Building Update - January 12, 2018

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Hello, everyone! Our project to construct an office building has now moved to a new phase. Each week on Thursday throughout the duration of the project, we have a meeting scheduled with our project manager (CBRE), builder (Highland Builders), civil engineer (Cross Engineering) and architect (Alliance) to discuss that week’s progress. From that meeting, I plan to post each Friday a brief summary to keep all of you informed.

This is our first weekly report, so I need to bring you up to date on the progress to this point. We have completed all the architectural drawings and civil engineer drawings. Since the city of McKinney has formally approved all the civil drawings, we are only waiting for the formal grading permit to begin the excavation. In our meeting today we were told that even though the city has approved the necessary permits, there has been a delay in getting the grading permit out of the city planning commission. The delay seems to be a matter of paperwork and getting everything properly recorded. We expect to have the grading permit in hand in the next few days. Once the grading permit has been issued, there is one more meeting between the builder and the city to make sure we have an adequate erosion plan in place before we can move any dirt.

One thing we have learned about this project is that the city never gets in a hurry! We have been anticipating breaking ground since the last week of December. Until all these pieces are completed, we can’t do any work on the property. But it seems that there is good reason to believe there will be a groundbreaking ceremony next week. We are working on a simple ceremony with the office staff whenever we get the final go-ahead.

Next week takes us to the middle of January, so we are already a couple of weeks behind our original plan. I am confident some of this time can be made up, but we just need to get started! When we began this project back in July with the purchase of the property, we were cautioned that the wild card in this whole process would be the city. We were told to expect at least six months to get everything approved by the city of McKinney. We are now in our seventh month! 

I am optimistic that next week I will be able to report the groundbreaking. If so, we will have pictures and possibly some video. We now have our own drone here in the office, which will make it possible for us to get good video from overhead. Thank you for your support. Some of you have been sending donations to the building fund, and they are very much appreciated. Until next week.