All Forum Posts by: Jamie Hora

I specialize in the civil engineering & permitting for any land development type project.  Probably 75% of my focus is commercial work, and the other is residential developments.  I help developers with initial due-diligence & feasibility on site selection, and then all parts relating to civil/site permitting: rezoning, platting, civil design, etc. 

I really love my role in the industry.  Maybe one day I'll work on a development myself, but for now, I'm happy doing the engineering aspect.  I'm licensed in Texas, Arizona & Arkansas. 

Getting a civil engineer and/or architect with experience in the area will be able to guide you through much of this.  Also, you can meet with City staff to discuss your questions as well for you to gain the knowledge yourself before paying an engineer. 

I am not sure on single vs multi-tenant options, that is outside of my experience. I believe you would look at market analysis of what tenants would be in each of those scenarios and compare the proforma on each. 

There are plenty of tenants that can accommodate with a < 1 acre lot. You are in line with your thinking on some newer banks and/or coffee drive through shops.  There are drive-thru only coffee shops with buildings ~500 sq ft.  The main challenge with some of these are the dimensions of your lot and configuring the site to allow the minimum stacking of vechicles.

Depending on your use, a 5000 sq ft building may be tough to fit in this size lot when looking at how much parking you want/need, building setbacks, landscaping setbacks etc.   

Very nice, congrats!

There is a large piece that you didnt mention, the actual cost of the development. You may have a grasp on this aspect, but there are items to consider that can play a big factor when choosing your land such as topography, existing zoning & platted lot status, minimum/maximum requirements such as parking, detention, size of building, setbacks.  

Timelime of the project can be heavily impacted by which agencies are required for permitting. It is only within a county, or need City approvals, or possibly DOT approvals for driveway connection, etc. A local engineer can help understand all of these items.

Good luck on the project. 

Hi Bryan, I'm a civil engineer and am familiar with things like this.  Uneven terrain may not be an issue but yes it would require leveling for your garage slabs.  Depending on the dimensions of your tract, your goal should be to orient your garages with the elevation difference going front-back or back-front.  That will allow areas outside of the slab to be less affected and limit the required work to place the pads on even ground. 

If that does not work with your site and the contours/grades are dropping/rising along the longitudinal with of the garages, that can cause much more site work.  In that case, you would likely need several separate slabs, with some separation between them, versus a 200' wide slab with 8 garages. 

That is the concept how things like rows of apartment garages and storage units can be laid out in areas with lots of grade change.  But more creative solutions are likely site dependent specific to your situation. 

I do not think the location of a railroad would have any impact of the rezoning for the apartment usage.  This would be more dependent on the  surrounding zoning, future land-use maps by the City, and the City's input. 

One possible large impact would be a minimum setback requirement from the railroad to any development, which could drastically cut the usable land. 

Hi Yehuda. I am a licensed civil engineer in Texas and perform these for clients on a regular basis.  I'm located in San Antonio and have projects in and around Dallas-Fort Worth.  I would be happy to have a discussion with you about the project and the exact services you need.  Feel free to send a direct message. 

If you wish for each home/lot to have their own septic tank, counties or city code will usually require a minimum lot size (1/2ac - 1 ac min roughly).  Since you said tiny homes, this is probably not an option.  

Septic fields are an option, but they can require a quite a bit of open space.  Best advice is to reach out a septic designer and see how many drain fields you would need, or how many homes you can combine into 1 field based on code & practicality.  In my experience on my commercial sites (with restaurants), roughly 1 acre out of the 4 acre site could be eaten up by a septic field. Not sure about residential though.  

A well can definitely be set up to serve more than 1 home. Just need to see how much water a well in your area can produce, plus the cost / efficiency of a larger well vs multiple individuals. 

In both scenarios with "shared" services, I would also give consideration to the shared responsibility & maintenance of the septic field , well, and equipment.