Road to Westmont Timeline

November 2021 - March 2022: The landlord was threatening rent increase and did not respond or send renewal proposal in a timely manner. We came to find out the Salon next door was negotiating a lease to take our spot for their “Medical Spa”. Their negotiations fell through as they did not want to pay the increase, we were allowed to renew only after he feared a vacancy. In the few months it took for us to get a response we frantically looked for a spot for us to work out of to continue our contractual obligations.

February 2022 - April 2022: We searched for a new place to open our new storefront. We avoided any place to lease as to not have the same issue of landlords and neighbors jeopardizing our business. We focused on buildings for sale near our customer base initially but with nothing meeting our criteria or with poor response from towns we inquired into, we expanded our search.

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April 2022 - June 2022: We found it, our bakery’s new home in the beautiful downtown area of Westmont! We were floored that we found 34 N Cass for sale and only 7 days on the market at the time. Both of us are from Westmont/Downers Grove so we were ecstatic to open closer to family in our hometown. We went through the closing process and had to go through special contingencies as per the Villages zoning it was required to get approval from the village board to open any business in the downtown.

June 2022 – April 2023: The search for an architect, Initial drawings, and first round of bidding. The long and tedious process of getting our architectural stamped and approved by the village (His plans never got stamped or approved.). This took months of back in forth from many different parties. When it was finally set in done our bids came WAY higher than our projections, but they were also VERY spread out in terms of cost. We decided to get a second opinion as the cost itself and the spread in cost amongst the bids was too wide.

May 2023: We brought on Jeff, our project manager to review everything thus far and give us feedback. Almost everything about our architectural drawings was a problem. In addition, the condition of the building was pointed out to us, there was a lot more wrong with it than we anticipated and was likely going to factor greatly in change orders as it was not accounted for in bids or drawings. Our project manager was the first to explain that in a sense we were being led in a bad direction and were going to end up paying more if things were not addressed appropriately in plans. (He chewed out our architect.) As disheartening as this was after months of work and thousands of dollars, we understood we had to start over and do this right.

 

June 2023 – February 2024: We went through the whole process of drawing new plans with Jeff’s guidance and our new competent architect Bob G.! This process was WAY different than the original process. Jeff had direct communication with the Village and worked along side them to get everything in line we needed for approval. The only unfortunate aspect is that it is a LONG process, many correspondence and moving parts to get us ready for bidding. We had to go through another approval process with the Villages planning and zoning department and present the changes we were making.

March 2024 – April 2024: We went through our initial bidding process to get new bids for our redrawn plans. We, as well as the whole team, were blindsided at the bids we received. They were 3x what we had budgeted for. And 5x what we bid out in 2021, the cost of construction had increase so much from when we had initially started.

May 2024 – June 2024: Bidding round 2 started. We did some value engineering in the plans to see how much lower we could push our costs down. While we were able to get closer to our budget it was still much larger than we had planned for. With the structure of the loan, we were underwriting/closing for and the added fees, it pushed us past the point of comfort. While we understood that debt and risk was necessary for us to achieve our goal, we were not going to put us in a state where we would financially ruin ourselves before our doors even opened. We made the hard decision of pulling out from closing and stopping our lending pursuit. To put into perspective the cost of this project, we were pushing towards a 7-figure project that almost doubled after the banking fees, contractor markups, and with 12% interest. This was also after paying all expenditures out of pocket to get us to permit. Once you start breaking down the cost with how many almond croissants we must sell, life begins to look bleak.

June 2024 – October 2024: We put our building on hold and tried to find a leasable area in Westmont to get us their and get better loan terms. As many factors played negatively towards our loan terms. Including the distance, we were moving and the change of production from a small store to full fledge bakery. This categorized us as a “start-up” negating all our years of service and experience. To counteract that we wanted to get to Westmont in any capacity. We started speaking with the representative of a building that has been vacant near there for a long time and after months of corresponding and waiting for items we requested we unfortunately had not heard back. But we continued to look and inquire as things came on the market. We had planned that with another year in our current facility we could collectively work together to get us to Westmont without fully relying on the bank and their terms.

October 2024- Present day: After trying to renew with the landlord he proceeded in giving us the run around again. We’ve requested a proposal with his increases, but we know he never intended on sending one. So, with the phone call I had that mentioned his new franchise moving in and the salon’s interest again in our space, we know we are not being allowed to stay even if not directly. At this point it would also be in our best interest to not entertain any proposals in these “negotiations” as we would be in a bidding war.