09-10-2014 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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TO: City of Little Canada City Council Members FROM: Derek Jason Owens, Ph.D. and Kathleen Mahan, M.D. RE: Lot for sale at 3046 Labore Ave Dear Council Members, Please consider the following proposal and offer for the lot located at 3046 Labore Ave. First, a little about us: My wife, Kathy, and I moved from South Carolina to Minnesota in 2006 for graduate and medical school after completing undergraduate work at the University of South Carolina. In searching for housing, we found a single family home for rent in Little Canada, and moved in on August 3, 2006. We instantly fell in love with the area, and in 2007 when the owners expressed an interest in selling, we bought the house from them. Now that we have finished school and are getting into our careers, we are ready to pursue our dream of building our own home. However, we would love to be able to stay in the City of Little Canada, and we believe the Labore Lot for sale offers that opportunity. I (Jason) completed my Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Minnesota in 2012, and I am entering my third year as a Stem Cell Scientist at R&D Systems in Minneapolis. I also teach part-time as adjunct faculty at the University of Minnesota in the School of Mathematics. Kathy graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School in 2013 and is currently a second -year resident in Internal Medicine at HCMC. While our income has not quite reached the level that it will when Kathy completes residency, we have already received pre -qualification to purchase or build a house in the $600,000 range (we were inquiring originally about the Pinetree Ponds development). Because we would be purchasing the land and be involved more extensively with the floor plan creation and selecting a builder, the process is decidedly more complicated than purchasing in the Pinetree Ponds development. However, we have help — my father is a carpenter, general contractor, and co- proprietor of CCI Construction, Inc. out of Spartanburg, SC with over 40 years of carpentry and general construction experience, both residential and retail. He is licensed across the southeast from Florida and even up to Michigan and Ohio; unfortunately, his company does not currently do work in Minnesota. However, he has offered to lend us his expertise in every facet of this project, including being present for many key stages throughout the process. As such, the following is my proposal for the sequence of events that would be necessary for us to realize our dream of building our next home while staying in Little Canada: 1. We would like to offer to purchase the lot at 3046 Labore Ave for a price of $85,000. 2. If our offer is accepted, we would first pay an earnest payment, $500, to secure purchasing rights for 90 days while we determine feasibility, select a builder, and draft the plans.