SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to the Sunbelt Developers Podcast. I'm joined today by Matt Bronfman, CEO of Jamestown. Really excited to have you, Matt. It's uh it's gonna be a great conversation. We're gonna cover a lot. We're gonna talk about Pond City Market, Chelsea Market, uh Jamestown's success um beyond the Sunbelt. We were kind of laughing earlier. Uh y'all are way beyond you're going internationally, do a lot in Europe now, and uh we can dig into that. And um some recent news waves has been around this NHL deal up in Alpharetta. Uh we'd love to get into that and hear kind of where that that project's at. So um, Matt, uh yeah, thanks, thanks for coming.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Thank you for doing this. I love what you're doing. I love your format, and it's a real honor and pleasure to be here today.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Yeah, man. Um can you just give us kind of your background? Like where'd you grow up and uh where'd you like what did you study and where did you go to school and all that?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

I grew up in Kansas City, great place to grow up, wonderful, wonderful city. Um I always sort of thought I'd end up in the back in the Midwest. I ended up at Northwestern Law School. I always sort of planned to go to law school because I was a very competitive debater in high school, and so if you compete on a state and national level in debate, everyone thinks you go to law school. So from the time I was probably about 16, it was always like I'm gonna go to law school. So I went to Northwestern in Chicago, figured I'd come back to the Midwest, but shortly after graduating law school, I met my now wife, and she grew up in Atlanta. And that's how I ended up here. We moved here a little over about 34 years, a little over about 32, 33 years ago. Okay, so early 90s. Early 90s before 94. I moved here in about 1994. Very cool. Okay, what were you you were still studying around that? I was I graduated from Northwestern. I clerked for a federal judge after law school, and I took a job at a law firm. It's funny how things pivot. I took a job as a law clerk because I thought in law school, again, I was a serious debater in high school, I thought I wanted to be a litigator and argue cases. And so if you want to argue cases, you if you can, you take a clerkship. So I took a clerkship, and what I determined from the clerkship is I wanted nothing to do with litigation. I found it tedious, boring, silly. And so I pivoted coming out of my clerkship and moving to Atlanta, that I do not want to be a litigator. I do not want to be a trial lawyer. Um, I want to be, therefore, a transactional lawyer. And then I became a transactional lawyer, which I actually liked a lot. Some people who end up on the business side from the law or different fields sort of hate what they're doing and they're running from it. I did not. I enjoyed the law, but I had what I thought was a more interesting opportunity to join a small company called Jamestown at the beginning of 1998. So my story is really go to law school to be a litigator, take a clerkship to become a litigator, decide I don't want to be a litigator, go into the business side of law, and then decide, you know what, the business side is actually more interesting. So it was a series of sort of fortuitous circumstances, and I really mean this. I've been incredibly fortunate from getting a clerkship that allowed me to determine I didn't want to do that to going to work for a law firm where I was focused on business. And then I was working for a relatively mid-sized small company, Jamestown, and I got to know them just fortuitously. They were a client of the firm, asked me to join them. I told my wife at the beginning in 1998, this is more interesting work. I'm I really want to do it, but real estate is very cyclical, and I may end up only there, you know, two to four years, you never know, but I really want to do it. And I was doing well at my law firm and I enjoyed it. And she said to me, Don't do it. Stay at the law firm.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 4:10

I was able to convince her otherwise because we make decisions jointly. And so, you know, now whenever we disagree, I can say, Well, you told me not to go to Jamestown.

SPEAKER_04 4:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

And so I try to leverage that whenever I can. It doesn't usually work. But in theory, it it's helpful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

Um tell me, like, what was Jamestown at that time? Like how many employees and assets under management, if you remember?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

A couple billion dollars. I mean, we were decent, maybe not that big. We we did primarily, yeah, I did I don't want to say how big we were because I don't remember, but we primarily did a lot of Walmart in the Southeast and power centers.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

So we would somebody would build a power center with a sports authority, you know, a Best Buy, that sort of thing, and we would buy it and operate it. And our business model was Jamestown was founded raising money from a German retail distribution system. And that what that means is basically dentists in Dusseldorf. And, you know, we're we've we're on, we're starting here in the next couple of months, Jamestown 33, and we're not very original in our naming. It'll be our 33rd fund, and I've been at the company 28 years. And so we do about a fund every year or two. And people here, we you know, we've raised funds with four or five hundred million in a year, and people think, oh, you probably have some really big institutions, and we do have big institutional relationships, but the German fund series that is now on Fund 33 is really what I call a retail distribution system, meaning it's a dentist in Dusseldorf. It's people who, and you have to understand Germans like real estate a lot. Um, Americans to Americans are more stock market focused to stereotype here. An average American who has excess cash will buy an index fund. The average German, either from the experience of the wars, they don't like intangible assets as much. They like real real estate. So the average German who's you let's say you go to your advisor in Germany and you start talking about real estate and tax advantage investments, and back then wanting to diversify out of the then Deutsche Mark, um you would think about, and remember, this is before the Euro, and so you would worry about I want to diversify, I want to have some money in dollars, we would be the most recommended product for that dentist in Dusseldorf. And so we've just built up a strong history, but a lot of the early days were basically very conservative, buy and operate a power center, a Walmart, that sort of thing. Wow. When did you all get started? The company traces back about 40 years.

SPEAKER_03 7:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Okay, primarily retail. And did they start in Germany or was it always in Germany, started by my still good friend Christoph Kahl, who had this notion, this is before the fall of the wall in the 80s. Germans should want to diversify. The Soviets were literally at the wall. The Deutschmar the Deutsche Mark could be challenged at times, and German business people, again, the dentists in Düsseldorf, should have a certain amount of their money diversified in real estate outside of Germany, outside of Europe. Got it. And so that was the original premise. There were some tax advantages to it as well. But it was really about diversifying out of the then Deutsche Mark, and that was the origin story of Jamestown. And we've grown. You know, when you have a successful track record, you will be launching our 33rd fund. It's based on a track record, transparent communication with our investors, and you know, doing what we say we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_03 8:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

That's amazing. I was with a guy yesterday, they were on their seventh fund. So just say 33. Not many people on their 33rd fund. No. Um okay, so uh uh with this is the last question I'll ask about kind of background of Jamestown.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Did they just send over some kind of German pioneers to scope out America's real estate market or Christoph um really when he founded the business, his he put together a very small team in the US and he would fly back and forth all the time. And so, but as the company started to grow, and that's really when I joined the company in '98, that we saw opportunities to grow, and that's when I joined. And then around that time, we intentionally sort of took a position that we thought some of the best opportunities were going to be in gateway markets. We had a view that New York was supply constrained, that um there was great demographic headwinds, tough zone. I I'm a real believer in stringent zoning. That makes me maybe not a very popular Sunbelt developer. Yeah. Because sunbelt developers tend to love very loose regulation, but I'm a believer in tough zoning. And as an owner of real estate, I think you want tough zoning often because you want to know what your competition is, you want to know what supply is coming, and you want predictability. It's funny because sort of the antithesis of that you might see is Houston. And Houston sort of prides itself on they have no zoning. And I always have joked: who wants to live in a place without any zoning? Who wants to build their dream home and find out you're right next door to a 7-Eleven or an office building or a strip club? And so I am actually a fan of zoning. I'm a fan of supply-constrained markets. And so when I look around a lot of Sunbelt Cities and I see a lot of parking fields, I see competition and I see fee, you know, and I see fields in general. Some of the early Jamestown deals that I inherited when I joined the company in 1998, where we owned a bunch of Walmarts. And what we found is Walmart was a great tenant in a lot of ways because they created an ecosystem where people wanted to be next door to them. But what we also found is Walmart would call you halfway into a lease and say, hey, we want a bigger store. And we would say, Well, I don't know if we can really accommodate because we have tenants next to you and it's really hard to do. And besides, you still have seven years on your lease, but this is something we can discuss. And Walmart would more or less say, You see that field across the street? We've put it under option. And you either address this now or we're going to leave. Wow. And so that made me very suspicious of building without supply constraints, mark without supply constraints, and without, you know, uh, you know, a lot of regulation. So that was one of the first things that made me think I like the um demographics and that I think is coming in places like New York, Boston, San Francisco, but I also like that it's supply constrained. Yeah. That if I own an office building, I know what else is around me, and I can feel very comfortable that Walmart is not going to just build something right next door to me. Wow. And so that's what took us. It was that sort of mentality that took us strongly in the early in the late 90s and 2000s into more gateway markets. And we really assembled a blue chip portfolio of office and retail in maj in the major cities.

SPEAKER_03 11:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

That's such a contrarian take, like the constrained zoning.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

That's why I said I'm I'm it's uh I'm speaking on a Sunbelt developer d dialogue. In some ways, I'm not a real Sunbelt developer.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

Yeah, but I mean it's it's really in a way kind of a brilliant perspective on it. Because you're you're seeing there's a lot more predictability to your I like predictability.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

I'm not uh You know, I have this sort of view that developers I think often take outsized risk. And I appreciate that sort of gunslinger mentality, but at heart I don't consider myself a developer. I see myself as a curator, an operator, somebody who likes to improve ecosystems, improve cash flows. And this is true whether I'm buying an existing grocery anchored center or I'm massively repositioning Ponce City Market, or even buying an office building, that I have a view that I can make the ground floor better, I can make it more active, more engaging. And look, we've done plenty of development, but I don't consider being a developer my day job.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

Yeah. It's so funny just hearing you talk about not taking risks and like all I'm thinking about is ponts and just the Ponce was a big risk.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

But remember, at Ponce, we also inherited 16 acres, we bought 16 acres on 2 million square with 2 million square feet. And yes, there was risk. We had to spend a lot of money repositioning it. Yeah. But my take on Ponce was and is Atlanta's a market for whether you're talking live, work, play, it most of it tends to be what I would call rather commodity buildings. And I have a view over the last 15, 20 years that people don't want to work in their grandfather or grandmother's office building. And people don't necessarily want to shop the way their grandfather or grandmother shopped. And so if you look around Atlanta Market, most of it is glass towers on or near Peachtree Street and shopping malls. Yeah. Oh yeah, John Portman and Tom Cousins and those the beautiful kind of things. They did a lot of great things. They built Atlanta, and I have a ton of respect for it. But I had a view that the tr you know, that sort of suburban office building with no amenities around you, or even a traditional glass tower, or even some of the big malls, were a little boring. And it wasn't what the next generation wanted. They wanted something more authentic, more engaging, and they wanted to feel more stickiness to it. And so that was sort of in the early 2000s in New York, we did uh a number of traditional office buildings. But what I found was a tenant would tell you and this is true anywhere, um Sam, um a tenant would say to you, I really love the way you're managing that office building. It's clean, it's great. But I'm moving across the street because I can say 50 cents a square foot. It's a commodity. It's in effect. And this is true of the res multifamily. Most multifamily is a commodity. Um you may be on the other, you know, ones on this side of the street, ones on that side of the street, that you know, but they're all sort of interchangeable. You're simply competing on price if you're honest with yourself. Most buildings are most office retail, residential are what I would call commodities. And we found this in New York. Somebody would say, Oh, I love the way you manage that building. It's clean. Um I uh the elevators work well. Yeah. But I'm gonna save a dollar a square foot and I lease a hundred thousand square feet, and saving a hundred thousand dollars is real money.

SPEAKER_03 15:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

And so that got me thinking a lot. What can you do to have a more sticky tenant base? What can you do to create something that people want to be a part of? That people feel they're really in that, you know, like medical office, I think, is a area that does this pretty well. That your doctor comes to a opens up at a location, his or her patients know that's where they office, they come there, and that doctor is probably not leaving for the balance of their career. And that's if you're a landlord, that's a really valuable good thing. You can raise the rents, not astronomically, but within reason, you can raise the rents and they're not leaving. Conversely, an accounting firm or something, they'll move across the street. The vis the visitor experience, the sticky, it's just less a factor. The cost to retenant. And the cost to retenant. So I started thinking, and this is what led me to Chelsea Market in New York, that I started thinking, what can you do that isn't commodity? What can you do to have a unique experience? And that led me to Chelsea Market in rough in you know the mid to mid 2000s on the theory that here's a building that has unique culture, perspective, and you've got 20 restaurants on the ground floor. And yes, somebody who walks through Chelsea Market sees a food hall, but what Chelsea Market really is, is roughly you know, 900,000 square feet of office on top of a hundred thousand square foot food hall. And that that's what first got me sort of thinking about what you can do to create something unique that will cause tenants to stay there that I think was really proven true. We then bought other buildings in the meatpacking district, 111th, the milk building. And at one point in about 2012 or 13, Google won Google decided they were gonna buy one of our buildings called 111th Avenue. And um at that time, 111th Avenue had some vacant square footage that was very similar in size to how much space Google was leasing at Chelsea Market. And so I was always sort of thinking to myself, at some point in this negotiation, Google's gonna come to me and say, hey, the final point about buying 111. And I expected it. That was gonna be part of the deal. And at so at some point, I just decided to ask them, what's your plan for Chelsea Market? And they said to me, What do you mean what's my plan for Chelsea Market? And I said, Well, you've got vacant space in a building you're buying. Are you gonna move out of Chelsea Market? And he looked at me almost offended and said, We're not moving out of Chelsea Market. It's part of our brand. The people who office at Chelsea Market love officing at Chelsea Market. I'd have almost a revolt on some of my most senior engineers and talent if we ever moved out of Chelsea Market. And so I sort of thought that's about as good as it gets as a landlord. You don't see that level of stickiness. And so that's ever, you know, that's when I really started thinking about how do you create great community-focused assets that people want to go to, that people feel almost some ownership in, that they're proud this is where I work. And it isn't just a commodity experience. And so that was what I started to experience at Chelsea Market. And, you know, you could throw in, we're the biggest landlord for a long time in Georgetown in DC, Newberry Street in Boston, um, Union Square in San Francisco. We really started to focus on these unique curated assets that we felt would more likely stand the test of time. That even in a weak market, people are gonna say, that's where I want to be. And I think that's been one of our secret sauces is office the office space leasing market is challenged right now. Everywhere in the country, office is challenged, and I'm jumping around in time, of course. That's right. But um the assets we have are still outperforming the market. Again, office is challenging, full stop, but the assets we own are really unique. And that causes tenants, I think, to want to be there. Because if you're an office tenant today and you want to get your people back to work, one of the most important things you can do is be part of a unique place where people want to come. If you have some boring commodity office building off the freeway, it's really hard to convince your employees to come back to work. If you're officing at Pond City Market, Chelsea Market, Raleigh Ironworks in Raleigh, and you know, some of our other unique assets, people, your employee base is more likely to be say, well, that's a cool place to come. Yeah. I'm not gonna fight as hard about coming back to the office. Yeah, there's an experience they can. There's the experience. And I joke, I only have joke, we're in what I call the surprise and delight business.

SPEAKER_03 20:38

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

We're not in the commodity business. If you want to get people to work, and we were early on this and uh avoiding commodity buildings, you need to provide a surprise and delight factor. You need to have an office where somebody says, I like going there. It's pretty interesting. I was surprised by what's there. It's pretty cool. I like bringing a family member to see where I work because it's not just some sad, you know, box in the trees. It's a pretty cool place to go. I'm proud to bring my kids there. I'm proud for my parents to come there. And that's really where we've focused over the last 25 years.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

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 development. A couple projects that you might know here in Atlanta is the Hyatt Centric right behind Linux Mall. It's also the Howl, 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 Sanji Highway. Again, that's SanjiHighroads.com. Now back to the show. Where do you think that adaptive reuse conversation's at today? Like my my thought is people that own these old dilapidated factories, either they've had a a bunch of developers come to them, you know, with some sort of plans, and maybe it's way more they they have a price in their mind that's way above where it maybe it should be. Like I feel like Ponce worked because y'all were able to get it for pretty attractive bases.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Yes. I mean, there's a problem right now that adaptive reuse has become a little too hip and cool, and I think people are paying up for it. And you've got to buy right because you still want your bases to be good. Like at Ponce, people often point out, as you did, we bought ponds for call it $15 million, 2 million square feet, 16 acres, really cheap. On the other hand, we did spend $300 million repositioning it. So we took a lot of risk. And but so certainly buying right is important. The other thing I say about adaptive reuse, I think people often make a mistake in thinking they can buy an old cool one or two-story building and create something really great with restaurants and curated food and food halls. And one of my other theories is people call me a lot, brokers, friends, and say, I want you to look at this property. I think it would make for a great food hall, or I think it's already a good food hall or a good curated retail district. I think Jamestown could make it better. And I often say, What else do you own? What's on top of it? What else do you own in the neighborhood? And they'll say, Well, nothing. I own one to two-story food hall in restaurants. And my usual refrain is, I worry you may have a really good hobby. And I'm not so sure that's a profitable plan. Because go back to Chelsea Market. Chelsea Market is a hundred thousand square foot food hall, roughly, a hundred thousand square foot of food hall retail ground plane with like a nine to one ratio with about 900,000 square feet on top of it. And I'm convinced I can drive higher rents in the office because you're part of the experience. And we need to be, again, surprise and delight. And if all you have is one to two stories of food and you're doing a good job on your food, you're bringing in new interesting chefs, you're letting the bookstore stay, even though they can't pay good rent, even though they don't have great credit, you better make it up upstairs. And you better have enough upstairs to be able to make it up. So I think one of the other mistakes people make in adaptive reuse is thinking I'm going to do this great food hall, great retail experience. And then at some point they realize I don't have enough upstairs. I'm not, I don't have enough rent-paying tenants to justify how hard I'm working on the ground floor. And I think this is true around the country of people who are trying to make it work with one to two-story buildings by doing great retail experience and they don't have enough density. Now, I'm a big fan of grocery anchored, but grocery anchored is something totally different. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

It serves a way different purpose.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

It's way different purpose. It's net necessity, utility retail, and it's just a different business model. Right. Um, but when it comes to really great curated food halls, curated retail experiences, I think you need to have enough upstairs to justify that the ground plane. You know, we if I'm honest, Chelsea Market, the ground plane, made money some years, probably didn't make much money in other years, if any money. But that was okay.

SPEAKER_03 25:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Because I knew that Google was telling me I'm never leaving. This is my favorite office environment in the entire country. I get demand, and this is true in COVID. Google asked their people, where do you want to be? And they thought they were going to get a lot of responses about Mountain View because it's a pretty campus, it's their main headquarters. And what employees overall overwhelmingly said is if I could be anywhere, let me go to Chelsea Market. Wow. There you go. So they'll they'll be there. Didn't y'all did y'all see it? We sold it to Google. Yeah, yeah. Um we still manage and leased it for them. Um we have a great relationship with Google, but candidly, in some ways I joke, we were better negotiators with Google than we ever intended to be because we wanted to I've never been a fan of what you might call single tenant risk. And I love Google being a Chelsea market, but I never really wanted it simply to be the Google building. I wanted to stagger my roles, I wanted to have other tenants, uh I did not want it to be this is a hundred percent a Google building with an expiration in 2025. And that's what companies like Google want. They would much and so at some point, as I pushed back on Google having all their roles co-terminous and being the biggest tenant, and we were pushing back, and at some point Google, which is a great company, was basically like, yeah, why don't we just buy it? If you're gonna if you're gonna be putting up these obstacles to uh what we want to do, why don't we just buy it? And the old joke, everyone has a price, Google named ours. But we have a great relationship, great friendship. Yeah, it kept you around to and we do other work with Google too. And they what I one of the many things I love about Google is they understand the importance of placemaking in community, they want their assets to be places where their employees want to be, and they have a commitment to the communities in which they are active. They keep track of do we have diverse restaurants, do we have a diverse workforce? Um, do our employees like being here? Do they congregate in the restaurants or do people just get to their desk, eat at their desk, and leave? That's not what Google wants. They believe in the benefit of community. So that has Google has been a great partnership now going on, you know, 15, 20 years, because I think we look at the world similarly, the benefits of being in person and the benefits of being part of a great district.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

That's awesome. Well, congrats on Chelsea Market. I'm I've been there, it's it's a very special place. And um so I wanted to ask you Potts, y'all just wrapped up this kind of phase two here. You got Scout Living, is that right? Um, and then obviously Sage was a a slam dunk deal. Shout out to Travis and Addison in our office. That was a Cushman deal. And I I've seen the build out. I've heard the build out was incredibly elaborate and expensive and beautiful. But um is there a phase three to Ponce that's coming?

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Not not anytime soon. Um but we're we've we're excited. Um there's few things, maybe nothing at Jamestown I'm more proud of. To do something like Ponce requires someone to sort of say, I believe, yeah, at a senior level. And Ponce was sort of my baby. I've lived in in town Atlanta for my entire 30 plus years here. I've driven driven by the building. I'd been to the building when it was the old City Hall East, and I had a view that the neighborhoods around Ponce had gotten better between Inman Park, Virginia Highlands, Old Fourth Ward, and that the building had sort of become the blight on the neighborhood. I believed in the potential of the belt line, even though there really was no belt line per se back then. But because of Chelsea Market, I was very involved when the Highline was formed. The Highline abuts Chelsea Market, and I was super involved in the beginning of the Highline back when a lot of landlords in New York were like, What's this stupid Rails to Trails program? And back then I believed in it, but I saw it in action. So I was very, you know, a lot of my story is being right place, right time. I've been very lucky. And one of the play one of the many ways I was lucky is I did Chelsea Market, I knew about the old Sears building, and I knew Mayor Reed at the time, and I basically cold called him and said, You own this great building, it's not on the tax rolls, the carry on it for the government is probably a couple hundred thousand dollars a year of just security, heating, cooling, etc. You're a big fan of the belt line, but you if we're honest, you don't have any jobs on the belt line. You need a main and main if the belt line's going to be successful. And we know how to do this. Can I take you to New York and show you Chelsea Market and tell you what we want to do? And that was the origin story of Pont City Market. And um again, I I believe in non-commodity real estate. I believe that Atlantans were looking for new ways to live, work, and play, and that we could create something really special. And was there anybody else chomping at the bit for ponds?

SPEAKER_02 31:26

Or not too much.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

There were other people who were looking at it who had it under contract, but then the Great Recession happened and it kind of fell apart. So I really did a hard press to get it. And we couldn't the the city was a wonderful partner, Mayor Reed and the entire city team, because they quickly understood that this was an early public-private partnership. And they were really great. Um we needed to get historic tax credits. Yeah. And when we first pursued historic tax credits, we got rejected. And we got rejected for funny reasons. The people who run the historic tax credits are very, uh, they're almost zealous, zealous in what matters to them. And so people, you know, if you think about it, why is our front door not ponds? Why is our front door North Avenue? And some of that was historic tax credits. We wanted to put big awnings on ponts. We wanted to double or triple the sidewalk size on ponds to make it ponce more inviting. And what we were told by us, that was one of the many, maybe 15-20 reasons we got rejected. So they wanted us to they wanted to look at the basically like what did the building look like in the 1920s? Were there wide sidewalks in the 1920s? No. Were there awnings in the 1920s? No. Wow. And so that's when we pivoted more towards making North Avenue our main entrance. And ultimately we got a successful compromise with the um uh the the Parks Department, which administers the tax credits. But the mayor and the city couldn't have been more helpful. They went to DC with us, they lobbied with us to strike a compromise, and it was all good at the end of the day, but we couldn't have had a better partner in this in the city and its administration to get this deal over the finish line. They saw that it was important to make this happen. And we got, again, we got very fortunate. The tech market, you know, we come out of the ground and very special time. Very special time. And these tech companies who came and started looking, they bought our vision. I joke, one of the maybe the best office tenant to our I'll ever have, I don't mind saying it, it was with Athena Healthcare. I was gonna bring this one up. They were our first tenant, and this is a true story. Um, they wanted to have a headquarters in the South. They were they're a tech healthcare company. They were looking at properties from Alpharetta to Buckhead to Midtown, and the CEO of the company turned to his broker and basically said, none of, and they were in an old munitions factory in Cambridge outside uh Boston and said to his broker, none of this real estate's very interesting. Do you have anything more like where we office? And his broker said, Well, there's this one project that's coming out of the ground called Ponce. I don't think it's in a very good neighborhood. I don't think it's very safe, and I don't think you'd want to be there. But if you want, I'll take you there, especially if we can do it during the daylight. And um so they call me, and I travel a lot, but I happen good news, good luck, I was in town, and I went down there and meet them, and we have to put on hard hats, and we're walking around, and it's total chaos. And but to the Athena team's credit, they saw it. They saw the hundred-year-old floors, the crank open windows, the old school electrical boxes. And in front of me during the tour, the CEO turns to his group of advisors and says, I can't believe you made me look at all this shit over the last couple of days. I'm only coming to Atlanta if I can office at Pond City Market. And I'm just like, can we just like memorialize this moment? This is the greatest moment. This is the greatest moment in office leasing history I personally will ever have. When a tenant says, the only way I'm coming to Atlanta is if I um can office in this building. This is unique, this is culture, this is curated, this is to use my terminology, surprise and delight. Yeah, this is what we want to be a part of.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

And it was Phil Berry, wasn't that the tenant rep broker? It was his team. Yeah, I worked with Rick Nash at Davison Young, and I remember hearing this story. The the one detail that I I don't maybe you've heard this as well, but that original committee, they I think they went to Ponce at another time and wouldn't get out of the car. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 36:20

And so, anyways, when the team tell that story because it makes people sound you know a little bad in some ways, but I mean they drove to Ponce and kept their doors locked and were not willing to exit the car. Yeah, yeah. And so that's just that's it was a really it's a really cool story. But it speaks to a moment in time. And yeah, older people, and I'm an older person now, but I don't think older people got it. And it this the leadership at a Athena, this healthcare tech company was young. CEO, he's he's visionary, he's thinking ahead. He was thinking ahead, and he was like, this is and I'll never forget this. He was still getting pushback from some of they had a couple employees in Atlanta already who were based in Alpharetta, and they were telling him it was a mistake. And don't go any farther south than Buckhead. Do not go to this unsafe location. And to the credit of the CEO of Athena Healthcare, I get a call from the broker from Phil and his team, and they say, okay, Jonathan, the CEO, he's totally committed, but he here's what he wants to do to either validate what you're telling him and what he thinks, or that uh you and he are wrong. He said they won't they like to hire young engineers from Georgia Tech, and that is their target audience. And he said, we are going to, he said, we've been tasked with hiring a group to do a focus group of Georgia Tech computer science majors between the ages of 21 and 25. And we're going to ask them, would you rather be in Buckhead or at this Pont City Market project? And I said, Thank you very much. I've won. And he said, Why do you think that? And I said, Oh, I know I've won. That's a that's my demographic. You didn't say we're gonna quiz 40 somethings in Alpharetta. You're taking the pulse of 20 somethings who live in midtown area. Yeah, they know this is the next thing. I know that I'm going to win this. That's so funny.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

Like you're toast the deal. Wow. And that was what, like 80,000 feet or something? Yeah. That was a pretty pretty good deal. Um well, it's amazing. And I I just I always love kind of recapping this story and success of Ponce. And now we're on phase two.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, we've had a lot of success. One of the amazing things, we used to worry at Ponce whether we had enough parking. And what we've learned, one of the coolest things that I'm most proud of at Ponce is we believe we're the number two Uber destination after the airport per Uber. Wow. Roughly 23% of our people don't drive and park at Ponce. Meaning they may bike or scooter on the belt line, they may Uber to Ponce, they may, you know, they may car you know who knows. But they do not drive and park in our parking deck. And that allowed us to do phase two, because without it, if we needed when one of the cool things that's happened at Ponce is office tenants show up and they give the traditional, I need three spaces per thousand, or whatever the number, whatever number you want to use for office tenants. And we say, we don't think you're gonna need that many, and they say, Well, that's what I need. And we say, Okay, we'll sell you the parking spaces. And almost inevitably, in almost every tenant case, and this is true of retailers too and their sales force, within 12 months, they call us and say, Yeah, we don't need that many parking spaces. Turns out our employees, our staff, our visitors, they're walking, they're scootering, they chose to buy a place, including older people. Like we have a Kona is a tenant, the Coca-Cola company just opened up. And what they told me is they're amazed the number of their senior people who either moved in town, their kids had gotten older, and they didn't need the big house, so they're like, I'll buy a town home on the belt line, or people who still kept their home out in the suburbs but decided to buy a one-bedroom condo on the belt line to make it just as something fun because they were having so much fun coming to work there, they're like, why not keep a place here?

SPEAKER_00 40:48

That's pretty cool. Cool, man.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

And so we did phase two, we had the parking, and we've done a f we did a on the bottom corner, you see that scout. Uh I'm sorry, that's 619 ponts. That's a timber-built building. And we did timber because we take sustainability seriously. We also think it's prettier with better window lines, we think it smells better, and we just think it's super cool, this building that is all timber. And it's a special type of timber that is fire retardant, that's specially uh made this way, but it's fantastic. And we have fully leased that office building at a time where it's tough to lease office. Right next to it, you see going up there, that is now what we call scout living, which we're incredibly excited about. Traditionally, there was sort of a dichotomy. You either rented an apartment for one year or you got a hotel room for call it one to three nights by and large. And what Scout is trying to do, and it can be a one-year solution, it can be a one to three nights solution, but it's meant to be something in the middle, because we think that traditional dichotomy is sort of evaporating a little bit. And so what it is, these are for by and large, super efficient 400 square foot one bedrooms that are fully furnished with flatware, glasses, small European-style refrigerator, two burner stove, a combined washer and dryer. You can either wash or dry your clothes at the same time. You can't do both. It's one unit. And we have a cool little table that can be both a coffee table, you can crank it up to be a desk, or you can crank it up more to be a cutting board in your kitchen. Very functional a little bit. Very functional. If you have some, great. I'm just gonna do a little Google. So what we have found is Scout uh is doing really well with a lot of different demographics. It's really popular with some some including people who want to be here only for a few nights, but it's also really popular with somebody. Yep. Kind of like that's the that's the table that goes up and down. That's the that's the living room. Yeah. And so you can see that table goes down and you can put it in front of your sofa. You can crank it down to be in front of your chair. You can put it there uh as a more of a standing desk, and there's a kitchen right next to it. It's all and but then there is a separate bedroom. Again, it comes with um flatware and everything you need. And it's doing really well with you could be coming here to work on a movie for six weeks. It really is doing well with that demographic, though the movie industry is slow right now. Does well with a McKenzie consultant here for a period of time who doesn't want to be in a traditional hotel, wants to feel more a part of an environment like Ponce. Doing well with a digital nomad who can work anywhere. And we have office, we have some co-working space in the building. Um, for them. It's doing interestingly well with like a grandparent who has a grandkid born in town, and the house isn't the Virginia Highlands Inman Park home isn't big enough for them. And so they have this on a flexible basis. They don't know how long they want to be here, how long they're gonna be welcomed here. Um, but they come here and they can, you know, be at the grandkids' house in 10 minutes. Yeah and but they also have their own place. And so we're intrigued by the number of different demographics this is appealing to. People who think I may want to move to Atlanta, but I don't know what it's like. I'll move here for a month and see how it goes. And we think it works. We think this is a model we can take other places. We think in mixed-use environments like ponds, it's really great. We think it also could be interesting in college towns. Um we think there's a lot of things we can do with scouts, so we're super excited about it. And it sounded pretty reasonable. It's what what like $1,500 price? Don't quote me, but again, it's a V for new product, it's a very affordable chunk price. By chunk price, I mean to rent a one-bedroom. Now, on a per square foot basis, it's a little more expensive because you don't have a big unit and it's fully furnished. Uh but on a chunk basis for what you're getting, a separate one bedroom, great natural light, furnished. You don't have to worry about what do I do to wash, dry my clothes, what do I do for flatware, glasses, cups, coffee machine, it's all in there. So you could move in tomorrow and it's totally flexible. You could say, I'm gonna be here for two weeks, I'm running for two weeks, and I'll let you know in about a week or so whether I'm gonna be here longer.

SPEAKER_02 45:47

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 specification, architectural solutions, project management, delivery and installation, and more. They're known for delivering turnkey solutions that help your properties stand out and your client's 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 corporate environments.com. Let their team turn your vision into impactful spaces. I'm curious, just like the ongoing caretaker. Like, do you all have cleaning?

SPEAKER_01 46:48

We offer you an option. Um we can for a and this is true for hotel guests, for somebody only there one to three nights. We will for it's all app based, it's all on your phone. You can request um the property be cleaned daily, or you can say, and it's a fee. It's a it's an extra fee if you want that. Just like for a fee, you can have the refrigerator stock before you get there. Um pretty cool. Yeah, it's very cool. I think I I think it speaks to the way people want to live in the future. I think it's very exciting, and I'd like to think and it's again, it's a cheap price point for new product. I would argue that you probably can't rent a one-bedroom with that type of light and view on the belt line in product that's been built in the last decade. So I'm very excited about it.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

Yeah. For the functional, like what you're trying to solve there, it's a very, very reasonable price point. Yeah. Switching gears, we were talking about this NHL thing that's happening. Can you speak? Where are we at with this?

SPEAKER_01 47:56

Exciting, incredibly exciting, and we're glad to we're excited to be a part of it working with New York Life and the NHL. What our core job is trying to rezone and figure out the highest and best use for the benefit of the entire community. Uh I think it's a great piece of property. It's not much has happened with it the last few years, and we're excited for the rebirth. Ideally, that rebirth would include an NHL team.

SPEAKER_03 48:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

But that's a little bit above my pay grade. But uh, we're working closely with New York Life. We're a s we're partnering with New York Life on it in an ideal world, and the NHL is working closely with us in an ideal world. I think that's a perfect location for an NHL team. I think if you look at the demographics of hockey fans and youth hockey, I think it's a fantastic location. Yeah. And so I'm hoping we can, no matter what, we're gonna rezone it and make it better. The but the optimal solution we do believe is can we pull off a hockey team in partnership with New York Life and the NHL.

SPEAKER_02 49:00

Yeah. What what's holding it up right now?

SPEAKER_01 49:02

Like why? Well, we got to get the rezoning done. We've got to figure out if we can get all the financing in place because building a, you know, 15,000 square foot arena is expensive and difficult. And so we have to, but AlphaRed has been great for working collaboratively with them. And then another big part of it is finding who would find the right ownership group. And I don't doubt there are people who are very interested, and the NHL is talking to people about that. Um and so, but again, that's mainly being handled out of New York. Got it, got it. And y'all are on as like Toltons for this next year and then eventually as part of the. Hopefully longer. We'd love to stay in this project and repos redevelop the property, including with an NHL team, but we needed to maintain some degree of flexibility because we don't know how it's gonna play out. Like an NHL owner might the person who buys the franchise might show up and say, Thank you, New York life in Jamestown. I'm just gonna control this. I want to control it all. Yeah. And thank you for all your rezoning and all your helpful work. You all will be paid for that. But I've got my own vision for the real estate, the same way the Braves had a vision for battery, or the same way the wrestlers had the wrestlers had a vision, or Brooklyn Nets um did theirs. I mean, certainly the future of sports is to be a part of a mixed-use district. Yes. And that's where sports teams want to be. Yeah. And so we're excited to be a part of it. I think what we do really, one of the things we do well is mixed-use districts. And sports, of course, should be part of that. So we're excited to be a part of it, but I also acknowledge that that next that owner might show up and say, actually, I have my own development shop. I have my own vision, thank you, but I'm taking it from here.

SPEAKER_02 50:52

Fair enough. So this might be wrong. I've I've heard there's more than one site up in Alfredo, maybe coming for site that's there's different sites that are bandied about.

SPEAKER_01 51:02

I think the NHL likes our site, but all I can do is try to turn this into the best mixed-use plan out there, and we'll see where sort of the NHL gets to. I know they want to be in Atlanta. They want to be in the suburbs because they think that's their best right to win, I believe, without putting words in their mouth. I think that's where they see the demand for that's where they see youth hockey being played. Yeah. And so how long have they been poking around with this project? It's like the last couple years. I think I think a couple years. I'm new to it, so I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02 51:37

Okay, got it.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

Yeah, I know there's a lot of buzz around it.

SPEAKER_02 51:39

I mean, it's exciting. I think it's really exciting. Love to see the progress. Um I'm trying to think what else I can ask you about. We so we've talked about ponds, talked about Chelsea Market. Um, I don't know much about Ironworks. Can you talk about that project?

SPEAKER_01 51:52

Raleigh Ironworks is a mixed-use project just outside of downtown Raleigh in a really great neighborhood. And you know, our premise there, you know, I'm I I repeat myself a lot. Um it was that I went to Raleigh to look at some different things, to look at some opportunities, and what I determined is most of Raleigh is not is sort of commodity office and retail. Is this this is it? Yep. Yeah. And the opportunity was to take some an old steel factory with development around with development opportunity around it and create this mixed-use district with multifamily, with office, with retail, and we think we're on a good path. Um, phase one delivered with a little over 50 to 60 percent of the income and square footage coming from office. And, you know, in high not great timing to have that heavily an office-focused product. But with that said, our office is over 90% leased, and it speaks to we offer something really unique that the market has embraced. Yeah. So we feel good about it. I love uh I love delivering non-commodity special surprise and delight real estate. The other thing I love is great demographics. I've really at heart, I am something of a demographer, and I spend a lot of time thinking about where do people want to be? What are people's aspirations? I as I said before, I think young people don't want to work in their grandfather or grandmother's office building. I also think young people like being around creatives. There was a day where investment bankers hung out with investment bankers and creative an artist hung out with creative an artist, and never shall the two worlds meet. And I think that has disintegrated. And investment bankers and lawyers, they love being in places like Chelsea Market. They love being in interesting, engaging neighborhoods, and they like being uh they like art galleries and all that. And so that's the other thing. I like to gravitate towards markets that have a lot of have good demographics, a lot of creative people, a lot of diversity. And I think those are sort of some of the things we look for in our projects. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:12

So this is a fairly recent project. Yes. Ironworks?

SPEAKER_01 54:15

Okay. Yeah, been the last few years, but it's gone really well. Again, it's fully leased. 90%'s great. For an office building, it's really great. I wish more of my office buildings were 90% leased. Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02 54:25

Okay, tell me tell me about the North American deal that came about. Y'all um acquired them?

SPEAKER_01 54:30

We acquired North American properties, I want to say, about 16 months ago or so. It was really like it was really relatively easy because we're like-minded people. We all we both value community-based development, creating engaging environments. Their focus has been more suburban. We've been more urban, but it's the same tenants, same mindset. They, of course, did Avalon. Yeah they have the Forum in Peachtree Corners, Avenue East, pardon me. Colony Square. Colony Square, Avenue East Cobb, they have Ridge Hill out in Yonkers in a suburb of New York. And we have a similar view that we're in the concierge, we're in the hotel business. So many people in real estate are not, I think, customer friendly. Take a look at like the grocery anchored business. We have a I'm a real believer in grocery anchored business. It's a necessity-based market. And I think our special sauce in grocery has been, yes, we have a good publics relationship or Kroger relationship, but we also curate the tenants around that Publix or Kroger to have what would go best. Can we get a really good, cool, fun, interesting restaurant? A surprise and delight. So many people in the grocery-anchored space just would be like, I'm just gonna lease it to whatever tenant pays the most rent. Mattress store shows up, goes next to the public's fine. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with a mattress store, but we would rather think about the overall ecosystem and what is most conducive to creating the overall best experience to make everything sticky. Um, and so North American has sort of a similar viewpoint. They have create curated these great environments on the Eastern seaboard, and putting us together was just obvious synergies, and it's been a great marriage, and that all their people have basically integrated and really wonderful organization. And but they're now fully integrated, but and we love the projects we are working that they brought over. We bought the platform, but we also bought the assets in which they're invested. And their portfolio at that time was, depending upon how you look at it, about six to nine assets. Okay. And which included Avalon, Avenue East Cobb, Colony Square, et cetera. So we're excited about all those products, all those projects, and they they're a great group of people. And of course, because we were all Atlanta-based, it made it that much easier.

SPEAKER_02 57:02

Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. How did that come about? Did they did y'all go to them or they came to y'all?

SPEAKER_01 57:08

I'd known their senior people for a while. I heard a rumor that the family that was sort of behind them might be interested in something. And a little bit like cold calling Mayor Reed, it just sort of came about. I'm not shy.

SPEAKER_02 57:23

Yeah, yeah. I love that. That's that's really great. Um okay, Buckhead Village, anything going on? I know Will Will Morgan's a good friend. I know he's been on that project.

SPEAKER_01 57:33

Will Morgan is a rock star. He's fantastic. We're we're incredibly excited about Buckhead Village for all the problems in real estate. There are a lot of problems in real estate. Interest rates have gone up, the office market's been challenged, there's been an oversupply of residential in a lot of cities, and so rents have not grown as much as most of us would like. Buckhead Village has been a really solid performer. The office is well-leased. We get interesting tenants like we just did a deal with Jeffries, our restaurants from Bilbo K to Colonial to Yepah. Buckhead Village does really good. We're we've got a couple development sites we're pursuing a couple interesting opportunities on. We feel very, very good about Buckhead Village. We feel like, again, it speaks to the experience we like to curate. And we think Buckhead is primarily a driving location. You drive to the mall, you drive to your office building, you're in your car, nobody people don't walk around Buckhead. And what I like about Buckhead Village is we have the only real walkable environment in Buckhead with more or less that has true mixed use. Yeah. Um and so we're incredibly bullish on the future that what we have there is going to be great for the next 10, 20 years and feel really, really good about it.

SPEAKER_02 58:58

Yeah. No, it's it's great. I know, yeah, all the office product around there's crushing at Bucket Plaza across the street with does really well. Yeah. 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, USACablingtech.com. Again, that's USA CablingTech.com. Now back to the show. We kind of hit on this earlier, just the state of adaptive reuse. There was quite a wave of that. Um, do you see more coming? You know, a whole other bucket to that conversation is this office to residential conversion. None of those seem to pencil. It's very problematic.

SPEAKER_01 59:49

You've got to buy things really, really cheap. Or almost get it for free. Or get it for free. Yeah. It needs to be land value practically. And that's a problem. People at cocktail parties all the time approach me like, wow, you must be excited about these office to resi conversion, and uh to really upset them by saying it's hard to make any of a pencil. A traditional office building really doesn't work for resi. You know this because an office floor plate is deep, 30,000 square feet or so, and a resi floor plate meets needs to be much more shallow with on glass, and it's just really hard to do a make a resie conversion work, and there has to be a lot more pain. And it works better in like New York, say. New York can do it because New York resi is just so much more valuable by and large. I mean, New York, you know, you per square foot price is just so, so, so much higher than almost anywhere else in the country. But in a market like Atlanta that's more affordable compared to, say, in New York, it's hard to make work because you have to figure out how you're gonna put in the plumbing to put that many bathrooms in, how you're gonna get natural light into deep spaces. So it's really hard to make work. And that's that's a challenge that, by the way, is a challenge in some ways at ponds, too. I mean, uh, some of our floor plates are really deep. And that's and that makes it a challenge. Um, and so the adaptive reuse, we went through a period where people were paying too much for it and it didn't pencil, and now I think the that market is really slowed.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:27

Yeah. It was a big conversation for a couple years.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:29

Yeah. It's uh I think the the word's gotten out. It's it's tough. Yeah. Um I I would love your take on where you see opportunity out in the market right now. And that could be you know a part of town or even a product type. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:42

I think I think our scout product, which I talked about before, this hospitality living format is something we can take to different markets and it meets a need. Um I think in certain cases, the opportunity to improve grocery is still out there because, as I said, you've got a really good grocer, and then you have a lot of things often around it that were simply put in there because they were cheap to put in next to the grocer. And so I think the opportunity to buy grocery and improve the overall environment in a grocery anchored center such that the grocer wants is more likely to want to renew in state too, because they get cross-traffic from a fill-in-the-blank, a a vet, a good restaurant, um, what have you. So I think grocery is really interesting. I think this sports theme is gonna pick up more and more as part of a mixed-use district. And so I think there's real opportunity in sports as part of mixed-use district. And it doesn't we're talking big things like NHL and we're doing some work with San Jose and the Sharks out there and Google. But it can all it doesn't have to be at that level. It can also be minor league. You can also have, as part of an interesting mixed-use district, I think, in smaller towns in particular, uh minor league soccer stadium or minor league baseball park. Um, so I think having sports as a component that draws people to a community more days and nights of the year, including practice facilities for kids' activities, that sort of thing, is I think powerful.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:28

Yeah. That's an interesting take. You're talking about the grocery improvement or kind of that next level. So Disco Kroger got torn down and we've got this new Publix. I think they have some name to it now, but that Publix has like you know, like a wine bar and everything down above it.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:45

I think that's great. I think these more better grocery, for a long time. Grocery was simply, oh yeah, that's my Publix. That's my what have you. And it's activated or now it's activated. The Publix has more activated their site, and you put peop put other tenants around it that contribute to that. Whether it's better restaurants or again, a a better vet, uh fitness, just a better uh curated system that that becomes more part of your that becomes more than simply your grocery store, it becomes like a community center. And that's what Jamestown always strives for is how do we turn something into more of a community center where people, yes, they'll come for their milk, but they'll stay because on a Friday night we have an outdoor concert. Or that's also where my this great yoga studio is. Or, you know, uh fill in the blank. Yeah. Make those, make it better around it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:43

Yeah. No, I I think it's great. Um okay, switch the gears from real estate. Uh I want to ask you, d how do you stay on top of trends? Like how do you uh I'm curious what your kind of daily habits are. Like, how do you lead an organization of I mean, how many employees do you all have?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:58

We have about 700 around the globe. Um I read a lot. Uh my door is always open for ideas.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:08

Um And I have good people around me. I admit, you know, I'm at an age where it I should not be the one trend spotting, but I try to listen to others and give people free reign to figure out what those are. And so this podcast has been a lot about me and my views and things like that, but I'm part of a really, really good team of people who have worked collaboratively. One cool thing about Jamestown, we are a vertically integrated operator. And what that means to me is we have people on our team who focus on we have one guy who is our food and beverage person. Not many real estate companies have a food and beverage guy. And that person is all about thinking about what are the trends in restaurants and bars. And we have really good creative people. Who draw up the marketing packages and control our websites, and we have leasing people and we have construction people. And the downside of having all those skills in-house, I sometimes joke is you have too many cooks in the kitchen. Our kitchen is a little unruly at times. Um, but the good news of it is you get a lot of voices, and I'm a real believer in talk up, speak. You know, I don't I I don't want to dominate a meeting. I don't think I do dominate a meeting. I want to hear different perspectives from because I'm a again, I'm a real believer. The best teams play together year-round. The best football team or soccer team is not one that simply comes together to play an all-star game once a year. The best soccer teams or football teams are ones that practice together year round. And it's made up of people who block, run, pass, etc. I'm switched to football.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:00

Um and so I think that's what we have at Jamestown between a food and beverage people, people who focus on fashion, people who focus on construction, people who focus on capital markets. We have a diverse tool set of people who raise their hand ideally and say, I hear you think that's the right tenant to put in there, but I'm telling you right now, Matt, you don't know what you you respectfully, you're really wrong. That's a yesteryear's tenant. And that is not a tenant that would ever belong at Inman Quarter or Ponce or Chelsea because nobody in their twenties want I almost want to fill in the blank, but I should. Nobody in their 20s or 30s wants to shop there. Yeah. And you don't get that. Yeah. And that's the way it should be. And you're like, okay, fair enough. Okay, but if I didn't have if we didn't have a vertically integrated team, I we might not hear that. Yes, we might have a retail leasing agent at a third party, and don't take this wrongly, because I know what your business is, but that retail leasing agent is purely focused on I just in theory, just to get a deal done, more so. Whereas an integrated person on the team in three years, they're gonna be held accountable, more likely. Like, uh what what made you think that was the right tenant for that space? Let's go through it. Wait, what did we miss? And they're a part of they need to speak up because they're gonna have to live with those assumptions. And so I think having this vertically integrated platform for us works really well, and it makes it so much, so much less about me and my other partners' views because most of us at the top of Jamestown are over 50. And people over, especially when you're working in creating community-focused districts, people over 50 should not be solely making the decisions. They should be throwing out ideas, but raising money and yeah, getting finding new deals and and whatnot. They should acknowledge that somebody should be able to say to me that at some point I need to acknowledge that as my kids might joke with me, you're stale, male, and pale. Stale, male, and pale.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:11

Wow, that's that's good. Um I I wanted to ask, so we have a lot of uh of students that listen to this, either UGA or Georgia State. And um, I'm curious what you've done plenty of interviews and had, you know, amazing talent join Y'all's team. What do you are do you have a favorite interview question? Or I'm curious if you have any advice for those kids that are coming out of school trying to I like to ask what people like to do in their spare time.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:39

Are they a reader? What do they like to think about? What do they think is the future of AI? What is the future of jobs? Um, I like to see them think creatively. I'm not so interested in where they went to school or what their other people can ask them about their Argus or Excel skills. Yeah. I'm more interested to s sort of see how people think. What what do they like to do with their time? What do they think is the future of jobs and technology and that sort of thing?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:11

What's your take on the future of AI? You know, it's funny.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:14

I um Office has the and we're a big office company, and we have a lot else too, from retail to residential, but office is a big part of what we do.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:24

And I was n I always believed that the work from home, although impactful, I believe in more flexibility.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:35

That it's a totally okay. When I was young, you could have 103 fever, your kid could have a big big event at school, and you'd be like, oh God, what am I gonna do? I I can't leave the office. I think flexibility is great. I think working from home one one and a half days a week, I think I'm leaving early today because I've got a kid's sporting event, or I'm leaving early today because I just am not feeling it. I'm gonna go home and go for a walk, and then maybe I'll log back in. I think that's fantastic. But I always believe and still believe that people should be in the office a majority of their time for reasons of mentorship, innovation, collaboration. Um and so I always thought that threat to the office environment was more short-term. I'm far more focused on the threat to office from AI and what does it mean for the future of jobs. And I'm not a Luddite who thinks like it this is the end of jobs, but I think we're going there's gonna be so much fast-paced change that I'm very concerned about how the office environment is gonna shake out. I think it needs to change its format, less traditional huge tenant improvement packages and more pre-built, because more and more companies are gonna be like, we need 20,000 square feet, oh, we need 40, oh, we don't need any, we need 5,000 square feet because we figured out everything could be done through AI. And so I think you need to have more flexibility. So we need to get away from these huge traditional TI packages, I think. And there are exceptions, but that's generally my view, and I think the pace of change is going to be far more rapid. My youngest kid graduated from Vanderbilt last year with a degree in computer science. We applauded his decision to major in computer science, and I think he would tell you right now that he thinks his industry is going to be decimated in the next three to five years. That Claude and AI are simply going to obviate the need for that the number of programmers out there. And you would have I think most of us would have thought three years ago that's a good major.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:43

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:44

No, it was.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:45

I mean, over COVID, it was like the jobs for computer science majors were through the roof. Um what's your AI hack? Do you have cloud open? You got a window open?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:55

Like, do you have like what what's your use case that you're we're a registered investment advisor, so we have to be a little more careful. We have our own proprietary Jamestown system. Um, but I love playing around with it. I need to get better at it, but I use I I love using it to again, I I love demographics and I love using it to help solve what are the markets to look at, what and just sort of playing around. So I love it. Yeah. I love technology.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:22

No, it's it's it moves so quick. I my thought is I've I've just kind of been waiting on the sidelines. Obviously, you know, testing out Gemini, Claude, all the different ones, but kind of waiting for it to sort of I don't know if it'll hit a plateau, but you know, where it's like, okay, the rate of change. I feel like every week there's new releases where it's oh, it can do this now. And so there's it keeps getting better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:42

And you're like, I'm so excited. I'm I I I have a very mindset of I love embracing new things. I look forward to never having to drive again as well. So I think it's all exciting.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:52

I I am a champion advocate for this Tesla full full self-driving.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:58

I have a Tesla. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:00

I subscribe. It was like, I don't know, a month or two ago. I was like, I can I'm gonna I'm gonna subscribe to it. I think it's worth it. And now it's like it's fantastic. I think my stats are like 70 or 80 percent now, it's like full self-driving. But it's amazing. It is, it is. It's here. It's like finally my wife hates it. I mean, we went to dinner last night and she's like, she thought I was driving, looked over and I wasn't touching the wheel, and she's like, hey, I don't like she's getting there.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:22

But see, my wife loves it because I am an aggressive slash shaky driver. Like I'm it's better than I'm like boom, boom, boom, boom, stop, fall forward. And she's like, You're making me wanna, you're making me sick to my stomach. You've got to stop. So when we get in the car, she finds the Tesla self-driving to be much smoother than me. Ah. So she embraces it for that reason that I make her sick when I'm behind the wheel. Got it, got it.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:53

Well, it's it is incredible. I mean, just having that. And and I've noticed even like being on phone calls in the car, your your brain, you just have a little bit more bandwidth like before. It was you're kind of passively driving, but you can focus on the conversation better. It's a game changer. Yeah. Well, Matt, this has been awesome. I don't what else can I ask you? No, this is great. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:11

I I really enjoyed it. Thank you. You do a great job, and it's really my honor to be here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:16

I appreciate it. Um, well, y'all, thanks for listening in. It's been another great episode of Sunbelt Developers Podcast. Obviously, if you have any commercial real estate needs, give us a call at Cushman. Um, and thank you again to our sponsors, and we have a lot more exciting things coming. Matt, thanks. Thank you. It's been awesome.