Today I'm still up in Nashville for the third and final day of the Tennessee Association of Realtors (TAR) Spring Conference.
Yesterday afternoon we had our Board of Directors meeing, pretty routine, no contentious issues or disasterous pending legislation.
One interesting thing we heard was an update on our new, TAR Headquarters building here in Nashville. A couple of years ago we got the proverbial "offer you can't refuse" from a developer who wanted to build a high rise "kiddy condo" development in the area of Vanderbilt University's campus where our old building was located.
Being we needed a new headquarters at the time and the offer was about 5 times what we had paid for the building 20 odd years ago we sold.
Our new building is supposed to be ready for occupancy in May of this year and has a lot of "green" features for more ecomical and enviromentally friendly operation.
It's contemporary in style and designed to fit into the upscale neighborhood in Nashville near where our former HQ was located near the Vanderbilt Campus.
A geo-thermal, vertical, closed loop heat pump system will supply our HVAC needs.
Ours is a gycol liquid based system the transfers heat by pumping the liqud through a continuous loop consisting of 20, 300 foot deep, wells sunk into the ground under the building. Cool in summer and heat in winter for about 50% of the operating costs of a conventional system.
These type systems take advantage of the constant temperature deep inside the earth and a heat pump extracts heat in winter and disperses the same heat in the summer keeping the building a comfortable temperagture in a very economical and enviromentally friendly manner.
Additionally we have a cistern to collect rainwater for landscaping watering needs, a 5,000 square foot training center, lots of new offices, meetings, a video booth, and an option to add a third floor later on as our space needs increase.
Today we're visiting "The Hill" in Nashville as our state capitol building is called. We'll be meeting with legislators and talking about current and pending legislation affecting our state's real estate and building industry.
Nothing major on the horizon legislation wise; we're promoting some changes to our real estate commission's proposed broker supervison rules, some housekeeping changes to a bill on septic tank disclosures,
I've always enjoyed these Spring conferences; good learning experiences, a trade show, visits to the state capitol to talk with our representatives about real estate legislation, and some fun and fellowship with about 1200 of my fellow Realtors from around the state.
One of the home warranty companies and a few others threw us a party last night with a great band and we danced and partied into the wee hours.
Today it's back to business one more day and then back to business in our home cities.
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