Reviving Community Spaces: The Future of Corner Stores

We travel to the beautiful Pacific Northwest this week to talk with architect Cary Westerbeck. Cary lives and works in Bothell, Washington, a northern suburb of Seattle. He traces his path from being a bicycle mechanic to architect, developer and even Planning Commission member.

One of the really cool things about this episode is hearing Cary take me step by step through his process to build the Fir Street Lofts. This size of project, 3 apartments and one retail space, is the kind of project that should be within reach of many aspiring developers. Cary talks about how he conceived it, designed it, financed it, and general contracted it as well. If I could construct a curriculum for architects, I’d have them all listen to this episode to learn how much more is possible than just being a hired gun for others.

Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.

Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.

Intro: “Why Be Friends”

Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

Transcript:

Kevin K (00:01.132)

Welcome back to the Messy City Podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. This week we're off to the Pacific Northwest to talk with another small scale developer and urbanist kind of guy who's done some really cool work and who I haven't really had a chance to talk to a lot in person, but our paths cross all the time, including when this one drops, my most recent guest will have been Jim Hyde from the Small Scale Developer Forums and

And my guest today, Kerry Westerbeck, has been very involved in the Small Scale Developer Forum. there's kind of a fun alignment there that I'm looking forward to talking about. But anyway, Kerry, welcome to the podcast. It's great to see you.

Cary (00:43.968)

Thank you, Kevin. Nice to be invited. Great to be here.

Kevin K (00:46.786)

Well, again, it's a situation where we just know so many overlapping people. It makes it feel like the world is really small.

Cary (00:53.226)

Indeed.

It really does. There's so many connections, whether it's social media or blogs or podcasts. Like, hey, I know that person and they know that person and all these points begin to overlap. It's fun.

Kevin K (01:08.952)

Yeah, and I know there's more than like 20 people doing small scale development in the whole country, but for whatever reason that like circle we travel, and it of feels like there's like 20. So I don't know.

Cary (01:17.162)

Yeah.

Cary (01:20.884)

No, it's true. It's the same bunch of us kind of keep getting hit up. Maybe we're the ones who'll enjoy talking about it. Others are just doing it and being quiet. I don't know.

Kevin K (01:29.816)

Could be, could be. There's a whole lot of people who just, you know, proceed on in the background and do really cool stuff. So anyway, Carrie is in the Seattle Metro area and is doing some really neat stuff up there and has for a long time. And I wanted to talk obviously about some of the projects you've been doing, but you also have a really interesting background getting into this.

Cary (01:36.212)

That's right.

Kevin K (01:56.236)

that our mutual friend, John Anderson, kind of clued us into. And I wonder if you want to start by talking a little bit about like your own journey to being where you are now. I think we're probably around the same age, ballpark. so, yeah. And so, you know, by the time you hit our age, you've probably had two or three different lives, it feels like, or certainly professional lives. And there's lot of different paths that people take. So let's talk a bit about where you started out.

Cary (02:03.541)

Yeah.

Cary (02:09.865)

early 50s.

Cary (02:17.214)

Yes. Yes.

Cary (02:25.974)

Sure, no, I think that's a really good way putting it. I have a lot of friends who are five to 10 years older and some of them didn't know me when I was younger. I do joke, I've had many lives, I've lived many lives because I was a bicycle mechanic for much of the 90s before I finished my undergrad degree and then went later and got a master's in architecture and became an architect 20 years ago. So I...

30 something years ago, I spent six months in the Virgin Islands working as a cook when I was just casting about traveling. So these newer friends, yeah, was great. Yeah, on St. John, US Virgin Islands at Eco Resort. And so yeah, I've had these interesting paths and I worked for Seattle Public Utilities after my undergrad degree before I got my architecture degree. This is in the late 90s and decided

Kevin K (03:01.964)

That's cool. That must have been a... I think we could do a whole podcast probably just on that experience.

Cary (03:23.828)

At the time, my policy wasn't too thrilling to me, but I did some policy work for a while around Seattle Public Utilities work. I was a project manager for a watershed action plan. anyway, my route to where I'm at today, yeah, I was doing that. I've been actively involved in the outdoors here in the Northwest, biking and hiking and backpacking and stuff. But I've always been intrigued with architecture.

Even when I was younger, I thought I'd go be an architect when I was in high school. And then I kind of got into a little more carefree lifestyle in my late teens, early twenties, and really didn't apply myself very well when I was in community college and when my friends were off at the universities and stuff. So I had kind of a more circuitous route to getting married in my mid twenties and then deciding to finish my undergrad degree, doing that policy work, Seattle Public Utilities in the late nineties, and then deciding.

hey, I've got kind of got my life together more. I'm better at studying and applying myself. I'm going to go pursue that architecture degree. So I did do that at the University of Washington from 2001 to 2004. And that's how I got my start as an architect in 2004. I've always been in the Seattle area. I was born in Tacoma, just south of Seattle. And I grew up actually one town over from where I am today in Bothell, Washington. I grew up in Woodinville, Washington next door.

So I've stayed local, love the Northwest. So I became an architect and like many of us, became an intern at a good local firm in 2004. And we were just working as fast as we could as architects with that firm, which is still around today until many of us got, most of us got laid off one by one in 2008, 2009. And as we all who live through that, know that story, I think something like 40,

Kevin K (05:19.468)

Well, nope. Still have the scars.

Cary (05:21.782)

Yeah, you know, yeah, exactly. 40, 50 % of the architects, I think, in the country got laid off within a few months, something like something crazy like that. Yeah. So I'd only had five years experience at that point, but had done all kinds of work and been working a lot. So I had enough to then quickly get licensed within a year or so. And I was in the process of beginning my own firm because my wife's a librarian and a teacher. so

Kevin K (05:29.154)

Yeah, it was brutal.

Cary (05:51.03)

firms didn't have work in 2009 or so, but these teachers are still employed. And so a couple of them, we want to do an addition, we want to do a deck, whatever. I started a small firm kind of out of necessity to make a living. And that actually worked pretty well. So I was actually doing okay during the recession, starting a small firm and learning how to do contracts and all kinds of things.

But all along, we started owning houses. My wife and I bought our first house in 1997 prior to my becoming an architect. And my dad had always been kind of a frustrated engineer architect. we actually lived in a couple of architecturally significant houses growing up. So I was sort of steeped in design. so along with that, he was always remodeling our houses. So I kind of had this DIY spirit. And my brother was, at that time, a

professional contractor and general contractor. He's now a professional architectural photographer. Interestingly enough, he shoots my work. So immediately we would remodel each house we own. We had a few houses through the year before the projects we have now that we own now. And so I wasn't afraid to put on the tool belt and learn how to do things. So I say that because we were starting to look at getting into design build when I was at the firm I worked at, Johnston Architects.

And I actually built out the offices when we moved offices in 2007 or so. I was the lead on that and literally cutting the wood and building the desks and all kinds of things like that. Cause I had experienced doing that and brought remodeling houses. And about that time I learned about Jonathan Siegel down in San Diego. Most people know who he is these days and this line of work. And one of the guys in the office had gone to one of his in -person.

seminars where we taught people how to be architect as developer. I thought, hey, I've always been interested in design build and building my own projects, self -initiated work, but I didn't really understand. You could just decide you're going to be your own client. This is an electrifying idea.

Cary (07:58.932)

So it was planted. didn't do anything about it for a while, but I thought, okay, well, I'll keep remodeling my houses and doing work for clients. And got a lot of on the ground construction administration, construction observation work, doing projects, not only when I was working at Johnston for that five years, but then later on my own being very hands -on, both designing the projects and walking clients through those projects. So that gave me a pretty good feel for working side -by -side with general contractors. And I could be comfortable with that.

So I started getting this bug that I wanted to self -initiate projects and become the architect as developer, you know, idea person like Jonathan Siegel. And I was finding out about others at that time in New York and other places. And so I took the online course by, what was it, 2014 or so that Jonathan Siegel offered online. He decided it was too much work to do tours and keep speaking. So that...

Kevin K (08:55.17)

He was probably having too much fun in San Diego too.

Cary (08:58.3)

Exactly. know, by then he'd already had a lot of good projects under his belt. I think a lot of us saw his stuff winning awards and everything. So he would become pretty high profile. So that course was extremely empowering and convinced me that, I've got the skill set and he, you know, is very empowering in that way. You can go do this and you've got the skills and you've got the, you know, the intelligence and everything. And he was right. So that led to us.

Buying an existing triplex in the downtown core. I'm actually in that triplex right now. And with some extra land on it. And that was 2014. So we learned how to be, had tenants already, so we remodeled some of the units over time. learned how to be landlords.

We even sold our house nearby and moved into one of the units of our family of four, my wife, myself, our two daughters who were younger at the time. And we lived in the upper floor of that existing triplex that we bought in 2014 while I designed and planned a new building for the front yard.

Kevin K (10:06.776)

So how big, just describe the units in that triplex. How big a space were you looking at?

Cary (10:12.95)

Yeah. So the triplex was actually, its origin is, it was a barn built in 1913 by one of the early families, that kind of a founding family, the Erickson family of the city of Bothell. And it was a barn where they raised rabbits, a rabbit hutch. And it's 30 feet by 40 feet, two stories, with the gabled roof. Like literally just like the diagram of a gabled house, basically that children draw.

And it had two units, has two units in the downstairs and one unit upstairs. And then I've carved out a little office out of a shared foyer on the upstairs that I remodeled into my office where I'm sitting now. And we will replace this eventually with a building I'm working on what it will be replaced with.

Kevin K (11:02.552)

So you were in basically 1 ,200 square feet with the four of you then. A couple of little kids.

Cary (11:05.386)

Yep, correct, actually. Including my office. what I'd carved out from my conference room, so just a separate door and a deadlock, deadbolt stuff that I use now. We didn't use it at the time when the family was living in the hall upstairs. My wife's in my bedroom was the small conference room, which I've never really used in conference room, but it worked out great.

Kevin K (11:28.856)

So did that, at the time, that feel like a bit of a sacrifice, kind of moving into that space? Yeah.

Cary (11:33.29)

Yes. Yeah. was, so we've remodeled it. was kind of nice and shiny and new and, know, certainly an old building, but we made it look pretty nice and permitted all the work. I moved a bunch of walls around and built new bathrooms and all kinds of stuff. And we were over here with, with friends kind of looking at it one day after we got the final sign off. And I thought we should move in here and save money so we can build the new building soon. And I thought my wife's, my wife's a gamer. She's pretty flexible.

And I thought, well, I'll wait day or two and see what she thinks. So I proposed the idea a couple of days later, and we'd been living in a nearby town next door, Kenmore, for 11 years, had a quarter acre lot, and a mid -century house. I'd remodeled every square foot. It had pretty good equity in it, and it could help us with the future project. And so I proposed the idea, let's move in, let's save money. We will travel little more for a few years, and she loved it. So that's what we did six months later.

And so yeah, we kind of made a sacrifice about three and a half years we lived in that little 1200 square feet. But the cool thing, you know, cause I'm an urbanist too, this is a small little downtown. We're right in the middle of downtown. City Hall is a block away. They're building multifamily all around us. Most of it's built now. There was more going up, but at the time there was only one out of about 10 buildings that had been built in that last 10 years. So,

Kevin K (12:31.596)

Fantastic.

Cary (12:55.39)

We really wanted to, I wanted to walk my talk and the family was into it too and be in a walkable place where we could drive less and we were in my transit and bicycling and stuff. So we've really been doing that. And we had that, you know, immediately overnight. So it was a, it was an adjustment, but it was really been fun.

Kevin K (13:13.176)

So by way of context, what was the local real estate market like when you bought this place in 2014?

Cary (13:18.966)

So at the time, know, it always seems expensive at the time, right? Never, it's so much worse than it used to be. Well, it seems downright quaint and affordable now looking back on 2014. It was a very hot market. We got a great price when we sold our house and we had a really good price on the Triplex because the family owned this old building kind of, it was one of many and it was very run down and they just wanted to get rid of it. So we got a great deal. It's more than double what we paid for it. So yay for us, right?

but it all felt like a stretch at the time. I honestly don't know that we could get it today. not because of competition, but because of the cost of land and, and, properties down here now. a key factor there was, because of being an architect and into local planning issues. And, and, we lived in the town next door, Kenmore, which does some overlapping planning, at the county level and so forth with, with the city of Bothell where I'm at now.

Bothell had a master plan and a new downtown code and zoning code and things like that. There was sort of a hybrid for the downtown, sort of a hybrid form based code that I was well aware of had been written and put in place. It was kind of a sleepy place. A lot of people didn't know. So I was well aware that this town was going to rapidly change and grow because they had set the table for it. So for once I got in at kind of at the right time, but it was a stretch.

Kevin K (14:47.606)

Yeah, right. So at some point you decided to take a closer look at that vacant lot next to you. And was that the next project you undertook or was there anything else after that?

Cary (15:00.938)

Yeah. So we actually, I guess we would call this the covered land play because with the triplex, the triplex lot here, the city had actually bought about four feet because right after we moved in, they rebuilt streets and sidewalks fringes and really made these beautiful deluxe streets, replaced all the infrastructure, daily at a creek across the street. did millions and millions of tens of millions of dollars worth of downtown improvements as part of this plan.

But otherwise, the triplex came on a lot that was 6 ,750 square feet. And so we already had the land as part of the triplex property. So when I eventually designed and built the building that I'd become known for, I built it in the front yard. already had the land. I short -platted it as part of the building permit. And I short -platted.

because otherwise the old building rides with the new building on the financing. And that would sort of drag it down. So I realized I needed to split the lot and create a brand new fresh lot that would give me some equity because there would be value given to that lot. And at the same time, have the finances completely separate from the old triplex that we owned on the lot. So I turned it from one lot into two. And I would do that over and over if I could.

Kevin K (16:22.336)

Interesting. Yeah, and I

Yeah, so why do you say that? was the advantage of that from your perspective?

Cary (16:32.054)

You basically, give yourself a free lot and in small development, as you and probably many know, the land basis or the cost of land or getting a chunk of land to build on is one of the most difficult hurdles for small operators. Bigger developers can often do a purchase and sale and wait until they entitle a project to pay their five or 10 or 15 million for their property. That's how all the bigger projects are done around here.

But small mom and pop sellers for the size of lots, I'm usually looking at five, six, seven thousand feet, whatever. They just want cash upfront. so you kind of have to commit. So to get a property that already has a building that can sort of help offset the costs, in our case, the mortgage with renters, while you split the lot, you're effectively giving yourself a new tax lot.

at very little cost. Just really the cost of splitting that lot is the cause of any taxes you eventually start paying on the property tax.

Kevin K (17:39.669)

So, what would a like that cost in Bothell by way of comparison, just if you found a vacant lot in a neighborhood?

Cary (17:45.59)

Yeah. So at the time, that lot, is only the building I built is on a lot that's just about 2 ,600 square feet, 2 ,625, very small. There's no minimum lot size in our downtown, fortunately, like there is other places. The valuation five years ago was 400 ,000. It's probably a little bit more than that now. So it's not inexpensive land down here. We're doing a project now that broke ground for a four unit just a few blocks away from here. So it's a good comparison.

Kevin K (18:08.141)

Yeah.

Cary (18:14.358)

I'm working on it with two other partners. doing four townhouses. We wanted it to be more, but that's another story I can talk about later. And that lot is 5 ,400 square feet, I believe it is. And it was $640 ,000. And lots have sold in the two years since become even more expensive per square foot. So, yeah.

Kevin K (18:42.872)

That's That's amazing. My Midwestern brain has a hard time getting around those numbers.

Cary (18:47.772)

yeah. When I look on the social media groups I'm part of, the Neighborhood Development Group that John Anderson started, and Income Mill Development Alliance and others, Kansas, where you are, and of course, Grand Ure in the city, where property probably costs a little bit more. And then in the South and the Midwest, my jaw drops when I see what you guys can get land for and lots for.

Kevin K (19:13.196)

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a different market in lot of ways. So let's talk about the project you built there, which I've seen pictures of. I haven't seen it in person, but it's a really cool project. It's kind of in many ways like the classic example of a small mixed use project that we talk about in a hundred different seminars that you were actually able to execute. So I'm curious about like why you chose that particular kind of project and some of the pros and cons of doing that.

Cary (19:15.583)

It is. It is.

Cary (19:42.26)

Yeah, no, I love to talk about that. learned so many lessons, but really fundamental to this was meeting John Anderson after I did the Jonathan Siegel course. I really had a lot more I needed to learn about sort of scrappy on the ground, get things done, part of the small development. And John Anderson, I met just at the perfect time.

and incremental development alliance was young then. I actually went down to Texas and took one of their boot camps in 2016. But he taught me about the, for a first project, don't get too crazy. Do three stories you can do with like a single stair. I already knew about that. Single stair is hot now, but at the time it was okay. We'll keep it three stories or less, single stair. International building code allows that. And design it around what can be allowed with an FHA 203B loan.

B or C, can't remember. The ones that are renovation loan. But this is the vanilla FHA home loan that millions of Americans have gotten to buy anything one to four units. So if you're going to buy your first house, this is that loan. The unique thing is, unlike most mortgages, you can do one to four units. So that's not unusual. But they allow up to 49 % commercial. There's no other.

vanilla mortgage that allows that. And I was really interested in doing mixed use because I had a corner lot in downtown. And I just felt as an urbanist who wanted to place make and create places for people that this should be a corner shop, commercial shop. So I had my sort of template then. All right, I'm gonna do four units. Originally I was gonna redevelop the entire lot all at once. And I realized that was.

biting off more than I wanted to chew and I didn't really want to get rid of a cash flowing triplex because this is my first project. So I thought, well, this is perfect. I'll split the lot. I'll do a single stair FHA compliant building that's not going to get me out of my ski tips. This won't be built much differently than a single family home, which I had a lot of experience with, like commercial. And I'll general contract it myself.

Cary (22:05.242)

And I don't get too fancy, it's a simple shape. And that was kind of the premise. And what I call it is a well -detailed simple box. But that was the groundwork for the project. To do that, and I was allowed to work on it for a few years, kind of refining and working on it. But during my spare time.

Kevin K (22:28.504)

Let's talk about a couple aspects of it, the FHA 203B thing, know, not everybody knows about all that. Did you have a hard time like finding a banker or bankers who understood, you know, financing it this way?

Cary (22:33.833)

Mm

Cary (22:41.686)

Yes and no. So most mortgage folks I talked to knew about it. Many of them were unwilling to originate them. I don't know if there just wasn't as much fat in it for them or what. The original, when I was finishing the project in late 2019, just prior to the pandemic, the mortgage broker I was working with at the time had done a great job for me doing a refi and a home equity loan or a

sorry, HELOC on the Triplex so I could use the Triplex as a sort of cash machine, which is another small developer ploy. He'd been really spectacular for me, really experienced. But he was very reluctant and quite frankly unwilling to originate an FHA loan because I suspect he wasn't going to get paid as well. So he brought me a commercial loan just as the pandemic was beginning and it was really

awful terms and we had to bring a lot of money to the table. And so I quickly had to go find another experienced mortgage person. a lot of them will say they're interested and then you get into it and they try and deter you from doing one, the FHA. So that's information that I should share.

Kevin K (23:56.418)

So you really have to kind of push through. I think John has talked about this before. It's almost like you have to know more about some of these programs, or know as much as your banker does, or your lender.

Cary (23:58.571)

Yes.

Cary (24:04.032)

Yes.

Yeah, John makes that point. I completely agree. I downloaded the 600 page, whatever it was, manual on HUD lending that he recommended. Granted, just not to scare everyone, you're not going to read the whole thing. You're going to skim it for certain sections. so, yeah, I would quite literally call these mortgage brokers up, or lenders, and have to tell them they were allowed to make this loan. And this is why. And here's the terms. And so it's so true.

I got a little disgusted at certain points that I was extricating with people on their own business. Yeah, but I did find this guy who was incredible. He was basically ready to retire, but he was just having fun, still doing things. And he found the pandemic loaning to be really tough, but also a challenge. So lucky for me. And I paid a lot of extra interest. That was the only thing in my project that went.

Rye as it were the the designing the permitting the construction. I want really smoothly it was throughout 2019 Getting the final loan mortgage that FHA mortgage to take out the construction loan Which was high interest because I was a new developer was the only really challenging and expensive part of the whole project

Kevin K (25:21.194)

Interesting. what would that product, I guess talk us through if you did the construction loan, like what sort of percentage equity did you have to have to do that? Or how did you finance it? then when you do the permanent financing, how did that convert?

Cary (25:29.813)

Yeah.

Cary (25:37.206)

Yeah, so I was a little unusual in that I did talk to multiple banks. I'll cut to the chase. I got a hard money loan from a small two -person LLC that I was put in touch with from my mortgage guy at the time. And they loved me, these lenders. It was 12%. Doesn't sound quite as bad today, but at the time it was twice what banks were lending for construction loans, so it was expensive. But it was easy and it was fast and draws were

were painless and they trusted me. They visited the site once and completely believed in me and the money was, you know, we did all the paperwork. They had a first position and all the normal stuff a mortgage company would do paperwork wise. was just not fly by night. But because it took extra five or so months at the end to get the takeout mortgage, the final mortgage, that FHA mortgage, I paid something like $125 ,000 in extra interest. So that was painful.

I did that but I had talked to two different kinds of banks and this is the kind of information I love to share with people. I did have banks that were interested in loaning on the building. One type of bank was the one type of loan I should say is banks who are wanted to loan to myself and my wife as a husband and wife entity building basically a house. One to four units they just kind of saw it as a home loan basically. They don't care if you do four units.

And though they were wary of the commercial part, for fair warning, they were like, we don't really loan on commercial. So we hadn't really sort of do that because we weren't offered the loan in the end. so they actually they did offer us a loan. was much it was several hundred thousand less than we needed. Ironically, it was because I had spent a fair amount of time of my own office time working on my project. I didn't make as much money for the prior tax year. So I kind of

was stung by the fact that I was putting my energies into my own building, doing the construction drawings and managing the design. I looked much better on paper for the prior tax year and they were like, well, what happened here? You you you dropped like, well, I was, you know, giving myself as sweat equity as it were, as an architect. And there's value in those drawings, but they don't care about that. They want your tax return. we couldn't borrow enough money.

Cary (28:01.742)

to with a bank that wanted to loan us the money as a private home project. So they're out of the picture. We would have had to bring too much money to the table ourselves. I also talked to a commercial lender. They liked it. They wanted to loan the full amount, but they wanted a guarantor. Not unusual. I did not have a guarantor. So we probably could have used a family member, but we didn't want them to have

power or decision -making power on the project. Because they're the person I'm thinking of, they're in real estate as well. And we thought, well, we want to do our own thing. So we eschewed that and went hard money. So I didn't go a traditional route there. But I also learned that it's not unusual for those of us doing it for the first time to seek out private money or hard money like this. Yeah.

Kevin K (28:55.638)

Interesting. What was the total size of the project? What cost?

Cary (29:01.11)

Yeah, like the stats. Okay, yeah, the the total cost we borrowed 1 .3 million. It cost about 1 .5 in hard cost construction costs total 1 .5 million with with soft costs. No, excuse me. I apologize.

trying to recall here, hard cost for closer to, I think it was closer to the original 1 .3 million. And with soft costs, we were at about 1 .5 million. And the total value of the project in the end at the lower end was about 1 .8 million, putting a lower kind of lower end price on the value of the land. So yeah, was a, you know, so all in, you know, if you're around about a $1 .5 million project.

Kevin K (29:52.672)

Interesting. And then were you as the architect able to pay yourself a fee for that and for the construction management?

Cary (29:59.99)

Yes, I love to talk about that. So I didn't pay myself for construction management per se, but what I did was this project took a lot of planning. And this is the kind of thing I love to share with other architects doing this. I had learned from Jared Devalle back in 2011. He was one of the other people I learned about the architect as developer model when I went to an architecture conference in 2011. And I was intrigued with his

I think his company was called Alloy working in like Dumbo and New York City. And he had expressed how you have these different companies, you own them all, but they're arms length transactions. So you have your development. And in my case, the development, the building is called Fur Street Flats, because the 183rd street out in front of my building was originally called Fur Street, like the tree, Douglas Fur. So it's called Fur Street Flats. And that was one LLC.

And then I had my established architecture firm, Westerberg Architecture. And then I also became a licensed general contractor. And that was my firm for that, Shelter Lab. And so they had arms length transactions with each other. So First Street Flats had a written agreement to provide architectural services. Westerberg Architecture would provide architectural services to First Street Flats.

Now granted, that money is just being shuffled between my different business accounts. And I had to have business accounts and you go to the bank and you get a business account and you have to show them your LLC agreement and your state certificate and all that. But yes, so that's a long -winded way of saying, Westerbrook Architecture got paid by First Street Flats a fee to design the project. What happened then was I made sure that I continued to give myself a paycheck as I acted as the journal contractor for a year building the building.

My architecture firm was giving me a regular salary, even though I was not doing architecture work. This was so that I paycheck consistency that the mortgagers want to see when you're done with the project. So you don't have a, they want two years. So I just had continuity there. So I used that fee. Once I got my loan, First Street Flats paid Westerbrack architecture for the design. And I used that money to live on just basically as my paycheck that I would have been earning as an architect. I just.

Cary (32:22.358)

prepaid it and drew on it as I built the project. So that essentially covered me to work as a general contractor and I did not pay myself a general contractor fee or a developer fee. I considered it all basically I get to keep the building because I'm not selling the building. I get to keep the building and that's my that's my equity stake and my payment. So it's a little unusual but I learned all that from these various people I studied.

Kevin K (32:45.496)

Interesting. Yeah.

Kevin K (32:52.536)

Well, I mean, it's interesting because obviously for any architects in the audience to think about getting into development, that's just an aspect of it, which is paying yourself, covering your overhead during that process, the design process and construction process. I mean, it's pretty cool that you also did the construction management. There's probably a lot of architects who wouldn't do that.

Cary (33:02.838)

key.

Cary (33:14.474)

Yeah. Yeah, that's really a critical thing to understand going in. Are you comfortable being your own general contractor or not? And then if you're not, and you're going to have someone do it, which is not uncommon, you're going to pay a little more. It's smart for lot of people though, because there's so many pitfalls in construction if you're not skilled at it. I had my snafus here and there, but I handled them.

they're going to happen whether you're building it or not yourself or not.

Kevin K (33:48.024)

So when you get this project complete from the construction standpoint, how did it go from a leasing standpoint?

Cary (33:54.55)

so I'll add one more thing that I hadn't shared is, my family designed the entire third floor, top floor for our family to live in. we designed it custom for ourselves. It's not like super fancy, but it's each floor has 10 foot ceilings. There's a lot of glazing. there's a couple of exposed steel beams. It's got the top floor has three bedrooms, two baths, a nice kind of big great room.

People really like the space. It's nicely proportioned. So we were building a home for ourselves as well. So we are living. And that's another thing FHA loan requires. It requires the owner, owner occupancy for the FHA 203B. And that was one of the things I hadn't mentioned. And that's very different from my commercial investment property, where you were actually not allowed to live in the building. It's completely different. They literally disallow it. So that's another reason that FHA loan is unique. But anyway, lease up was

Kevin K (34:31.063)

Interesting.

Cary (34:49.078)

almost effortless. That's not the right word, but we really only had a couple units. So my mom lives in the one bedroom. We have a one bedroom, a two bedroom, and we live in a three bedroom. And then we have the commercial space on the ground floor. October, two months before we got our certificate of occupancy, October of 2019, I started to kind of just.

getting word of mouth out that I had this small commercial space about 650 square feet on the corner available. People saw it too, and it's a very visible corner. So there was already a lot of buzz. And I had a ton of interest. So right away, a broker actually, a very busy broker in town brought me a barbershop. And I actually had gotten my haircut from one of the two owners that wanted to start this barbershop. And I thought, well, they're a good tenant. It's idea was better than the other offers that I'd had.

And so we quickly worked out a you know, broker -ridden lease a couple months prior. I helped them do their, few drawings they needed to submit to the city for a small TI build out. And so that went very quickly. And I always say this, and I say this to my friends in city council, and I'm on planning commission as well. This is really important to know. There aren't enough small spaces in my town and around here, especially these newer...

These younger West Coast cities, they don't have the plethora of old buildings with small affordable spaces. People are always looking for small spaces. I could have leased that 650 square feet out a dozen times over. Whereas when they're building these bigger buildings, these five over ones in town, which we have a lot of, they're sort of a lost leader where they've got the retail that's hard to fill. It gets filled here because we're a busy place on the edge of Seattle, but they're 3 ,000, 4 ,000, 5 ,000 square feet. They take a big...

you know, national or at least a very successful local business to fill those. So there aren't nearly enough of these small ones. So leasing that commercial space was really easy. It went very quickly. And I had mom for the apartment. And then we were advertising on Craigslist at apartments .com, maybe one of the two other places for the two bedroom, which again was filled within a week or two, probably a couple of weeks. I showed it three or four times and it was snapped up. And then we were done.

Kevin K (37:04.728)

Yeah, that's great.

Cary (37:08.406)

And we had to fill our unit because we were moving out of the old triplex, but it also found a newly married couple who started a family right away and they were there for the first few years throughout the pandemic. So we had everything filled in no time.

Kevin K (37:09.218)

Yeah.

Kevin K (37:26.488)

That's ideal in many respects.

Cary (37:30.452)

It is, I mean, I really feel like I should knock on wood or something that went so well. And we've stayed full ever since. I've had a lot of people who've asked me, because the building is popular, the new building's popular, people, get compliments on it still all the time. And people are always asking if there are units available. So I'm flattered, but I, there's been no turnover.

Kevin K (37:50.104)

Well, it's also nice from a small scale standpoint that you just have a handful you have to deal with. That's kind of a real advantage.

Cary (37:57.778)

It is. It's plenty. I've said, so we've got seven units, including the commercial unit and our own personal unit between the two buildings, the old building and the new building. It's about as much as I want to manage because I've got a full, very full life in other ways and volunteer things and run my business and some development. So it's about as much as I want to deal with. If it gets much, if I get more units that I get to, you know, that we get to keep, I will have to go, I will decide to hire a management company.

One of my clients actually runs a good firm doing that, I'll hire her.

Kevin K (38:32.396)

Well, there you go. So what happens after that, after first street's up and leased and then kind of where do you go from there?

Cary (38:41.194)

Yeah. Well, interestingly, so I had been reading about this pattern from John and others who successfully have done this in the past, John Anderson and many other small developers. You get your building stabilized and then you borrow against it to build the next project. And I was all prepared to do that, but the pandemic hit. So I was just happy to get the thing mortgaged and keep it. Because there was a couple of months when we couldn't get the mortgage in line.

very quickly that we were worried we were gonna have to sell the building because the plan was always to hold it. So I was gonna go do another project. So it's been years until I've got a couple years ago another property that I partnered with two other people because I couldn't easily borrow against my building. So it's taken me more years than I planned to try and get to the next project.

So that was kind of what was next as far as the last five years. And it continues to be challenging to really try and find land and investors. And then right now, even if you could find that to make projects pencil out is tough because of interest rates and the cost of land in our area and the cost of construction.

Kevin K (40:00.46)

Yeah, yeah. Have you thought about, I'm sure you've thought about it, but like what types of projects, if you imagine that you would want to do next, if you could find the right site and everything else, what are you looking to do?

Cary (40:02.08)

So it's been hard that way.

Cary (40:10.09)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

I'm still really intrigued with infill and small scale, urban or close in suburban work. I've looked at and I was pretty serious about a cottage project because I'm on planning commission and we just passed middle housing, missing middle housing code for our city that I helped write.

I was actually the nerd six, seven years ago who would bring articles about middle housing, missing middle, the Opticos had written to council meetings and planning commission meetings to hand them out. So it's really exciting to be that annoying guy and finally get our way. I wasn't on planning commission then. so I've, really been interested in bungalow courts and cottages and stuff. And I say that because it's not necessarily my, to me, that's not like the pinnacle of what I want to do, but I like that it's sort of the,

Kevin K (40:53.944)

Yeah.

Hahaha.

Cary (41:09.867)

the gateway drug for some people who are used to single house on single lot. They seem more open -minded to, we'll put four small homes that are more affordable. They're still expensive, but they're more affordable for our area. And they're gonna be a little closer to schools and shops and services. So it's sort of this entry. And so we're starting to see some proposals in the city that. So I'm interested in that and have had a...

of stops and starts on a couple of those. Doing some townhouses right now with the two partners that I mentioned earlier. We actually wanted that to be about a 10 unit, because of parking, which we're working on eliminating those parking mandates, but because of parking requirements and then interest rates, we couldn't do the build and hold model that we had hoped. we're doing four townhouses, but I remain interested in, you know, if I could have my way, I'd still keep doing mixed use. Very similar to my first First Street Flats project.

but probably more units. I'd love to do 10, 20, 30, ideally over. I'd love to create some sort of a community space that I program, that I could hold and keep. Even if I had to sell condos or something like that and only keep like condo -wise commercial space at the bottom, I'd love to have sort of like a community space I could rent out for events and artists and things like that. It'd be great sort of as my equity piece.

So and I may be to do that in my replacement for this triplex so what I've designed for this this lot to replace the triplex right now that I'm excited about is We had local state legislation here in Washington State legalized co -housing which is also essentially micro units and Because we're right near transit frequent transit in downtown here There is no parking required and we're also about a mile

Kevin K (42:55.234)

Mm

Cary (43:05.078)

from University of Washington Bothell campus. It's a satellite campus. It's about a half an hour to the main campus, but it's a very busy branch of the University of Washington. And they're really close. There's students all around. They don't necessarily have cars. So that need for parking space is not strong. There's a co -located community college there on the same campus. So they're growing all the time.

And there's a lot of people in tech here who ride e -bikes around and walk. And so a lot of people don't necessarily put high priority on car ownership. So suddenly, the project I've been trying to figure out how to make work on this around 4 ,000 square foot site, which is the old Triplex I've been talking about that we own here that I'm sitting in. Suddenly, it works. 20 to 22 units, 350, 400 square feet each, the kitchenette, the bathroom.

The key is you have to have a community space with a shared kitchen and so forth, which is fine. It's fun idea anyway. And a bunch of them have been successfully built in Seattle. So I'm not really excited about that right now because I'm trying to make that happen.

Kevin K (44:09.386)

Interesting. So are there like code, zoning code challenges or anything associated with that building type?

Cary (44:15.538)

Fortunately, nothing special. We have to codify it because there's now a ticking clock. All these cities in Washington have to allow them. So we will be, enough, tackling that in planning commission, I'm sure, in the next year because we'll have to. the similar buildings have already been built, like I mentioned, in Seattle and elsewhere. So it's really going to be a standard, like in my case, five -story, IBC compliant.

building that we've got to put an elevator in, a couple of stairs and so forth. So that would be tight, but it works. But otherwise the zoning here is pretty generous. I'm in the second most dense zoning for the city of Bothell. And so we can go five stories, 65 feet taller bottom story, zero lot line except the back, there's a five foot setback. And then like I said, I get out of those parking requirements, which allows me to really use maximum

Maximum use out of the site.

Kevin K (45:14.826)

That's really cool. And it seems like the student angle really makes a lot of sense for that type.

Cary (45:20.468)

Yeah, yeah, because the students rent apartments around here all the time. And so probably a great option because most of the apartments around here are a little more expensive and a more nicer. Not nice finishes, but I mean, they're larger or more expensive than maybe a freshman or sophomore would want to pay for.

Kevin K (45:41.964)

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, and it's nice, you know, as a student to be able to get your own place, you know, even if it's really small, it doesn't matter. Like when you're that age, it's just cool to have your own space.

Cary (45:46.816)

Yes.

Cary (45:50.57)

Yeah. Yeah, I make that point like in planning commission meetings and elsewhere, people say, because there are certain folks who think it's really inhumane to live in a micro unit. And I do not. I don't think they should be making decisions about how other people want to live, make choices about they want to live. But I lived on Capitol Hill in Seattle, a very dense, walkable, urban neighborhood, very popular neighborhood in Seattle when I was younger.

I had a space that was actually the first year about 120 square feet. was like 10 by 12. Bathroom is down the hall, so it's more like a boarding house. I absolutely loved it because it was super cheap and I was just gone a lot anyway. So it was great. And then I had, I felt like I really arrived because the next year I had one that was about 300 square feet. That seemed huge. So it's all relative.

Kevin K (46:27.746)

Mm

Kevin K (46:38.04)

Well, and it's, you know, it's sort of that like what's old is new again. Because that type, you know, back 100 years ago, there were all manner of types like this, not just boarding houses, but there was the classic building called the apartment hotel, which was really this type. And people rented a room in the apartment hotel and it had some shared amenities. And we had dozens of them. Most older cities had them.

Cary (46:44.074)

Yes.

Cary (47:04.476)

yeah. Yeah, Seattle had a ton, like you said, we were all tracking this these days, but most cities had a lot of them. They outlawed them the seventies, eighties, nineties. The building I was in that I mentioned that I lived in with the bathroom down the hall with both units, bathrooms down the hall. It was a similar building. It was like a single room occupancy type, but they were all different unit sizes. There were some full size apartments, small, medium, large. It's still there. In fact, it just sold a couple of years ago.

Kevin K (47:31.872)

Interesting. Yeah. So one thing, you know, obviously in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle, that area has been one of the leaders for quite a few years in the whole single stair building type deal. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your experience with that and understanding of like how important of a change was that to allow that to happen in Seattle?

Cary (47:44.544)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cary (47:57.078)

Yeah, Seattle's had it for 50, 60 years, something like that. So we've had it for a long time. And there are lot of sort of sleeper buildings that have utilized that single stair for my entire life. And they make a small site work. In fact, I'm friends with Mike Eliason, an architect who helped put the single stair idea on the map and gets a lot of deserved notoriety for it. And Mike spent many years in Germany.

working and so he was really familiar with that type of building, which so common around the world. Yeah, it's for folks who don't know, and I know Kevin probably knows a lot of this, but it makes a small site much more viable because you can create a lot less hallway and circulation space by doing a single stair. Usually the building will be sprinklered so it's safer than you would think. And it allows each unit, usually you can...

total is usually only four per floor. So you usually have at least a corner and two aspects for light and air and cross ventilation. Sometimes like our building, we've got three. So it makes it much more humane to live in. And most people really respond to a building that it's not, for example, folks listening, we've all been in hotels with a single hallway and then that's a double loaded corridor and they've got apartments or rooms off of each side.

Most apartments in the United States built today are that double loaded. So you might have a long deep unit if it's two or three bedrooms. It's uncommon, but let's say two bedrooms or even one bedroom. And there aren't a lot of windows. So all the windows are on the outside edge and you can't get cross ventilation and you don't have light from more than one side. So a single stair makes a much more livable, desirable unit. Most people, again, walk in one and they respond differently.

than they might to one of these double loaded corridor units. what you see in a lot of countries say they want to do a really big building. They build multiple side by side. every, you you might have one every 50 feet or something like that. each stairway serves a slice. So you might end up with five of them in a row and they each have their own stairway, but then they have like a firewall between

Cary (50:19.272)

each of these individual buildings might look like one big building. So there are different ways to put them together. And they actually have, as Mike Eliason and others have been riding on for some time now, very good safety ratings. In fact, fewer fire incidents that we do in the United States with our two -stair buildings. So there's a lot to recommend them and there's momentum behind making them more legal. Washington State, in fact,

passed a law this last year, one my friends, a representative here at Bothell helped push the legislation that the city, excuse me, the state of Washington has to have a up to six story single stair building code amendment essentially or ordinance that any city can adopt. They're not forced to, but they can adopt it and ready to go in about a year. I think it was a year, year and a half.

I think other states are starting to do it too. California might have it on theirs. But the key thing is that it allows buildings like my three story, but you could do four, five, six, and it makes a small lot instantly more developable. The reason we see a lot of these big block size, half block size buildings, we call them podium buildings, five over ones, whatever, with 100, 200, 300 units is because they have to aggregate land into these huge.

plots so they could do a big enough project to merit two stairs, multiple elevators, and make them viable. Whereas once you can just do a single stair, maybe a single elevator if it's needed for accessibility, you can make almost any little slice of a lot work. So it opens up enormous amounts of our building, our zoning, the fabric, the land in America that we maybe have looked at and not been able to utilize.

Kevin K (52:13.645)

with them.

Kevin K (52:17.976)

Yeah, I kind of think of it myself if I were to go back to thinking about how I lived like when I was in college and the standard college dormitory that I lived in, and I think a lot of people lived in, was a double -loaded corridor, little shoebox rooms that two people stayed in together with one window. And they weren't particularly pleasant. You're 18 or 19 years old, that's not a big priority, but it's not like,

Cary (52:46.025)

Okay.

Kevin K (52:47.244)

They weren't like the most pleasant places to live. And then when I remember, you know, especially at a college and I started having some friends that rented some of these more historic, like four and sixplex apartments that had exactly what you described. So they had a single entry and a stair in the middle of the building. And then they were flanked by usually one bedroom apartments, sometimes two bedrooms, going up two or three stories. And what was so cool was you would walk in, you walk in those places.

and it's windows on three sides. And it just immediately felt, even for like some of these places that at the time were like really old and hadn't been renovated and God knows how long, they just felt so much better because of the presence of the windows and the light and the cross ventilation. And that's a huge benefit of this approach.

Cary (53:33.173)

So true.

Cary (53:39.798)

It's true. I don't even know if I felt completely as strongly about it as I do when I was working on my building and taking advantage of this aspect. I mean, I knew as an architect, because I'm always trying to get bedrooms with two sources of natural light. are pattern language kind of things we reflect on as architects, right? But until you, I think, like you said, walk into one and experience it and kind of know you're comparing it to something with that single window.

aspect type of apartment, it really kind of smacks you up in the head. Like you said, it doesn't matter how old it is, whatever. It's just, it's so much more humane. with us as a culture, as a society, as a country, waking up to how, we could have that and it would be good for us. And a lot of people would enjoy it. And we just kind of have to legalize it as a, it's a pretty powerful thought that, we could have, we could have nice things as the meme guy.

Kevin K (54:33.846)

Right, and it's not like we're giving something up in order to get it. It's really just kind of a silly adaptation of how the building codes have grown and changed over the years.

Cary (54:36.672)

No.

Cary (54:43.702)

Precisely. Yeah, we could just decide to do things differently and have these nice things and hey, we might even be safer for it.

Kevin K (54:51.384)

Yeah, yeah, no doubt. So, you know, one of the things, Kerry, is like we joke about here in the middle of the country is that like all the trends, of course, start on the coasts and then eventually, you know, like 10 or 20 years later, they find themselves here in the Midwest. what other obviously you all, especially a lot of West Coast states have really been leading the charge because of your your housing crisis is much more intense than

Cary (55:02.238)

Hahaha

Kevin K (55:20.118)

what we are having, so there's a lot more reform happening. What else is going on that you're seeing that we might be hearing more about as time goes on?

Cary (55:26.794)

Mm

Cary (55:31.286)

One of the hot ones right now that I think is going to happen and this is gonna fit right into the whole Midwest and Heartland because you guys have to tell me the corner store idea We're starting to warm up in the state here and various cities and and the people like just your average citizen Really responds well to this like why don't we have corner stores anymore? Well, let's set aside the fact that they're hard to necessarily operate and run and make work. Let's you know, that's maybe

going to have to be tackled, but it doesn't have to be a store per se. It could be a wine bar. could be a cafe, whatever. So we're starting to see a trickle of bills and ideas and cities experimenting with the idea of re -legalizing corner stores. Granted that West Coast is covered with these dendritic cul -de -sac laid out neighborhoods that are not grids.

And they do not lend themselves well necessarily like a grid does to having corner stores and walkability and everything. So we're going to have, we have some challenges, but that's one of the things we're seeing people really wake up to is how do we allow low impact mix use in our residential neighborhoods again? And Spokane has a program that goes back, I think to 2017, because Spokane is an older city in Washington.

It's not old compared to Midwest and back East, but for us, it's, you know, they were going gangbusters in late 19th century. They had a lot more corner stores that were turned residential, kind of turned into homes because they outwalled them. Well, they had sort of an amnesty program beginning, I think it was 2017, with some success where you could take anything that was clearly on record as being a commercial store or commercial use.

could be turned back into a commercial use. They have a whole program for it. And Volkan's really been on the forefront of programs like that, Missing Middle and other things as well. So that's one I see coming that gets talked about a lot.

Kevin K (57:36.768)

Interesting.

Kevin K (57:41.248)

Mm -hmm, interesting. Well, if I could marry two things that I just personally really love. One, as an architect, I love small buildings and small spaces. And the second is I love the, especially what you see in Japan, the Japanese approach to really, really small businesses that are run by one person, but are fanatic and excellent at what they do. And to have more of that in our communities would be.

Cary (57:50.656)

Yeah.

Cary (57:56.842)

Yes.

Kevin K (58:10.319)

would be pretty cool.

Cary (58:12.18)

You and me both, I'm fanatic about having those. really, yeah, I'm so envious when I see those cute little, beautiful little Japanese stores serving just specialty teas or donuts or whatever. Yeah, it's amazing.

Kevin K (58:25.25)

Yeah. Yeah. Or like, it's a, it's like the best restaurant you've ever eaten at in a head and it seats like six people, you know, so yeah.

Cary (58:31.958)

Yeah, exactly. back in 10 minutes. Yeah, it's gorgeous. Yeah, exactly. We've got to open the doors just to have people be able to sit on the stools, right? Yeah, it's great. Yeah. And so we're seeing people get more comfortable with that. And like I said, it's actually a popular idea with lot of people who aren't necessarily into policy and planning and design, the people who live in neighborhoods frequently.

Kevin K (58:41.036)

Yeah, no doubt. No doubt.

Kevin K (58:56.13)

So one last thing I wanted to ask you about, Kerry, was obviously you've been on the planning commission for some time and wanted if you could talk a little bit about why you got involved in that way. And maybe as somebody who's not just a designer, but a developer, and you have a foot in all these different worlds, what were some of the advantages for you to get involved in that response?

Cary (59:11.115)

and

Cary (59:15.254)

Yeah. And a little bit of background on that. know we don't have much time. Something I didn't talk about here, but I've been a member of Strong Towns for, gosh, probably 10 years now, of earlier days, not super early. And so I've been on their podcast a couple of times and I've been a fan and been part of some of their classroom, know, their classes and things like that. Anyway, so I've got a

Program background and then I had a very successful now kind of quieter group called Bopop Botha lights for people oriented places Our town is Bothal, which is one of the early local conversations That strong towns now fosters really strongly anyway that led me to going to lots of planning commission and and built a city council meetings and then as friends and I were doing that We've

ended up taking over many of us who were in BoPOP or were peripherally related to BoPOP. City Council, five people now, and most of Planning Commission, and some have cycled from Planning Commission. So anyway, my pitch to getting on Planning Commission was at the time, four years ago, I'll be up for another four years this next winter, there were no people on Planning Commission who were...

architects, developers, builders, engineers, anything like that. And I feel like they usually, she should have at least one or two who actually work in the codes and build and develop or plan or whatever. So that was actually my pitch. And some of my detractors since then have said, he's this, you know, developer, shell, architect, blah, blah. And I very, very, you know, I'm very out.

Kevin K (01:00:55.44)

Ha ha ha.

Cary (01:01:01.086)

out about that. Like, yeah, that was literally my pitch is we should have people who are doing this work who were reading and using the code who are the ones helping to modify it and build it and change it. I'm very unabashed about that. So that is why I wanted to be in there. And that's what we've been doing. And sometimes it's a bit boring and tedious to put it mildly. But

It's important work and I encourage people to seek that out if you have any interest in it. Most people are still somewhat lay people, but we have a couple of people who are civil engineers, planners, lawyers. So there are people who do work related to making code and law who are fit right in. But we like to have people who are not necessarily related to, because we like diverse perspectives on planning commission. As long as they're willing to bone up and learn about how to.

Kevin K (01:01:51.212)

Yeah.

Cary (01:01:53.972)

how to operate and read the code and ordinances and things.

Kevin K (01:01:59.798)

Yeah, it just seems, you know, honestly, logical to me that if you have a commission or anything that is heavily involved in regulating one industry that there ought to be some people from there who interact with those regulations every day and who are involved. Just like, like if you had a commission to regulate barber shops, you would expect like there'd be a few barbers, you know, on the commission.

Cary (01:02:18.72)

Yeah. Yeah. That's why I kind of chuckle when people think there's this conflict of interest. And I say, no, I was, that was literally my pitch was you need people who do this work, who are helping to shape these, these policies. And, it's been, it's been good for me. And then I think, I've helped, helped get a lot done. I believe that it's useful for pushing us forward and streamlining and, and, know, helping to housing is just a major, major issue.

How can we sort of stay safe and compliant, but grease the skids for more housing? It's been a big, focus.

Kevin K (01:02:57.014)

No doubt. Well, Kerry, it's been a real pleasure. It's been a lot of fun. feel like we could easily go on for another hour or two, but I think we'll call it right there. And I really value having your experience and sharing that with everybody. And hopefully we get a chance to talk about this again at a future date.

Cary (01:03:04.874)

down.

Cary (01:03:16.446)

Agreed, my pleasure. Like I said, I can keep, keep put a quarter in me and I keep going, I hope, hopefully some of this is useful.

Kevin K (01:03:23.2)

and how if somebody wants to try to find you either, you know, internet or social media or whatever, what's the best way.

Cary (01:03:30.068)

Yeah, I can be found. Well, my website is westerbeckarchitecture .com. And you can always drop me a note there. But the easiest way, I'm still on Twitter under my own name. We'll see how long that lasts. I've jumped onto Threads social media, which I've been spending more time. And I can be found under my name there. So those are both good ways to find me. And then I have a business page on Facebook.

I don't go on there very often, but if anybody tries to message me there or finds me there, I will see that. So I can be found pretty easily on those platforms or my website certainly. And there's a number for my firm on the website, so people could feel free to call or text me if they want to. And many people have. I've been contacted dozens and dozens and dozens of times since finishing my building five years ago. And I'm always happy to help.

Kevin K (01:04:26.459)

that's fantastic. All right, Kerry, well, really appreciate the time and look forward to talking again. All right, take care.

Cary (01:04:32.736)

Thank you, Kevin.