Work record / Development / 301 W Osborn / Questions answered
301 W Osborn: questions answered
What people ask me about 301 W Osborn, and my answers. The project itself has its own page.
Where did the rooftop carrier push hardest, and how did you keep the talks tied to what it really used?
The easement language. They wanted the whole roof, and we could not hand that over, because the building still has to work. Every mechanical system needs penetrations through that roof. All they cared about was their cell tower, and if the building sat empty forever it would not have bothered them. So every conversation stayed on their existing cell lease area, the footprint they really used, and we trimmed the scope down to the language the build required.
What fixed the boundary of the cell lease area and made a narrower easement hold up in the final documents?
The lease that already existed. That roof already had the carrier's cell lease area marked out, so nobody had to invent a line. We simply would not let the easement grow beyond it. From our side, the test was what the conversion has to take from the roof. That is the mechanical zone, every penetration our systems need, the amenity space, and space for a future carrier or solar. Whatever sat outside the carrier's existing area stayed with the building. Outside counsel drafted the easement assignment and the lender's non-disturbance agreement. I held the scope, and counsel made it stick in the documents.
Which part of the condominium plan depended on the roof, making the non-carrier area worth protecting?
The mechanical systems. Each of them has to pass through that roof, and the building must work before anything else counts. That is why the roof was not ours to give away.
Why did you pick a Japandi-Sonoran concept for the residences?
It fits the market and the luxury buyer, and as far as I know nothing like it exists in Phoenix. The site is close to downtown, which suits that buyer as well. The look is what we were after: natural materials, clean lines, no clutter.
What confirmed that the positioning would draw buyer demand?
It was not just my read. The architect, the interior design team and our broker all agreed with it, and our broker has handled as much adaptive-reuse and condo work as anybody in Phoenix.
What did assembling the investor package actually accomplish?
It is required. Once you take outside investment, you have to show investors that the whole project has been thought through and that you have a plan. That is basic due diligence, and for the PPM it is also a legal requirement. You have to be able to prove the research was done, because assuming it is a real liability.
Which code finding did the most to change the design or permitting strategy, and how did you resolve it?
The pool location, along with what we could do on the roof. For the pool, we chose to wait and resubmit it later, once the main shell was approved. On the roof, we gave up the idea of a roof deck. It was too complicated, and the FCC radiation requirements made it too hard.
How did that validation discipline carry into the Revit build, and what did the three-agent adversarial review find?
The rule is the same everywhere: nothing grades its own homework. Take estimating. We held one bid out at a time, priced it as though we had never seen it, and published only that number, never the in-sample one that flatters us. Take architecture. Over six weeks, agents turned a stalled as-built into a design-development set, and I reviewed the model and signed off before it went anywhere. A three-agent adversarial review found a wrong setback before any person did and before it hit construction documents. That kind of mistake costs little on a screen and a lot after the concrete is poured. The same model was later found to carry a footprint problem that traced back to another project's plan set. The overlay rule and the blind pass exist for exactly that reason, and a self-caught error is never the last one in my book.
What did the human release gate look at before the design-development set went forward?
The gate was a list of findings, and I cleared every item on it before the set advanced. We exported the model's walls, dimensions and room boundaries, and checking agents measured every element against two references. The first was the code sections for this occupancy and alteration type, which a person had reduced once to fixed numbers. The second was the project's criteria sheet, covering unit counts, ceiling heights and setback minimums. Anything out of tolerance went on the list, and one open item meant the set stayed put. The stamp still belonged to the architect of record, so we gave the architect an independent code study with the critical findings already cleared, not a request to re-read the building blind.
What other design errors did the review system catch?
A lot: wall height, deck width, floor slab thickness, where the cell tower sat. But what mattered more than the catches was drafting in Revit ourselves, not paying a drafter, which saves real money and time. A human drafter cannot work 24 hours a day.
What did you measure the in-house drafting savings against?
Real architectural bids, about five of them. We went through them line by line and were able to cut out a large part of each, based on the work we did agentically.
What was the A, B and C crew grading measuring?
The grade belonged to a trade, not to a person. Nearly every tradesperson is an A at one thing and a B or C at the rest, and that follows from how they learned. A framer may have started as a drywaller or painter before framing became his trade. So we graded each person's main skill along with their second and third trades, which showed us where else they could work.
How did in-house trade crews change the way Midtown was staffed?
Midtown is where it showed. Armstrong Construction Group is my other managing partner, and it supplies in-house labor, the same crews who worked on the Ritz-Carlton Residences in Scottsdale. The labor being in-house through Armstrong is what makes the LÏEF model work.