The hardships of pioneeringmissing middle housing

Вот отформатированный транскрипт вебинара: Роберт: Okay, I'm going to start talking, and uh… we'll get going. Um, thank you for everybody for joining us today. Welcome to On the Park Bench, a public square conversation brought to you by the Congress for the New Urbanism. On the Park Bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied fields related to the built environment. Today, we have "The Hardships of Pioneering Missing Middle Housing" with Andre Jones, moderated by myself, Robert Studiveville. And first, a couple of notes: join us for CNU 34. CNU 34 will be in Northwest Arkansas, May 12th through 16th. Northwest Arkansas is an epicenter of innovative regional planning ideas. I have been to 30 CNUs so far in cities all across North America, some of the best cities. And let me tell you that Northwest Arkansas right now is offering some of the most exciting urbanism that is going on in the country right now. And they have four downtowns that are growing in different ways, different kinds of cities. They're all being linked together with infrastructure. They're doing things with infrastructure that most other cities are not able to do. It's really worth seeing what they have done and the plans that are going forward in Northwest Arkansas. So, if you really want to be at CNU 34, and if you don't go, you're gonna be sorry that you missed it. So, go to CNU.org/CNU34, and register if you haven't already. And consider getting CNUA accredited. Sign up for CNUA. The benefits include: it provides a marketable credential to employers and clients, a CNU Accredited Professional Certificate, and listing on CNU.org public member directory as CNU accredited. Go to cnu.org/getinvolved/getCNUaccredited. So today, we're going to hear from a local developer in Memphis who has built an amazing block-scale project called Malone Park Commons that exemplifies many of the ideas that we talk about in new urbanism. It's infill, it offers a range of housing, and mixed-use. And the buildings do their jobs of defining the streets as places of shared use, and it's helping to bring back a neighborhood that was long disinvested. It does so many things right, but the experience you went through says a lot about why it is so hard to build attainable, sustainable, livable, affordable housing in cities today. So our guest is Andre D. Jones. He's co-owner of Jones Urban Development, a real estate development and general contracting firm specializing in residential and small commercial projects in walkable neighborhoods. With 27 years in the construction industry, Andre brings deep experience and a passion for community-centered development. There's a little background: we had an affordable housing council, seniors sponsored that in DC two months ago, and Andre spoke and really was the talk of the council. And so I think you're going to be really interested to hear what he has to say. I'm going to turn this over to Andre for a presentation, then we will have a discussion, followed by Q&A from the audience. So please use the Q&A function in Zoom to ask your questions, and we'll get to them more or less in the order they were asked. Thank you, Andre, for being here, and welcome. If you want to share your screen, you can get started. Андре: All right. Can you see it? Роберт: Um, no, I can't, not yet. So… Андре: Okay, just a second. It says… Share. Let me stop sharing, and then I'll try it again. Роберт: Oh, he, um, they're saying that they can see. Андре: Okay. Oh, okay, let me try this again. All right. How about now? Роберт: There we go. You can, and uh… Good. Андре: All right. Well, thank you, Rob, for having me here on the park bench. It is a fabulous day here in Memphis, and I hope it is for everyone who's on the call, and I want to thank you for joining and listening to this story that I'd like to share with you. So this has been a labor of love for us: Malone Park Commons. And let me step back just a minute. So, I want to thank Rob for sharing about Jones Urban Development. One of the things that I like to let people know is that we have a pretty small firm, as, you know, we would say, an Incremental Development Alliance term, which had a big influence on what we've built here. And so we normally try to work within and around the core of downtown Memphis, that historic walkable street grid, those communities that were developed prior to World War II. And so we have a lot of opportunity here in what's now branded Uptown, the Memphis Medical District, and South City are those areas that surround downtown. And so Malone Park Commons is a 35-unit development that is, as you can see on this particular slide, there's a concept site plan to your right, which shows sort of an aerial view of what Malone Park Commons was envisioned and what it is now. And I will move on over to the next slide. So just a little bit of background. This particular, this is a pre-development aerial of the site where Malone Park Commons exists now. To your… to the west, which would be to the right, top right, would be Harbor Town. If you're familiar with new urbanist development, Harbor Town was developed by Henry Turley Company back in the late 80s, and it was probably, if not the first, probably one of the first new urbanist communities developed. And so, just to the west, sorry, to the east of the Wolf River Harbor, is St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. And to the north of St. Jude was a public housing project called Herb Village. So Rob and I were talking about this a little bit before we started the, you know, I started this presentation. Henry Turley had the foresight to create a Tax Increment Financing District to capture the incremental growth of taxes from the Harbor Town development to help revitalize the area just north of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which was started around the year 2000. And we saw what was happening, and we, you know, begged to be involved. We were one of the three market builders that helped build new housing here in the area around 2008. That kind of stalled. I'm pretty sure you all know what happened. I don't have to explain that. And so from that point forward, we kind of limped along. Everything's starting to pick up again now. It's a great location. But just a little bit about this particular block. So we called it Block C when we were waiting for it to be developed. But it is a brownfield that was remediated by the Henry Turley partnership during the Uptown revitalization. And it is, you know, a walkable street grid. So this particular area was developed in 1856. Original limestone curbs still exist. You can still see some of the brickwork when some of the asphalt is removed from the streets. It's really a cool place. We're just west of, um… just east of the Mississippi River, so we're a couple of blocks from the Mississippi River, just north of downtown. So it's really a great location. Um, this particular piece of property was originally platted to have six single-family houses. So this entire block probably has 12 houses. I need to count that up. I hadn't even thought about how many houses were existing, and we built probably six of the houses, four of the houses that were original to the block. We built the first house, which was we built in 2008. And this, since this is a brownfield, I would highly recommend that you're never the first to build on a brownfield, because we endured all sorts of heartache. And you know, the next builder that came along didn't do half the stuff that we did. So we learned our lesson on that. Um, but the six single-family parcels were left vacant after 2008 up until around 2018 when Tommy Pacello, who some of you may be familiar with, was President of the Memphis Medical District Collaborative, and big into the Incremental Development Alliance, invited the IDA folks here. So we started chatting, and you know, somebody said, "Well, why don't you build on those six vacant parcels?" And so we started planning this out. And lo and behold, we were able to get our hands on this particular piece of property and start our work to what ended up being a "work to learn" project versus a "work to earn." So we were in overlapping incentive geographies, thankfully. So not only were we in the Tax Increment Financing District, we were in the Central Business Improvement District boundaries for the Downtown Memphis Commission, and we're also within the boundaries of the Memphis Medical District Collaborative. And the Memphis Medical District Collaborative is a nonprofit that was started by the anchor institutions, the hospitals that are in the medical district, to help try to revitalize this particular community. All right. So what we were trying to build. So, um… half the block. And I like to call this the most diverse block of housing built in Memphis, if not the nation, since World War II, and nobody's sort of… nobody has pushed back on that, so I'll just keep using it. So we have, the dream was to have missing middle housing types: fourplexes, cottage courts, live-work buildings, all on the six single-family lots. And to have businesses within walking distance, because that's the way sustainable neighborhoods used to be built prior to World War II. That's the way it's, you know, traditional neighborhoods have been built historically: to have attainable businesses—I'm sorry, attainable spaces for small businesses—to have opportunities for employment within walking distance. Um, you know, our goal was to shoot, while this is not, um… well, this is not a strict affordable housing or attainable housing product, you know, we have it's market rate, but our goal is to have rents that are attainable for folks who make between 80 and 120 AMI. And then we ran into what's considered the small-scale developer reality, which I will touch on here on the next slide. All right, so… when Rob heard me, so, just to go back a little bit. There was a lot of pain associated with this particular project. And so I attended my first CNU in Cincinnati—I'm sorry, in Charlotte—a few years ago. And what I was hoping to come to find was someone who had, you know, gone through the pain of building missing middle housing the way we were going through it at the time. And so while we had some, there were some really good sessions from Kronberg about, you know, hacking the International Building Code and things like that, there was really no specific conversation around, "These are the issues that I ran into, and this is how I resolved them." And so we were able to, John Zena, who was the Chief of Infrastructure for the City of Memphis, and myself presented at Charlotte—I'm sorry, and at Cincinnati and CNU 34. And I called it "The Confessions of a Missing Middle Housing Developer of a Recovering Missing Middle Housing Developer." I spent about an hour just sort of talking about the pain that was caused and that we endured. And so I'm going to try to shorten that here for you all this afternoon. And so the barriers to missing middle housing. I like to call, you know, when you're building single-family and duplexes, you're building under the International Residential Code. Um, and then once you get to that third unit, you hit what I like to call "the great wall of the IBC." And so it's like you're all of us, you're running along on a flat surface, and then you have to run up a mountain to get this thing, get these things done. And so some of the things that we ran into were, you know, fire protection regulations, utility requirements, mixed-use triggers, fourplexes treated like apartment buildings, code interpretations. And so, when we started Malone Park Commons, we had done a lot of work in single-family residential. Um, and, you know, that seemed like a simple endeavor to us. Okay, we've got a single-family house. You can build a single-family house, 4,000 or 5,000 square feet, and you don't have to have sprinklers or any of these other things: mechanical, electrical, plumbing. But as soon as we built a fourplex or anything with more than three units, we ran into the fact that we needed to install fire sprinklers, we needed to install fire alarms, we needed to install backflow prevention devices. We needed to, if we didn't have a fire sprinkler within 100 feet of the building, we would have to install a private fire hydrant. So the costs were just astronomical. And people ask, people would say to us, "Well, you should have known all of these things. You should have hired the right people, you should have done, you know, you should have had a team." We're a small-scale developer. We didn't have the development budget for, you know, the team of engineers and all these people, fire designers, that large developers have. And then, plus, if we had known all of that, we never would have gotten into this, and we never would have done it. So I'm proud that we were able to get into it. And although it caused a lot of brain damage, we were able to get through it. Um, and we were able to make some positive change that I'll talk to you about here in a second. All right. So how we moved forward slowly and painfully. We started with our cottage courts, and we did this in phases. It started with our cottage courts; we have 11 cottages on two single-family lots. And the first issue that we ran into was: in 2017, the State of Tennessee passed a law that said each utility had to have a cross-connect program. But apparently nobody knew about this cross-connect program until we got to our final plumbing inspection, and we were about to move people in that very next week. And so the plumbing inspector comes out and says, "Hey, you know, you need to have a backflow preventer here." The plumber hadn't heard about it. Uh, it was a really, like… it was not a great situation, because we're planning on moving people in the next week. And so the plumber was like, "Okay, we'll do. We'll install the backflow preventer." They installed an underground backflow preventer. Another inspector came out to inspect and said, "No, this needs to be above ground." So they had to dig that out and build, put a backflow preventer in that was above ground. We finally got the plumbing inspection, but that was our first real, real exposure to the IBC and the MLGW (Memphis Light Gas and Water) cross-connection program, who is our utility provider. And that sort of started this downhill or uphill battle between us and the… of us in the Memphis Shelby County Code Enforcement and the State of Tennessee Fire Marshal. So we'll just keep on rolling here. The incremental development mindset. So a lot of the folks in this area and around the country used to build… used to larger developments, you know, developers coming in, and they'll build block, superblock projects, and they build it all at once to finish. And so what we had to, and what people still don't understand, is that incremental development is how towns and cities have been built forever. And that's how you build resiliency. And you start with the ten… you may start with, and you may come back with a wood cottage. You may come back with a one-story brick building, on and on and on, as those things become more feasible. And so that's why we wanted to help people understand that we were building this in phases because we wanted to build these such that we could prove their sustainability and resiliency and get them operating before we move forward. Collaboration with code officials. Um, luckily, we had again, I mentioned John Zena here, who was working, who's pretty progressive. We knew we had, you know, everyone talks about zoning being a deterrent to missing middle housing. But once you solve the zoning issue, people still aren't going to build missing middle housing because of the International Building Code and some other regulations like I've mentioned before. And so John had the foresight to put together a Building Code Advisory Board. And so he asked me to actually join the board, because I was one of those folks who actually was working on missing middle housing. He wanted my perspective. And so we were able to get on the board and start to work towards changing local building codes that I'll talk about later. But it was a really good idea. And if you do not have something like this in your community, I highly suggest that we had the code enforcement folks, the authority having jurisdiction folks from the fire department, various engineers in different fields, architects, builders. And so it was, it's been a transformative relationship. It wasn't always pleasant. You know, I don't know if there are any engineers on the call, but you know, we finally got, were able to get them over to our side. Alternative construction methods. While the building codes were being changed, so we were allowed to have certain alternative construction methods as stopgaps, um, to keep moving forward. We advocated for change at the local and state level. And so we were able to get some state-level changes through advocacy. And um… patient capital. You know, I cannot tell you how lucky we were to have patient program partners: our senior lender who provided the senior debt for our construction loan, the Downtown Memphis Commission, and Memphis Medical District Collaborative. You know, while we explained this incremental development path, and while we're explaining the advocacy work that we're trying to do, they were really, they really worked with us. You know, one of the comments that was made by one of the planning managers was that, you know, "I would go in and argue a certain code didn't make sense based on the scale of the building." And I think I was in there talking for about an hour, and eventually he said, "You know, most developers, for most developers, time is money. You know, you're sitting here arguing with us when you could just be, you know, just accept what we say and go and build and save yourself some interest." And I was like, "But the whole point is, this is not logical. It doesn't make sense. So I'm going to sit here because we need to make these changes. So even though I'm enduring this pain, in the future, when we're built, when we build, or when someone else tries to help, tries to build infill in Memphis to help grow our density, then they won't have to deal with this issue." And so, um… you know, that's something that, you know, I appreciate. I appreciate being able to get that… get through that. I knew it was not normal, but eventually the folks came up, the team came around, and we were able to work together. All right. So what got built? So, I hate that my top left, the top left photo, uh, got cut off, but it's essentially a half block. So this represents the six single-family lots that were originally designed to have six single-family houses. So instead of six single-family houses, we have 31 residential units and four commercial spaces. So at the top right, you can see the center of that is our cottage court. We have 11 cottages total, six cottages on the right, and five cottages on the left. On the to the right, we have fourplexes. We have what we call the live-work buildings, which have ground-floor commercial and apartments above, and those anchor both corners. You can't see it, but everything that you see on the right of that photo is on the left, and it's bound by North Main Street, Saffron's Avenue, and North Second Street. The four commercial units we have, you know, we're able to get those done, and we were, and that is, that has been actually better than I could ever have dreamed, because we provided attainable spaces for people who have opened their first brick-and-mortar locations. They are all owned by black women, which I'm so proud of. One is Groovy Gratitude, which offers smoothies and sandwiches and fresh squeezed juices, and we're in a food desert, pretty much. And so to have healthy food options within walking distance was, you know, I cannot thank them enough for believing in us and bringing this option to our community. We have Evolved Pilates. We have The Main Wildling, which is a floral studio. And on May first, we will have Impress, Inc., another black woman-owned business, move in. So very proud of those. Those are on the ground floors of those two brick live-work buildings. We've got fourplexes. And so let me talk a little bit about the issues that we ran into with building these. So, the live-work buildings were phase two. And so that's when we really started to drown in the morass of what we call the International Building Code. Anytime you build more than two units, you have to have fire sprinklers. And so what we built was, we built and permitted these as residential for residential units, the brick live-work buildings. And so we installed NFPA 13R residential sprinklers. Now, we always wanted to have ground-floor businesses. And so what we did was, when we submitted our alteration permit, we asked, we were told that we needed to have NFPA 13 commercial sprinklers in those spaces, the commercial spaces. Now, mind you, these spaces are only 600 square feet. And so we were asked to have NFPA 13. And our fire sprinkler contractor at the time had no idea that he could mix NFPA 13 and 13R. And so we were talking about a building that was already constructed where we needed to rip out the two-inch water meter and put in a four-inch fire meter. I'll run new pipes through the slab, which was not going to happen. So this was something that we just… we just basically started to try to beg our authority having jurisdiction if we could use NFPA 13R sprinklers in this space. There is a provision in the IBC that I still argue to this day that says, if you have NFPA 13R throughout your building and with two-hour fire separation, that it's okay. Now, it doesn't say that, but that's the way I read it, and that's what I argue. And so eventually they allowed us to have this alternative construction method that allowed us to use two-hour fire separation for this Group B business and use NFPA 13R in this, in what was then a coffee shop. That was our first foray into this. Now, after they did that, all right, we thought we had everything planned. And so we went to open the smoothie shop, which is Groovy Gratitude. And the State Fire Marshal apparently had paid a visit to the building official and told them that they couldn't do that anymore. So, for Groovy Gratitude, I had to go and find a sprinkler contractor who knew what they were doing. And we had to spend $6,000 to add two fire sprinkler heads into this space, this 600-square-foot space, to make it, um, pass code. It was… it was a painful experience, many that I have mentioned, and totally unnecessary. But, you know, the State Fire Marshal stepped in and, you know, sort of put their foot down with the building official. So we had to move forward with that. Now, when we opened the Pilates studio, they were going to try to make us do the same thing, and that's when I just… I couldn't do it as a Pilates studio. They're not going to have a fire in there. Why do we need to do this? So I was able to get the building official to come and take a tour. A different building official, a new building official, to come and take a tour. And she agreed that, you know, this, you know, it didn't make sense. So they allowed another alternative construction method to allow us to do the Pilates studio with residential sprinklers. So we learned a lot there, and during that time, the City of Memphis and Shelby County actually adopted local amendments that would allow these types of, that would allow us to do these things by right. But, and so we waited to build phase three, which was our fourplexes. So the fourplexes at the time would have required NFPA 13R fire sprinklers as well. So we waited a year because we knew the local amendments would be adopted. And then we submitted these plans for the fourplexes to plan review. And then while they were in plan review, the State Fire Marshal stepped in and said, "No, you can't do that." So we had to put $20,000 back into the budget for each one of these four fourplex buildings to be able to build them and put the fire sprinklers back in as the State Fire Marshal required. So, um… the State Fire Marshal actually paid us a visit. Folks from the State Fire Marshal's paid us two visits, and we asked the building official if this was normal, and he was like, "No, that's not normal." So apparently we raised the ire of folks at the state level. But because of all the brain damage that we, you know, that we, that we received, we were able to work with the City of Memphis and our State Legislature and the Home Builders Association of Tennessee to get certain laws passed at the state level and at the local level. So in 2024, we got state law HB… well, now I can't remember the number. I'll get that for you, Rob, when I, when I, after, after we're done. But in 2024, we got a state law passed that allows fourplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes to be built up to 4,000, up to 5,000 square feet. If you choose to exclude sprinklers, you have to have two-hour fire separation. So if you choose two-hour fire separation as an option, then you would not have to install sprinklers, which was a huge win for missing middle housing. It's an opt-in. So municipalities can opt in. So Memphis was already down that path. We opted in, and it's open to any municipality that wants to opt in. But since then, we were able to, um… the City of Memphis has worked and adopted what they call Appendix M local amendments to the IRC, and I'm sorry, to IBC 2021. So here's a few of the keys from there: * Three to 23 to 24 units. There are some provisions that, and I don't have all of those provisions in front of me, but there are some provisions that eliminate certain MEP and things like that. I can get into… that's not my scale, so I haven't really gotten all the details on that. * Two compliant fire safety paths for missing middle housing. So, for NFPA 13R plus one-hour separations, or you can do two-hour separations without sprinklers for three or four units, three or four unit buildings under 5,000 square feet, which I just mentioned. * Also, up to eight units. If you build up to eight units, and the building is smaller than 10,000 square feet, you can use 13D sprinklers instead of NFPA 13. * Fire alarm requirements, scale to size. We, during the testimony, I testified in front of the State Legislature against fire chiefs during the while this fire sprinkler law was going through the State Legislature, and one of the things that we were able to prove through data from the National Association of Home Builders is that fire sprinklers, once fire sprinklers were adopted, they didn't significantly reduce the number of fire deaths. What really reduced the number of fire deaths were inline smoke detectors, connected smoke detectors, which were adopted maybe 10 years earlier. And so once we were able to prove that and show that data, then it was easier to get our state legislature to pass that bill. * IRC Structural provisions. You can use the prescriptive light frame design allowed in lieu of four IBC engineering if you're building up to four units. * Ground floor small commercial. Now, this is a big one. All of those sprinkler problems that, I know the words that I have used have not described the pain and anguish and cost that I had to go through to get the alternative construction methods that were, that were allowed. Now, here in Memphis, if you have a Group B use and a mixed occupancy building with residential, then, if it's under 1,000 square feet, you do not have to have sprinklers in that space. Actually, you don't have to have sprinklers in the entire building. So if it's four units, and there's two residential apartments above and two ground floor Group B spaces under 1,000 square feet, you do not have to have sprinklers. So for us and for small businesses, and for anchoring some of these corners in a lot of these wonderful neighborhoods here in Memphis, that's going to be a game changer. * Utility requirements clarified. So here in Memphis, we were able to lobby Memphis Light Gas and Water to change their cross-connection program minimum from four to five. So now, if you're building a fourplex, you don't have to have a backflow preventer. * And of course, zoning flexibility. Data use permitted now on 7,000 square feet. And what I didn't mention on this particular block before we started Malone Park Commons, we also built single-family homes with accessory dwelling units. That's why I like to call it the most diverse block of housing. But our lots here are 4,000 square feet. So while 7,000 square feet is smaller than it was, I still would like to get it down even smaller. All right. So just to wrap it up, what helped work here in Memphis, and what, you know, could work in other communities is, like I mentioned, the Building Code Advisory Board. You know, form cross-disciplinary working groups: include the building officials, fire utilities, architects, engineers, and small developers. So you can get in a room and talk about what really makes sense for buildings of this size. Use real projects to test proportional code paths. I really don't think we would have been able to get any of this done in Memphis if we hadn't started Malone Park Commons, because these buildings actually were used as, you know, this project was used as a learning laboratory to help inform our code officials, our city officials, of what the real barriers are to missing middle housing. Interpret first, then formalize. So we sat through, and I've joined the International Fire… I joined IFC. I joined the ICC to get code interpretations, because the code officials had different interpretations. And so we, we, we talked about those things. I made sure I fully understood what, what, what those interpretations were, and so we're able to work that out. And then we talked about it, and then formalized it. So we were able to use those findings as alternative construction methods, which, you know, were on a case-by-case basis. And then we use that data to help formalize them into local amendments. Feed lessons learned back to the International Code Council and International Fire Code for future code updates. So one of the things that we talked about, Rob mentioned the housing conference, is that we want to take these findings, when we actually want to submit them to the International Code Council, so we can actually make change at the top, so it can trickle down. I am proud to show this photo. I know that I assume that many in the CNU family knew Tommy Pacello, who was a big supporter of Congress for the New Urbanism. And so Tommy passed away in 2020, and in his honor, the Urban Land Institute created an award called the Tommy Pacello Small Development Award. And we were the inaugural winners of the Tommy Pacello Small Development Award, and we're so proud to have that honor. And on this photo is my family. And then there's the future of Mary Young, who at the time was the President of the Downtown Memphis Commission, who also was vital in providing incentives for our, for Malone Park Commons. So very proud of that, and um… you know, I want to thank you, Rob, for having me on. And I think I'll wrap it up there. Андре: I can't hear you, Rob. Роберт: I'm sorry, I'm muted because of the echo. I forgot I muted. Oh, okay. Okay. You can just keep these slides on. We might refer back to them because there are good slides with some details, and you presented a lot of details, and I think some of them probably need some further explanation. But first, I just wanted to ask you a general question: How did you become an urbanist infill developer, and what brought you to build, like, a new urbanist project like Malone Park Commons? Андре: We… we lived in the city. My wife and I lived in Memphis, you know, native Memphians lived in the city. And, you know, at the time we… I was not… I was not an urbanist, at least I didn't know I was an urbanist. So when we built our first house, we built our first house out in Carryville, which is a suburb of Memphis. And what I realized was, you know, you had to walk them, and I, I was inherently… I just wanted to walk. You had to walk a mile to get out of the single subdivision entrance. There were no sidewalks on the main street. You had to drive everywhere. We had to drive all of my folks, and everything that we wanted to do was a 30-minute drive. And so when we, I just couldn't take it. And so when we were, when we're allowed to get involved in the Uptown revitalization, I was like, "This is perfect." And so, I realized that once we wanted to be in a place where we didn't have to depend on a car, where I could ride a bike, we could walk to get some food or ride our bikes to take our kids to school. And that's exactly what we did. And that's what the living in the Greenlaw Uptown community allowed us to do, and we wanted to share that feeling with others. I mean, the car dependency deal not only is becoming too costly, but it's a health concern as well, because we don't walk as much as we need to. And so I just realized naturally that, you know, I figured out that I was an urbanist, and then I wanted to try to apply that. Being able to work with Tommy Pacello, we started to scale down to smaller housing because we knew that household sizes were shrinking. We were big fans of the Katrina cottages, and that informed our house that we built. Our house is based on, our house that we live in now is basically, basically, a Katrina cottage that we altered a little bit. But then moving forward, we got involved with Tommy, and Tommy brought in the Incremental Development Alliance folks. And so it just started to make sense. And actually, uh, before Tommy, I attended the first Incremental Development Alliance Bootcamp in Duncanville, Texas, in 2014, I believe. So I had some exposure to it, but it really came full circle when Tommy brought them to town that time, that… in 2018. Роберт: Cool. You gave a lot of detail. Could you actually go back two slides so we can see the pictures of your development again? Yeah, um, I just wanted to clarify a little bit, because you said it was 35 units, and you had 11 of the cottages in the cottage court, correct? Андре: Correct. Роберт: And then you had four of the fourplexes that we're seeing there in the lower left. And so that totals 27. And then you had some units in the mixed-use buildings. And then you said you had some single-family houses that ADUs. And so that adds up to 35, right? Андре: Well, the Malone Park Commons community proper is four fourplexes, which is 16 units. The 11 cottages, which is 27. And then we have our two live-work buildings, with each has two apartments. That would be 31. And then we've got the four ground-floor commercials, total 35. The single-family on the other half of the block is what we worked on prior. Роберт: I see, yeah. Андре: So we probably built, like, 75% of the homes on the south end of the block, and those are all homeownership. We have a couple of ADUs on those. But these, those homes and ADUs were built prior to us building Malone Park Commons. So Malone Park Commons was built on six lots, essentially. That was what you started out, six parcels. Um, how did you get your land? Yeah. Андре: So the land was owned by the… so the land was owned by the land bank that the, that the Uptown Revitalization Partnership created. And so the Community Redevelopment Agency, which manages the Tax Increment Financing District, held lots and remediated this brownfield prior to development of those single-family homes. And this is a point that I didn't make, which is that other half block that stayed vacant from 2007 to 2020, when we started Malone Park Commons, had a few failed initiatives… initiatives to try to build those six single-family houses, and for whatever reason, that fell through. I am very happy that it fell through. But, you know, sometimes you come out better when… sometimes you end up with more positive results when prior attempts fail. So we were lucky there. Роберт: So, uh, with your… you started with the 11 cottage courts. Were they under the International Residential Code? So you… Андре: They, they are under the International Residential Code. The issue became, um, because we have multiple cottages on one lot, there was confusion at the utility, utility, and some in the planning as to whether they should be considered as apartments or single-family. And so we're eventually able to get everyone to understand that they're single-family detached. But because they were all… because they're all on one parcel and were using one water meter, because we were, because we planned on leasing, or at some point we can sell them as condos, we had to have the backflow preventer, which nobody… that's how we ended up getting stuck at the end with having to do this backflow preventer deal. Роберт: I see. Just so everybody understands, you have the International Residential Code, which most of our single-family houses are all around America, and the townhouses are built under. And then, um, if you get above a duplex, a triplex, or anything above, um, you're essentially under a different building code regime, um, which is, uh, if that's the right word, but the International Building Code instead of the International Residential Code. And it's the same, um, requirements as if you had a 200-unit apartment building, um, or apartment complex, um, is governing a triplex, or a fourplex, or anything like that. And so, you're, um, it's a regulatory mismatch, because all of the same, you know, all of the same requirements as if you had a huge project are put on you if you have only three units. And that's what you were running into with most of the units on, on Malone Park Commons, um, which, uh, created all kinds of problems for you. Go to the next slide. Um… Were you, uh… So these were the changes, and some of these were city changes, and some of these were state-level changes, correct? Андре: Correct. Роберт: So the, go ahead. Um… Uh, okay. It gets a little bit complicated, but, um… Um, one of the things that CNU, uh, would like to do, um, you know, coming out of the Affordable Housing Council, is to get small apartment buildings and triplexes and multiplexes up to a certain level, uh, governed under the International Residential Code. Would that have solved most of your problems if you had that to begin with? If all of this was done under the IRC as opposed to the IBC, would that have solved a lot of your problems and lowered your costs for construction and your headaches and everything? Андре: Oh, yeah, it would have solved the majority of our problems. Absolutely. We, um… we… Yes, I was trying to think of anything that, that I might, that may fall between the cracks. But yeah, it would have solved the majority of our problems. The mechanical, electrical, plumbing, engineered plans would have, would not have been an issue. Fire alarm requirements. Everything would have, that should have taken care of all of our issues. Now, there were, there, there are a few exclusions in the IBC that you have to… that you can take advantage of, but… again, that depends on how the folks in charge interpret them. We had like a real issue with our fire plan reviewers concerning the fire alarm systems in our live-work buildings where they were telling us that we needed low-frequency sound bases for those, and I read the code. I read IFC and NFPA. I even joined the NFPA and got an interpretation that proved that I was right, and they still wanted to try to make me put in low-frequency sound bases. And so I just did not do it, and I just said, "Well, maybe I'll go to jail for doing this when the fire inspector comes when we're finished." But it ended up, they didn't say a word about it. So, you know, sometimes you just have to plow forward and, and hope for the best, hope for the best. Роберт: Let's just get to some questions from the audience. Um, you, we're already more than fifteen minutes in, and uh, it's been great, but the audience has some good questions, and, uh, once again, uh, if you have your questions, please put them into the Q&A function of Zoom. Um, we had a question on your thoughts on creating more businesses within walking distance and in a location like this or in cities in walkable neighborhoods, in a world of big box stores and Amazon, where, um, you know, people are increasingly ordering things online. Is it viable to have retail near, you know, within walking distance of residential, do you think? Андре: Oh, absolutely. You know, one of our goals was to decrease dependency on cars. And so what we, you know, what has been outlawed since, you know, prior to World War II from a zoning perspective is, you know, zoning concentrates housing, and then businesses in different locations where you basically have to have a car, you have to. At least in Memphis. Of course, there are cities where you have public transportation that can get you to these places, but in Memphis, our transportation, our public transportation is a real issue. And so we wanted to make sure that we had businesses within walking distance the way neighborhoods used to be built. And so having the smoothie sandwich shop where people can just walk to out from our community, walk there. We've got a new headquarters, Varsity Spirit, just opened their new headquarters here a block north from us, and just being able to see those folks walk to get some food, to make that walk interesting and comfortable enough for them to get food here in our community is, you know, it's mind-blowing. But we also have created small spaces for locally owned businesses, you know, they can afford. And we also have created job opportunities. We've had people who work on this very block, I mean, who live on this very block, who live in Malone Park Commons, work at these businesses. So I think it's vital, um, to have businesses in our communities, because they also become third places, right? We need more socialization, and part of, um… the real, um… the real goal in a nutshell of Malone Park Commons is to create community to help foster socialization and socioeconomic mixing. And I think we've accomplished that. Роберт: We had a question about what was your original budget, and what were your cost overruns, fixing the sprinklers, backflow, etc., and how much did your timeline shift, the target versus the reality? Андре: First, I want to say that we did plan to do this incrementally by phase. But, so we actually broke ground in 2020 on the cottage court. We completed the four… the last set of fourplexes in December of 2025. So it took us five years to do the entire project. We waited a year intentionally to build the fourplexes. So we started phase one was the cottages. Phase two was the live-work buildings. We could have immediately started the fourplexes then. But we wanted to wait until we got the new local amendments, and we waited a year. But we still had to do the sprinklers because the State Fire Marshal stepped in during the plan review and said, "No, you got to have them." From a budget perspective, we had to add 17 to $20,000 back in for each building, because we had to have the backflow preventer and the fire sprinklers. And so obviously we had to do that dreaded value engineering deal. So there were some changes, but we, you know, we were able to… we're probably… it probably added an 18 months to our construction timeline, because we even during, even when we're building our live-work buildings, I intentionally waited, you know, I had to wait and argue about the sprinkler systems and things like that, so we couldn't move forward. So we, we were stalled for a while. Роберт: We had a question: What would you say to community leaders who represent a historically black community who are hesitant about affordability and missing middle because it changes the traditional single-family housing pattern? Андре: Yeah, no, I, I would say that, um… Роберт: Does that make sense? Андре: Yeah. We, all right. There's a two-pronged way to think about this. So, in, in our communities, we, a lot of, a lot of us, a lot of us are in communities that are food deserts. And one of the arguments that grocery stores and other retailers have is, "You don't have enough rooftops." And so the goal of missing middle housing, you know, when you think about it, is you can have more households under one rooftop. And so if we create general density, meaning more roof, more households under fewer rooftops at the scale of single-family homes, then we can start to meet those retailers, if we decide to pursue them, meet those retailers' requirements more quickly. The other thing is that neighborhoods used to be built this way. And so you're not really changing… well, you could change the fabric based on someone's experience after the world, after the, you know, after the 40s. But really, your neighborhoods are going to be more sustainable if you have the first housing types where people at different income levels can afford to live in your neighborhood, um, because just having single-family houses is becoming too costly, or they're too, um… in too much disrepair to be able to afford to renovate. And so if we can have newer missing middle housing, you'll be able to allow the people that you care about, that you know can't buy a house right now, but they can still live in your neighborhood at varying price points if you have diverse housing types. And if we have businesses within walking distance that offer opportunities for people with great ideas, they just can't afford these larger spaces, they can have a smaller space to create their first brick-and-mortar to test their idea, and that gives you the benefit of having retail amenities within walking distance that also reduces your dependency on a vehicle. Роберт: Another question in that regard, and it comes from David Kim, who I believe was an architect involved in this project. He said, "You obviously want to incubate small businesses. Please share your rental strategy." Андре: So our rental strategy for Malone Park Commons, because we had a nice number of residential units, was to use the residential rents to help subsidize the small commercial businesses. And so we, you know, this is our first foray into build-to-hold, and especially into commercial. So we're not really familiar with triple net and all those sorts of things. But it also seemed like a big burden on a small business who, who is just starting out, to have all of these property taxes and insurance and all these other things. And so what we decided to do was to just rent these 600-square-foot spaces, just like their apartments. Now you have your rent. We pay for water. You pay for your utilities, and that's it. And then we charge you the same amount as an apartment rent would be based on the square footage, maybe a little more. And then the other 31 residential units help to subsidize the cost of your space. Роберт: Cool. Um… Well, we are at the hour point, and I wanted to let people know that this video will be posted online cnu.org tomorrow. And so, um… uh, you can, uh, you can see the whole thing then again. And I wanted to, like, we have some more questions. If we have time, uh, can we continue to answer these, Andre? Or do you need to be? Андре: Oh, absolutely. Oh, no. Роберт: Okay. So we'll just keep on going through some of these questions. And one is, if you had it to do all over again on the live-work building, would you have set the sprinklers up differently since you knew you were doing commercial on the first floor? Or did commercial on the first floor come as an idea after the building was constructed? Андре: We… so these were originally permitted as apartments, all four. But we had an idea that we wanted to do ground-floor commercial. So we got a zoning variance to allow ground, limited ground-floor commercial when we were doing the planning. Now, had I known at the time, that because there is some confusion in this, if we separated the spaces, the ground-floor spaces with two-hour fire separation as, as noted in the IBC, there are some… there's wording in there that, that tells me that at least I interpret it as being, is that we wouldn't have needed sprinklers in those ground-floor spaces. So… no, I would not have done it differently. And if I had to do it the way the IBC spelled it out, we wouldn't have been able to afford to do it in the first place. So I think the fact that sometimes when you have… sometimes when you know everything starting out, that basically stops you from doing it in the first place. So I'm kind of glad that I, you know, had the selective ignorance to move forward and then battle it out. And now I think that we, I think we've helped create some positive long-term value for our community. Роберт: Um, all of those, uh… changes that you described locally and at the state level, did they come out of that commission that you talked about, that board that was set up in Memphis? Um, uh, was that really key to getting the regulatory changes? Андре: Oh, no, it's absolutely a key. I mean, we had to sit through… so this… this particular… and I have to step back, because I… I think I made… I think I made the mistakenly made the point that this may have been something that was created just when we started this. But no, they had, there's a Building Code Advisory Board that already existed prior to me joining that always reviewed the, the new codes before they were adopted by the city. John Zena knew that I was working on Malone Park Commons and some of the headaches that we were running into, and so he invited me to join this board because he wanted to start to try to figure out how to reduce the barriers for missing middle housing. And so every, every amendment that has been adopted has come through our collaboration through the Building Code Advisory Board. Роберт: So this was really, uh… this was really a mindset change in Memphis. They wanted to make it easier for missing middle housing, and they somehow hit upon a process that enabled them to create a lot of changes. I don't know that these sorts of things have been done in very many cities around the country that I'm aware of. Maybe you've heard of some other examples, Andre, from your contacts and Incremental Development Alliance, but it seems quite, um, extraordinary. We get a question: "Where was the disconnection for the building department during their review of the construction documents? Their requests for costly and a little surprising, they did not… it was not surprising, it was surprising they did not catch these changes up front." Андре: Repeat that one more time, Rob. Роберт: Okay, um, well, um, the question said, "Where was the disconnection for the building department during the review of the construction documents? Their requests for costly and a little surprising that they did not catch these changes up front." So I would… So, I guess the information, yeah, that they should have caught him earlier before he started… building or… Андре: Well. So from, from, from a code enforcement or plan review perspective, they caught… they caught some early. And so that's what spurred some of the… and I didn't talk about those things. They caught them early. Yeah, they caught some early that we, that we were able to… Okay. Rectify, and that we were able to, you know, talk about how this should be interpreted and applied from a code perspective. So they caught some. But then, once we got under construction, and we started, you know, we wanted to convert a, one of the ground-floor apartments, convert the use from a residential to a, to commercial. That's when we started to get into the commercial trigger of the sprinklers and fire alarms and things like that. And even the fire plan review for the live-work building, where we talked about things like the, where I talked about the low-frequency sound bases. I mean, that stuff was caught during plan review. But they wouldn't change once I proved, you know, once, you know, when I say I joined NFPA, and I got an interpretation that says that I am right, "Well, we don't need low-frequency sound bases." I forgot the exact number if it's under 16 or 11 units. And they were like, "No, we, you know, we are under ISC 2021. We're not at NFPA." There was confusion there, so I didn't have time to argue. I just had to keep moving. So I just did what I knew was right, and at the end, you know, they just did. They didn't say anything about it. So obviously, I was right. So there are a lot of… I spent an hour talking about these, you know, specifically about these things during our CNU session, and I can, you know, try to, you know, share that presentation and other information that I, that I garnered. But yeah, it's, it's, it was like a, from the beginning to the end, we always had something that popped up that, you know, was a deterrent or some issue that came to the forefront when it was unexpected. So you can try to plan for all those things. And like, I'm a small-scale developer. To hire a fire designer, you know, and all these other people before you actually break ground pre-development, we don't have those kinds of funds. And even then, I don't think, you know, there are, there are people who work in the industry who would look at those interpretations and disagree with the, with the building code officials. So there's, there's some language that needs to be clarified by the ICC in, in the IBC and some of their exclusions to make it clear as a bell as to what's required and what's not. And then we need to go back with some of these code changes that we made at the local level here and see if we can get the ICC to adopt them, because it really is, I mean, it's like a true deterrent. Nobody's going to go through the trouble to build these if they have to do these things. Роберт: We had a question about the homeownership, and at first the person wanted to clarify, I think that these were not dedicated affordable homes. But that you were targeting the 80 to 120% AMI. Correct. Андре: Correct. Роберт: And it was asked, "For these first-time homeowners?" That was the first question. And for these homeowners, particularly with the ADUs, did you need to provide training and support for how to be a landlord? Андре: So… so the 80 to 120 AMI target was just for the rental units in Malone Park Commons. We didn't have an 80 to 120 AMI target for the homeownership. And so that's, that, those were two separate, two separate items, even though… the homeownership units sold for what would be considered 80 to 120 AMI. From an ADU perspective, no, we did not have any, um… um, you know, training regarding how to become a property owner, to rent your space, you know, because we… But we did, the whole goal for the ADU and inclusion was that, you know, people always say that homes are… homes are an asset, and that may be from, that may be true from the definition. But realistically, they're a liability until you sell them, because you have maintenance, you have mortgage, you have property taxes. And so those things are… expend out of pocket. And so what we wanted to do was try to build ADUs so folks would have some way of making income to help offset those costs. Роберт: Excellent. We have a question about how you got involved in state-level advocacy. Um, you know, how did that happen? Андре: Well, yeah, I sort of talked about this a little bit. So, when the city adopted the local amendment that the State Fire Marshal eventually stepped in and said, "No, you can't do that," two things happened. I was… I had joined the Home… I had been a member of the Home Builders Association, but I eventually joined their government… government affairs regulatory team for the, the State Home Builders Association. And at the same time, John Zena, who was the Director of the Division of Planning and Development, was dealing with the State Fire Marshal stepping in to blocking, to block the amendment. And so he moved forward with creating a bill for, drafting a bill to have the fire sprinklers excluded for up to four units. And so it was sort of a, it's sort of a, a lucky deal where I was able to get the Home Builders Association to, to support the bill. And then I also was the one who was actually doing the work. I had fourplexes sitting right next to a single-family house that wasn't much larger than the single-family house. And so it was, I felt it was incumbent upon me as the person actually doing the work to go and testify. And so, you know, it all worked out to the point where I would go testify. John drafted the bill. We had the support of the Home Builders Association of Tennessee and the NAHB. Um, and so I went up and we were able to get that done. Um, and it was, it was an interesting experience, um, that, that was my first real foray into dealing with state politics. And so I learned a lot. Роберт: Cool. Um, did you have any struggles with regard to parking ratios or reducing parking requirements in this project? Андре: No. So we, so I, I live in a, and I live in a bubble. So Uptown is a special overlay district. And so I rarely look at, you know, what's happening outside of Uptown. But here we had a one parking space for three bedrooms, one onsite parking space for three bedrooms or less. So it was, it was fine. It was no, no issue there. Роберт: Okay. Great. Well, I think that we're going to leave it at that, and this was excellent, Andre, really provided a lot of good information, and I wanted to thank you. And thank everybody who, to attend it. Um, once again, this is going to be, uh, posted on cnu.org. Do you have anything, any final thing to say, Andre, before we go? Андре: Yeah, I wanted to say that, you know, an optical scoring the term missing middle housing. You know, we are… actually, Malone Park Commons is actually between single-family houses and a large apartment building on, on this, just on this next corner. So we actually are missing. We fill the missing middle gap between single-family and a large apartment complex. And that's why I like to say that it, that it's… people can see that it's real, and that it can be done, and that, you know, when you talk about definitions, you know, actually being able to show people proof of concept is really helpful when it comes to changing minds. Роберт: Awesome. Well, thank you very much once again, and have a great day, Andre, and thanks to everyone. Андре: Thank you, Rob. Thank you.