February 2025

Water Street Townhomes Update

I’ve been remiss in posting project updates, but you can always see what’s been posted in the past using the search box at that shows up on most pages. You can click here and see what’s been posted.

This project has had some struggles getting off the ground. Despite having funds from READI and the City of Plymouth to invest, getting a construction loan and securing permanent financing proved a challenge. Construction costs remain high and getting to an acceptable debt service ratio was challenging. We spoke to nine financial institutes before settling on Interra Credit Union for this project. Even after making that decision, the commitment process was slow. All of the financial institutes seem skittish about committing to long term financing in the current market.

We have made our first draw request to READI on January 15th and currently are being told it may be another 30-45 days before we see funds released. We made our first draw request to the City of Plymouth on January 8th to start the process for approval with the Redevelopment Commission meeting on the 21st, but despite approval there, the bond fiduciary has not released funds to us. It is hard to complain about the injection of funds that make this project possible, but the delays mean we will incur additional interest expense to cover costs until the payments come in.

We broke ground on the project December 17th, 2024. Those gold shovels have traveled to a lot of sites over the years! Mayor Listenberger asked us to delay actual construction until after Christmas to keep the parking lot open for holiday shopping. We literally broke ground December 26th, with excavation starting that day.

Excavation is mostly complete for the building footprint. We have been fortunate that most of the debris we have uncovered has been relatively easy to remove. As always, there was some “fun” stuff, like an active waterline that ran back under the parking lot, through the excavation, from Water Street before it was capped. That made for a muddy day before being resolved. As of now, footings are in place for the townhomes and a large percentage of the basement walls are complete. We should see basement waterproofing start this week and backfill shortly after that. We’re working through the framing shop drawings to get the wall panels released.

We are still looking for completion in late Fall of ’25. We would love to accelerate that if we can!

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