We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chris Levings. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with chris below.

Alright, Chris thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Northwest Square is really a business model that was build backwards. I happened to notice that my childhood church building was for sale and was intrigued. I was already invested in the neighborhood and intrigued. My realtor (and wife), Jessica was initially hesitant to show it to me because it was such a departure from my other projects, but I talked her into it. After that first walk through I knew there was a good opportunity, but I couldn’t have told you what it was. I thought an apartment building made the most sense, but it didn’t feel right to take away the church building’s role as a community space or to “chop up” the sanctuary space. That’s where Jessica really stepped up to help develop a plan that really utilized all parts of the building. What we ended up with is Northwest Square, the adaptive reuse of the 100 year old former Trinity United Methodist Church building. It’s 30,000 total square feet are divided almost evenly between 15 apartments, 4 event spaces, and 6 commercial leased spaces.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Northwest Square offers a unique, very walk able living experience in it’s 15 apartments, a “go to” spot for the community as the hub of DeLand’s Northwest Historic District with the food hall, beer garden (with two food trucks), wine bar/tap room, coffee, tea, groceries, and gift shop and 4 unique event spaces for weddings and events from 25-250 people.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

This place was expensive! Not so much the initial purchase, but the cost of bringing a historic building 100% up to current code. In addition to a substantial mortgage from our local bank, we brought in a friend who was an experienced investor as a minority partner and we sold 6 other investment properties to relocate those funds into this project.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met my business partner nearly 25 years ago when we were both at University of Florida. We married in 2011 and have 4 kids. Neither of us ever intended to work together, but Jessica got her real estate license in 2016 to handle my investment transactions and then with the development of the Northwest Square business plan she started her own brokerage (Northwest Square Realty). Our much different perspectives and skill sets have allowed us to segment the overall responsibilities of developing and running the business and give us a much better chance of keeping up when it seems like there are always more things to do than hours in the day.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.northwestsquare.com
• Instagram: @northwestsquaredeland
• Facebook: @northwestsquare
• Linkedin: ? – I know we have an account
• Twitter: no
• Youtube: no
• Yelp: northwestsquare
• Soundcloud: no
• Other: Google places – northwest square