SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to the Sunbelt Developers Podcast. This is season two, episode two. I'm here with Travis Garland at Portman. Thank you. Really excited to have you. You know, we have we have a lot of um, I call them back nine people that are, you know, known historically for you know helping build our city. You're kind of in that like mighty middle, yeah. Kind of like Herbert's. I'm really excited to.

SPEAKER_04 0:21

I guess you just aged me out.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

You're well front nine, front nine, whichever hole we'll talk about. But um yeah, I just I'm really excited to get your take. I've I've seen you on panels and stuff. I know we've gotten breakfast a couple times, and I think you always have a fresh perspective on the what's happened. So um can we just dive in? Like who's Travis? I know you were in brokers for a little bit, but like maybe on the broker side. We'll get well. Let's let's back up to like are you from Atlanta?

SPEAKER_04 0:44

Like who I grew up in Gainesville, so an hour north of Atlanta.

SPEAKER_06 0:47

So Atlanta area native.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Cool. Yeah. I was born in Gainesville, but never really lived in. Yeah. Dad's from Winder, grew up on a chicken farm. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 0:56

Yeah. So it's not it's up there. It is a drive. Yeah. Do you still have family up there? My parents are still up there. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So we love it. It's a great great little town.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:04

When did you venture to big old city?

SPEAKER_04 1:06

So uh I graduated from Georgia 2003. Okay. Um I think I uh the the the the background to get to real estate, I think I always knew I wanted to be in real estate from time I can remember, right? So I was actually a real estate major in college, uh which is really kind of a finance major, but uh you know it's more common now than it was then. Um we you know, I went to uh uh one of my professors and I said, Hey, what uh what should I do? Like you you've you've had me for a few years now, you see kind of skill setting. He said you should be a broker. I'm like, all right, that's it. I don't know that I'd really put thought into it at all uh and kind of went down that path. 2003 was a little bit coming out of the dot com bust, so the market was tough. Um I actually was uh had taken a job with a group in Tampa and I was gonna move to Tampa and and do brokerage there. Um and uh after school, this I wasn't gonna move down there till the fall. Um and so that summer I think I had a recognition of like how hard brokerage is to start off with at 22, especially moving to a new city and having no income. And and during that time I said, well, maybe I need to rethink brokerage. And um I had done an internship in college with a with a friend who was a developer, and he called and said, Hey, one of my really good friends, and this guy just had a really interesting background, um, owns a sports marketing company. And this guy was actually integral in after the Cleveland Browns went to Baltimore or sold to Baltimore, this guy that owned the sports marketing company was really kind of a tip of the spear in bringing Cleveland back to Cleveland. So he said, he needs somebody to work for six months and you travel the country. And I said, Yeah, I you know, I'm kind of at a loss right now of what I'm gonna do. I'll go do that. So I spent six months working for him, traveling the country was a great experience. Um, and then when I came back, I said, okay, now I want to get into real estate. And uh somebody I'd met along the way, local guy, kind of one-man shop, but but was an affiliate partner. Again, I don't know if this is the right path, but it was a path I took. Uh, I started working with him. And I say that just from a standpoint of his great experience, me and him, small shop, you know, um super gritty on getting stuff done mostly on the tenant rep side, but had some property management. I think I got a little bit of exposure to a lot. Um so did that for several years. So that would have been 2000, call it probably mid-4.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Okay. Um this this was in Atlanta. In Atlanta. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Did you ever run across Frank Simpson or the Norton guys? Yeah. I was curious if you'd like ever interview with them or something.

SPEAKER_04 3:43

No, I didn't. I always wanted to be in Atlanta. Yeah. Okay. Um to get to Atlanta. So for me, again, right or wrong, I think my decision was you know, here's an opportunity, it gets me to Atlanta, it gets my foot in the door. Let's kind of see where this goes. Um so we were together for several years. Uh obviously 2008 hits, right, because it was just two of us. We were small and nimble and and could survive. Um I probably around 2008-2009, after I'd had a few years, I really started recognizing like I don't want to be on the brokerage side. I really wanted to be ultimately on the development side, but I think just during that time it was more just on the ownership side. Um and uh a lot of things probably happened through luck and you know who you meet and relationships you build along the way. So um a good friend of mine who I had met being in Atlanta, um, who's still a good friend of mine who worked at Portman, who still works at Portman. Um in 2011, he and I were talking, and uh I we'll get a little bit of the Portman background, but Portman had been overseas really for a long time. Yeah. They were big in China. Big in China, yeah, which I can give some of that story. Um he called and said, hey, and he'd actually worked in China. He took a job with Portman High School, he's my age, he took a job in Portman and was actually working uh in Shanghai. He was moving back because the company had moved, really started to refocus on the U.S. And so he called and said, Hey, we're gonna be refocusing on the U.S. Um development. This is 2011, the cycle didn't really kick off then. Um I don't know where it's gonna go, but in the meantime, uh Brian Hogue, who is a the Atlanta icon of kind of office, um was gonna be retiring out of what he had done for Portman, which was leasing Sun Trust Plaza at the time downtown. And so Charles said, you know, we're gonna interview somebody to handle the leasing side of it and see where it goes on the development side. So I really joined Portman in 11 through a lens of hopefully this grows into development, uh, but but really on the on the leasing side still, uh at least in Sun Trust Plaza. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

And your your name was on that building until only a couple years ago.

SPEAKER_04 5:50

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Probably was. I mean, I probably completely got out of that several years ago. There wasn't much leasing there, but we still we were still technically on it. Yeah. Because the building's been almost 100% leased for a long time because the bank.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:03

Yeah. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Yeah. Okay. So you get in, you're starting to do some leasing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:07

And then the development business just kind of started growing. I mean, we kind of uh organically a little bit. I mean, I think once we were there, once I was there, um, you know, had the opportunity to then sit alongside people that were in development um uh to really kind of start to understand that business and and and watch that business and we kind of really grew it together. I mean, we kind of think of the team that that was, you know, late 2000s um that really started to refocus back on the U.S. is I mean, it was we were standing on the shoulders of giants as we did it, but and and uh an unbelievable reputation and doors open because of the reputation, but really starting in you know, probably 2012 is when we started feeling things move a little bit back to development. Kind of in the southeast, we were Atlanta, really kind of Charlotte initially. Um that's really when we started to to build what we've done over the last 10 years. Yeah. What were some of those early projects like that were uh kind of first move movers out outside of the first uh the first so Atlanta Atlanta um was probably a little bit later to recover than some other cities. Uh uh the first project in Atlanta, which was one of the first projects we did, was 230 Peachtree. So uh that was actually I think that was Mr. Portman's first office building as a part of Peachtree Center. Yeah. Mr. Portman was still very involved at that point in time. So we bought that building back out. I think it was in it was foreclosed on probably from a servicer. Bought it, uh turned the bottom third of it into a hotel indigo, and then the top two-thirds are office, which we still own. So that was that was kind of the first project, which was a redevelopment project. And then around the same time, um, we had an opportunity to do a project in Denver on the backside of Union Station, uh, which was uh uh this is unbelievable to kind of if you look at a picture now of what Union Station was. Um so Union Station, the the the station itself, this was a big public-private kind of infrastructure to get you know a new part of the city lodo, but on the backside of Union Station kind of redeveloped. Um and so we showed up and Union Station was about to be done and reopened, and it was just I don't know how many blocks, probably 15 city blocks that were just dirt for the most part. There were a couple projects under construction, so we had the opportunity to be one of the first ones there and completed the projects called Union Tower West, uh, which was 100,000 feet of office and a 180-key hotel, kind of vertically mixed use. So both of those we started in 2014, 2015, and then um uh the the uh Portman organization had family owned the Weston in downtown Charlotte. And uh adjacent to the Weston was a parking garage that was kind of a free brand standing parking garage that there were previous plans to develop on top of. Uh it was actually going to be a condo building, uh kind of pre-recession. And so that didn't work, uh obviously coming out of the recession, uh out of, you know, in Charlotte. So we started looking at, all right, let's go office. We think now is the time to go office. So that was really kind of our first of scale office development, um, which would have been 2000 probably started that in late 15 or 16. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 9:24

It was 370,000 feet on top of uh top of parking garage.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Cool. Was that that's not the one that we were looking at mid-speaking? No, it was up there. Uh on the railway.

SPEAKER_04 9:32

We were pulling that up. No, and then that was later. We yeah, we we've been very involved in Charlotte uh really for a long time because of the West then. But uh I mean, called the last 10 years we've been super involved kind of on that quarter of development.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Cool. Okay, so you're starting to get your development seat. What was I'm curious, like I'm in leasing your you went from leasing to development, like from a skill set standpoint. I mean you were just kind of learning biosmosis, just being around it. And like I mean, you kind of had a finance background, so you get some of the underwriting.

SPEAKER_04 10:06

You know, uh actually again, and and we we've done this. We did this at breakfast of like what what what do you tell people? The the truth of it is I think one of the interesting things about real estate is the variety of background that people have. So I don't know that there is a right path on where you end up. It's it's kind of an incredibly diverse group. Um I think a leasing background's incredible because you've been around, you get reps of deals, right? And sitting across the table from people and understanding, you know, sometimes what pay makes people tick, I think that's an incredible skill set that just from a cadence, if if deal flow and execution of deals kind of makes you sharper in what you do, the brokerage side of it, you get more deal flow than you do on the development side of it, right? I mean, if we've done 10 projects of 10 years on a lease standpoint, from a broker standpoint, you could do 10 a month. And so that was really, I think, very helpful in um what I'm doing now where I started is just understanding that and kind of having those reps of of just deals. Cool.

SPEAKER_05 11:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Okay. So doing some stuff in Charlotte, Dallas was kind of cooking then too. Dallas was later.

SPEAKER_04 11:16

So really kind of the progression was Atlanta, Denver. Denver ended up being kind of a one, a one deal, you know, uh type type project, our city. And we'd go back to Denver just uh by the time we exited that things were we were busy in in other places. Um uh Charlotte probably Nashville may have been next, and then and then Dallas. And so now we're really on the on the um office and residential and kind of call that mixed use, you know, to a certain extent. Um really focused kind of sunbelt today, uh, which stretches over into Texas. Um and then our industrial business that has a lot of focus in those same areas, but they've got some focus, they've got some assets in the Northeast, uh, and then our hotel business is a little bit all over.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Hey guys, I just want to take a second and thank our sponsors for today. Our main sponsor is SHR or Sanji High Roads. David Sanji was one of our guests a couple months ago and really brought an incredible story about his career. Sanji High Roads is a commercial real estate development company that has done almost$3 billion in developments. A couple projects that you might know here in Atlanta is the Hyatt Centric, right behind Linux Mall. There's also the Howell, which is a brand new apartment complex. And the most exciting project that they're working on is the expansion to the Savannah Convention Center. We're really excited to go down there probably early next year to show you guys what's going on. But they've broken ground. It's an almost a$400 million project. It's been in the works for almost 10 years and uh very excited. So if you have any development opportunities or you want to learn more about them, uh please visit sangyhighroads.com. Again, that's sangyhighroads.com. Now back to the show. Okay, can we can we jump back? You said Portman. So do you know Lel Barnes? The name. Okay. Um shout out Lel. Uh Lel lived over in China for a long time. Came back. I think he saw one of my posts on LinkedIn and reached out. We talked for like an hour one day, and he had all sorts of stories and whatnot. But I'd I'd heard the business climate wasn't as opportunistic or it had just kind of shifted over there. And I mean, do you know the numbers on how how many projects y'all did over there? I don't know the numbers.

SPEAKER_04 13:29

Yeah. So I agree with you that. I mean, a little bit of what had happened was um so so Portman I think is the second was the second US company there in China.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:40

Um and and so when that when that business went, and so by the way, I mean this is hard to kind of grasp now seeing what China looked like, because this would have been like late 70s, early 80s, right? Um there were there were no high rises. There was no type of density that was in China when it opened. And so and so Portman was really kind of a first mover in that space, right? Both on the architectural and the development side.

SPEAKER_06 14:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:05

In fact, we were just telling the story the other day. Um we had a group of investors in um from Japan, and uh uh Kajima was the contractor, which is a Japanese contractor. We ended up, and and and I was in the meeting and John Portman IV was telling the story. They ended up being a part of kind of the the ownership and deal team early in China because there weren't even Chinese contractors that knew how to build anything high-rise. So so we had to bring somebody in uh from Japan to do that. Um but so so uh Portman was early in China. Um uh really as things start going, I mean they start going quick, right? And um was there for really it ended up being about 30 years, but I would say uh kind of early 2000s um a decision was made that the advantages that were there early, which were kind of knowledge and and frankly capital to a certain extent too. In the early 2000s, we didn't have the transfer of knowledge to domestic developers, Chinese domestic developers had occurred. They didn't need our capital, right, anymore because there was plenty of Chinese capital, domestic capital. So really what what was an advantage early and had a 20-year run of just an unbelievable amount of success there, by the early 2000s, you had different risks, right? The transfer of knowledge had occurred, you had um domestic capital you're competing with, and so it almost became hard to compete because our cost of capital was inherently higher because we had to layer on exchange rate risk and governmental risk and just different layers of risk, right? And so the decision was made at that point in time. And and really also um you know, unless you're kind of a uh an asset allocator from an investment perspective, it's it was hard to stretch kind of a development balance sheet to be spread out that much internationally. And so um uh that was around the time that Ambrish is our CEO who joined in the mid-2000s, kind of joined to say we think we should refocus back on the U.S. That was probably actually pre-recession, right? As the decision was made to do that, it just took longer because then the recession hits, and so by the time you start to get everything kind of in motion back in the U.S., you're you're kind of coming out of the recession side. But uh unbelievably successful in China, both on the development side and on the architectural side. Um I'll give you those numbers. Actually, I just heard John say these the other day in the meeting.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

It's a lot. It's a lot. I know like Peace Tree Center is a big, you know, multi-million square. I know y'all put like a bigger complex over there was like similar to multiple towers. Yeah, and that's what I was saying.

SPEAKER_04 16:44

When you're gonna be pop up, I mean it's like nothing, and then like three years later, it's like a city. Yeah. And I uh Shanghai has like seven ring roads or something. Yeah, yeah. It's incredible. I I've I feel so honored to be there. Did you travel over there? I never did. It was about the time I joined, we were kind of back focused. But um uh sportin passed away in 18, so I had several years with him. It was amazing. I mean, just the the uh ability to kind of be in that um office when it wasn't just him, but some of his advisors were around to just soak all that in. Yeah. You know, I think I think it was unique ability as we were coming back to the U.S. focused, right? The team that that we kind of talked about, we had this unbelievable amount of knowledge and experience around us that we could all kind of soak in and learn from. Sure. Which I think was you know a little bit of the groundwork of what we've been able to do the last decade.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

How how involved was John through the later years? I know some people work till the day they die. I don't I guess he was one of the things. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:43

I mean, he was uh I mean he was a six-day-a week guy, you know, until the end. Uh 230 Peace Tree, I mean, that was his baby. Yeah. Right. Yeah, the restaurant. It's almost there's almost some like greatest hits, right? There's this beautiful staircase that's in the building that was he'd use some of the light fixtures. I mean, he was truly Renaissance man, right? I mean, everybody knows him from a developer perspective, architect perspective, but like artists, which people kind of know, but not really. Right. I mean, if you know, you know, but um that doesn't automatically kind of transition to him. But like a lot of the furniture he was designing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Um and his house, the Sea Island house, just sold for record numbers, which I like looking at that, I was uh so curious about like I mean the maintenance cost to keep it's like full of plants and like the structure of your yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:34

So it's a commercial structure.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Yeah, right. Right. It looks like I think we were just looking at like a hotel lobby that's yeah you live in. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the house here, too, right?

SPEAKER_04 18:44

So I haven't seen that. Yeah, it's very similar. I mean, as far as the water that's inside and yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

A Renaissance man. Yeah. That's for sure. Yeah, he was. Yeah. Okay, so I I always like to ask this question. Kind of like a what was the first kind of breakout project for you that I know like we had Aaron Keel on here, he's like three lines with his baby, and like I don't know if there's one that maybe stands out to you of like stand out.

SPEAKER_04 19:09

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um I don't know. I so so uh I mean I think the first kind of really big scale probably was 615 South College for me. Um, which was what was three alliance timing? Do you remember 2017? So we were about the same time. Okay. Like we were doing that in Charlotte when Chris was doing that down here. Very similar time frames, actually. Because I remember talking to Chris about things at the time.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Um I'm gonna I'll bring it up.

SPEAKER_04 19:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um I think that to me, um was so that was after we had started Union Tower West. It was after we had started 230, which I had pieces of and parts of the 100 years.

SPEAKER_06 19:49

Uh 615, 615 South College.

SPEAKER_04 19:52

Um that I had that I had parts and pieces in. 615 was really the first one where I probably had a you know more input than I did previously. That was a little bit more, you know, kind of tip of the spear on some of this stuff. So it's that, yeah. Um Wow. Yeah, so this is a parking garage that existed, the Weston existed, and so we kind of had to build on top of the parking garage. And so when Chris would talk about, I'm sure Chris talked about, um, because he was just in our office and I've heard him say this multiple times, this was a first mover, right? We were we were a first mover here um coming out of the recession. And um this was one where I think because it was truly ground up office, right? Like where I could put my my thumb print on this. This was probably the first one that of scaled at and we were incredibly successful here um financially leasing, great, great outcome. Yeah. Um this is 375,000 feet. Okay. Yeah. So um we sold this to CBREI, who still owns it today. Um I almost say we sold this in 18, probably. 18, maybe early 19. I'd have to go back and think, but generally that's kind of where it is. Um and we still the family still owns the Weston next door, so it's still something that we, you know, it was important.

SPEAKER_03 21:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:18

Um and and this was actually an architect uh or the building. This was a building that uh Poorman and Associates was the architect on. Um and so they were still around at that time. And uh so it was it was just an unbelievable amount of great collaboration. We shared an office space with architecture group, you know, where we could really go push and pull things together. So this was a lot of fun. This is probably um the this is the first one. I don't know that it's the most important, but this is the first one that I was like, this is unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

A special, a special project. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was uh did you have any influence on these balcony cutouts for you? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:57

This was early, right? From a design perspective, this was right. When people started using balconies.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Yeah. And carve out, like I know there's some that'll punch through windows and bring balconies into the stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:08

And this was like, by the way, nobody knew if you could actually charge for balconies or not. And is this rentable? I know Booma. Okay. We did not treat this as rentable because we could like nobody else was really doing this yet. That you didn't have the example to say, can you do this or not?

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Hey guys, I just want to take a second and thank our sponsors for today's episode. This episode is brought to you by Corporate Environments, Georgia's leading full service commercial furniture and workplace solutions partner. Whether you're building out Class A offices, retrofitting, co-working space, or planning large-scale tenant improvements, Corporate Environments brings deep expertise in future design and specifications, architectural solutions, project management, delivery and installation, and more. They're known for delivering turnkey solutions that help your properties stand out and your clients' space work better. Plus, as a certified, minority-owned business, they bring a fresh, diversity-driven perspective to every project. Something that resonates in today's market. To elevate your next interior build-out or FF and E plan, reach out to corporate environments. They have a location here in Atlanta and Savannah, and you can learn more at corporateenvironments.com. Let their team turn your vision into impactful spaces. So as a as a tenant, like that's exclusive balcony or those common or they are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Each one of those, each one of those four balconies on this building, each one of those balconies, um, there's the other one. Yeah, which is amazing. Each one of those balconies is occupied by a full floor tenant. Some of those are are multiple floor tenants. Um so anyway, so that was that that may be the first one. And then as we moved out of this kind of into Atlanta, um the first big one in Atlanta, I think really from a team perspective, a lot of special uh uh is Coda and then kind of Tech Square in general. Yeah. Um and I think Coda was special and unique for a lot of purposes beyond just me, I think, for the whole team. Um that that building uh was actually the last building that Mr. Portman was the architective record on. Wow. Um I'll bring it up. Yeah. And so this would have been, we got into that. I want to say that probably started the end of 14, really kind of ran hard in in 2015 uh from a process perspective, and then we ended up uh breaking ground on that in uh 2016. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

This is it's very unique building. Very unique building. Like the the floor plans, like everything. I know there's like there's no core in these wings here, so it's like just kind of unencumbered. Unencumbered. Yeah. It's and the spiral staircase. And the spiral staircase. Got a data center. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:46

And this was like, again, I think some of this magic that uh that exists in the collaboration that is real estate development is this ability to really like push and pull things and try things. And I think I think one of the things that I don't want to say makes us different. I just think one of the things that we're good at is listening. And so we listened very intently as to what Georgia Tech was trying to accomplish in this. Um probably because of it being 2000, end of 2014, beginning of 2015, so the world wasn't great yet. When Georgia Tech first sent this RFP, RFQ out, whatever they sent out originally, I think it was something like 52 groups that responded. Wow. Um and it came down to a competition between us and a team that was Cousins and Heinz. Um and so I mean that was kind of the caliber by which we were competing with.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Um and cousin back like I mean NCR is over here.

SPEAKER_04 25:41

Yeah. Did Cousins develop this or was that the file? They they did. They they did develop it, but but this was a little bit more of a kind of fee. NCR had made the move to go purchase and then brought cousins in. I think NCR had actually already bought this. That project hadn't started yet. I I don't think that project had started.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

I was curious what if that was like kind of on the heels of this or no.

SPEAKER_04 26:02

And so this for us was um you know, really and again, uh special on a lot of fronts, um, but complicated, unbelievably complicated. Um there's a data center? There's a data center, which is the structure here that we don't have any ownership on. Okay. But I mean, this took kind of every one of us. Um, Brees was very involved, very, very involved. John Four was very involved. I I mean the team in totality was just unbelievably involved. This is a is is a ground lease. It's got lots of complications that we've actually taught classes at Georgia Tech about because of the structure of how we had to put all this together. Um so I think I think I think winning getting starting it was was um something that we all felt great um kind of happiness over and and and pride over. But I think what's come out of that for us, and and this is a lot of, you know, I think one of the one of the cool things about development is you can see the impact. Like there's a physical view of the impact you have on a city.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Right.

SPEAKER_04 27:04

Um and so, you know, kind of what came out of uh out of Coda is is a ripple that I don't know that even the city or state knows the full kind of you know scope of what that looks like. I I actually think that there will be a white paper written about what happened in TechSquare, and Coda was just a piece of TechSquare. But at the time that we had a lot of macro tailwinds and and Georgia Tech and coming out of the recession things that had started happening in TechSquare with um uh at Synergy, right, they had innovation centers and nobody even knew what an innovation center was, but it was like this building block that started growing. So by the time Georgia Tech brings this out, we had a little bit of insight as to like what this could be. Um and frankly, when we first started it, and this is almost kind of nerding out a little bit, you hear about like an ecosystem. I know you just had Bird Song on, so he understood because they were doing a like television, like this ecosystem of like a startup community, right, or a tech community. And really, as you get into an innovation district, the ecosystem needs academia, it needs money, it needs startup, it needs big companies. And so when we started doing this and learning about this, again, there weren't a lot of examples even in the country you could go look at. Arizona State had something that started to go that direction. Um there was a project in New York that hadn't opened yet that was starting to go that direction. You know, Sand Hill Road next to Stanford kind of went that direction. It was Capitol, you know, across the street from Stanford. Um, but but not all the way holistically. And so for us, the ability to kind of take this, listen to what Georgia Tech was saying and study it right outside of just office. And and that's what drove the the design, the aesthetic and the L-shape and this, you know, communal core was really to a space to kind of bring everybody together in so that you could have these like sporadic interactions and ideas may get shared and sparked. So that I mean, this was the whole thesis of all this. But out of this, um for us and for the city really um created as as the city had a lot of tailwinds anyways, just this environment that was unique. I bet alongside with Georgia Tech's got an economic development um uh team, and there's a guy by the name of Greg King that kind of leads that team. He and I were side by side through this. And and I would tell you that this wasn't even leasing of office space. This was economic development of telling a story of the city of Atlanta and the talent and the talent of Georgia Tech. And so it was just it took on every level kind of uh this wasn't a public-private deal from a typical sense of public-private, but this was a public-private kind of partnership of bringing together a major university and a developer to really good make this happen and tell the story. And then out of that, we were able to do um uh ended up doing a build-to-suit for Anthem next door, which is just to the right. Um and so Anthem came to us, um, I got a phone call from a friend from a broker that said, Hey, we're working with a company, they're looking at um kind of rolling up their whole tech. So, so, so a lot of innovation centers, which you may know that were in Tech Square weren't necessarily tech companies, right? Georgia Power was there. It was groups that were looking to, as as the economy was changing and coming out of the recession, they were looking to tap into every company kind of became a little bit more tech focused, and they had to understand that. So people were innovation centers were there really for a piece of the business, even if they weren't tech companies. So uh a guy calls me and says, Hey, I don't even know if he told me it was Anthem initially or not. A company's looking to roll up, they've never done this before. Anthem owns a bunch of companies, right? So just think about them as a big corporation. They want to roll up all their technology groups that support that organization, and they're running a multi uh kind of a multi-market search as to where they'll go. And they think if Atlanta's on the list, they think they only want to do it if they could do it in TechSquare. I mean, that was kind of the power of TechSquare. Wow. Coda wasn't open yet. It was just people started to see the makings of what that could be. Um and so I said, okay, let's talk. So we sit down, I actually went to dinner with them, and they said we'd really what you're doing at Coda looks like what we want, right? Being in TechSquare, that's what we want. Um well, part of again, back to the thesis of Georgia Tech and the ecosystem. One of the commitments we had made to Georgia Tech was um we will fulfill what your vision is, which is really have a lot of companies in this building that you can interact with, not one. And this is a very hard thing. So I'm sitting across the table from somebody that wants to lease 350,000 feet, and I'm like, I can't do it at Coda, right? That's not the thesis. It we're building this for something different, and it wasn't for you and Georgia Tech, right? Yeah. Um but SunTrust had a retail branch next door. At the time, that's all that was on the site was a Sun Trust retail branch.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 32:11

And like a surface lot, right? And a surface lot. Yeah. So back to I was leasing Sun Trust, right? So uh corporate real estate is who I interacted with. Um and I said at dinner, I said, you know, I I think we could buy the site next door and do a build-basuit if that's something you guys wanted to explore. To be in TechSquare, you'd be next to Coda, so you get the interaction. And that's really what started the conversation. I called my contact at Sun Trust the next morning, who who's now actually our COO, and I said, Hey man, I'd I'd I kind of promised that we'd be able to buy your site last night. I'm I'm I'm assuming you would sell it, right? And he's like, Yeah, we we work something out. So that's how all that came about at seven at the Anthem, which is Anthem Tech Center, which is 740 West Peachtree. And then a few years later, they ended up because again, the city was just on fire at the time. Anthem said, let's go ahead and do a second building. And so that's what created 712, where they they leased uh 85% of it originally, and then ended up giving back a couple floors so we could go lease microns in the top of that building now. So that was like this whole TechSquare magical story that they're what a good rundown. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

And Coda's still doing well.

SPEAKER_04 33:22

But what I was saying on like the the city and and state perspective, um, and again, way more than just TechSquare, way more than just Coda, but what came out of that and and what Greg and I did aside from the economic development of it, as companies were coming in. I I bet he and I have met with somewhere between 20 and 30 cities and universities that tried to replicate this. It's hard to replicate just because of all the layers of kind of leadership and cooperation you need at a city state, state at a city perspective, at a state perspective. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And just timing. At a university perspective, timing. So it's this hard thing to replicate. Yeah. Um but because there are things that I don't know would have happened but for what was happening kind of with, you know, in the mid-2010s around TechSquare and with Georgia Tech and with the whole economy kind of shifting to technology. And as I look out now, you know, Hyundai's now got a bigger relationship with Georgia Tech. Does that plant outside of Savannah happen but for kind of what was going on here at the time? I don't know. Right. Um Microsoft actually started at Coda and WeWork. Um and so they started with um 60 people. Actually, we opened, we were, I mean, we opened Coda and had a grand opening party in 2019, and and we were negotiating uh an LOI with Microsoft at that point in time for 40,000 fees. So they had gone from like, hey, we work, we really like Atlanta, we think we're gonna grow a little bit more. And when did it turn into 500? Like insanely quick. So actually when we're yeah, so it went from kind of every at every phase of a conversation, or I actually think it started at 20 and then grew to 40, but kind of at every phase of the conversation, Microsoft would have somebody new come to the city. And by the way, behind the scenes, I'm sure they're already talking to the city about what they would maybe doing bigger, but yeah, but not to the scale that it got to, at least initially. And every time they came, it was like there's a lot of good stuff happening in Atlanta. They'd bring somebody else back and the requirement would grow. So it went from like 20,000 feet to 40,000 feet to 60,000 feet to 80,000 feet. I got a call and they're like, hey, we're 120. I'm like, I think we can do 120. I mean, it's getting tight now. Yeah. To I think it I think it outgrew us at like 180 and then went to 300 and 500. Wow. Um and so it was just a lot of those types of things that were happening here that that it's not, it wasn't, I mean, it's you can never kind of pinpoint one specific thing that changed, but what was happening in Tech Square, which Coda was a was a very important piece of, I think rippled to the city of Atlanta. I think it's probably rippled to the state. I suspect the economic impact of that is in the billions. I know the economic impact between what would be Yeah, you got Norfolk Southern. Yeah, Norfolk up to 10th Street. Yeah. Right. So between so we started Coda in 2016, between 2016 and really like 22. Yeah. Right. It was like two billion dollars of real estate that got invested in there. Wow. So that's just from a real estate perspective. So ripple that out. Yeah, all the company jobs, and yeah, it's huge. It's amazing. Um, which is why all these other cities were come in and try to replicate and meet. And and we've met them, and I mean, we're always very open about it. Um, it's just it's a hard thing to replicate.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

So this has been that's yeah, that's a special project. Hey guys, I just want to take a second and thank today's sponsors. Uh, this episode is brought to you by USA Cabling Technologies and Solutions. Alex Morris and his team are just the most incredible partners. They've helped us get our studio going here. Anything that you need for low voltage or audiovisual needs in your own build-outs or office suites, they are just A plus. So if you want to learn more about them, you can go to their website, USA CablingTech.com. Again, that's USA CablingTech.com. Now back to the show. Okay, the spiral staircase. Yeah. Wasn't that the tall? Is it still the tallest? Or did it have the We say it is. I don't know if it's okay. This is a marketing. It was definitely was. I don't know if it still is. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 37:28

Yeah. So the whole staircase, the idea of staircase came from. So again, like when we're studying this and how do you create a few years? Let's bring it up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

People haven't seen it. There's a spiral staircase. How tall? Five.

SPEAKER_04 37:39

Uh so 17 floors, it's probably twelve and a half. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

That's not it. That's not it.

SPEAKER_04 37:46

You can go code aspiring. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

There we go.

SPEAKER_04 37:49

Go to the next one. All right. So zoom in. Oh, and you got a Portman logo right in the middle of the state. So this is so again, like the uniqueness of this, right? So um so the idea of the spiral staircase and kind of the centerpiece was you you really wanted to create um these spaces that that a researcher could be in with an industry partner, right? And just to have kind of a sporadic bump in, if you will. And so we were studying this because this was this was kind of early in the space. And um a group of us went to look at the Google building in New York, and it was amazing, right? I mean, this was an early stage of uh these were the companies that were people were kind of looking at and understanding from an innovation perspective, you know, how do you recreate that? And one of the things that we came out of that, this was early in the design. One of the things that we came out of that meeting uh with was um the answer to a question of what would you do differently if you could do this all again, right, from a design perspective and build-out perspective. And and there were several things, but one of the things that stuck was they had staircases kind of all over, right? That were connecting floors. And he said I would do more staircases because these staircases tended to be the areas where we're walking past each other and we haven't seen each other, and we're like, hey, I needed to see you. Yeah. I've got this idea, right? So that kind of that that interaction is what really created the the idea to do the big staircase that connected this building. Um and then we had to make a spiral because it was Portman. Yeah. Um, yeah, yeah. This is beautiful. And so, you know, that was Mr. When Mr. Portman signed, that's our logo. But when Mr. Portman signed his name, he would draw the spark on his signature. Oh, cool. And so uh he had passed away by the time we had opened this building, and right at the this was not planned, right at the very end, right before we were about to get the CO, the architect that was a Portman architect who's the who's the design architect on the building, said we should put his this is the last building that he's architect of record. We should put his spark up there. So that's how that came about. That's his mark. Yeah, yeah, it's his mark. So this is an unbelievably special building to us all.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

I I knew some of that. I didn't I didn't know about the spark. That's a really cool little little Easter egg here. All right. So let me bring back the map. Okay, so that's like the Tech Square kind of story, the outcropping. Um did that kind of lay the groundworks for spring quarters. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:15

So some of this is um uh some of this is through a lens of so again, think about uh as I'm looking at the map. So when we started it, Tech Square really is fifth in spring, and it goes out, you know, a block and a half, maybe, right? We we probably stretched it a little bit, Coda probably stretched Tech Square down to, you know, 3rd Street, right? And then NCR stretched it up to 7th, 8th Street. But like you had this elongation that was coming. And so your main thoroughfares over to Georgia Tech are 5th Street and 10th Street.

SPEAKER_06 40:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:48

And North Avenue as well. But 5th 10th and North Avenue. Yeah, you got the park down here. Or your big ones. And so um as we were seeing just this unbelievable amount of growth that was coming to Atlanta, to Midtown, to this neighborhood specifically, the the 10th and spring kind of quarter was a little bit of the hole in the donut. Um and some of that was because there was a four-acre site that was operated by a funeral home. So that's what that was. And so that created the hole in the donut, really. That was the biggest block that was the hole in the donut. So for us, the ability to go continue to play into um uh an unbelievably active midtown, really kind of tech square, which you can start to stretch that tech square is now to 10th Street, right? I don't think people would argue with that. Um and to have the ability, this was a four-acre site, to create what I think we're best known for, which are these vibrant mixed-use areas and developments and districts. Um that's really what kind of drove the interest to purchase the site. The original master plan was an apartment. It's interesting that this this is old isn't it. You've got pictures now, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um but the original master plan was was uh uh residential, office, and hotel.

SPEAKER_06 42:12

Well, let's see. Oh, there you go. Yeah, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_04 42:15

So in the in the foreground, right there is where the hotel would be, just on kind of where this white house is. Okay. Just to the just to the left of it. So the original master plan was those three components. Um uh we started the residential project, which made a lot of sense at the time, obviously. Just midtown. Uh obviously the the funeral we bought it from the funeral home REIT, which I didn't know existed before we bought this up.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

I have a client that is a funeral homeowner.

SPEAKER_04 42:41

Really? Are they REIT?

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Uh he's rolling up.

SPEAKER_04 42:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

He's he'll I think he's if not the largest, like the second largest private owner.

SPEAKER_04 42:49

Yeah, this was an interesting acquisition. We like go in and it was still operating, and they'd be like, Don't go in room number two. Oh my god. Yeah, I mean it was a funeral home, right? So it was like, hey, we got a funeral going on. Yeah, yeah. Um but it was it's it was actually a purpose built, right? This is uh actually it next year will be the high so it's 1927, right? Beautiful old home. Wow. Um beautiful. The the the the tenant that goes in here, this is gonna be amazing. This is gonna be like unlike anything Atlanta's got right now. Any announcement or time? We're close. We're close. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um but just because Atlanta doesn't have a lot of history, I mean it's like Potts, Ponts is amazing for a lot of reasons, but part of the amazing piece of Potts was Atlanta doesn't have a lot of historic buildings that you can walk in and like appreciate character of. Yeah. This this is gonna have that. It's gonna be amazing. Um but all of this is historic. The house and the garden is is all historic. The driveway is historic. So you kind of had this one acre call it, it's about an acre of you can't really do much with it other than what we've done, right? You had framework you had to work within, but it became it's going to become the centerpiece anchor from a retail perspective of what all this will. So, anyways, the the the the apartment starts um that makes a lot of sense. Uh we were we were fortunate uh going back to Tech Square. We had just sold um the first anthem building. I don't think we had sold the second one yet, but we had sold the first anthem building to Blackstone. Um maybe we were in the process of selling the second anthem, the B B read ended up buying both those buildings. Um and so and so that that relationship which had already kind of been established, it just continued to grow and evolve. And so we were fortunate and they kind of had a view of TechSquare, um, probably not dissimilar to what Kendall Square was. Again, just at the time, the growth was was amazing. And so we're fortunate to have them as a partner uh on this project to start this building in twenty-two, right as interest rates started to run in in May of 22. But it's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Um Tell me about the design a little bit. I've I've heard you all kind of spared no expense on making it's amazing. Yeah. Have you not been in it yet? I have, yeah. I just I was told like the windows were like extra wide. They are extra wide. They're yeah, just I don't know if there's other like little tidbits.

SPEAKER_04 45:13

So um the design architects KPF out of New York. Okay. So they they had done a few projects in Hudson Yards. And um again, this is a little bit, you know, tech was still right, coming going through going through COVID, things slowed down in 20, kind of slow in 21. But if you call, like then there was just this explosion again for a year of tech going crazy, right? And um so we said, okay, Atlanta was still doing very well from that standpoint. We probably we probably at CODA signed Cisco in 21 for 100 and something thousand square feet. So like we were seeing it in real time. So this building being kind of an expansion of Tech Square was we've got to try to mix something that could attract tech, but also your traditional midtown tenant is not, right? It's it's finance or legal professional services. Um and and so we went to KPF and said, okay, yes, let's let's do something really special here. Um at that point in time, Portman architecture really wasn't around anymore. So, you know, but it's still all on our DNA as far as the creation of a product. Um so KPF came and I think I think by the time we had done this building, um the whole industry had moved to we gotta have things feel like a hospitality. I mean, I think it was already there.

SPEAKER_02 46:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:37

Um outdoor space was there, right? We had just had the ability to do it a few times where we started to hone that in a little bit better. And and so um we went KPF on the base building kind of design architect. HKS did all of it architecturally from there. Um but then on the interior, there's a guy named uh Michael Shue, who Michael Shu um has now really become well known. But at the time he was really coming out of, he started with um kind of really high-end homes in Los Angeles and Austin. I think he did a uh, I don't know if you know what a proper hotel is, but a proper, which is amazing. Um and so he's got this style, and so we got him to do our entries. You can pull it up.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

What is a pro I was like, I I know what a hotel is, I just don't know. Proper hotel. Any fancy spelling?

SPEAKER_06 47:30

I mean you can do the one in Austin or Malibu, you'll see some images. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 47:36

So by the way, you see this and you start to see some of our lobbies and you're like, oh yeah, that's a that's a style.

SPEAKER_01 47:41

Yeah. I mean the industry is kind of like you go to Galleria 600 or a lot of Pete.

SPEAKER_04 47:45

I mean, everybody's doing for sure. Everybody I mean, look at like the windows here. If I could show you what that looked like in our building, it's that there's a lot of similarities. But but one of the things that we had done in the past when we were like, okay, we know we know office is moving towards the the hospitality feel.

SPEAKER_02 48:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:03

And and this is not a negative towards anybody we'd worked with in the past, but it it we were trying to go that direction, but it still had a little bit of a corporate feel to it, right? We were moving it to a hospitality, but we weren't-I don't even know if we were ready to go all the way in of like, let's really go hospitality, right? We've obviously got that in our DRNA DNA from a hotel perspective, but there was always still just a little bit of a corporate feel to it. Um so when we did this on the interior, we hired Michael Shu, we said go all in on hospitality. So it does, it feels like a hotel kind of at every level.

SPEAKER_01 48:35

There you go. Okay. So this is uh this is like the administration.

SPEAKER_04 48:38

Yeah. So what's happening here, and again, some of this stuff you kind of make up along the way. Um so uh we have down at the bottom of the building, we had a uh traditional retail space. Um uh and the the loading dock elevator for that retail space because we had to bring one up for them. We brought it up the ground floor, and then we said, you know what, we don't know we don't know what this is gonna be, but to bring the elevator up from the ground floor to the rooftops, not that much more money. Let's just create flexibility because maybe we'd we'd be able, we're creating this unbelievable amenity of a rooftop. Maybe we could create a situation with the right kind of restaurateur partner where we could activate this rooftop and not just be a rooftop that office tenants only get to see. So we brought the elevator up. Um and so then when we signed our restaurant tenant uh um Chef Ito, who was the original chef of Umi, um we went to him and said, Hey, just an idea. Um, would you do an omakase room up here? Because he really, I mean, everybody loves the skyline because you get kind of a lot of trees because you're looking out over Georgia Tech. He's like, let's look at it. I'm like, well, we brought the elevator up, so we kind of figured out somewhat of how we're gonna bring people up here. And so uh kind of right on the backside of this window, he opened a 16-person um omakase kind of chef experience. It's amazing. So it looks different now because they came in and and added some stuff to it. But anyway, so we had created this is part of our mini floor, right? And so we had created this bar that was part of a mini floor that honestly we were like, I mean, maybe this is like a catering bar. This is incredible space for a corporate tenant to have you know a function in and they've got a bar that they can have a caterer at. And then um when when the idea came to put an omakase room, which is right through this door, we said, why don't we why don't you run the bar too? So um, you know, now it becomes this a special location where now the office tenants truly feel like they're in a hotel because they can come down and have a drink. Um we've got access from the ground floor where people aren't gonna have to go through the office building to get up there. It's kind of a reservation system. I kind of cheated a little bit off Jim and what you did at the top of fourth with Moonlight of how they were gonna bring people up and you know keep it reservation based. We all learn off each other, right? It's a great model. So anyway, so that's that's where that's gonna be.

SPEAKER_01 51:07

Well, great. Okay, so Spring Court, y'all landed, EY. That's big. Yeah, yep, there you go. And it's just I mean, it comes up a lot. It's a it's a great building. It's kind of the pinnacle of Midtown right now.

SPEAKER_04 51:20

Yeah, yeah. It's it's it's amazing. So the windows, which you were asking about, um so again, one of the things that uh that KP have done at Hudson Yards was they did 10 foot instead of five foot panes, which you hear it and you're like, it'll make that much of a difference. It makes that much of a difference. It's amazing. So you walk off and you almost and then the spandrel glass is also clear. So when you walk off the elevator today, it will look different when offices get built out of somebody who demise it, but you just have a sheet of glass that's like, you know, ten feet by twelve feet. Yeah. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 51:54

Beautiful view.

SPEAKER_04 51:54

Very unencumbered.

SPEAKER_06 51:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're proud of it. Clean.

SPEAKER_01 51:58

Yeah. Okay. So tell me about junction timeline and comparison. Was it it was similar.

SPEAKER_04 52:05

So uh it was it was similar. So junction, uh, we bought the site on the belt line in 2000, I'm gonna say it was probably like 17 or 18, actually with the idea of doing a hotel there. And uh a little shout out to Fishman, congrats on the congrats, yeah, yeah. I loved it. So we bought this as a hotel site. Um and and I don't know if you call, but really this part of the belt line hadn't even opened yet. It was it was coming, it was gonna be open. But the original stretch of the belt line went from Pimount Park to it stopped just north of here, right? And so this was kind of this first two-mile expansion. Crog Street was there, right, but not what it is now. Um but we thought this was like the neighborhood, I mean, it was a little bit, it was more boutique than even what what Jim ended up doing with Fourth. Um and we said, okay, the neighborhood, this is good for the neighborhood. Um, we were way down the road. I mean, we had we had design and then COVID hit. And so it completely shelf the thought process of doing a hotel there. Um but what happened during that time was the neighborhood had matured. So we looked at it again, just kind of skill set of being able to look at each site through a lens of highest and best use, and we probably got that skill set in the in the shop, right? Hotel, office, residential. Um and so at the time when we were doing the hotel, office really probably wasn't achievable down here because it was just the the neighborhood hadn't matured enough. Well, by the time we're then coming out of out of COVID, and again, back to that window where tech just was exploding, this neighborhood really had matured to the point that we said, we think we can go do office here now. So that was really the impetus of of uh junction was um uh coming kind of kind of the collapse of the ability to do a hotel here and then maturation of a of a neighborhood where we felt really good about doing an office that was very unique and different than what we were doing at spring quarter, right? That tenant base is probably different. Um really, we thought, you know, this neighborhood and these side trails awesome, but even this is even different than a mile up next to Ponce, right? This feels a little bit more neighborhoody. Um uh, you know, the the tenant base here from a retail perspective is a little bit more local, right? Ponce, Ponce has been amazingly successful, but just feels a little bit more commercial now. And so for us, I think that was probably what drove Rivian. I mean, you can ask April what she, you know, what she'd share behind the scenes, but I suspect some of that they show up. I actually remember a lot of them were from Manhattan Beach and California. They showed up and they're like, this feels really cool and good vibes like we have at home. And so I think that was a lot of kind of what attracted there. So um so Rivan's there, they've moved in now to most of the space. Yeah. See if they take more.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

Yep. That's good. They they put a sign, aren't they, on?

SPEAKER_04 55:00

Uh they do have a sign. I don't know the one at the top of the buildings up yet.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

Okay.

unknown 55:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 55:04

Down low they do. Yeah. And again, like, you know, we had this space on the ground floor that we thought was going to be office lobby.

unknown 55:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 55:12

But then during design, I was like, I don't know if we should build that as office lobby yet or not. There was a deal in Houston that was similar size that didn't really have a real lobby. So again, back to vibe, we'd all kind of get ideas and you know think through how we could do it and implement it. So we didn't end up building an office lobby here because we had an entrance and we thought the entrance made work. Maybe maybe that's all we ever needed. And so Rivian's now, you know, taking the ground floor space too, is a little bit. It's not a showroom, but it's showy. Yeah. Yeah. Do they have a car down there? They do have a car down there and a sign. And actually, interestingly, this intersection right here is the is the um busiest pedestrian intersection on the bell line. I have no idea how this is the case, but it actually uh is like twenty thousand people more than wherever they measured around Ponts.

SPEAKER_01 55:59

Well.

SPEAKER_04 56:00

Um, and it's like 2.2 million a year.

SPEAKER_01 56:03

I don't doubt it. I mean, every time I drive over there, it's like you have to wait a while to get the clearing to get it going. But yeah. Um well yeah, fantastic project. Um I'm really curious. So I know y'all uh Brookside, y'all are doing something unique up in Alpha Reddit with Burbs. Um we talked about that. I'm curious like where else you see opportunity. And I know y'all are always poking around for new things.

SPEAKER_04 56:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh uh Brookside is uh is is is for sure uh happening. We'll break around on that on the redevelopment piece of in September. We bought it last year. Um I I think I think where we are now kind of in a in a cycle perspective uh and from a development perspective, which is challenged right now, just given the interest rate market and cost structure of some of these more dense high-rise. Um I mean, look, I I think today to build an office building in town, really, really, it's a thousand bucks a foot. Maybe you can skinny that down a little bit, but yeah, low 90s. Yeah. Yeah. Um and but but like what drives some of this is um I love, I mean, I love all the asset classes, but office is unique because I feel like you get to tap into a cultural aspect because tenants make decisions based off who they're gonna be hiring, so there's a demographic view of it. And so I think one of the things that started to to to you know change is as we were getting into this kind of in you asked about the outdoor space in Charlotte, that was kind of early millennial impact, if you will, of like the workforce, right? But but that impact still exists, and so what you see demographically is okay, if as folks move suburban, they still want kind of what they've got accustomed to from city. So being in a city, so really a lot of our focus today on the mixed use aspect is is things like Brookside. Brookside's unique because there's an office component of it that is getting demoed to create, but really kind of you know, city center-like um projects that have a mix of hopefully office, office and residential and retail. Uh and so Brookside's um 320 units first phase, 350 units first phase. Uh I think we'll end up with about 50,000 feet of retail, and then we're keeping one of the existing office buildings. On the Greenway, it's it's gonna be an awesome, you know, to build off the success that North American had at Avalon. Um and so I think that was eye-opening for the industry as to how you could do things. I think that's a hard thing to replicate, kind of like TechSquare is a hard thing to replicate, but you can get pieces of what that can be done and kind of pull that in. And so that's where a lot of our focus is today are um you know these types of call them suburban, but they're they're really areas that you can create kind of a um an urban edge, if you will, right? Um and so we're active right now in Alpharetta on that deal. Um there's some suburban markets outside of Charlotte that we're looking at. Um uh we've got some stuff working in North Dallas that's uh you know kind of fits that mold. So that's where a lot of our focus is right now on the mixed use aspects. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:13

Yeah, I know Avalon, there's like bidding wars over the last couple of bits of office space. I don't think we're gonna get to that level, but yeah. But they do they do well. There's there's place there, it's it does really well for the office. Um I just yeah, I'm curious. So Brooks side specifically, I can't tell you how many uh office investors and developers have I've talked to that are you know looking at something like a Royal Center where like it's they called it the fried egg, where it's like there's an office building surrounded by an ocean of parking. And to that's actually yeah, yeah, yeah. When I heard that makes a lot of sense. You can't unforget it. But um to to densify and kind of I d I don't know what the the zoning or how the city saw what y'all are.

SPEAKER_04 59:56

Yeah, yeah, it's tough. I mean uh Alpharetta specifically. I mean I think again, going back to one of the things I said before, I think one of the things that we're good at, and not not to say that others aren't, is really good listeners and and and I think we approach kind of all the stakeholders really through a lens of partnership, right? So we spent a lot of time with the city of Alpharetta listening to like what what would you want to see and and where would you want to see that. Um and so I think some of that, and and Alpharetta is tough from an entitlement perspective of multifamily. A lot of these markets are tough from an entitlement perspective of multifamily. Um but it was really a very collaborative approach with the city of, okay, I think we can go create this. This is what you guys would like to see. And and for the city of Alpharetta, it really kind of over it kind of overlaid with what they were trying to do really on all of Brookside Parkway, right? They had selected Brookside Parkway as an area that they needed to lean in to create what is getting created there right now. Yeah. And so, like a lot of things in life, it's a little bit of timing and luck, right? But then I think once we'd had a seat at the table, we were then very thoughtful about how we approached it to kind of get to where we are today. And that's really what we're doing kind of in all these cities as we're going to them. Um it's it's interesting. A lot of these um, you know, suburban, not just in Atlanta, really everywhere, a lot of these cities are now thinking in the same fashion of it took time, I think, um, coming out of COVID. I don't know that this was a loss of tax basis from office valuations maybe going down. But I think uh finally we're starting to see a lot of cities say, okay, what we've always had, we may not always have on a go forward perspective. Let's go figure out kind of how we continue to attract and retain people to be here as these office buildings that are the eggs. Yep. That's all they become otherwise, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:50

There's obsolete, undesirable, yeah, and then desirable. And I they're yeah, I wouldn't say they're obsolete. They're yeah, they're not too old, but it's just you're you might have like a grab and go, you might have like a little gym, but there's not a ton of unique features to a commodity office. So it's exciting. So breaking down that's September of this year. Yeah, breaking down September this year. Okay. Yep. Very cool. Any any other projects you can share about kind of in the early on?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:17

Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:22

Let me think about that. We've got a lot going on this year.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:24

Um I think so. This year, I'll just I'll just run through what I think we're gonna what we'll what we'll start this year. Um we should start, you know, part of our business is is somewhat unique in that it's uh convention center hotels. So again, that just goes back to a little bit of the DNA of of Portman. And those those typically are very true public-private deals in the sense of you know how you think about a public-private deal with public money.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:49

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:50

Like Insignia downtown or Savannah Convention Center. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Similar, right? Um uh we we own a Hyatt in Salt Lake City, the Weston in Charlotte, which the family owns was a public-private deal. I mean, this is back 20, 25 years ago. Um we should start uh next month on a new Commission Center Hotel in in Cincinnati. Um that's a a a big project, a great project. We're excited to get that. It's been a great partnership with the city. Um uh Brookside September. We've got a uh apartment deal in Pompano Beach, Florida that will start in September. Uh Amsterdam Walk is is the one that is going on there? Yeah, yeah. So we um obviously got through zoning. Well uh again, Mike Green in our office who really kind of heads up our mixed use.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:40

Let me bring it up. I know y'all y'all came out with some renderings. I know the neighborhoods had their own opinion and none of these renderings are real yet.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:52

Okay. Um Urbanize caused you controversy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:58

But that's that's an amazing project. Amazing project. So this is this is a fine rendering from what we were doing from a zoning perspective. Okay. So um Mike really led that. Mike's led a lot of it. He's led Alpharada. Mike is an incredible listener. Um if you haven't met Mike, you should. Uh so Mike, I mean this was probably a two-year process, right? Of of really I mean, I can't tell you how many neighborhood meetings he went to. He was sitting in people's living rooms, you know, listening to to their thoughts on it. Yeah. Um it was controversial, for sure. Yeah. Um I would say lots of times zoning is controversial. Um I think some of the controversy here, interestingly, and there was some I mean, there were some legitimate concerns. I think lots of times what happens in zoning is some people form opinions based on information that comes out that may not be accurate information. And so some of the controversy is probably through a lens of misinformation. And I don't know that there's intention on that. As an example, one of the things, by the way, I live in this neighborhood, so I was like sitting quiet the whole time. Um but but one of the things as an example was on one of the neighborhood meetings and it was all done on Zoom, one of the neighbors said something about that as a part of this development, there was we were going to build a road that cut through Piedmont Park. And I was texting Mike and I'm like, what what what are we doing? And he's like, that's not true, man. I don't know where even where this came up from. So you had Yeah. So you had some level of of um people being against it based off of what they thought they knew. Yeah right. That may have just been inaccurate. Anyways, um This is going to be incredible for the city. I mean, this asset and and kind of what we're doing. Yeah, yeah. Um you know, the ability to go and create, you know, call it on ten acres, uh, give or take, um, on the belt line. Next to Piedmont Park and really kind of create this community village that that just doesn't exist right now. For us, Local Luna was there. For what I mean, fast forward a few years and we're sitting here again and you're asking what's what's uh something of pride. This is going to be something of a of immense pride, right? Of what gets created, um, just from an ability, as Jim has, you know, down around ponts and forth of like really having a direct impact kind of on the immediate neighborhood. Um what's what's timing? Yeah. So we should uh so we're designing it now. We haven't released any image images. It's at this point really just residential and retail. Um uh we will start this early next year. So uh active design right now, uh which again, nothing's been released on the design aspect of it. That's real. That was that was zoning stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:57

Um if you need a place to show it off, we can special. Throw it in here.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:02

Yeah, yeah. You want to break the news a little bit? Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. Um so anyway, so so we're doing that. Uh we're doing that at the start of next year. Again, stakeholders, partnerships, we've addressed all this. I mean, I think you know, one of the things that we did in connection with the city is making sure that we were looking at the right amount of and how to create real affordability as a part of this project. Um, not just on the residential side, which is what everybody knows affordability as, but one of the things the city asked us to do, which nobody's ever done before. We're kind of figuring this out along the way, too, is create a section of our commercial space, which again a commercial being mostly retail, which is affordable as well. Um, with the real intent of that, of of trying to create like space that call it a maker space, right? Where they can, they don't get priced out from having sixty or seventy dollar rents or now Crogs at$100, where you could really make sure that you had community space. And so that that got built in. So this was a very long, not just rezoning, but collaboration um with Halpern who owns it, with the city, right, from their stakeholder view of what we needed to do in order to get all this through. Um, and it's gonna be amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:15

Very excited. Very excited. Yeah. Uh we moved nearby not too long ago. So this is this is uh we'll be benefiting benefactor. So thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:25

And probably no office here. At one point early, we we we we had some office planned. I think one of the things that got squeezed down. This would be a unique. It would be a unique. Yeah, yeah, it would be. One of the things that got squeezed down uh through our zoning approval was height. And so we we we had some we we previously had some areas on the site could go a little bit taller, and those, you know, we we didn't get that through the zoning, which is okay. Uh and so that really kind of took out the the thought of having office just because you end up with a little bit of a shorter structure. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:55

I feel like these little pockets do well for like a local architecture firm or kind of like more boutique kind of users.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:03

Yeah, it's gonna be amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:04

Well, Travis, thanks, thanks for coming on, man. Uh thank you for all the projects y'all are working on and impact you're having on the city. And the sunbelt. So good. Um I guess we'll we'll have to have you on, or maybe we come tour one of these projects that you get building out. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:17

Come see, let's do it a spring quarter.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:19

Sounds good.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:20

Good.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:20

Um, all right, y'all. Well, thanks for listening. Yeah. Thanks for listening to another episode of Sunbelt Developers. Uh, we've got probably another eight or nine episodes coming in this season. Um, thank you again to our sponsors. And uh as always, if you need commercial office space in Atlanta, give me a call or anybody at Cushman. Um, we're here to help you. So thanks again.