Said this project is going to last 2 years and employ about 400 people. 

To determine whether an investment is worthwhile, one might consider the opportunity cost of putting money into a real estate investment instead throwing that money into the stock market for the same period of time that you’d be invested in the real-estate project.

I have seen enough to get the gist of it, but this will be my first mail merge and bulk offer project.  

Schedule tours and ask them to make offers.The same approach applies to my 350,000sf warehouse project or the 1,000sf small user space.If you have the time and energy and willing to make the effort, you can do it. 

Btw I worked all through undergrad so that is only 4 years debt I reference ;)But back to original post- I agree to only put 1 name on the loan- that's what we did, and my massive debt never hindered the process...

The project is going to be 20K of material and sweat equity.

Everything is running extremely thin and we all discussed that we need to find something we SOME leeway, especially since this is our first project. 

.$1,737/month on a $3,000 rent sounds really great to me, I don't think you want to jump out because of the 50% rule with those numbers.Your main concern is getting the project done fast and getting renters in there.

CongratulationsHow did you pay for the project?  

If you can move into a place and work on it, saving yourself overhead, protecting your project, those can be good things and you'll also meet the neighbors and probably pick up more deals that way.