New Urban Development in Oklahoma:Infill and New Town

So, welcome to On the Park Bench, a public square conversation. Um, and it's brought to you by the Congress for the New Urbanism. On the Park Bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied industries, providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real time. And today we're going to have a discussion on uh new urban development in Oklahoma infill and new town specifically uh the Wheeler district in Carlton Landing. And our guests today are Ashley Terry and Katie Chapman. And uh the interviewer is myself, Rob Studville. So share your thoughts ontheparkbench www.tinyurl.compb. tinyurl.compb feedback and register for the coming webinar uh next Tuesday also at 12 noon Eastern time and the people at the incremental development alliance will be talking about current projects and how to bring together a team of small developers to revitalize a city during and after the pandemic. Go to cu.orgresourcesthearkbench org/resources ontheparkbench for more information and to register. And um wanted to talk a little bit about CU30 in Oklahoma City, which is coming up in two weeks, March 23rd through 26, 2022. And it's going to be CNU's first in-person congress since 2019. meet up with uh some of the uh the great urbanists uh working uh in America and elsewhere and meet up with your colleagues uh visit Oklahoma City which has a lot of great things uh going on um in terms of how they have transformed their downtown and adjacent neighborhoods. There's also tours of the two projects that we're going to be talking about today. So, learn more. cnu.orgcnu30. And uh before you do that, you might want to join or renew your membership. Become a current member and save $200 off your CNU30 registration. Check your membership status today. members.cnu.orgmemberships. And uh joining us today are Ashley Terry uh who is VP of development at the Wheeler District in Oklahoma City. The Wheeler District is a redevelopment of a former municipal airport about a mile or so from downtown in into a mixeduse neighborhood with up to 2,000 homes. Katie Chapman is director of sales at Carlton Landing, a new town that's being built about two hours east of Oklahoma City. It covers a larger area and is planned for about 2500 uh homes. And both of these are are major undertakings planned by well-known new urbanist firms in both in Oklahoma. The developers are brothers Grant and Blair Humphre. I'm Rob Studville, editor of CNU's public square. So, first Ashley and Katie are going to present um I think Ashley first followed by a discussion with me followed by Q&A from the audience. And so use the Q&A function of Zoom to ask your questions as they occur to you. And I'm going to pass this along and we can begin. Perfect. Thank you so much to Rob and to CNU for hosting this today. Um, this is going to be a lot of fun. Gonna get my screen shared here. I'm assuming that everybody can see that. Okay. All right. Well, I'm here to talk to you guys today about Wheeler District. As Rob mentioned, my name is Ashley Terry and I serve as the vice president of our development. Uh I've been with the project since 2015 and I'm just really excited to be here and share a little bit about it with you. Uh so Wheeler District, as Rob mentioned, is a 150 acre uh mixeduse master plan development. Uh we are a mile and a quarter from the CBD in downtown Oklahoma City. Uh and we have about threequarters of river frontage along the Oklahoma River. Our site includes the former downtown air park which is a private airport here uh that operated until uh the late 80s early 90s here in Oklahoma City and really our goal with Wheeler District is off is to offer a range of housing opportunities um in a walkable and bikable community. Uh so I thought I might start by sharing just a little bit uh with how it began. So for us it all began with a sharet. Uh we hosted a sharet back in 2014 with Dover Colon Partners. Uh they came here to Oklahoma City and spent a week um with about a thousand people from our broader community. Uh and it really offered people an opportunity to share um their thoughts and their visions and their dreams for what they wanted to see in a new community. Uh we asked people um if you could live anywhere, where would you live? and we heard things like Denver, uh, Portland, uh, Philadelphia, Chicago. And so really those answers, um, and the information we collected from the broader community during the Sharette, uh, really led us to design, um, a really dense, um, master plan for Oklahoma City. So, this is the master plan design that came out of the 2014 Cheret. um you know, we were able to really take all of that information, take our site and the context around us and really work into uh what we're pretty excited to share with Oklahoma City um and with you here today. Um so those main framework pieces um you can see here within the master plan. We do have a major thoroughare that bisects the project uh Western Avenue here in Oklahoma City. Um and so really through our m through that master plan process uh we worked out opportunities for how we might take this uh site and this project and that feedback and share it with you. So then we have to take all of that uh vision and turn it into a reality. Um I think with master plan projects we often view them as one big uh giant uh development and they are at the end of the day but uh as part of that process um really these are incremental projects. So for us that 150 acres gets broken down uh not just horizontally in a timeline uh but vertically and how are we actually going to take the site down uh how many acres should each phase be what should each phase hold and things like that. So, we've been at this uh for a while, as you can see here by our timeline. Things kick off kicked off in 2006 whenever the land was supposed to be purchased. Um, fun fact, actually Grant Humphre was supposed to lead the Wheeler District development. Um, but that was planned to kick off in 2008. Um, for obvious reasons, in 2008, that project did not take place. Uh, and so Grant went on to go do Carlton Landing during that time. uh which Katie will share about here in just a little bit. Uh Blair came back from MIT um and uh really took on Wheeler District with Gusto kicking off in that with that sharet in 2014 and really our team has been at it since then. Um so we took things down uh as I mentioned in an incremental way. So you can see here what we've been working on. Um the area shown in blue that you can see on your screen here is our phase one and two. So, this represents about 36 of the 150 acres of the Wheeler District development. Um, so this is really, um, when you come out here and tour it with CNU here in a couple of weeks, this is what you're going to see here on the ground. And you can see that it really just represents a small almost about a quarter of the project that we have ahead of us. This is Wheeler District as it looks today. Uh, a nice glowy twilight picture. Um, but this gives you a good idea of the size and the scale of what we're working with on the ground today. Just to share a few numbers with you guys. So, we have about 115 occupied homes. Uh, that's uh we've got about another 30 under construction. 27 of those are already sold. We've got about 40,000 square feet of commercial space here in phase 1. A couple of playgrounds, a park, a neighborhood pool, an elementary school, which I'll share about here in a little bit, and of course, a ferris wheel. So really uh we took that vision, worked it into a reality and we did that by focusing on a handful of key ingredients uh that um for our project. And so those four key ingredients uh were new homes in the urban core, outdoor spaces for everyone, the idea of being able to live, work, and play all in one space, and then really a commitment to being part of the broader Oklahoma City story. Um I'll share about each one of these things. These are definitely uh principles that you'll see in lots of different new urbanist communities. So for us really we started with housing product. Um that was really kind of the first structures that were built out here. We hit the ground running with about 12 houses. Uh we're really proud of our cottage home product. So this is a 600 to$1,200 square foot product. Uh it hit the market at about $150,000 with a sales price. This is a simple clean design. These cottages set on a 24 by 36 lot. Uh and they front along a pedestrian street called Peddller's Lane. Um these cottages were really designed to create connections between neighbors and really kind of a special little place within our community. Our standard home offering uh are runway homes uh aptly named after the downtown air park on Runway Boulevard. Uh these range about 1500 to 3,000 square feet. They start at a sales price of about $375,000 and really range all the way up um to a contract that we just signed for over a million dollars. This is the bulk of our home stock. These are really designed around livable front porches uh with alleyfed garages, which you can see here. Um one product that we're really excited about uh and this product really evolved from that cottage product is our terrace home product. So these are 1,700 square feet. There's a handful of them. They also sold for $429,000. These came along um as a way for us to really create an urban verticality uh but in a single family product. You'll see here when you come to Oklahoma City that attached product isn't quite as common as it might be in other markets. And so for us, even offering a three-foot separation and what we um call a detached town home, which we are fully aware of what what we're saying when we say that. Uh but really that allows us to really create that urban verticality. We thought it might be kind of fun to paint this product um in an interesting way and so we created an ombre gradient. um these front on the major thoroughare for the next couple of years and they have a really beautiful terrace on the front. Another real key ingredient of our project is creating outdoor spaces that are for everyone. The one that everyone's most familiar with is the Wheeler Ferris wheel. Um it's um you know if you're familiar with the story, you know that it came from S the Santa Monica Pier. Uh the ferris wheel was actually purchased by Grant Humphre on eBay. Uh, yes, you can purchase anything on eBay, even a ferris wheel. Uh, so that that um was really kind of the first piece of our development in 2016. We kicked things off with that. Uh, it's really become an outdoor space for the broader Oklahoma City community to enjoy. Um, and we're excited to welcome you all here. We've got pocket parks and playgrounds throughout our first couple phases of development. Uh, lots of patios. We're really focused on providing flexible, sharable uh open space that really invites the community to come in and enjoy our project. We've got a 1acre park and neighborhood pool uh that we're kicking off as part of phase two that'll be open this summer. And uh Runway Boulevard um has a bike path, bike and pedestrian path down the center. And really this will eventually reach all the way up to um connecting to the o the Oklahoma River trails. again that idea of live, work, and play all in one place. So, we're really focused around the opportunity to provide people the chance to maybe live in Wheeler District, work in Wheeler District, and play in Wheeler District. One way that we've done that is through a shop home product. Uh, this product is really fun because it has a um flexible commercial space on the ground floor with residential above. This is an an attached product that we uh brought to market in May of 2020. We brought 10 of these to market and sold all 10 of them in three weeks. So, this is a product that I think a lot of people are really excited about. It's been really fun to see how people use the flexible commercial space um and how they've really uh jumped in and embraced this new product for Oklahoma City. You can see here again these front on a bike and pedestrian street. Um and we're really excited. You can see a branding firm, a coffee shop, and a wine shop in uh three of these here. Probably our largest civic commitment that we've made to date is uh our involvement in Western Gateway Elementary School. So, this was a piece of our project uh that we kicked off in 2015. Uh it opened in August of last year. Um the exciting thing about Western Gateway is uh its curriculum. So it is has a dual immersion curriculum uh where students are learning in English and in Spanish and uh are receiving a bilingual education. Uh this really speaks to not just our civic commitment but really honoring the context of our project uh through our involvement with this um with this piece of the project. You can see here that it has a neighborhood boundary that serves multiple neighborhoods um including Wheeler District. There's five neighborhoods in total uh that this elementary school serves as of August of this year. Another piece that we're really excited about is our Wheeler criterium races. When you're here on Tuesday uh for CNU, you'll have a chance to check these out. So, these criterium races actually happen on the streets of Wheeler District on Tuesday nights. It's a lot of fun to come down neighbors line uh Runway Boulevard and other places in the neighborhood. and um they they have cowbells and all kinds of other things to cheer the cyclists along. So, that's a really fun piece of it. Of course, I'll just end kind of end by saying that none of this would have been possible uh without our partnership with the city of Oklahoma City. So, Wheeler District does have a tiff. Um you can see here how it's broken down into three key elements. Um, but really I think the important thing to understand about the Wheeler District TIFF and really it's the first of its kind in Oklahoma City is the structure in which the developer is taking on the upfront risk. Uh, it's specific to public infrastructure uh, and the elementary school and uh, the developer is only eligible for reimbursement once the costs have been spent and um, once the increment has actually been made. So that's just a little bit about the Wheeler district. It's a quick 10 minutes to fit in everything we've been working on for the last few years. Uh, but we're really excited to welcome you to Oklahoma City and excited to dive into some of the Q&A that I'm already seeing come through here. So, uh, I'm going to hand this over to Katie so that she can share about Carlton Landing with you. All right. Thank you, Rob. We'll go with this. All right. Um and um I'll just say next slide. Okay, let me let me get on full screen view. Um I can't seem to All right. Well, I will just go. Um I'm sorry I don't have the full screen view, but it's but at least you can see it. Okay. I think you guys were seeing my messy desktop with a You want to start there or? Yep. Let's uh go into the master plan. Yep. Okay. So, again, our master plan was done by DPZ. We are 10 years into a 30-year master plan. It has evolved a little bit because we do allow the lake and the land in our community have a voice in the way our town is designed and grows. Um I do believe with each step that our core principles and beliefs have inspired the master plan um do remain. So we're about 15% built out with 300 existing units. We are on track to have over 2,000 homes and we expect to realize the majority of that growth over the next 10 to 15 years. You can go to the next slide. This is Lake Eupala. Um it is a 150 square mile core of engineer reservoir with 600 miles of shoreline. The lake was christened by Lynon Johnson in 1964 and we are able to enjoy the natural landscape and mature vegetation protected by the core. Next slide. Another perspective. You can see how we're located on a peninsula and able to enjoy the lake from three sides. It also protects us from wild fl wildfires. Um the lake is truly the heart of Carlton Landing. Next slide. In conducting the market study for Carlton Landing, it was realized that we're in this interesting triangle of geography with Dallas and Texas or Dallas and Oklahoma City and Tulsa and that there's not a lot of options for these residents to of these cities to go for for nearby retreat. So, it's worked out well. We've seen buyers and residents from all these areas as well as Kansas and Missouri. Next slide. Not only is Carlton Landing Oklahoma's youngest town, we're also the first new urbanist town to incorporate its own municipality. We do have a mayor and an elected um board of trustees. We were also able to set up a tax increment finance district which is set up to provide about 80 million over 25 years for community improvement. Along with our 3% sales tax and property tax, a 9.5 million obligation bond is providing funding for our civic structures, cultural facilities, parks, and trails. Um, next slide is our swim beach, which is one of our more recently funded tiff projects. And then go on to the next slide as well. We're also home to Oklahoma's first rural charter school with about 75 you um students from preK through 8th from Carlton Landing and the surrounding towns that are able to take advantage of a hands-on approach to learning. You can see our learning cottages here as well which allows our school to grow incrementally. All three of my children have gone here and it's been really nice for them to be able to just walk to and from school by themselves. Next slide. Um, so for our civic buildings, this is a quick glance. Many of these structures have been home to a multitude of events or businesses at one time. Pavilion has been the meeting place for potlucks, town meetings, school events, and the and also our church's home for several years before we moved into the building you'll see in the next slide. Um, and you also can see the popups as well. Um, that's a great place for businesses to start and these small, simple wooden buildings right there, that white one. Um, and then as their business grows, they're able to move on to a more established brickandmortar location. And you can go on to the next slide and next slide. And then this is the meeting house. Right now is a great place to grab a cup of coffee. Um, but it was previously the sales office and before that the developers offices as well. So moving on to local architecture, our local vernacular is inspired by the Oklahoma farmhouse. It's based on rural traditions with most of our homes and wood clapboard and board and batten and standing seam tin roofs. The farmhouse motif on the lake is utilized in the same way the beach house is used in 3A. Steve M Steve Steve Mison has provided us with his living traditions guide as our design. Our urban standards intentionally include sidewalks and front porches pushed closer to the street, bringing people together more frequently. We'll just kind of scroll through some of these pictures. Um, it will show you about our thorough affairs. They provide vehicular access while prioritizing pedestrians and cyclists and allowing multiple points of crossing with slower speeds of traffic. Um, our architectural standards provide a cohesive approach to home design, allowing a variety of homes to fit together and just keep going through all the way to that big house. Our architecture is also egalitarian, encouraging larger homes with humility and more modest homes to be equally celebrated. So, the homes that Rob is scrolling through here are just a few of the si styles you'll find in Carlton Landing. Um they were all built by members of our builder's guild, most of whom are also full-time residents. And then the structural masonry homes shown next. Um it actually represents probably the largest concentration of newly constructed mass wall masonry homes in the country. We have about 18 loadbearing um clay brick masonry homes throughout the community. And then scroll on down to that pocket neighborhood. We have a few pocket neighborhoods in the community which are really unique landmarks within the community that provide relief and distinction within the predominant design motif. And we're going to go down and then this is the bend. That's a hybrid of structural masonry and cedar shake houses. The next slide is light imprints. On the development side, we have implemented Tom Low's light imprint which provides an ecologically sensitive way of managing our storm water. We allow the rain water to soak through the rock beds and the seasonal creeks. I used to live on boardwalk and my youngest would always get so excited whenever an instant creek would show up outside our door after a heavy rain. It's also less expensive um and less invasive to implement. So right here on this slide, you can see a small retention area at the top of the rock bed that is where rainfall um gathers after a heavy rain. And then children love to go out there and play in it. You see the next slide. My child is one of those who loves to embrace that pool of water while the clean city kids look on. So, and then going down to the next sl uh that's just a little bit more of the light imprint you can see in the rock beds. And the next slide is celebrating our community. We can't talk about how beautiful our town is without celebrating the people and the culture and the life here. We've got 25 full-time families. Uh the majority of our part-time homeowners come frequently and serve on the school board, HOA or town as a town trustee. Uh we've created great annual traditions like the um porchfest which started Ithaca but is also at Carlton Landing now. Um and the bonfire at the burrow. So just the next few slides just kind of showing our lake life. Fishing, boating, swimming, all essential to the success of our community here. Now, so our sales report. So in 2020, we had an unprecedented year in sales, selling almost a hundred homes that year, not including customs. Like many other places during the pandemic, I do think that people were revisiting where they choose to live, and those that were on the fence about having a second home at a lake in the country suddenly had a very practical reason to do so. Um, since then, we've been very busy keeping up with the demand. And so we're really looking forward to several next phases of our development. So real quickly, we're approaching $400 a foot on resale furnished homes. We have very little inventory. Um we have completely sold out of our next phase that I'll show you in just a second. Our builder's price is about 250 a foot, not including the lot. If you go down to the next phase, this is Lincoln Square. We'll set um we're set to break ground on that a little bit later this summer. We've sold out. We're also going to have room for some civic buildings here as well. That's our town hall at the top. And then possibly a library and post office as well. The next slide is our first concentration of commercial space and live work that will also break ground probably around this fall. Um, and then we're the next phase is our new marina which is about to move and we'll be able to double our slip capacity there and allow the cove that we are on to be more swimming, um, kayaking, paddle boarding. So then I don't have the rest of the slide or the last slide, but I'll just quickly talk about um, one of our next phases. Grant's been working with Tom Derty on an exciting project called the Goduous House. So, it's more prevalent in the Netherlands and Belgium. Um, but it is a more integrated way to include our elderly population in our community than in the conventional assisted living. So, it's going to be um in phase eight right up from our church on Char Street. It'll be a series of cottages centered around a courtyard. know, it's going to be in a partnership between the town, the town um founder and our um and the builder. So, I think most of you guys know that we recently received the 2022 charter award um for um region, metropolis, city, town category. And we also will be having a field trip on March 26th um on the last day of CNU. So I hope that you can make it out and come see this wonderful town in person. Thank you very much um Katie and thank you Ashley. Um you know that was a great presentation Katie despite the technical difficulties and I wish I was able to help more with that. Um but uh uh you know let me just uh you know many questions uh you know come uh come to me there's so much to ask there uh and um first of all I wanted to ask um what were the precedents that these two projects followed you know with uh with the Wheeler district um you may have looked at at other municipal airports that were redeveloped around the country like uh Miller and Stapleton um Carlton Landing, you know, perhaps other uh traditional labor developments were uh you know, particularly inspiring. Can can both of you uh talk about those precedents? Sure. I'll jump in and talk a little bit about Wheeler District. So, you're absolutely correct. uh Miller, Stapleton. Uh we've spent a lot of time traveling around uh what was uh Pinewood Forest, now town at Trillith. Um we've been really lucky to be plugged in with CNU and NTBA and really had the opportunity to look at other projects. Uh one thing that was really transformational for our team though was we actually took a team trip to Copenhagen in 2017. Uh for us, we were walking around saying we were trying to develop the most bikable neighborhood in Oklahoma. And so we really thought we ought to go see the most bikable neighborhood uh in the world. And so we spent about a week in Copenhagen as a team. And really, I can speak to very specific influences that came back to that. Um as you were here on the ground, there's things that we can point to directly. Um whether it was just spending time together as a team, but also just obviously the amazing influence um that we were able to see there. So Katie on the Carlton Landing side, you know, Ashley was able to be part of that original master plan, but we have a gorgeous book uh that DPC put together that I've been able to look through as well. I think because of our vast lake. It's it is truly like an inland sea. Seaside was the obvious inspiration and precedent. Um this could be considered the seaside of the Midwest. Um, also I know that they looked at Lake Aluma in Oklahoma City for some of the um design as well. Okay, I'll remind everybody if you have questions uh we will be getting the Q&A from uh uh from the audience. So ask them in the use the Q&A function of Zoom. Um I wanted to ask about the demand uh you know in a different way um you know perhaps there you you're both uh developing in areas where there was skepticism as to the demand although one is is you know pretty close to the downtown core but across the river in an area where um it hadn't been developed for a long time and another really and part of part of the state that had not grown for a long time. Um, can you talk about uh the demand for living out there and and how you looked at that demand and um um you know how that worked out? Um first you want Okay, I go first. Um well, I do think that again we're a little bit different because we are in rural Oklahoma. Um and we have this wonderful resource such as the lake. Um they they do and they do want Carlton Landing to be a viable full-time community, but um I I the majority of the homeowners are part-time residents. We have we're about 10 minutes outside of Eupala, which is a small um rural town, and about 10 minutes from Longtown, which is another one. So we're kind of right in between there. Um, my kids have gone to Carlton Landing Academy and now my oldest is at the high school in Eupfala. There's a lot of crossover. Um, while Carlton Landing can provide some of those residents that have been part of these communities forever a a different place to live, um, we're also bringing other things to these communities. Um, I would like to say that the whole overall area of Lake Eupfala has been improved with Carlton Landing being here. Um, I would say the demand right now is more for secondary homeowners. Um, those people from Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, like I said, the pandemic really exposed us to a lot of people. Um, we have a very strong rental market. So, I think we have our main vacation property management group has about 55 homes in their program and they are full about every weekend. Um, we generally will get some full-time residents from from that. Um, and but definitely second home buyers. I'll say from the Wheeler district perspective, you know, for us, we are, as I said, a mile and a quarter from the CBD, but really we're in kind of those those traditional ring neighborhoods, kind of that area uh right outside of downtown. And there is really not anywhere um to build massive pockets of new construction. Um most of that was built out uh years, decades ago really. Um, and so for us, we have the opportunity to provide um, new homes in the urban core. And um, you know, I think for people who might have lived in a historic home, now we have the opportunity to live in a new home but in a similar location near downtown. Um, and so just like most projects that have residential as part of them, demand has just been insane from 2020 into 2021 and continuing. I think I mentioned in the beginning of my presentation, we've got about 30 homes under construction right now and 27 of those are already sold. Um, so we're continuing to see that demand um even as um other pieces of the housing market are starting to slow down just a little bit. So is um are both of you uh you know doing very quite well in terms of sales at this point? I mean, um, it's strong despite the fact that they're such different markets. Um, you're both seeing a strong demand for sales. Yes. Um, we sold out of our next phase last March. Um, at that time we did not have utilities uh priced for that area. So, we pre-sold them with the um with the possibility that there would be a price increase once the bid for utilities came back in. So, we got that a few months ago. Uh took that to the buyers. They were able to decide if they wanted to continue with their lot purchase or not. All but five did. And I listed those five for sale last week and they were sold out within an hour. Wow. Um It's striking that both of these projects seem to be sort of a laboratory for new urbanist ideas. Um, you know, in different ways. Uh, and can you um uh can you talk about that a little bit and and uh how you're both manifesting that in a different way? I think Oh, you go Ashley. I I think from the Wheeler district perspective, you know, for us it's the idea of we've got all this space. We've got a full 150 acres, but we are developing it out, you know, really block byb block, phase by phase. So, we have this opportunity um to really kind of test things um in the block format or in like a small section of the community um and really see how the market reacts to it, how our, you know, our new neighbors react to it, things like that. Um so, one example for us is um our cottage product. Originally in our plat and in our master plan, those lots were drawn in as our standard 36 by 93 foot lot. It would have had one single family runway home on it. Um we had this cool idea, worked with an local architect, Sam Day uh here in Oklahoma City to come up with our cottage product. Took that 36 by 93 lot and really transformed it into three 24 by 36 foot lots. Ran a pedestrian path down the center of it. Um, and so because it's a master plan community, um, you know, you own the land around it, you have the ability to make those changes and, uh, do things on the fly. Um, we're also really lucky to have a home building partner that's willing to jump in and take on some of those crazier ideas along with us. Um, even starting kicking things off by installing a ferris wheel along the river. Um, so for us, I think that it's, you know, we love kind of the opportunity to get to play with the plan a little bit. Um, we're also really lucky to have had Dober Cole set us up with such a fantastic framework for us, our team to really jump in and take down piece by piece. Can you talk about some of the laboratory ideas uh in Carlton Landing? I can. I probably a little bit personal for us. We that's exactly why we moved here in 2014. Um my husband Clay was working on his structural masonry concept and you know while we can build that in a city um and did it was a little bit more attractive to come out to the lake where there wasn't a strict code and really dive in in some research and development on the mass wall masonry. Um and since then we've just kind of found our home here and have continued to build. Um also say you know from the beginning the whole thing was an experiment coming into a rural setting. I know Grant actually had to start a home building company before he was able to attract other builders to come out here. And then typically so far in our development we've had single family um homes primarily a few condos but these lots have been you know small third of an acre lots and now with one of our next phases we're working with Tomllo on the west estates and those will be our first multi-acreage parcels that we're going to develop. We're going to get to Q&A um in a minute. I just wanted to ask about uh the programming and public events in these two projects and um uh and particularly I'm interested in the porch vest uh in Carlton Landing. Um uh it began in in my neighborhood in Ithaca, but we have uh in my neighborhood 6,000 people and 50,000 people in the city. Um, and I it's it's amazing that you can have a porch fest in such a small community, but uh I'd like to I'd like to hear about it. Okay. Well, probably on a much smaller scale than Ithaca, but I I think at the core of Carlton Landing, it is about community and we have found that having events such as this, especially ones that are not typical for this part of Oklahoma, brings a level of excitement and it's also a draw for people to come. So with Porchfest, you know, we had knew the history of Porchfest and Ithaca and one of our friends, Scott Doyen, um had brought it to Atlanta prior to our move out here and we were able to see the success there as well. So just kind of a bunch of us here decided that Carlton Landing has a lot of porches and it would be a great let's put some musicians on them. So we I think this is our fourth annual one and the first one was really big food trucks coming out. It attracted obviously not only the residents in Carlton Landing, but from the areas around us, which is always nice when we can find some common ground with them and do things together. So, we've had musicians come from Eufalla as well. Um, and then as it's grown each year, some years have been smaller because of rain. It's going to be maybe snowing this weekend when we have it. Um, but I think it we've got a great lineup and it's definitely a day that is full of excitement and kind of renewed vigor about community. So, what about the programming and the events that you have at Wheeler District? Yeah. So, for us, you know, it's really a way for us to introduce people to our project, invite them to find a way to interact with our project, whether they're a homeowner, a neighbor to the community, just someone who lives in Oklahoma City. Um, but to come down here and experience Wheeler District and not just see what it's all about, but actually, you know, maybe have a little part in it. Uh, they might be a small business that pops up at one of our events, you know, maybe a musician that plays. Um, I mentioned the Wheeler CR the Wheelerr bike races. Uh, those are a lot of fun on Tuesday nights. Uh, but it's also an opportunity for us to kind of see that idea of walkability and bikeability being priorities of the neighborhood and of the district. Um, we literally shut streets down to cars every Tuesday night, March through September, uh, and allow these bike races to take place. when you move into Wheeler District, you get a little Wheeler District branded cowbell uh in your opening gift so that you can come out onto your front porch and cheer the cyclists along. Um and those those cyclists have really become collaborators within our community. Um they've become partners in in our community. you know, we um we actually brought them out as we were designing our streets and had them uh ride their bikes over our raised crosswalks to make sure that they still, you know, functioned uh and really prioritized cyclists. Took some of our tighter curves uh to make sure that they still worked for the crit races. So, it's a lot of fun to use public events to kind of seed some of those key ingredients back into not just the public version of Wheeler District, but the district itself. Um, we're going to get some into some of the Q&A and Lynn Ellsworth asked some questions about uh speculation, speculative investment, and uh um how do you prevent that from happening if you do or is that a problem? Uh um are there rules preventing investing in these homes as rental units? Are some built as rental units? It's a lot of questions, but getting it to the idea, I guess, of home speculation. Yeah. So, I think from the Wheeler district perspective, um, you know, we we welcome investors, we welcome residents. Um, you know, we are excited to have a rental in the community before we're able to offer multif family, uh, which is something that we're actively working on right now. Um, you know, the thing that we have regulations for is Airbnbs. That's kind of the hot thing here in Oklahoma City is taking homes and turning them into Airbnbs. So, we have regulations on whether you're not whether or not it's your primary residence. Uh you're limited on number of days you can Airbnb if it's not, although you're welcome to still buy a property and Airbnb it. Um you just have to stick within those regulations. So, for us, that's kind of the speculative piece that we've been focused on. Um we've had lots of people, you know, we have a waiting list of people who are wanting to buy homes and actually live in the community. Um and so it's not been something that we've had um any major issues with at this point. Um although I know with a lot of communities it's always on your radar as you're doing new construction. I'd say um similar story here. We definitely welcome investors in um spec builds as well. We do have a strong rental market for full-time um long-term leases and short-term as well. At one time, we did have uh restrictions on how people were able to rent their homes. We have since removed those. Uh there's a few property management groups here and owners are able to also list their homes on Airbnb. Um, again, you know, we the majority of our homeowners are part-time. So, when they come to buy, they are looking at their rental um, income potential and that is a big driver here right now in their home buying decision. We had a question about the sustainability features of these projects. Uh, maybe Katie, you can start with that aspect. Um, so definitely I think the light imprint plays into that um with the sustainability just embracing our um our natural landscape and terrain. Um we have our brick homes here as well which will also last hundreds if not thousands of years. Um and then also many of our builders are implementing um ICF as well. Um and and just other green building practices like GE. What is ICF? ICF is uh insulated concrete. It's similar it's it's similar to mass wall masonry but with the concrete. Um, so we've had one builder do that alongside then we have the brick homes as well. So here in Wheeler District, um, one thing that I often fail to mention in my presentations, especially one where I'm trying to fit it all into 10 minutes, but all of our homes are geothermal. Um, and that's really something that is not normal in the Oklahoma City market. the our primary home builder here in Wheeler District actually built the first all geothermal neighborhood um prior to starting to work with us here in Wheeler District. So, Wheeler Homes are geothermal and then we also have introduced solar as an opportunity here uh within our project. So, we have a partnership with a solar home build uh solar company um that allows you to maybe add it on or we actually have some homes that we're starting to look at coming standard with solar um as they come to the market. Um we had a question about the uh the shopfront homes, the live work units. I um um I guess they're in Wheeler, not in Carlton Landing um at this point. Um but um how how do they work? are do you have somebody buying it then living in the upper section and actually working downstairs or renting that out? How could you tell me how that works? Yeah, so we've seen both actually. Um so you know we've got uh residents who are living in the upper floors and renting uh potentially to the like the wine shop downstairs. Um the owner of the coffee shop lives above his unit so he's utilizing all three floors. Uh but the CPA firm that is in the ground floor um they actually own the space and then are renting their residential units. So we've kind of seen uh people use them in all different ways. It's kind of been you know going back to that idea of it being a lab. This was a really fun product for us to bring to market and kind of get to just see how people used it. Um and that's that's been really fun for us. Um all 10 again are sold. We're actively planning on working the working on the next phase of these and I believe nine of the 10 um have commercial uses on the ground floor. There's one where the resident lives in all three. Um again, these are a 15 foot wide product. They're attached. Um so you get about 440 um square feet on the ground floor of commercial space. Um they have the ADA entrance and an ADA restroom. So it allows them to flex into that commercial space but as um you know you could live in all three floors of it as well. So they really offer some unique flexibility but there is a way to divide the two. Um they yeah so they are they're actively they they have two entrances. Um so yeah there's a residential entrance and then the ADA commercial entrance. Um and there's a term called house hacking. uh then where you can kind of like uh reduce the the amount that you're spending for your mortgage, make things more affordable uh by getting a a house where you have rental. That seems like a a possibility for either house hacking or business hacking. Yeah, absolutely. And it's, you know, I'd say we're actively kind of encouraging that. Uh ADUs is another thing that we're really focused on. We've got lots of residents that are um looking at adding those either now or setting up um to have them in the future. Um just really increasing that density overall. Is that sort of a thing in Carlton Landing? Is yes, that's very prevalent in Carlton Landing. Uh we do not have restrictions throughout the community on what can be commercial or what cannot be commercial. So, um you'll be walking down the street and somebody is using their detached garage as their home building company's office. Um we have a similar product coming online that I was talking about, the commercial live work town houses down on Water Street that's really going to I think uh put more of the focus of our community down on Water Street by the water. And we have two very specific units that will that will only be commercial. Um the rest of them have the ability to be either. And I think they're very similar product with the um two entrances and then somebody can live above as well. They'll be three stories tall. Um which kind of leads into this question uh by um by Rick Cole. uh and uh given the family and regional connection between these two projects, what kind of synergy is there between the two projects given their different um they've got completely different uh locationational uh aspects to them, but do you learn from each other? Um do you share resources? Absolutely. Like 100%. I always say that we were really lucky here at Wheeler District to actually have Carlton Landing kick things off first. Um Katie can attest that we're constantly pinging them and asking them how did you guys solve this question or uh what do you what does your association do in this instance? Um but more than that we've actually been really lucky to take frequent trips as a team up uh especially with our home building company uh and we can tour and really get on the ground within just a couple of hours um to see a really great housing product. And so I think they are totally different projects. Um really their ultimate goals are uh a little different um you know but at the same time um I think they all still have those they both still have those new urbanist principles all the way through and some of the main key features of both projects I think are the same too. So we're really lucky to have Carlton Landing so close to us. Yeah. Um same likewise. I think one of the fun things is, you know, at Carlton Landing, we definitely have a different, um, house style and so, uh, different audiences. Wheeler is much more geared to that city, um, look. And so, it's been really fun to kind of look at what Wheeler is doing, really pushing the design um, a bit. And I think Carlton Landing is also doing it in its same way, but to a very different market. So um there is lots of crossover and definitely the sharing of ideas and what has worked and what hasn't. Um, this is a highly technical one, but uh, Hes Boris asks about any chance you could share your full finance stack structure. And I don't even know what that is. Uh, but uh, um, helped us to understand the ratios of TIFF, equity, and debt. So from the I'll say from the Wheeler district perspective, Hazel, there is not enough time between now and CNU for us to get into our full finance stack with you. Although I'd be happy to grab you at CNU and talk about this a little bit in person, but I will say from the Wheeler district perspective, like I I mentioned that the project wouldn't have been possible without the TIFF agreement for the city. So that $60 million is eligible for reimbursement on public infrastructure. Uh the way that that process works for us is we actually um turn a stack of invoices into the city each year. They review them and certify uh whether or not they feel like they were public. Um and that amount uh is then really kind of set aside and as we create increment through the project, it is eligible for reimbursement up to that 60 million. Uh to date we have given the city about $10 million worth of invoices on the project and we received um incremental reimbursement of about $150,000. So that kind of gives you an idea of um increment is slow to create in the beginning of the project. Obviously we'll see that grow as the project continues to grow. Uh so we hope that that reimbursement gets a little bit larger and catches up. Um, but to date the the TIFF is something that's really just kind of getting its feet under it and getting started as a project. I'll say on the Carlton Landing side, we have an amazing town manager, Greg Buckley, but Hazel, I could put you in touch with him. Um, it's definitely a, you know, a good relationship between the developer, the town trustees as well, and Greg kind of is the go-between between those two parties on um, making sure the TIFF is implemented. Um, so they he would be a great resource if you want to get his information from me later. I'm going to say that we're at the an hour point right now and uh we're going to continue to answer questions uh from the Q&A. Um uh this is going to be um put on a uh the video is going to be posted. So if you have asked questions um and you need to go, you can come back and uh take a look at how these questions were answered um tomorrow when when the video is posted. Um kind of uh you know following on that uh can you tell me a little bit about the differences of uh working uh being a project located in a big city versus being a project where you're essentially your own municipality and and how that affects how the project is going. Well, I'd say we're constantly jealous of Carlton Landing being their own municipality and getting to make some of their some of their own rules. uh while we're not able to make some of our own rules here um you know for us we worked really hard on um our zoning our covenants like I think that for land development um a lot of people may not know or just may not be aware of all of the work that goes in on the front end creating you know legal documents and complex agreements with the city um that have allowed us to come in and do this type of development. Uh our project is a PUD. Um and so that was uh it's a long PUD. It had quite a few variances as far as the city was concerned. Um I saw a question uh about how the fire marshall uh is on board. Um we're definitely unique in Oklahoma City, but I'd say, you know, our standard housing spacing really isn't that far off from what you might see in a historic neighborhood here in Oklahoma City. It's just new construction. uh it might be a little closer to the street um with and have the garage in the back, but really it's not something that they're completely unfamiliar with. Our streets are definitely tighter. Um we the it's pretty fun actually. The fire department will bring trucks and teams out here and uh they will take their trucks and practice making turns in our neighborhood for training exercises and things like that. Uh because we really are kind of a unique thing here in Oklahoma City. Um, but it uh it's also a lot of fun to get to collaborate with our planning department uh and other local developers really to just kind of um look at um best practices and how we can implement them on the district and the neighborhood level. Say because of our location um and being very rural um in the beginning most everything was under the developers um framework. So everything was in-house. U when we moved out here there wasn't a um there was no code enforcement or anything. So it was a little bit more wild west. As we've grown um we have been able to take some of that load off of the developer and um put it on the town, put it on different planning committees and so it has become a little bit more regulated um as we've grown. One of our maybe hardships is the the trade pool. We're having to bring in um quite a bit of people from outside of even our local area. So, just trying to find enough hands to come out here to help us build this has been a little bit challenging. Can you uh Katie just briefly tell tell the folks about uh what the area like what other uh settlements are in the area and how does that all work together? Yeah. So the the main town is you fall about 10 minutes away from here. It's probably the largest town outside of here. Um it's it's small. I can't remember exactly how many people but we've got a few restaurants. um uh public schools are there. They're great as well. So, it's definitely a community that we like to try to work with and um and and be a part of as well. Um other than that, Mallister is 30 minutes away and that is our closest Walmart. So, um that kind of lets you know a little bit of our location. We're about an hour and a half south of Tulsa as well. So, it's it is a a great place for people to um have a second home on the lake. It's it's a beautiful lake. It has not always been um what Oklahoma or the for tourism. It's not necessarily the lake everybody was coming to. And I think that Carlton Landing has really changed that narrative. And um I concentrate only in Carlton Landing on sales, but I have a lot of good relationships with realtors outside of Carlton Landing and and all of real estate on Lake Follow right now is booming. Um so I think that Carlton Landing has had a hand in that. Um, we've brought shops and restaurants and we're also pouring into the existing communities around us and I think that just helps the whole lake um to be able to grow and thrive right now. Katie, that's such a Oklahoma way to measure things, your proximity to a Walmart. Right. Exactly. Mark said that he loves both of these communities, but what were the biggest roadblocks that had to be overcome on the civic community level in getting both of these neighborhoods started? I'm happy to jump in and talk, you know, from the Wheeler district perspective. Um, you know, for us it was really just creating our tiff agreement with the city and working through all the details of that. Um, as I've mentioned multiple times, it was a necessary piece of the project and so it was something that we had to have in place before we could start even those first pieces of infrastructure construction. Um, I think also our zoning code, our PUB um was just something a little different. So there was a lot uh that we had to work through with the city there. Um, so I think with each of those things like we've kind of been a unique new thing for Oklahoma City. Um, and that doesn't mean that we haven't used best practices from ways that things have been done in other parts of the city, but to kind of pile them all together, uh, in one location, I think has been a little challenging to work through on a few different levels. But as we've gone through phase one, uh, we're halfway through phase two and we're already starting to plat phase three, uh, which is going to be double the size, um, of what the first two phases were. um we you know are really seeing that uh I think we've worked through a lot of those challenges and getting things kind of up and running and Rob I think you've already spoken to this but just you know developing um a new neighborhood it's you know we've got to get people excited and interested in moving here. Um and so I think that that was kind of a unique piece as well as really kind of kicking off a whole new neighborhood in Oklahoma City. Um but we've been thrilled with the um the opportunity and the process and really the response that we've seen from the broader community. [Music] I think for me I'm not on the development side of things or wasn't you know in the beginning so that might be something that Grant would have to speak to a little bit more from my side unfortunately. You know what strikes me about um the Wheeler district is you have that road going right through the middle of it. Number one, I mean, you know, that has to have some traffic cominging and I notice on the plan you've got a couple of roundabouts that are planned. I don't know how that's going. You've got sort of a vision for traffic calming that and um and uh you know how you're getting along with that or you know are you making progress towards it? We are. We are. So, you know, we've always known since the beginning, you know, uh Western Avenue sees about 19 20,000 cars a day um right here that thoroughare that runs through the project. And so, you know, for us, we've known since the very beginning that this was something that we were going to have to do was calm down traffic on Western Avenue. Uh Do Cole um came to the table with really cool ideas for how to do that. uh they had someone as part of their team uh Rick Hall who I think a lot of people might be familiar with um who helped us work through those pieces and really decide that a roundabout was our best opportunity. So they've been in the master plan since day one. Uh we do not own Western Avenue though it is a city street. Um and so we've had to work with the city on what that could look like, what our opportunity is and you know we've been really excited with our progress on it so far. So, we see the roundabouts as coming along with phase three. Um, we are actively engineering them right now. Um, and are actively slowly working our way through the uh through the uh city approval processes. Um, but we really see those as being something that'll come along with phase three of the development. So, here soon. You seem to have a progressive public works department in in uh Oklahoma City. We do. Uh generally I'll say you know really I think whether you can view some of their specific views as progressive or not what they are is very open to conversation. They're very open to sitting down talking through things with developers working through things. Um you know I think that that um makes them they're very collaborative and so I think that that is part of what makes them so easy to work with. Um, and really we don't necessarily always win. Uh, but I think everybody's happy with the compromises that we come to at the end of at the end of everything. I don't know Katie whether you can speak to any of like the biggest um infrastructure challenges at Carlton Landing. Um as far as with our sewer or waste water, the streets the you know anything that that's you know like the major development infrastructure. Um okay I think the storm water would have definitely been our biggest challenge because of our topography. Um we have we start at very high elevation as you drive into Carlton Landing. It's a climb for about two miles up to um the overlook which is beautiful and you don't really think that you're in Oklahoma because of how high you are and looking down at the lake but from there it's down all the way to the lake. So that water is running shutting down the hill constantly and we get very serious rain. So I think that was probably the biggest challenge that they've had. Um I think it was handled beautifully. Um working with Tom Low on that instead of having you know these huge sewer pipes um we were able to come at it from a very ecologically sensitive manner. Um we also are about to complete our wastewater treatment plant. So we are completely self-sufficient. Um we've been on a lagoon system this far and um wastewater treatment plant should be finished up about the end of this month. Um I I wanted to ask about uh the nurturing of the mixed use. Uh both of you seem to have these interesting businesses that have come in um to try to create a sense of place or a sense of community. third places. Um, uh, you know, big see they seem to be a little bit bigger in in Wheeler district. Uh, but can you talk about recruiting, uh, businesses, uh, to be part of these neighborhoods? Um, I I'll speak to it real quickly. Um, I think probably the Meeting House and Mama Tigs have been our most established businesses and both of those owners definitely took a risk and it was their initiative, but um, the developer has come alongside when needed to try to help that be a possibility. Um, with our next phase of development coming up, we're adding a bookstore um, as well. And uh Grant is also helping on that as far as providing the building and then there will be you know a reasonable uh rent based on the percentage of sales until you get to a certain point. Um and another popular way for people to begin starting businesses out here is either online or out of their home. Uh one of our new businesses here is called the pantry and it's grocery delivery. um that they have they actually are providing their own groceries. And so when somebody comes to stay for the weekend, you can get online through the pantry and order everything you might need for breakfast or everything you might need for dinner and then they go and place those groceries in your home. So they have been actually running it out of their home here and they're now partnering with the developer to have a space in our welcome center. So, it's just those baby steps and um definitely has to be driven by the business owner, but wherever the town or the developer can step in to ease that um we try and so that we can just continue the growth here. From the Wheeler district perspective, you know, the idea of it being a mixeduse community is been there since the very beginning. And really we view the project as becoming more denser, more mixed use, more commercial the closer to the thoroughare it gets and the closer to the riverfront that it gets. And so, you know, obviously we're developing in the southwest quadrant a little away from those, but also knowing that um really kind of seeding that idea. Um the vision is, you know, be able to park your car on a Friday night and not have to get back in it until Monday morning. Um or even beyond that. And so in order for that to happen, it requires those mixed juice elements to be here from day one. And really, we've been so fortunate to have um a couple of businesses that um really have partnered um along with us um and really taken that leap of faith uh in starting their business here in a brand new neighborhood. Um we're actively trying to get the number of rooftops up to continue to support their business. But uh we actually have two businesses here. Uh, Taco Nation is in the old airport terminal building. Uh, and the Big Friendly constructed a brewery out here. Both of them started as mobile businesses. So, um, the they both actually started in old school buses. Um, so Taco Nation had a taco school bus and Big Friendly had a a rolling beer school bus. Um, and so those mobile businesses, it's really fun to have created a place for them to open their first brick and mortars. So, they're taking taking a leap on a couple of levels, but I think it um just the nature of them as business owners and the nature of their businesses, they're innovative. Um you know, they're people who are willing to take on kind of a crazy cool idea and run with it. And so, I think Wheeler District just fits right into that uh for them. I wanted to ask a little bit about um you know inclusiveness and how you're bringing uh neighborhoods around especially the Wheeler district. You have some neighborhoods around there that probably have um uh you know um varying incomes, maybe some poverty around there. And uh you do have a is it a charter school that's located there or Yeah. So, it's a public charter school that's has a neighborhood boundary. So, within that neighborhood boundary that serves five different communities uh here, five different neighborhoods. Uh those kids, it's their as of right elementary. Do you also have any plans for affordable housing? Um anything like that? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think I'll just start by saying that um, you know, while including the broader community, connecting with our neighbors, connecting with the surrounding community has been really one of the highest goals of our project, we haven't been perfect about it and we're um, you know, we're constantly working on ways um, to do that and ways to connect to the broader community. Um, you know, I think for us, the school was one big piece of it, but it's not the only piece of it. Um, as I mentioned, you know, Wheeler District is an incremental project. We're only in phase two of 10, so there is so much more of Wheeler District to come. Um, you know, we, um, we have plans to reconnect the street grid. Um, so right now, the existing neighborhood west of us, when the downtown air park was built, they closed off those streets that uh, so they now deadend into the airport. As part of our master plan, we're reopening those street grid connections from Southwest 20th all the way up to Southwest 11th. Uh reconnecting Southwest 15th Street, which is a major thoroughare. And so really, you know, we're creating that paracity and really opening Wheeler District up to just knit right into the contextual neighborhood that's directly west of us here. Um, you know, I think in addition to that, we are actively working on an affordable housing program. Uh, as part of our TIFF agreement with the city, we voluntarily promised that 20% of our forale housing would hit HUD affordability standards from 70% to 120% AMI. Um, we've been able to achieve that so far just through built product without having to bring any subsidy to the table or anything like that. Um, but with construction prices where they're at, uh, with housing demand and the market where it's at, um, that's not always going to be the case. And so Wheeler Community Foundation, which is the nonprofit arm of of our development, uh has full plans to have an affordable housing program. And it's something that we're actively planning right now. Um and something that I would see being implemented as part of the third phase of our project, if not sooner. Do you have any thoughts on that, Katie? Um yeah. Um so, similar to Wheeler, you we are 10 years into our 30-year master plan. So, um, we have always had the intention, and I don't want to speak too much for the developer, but I believe that it is still in the works to create some sort of worker housing. Um, we have pretty large farm area as well. Um, and I believe that from there to the insurance is where we have identified as possible locations for that. We also have the Carlton Landing Community Foundation um where it is set up as a possibility that the um Carlton Landing would retain ownership of the lot um or the land and allow a more affordable house to be built on that. um those that is not happening quite yet, but I know that you know we're taking steps to um hopefully get that get there in the future as well as just you know with the smaller houses uh the the burrow would be one example where we wanted to come in and provide a different product like we want our teachers to be able to live here. We want some of our tradesmen to be able to live here. And I think that that comes from, you know, um some of where the foundation stepping in, but also creating different designs and different places to live that can speak to different levels of affordability. Well, thank you very much, Ashley and Katie. This has been u uh really informative and fun. So, um um uh we look forward to coming and seeing you in Oklahoma City uh in two weeks. Two weeks. Wow. Yeah. I hope to see you all at the field trip at Carlton Landing. Yes. We're so excited. Seeing you 30 is going to be a blast. We can't wait to can't wait to see everybody. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Have a great day. Thanks so much. Bye.