Over the past 2 months: Lakeland’s Historic Preservation Board approved the City of Lakeland’s recommendation to demo the building, Marcobay our contractor confirmed that we could build a new structure with the same footprint close to the original budget, and Catapult architects (WMB-ROI, The Lunz Group and KCMH) agreed to meet weekly until a new design could be hammered out and approved by all. More importantly, we chose this option because our team had made a commitment to this project on this site and we felt that Lake Mirror still needed a catalyst project. This option would allow us to recuperate some of these costs by building a facility with a similar footprint to our original plan. Or should we demo the condemned building and rebuild a similar building on the site, paying tribute to the old structure and design something bold, new, and fresh? We had invested a significant amount of time and money on engineering, architectural, and mechanical work. Should we stay in the Bank of America building and not expand our footprint? Should we lease a building outside of downtown, maybe in a neighborhood that needs a catalyst project? Should we demo the building and sell the site? Once we recovered from the shock, we spent a few weeks evaluating our options.
Our dream of turning the former feed store into Catapult 2.0, an entrepreneur center for Lakeland, was brought to a sudden halt as Hurricane Irma effectively condemned our building and took us back to square one. Nine weeks ago, we received devastating news regarding our plans to renovate the former Cash Feed building on Lake Mirror.