<p>Joey Thurman:<br />Aurora is filled with history and historical buildings, such as the Keystone Building. Now developers are coming in instead of knocking down these beautiful buildings they are repurposing them. Urban Equity Partners have taken the Keystone Building and turned it into some beautiful lofts, let's go take a look. You had a Rockford based company, why come to down downtown Aurora?<br /><br />Justin Fern:<br />Aurora has a ton of potential. Back in 2000, I would say 2017, maybe early 2018, we started investigating the City of Aurora and it's downtown, and we really determined that it has a ton of potential and there's great need for housing and even retail in downtown Aurora, so that was a big part, just hearing what kind of billing stock Aurora had. Aurora having the state tax credit available for historic renovations was a big game changer, so we were able to offset costs with that state historic tax credit by 25%.<br /><br />Joey Thurman:<br />Okay.<br /><br />Justin Fern:<br />So you couple that state historic tax credit with a federal tax rate of 20% it changes the math on billings that may not have worked before could work today.<br /><br />Joey Thurman:<br />Right. With a historic building, now what are some things that people might not be aware of when you're trying to make sure you rehab this and you're hitting all these different parameters?<br /><br />Justin Fern:<br />Yeah. So a big requirement of the National Park Service when you're using the historic tax credit would be the corridors. So the original corridors, the hallways, the stair towers in these historic buildings are super, super important to them that you keep and retain and restore, and you don't change the size, right, so you have to keep that same character but you also have to go in and restore the trim and the doors. And even if you're only utilizing say 12 of the 20 doors, for example in this hallway here you have to keep those other doors intact and they'll just end up being a faux door, they won't be functional.<br /><br />Joey Thurman:<br />Yeah.<br /><br />Justin Fern:<br />But it keeps that original character of the corridor, which is a bigger requirement. The stone work, the terra cotta for example on this building is very original and it's in great shape, and we had to do some restoration but we didn't do a whole lot because it was pretty much all there when we bought the building.<br /><br />Joey Thurman:<br />Now what's your typical tenant here. They're coming into this building that was built in 1920s, why are they choosing this building as opposed to something that's fresh and new?<br /><br />Justin Fern:<br />Our typical tenant is a younger professional, typically they're making six figures, they want an urban experience. They want to be within walking distance of coffee shops and retail, and say the river and theaters and all those great things, the best restaurants, right, they want to be in that core. Maybe they don't want to be in Chicago, they don't want to spend $2,400 on an apartment there, they can come here and spend $1,400 and they are a train ride away, right, and typically they have pets. Now the other part, what kind of separates our buildings or our product from say a new multifamily building in a cornfield is exactly that, we don't have a cookie cutter vinyl sided box in the middle of a cornfield, okay?<br /><br />Joey Thurman:<br />Sure.<br /><br />Justin Fern:<br />We take this hundred year old building and restore it and then build a modern apartment inside it. I mean, how cool is that?<br /><br />Joey Thurman:<br />What's next for your company in downtown Aurora?<br /><br />Justin Fern:<br />Well we'd like to do some more adaptive reuse, so we're looking at several other buildings to potentially convert. At the same time we're toying around with not one but two different potential new construction projects for downtown Aurora.<br /><br />Joey Thurman:<br />Okay.<br /><br />Justin Fern:<br />So we're actively planning, looking, negotiating, and we hope to roll something out by mid 2022 and go public with at least one more new project that we could start maybe by early next year would be the plan.</p>