Downtown Visit in Montgomery, Al

This coming week a visit to the new Dreamland BBQ joint in downtown Montgomery. The group will be discussing issues with renovating.

We met with a banker this week and we are ready to meet with you to discuss just how much financial disclosure you will have to provide in order to finance this project. We are going to have to sit down and see how much cash you have to put into this project. Most banks now will not lend unless you have the ability to contribute 20 to 30% of the project in cash up front. You are going to have to disclose every aspect of your finances to the bank. The bank is going to have to see that the proposed project will provide at least one and a half times coverage of the aticipated loan payment. We can talk more about this at a later date.

Parking Requirements

Based on our findings - we will likely need a variance for the large amount of parking required at the site. While we will try to mitigate some of the parking requirements by adding trees and green space, we are still facing a similar problem that the A&P development faced. Hopefully, we will be able to work out the same favorable outcome that they did. It was a brilliant idea to allow the residents' parking to be used by the surrounding businesses during the day! Maybe we can work out a similar solution at our site!?!
It is worth mentioning that the Board of Adjustment considered a very similar variance at their meeting last month, and the Board voted in favor of it. While there are no guarantees, this is encouraging information! We have some work ahead of us, but we will find a solution to this problem! We will be in touch soon.

Meeting this afternoon

Hope that you have had a wonderful week so far. We have been working hard on our presentation re: historic and aesthethic regulations. We have prepared the necessary documents for relocating and/or demolishing the building on Parcel 1. Glad that we were able to reschedule Mondays meeting for this afternoon - we look forward to presenting our findings to you. See you soon!

Meeting at the Loft

We met Wednesday at the A&P Lofts to discuss how zoning density can work. We toured the award winning property and saw examples of how people can work and live in the same space. We discussed how a development can work with the city and obtain the variances needed to make a project work if all of your homework is done. The importance of having a complete plan before going to the city is imperative. We also discussed the importance of getting the local community on your side before you go forward with a project. Community support can go a long way in helping make your project successful. The final thing that we went over was how to organize the structure of the development whether develop the property as a condominium or to parcel the development out as individual fee simple units. We are looking forward to our presentation Monday regarding the demolition and/or moving of an existing structure.

Historic Wednesday

We look forward to meeting with you on Wednesday at the A&P Lofts - it will be an informative session about the historic regulations that the delevoper faced and how those obstacles were overcome. We will look at the A&P from the perspective of design and regulations. We will also discuss how effective the historic regulations were in this area... are we willing to overcome similar obstacles if faced with them at our project site?

Cupola

Thought you might enjoy this website about cupolas, and hopefully will find it informative as you begin designing the cupola for the Cloverdale property. Look forward to seeing you next week.

http://www.cupola.com/index.htm