So the classroom was NOT ready! How bad could it be? Well, the A/C was out and so was the Electricity.
How does that scenario as setting for high ranking professionals to come speak to us? ha!
Don't be duped! Dr. Forgey to the rescue! Unsurprisingly, we made our way over to the bar across the street to have our class at one of their private dining rooms (pretty shnazzy if ya ask me!). Dr. Forgey, in his altruistic nature bought us all breakfast and lunch to got us settled into our temporary nest. Thanks again!
To get our guest speaker line-up sparked off, we Had Owen Hanney of Slingshot (Ad agency) come in and give us his very unique insight into real estate development. Owen was sourced by John, and was an architect by trade, who fell into the ad business and had a passion for adaptive re-use. Well rounded enough?? Owen retrofitted the Await Building in Downtown Dallas a few years back, and utilized tax credits and tax abatements, and experienced a stringent period of being turned down by 25 conventional lenders for his projects. One lesson to take away is that if you have the vision and the passion to create a project, perseverance is an integral component of the formula to push your dream through. Nonetheless, he put in two new elevators with the preservationist giving him hell, avoided bankruptcy, and got all of this done on a 40,000+ sq ft building in 10 months! Also, learn about Tax Credits and your partners in those deals before your enter into the deal!
As Owen was presenting, Jason's speaker joined us. Leslie Houston is with Wells Fargo's Community Lending & Investment department, and was able to tag team with Owen on parts of the conversation, before she took the floor solo and gave us a breakdown of what types of programs students like us could enter into and have better success with relative to conventional financing. Generally speaking, the bank is requiring a 50% LTV, 1.3+ DSCR, personal guarantees, and financial statements backed up with tax returns from the principals in the deal. Ouch! She did mention a website and institution that might be of interest to us, a division of the US Treasury called the CDFI (Community Development Financial Institution). We will be doing our due diligence into this...
As lunch came rolling in, I thought I should head over to the main campus to guide my speaker over to where the class was. Fashionably ahead of schedule, Dana Burghdoff of the City of Ft. Worth was waiting for me. Ms. Burghdoff is the Deputy Director of Planning at Ft. Worth, and had a wealth of information for our class. Specifically for our project, we learned that the handful of houses behind our tract were zoned A-5, triggering the technicality that forces us to meet the minimum parking requirements for our project, Ouch again! She was also helpful in providing us contacts in at the city such as the Developer's Aide department (not the actual name) which provides guidance to developers through their process. Also, we will be setting up a meeting with Randy Hutchison of the Planning & Development Dept. to discuss pre-development plans for our specific tract, which he supposedly knows better than anyone else other than James. Nice!
Off into the afternoon we go, GO TEAM USA Soccer!!!!
Cheers.
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