It’s not a popular opinion but it’ll help with DTI issues and it’ll keep your risk down.

.#3 Your time is precious = A broker saves you an incredible amount of time.

In hindsight, this was incredibly short-sighted by me as I have a network of people around me who are more than willing to help.

He is a very popular in the area and wouldn't take on any new clients. 

In a city with this much old housing stock it would seem to cause an incredible burden on landlords all having to upgrade their windows.

My boards have a 3-2 split on one board and a 5-4 split on the other as an investor/occupant ratio (yep, both are majority investor), but based on my discussions with other people, that is incredibly rare.They may actually consider what you're asking, but depending on how their rules are written, may have to put it out to a homeowner vote where it is likely to fail for all the reasons I mention above.The most important reason being that investors don't vote. 

Do you have friends or family in popular locations that would let you park it at their place?

Disadvantage could be a location on a busy street which is less popular for residential, but would be great for a store-front.

If site is incredible and best for the area but does not meet all of their layout criteria they might manipulate building size or layout to fit the site.If site and location is a choice among many and does not line up well with their site criteria and plans with hurdles to overcome they might pass on it.Sometimes they can talk to you directly and other times they will pass it on to their tenant rep broker to scrub the site further and then if it still looks good the tenant rep broker talks to their client the company and then they contact you to discuss further and a possible LOI.It's not how they all work but typical from what I have seen.    

That was laid out so clear and is incredibly helpful.