November 25th, 2020 — Bridge Updates- Mexican Spotted Owl Habitat??

November 25, 2020

The bridge results are in! If we begin on December 1, the project will be completed in almost 6 months at the end of April. Our bridge is near a habitat for the Mexican Spotted Owl, which I guess is an endangered or threatened species and “environmental clearances will be a large effort” but construction can proceed. Price is actually much lower than we thought! 🎉 Which is amazing. We share this bridge with 5 other people. If we can divide 6 ways, it’s super affordable!! But not sure how many of our neighbors would be willing to contribute $2,700 right before Christmas lol. We were told the bridge has a max lifespan of 5-10 years anyways…. so hoping they will help. If not, we will be including a very nice custom sign saying the bridge was donated by Cronin Mountain for all our neighbors to see every time they drive over it twice a day lol 💁🏻‍♀️

COMMENTS:

  • Emma BrakeWow that’s much cheaper than I would expect 😳 I’m waiting on our road bid and expecting it to cost about 3x that much 😭 Yay! So exciting you can move forward with that!
    • Rachel McCash CroninEmma Brake we are as happy as we can be with news of needing to replace this bridge haha!! I was thinking up to $25k! So definitely great it can be done for much less 💗🙏🏼
    • Emma BrakeRachel McCash Cronin EST is just the engineering firm, isn’t it… 😬 Have you gotten bids from contractors yet? Our road engineering cost something like $12K. Why the heck is it so expensive?!I hope I’m wrong, but full permission to go stuff with your face with mashed potatoes now.
    • Rachel McCash CroninEmma Brake hahaha yes it is!!! I thought it was too good to be true and it is. I’m like 99% sure the $16,250 is just design and then materials, labor and install is all extra hahaha 😂😂😂🤪😭
    • Emma BrakeRachel McCash Cronin once I get my road bids, we should get together and go axe throwing or something. It would be very cathartic 🤷🏼‍♀️
    • Rachel McCash CroninEmma Brake yes!! Totally down!! I’m literally laughing manically over here haha. We are doing hard things!! And if we stay sane by the end we will have succeeded 🤪🎉💯
    • Rachel McCash CroninEmma Brake remind me, you guys are doing the 150 too? Or which one again? We both need to plan the most epic house warming parties of all time when we are finally done lol
    • Emma BrakeRachel McCash Cronin we’re doing fully custom now, as much as I wanted to work with Avrame. There was just literally no way to make it work on our lot ☹️ Everything from the height restrictions to the setbacks was wrong so we’re working with an architect who is amazing and will cost as much as your bridge design
    • Rachel McCash CroninEmma Brake aww yes before we found Avrame we were working with an architect and yep—plans alone were about $16k, I totally get it. But we do what we have to do!! Are you sticking with the Aframe design or doing something totally different now? And yes it’s 💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸💸 building on raw land 😩 BUT IT WILL BE WORTH IT!!!! 💪🏼🙌🏼💗
    • Emma BrakeRachel McCash Cronin hoping to have an (as much as possible) Aframe for at least our great room and then we’ll do additions on both sides from there. This was our architect’s super preliminary design and I had a long conversation with him about how it wasn’t an Aframe and all I want is one full A and I’ll be happy so we’ll see what he comes up with! We have an average height above grade restriction of 25’ which really makes it hard to do an A. Dumb rules 🙃
    • Rachel McCash CroninEmma Brake ah it’s gorgeous!!! Can’t wait to see the final design!! And yeah, it’s hard to stay at 25’ or less with the big A’s but that’s only 5’ shorter than ours. Ours is 30’. I’m sure a ton of things have to change to subtract 5 ft though lol. Is that your HOA rule over there?
    • Emma BrakeRachel McCash Cronin we’re not in an HOA. My ONLY nonnegotiable was no HOAs 😆 I can get creative homesteading on a small lot, but I’m not dealing with HOA crap. It’s the city of Manitou.
    • Rachel McCash CroninEmma Brake ahhhh I see ☹️. That’s good no HOA though!!! 🎉 Its all going to be incredible!! We may need lots of axe throwing 😂 but it’s all going to be great 💗💯
  • Jessica KishFar less than I thought it would be too! but great news
    • Rachel McCash CroninJessica Kish it means this is the fee needed to design the bridge. This fee does not include demo and removal of the old bridge, or materials or install of the new one. All those are extra. They are estimating $20k ish for that. So it’s looking like an almost $40k project lol
  • Jennifer ParkeSo what has to be done with the Mexican spotted owl issue?
  • Karen McCashTOLL BRIDGE!
  • David McCannWow, that’s so random about the owls! But glad you guy’s can proceed. We are also in talks with different neighbors to get our power on the block installed and cost split between us. Hope it all works out
    • Rachel McCash CroninDavid McCann that’s awesome!! Keep me posted on how those conversations go. We learned that this fee is most likely just the design fee 🙈 so I have no idea how the talk with the neighbors will go. We might be looking at a $30k+ project. Which would be $5k a piece ish so we’ll see who is interested in helping. It’s already a big deal getting the neighbors to help with the road grating or snow plowing. Only 1 neighbor helps contribute to those things (the rest just enjoy the benefits) so we’ll see how it goes
  • Steven Dalelet them know you’ll let the owls cross for free too and it should all be good.