Music and Cats

We’ve all waited for letters - from sweethearts, from colleges, from employers. Usually, the letters for which we’re waiting come directly to us. Occasionally, however, the letters that are most important are addressed to someone else.

When the fax machine at my office beeped yesterday morning, I found a one-page letter in the tray. Here’s what (in not too many more words) it said:

Dear Mr. [Building Official],

I have reviewed the construction documents for [my architectural project], and find them to be in compliance with the [applicable building codes]. I am returning the drawings for this project to you for issuance of building permits.

Sincerely,
[Plan Checker]

While it was not addressed to me, I’ve been working since July for this letter. I’ve been working for a couple of years on this project, 51 apartments for low-income families. This short letter represented a huge step in getting the project built.

Most affordable housing projects built these days draw on a variety of funding sources, the most important of which is federal tax credits. Tax credits are awarded at the state level, based on complicated, multi-factor scoring and ranking of all proposed projects seeking funding. Each of the past two years, this project has not scored high enough to get tax credits. Early last summer, our client acquired the last of the funding sources other than tax credits needed to build the project; this gives them several “readiness” points in tax credit scoring. And in July, our client decided to go for additional readiness points by getting the building permits for the project. These few additional points would put the project’s score well into the range in which tax credits have been awarded the past few years.

In Olympia, where this project will be built, permitting for a construction project of this size involves four different types of review and approval: land use (compliance with local zoning code), design review (compliance with local design guidelines), engineering (compliance with utility and road development codes), and building (compliance with structural, accessibility, and other building codes).

Normally, we would spend a couple of months preparing the submittals for land use and design review, and two to three months more on the engineering and building submittals. If we started in mid-July, we would finish all of our permit submittals by early December. Because Olympia is in a building boom, submittals might sit in the city offices for three months before a reviewer ever looked at them. Allowing a month or so for reviewer comments and our drawing corrections, the permits would be all be ready in early April.

Did I mention that the application deadline for the next round of tax credits is January 17?

The usual schedule - both ours and the city’s - would not work. Fortunately, the city of Olympia wants this housing to be built. The city’s planners and building officials agreed to expedite their review process… if we would make our submittals sooner.

So, I had to see that the required work - both our architectural drawings, and the work of engineers and landscape architect - was done in under three months, rather than in five. I have great coworkers, but few of them were available to help with my work; they had their own tight schedules to meet.

I worked a lot of overtime in the fall. I cancelled plans with friends. I didn’t spend enough time with Paul. I didn’t write much, and what blogging I did was cat photos and Katrina rants. Too much time at the computer led to sharp pains in my left shoulder. Too much stress led to a daily Tums habit and too little sleep.

We got our work done - perhaps not as methodically and cleanly as I would have liked, but done all the same. And I rode herd on the engineers (some more like cats than others) , and checked in with the city officials regularly, and reassured the client… and somewhere in the middle of all that, figured out how to take a couple thousand square feet out of the project when the cost estimate came back too high.

Until that fax came yesterday, I wasn’t sure that we’d make the January 17 deadline. When I read that brief letter, I felt relieved, then thrilled. I felt some of the by-now-familiar tension in my shoulders release. I showed my boss the letter, then took a copy down the hall to our client’s office. I called Paul. I emailed the (now former) coworker without whom I couldn’t have finished the work. (Thanks, C.) I accepted congratulations from all of them.

And then I filed the letter, and went back to work on the next project.

Tags: 10 Comments