[dellinger63]

Here's a good example of a lost hippie finding his way to the American Dream albeit with $500

Singh was born Paul Arthur Labombard in 1952, in Fitchburg in north central Massachusetts. Like many people in that small factory town, he grew up poor. But from earliest childhood, Singh stood out from the crowd. He yearned for adventure and challenge. He taught himself to read at the age of four and the local library was a favorite childhood haunt. According to Singh, “I dreamed of someday visiting the world. I also learned that if you want to learn anything in life you can always find it in a book.”

Long before he developed his first property as Pritam Singh, Labombard displayed a flair for attracting media attention to causes he deemed worthy. As a teenager in Brunswick, Maine, where his family had moved, he was interviewed by Walter Cronkite in 1968 for his role in discovering illegal signatures on a petition to place the segregationist George Wallace on the presidential ballot in Maine.

In 1969, at the age of 17, seeking sun and serenity, Singh made his way to Florida, first to Miami and then on to Key West, where he spent several months sleeping on the front porch of a local inn. Though it would be 17 more years before he developed his first project there as Pritam Singh, the Florida Keys captured the imagination of the young and penniless Labombard, and over the years he would be drawn time and again to this delicate string of coral reef islands.

Also in that year, Singh was arrested and spent several days in jail with a group protesting the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C. His early political activism evolved into a spiritual search, however, and Labombard entered a Sikh Ashram in Massachusetts a couple of years later at the age of 19, remaining until he was 24. While in the Ashram, he married Kaitlin Briggs. It was also during this time that he took the name Pritam Singh. Pritam means “God’s Beloved” in the language of the Sikhs, and Singh, meaning “lion,” is the surname all Sikh men adopt.

The working years

In 1976 Singh emerged from his long period of meditation and study in the Sikh commune and moved to Portland, Maine. In Portland, he and Kaitlin had two daughters, first Siri Sahaj Kaur and then Charan Kamal Kaur. Kaur, meaning “Princess,” is the surname of all Sikh women. In 1979, after a period spent traveling to India, he bought his first house in Maine - a building that had been condemned after a fire - using a loan from his lawyer, a mortgage from the seller and $500 on his credit card. Singh turned the building into ten apartments.

He formed a company called Great Bay and began turning low cost and foreclosed properties into a series of small-scale development successes, and his career as one of America’s most talked about real estate developers began.

From the very beginning as a small New England builder focusing on historic preservation, Singh displayed the deep reverence for beauty and tradition, as well as for quality design and craftsmanship, that continues to distinguish his projects today.

Singh was a principal force in the revitalization of Portland’s downtown district with a series of acquisitions, each larger and more ambitious than the last. He took four historical buildings called Frothingham Yard and turned them into 16 affordable condominiums that sold out in two days. He purchased, renovated and quickly sold historic buildings like Carroll Mansion. He took two buildings in downtown and turned them into the Oakview Condominiums. Then came 35 condominiums at 99 Silver Street

And now

Pritam Singh is the Founder and President of the largest and most successful real estate development company in the Florida Keys. His firm currently has five major residential, resort and commercial projects under development, stretching from Key West to Marathon, with a combined valuation of more than one quarter of a billion dollars. His projects in Key West alone are estimated to have added over a billion dollars to the city’s tax base.

Singh has been responsible for the development of large-scale planned residential, resort and hotel projects in the Florida Keys worth over one billion dollars. These include such now well-known names as the Village at Hawk’s Cay, The Key West Golf Club and, most notably, the Truman Annex, The Singh Company’s signature project encompassing a resort hotel, upscale condominiums, single family homes and over 60,000 square feet of commercial space, all celebrated for their adherence to the simple yet beautiful architectural style that Key West made famous.

Singh is personally involved in every project his eponymous firm develops, and his keen eye for detail has taken on legendary proportions among the builders and contractors who work for him. An exacting perfectionist as well as a frequent world traveler, Singh has been known to bring back a particular style of porch light or doorknob he has spotted on his travels to Europe and Asia for use in a community he is developing.

So for God's sake America stop bitchin, stop coveting others' money and get a f'n job!