Connecting Commercial Corridors

So welcome again. to on the park bench public square conversation. Connecting commercial corridors with Jason Hyman and Snot Scott's Nodgrass and unfortunately Nicky Knight is not going to be able to join us today. But, join us for upcoming webinars next week. We have one on affordable housing strategies and implementation. May 7th it from at 12 noon eastern time go to see new.org slash resources slash on the park bench and of course come to seeing you 32 in Cincinnati this is going to be an excellent program. We have a great turnout and check out Cincinnati, which is a city with with excellent urbanism going on and things to learn from and you can learn more and register at CNN. Org slash seeing you 32. And today we have a panel on connecting commercial quarters from Houston, Texas. Jason, I'm in his broker, principal partner. And owner of Real Links office of Jason T. Hyman, Houston's only black led real estate brokerage offering urban planning services. His vision guides the office to bridge The generational wealth gap through real estate. He also founded the 3rd ward Real Estate Council, a nonprofit dedicated to equitable real estate options in communities historically impacted by redlining. Leveraging his infill development and tactical urbanism expertise he promotes responsible development and investment while nurturing a community of emerging minority developers. And Scott Snodgrass is a founding partner of Maristem Communities, a Houston-based real estate development firm committed. To creating places for people with mindful fine-grained developments. Scott is an entrepreneur and former farmer who is focused on interconnected resilience in the natural human and built environments. His vision is being brought to Fruition. You Indigo, one of Maristam's 1st developments in the suburbs of Houston, built around human scale working farm and pasture and once again Nicky can't be with us so welcome to you both to on the Park Bench. I'm Rob Stuartville. Editor of Cnu's Public Square and we're going to have a presentation followed by a discussion among the panel and followed by QA from the audience. So please, use use the key. Function of zoom to ask your questions as they occur to you and now I'm going to pass this along to Jason. Right, if you can I can share a route. Yes. Hold on a second. Let's stop share. There we go. So, you can now share. All right, thanks. So, I, I actually submitted, A version of this for the conference this year. So We didn't get selected to share the topic. So I'm definitely, you know, really happy that I get to share here that opportunity to share here with you guys. I'll still be at the conference now. So anybody there, definitely reach out. Let's connect. So there's a lot changing, in the way we live, so I thought it was important. Especially around this year's theme of a restorative urbanism when it comes to corridor. Revitalization. So I know I'm going to speak a lot more on Revitalization and you guys get to hear Scott. Talk a little bit more about the development of sustainable corridors, solve a little bit of. Pro. Pre post. Discussion here so you guys enjoy. So give me a second, let me. So, here. So took a moment you know trying to figure out how best To explain or unpack really what. We mean or what I mean when when I say connecting 4 doors because it can mean So many things and so I actually went took a look at The charter here for the congressmen. And it was pretty cool to see that. Essentially, we really are. Embodying those principles around the neighborhood, the district. And the corridor and so it least for for Ask me really Get a corridor is the backbone of the community and it really connects the neighborhood. And the district can kind of brings them all together. This also was really kind of just a funny way of us communicating connecting corridors that would prompt people to say connecting to what? And we would, you know, joyfully say kind of Everything. That's really how we look at it. If you do this correctly, your corridor, our corridor should really provide a lot that we need. So. I want you to Tano. Think about it. So for us like we look at the corridor as like a reflection of the community. So a healthy corridor for us is essential to having a healthy community. So if you really kind of sit back and think about things or visualize things. I would argue that like a healthy corridor is is more of a public need. I have a picture of this building here as the building that I'm going to speak on in a little bit. If you look at it. It's it's blighted building nothing's really going on and if we think about these 3 pillars of like health safety Hey, economic resources and representation in the community, which is what we try to focus on here in Houston on this corridor. It kinda tells you what's going on in the neighborhood. So if you close your eyes, you look at this building or close your eyes and visualize a corridor that's thriving, is kind of an indication of. The health excuse the spelling there. It's usually indication of like the health of the neighborhood both physically and mentally. It's very different. For instance, you don't see a picture of people walking around or doing much here in front of this building versus if you think of a very thriving corridor. People are walking because they feel safe. Both mentally and physically they're able to walk around and get to things and everything is there for them to do that. If you think about a healthy corridor that's full of businesses and activity. Or lack thereof kind of gives you an indication of how money needs to be spent. Can we go to this area and be consumers or do we need to go to this area and be investors at this state or life cycle of what's going on? And then more importantly for us. Is a real visual representation of the representation of that. Oh, and so. Whether it's the signs that you see. The languages that they are. Written in is the indication of who lives there. The type of services or maybe even think about cuisine that's offered. It's also an indication some time. You know who visits but also who's there and who services it. Yes. We really think about the corridor, not from just a tourism standpoint, but like how does it really service and connect? To those people and needs that are behind the corridor. How Or You guys with where we are in Houston. Before I kind of give you guys some examples of what we have going on. We're in 3rd ward which is you know, just southeast of maybe 2, 3 miles of downtown Houston. We're really pretty much sandwiched in between Out to Texas Southern University. The University of Houston. The medical center. And Rice University. So there's a lot of anchors around us. It makes this corridor. You know really prime for something to happen but right now there's still a lot of gaping holes. It once was an area that was very Thriving, but over time, you know, became what it is that we see today. And so people drive through poor doors and that's you know for ours and most people's when someone's driving through your major article your major corridor through your town or community. That's What they see. People aren't driving through the neighborhood, so. Like I said, what you see is more of a indicator there. For us, people are driving for one anchor to the other, but not necessarily stopping in between, which is what we want them to do at times. We need That kind of Balance between Neighborhoods support and people coming to shop on the poor door as well as those folks that are coming in. To stop and die with us at time to time as they're going to their destinations. So what we're going to talk about today in this stretch in in our corridor on emancipation is Emancipation Avenue in 3rd ward. I'll say about it 2 miles stretch for us. About. A street called Blodgett Street. Down to I would say a street called McGowan. So if you guys aren't familiar with the area, look up Emancipation Avenue and you can look at Cross street. Along that corridor. There are some really good things. There's a brand new park renovated building just to kind of give you guys a visual a renovated historic building across the street from the park, a renovated historic building across the street from the park, a renovated historic building across the street from the park, a large office building. From the park is with. But as you Away from things, it starts to get a little dicey in a sense. And so we took this approach of really want to get ahead of development. This area has rapidly gentrified over the past. Let's call it just 3 to 5 years, where prices have really increased somewhere. 200. To 300% in certain areas. But the commercials corridors. Still has not necessarily been touched because all of the data. Says that, it's There's not enough income to support. A commercial. The the corridor. Think is false. I just told you all the different anchors that are there. It's just that those people don't show on demographic reports. So it's just something to think about when you're talking about, you know, urbanism getting out from behind the desk and getting down the street and really understanding what's going on. So How can we start to leverage corridors? Right now early on in these development cycles. And I want to talk about 3 things. One is how we think. One is one is how we connect and the other is how we collaborate. And so first, st how we think. I encourage everyone to think small. And so that means very neighborhood scale. You'll hear Scott talk later. They're all about places for people. It's human scale. You're seeing a very big shift in the market just in the commercial space alone. I think I read that. Atlanta is. Downtown is over 50% vacant. Office buildings. Right? People are living differently. Differently. We're at home again. We work from home. And so how our neighborhood interacts with us is becoming increasingly important. And so you take a neighborhood like ours. That has the makings of in a sense greatness, but still has some gaps and some things that need to be filled in. We found it when thinking small. Taking incremental approaches and. You know, creating multiple uses in small spaces is really successful. So. You take this particular site here to see this is just a $5 square foot. Live it's on a corner but as you see from a programming standpoint. There's space for pop-up just cover space for pop-up Yes, space for small retail. Garden. There's courtyard to encourage social interaction. And then the building this people look at is nothing has become somewhat of our art block. Okay. And so we're kind of using what we have there. And making small investments that we can reap some game from over time. So while we are able to necessarily utilize the space the way we can to its unquote highest invest, which is how we typically go at things, which is why. Most of our Corridor isn't developed, right? Because they can't go highest and best right away. This is a approach where we can take time. Oh. Suited for you know Lot of neighbors in the area. To We'll work together. And we can take those proceeds or whatever profits we make from operating small markets and pop ups. To reinvest in in the later building field gaps in our funding for the later development. The second thing we really focus and key in on. Is engagement for us that that really equates to transparency. Collaboration so we can you know move a little faster. So that's, that's engagement. Research. Find that things like asset mapping is really helpful. But not just asset packing, so you have it, but share that data. We include, the community in that asset mapping exercise. So you see we take regular bike rides to understand what's going on. Okay. So we're out in the street, but we take a lot of the data that we collect and we share, you know there's consistent programming. So at that particular site, there's consistent programming. Start small though. We're not doing everything every day, but we started with just an event. We did. People came out. They were able to just hear what's going on and getting some excitement. And from that later on down the line, we had another event at this one. People were able to actually just utilize the space. And see how it could feel. I'm in the We had another one for example where folks came out. And actually had field paint that we used and folks marked off where things should go and what should be the And it was so engaging to the point where at some point I suggested that there not be a garden and they almost kicked me off the property. And so it kind of gives you a level of, you know, a living test of like. What would be successful there because these are folks that would use the space and they're telling me. You know, willing. Is the promotion. Right, promote promotion of the space. So of course that sounds simple and straightforward but again i told you about where we are which is very different from for instance where where Scott is takes a different kind of promotion where we Yes. Already a bias or transparency of what's there and what's happening and that's why the investment is necessarily there. So our promotion is not necessarily just of the space and what's going on there. What is other area as well is highlighting the different. Things that are going on that are great that are positive so people understand there are more things connected to this space. Then just, so for example, we've talked to the local university about different art classes coming to rotate. Or that particular art block. We're connecting different resources to small businesses to get them ready. To operate those. Retailer spaces. We're having conversations with people about the different resources they need at the space as it's being done in real time. Okay, very iterative. Process but Yielding for us some great results a little slower but better results in terms of engagement was going on. To the broader. Go Just so promotion and then last and at least a feedback so I kind of spoke to that but not just feedback on site We even have shared it to where folks are able to give feedback. Online and continued feedback. Because we have like monthly kind of gatherings. So and we bring these things up. So this transparency just kept this type of collaboration helps in. Revitalization and bringing more pride, more awareness to of the area was going well. And the last thing I'll touch on is partnerships. I think we all know, but we don't always play as well in the sandbox, but if we could, we can do a lot more together. Again, if we go back, it takes that thinking small it takes finding partners they think small like you it takes. Finding partners that want to engage in building intentional relationships. So that's 1 of the key things here. One of the approaches that I took was really recognizing that Wow, folks like CNU Houston has a chapter here. I reached out. Hey guys, what what's going on? How can we talk? How can we collaborate on raising awareness around? The principles that I spoke off earlier. Reached out to organizations like the American Planning Association. Or even strong towns. Who will be part of the conference here next month. We Hell Star, a conference. We have an annual conference that we host here in Houston. And we're intentional about the folks that are involved and the principles that are being taught. So to increase those just very intentional partnerships. And what we're doing and being very clear about what we want to do. There's being very aligned with our public resources. One of the things that I realized and working with a lot of local inf developers. Is it? They were just developing, but they had no idea what was really going on in the area. And so we and Houston have a very good planning department as well as other resources that we can tap into. There was a plan calling complete community plan here, Dunn and Houston that really laid out everything that was needed for our area. And so we use that to just really govern. Our sales. So I encourage folks to. Tapping into those public resources and see what's available first.st If you're talking about your economic development office. Your, housing, maybe office. There are more geared towards maybe the economic activity or the housing activity that's needed in the city. They can give you a little bit of idea what's going on so that you can align with them that way you're getting some synergies because in order to think small in order to engage with takes time. They are going to be some financing gaps, some subsidies and some things that you're gonna have to think about. If you don't have like a long, you know, pocketbook or. Bank that's really really backing you at a high level. So organizations here in Houston like our church. Is able to provide support. Or program. Right now, for instance, they're offering $10,000 up to $10,000 of help to help raise buildings. So just think if you can use those funds for example to raise a building. So that you can go back and do something. To activate their space. Okay, so. And that helps towards the long term. There are also different subsidies at the city level, but we have to be, I think, a little bit more of advocates for small to our city officials and leaders, so that they can put more products and more opportunities out. Such as you know smallest grants for smaller scale. When I say grants for small scale, most that I've seen funding that goes out from cities is for 200 300 unit apartments are large developments that support a large workforce. But if we're changing the way we live, my argument is that the city should support. That public need of how we're living now, which means that some of those same policies they use for large scale development should be refashioned. For small scale development. And those things need to start. Aligning so if there's any officials or things like that on the line I think that's something to consider. And that's not just even in the product, but the process in which they're administered as well. Because a small shop is very different from. You know a large shop that has you know 20 people working you know, in one department versus a shop of 3 or 4 that are doing something. So that application process has to be even different. So those are things that when we talk about partnership, that we're advocating for, that we're communicating, those are all very, very important and have proven some success and guidance this far and in our efforts and that now we are S to lie with other neighbors so that we can in a sense start to master plan things. So I have a very different angle that I'm speaking from. Is private sector. Right, but it's also one of a resident. And so I want you to think about that in terms of revitalization. It's very, very. Much so incremental approach and if you give you know, Rob, last time we talked, we talked about gorilla urbanism. It really takes both those things to account. So if you have, you know, questions to. You know, any of the project that I mentioned or any of the things that I spoke about. You can reach me at at Jason T. Hyman and that's my email there. But I'm gonna stop here and I'm gonna let Scott chime in because I think he has a very different angle. He's gonna I think talk a little bit more about how to avoid some of the things we're dealing with on our end. So Scott, I'll stop sharing here. Rob, I don't know if you want to stop taking any questions if you want us to just, you know, keep going into this discussion. Let's finish the presentations and we'll take questions. Okay. Hmm. Okay. And so reminder to everybody. To fill up that Q&A down there as you're thinking of questions. Let's see. Go ahead and toss them in there for going along. I'm Scott Snodgrass with Marathon Communities and, we imagine a world where cars, corporations, and capital aren't the primary stakeholders in our planning and development processes, but they're centered around people. And certainly we, may use cars, corporations, and capital as tools. In our in our living, but they aren't the primary stakeholders. So I wanted to talk a little bit about Indigo Commons today and so Indigo Commons is the mixed-use town center of our neighborhood indigo that we're currently developing that's under construction in the southwest suburbs of Houston it's gonna be 661 single family homes and about a hundred 50 apartment units spread through a few different formats. And Indigo Commons itself is about 12 acres centered right at the heart of our community with a small Yeah. Suburban farm as the gateway to the community. And like Jason mentioned, there's a lot of similarities to what's going on on emancipation and the way that we are looking at developing a retail corridor. Also some differences because this is green field development. I'll wait for all the booze and hisses to pass. For a minute. But, this is green field development and in our market, like many, we are in a desperate need for more housing. And so there's probably some green field we still need to do while we redevelop the areas that need to be intensified with more gentle density as well. And then Greenfield's gonna happen in Houston. It's not gonna stop. We don't have the boundaries, constraining our growth that many cities do and so we also like to believe that maybe we can do it a little bit. In a better framework, both for people in the environment, then maybe is being done currently. And so, I'll run you through a few things here, but just as a framework, we're in the Southwest suburbs of Houston, kind of where the toll, the toll roads are ending or close to where they're ending. We're just outside the 3rd loop, which is called the Grand Parkway. Highway 99 that you see there. Close to the Brazos River between Sugar Land and Katy, officially in the ETJ of Richmond. But also parts of our property were unincorporated county as well. And so what we're trying to do is develop a small business community through the corridor that, that essentially separates our residential and commercial areas in our community. And while the commercial areas are mixed use and we do anticipate there being quite a bit of apartment. Rental apartments in that space. All of our for sale homes are separate and at least across the street here from these mixed use buildings. And we originally, we designed this neighborhood out with the idea that we are not serving the family formations that make up our communities anymore. In the suburbs of Houston, we build homes for nuclear families with 2 parents and multiple kids. And that is now like 20% of our family formations. And so why are we, why are we only developing in that pattern still? I think Eric Kronberg posted something the other day that was showing those how upside down we are and what we have in the market. And our housing supply versus what the household formations of today and tomorrow are going to need. So we have a lot more single folks living in homes. We have a lot more people who are unrelated and not romantic partners living in homes. We have single lot of single parent households, our baby boomers living in homes. We have single lot of single parent households. Our baby boomers are, you know, pretty much done with out of the house now and are empty nesters. And so we've got this big shift that's happened in the past 5 or 7 years and we were we were very thoughtful in the way that we designed. To Housing. But we realized as we were designing these retail areas that we were stuck in maybe a commodity mixed use mindset. We were still developing you know, 10,000 square foot foot plate buildings with, you know, 2 and 3 stories, something very easy to bank. Very easy to find a construction company to do, very easy to find other developers to jump in on some of these projects as we're the land developer. We won't necessarily develop everything vertical. And we realized we needed to step back, take a more human focus, and we started looking at the successful areas in town these corridors that were successful and corridors that weren't successful and were in decline. And we saw the work that Jason was doing on emancipation. And said, okay, how do we design a place that never even falls into decline like that? Like there are reasons those corridors fall into decline. A lot of them are policy-based. A lot of them are race-based. A lot of them are based on the removal of any resources going into that space. Or sometimes just hard barriers to citizens on their own being successful and banding together and being successful. So that we knew when we created this corridor, we wanted it to be a place that our, that small business owners could have their own sense of community as small business owners. So I'll get to the land plan in a little bit, but I wanted to run through just briefly kind of what we are offering and why we're doing it that way. And so we have a bunch of what we call incremental retail buildings. This is the brochure that we shared with people who want to look at this this idea but the goal is to have these tenant occupied or owner occupied buildings. Where the tenant is the owner. So we want a small business to own the building. And so we offered 3 different pathways to get there because there may be some people who really want their fingerprints on the building. They want to adjust the building for the needs of their business. They want it to look like their personality and fit them. So we had to build your own building purchase pathway, which is where we're just selling. A pad site with architectural controls and then you're going in and building that building. Let me have to build the suit option for the business owner who would want some customization, but didn't really want to manage the construction process and we could stop in and help with that. And then we have the full Monty, which It's named after Monty Anderson, who I'm sure plenty of you know or familiar with. The incremental development alliance and now with neighborhood evolution but Monty does really great small scale just really tailored the business. Retail developments and they're wildly successful for that reason. And he's really thinking about the needs of the business when he develops a space of the business when he develops a space. And he does some for sale and he leases some. And in both formats seem to work. So in this. Format we were actually building the building and selling it directly to someone. And you see all the details down here at the bottom. You know one of the big differences here is that we tailored all of these to work with the SBAs 5 0 4 and 7 a programs So the small business administration will give a 25 year mortgage. To a small business for property that they're Purchasing. If they're purchasing a pre-existing building, they only have to occupy 51% of that building. So, there's even opportunities to lease out other spaces and have income based on that. And we saw that 25 year mortgage. It's not a 25 year amortization like anybody can go get that loan from a bank. But it renews every 5 years. And if the market turns down in that time period, then you might lose your ability to refinance that building and lose the building. So we really wanted those long-term mortgages just like we've done for homes that have made home ownership a little bit more accessible. Wanted to work alongside those programs. So we actually designed the buildings with that in mind and the SVA was kind enough to come out some of our events and speak to our potential buyers. There but here's the format of the building and so these are flexible it's kind of a kit of parts 2 and 3 stories 20 feet wide about 40 feet deep We wanted to create a small footprint as we feel like a lot of businesses that are trying to get up and running. Really struggle because 2 or 3,000 square feet might be the smallest format that's available for rent. And so we wanted to offer some smaller formats for people. So, this shows you, you know, a 2 story that's retail on the bottom floor office above. It's just your business. And you're running it out at the space. You might also you know want to live in the same space or live right above your retail space and so this is an option where you know there's 700 square feet downstairs and there's 699 square feet upstairs and you're actually, you know, your business is occupying 51%, but you're also living in the space. And so now that 25 year mortgage is covering both your space for your business and the place you live. Or maybe you're leasing it out. Same thing in 3 story, looking at apartments, townhomes, a bunch of different formats just to get people going. With the idea of this. And these are, individual buildings that have air gaps. Between them. So what you see in the column there in, I have a cursor here, what you see right here is actually one building with a 2 inch air gap between it and the next one. In our market that's mostly related to insurance for the building and a little bit of making entitlement easier through our cities. So this is the land plan for Indigo Commons. Harlem Road at the very bottom of this is the existing major thoroughfare that we take access off of and the residential part of the neighborhood is to the top left and right surrounding Indigo Commons. But we've created along Mercantile Street there at the top. A corridor of those incremental retail blocks. As well as some multi-family buildings, the filling station and the mill, or the filling station is a general store, the mill is going to have a small food hall, some co working space and a brewery within it. And then the barn there towards the bottom of the page is an event center. And so we just wanted to create it in a format that densified the retail opportunities close enough together that we would get the human energy to really support what most developers in our area consider a much higher. Ratio of retail to residential than they would believe would be able to be supported. But the interest that we've had in these has been so tremendous and we have a number of them already, you know, with registration payments down on them. And are getting ready to reengage with the marketing on these and we'll have one under construction here in the next 60 days or so, which will be exciting. But we've really tried to create this corridor space here that, connects to the community. It's not necessarily connecting in multiple developments, but because it's located right across the street from all the residences and all of our homes are within a 7 min walk this space. We've, created a place where we're connecting the residential homes into the retail as much as we can. And with that, Robert, I think we'll be happy to take questions. Hmm. Okay, great. Well, thank you very much. Jason and Scott, for those presentations, I think that We will, ask a few questions, and then we'll get to the Q&A. I wanted to, to let people know that if you have questions, please ask them in Q&A. We're already getting. Some. One question I had, which maybe is more for Jason, but perhaps it relates to you Scott as well. And that is, in corridors. Really there's, there's a lot that's going on. Especially in the quarter like emancipation avenue you have all these different property owners and different developers, but you also have the actual quarter of the street. Which is a public space owned by. Owned by the the city or republic entity And in order to transform that quarter or change it, get it all connected together you get you have to have these different entities working together. And how do you kind of, how do you get these different entities working together? How do you maybe get the city to invest in the street? Okay. How do you get various developers working together? On that corridor to make it something more. Sure, so man So this kind of twofold, I don't want to say it's a long story, but it has been a journey. One of the things that I probably didn't really key in on is that what the year from the outside coming into area or you're already there the community building begins first.st And so, for example, I think I saw the other day someone said they bought like a block in a small downtown. And now they're looking for tenants. Right. We should kind of. Probably been connecting with the community there 1st and letting those going off. So where I'm going is that I'm here. This is my backyard. And so I'm not just looking at real estate. I'm involved in the civic clubs i'm involved in Everything is kind of going on in my neighborhood. I live here with my family. And so with that being said, I've been very vocal about the things that are needed. I use things like our civic association, but we have a super neighborhood system here in Houston. Which is part of the city's charter. So we use our super neighborhood to voice not different things and then just We were lucky enough. I don't wanna say lucky enough, but. Emancipation part. Which has a very big historical significance. And about 30 million dollars. Invested into it. Not long ago, I can't, it's been less than 10 years. And so that's prompted a lot of other investment, And so that's getting interest of people. So one, the city already had kind of started taking measures because of the advocacy that having going on on the ground. And just the market changing as well. Our mayor initiated was called complete communities, which was a program the previous mayor. Initiated a program called Complete Communities where they really took a hard look. It's 10 core communities here in Houston. That needed some gaps field. And so ours was one of them. So it wasn't too hard to get them looking, but if it has been an effort. You know being vocal to keep them aligned. I'll say in terms of our specific corridor, Nikki was not able to be here. But the Southeast Manager District, the organization that she represents, I think has been a very good. Ally in there. They're responsible for the programming. On these corridors and what's happening so they are really into what It looks like they support the owners because they they tax the owners. So we're very vocal with them as well. And so all those things that come together and a lot of times they are a voice for us on behalf of us when we aren't able to communicate kind of as residents. So. That's 1 piece. The second piece of your question you're saying How do you get to develop a source together? And so that has been somewhat of a journey as well. We really look at things as more of a homegrown aspect. We don't, our neighborhood is not a place. For, probably the outside investor right now, right? The market is just not gonna look good on paper for them. But for me, and neighbors and folks here that live with us or really alive with the 3rd word area or just the things that are happening in our area because it's happening in theirs. We started training ourselves. So we, you know, we're Yeah, we're seeing you meetings. We're, you know, at, you know, different conferences together. And then we, kind of formed our own organization as well. To just kind of do a lot more peer to peer sharing. And partnering to really just empower ourselves. And so one of the things that we work towards to kind of coordinate our sales better, Rob, is that, this year we'll have Aside from our conference in June, where we meet. Not just network, but we have some interaction. Goals within the conference as well for the area. We also, a set of design standards for our area that we're publishing this year to share with the local developers. And a few other, you know, kind of. It's sent us even from helping. People raise funds and structure their deals and provide technical assistance. So we're incentivizing people to come. And build here and kind of build, I don't say in our way, but we're making it easy for them to build what we want here. If that makes sense. And Scott, how do you, sort of make everything work together? It's a little different. You've got a single developer. But, but also since you emphasize this, you know, how do you, how do you, ensure that the investments are going to not decline in the future and be successful in the long term. Yeah, I mean, there's not a lot of large singular developments. There's a lot more that failed and are successful. I think we can probably all agree that eventually it may take 30 years, but a lot of those are eventually going into decline. So we're the land developer, so we're developing, we're acting essentially on behalf of a city in some ways. We're providing utilities, we're paving the streets. But all of those are going to become public resources eventually. Our streets will all be public right of way. Well most of them will be public right of way. Within our community. So we still have to coordinate with the in the city and work through and as most new urbanists out there know so much of what makes the charter powerful is illegal to do. Okay. In most places. You cannot build it that way. And so We've been working a lot to get through some of those hurdles and convince of the value. I think frankly, we're bigger risk to a city because we're a bigger project, but also we can invest the resources and doing more design work upfront than a lot of people can on smaller projects. And so that allows us to show more complete picture to the cities and get everyone on board. But in some ways, we get to control some of those resources that everyone's talking about. I mean, we We have a municipal utility district. That we get to, you know, determine how, those that infrastructure is built. And so we, get to act as a city a little bit there, but then I think most importantly, we don't want to just be one developer with one set of fingerprints on everything in the community. So we're developing the land, we're determining what the brand of the community is, who do we expect is going to live there? What is some of the programming happening? We do a lot more work on the residential side, but on the commercial side, want to have a whole host of vertical developers doing the construction. And the space will do some of it likely, especially to get things started. But we want there to be a lot of different fingerprints because that diversity is what creates resilience. If we go build every building the exact same, not only is it boring. But then it also is a lot less resilient because if that formatted building ended up not being a good one. Well, we have 50 of them and we're in trouble. And so we believe that the diversity of having a bunch of different developers working in one space. So what, you know, Jason's talking about, right? You've got multiple assets that are, you know, ready for redevelopment and, you know, how do you encourage different people to work in those? In Jason's case, you know, people within the neighborhood, I think the same thing for us. You know, we want, we want people who live within Indigo to also be business owners and own some of those buildings as well. Okay. I'm going to ask one more question and then we'll go to the Q&A. When people think about Houston, though they think about it doesn't have zoning. That's, you know, it's sort of its reputation. I don't know whether that's the case in the suburb that you're working in Scott, but, but a question would be, you know, in terms of vitalizing these corridors or transforming them. Does it help or hurt or maybe both? To to not have zoning or to have the regulations that you have in place in houston that's 1 but also you know, what can, what can people from around the country learn from Houston's example? I will say our jurisdiction city of Richmond does have zoning. They do have mixed use as one of those zones and it's It's a fairly good definition. So we were able to use that and then because of our size and our scale. We're 235 acres, which in the Houston suburbs is actually relatively small when we travel other places in the country, you know, it's massive. Okay. But having 235 acres to develop, most cities are going to treat you just as a specific plan. And so like they're going to make adjustments for your neighborhood based on the plan that you want to submit. And so, I think that's been relatively easy in that regard. The things we've looked at within the city of Houston, sure, there's not zoning and I think that's that's really been great for the mixing of uses and Houston has some great walkable neighborhoods. We actually in some areas do really well with that. But there's still other controls. That are a problem. It's not like just because we don't have land use zoning, but that means you can do everything that you would want to do. There's still minimum lot sizes. There's still height controls and all those things. But I'm sure Jason has a lot more experience with those. It's, I'm sorry, in terms of the policies. Of dealing with zoning, yeah, and what you're trying to do. Yeah, Luckily right now, I guess just specific to that and when we talk about, emancipation. One of the reasons we want to focus there is because the city wanted to pilot a more walkable area. And so they did some studies and came out with a walkable places ordinance as well as a transit oriented development orient or ordinance. And so both actually support. Walk a walkability by helping us reduce cars. In so both those ordinances pretty much speak to us being able to use the current commercial corridor and push those cars kind of behind the buildings, wide inside sidewalks, things that but That's not how it is today. And it's just the rule, right? I think the biggest thing is To your point, how do you or to your question, Rob, how do you begin to? Hmm. Actually get those developers in the area to utilize. The policy so to your point Scott very different application of the policies you guys are pushing it a different way pushing along those levers a different way. So we have the question, what are some creative ways to finance projects and secure commercial property, especially in undervalued areas. Sure. I'll say in terms of that, one. Particular one is reaching out to those owners if you can get in touch with them partner with them. We find that a lot of the owners they have dreams and goals too But they're lacking maybe the experience they're lacking maybe the capital but they'll work something out to be able to maybe do something in the short term as well as in the long term. The other thing that we find in terms of capital is Cannibal mix of a Just different sources being flexible with you know, public funding and being creative with itself for us in Houston, that may mean We have a Houston Community Land Trust. We have a Houston land bank. We have a housing and community development department. We have a terrorist all of them have funding and so while they don't have a specific product. For me. I can figure out what I need. And gonna have the conversation with them. We're at a point in time where I think The country is looking for solutions. And so I think the wholeness of responsibility is on us too. Kind of practice these principles that You know, we all look at it and it's, vivi and it's charter. And I'll add that. Most of the work that we're probably talking about doing in this room is not the standard commodity. So don't don't look to the standard commodity financing model. That's why we talk about capital not being a primary stakeholder. They want to be right down the lane, you know, the standard way that everyone is done and I think really you can do yourself some favors by looking for, you know, debt and equity groups who have ESG or DEI language on their websites talk about what they're trying to accomplish. Yes. With their lending there is a lot of money that is now trying to be placed into projects with social goods specifically And so that's a place to go. I would say don't be afraid to talk to private lenders instead of banks. It will be more expensive. Where our entire community is being done with private lenders. We don't have a single bank involved. It's a lot more expensive but It means almost no covenants, like very few covenants, a lot of flexibility and they're used to working. In uncertain times, that's a little bit more of their, I would say their playbook. So they're a little more flexible if you have a downturn in the market. And then the other thing I would add is there's some great crowd real estate crowdfunding websites out there. Small change is one of them. And small change also has the same kind of DEI and ESG goals as well that it's investors are doing. So if you're trying to raise a small the medium amount of money, you know, $100,000, $300,000, $500,000, those crowdfunding platforms might be a great way. Absolutely. Not just to raise the money, but to get your community that you're developing in. In the building as well. Hmm. You know, and I'll just one other things today. I'm with you, Scott, like the banks, right? But with the banks, it's a little harder. But what I'm going to say is that Banks are always, risk diversity, always going to be kind of the last to change in a sense. And from my perspective. But what I'll say is a lot of that conversation I have is that they want the feedback now so that they can take that and figure out how best to service the market. So I think the more conversation and more transparent we are with with all of these different arms that you know we both spoke about It really helps drive the conversation. There's a question. When, when it comes to connecting commercial corridors. What are some of the ways that you can build community between the activations because on the corridor you may have an activation then you may have a gap and then another activation another node or another. Piece of activity. So what do you do in between? Yeah, so for us it's You know, we kind of formed formed a group. And so even though, you know, the corridor is one of our focuses, we just meet regularly. So we kind of do 2 things. One, we meet regularly, monthly. Just kind of in a social setting. We meet quarterly from a technical perspective. We, to train one another to share to exchange with each other is doing. And then last night at least we're online. So we have like our little Facebook group. Different things like that. What we're sharing was going on. Different news, different led policy, different projects, whatever we feel like really affects, you know, our space. So that's how we. Tend to engage in between those activations. You know, and we are always I wanna say we're always growing and as people are coming in, they. They help increase. They community kind of gets involved, right? And they increase those that they kind of the Scott's point like they kind of take hold of things I get calls from people they're like well can I do this and can I do that will you know I'll have to figure out a you know Like, you know, it's a set of, you know, rules and standards. Or whatever the case is, but I think that's the energy that. You want when you're doing these, at least from us, this is kind of like a public private space, but it's a social meeting spot for the neighborhood. So getting that kind of feedback is exciting for us. There is a question. How do you, how do each of you engage the local government to influence policy around small scale developments? So on our end, some of it was getting our land plan approved and just like literally having to sit in meeting after meeting with. You know, city officials. And county officials going through and talking about how to handle. All the special rules that we needed to make it work and then then there's kind of the level above that I think maybe which is really more of the question here is like how do you get public policy to shift over time. And I think maybe, which is really more of the question here is like, how do you get public policy to shift over time? And I think that really we need a bunch of examples that have been successful. So that those city officials because like to be honest they're they're afraid of changing things because if it doesn't go well It reflects poorly on them. And they want things to go well. And so we've just really worked with CITY officials to find measured risk they can take that works for them. They can take that risk in one time. We prove the concept there and then we can take it and expand it from there. And so like Jason is talking about these pilots, I think that's a great way to get there. Is start small, start in a specific neighborhood, start with focus, give it a really good try, and then prove the success that, you know, these ideas that are in the charter are meaningful and real and work. Sometimes that means like in Texas we have a distrust. Our city officials often have a distrust of what works in California and what works in New York. So we need to find local examples too, that maybe are a little bit closer down. I'm gonna let Jason answer that, but, but 1st I'm gonna let people know that we are at the end of an hour and we are going to post the video to see news website tomorrow. So if you need to go, you can, come back and watch, you know, the remaining questions. We're gonna take a few more questions. And continue the conversation for a little bit longer. So I don't know if Jason, you had any response to that. You know, the local government question. Yeah, I guess we try to take a two-fold approach. I think Scott kind of alluded to it. One is, you know, high level. And so we've been working it, for instance, a A toolkit, so just really documenting what's going on. Sharing some of those best practices and principles along the way, but also package and get up so that you know it's 1 cohesive document that we can really campaign behind and get more people to to share and really spread the word. So there's that awareness and that education that we've been slowly kind of swelling up and then on the flip side this meeting that that education with something tangible. And so, you know, the corner we spoke of for instance, we anchor a lot of our language and a lot of our for instance, to that. As a tangible. Example, for instance, for instance, in that way we're able to take something tangible to the city. So if there's a permitting issue, if there's something like that. You know, we have it to say, here is the site. We don't have to. We can go through the friction somewhere and hopefully work it out and create a model that no one else has to go through that same thing. There was a question. An interesting one for you, Scott, and do you have any sort of curation plan for, for picking the people and ensuring a good mix of like 3rd places, food and beverage, neighborhood service office, So, that's, the, experience. You know various experiential retail etc. You know in your little corridor in mainstream. I think this is a really good question because I think a lot of the at our scale at least. I think a lot of the commercial spaces and mixed use spaces that have been developed in sort of a new urbanist framework have ended up with their retail spaces being all luxury goods and experiential retail like Jacob is mentioning here. And I think again that is is You know, it's really a problem for the adaptability and resilience of that space. Because those businesses are not actually the businesses serving people's everyday needs that people are going to have no matter what. And so I think it's a great question, Jake. And I would say that The control we're going to have is who we sell these 2 in the 1st place. We've been very careful. To we do have a commercial association but we've been very careful to strip those rules down to the bear minimum. Cause we've seen too many instances where adaptation is needed in a retail space. And this happened in the city of Sugarland in our suburbs. The city actually wrote this wonderful mixed use code. We helped consult with them on it and answer questions and make comments to the code. But then the city actually couldn't get that implemented anywhere because the commercial associations all had rules that were recorded onto the deeds of the property, that supersede the cities, what the city was trying to allow. And so I think it's really important that we strip down those requirements. We started off in the right way with the right design and the right programming support around it. But then at some point you have to push the baby bird out of the nest. And just hope that it takes flight. How about you, Jason? Is there any curation that goes on and, Emancipation Avenue? Yeah, so the curation is a little It's a little different. So for us, you know, they are of course a mix of landowners and a mix of different business needs and uses so But it really comes down to You know, what's there? What's existing? And you know, if there are a hundred. If there is a good number of us that are willing to plan and coordinate. Then that's how we have chosen to go about so that We know where the next barbershop is coming versus where the next coffee shop versus so they won't we don't have all the same thing in there is something cohesive there so that's been our approach. Which, you know. Will be eventual sounds like with Scott. It's setting up the community floor. Well, I think I'm gonna. I bring this to a close unless either of you have any like final words or something that might have been missed significantly that you wanted to say. If not, I mean, There's, there's other things I'd like to talk to you guys about. But maybe for another discussion, maybe it, maybe in Cincinnati, if you're gonna be there. And, so, I, with that, I will say thank you very much for participating in this and thanks to everybody for listening. And we'll see you soon, hopefully in Cincinnati. Alright, thanks, I'll see you there.