Full Circle with The Christi Reece Group

Jeremy Nelson - DT GJ REgeneration LLC - Full Circle with The Christi Reece Group - Episode 4

July 08, 2020 Jeremy Nelson Season 1 Episode 4
Full Circle with The Christi Reece Group
Jeremy Nelson - DT GJ REgeneration LLC - Full Circle with The Christi Reece Group - Episode 4
Show Notes Transcript

Christi sits down with Jeremy Nelson of Downtown Grand Junction REgeneration LLC, the developer for the Lowell Village Townhomes.  They discuss the exciting project to bring modern townhomes to Grand Junction's vibrant downtown. The homes are being built behind the old R-5 High School, also part of the redevelopment plan, on 7th St and White Ave. When finished, there will be 36 townhomes with detached garages that include an upstairs flex suite.  Buyers can choose from multiple floor plans and finishes.  All townhomes have front porches to encourage neighborly connection.  Couple that with a community garden, great lawn and plaza, and there will be plenty of space for fun!  Call us at The Christi Reece Group at 970-589-7700 to learn more about Phase 2, to be completed in 2021.

If you prefer visuals, watch here!

Christi:

The full circle podcast, compelling interviews and incredible tales from Colorado's Western slope, from the mountains to the desert, Christi Reece and her team here from the movers, shakers and characters of the grand Valley and the surrounding mountain towns that make the Western slope, the place we all love. You'll learn. You'll laugh. You'll love with the full circle. Welcome everyone to the full circle podcast with the Christi Reece group. Today, I am here with Jeremy Nelson of Downtown Grand Junction Regeneration, LLC. So if you don't know what that is, and you probably don't, he's the developer of those amazingly beautiful townhomes down at white and eight behind the[inaudible] school. So we're going to talk to Jeremy today about the project, uh, about how he found Grand Junction and what it's going to look like when it gets built out eventually. So Jeremy welcome. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. You bet. So, um, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background, where do you live? And then I wanna know how you found Grand Junction.

Jeremy:

Sure. Um, Grand Junction found me, I think, but, um, we live in San Francisco during the school years, my wife and our two kids nine and five, and we are in Durango in the summers. We stumbled into that by postal lifestyle. We didn't set out to, um, uh, create that life. But, uh, for various reasons, we ended up splitting our time between those two communities. I have a background professionally in planning, urban planning and consulting for planning agencies around zoning codes and development, friendly policies and consulting for developers on infill makes you smart growth type of development policies. And you did that in California, in California. Yes. Um, even the Bay area. So practicing public sector and private sector. So professionally I discovered grand junction at a DCI conference, I believe in 2013. Um, when we were living in Durango full time. And then as we began to make our sort of summer pilgrimage back and forth between the Bay area and grand junction in the end of summer, we take the Northern route through Salt Lake city, which takes us right through Grand Junction. I fell in love with Grand Junction, generally in downtown Grand Junction, particularly

Christi:

There really aren't a lot of towns of this size that have such a great downtown, like we do.

Jeremy:

Yeah, it's a, I've heard so many people say this. I thought I'd come up with it. But subsequent to getting to know people downtown is a hidden gem in Colorado because a lot of people are driving through grand junction, but don't stop and make it to downtown. So I stopped saying it's a hidden gem now, cause it's no longer hidden to me and to our company and our team. But, um, yeah, it's an amazing downtown through public sector investment over a series of several decades. Um, the reason we working on the project eight, then why was the partnership with the Downtown Development Authority, where we were selected as the developer for that project and for, um, rehabilitation of the lower school.

Christi:

So the Downtown Development Authority is a group of business owners and they are a, would you say they're under the wing of the city of Grand Junction.?

Jeremy:

Um, my understanding is the Downtown Development Authority like many, um, DDA's is sort of quasi independent. It has its own it's its own entity formed, uh, by, through an election with downtown merchants and property owners of Mona say back in the late seventies, early eighties, 1981, I think. But, um, it also is a sort of dotted line sister agency to the city in terms of shared resources and, um, sort of shared policy coordination and those sorts of things.

Christi:

Well then, uh, Brandon, if you're listening, you're going to be a future guest when I talk to you about the DDA here on the full circle. So, um, so the DDA put out a request for proposals, is that correct?

Jeremy:

Yes. And we were selected as the development partner for a couple of sites, and right now we're wrapping up our first phase of the townhomes. You mentioned little village townhomes and then moving into, um, rehabilitation of, and revitalization of the school, building the little school building and restoring that building to its former glory.

Christi:

So I know because we've talked about this a lot, that one of the really great aspects of this project for you is the school building like that really attracted you to this site and this project.

Jeremy:

Yes. Uh, it's always been the entire, site's been public since the beginning and the school, obviously it was a public school from its inception as an elementary school, um, until it was an alternative high school in the seventies, uh, through the, or I guess eighties and through the, um, 20, you know, early teens when the school district sold it to the DDA. So we've always had a vision for the project, both the townhomes and the school to be public, um, to be, not be gated, to not be closed off, to have public amenities, uh, community gardens, um, to essentially, and then with the school building to essentially create a facility that's more of a community facility, even though there may be private businesses or tenants in the building, but to be open to the public and become kind of a community asset, not just sort of a private sector, you know, office building or something like that. And similarly with the great lawn, we envision that as public open space to be programmed and activated as public open space,

Christi:

Don't worry. We're just popping up on a couple of surfaces over there. No, I don't think so. Thank you. So cheers, Jeremy. Um, and you were inspired on the school building, uh, and what the possibilities were for that building by a couple of other projects that you've seen in other places. Can you tell us a little bit about those?

Jeremy:

Sure. Um, the project that comes to mind in terms of mixing residential with restoration of the historic school building is the, uh, Albuquerque high project in downtown Albuquerque. Uh, no, the developer of that project mentor to us, uh, several members of our team and was an advisor early on in the project in terms of, uh, how to make residential and school rehab work. So that was one inspiration if you don't know downtown Albuquerque or the Albuquerque had projects. Great. And then another inspiration was actually in Durango, the smiley building in downtown Durango, which is a former middle school and was purchased by the Shaw brothers 10, 15 years ago, I believe from the school district. And they spent that same amount of time pouring, lots of TLC, lots of historic state, historic preservation grants, um, a lot of elbow grease and really turning that into one of my favorite places in downtown Durango, in terms of the mix of tenants, the community focus of the building, um, the sort of vibrancy of, you know, activity there all day long weekdays, weekdays, weekends, and really also activating the outdoor space with events and things like that.

Christi:

Right. And the location of the[inaudible] school in downtown Grand Junction. is amazing. I mean, it's right there on seventh and white, um, just a block from main street and I love how you call it the great lawn, because I think that that just has great imagery and it is such a nice big swath of grass and the possibilities are endless there. And so right now there are some tenants in the building and talk a little bit about the future of the school building itself and how you envision that in the future.

Jeremy:

Sure. Um, the first thing I'll say, which we've said consistently, since we were selected as the development partner for the school building, is that we're not tearing the school building down. Hopefully that message has kind of gotten through, but we were asked that, uh, multiple times from multiple quarters. Um, and what I said is, uh, are you kidding me? You'd be an idiot to tear the school building down. There's an intrinsic value to that school building. Um, and not from just an altruistic sense of it's a community asset, but from the sense of it creates value for the rest of the development. So, so we're not tearing the school building down. We have no intent of doing that. We would like to keep existing tenants in the building. We're already applying for historic preservation grants in anticipation of taking ownership of the school, um, in the next, in the near future and applying for grants to start restoring the masonry of the building. They're bricks falling off the building. What year was it built 19? Oh, I'm going to now I'm going to forget. I think 1926 is a, the year is built in our historic preservation as will correct me if I'm wrong and in fairly good shape, but still it's in fairly good shape. I think because it was, it was operated by a school district. They maintained it fairly well because you have to re you know, you're educating children, you have to keep the building up. So there's a lot of mitigation and testing and upgrades over time. But at the same time, um, there is, we did partner with the DDA to, um, lead on their behalf. A historic structure assessment pulled together the team and get the grant for that from the state. And there's half a million dollars at least of historic preservation work that was identified in that historic structure assessment. And beyond that, there's just some of the things like removing drop ceilings that may make sense when you're running a school and you need a low maintenance, but make no sense from a historic standpoint or even from kind of a reactivation of the, of the building standpoint. So while that's not historic preservation, there are improvements that can be made. And we also have a sustainability focus where we want to do things like solar panels and low water. And so those aren't historic preservation aspects, but they are things we want to invest in. And what I tell people with historic school rehab, but from what we've learned from the Shaw brothers and from, uh, uh, the developer of the Albuquerque high project was, you know, these are not commercially viable buildings. They're not something that overnight is generating a return on investment. It's a labor of love for three, five, seven or more years, lots of grants selling tax credits to investors. And then at some point you realize you've created this amazing place that not only has community value, but has financial value. So we're on a longterm path. It's going to be such a hub. I hope so I would encourage them to live downtown. Absolutely. And I encourage everyone to look at the smiley building website to kind of get a sense they, they just rebuilt their website and it perfectly captures what we're trying to create. Fantastic. So lots of different possibilities for occupants in that building in the future, whether that's office or art or food service. Um, you know, there's a couple of different pathways when we were selected as the developer of the building was empty. Um, it was emptied after the school district left. The DDA had not, um, occupied it from a standpoint of not wanting to constrain future development partner. Um, we basically said once we were selected, we want, we encourage, and we actually want the DDA to Lisa while it's under their ownership, both from a maintenance standpoint, but also to start creating a sense of this is no longer a school building, but it still is an important building in the community. Um, and so we want to work with the existing tenants when we take ownership to keep them in the building, if they want to stay, um, we may need to move people around when we start doing renovation projects that we'll work with folks on that. And then we're looking for other tenants that would kind of compliment the existing mix of tenants in there now. So

Christi:

Let's talk now about the townhomes, and then after we can talk about the, all of the features that are going to happen on the, the whole site itself and how those will compliment each other. So if you haven't seen a town homes folks, you've got to drive down there and take a look, they are finished for all intents and purposes. We've got a stove or two to put in in the next couple of weeks, but we're awaiting some city approvals so that we can close all four of the first units are sold and they are absolutely spectacular. I haven't heard from anybody that doesn't say, wow, what a great design they're gorgeous. Tell us about how your inspiration for the townhomes.

Jeremy:

Yeah. Um, I think part of it was driven by the DDA's policy goals, which was the basis for putting an RFP out in selecting us the developer for market rate downtown housing. Um, part of the inspiration was when we would drive around, we love down when we were visiting every summer we'd walk or drive drive around occasionally bike around when an Airbnb had a bike, uh, uh, available for guests. And the downtown was amazing. You know, all the mix of businesses, restaurants, et cetera, but we realized on the downtown adjacent neighborhoods, there was not a lot of new housing. It was, you know, if, if you're, let's say you're recruited by your company is recruited by GGF to relocate here. And you're used to urban housing where you can walk to amenities and not have to drive for every trip. There weren't a lot of options for you unless you wanted to either buy a fixer upper and spend 10 years in a quarter million dollars, fixing it up or buy the house that someone had already done that too. And a lot of folks, either younger or older, they don't want the big old house that has a lot of upkeep with the yard. There wasn't a lot of urban housing and not a lot of new construction downtown at the time. There's been a few projects that have come online and the smaller scale bars, which is great.

Christi:

And I know you and I have talked about it. I've talked about to so many of my friends about those little hidden gems that are, you know, a little, um, uh, ADU in the back of somebody's yard or above their garage, that you drive down the alley and go, Oh, isn't that cool? They put this little apartment back there, something, some really modern stuff there, but they're kind of hidden.

Jeremy:

Yeah. There's a lot of 80 years when I stay downtown, I typically will do an Airbnb. That's an accessory dwelling unit. So there's a lot of density within that older urban fabric of the historical housing or the older housing. But what we were trying to do is create respect the existing downtown urban fabric, but create sort of a modern twist of traditional housing. So that's why we did the detached garages, formerly known as carriage houses with the accessory dwelling units above were doing flex suites above those, um, garages. We did the front porches, even though people said, why are you doing front porches? No, one's going to sit on the front porch. But every buyer we talked to loves the front porch, it's right up next to the sidewalk. You can literally sit out there in the evenings when it cools off and your neighbors are out walking and catch up. And so we really think that kind of front facing public facing front porch is an important feature. We there's an 80 foot height limit on the site. We could have gone up 80 feet or townhomes or 35 feet. I mean, put that into perspective for us. If, if, if you're doing 10 foot ceilings. Yeah. I mean, technically you could do a seven or eight story building, right? Um, a, we didn't think there was the demand for condos, uh, like an eight, seven, eight story condo building, um, B w but we didn't think that the for sale housing market was recovering at the time. Um, but the tunnels are only 35 feet. And to the point about kind of respecting the existing fabric, we took the third story and we set it back. So it's more of a loft. We painted it a darker color as you know, so it doesn't, it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb when you're walking along the sidewalk, it feels like a two story building. We've had people come in and say, these look so small from the outside, but when you walk in, they're so big, that was the idea. So they're 1500 square feet in the main unit and then an optional 400 square feet above the garage. If you choose to finish that out, yes, you can do it as an unfinished flex space, which is just a raw unfinished space that you can do later with city County permits. You can have us finish it as a flex space with the exception of a stove, or you can have us, or you yourself can go get permits for adding a stove with a fuel source. And it can become an accessory dwelling unit, which makes it a habitable unit that you can rent or put family members in. Right. Lots of options there. Yeah. So on the whole site, how many units total? So just the townhomes 36 units on a 1.6 acre site, which is about 22 units per acre. It's actually fairly good density, but without feeling overwhelming in terms of the design, let me be clear that this city and the DDA both wanted a lot of density, right? Like that was the goal. Like let's put a lot of houses on this site in addition to keeping the school and it'll make a really nice combination. Yeah, absolutely. The challenge is your public agency partner, the DDA want market rate housing, and as much as possible at the time the market rate housing market was just recovering. You've got a historic school building in your front yard. Uh, you're on the scene between the commercial core of downtown say seventh and white is kind of the edge of commercial court, but then you're also in the, to the North East, you're in the historic fabric and older residential two-story neighborhoods. So there were some challenges with the site to maximize. We did townhomes zero lot line. We did the ADU. So if everybody were to permit and finish out their flex space of the garage as an accessory dwelling unit, you actually get 72 units on 1.6 acres, if they were all occupied and that's 44 ish, 45 units per acre, which is extremely good density without feeling like skyscrapers eight story buildings.

Christi:

So in that first fourplex, we're going to have a model home. So we're getting that ready. Um, with COVID, it's been a little challenging because we haven't been allowed to have open houses. Things are loosening up a little bit, and we are excited to be able to start giving tours of the model home. And as soon as we have approvals, we're going to close with the families that are ready to move into the other three units.

Jeremy:

Absolutely. Um, I feel like a Testament to our vision, our team's vision and our team's persistence in executing that vision has been the fact that all four of the buyers of the first four units, despite some delays and extensions to their closing dates, none of them have walked away from their contract, even though Colorado has very buyer friendly contracts compared to other States where it's quite easy to walk away for a number of reasons. And we've heard from several buyers and several folks who've put reservations on the next phase that they would not, they don't want to live anywhere else. This is the project for them. And that was part of our pitch from the beginning, which is when folks, whether it be lenders or neighbors or other folks weren't quite connecting with the vision that we were seeing on that site. Uh, I basically said, look, you may be right. This is not something for everybody, but we're building 36. So I only need 36 people to like it. And so far we found our people, we found our travel and I hope we continue to do that. And I think the reservation

Christi:

For the next phase suggest that we will. Right. So talk a little bit about the overall site, because it's not just townhomes in a school. There are a lot of other elements that are incorporated into the overall plan that are really exciting. You know,

Jeremy:

Talked a little bit at the beginning about how this has always been a public site. Um, it's funny that when we first looked at the plat, the original town plat, instead of the parcels being numbered, they were named the library jail

Christi:

School. And I forget the fourth one now, but, um, police station, I think something like that. So that was a very important block,

Jeremy:

Always been important public of serving function, um, and an educational function. And so that was part of our vision from the beginning was to make sure that while this would be private residential project, to make sure that, um, there wouldn't streets wouldn't be gated. We created lots of opportunities to walk through the site. So it has sort of a ability to kind of shortcut through the site. Um, we incorporated community gardens as our landscape architecture con pair or landscape con to the, uh, Rob Breeden with Nvision design approached us proactively and said, I'd like to pitch you on community gardens. And I said, that sounds amazing. And he, anytime you come up with a good idea, you end up being tasked with leading it. So he's, he's both designed it and we'll be implementing that. And the community garden has an opportunity with composting and the greenhouse and community garden plots throughout the site to also engage with neighbors with the school district or a specific school sites, and really become part of that educational continue that educational purpose through a local food production, recycling composting. So there's, um, a public aspect to that. And then we talked about the school building wanting to really get the right mix of tenants to bring people into the school, um, and have it become almost a community center, um, not just a kind of a commercial enterprise.

Christi:

And one of the things I really love is that open Plaza in the back. So what was your vision for that? I I've seen some of the photos that you had for in your vision board, and I love it, you know, with some lights strung up and maybe some food trucks. Absolutely.

Jeremy:

Uh, we try to take sort of one size fits all development standards, and we try to think creatively about how do we meet the need or the intent of that development standard, but also kind of creating a multipurpose space. So in this day and age, and especially with infill development, infrastructure is really expensive. And so you never want to have a piece of infrastructure, just do one thing. You want it to be multipurpose. And so when the fire department said, we need to have a three point turn turning area for our firetrucks, we need to be able to position those firetrucks up to the school if there were ever a fire. So we can get the ladders up to the second floor to the roof, the design constraint could have been a sort of hammerhead or a col-de-sac type of approach. What we did is essentially create a mini, urban public open space Plaza with on both sides. We have one, one site, we have green house. On the other side, we have composting recycling. And that Plaza that you described would, will be available both to members of the Philadelphia village townhomes to reserve, or the Metro district reformed may host certain community events, Superbowl parties, or things like that, but also be available almost like a park that you can reserve an area of a park to members of the general public. So we want to have people come onto the site and listen to music, or have a family reunion in our little Plaza or on the great lawn. We want people to actually use the site and activate the site because it's always been public. And it's not for us. It's not just about restoring the architecture of the building. It's about restoring the centrality of the building as kind of a community asset.

Christi:

It really gives me goosebumps to think about when they're all built out and all being lived in how that will revitalize that whole area with so many families living downtown.

Jeremy:

Yeah. We've um, the demographics of folks who've moved in thus far, um, they're very downtown oriented. They either already worked downtown or they shop a lot downtown and of course they're a captive audience now for downtown spending. So that was the original goal. And we think we've been successful in, you know, forging a path to fulfill that DDA policy vision.

Christi:

So a couple of unique aspects about this project are number one, it's a public private partnership. So pretty unique for grand junction. Number two, you formed a Metro district, which is also kind of uncommon around here. Can you talk about those two things a little bit?

Jeremy:

Sure. Um, development's very challenging for those who have not done it, uh, for those who have, they know that infill developments even more challenging if you're developing out in a cow pasture where you have, uh, uh, wider margins of error, um, infill development. So the game of inches, and then you add to the infield on the challenges, they public private partnership. And you're working with agencies that have different goals, different expectations, but you still have to come to common ground in terms of outcomes. And so a public private partnership is especially helpful when you don't have a functioning market and the downtown or the downtown development authority had done a market rate housing study that identified that a market rate housing was not financially viable at any scale, maybe one officer, two offs, but not financially viable. And the scale, there was a gap for both for sale and rental. And that is what merits public sector, investment and partnership on private sector development in order to sort of catalyze and reduce risk for someone willing to be a first mover and be a pioneer on a project that otherwise the market's not creating on its own. So that's the public private partnership. It's been a great partnership. Um, the DDA has been extremely helpful throughout the process. Um, the Metro district reform, because we looked at the plat and we looked at the utilities and as good of care as the school district took of the school building, they weren't thinking like developers. So utilities criss crossed the site. And, you know, if you're just trying to get gas service, that new gas line to your S your building, you take the shortest path to minimize your costs. You're not thinking about 36 townhomes that are being built the 20 years down the road on top of that. So looked at the site and we realized that there was a lot of utilities that were not going to be useful. We were going to have to vacate those utilities, abandoned those utilities and rebuild new utility lines.

Christi:

And I just want to say that's something that a lot of people don't think about. You know, people think that developers just, they're just rolling in the money, right. You're just getting rich, but you take so much risk coming into a project like this. And also there's so much unknown. I mean, once you get started, it's like opening a can of worms, right? When you talk about having to abandon old utility lines, put new ones in incredibly expensive and a lot of work.

Jeremy:

Absolutely. And even bringing utilities from underground from across, um, eighth street to the site underground, it was a job that was a several tens of thousand dollar check just to bring over gas and electric underground cause we want underground utilities. Um, so yeah, so because infrastructure is expensive generally, and because of some of those issues with the existing infrastructure and those connections, we looked at a Metro district as a way to help reduce risk, uh, which essentially allows us to, um, use the Metro district to secure financing, to build infrastructure. Um, and then the buyers, the townhomes partially pay that back through an annual property tax assessment, which in our case would replace the more conventional approach of an HOA monthly dues. So the people that benefit the most from that infrastructure pay for it. Right.

Christi:

Uh, can you talk a little bit about the opportunities zone?

Jeremy:

Yeah. Opportunities zone is interesting where the entire block, the school building and the town home site is within a state and federal designated opportunity zone opportunities zones. I think the best way to describe them and the shortest way describe them is similar to 10 31 exchanges that more people are familiar with where you can sell real estate asset, take the capital gain and reinvest it into a similar type of real estate development, and then avoid paying capital gains taxes or reduce your capital gains tax. The opportunity is known as sort of a 10 31 on steroids in that you can take any capital gain from the sale of any asset, whether it's stock a business real estate, land, partnership, intellectual property, um, any capital gain can be rolled into a qualified or eligible, um, development or business within an opportunity zone. And so we're opportunities zone, investment eligible. Um, the school building is a perfect opportunity for folks looking for those capital gains tax capital gains tax benefits to either reduce, defer, or eliminate their capital gains because the largest tax benefits to an investor who can be patient and can wait five, seven or 10 years and keep their investment that hold their investment in the, in the project and the school, this school building renovation and revitalization really yields its greatest benefits over that five to 10 year period. So it's really, it's a, it's a unique opportunity. It's not for everybody, it's a niche, but for those who do have a capital gains tax obligation coming due, we would love to talk to you and we can certainly find a way to help you accrue some tax benefits.

Christi:

So I'm sure people that are excited about the project want to know what's the timeline going forward. And I want to just emphasize that it's been a challenge it's, it's taken a lot longer to get to where we are now than you anticipated or anybody anticipated and the planning process and the city processes and all of that have been a challenge. Correct?

Jeremy:

Yeah. Um, we were, I mean, I, what I tell people is we were clear from the beginning and we did a market demand study that, that justified the strategy that we weren't planning to build all 36 at once all 36 down homes. That would be tough. Yeah. And the, the market, the market demands that he said there was demand for 12 to 16 for sale units downtown per year. And just depending on what numbers you use and kind of a margin of error. So we decided to do a couple of things. We decided that if somebody else were to build some projects that would eat into that market demand, and we also wanted to make sure that the level of investment that we were making in the townhomes themselves was justified in terms of the market response. So we actually started pretty small for phase one. We kind of consider that R and D are there enough buyers that are interested in the quality, the level of quality that we're investing in that we can actually justify going forward. And the market has responded on that fourplex. And so there were delays, um, through a number of whether it was approvals or whether it was, uh, some construction delays. We had the wettest winter and the wettest, the snowiest winter, and the wettest spring when we started construction, uh, right before. So that took some soil remediation. Um, so there, yeah, there's been what I call kind of a perfect storm of sort of construction delays. But, um, what I, what I tell folks is we weathered those delays. We stuck it out because we believe in this project and we wanted to at least get to the point where that first fourplex, we could test our vision and see if anyone shared that vision. And because we persevered with our entire team, including yourself, uh, we have proven up the vision and now we're more committed than ever to continue forward with some lessons learned as we finalize approvals for the next 30 to, um, some lessons learned on the construction side, our team has jelled. We've had a few new team members come in that were able to fill, you know, some gaps or some weaknesses that we had on our initial team. And so we feel like we're sort of locked and loaded and ready to start the next build as soon as we have our city approvals.

Christi:

So hopefully you're getting to the approvals for phase two in the next 30 days. And phase two is the entire rest of the project, right. So we can really start rolling and respond to the demand that's there.

Jeremy:

Yeah. We'll continue to phase the buildings because it's better to have a wait list as much as it kills us to have a waitlist of 10 or 12 people. It's better to have a wait list, a mile long than to have empty units that you have to start making concessions on. Absolutely. And given the uncertain times that we live in, where we're bullish on downtown grand junction, we're committed to this project, but we also want to be smart about how fast we built. Um, so we're right now thinking that the next phase would be at least seven units. Um, potentially as many as 11, um, that's going to be driven, I think partially by reservation interest for people who want to place a reservation for a year out. Um, the more of those we have, the more confident we are, the more we can build.

Christi:

And we have five reservations right now. So yeah. Well, Jeremy, it's been a pleasure to talk to you today, and I'm just really thankful that I get to work with you on this project. Because from day one, when I learned about your vision for the project, I was interested in being involved and really excited to be able to give all of our friends, family, clients, and the general public tours of the building coming up. So if you're interested in seeing the units and learning more about the project, you can call us at the Christi Reece Group at 970-589-7700. Happy to give you a tour, happy to talk to you more about, uh, the school building, the opportunities zone, and some other projects that you have coming up, uh, which include a building over on White Avenue.

Jeremy:

Yeah. We're looking at other opportunities. I feel like now that we've learned are sort of, we've scaled the learning curve on, uh, both the approval side and, uh, pulling our team together. Um, again, this was our first project in this market. So now that we've kind of got some hard won lessons learned, um, we're looking at other opportunities in downtown. Awesome. Cheers to you. Cheers to you. It's been great working with you.

Christi:

One of the challenging things about drinking beer in this setting is I'm sure this microphone picks up a burp really well. So kind of take a sip and I think, Oh my gosh, this is going to get, it's going to hear everything. So thank you for listening and watching today for the full circle podcast and thanks to Jeremy Nelson of Downtown Grand Junction, REgeneration, LLC. Uh, more information about Lowell Village Townhomes can be found by contacting the ChristieReece Group at(970) 589-7700. Thanks and have a great day.