Early on in my career, I worked on a new office development where the decision was made to start construction having only pre-leased 25% of the building. (It may have actually been closer to 22% if my memory serves me correctly.)

Our big constraint at the time was that this first tenant had to be out of their current space by a certain date, and the only way we could meet their deadline was to immediately start construction. Otherwise, we knew we would lose them to another development or to an existing building.

To convince ourselves that this was a reasonable thing to do, we looked at all of the upcoming lease expiries in the market, and then came to the conclusion that there would be enough demand in the coming years to fill the rest of the building.

Still, we were taking a leap of faith, even if it was an informed one. And it meant running the project entirely on equity until we could secure a construction loan. Thankfully, in this particular instance, our hypothesis proved true. The lease expiries did end up creating the demand we were hoping for and so we were able to fill the rest of the building.

The project was a success.

But that was then. And in hindsight, this move feels scary. What would have happened had we made this exact same decision at the end of 2019? Things would have been very different. Not because of a fundamentally different decision on our part, but because of a black swan event that was truly impossible to predict. Our timing would have been bad.

This is just one example of the many risks associated with the building of buildings. Development never happens in a vacuum. You're always solving for a long list of constraints. And sometimes you need to solve for things that you don't even know exist yet.

One of our partners shared this video with me today:

And it is possibly one of the greatest 39 seconds of interview you'll ever watch.

It is a video of Jim Fahy interviewing James Horan about the construction of Ireland West Airport. The important context is that Horan was a parish priest in Knock, County Mayo, and he desperately wanted an airport so that pilgrims could more easily visit the Knock Shrine.

However, critics felt that an airport in County Mayo was just not feasible. The area was too foggy and too boggy (I had to look this one up).

But Horan successfully campaigned to have one built and he did somehow find the money. Though maybe not the following week. The campaign apparently took a lot out of him, and he died shortly after the airport opened.

But in the end, he got it built.

It takes a special kind of person to accomplish what most people view as boiling the ocean (i.e. an impossible outcome). And when you watch the video, it will become obvious to you that James Horan was that kind of person.

Early on in my career, I worked on a new office development where the decision was made to start construction having only pre-leased 25% of the building. (It may have actually been closer to 22% if my memory serves me correctly.)

Our big constraint at the time was that this first tenant had to be out of their current space by a certain date, and the only way we could meet their deadline was to immediately start construction. Otherwise, we knew we would lose them to another development or to an existing building.

To convince ourselves that this was a reasonable thing to do, we looked at all of the upcoming lease expiries in the market, and then came to the conclusion that there would be enough demand in the coming years to fill the rest of the building.

Still, we were taking a leap of faith, even if it was an informed one. And it meant running the project entirely on equity until we could secure a construction loan. Thankfully, in this particular instance, our hypothesis proved true. The lease expiries did end up creating the demand we were hoping for and so we were able to fill the rest of the building.

The project was a success.

But that was then. And in hindsight, this move feels scary. What would have happened had we made this exact same decision at the end of 2019? Things would have been very different. Not because of a fundamentally different decision on our part, but because of a black swan event that was truly impossible to predict. Our timing would have been bad.

This is just one example of the many risks associated with the building of buildings. Development never happens in a vacuum. You're always solving for a long list of constraints. And sometimes you need to solve for things that you don't even know exist yet.

One of our partners shared this video with me today:

And it is possibly one of the greatest 39 seconds of interview you'll ever watch.

It is a video of Jim Fahy interviewing James Horan about the construction of Ireland West Airport. The important context is that Horan was a parish priest in Knock, County Mayo, and he desperately wanted an airport so that pilgrims could more easily visit the Knock Shrine.

However, critics felt that an airport in County Mayo was just not feasible. The area was too foggy and too boggy (I had to look this one up).

But Horan successfully campaigned to have one built and he did somehow find the money. Though maybe not the following week. The campaign apparently took a lot out of him, and he died shortly after the airport opened.

But in the end, he got it built.

It takes a special kind of person to accomplish what most people view as boiling the ocean (i.e. an impossible outcome). And when you watch the video, it will become obvious to you that James Horan was that kind of person.