We began by purchasing older (as in Second Empire, Victorian, Edwardian, with a couple of post WWII houses) buildings and renovating them to be healthy energy efficient homes for our tenants.Our roadmap has always had the longer term objective of building new multi-unit buildings (townhouses and/or apartment complexes) to Passivhaus standards.  

At this point I have a good idea of the investment strategy I want to pursue, and a pretty healthy down payment ready to go.I am interested in cash-flow properties, and more specifically, in what has been coined "hybrid" real estate investment.

I hate to say it but with zero  experience in  development, or real estate for that matter, it would be near impossible to obtain financing from a bank without a huge amount of skin in the game, like 40-50% or more.  

Yes Linda, a Hard Money lender will issue you a POF Letter provided you can show that you do have capital to invest as well "skin in the game" as they say.  

In short, I'm just encouraging a healthy brainstorm of all the creative ways that influence accomplishing this objective.

I have thick skin so I know being yelled at is just a part of the game.

With a healthy advanced notice, let them know you're raising the rent to market rate.  

We want the city because we like downtown and we want healthy distance from some family in the area.

Plus there is a huge body of knowledge required to develop bigger projects.Second, it takes time to amass enough of their own capital to able to have skin in the game in their projects. 

Texans have thick skin!