A Tale of Two Cities: Finding The Warehouse of My Dreams — Part 2
This is the Part 2 of the saga of my search for an industrial space/workshop for Treleaf, my brand of wooden home decor for interior green spaces.
Check out Part 1 for the background.
The Search Continues
After two months of looking, driving around, keeping tabs on the online listings, and calling numerous listing agents, I found out most of the properties that met my criteria that were listed were already leased. So the supply was very low and the demand high. So I had to be even more aggressive now. I called every listing agent I could find, and told them what I was looking for, and gave them my number. I created follow up tasks on my calendar for each of these people so that I could remain on the radar and after two months of looking around, I was starting to hear from these agents. Some of them said they had listings coming up on the market for June.
I found one property (in another city, but nearby) that was listed online and it looked perfect for us, but when I called the listing agent, he said the lease was being signed as we spoke. He did have a similar listing coming on the market in 3 weeks!
I told him that I would be ready to sign a lease quickly. I persuaded him to look at the space before it even went on the market. It was the perfect size, and the rent was acceptable. But it was in a new city, I would need to go through the permitting process again. So I called the zoning department of the city the same day, and informally cleared the intended use. The next day I signed the lease. And I was super excited to proceed.
This time around, I thought I knew what to expect from the permit process, and that I could sail through. But the second city had other plans for me.
The Second Space in the Second City
The first task after signing the lease was to get the business license application on file with the city. But it turns out every city’s application process is different. For this city, the application was much more bureaucratic, and not business friendly. Although I was just a new tenant, they wanted information like building plans, the angle of the roof, and so on–which had not been changed since the building was built years ago. It was a big hassle to round up all the documents. In addition, they wanted further details on how the space would be used and so on. After three days of tedious work on this application, I submitted it to the city. As this was a smaller city with minimum resources, every application cycle took a week. So I had to wait a week to even hear back from them.
Hassled by Bureaucracy
After a week I got a request for submitting a further document including a Statement of Work (which was not even asked for in the initial application checklist). So I scrambled again to create this document and submit it to the city. Now a wait of another week.
Another rejection. Why? The notice stated that a dust mitigation plan was missing. But none of our equipment generated dust, and responded accordingly. I got a follow-up email from the department, in which the reviewing bureaucrat could not fathom how a piece of wood could be cut without creating dust. So I had to write another long letter explaining why I don’t have any dust and why we do not need any dust mitigation plan. So another submission, another week of waiting.
We got another request for further information–mainly because of that bureaucrat’s ignorance and refusal to accept my technical explanation in good faith. At one point, I explained I have a PhD in engineering, and that I have significant manufacturing experience. That helped a bit, and we finally could move ahead to the next inspection.
Thankfully, the building department’s inspection was a breeze. The officer came in, took a quick walkthrough, asked a few questions and said you are passed. The next inspection would be a fire inspection.
Now, I had been through the fire inspection process for the previous workshop, and was familiar with various requirements, like working and lit exit signs, clear exit and entry, tagged extinguishers, and so on. checked all of these things and made sure everything was in good working order.
Another Failed Inspection–For the Flimsiest of Reasons
The fire marshal came in, and took a walk through the space. His gruff and unfriendly demeanor, and monosyllabic answers gave me a bad feeling. The way he was looking at everything with hawk eyes, I realized he was looking for a pretext to fail the inspection (so I would have to pay another fee for a re-inspection). I also realized that he was getting irked that he couldn’t find any quick errors (extinguishers had good tags, exit signs were working, and so on). Then he came up with two absurd grounds for failing the inspection (1) A can of WD40 (which we had used to grease squeaky door hinges–he insisted we needed to have a flame-proof cabinet for that! (2) A magnetic bug screen in the back door. I told him that I could remove the screen and the can of WD40 from the premises in 10 seconds.
But he insisted on conducting another inspection on a different day to make sure the WD40 was not on the premises, and that the bug screen was removed! I needed to schedule a follow-up inspection and pay another fee–this just didn’t sit right with me.
Thankfully, we passed the second inspection (by a different inspector) a couple of days later–in a matter of seconds. Finally, I had the permit and could start production.
Finally Treleaf has a Home Again
You don’t know what you don’t know. As an entrepreneur, I am very comfortable with venturing in the unknown, and figuring things out on the fly. But the last six months have been a whirlwind.
The new space has been working well, and the team likes it. Now that the dust has finally settled, I know I will have other fires to fight, but I hope those will be less bureaucratic and more intellectual than this entire exercise.
