Our Journey to Funding & Building the Barn Burner

This is a continuation of the story I started telling here about how we moved to Brown County in late  2016 (on a bit of a whim, to be honest) and ultimately dreamed up, designed, and built the Brown County Barn Burner.

The short version of this next part of our story is that we bought the property in July, 2018 and went through many revisions, doubts, and long nights before finally securing our construction loan financing in March, 2020.  We closed on our construction loan four days before the world essentially shut down and our girls’ school was canceled for the rest of the year. But despite that, we were able to complete construction in about seven months from late March to mid-October 2020 and we welcomed our first guests on November 13, 2020.

But, if you’re interested in more context, here’s a more detailed timeline:

March 17, 2018 - We visited the “Barnyard Shoppes” property for the first time, right before going to dinner with friends on St. Patrick’s Day.  Although there wasn’t actually much to “see,” since the door handle and lock box had been broken off, so we couldn't go in either of the buildings (so much for that camera watching that the sign promised). 

Ultimately we were able to get into the property, felt like it would work for what we were planning, and made an offer that was accepted.

July 25, 2018 - We closed on the purchase of the property.  While we had initially hoped to close on a construction loan at the same time, we decided that was rushing too many things and chose to slow down our planning, contractor selection, and the overall project, and just bought the property at that time.

August 2018 to June 2019 -  The buildings had been vacant, and essentially unused, for many years and there was significant water, insect, and mold damage in many of the spaces. At that point, we weren't sure how much (if any) of the existing building structures and foundations we would reuse, but we knew that there would be significant remodeling regardless, so we felt OK  starting to remove whatever we thought could be reused.   Many of the interior sections had tongue and groove wood paneling, there was exterior cedar shiplap, and we also uncovered some original oak board and batten siding - all of which we salvaged before final demo. 

At the same time, we were also actively talking to banks to secure a construction loan and to contractors that we could potentially work with to bring our vision to life.

June 10, 2019 - After exploring the buildings further, and settling on a final design for what would eventually become the Barn Burner, it was clear that we needed to demo the Barnyard Shoppes buildings entirely and start from scratch.  We were still going round-and-round with banks and contractors, but we knew we needed a blank slate on the lot eventually, so we decided to move ahead with demo in June 2019.  In addition to removing the liability of having two vacant and partially demo’d buildings continuing to sit there, we also figured that we could temporarily use the property as a pay parking lot.

June to September 2019 - These months were rough.  We finally had a contractor on board that we felt great about and we thought we were close to securing our construction loan too, which would enable us to start building in time to hopefully open in the Spring of 2020.  Ultimately, the bank that seemed so promising (Bank #4 at that point, plus two separate private investors) ended up falling through.  We really had to look hard at what we were planning and whether we believed we should keep pushing forward.

October 2019 to December 2019 - One of the investors we talked with put us in contact with a loan agent at IU Credit Union and we decided to give everything one more try.  After lots of back and forth, things were looking good, but it was clear that we needed to come up with more money for our down payment, and we had to get real with ourselves about how that would be possible, what we were willing to do, and whether we were going to actually move forward with the next step of this dream.

January to February 2020 - After lots of Googling, discussions between ourselves and with family and friends, we had a funding option that we thought might work for us.  We made the decision to move forward with a ROBS Rollover to get the rest of the money needed for our down payment, officially restructured as a C-corporation, and started making final preparations to close on our construction loan.

March 11, 2020 - We FINALLY closed on our construction loan!! 

We were elated but, if that date sounds slightly ominous, it’s because by March 15, 2020 Covid restrictions were being rolled out, our kids school was closed for the foreseeable future, and we spent hours discussing stay at home orders, what an "essential worker" was, and whether we'd be able to move ahead with construction.  

At the time it seemed like ARE YOU KIDDING ME UNIVERSE. After all that work for almost 2 years to secure funding and get everything aligned, now a global pandemic?!?

But, with the benefit of hindsight, I can now say with certainty that everything actually happened in the best way it possibly could have (although I could have done without the pandemic entirely).  With any other timing, we would have either been opening in the spring of 2020 or we would have gotten caught up in all the market craziness, supply chain disruption, and inflation issues, but luckily we managed to miss most of that.

So, while it was never the plan to do everything while stuck at home, without friends or family around, with our kids home from school indefinitely, we made it work and even found some bright spots in the making of it all.

I’m planning to share more details soon about lessons learned and the actual construction process, but just let me know if you have any questions about the planning process, finding funding, how to get creative to make your dreams a reality - whatever you need!