What Does it Mean?
Any savvy investor will tell you, money follows vision. Never start with money as the goal, start with the vision. This lesson applies to development projects.
A clear and compelling vision:
- Attracts developers
- Establishes your community values
- Aligns your community effort
- Builds local support
Important Reminders
Before you get into building your development vision, there are a couple things to remember, keep it simple and keep it flexible. While establishing a vision is important, communities too often spend an exorbitant amount of time reviewing, debating, discussing, and reworking a vision at the expense of everything else that needs to get done. Don’t let the vision become the outcome, and remember, circumstances will change.
Be sure to keep it simple. A vision can be as direct as seeking to develop workforce housing for households at or below 120 percent of the Area Median Income in partnership with the local school district.
Develop a preliminary concept!
At this stage in the process, you’ve identified a development site, completed preliminary research on ownership and are ready to move forward with a concept. You don’t have to pay an architect thousands of dollars to sketch out a three-dimensional concept plan with design flourishes, landscaping and drawings of people walking. Instead, do it yourself.
The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority has a Technical Assistance program aimed at small-scale affordable housing developments. This program provides a range of technical assistance including project visioning and conceptualization. If you can take advantage of this program, be sure to go in prepared. The program is at no cost to the community so be ready to take advantage of it when the application period is open.
Can the market support the proposed use?
Be sure your concept plan is consistent with what you are seeing locally in terms of development requirements.
Talk to property owners about their needs, particularly hospitals and schools. Do they need one-bedroom apartments, single-family homes, or something different? Also, talk to local banks and get their input. If you are going to ask them to finance a project, they will have good insight into the local market potential.
Understanding the Design Phases
A preliminary concept plan is good for establishing your vision and building support, but once you get further along, you may need to hire architects to move the project forward.
The different phases of design are:
- Schematic Design
- Design Development
- Construction Document
Schematic Design is the first phase of the architectural design process. Here you are producing the project framework, it includes things like building footprints, and floorplans, elevations, as well as a site and code analysis. At this stage, you are still working through some of the project details like the size of the units, and street layout. At this stage, project elements can change.
Design Development phase is when you get the drawings that are used for final pricing. At this point, you’ve worked out the details through the schematic design and you are adding items like the finishes, and landscaping elements. This is when you will start to do the real estimating. You can complete preliminary cost estimates from a conceptual design to help guide the decision-making process, but Design Development is where you fine tune those estimates as you move into financing.
Construction Documents are the final step in the design process. Construction Documents are what you provide to the general contractor to build the project. These are the documents that you provide if you are competitively bidding on the project as well. They are the specifications from which the project will be built.
