What am I???
I am in my late 20s and educated in accounting but haven’t been able to accrue a lot of steady work experience post 2020. I’ve always been interested in architecture and property development: seeing an under utilized property or empty lot and saying to myself, “This is what the city should do with this empty plot downtown. This is what is needed here and I would build it if I had money.” The problem is that I don’t have money. I don’t know how to seek funding. I have this great idea in my city for a mall to use an empty parking lot to build a tall apartment building next to a large urban forest and park. All the units would be located one side of the building with individual balconies so all tenants could look over the woods and watch them change color and form during the seasons. There truly is no remotely similar view in my city or much of the US, in my estimation.
I want to reach out to the mall owner and pitch this idea with enough details to show that I have thought about how they have a huge empty auxiliary parking lot in their mall complex which earns them no revenue. This mixed–use primarily apartment-housing idea would diversify their income and create a separate income stream not related to retail. I want to show them how I imagine the facade of the building to use colored glass to mimic the colors of a forest and autumn leaves. I want them to know that the building would really be a compliment of the forest it overlooks and how the forest is actually the main character in this story.
I truly feel like I have unique ideas that focus on filling in instead of building out a city further and further, but how do you even pitch ideas without a reasonable certainty that they won’t just steal the idea and cut you out? What do you even call a person like me who thinks up these (some would say ridiculous) ideas for housing and retail and recreation???