Visionary

Woman of Influence.

May 14, 2024

For the second year running GlobeSt. has made me a winner!

GlobeSt. has been recognizing the growing number of women in commercial real estate for their excellent professional achievements for over 30 years now through the “Woman of Influence” awards. The categories are broad. This year I’ve been included in the PropTech Executive / Innovator group of just seven women.

All credit to GlobeSt. for trying to turn the tide. We need what they want, and that is to recognize that both men and women are capable of amazing things. I’m eagerly awaiting the day that these awards will be renamed – from “Woman of Influence” to “Person of Influence”.

You can view the class of 2024 here.

Thank you GlobeSt!

Image courtesy of Eve Picker

For the love of cities.

May 8, 2024

Enrique Penalosa is an internationally respected urban thinker, who, as Mayor of Bogota in two non-consecutive terms, profoundly transformed his city from one with neither bearings, nor self-esteem into an international model in several areas. As adviser and lecturer, he has influenced policies in many cities throughout the world.

Among his achievements is the creation of TransMilenio, the world’s best BRT (Bus based mass transit), which today moves 2.4 million passengers daily, inspired by the Curitiba model but much improved in capacity and speed, which has served as a model to hundreds of cities. Currently its lines are being extended by 61%. He contracted the first Metro line in Bogota which is under construction. He also created an extensive bicycle network when only a few northern European cities had one, greenways, hundreds of parks, formidable sports and cultural centers and large libraries, 67 schools, 35 of which managed by a successful private-public scheme and high quality urban development projects for more than 500,000 residents and a radical redevelopment of 33 hectares of the center of Bogota, previously controlled by drug dealers and crime which required demolishing more than 1200 buildings occupying 32 hectares, a few blocks from the heart of Colombia´s institutional heart, including the Presidential house.

His advisory work concentrates on urban mobility, quality of life, competitiveness, equity and the leadership required to turn visions into realities.

Penalosa has lectured in hundreds of cities and in many of the world´s most important universities. He has advised local and national governments in Asia, Africa, Australia, Latin America and the United States.

He is a member of the Advisory Board of AMALI (African Mayoral Leadership Initiative), Fellow of the Institute for Urban Research of the University of Pennsylvania. For over a decade he was President of the Board of New York´s ITDP (Institute for Transportation and Development Policy) of New York; member of the London School of Economics´ Cities Program Advisory Board. He was a member of the Commission for the Reinvention of Transport of the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority created by the New York Governor Cuomo.

His book Equality and the City was recently published by The University of Pennsylvania; in Spanish it was published Villegas Editores and in Portuguese by the IPP (Instituto Pereira Passos) of Rio de Janeiro.

Penalosa has been included in Planetizen´s list of The Most Influential Urbanists, Past and Present, the most recent time in July 2023. He was also one of ¨15 Thought Leaders in Sustainable City Development¨ selected by Identity Review July 2023. He has been awarded important international recognitions such as the Stockholm Challenge; the Gothenburg Sustainability Prize; the 2018 Edmund N. Bacon Award, the highest tribute of The Center for Design and Architecture of Philadelphia, given to him because of ¨the world-wide influence his pioneering initiatives have had on public transportation, infrastructure investment, and public space, including in cities such as Philadelphia and New York City¨. For Penalosa´s work Bogota was awarded the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale.

Penalosa has a BA in Economics and History from Duke University, a Degree in Government from the IIAP (now fused with ENA) in France and a DESS in Public Administration from the University of Paris 2 Pantheon-Assas. He was Dean of Management at Externado University in Bogota and a Visiting Scholar at New York University.

Penalosa´s TED Talk has nearly one million views, his X account in Spanish has more than 2 million followers.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:13] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. For Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich, or poor, beautiful, or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo in order to build better for everyone.

Eve: [00:00:49] This is a long one, but I couldn’t help myself. Enrique Penalosa is an exuberant lover of cities, equitable cities. He served as mayor of Bogota, Colombia, not once but twice, profoundly transforming his city from one with no self-esteem into an international model. As mayor, Enrique launched TransMilenio, a bus mass transit system which today moves 2.4 million passengers daily. He also built an extensive bicycle network at a time when only a few northern European cities had one, along with greenways, hundreds of parks, sports and cultural centers, large libraries, 67 schools, and a radical 33-hectare redevelopment in the heart of Bogota previously controlled by drug dealers. This required demolishing more than 1200 buildings. Recently he published a new book called Equality and the City. Look for it on Amazon. Of course, the accolades are too numerous to mention here. Enrique’s work is considered significant and influential by many, and the list of awards is long. There’s a lot to learn here. More than an hour’s worth of podcasting can hold.

Eve: [00:02:21] Good morning. I’m really delighted to have you on my show, Enrique. I’ve been a huge fan of yours for a very long time.

Enrique Penalosa: [00:02:28] Thank you very much, Eve. Thank you. You’re really generous, and it’s a great pleasure to be with you.

Eve: [00:02:33] I know there have been many, many accolades. You’re one of the most influential urbanists, and you have a brand new book called Equality in the City. But I wanted to start with a question: why and how did cities come to take center stage in your professional life?

Enrique: [00:02:50] Oh, that’s an interesting question. I somehow talk about this in my book. I am from Colombia, and this, of course, conditions everything. My father was into public service, and he was the head of the Rural Land Reform Institute and the, and so I was as most middle, upper middle-class children in a developing country, in a private school. And I used to get beat up because they were this, institute was doing land reform, taking, forcefully buying land to distribute to small farmers. And so, since very early, I was obsessed with equality with, I was convinced that socialism was the solution, as many in my generation. It was that time around late 60s, 70s and I went to Duke University and there I really was very interested in studying all about this. And I realized socialism was a failure. It was both a failure for economic development, which for me was extremely important and sadly, also for constructing equality, because it was extremely hierarchical system with all kinds of privileges for the bureaucracy and all that. But at that time, when I was in college, my father became secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements – Habitat in Vancouver. And he had always already been involved in in Bogota, he had been in city council, and at that time I began to be more and more interested in cities and less and less interested in the socialism, which I as I said, I realized it was a failure. And at that time my city was growing like 4% per year. Bogota. And I realized that maybe it was much more important to define the way cities would be built and even economic development, because economic development would come sooner or later, maybe 50 years later, 50 years earlier. But if cities were not done right, it was very difficult to correct them. If we were able to save land for a park as the city was growing or exploding, almost, this hectare or ten hectares or 100 hectares would make people happier for hundreds of years. Thousands.

Eve: [00:05:21] New York City is a really great example of that, with the fabulous park in the middle. That was very visionary. Yeah.

Enrique: [00:05:27] New York City, I mentioned this, and I work a lot with Africa recently, New York City created Central Park in 1860, when New York City had less than 1 million inhabitants and had an income per capita, very similar to some developing countries today. So, if we are able to save land for a park, it will make life happier for millions for hundreds of years. If we are not able to save land for that park and cities built over, it’s almost impossible to demolish, for example, the 300 hectares that Central Park has later. Demolish 300 hectares of city to create a park of that size. So I became more and more interested in cities. Obsessed. Later I did graduate school in Paris and, of course I was always very poor. When I was at Duke, I was on a soccer scholarship. And in Paris I worked a lot. I was a very low. I mean, I realized I was poor many years later because I was extremely happy. The city gave me everything I needed. And I realized how a great city can make life happy, even if you don’t have wealth or anything. I mean, it’s a, so I became obsessed with cities since then. When I majored in university, I studied economics and history and public administration and all that, but I never actually studied anything urban per se. But all my life that’s what I have worked on.

Eve: [00:07:02] Interesting. So, I have to ask you, what city do you think does that best today, makes people happy?

Enrique: [00:07:10] Oh.

Eve: [00:07:11] I wasn’t going to ask that question, but I have some of my own answers.

Enrique: [00:07:15] That’s an interesting city because I love all cities, you know, all of them have some charm and some great things. Clearly, today for everybody what is a great city is one that is good to be on foot for pedestrians. That’s the way. So, with that criteria, which city? What makes it a great city for pedestrians and for, also, I would add, a great city for the most vulnerable citizens, for the elderly, for the poor, for the children. And so the first thing has to have is great pedestrian qualities. And pedestrian quality means great sidewalks, of course, but also destinations, places to go to and people that you see in the sidewalks. We need to see people, to see people. I mean, we are pedestrians. We are walking animals. We need to walk to be happy. Just as birds need to fly or deer need to run, or fish need to swim. We need to walk not just to survive, but to be happy. We could survive inside an apartment all our life, but cities that are great for walking sometimes because they are very great sidewalks places such as I love New York, despite the fact that I think it’s a little too dirty recently.

Enrique: [00:08:35] And I think the occupations of public pedestrian space by by informal vendors really is getting out of hand. And this crazy, how is it that they put in the buildings the, andamios. Scaffolding all over the place that lasts for years. I mean, but despite that, I love New York because he’s so full of life and he’s so it’s so free and it has beautiful places like the riverfront and anyway I love, I mean I love all cities. And it seems very spontaneous, you know, spontaneous. So, it’s not like, and they are, everybody’s like doing their own thing and doing things. There are cities where you, I think you can be there and just simply lead a contemplative life. But others, if somehow brought you to do things, to do things, to be active, to create, to do, to do. Other cities, you can just, you know, go to the cafe, relax and that’s fine. But I like this energy New York has.

Eve: [00:09:45] You like active cities. Active cities, yeah.

Enrique: [00:09:47] Somehow brought you to be active and to create and to do things. But I mean, all cities are wonderful. I mean, all for different reasons. Mexico City, my city I like, of course. I mean, I love all cities.

Eve: [00:10:03] Yes. So, let’s move on. You had two terms as mayor of your city, Bogota, Colombia, and they’re often cited as transformative for the city. So, what led you to become mayor? I mean, I hear the love of cities, but becoming mayor is really another big step, right?

Enrique: [00:10:20] Yes. I was obsessed with the public service somehow. Always. This is why, even though it’s an interesting thing, I was born in the United States, because, but I was there for only one month, as my accent shows. When I was a kid, my family went back to when I was 15, to my father was working at the Inter-American development Bank and even though then, I was at Duke University, a very good university in the US, and I had a US nationality because I’ve been born there in one of these rare trips to Colombia, I renounced my US citizenship because, since then I was interested in politics. In politics and my father had been a public servant, but not elected. And he was attacked and all this and had many, and I remember always an uncle of mine who said, look, uh, your father was attacked so dirtily because he had neither money nor votes. So, I said I would not have money, but I will get votes. What gives you power when you are, and what makes you be able to do change when in government is to have votes. The difference between the one who is elected and the one who is appointed is like the difference between the owner of the company and the manager.

Enrique: [00:11:46] If you do, if you are appointed and you do anything that creates a conflict, you are fired. So, I always thought I wanted to be elected, and that’s why I said maybe to have a US nationality may become a handicap in the future. And I was obsessed with doing things for cities. More and more, the more I studied since I was in the middle of college, I was obsessed with studying and reading, and I lived in Paris, and I always dreamt of doing things that were very obvious. And I dreamt, for example, of bikeways much before, I mean, they were always bikeways in the Netherlands and Denmark, but there were no bikeways in Paris when I lived there, not one single bikeway. And in Bogota there were no sidewalks, very few almost. There was not one decent sidewalk in the city, in Colombia. And I always also dreamt that the rail systems were too expensive for our possibilities, that we needed to organize some kind of efficient bus-based mass transit. And, I mean, I was obsessed since then, and so I wanted to become mayor. I think I was a good mayor, relatively good. But I was not a good politician.

Eve: [00:12:58] We had a mayor like that in Pittsburgh. He was a fabulous mayor, but he was not a good politician.

Enrique: [00:13:03] Yes, yes, yes. I mean, I have lost like 7 elections in my life. And that sounds very quickly. When I said you, I lost seven elections. But in life, actually, it is almost one year of work every time, so like,

Eve: [00:13:14] Oh yeah.

Enrique: [00:13:14] You could say it’s lost seven, seven years of life for elections that were not successful. But to make the story short, in my life, I was, after a big effort, I was elected, but I wanted to be mayor because I wanted to do things. I had a whole vision in my mind of what I wanted to do. I did not want to be mayor, but to do as mayor.

Eve: [00:13:43] Yes, I get it. I mean, I’ve read that even the way you became elected, you didn’t really rely on a party machine. You relied on meeting with people one at a time, right? It was all about connecting with the people.

Enrique: [00:13:55] That’s right. Eve. When I started, Colombian politics was only machinery, very powerful machineries, organizations and a lot of money distributed to local leaders. And I did something that was completely new at that time. It’s very obvious. And I had nothing creative now in the world. It’s very easy to start to distribute little leaflets in the street, which nobody had done at that time. Even I did some interesting things that were different. For example, the first politician had a smiling picture. At that time, all of the pictures were more like, great…

Eve: [00:14:34] Powerful. Yes.

Enrique: [00:14:35] And I also put a resume and anyway, so I was able and going to homes one by one. Anyway, I was elected. I was able to be elected first to Congress, like this. And a few years later to mayor with no party, as an independent really.

Eve: [00:14:57] Independent. Interesting. So, describe Bogota as a city when you took office and some of the challenges you faced.

Enrique: [00:15:06] That’s interesting because Bogota, as most developing cities, well, Bogota, our cities have lacked a lot of planning. And even when they did plans, they weren’t very nice plans. Architects draw and they don’t, are not implemented. So a few things were a few roads, a few main big roads. But for example, more than 40% of Bogota when I was first elected in ’97, had informal origin, had been of informal origin. And since I had worked in the past in things with the city, for example, I was Vice President of this Bogota water company. I had really worked closely, and I knew very well, and I was very obsessed with this informal organization, how lower income people were not able to get legal land, well-located legal land. So were they forced to the steep hills around the city, steep mountains, or flooding zones near the river and so with the water company we used to we’re able to work a lot in the legalization of this to bring water and sewage. And so, this is one thing Bogota had. Another thing Bogota did not have sidewalks, practically not one. I would say they were not one. They had been a few decades before a few sidewalks built or some sidewalks, but the cars simply were parking on top of them whenever they had been built. And and many places they had not even been built at all. So, it was horrible for pedestrians and of course Colombia has always been a very much of a bicycling country. It’s the only developing country, the country in the developing world that has successful cyclists at the world level. Some Colombians have won.

Eve: [00:17:00] That’s interesting. Yeah.

Enrique: [00:17:02] There is no other developing country in the world. I mean, you would think this is not an expensive sport. It’s not like yachting, but nevertheless, for some reason, Colombia is the only developing country that is successful. For example, Colombian won the tour de France and Colombians have won the tour of Spain and of Italy.

Eve: [00:17:22] Oh wow! I didn’t know that. Yeah.

Enrique: [00:17:25] But there were no bicycling for work. For zero for transportation. It was like a sports thing. And of course, only 10% of the people have cars, but they were the richest and most powerful people in the city, and they think they could park in the sidewalks or two. And they thought the bicyclists were a nuisance if there were any. They were nobody used to go to work by bicycle. There were almost no parks, and the few parks were completely abandoned and not in a good shape. So, this is the environment I found, more or less. And of course, the traffic jams were worse and worse, and there was not a decent public transportation system. Of course, there was not a metro and there was not a, the bus system was completely chaotic. There were thousands and thousands of buses that were almost individually owned, racing against each other, people hanging from the doors. And sometimes since they were fighting for passengers, they would block the another ones and the other bus the driver would get out with a cudgel and break the windows of the other bus. Even if the other bus was full of passengers, it was like the Wild West. And that’s the city.

Eve: [00:18:45] It was. It was like the wild… Just just backing up a little bit, how many people live in Bogota?

Enrique: [00:18:51] Now we have like 8 million inhabitants in Bogota.

Eve: [00:18:55] It’s a big city. OK.

Enrique: [00:18:56] And also in the surrounding municipalities, like a little bit about a million, 200 more or something like that.

Eve: [00:19:02] Okay, okay. And then it was also a lot of poverty and drug activity and altogether not a very healthy city by the sounds of it.

Enrique: [00:19:12] There was a lot of poverty because we were a developing city that was very poor. And we are still I mean, so far, for example, Colombians income per capita today is around $6,000. And the United States income per capita is like $80,000 or something like that. So it would take us if we do very well with very high economic growth rates, it would take us maybe, even if we have very high economic growth rates, like, for example, if we if we grow at 3 or 4% per capita annually, it would take us more than 150 years to reach today’s income per capita of the United States, not to catch up to the United States, but to reach where the United States is today.

Eve: [00:19:53] Wow!

Enrique: [00:19:54] We have advanced a lot. Colombia has progressed a lot and we have reduced poverty very much. We have made huge advances in education and all that, but we are still at poverty. But of course, we had much more poverty 25 years ago when I first became mayor.

Eve: [00:20:10] So what did you tackle first?

Enrique: [00:20:13] One thing before I go into that, I’d like to say that this experience in urbanization, urbanization is fascinating because it’s gigantic. I mean, when I became mayor, Bogota’s population would double every 16 years or so, and the size of the city grows much more than proportional to population, because as a society gets richer, there are more buildings that are different from housing. For example, when a society is very poor, barely there are housing buildings. As societies get richer, there are shops, there are factories, there are offices, there are universities. And one thing that is very interesting, this is not just history. What we are talking about is not history because this is the challenge in Africa. I think the most important challenge in the world today is African urbanization. Today in Africa, there are more than, in sub-Saharan Africa, there are more than 250 million people who live in slums. Horrible poverty, slums with no electricity, no water, no sewage. Different degrees of poverty, but all of them horrible. And if these things continue the way as they are, they would have more than 500 million more people living in slums in 20 years. African urban population, it grows by the amount of the US population, about 320 million or something, every 15 years or so. So every 15 years, Africa has to build the amount of housing that the whole US has today every 15 or 16 years, you know. And they are extremely poor, not only housing the sewage, the water…

Speaker4: [00:22:03] The infrastructure.

Enrique: [00:22:04] The schools, the roads, they’re going to have giant cities, cities that maybe like Lagos, cities that maybe 60 million inhabitants or more. So, it is extremely important not only for Africa but for the world to do good cities in Africa. Even if at first they do not have all the water or sewage, but to leave enough space for roads, for parks, for public transport, because otherwise this is going to be horrible for the environment and horrible suffering for people. And this is even a problem for the security of the world, because this is going to be a completely inhuman situation that can have unexpected consequences. So, what I’m saying is that my experience in Latin America is some, a few decades ahead of Africa in economic development and urbanization but this is still a big challenge for the world. This is not just history.

Eve: [00:23:10] I suppose I’m wondering how you convince people. Because Bogota Ciclovia is a really amazing, iconic symbol of the city. I understand that now every Sunday, 75 miles of roads are shut down and given over to people to enjoy, almost like a Millennial Park, right?

Enrique: [00:23:30] Exactly. This is a beautiful thing that we have in Colombia.

Eve: [00:23:35] So I actually was so inspired by this, I co-founded an open street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I can’t tell you how hard it was to get one mile of it because everyone complained about, you know, the street in front of their shop that someone couldn’t park there and shop there that day. It was exhausting because people don’t understand the potential that that has. And I don’t know how you get to 75 miles, like, this is huge! You know, how do you convince people that they have to be fabulous cities in Africa or we’re all going to suffer? It’s, most people don’t want to think about it.

Enrique: [00:24:20] Yes. There are several aspects of this. This is a fascinating thing. It all has to do with equality, which is the theme of my book in a certain way, how cities can construct equity so that a good city is one place where nobody should feel inferior or excluded. A good city is also one where, if all citizens are equal, then public good prevails over private interest, you know? So, in developing countries, in Africa or even in Colombia and most, almost there is not one single developing country where more than 50% of the people have cars. Always developing country, almost by definition, I would say, is that it’s a developing city is one where less than 50% of the people have cars. And the one thing we should remember is that if we are all equal, as all democracies say, all constitutions state that all citizens are equal, then a citizen on a $100 bicycle is equally important to one on $100,000 car. And they have, or a citizen that is walking or is on a bicycle has a right to the same amount of road space that a citizen that has goes in a luxury car. The same amount. There is, the person in the car usually think they have a right to more space than the people in the bicycle or so, and they honk at the people in the bicycle.

Eve: [00:25:53] Oh yeah.

Enrique: [00:25:56] So, so this is very beautiful, what we have achieved in in Bogota because,I mean, it was created before, but it has been expanding, actually, when my brother was the head of the Sports and Parks and Recreation with another mayor, he expanded a lot and I expanded it a lot. So, we get, on a sunny day, we may get, a million and a half people out in the street. And one thing that is important is that Bogota is a very compact city, very dense. We have more than 220 inhabitants per hectare. So, it’s a beautiful ritual of human beings reconquering this city for themselves. One thing that I did that is interesting too, is that I held a referendum for people to vote, and one day a year a work weekday, we have a car free day. So, this whole 8 million inhabitant city has no cars, no cars at all, during the whole day. Everybody has to use public transport or bicycles. We have taxis but no private cars. And so, it’s an interesting exercise, not only in terms of the environment or even mobility, but of social integration. One of the most crucial things that we need, especially in unequal, in more unequal societies like ours, is that all citizens should meet as equals. For example, someone who owns an apartment in Fifth Avenue in front of Central Park in New York.

Enrique: [00:27:38] He may meet the doorman of the building, but they meet separated by hierarchies. One is the owner of the apartment, and the other one is the employee, low paid employee. But if they meet in the sidewalk or if they meet in the park, they meet in a completely different way. They meet as equals or if they meet in public transport. So, in a great city, people meet as equals. This is not enough for, but this is one of the kinds of equality that a good city can construct. And so in these kind of exercises, if we get people to meet together, for example, if two people meet in bicycles in a traffic light, maybe one bicycle is a $10,000 and the other one is $100, but it doesn’t matter. They both meet as fragile humans, vulnerable. They see each other. They have the same right to the street. They have the same right to the space. It’s very different than if somebody is in a crowded public transport, and the other one is in a luxury car or something. In this there is a proximity, there is a vulnerability. And so, these exercises that we do in Bogota, I think they are interesting. And they are good for the environment, they are good for mobility, and they are good for social integration or construction of some kind of unconscious equity.

Eve: [00:29:11] So you as mayor, you focused on mobility, not just bicycles, right? I read about the TransMilenio, the first metro line, a huge bicycle network, greenways. Do you want to tell us a little about all of that?

Enrique: [00:29:26] Thank you very much, Eve. Yes. For example, the TransMilenio, the BRT. I have even written about how we should organize a bus system that was different than the one I described earlier, with exclusive lanes for buses and a system that, where people would have prepaid cards so they would not take time to board the bus. And then I found the Curitiba system. Mayor Jaime Lerner in Curitiba had done a wonderful, in Brazil, Curitiba had done a wonderful system. But Curitiba was a small city. The system had been created like in 1973 or 4. And they only had 500,000 inhabitants, at that time. It did not have much impact. But then to me, I marvelled because I said, this is the solution. This is perfect because rail systems are too expensive. I mean, subways are wonderful. But they cost a huge amount of money. It’s extremely expensive to build an extremely expensive to operate. And so, we created a BRT system and actually we were innovative even in that we gave a name to it. You know, one of the things that I, I knew from, since you tell me you are in Pittsburgh, one of the first places in the world where they did some exclusive lanes for buses was Pittsburgh.

Eve: [00:30:50] Oh yeah. I use it. I used it a couple of times a week. I live downtown, and I have an office in East Liberty, a building in East Liberty, and it takes me seven minutes on the busway. And if I drive, it’s 30 minutes.

Enrique: [00:31:03] Exactly. You know, so…

Eve: [00:31:05] It’s Fantastic. Fantastic.

Enrique: [00:31:07] Well, I’m very happy that you say that, because I like to tell you and to tell the Pittsburgh people that one of the things that influenced me to create TransMilenio was the Pittsburgh project, because that’s before TransMilenio. I found about it. And these things motivated me and inspired me.

Eve: [00:31:23] It’s very limited. I wish they would expand it. They’re doing a line now from downtown to Oakland, which is the University Center, but they’ve been talking about it for 30 years, you know, takes a very long time to do things.

Enrique: [00:31:38] This brings us to the fact that solutions to mobility, more than an issue of money, are an issue of equity and political decision. This is very obvious. Some things, sometimes for us, they are before our noses, and we don’t see them. You know, for example, only about 100 years ago or a little bit more, women could not vote, you know, and it was not fascist who thought women should not vote. I mean, normal people, good people thought that this was good. That was normal, you know? And today we see this is completely mad. Or how about only about 70 years ago or so that, even in the United States that the African Americans had to give their seat to the whites or things like this, that today we think is is mad. But at that time, I’m sure many people who were good people thought this was normal. And so, in the same time, sometimes inequalities before our noses, for example, I believe it’s completely crazy that we have a bus with 50 people and then you have the give the same space that you give to a car with one, you know. This is not democratic. Besides, it’s not technically intelligent because actually a BRT is the most efficient way to use scarce road space. Since we are going to have buses, a BRT is the way that you use the least energy, the way that you use the least amount of buses, the way that you use the least amount of road space. Anyway, we created TransMilenio, which became a model to hundreds of cities around the world. It’s a system that has an amazing capacity. It moves more people per kilometer hour anyway you want to measure it than almost all subways in the world.

Eve: [00:33:28] Wow.

Enrique: [00:33:28] We move more people, passengers, our direction and also within Europe. There is only one line in New York subway that moves more than us and that’s the Green Line. But that’s only because it’s two lines actually: the express line and the local one.

Eve: [00:33:43] Right.

Enrique: [00:33:44] But our system moves more passengers per kilometer than practically even all the New York subway lines. And of course, it costs 15 times less. And this is, I think, you need more of this in many cities in the US, it’s the only way to be able to give this kind of service, even to suburbs, because this can have more flexibility. Anyway, we created this, this system. It has 114km today. And it moves a 2.4 million passengers per day.

Eve: [00:34:14] Wow.

Enrique: [00:34:15] And it’s being expanded by 60%. Now, at this time. So, we should reach easily more than 3.2 million passengers per day or something like this. And now, of course, most buses are bi-articulated buses with gas fuel. But soon all of them will be electric, of course, as well. So, and I’m sure very soon in ten years or so, they will also be driverless. So actually, what makes a mass transit system is not the fact that it has metal wheels or rubber wheels, but the fact that it has exclusive right-of-way. That’s what creates the the mass transit, the capacity, the speed. We don’t have time to go into these boring technical details. But what is interesting also is the democratic symbol it represents, because I have seen everybody in the world wants subways.

Eve: [00:35:14] Yes.

Enrique: [00:35:14] Upper income people all over the world, subways, preferably underground. So, they don’t even have to see the low income people that go in them. You know, in developing countries, I mean, this is not the case in London or in Paris or in New York, but in developing countries, all upper income people want subways, but they have not the slightest intention of using them. It has not crossed their mind. You know, I am sure that if you have Mexican friends, that are most likely upper middle-class citizens, 99% of the cases, not only they don’t use this, I mean, the Mexico City subway is one of the most extensive networks in any developing city in the world. I think only Delhi and maybe another one has longer one. But the upper middle class or upper class even less, it’s not that they don’t use it, it’s that they have never even been to it once in their lifetime. Never.

Eve: [00:36:14] So, you know that’s not only true of them. I have a Pittsburgh born and bred friend who’s in his 50s who has never ridden a bus. Ever. I was completely shocked when he told me that.

Enrique: [00:36:27] There is something very interesting. Transport has a lot to do with status for some interesting reason. You know, this is why some people pay $500,000 for a car, which basically that’s something very similar to a $50,000 car, you know, but then it’s very cool. The fancy car. And for example, in 1940, there were trams in every city in the world with more than 100,000 inhabitants. But at that time, trams were identified with the poor, with the lower income people. They were jammed and so, buses appeared. For some interesting reason buses appear much later than cars, because at first, they were not the technologies for pneumatic tires, and the only until 1920, or even more, most streets in the world were cobblestones. So, a solid rubber tire, big vehicle on cobblestones, of course, would fall apart in a few blocks.

Eve: [00:37:27] Yes.

Enrique: [00:37:28] Jumping.

Eve: [00:37:29] Yeah.

Enrique: [00:37:30] And so buses appeared, and in 1940 buses were sexy. They were the sexy, the modern thing. And trams were identified with something for the poor. Now it’s the opposite. Now, in the US, buses are identified with the poor, with the Latin Americans, with the African Americans. And the cool thing is trams. So, everybody wants to put trams, trams. All cities think trams will revitalize the city centers and all that. And, of course, trams are nice, but basically, they do the same or less than buses and they cost a lot more. But they are sexy, you know, and so we have to make bus-based systems sexy to finish this story. We may have $100,000 car stuck in a traffic jam, and there are many traffic jams in Bogota, and the bus zooms by next to it. And even a little boy can’t make faces to the guy in the car, you know, and say, hey, they can go, you know?

Eve: [00:38:31] Yes.

Enrique: [00:38:32] So it’s a symbol of democracy in action, a BRT when the expensive cars. So, because, even if an underground subway is wonderful, it’s not as powerful symbolically as the bus that zooms next to the car, because it shows that public good prevails over private interest. Democracy is not just the fact that people vote. Democracy it also requires that if all citizens are equal, public good prevails over private interest. And this is the essence of the busway. And also, this is the essence of bikeways. When first we started to do bikeways in Bogota, when I first became mayor, we did like 250km of protected bikeway, the first time I was mayor. When there were no protected bikeways anywhere in the world except the Netherlands and Denmark and a few in Germany. There was not a meter in Paris or in New York, or in London. Maybe there were a few kilometers somewhere in California or something. But we created this network and again, it’s the equity principle is what is behind it. What we are saying is a citizen on a $100 bicycle is equally important to one on a $200,000 car. And the protected bikeway not only protects the cyclist, but it raises the social status of the cyclist. And this is very interesting. Bogota today has the highest amount of cyclists in any city in America. Amsterdam has a much higher percentage, of course, but since we are much bigger, we have more cyclists than Amsterdam.

Eve: [00:40:12] Interesting.

Enrique: [00:40:13] We have like a like a million people every day using bicycles.

Eve: [00:40:17] Your optimism about this is infectious, but I can’t wonder what sort of pushback you had because wealth is powerful, right? So even if 10% of the population don’t get it, that must have been an enormous lift.

Enrique: [00:40:32] I had a lot of enemies in politics. Yes. I mentioned I was not a good politician. Amazingly enough, I was re-elected in Bogota. There is no immediate re-election. If I had immediate re-election, I would have loved to have 2 or 3 periods. I really would have transformed Bogota. But I had to wait several years afterwards. And it was very difficult, even, for example, when I was just having the war to get cars off the sidewalks and to put bollards, for example, they made this huge calumny. Half of Colombians thinks that I made a business making bollards, you know? And there was never an investigation. There was never even a press article. Nothing. But there was so much calumny that I would say, if we make a poll, a half of, not Bogota people, Colombian people, think I made some kind of business from making bollards, or that my mother had a bollard factory or my brothers or something. Because we had to put bollards because we built a lot of sidewalks. But we did not have enough money to build the sidewalks everywhere. So we had to put bollards where we did not have money to build sidewalks. It’s always difficult. I try to do many things. I mean, again, we have to do what will improve the life of all and this implies conflicts. For example, now I talk very quickly about how we create the TransMilenio. But these people who used to have individually owned buses before TransMilenio, they were extremely powerful, extremely well-organized, and they would bring the city to a halt on a strike, and they would put the president on his knees. When I was doing TransMilenio, the President would call me once they had a strike, and he would call me all the time at home and everything to tell me to stop and to negotiate, that this was not tolerable.

Enrique: [00:42:30] Happily, in the Colombian constitution, the mayor has a lot of autonomy, and I did not have to obey the President. But I don’t say this is the kind of difficulties that you find when you are seeking the public good. And not only that, for example, many of these traditional bus operators became the contractors of the TransMilenio system, and actually it was very good business for them. But it was not easy. And, for example, there was the most exclusive club. This is the cover of my book, by the way, the cover of my book. The most exclusive country club in Colombia where the elite of the elite, maybe, I don’t know, 1500 members, the all the former President, the richest people in Colombia, I mean the most powerful people. I use eminent domain to turn the riding stables and the polo fields into a public park. And I also said that the whole golf course should become a public park as well. And this was, of course, very difficult. And, of course, all of these are battles. Battles, battles. Sometimes I have to battle the drug traffickers who control the whole area downtown. The police would not enter this area unless they were on a big operative with a hundred police, but five police would not go there because it was completely controlled by crime. And this was two blocks from the Presidential palace, from the main square in the country, in the city, from Congress, from the Supreme Court of Justice. And it was extremely difficult. And there we demolished more than 1200 buildings in my two terms and were able to create parks and housing.

Eve: [00:44:16] Wow!

Enrique: [00:44:17] But everything that you do is difficult. It’s difficult and painful.

Eve: [00:44:21] And yet you went back for a second time.

Enrique: [00:44:23] I went back, this, yeah, this thing that I just.

Eve: [00:44:25] Is there a the third one that we need to know about?

Enrique: [00:44:28] Well, I was feeling that I was already in a certain age. But then, once I see Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump as candidates, so I feel very young again.

Eve: [00:44:41] Very good. It’s only a number, right?

Enrique: [00:44:43] So I will go for another time or something.

Eve: [00:44:48] This is an amazing story. So, I want to ask you what’s the accomplishment you are most proud of?

Enrique: [00:44:54] Well, there are many things that made me extremely happy. For example, I was able to get more land for parks than all the mayors in the city in the whole history. The TransMilenio is very exciting to me because I think, again, as mobility, as symbol of democracy. There are some other things that we did that are very beautiful. For example, one of the most difficult things is to give good education to the poorest people, quality education. And we began to build some beautiful libraries, like four large, beautiful libraries, some in low-income areas. So, they are symbols that construct, like temples, that construct values, that knowledge and education are important. But also, we created beautiful schools. Beautiful, like the best private schools of the upper income people in the lowest income neighborhoods and former slums. And these beautiful, but more important than the building is that we created a system that has cost me blood politically, because I confronted the extremely powerful teacher’s union in which we said, we are going to get the best private schools and the best private university to manage these public schools in the poorest areas.

Speaker4: [00:46:09] And we have now 35 of these schools that we built, and we are able to contract with this, the best university. And the results have been amazing. Amazing. It’s really amazing that these children with the poorest people, because these schools are all in the poor, they are not in middle class areas, they are in the poorest neighborhoods. These children have academic results that are comparable to the upper income children in private schools. And of course, this has been extremely exciting. I mean, I will tell you that 99% of these children who study, they’re already graduates, or they have no idea that I, that I did this. But the teacher’s union has it very clear and it has caused me blood because they have been specialists in calumny me and to say all kinds of lies. And of course, the fact is not that all public schools are going to be managed in this way, but this creates a competition with…

Eve: [00:47:09] Equality, yeah.

Enrique: [00:47:10] Exactly, a model. So, we have to understand why these children in these schools, why these schools work so much better, so much, amazingly much better than the other public school that is managed by the traditional public union style only a few blocks away. And it’s not only in academic results that are amazing in the S.A.T. kind of things, but also, for example, much lower drug consumption, much lower desertion. I mean, when desertion rates that these children leave schools. Much lower gangs, even the whole neighborhoods crime goes down.

Eve: [00:47:50] Interesting.

Enrique: [00:47:51] It’s really fascinating. And of course, like many things that, so this, if you say, what are you most proud of? I think that these schools are teaching some things which have not yet been adopted by the rest of the educational system, but it’s very clear what it is that makes them much better.

Eve: [00:48:08] Interesting. We could talk all day, but I’m going to have to wrap up. So one more question. What’s next for you?

Enrique: [00:48:17] Well, we have in Colombia this time what I consider a terrible national government. We’re doing many crazy things, and I continue participating in politics. I mean, I have, like more than 2 million followers in Twitter, and so I try to give opinions or things. I may run for office somehow, even if it’s just to help somebody in the end, somebody else. I’m not obsessed with power, but I will try to contribute, and I’m also working very much internationally. I am very, I have been given the opportunity by some programs in Africa that are being, built by AMALI, an organization called AMALI and by Bloomberg. So, I am extremely interested in being able to participate more in African organization. I think this is a huge challenge, not just because we could avoid horrible problems, but because we could do cities that are better than anything that has been done before in the world. For example, in Africa, one of the things that we did here that I’m most happy about, we did more than 100km of greenways crisscrossing or bicycle highways crisscrossing an extremely dense city, because this is easy in a suburb, maybe, but this is extremely difficult.

Enrique: [00:49:33] And so, African cities could very easily have thousands of kilometers of greenways crisscrossing them in all directions. Imagine, not just one central park, but some parks all over the place. I mean, African cities can profit from the experience of all cities in the past, and in many cases, it makes it easier. In many cases, land is owned not by private owners, land that runs it by tribes or by national governments. So this is something that I hope that I’m able to participate more, because I think African people are wonderful, and I think there is a fantastic possibility to profit from us. I tell them, look, it’s not that I want to teach you the wonderful things we did. I want to tell you all the wrong things that we did, that you can avoid. Because our process of urbanization is so recent. I say, oh my God, if we had done this, that, that, that, that we would have we could have avoided so many mistakes.

Eve: [00:50:35] Yeah. Well, this has been just an incredibly delightful hour. I could go on forever. And of course, now Bogota is on my bucket list. I have to go there. Especially on a Sunday. I can get to ride those 75 miles. It would be amazing. So, thank you very, very much for joining me. And I hope every city gets your touch.

Enrique: [00:51:02] Thank you very, very much for the invitation. Thank you very much.

Eve: [00:51:19] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. Please support this podcast and all the great work my guests do by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media, or leaving a rating and a review. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing, head on over to smallchange.co where I spend most of my time. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music. And a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Enrique Penalosa

Manufactured authenticity.

March 27, 2024

Scott Snodgrass is a founding partner of Meristem Communities, a Houston-based real estate development firm committed to creating Places for People™️ with mindful, fine-grained developments. Meristem is a resiliency-focused developer whose guiding principles create human-centric design by thoughtfully, sustainably, and holistically connecting the land and its natural resources with people.

Scott is an innovative entrepreneur and former farmer who leads with respect for the land and the environment, carefully strategizing an interconnected resilience of all systems—natural, human, and built. His vision has always been to create neighborhoods that honor and nurture local ecosystems, empowering people to live a more holistic way of life with renewed appreciation for their natural surroundings. This vision is being brought to fruition in Indigo, one of Meristem’s first developments in the suburbs of Houston, designed with a foundational connection to agriculture and built around a human-scale working farm and pasture. The Meristem belief is that it’s the sum of a thousand small decisions that create more engaging, more interesting, and more livable neighborhoods.

Alongside his work at Meristem, Scott works collaboratively with developers and consultants to create unique and exceptional agricultural amenities (agrihoods) within master-planned communities through Agmenity. He has become a thought leader in the national agrihood movement, regularly speaking on the topic at regional and national conferences. Scott is a member of several community organizations including the Urban Land Institute (ULI), currently serving on a national committee and most recently contributed to their 2018 ULI Agrihood Report. Scott holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science and government from The University of Texas at Austin.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:06] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. For Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich, or poor, beautiful, or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo in order to build better for everyone.

Eve: [00:00:43] In real estate development, envisioning how future societies will live can often feel like masterminding a high-tech work of science fiction. Just outside of Houston, a new development of the future is emerging. But instead of flying cars and skyscraping utopias, this version of Tomorrowland has its roots firmly and sustainably planted in days gone by. Indigo, a 235-acre community, is being developed by Scott Snodgrass and his partner Clayton Garrett, both farmers. They have thoughtfully gone against the norm in every aspect of this project, focusing first and foremost on people and a human scale to encourage interaction. Downsized lots and homes, a working farm, the integration of small businesses, careful attention paid to embracing everyone all make this project one worth watching. You’ll want to listen in to learn more.

Eve: [00:01:54] Hi, Scott. It’s really nice to have you join me today.

Scott Snodgrass: [00:01:57] Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been a big fan of yours and the podcast, at least for the past couple of years, and so, excited to be able to join today.

Eve: [00:02:06] Oh thank you. You’ve been heard to say that in community development, envisioning how future societies will live can often feel like masterminding a high-tech work of science fiction. Why is that?

Scott: [00:02:21] Well, uh, we don’t really know what the future holds for how people are going to live, but I think that we have maybe 40,000 years or something of history with how people live. And certainly, in modern history, we have some great analogues to look back at and so, I think it’s really about learning with what we’ve done in the past, but then also applying the technological changes we’ve had to the future. We’re a little slow to adopt some technologies. I think it’s real easy to see technologies and think it’s the future. And these sexy technologies that are always being sold by some company for some high price and you have to sign up for their subscription, and they own all of your data and all that. And we’re a little wary of that. But I do think that as we look into the future, sometimes we are doing the same thing that a science fiction writer would do in imagining what the world’s going to be like in the future.

Eve: [00:03:16] That’s true. So, and you are a former farmer amongst other things. How does a former farmer become a real estate developer?

Scott: [00:03:24] It’s a great question. It’s the one that most people ask, right away off the start. But my business partner and I, we have a company called Agmenity, and it manages farms for master plan community developers, hospitals, school districts, cities and counties. And so, we had experience in agriculture and started that company as a service company to help incorporate agriculture into more real estate developments and have been doing that work since 2015. And we had, our first project is called Harvest Green. It’s here in Houston. The real estate developer was just a wonderful company and their general manager on the project, Shay Shafi, was just an incredibly generous guy. And he brought us into every single development meeting, you know, so every week or every two weeks for years. And sometimes…

Eve: [00:04:18] You caught the bug!

Scott: [00:04:19] Right. We were like, why are we here talking about engineering? And he said, well, hey, this whole like, agriculture in a community thing is relatively new in the modern framework. And so we want to make sure that we’re catching any of those conflict points. And so we got to see the behind the scenes. And we got to ask questions about, well, why are you making this decision and why are you making that decision? And Clayton and I, my business partner, we had always felt like what could be more impactful on someone’s life than the food they eat. Nothing, right? And then we saw this whole real estate development world and said, oh, wow. Like, real estate development actually has a lot to do with what food people eat and a whole host of other things. And so, this is also incredibly impactful work. So, we hired a COO at Agmenity who does a tremendous job, runs the company better than we ever did or could and is really leading that company in a growth throughout the country right now. And so, Clayton and I have been able to focus at Meristem Communities and put our energy there and really work on our first project, Indigo.

Eve: [00:05:23] And so Meristem Communities you launched with your partner. And how long ago was that?

Scott: [00:05:28] Now we just launched meristem in 2021. We owned a piece of property, um, that we had had a large-scale farm on, and we were starting to be surrounded by suburban development outside of Houston. And so, that farm was never going to grow to the full size of the property we had purchased, we realized. And so, we said, okay, well, what do we do with the rest of this property? And so, we had been walking alongside real estate developers and we said, well, let’s look at this. And we started talking to some folks about some mixed-use and sports parks and light industrial even. And none of it felt quite right. And then Covid hit, and everything stopped for a while. And then single-family real estate caught on fire, for good and for bad. And we said, okay, well, this is kind of our only option right now. And frankly, because of the demand that home builders had for lots at that time, it put us in a position where two farmers could become real estate developers because the home builders were so desperate for lots. And that was really the key that opened up financing and all the other agreements that we needed to get moving.

Eve: [00:06:38] Interesting. So, then I have to ask you, does this community differ from conventional urban plan communities? And if it does, how?

Scott: [00:06:48] Certainly for Houston, it is shockingly different, we discovered right away. Our conversations with our home builders weren’t easy, even though their demand for lots was so high. But, you know, we’ve done a number of things at Indigo that are different than the norm. You know, first off, we do have agriculture incorporated into the community. How could two farmers, you know, develop a community that didn’t have agriculture? So, we knew we had to do that, but we actually don’t find ourselves talking about it that much, related to Indigo. We see the big differences that we have are really our focus on walkability, and that means using homes that have their garages on alleys and the front doors either on the street or on a green space. And that was a very difficult framework for the Houston development world to understand. For whatever reason, Houston has just rarely had any alleys since the 50s or 60s. The city’s abandoned a lot of them in the urban core and master plan community developers just haven’t used them. And so, you know, we can easily travel around the country and see alley-loaded neighborhoods. You know, the traditional neighborhood design framework all around the country. Dallas even has a lot of it. And so, it was easy to go see it but we had a hard time getting our, our builders on board with doing that. So that was kind of the first hurdle and something we were doing that was very different. And then the second part of that was smaller…

Eve: [00:08:14] So actually let’s back up. So, the importance of alleys means that, you know, no driveways on the front, the front of the houses are really for people, not for cars and, and trash and cars are relegated to the alley. Right?

Scott: [00:08:29] Yeah. So, our tagline at Meristem Communities is places for people. And you know, we imagine a world where cars, corporations and capital are not the primary stakeholders. And those other three things are tools that humans can use to achieve their goals, but they’re not the primary stakeholders. And unfortunately, our real estate system, as you know and talk about all the time, is currently built for cars, corporations and capital. And so, we believe that it’s an important shift in the design framework as you’re designing a community to look at people first. So yes, garages on the back. That reduces our curb cuts and our conflict points for vehicles and for for driveways and sidewalks. Yeah.

Eve: [00:09:12] And people. Safer for kids.

Scott: [00:09:13] Yep. Safer for kids and all that. It allows us to have on-street parking and a lot more of it because we don’t have all of those curb cuts now, for the driveways. And it also means that when cars pull off of the road onto the alley, there’s a very limited number of cars on those alleys as well, because they serve small pockets of homes. And so even those spaces are relatively safe as well.

Eve: [00:09:35] That’s a really major urban planning feature, but I feel like I need to go back a step and ask you what your vision was. Like, what’s the overall vision for this community, and where did you draw inspiration from? Aside from the farm?

Scott: [00:09:51] And we have this conversation a lot too, like. Our PR team will ask, you know, what’s the theme of the community? And we keep coming back to it’s places for people. That really is the theme. You have to do everything. You can’t just pick one thing to do. And so, we’re incorporating agriculture into our development. We’re using alleys. We’re creating safer streets. Wherever our sidewalks cross the street we have a raised pedestrian crossing or a raised intersection table. We have narrower streets, we have on street parking, we have bulb-outs. We have all these things to create a safer environment for people and focus on that. And then we’ve also done the mixing of uses by having residential and retail and other commercial in the same space and, you know, bringing that into the neighborhood instead of pushing it out onto the major thoroughfare adjacent to our neighborhood and turning its back to the community, we’ve really brought that retail into the community and had it face the community and be really central there. And so, I think you have to do all those things. So, places for people really is the theme but then walkability and safe streets has to be an important part of that.

Eve: [00:11:00] So how big is this community? How many homes are we talking about? How many people?

Scott: [00:11:04] So we have 235 acres within the development. More than 60% of that is open space. So, we have a 25-acre lake. We have, you know, miles of walking trails and sidewalks and everything. And we also have these, we basically created a street grid and then took out every other street and made it a green space. And so, homes still front on those green spaces, and they’re served by the alleys in the back. So, we have a lot of open space there. We have, uh, 661 homes for sale. And then, and that’s a range of attached and detached and cottages and more traditional single-family homes for our market. And then we also have about 150 apartment units, but they’re distributed through a number of buildings. We have these mansion apartments that are six- and seven-unit apartments that just look like a banker’s house, that we’re putting on some of the green spaces. And then we have some, like, smaller 30-unit buildings of micro units that look like brownstones that are in what we call Indigo Commons, which is the real town center, mixed-use area of the neighborhood.

Eve: [00:12:17] And so you’re under construction, right?

Scott: [00:12:21] Correct.

Eve: [00:12:21] How far into this project are you? What percentage complete and how many people live there?

Scott: [00:12:27] So, we don’t have anyone living yet, but our section one, the model homes for the community are going to start construction here in just a few weeks. So, all of section one, which is a little more than a third of the community, all of the storm sewer, the sanitary sewer, water lines, all that’s in the water plant. And, you know, we built our own water plant and wastewater treatment plant because we didn’t have services in our area. And so, all of that is in and the paving starts this week. And so, they’re moving real quick for us. Hopefully the weather holds up for us and they’ll be out there pouring concrete for the next 30 days or so, and then we’ll have those first 265 lots available for sale. And I’ll tell you, we’ve been doing some really intentional, small-scale and intimate cultivation of the potential home buyers. And our home builders are saying the demand is intense and we believe that we’re going to sell out really quickly. So, we’re already getting section two ready. And construction for section two will start in just a few months here.

Eve: [00:13:28] And so, I have to ask how affordable are these homes?

Scott: [00:13:32] So, we are in the probably least affordable quadrant of the city. And again, partially that’s what allowed us as, you know, two simple farmers to deal. But also, what we’ve done is compare ourselves to the communities around us and if we wanted to push towards affordability, what could we do? Because Houston’s always been very affordable compared to the rest of the country but during Covid it changed quite a bit. And so, we’ve seen the same thing now where your firefighters, police officers, teachers, social workers can no longer, or anyone working in retail, can no longer afford to live even in the communities where they work. And it felt really wrong for a community to tell the people serving it they had to go somewhere else. That just felt inhuman. And so, we said, okay, we’ve got to find a way to solve for that problem. And so, one of the ways we did that was by pushing for smaller lot size, because we saw an opportunity where lots in Houston had become huge, you know, mostly in the 70s and 80s and 90s and that mostly that’s wasted space. People aren’t using those portions of their lots. So what we did was really densify our neighborhood, compared to the suburbs, you know, 3.2, 3.4, maybe four units per acre is the standard in the suburbs. I think we’re at almost eight units per acre. And then if you look at like, you know, net density in some smaller pockets in the neighborhood, we even flirt with 20 units per acre in our most dense areas. And so that’s a very different calculation. And that’s just on the first side.

Eve: [00:15:10] What were the zoning restrictions you have to contend with to get there?

Scott: [00:15:15] Most of our property was in the unincorporated county, and the county that we’re in has very little in the way of requirements for subdivisions or development. So, it’s kind of the wild, wild West out here.

Eve: [00:15:26] And that reminds me of, I don’t know if you ever used to play SimCity.

Scott: [00:15:29] Yeah, yeah.

Eve: [00:15:31] I just, you know, no restrictions.

Scott: [00:15:35] Yep.

Eve: [00:15:36] Insanity. Yeah.

Scott: [00:15:38] Yeah. So, then we, but we did have a portion of our property that was in the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the city of Richmond, which is our closest jurisdiction. We reached out to Richmond and said, hey, we’d love ultimately for our neighborhood to be a part of the city. So, we worked with them on a development agreement, and they have the right to annex our property in about ten years when we’re done with the development process. And that development agreement, so their, their minimum lot size was 6000ft², in the city of Richmond. And through our development agreement, we got that down.

Eve: [00:16:11] That’s a really huge.

Scott: [00:16:13] Right. Yeah. It’s big for the minimum. Right.

Eve: [00:16:15] Yes. Yeah,

Scott: [00:16:16] Maybe a maximum. It’d be okay. So, we worked with them and got that down to 2000ft², which is allowing us to do some cottage homes that are in that, like 950 to 1450 square footage range. That really serve, and that’s what we saw, was the suburbs of Houston have almost entirely been built for two parents with children families. There’s just so many homes built for that family formation, which in Texas is now like 20% of our family formation.

Eve: [00:16:49] Oh that’s really interesting.

Scott: [00:16:50] So the other 80% of family formations or household formations we’re just ignoring. People who want to live together, who aren’t married and have trouble with financing. You know, we have single parent families who affording a giant home like that can be really difficult. You know, all these different formations, you know, like couples who don’t want to have kids, which is more and more common today. And so, like, why are we only building these five-bedroom, you know, mini mansions in the suburbs? So, we shifted everything down on lot square footage and home square footage to create more of an ecosystem so that we’re providing homes for that wider range of people. And then especially wanted to do the aging in place concept where you could buy your first home in our neighborhood, you could rent here, then you can buy your first home in our neighborhood, and then you can size up your home as your family grows and size down as it doesn’t, as it shrinks and create all of that in one place for people.

Eve: [00:17:47] This is pretty challenging stuff that you’ve tackled for two farmers. First time real estate development. I have to ask, there’s a lot of infrastructure to put in place. How challenging was it to put the funds together for this project?

Scott: [00:18:01] I think we’re very persistent and we’re very persuasive. And then the market was really hot at that time. Like, we have the privilege of that and the privilege of both being white males, which does make a difference when you’re trying to get financing.

Eve: [00:18:15] Definitely.

Scott: [00:18:16] Absolutely. And then at the same time we were just willing to take no for an answer over and over again and go to the next person. And so we heard no, a bunch of times. We didn’t fit the traditional needs. You know, everybody understandably wanted a huge chunk of cash equity in the deal. And we didn’t have any money, we’re farmers, and we didn’t know anybody who was going to do that for us. And we didn’t want to go out and find an equity partner who would ultimately control the decision making. We wanted that to be us. So, we just kept working and working until we found a private lender that was willing to take on our deal, that was trying to move more into Texas. They had been developers in the past, which we really loved because they understood the development process. They’ve been very flexible. They are not very cheap. And I think that is the place that people need to get over that mental hurdle that, in our minds, we will pay for flexibility over and over and over again because it really brings resilience. When you lock yourself into this tiny little box of requirements and allow that lender or the bank to pull the rug out from under you whenever they decide to, that’s a tenuous place to be that we didn’t want to be. And so, we are happy to pay very high interest rates for very large sums of money for a long time in order to get the flexibility that we need. So, sure, we take a haircut in our profit at the end. And I think that’s what most people struggle with. But it does make our development more resilient.

Eve: [00:19:44] So you will have a working farm in this community?

Scott: [00:19:48] Yeah.

Eve: [00:19:48] How does that go?

Scott: [00:19:50] It’s 42 acres. And really, what most people will experience is the front three and a half acres, which are right at the entrance to the community, and it bumps right up into the town square area. And that’s the vegetable farm. So that’s where vegetables and flowers will be grown. That’s where people can go and buy some vegetables from the farm. They can take classes, they can interact with the farmers, maybe even have their own little plot to grow some vegetables in. And then the, on the back side of the property, the remainder of the farm is pasture and orchards. And so we will probably have laying hens, you know, hundreds and hundreds of laying hens and do egg production on the farm as well. And we’ll have some programming back there, but in a more limited basis that’ll mostly be a farmer’s work area on the back side of the farm.

Eve: [00:20:38] It sounds idyllic. And then also, where did you get your inspiration from for the architecture for the community, like, and what is the architecture like?

Scott: [00:20:48] We have a funny phrase we find ourselves using more and more, and that phrase is manufactured authenticity.

Eve: [00:20:54] Kind of like Disneyland, right?

Scott: [00:20:57] Yeah, in some ways. And there’s some parts of Disneyland that Disney did really well. Right? And really speak to people. There’s other parts of it that are cloying, I would say and, you know, are saccharine. But what we wanted to do, because we were developing what was just entirely farmland, not a single tree on our property, no structures at all. We felt like for people to feel like it was a place we needed to create some age, some patina on the community. So, we’ve done a few different things. You know, one, we went out and bought two 50-foot-tall live oak trees and had them planted at the property, and that was not cheap. But doing that, you know, at least makes it feel like something was here before. And then as we planned the architecture of our buildings, like the first commercial building we’re building is called the filling station. And so, it’s a little bit tongue in cheek that it was a 1930s Art Deco gas station. And then all of the decorations on it had been stripped off. It had been stripped back to its basic form, and it was no longer a gas station. It wasn’t serving cars now, now it’s serving people. So, it’s a general store, coffee, beer, wine, light breakfast and lunch options and then sells vegetables from the farm, eggs, pickles, jams and jellies, all that. And acts as the third place for the community to really activate at the beginning, where there’s cafe seating and it’s like, come hang out here, use the Wi-Fi, do whatever. So, the architecture of that building was really intentional, that it refers not only to an architectural style of the past, but also acts like it had been adaptive, reused, at some point in the future. And that goes all the way to like, choosing a polished concrete floor finish. You know, where do you incorporate some concrete block, like would have been in those buildings before so that you can see it, even if that’s not our modern construction method? So, there’s some touches to it that are Disney but what we’re hoping to do is really just give people that subconscious feeling of like, this isn’t a brand new whitewashed, you know, place. There’s some age here to, to help the community form in the beginning.

Eve: [00:23:11] And so how do you balance, like, modern amenities with this notion of small-town living?

Scott: [00:23:17] Part of that is actually doing your research on amenities and finding out what people want, and then looking at life cycle cost and value to the community. You know, in Houston, we’ve had an amenity arms race over the years, and people in other places in the country are shocked when they hear how low our association fees are compared to the amenities people get. Usually when I say we’re $1,700, they say, oh, $1,700 a month. That’s a that’s a little bit high. But we’ve seen numbers like that, and we say, no, $1,700 a year, is our cost. It’s shocking to people. And so, we wanted to, like we do with so many other things, go counterculture on that a little bit and say, what do people actually want? So, in Houston, every community has a pool, but those pools are only open three months a year. They cost millions of dollars to install, and they cost like a quarter million a year to staff and maintain. And so, we looked at that and said, okay, well, is there really the value? Like I have three elementary aged kids and we have eight pools we can go to in our neighborhood, which is ridiculous. But we go like 5 or 6 times a year. So, the amount of money that I’m paying in HOA fees towards that pool, it probably doesn’t calculate out to where it actually makes sense. And so we decided not to build a pool at Indigo.

Scott: [00:24:35] We have an amenity lake that is like a nature lake that you can swim in that we’re putting a dock on so if you want to swim, you can go there. But also, if you just desperately want to go to a pool, there are private pool clubs in the area, or you can go to a fitness center with a pool and those sorts of things. So, part of it was like getting rid of the big plays. In Houston these crystal lagoons have become all the rage, where people spend $10 million building a beach. You know, it’s an enormous pool, essentially. And we didn’t want to saddle our residents with that kind of debt. And we feel like with those big giant plays may get you a bunch of media coverage, but they’re really risky long term. So, we’ve downsized our amenities and done more of them and spread them out more throughout the community. So, it’s little things like a couple of bocce ball courts here and a natural children’s playground over here, and a small dog park over here, and a meditation maze over here, and some moving water and wind chimes over here. And really just spread those out and diffuse them throughout the community so that they’re more easily accessible. And that’s a part of the walkability. And they’re, I guess, maybe a little more equitably spread out throughout the community too, so that everyone has access to them, but not saddling the community with any specific, really large-scale debt.

Eve: [00:25:55] Yes, yeah. So, who will live there and where are they going to come from?

Scott: [00:25:59] So we did a lot of research at the beginning. We used a company called Kantar that has a giant database of demographics, looked at who lives in our area, which generation do they fall into? And then they even segment each generation by behavior. So, for example, there’s a millennial segment that’s a little more career-oriented, that’s a little more go, go, go. Then there’s another segment. So, I’m in that segment. My business partner Clayton’s in the other segment, which is a little more family oriented, a little more self-care oriented. And so, you know, it’s interesting to see the different segments and how they’re, how they want to live. So, my segment might be happier in a town home in an urban area. My business partner’s, you know, his segment might be a little bit more happy in a home, a smaller home, but with a little bit more of a lot around it and not attached. So, we did that research. Then we went out and looked at who’s in our area of those segments and then designed our home types for them. And then, we actually had 700 people answer a survey with questions about amenities and other things in our community and got amazing feedback from that that we incorporated into what we were doing. And then we took all of that to our home builders and said, here’s really what we want to see for the homes in this area. And we have architectural guidelines that control what they can build. We control the square footage band. We approve the elevations for the homes, what they look like on their facades and all of that. And then the goal is that once we get that done, we can hand it over to the homeowners’ association, and then the control can relax. And we want people to be able to have their own impact on what their home looks like.

Eve: [00:27:46] So how do baby boomers and seniors fit into your plan?

Scott: [00:27:51] Well, I mean, baby boomers are such a huge part of the population right now. And a lot of them, I’m sure everyone’s seen the articles are holding on to to larger homes and not moving out of them. And that’s creating a little bit of a scarcity for homes, for families that are growing. And I think one of the reasons is that they haven’t been given alternatives, other than the age qualified 55 and up communities and we’ve had conversations with a lot of people who don’t want to live in one of those.

Eve: [00:28:19] Me included.

Scott: [00:28:21] Right? They want to be around younger people and specifically probably even their families. And so, at Indigo, we’ve tried to design the community again, where it’s a complete community with opportunities for everyone. So, we looked at what are some good housing types for people who are downsizing, empty-nesters, aging populations. You know, there’s things like more one-story buildings, or if it’s a two-story, try to make sure your primary suites on the ground floor, and then looking at the the walkability for those homes as well. Mobility is different for every different person. But there’s some commonalities and so for people who are a little bit older, having a place to rest every 150ft or so is really critical. And so, we’ve tried to design our walking network so that there is both shade and places to stop and rest as you make your way from your home to the different places throughout the community.

Eve: [00:29:17] So what about cultural and racial diversity?

Scott: [00:29:21] Our county is the second most diverse county in the country after Queens, I think. And so, it is 25% white, 25% Black, 25% Hispanic, and 25% Asian. And the Asian population is incredibly diverse itself with a lot of Indian and Pakistani, Chinese and Vietnamese populations in our area. And so, we feel like, really fortunate to be in a place like that. Yet at the same time, the suburban neighborhoods can still be fairly white in our area. And so I think some of that is like the messaging that you present to the world when you’re asking people to come join you. So, we’ve been really intentional with our marketing team. And we took our entire design team, including marketing through some DEI workshops and learning about cultural differences and how we can approach things maybe differently with that, with cultural differences in mind. And that’s been, I think, really impactful so far in the narrative that we’re telling, making sure that our marketing materials are representative of the communities around us and the people that we are inviting to come join us. And then we’re even working on a home-buyer resources guide. Basically, if people come to try and buy a home in Indigo and are, either think they won’t qualify to buy the home or try and don’t qualify, we have some secondary resources that are designed to overcome the hurdles that people of color and women and other class distinctions have faced in real estate. I mean, I think real estate is in the top 2 or 3, you know, racist and classist…

[00:31:05] Oh yeah,

[00:31:06] Institutions that we have in the country easily. Right? I mean, the prison system.

Eve: [00:31:10] Maybe the top.

Scott: [00:31:11] Yeah. And so, we want to work against those things in every way that we can. And so, we actually are in the process of building out an equity framework for Indigo and looking at like, what are all the spheres of influence that we have and we’re targeting. So, we have eight strategies that we’re ultimately going to be targeting throughout the community for things that we can do to overcome historic barriers to either renting or real estate ownership.

Eve: [00:31:39] Wow! It sounds to me like farmers do a lot of research. You’re used to that. Yeah. So, what have been some of your biggest challenges and disappointments?

Scott: [00:31:49] Challenges and disappointments?

Eve: [00:31:50] Maybe none?

Scott: [00:31:52] Yeah. No, no, we’ve definitely had challenges. I mean, working with the city, everybody told us that our city was like the worst city to work with in Houston. That’s what the development world said. We found them to be great to work with. It just took a lot of work and time to get them convinced of what we were trying to say, but we brought data to them. You know, narrower streets. It’s the fire chiefs don’t like narrower streets because it restricts access, right? So, then we have conversations about, okay, but a narrower street means slower speeds and means less kids die when they get hit by cars. So let’s balance like, how many home fires do you have in your area? Not very many. Okay, well, maybe more kids are being hit by cars and we should balance that out. So, we just went with those things. It took longer than I think we expected, and I think we’d be a little faster next time. But I also think people need time to wrap their heads around things, and you have to give that to them. So that’s maybe one of the big challenges. And then, you know, there’s a bit of a regret, I’ll say, that in the design of the neighborhood, we didn’t like bleed the retail into the residential part more than we did.

Eve: [00:32:56] I was going to ask about that. What is the retail and where is it? Yeah.

Scott: [00:32:59] So, we have what we call Indigo Commons. It’s right next to the farm. It’s surrounded by the neighborhood. But I wish that, you know, we still have like a street as the dividing line between the mixed use and the residential. And I wish that we had been smarter and had retail on both sides of the street, I think, instead of. And so, take more of that corridor mindset than the block mindset when we were looking at land use. And so, that’s a big regret, is like pulling a few little neighborhood retail places, pulling a restaurant to like a busy corner somewhere in the residential section. I mean, all of our homes are within a seven-minute walk of the commons. So, it’s not like you’re that far away, but it still would be nice to have pulled a few things out. So, I think that’s one thing there. You know, definitely on the commercial side, there’s been some challenges. We have what we call our incremental retail buildings. So, we did the whole household formation conversation on the housing side. And we were getting like halfway through the planning of the mixed-use area. And then we said, wait a minute, we need to do the same thing for businesses that we did over there. What about the barbershop that just wants to have two seats and doesn’t need 2000ft²? Why should they be paying for 2000ft² if they don’t need it? So, we did the same thing and started downsizing and right-sizing. And you know, we’re farmers. We’ve known a lot of chefs in Houston because we sold to a lot of them over the years, and just saw too many extractive relationships between landlords and tenant restaurants, where restaurant gets a little bit of press for the chef having great food, and then all of a sudden, they get slammed and they’re just so busy for a month.

Scott: [00:34:40] And then the landlord says, you know what? Your lease is up in a couple months, we’re going to go ahead and double your rent for next year. And that restaurant may not even be making money. They just appear to be busy and got some press. And so, to fight that a little bit, we wanted to have some tenant-owned retail. And so, we’ve designed these incremental retail buildings. It’s an 800 square foot footprint, 2 or 3 stories. So, 1600 or 2400ft² maximum. The bottom floor has to be active retail. We need the foot traffic for those buildings. But then on the second and third floor, it could be more retail. It could be offices. You could live there. You could lease it out as an apartment, whatever you want to do. And we got that through our jurisdictions and approved. So, it is a little bit like a live/work unit in form. But what I’ll say on the live/work units is most of the places people have done those, they’ve been residences first and they’ve been financed as a residence and then just have the retail. We’ve designed ours to where they work with the Small Business Administration’s 504 and 7A loan programs where you can get a 25-year business mortgage on that property, and you can live there and work there or lease it out or whatever. So, we just wanted to provide a bunch of flexibility. And so, that was a little bit of a challenge to get people to wrap their head around. And even the market has taken a little bit, but now we’re really starting to see intense demand.

Eve: [00:36:03] Well wow! I’m really impressed. You guys clearly have thought about absolutely everything. I hope I get to see the community when it’s finished. Is there anything else you want to tell me? I feel like we’ve jumped around everywhere. I’m sure I’ve missed a lot.

Scott: [00:36:18] No, I mean, I think the encouragement I would give to other people working in the space, and you’ve had so many great guests on your podcast. I was actually just listening to my my good friend Jonathan Dodson, to his version, I think, take hope in the fact that there are a lot of people working in this direction right now, and it feels like the tide is shifting a little bit. And thanks in part to people like you, Eve, doing these great communications and, like, sharing this because otherwise, how would we know about all these other people working in these other cities in the same area that we are? And so, I think it’s really, really valuable. And people who are feeling alone in this work out there, reach out to the people on those, like, we’ve had great success connecting with other developers. And, I mean, we flew to Oklahoma City to meet Jonathan, you know, kind of on a whim and then have become really good friends. And so, I encourage people, even if you’re working in this area and you have questions to reach out to us. You know, find us on LinkedIn and reach out and we’ll be happy to chat.

Eve: [00:37:20] Well, this has been delightful. Thank you so much for joining me and spending time. And, um, I do want to know how it ends up.

Speaker3: [00:37:27] We hope to have you down to Houston.

Eve: [00:37:28] I’m a little bit jealous.

Scott: [00:37:31] Well, we’ll look forward to that.

Eve: [00:37:40] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. Please support this podcast and all the great work my guests do by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media, or leaving a rating and a review. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing, head on over to smallchange.co where I spend most of my time. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music. And a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Scott Snodgrass

Architectural entrepreneur.

November 29, 2023

Atif Z. Qadir, AIA is the Co-founder & Chief Impact Officer of Commonplace, a market network at the intersection of real estate and capital markets. He is a Registered Architect and LEED Accredited Professional turned entrepreneur with a particular interest in housing and impact. His strengths are observing, asking, analyzing, and using the power of narrative to uncover, share, teach, support, advocate and champion. He is a builder at heart, who is comfortable in different scales and settings – from small workforce housing units to multi-billion dollar redevelopments, from podcasts and panels to public service, from nonprofits and academia to private equity & venture capital backed companies, and from design to finance to public policy.

Atif is also a Founder & Partner at Amanat Properties and serves on the Planning Commission in the City of Hoboken, the Advisory Council of Provident Bank and on the Board of Trustees of The Hudson School. He previously worked at Extell Development and Turner Construction. He began his career at Rafael Viñoly Architects and Boston Housing Authority. He studied at MIT, where he received dual bachelor’s degrees in Architecture and in Urban Planning, and at Columbia Business School, where he received a MBA focusing in Finance.

His work has been covered by MIT Technology Review, Commercial Observer, Propmodo, and The Real Deal. He’s also a frequent speaker on the future of buildings and cities on popular industry podcasts and at conferences, including this past year at the Commercial Observer National Diversity & Inclusion Forum, Yale Alumni in Real Estate Association Conference, the Columbia Real Estate Symposium, NYC Open Data Week NYC and Austin Design Week.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:04] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. For Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich or poor, beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo in order to build better for everyone.

Eve: [00:00:39] Atif Qadir is a serial entrepreneur, but that’s not where he started. Trained as an architect and urban planner. Atif decided pretty early on that what he wanted was to work his way up the ladder from servicing developers as an architect or builder to being one. So, he started developing his own small properties. And as his frustrations with finding project financing grew, so did his entrepreneurial ideas. He launched Commonplace, a fintech platform with a mind to create a marketplace for emerging developers and investors. Dating for development projects. In amongst all of this and in partnership with the Office of Michael Graves, Atif hosts a podcast show called American Building. He’s a high energy guy. You’ll enjoy listening in.

Eve: [00:01:40] Hey, Atif, it’s really good to have you on my show today.

Atif Qadir: [00:01:44] Thank you so much for having me on, Eve.

Eve: [00:01:46] Oh, yes. It’s going to be fun! So, you have a very multifaceted resume, lots of fingers in many pies, but your background is fundamentally architecture and planning. And then you went on to get an MBA at Columbia. What prompted you to transition from a registered architect to entrepreneur?

Atif: [00:02:08] Sure. So, the job that I had before going to business school was at Turner Construction, doing construction management for huge projects in the New York area. And for me, I had thought that going from architecture to construction was higher up in the food chain about actually be making decisions. When I realized that as a construction manager for a developer, I still wasn’t making any decisions. I was executing on decisions, but I was telling the architect what to do. So I sort of had moved up in the food chain but not quite to the the decision making power center yet. So, I knew there was a few more steps I had to go.

Eve: [00:02:45] And what was the top step you were attaining to acquire.

Atif: [00:02:51] At that point? I think it was being a developer, but then not to bury the lead, I realized that even being a developer is not the top of the food chain because now you’re answering to the investors, so, and the bank most importantly.

Eve: [00:03:02] Always the banks, always the banks, right? But anyway, you can definitely, as a developer, you have more control over more aspects of the project, right? Not just, and that’s a lot more fun, right?

Atif: [00:03:14] I think it’s a lot more fun. I would say the way that I describe being a developer in the context of, say, jobs or roles that are easily understood is I think a developer is a lot about being a project manager, an accountant, a janitor, a babysitter, a therapist, a divorce lawyer. Like all of those things is all the skill set of being a developer.

Eve: [00:03:38] Well, I would add artist to that.

Atif: [00:03:40] Oh, yeah, yeah! Artist, of course, yeah. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that one.

Eve: [00:03:45] You’ve got to use that side of your brain to really envision things, right? If you’re going to do a good job of it, right?

Atif: [00:03:51] Of course. Yeah. I think that there’s this great quote that I saw on LinkedIn. There’s a gentleman named Tyler Sumaila who does coaching for architects about how to think and how to present themselves the value that they bring. And I think there’s a lot of similarity between what we’ll say for architects and developers. Basically, it says teaching an architect is like teaching a baker how to bake every bread that’s ever been made before and how to make every bread that could potentially be made in the future and not teaching them how to run the bakery. That’s essentially what an architect does.

Eve: [00:04:25] Actually a pretty good analogy. Yeah.

Atif: [00:04:27] And feel developers are maybe like a shade similar to that too.

Eve: [00:04:30] That’s true, that’s true. So, I’m going to explore three of your companies. They were the only three I could find so far.

Atif: [00:04:38] I’ve tucked to a few more into the side.

Eve: [00:04:40] If there’s a few more just let me know, okay? But the first is Amanat Properties, which is perhaps the most traditional of your companies. That’s your development company, right? And what type of projects do you focus on and where are they?

Atif: [00:04:54] Sure. So, it’s in the Garden State, the great state of New Jersey, and the types of work that I do is historic redevelopment on a small scale. So, these are the projects that completed are a rental building in Hoboken where I live, and a condo building as well. And then I also have a workforce housing portfolio of 13 different assets that are, I purchased them as Class C and then brought them to Class B with renovation. And those are in Hudson and Middlesex County in New Jersey, which is the I-95 corridor.

Eve: [00:05:30] Oh, okay. And what drew you to this niche?

Atif: [00:05:33] So I would say from a few different perspectives. One is from the geography perspective, once I moved to New Jersey after business school, I realized there’s this whole amazing place called New Jersey and Hoboken and Jersey City in particular is the half price clean version of Brooklyn. And I was like, there’s so much value, so much value there. So that was I think the geographic reset was really important. I think number two was having spent a couple of years at Extell, I realized that at a very prominent real estate development firm like that and perhaps others, there’s a glass ceiling that you come to. And of course, it’s based on gender. But there’s another layer, of course, on that, which is if you’re not the family member of the founder of the company, there is a limit to how far you can go. And in this particular situation, Gary Barnett, the owner of Extell, very intelligent, very prolific developer. All of his daughters were already married so there was really no option for me to join the family at that point. So, I started considering the other options.

Eve: [00:06:43] Was that your way in, marrying a daughter?

Atif: [00:06:45] I would be so good as a house husband. I would kill it as a house husband. But unfortunately, that route wasn’t available. So that was the second thing kind of draw out. And I would say in particular, when it comes to fixing, I’ve realized over the course of my career that my nature is actually very much more a fixer and a bringer together and a resolver than my nature is as an executor as opposed to a creator. So, for me, I actually enjoy the idea of historic redevelopment significantly more than vacant land. So, I think all those reasons were the influences that brought me to do development the way I described it to you.

Eve: [00:07:28] And so what are the unique challenges that you faced?

Atif: [00:07:32] Yeah. So, I think the most often thing, when ask this question to other developers, it’s how much time do you have?

Eve: [00:07:39] Go, go for it.

Atif: [00:07:42] Go for it, do it. I would say, the three that I would say come to mind right away, number one would be access to capital. So, I think that for me, for my deals, I had probably done a hundred tours of Hoboken and Jersey City to raise $8 million from a small handful of investors. And then I talked to 35 banks to get the debt that I needed for my two development projects. And I still ended up having to use a mortgage broker.

Eve: [00:08:13] And why do you think that is? Why is it so hard?

Atif: [00:08:16] I think that fundamentally it boils down to this issue of a supply and demand mismatch. And I think at the smaller level, there is an array of potential investors, but none of them are institutional level and being able to actually find them and find them at the time that they have the money to give to you is really like the whack-a-mole challenge.

Eve: [00:08:39] It’s a huge challenge. So, you’re talking about what I call the $10 million check problem, right?

Atif: [00:08:44] 100%. I was just talking to Caleb Ratinetz, who’s a principal at Asland Capital Partners. So, a mid-size equity provider for residential inclusive of affordable housing. And he’s like, asked me like, why wouldn’t you invest in projects where you’re cutting checks of three, 4 or 5 million? He’s like, why? They’re bigger headache than me for like a $10 million check and even a $10 million check is a headache.

Eve: [00:09:09] Which is a really big problem because that means that emerging developers, disinvested neighborhoods, all those things that you and I probably care about get left behind because I think that gap is widening and widening. It’s not, it’s probably no longer $10 million and it’s probably creeping up to $15 million.

Atif: [00:09:27] I think it’s inflation is now like 30% a year.

Eve: [00:09:31] So that’s a huge problem. And has that slowed you down in the projects that you’ve been able to? Well, of course it has.

Atif: [00:09:41] Come to think of it like this, is that if it took me, so 2018 is when I acquired title to the two properties and both of them were stabilized by the spring of 2020. So, it was two full years to do two projects that were under $5 million each. I just like, imagine the amount that I could have done. I could have done eight townhouses or like eight small multifamily buildings in that time if I wasn’t running around doing the dog and pony show for investors and for lenders. So, I think the volume of stuff is definitely what ends up being affected.

Eve: [00:10:18] Okay. And then, like, what does your team look like? Who are you working with? Yeah.

Atif: [00:10:24] Yeah. So, for Amanat Properties, it’s a one man show. So basically, I JV with a company called Hanini Companies, Hanini Group sorry, and that’s in, based in Newark, New Jersey. And the construction is sometimes from them and sometimes from a third party. Architecture is from a third party. The development soup to nuts is my responsibility, including the expediting, because I tried an expediter and that’s not a good idea. So, I did not decide to go down that path. And then asset management, all that stuff is me. So that’s essentially the way that I’ve broken down Amanat Properties. I’ve had probably at least a dozen interns over the course of the years that I’ve done development, but it’s more because it’s fun and I like teaching as opposed to like actually having any benefit from it for me.

Eve: [00:11:12] So Covid must have slowed you down a bit.

Atif: [00:11:16] Covid messed a lot of stuff up. And I think in particular it was the idea of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing when it came to government decisions as to what work was considered essential versus not. And it was as crazy as the state of New Jersey declaring certain trades as essential, and the city of Hoboken declaring others as non-essential. And then even when they were declared essential, oh, City Hall was closed for a few weeks. So, we were never getting the inspections that we needed anyway. So, I think that that was the biggest frustration. The banks, I thought my banks, they were patient. My investors were incredibly patient. It was the municipal approvals and all of that stuff. That was the problem.

Eve: [00:12:02] And coming out of Covid, like we’ve heard a lot about the disarray of the commercial real estate industry and how is that impacting you? Do you have a next project lined up? Is it harder than it was? Even harder than it was?

Atif: [00:12:17] Yeah, I would say the biggest issue that I am foreseeing is this reality. So, I’m talking to a chief credit officer of a local community type bank in New Jersey and said, oh, so how are you doing with new commercial real estate loans? And he’s like new commercial real estate loans? What are you talking about? And I was like, no, like, seriously, aren’t you deploying capital? He’s like, only for Perm and only to people that we’ve done business with before that have a significant amount of cash at our bank. That’s it. And that type of a of a response. I heard maybe a slightly more liberal like version of that from a super regional bank that I do a lot of business with. And then from the Wall Street and the larger banks of the community development banks that are operating in this space. For them, it’s generally business as usual, but the issue often is that the checks under $10 million, like there’s no use of, like they can’t do them anyway. Before they wouldn’t do them and now, they wouldn’t do them. So, I think it’s the evaporation of options, which is the issue right now. And I think coming forward for the next two years, it’s not going to get any better.

Eve: [00:13:30] Not going to get better.

Atif: [00:13:31] Yeah, there’s about $1 trillion of commercial real estate debt coming due dominantly in office and retail and dominantly held by regional and community banks. So that the lender that would lend to people like us, no, they’re not, they have bigger issues now.

Eve: [00:13:49] Right, it’s pretty difficult times. That’s really depressing Atif, but it’s really true and I think the bank collapse earlier this year is also going to make lending even harder because now experience will count even more. So, it makes it very difficult to start a career in real estate, you know.

Atif: [00:14:08] I feel like experience is often the catch-all term to incorporate many shades and variations of biases together, because the quintessential problem many of our colleagues, when we were together at the Small Scale Developer Forum that Jim Heid runs in Philadelphia, the last one, is that is the chicken and the egg problem. How is it possible to have a diverse group of developers in this country when your requirement is to have done 50 projects already? So, unless you were born to come out of the womb with 50 projects done, how would one even do that?

Eve: [00:14:42] Yes, it’s a very big problem. Very big problem. Let’s move on to the second company, which is now called Commonplace, which I think probably, I’m guessing, addresses some of these issues. So, what does Commonplace do? What is Commonplace?

Atif: [00:14:56] Sure. So, Commonplace is not a real estate development company or an investment company like Amanat Properties. It’s a technology company and it’s one that’s considered a startup. So, we have venture capital financing. And what our mission is, is to help impact developers be able to access capital more easily in order to do the good work that they’re doing. So, we’re a team of six, based in New York, and our focus is on making double opt-in qualified introductions between impact developers as well as capital providers. That’s our first product. And from there we’re building out a suite of other activities and initiatives and products that we hope to release in the next couple of months.

Eve: [00:15:45] Interesting. How far along are you with the product? How many introductions have you made?

Atif: [00:15:50] So we’re about 150 a week is where we’re at right now. So, we’re starting to now do the, like the assessments from the past quarter of how many went to first conversations, how many went to second conversations, and how many went to term sheets. And I think over the next quarter, we’ll be able to reassess that as well. But essentially what we’re, we’re approaching the problem from the perspective that the issue isn’t necessarily technology, and the technology is the accelerant of something like this. But the issue often is simply the relationship not existing. So, from that perspective, we’re taking actually, frankly, a low tech approach to the introductions and then implementing technology in different layers to make that accelerated. And we’re actually seeing this as the test case for us to be able to deploy something that is more robust and more technology native, which we’re calling Capital Applications. And that’s a product that we’re excited to launch with six capital providers in the next couple of months.

Eve: [00:16:53] Oh, interesting. So, when did you start Commonplace?

Atif: [00:16:57] So commonplace. We started in its original iteration in 2020 as REDIST, which was a software as a service company focused on data related economic development incentives and then Commonplace, we relaunched as Commonplace in May of this year.

Eve: [00:17:15] What prompted you to reimagine it?

Atif: [00:17:18] So I mean, I thought when I was banging my head against the wall and capitalizing my deals that, gosh, it must be economic development incentives that’s going to solve, they’re going to solve all my problems. And I was like, these are really hard to figure out and find and learn and get. So why don’t I put all the information together and I’ll make my life a lot easier and probably that of developers. So, we did that. We gathered all the data related to 6000 different incentives in 13 states. We curated all the content and wrote that up in a way for developers to understand, and we piloted that with 250 companies. We had paying customers. And often what we heard from our customers and from the folks that piloted our product was this is great, could you help us find debt for a new construction multifamily project in Detroit? Because we don’t know any community banks in Detroit that want to fund new construction right now. Or, like another classic one that we heard was, oh, I have all the capital from my 80 different sources for a repositioning of a historic hotel in a majority minority neighborhood in Chicago, but we just need another million and a half of equity and we don’t have any more friends and family to go to for $10,000 checks. Could you help us find some more equity? My favorite one was a developer in New Jersey who had said, oh yeah, we’d love to get debt help. We need help with debt besides the incentives. And he’s like, you’re a licensed architect, would you, could you also design our whole development for us too?

Eve: [00:18:54] So are you adding in design services?

Atif: [00:18:57] Oh, no, I’m not going back to that one. And also, it’s been so long since I’ve gotten CAD, but generally the three people that I’m describing all were of a similar style person, which was a midsize impact developer that was developing in a majority minority area. And we realized like the similarities again and again, and that’s what made us take a pause, spend a couple months, do a bunch of research interviews, go through our notes again and figure out how we want to address the same problem in a different way.

Eve: [00:19:27] Really interesting. Well, that brings me to the final one of the three I know about, and that’s called, the podcast, American Building Podcast, which you host. Tell us about that and what motivated you to launch it.

Atif: [00:19:41] Sure. This was motivated by the magic of LinkedIn. So, the new CEO of Michael Graves Architecture and Design, His name is Joe Furey. He has the three letters after his name it’ not AIA, it’s CPA. And he is probably the most fascinating head of a design firm that I’ve seen because he’s no nonsense. It’s like, let’s get to the point. And I think particularly for firms that are going through transitions where their founders have passed, particularly when it’s a very iconic founder, it is, not in every case, but I think it’s a challenge I’ve seen in several different places to transfer the business development responsibilities to the new generation. So, long story short, Joe was following a bunch of my LinkedIn posts that I did when I left Extell because, I mean, given I wasn’t developing because I couldn’t find the equity and the debt fast enough.

Eve: [00:20:35] The capital, yeah.

Atif: [00:20:36] So I had to fill the rest of my time doing something. So, I was making LinkedIn posts and Joe saw this and he was like, hey, you seem like a really interesting guy. Would you want to come and just grab coffee? I said, funny enough, I’m actually at my parents’ place, which is like five miles away from your office. Let’s meet tomorrow morning for coffee. So I met him and then I invited him to a panel that I was hosting at the Harvard Real Estate Symposium on Entrepreneurship and Intrapreneurship within our industry and we just started, on the way up, we were just like talking a lot about how does he, as a firm, reach out to a new generation of potential customers, who are now in their 30s and 40s leading development firms all across the country? And we said, you know, both of us listen to podcasts. Let’s just do it, let’s figure it out. So, we basically came up with our plan, what we wanted to do. We dug into our virtual Rolodexes of friends in the city, and the thesis that we wanted to bring was, let’s talk to a new generation of developers and the ones that you don’t see on the cover of the Real Deal, the ones that you don’t see on every single industry panel, though, and you know exactly what I’m talking about, all of those people. So that’s what we started with. And I think we really kind of struck a chord with people. We got some really great guests on. So, Vishaan Chakrabarti from Practice for PAU, great, great architecture design studio. Marion Gilmartin, Melissa Birch. A whole set of people that are really amazing. So our 75th episode we recorded yesterday with Keith Rand from Mill Creek Residential. So yeah, that’s basically the path.

Eve: [00:22:23] And what have they told you? What have you discovered in these interviews?

Atif: [00:22:27] So in each of these interviews we wanted to get to the heart of it is, the why of what they actually were solving for it. What was it that drove them to develop this building or design this building? And what is it that a listener can take away from them to understand what is the future of our industry going to look like? Generally speaking, that was season one and two and then three focused much more tightly on housing in the greater New York City area. And we included, started including a journalistic style monologue in the beginning that talked about a certain issue in great depth. So one of the ones that I thought was really fascinating was where did the modern system of home mortgages come from? Like, how did that even start? So, we kind of go all the way back to FDR, the 1940s, and describe that process on the way back. So that’s what made this season a little bit more unique than the other ones.

Eve: [00:23:26] Interesting. But what have you learned about developers, this next generation?

Atif: [00:23:30] Do you know? What I would say is this, as that as easy as it is to stereotype our whole industry as being in it for the money, which is usually what people yell at me when, I’m a city planning commissioner in Hoboken as well, so that’s usually what people in the audience will yell. They just yell indiscriminately aloud from the audience. And a couple times I’ve also done like the so tell who are these developers you’re talking about? But I think what, so what I’ve learned is that there are many people that aren’t that and there’s many people that care about the place that they develop. And there’s many people that care about the people that are going to live in, work in or enjoy the buildings that they’re creating. And that’s something that is deeply inspiring because I think the other description or stereotype of our industry tends to dominate the public psyche.

Eve: [00:24:22] I think that’s true. And then what about architects, this next generation of architects? How is the industry changing? Is it changing? Because, you know, architects are very undervalued on the whole. And I’m, I’ve puzzled for years over why that isn’t more actively addressed because I think they bring enormous value. But I’m not the norm in that thinking, right?

Atif: [00:24:51] Yeah, I think that it probably comes to something that my therapist would say, which is about boundaries. And I think that architects are terrible at creating boundaries in terms of what they will do versus what they won’t do and how they value themselves versus what they will give away for free with the hope of being able to get something else. And I think perhaps an old school way of thinking about this is what H.H. Richardson said, which is that he’ll design anything from a cathedral to a chicken coop. And I think the new-age version of this is where an architect’s values overlay with what they will actually do. So, for example, Vishaan Chakrabarti, the architect that I mentioned, makes it explicit in the manifesto for his business, he will not work for authoritarian regimes. He will not design a prison. So, and he is not interested in doing stuff related to law enforcement. So, I think that all of those areas and declarations are the beginnings of this boundaries of saying that this is me, this is what I do, I am valuable. And if you choose to value me, this is the price associated with it. And if not, somebody else will. That’s the tough one.

Eve: [00:26:08] I really admire that. But I’m thinking of value in a much broader sense. Like, I walk around my neighborhood or where I have my little cottage and I’m just appalled when I see the buildings that are going up in a place that has such distinct character. And the buildings are thrown up by builders who have never been trained to recognize that character or replicate it or build anything that fits into it. And architects are not even a thought. They’re just not a part of the conversation. And so, we end up with really wonderful places being just ruined over time by either an unwillingness to think about what it means to put up a building and the space it creates. And I am, I’m appalled when I talk to people about this who don’t know what architects do saying, but they’re so expensive why would I why would I need one? The builder can do that for me. I’m just puzzled at why the architecture industry hasn’t been able to find a way to talk about its value broadly.

Atif: [00:27:20] Yeah, I think that there is this element of, um…

Eve: [00:27:25] Elitism.

Atif: [00:27:26] Elitism. I think this idea that you poor people don’t deserve nice things and architects don’t work for poor people. And I think the, what I think about is also the minimization of our trade by the increasing presence of legality and fear of lawsuits throughout every aspect of our industry. So, I think the AIA has done a wonderful thing by codifying contracts that our industry uses as our norm for both owners, architects and contractors.

Eve: [00:27:57] And builders.

Atif: [00:27:58] And builders. Yeah. And I’ve read those contracts as a principle. Like I’ve needed to read all of those contracts when I’m hiring a contractor, I’m like, gosh, architects, we’ve really backed ourselves into a corner. And when I think about, let’s go all the way back to one of the greatest, still one of the greatest buildings of all time is the Taj Mahal. So, the head architect, his name is, was, Sir Ustad Ahmad Lahori. So funny side story, he’s essentially a Pakistani that designed in India, which is a whole other side story. But the amazing thing is that, um, as an architect, it wasn’t like he just drew the drawings and was like, okay, you do it and if you have a problem, I’ll probably sue you. Or if you want to sue me, let’s go to court. His whole responsibility was everything, including the supply chain. And what I found so amazing is he was responsible for the team of people that were getting all the precious stones and all the precious materials like Jade from China, Tourmaline from the Middle East, all of these different things. And they all spoke all these different languages. And he was responsible for all of that. And I think that owning of the whole process is what allows architects to truly be maximized in their value in the way that you’re describing.

Eve: [00:29:11] Yes, but I still puzzle over how that’s ever going to be brought into, you know, everyday lives because streets, neighborhoods, blocks are ruined by poor design, and then we all get to enjoy that.

Atif: [00:29:28] I mean, there’s some avenues. Let’s think, so, I mean, it’s not like us having to turn the clock all the way back to the, I guess that would be the 1400s when the Taj was built. Maybe I’m off by a century two, something like that. But I mean the idea is citizen commission. So, I think participatory democracy in some ways is a very good thing. And I think having planning commissions and zoning commissions and historic commissions can have positive benefit there. I think perhaps another one that’s not a fully baked idea, but the idea of perhaps making real estate more accessible from an investment perspective, I think there’s a really beautiful thought process around that. And then I would say…

Eve: [00:30:07] You mean like we’re doing at Small Change?

Atif: [00:30:09] Exactly! Yes.

Eve: [00:30:11] Oh, yeah. That’s how you build wealth, right?

Atif: [00:30:14] Completely, and I think that there should be, the way that the SEC thinks about and regulates funds at a larger level, I think being able to think through and structure and support the great work that Small Change is doing and people that are looking to invest at the smaller scale sounds like that’s something that’s worth effort from a legislation perspective and maybe even a funding perspective rather than huge amounts of money thrown at infrastructure to the tune of billions of dollars through the last two major bills and the Biden administration.

Eve: [00:30:44] So what was your favorite interview ever, and why?

Atif: [00:30:50] Okay, so my favorite one ever, and I love all my babies, all my babies are wonderful, all my episodes. But my one that I think of in particular is the episode I did with Louis Schump, who’s a creative director at Gensler, on the subject of the West Side Pavilion, which is Google’s new headquarters in Los Angeles. And it’s essentially, it’s a conversion of the mall that was featured in Clueless, the movie, into a mixed-use office complex. And as part of that, we talked a lot about the goals of Google and the, I guess you could say, the largesse of a large company like that to be able to promote good urbanism at a large scale. And then one area that we explored is just reeling it back. How did America get so many malls to begin with? So, both of us are amateur historians.

Eve: [00:31:45] And what are we going to do with them now? Right?

Atif: [00:31:49] I have an aunt, a great aunt, who is from Toronto that I’ll see in a couple of weeks. And every time I see her, she has the most creative ideas of what to do with, she’s not even in real estate industry, but she’s the most creative ideas and the one that she said nearly like a decade ago, far before the pandemic, she was like, hey Atif, basically what I do every day is I drive to the mall and all the other Indian aunties, we just walk around the mall together. And then sometimes we have to go to other places to pick up our grandkids and we go to other places to drop them off and then we come back. Wouldn’t it be great if there was like the mall just became my house and then the day care was there too, and then my son and daughter just lived nearby. Like, wouldn’t it be cool? And I’m like, oh my God, you hit on it right there, that’s it. That is what, that’s what malls should be. Multi-generational housing.

Eve: [00:32:37] If you want to live in that environment, that is. Because I’m not sure I could do it. Okay. So, one final question. Unless you have another company you want to explain to me?

Atif: [00:32:52] Any other companies, I would say no, I’m good for now. We’ll stay a three.

Eve: [00:32:56] You’re good for now, okay. So, one more question and that’s what’s next for you?

Atif: [00:33:02] Good question. So, we’re, for Commonplace, we’re coming up to a fundraising milestone. So, we’re excited about that. And we hope that that will allow us to expand our product offerings, our vision, our scale and bring on some more great talent to help us do that. And I think that there’s a couple other ideas I have in the works in my head. One of them is the investment portfolio that I have and scaling that perhaps to a much larger scale, allowing folks to be able to invest in workforce and affordable housing more easily on an individual level. That’s probably something a bit separate. And then the one that I love, which I feel like this is this could be the final one that I ever do, I call it, lovingly, it’s the wedding planner for high end home renovations. So, I literally, every month or so at least some family members, some neighbor, some friend from college is like, oh, P.S. I just bought a $5 million brownstone in Brooklyn. Can you just do, like the whole renovation? Because I know you did such a good job on it with your parents’ house. And I’m like, there has to be a business here. And that would be so much fun to do.

Eve: [00:34:17] So, you’re not even sure what’s next for you?

Atif: [00:34:22] One of all of them is the potential next one, so we’ll figure it out.

Eve: [00:34:26] Well, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. You’re such a high energy person. I can’t wait to see what you do next.

Atif: [00:34:31] Thank you so much for the opportunity, Eve. I love your podcast. I love everything that you’re doing and I’m so looking forward to seeing you again at our next Small Scale Developer Forum in just a couple of months.

Eve: [00:34:43] Can’t wait, in the beautiful Savannah, right? Okay.

Eve: [00:34:53] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. Please support this podcast and all the great work my guests do by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media, or leaving a rating and a review. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing, head on over to smallchange.co where I spend most of my time. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music. And a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Atif Qadir

Lindsey is a scout.

October 4, 2023

Lindsey Scannapieco leads Scout, an urban design and development practice that focuses on the activation of underutilized space. Scout’s largest project to date is the redevelopment of Bok into an innovative space for makers, artisans and entrepreneurs. The project has been recently recognized with the Charter Award for Transformational Development by CNU (2021) and long listed in adaptive reuse by Dezeen (2022).

Lindsey has been recognized with the 40 Under 40 by the Philadelphia Business Journal (2023), Girls Inc Community Impact Award (2022), the Rising Star Award in Real Estate (2018) by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Outside of work, she is the co-President of the Friends of FDR Park and an active board member of Fleischer Arts Memorial and the Knight Foundation Advisory Council. Lindsey holds a B.S. from the University of Southern California and a MSc from the London School of Economics in City Design and Social Science.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:05] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. For Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich or poor, beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo in order to build better for everyone.

Eve: [00:00:36] Lindsey Scannapieco is an urbanist and an artist in every sense of the word. While living and studying in the UK, Lindsey worked on projects such as activating an underutilized subterranean crossing alongside Westminster Council, supporting Tech Shop in their global expansion, and developing a community led design project that reconsiders traditional construction hoardings in South Kilburn. All of this led her to found Scout, an urban design and development practice that focuses on the activation of underutilized space. Not one to think little, Lindsey submitted a proposal to purchase a 340,000 square foot vocational school building from the city of Philadelphia. Much to her surprise, she won the bid. Eight years later, BOK, as it is called, is a thriving and creative mix of makers, small businesses, and nonprofits, and 100% full. The building is a testament to Lindsey’s staying power. You’ll want to listen in to learn more.

Eve: [00:02:03] Hi, Lindsey. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Lindsey Scannapieco: [00:02:07] Thank you so much for having me, Eve. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Eve: [00:02:10] Yeah, well, I had the pleasure of visiting BOK a few weeks ago. That was, that’s a monster project. I can’t wait to hear how you pulled it off. But first, I wanted you to tell me about your company Scout. When did it all begin and where did it all begin?

Lindsey: [00:02:28] Yeah. I’m so glad you were able to see BOK in person. It’s been a great project, but a little bit about how we got started. So, started Scout in 2011. We are an urban design and development practice, and in the early years we were really working on consulting projects, really about underutilized spaces, primarily for planning agencies in the UK. That’s where Scout was founded in 2011. We did our first kind of big public project that year, which was a pop-up cinema called Films on Fridges. And although a pop-up cinema might seem pretty different from large scale development, actually there was a lot of shared characteristics in both of those projects, which I think are kind of a common thread throughout our work, which is trying to reimagine histories of space and place. I think playfulness is a big piece of our practice and I think inviting people in to have an experience is another part that we think is a really strong tool in any project. And so, we started Scout with this idea of looking at underutilized space in different ways. And in the beginning that started off as cinemas, community engagement projects, public realm work and evolved into development many years onwards.

Lindsey: [00:03:58] And we got the name because when we were talking about it, we were thinking about this idea of both scouting for space, so actually being a scout in that way, but also kind of a Boy Scout or Girl Scout sash in that we were accumulating skills and we didn’t know where they would take us. And so, I remember after we did this pop-up cinema, we got calls from a bunch of people who said, oh, can you do a pop-up cinema here? And we said, actually we don’t want to become known as the pop-up cinema company. For us, the cinema was a tool to bring people to a space that they otherwise would not go to because people are willing to travel for experiences. And so, we kind of put that on our sash or on our badge and turns out that was kind of a skill set or an approach to space that came in handy when we were tackling much larger projects down the line. So, this kind of idea of a tool kit or different badges of different types of skills for how to reimagine vacant space.

Eve: [00:05:03] But let’s go back a little bit even further. So, what sort of training did you have that made you even want to think about scout? There’s surely a lot of story before that, right?

Lindsey: [00:05:17] So my background in undergraduate, I studied real estate finance with a minor in classics and art history. And at that time in my life, I thought I would go into art business because I really enjoyed the arts and that made sense to me, arts and business. I actually think that what I’m doing today is I get to work with way more artists than I ever would have had I kind of gone down that track further. And so I guess after I graduated, I became really interested in urban planning and development and then pursued a master’s in City design and social Science at the London School of Economics. And through that work focused my studio on an area adjacent to what was then the 2012 Olympic site called Hackney Wick. And from there started to work for the London Legacy Development Corporation, where I led interim uses, which was looking at kind of the opportunity of spaces before the long-term development plan comes to fruition, but is kind of a better alternative to just fencing or hoarding a site. And I think through that work was really the impetus to starting Scout and started Scout a little bit because of that role. I was encouraged to start my own company and to be able to kind of work for them as a consultant. And then through that we took on more clients and grew a team and grew projects and that was over a decade ago now, which feels pretty wild to say today.

Eve: [00:06:57] So how would you say your approach differs from a traditional real estate practice?

Lindsey: [00:07:03] I think one of the first things that we do is I think often times in development, people bring ideas for a project into a space. And so, they’re saying, I know what I want to do and I’m trying to force this building to do that thing. I think what we’re interested in is really looking at the infrastructure, the assets, the physicality of a building as it exists and finding value and usefulness in that and almost listening to the building, letting the building tell you what it should be and how it should be used. And I think, you know, we can be quite precious, I think, about development sometimes and sometimes actually there’s a real practical piece of what a good building can be or can provide, particularly in our cities. And so, we’re really interested in that. I say oftentimes I’m really interested in dirty work and that kind of means to say the work that doesn’t happen at kind of our clean desks. That unfortunately is often very fragile. It’s usually moved to, you know, the edges of our city. It’s at risk, it’s sometimes happening in buildings without proper heating or roof systems or it’s just, you know, warehouses we see, every single day, being converted into residential or kind of, quote, higher and better uses. And so, I think we’re really interested in the preservation of those spaces, and I think how we can allow spaces of experimentation and growth in cities, I think that’s really something that we’re very passionate about.

Eve: [00:08:49] Yeah. So, you moved out to Philly? That’s right. What was your first project there?

Lindsey: [00:08:55] So we moved Scout to Philly for BOK.

Eve: [00:08:58] Oh, okay. Okay, I didn’t realize that. So BOK came first and Philly came second.

Lindsey: [00:09:05] A bit, I’m from Philadelphia, so for me, it was a bit of a homecoming personally, but we had submitted to an RFP for this big old school. It’s a 340,000 square foot school. It occupies an entire city block. It’s nine stories high. It has a very commanding presence over its surrounding neighborhood. And so, we submitted a response to the RFP. And to be quite frank, we never thought that we would get it. I just thought we would learn something about what that process was like in the US. And we had been looking at buildings, but at the time in London we couldn’t afford a building in London, so it made sense to go to another place that I had familiarity. And to be honest, we were shocked when we found out that we were the highest bidder. I was also the youngest bidder, I was obviously the only female bidder and so said, uh oh, we’ve either done something really right or really, really, really wrong. And so we jumped in and built a team in Philadelphia to start to take on that project. We had a year about of due diligence before we actually closed on the property from the school district. And over that period of time, we realized that the building is not flexible. It was built as a bomb shelter. It was extremely resilient, and it has, you know, incredible floor cores and floor strengths. It was built as a vocational school. And so I think most people had said to the city, and I don’t know this, I’m just, you know, speculating that they said, I’ll give you a dollar because to convert the building into residential or something that was more market driven would have required a ton of money and they would have said there’s no way that they could tackle that.

Eve: [00:10:58] Yeah, I’ve been to the building. I’m not even sure it’s possible. It’s really, really tough. Very inflexible, as you said.

Lindsey: [00:11:07] And so we embrace that. And so, we said, you know, how do we take spaces that aren’t flexible and how do we actually allow them to stay that way, allow them to stay what they want to be? You know, that means that, you know, an old woodworking shop became a home to a woodworker, an old culinary arts classroom, became home to a catering company. And so, you know, it really was about looking at the infrastructure and matching that to people who could use the space.

Eve: [00:11:35] You saw the existing infrastructure as an asset rather than something that needed to be like swept away and replaced.

Lindsey: [00:11:43] That’s exactly right.

Eve: [00:11:45] Yeah. So, when you submitted your RFP, what did you tell the city you were going to do with it?

Lindsey: [00:11:50] We told the city our vision was exactly as it is being used today. We said that our goal was to create affordable workspaces and they were not just going to be for artists or nonprofits. It was a yes and, so art spaces, nonprofits, community services, small businesses, people who just need access to spaces to be able to work. We had a theory that South Philly, which is an extremely dense part of Philadelphia, is a neighborhood with a typology of kind of the 12- to 14-foot-wide row home so that, you know, people didn’t really have access to larger, wider open spaces. And so, you know, we had a theory that people would be seeking that space and seeking that space in proximity to where they live. And I think when we talk about local impact and community led development, I think the ability to walk to work has such an incredible impact not only on your mental and physical health, but also the health and wealth of your community and your neighborhood at all and attracts all different types of people to support the small businesses and operations that are happening in the building. So today we have over 260 businesses based out of BOK.

Eve: [00:13:14] A lot of businesses.

Lindsey: [00:13:15] And 72% of them are owned by somebody who lives in South Philadelphia. So very much locally driven.

Eve: [00:13:25] That’s amazing. How many residents in South Philadelphia like how big is the neighborhood?

Lindsey: [00:13:30] Oh, that’s a great question.

Eve: [00:13:33] It’s got to be big to draw that many people.

Lindsey: [00:13:36] Yeah, I’m just, hold on, I feel like I have this number somewhere, but I’ll have to look it up. I don’t have it off the top of my head.

Eve: [00:13:44] Nevertheless, it’s got to be a big neighborhood to have that many people wanting small business space. How long had the building been vacant?

Lindsey: [00:13:52] So the last graduating class at Bok was in 2013.

Eve: [00:13:58] Oh, not so long.

Lindsey: [00:14:00] So not so long. Although the top two floors of the building had been closed before we took it on. The building was a high or is a high rise, I should say, by its height. But the school district, in order to not comply with high rise building code, cut off the top two floors and said, see, it’s not a high rise so we don’t have to sprinkler the building. And so that was one of the big pieces of work that we undertook was the sprinkling of the entire building. But essentially it really wasn’t vacant for long. And crazily, the school district thought that out of all the schools that they put on the market, and they put over 30 schools onto the market in that year, that BOK would be the last to sell. So, they actually moved all of the stuff, all of the chairs, all the tables, everything from all the other schools to Bok. And people could essentially come and kind of find the furniture that they needed. And that was that was fine and good and when we went to actually go close on the property, obviously we wanted the building empty because there was rooms just filled with stuff up to the ceilings. Plus, it was practical stuff. And we all know that our schools need equipment, they need supplies, they need furniture. Unfortunately, approaching the end of the process of moving towards closing, they started to throw out things and we said, all right, that’s it we’ll keep the rest. So, if you go to BOK today, sometimes you’ll see, for example, children’s chairs and a lot of people will say, well, wait, wasn’t this a high school? And it’s because they thought that BOK would be the last building to sell, and I actually think it was one of the first.

Eve: [00:15:39] That’s interesting. So, when you tackle a project like this, 340,000ft², most people would feel overwhelmed. You had some really huge challenges like code compliance and financing. Where did you begin? What was your strategy and how full is it today, by the way? Is it 100% occupied?

Lindsey: [00:16:02] It is. Today, BOK is 100% leased. We have no available space in the building, Unfortunately, I know I’m supposed to say that’s a good thing, but I actually think it’s a bad thing because for so many years we’ve prided ourselves on being able to expand and grow with people as their business changes. And it’s actually been, it’s hard now when you actually are full. But I think we also feel very grateful to be at 100% occupancy. So how did we start this? I always kind of say, you know, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? But our first bite was a decision to open up a pop-up bar on the roof of the building. And I think kind of going back to the beginning of this conversation, that’s because that’s something that we had done before. And I think that people are willing to travel for food and drink in a way that we’re not willing to travel for other things. We talk about traveling for other things. I talk about going, you know, maybe to a neighborhood I don’t go to frequently for an art exhibit or a shop, but most of the time it actually takes a lot for me to actually get there. I can think about it. But to actually get there and food and drink and I don’t know if it’s because it’s a shared activity or because there’s actually kind of a sweet adventure at the end but we kind of really knew that that was a strong tool and had seen that in the past.

Lindsey: [00:17:33] And so we opened up a pop-up bar and the joke is that I invited a bank every single night for a drink until I closed on our big construction loan, which I did. And, you know, we were open for 22 nights that first year and we had over 30,000 visitors. And so.

Eve: [00:17:54] Oh, wow.

Lindsey: [00:17:55] You know, I think a lot of people were saying, who’s going to come? How’s this going to work? How are people going to find out about this building? How are you going to deal with the parking needs? Who wants to be in a big old school? And I think for a lot of people, whether that was neighbors, future tenants, partners, bankers, politicians, coming upstairs to a very full and vibrant bar allowed them to say, wow, there’s something here. And people are willing to come here to find it and be a part of this place. And so, I think actually that was helpful in convincing people that, A, we could pull things off and make things happen. And we did that within 30 days of closing on the building, mind you, because I really feel strongly that oftentimes in development we wait years, we talk about grand visions, we undertake the large scale, you know, development, construction, and then we have a ribbon cutting and we’ve actually never had a ribbon cutting for BOK and never will, obviously at this point.

Lindsey: [00:19:07] But the idea of kind of incremental growth, I really believe that slow is really healthy actually, when we’re talking about large scale projects in a city. I don’t think it’s natural, normal or good to just open up the doors and add 350,000ft² of activity to a neighborhood. It’s much better to have that be an iterative process where people get to know you, you build trust. You also learn what works and what doesn’t work. There were mistakes along the way, you know, where should the trash sit, for example? You know, we moved that around a few times before we got it to the right place where trash trucks could access it and it wouldn’t disturb neighbors. And so, you know, I really believe in kind of iterative and slow development, but I always kind of say the bar is the thing that started it all. And that really allowed us to gain the momentum and the confidence of our team, even our neighbors, all of our collaborators and partners in that something was possible here.

Eve: [00:20:15] So as you built this thing, what other major challenges did you face during the project? Because you built it slowly with 200 tenants. It’s a lot of space.

Lindsey: [00:20:28] So it’s funny because I think sometimes your greatest strength is also your biggest challenge. And so, I say, I really like the idea of slow development, of iterative development, of the idea of the building kind of taking and evolving over time. And it really has. It took seven years to essentially finish all the construction pieces. And I’d actually argue that there still are pieces of the building that we still want to tackle or want to go back to or kind of take further. But I say that, at the same time one of the biggest challenges is that that meant that we were doing construction while we were an occupied building. And so that was also a challenge. There’s no other way to say it. We installed the sprinkler system actually when we were probably at 40% occupancy, something like that. We had outlined a scope of work with the fire board where we would basically install major infrastructure every six months with a kind of timeline of completion. So new standpipes, for example, went into all stairwells, I think for the first year. And then the second year we sprinklered a part of the building and then the next part and the next part. And so, I feel very grateful for the creative minds in the fire board and the city who kind of allowed us to create a safe building together, knowing that that was a huge piece of infrastructure and a huge cost item. But also, it was just a real operational challenge in terms of we did that work overnight in occupied spaces. So, I think, you know, to every strength also sometimes has its drawbacks too.

Eve: [00:22:14] I mean, financing is something that you fill slowly, is got to be really difficult as well because you need revenue to pay the loans. And how on earth do you manage that?

Lindsey: [00:22:25] Yeah. So, a similar approach in that how do you eat an elephant that one bite at a time and that our first loan was actually really just based on an appraisal of the building. We had had a zoning change and so kind of was able to argue to the bank that, you know, it was now worth three times more than essentially it was purchased for and it was purchased very cheaply, I think that should be acknowledged. We purchased the building for 1.75 million, although as I said, we were the highest bidder by a lot apparently.

Eve: [00:23:00] You could say that was a huge liability when you purchased it.

Lindsey: [00:23:03] Oh, 100%. But I actually think that that kind of that low entry per square foot is actually really essential in terms of allowing you to take a more creative approach. And I think, you know, Jane Jacobs says this best when she says, you know, new ideas must use old buildings. And I think it’s really because, in that when you’re getting a building for cheaper, that’s kind of been considered less valuable, it actually has more opportunities for experimentation in it and less pressures on it. And so I actually think that’s a really important piece of the puzzle. But essentially, we first got our first piece of funding just based on the kind of increase in value from a zoning change. And then once we signed kind of our first couple of leases, we kind of showed them that this was working. We were able to increase that by, I don’t know, 2 million or something like that, and then we increased it again, then we increased it again, and then we brought in new market tax credits and historic tax credits. And I had to condo out the buildings that I could kind of apply different financing pieces to different pieces of the puzzle as they came online. And that’s how we got it done.

Eve: [00:24:18] A little bit at a time. So, what about the community in the neighborhood? What role have they played in this revitalization of this, it’s a huge building sitting in the middle of a very dense neighborhood, as you said. It’s very, very large.

Lindsey: [00:24:32] Yeah. So, one of the first things we did when we started the project is we did a community asset mapping and I would encourage everyone to do that before you start anything kind of on your on your own turf, which is to look around you and see what’s already working and what already exists. Because I really think, although, you know there are certain characteristics of our neighborhood that we wanted to speak to, we started off by saying, how can we help the existing agencies, communities, organizations and people that are already are, you know, symbols of strength or kind of have agency or have organizing efforts within the neighborhood? And I think one of the best examples of that is a group called SEAMAC, which is the Southeast Asian Mutual Aid Coalition. And we invited them in to use this space for their elder’s breakfast on Tuesday morning. And so, they did that for 3 or 4 years. And through that partnership, which was pretty loose, you know, we were just giving them free space to be able to have their elders breakfast, they were able to work with Jefferson Hospital System to bring in a health clinic called the Wyss Wellness Center, which is a primary care health clinic. So, anybody can go and see a doctor there for primary care, but they’re specifically trained in the immigrant and refugee needs of our neighborhood, both language and cultural sensitivities. And that has just been an incredible resource for our community. Not just South Philadelphia but think of Philadelphia at large. A lot of the refugees recently who have been kind of bused into the city, that’s actually their first port of call in Philadelphia. And so, it’s really become an incredible space and anchor for that community. But that took almost six years to make happen. And so, I do think it really is about building trust and understanding how you can enable and support the growth of organizations that are already A, doing the work and B, very trusted within the community itself.

Eve: [00:26:52] I’m just fascinated about who the tenants are. Tell us a little bit about the mix of people in the building. I was lucky enough to walk through it, so I some of it’s burned into my brain, but I think you need to describe it a little.

Lindsey: [00:27:06] Yeah. So, we have over 260 businesses based in the building today. And of those, 52% are women owned businesses, 25% are minority owned businesses. And think about 15% of the building is nonprofits. And so, what that means is that we have everything from a glassblower who’s also doing glass recycling, to a daycare, to a tattoo parlor, to architects, jewelry designers, fabric printers, a tufting workshop, photographers, graphic designers, an accredited art school that focuses on contemporary realist painting, so a lot of work on the nude form and portrait work. We have a bakery called Machine Shop Bakery, which was just nominated for a James Beard Award in the pastry category. We’ve got a restaurant, Irwin’s, which has been rated one of the top ten best new restaurants in America. We’ve got a fabric recycling center, we have Girls Inc, which is a national nonprofit supporting young women, we have ballet classes, we’ve got a catering company, we have ceramic makers. It’s all types of people doing all types of things. And I think that’s actually really, really important, is that it’s not just a building for one type of person or one type of use. It’s a building for a lot of different uses to happen side by side.

Lindsey: [00:28:41] And I think one of the questions we always get asked is, oh, is there kind of a jeweler’s row or wing? Is there kind of the carpenter’s wing? Is there the band wing? And, you know, how much do you kind of curate this building and this space? And the answer is that we really don’t curate the building. We allow people to find spaces that suit their needs and their budgets. So, if somebody has a budget of $500, we’re trying to find a space that fits that budget and has the infrastructure that they need, that’s a sink or a lot of power. But the thing that we are really conscious about is sounds and smells. So, the people who make a lot of sounds and aren’t sensitive to sounds, they do go together. But beyond that, there’s not a ton of curation. On the first floor, obviously, we very much focused on things that are more public facing and want to interact with the public, because ultimately a lot of the building is just a workspace, not just but is a workspace. And so, people don’t necessarily want people knocking on their door saying, can I buy a, you know, a product that you’re making right there? They’re really there to focus.

Eve: [00:29:53] And how big is the team that manages all of this?

Lindsey: [00:29:56] Yeah. So, we’re about ten people, 10 to 12 people. And this, none of this would be possible without the team. I have an exceptional team. We have a facilities director who is just wonderful, is constantly, as an old building, it’s constantly moaning and groaning and he’s kind of there to oversee it with a great facilities crew. We’ve got a director of operations, we have an events team that does a variety of different events in the building we do around, we do weddings, we do community events, we do self-initiated events like Open Studios, for example, is one of them. Alumni Day, where we invite people to come back who are alumni of the school and so just have a great team. And I think that’s just so, so, so important for the project to be able to get to where it is today.

Eve: [00:30:53] But it’s not a traditional leasing and maintenance team, right?

Lindsey: [00:30:59] No, I mean, most of our leasing is done in house. I think over 50% of the people that we’ve leased to this is their first commercial lease. So, a part of our process has been trying to break down some of the jargon and lease terminology that really people aren’t familiar with outside of the leasing world, to help people to feel comfortable making that first big jump into a space. And in our work, we’re not working with a lot of large credit tenants. I think in the most more recent years we’ve had a few, but generally, and particularly the early years, we had no credit tenants. And so the idea of trying to lock somebody into a long term lease really doesn’t make sense for us or for them. And so really, it’s about allowing people to test and experiment and see what works and see what doesn’t work. And at the end of the day, if it doesn’t work for them, we’re lucky enough that there’s been enough demand and the scale of the space is kind of a very, I think, attractive size that that’s okay. It’s okay for us to have, you know, people move on and move out if it’s not the right fit. And we’re not locking people into leases that are longer than they can really take on.

Eve: [00:32:19] I think you and I see eye to eye on that. I’ve always been very disturbed at the real estate industry that rewards leasing agents based by commission, because of course, that means that they’re going to focus more time on larger leases. And so I have a couple of buildings where I took pretty much the same attitude. You know, shorter leases were fine. And if they could only renew for a short time, that was fine too. And what’s happened is I’ve had some tenants in some of my spaces for 15 years just renewing one year at a time or expanding and eventually moving on. But yeah, there’s just there’s something really broken with the industry that doesn’t allow for that to happen more freely. I think unfortunately, you know, real estate agents have to make money like they’ve got to live, right? But if they’re going to make $200 on a small lease, of course they’re going to spend more time on renting a big space where they can make $10,000, right?

Lindsey: [00:33:21] You know, I wonder if Covid has made anybody rethink that, because I always joke that in the beginning of Covid, I think I was my first bank call. They were like that building with all of those non-credit tenants. It’s, how are they going to fare through Covid? And the reality is that we fared better than any other building, a commercial building and my bank’s portfolio or any bank’s portfolio.

Eve: [00:33:47] Dare I say that’s because it’s 50% women owned businesses?

Lindsey: [00:33:51] I mean, I also think, you know, listen, it’s small scale. I think, you know, a third of our building is under 800ft². And so, you know, when somebody decides to close their business or move to Maine or move to Mexico or wherever it was that, you know, whatever they decided to do kind of in the pandemic.

Eve: [00:34:12] It’s a tiny percentage of the whole building, right?

Lindsey: [00:34:15] It’s a tiny percentage. And so we were able to kind of, you know, stay flexible, stay nimble. I think we also created a really incredible program around rent relief and deferment for our tenants, where we gave over $300,000 of rent relief and support. And that meant that we basically had, I think it was under 10% turnover during Covid. And so, you know, I hope that the industry as a whole looks at buildings like ours and says, oh, these buildings that we’ve always thought are more risky because they don’t have large anchor tenants, they don’t have the credit tenants, actually, there’s strength in the small and that there’s something very strong about our ability to be nimble. But at the same time, you know, I think it’ll always be interesting to see how that grows and goes. But I hope that maybe it’s made some of the industry just rethink a little bit about kind of who we think are dependable.

Eve: [00:35:13] You know, I’ve had a similar experience. I’ve got a building that has these, it’s much smaller, but it has these 13 little studios that range from 400 to 800ft². And I keep telling people I wish I had four buildings like that because it really never lost steam during Covid. And the people who are looking for space now want space like that. And I’m thinking about how to subdivide larger spaces to turn them into these little spaces because, yeah, I totally agree with you. If it’s a, it’s much easier for a landlord to manage than losing an entire floor plate of a building.

Lindsey: [00:35:51] Yeah, I mean, it’s a lot of work. I think like, you know, doing 260 leases versus doing, you know, ten or something would have, you know, but we think it’s also more interesting. It’s the type of people we want to work with and…

Eve: [00:36:03] Much more interesting.

Lindsey: [00:36:04] I would take it every day. So.

Eve: [00:36:06] So what other projects is Scout working on today, or is this just keeping you busy full time?

Lindsey: [00:36:13] No. So, we’re starting to work on other projects, which is very exciting. So, we actually are working on two projects up in Providence. One is called 50 Sims, which is a manufacturing building that will be workspace. We have some great workforce development tenants in there today. We’ve got a great brewery; we’ve got people doing CNC training and forklift training and we have a boat builder and an artist studio and a preservation society that’s teaching people how to repair historic windows. So, we’re really, really excited about that project and excited to be also working in a new city. It’s been wonderful. I think Providence has a lot of similarities to Philadelphia and we’ve really enjoyed being a part of that community.

Eve: [00:37:11] And how big is that project?

Lindsey: [00:37:13] It’s around 110,000ft².

Eve: [00:37:17] Oh just weeny. Weeny Scale.

Lindsey: [00:37:20] I think for better or for worse, once you do big buildings, everybody calls you about big buildings. So, I think we have to get comfortable in this space.

Eve: [00:37:29] Yes. Yes. One other question. Is collaboration important in your projects? I know that’s what you started out doing with Scout, but how is that morphed into BOK? Who do you collaborate with? What does that look like?

Lindsey: [00:37:44] So yeah, Eve, there’s a few different things that come to mind there. I think we collaborate a lot with artists on site specific pieces. So, if we are looking for furniture, for example, for a space, we’re typically commissioning and working with local artists, oftentimes people in the building. In the last couple years, we’ve also done two amazing projects that are pretty different than our kind of real estate development practice side. So, we’ve done two projects for the flower show in Philadelphia, which were both incredible collaborations with a whole host of different creatives and makers in the city. The first year we did a Risograph printing house where we printed aspirational posters, or inspirational I’m sorry, inspirational posters to give people hope in 2021, kind of following the year of 2020 that we had all been through. Three of those posters were in a language other than English to speak to the population of South Philadelphia who previously really didn’t have any materials in their languages at the flower show. And then last year, I guess in 2022, we did an installation called The Smelly Tunnel, which was essentially just a piece that you would walk through, and it would mist scents on you. And the idea of kind of flowers in terms of our mental health and kind of the ability to just step back and breathe. And so pretty different from our kind of management and development of a large building. But I actually think are great examples of things that A, make our team really excited and B, kind of that that collaboration. And so, I think we like working at a lot of different scales and find that kind of continuing to keep our hand in some of those small scale installation work that makes our kind of our long term development practice also stronger.

Eve: [00:39:43] And one more question for you, and that is I’m wondering how your time in the UK influenced your perspective on the built environment.

Lindsey: [00:39:53] I think there’s so many examples in Europe, I think, of how adaptive reuse is encouraged and I think just really done well. I think that’s certainly something I think that the value of both the creative community, but also of the cultural community, of cultural institutions, cultural organizations, has a different value in Europe and a different, I think, support system in terms of actually how those entities are funded compared to here in the US. So, certainly drew inspiration from many projects that I had seen and worked on there in Hackney Wick. There were some great examples, The White Building being one of them, and Amsterdam and DSM, I think was a, is an incredible example of kind of a building where the government really allowed people to experiment with what was possible and has now become kind of a center, a cultural center in Amsterdam. So, certainly it was a was a huge inspiration, is a huge inspiration and certainly informs my work. And I think, you know, this idea of kind of allowing things to stay a bit unpolished, unruly, but also surprising, I think is just certainly something that continues to inspire me, and I certainly travel to get to see projects like that, that continue to just be an inspiration for our work here.

Eve: [00:41:27] Yeah, it’s pretty amazing when you can say government did something so fantastic. We should be able to say that all the time, right?

Lindsey: [00:41:37] It would be nice.

Eve: [00:41:38] I have one more question for you. What keeps you up at night?

Lindsey: [00:41:41] Oh, so many things, to be honest.

Eve: [00:41:44] Maybe nothing. Maybe nothing.

Lindsey: [00:41:47] Oh, no, I wish I could say it was nothing. I mean I think to be honest, um, maybe I’ll start with where I think the kind of the opportunities are in that I think we are seeing cities shift. We are seeing obviously a lot of office space come online and I think there’s an opportunity there. And just thinking about what types of workspaces we need. I think, again, that kind of dirty workspace is something that doesn’t actually work well in our homes. And I think particularly for creative individuals, I think collaborative and creative environments are really key as sources of inspiration. And you know, people work better in those communities than perhaps they would in a basement or a, you know, a guest room or whatever it is that they might otherwise be working. So, I’m excited to see how that evolves. I think I am always just, I think, I don’t know if you feel this way, but it always feels still very fragile, and I always feel like I’m, it’s hard to enjoy the successes because I’m always fearful of the next hit.

Eve: [00:42:58] Well, that means you’re prepared, right? I mean, I think, yeah, it’s scary, but it’s probably healthy too. If you don’t have any fear, then you’re probably being too cavalier because there will always be a next hit, right? There will always be something else.

Lindsey: [00:43:16] There will. And particularly in old buildings, there’s always the next hit. I think that’s the reality. And so, I think that certainly always keeps me up. And, you know, I think just also as we’re in this next phase, I think of trying to figure out, you know, what’s next for Scout as we’ve kind of gone to the city of Providence and I think we’re looking elsewhere, I think that’s something that’s certainly keeps me, kind of, keeps my brain thinking at night about all the possibilities and projects that we might take on. So…

Eve: [00:43:50] Well, it’s been a pleasure talking to you, and I can’t wait to see what you do next. You have to stay in touch. It’s very, very exciting work. I really appreciate it.

Lindsey: [00:44:00] Thank you. I would love to. I’d love to show you our next projects and the next ones after that. And I know many years ago when we were starting back, we came out to Pittsburgh to visit you.

Eve: [00:44:11] Yes, that was a long time ago. A long, long time ago, yeah,

Lindsey: [00:44:14] Long time ago. So, you’ve certainly been an inspiration and a part of this process.

Eve: [00:44:19] And maybe, sometime you want to even crowdfund one of your projects.

Lindsey: [00:44:23] I would love to explore.

Eve: [00:44:24] Can’t mention which one.

Lindsey: [00:44:30] That would be great.

Eve: [00:44:31] Thanks very much, Lindsey.

Lindsey: [00:44:32] Thank you, Eve.

Eve: [00:44:43] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. Please support this podcast and all the great work my guests do by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media, or leaving a rating and a review. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing, head on over to smallchange.co where I spend most of my time. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music. And a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Lindsey Scannapieco

Woman of Influence.

For the love of cities.

Manufactured authenticity.

Architectural entrepreneur.

Lindsey is a scout.

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