Ogden – 24th Street
*This development is currently in progress all development details are subject to change*
August 2020 – The Traditional Developer Approach
In August 2020 an architect and developer put a property in West Ogden under contract. He worked with the seller to present a development plan to the city. He spent money on a survey, time on an architectural and engineering package. The city was favorable of the development however the developer did not have enough time left in the contract to secure the development. The seller demanded earnest money to go hard for an extension. Seeing there was enough unknown about the project still, the developer cut his losses, cancelled the contract and moved on. His money and time spent were now all a sunk cost. The developer’s name was Pier Langue with Axis Architects.
December 2022 – Real Estate House Tour
Luke attended a house tour in Salt Lake City where the investor shared their plans to turn a single family rental into a rehab house. The strategy and cashflow projections were astounding. Luke met the presenter and investor, Tyler. He got his contact info. They added each other on social media. Luke reached out to Tyler about “Hot Stuff” to see if there was potential for the project to be a rehab facility. Hot Stuff wasn’t a good fit for a rehab facility due to zoning, but it was a good touch point for Luke and Tyler.
February 2023 – A Social Media Post
Luke felt like he needed to do a development related post for some time. He wasn’t sure what to say but decided to just put something together and post it. Here is the post. Luke received a lot of surprisingly negative commentary on this post. However, right before heading to bed he got a message from Tyler. Tyler saw Luke’s post and decided to reach out. Tyler had multiple properties he wanted to develop. One specifically he had purchased a year ago with the specific intent to develop it later. Tyler said that when he bought it there was a developer who was trying to develop it and was having trouble. He said it could be a town home project. Tyler wanted to pick up where that developer had left off.
Due Diligence
During this information gathering time we were actually able to identify the developer that made the last proposal to the city. We set up a call with him. He said he was happy that we were able to work with the land owners and hoped our endeavor would work out. He told us we could have access to any of his due diligence package for a price. That being said, he wouldn’t show us anything without us paying in full. This mindset really does confuse Steve. It is a sunk cost for Pierre. If we paid him $1 it would be a positive return for him. But he was asking thousands of dollars for each item completed. What would you do?
A new approach to development.
After gathering all the information and seeing the potential for the development it was clear we should take this project to the next step. Steve, Kyler, Luke met with Tyler and Teresa about their property. The initial discussions were to be able to do a development agreement where McCleery company controls the development process and then we would split the upside. However the risk associated with the unknown on this project caused us to scale it back. We decided to take the approach Steve has always taken. Let the land owner be the developer until we get to entitlements.
We started working with Tyler and Teresa with the land owner first strategy. We share all the information we had gathered about the property, the development potential and history of the previous developer with Tyler and Teresa. Then we put together a concept presentation, and presented it to Tyler and Teresa. They gave the thumbs up to move forward with the city.
Concept Presentation to Ogden City
We took our concept presentation to Ogden City. The city was excited about the project and gave us an initial thumbs up to continue. They told us the pitfalls of the last proposal and what things we needed to prepare for next steps. We went back to Tyler and Teresa. We needed to hire an engineer.
Engineering a concept plan
We worked with David at Excel Engineering for the next concept plan. It was less than $1000 and we were able to create a concept plan for the development. We went through a few tweaks and then we were ready to go to the city again.
Concept Plan #2 with Ogden City
Meeting with the city this time was just as exciting as the first time. They are eager to see this project happen because it is basically bringing the future of Ogden into the present. 24th Street is slated to be a whole mixed used district however it’s all residential, commercial, and industrial zoning hodge podge right now. The next steps from this meeting were to prepare the vacation of Cahoon St and to close the abutter’s alley.
Street Vacations
We started the process for getting the approvals for the street vacations. This included a title search to uncover the specific ownership of each piece needed to be vacated. It also included getting bids from surveyors for the legal descriptions of the sections to be vacated. In our shopping for surveyors we approached a surveying team who said they couldn’t do it for us but they knew a surveyor in the area that would be great to work with. They actually referred us to the surveyor who surveyed the property 2 years ago for Pierre. Oh the irony. This surveyor gave us the legal descriptions for the portions needed to be vacated for a few hundred dollars. This was WAY better than paying thousands of dollars to Pierre for a PDF survey that didn’t have the specific legal descriptions we needed for our development, instead of Pierre’s failed one.
Working with the church for the vacations
I tried calling the pastor many times. It was hard to get a hold of him. One day I took an envelope, put the plan of the concept development, the highlighted areas needed to be vacated, and a note in the envelope and taped it to the front door of the church. 45 minutes after we left the envelope I received a call from the pastor.
Key Takeaways:
– Post on social media about what you are doing. Keep your warm network informed about what you are doing. You never know who will be a potential partner.
– When landowners are not responding, leave a note.
