Unofficially, this project started years ago, somewhere in the midst of one of the many home improvement projects I lived through and took part in growing up with a dad who probably should have been an architect instead of a businessman.
Officially, CP Juniper got its start with this voicemail:
“Good morning, Connie Coe, Coldwell Banker…Hey Tyler, you were the second call I made after the buyers decided to not go through with the transaction at 385 Juniper. So, I think you still had some interest…”
I actually still have this voicemail on my phone. I’ve resaved it every few weeks for the last two years.
My wife and I have rented a smallish two bedroom apartment near the beach in Carlsbad for the past 10+ years. We love the eclectic character of the neighborhood and the fact that our home is within easy walking distance of the ocean and downtown Carlsbad. Sometime after our first kid arrived we came to the firm conclusion that if we had to choose between the neighborhood and a larger living space we would choose the neighborhood for as long as possible.
So there we were in our little apartment, feeling the chafe of aging plumbing and paying someone else’s mortgage, but still deciding this is the best place for our family. It is in this setting that we started dreaming about ways to stay in the neighborhood, make room for our growing family (and the associated grandparent visits) and gain some long-term financial traction.
Dreams are nice, but plans are better and our dreams were never going to turn into plans without outside financial backing. Luckily my home-improvement-inclined businessman dad still had an interest in architecture and was “retiring” from his current job. Since this really just meant that he needed a new project to dig into, we set to work forming CP Juniper, LLC and the family business was born. In a nutshell, the plan was this: develop an apartment complex that could 1) provide a larger space for our family 2) include a guest-suite for visitors, namely the grandparents, and 3) serve as a viable long-term financial investment. Now we just needed a chunk of land in our existing neighborhood near the beach, for less than an arm and a leg.
Easy, right?
Fast forward to the call from the realtor. On July 28, 2013, in God’s providence, we closed escrow on the plot of land at 385 Juniper. Here’s what it looked like when we bought the place.
We had initially hoped to rent the old house during what we knew would be a lengthy design and permit process. The site would have cleaned up all right, but due to a lot of suspect electrical work and almost non-existent sewer services (the kitchen sink drained to the front yard and the backyard bubbled when the toilet flushed) we decided to let that idea go and set to work on just shy of 2 years of design, permit processing and bidding. Our construction loan finalized on May 28, 2015 and we started construction shortly thereafter.
Read more about the design here.