A Time for Patience…

I sit here and think of the song “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by The Byrds.

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

And so it goes. I’m trying to make this my mantra, for the process of creating our school is one that cannot be easily predicted in many ways but yet WILL have it’s time.

As some of you know, we were planning to have an open house on September 29th. We met with our City of Austin inspector on Thursday, and he highly discouraged us to have anyone over until we obtain our certificate of occupancy. Logical? Yes. But darn! We are so dang excited to share this place with all of our current and future friends that it is hard not to feel disappointed. For now, we are sorry we can’t have you over to celebrate just yet. However, we will soon! Please continue to keep in touch as we will with you.

For those interested, I’d like to go into further detail of the roller coaster ride we’ve been on: if it helps enlighten the reason for our delay, helps a future entrepreneur to know the wild ride they are about to embark on, or just provides some entertainment while on the loo, then I’ll be satisfied. 😉

Our little house on James Casey Street was built in the 1930s somewhere on the east side, then relocated to South Austin some years later and has up until the beginning of this year, served as a residential home. It has such a sweet charm to it with the original wooden floors, decorative wood trim, large windows, and high ceilings. We thought, “Perfect! This little bungalow is now zoned commercial, so easy peasy! Right?” Oh, we were so cute.

Okay, first step: go to the city and pick up a certificate of occupancy, then we’ll schedule our fire and health inspection, and then licensing will come out! We got this! Wait… There’s no certificate of occupancy? We have to go downstairs and apply for one? Okay. We got this!

Amberly and I, with our two toddlers in tow, wait in the lobby of One Texas Center on Barton Springs to find out what we need to do to obtain this infamous CO, as we now call it. A friendly gentleman welcomes us back to inform us that we will need a concrete or asphalt parking lot with 4 spaces, one of which should be handicap accessible, and an ADA compliant ramp to enter the building. Needless to say, our hearts sunk to our stomachs with the realization that 1) our budget would surely increase and 2) our timeline would definitely be disrupted. Call us naive, but we are both pretty upbeat and optimistic folk!

Now to decide concrete or asphalt? A wooden, steel, aluminum, or concrete ramp? We already knew we’d need a new fence, got some ridiculous bids, then reached our to our amazing families who offered to build a fence, deck, and stage for us. Thank goodness the inside doesn’t needed any major repairs! (yet…) We got parking lot bids and ramp bids, while attempting to navigate the Site Plan Exemption Form that was necessary to give us approval to do these things. We turned the Exemption Form in, still hopeful, started some much needed landscape work with friends and the incredibly talented Garden Austin team while waited 5 weeks to get a response, and then… got rejected. Okay, so our parking idea was not acceptable, the ramp details seemed fine. I quickly threw together my own parking lot design (yay for being a former architecture student) and resubmitted our application. This time it took only two weeks to get a response… rejected again! I needed to let them know the location of the water meter and they suddenly had an issue with the ramp. I head to the city to set up meetings, since none of this was communicated prior. I find out I can quickly add the little circle on the plan for the water meter and, Oops!, the comment about the ramp was a mistake because someone skipped a page. I totally understand that working for the city can be thankless, and I don’t want to make it sound like it is a horrible place (there truly are some super helpful, caring, and informed individuals in all departments), but man is it easy to get misinformed and create miscommunication! So finally, after starting the process in June, we got our APPROVED form back in August.

Of course, during all of this, it became very clear that opening in September was a pipe dream. However… We got some beautiful work done on the inside and outside of the house (very pleased with the natural playground we’ve got started). We met some amazing families who we can’t wait to work with and guide their little ones to new discoveries. We passed our Health Inspection! We’ve been holding tight to these wee victories.

Back at the city, I picked up my newly approved Site Plan Exemption. “What’s the next step to obtaining my CO?” I ask the man. “You’ll definitely need a building permit for that ramp, and you’ll probably need to apply for a change of use.” Uh… Me being the novice has to learn the difference between Zoning and Use (the first applies to the property, the second to the inside of the building). I learn how to get a permit and apply for change of use from an angel from above in the Commercial Building department (I won’t use her name, but she is absolutely my hero). I get to utilize those drafting skills again and create site and floor plans to inform the city of every little detail possible. When I think I’m ready to submit this round, I go back to visit my hero, and discover there are quite a few abnormalities with our property. After she leaves multiple times to find out if an exception can be made for this or that, I try to keep myself from bursting into tears. “We’re not going to be able to use this location after all!” says my not-so-optimistic brain during her absences. But somehow, it seems we may get it to work. First, I must check in with the Electrical department, where I find we must change ALL of our outlets to a new standard safety outlets with individual grounding because of the way our house is wired. Sigh. I turn the application in (and pay more fees). It is September now.

This time we only have to wait a week, but our application comes back rejected due to some questions from the plumbing department. 1) If we are classified E (education), then we can only allow 15 people or less to share a unisex bathroom (we only have one). Our current occupancy was rated for 29 people. 2) We must get rid of our oven/stove or install a commercial hood. 3) We need to install a service sink. (Thank goodness my dad decided to install a sink that happens to be a service sink!) and 4) We need to install a water fountain. Obvious choice is to get rid of the oven/stove for now and label the service sink, but adding a water fountain and ANOTHER BATHROOM! Yikes! I set up some meetings with the plumbing and building departments. Plumbing tells me, oops!, they made a mistake about the water fountain, so it isn’t necessary. The bathroom he can do nothing about unless we either A) get our label of E changed to B (or something else) to allow for more people per unisex bathroom or B) get our max occupancy lowered to 15. My hero came to the rescue! While I was meeting with the Commercial Building reviewer who looked over our application, she happened to overhear and decided to step in, since she was very familiar with our project. She went to work finagling things we didn’t know could be finagled, and BOOM! Our max occupancy was down to 15 (for the three classrooms, not counting the office, kitchen, etc.), which would mean we could make it with our one little bathroom afterall!! I wanted to hug her. Afterwards, I went out into the lobby, hand wrote some notes to clarify the changes, then resubmitted our application right away. I may have gotten a strange look from the intake guy due to my handwritten submission, but I am at the point of desperation and could care less. 😉 Three days later (it was a weekend), we got an approved permit!!

Next we’ve been instructed to schedule a pre-construction inspection, so I schedule it on my way out of the building, wasting no time. Little do I know, all inspections called in are scheduled for next-day. Ugh, I miss the inspector the following morning. During all of this we are going back and forth with parking lot vendors and the rain is against us too. I finally figure out that I’ve missed the inspector and give him a call. He asks if we are open already because he sees some furniture inside. No… Should we not have furniture inside? “You’ll need to clear that out, if you want to pass inspection,” he says. Sinking feeling again. We’ve brought in quite a bit of supplies and furniture, so to imagine clearing it all out is quite disheartening. After I put Amberly into a panic as well, I decide to call him back and explain our situation, in hopes he’ll take pity on our inexperienced souls. He does! He says the max penalty will be $53 if he should decide to site us. Whew!! He’ll come visit us tomorrow to give us more details.

We’ve got our families visiting today (from out of town, no less), fixing gates, putting together picnic tables, watching our children. They are amazing. The inspector arrives and gives me some more surprises. We’ll need to replace 7 glass window panels with tempered glass, put a new level handle on our front door, make the threshold more accessible, and be absolutely certain our ramp is done properly. He warns us of the many mistakes people commonly make and tells the story of a man who goes around to businesses who are supposed to be accessible and catches them in their ADA mistakes in order to sue and get settlements. What a world! We call the glass people and decide to get the glass from them but install it ourselves. We’ll use some of the money we save to put towards a concrete handicap ramp instead. It has been a day! We couldn’t do this without the incredible support and guidance of our families.

So here we are today. I get a call from our parking lot guy. He’s going to remove the asphalt in a few hours. We can’t believe it! I had to go see it for myself, since we’ve been waiting for so long. It really happened! On Monday we should start to see some leveling and fill go in. We hope and pray for no more rain! If you’ve read this far, you surely are a trooper and deserve a round of applause. Thanks for hopping on this journey with us! Stay tuned for further updates, which will hopefully be full of good surprises and things running smoothly.

Keep your fingers crossed for us! Cheers!