Our time has come...

This morning, at 8:36am, we received an email from Michelle Macias at the City approving the Drainage plan, thanks to the proper listing of species of trees.

Honestly, my excitement is tempered by my frustration with this.  We only lost two business days on her inability to find the species in the plan, but it was an emotionally frustrating four days for us (including the weekend).

The end result is that we've received approval from the final department, thus paving the way to permit issuance.

We're unclear on the details of the process from here, but we'll have a "Final" review, and an on-site meeting with the City before they actually put a permit in our hands.  This process will take 2-4 weeks, but as far as we know, there's nothing that can really hold up the actual permit issuance.

Personally, I'm shooting for a Monday, May 23 groundbreaking.  Two years ago, on that day, Julie and I began a journey together, when she accepted my proposal on a beautiful hike overlooking the bay in San Diego.  I think it would only be fitting to mark that anniversary with the beginning of another journey, overlooking the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains, as we turn the first piece of dirt on the site that will mark our home for a long time.

We'll know more soon, and I expect we'll have a grand ceremony to mark the day.

Up Next: A bottle of champagne! (Or, sparkling white wine, if you're snooty like that)

When will my city stop hurting me?

Well, that thing that we thought might happen?  It happened.

We'll be going into Cycle 5 as soon as possible.  Thankfully, at the very least, this round was completed with some expediency.  As a result, hopefully we'll be able to turn it all around promptly as well.

The Drainage Department (represented by Michelle Macias) has rejected our plans.  I just emailed her a few minutes ago to get the list of corrections that are required.

Our architect, Richard Rhydes, has been extremely frustrated with Ms. Macias, for reasons we don't fully understand.  As far as we can tell, the City has not been able to decide very well what they want us to do with our plans for Drainage, so we've never gotten a straight answer.  I expect this can be frustrating for an architect.

I'm sure we'll be posing more over the weekend as we figure out how significant the corrections are, but for now, the word is...not yet.

Up Next:  Reviewing and Correcting the Drainage Requirements OR "Can I please speak with your manager?"

------------------------------------------
UPDATE - 2:48pm

Just heard from Richard that Michelle emailed him this morning a question about the species of trees on the plans.  There are 8 total trees on the plan, and there are labels for them, but according to the email, Michelle states that "as soon as you let me know the tree species, I can approve."

This sounds like pretty good news.  There's a chance she'll reverse her non-approval today, but even if not, if we only have to label the trees, we could be back on track quickly!

------------------------------------------

UPDATE - 5:00pm

Well, the end of the day has officially arrived, and no communication from Michelle.  This leads us to believe that she probably went home early today, and didn't receive any of our correspondence.  She's typically very prompt with her communication.

And, we don't think she works on Mondays, so we'll be on pins and needles until sometime Tuesday.

One more to go!

It's difficult to express the chills I just got.  It's akin to getting notified that you've just been offered your dream job, from amongst hundreds of candidates.

Even though we're not done yet, today marked a HUGE achievement in our quest to build our home.

As of about 3pm today, the ECA Slide (Environmentally Critical Area) department approved our permit application!  This leaves only the Drainage Department to appease.

This is major news for a number of reasons.

Of the two departments we resubmitted for on April 11, the consequences of failing the ECA Slide department was much greater.  It could mean more re-engineering walls, or getting various approvals from different neighbors.  The Drainage Department, on the other hand, would just require us to move around a drainage pond or two...a relatively simpler task.

Additionally, Jim Mattoon, the reviewer in the ECA Slide Department, is the Senior member of the review team, so his approval is paramount.

We're tempering our excitement a bit, however, because of the two departments, we believe that the Drainage Department is the more likely to reject our plans.  This results mostly from the City's own confusion.  Drainage plans are a new component of the permitting process, and Michelle Macias, while she's been excellent in the communication realm, is in a bit over her head when it comes to reviewing the plans.  Really, by no fault of her own, except for lack of experience, but it very well could send us to Round 5.

However, should we reach a Round 5, we expect that round to progress much more quickly.

Thus, we've revised our estimates as follows:

IF we successfully pass the Drainage Department, we should know by Monday at the latest.  This puts us at a mid- to late-May groundbreaking.

IF we fail the Drainage Department, we should be able to resubmit in two weeks, and have the plans approved within two weeks of that date, thus only pushing us out a month.  This gives us a groundbreaking of no later than the end of June!

Up Next:  The anticipation builds...

Round 4 Submitted!

Finally...

Actually, that's hardly the way to describe it.  We really haven't waited very long at all.  The time between our last corrections notice (translation: rejection) and this re-submission was only a touch over 4 weeks.  This has already been a dramatically faster cycle (previous cycles were 6 months and 3 months respectively).

Regardless, we're ecstatic that Richard Rhydes (of Whidbey Island Architects), our diligent architect, has completed the corrections for Round 4 and submitted them this morning.

He went about the process a little bit differently from the prior cycles.  Typically, we receive the corrections notice, change the drawings and re-submit.  This time, Richard scheduled meetings with the remaining departments to review his corrections prior to submitting.

We're hoping this approach both saves time, and avoids another corrections notice.

By comparison, I think we're actually doing rather well.  Julie has been keeping her eyes on construction in the area, and there's a new house that's almost finished over on Sunset Ave. (1411 Sunset).  This house, although it's on an even steeper slope, was originally submitted in 2007, and they're just wrapping up construction now...yikes.

So we feel fortunate...or at least we're trying to keep our spirits up by telling ourselves we should feel fortunate.

At this point, we're trying to project this round of reviews, and I developed a little comparison table for the two departments at issue.  Below are the round-by-round comparisons of each of the two remaining departments.

By this chart, it appears that Round 4 should be approved or rejected before the end of April.  According to some other research we've done, it appears that between the last departmental approval and the "Final" approval, there are typically 3-4 weeks of meetings.

So...where does that leave us?

HOPEFULLY...a start date of late May.

Up Next:  Eyes on the Prize - Tracking Round 4.