Renner Updates: GC bids

I've kind of dropped the ball on keeping the blog updated over the past few months, so I'm going to attempt to catch it back up with everything that has happened in a series of new posts. Here's the first one about Renner;

Picking up from where we left off, the general contractor bids came in and out of the 4 we contacted one said they were too busy until the spring, another came and looked at it but never even came back with a number, and then we got two ballpark numbers; one at $108k and another at $225k. Since we didn't have actual plans with a formal scope of the work, both of these estimates were very preliminary and the contractor with the higher of the two estimates made it clear that it was a very rough estimate. I think what we learned was that we should have gotten architectural drawings first to give them all the same basis to start their pricing from. Since we didn't, we didn't get a good apples to apples comparison and we'll need to take it back to them again once we have drawings.

At this point the building has been mothballed until the spring at the earliest with the tarp/temporary roof in place (which I'll post pictures of in another post) to keep it dry and secure. I'm thinking that we'll get the wheels turning on architectural drawings and then go get better estimates before applying to the CDF for a loan to get the work done. As we see it there isn't a huge rush to get the building up and running since our carrying costs are minimal and the demand for living this far north won't really intensify until the streetcar is operational in the summer of 2016. We'd like to have it up and running right around the time of the opening if we can so that we can justify higher rents and find better renters.