My first development!

[Mark Updegraff]

Hi Everyone,
It has been a while since I've shared with BP and I've got a few seconds now so I figured I'd start by letting y'all know what I've been up to as of late :D

I'm in the process starting my development company, and building a ~10,000 sq ft garage with 2000 sq ft of office. The land is under contract and we're entering our due diligence period where we will seek special variance permits for the commercial zoning and get more clarity on potential wetland areas. In addition, we have another parcel under contract very close where we will develop to suit.

I'm very excited to share this opportunity with the BP community! I'll keep this thread updated with progress, photo's, lessons learned, etc.

As always, if anyone has specific questions I'll do my best to answer them!

Looking forward to sharing more soon,
Mark

[Mark Updegraff]

Sean H. Indeed! I just spoke with my commercial broker and our offer has finally been accepted! After 8 months of very slow back and forth negotiations I got a verbal yesterday that it is GO time. We're going to have to get a special use variance, and there are some environmental issues that will need examined. We've incorporated a 90 day due diligence period in the offer to make sure everything will work with our plan.

I spent a lot of time getting into Google Sketchup recently. I've put together a nice rendering of what I hope the building to look like. It is 8000 sq ft warehouse, 2300 sq ft office, 2 acres paved parking with landscaping, and the rest will be stabilized and covered in stone. The parcel is 10 acres. There are some other interesting details that I will divulge as soon as I receive a signed copy of the purchase agreement!! Sorry, after all this arduous negotiating I don't want to be too hasty. I want the signed contract in my hand before talking too much about this project.

As soon as that happens I'll give the nitty gritty on everything, including lessons learned. And, moving forward how we end up dealing with the city, permits, and special use variance. Also I'll detail the environmental portion. This will be my second go round with monitoring wells, so that will be easy for me to document and describe step by step.

I'm really excited to actively working on my first development. Like everything else, it takes a lot longer than you anticipate!

Some positives that I can share from the last 8 months of ground work are about the market. It is incredible! Commercial RE in central PA is where it is at! I can't wait to tackle this so I can keep rolling them out. LOTS of credit worthy tenants looking for NNN leases and the rates are very good for land/property owners. I have found another client that wants to build and I'm getting to cherry pick my brokers 'pocket listings' for land options. IMO you can't go wrong. I'm currently drafting plans on the 4 acre commercial parcel we secured last year, but I don't anticipate breaking ground on that until we finish this project.

Just for reference, undeveloped commercial is selling for 40-120 / acre. Yikes!

Mark