The young, youngish and seasoned principals of Bienville Capital Management, New York and Mobile, Ala., hold informed opinions on China, Europe, gold the world's monetary affairs. They travel, think, read and consult. And then, all at once, it came to them: The opportunity they were searching for is the one they are virtually sitting on.

Now begins a bullish survey of the values on offer in the cast-off real estate of America's Gulf Coast. Bracketed by Mobile to the west and Pensacola, Fla., to the east, Baldwin County, Ala., is where the managers of the Gulf Coast Opportunities Fund hope to double or triple their partners' money in the next five to six years.

Though the GCOF is no yet fully funded (the partners are trying to raise $50 million). The values seem real and the back story promising. Still wounded by the 2007-09 financial crisis, the Gulf Coast was shocked by the 2010 BP oil disaster. Taking one thing with another, you are less surprised to discover that Baldwin Country real estate values have returned to the levels of the mid-1990's than you are that the country is still on the map.

When up and running, according to the offering document, GCOF will acquire a diversified, unleveraged portfolio of raw land, developed residential lots and commercial buildings, and it will hold those assets for up to eight years. So, yes, it sounds like a real estate investment. And yes, Cullen Thompson, one of the GCOF principals, tells Charley Grant of this staff, there is a natural tendency to broadly lump this strategy into 'real estate'."

At least, that's what the box-ticking investment consultants would call it. But, Thompson says, his partners and he care more about the underlying drivers of investment value than the boxes. "With respect to GCOF, yes, we are buying real estate assets," Thompson goes on, "but if you think about it, the real upside-the optionality-is the result of the liquidity vacuum. There hasn't been enough capital coming into the area to offset ongoing bank de-leveraging. Therefore, for those with the patient capital, good assets are available at shockingly low prices in an attractive geographic area. So the driver of returns for GCOF is somewhat idiosyncratic. Liquidity will come back at some point, and when it does, assets will return to fundamental value. While the macro is being sorted out, we're hoping to capitalize on the pro-cyclicality of banks. They lend too much when they shouldn't and not enough when they should."

Amen to that. In the fourth quarter of 2011, according to reporter Grant, who trekked to Baldwin Country last week, 37 residential lots in a subdivision in Daphne, Ala., sold at auction for slightly more than $13,000 each. In the bubble years, they had been offered at $150,000, with no takers, but one actually did sell in 2009 at $85,000. Now according to Nathan Cox, a partner of Thompson's in GCOF, $40,000 would be considered a fancy price, and indeed, "several" did sell for slightly more than that price early this year.

Cox, 31, a former Marine platoon commander in Iraq who played foot-ball at the University of Alabama, is the fund's chief real estate operative as well as the president of Bellator, a Spanish Fort, Ala., real-estate development firm. In conversation with the Grant's staff, Thompson had dropped the memorable line that "our competition is nobody." Cox elaborates: "One deal  that's coming up for bank auction that we will be pursuing-it's 83 acres of land, 28 acres of which are behind another subdivision that we already own in one of our other entities, and the land on that 28 acres is fantastic," he says. "Probably the best land in Daphne. Beautiful trees, it's level; it's basically oaks and other hardwoods on it. It's perfect. But the problem is, you can't get to it is us, because we already own the other land, so there is some value there to us, but to anyone else it's worthless, including the bank that has to auction it. What we would do with it, GCOF would buy this land at the auction. GCOF would buy a lot from a lot from one of our other investment groups at today's full market value, and we can take that lot, vacate that lot, make it go away and use that as our entrance to this land. And all of a sudden, we've got the best subdivision in Daphne." He says the fund could sell the lots, which will have cost it $23,000 each, for upwards of $65,000 each.

A nice and bustling part of the world is Baldwin County, our correspondent relates. A visiting New Yorker will find in such towns as Fairhope all necessary comforts and appurtenances-from art galleries to coffee shops and concert venues. Now has BP left its mark on the brilliant white-sand beaches of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, Ala. "OK," Grant relates, "it's not the French Riviera (yet), but the old slur 'Redneck Riviera' is fast becoming obsolete.

"The economic prospects along the Gulf Coast look strong," our reporter continues, "starting with its favorable geography. Mobile is linked to the world by a pair of interstate highways, five railroads and a big port. The city's unemployment rate registered 7.6% in April, down from 11.9% in January 2010. It could be headed lower if the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., parent of Airbus, decides to pick Mobile as the new site for its American Factories (Tom Enders, formally names CEO of EADS in May, has already identified Mobile as the preferred site should the company decide to go forward with U.S. production). Perhaps Meredith Whitney was on to something at the spring Grant's Conference when she spoke of the rise of the American 'Golden Triangle'- low-tax, business-friendly states in the nation's interior."

Baldwin Country has done more that survive BP and Wall Street, not to mention Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina in 2004 and 2005, respectively; it has expanded its numbers in spite of them. Thus the country showed 29.8% population growth between 2000 and 2010, in contrast to state-wide growth of just 7.5%. And county growth of 85% between 1990 and 2010 towers over statewide growth of only 18%.

Not the least bullish feature of the local scene is the shifting focus of official worry. "Everything is great," Mayor Tony Kennon of the town of Orange Beach (population 5,441) assured the Mobile Press-Register last week. Visitors and tax revenues are both on the rice. But so, too, His Honor added, is traffic. "You're trying to really balance growth and quality of life for those of us who live here full time," he went on. "So while we're extremely excited about seeing the numbers and revenue, I am concerned that we've got to maintain and keep our quality-of-life issues at the [top] of our priority lists."

"Kennon," Grant observes, "hardly sounds like a man concerned about his town's collective livelihood, yet real estate seems priced as though no recovery in the local economy were under way or forthcoming."

The partners of GCOF's sponsor, Bienville Capital-besides Thompson, they include Ralph Reynolds and Billy Stimpson-do their worrying from the top down. They approach markets from the macroeconomic angle, including the vantage point of Federal Reserve policy. "As both an investor and fiduciary of other people's money," says Thompson, "every day I contemplate ways to insulate our portfolios from the potential missteps of the Federal Reserve. I think about this chart [the nearby picture of the funds rate less nominal GDP growth] often. As you can see, each time the funds rate has remained below nominal GDP growth for a protracted period of time, bad things happened. Now combine that history with the size of the Fed's balance sheet today and the experimental actions they are engaged in. I think it's only rational to be concerned, and prudent to look for creative ways to protect yourself, from Fed-induced mishap. Our investment themes today are driven by our desire to uncover more idiosyncratic opportunities-ways we can earn attractive risk-adjusted returns without having to unduly obsess over the day-to-day vitality of financial markets or the subtle word changes in the FOMC's press releases."

In CFA lingo, the GCOF promoters call their knowledge of the local real estate and banking situation their "alpha"- it's how they expect to add value. They call any generalized American macroeconomic improvement their "beta" – it's how the gods will add value. They say they expect to thrive in an inflationary environment. But they also insist they will hold their own if, after eight long years, they have to sell at the same rock-bottom prices at which they expect to buy.

Should that occur, Thompson winds up, "that implies that land will not have appreciated in a geographically attractive area for 25 years. I have a hard time envisioning that.  However, should that be the case and if we can return our investors' principal, because of deflation our dollars would be worth more at that time than today."

Raw land is, of course, a negative-carry asset, though Baldwin County makes it relatively easy on the long-term investor. Cox relates that real estate taxes on a typical vacant lot would range between $200 and $300 a year, while those on a $300,000 primary residence would come in at about $1,000 a year. New Yorkers will do a double take, but Cox insists.