What's Taking So Long?

I know everyone is wondering, “what’s taking so long to get started with construction”?  We have the land to build on, the building designed, the contractor hired… what’s left?  Well, the short answer has been a building permit and financing.  At this point, we’re half way there.

A great deal of time and energy has been put in by Hill Country administrators, lawyers, bankers and many other professionals to complete the complicated financing for the construction.  Before the financing could be finalized, we needed permission to build from the City of Redding and that comes in the form of a building permit. 

We needed to provide the City with a variety of documents showing what we were going to build, how we were going to build it and that we would follow all codes are regulations required by the City, County and State.  Here’s a short list of the information they needed (this is called the Submittal Plan Documentation):

1.       Building plans that show the location of the construction with the specific plans for structural, plumbing, mechanical, electrical, landscape/irrigation, food equipment and fire & life safety.

2.       Geotechnical Report.

3.       Civil drawings.

4.       Water efficient landscape documentation.

5.       Structural and truss calculations, stamped and signed by licensed California architect or engineer.

6.       Energy calculations, signed by designer and/or owner.

7.       Construction Waste Management Plan.

8.       Assessor’s plan (floor plan and site plan).

9.       Electrical plans (for Electric Department).

10.   Then we have to complete the following Forms:

a.       Permit Application

b.       Owner Builder Form

c.       Electrical Load Form

d.       Hazardous Material Checklist

e.       Hazardous Material Agency Approval (if required)

f.        Wastewater

g.       Electric utility information

And that’s the condensed version of the list!  The checklist of requirements from the City of Redding’s Permit Center is four pages long with 228 checkboxes (yes, I counted them) listing specific details that must be provided before the permit to build is issued. 

Putting all of this detailed information together takes a team of professionals quite a while to complete.  Fortunately, we have an excellent team and they’ve been led by current Hill Country CFO Nick Cutler and former CFO Richard Hardie.  Keeping the team working towards the goal, coordinating every detail and completing all of the preconstruction requirements has been an intensely time consuming challenge but these two gentlemen have been up to the task.

 With the amazing efforts of Todd at Trilogy Architecture, they have secured our building permit.  Now, all that’s left is finalizing the financing.  We’re almost there!

A big thank you to Nick Cutler and Richard Hardie for your tireless efforts to get us to this point in the project!