Freedom to Build, Freedom to Object

Real Estate Insights. Success Mindset. One Step at a Time.

Issue #58 | July 5, 2026 🇺🇸

Two hundred and fifty years ago yesterday, a room full of merchants and lawyers signed what one writer rightly calls a suicide note, and bet everything they owned on a single conditional word. This week, we're talking about what that word still means for the dirt business.

🧠 Market Insights

Freedom to Build, Freedom to Object

Georgia Power's 10 year transmission plan calls for up to 1,000 miles of new high voltage lines across the state, most of it chasing data center and industrial load growth. In Coweta County alone, more than 330 private properties sit in the path, and 21 homes are set to be taken outright. The utility says it starts negotiations at 125 percent of appraised value and treats eminent domain as a last resort. Several families say the offers still fall short.

The transmission fight sits downstream of two data center pitches in the same county. Project Sail, an 829 acre campus, and Project Peach, a $1 billion facility near Palmetto, both won narrow 3 to 2 votes from county commissioners over packed rooms of opposition. Nearly 20 residents are now suing to undo the Project Sail rezoning.

It is not isolated. Across the Atlanta Southside, in Fayette, Henry, and south Fulton counties, several jurisdictions have paused new applications entirely to rewrite zoning codes before the next proposal lands.

Dirt Dawg Take: Every one of those county votes, for the data center and against the transmission line, is the same right in action. The freedom that lets a developer buy dirt and build on it is the same freedom that lets a homeowner pack a commission meeting and fight back. You do not get to keep one and lose the other. Coweta County is living that trade out loud this week.

✨ The Alpha Effect

A Republic, If You Can Keep It

Every county vote we just talked about, for the data center and against the transmission line, only happens because of one word that has been holding for two hundred fifty years.

Mike Kimelman called the Declaration of Independence what it actually was on his Substack: a “suicide note.” A room full of merchants and lawyers backed it anyway.

The odds were ugly. The downside was everything they owned.

Yesterday, that suicide note turned two hundred fifty years old.

Benjamin Franklin, walking out of the convention, got asked what they had built. A republic, he said. If you can keep it.

That word is doing all the work. If.

250 years later, we're still keeping it. That's not luck. That's the whole ballgame.

I think about how blessed I am to live with this freedom every time I close a deal, walk a site, or watch a county commission vote a project up or down.

Every signature on every closing statement I've ever handled only means something because that conditional word held.

None of what I do exists without the freedom sitting underneath it.

Three thoughts from the Dirt Dawg Den:

1. Freedom to buy, sell, develop, and change your mind is the whole business.

Nobody grants me the right to sell you a piece of ground. Nobody grants you the right to build on it, hold it, or flip it in six months. That right exists because men with everything to lose picked a fight they had rotten odds of winning. And won it anyway.

2. The same freedom that lets me sell you dirt lets your neighbor stop you from building on it.

I've sat through county meetings that turned into shouting matches over projects. Coweta County residents are fighting a utility over transmission lines right now, and plenty of people are cheering them on. That's not the system failing. That's the system working exactly as designed. Freedom to build and freedom to object come from the same well.

3. Freedom of expression is why any of this gets written down at all.

This post. Your comment underneath it. Kimelman's Substack. None of it exists without the same conditional word Franklin used two hundred fifty years ago.

We didn't inherit a finished country. We inherited the job of keeping one.

If.

Buy it. Sell it. Build it. Say no to it if you don't want it built. That's what the whole thing was built for.

Two hundred fifty years in, and we're still keeping it.

What does freedom let you do in this business that you don't say out loud enough?

Might as well celebrate it and be grateful every day, not just once a year.

God bless America.

🚀 One Step at a Time

Action Steps This Week

1. Answer the Question Out Loud

What does freedom let you do in this business that you don't say out loud enough? Write it down this week. Be grateful for the opportunity. Then say it to a client, a partner, or your own network.

2. Show Up Where the Vote Happens

Put one local commission or zoning meeting on your calendar this month, yours or your neighbor's. Freedom to build and freedom to object both need people in the room, not people complaining from home.

3. Exercise the Freedom While You Have It

Make the call, write the offer, put a property under contract, or walk away from one you should. Buying, selling, developing, and changing your mind is the whole business. Use it this week.

Small steps compound. So does keeping a promise two hundred fifty years running.

Here's to building your success, one step at a time...

from the dirt up.

Kris "Dirt Dawg" McGee 🐾