Understand the fees involved and calculate the total cost for an entire year of management so you can compare the different managers.

Understand the fees involved and calculate the total cost for an entire year of management so you can compare the different managers.

Add in community involvement any way you can.

Needless to say, many parties are involved, and they all need to be established and verified, or your business will suffer greatly. 

Going this route is more involved and that makes it more costly too.

Understand the fees involved and calculate the total cost for an entire year of management so you can compare the different managers.

Understand the fees involved and calculate the total cost for an entire year of management so you can compare the different managers.

Furthermore, this is a minor issue that shouldn't require your involvement at all. 

I was not involved in contracts, funds, etc. 

While both involve finding and properly securing a site and bringing it to full entitlement, the ground-up process includes the land piece but gets way more involved and complex to execute.The full "Monty" for ground-up development needs to include financial literacy, an explanation of metrics, and how they work.