Moving up, Moving out

I realize that this blog was originally conceived to chronicle the restoration of a charming downtown Summerville cottage, but restoring a 100+ year old home is only one of my many duties. I have a large hat collection. Monday to Friday I wear a business systems analyst fedora for a defense contractor supporting the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center over on the old Naval Weapons Station. In the evenings I don the IT guy derby for my wife’s diagnostic imaging center. I keep the VPN firewall up and running and make sure that the radiology and DICOM files are being processed and archived as planned. Maintaining the PACS system should be a full time job, but I squeeze it into a few hours in the evenings. On weekends and most holidays, I put the hardhat on and work on the house.

As I described in a previous post, we purchased the property primarily as a mixed use residential-professional office arrangement. We intended to convert a large detached two car garage into a home base for our mobile diagnostic ultrasound service, and that is precisely what we did. I completely renovated that outbuilding, wired it, installed a bathroom, installed central heat and air, and built out the area as office space, but as our business grew, we grew out of the building and ended up moving our offices into our residence and redesigning the converted garage to function as an outpatient exam room for vascular and prenatal ultrasound.

The CMS (Medicare) test deposit was entered into our bank account on Thursday, so it would appear that our enrollment package is nearly complete. We will be able to accept insurance any day now. Our promotional material has arrived and we will begin a comprehensive marketing campaign within the next two weeks. What that means is that our business is growing. We will soon need even more space. After many hours of contentious deliberation, Holly and I decided that we would inevitably have to convert the entire residence into an outpatient imaging center. With some work, the building would make an ideal medical practice. After all, a local attorney operated out of the space for many years. So, essentially the front two bedrooms will be converted into exam rooms, and the parlor will be converted into a waiting room. The living room will house a horseshoe administrative area, and the back bedroom will be an executive office. The kitchen, of course will become the employee break room. The converted office outside will become a vascular lab.

In order to make this space work as a state of the art imaging center, we have to take on several large projects including building a wheelchair ramp off of the front porch. We also have to remove the gorgeous claw foot tubs and replace them with urinals and ADA compliant fixtures. We have to build the horseshoe administrative area, run the appropriate communication lines, and put sinks in all of the exam room spaces. Most of the doors will have to be widened and replaced with industrial solid core flush units. We would have to replace all of the carpeting, and install vinyl composite tile in the exam rooms. We also would need to replace the windows and cover them with attractive Bermuda shutters on the exterior to limit the sunlight infiltration and create the appropriate ultrasound conditions. Of course, I will probably hire a general contractor to tackle these projects. All in all, the layout couldn't be better, and the great part is that in the end we can deed the property over to the LLC and instantly increase the asset side of the balance sheet.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that our facility was chastised as “make-shift” on another merchant’s blog. I don’t know what this persons motivation was or even if they have ever been inside our facility. I doubt that they know the reasons behind our conscious and socially responsible decision to utilize a mixed use zone. I doubt that they know that most of the homes on our street, with the exception of one, are currently in use as professional offices. In fact, I doubt that this person knows much of anything. I have lived in Summerville my entire life with the exception of a few years while I was away in college. I was born in the old hospital, now the county services building off of Main Street. When I was in high school the US Census count said there were less than six thousand residence in Summerville. There are nearly fifty thousand now, with over half of them arriving in the last decade alone. With all these new residents comes new services, new shopping centers, and new strip malls. If there is one thing I despise more than anything else, It's seeing new strip malls detracting from our truly remarkable landscape. Don’t get me wrong, as a small business owner; I’m clearly not against growth. I just think it’s a shame to build new strip malls when so many existing ones are so anemically vacant.

In order to maintain the integrity of the town center, people need to live where they work. Otherwise you don’t have heterogeneous sustainable growth, you have sprawl. No one wants sprawl. Anyway, a note to the uninformed: Our decision to live and work from our home was not based on financial reasons, or any other reason that you might dream up for that matter, rather it was based on a humble attempt to revitalize a part of our beloved community; a community that is being threatened by the very irresponsible development you operate your own business from. Get a life. Get informed before you feel the need to comment on something you obviously know nothing about.