Cities and Parents: Let's Get Real About What Matters

27 ago 2024 · The Messy City Podcast

Truth is, I wish we talked a lot more about making cities as kid-friendly as possible. The topic is often overlooked. That’s why it was fascinating to see Derek Thompson’s article, “The Urban Family Exodus Is a Warning For Progressives” get so much traction. He clearly touched a nerve.

Today, I give my take in this solo podcast. As a father, as someone that loves cities, and someone that is in fact deeply concerned about the trendlines, I share my observations. This one gets a little personal. Ground I cover includes:

1. How parents really feel about their kids

2. What life in American cities is really like

3. How things are different now from the historic norm in the US

4. What parents really prioritize, not what we wish them to prioritize

5. What cities can do

6. How cities *could* be amazing

Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.

Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.

Intro: “Why Be Friends”

Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

Episode Transcript:

Kevin K (00:01.824)

Welcome back to the Messy City podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg flying solo today, doing an episode in a way that I've done occasionally in the past, but I haven't done a little while. I've had some amazing guests. I've got some more coming up and I love talking to people other than myself primarily in this gig, but it is fun once in a while to just riff on something that's in the news or on my mind.

And that's what I'm going to do today. I do want to take a second and say thank you to all of you who are listening and following. The podcast has really grown a lot in audience the last six months. And I really appreciate everybody tuning in. And if you get a chance, please hit that like or follow button. Leave me a review on your podcast platform, especially if you're on Apple. Apple is the biggest podcast platform by far.

So if you're listening through Apple podcasts, I'd really appreciate it if you gave the show a rating. All of that stuff helps get attraction and grow the audience. And the bigger the audience, the better I will be able to be at providing you all with really good programming and interesting guests and the ability to try to help us all out as we navigate how to improve our cities, how to improve our own situation.

if you're a, a small developer or an aspiring small developer, try to become one. if you are someone who's just interested in cities and planning to do whatever you can do to make your community a better place to live and, and, help us, help us all out in our own little world. So that's the point. That's what I'm trying to do here. And, I hope you enjoy it judging by the numbers. A lot of you are enjoying it. So that's really cool. And, it's,

It's definitely a lot of fun for me. So with that, I want to talk about an article that's made the rounds a lot lately and a topic that I've seen discussed in social media and elsewhere. And it really has to do with the subject of families and big cities. And a lot of this most, the most recent flurry of discussion happened at

Kevin K (02:25.002)

as the result of an article in the Atlantic by Derek Thompson titled, The Urban Family Exodus is a Warning for Progressives. And I'm going to commit a cardinal sin here today where I'm going to talk about this topic without having read the actual article. So forgive me for that, but I will say I have read many, many articles on this topic.

And what I really want to talk about today is just kind of my own experience as a father, as a parent, and my own interaction and evolution on this issue. Because I think there's an awful lot in the context of this subject that we just don't talk very much about. Especially those of us who are in this tiny, tiny niche of

people who call themselves urbanists, who care about cities, who care about development in cities. There's an awful lot tied into this issue that overlaps with others that we've talked about here before, but I think there's some that's really specific about having kids that I'd just like to dive into. So the context really in Derek's article, I did see some of the numbers. I don't have them in front of me. You can find them.

out there, it's not hard to find. But the context was that people with children are continuing to move out of big cities. That this trend really started in the early COVID years, 2020, 2021, and has not really abated. so the article really was kind of a warning, especially to people in some of the larger

cities in the country, the places like New York, San Francisco, Chicago, et cetera, that people who have a choice, who have kids have continued to leave. And so that is why he says it's a warning. I guess I would say right off, right up front, I think this should be a concern for everybody. I don't think it should be a concern just for somebody who calls themselves a progressive. I've always had the opinion that

Kevin K (04:42.818)

Communities and cities are for everybody in every age group, every kind of background, every interest. The best kind of communities really embrace everybody. And it's a little strange to me when we say that, when we just kind of dial it down to like a political impulse. I understand why he's doing that. the reality is that most big cities are run by progressives.

And so I think he's talking to progressive policymakers. But I think this issue really should concern everybody because honestly, when you don't have children living in your city, you have to ask yourself, like, what future does your city have? This is often talked about in relation to like places that are like retirement communities. And a lot of retirement communities also go through phases and fads.

And if they don't evolve, since they're not replacing people themselves, there are no children in retirement communities. And so people aren't growing up there. What happens as people die off and those populations change? Well, the same is true of cities. If children are not growing up in cities and having, or if they're not growing up in your community and having a good feeling about it, it lowers the likelihood that they will want to be there as an adult.

And if you're not going to be there as an adult, it's going to hurt your future population as well. everything in cities is a function of time. And there is that fourth dimension that we often neglect, that things change a lot over time. And we don't think about what might happen 10, 20, 30 years down the road. But if your community doesn't have children in it, that's a big red flashing warning sign.

for what happens in the next generation. So I think this is an issue that should concern everybody. And again, I'd say right up front, I am terribly, terribly biased on this because I do have children. I have two young children, two daughters that are six and eight years old. And so I want to share, I think what might be useful for me, first of all, is to share a little bit of a personal perspective on having kids.

Kevin K (07:09.09)

And then I have some thoughts related to what's going on in terms of evaluating and understanding cities and the landscape of cities in the United States. And then also what we might do, what cities might be able to do to course correct. What can they do to turn this around so that cities can be attractive to people who do have kids and reverse that population loss. So let's just start off with the personal.

not a young person anymore. I certainly don't feel old, but I can't deny the math, but I'm not somebody who's in my 20s or 30s. And I have kids, but I came to having kids pretty late in life compared to most people. So my oldest was born when I was 45 and then my youngest when I was 47. So I'm not in...

What is it? Al Pacino world here? Is it Al Pacino that like that recently had a kid or something and he's about eight years old? I'm not in that world, but I am definitely in the category of people who had kids late in their adult life. And so I lived a long period of time without children in cities and now I'm living with children in a city environment.

and I think the thing, you know, the thing, the way I would like to talk about this first and foremost, there's so much about this that changes. You know, there's a lot of cliches about the things that change. And when you have kids and I knew all those cliches, I heard them a million times. It's really hard to fully understand that until you go through it. And, having children completely rewires your brain.

and your priorities in a lot of ways that have really surprised me as a person. And I have often found myself just like shocked at things that are different about me now that I am caring for and responsible for these two young people. Just, you know, one silly thing is just like...

Kevin K (09:29.184)

you know, my wife and I have talked about this, like anytime there is like a movie or a show on TV and there are children that are like at risk, they're abducted, they're being hurt or harmed in some way. It's like, you know, I just lose it now. And it, the emotion that that creates in me and us is, it's hard to describe. It really,

It affects me in ways that are, they seem kind of silly, but I understand and I empathize much more with the families and people in those situations than I ever would have otherwise. And so it's really kind of bizarre, but it's like an incredible way to just like make me all of a sudden choke up, you know, watching a movie, having some harm come to a small child. But I mean, the reality is,

I will tell you from my experience, you do become much more emotional when you have kids. At least in my experience, I have found a protective impulse, the desire to protect them from harm and from the world that I just wasn't sure that I had that. When I was younger, I didn't know about that, but when once you have those children in your care,

It's incredible how protective you are of just every aspect of their life. so I get why we don't want to become helicopter parents. We are not like that. But I get why people have that reaction. I get the instinct that a lot of parents have to really deeply care for every aspect of what happens in their child's life. And I would say,

If you don't have that kind of reaction, if having kids doesn't change you in some meaningful way, then you should probably take a long look in the mirror. I mean, you might be a sociopath, I'm just saying. And it should change you. because it's an incredible thing to have to care for another human being. It's an incredible joy. And there's definitely the part of me that says, God, I wish

Kevin K (11:54.036)

I had done this when I was younger and even had more kids than just the two of them because they really bring you incredible joy into your life. I would say that probably the highest highs and lowest lows come from being a parent. The moments you have them with them that are really great or fun or memorable from a good standpoint, stand out above and beyond anything else that

you I did for myself in the years before I have kids. So it really is very different and it does tend to make you think that the life you led before kids was very like self -centered and maybe selfish. And I'm not saying that as like an accusation to anybody because, I lived it. I lived it myself for a very long period of time, but it is just really different. So

having kids that you care for really does change your priorities in ways that you probably can't communicate perfectly in an article, especially if you're like a childless person and you're just trying to describe like statistics that are happening and analyze what's going on. If you can't understand the emotion of it, then you're really missing something really important. So one aspect of that

is that with small children especially, you spend an awful lot of your time and mental energy trying to come up with activities for them and trying to entertain them, trying to do these things in ways that you're not worried about their safety. mean, you're literally worried about them surviving every moment.

And so we spend a lot of time like trying to chase down those different activities. And for a lot of small kids in particular, in American cities, a lot of those places are in the suburbs. And I'll talk more about that in a little bit and the evolution of all that. But that is part of the day to day that most parents deal with is, you know, maybe you're going to a kid's play area or a play date.

Kevin K (14:21.192)

or a daycare or a swimming pool or aquatic center or whatever it is. And in American cities, most of those are in suburban locations because that's where most of the kids are. so there is this kind of challenge that you have as somebody who lives in an urban area that there isn't as much just kid -focused amenities as you would have in a lot of suburban areas.

So it's true that if you live in the suburbs, you're still driving a lot to all these places, but it is closer and there's just a lot more of it. And so, you know, as a parent, we do find ourselves getting in the car a lot and driving out to suburban locations for any number of activities. And frankly, the family oriented events and activities, there's just so much more of them that are in businesses and other things in the suburbs.

And it's just, one of the things that I think you can't really describe very well is going to, when you have small children, going to a place where you can kind of just let the kids free and roam around and play with other kids and not worry that they're going to be harmed. there's a, there is like a stress reduction on your own life that happens there. And so you're kind of always looking for those opportunities and there's just not much of that in a lot of urban areas or.

urban locations. Now I think cities have gotten better for families in my lifetime. And there are more things. So like in my city, there's something we call Science City, which is basically just like a kids play area that is in the Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, that's in the city. It's a really cool place. The kids love going there. That's an example of like a very family and kid focused activity.

And there are some people working on creating more activities nearby and adjacent to it that I think will be really cool. We obviously have parks, we have playgrounds, we have a fantastic park that is a block away from our house that the kids walk down to and it's got a playground and everything. So we've used that a lot. We've got some of those types of things. And we have a neighborhood main street that is just up the block from our house.

Kevin K (16:45.054)

And if we walk a few blocks in one direction, you know, we can hit the ice cream place and there's a taco place and there's, there's, there's some places that are, that are fun to hang out. Now, I will say in our area, most of there are some, most of those businesses are not what we would call like kid friendly places. and maybe that's a, that might be an especially American way of looking at businesses. but they aren't.

And they're generally focused on the demographic of people who live in the cities, which tends to be younger and just certain crowds of people that are not dragging their kids around. we have some of those things. It is better. But we also lack a lot. We don't have a swimming pool, for example, in our neighborhood or anywhere near us.

By contrast, both of my sisters live in suburban subdivisions in our metro that both have neighborhood pools. And they can just walk over any time when they visit their aunts and uncles and they can just go swimming all day. Granted, they pay for that. It's part of your HOA dues if you live in one of those subdivisions. But we don't even have that option in our area at all.

in our part of the city. Now, some cities are better than others. Our city is not particularly good at having those kinds of amenities. And that's really something that is very lacking, not to mention some of those kid play areas. And there's just also very little programming of events that are specifically for kids and families in the city.

Parks department is doing a little bit more of that than they used to, but, it's great. We love, we do as much of that as we can. But when you compare it to the sort of routine events that happen in a lot of our suburban jurisdictions, it just doesn't compare. and, and it's frustrating. It's frustrating for us because we wish we had a lot more of that. Cause we don't want to get in the car and drive for 20 or 30 minutes to another location. But we often find that.

Kevin K (19:07.116)

that's just kind of what we have to do. So that, I mean, that's one aspect of all this is, you know, when you are in middle -class family and you are trying to balance, you know, a lot of these needs and really care for your kids and provide them with fun things to do and go to places where you can kind of relax too, it's really important to have those things nearby. So, you know, another aspect of this

I think if you're to step back a little bit, and that's all kind of like personal experience. If I were to look at like, are the things that most normal families really care about when it comes to choosing a place to live? And I've mentioned this before, but one thing that I think almost anybody listening to this podcast would have to understand is that like,

Those of us who are in our little world here are not normal. If you are a quote unquote urbanist, you are probably not normal. You probably do not have like the same value system as the vast majority of people in your city or in our country. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just, it just is. It's just different. A lot of us put a high priority in our own life.

in living somewhere where you can walk around to some things or ride a bike to some things. And I love all that. I put a high priority in that. I wish more people did. I wish that was normative in our culture that like the idea of using your body to get around to most things in your daily life was like normal. It used to be normal in our cities. And if I were to say a little sidebar here,

one of the things that's really kind of unique about American cities and culture is that we conflate urban with big city. and by urban, mean like places where you might like walk around to things. so this is, this is different than most countries in the world where, where people small town, whether you're in a small town or a big city, most people walk around, to get around.

Kevin K (21:36.69)

And it's different from our historical legacy as well in the United States, because prior to the 1920s and the beginning of the suburban experiment or the revolution in city planning that happened at that time period, every community in our country was a walkable place. Everything that a lot of quote unquote urbanists would love was normative.

And if you don't believe me, just look at pictures and postcards from literally any community in America prior to the 1930s. And you see that they are all what we would call urban today in terms of how people actually lived. So that was our legacy and that was how our country developed for a couple of hundred years.

until we embarked on this experiment to basically destroy it all and destroy it all kind of on purpose with big money and big policy and for many decades of intentional destruction. And so we're left with this situation now where people tend to conflate like, if you mean walkable and urban, well, that's only in like the big city. And that's just not true.

that's never really been true historically. But on the ground today, that is how a lot of it feels, that you have big cities that are kind of walkable and maybe people take public transit, maybe people ride bikes. And then you have suburbs where people drive cars. And very simplistically, that's how a lot of people look at the world. And I've always been frustrated by that.

And it certainly doesn't have to be that way. But that is how a lot of people look at it. one substacker who I've talked about before here, Addison Delmastro, he does a really good job of writing about this. He kind of talks about this topic frequently on his substack, which I think is called the deleted scenes. Just the notion that small towns, as we think of them today, really are just big cities that haven't matured or

Kevin K (24:03.778)

didn't mature or grow into being bigger places, but they all have the same DNA. The little town where I went to high school, Marshall, Missouri, has this lovely courthouse square and beautiful older neighborhoods from before the 1930s. And it has the exact same DNA as like the neighborhood that I live in now. It's just that Kansas City, Missouri grew to become a big city.

Marshall, Missouri did not grow to become a big city. It kind of stagnated at a certain population and it's been more or less the same population for about a hundred years. So big cities grew and changed and a of small towns did not. And then we also had the growth of suburbia, which was a completely new way of living that was in many ways organized around needing a car to get to places. So.

So anyway, I guess that's a bit of a sidebar. It's kind of thinking about how cities are in America today. But historically, they weren't that way. So anyway, setting that aside, for most normal people in our country today, they look at the landscape and don't really think about these issues. It's just like, it is what it is. You live in America, you have a house, you have a car, you drive to places. And that is baked in to the cake.

that like that's part of the lifestyle. And so as a result, a lot of people, especially families with kids, they're not really like thinking about like urbanism or walkability as a thing necessarily for their children or for their family location. Some people do. I think there's more people that think about it now than used to. There's probably more people who think about it from the standpoint of like, it'd be cool to have like bike trails nearby.

because a lot of suburbs have done a great job of building like bike trail networks. But not many people are thinking about, you know, I want to live in a place where they have like a neighborhood main street that we can walk to with the kids. Again, I wish they would, but it's just not in the minds of most people. What is in the minds of most people, especially people who have a choice in where they want to live, not everybody has a choice, not everybody can afford to move. But for people...

Kevin K (26:29.996)

For middle class people especially who have a choice, and if you have kids, this is the reality. You're thinking about crime and safety first and foremost because you're trying to protect your children from harm. That is first and foremost in the minds of nearly every parent that I know. How do I protect them from harm? And yes, that can include, you know, there are,

can include walking and biking as a part of that, but what most people are thinking about is, I want to live somewhere where our house isn't likely to get broken into, where our car isn't likely to get stolen or carjacked, where it's less likely to run into violent crime, especially in public. Because violent crime is a reality in our society. We have a lot of it. My city is a particularly violent city.

unfortunately, and we can't ignore how prominent that is in the minds of most people who have a choice. So I always put that up there, like that's number one. If people aren't thinking about that or factoring that into, you know, why people might be leaving cities, then they're completely missing the boat. The second thing that people think about really are the quality of the schools when you're thinking about your kids. And

sure that's a loaded topic. We all know the history of public schools is fraught with a lot of different issues. But there's just simply no question that every parent is trying to get their kids into the best possible school that they can, the best one that they can afford. And by afford meaning whether it's a private school that they want to pay for or it's a public school in the place with the house that they can most afford with the best public school.

so that is a major consideration and, you know, frankly, most big cities fail in this area. Most of our big cities in the country, including my own have public school districts that are often at the bottom of the list in terms of rankings for schools in their Metro areas. you can argue with me whether you want, if you want to, about whether that's fair or not fair. It doesn't matter. All people know is.

Kevin K (28:56.65)

school, those schools bad, other schools better. And people are going to act on whatever they think is best for their kids. Because you're a really weird person, I think, if you want to experiment with your children by sending them to a school that is potentially subpar. So again, there are a lot of factors involved with why schools are better or not.

You know, in our city, we happen to have a unique network of charter schools that was started 20, 25 years ago. And so charter schools are public schools, but they each operate as their own independent school district, essentially. And our kids go to a charter school in the city that is an excellent school with some of the best academic ratings in the state of Missouri.

really great school. a foreign, it's a unique foreign language immersion school and we really like it. We're very, happy with it and we have many friends who have had their kids there and have their kids there and so it's kind of a unique situation. That was an incredible enticement. I will tell you before we had charter schools in the city as a choice, people as soon as they had it, as soon as their kids hit like elementary school age, they were out of here.

they were moving to the suburbs. And now that we have a whole selection of charter schools as an option where people don't have to pay, we have many, many more families that are choosing to stay in the city and keeping their kids in those schools. So that's an encouraging thing. That's generally been a good thing. But a lot of cities don't have that choice. A lot of parents don't have that choice.

When we lived in Savannah, Georgia, we didn't really have that choice. think there were two charter schools in the city of Savannah and they were both just unbelievably oversubscribed and very, very difficult to get into. And again, you have to ask yourself as a parent, you know, are you going to just like play a lottery game with your kid's future? And most parents are not. They're not going to if they have a choice. Again, many parents don't have a choice, but if you do have a choice,

Kevin K (31:20.694)

you're just not gonna play that game. And you'll make whatever sacrifice you need to for your kids, if it means moving, if it means moving to somewhere that's more expensive, whatever you have to do for your kids' future. So that's a big deal. The other aspect of schools, things we can't, the discussion we can't avoid, although I think a lot of people would love to avoid it, is that there is still a tremendous hangover from the COVID policies. And the schools that were closed,

the longest during COVID were almost all schools in major cities and especially schools in large school districts in inner cities. And there are many, many parents who have just not forgotten that and have not let go of it and will not let go of it. I think obviously there was plenty of evidence that

people left, a lot of people left those districts during the COVID era so they could be somewhere where their kids could be in school. And I would suspect that there is a hangover from that for a lot of people still looking to get out who are still very angry about what happened during that era, kept keeping their kids out of school for a year, some places, two years. And they want to be somewhere where they know that's not going to happen.

again or where they suspect that won't happen again. that's another aspect of the school situation that in the current era is a big deal. So again, top of the list when you have kids, crime and safety, and schools. I think the third thing after that is cost of living. And this is where the affordability discussion comes in.

You know, this has everything to do with housing affordability primarily, but it also has a little bit to do with taxes and overall cost of living. You know, I live in a city where our city has an income tax, a 1 % income tax. It's the only city in our metro area that has that. And so I get it when people don't want to be part of that.

Kevin K (33:41.068)

when they say to themselves, well, I can live somewhere else in this Metro and not pay an income tax. I can be in a better rated school district and I'm going to have lower crime. I mean, honestly, that's the logical choice. Who wouldn't? You really have to be a weirdo or like me to say we want to like live in the city when those are your basic choices. And it's funny that any of these things get framed otherwise.

Like that is the normal rational choice to make is to live somewhere that's less expensive where you get more for your money that is safer for you and your kids. So that's just the hard truth for how all these things work out that a lot of American big cities fail in those key areas compared to their suburbs. And then unfortunately what's happened over the years

is that the primary political constituencies have adjusted to all this to kind of reflect their populations. big cities tend to focus on policies that are the people who are left in those cities who like them, wealthy people, childless people, and oftentimes people who don't have a choice to move somewhere else. And then suburban cities tend to keep reinforcing and focusing on

like families and kids, oftentimes to the exclusion of attracting younger people and single people and childless people too. So they have that blind spot in a lot of suburban areas. And so there's that issue as well. I think in the minds of a lot of city and urban policymakers, what's really great for kids is just not top of mind. And so it kind of becomes like a self -licking ice cream cone.

in the policy world. And it's just an unfortunate side effect of where we are. So what can cities do? What can urban areas or major cities do about all this? Honestly, that's always a question. I've just never been the kind of person that I am satisfied with stating a problem and not trying to give.

Kevin K (36:03.458)

some concrete ideas on like what to do, what else could be done. And so I'll take a shot at a few things here. I mean, I think a lot of this is kind of going to logically follow from the other part of the conversation. But first and foremost, cities need to be serious, and I mean really, really serious about public safety and crime. And too many cities just are not. My city is not.

just flat out not serious about it right now. We have one of the worst murder rates and crime rates in the country. There is no sense of urgency on this issue from our leadership at all. There are people who care. There are people who are trying to do things. But there's no sense of urgency related to

How do we deal with this immediately and today? It's mostly like about like longer term solutions. And I'm, you know, long, I'm all for the longer term solutions. Those are great. But if you don't deal with things immediately, then you lose people. People just leave and they get fed up and they're going to move on. So if your city is in that category that it's not really serious about crime and safety, you're going to lose people and you're especially lose middle -class families with kids. That's just part of the reality.

Another thing that cities can do is try to find ways to support innovation in education. I'm going to write about this more at a future date here, but I've had long had some thoughts about ways that public school districts, especially really large ones, could be reformed. And I think there's a lot of reform needed in public school administration and education.

And if you are a logical person, you would start with the ones that are the most underperforming. And we are fortunate here in Kansas City, Missouri, that we have more choices than most with charter schools, with private schools, and a public school district. But our public school district needs to be better. There's just no other way to say it. It's got to be better. And we've got to find ways to just innovate much more quickly.

Kevin K (38:28.41)

and in more thoughtful ways than what we're doing right now in education. Or again, people will leave. It's just that simple. If the schools suck, people are going to move somewhere else. So the third area, not really all that surprising, but when we talk about cost of living is cities need to get really serious about trying to be affordable with, and to try to make their housing as affordable as possible.

I've stated this here before in this podcast, but as a refresher, I don't think that means like we need to build capital A affordable housing. That is just generally not as, that's not what I'm talking about. We're talking about housing for middle -class people generally that have kids. The path to affordability there is to do what a lot of cities have started to do, which is really reform their codes and processes.

to actually make it easier to produce new housing and produce it at scale. So whether you're talking about single family houses, townhouses, duplexes, missing middle housing, whatever it is, most cities have become really, really difficult to work in to produce new housing. And their suburban counterparts are quite easy to work in.

For somebody like me, I don't like the housing that is being produced in most of our suburbs. The standard suburban format, industrially spit out house in community. That doesn't appeal to me. But it sure would be nice if our city, if we could produce housing at the pace and ease at which it happens in a lot of suburban places. So that is something that we're seeing progress in.

We're starting to see reform in a lot of cities, but we've got a long, long ways to go to get that better. And obviously the last thing, I think this is a little more challenging, it's probably more from an entrepreneurial standpoint, but we really need more amenities for kids and families in urban places. Like if you really care about having and retaining kids and families in urban places, they've got to have those.

Kevin K (40:52.546)

amenities that families come to expect nowadays. You know, this isn't this isn't 1950 anymore where a lot of places just didn't have amenities. Now there's an expectation and if people don't have it, they're going to go where where those expectations are being met. So, you know, neighborhoods should have pools. They should have swimming pools. They should have play areas and playgrounds and park spaces.

It would be nice if there were more businesses that were more welcoming to families and kids and more like family focused businesses. So those can't be mandated. I'm not saying like those can be mandated from the top down, but it would be smart for people who care about those things to encourage them, try to create them. So I'll just like sum up here by saying that

I think the frustrating part here, and I think probably a lot of you may feel this way as well, is that a lot of our cities could be absolutely amazing for families and for kids. And they can be amazing in ways that our suburban communities cannot be and may never be able to be. By having the freedom of movement

on foot or bicycle and the free, ability to explore and be independent in a really well functioning place that was historically available for kids to be able to like actually walk to a neighborhood school or a neighborhood park or a pool. And there's just an awful lot of suburban communities that will never ever have that.

because of the built pattern that exists, which makes it virtually impossible without like radical change. The built, the physical DNA of a lot of cities is ideal for incorporating all that. But we have an awful lot of policy problems, administrative problems, and just intransigent thinking that is holding

Kevin K (43:19.57)

us back and holding our cities back. time marches on. If you are a parent and you live in a city and you haven't thought about like going somewhere else where a lot of that could be easier, then you're probably unique in that regard. I've thought about it. My wife and I have thought about it. We have had discussions about, know, we are city people. There's a lot we love about the city.

But might it just make more sense for us to live in one of the suburbs in the area? And there's a list of things we just really wouldn't have to think about or worry about very much. And we have never pulled the trigger on that. I don't know if we ever will. We really love our neighbors and our community. And we love the school that our kids are in, which really helps. That's a major.

major factor that would keep us in the city. But the other things are a real source of frustration. We absolutely worry about the crime and safety issues. They are real and extremely concerning for us. We do get frustrated with the cost of living. That is just, it's just more expensive to live in the city and we have fewer amenities.

I mean, that's just the reality. you know, is that the end of the world? No, it's not the end of the world. And we're in a pretty fortunate position compared to a lot of people. But my point is that I think that many, families, the majority of families think about things this way. They're not thinking about, boy, it would be cool if our kids could walk somewhere, you walk down the street to the neighborhood ice cream shop.

and live in sort of an urbanist paradise. You're not thinking about that. You're thinking about very basic things like the safety of your children, the education they're going to get, and how much things are costing you. And that's the part of the discussion that if we want to be honest and if we really want to make things better and fix things, we have to be aware of these and have real frank discussions about.

Kevin K (45:48.332)

That's what I have for you today. This is Kevin. Thanks again for listening to the Messy City Podcast. And please hit that like or follow button and leave me a review if you can. Send me a note. Let me know what you think. Leave a message on the Substack page. Thanks everybody. Talk to you later. Bye.

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Episodios

A Conversation with Dhiru Thadani
4 mar· The Messy City Podcast
It’s truly a rare thing in life to run across people that are uber-talented, thoughtful, and just fantastic human beings. Dhiru Thadani is one of those rare people.
An architect, urban designer, author, teacher, and prolific sketch artist, Dhiru has been involved in the New Urbanism movement since the earliest days. He’s written multiple books about the famous new town of Seaside, Florida, and we spend a bit of time rehashing some history on this episode for those that are unaware.
One of my most enjoyable lines from this talk, was Dhiru relating that “The most original architects have the largest libraries – that’s their secret.” In essence, we all steal from each other, and from history. Nothing is original; everything derives from something else. Some may find that statement stifling, but if you truly care about making beautiful places above all else, it’s actually liberating.
Dhiru and I talk about the possible future evolution of Seaside. Can it, in fact, evolve? Many of us that know and love Seaside as it is have a lot of heartburn with this notion. We hate seeing beloved buildings come down.
My editorial, though, is that this line of concern is really just a symptom of an era of horrible architecture. Our ancestors never felt this way, because older buildings (which often were attractive), were replaced by new buildings that were more attractive.
That all stopped with the advent of the modern movement in architecture – most notably the “international style.” Now, we just don’t have confidence that beauty can be replaced by beauty. We rightly fear that beauty will be replaced by ugliness. But in fact, we can build beautifully, and we have. People like Dhiru have been teaching us how to do so for more than forty years. It’s now incumbent on us to keep that fire burning.
For inspiration, check out Dhiru’s Instagram account, and pick up a pencil and draw.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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Designing Beauty in Housing, by Being Intentional
18 feb· The Messy City Podcast
The world of architecture is full of megalomanicas, wanna-be stars, and also a whole lot of good people just grinding out beautiful work outside the spotlight. One thing I enjoy with my little platform is shining a light on some of the people that do that beautiful work, and rarely get national attention.
Don Powers, of Union Studio in Providence, Rhode Island, has one of those firms. Union Studio has grown over the years to do a lot of different kinds of work, but what I really wanted to focus on for this interview is their work in courtyard housing and affordable housing.
Educators and media within the architecture profession will routinely tell us we can’t build like the old ways, nor should we. And yes, of course, there’s some truth to the fact we have different materials, means and methods now. But Union Studio’s work shows us it is in fact possible to produce new buildings that build off of living human traditions, add grace and beauty to the world, and will certainly stand the test of the time. That’s as true for higher-end housing as it is for “affordable housing.” Good design is a choice, it’s an intention. In this episode, Don walks us through how they’ve made some of it happen.
Give the whole thing a listen, but do remember some key points: fight for those one or two good details on any project, including doors and windows. And, good landscaping is cheap. Don’t overlook the importance of simple, but good, site design.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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Building Culture in Oklahoma
11 feb· The Messy City Podcast
Austin Tunnell is one of the shining stars of a new generation of designer/builders for creative smaller projects, and he also happens to work in the world of mass masonry construction. In this episode, we talk about his journey from accountant to mason and beyond, with his really cool company called Building Culture.
Austin now lives and works in the Oklahoma City area, and he’s aggressively expanding his scope with a new project called The Townsend. Audio doesn’t really do these projects justice. You really need to look these up, and/or see them in person. Not to get too frou-frou, but they touch your soul in a way that most new buildings just do not.
Some links below:
Podcast with Clay Chapman
Podcast with the Mayor of Oklahoma City
Podcast with Hiatus Homes
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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Exploring Small Scale vs Large Scale Development
28 ene· The Messy City Podcast
It’s not often you run across people in the development world that have deep knowledge in both the smallest scales of projects and the biggest. The industry, like many, is very bifurcated. People who do small projects tend to keep doing small projects. People who work on really large projects tend to keep doing that for their careers.
Joe Perry, who works as his day job as the Vice President of Development for PortKC, has had one solid foot in both worlds for his entire career. We talk about what it’s like to exist in both realms, to prosper in both, and some key lessons learned. For anyone interested in house hacking or house flipping as a side gig, I’d highly recommend listening to Joe discuss what he’s done over a few decades.
Joe and I worked together on the New Longview project in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, and you can hear more about that in my interview with developer David Gale.
I really enjoy some of Joe’s advice to others, especially to young people. Stay tuned for the whole thing, it’s worth it.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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Boomerang to Help Your Hometown
21 ene· The Messy City Podcast
“Just do it. Do it as quickly as you can.” That’s the advice of architect Doug Moss, who came to doing small-scale development projects after working for three decades as an architect. Doug left small-town Texas to pursue a career in New York, and boomeranged back several years ago to pursue his dreams as a developer. Now living in Austin, Doug has a healthy side gig doing small projects in Taylor, Texas, where he grew up.
Doug and I met during the Small-Scale Developer Forum, which is a group Jim Heid gathers together twice per year. If you’re someone interested in improving your own community with development, these are your people. Doug still works as an architect with Steinberg Hart, but also does development with his company Public Sketch. Doug is such a modest guy, but this story is great inspiration for anyone who wants to use the professional skills they’ve learned to help a community they know and love.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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Is Your Town a Bitterness Factory or a Hope Factory?
7 ene· The Messy City Podcast
Allen County, Kansas is not a place most people will be familiar with, but the story is one you’ve probably heard before. Located in southeast Kansas, an hour and a half from the nearest major city, it features much that’s typical of rural America. Iola, the county seat, is a city of 5,300 people. It has a classic town square and lies at the junction of a couple of state highways. The beautiful Flint Hills and its majestic cattle ranches are not far away.
But after the community lost its hospital in the early 2000s, the usual questions emerge - is Iola, and the whole county on the verge of permanent decline?
Out of this tragic circumstance was born Thrive Allen County Jared Wheeler, their Economic Development Director, joins me to talk about the path that Iola, Humboldt and the whole county have taken since that time. And, the remarkable successes they’ve achieved. Humboldt, for example, was featured in 2024’s “15 Best Small Towns to Visit” in Smithsonian Magazine.
You might not know much, or even care much, about rural Kansas. But I think you’ll still find this to be an inspiring conversation and story. Jared and I cover a lot of ground, talking about rural community development, place-making, a culture of experimentation, and even bike paths.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”
Text Transcript:
Kevin Klinkenberg (00:01.158)
Welcome back to the Messy City Podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg joined in studio today by a special guest from Central, what did you call it? Central Kansas? Southeast Kansas. Southeast Kansas, yeah. Southeast Kansas, all right. Well, shout out to my buddy Jason Carter-Solomon who hooked us up. He said, you know, just was out in Iowa, Kansas and I met this guy doing really cool stuff and it's like, you've got to talk to him.
And it sounded intriguing and here we are. So welcome to the show for Jared Wheeler. You got it. Jared Wheeler. I am economic development director for a nonprofit in Southeast Kansas called Thrive Allen County. So I'm thrilled to be to be here today. Well, it should be a lot of fun. I have I've been through the area a little bit, have not stopped in Humboldt, which I know is like the big.
tourist draw now. Right, right. Who would have thought that a community of 2,500 people would be in the Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, all these national publications saying you got, you have to come check this place out. Yeah. So why don't we start a little bit by just talking about, first of all, what thrive Allen County is, and how you came to be a part of it. So thrive Allen County.
was initiated when the hospital in Iola, Kansas was closing. And as part of the agreement, anytime a hospital closed at that point, the idea that assets would be sold and then the money put it into the, with the intention of creating a 501c3 nonprofit, specifically dedicated towards public health initiatives. So Thrive Allen County was born out of really a crisis. So it's kind of birth from a crucible.
the hospital in a small town closes. If you speak rural life fluently at all, that is a recurring theme that the hospital in town closes and you are left with some amalgamation of clinics or some specialty shops or just a general practice with limited beds, no overnight stays, that sort of thing. So the hospital closes, thrive, Allen County is born.
Kevin Klinkenberg (02:20.988)
And its initial mandate is to improve the community health. Just to interrupt for just a sec. So give people perspective. How big is Iowa? Yeah. Iowa, Kansas is about 5,200 people. Relatively small. It's the county seat of Allen County, Kansas. The next largest community is humble of 2,500 people. So the entire county's population is 12,000. Right. So for those of you who are in urban context, you are.
probably struggling to imagine that sort of lack of population density, population scarcity. It's funny. It reminds me. So I went to high school in a small town in central Missouri. That was about 12,000 people. Okay. But when I hear you say, you know, Iowa is 5,200, it just reminds me that like when you're in a smaller town, like the hundreds matter. my. Saying 5,200 versus like 5,600, that's like a big deal. Right. It's the same way, you know,
parents of young children still measure their kids age in months. It's like, is it about 27 months? It's the same situation for those of us who are doing our best work in rural communities, like 5,200. Because if I say, it's about 5,000 people, somebody out there is listening going, my graduating class was 5,000 people. That makes no sense. So Thrive, that's our context in which we work. And for the last,
17 years Thrive has existed to enrich the health of citizens in Allen County. And that was initially in specifically related to physical health. So we have healthcare navigators that try and make sure that as many people as possible are insured. We operate vaccination clinics throughout the county, especially in even more rural and remote context. And then
about halfway through the lifespan of Thrive, economic development was added. And economic development is really pursued from the perspective of community health. What is going to be a source of good, benevolent disruption? That's my approach constantly is what is going to disrupt the systems that are in place that contribute to the lack of health?
Kevin Klinkenberg (04:45.788)
for our community members through economic development. So that's my role and I am part of, technically I'm a one man department, but we all work together at Thrive and with our partners, both public and private partners in the communities. So how big is the organization overall? We have just under 30 employees right now. Yeah, and so we're fortunate in that some of those employees are in a transition period because we operate Allen Regional Transit.
which is a public transportation organization in a rural context, which I know some of y'all out there are picturing like covered wagons. That's not exactly what's going on. But so we operate a public transit organization. And then we also have within our organization, the seed of another nonprofit that will probably spin off called Thrive Kansas, which is working for the same sort of rural community health goals.
that we do in Allen County, but is trying to create statewide networks to do that. And how did you, are you from the area? Man, my rural bona fides are legit. I am, I am from a town of 500 people originally called Thayer, Kansas and in the same region, Southeast Kansas again, born and raised there. And really, so you have to remember I grew up in the nineties, early two thousands. So my experience of the wider world.
was purely through pop culture. We didn't go anywhere. I was as hasty as they come. I knew what sushi was. did not eat. I had not had a bite of sushi until probably when I was on my honeymoon. And my cousin and I had a wonderful time. I'm just kidding. And so that's my baseline understanding of the world. But then I...
I lived and worked in churches and schools after that. Did my grad school in Portland, Oregon. And so I did intensive weeks out there. So I was spending time in Portland in the Pacific Northwest for a couple of weeks at a time for four or five semesters. And so I've experienced a lot of different contexts. And then we moved back to Southeast Kansas, my wife and family and I from Kansas City actually. And so we lived up here.
Kevin Klinkenberg (07:12.294)
and then moved back about nine years ago with the choice to locate our family in a rural context. that's my route towards economic or community development is incredibly circuitous. And I really, I've found that that was a point of embarrassment for me initially when I took the job, because I just thought, everybody knows this stuff better than I do. And now I'm learning more and more about our conversation off mic before that.
You were in architecture school before you got into community development. And I think that's, that is true for so many people that the reason they end up in community development, economic development, especially in a rural context is because they love the place. They love the place. They are invested in it and they have lived it. And again, bear the burden of what could be, or they have lived it and they are so quintessentially formed by it.
that they believe other people should benefit from that formation as well. And the same is true for me in both directions. So, really the only experience I have with your area has been driving back and forth between Kansas City and Tulsa, which is kind of like the most direct route, really. Maybe not the fastest route, it's hard to say, but it's more interesting anyway, a little more scenic.
been through Iowa. don't think I actually have driven through Humboldt yet. Humboldt, as you mentioned, has been a place that's gotten a lot of attention in recent years and it's kind of on the radar for, you know, like glamping and for cycling and everything else. Why don't you talk a little bit about like how and why has the area started to get the level of attention that you mentioned before?
I think there's two categories I should speak to. The first is material and then maybe the second is going to sound a little weird, but it's mythological. So materially, one of the reasons that the area has gotten attention is because quite frankly, it's cost effective to develop and to try things in Allen County. The economic ecosystem in rural Kansas has typically been one of either extraction or exploitation historically.
Kevin Klinkenberg (09:35.81)
It is a wildcatting pioneering economy since my goodness, since the 19th century. And so the, industries that boomed the turn of the 20th century into the 19th century were extraction based businesses. Let's pull things as pull natural resources out. mean, my goodness, near Iola, Kansas, there is literally a city called gas and it is called gas because you, you made your bones.
as part of a natural gas business there, that that's the way you made it so that the name stuck and in Humboldt and Iola there, there were massive, concrete businesses. there are these huge firms that, mined a mineral from that area and then use it to turn it into cement and concrete. So it's one that's still an operation monarch cement company in Humboldt, Kansas, but
That is the case. either you're pulling a resource from the landscape and when that is exhausted, you leave. And so that that also funnels into that exploitation idea. It's extraction or exploitation. So there's a sense amongst the folks who live and this may be true if you're a real person listening, you might be nodding along or you might want to fight me either way. Where
There's an idea, the scarcity mindset that blends in that says, well, everybody who could have left did. Everyone who had the chance and the means and the capacity to leave when it was time to leave did, and we are what remains. I don't think that's accurate. I think that's sometimes, unfortunately, the way that small communities understand themselves. They either become bitterness factories or hope factories. That's very rarely.
in a community that is somewhat remote and rural, is it in between those two extremes. You're either a community of hope or you're a community of bitterness. What could have been and what might be. So those are your two extremes. And I'd love to talk to people if they feel like they live in a community that exists right in the middle of those.
Kevin Klinkenberg (11:51.238)
So the first reason why the community, the area is getting more attention is because materially it's more cost effective to try something new there. That economic ecosystem of extraction or exploitation is given way to one of experiment. Let's try something new. And so there are people who are either coming back to the area or they are relocating from other parts of the country.
because they have an idea that is impossible due to the cost constraints of where they live. I am assuming even for our folks who are listening in Kansas City, that if I started doing cost analysis comparison between opening a storefront business of some sort in Prairie Village compared to Iola, Kansas, you will not get the population density for traffic or tail lights, but
for your permit cost, you might be able to buy a building in Iola. So that's really at end of the day, it's more cost effective in our area just because things are cheaper. I don't mean to be crass, but that's what it comes down to. That's the material side. The second one, the one that I'm maybe even more interested in is the mythological side. Why are people so interested in that area? And I wanna ask this question as I hold this off in my head.
How do you think people from non-rural contexts experience or how is their perception of the rural world formed by what pop cultural artifacts, so to speak? in the fifties and sixties, I would say it's probably Mayberry, you know, it's the Andy Griffith show. And what's the essence of the rural experience? Well, everybody knows you, you're not going to get away with anything because you're
your mom's hairdresser's aunt saw you do that. And so they're going to report back. And then as it moves forward, what there's kind of this, it's dearth of pop cultural artifacts that have, kind of monolithic effect, except I believe there is now a new pop cultural phenomenon that everyone at least is aware of that is giving people a lens to look through.
Kevin Klinkenberg (14:16.988)
and see the rural context. And this is going to be absolutely ridiculous to most people, but stay with me. If you're familiar, if you, if you are familiar with the incredible pieces of art, they're known as hallmark movies. You have had a rural experience because those movies never take place in urban settings. Or if they do, it's only momentary because they're trying to escape it to get
to the rural place in which you are going to fall in love, achieve your dreams and feel your stress melt away. And that's silly, it's ridiculous. But at the same time, I believe there is a, I think that is a very kitschy way of seizing on a groundswell of
Collective emotion right now where people are looking for something that is more simple. Our lives are incredibly hectic. We know they're hectic. We know that we are addicted to everything and anything. So how can I simplify? And then how can I take charge of my life and do what I want to do and have some agency? And with a little bit where your dollars go a little bit farther and maybe the pace of life slows down, people feel like they have a little bit more agency.
And then finally, where can I still access some version of the American dream, whatever that is? And I think that is a piece of mythology that has been so twisted and turned, but there's, it's still baked in somewhere to us. And I think at the end of the day, part of that dream in a rural context is can I be known by people and can I know other people? I'm sure you are aware of the
the emphasis and the buzzwords of, you know, quality spaces, place making third spaces. mean, we are, we are addicted to those. And in a rural context, I think the perception is when you look through the lens of an artifact, like a hallmark movie, that the entire community is a third space because you're going to bump into the person you work with elsewhere. You're going to see someone.
Kevin Klinkenberg (16:38.764)
at one of the three restaurants in town that you saw yesterday crossing the street or so on and so forth. So I think that's one reason why the community has been so, or the area has been of interest is because mythologically, it provides an avenue towards some essential thing that we want out of living life in community that may be a little bit more difficult.
in, if not an urban context, certainly a suburban context. So if I were to put a dot in Iowa and then draw like a circle 100 miles around it, there's an awful lot of small towns within that circle. Right. What has distinguished Iowa and Humboldt that you see more positive
rebound and attraction than maybe some other towns that are within that context. One thing that has really helped so much are collectivist approach to problem solving. for example, my organization Thrive Island County, especially in the area of economic development, we would be completely inept and ineffective if we didn't have
close and active partnerships with local government and local business leaders and confederations of industry leaders as well. So that's one of the first reasons that Iola Allen County has been successful is because it's taken a collectivist approach to problem solving without any sort of political machinations behind that, or sometimes even completely devoid of
political ideology, just because, something needs to change. What do we do about it? Another reason is because folks who have been successful in Allen County have taken it upon themselves, even though there isn't a whole lot of philanthropic infrastructure, or they don't see philanthropic models that you might see in a larger community. you start a foundation, that foundation does this, this is the way in which you...
Kevin Klinkenberg (18:59.088)
you know, are able to recoup some of what you've given away through tax breaks and so on and so forth. That infrastructure doesn't really exist in Southeast Kansas and small communities, but successful individuals have taken it upon themselves to think critically about the complex issues that their communities face, identify the areas in which they can have an impact and aggressively pursue that impact. So, and
I'll be somewhat discretionary simply because the individual in question is not a huge fan of publicity, but there's an individual, a family in Humboldt, Kansas, that at the time of the pandemic redirected a considerable amount of its workforce towards making community improvements as opposed to laying off workers at their industry. That's turned into almost a parabolic story.
but it is exemplary of this individual and this company's approach to community improvement. And even without a model that said, is how you do this. There's no, there's not a Carnegie library in Humboldt, Kansas, even serving as a beacon of what philanthropy looks like. This individual became a quintessential philanthropist to solve
problems and it's in his small community again, because he loves it. And that example has had a profound impact throughout the region where there are more and more folks who have been successful and have realized that their success has resulted because someone else made a provision for them and they've turned around and said, okay.
How do I address the complex issues? Not merely I'm gonna endow a scholarship, which by the way, we love that, keep doing that everyone, but we need new curb and gutters in the road. I bet I could do something with that. I bet I could have an effect in that direction. So we've been very beneficial through collectivist solution making and then also,
Kevin Klinkenberg (21:19.676)
the inspired philanthropy of successful folks. mean, that's so interesting. It kind of hits on a broader topic. know Aaron Wren on his podcast has he's talked about this as well. But like one of the real differences today versus in communities, say 100 years ago, is that 100 years ago, the bank in town was locally owned. Right. The department store was locally owned.
Right. You know, most of the, and this is true in cities of towns of almost all sizes, that your local leadership class were people who owned prominent businesses in the town. Right. And that is something that has been lost in an awful lot of communities because of, you know, just changes in the economy and so much
So much of a shift towards sort of larger corporate owned Businesses that then just have branches in places and you just never have the same buy-in right you're like if you're like the branch manager of a bank that's got 500 Locations right you're gonna have a different buy-in than if you're like the owner of the bank. Yeah and and the same goes for for a lot of industry so I think that's it's really interesting what you mentioned that you sort of start starting from a kernel of somebody who owned
an important business and lives in the town and says, just like you said, I'm not going to just do a scholarship fund, but I'm going to invest in things that make, improve quality of life where I am. Right. And I guess that's, as you were, as you were talking about that, I, I couldn't help but wonder, and I'll, I'll ask you directly if you, do you think a community can outsource its self identity? no. Okay. Okay. So, but that's, that's the tug.
When so many things are operated or owned remotely is what happens is this, I really think an existential crisis for a community to go, then what are we and who are we? And if you don't have a thing to point to that provides an place of orientation for your community, it gets really hard to then invite people to invest in that community.
Kevin Klinkenberg (23:44.63)
And so I think that's, I think you're exactly right. That when, when that autonomy evaporates, then you do have a, identity crisis, so to speak. And so that's one thing that's been really interesting in both Iola and Humboldt is, you know, the businesses that are added, we have some community investment, groups and, some microloan groups and
so on and so forth. The businesses that have been added are not, mean, there is no retailer that's saying we'd love to drop a branch in your town of 5,000 people. It doesn't make sense for them. So what's added is homegrown. It's local entrepreneurs who we claw to find capital for them and then they take a swing and we're fortunate in that. I sit on a board of what we call a entrepreneurial community.
a lending group, micro loans. although, you know, to us, they're not micro to other folks. might be, we have over 25 loans on the book right now and 99.9 % of them are making their payments with regularity. And we have businesses that are crossing that year to five to year six, year six threshold, which is enormous for anybody in the entrepreneurial world. And we've just been fortunate because, there's nobody coming to rescue us.
think that is, that is a shift in mindset for small communities. That's so important and it requires a bit of, I mean, you, have to be brutally honest with yourself that you, you need to empower the folks who are there to ask why not instead of why here. Yeah. And
If something else comes along, if something locates itself in your community, that is an extra. But if you can empower the folks who are local to take a chance, then I think you're onto something that could be sustainable. Yeah. I wonder if you can talk a little bit more, maybe some specific examples of like the homegrown approach. The reason I ask that is I'm old enough to remember
Kevin Klinkenberg (26:09.818)
that the standard approach to rural economic development for a long, time was go plat an industrial park on the edge of town, put the infrastructure in, and try to attract what basically were like low wage industrial jobs from big companies. that's how you will save your community. what you're describing is a really different sort of a bottom up approach to working with people who are already there.
I wonder if you could talk more about like some of the successes or some of the other couple of stories you can share. Absolutely. and we still do that. I mean, I, got, I got two industrial parks right now that are planning and ready to rock. So if you're out there listening and you, and you want to, know, you need a spot for your biofuel company, hit me up. Cause I am ready to talk. so we're not, we're not opposed to that approach. I just think that, charting that as the only course is, really risky.
And to be honest, I don't know how much, how reliable it is. I think it's a part of a solution model. But so for example, we have a coffee shop in Iola, Kansas. Every community has got a coffee shop at this point. It doesn't matter how small you are. This coffee shop, shout out Wild Bloom Coffee in Iola. And this coffee shop got started as a
lower level commercial space on the square. Like every other cute coffee shop in a small town bought the bare minimum square footage that they could afford as just one half of a building, one half of the lower level of a building. And the coffee shop has been so successful and it's been able to
apply for and receive grant funding. It's been able to benefit from a neighborhood revitalization program that's a tax rebate program when they made improvements to the space. It works considerably with our organization in small business coaching and in capital pursuit through our micro loan program. And this coffee shop has now purchased the entire building that they're in. They offer
Kevin Klinkenberg (28:29.468)
kind of a subscription based bourbon taste in nights and cigar bar evenings. And they're going to expand to catering and they they serve brunch now. And in our little coffee shop in Southeast Kansas, the other day I had the best ramen I've had in years. we have, they're really talented folks who are owning and operating that shop, but it's been able to expand consistently.
due to again, these collectivist approach because there's so many people, it's not only that they serve a great product, they do. It's not only that they provide a great customer experience, which they do, but it's also because they have been willing to not only want help, but ask for help. And that's an enormous difference. Wanting help is just the awareness that you need something. Asking for help is putting your hand in the air,
I said, okay, I'm willing to reach out and grab whomever is going to help out, but I'm asking for it. And so that's an example that we've had in Iola. In Humboldt, Kansas, and I can take no credit for this, there's a group known as a Boulder Humboldt. And that is a confederation of business owners, entrepreneurs, movers and shakers who have added businesses throughout Humboldt. So the best...
And from my money, the best little honky tonk in Kansas is the Hitching Post in Humboldt, Kansas. And they have live music every night, every weekend night, excuse me. Probably the most expansive collection of whiskeys that you could want or need. And it is an incredibly successful business and an incredibly successful gathering place. And again, was started.
by an individual who moved to Humboldt who had connections with people who had multiple generations of their family within Humboldt. And they were able to continue to build that business and be patient as it was built. they live, to your point earlier, they live and work in the community. The gentleman who owns that business is a city council person in Humboldt, Kansas. And...
Kevin Klinkenberg (30:48.88)
is really devoted towards overall community health and community growth. those are, and those businesses are now moving beyond. So Hitching Post is moving towards, I think it's third year of operations. So kind of living past that initial start at birth. Wild Bloom, I believe is to year four and five in Iola. So we have some wonderful businesses that are outside of what people would expect in a small community.
again, because there've been collectivist approach. So hitching posts exists because of the collective that is a bold or humble and humble. Wild Bloom exists because of multiple collective groups within Iola that were, had a vested interest in these success stories. So the one, I confess the one business I remember from going through Iola is I stopped at the butcher shop right off the highway, which was a pretty incredible operation.
And I think at the time I was kind of thinking about, we're not very far from ranch country. I had a cooler with me. want to buy some steaks or whatever and take them home with me. And of course the selection was incredible. The prices were way better than when I get in the city. And it's pretty much like fresh off the ranch. Right. I mean, you might have driven by cattle that were lamenting that their buddy was gone and ended up in your cooler instead.
Yeah. So one of the thing I definitely I know about the area is you have this north south bike trail. Yeah. That comes through that goes for, I don't know, 100 miles or something. Yeah. Is that the Prairie Spirit? Prairie Spirit Trail. Yeah. What impact has that had on the area? So one, we have a very high rate of folks who bike or walk to work. Comparatively, I just pulled that data.
We are higher than the state average, I think almost twice as high as the state average and people that walk or bike to work. So to me, that signifies two things. is it's pedestrian or bike traffic is built into the community. think part of that is because of the trails. There's 60 miles of trail in Allen County alone.
Kevin Klinkenberg (33:09.622)
so that's around the, what will become the new state park, Lehigh Portland state park. That's going to be on the edge of Viola. let's say it was a lake that was publicly owned and privately owned and then was deeded over to the state of Kansas and, Kansas department of wildlife and parks is turning that into a new state park. So there's a lot of trails around that and people have access to those trails for a while. Thrive Island County, maintenance is those trails on behalf of KDWP right now.
we have trails though, that also we, we think of in, in rural communities, you think of your trails as out somewhere out towards the woods. I mean, you're go ride around and walk around, but there's also dedicated trails in Iola, that go to the hospital. spoiler alert, we did get a new hospital. I started the story talking about the, this, closing of the hospital, new hospitals added, to the elementary school, a new elementary school and to the high school, middle school, and also to around.
Not to, we're working on getting trails all through the main thoroughfares in town, but there's also trails around Allen Community College in Iowa as well. So we are addicted to trail building and maintenance because we have a population that in many respects is income challenged. And an automobile, even though to most of us is an automatic purchase to a lot of our neighbors and friends, it's a luxury.
And so if you do not have an automobile, but you need to get to work or you need to make your appointment or you need to get to school, you need to have a safe way to do so. And so I think that that trail system is. It's part of a wider, pedestrian and bike travel understanding and folks in our community are not embarrassed to do so. And it's because there's not.
There's not the income stratification that exists. I mean, in some communities, if you see someone that is riding their bike to work, there's three categories either, they're, they're a granola type that just wants to show us that they're more fit and better than the rest of us. They are too poor to purchase a vehicle or they get a DUI and they can't drive right now. I mean, that is the truth in, our community because the, because of the prevalence of the trail system.
Kevin Klinkenberg (35:35.002)
If someone is walking or biking to work, it's really hard to codify them. I wonder if they fall into this category or that category just because it's the norm. So we're very fortunate that those trails exist and they do. It also affects, as you mentioned, the glamping outdoors, outdoor recreation, infrastructure and commercialization that exists in our area. That's very helpful. So again, in Humboldt, there is a camping, kayaking,
and BMX riding facility known as Base Camp. And it is located at a trailhead. And so you can jump off Prairie Spirit or Southwind Trail. You can go into Base Camp. The, again, the state park is full of trails and also on Prairie Spirit and connect to Southwind Trails as well. Yeah. And then if you ride it far enough, you'll connect to the Flint Hills Trail. Yeah, exactly. Which is.
over a hundred miles East West trail. Right. Exactly. My wife and I have ridden a few times. Okay. Cool. Yeah. we, we, one of our favorite events of the years, we go to the symphony and the foothills. Yeah. which is, I almost hate to talk about it because I don't want, I don't want it to become too popular. You don't want people to show up. Yeah. I really don't want people from the coast flying in and, and, making this, you know, too expensive, but my God, it's an incredible thing. Right.
just one of the coolest events that we do on a regular basis with where the Kansas City Symphony goes out onto a active cattle ranch in the Flint Hills and performs a concert. But we've made a habit of going and writing a different section of the Flint Hills Trail every year, which is really a fun experience as well. But haven't done the Prairie Spirit, so I'm...
Interested to do that. You absolutely should. mean, we, we talked to cyclists who do the same thing, who are connected using the Prairie Spirit to get to the Flint Hills. We're doing a major ride and they're always impressed with the quality of the trails. the Prairie, I, I can only say I only ride or have ridden a portion of it. so, and if you happen to see me riding, can, you can, guess a, is it.
Kevin Klinkenberg (37:46.192)
Poverty is a DUI or is it granola? one? What's the reason? But no, we're very fortunate that that trail system exists and fortunate that we are the custodians of that trail system. And that's one thing that I would say to, if you're in a rural context and you're just trying to think of something that you could add that would improve quality of life, would be a quality of life amenity, which by the way is an absolute necessity now.
That's reason people are choosing to locate themselves in different places. Obviously housing matters, obviously childcare matters, obviously the possibility of earning a comfortable income matters. But if those three things are satisfied, they're making decisions about where to land based on, you know, is there a quality of life, amenity that I can connect myself with? You have, you have space and you have dirt. You are almost there. You are almost to the, to having a trail.
or a system of trails in your community on the edge of your community. Please, please talk to Thrive Allen County. We have a lot of experience of doing trail work. We have blown it and messed it up in different places so we can help you avoid those problems as well. But that is a way in which you can activate your community and you can also contribute to the overall health of your community as well. So I want to talk a little bit more about the place making aspect of this.
Like I mentioned before, went to high school in a small town in central Missouri and before that I did first through eighth grade in a small town in southern Minnesota.
things that were memories that really stick out for me was, know, if you live in a small community and you're a kid, like riding a bike is a normal thing. Yeah. And I used to ride my bike everywhere. And it was accepted. It was normalized. It was easy to do and safe. There's very little traffic on most of the streets. But as soon as you hit 16 years old, like it is the
Kevin Klinkenberg (39:54.78)
uncoolest thing in the world. You've got to have a car. You've got to be cruising around. there, one of the things that has really interested me that I've tried to, I've tried to articulate, I haven't done a great job of it, but I've thought a lot about, which is most small towns are absolutely natural places for the sort of walking, biking lifestyle that.
quote unquote urbanists talk about all the time. it's actually, they were built for that originally. But it also bumps up against like the, there's a culture aspect, which seems to not embrace that in most small towns. And I experienced that. I still see it all the time. And I've often thought like really, I guess maybe I want your reaction to this. One of the things I've thought is that
one of the best economic development approaches for a lot of small towns is to be the antithesis of the big city and the big city, people think of it as urban with all this cool stuff to do. But the reality is most people are spending a ton of time in a car, getting from place to place, commute, whether not just commuting, but going shopping, kids activities, et cetera. Looking for a parking spot. Looking for a parking spot. but in a small town,
those, it almost ought to be like, that's the place where you could really sell this idea of a lifestyle where you get on your bike and get to a lot of places. You could walk to the town square and that should be a real competitive advantage. wonder if you could, you think that's. Yeah. So why does that not happen? No, I think that's a, I think that is such an insightful question. and one that we struggle with a lot. so I want to, I want to tackle it in a couple of different ways.
One is back to the mythology. What's a marker of success? Marker of success is to be able to have your preferred automobile and typically multiple automobiles. And that doesn't end just because you're in a small town. People still want to virtue or virility signal with their automobiles. And because of the work and the terrain in which people live in small towns in rural Kansas, automobiles are typically bigger. Automobiles are bigger anywhere.
Kevin Klinkenberg (42:13.868)
Always constantly. that again, back to the American dream model, excess is our love language as a culture. so at the same way you got, you have a lot of big vehicles and we need, we're going to signal that we're doing well via this big vehicle, especially if you struggle with multi-generational poverty. Here's a purchase you can make that is a signal that does not require the type of overhead as a home.
So I'm going to buy this vehicle. It's going to show everyone that I'm doing okay. The only way to show everyone that is to use said vehicle until I can't make the payments on it anymore. that's not a, that's not a purely rural experience, but it's one that shows up a lot, especially in socioeconomically, depressed areas. Yeah. Here's my $50,000, vehicle in front of my $40,000 house. Sure. Sure. yeah. So that, that, that occurs a lot. There's still,
There's still status signaling through via vehicles. That's the first one. Second one is it costs communities more to provide the infrastructure necessary for safe pedestrian and bicycle traffic. If you have X amount of dollars in your county budget or in your city budget to build roads and it's going to take, you know, 5 % more to add a bike lane.
to change the width of your sidewalks and you have to decide either we do the project without those things or we don't do the project at all because everyone is clamoring for those things. In most cases, they're going to choose to add the infrastructure without these dedicated spaces. Part of my organization's efforts is to educate communities that you can do that in a cost effective way. You can add those things in a way that's cost effective. So,
I think we're moving the needle in that direction. I think that that's still a big issue. we have some, so there's some cultural status signaling. We have some infrastructure cost challenges there. And then also the antithesis of the big city idea is very interesting because typically when people see adults riding their bikes, if you are from a rural community,
Kevin Klinkenberg (44:34.576)
You only see that when you go to larger communities. I remember having, again, I did grad school in Portland and Portland is an incredibly bike friendly community. If you talk to people who drive in Portland, who do not also cycle there, they lament how bike friendly it is. But if you are a person traveling in a large city, from a rural context to a large city, you see for the first time.
city infrastructure that has bike lanes, has bike crossing, pedestrian cross, a lot more foot traffic, a lot more bike traffic. And it can be really alarming to your sensibility of what it is to get from place A to place B. And so, man, did we have a scare, I almost hit that person on a bike. Do I really want to deal with that back home? In a place where you're sharing literal traffic lanes as opposed to driving next to a bike lane.
so on and so forth. So I think you're right. think there there is a sense in which, you do want to be the antithesis of the big city. But where you say that and you go, so make yourself more walk walkable and bikeable. There are folks in smaller towns who go, yeah, man, there's a lot of cyclists in that big city that I that I visited. And it was really difficult to navigate. I think that's shifting. We're very fortunate in that even in our town of five thousand people, there are folks who are interested in.
making a transition from predominantly using their vehicle, their automobile to get around to using their bike or just walking again, twice as high as the state average of folks who getting to work that way. So I think we're seeing that, that shift. And I think that is a selling point for why we're inviting people to spend time in our area or consider moving to our area. Because if that is a lifestyle change you would like to make or that you've already embraced, then
There's probably a way in which you can get everywhere you need to go in Iola or Humboldt or elsewhere in Allen County on your bike or on your own two feet.
Kevin Klinkenberg (46:38.566)
Another thing that has been really interesting the last few years, in the wake of COVID and all of the policies and changes that happened, there's been an awful lot written and talked about in regards to like people moving. People leaving cities, looking for smaller towns. Sometimes they're leaving the city and moving to the suburbs. Sometimes they're maybe moving from the suburbs to a small town or an exurb.
And obviously, I don't need to rehash all of that, but there's been a lot of conversation about that for the last few years. And it feels a little bit like there's been a shift in perception in the culture about small town living in a positive way. What have you noticed the last four or five years? First, a little bit of a, I don't want to dampen that.
that exuberance for small town living. But I think the data is starting to show us that people dip their toe into rural life and then they have went back to the cities or to the suburbs or so on and so forth. But in some cases, that's that's true. Just people have chosen a city, a new city, and they've left. So Austin's a great example. Austin boomed post pandemic and now their vacancy rate in particular apartments, condos, things like that.
is astronomical because people are like, well, this was cool. And now I'm ready to go back to where my job is or where I lived previously. And so I think that's happening. The shuffling of the deck is resettling itself, so to speak. I do think you're right that there is a more positive perception of rural living than there used to be. I think it's because COVID taught us that everything could be truly remote.
And if you can survive and maybe even thrive, and you talk to some folks and the best years of their life, with all due respect to people who lost loved ones during COVID or struggled with that, or still dealing with the health effects following COVID, there are some people who will tell you that COVID changed my life. I was at home with my family. I was taking more, more direct self-care. I was making efforts to
Kevin Klinkenberg (49:00.964)
identify some things in my character that I want to change. It changed my life. So being remote was a positive. And so I think, what if I did that geographically as well? What if I did that socially as well? And I located myself in someplace a little more remote. Would that also be advantageous to me? And I think COVID also reminded us of the power of knowing people and being known by people.
I think that is probably the primary reason in which people are choosing, if they're not business owners or entrepreneurs, people are choosing to live in smaller communities or move to smaller communities, even if the numbers aren't as great as they were immediately post-COVID, because they see an opportunity to be known by their neighbors and to know their neighbors. Because when that was taken away from us, for so many of us,
that was relationally cataclysmic. And it made us, it gave us all, but it also gave us time to go, okay, how well do I really know the folks that I'm not seeing anymore? And does that bother me that I don't know them? And could I know them better? And I think in a rural context, there's still that capacity to know the people that live on your street and to really interact with them. And not that it's impossible.
in an ex-urban or suburban or urban context, but it might be a little less immediate than it is in a rural context. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the joke that the best thing about living in a small town is everybody knows everybody. The worst thing about living in a small town is everybody knows everybody. For sure. That's absolutely true. I think maybe COVID reminded us though.
The worst thing isn't as bad as the best thing could be good. doubt. What are, what are some of the things that your communities need to get better at? like what, if you were to chart a positive course or continue the improvement, what, what do you need to do better? What are you trying to work on now? So one thing we need to do is accentuate a positive that I mentioned earlier, more firm and reliable collective approaches to problem solving.
Kevin Klinkenberg (51:22.138)
So that's one thing. A second thing that we need to get better at is our anchor institutions need to position themselves as irrepressible agencies for good. So, for example, our school districts, our community college in Iowa, Kansas, and then the city governments and county governments, they need to, we need to work together to see ourselves as innovation agents.
and benevolent disruptors as opposed to status quo maintenance agencies. And again, I think that's applicable in most rural contexts and probably applicable in a lot of community contexts, because again, you are either moving towards becoming a hope factory or bitterness factory and status quo will lead you to bitterness because those who don't achieve it will become in bitter that they didn't achieve it.
or those that you're trying to force feed it to as the end result of their life will wonder why you didn't chart a more hopeful course for them. So we need our anchor organizations to see themselves as agencies of good and do so without shame. And I think that is obviously a difficult thing to map out or reverse engineer, but what it requires
is leadership that is constantly in pursuit of not utilitarianism or what works, but what is going to have the best long term effect on the quality of life of the people that work for the organization or that the organization serves. those are two things that I would say even more collective approaches to problem solving. So housing is a great example.
Everybody's struggling with housing right now, whether you're in an urban context or a rural context. And the old ways of solving that, just, you know, here's a here's a platable era, you know, several plaits, plaited land that the city owns. And we want a developer to come in and you can build a subdivision. And we're going to give you these tax breaks. We're going to incentivize this in so many different ways. I think that's still maybe possible in certain contexts and rural contexts. It's just not possible.
Kevin Klinkenberg (53:44.828)
One, because the city typically doesn't own that much land. And two, a developer then has to say, can I, what are the margins going to be? Because I'm going to have to bring a crew down here. I'm going to get supplies down here. Are there already contractors down here? There's already people. There's master craftsmen and so on and so forth. But there's not a contractor and there's not a readily available crew. So, for example, the state of Kansas right now, the Department of Commerce has offered the frame grant.
that is going to give capital to community colleges that have a building trades program, construction program to help identify the gap in the housing ecosystem and address it. And I think things like that, ideas like that are going to be so important moving forward because they're going to be necessary for everyone to get on the same page. In Humboldt, Kansas, the most reliable developer, with the exception of maybe in the past year,
was the school district. High school built one house every two years or so. And it was a guaranteed reliable development. One house in Kansas City, who no one will notice, in a community of 2,500 people, a new house is, I guarantee you, is the talk of the town. So I think that is something that's going to be necessary is that we continue to embrace and expect collective solutions.
collaborative solutions to complex problems. And then that our anchor agencies, and this could even include our anchor institutions and maybe even our industrial partners, see themselves with a responsibility to be benevolent disruptors.
One thing kind of as part of that conversation, I might be reading a little bit into this, but I certainly know from my experience that oftentimes in rural communities, there is more of an acceptance of just status quo. It is what it is. I don't mean to say this like an insulting way to anybody, but.
Kevin Klinkenberg (55:58.22)
not necessarily a push for excellence or striving. Maybe the better way to say it is not as much striving to achieve. And I think part of that's because it's more comfortable and easy to live in a smaller town, costs are less, et cetera, et cetera. In a big city, you find a lot more people who really striving for something. Is that an aspect at all of kind of like, as you think about
the next phases are achieving more in your county? No. I'll elaborate. No, if you don't, if you don't believe that striving for excellence is part of the rural expectation, you have not been to a county fair. So if you go to a county fair and see the effort that people put into things that will never
be recognized outside of a three day event and the sweltering heat at the end of July in rural Kansas, then I don't know what to you. if it's speak with, communicate with folks who are trying to grow the best stand of wheat that they have in their life every year, speak with people who are
do not care about commodity prices, but are proud of the way that they're being fields look, or the person that is growing the best beef you've ever eaten in your life. and I think that pursuit of excellence is still there. I understand what you're saying that, and I think the, what you're, what you're actually articulating is something that's present in rural communities, which is the reluctance to be disruptive. I don't, I don't want.
to in any way rock the boat because rocking the boat will, could potentially bring shame on myself. And they still on the honor and shame, social economy and small towns is still very real because most people are multiple or are part of a multiple generation. you know, family tree it's been in that area. So my gosh, if you mess up, then the shame that bring on your family.
Kevin Klinkenberg (58:21.628)
it moves up and down that family tree. It's not isolated to just yourself. If you are an entrepreneur in Atlanta and you have no connection to the community, you just landed there, and you try a business and it flops, but then you're able to go somewhere else. There's no shame involved in that. You, you are.
a pioneer. You are, you know, you're an entrepreneur and everyone is going to be impressed by you because you had a great big idea that just didn't work. And here's 18 reasons it didn't work that you had no control over. If you're an entrepreneur in Iowa, Kansas and your business flops and you still have to live in that community and everybody's going to ask your aunt when she goes to church on Sunday, well, you know.
We saw that he started that your, your nephew started that auto body place. Is this, is it still open? Didn't seem like there were many cars there. Didn't seem, didn't seem like he's doing, is he doing okay? he's, they had to close. that's terrible. And your aunt's the one who has to answer that question for you. And so I think, I don't think it's a reluctance to pursue excellence. I think it is a fear that they will somehow.
do something that will be shameful. Interesting. And I think that that's very real. And that burden of failure sits heavy in a rural community. failure in a rural community historically is very obvious. It is driving by a field that is fallow. It is driving by a farmhouse that's in disrepair.
because there's not money to take care of it. So it is so much louder than it can be in other places. Interesting. I appreciate that. last thing I wanted to ask about, as I've looked before at coming to Humboldt in particular, I was really impressed by just the amount of activity that is programmed in the town on a regular basis.
Kevin Klinkenberg (01:00:33.979)
That's something that most small towns don't do much of. I wonder if you could speak to a little bit. So like, I always think about that, like in a community there's hardware and there's software and that's like the software side and talk a little bit about what Humboldt has been doing and what that has meant for the overall success of the place. And the credit again goes toward Boulder Humboldt, that group, and then also their
City Administrator Cole Herder, shout out Cole Herder. Listen, if you want to know what it is to be a good City Administrator in a small town, which is part PR Director, part Public Works Director, part Ombudsman and Accountant and everything else, Cole Herder and Humble Matt Rader in Iowa, those are dues that you need to put on your radar and have a coffee with.
In Humboldt, that software analogy is so perfect because that directly connects to their sense of self. And so all of these events take place. For example, they brought back an event called Water Wars in the summer in which the municipal fire department is involved and it's a part parade, part massive citywide water balloon fight, part public water sports.
events on the town square. And there is, it is pure frivolity, but they have embraced it because it is a spectacle of joy for the community. And in that capacity as a spectacle of joy, it ceases to be frivolous because again, if you are driving or trying to move your community to
a becoming a hope factory, you need spectacles of joy. You need reasons that people can revel in the fact that they live in that place, because so often we are told as rural people, it's a shame you live there. Gosh, wouldn't it be great if you just moved somewhere else? So these spectacles of joy in which people can fully embrace, my gosh, I'm so proud or even because we don't have to defend it.
Kevin Klinkenberg (01:02:54.96)
And that's typically what a small town person is told they have to do. Defend why you want, why do you live there? No, I'm just going to be happy that I'm here right now. Iola just had their Christmas block party on the square in which, you know, Santa visited and kids played games and the businesses served hot chocolate. And it's, mean, it's, it is very Hallmark movie. By the way, one of the, one of the largest
town squares in Kansas. So come and visit if town squares are your thing. First of all, you and I probably aren't going to hang out at parties, but if that's what you love, come to the Iowa block party for Christmas and you will get a taste of Americana that you have been hankering for. But again, it's just a spectacle of joy and communities need those things.
They need those spectacles of joy. And I think that's also to your point earlier about why people are choosing to locate themselves in rural communities, because they can do it in an unabashed way. They don't have to defend why they're doing it. doesn't have to be cool. It doesn't have to be on trend. It can just be a thing that's fun that you can revel in. And in in Humboldt and in Iowa, in Humboldt especially, there have been a group of folks who have sought to add
to the community calendar, these spectacles of joy that have become a collective experience of hopefulness and celebration. And I don't know that you need to defend that. And I think we would probably all live in healthier communities if we engaged in those things without the need to qualify why they exist.
Jared, I think that's a great place to wrap. Very, very, very interesting. This was a lot of fun. I think at some point down the road, I might like to have you on again and talk some more. There's probably four or five more questions that I still have in my head. I'd love to talk about. But this is super interesting. If people are trying to find you and find your communities, what's the best way to do it?
Kevin Klinkenberg (01:05:09.084)
ThriveAllenCounty.org. You can find out everything about the organization that I work for and you can connect with all of my colleagues there. You can email me at Jared, J-A-R-E-D at ThriveAllenCounty.org. And that's the best way to get in touch with me. I'm on LinkedIn because I'm trying to be a grownup right now. But other than that, I am willfully disengaged from social media.
beyond that, for minutes, not because I'm a rural lead, but because I'm trying to protect my peace in that way. So shoot me an email, find my phone number on, on the internet. And I'd love, I'd love to talk to you. If you are rural and you want to argue with me about this stuff, please, if you are a person living in a different context and you want to chat more about this, I would love to do so. Fantastic. Jared, thanks so much.
Good luck with everything and I'll definitely make a point to bring the family down and come visit one of these days. Sounds great. Thank you so much Kevin. Thanks

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How to be a Small Developer that Makes a Big Impact
31 dic 2024· The Messy City Podcast
Jesse Russell and Ryan Andrews fit the profile of successful small developers. That is, they had no experience at all before trying it, almost no money, but have a ton of passion and creativity. Jesse and Ryan discuss how they came from the worlds of tv show production and finance to create a small development business in beautiful Bend, Oregon. They now focus primarily on cottage-style housing and unique, communal projects.
Beyond their projects, what is incredibly fascinating is their story of creating a locally-based investment fund so they can do more projects and truly work hand-in-hand with people invested in their community’s success. If you’re someone that is truly based in your community, and want to see more small-scale projects get done, the details of their model are worth a listen. It’s an astonishing example of starting with one modest project, and quickly moving up to having $100 million of projects in progress.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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A Conversation with Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt
24 dic 2024· The Messy City Podcast
Mayor David Holt, far younger than me, has an impressive resume for any big-city Mayor. He’s been elected overwhelmingly twice, and his city is clearly on the rise. If you’re not familiar with what’s going on in Oklahoma, this is a chance at some insight.
Moving out of a dark period in the city’s history in the early 1990s, Oklahoma City took it upon itself to pursue a dramatic makeover. Every city is a work in progress, but what’s been accomplished in the thirty years is remarkable. Mayor Holt and I discuss the MAPS program, initiated by his predecessors, and now working through its fourth installment.
Most cities and city leaders talk about the importance of “quality of life” issues and improvements, but Mayor Holt and OKC have actually done something about it. Their MAPS program, which has a unique pay-as-you-go feature, is a terrific example of local government initiative. Does OKC show a model of successful big city governance? Listen, and decide for yourself.
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Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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Can Design Charrettes Teach Us How to Fix Broken Systems?
18 dic 2024· The Messy City Podcast
It’s an intriguing irony that we live in the managerial age, with more managers than ever, and yet so much in our society is so poorly managed. But what can be done? Is it just an inevitable fact of modern life?
In this episode, I break down my experience using the design charrette process in planning and architecture. And, I discuss the lessons learned from years of creating these very successful processes. Can this unique approach to problem-solving help us better manage our cities, towns and institutions? How does the charrette process get to such successful solutions, in so short a period of time?
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Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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The many virtues of urban courtyard living
3 dic 2024· The Messy City Podcast
If you’ve traveled much to countries outside of the US, you frequently see a type of building that sits right up on the street, but has a landscaped courtyard space behind it. Instead of the ubiquitous American form of street-front yard-building-back yard, this type of building lacks a front yard in exchange for park-like spaces in the interior. As architects, we call these a variety of names, from courtyard buildings to perimeter blocks and on and on.
Alicia Pederson has come to Twitter/X and quickly gained a large following by highlighting the virtues of this kind of building. In particular, we talk about why it works so well for families with small children. This historic type is actually quite rare in the United States, but common virtually everywhere else in the world.
Alicia follows in the footsteps of people who have a passion for urban living, but aren’t necessarily design or development professionals. She focuses on this one approach, and we talk about how it might happen in her city of Chicago and elsewhere.
For a little more depth, check out this site for her exposition on this building type.
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Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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Building the Not-Quite Missing Middle
26 nov 2024· The Messy City Podcast
In the urbanism and planning world, we talk a lot about Missing Middle Housing. Rightfully so, since it’s a critical element that helps a community succeed and provide the total range of housing options. And, it’s historically what we used to build a LOT of, before the advent of zoning and modern development codes.
Hal Shapiro of Real Property Group in Overland Park, KS, talks with us about his unique niche and take on working in this field. Hal started on the lending side of the equation, and eventually worked his way into property ownership and development. But his projects are something different than what we talk about with Missing Middle Housing. Hal has worked on projects somewhat larger than the historic four and six and twelve-plexes we talk about so much. But he’s also much smaller than the big boys.
Hal and I had a chance to reconnect at the most recent Small Scale Developer Forum, hosted by Jim Heid. I interviewed Jim recently on the podcast as well. Hal has been very involved in the Forums for several years, and is an enthusiastic supporter of entrpreneurship generally. Hal offers some great tips in this for working at a unique scale, that hardly anyone else pursues. For anyone that’s got a bit of experience in the development world, and loves walkable places, this is definitely worth a listen.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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How to Hack Your Life
5 nov 2024· The Messy City Podcast
Stop what you’re doing, and listen to this episode. Trust me, it’s worth it.
I came across Joe Jimenez by way of Coach Carson, who has interviewed him twice. Joe lives in Kalispell, Montana, and now owns a business called Switchback Suites. Joe and I discuss his interest in the FIRE movement, (FIRE = Financial Independence, Retire Early) and how he eventually translated that into his own world. A key piece has been using house hacking to get into real estate investing, and to as he says, “play life on easy mode.”
I absolutely loved this discussion, and hope it’s helpful to listeners. I hope it can especially reach younger listeners, as Joe really lays out well what can be accomplished to set your life up for success. All it takes is some intention and a willingness to make a few sacrifices.
Joe and I also get into some depth on travel hacking, which is essentially making a game or system of using credit card bonuses for travel. I’ve used this for years, as has Joe, and we talk about how to do it, the benefits of being systematic, and he shares some very fun anecdotes.
Here’s Joe’s photo of Singapore Suites Class:
A few links we discuss:
* Mr. Money Mustache
* Chris Guillebeau and The Art of Non-Conformity
* Go Curry Cracker
* Paula Pant
* Jillian Johnsrud
* One mile at a time
* Frequent miler
* Choose FI travel
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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Turning love of your town into a development crusade
29 oct 2024· The Messy City Podcast
Before this episode, I knew nothing about Mineral Wells, TX. Now, i’m interested to visit. Mineral Wells is a small, historic resort town west of Fort Worth. It’s the sister city of Hot Springs, Arkansas. And our guest’s family has been on the forefront to save it from recent decline.
For me, this, what Macy Nix Alexander relates to me is how people who truly love their place can be the change that helps turn its fortunes around. This is a remarkable tale that can be relatable to all manner of places, regardless of their historic assets. Mineral Wells has some advantages, to be sure. But what they really seem to have are people willing to put their time and money on the line to make a difference. And as much as anything, Macy’s story speaks to the power of her father’s motto to “live below your means.”
I won’t give it all away, but the story of how they’ve gone from owning inexpensive rental properties to starting local businesses and renovating majestic old hotels is nothing short of inspiring.

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Getting to Affordable Infill Development
22 oct 2024· The Messy City Podcast
Eric Kronberg, of Kronberg Urbanists + Architects, is a wealth of knowledge for people wanting to truly understand the realities of new construction in cities. First off, it’s Kronberg with a long o, not as I initially pronounced it. Apologies to Eric.
Eric and I talk about his work in missing middle housing, working in development in Atlanta, and the opportunities and perils of doing infill new housing. TLDR: it ain’t easy, but there are solutions.
A couple of great takeaways I had from this episode are that the most cost effective way to build is a 3 story walk-up and the typical current strategy of upzoning commercial corridors and protecting single-family neighborhoods does not get us to an affordable place. In fact, it’s encouraging the most expensive forms of housing, and discouraging the least expensive.
I highly recommend checking out Eric’s site for more. Here’s a few links:
Power Plexes
La France Walk
Inc Codes
ATL ADU Co
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Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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Travel Lessons
8 oct 2024· The Messy City Podcast
So-called “urbanists” tend to travel to foreign lands and come back with the obvious takeaways: foreign cities good, American cities bad. I get that. I understand the impulse. I’ve done it myself, so who am I to judge?
But let’s suppose for a minute we put that impulse on pause, and ask, what can we learn that can be applied quickly and inexpensively to American cities? If we look past the charm of thousand-year old human settlements, are there other lessons worth learning? I explore this, and have some quick thoughts on the IDA conference in Seattle as well.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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How Does a Small Developer Actually Make Money?
3 sep 2024· The Messy City Podcast
Monte Anderson of Neighborhood Evolution and Options Real Estate in Duncanville, Texas joins me to talk about extremely practical matters: making money in real estate. That is, as a small developer, how is it actually done? What are the pros and cons of different approaches, such as buying and holding vs selling?
We start this by discussing a YouTube video from The Real Estate God. Yes, that’s the real channel. Titled, “The best way to 3x your money in 2024,” the video is a good jumping off point for how to structure deals in an ideal world. And, it goes over the differences between general partners and limited partners.
Monte talks about why nothing ever works as quick as he thinks it should, and the realities of development fees. We discuss the challenges, but also the joys, of working in development.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”
Episode Transcript:
Kevin K (00:01.733)
Welcome back to the Messy City podcast. I'm Kevin Klinkenberg. Got our returning champion, Monte Anderson in the house here today. Monte, it's always great to see you and talk to you. Where are you in Dallas? Are you roaming around the country somewhere?
Monte Anderson (00:16.022)
Yeah, I am in Dallas today. Glad to be here with you, but I am in Dallas. I'll be in Lafayette, Louisiana tomorrow morning and Elkhart, Indiana next week. So lot of traveling coming up, but I'm home for this afternoon. It is. It is. We've been going down there for, this is our second year. And so yeah, there's a lot of good food down there. Yeah.
Kevin K (00:26.257)
Cool, Lafayette's a really cool town.
Kevin K (00:39.449)
Yeah, was going to say amazing food, fun people, it be a great time.
Monte Anderson (00:43.647)
Yeah, they are fun people. lot of entrepreneurial spirit down there, know, they've had to do a lot with a lot of things against them, know, hurricanes and, you all the things that you've got in that part of the country.
Kevin K (00:53.627)
Yeah. Yeah.
That's right. That's right. Well, guess depending on where you are, you've got something. like we don't have hurricanes, but we've got tornadoes and floods.
Monte Anderson (01:06.668)
Yeah, yep, that's right. There's something always out there, the unknowns.
Kevin K (01:10.245)
Yeah, I know. I think I texted you a couple of weeks ago, we were up in Dubuque, Iowa, where I know you're also doing some work and they were dealing with the Mississippi is flooding this year. It's been very, very high. And so they've had some flooding in different portions. So in fact, we were going to take like one of their riverboat cruises and we couldn't do it because the river is too high.
Monte Anderson (01:28.705)
my.
Yeah. my, that's because that town is right in between the river and the bluffs. The downtown is right there in the valley, if you will, between the two hills. Yeah.
Kevin K (01:37.67)
Yeah.
Kevin K (01:42.063)
Yeah. It's really cool. had not spent a lot of, I've driven through, I'd driven through before, but I hadn't really spent any time there. And it's really a neat, neat little town with like incredible bones and, just a really pretty setting there on the river.
Monte Anderson (01:52.802)
Yeah.
Yeah, the great thing is it doesn't have any major interstates that go through it.
Kevin K (01:59.569)
But they had a lot of urban renewal. I'll say that. For a small town, boy, did they have a lot of urban renewal that was done to them. anyway, Monty, I wanted to talk to you today. We were exchanging some emails. I sometimes subscribe to these just kind of random YouTube channels or blogs or whatever that touch on real estate or design or planning or whatever.
Monte Anderson (02:03.544)
Yes.
Monte Anderson (02:07.554)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin K (02:27.953)
this is one, that I shared with you that is a YouTube channel, from somebody who calls themselves the real estate God, which, of course kind of made us laugh, but it was a really interesting short video. has some pretty interesting content, especially for, newbies, in this video that, I wanted to talk about today, the email, called it the best way to three X your money in 2024.
but really it was like a seven minute video that was about a basic investment strategy for real estate that I think is real, that is similar to what you teach. And I wanted to kind of walk through this and talk about it because I think it is, it's interesting. we've talked about financing before we've talked about different aspects of development. It's interesting to take it kind of step by step.
and help people understand how, you know, where you put money in, how you get money out, how you make money doing some of these smaller projects.
Monte Anderson (03:30.506)
Yeah, that's a really big deal for people getting started, you know, in this business. I mean, how do you get money out? Right? You put it in, but where does it go? And how does it come out fast? And it doesn't come out fast unless you buy and sell. That's basically the bottom line. If you don't buy and sell, it doesn't come out fast. You know, because if you buy a, you know, if you buy a property and you get a loan and you restore that property,
Kevin K (03:37.969)
Yeah.
Monte Anderson (03:59.286)
and you run it and you get it leased up over time. It's not going to cashflow really great in the beginning. It's going to take, it's going to take a while where I find myself these days and making money as far as making, pulling money out is, and this is what the big, developers do, buying something, fixing it up, getting it all rented up or, or, or buying something and getting it ready to sell, you know, and then selling it. And that's where.
A small developers have to do more like buying and selling. And in my case, you know, I charged myself, you know, brokerage fees and management fees and things like that. So my operating company, you know, gets commissions and gets development fees. And that's how we live. And big, big companies do the same thing. You know, the big developer will buy, you know, build a 200 unit apartment complex, lease it up and sell it to the Ohio state teacher pension fund.
You know, and that's where the money's made. That's where the big quicker money is made. But it's, it is really difficult as a small scale developer to buy a property, fix it up, build it and get, and I mean, you're building wealth. Okay. Because usually the property is going up in value, but you don't get a lot of cash flow out of it really quick. It's just, that's just, I think in my opinion, and you know, of course, I don't know everything. It's kind of unrealistic thinking. It looks good on paper.
but it's unrealistic thinking.
Kevin K (05:29.967)
Yeah, it seems like so generally when we talk about making any money in real estate is either you're making money off of the cash flow of the project itself, whether it's a residential project or a commercial project, you know, it's producing more income than your expenses. So you're making a little money year after year on that, or you make money when you sell it to somebody else, assuming you've added value along the way and you're selling it for substantially more than what.
you put into it.
Monte Anderson (06:01.614)
That's correct. And then depending on how much equity you put in in the front and how much leverage or how much debt, how much loan you put on the property, you know, will depend on what your cashflow is going to be. So if you've like in the, I've always been one for putting as, you know, having as little debt as possible because you can go through the times like we just went through in the last year or two when interest rate, like on one of my properties went from four and a half to seven and a half percent.
like it renewed and just went up. mean, they could have went up to 8 .5%, but my bank lacked me, so they did 7 .5%. But if you have much debt, if you have a lot of debt, first of all, you're not going to probably cashflow for a while. And then secondly, when the markets change, when the markets change or when interest rates go up or when vacancy goes up, then you're going to be in trouble.
And that's when you see foreclosures and that's when you see, like right now we're seeing a lot of properties on the market right now, either not so much in foreclosures, but people just needing cash. So they're selling their properties. So.
Kevin K (07:13.233)
Yeah. So like, you know, let's just say if you, random project that you're a small developer and you scrape together $50 ,000 and you, you put that into a deal and then you have debt on the back of it for the balance of the project. You're, you're either getting that 50 ,000 back to you when you sell it. Hopefully plus a profit or you're getting it like drip, drip, drip over time, over a number of years.
Monte Anderson (07:43.211)
Exactly.
Kevin K (07:43.429)
which like you said, at that small of a scale, that might be maybe make a few thousand bucks a year, but you can't make a living off that.
Monte Anderson (07:52.47)
Right. Well, you can't make a living off the drip, drip, drip part. You can't really make a living off that, but you can if you have a hundred units then. Okay. Then you have it. And you can, if you're in the real, if you have a real estate operating company, like I do, where we do our own leasing and management and development and construction. So we pay ourselves to do those, do those things. If, if the money is available, you know, if there is enough, you know, to do that, but
And many times these days, I put myself in better positions. You know, I should have learned after 30, you know, 35 years, I should learn, but I put myself in better positions where I can get those fees mostly. So even if the property is dripping, I'm still getting the fees for operating the property. Now I've got a big one that I'm sitting in right now in Duncanville, Texas. It's called Wheatland Plaza, which is an old strip center, know, with some townhomes I'm going to put on the parking lot.
And right now I've got all my fees into it. got, you know, I've got, I sold another property to, you know, make the cash calls to keep this thing going because I didn't want to get more debt right now while interest was high. So I made a conscious decision not to add more debt on. In fact, I may not have even been able to get more debt on because I'm in a leasing upstage and I bought a
Kevin K (09:06.673)
Mm
Monte Anderson (09:17.87)
strip center that was 60 % least and it went down to 28%. Now I'm back up to 80, but I'm still not up to really breaking even, know, nearly up to breaking even. And when I put the 20, the 19 townhomes on the parking lot, you know, I'm to have a mixed use building. And then now I've got something that's operating, but it takes, it takes time. So that'll probably take me, what I just described is probably take me four or five years to get that done. So you got to last that four or five years.
Kevin K (09:47.589)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Monte Anderson (09:47.736)
you know, negative cashflow and you've got a cash negative cashflow has got to come from from somewhere. So it's, it's funny to hear like in the, the podcast or the, the YouTube we were talking about, it's funny to hear some of the people talking about this stuff because they, this would be the way I would put it on paper to show you a deal. I would show you that in reality, it's just not that easy. And you're constantly having to,
You're constantly having to look for new ways of financing or finding another property to buy and sell to make cash flow or buy and sell something you've already got or raising capital from what we call community impact investors who don't expect huge high returns but are also, they expect a little return but they're as interested in the community impact as they are the return. They're interested in both.
Kevin K (10:45.541)
Yeah. Well, so let's look at a couple of the basics that he talked about just to clarify. He described the way he looks at it as like being a real estate private equity company. I think, I mean, that's clever, but I think it's just basically kind of the way a lot of real estate deals happen. And that is you have general partners and you have limited partners. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about like in your experience, how those, what's the difference between the two?
What roles do they play?
Monte Anderson (11:16.29)
Yeah, like I'm the general partner or the managing partner in, in, you know, nearly all the deals I do. And I have partners, limited partners or, or members. These days we call them members of the LLC. Same thing, same, but they're passive, passive investors. And so in any real estate deal, you really need two things. And this is what I talk about in all small scale developers need two things. Really. We need really a good, decent loan from a bank.
And I always say a bank, bank servers are still our best partners. They're going to be the probably lowest interest rate. They're also be the toughest to underwrite you, know, looking at your paperwork and, you know, looking at you closely and asking you questions. And then you need, you need affordable equity. You're either providing that equity or the down payment or your investor partners are providing that down payment.
Kevin K (12:09.617)
Right. Just like if you're buying a house and you have to put 5 % down, 10 % down, 20 % down, whatever it is. For a real estate deal, it's the same way. And a bank is probably going to require 25 % down pretty typically or more. Yeah. Yeah.
Monte Anderson (12:14.079)
same thing.
Monte Anderson (12:23.726)
or 35 % today, or you may want to put 35 or 40 % today at seven and a half or eight, eight and a half percent interest. I can remember years ago that used to be not be that bad of a rate, but we got used to this low rates. we kind of, you know, below 5%, I kind of call that free money. It's kind of free, you know, really. So it really makes deals easier to do. when they go up, but
Kevin K (12:45.265)
You
Monte Anderson (12:51.822)
Yeah, it's the same thing. You you buy a piece of property, you need a loan, you need equity, whether it's 5 % on an FHA loan to buy a house or whether you got a commercial loan at a bank and you need 25, 35%. We used to say 20 % down on commercial loans, but now these days I would say it's minimum 25 to 35 % down that banks are requiring. Not such a bad thing either, to tell you the truth, but it's kind of going back like a hundred years ago when we didn't have financing.
Kevin K (13:21.211)
Mm
Monte Anderson (13:21.678)
Cause if you think about most of you're in my friends, not wealthy, you know, we didn't grow up with extreme amounts of wealth. 35 % might as well be, you know, might as well be a hundred percent, know, we got nothing, you know, you got nothing, you know, it's still a, still a lot of money. But once you get your, your, your investors, your limited partners, your, your members of your LLC, your passive investors, the passive investors don't, don't operate.
Kevin K (13:33.859)
Yeah.
Monte Anderson (13:49.806)
on a day -to -day basis. They're just like they have stock in your deal. And they need to be accredited investors, which means they have to have a certain amount of knowledge or net worth or wealth. They have to make a certain amount of income. They have to be sophisticated and accredited investors of sophisticated investors. In fact, it's a business person that it's not like a little old lady with their last $50 ,000 in the bank.
That's a non -accredited investor or somebody that makes less than a hundred thousand a year. That would be non -accredited investors. So you want accredited investors and these accredited investors, that means they're sophisticated and if they lose their money, they're big boys and big girls. they, buyer beware kind of beware. So they're going to be passive partners. The general partner or the managing partner operates the real estate venture.
hires the contractors, hires the leasing agents, hires the property managers, hires the architects, negotiates with the bank. Quite often in my case, the general partner would personally guarantee the real estate notes, which I do just about on everything I do. I hear people talk about not personally guaranteeing these commercial real estate deals. It's not in my world, really. That's just not realistic. I have to personally...
Kevin K (15:14.949)
Yeah, how does that even exist? Who gets away with not guaranteeing a deal?
Monte Anderson (15:21.514)
I hear people talk about it on YouTube and things like that. But it's just not realistic. there are different kinds of loans where a lender looks at a bigger real estate deal, big, where the asset is so strictly regulated by the bank or by the lender that you may get.
Kevin K (15:25.125)
Hahaha.
Monte Anderson (15:48.098)
you know, a situation that we, know, that you don't have to personally guarantee. So the asset is lots of equity. You know, it's the lender is really looking at everything you do, commissions paid, finish out, you know, construction, you know, things like that. They're approving everything, approved leases. They might as well be the owner. That's the only time I see that where you don't personally guarantee, you know, your real estate in that case. But.
Generally speaking, is general partners got to guarantee the loan, got to run the operation. Also it's got to get, can get paid for running the operation. We get paid a leasing fee, a property management fee. We get paid a development fee. We get paid all these fees if there's enough cashflow. And since I'm the one putting the deals together, I always feel responsible when there's not enough cashflow and end up leaving my fees in.
because I feel responsible if I didn't make the projection quick enough. it seems we just never make the, nothing ever works as quick as I think it should. It never works as quick. It's the nature of the beast. There's so many different things that can happen, whether it be.
building permits or zoning or platting you know, a supplier, subcontractors, or didn't get a tenant, you know, early enough. mean, these days in most cities have hard trouble, have a hard time with building inspectors. So you may not get, you know, inspections as quick. We used to get building permits in two weeks and, you know, we could build a building in six months. That's just no longer the way it is. You know, it just takes a lot longer than that.
You know, it just, and I used to go to California and they'd say, well, it only took me two years to get a permit. And I said, well, we're from Texas. We got a permit in like two weeks. You know, well, we're like California now. It takes us forever. It takes us forever to get things. So all of those things compile up and can cause you delays and stuff like that. And delays are going to cost you money, you know, and, and
Kevin K (17:51.985)
Yeah.
Monte Anderson (18:07.692)
You know, I'm always changing things too. My projects are done incrementally. So we might start in one end and by the time we get through, it's different than what we originally conceptualized. And that's, it's got, it's good and bad. mean, bad is that it's changed and it's different and likely costs more. Good is it might be a better project because we're more curating the type of businesses or people that are there than we are just filling spaces.
Kevin K (18:33.615)
Yeah. I mean, just like on a personal note, the town, like as an example, the townhouse project that I'm working on with my partners, you know, we, as we have progressed through construction, we have found a lot of things that we decided we wanted to change. And a lot of that was really based on, we know like the price we're going to end up selling these at.
And so it kind of changed our minds about who we think like the buyers are. It's a, it's a more expensive, home now than, it was originally. so, you know, we, for example, during the course of construction, we're like, well, you know, maybe we should change that kitchen. maybe that pantry should be different. Maybe we should have a different kind of countertop or finish. And, you would think that all that would be figured out ahead of time. But like you said, during the course of the project,
Monte Anderson (19:04.589)
Yeah.
Monte Anderson (19:14.98)
Yeah.
Kevin K (19:28.355)
you know, especially something I'm at take two or three years, things change.
Monte Anderson (19:32.908)
Yeah, they do. know, time, time happens so fast these days and with AI and other things, mean, the, the speed of, of everything that's happening is, you know, if you're copying something somebody did yesterday, you're already behind. I mean, you've got to be figuring out, you've got to understand this business and know where it's going rather than copying where somebody's been. can, you can learn from someone, but you really can't copy from place to place. know, you principles are the same, but
Kevin K (19:48.027)
Hehehe.
Monte Anderson (20:02.318)
Yeah, like in the center I'm working in now, it's a 90 ,000 square foot shopping center built in the 60s. And we, you know, it was, we're converting it to mix of uses from retail and restaurants to coworking, you know, school and, you know, state of Texas lease and things like that. And we start off thinking we're going to get, you know, $16 a square foot or $18 a square foot. And we'll put a little lipstick on it here and a little, you know, fix some roofs here and stuff. What we find is if we
If we cut the spaces up smaller and we really gut them out and really make them nice inside, we can get $24 a foot. So $24 a square foot versus 16's a lot of money, you know, to the bottom line, which makes the property a lot more expensive. It's just what you just described with the townhome. You got a better kitchen in, you know, we're going to, we can get more money. In fact, if we keep the cheap kitchen in, we may not sell it.
because we found out that the market was a little bit different. And by being an incremental or a nimble type developer, you can make those decisions on the fly and adjust and hopefully profit, you know, hopefully profit from that. In the meantime, you got to get more money somehow. So where do you get it? You either get it from your equity partners or you get it from your, from your bank. And this is a good reason to have community at your partners you want to have. You don't want to have poor partners.
Kevin K (21:17.521)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin K (21:30.907)
Yeah.
Monte Anderson (21:30.958)
You want to have rich partners because poor partners can't help you if you get in a situation.
Kevin K (21:34.362)
Yeah.
Kevin K (21:41.297)
Well, and I like your point about the fees part of it, because I think that was something I didn't really know anything about related to development 15 years ago, was that, if I'm the managing partner or the developer of this project, then I essentially pay a percentage fee to myself, and that's part of the construction loan and everything. And I remember in the first workshops that John Anderson did that I
paid attention to, he was like, you know, it's kind of 5 % of hard construction costs in the ballpark. And so I was like, that sounds good. You start to bookmark that. then, you just like you said, that can evaporate during, you know, if things go a little bit sideways. And like on our project, we had budgeted a development fee for all, for the three of us who are managing partners and the construction costs changes and the inflation that's happened over the last few years have really caught up with us.
And we basically having to contribute those fees back to the project to cover other things that we would like to do to it. So we hope to get paid out at a later date, but the reality is we're not going to make that fee during the course of the project.
Monte Anderson (22:53.218)
Yeah. And that's, I would say that's more normal than not. I would just say that's more normal than not. Cause I don't know something about in the idealistic stage, you remember when you were getting ready. I remember when you were getting ready for the townhomes and stuff. And it's the idealistic stage. It's fun during that stage, you know, it's like, it's like new love, right? It's like falling in love and you're in love, you know, all of sudden and everything is, you know, right. Unicorns and rainbows, you know, and then, and then all of sudden, you know, the reality.
Kevin K (23:07.483)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Monte Anderson (23:22.414)
the reality kicks in. But I think that's more normal than not. In fact, I'm embarrassed to say this, but in my one, I had a hotel project in Dallas up here and the, was paid my development fee. I did the project in 2004 and 2005 and I sold it in 2015. And that's when I got my development fee in 2015. And it was my own fault.
Kevin K (23:46.233)
Yeah.
Monte Anderson (23:52.586)
In fact, my own arrogance, my own thinking I knew everything when I started that project that caused that to happen to me. And I wanted to do the project no matter what. I was just going to do it no matter what. I just wanted to do it. And that, and I was like kicking the can down the road, but that own arrogance.
I tell Bernice and I talk about this all the time, Bernice Riedel and I, don't fall in love. She says fall in love with these projects. I say, don't fall in love with them until you own them. Don't fall, because it excuse your, and I fell in love with this project before I did it. And so I just had to do it anyway. Sometimes you just, you and I were talking earlier, sometimes you just, and if you're going to do that, that's fine. Just know that the pain is coming. Just know the pain is coming with it.
Kevin K (24:32.145)
Mm
Monte Anderson (24:51.178)
I understand it. I understand loving a project more than anything and you want to do it. I understand it. Just be prepared, you know, for the stress and the high level of anxiety that will come with that.
Kevin K (25:02.481)
So, Monty, that begs the question then. If you didn't get paid your development fee for 10 years, if that's more common than we'd like to admit, how do you live? How do you make a living during the course of doing these projects? Because you have to have some cash flow to pay the bills on.
Monte Anderson (25:21.774)
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I started off as a real estate agent leasing and selling space, you know, and buildings in my commercial real estate agent. And so all in the beginning days back in the early years, 100 % of my business was third party broker. I was doing this for somebody else, you know, and that was easy. You know, I had an easy life back then. And then I decided to be a developer.
Kevin K (25:48.667)
Yeah.
Monte Anderson (25:51.406)
So, but what happened now today, I have about 80 % is my own stuff and 20 % is other people's about 80 % today. And so you still need to be working. We call it working in the flywheel or working in the area. You're still working to crank that flywheel to move your company along, to move your own personal life along. You still got to make income. So I always kept brokering space for others.
people. And if you're an architect, so you would still keep doing architectural work for other people or doing your podcasting or doing your, you know, if you're an IT guy, you still, you know, you're working on your IT in these buildings, you're doing, you're doing work in other buildings, you know, but you're doing in hopefully in your farm or in your community, or anywhere you're where you're, you know, you're committed to where you're committed. That's a really key to this is, is working in an area that you, you know, that you commit to as a small scale developer, you need to
You need to stay close to home and not try to be working in, you know, Kansas city and St. Louis and Oklahoma city and, you know, Dubuque, you know, you'll be, you'll, that's a good way to go broke. You know, it's being too scattered out, you know, like that. You, and some people may can do it, you know, I'm just not capable of doing that. You know, you have to stay close and that's how I make a living. And I keep my, another thing is, you know, you want to keep.
I mean, it's just silly stuff to say this, you know, live on half of what you make, try to get used to that, you know. That's a really hard thing to tell people and that's, you know, try to live on half, you know, try to really live, you know. I've had to sell my houses before. I've had to sell my cars. I mean, I've had to, you know, when the going gets tough, you know, sometimes you got to do what you got to do. Now, on wood and thankfully.
And by the grace of God, I've been able to build my net worth continually. But when you sell a property and you make a lot of money on it or you make a profit, you've got capital gains, you know, then. And so the only way not to pay those capital gains is to do, you know, to trade that property or do a 1031 tax deferred exchange and put the money into another property. So I sell a property and I get some money and I either pay a bunch of taxes on it or I have to re -spend it.
Monte Anderson (28:17.826)
But if I respend it, hopefully I can get a brokerage fee, an architectural fee, construction fee. And so I end up living on these fees. You know, I'll end up in these fees I pay myself. I'm able to pay myself. they're not, you know, they're market fees. They're fair to my partners, fair. You you always want to put these fees and stuff in your partnership agreements.
You want to put what you're going to get paid. You always want to put that in your partnership agreement. So your partners know what you're getting paid. You want to have that upfront. You don't want that to be a surprise. You know, as you're putting, I've got partners for like over 20 years, financial partners, and they just, trust me. It's whatever you want to do, do it. You know, and because they're used to me, you know, taking care of them. And that's really important as you take care of, you know, your
your people that invest with you like that. gotta take, I would, if I had to, would sell everything I had to make sure my people are whole and my banks are paid if I had to. And I'd just start over again. I haven't had to, but thankfully, but I've sold things along the way when I really didn't want to sell them, you know, to be able to keep on going.
Kevin K (29:31.323)
So, I mean, I think it sounds like then, if this is a fair way to say it, that if you're doing this sort of thing, first of all, it's probably, especially for a lot of people, it's better to think of it as like a side hustle, at least initially. But more importantly, it's it's great to be able to have one of those people in the flywheel that you would normally pay a fee to.
it would be great to be able to replace yourself with at least one of those. So whether that's brokerage, property management, design, engineering, anybody that you might normally be cutting a check to, if you have an expertise in one of those areas and you can claim that fee, then that is a way to keep getting yourself paid.
Monte Anderson (30:13.302)
Yes.
Monte Anderson (30:18.538)
Yeah, yeah, think about this. Think about this in your farm up there and your Kansas City farm up there. You're working on this project right now. You're having to put your fees back in, but you're also working on a project for another guy, John Doe and Jane Doe down the street. You're doing the same things. You're still improving the neighborhood. So it's really, I don't look at it as a side hustle. You're doing architecture for yourself and you're doing it for Jane and John and these other people.
Kevin K (30:39.91)
Okay.
Monte Anderson (30:45.42)
And then every third or fourth or fifth deal is your deal. And every third or fourth or fifth deal, it's your deal. And then the more you get going over time, every other deal is your deal. And then every two deals is yours and one is somebody else's. And every three deals is yours and then one is somebody else's. So over time, it becomes, but I think it's good as a small scale developer to have.
the term used, side hustle, is true to be able to start right now. Because right now you can adopt a place, start doing your architecture in that place, stop building, know, start working on hospitals all over the country, just work in your own farm, and do small jobs, do storefronts, come and help people do their lettering on their windows if you're an architect. You know, help them just fix things up.
You you make enough money to make a living and at the same time, now you're working on your townhomes. You know, you're working on your townhomes and now you find another project and I'm always looking for an opportunity. Because if I can find an and what is an opportunity? An opportunity is where something is below the market. Like the shopping center I bought, 90 ,000 square feet, 60 % occupied, the rates were like six or $7 a foot per year. You know.
When I get through, it's 90 ,000 square feet. The rates are 22, $24 a square foot. So I bought it. It was way below the market, but the market site is a $6 building. The market didn't see it as a $24 building because it had the cheap kitchens. Like you say, in the townhouse, had, so we put good kitchen, you know, we did better and we had to do, we had to spend more, but it was, we were able to make a lot more money.
And in the long run, it will be. I can tell you this on all of my projects, all of them, just a hundred percent. If I keep it long enough, I will get all my fees and a really good return because what I'm doing is improving a farm. I'm improving a community together. And as they say, it's the tide rises, so to all chefs. So every time I'm improving something in that farm, the one I've got is going up in value.
Monte Anderson (33:10.412)
And over time that'll go up. If we look at it at three or four years, that's where the problem is on the YouTube video that we talked about is looking at stuff that could get rich quick scheme is, don't know. There's guys who flip houses and do things. Gals that flip houses and do things that probably they get rich. They get somewhat rich, you know, I guess. And some of them get rich, I guess. And you know, you can do that.
Kevin K (33:22.523)
Yeah.
Monte Anderson (33:38.552)
That's just never been my goal in doing real estate. My goal has been one of a townmaker, you know, of making our lives better. And I know you have the same goal in mind. So do most of our friends have that goal. We want to make the built environment better. Money's important, but it's not always the only important thing.
Kevin K (34:02.363)
Yeah, I think it's, kind of took the words right out of my mouth. That's like, you're not, you're not describing a, get rich quick scheme at all. But you're describing something that has a different kind of reward that somebody had. Obviously your, your goal is still to make money and make good money if you, know, if you're smart about it, but you're not going to be rolling up in a brand new Maserati in two years or something like that. It's because your goal is really to improve.
Monte Anderson (34:08.93)
Yeah.
Monte Anderson (34:28.098)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin K (34:31.525)
your place and lift your own community up and do really good stuff along the way.
Monte Anderson (34:39.084)
Yeah. And, and like you said, make making money. always tell people wherever I go these days, making money is the most important thing. Doing good is equal, but I didn't say doing good is the most important thing first. And then make it my, you know, I said, making money, said most of them, because without making money, you can't continue. You're going to be stuck. You know, if you build those townhomes.
all your money's gone and all your credit's tied up and you weren't able to sell them or you weren't able to get the rents, then everything you got's tied up. And I can't tell you how many friends I've got all over the country right now that are one time, developer and out. They're one deal and out, you know? And so when I get stuck on a project and I do, I'm on one of those right now, it's just big and it's bulky, you know, and it's hard.
So I've got to continue to do these littler projects around that keep me. That's what keeps me making, know, my own salary, you know, making, you know, got to, we, had a meeting with my staff this morning and said, okay, what are we going to sell right now? What's, what's on the board that we can sell? You know, what can we do? That's when we make our fees, you know, brokerage fees and development fees when we sell these properties. And then we can do another one. We'll fix them up. And hopefully we get to.
sell them to somebody good, you know, that hadn't been the case always with me. I sold some stuff to some people I didn't, I wished I wouldn't have, but sometimes I have no choice. You know, sometimes I have no choice. have to do, but the difference too, in what you and I are talking about today, you're in the middle of it yourself right now. And I am in it all the time constantly is that we're in the middle of this, you know, of
very difficult, you know, complex, you know, maybe more complex than somebody doing a big, you know, $100 million building over here. Because a $100 million building, you've got lawyers and lobbyists and architects and planners and engineers and contractors, and you've probably got a big bid and you're going to build it all at once and it's going to be over and it's financed by the Ohio State Teacher Pension Fund.
Monte Anderson (36:57.602)
know, has financed it and it's probably easier because the developer didn't have to be the developers more of a financial architect, more of a financial wizard, you know, if you will, whereas a small scale developer like us, you know, we're the, you know, we're everything. Yeah, we're quite often we're the contractor, you know, handling leases, we're going to raise the money, we went to the bank to sign the note, you know, if the plumbing's broke, you know,
Quite often I might be the one that's called depending on when it is, if it's in the middle of the night or something like that. We're very close and these are personal. We know the names of our tenants or our buyers. kind of, know our people. That's the big difference. And so you gotta be, you gotta really be, I think more knowledgeable sometimes about building, about developing and building. And I would think that this is the way people were a hundred years ago. I would think.
100 years ago when there was no financing, or maybe a little longer, but 100 years ago when there was no financing and you're building these projects in towns with all cash or borrowed money from the attorney in town who had a little money, or that's quite often who's building those things back in those days. Quite often it was bankers and attorneys back then, bankers built.
We're developers. can't do that these days because of the laws, but quite often bankers and things were developers. And you were raising all cash and you're doing it. That's why all of the buildings are small, a lot smaller back in C. And they were built incrementally. When we talked about incremental development, we didn't invent incremental development. That's the way the beginning of time. Yes.
Kevin K (38:48.143)
Yeah. Yeah. That's the way all development was until really fairly recently. I'm curious about if you could talk about some of the ways things go wrong. So you mentioned you have some friends who are like one project and out. What's going on? How does something like this really go wrong for somebody where, or are there a couple of key mistakes to just really watch out for?
Monte Anderson (38:55.5)
Yeah, it was.
Monte Anderson (39:16.748)
Yeah, the biggest mistake is humility, not enough humility. I mean, really to have that open mind to really look at the reality and the facts, know, really have your ego checked and the reality of facts. You really need to look at those facts. Do not try to, you know, cherry coat it. not try to do that.
What happens in these cases is be a guy like you or me was starting out, you you put together a deal and you put all your money in, you put all your money in just to get the plans done and, you know, know, down payment on the property and engineering and, you know, bank fees and attorney's fees. And you put all your money up, you got your money. And then now you got a couple of partners and you've promised these partners. You've promised them certain things, you know, that are probably too good to be true.
Kind of like the guy on YouTube. Probably too good to be true. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And we've promised those. And we've promised those things and now it's not the right, we said it was. Or we want to upgrade the kitchens. Or I want to change the spaces. In fact, I have a meeting this afternoon at four o 'clock after this to talk to one of my partners about this exact.
Kevin K (40:21.903)
Yeah, if it sounds super easy, watch out.
Monte Anderson (40:44.318)
banking today and saying we need more, we need more money. And then you, then you, can't get much more money. You, you, you spend two or three years getting their project together. You used all your money, you used all your in -laws money to part of your investors. You got your credit tied up. You finally did get, say that in the best cases or in some of the best cases, you got it all built. It's built and you're not, you're for one thing, you're brain dead.
your brain dead, you're just deal dead. And secondly, you've got no more money. You got no more credit. You've got to go back to work wherever you are, doing whatever you can to make money. Because you still had your house and your wife and your kids. You still had to, and so that's actually best case in some scenarios, you didn't go broke. But in many cases where the deal maker, the promoter, the developer promises things.
They might even lose their interest because they can't, especially if it depends on how they promise the payback to the investors. You could actually lose your interest. call that, you there's a preferred return. A preferred return is when you would maybe guarantee an investor return. You would guarantee them maybe a 6 % preferred return, which means you're going to get 6 % from day one in the deal. And if you can't pay me back, that's 6 % plus a percentage of the profit.
then I take your interest. And that happens, that happens a lot. And that's not as bad as a bankruptcy or a foreclosure, but you ended up doing all this work and you end up with nothing. And so I never do preferred returns with anybody. I never do those, just don't do them. There's too many unknown things. There's just too many things that can happen. Preferred returns sometimes it's like having a bad credit card. You can't get the interest, you know, paid.
And it just keeps going every day while you're having delays or not getting the project done quick enough.
Kevin K (42:51.697)
So then for your, do you have a recommendation then for dealing with investors so that you don't have to do the preferred return? How would you structure, recommend structuring?
Monte Anderson (42:59.246)
Yeah, I do. I do. have a, what I call the whole pie. I'd say it's the promoter. And this is, I'm going to oversimplify this, promoter, the developer, you put up the money to pursue all the money to do the deal, the architecture, the due diligence, the earnest money, the legal money, and you sign the note. And then the investors, which you may be an investor in your own deal. If you put cash in your own deal, your investors get 50 % of the deal.
And they put up 100 % of the cash needed, the equity needed. And as the cashflow is there, they get their equity, they get their equity back first. No percentage return. They get their equity back first. And once their equity is all paid back, then you split 50 -50. So you're 50 % going in, you're 50%. But they get all their money back. And here's the thing about investors. Most of time, once they get their money back, they're very...
They're very flexible then once they get their principal back. And then in the meantime, you say, well, I got no fees. How am I going to make a living? Well, you make your living off the development fee, the leasing fees, the management fees. So you're making those fees back. then, then if you get the building leased up and this is what I'm doing here at where we speak right now, is I'll get this thing leased up and stabilized with no more construction going on. Then I can go out on the market and get a better loan.
So I can get a better loan. know, lenders during construction, you know, you've probably experienced this. You lenders are very nervous during construction.
Kevin K (44:35.218)
yeah, that's the riskiest time period.
Monte Anderson (44:38.252)
Yeah. And so they're in, this way, this way people get back, they get back to their percentage when they get it here, when it comes back, you're going to get it when it comes back. Now I got to treat them right. And I got to do my best to get their money back. And that taking me time to build relationships where I can, where I can get this done. And these are also community investors. And I would say, what is a community investor? It's a person that's, it's typically a baby boomer, generally speaking between.
It's worth between three million and $20 million net worth. That's gotta have 100, 200, 300 ,000, 1 ,000 they can put in one of your projects. Maybe there's three or four of them if you need a bigger amount. they're gonna be like around, it's somebody you can have coffee with and talk to. No, they're gonna be...
more empathetic with you, you know, if you're honest with them, you know, always be honest with them. Always telling the bad news and the truth. Always. Don't hold, don't hold back and surely don't hide it. Don't hide. Don't, don't do that. Don't do that. People are, people are, people are forgiving and better when, the truth, when you're, when you have a true, you know,
You have a true relationship that's not full of hidden things and it's just a, it's better. And it always comes out in the end. It always comes out better for you. And they know you're committed.
Kevin K (46:21.263)
Yeah, was gonna say eventually you might be able to hide something for a little bit, but it's gonna come out.
Monte Anderson (46:26.604)
Yeah. Yeah. You're not going to be able to be careful with your numbers. And I've done this. mean, I've, you know, I've been too optimistic on my numbers, you know, I mean, cause I wanted to do the project, you know, and, I have people around me that keep me balanced in that place. said my long time CFO here, he's an old banker back when he he's been with me forever, I always give him proformas and stuff. do. said, look,
Kevin K (46:46.16)
Ha
Monte Anderson (46:56.27)
shoot holes in this, really, just really take my stuff apart. Really look at it, critique it, challenge it. Tell me I can't lease that space for this much, or I can't resell it, or I can't know why I can build a restaurant for $100 a square foot. It's gotta be 150, no matter how you look. Tell me those things. Tell me I can't manage this thing for $5 a square foot. It's gotta be, critique me.
Yeah. Keep me balanced.
Kevin K (47:27.867)
So yeah, I think that's great advice. Always have somebody that you have a relationship enough with that you can ask them to poke holes in what you're doing. So I mean, we've talked about some of the downside, there's also, mean, the reality is we're interested in this and a lot of people are interested in this because there's a ton of enjoyment that comes out of it as well. Some financial, but a lot of it non -financial. I think one of the things just
Monte Anderson (47:37.88)
Yeah.
Kevin K (47:57.243)
For me personally, I'll never be able to shake loose the architect inside me and I just love seeing buildings going up. the incredible reward you have to know that you worked on something and you can see it manifested physically is pretty awesome. So there's all those things and it kind of like we were talking a little bit about earlier, I think one of the things that I remind myself of.
Monte Anderson (48:16.92)
Yeah.
Kevin K (48:26.845)
frequently is that sometimes you just have to make a decision to just go and to just do it. And you can definitely get paralysis analysis here in this always hoping for the perfect timing and the perfect deal. But there's never really any such thing. at some point, you want to do your homework and everything. there comes a point where you just got to pull the trigger and try it and do something, right?
Monte Anderson (48:33.186)
Yeah.
Monte Anderson (48:54.402)
Yeah, yeah, I'm very instinct guided by instinct. I mean, I'm very guided by instinct. Now, mean, you've seen me before work on numbers and stuff, you know, I'm constantly running numbers. When I see projects, I can see it with numbers. I see the numbers and the spaces and the sizes and what the rents should be and.
operations that cost and stuff like that. yeah, at some point, there's no way you're going to be able to prove it and you just got to go for it. You just got to. And to your right to see a project go from like you've seen, you know, go out of the ground to see it come up. mean, to watch the framing and, know, from the plumbing, watching the plumbing stick up and the framing. mean, there's, there's something so great about that, especially when you're doing a project that's worthy, you know, worthy project. It's something.
I mean, we were meant to be builders, think, as humans, especially. I mean, we were meant to build and to do good things upon the earth. Hopefully we could do better things than we've done upon the earth, than some of the things we've done, but we were meant to be builders. And there's nothing like it to see.
project. have photos all around my office of projects and things that and it's just so good to see all of that and to also have made a decent living and built some wealth you know and today I have my daughter and my granddaughter both work with me and to have that that legacy or that start of something is
It's like there's no way any amount of money could make me feel as good as looking at some of these projects and just seeing businesses thrive and people have decent places to live. There's something so special about that. Otherwise, I'd just be a broker today, just brokering deals and wouldn't care. I think there's something in us that wants us to be townmakers.
Kevin K (51:00.581)
Mm
Monte Anderson (51:00.704)
It wants us to make our towns better. And maybe it's you're not the developer. Maybe you're just one of the champions, the community champions, or you're just an activist in the community that supports this. It's nice to have people like that. Those are very important people to me. People that cheer me on and don't just criticize me. They're very important, you know, to me. They're just as important as anybody, you know, but that, but there's something so good about that. And then, then you will, if you can, if you can.
If you can commit, here's why committing to your neighborhood or your farm or your place for the rest of your life is so important. Because once you commit to that place like that, you commit. The universe changes around you. It makes things easier. Well, I don't know about easier. It makes things doable. It gives you resources. It gives you things that you wouldn't have had when you make that.
when you don't have that commitment. gives people come to you and they want to sell you a property cheaper or they want to, you know, people will invest with you. People will do things with you when they know that you're a true, you're champion like that. And then you will make money. And I think people and my partners and stuff, they want me to make money. They allow me to make money on these projects. They want me to make money. You know, I have to make them money too, but, and to...
see all the small businesses that I deal with and the people that I've seen in housing that may not have had housing and subcontractors and welders and carpenters and know painters and people that around me help them build their businesses and stuff I'm involved in all of that there's I mean I can't imagine doing anything better I don't know what it would be maybe I could be a missionary or something do better work or something but I don't know this is good stuff well this is just good
Kevin K (52:49.563)
Yeah. Well, you're a missionary of sorts. You're a certain.
Monte Anderson (52:57.312)
It's good stuff, it's good, you and it helps you help people. You help build a better, you hope you do. Not everything I've done is always the best for sure, because I've made a lot of mistakes, but that would be the hope that you are able to leave something decent. By the way, my other granddaughter just graduated from Stephen F. Austin in Texas to be an architect.
Kevin K (53:24.729)
wow. All right.
Monte Anderson (53:25.644)
So that was really cool. she's, you know, I got kids, so there's family trees, you know, starting to be architects and developers and stuff. it's a good.
Kevin K (53:36.625)
I feel like we're starting to brainwash our kids in that regard too. We've got them, you know, all those like HGTV type shows. We got them watching those and they're really enjoying them. And it's fun to watch with them. The latest one that we found, which I guess is not a new show, I guess it's like seven years old, but there was a show called You Can't Turn That Into a House. And it was actually three guys from Kansas City who
Monte Anderson (53:40.994)
Alright.
Monte Anderson (53:46.396)
yeah.
Monte Anderson (54:01.6)
Yes.
Kevin K (54:05.821)
made the show and they take these things like, you know, they'll take a couple of school buses or a grain silo or a horse trailer or whatever, and turn it into like a little house. and it's just like the coolest thing. And they do it on these ridiculous schedules and ridiculous budgets, but that act of creativity is so just, you know, incredible. And I remember actually, I think the first one we saw that it was like this, this stuff kind of reminds me of Monty because.
Monte Anderson (54:20.78)
Yeah.
Kevin K (54:34.489)
you have done some really cool, creative, unique stuff with your projects that are way outside the box on what people would normally look at, especially for your retail stuff.
Monte Anderson (54:44.15)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We use a lot of trailers and stuff like that. love buses and trailers and things. Yeah. Kind of cool. Yeah.
Kevin K (54:49.435)
Yeah.
Kevin K (54:52.977)
So it's fun work and I agree it's fun to share it with others and everything else.
Monte Anderson (55:00.111)
Yeah. We do need to make more money as small middle class developers and stuff. We do need to make more money. So we need to continue to teach each other and help each other. That's another thing about the friends that you and I have. I think we all pay it forward. We're all always trying to help each other, I think. And that's a good thing.
Kevin K (55:21.477)
Yeah. Well, Monty, where can people find you next? Or you mentioned earlier some places you're going to be roaming around to. Where else are you working these days?
Monte Anderson (55:34.934)
Let's see, South Bend, Indiana, Elkhart, Indiana, Denton, Texas, Regina, Canada, Dubuque, let's see, Lafayette, Louisiana, getting ready to start in Orlando, Florida. Of course, Bernice Riedel is working in Buffalo and Jim Cooman in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And then we've done a little bit of work or still doing work in Kansas City or in Grandview.
Missouri with an abandoned golf course down there that you remember. We're still working on that. They got their financing and bought that, the people that were helping. And then you can always reach us at neighborhoodevolution .com and optionsre .com. And we're always here. We do, we only do development, you know, in my farm, in my local area of Southern Dallas County. Southern Dallas County is where I work. And then we...
Kevin K (56:11.867)
Good. Good.
Monte Anderson (56:32.022)
Then we coach and teach and train, help cities create ecosystems all over the country through neighborhood evolution.
Kevin K (56:44.571)
Well, we just ran into Bernice recently. was here in Kansas City giving a keynote speech for a Missouri Main Streets Conference. So that was kind of cool to see. terrific. All right. We'll say hello.
Monte Anderson (56:51.916)
Yeah, and she's right outside my door right now here in Texas. She's riding with me to Lafayette tomorrow. yeah, we're meeting Marcus. Marcus King in Detroit will meet us in Lafayette. So Marcus is coming.
Kevin K (56:59.451)
Good, good. All right, Monty.
cool, good, good. All right, well I'm jealous. Sounds like a fun crew. So. All right, Monty, thanks so much. This was great, very informative and I'm sure we will do it again.
Monte Anderson (57:09.218)
Yeah.
Monte Anderson (57:17.762)
Yeah, thank you, Kevin. See you soon. Bye.
Kevin K (57:19.205)
All right, take care.

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Cities and Parents: Let's Get Real About What Matters
27 ago 2024· The Messy City Podcast
Truth is, I wish we talked a lot more about making cities as kid-friendly as possible. The topic is often overlooked. That’s why it was fascinating to see Derek Thompson’s article, “The Urban Family Exodus Is a Warning For Progressives” get so much traction. He clearly touched a nerve.
Today, I give my take in this solo podcast. As a father, as someone that loves cities, and someone that is in fact deeply concerned about the trendlines, I share my observations. This one gets a little personal. Ground I cover includes:
1. How parents really feel about their kids
2. What life in American cities is really like
3. How things are different now from the historic norm in the US
4. What parents really prioritize, not what we wish them to prioritize
5. What cities can do
6. How cities *could* be amazing
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”
Episode Transcript:
Kevin K (00:01.824)
Welcome back to the Messy City podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg flying solo today, doing an episode in a way that I've done occasionally in the past, but I haven't done a little while. I've had some amazing guests. I've got some more coming up and I love talking to people other than myself primarily in this gig, but it is fun once in a while to just riff on something that's in the news or on my mind.
And that's what I'm going to do today. I do want to take a second and say thank you to all of you who are listening and following. The podcast has really grown a lot in audience the last six months. And I really appreciate everybody tuning in. And if you get a chance, please hit that like or follow button. Leave me a review on your podcast platform, especially if you're on Apple. Apple is the biggest podcast platform by far.
So if you're listening through Apple podcasts, I'd really appreciate it if you gave the show a rating. All of that stuff helps get attraction and grow the audience. And the bigger the audience, the better I will be able to be at providing you all with really good programming and interesting guests and the ability to try to help us all out as we navigate how to improve our cities, how to improve our own situation.
if you're a, a small developer or an aspiring small developer, try to become one. if you are someone who's just interested in cities and planning to do whatever you can do to make your community a better place to live and, and, help us, help us all out in our own little world. So that's the point. That's what I'm trying to do here. And, I hope you enjoy it judging by the numbers. A lot of you are enjoying it. So that's really cool. And, it's,
It's definitely a lot of fun for me. So with that, I want to talk about an article that's made the rounds a lot lately and a topic that I've seen discussed in social media and elsewhere. And it really has to do with the subject of families and big cities. And a lot of this most, the most recent flurry of discussion happened at
Kevin K (02:25.002)
as the result of an article in the Atlantic by Derek Thompson titled, The Urban Family Exodus is a Warning for Progressives. And I'm going to commit a cardinal sin here today where I'm going to talk about this topic without having read the actual article. So forgive me for that, but I will say I have read many, many articles on this topic.
And what I really want to talk about today is just kind of my own experience as a father, as a parent, and my own interaction and evolution on this issue. Because I think there's an awful lot in the context of this subject that we just don't talk very much about. Especially those of us who are in this tiny, tiny niche of
people who call themselves urbanists, who care about cities, who care about development in cities. There's an awful lot tied into this issue that overlaps with others that we've talked about here before, but I think there's some that's really specific about having kids that I'd just like to dive into. So the context really in Derek's article, I did see some of the numbers. I don't have them in front of me. You can find them.
out there, it's not hard to find. But the context was that people with children are continuing to move out of big cities. That this trend really started in the early COVID years, 2020, 2021, and has not really abated. so the article really was kind of a warning, especially to people in some of the larger
cities in the country, the places like New York, San Francisco, Chicago, et cetera, that people who have a choice, who have kids have continued to leave. And so that is why he says it's a warning. I guess I would say right off, right up front, I think this should be a concern for everybody. I don't think it should be a concern just for somebody who calls themselves a progressive. I've always had the opinion that
Kevin K (04:42.818)
Communities and cities are for everybody in every age group, every kind of background, every interest. The best kind of communities really embrace everybody. And it's a little strange to me when we say that, when we just kind of dial it down to like a political impulse. I understand why he's doing that. the reality is that most big cities are run by progressives.
And so I think he's talking to progressive policymakers. But I think this issue really should concern everybody because honestly, when you don't have children living in your city, you have to ask yourself, like, what future does your city have? This is often talked about in relation to like places that are like retirement communities. And a lot of retirement communities also go through phases and fads.
And if they don't evolve, since they're not replacing people themselves, there are no children in retirement communities. And so people aren't growing up there. What happens as people die off and those populations change? Well, the same is true of cities. If children are not growing up in cities and having, or if they're not growing up in your community and having a good feeling about it, it lowers the likelihood that they will want to be there as an adult.
And if you're not going to be there as an adult, it's going to hurt your future population as well. everything in cities is a function of time. And there is that fourth dimension that we often neglect, that things change a lot over time. And we don't think about what might happen 10, 20, 30 years down the road. But if your community doesn't have children in it, that's a big red flashing warning sign.
for what happens in the next generation. So I think this is an issue that should concern everybody. And again, I'd say right up front, I am terribly, terribly biased on this because I do have children. I have two young children, two daughters that are six and eight years old. And so I want to share, I think what might be useful for me, first of all, is to share a little bit of a personal perspective on having kids.
Kevin K (07:09.09)
And then I have some thoughts related to what's going on in terms of evaluating and understanding cities and the landscape of cities in the United States. And then also what we might do, what cities might be able to do to course correct. What can they do to turn this around so that cities can be attractive to people who do have kids and reverse that population loss. So let's just start off with the personal.
not a young person anymore. I certainly don't feel old, but I can't deny the math, but I'm not somebody who's in my 20s or 30s. And I have kids, but I came to having kids pretty late in life compared to most people. So my oldest was born when I was 45 and then my youngest when I was 47. So I'm not in...
What is it? Al Pacino world here? Is it Al Pacino that like that recently had a kid or something and he's about eight years old? I'm not in that world, but I am definitely in the category of people who had kids late in their adult life. And so I lived a long period of time without children in cities and now I'm living with children in a city environment.
and I think the thing, you know, the thing, the way I would like to talk about this first and foremost, there's so much about this that changes. You know, there's a lot of cliches about the things that change. And when you have kids and I knew all those cliches, I heard them a million times. It's really hard to fully understand that until you go through it. And, having children completely rewires your brain.
and your priorities in a lot of ways that have really surprised me as a person. And I have often found myself just like shocked at things that are different about me now that I am caring for and responsible for these two young people. Just, you know, one silly thing is just like...
Kevin K (09:29.184)
you know, my wife and I have talked about this, like anytime there is like a movie or a show on TV and there are children that are like at risk, they're abducted, they're being hurt or harmed in some way. It's like, you know, I just lose it now. And it, the emotion that that creates in me and us is, it's hard to describe. It really,
It affects me in ways that are, they seem kind of silly, but I understand and I empathize much more with the families and people in those situations than I ever would have otherwise. And so it's really kind of bizarre, but it's like an incredible way to just like make me all of a sudden choke up, you know, watching a movie, having some harm come to a small child. But I mean, the reality is,
I will tell you from my experience, you do become much more emotional when you have kids. At least in my experience, I have found a protective impulse, the desire to protect them from harm and from the world that I just wasn't sure that I had that. When I was younger, I didn't know about that, but when once you have those children in your care,
It's incredible how protective you are of just every aspect of their life. so I get why we don't want to become helicopter parents. We are not like that. But I get why people have that reaction. I get the instinct that a lot of parents have to really deeply care for every aspect of what happens in their child's life. And I would say,
If you don't have that kind of reaction, if having kids doesn't change you in some meaningful way, then you should probably take a long look in the mirror. I mean, you might be a sociopath, I'm just saying. And it should change you. because it's an incredible thing to have to care for another human being. It's an incredible joy. And there's definitely the part of me that says, God, I wish
Kevin K (11:54.036)
I had done this when I was younger and even had more kids than just the two of them because they really bring you incredible joy into your life. I would say that probably the highest highs and lowest lows come from being a parent. The moments you have them with them that are really great or fun or memorable from a good standpoint, stand out above and beyond anything else that
you I did for myself in the years before I have kids. So it really is very different and it does tend to make you think that the life you led before kids was very like self -centered and maybe selfish. And I'm not saying that as like an accusation to anybody because, I lived it. I lived it myself for a very long period of time, but it is just really different. So
having kids that you care for really does change your priorities in ways that you probably can't communicate perfectly in an article, especially if you're like a childless person and you're just trying to describe like statistics that are happening and analyze what's going on. If you can't understand the emotion of it, then you're really missing something really important. So one aspect of that
is that with small children especially, you spend an awful lot of your time and mental energy trying to come up with activities for them and trying to entertain them, trying to do these things in ways that you're not worried about their safety. mean, you're literally worried about them surviving every moment.
And so we spend a lot of time like trying to chase down those different activities. And for a lot of small kids in particular, in American cities, a lot of those places are in the suburbs. And I'll talk more about that in a little bit and the evolution of all that. But that is part of the day to day that most parents deal with is, you know, maybe you're going to a kid's play area or a play date.
Kevin K (14:21.192)
or a daycare or a swimming pool or aquatic center or whatever it is. And in American cities, most of those are in suburban locations because that's where most of the kids are. so there is this kind of challenge that you have as somebody who lives in an urban area that there isn't as much just kid -focused amenities as you would have in a lot of suburban areas.
So it's true that if you live in the suburbs, you're still driving a lot to all these places, but it is closer and there's just a lot more of it. And so, you know, as a parent, we do find ourselves getting in the car a lot and driving out to suburban locations for any number of activities. And frankly, the family oriented events and activities, there's just so much more of them that are in businesses and other things in the suburbs.
And it's just, one of the things that I think you can't really describe very well is going to, when you have small children, going to a place where you can kind of just let the kids free and roam around and play with other kids and not worry that they're going to be harmed. there's a, there is like a stress reduction on your own life that happens there. And so you're kind of always looking for those opportunities and there's just not much of that in a lot of urban areas or.
urban locations. Now I think cities have gotten better for families in my lifetime. And there are more things. So like in my city, there's something we call Science City, which is basically just like a kids play area that is in the Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, that's in the city. It's a really cool place. The kids love going there. That's an example of like a very family and kid focused activity.
And there are some people working on creating more activities nearby and adjacent to it that I think will be really cool. We obviously have parks, we have playgrounds, we have a fantastic park that is a block away from our house that the kids walk down to and it's got a playground and everything. So we've used that a lot. We've got some of those types of things. And we have a neighborhood main street that is just up the block from our house.
Kevin K (16:45.054)
And if we walk a few blocks in one direction, you know, we can hit the ice cream place and there's a taco place and there's, there's, there's some places that are, that are fun to hang out. Now, I will say in our area, most of there are some, most of those businesses are not what we would call like kid friendly places. and maybe that's a, that might be an especially American way of looking at businesses. but they aren't.
And they're generally focused on the demographic of people who live in the cities, which tends to be younger and just certain crowds of people that are not dragging their kids around. we have some of those things. It is better. But we also lack a lot. We don't have a swimming pool, for example, in our neighborhood or anywhere near us.
By contrast, both of my sisters live in suburban subdivisions in our metro that both have neighborhood pools. And they can just walk over any time when they visit their aunts and uncles and they can just go swimming all day. Granted, they pay for that. It's part of your HOA dues if you live in one of those subdivisions. But we don't even have that option in our area at all.
in our part of the city. Now, some cities are better than others. Our city is not particularly good at having those kinds of amenities. And that's really something that is very lacking, not to mention some of those kid play areas. And there's just also very little programming of events that are specifically for kids and families in the city.
Parks department is doing a little bit more of that than they used to, but, it's great. We love, we do as much of that as we can. But when you compare it to the sort of routine events that happen in a lot of our suburban jurisdictions, it just doesn't compare. and, and it's frustrating. It's frustrating for us because we wish we had a lot more of that. Cause we don't want to get in the car and drive for 20 or 30 minutes to another location. But we often find that.
Kevin K (19:07.116)
that's just kind of what we have to do. So that, I mean, that's one aspect of all this is, you know, when you are in middle -class family and you are trying to balance, you know, a lot of these needs and really care for your kids and provide them with fun things to do and go to places where you can kind of relax too, it's really important to have those things nearby. So, you know, another aspect of this
I think if you're to step back a little bit, and that's all kind of like personal experience. If I were to look at like, are the things that most normal families really care about when it comes to choosing a place to live? And I've mentioned this before, but one thing that I think almost anybody listening to this podcast would have to understand is that like,
Those of us who are in our little world here are not normal. If you are a quote unquote urbanist, you are probably not normal. You probably do not have like the same value system as the vast majority of people in your city or in our country. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just, it just is. It's just different. A lot of us put a high priority in our own life.
in living somewhere where you can walk around to some things or ride a bike to some things. And I love all that. I put a high priority in that. I wish more people did. I wish that was normative in our culture that like the idea of using your body to get around to most things in your daily life was like normal. It used to be normal in our cities. And if I were to say a little sidebar here,
one of the things that's really kind of unique about American cities and culture is that we conflate urban with big city. and by urban, mean like places where you might like walk around to things. so this is, this is different than most countries in the world where, where people small town, whether you're in a small town or a big city, most people walk around, to get around.
Kevin K (21:36.69)
And it's different from our historical legacy as well in the United States, because prior to the 1920s and the beginning of the suburban experiment or the revolution in city planning that happened at that time period, every community in our country was a walkable place. Everything that a lot of quote unquote urbanists would love was normative.
And if you don't believe me, just look at pictures and postcards from literally any community in America prior to the 1930s. And you see that they are all what we would call urban today in terms of how people actually lived. So that was our legacy and that was how our country developed for a couple of hundred years.
until we embarked on this experiment to basically destroy it all and destroy it all kind of on purpose with big money and big policy and for many decades of intentional destruction. And so we're left with this situation now where people tend to conflate like, if you mean walkable and urban, well, that's only in like the big city. And that's just not true.
that's never really been true historically. But on the ground today, that is how a lot of it feels, that you have big cities that are kind of walkable and maybe people take public transit, maybe people ride bikes. And then you have suburbs where people drive cars. And very simplistically, that's how a lot of people look at the world. And I've always been frustrated by that.
And it certainly doesn't have to be that way. But that is how a lot of people look at it. one substacker who I've talked about before here, Addison Delmastro, he does a really good job of writing about this. He kind of talks about this topic frequently on his substack, which I think is called the deleted scenes. Just the notion that small towns, as we think of them today, really are just big cities that haven't matured or
Kevin K (24:03.778)
didn't mature or grow into being bigger places, but they all have the same DNA. The little town where I went to high school, Marshall, Missouri, has this lovely courthouse square and beautiful older neighborhoods from before the 1930s. And it has the exact same DNA as like the neighborhood that I live in now. It's just that Kansas City, Missouri grew to become a big city.
Marshall, Missouri did not grow to become a big city. It kind of stagnated at a certain population and it's been more or less the same population for about a hundred years. So big cities grew and changed and a of small towns did not. And then we also had the growth of suburbia, which was a completely new way of living that was in many ways organized around needing a car to get to places. So.
So anyway, I guess that's a bit of a sidebar. It's kind of thinking about how cities are in America today. But historically, they weren't that way. So anyway, setting that aside, for most normal people in our country today, they look at the landscape and don't really think about these issues. It's just like, it is what it is. You live in America, you have a house, you have a car, you drive to places. And that is baked in to the cake.
that like that's part of the lifestyle. And so as a result, a lot of people, especially families with kids, they're not really like thinking about like urbanism or walkability as a thing necessarily for their children or for their family location. Some people do. I think there's more people that think about it now than used to. There's probably more people who think about it from the standpoint of like, it'd be cool to have like bike trails nearby.
because a lot of suburbs have done a great job of building like bike trail networks. But not many people are thinking about, you know, I want to live in a place where they have like a neighborhood main street that we can walk to with the kids. Again, I wish they would, but it's just not in the minds of most people. What is in the minds of most people, especially people who have a choice in where they want to live, not everybody has a choice, not everybody can afford to move. But for people...
Kevin K (26:29.996)
For middle class people especially who have a choice, and if you have kids, this is the reality. You're thinking about crime and safety first and foremost because you're trying to protect your children from harm. That is first and foremost in the minds of nearly every parent that I know. How do I protect them from harm? And yes, that can include, you know, there are,
can include walking and biking as a part of that, but what most people are thinking about is, I want to live somewhere where our house isn't likely to get broken into, where our car isn't likely to get stolen or carjacked, where it's less likely to run into violent crime, especially in public. Because violent crime is a reality in our society. We have a lot of it. My city is a particularly violent city.
unfortunately, and we can't ignore how prominent that is in the minds of most people who have a choice. So I always put that up there, like that's number one. If people aren't thinking about that or factoring that into, you know, why people might be leaving cities, then they're completely missing the boat. The second thing that people think about really are the quality of the schools when you're thinking about your kids. And
sure that's a loaded topic. We all know the history of public schools is fraught with a lot of different issues. But there's just simply no question that every parent is trying to get their kids into the best possible school that they can, the best one that they can afford. And by afford meaning whether it's a private school that they want to pay for or it's a public school in the place with the house that they can most afford with the best public school.
so that is a major consideration and, you know, frankly, most big cities fail in this area. Most of our big cities in the country, including my own have public school districts that are often at the bottom of the list in terms of rankings for schools in their Metro areas. you can argue with me whether you want, if you want to, about whether that's fair or not fair. It doesn't matter. All people know is.
Kevin K (28:56.65)
school, those schools bad, other schools better. And people are going to act on whatever they think is best for their kids. Because you're a really weird person, I think, if you want to experiment with your children by sending them to a school that is potentially subpar. So again, there are a lot of factors involved with why schools are better or not.
You know, in our city, we happen to have a unique network of charter schools that was started 20, 25 years ago. And so charter schools are public schools, but they each operate as their own independent school district, essentially. And our kids go to a charter school in the city that is an excellent school with some of the best academic ratings in the state of Missouri.
really great school. a foreign, it's a unique foreign language immersion school and we really like it. We're very, happy with it and we have many friends who have had their kids there and have their kids there and so it's kind of a unique situation. That was an incredible enticement. I will tell you before we had charter schools in the city as a choice, people as soon as they had it, as soon as their kids hit like elementary school age, they were out of here.
they were moving to the suburbs. And now that we have a whole selection of charter schools as an option where people don't have to pay, we have many, many more families that are choosing to stay in the city and keeping their kids in those schools. So that's an encouraging thing. That's generally been a good thing. But a lot of cities don't have that choice. A lot of parents don't have that choice.
When we lived in Savannah, Georgia, we didn't really have that choice. think there were two charter schools in the city of Savannah and they were both just unbelievably oversubscribed and very, very difficult to get into. And again, you have to ask yourself as a parent, you know, are you going to just like play a lottery game with your kid's future? And most parents are not. They're not going to if they have a choice. Again, many parents don't have a choice, but if you do have a choice,
Kevin K (31:20.694)
you're just not gonna play that game. And you'll make whatever sacrifice you need to for your kids, if it means moving, if it means moving to somewhere that's more expensive, whatever you have to do for your kids' future. So that's a big deal. The other aspect of schools, things we can't, the discussion we can't avoid, although I think a lot of people would love to avoid it, is that there is still a tremendous hangover from the COVID policies. And the schools that were closed,
the longest during COVID were almost all schools in major cities and especially schools in large school districts in inner cities. And there are many, many parents who have just not forgotten that and have not let go of it and will not let go of it. I think obviously there was plenty of evidence that
people left, a lot of people left those districts during the COVID era so they could be somewhere where their kids could be in school. And I would suspect that there is a hangover from that for a lot of people still looking to get out who are still very angry about what happened during that era, kept keeping their kids out of school for a year, some places, two years. And they want to be somewhere where they know that's not going to happen.
again or where they suspect that won't happen again. that's another aspect of the school situation that in the current era is a big deal. So again, top of the list when you have kids, crime and safety, and schools. I think the third thing after that is cost of living. And this is where the affordability discussion comes in.
You know, this has everything to do with housing affordability primarily, but it also has a little bit to do with taxes and overall cost of living. You know, I live in a city where our city has an income tax, a 1 % income tax. It's the only city in our metro area that has that. And so I get it when people don't want to be part of that.
Kevin K (33:41.068)
when they say to themselves, well, I can live somewhere else in this Metro and not pay an income tax. I can be in a better rated school district and I'm going to have lower crime. I mean, honestly, that's the logical choice. Who wouldn't? You really have to be a weirdo or like me to say we want to like live in the city when those are your basic choices. And it's funny that any of these things get framed otherwise.
Like that is the normal rational choice to make is to live somewhere that's less expensive where you get more for your money that is safer for you and your kids. So that's just the hard truth for how all these things work out that a lot of American big cities fail in those key areas compared to their suburbs. And then unfortunately what's happened over the years
is that the primary political constituencies have adjusted to all this to kind of reflect their populations. big cities tend to focus on policies that are the people who are left in those cities who like them, wealthy people, childless people, and oftentimes people who don't have a choice to move somewhere else. And then suburban cities tend to keep reinforcing and focusing on
like families and kids, oftentimes to the exclusion of attracting younger people and single people and childless people too. So they have that blind spot in a lot of suburban areas. And so there's that issue as well. I think in the minds of a lot of city and urban policymakers, what's really great for kids is just not top of mind. And so it kind of becomes like a self -licking ice cream cone.
in the policy world. And it's just an unfortunate side effect of where we are. So what can cities do? What can urban areas or major cities do about all this? Honestly, that's always a question. I've just never been the kind of person that I am satisfied with stating a problem and not trying to give.
Kevin K (36:03.458)
some concrete ideas on like what to do, what else could be done. And so I'll take a shot at a few things here. I mean, I think a lot of this is kind of going to logically follow from the other part of the conversation. But first and foremost, cities need to be serious, and I mean really, really serious about public safety and crime. And too many cities just are not. My city is not.
just flat out not serious about it right now. We have one of the worst murder rates and crime rates in the country. There is no sense of urgency on this issue from our leadership at all. There are people who care. There are people who are trying to do things. But there's no sense of urgency related to
How do we deal with this immediately and today? It's mostly like about like longer term solutions. And I'm, you know, long, I'm all for the longer term solutions. Those are great. But if you don't deal with things immediately, then you lose people. People just leave and they get fed up and they're going to move on. So if your city is in that category that it's not really serious about crime and safety, you're going to lose people and you're especially lose middle -class families with kids. That's just part of the reality.
Another thing that cities can do is try to find ways to support innovation in education. I'm going to write about this more at a future date here, but I've had long had some thoughts about ways that public school districts, especially really large ones, could be reformed. And I think there's a lot of reform needed in public school administration and education.
And if you are a logical person, you would start with the ones that are the most underperforming. And we are fortunate here in Kansas City, Missouri, that we have more choices than most with charter schools, with private schools, and a public school district. But our public school district needs to be better. There's just no other way to say it. It's got to be better. And we've got to find ways to just innovate much more quickly.
Kevin K (38:28.41)
and in more thoughtful ways than what we're doing right now in education. Or again, people will leave. It's just that simple. If the schools suck, people are going to move somewhere else. So the third area, not really all that surprising, but when we talk about cost of living is cities need to get really serious about trying to be affordable with, and to try to make their housing as affordable as possible.
I've stated this here before in this podcast, but as a refresher, I don't think that means like we need to build capital A affordable housing. That is just generally not as, that's not what I'm talking about. We're talking about housing for middle -class people generally that have kids. The path to affordability there is to do what a lot of cities have started to do, which is really reform their codes and processes.
to actually make it easier to produce new housing and produce it at scale. So whether you're talking about single family houses, townhouses, duplexes, missing middle housing, whatever it is, most cities have become really, really difficult to work in to produce new housing. And their suburban counterparts are quite easy to work in.
For somebody like me, I don't like the housing that is being produced in most of our suburbs. The standard suburban format, industrially spit out house in community. That doesn't appeal to me. But it sure would be nice if our city, if we could produce housing at the pace and ease at which it happens in a lot of suburban places. So that is something that we're seeing progress in.
We're starting to see reform in a lot of cities, but we've got a long, long ways to go to get that better. And obviously the last thing, I think this is a little more challenging, it's probably more from an entrepreneurial standpoint, but we really need more amenities for kids and families in urban places. Like if you really care about having and retaining kids and families in urban places, they've got to have those.
Kevin K (40:52.546)
amenities that families come to expect nowadays. You know, this isn't this isn't 1950 anymore where a lot of places just didn't have amenities. Now there's an expectation and if people don't have it, they're going to go where where those expectations are being met. So, you know, neighborhoods should have pools. They should have swimming pools. They should have play areas and playgrounds and park spaces.
It would be nice if there were more businesses that were more welcoming to families and kids and more like family focused businesses. So those can't be mandated. I'm not saying like those can be mandated from the top down, but it would be smart for people who care about those things to encourage them, try to create them. So I'll just like sum up here by saying that
I think the frustrating part here, and I think probably a lot of you may feel this way as well, is that a lot of our cities could be absolutely amazing for families and for kids. And they can be amazing in ways that our suburban communities cannot be and may never be able to be. By having the freedom of movement
on foot or bicycle and the free, ability to explore and be independent in a really well functioning place that was historically available for kids to be able to like actually walk to a neighborhood school or a neighborhood park or a pool. And there's just an awful lot of suburban communities that will never ever have that.
because of the built pattern that exists, which makes it virtually impossible without like radical change. The built, the physical DNA of a lot of cities is ideal for incorporating all that. But we have an awful lot of policy problems, administrative problems, and just intransigent thinking that is holding
Kevin K (43:19.57)
us back and holding our cities back. time marches on. If you are a parent and you live in a city and you haven't thought about like going somewhere else where a lot of that could be easier, then you're probably unique in that regard. I've thought about it. My wife and I have thought about it. We have had discussions about, know, we are city people. There's a lot we love about the city.
But might it just make more sense for us to live in one of the suburbs in the area? And there's a list of things we just really wouldn't have to think about or worry about very much. And we have never pulled the trigger on that. I don't know if we ever will. We really love our neighbors and our community. And we love the school that our kids are in, which really helps. That's a major.
major factor that would keep us in the city. But the other things are a real source of frustration. We absolutely worry about the crime and safety issues. They are real and extremely concerning for us. We do get frustrated with the cost of living. That is just, it's just more expensive to live in the city and we have fewer amenities.
I mean, that's just the reality. you know, is that the end of the world? No, it's not the end of the world. And we're in a pretty fortunate position compared to a lot of people. But my point is that I think that many, families, the majority of families think about things this way. They're not thinking about, boy, it would be cool if our kids could walk somewhere, you walk down the street to the neighborhood ice cream shop.
and live in sort of an urbanist paradise. You're not thinking about that. You're thinking about very basic things like the safety of your children, the education they're going to get, and how much things are costing you. And that's the part of the discussion that if we want to be honest and if we really want to make things better and fix things, we have to be aware of these and have real frank discussions about.
Kevin K (45:48.332)
That's what I have for you today. This is Kevin. Thanks again for listening to the Messy City Podcast. And please hit that like or follow button and leave me a review if you can. Send me a note. Let me know what you think. Leave a message on the Substack page. Thanks everybody. Talk to you later. Bye.

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Exploring the Mechanics of an Architect’s First Small Development
20 ago 2024· The Messy City Podcast
We travel to the beautiful Pacific Northwest this week to talk with architect Cary Westerbeck. Cary lives and works in Bothell, Washington, a northern suburb of Seattle. He traces his path from being a bicycle mechanic to architect, developer and even Planning Commission member.
One of the really cool things about this episode is hearing Cary take me step by step through his process to build the Fir Street Lofts. This size of project, 3 apartments and one retail space, is the kind of project that should be within reach of many aspiring developers. Cary talks about how he conceived it, designed it, financed it, and general contracted it as well. If I could construct a curriculum for architects, I’d have them all listen to this episode to learn how much more is possible than just being a hired gun for others.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”
Transcript:
Kevin K (00:01.132)
Welcome back to the Messy City Podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. This week we're off to the Pacific Northwest to talk with another small scale developer and urbanist kind of guy who's done some really cool work and who I haven't really had a chance to talk to a lot in person, but our paths cross all the time, including when this one drops, my most recent guest will have been Jim Hyde from the Small Scale Developer Forums and
And my guest today, Kerry Westerbeck, has been very involved in the Small Scale Developer Forum. there's kind of a fun alignment there that I'm looking forward to talking about. But anyway, Kerry, welcome to the podcast. It's great to see you.
Cary (00:43.968)
Thank you, Kevin. Nice to be invited. Great to be here.
Kevin K (00:46.786)
Well, again, it's a situation where we just know so many overlapping people. It makes it feel like the world is really small.
Cary (00:53.226)
Indeed.
It really does. There's so many connections, whether it's social media or blogs or podcasts. Like, hey, I know that person and they know that person and all these points begin to overlap. It's fun.
Kevin K (01:08.952)
Yeah, and I know there's more than like 20 people doing small scale development in the whole country, but for whatever reason that like circle we travel, and it of feels like there's like 20. So I don't know.
Cary (01:17.162)
Yeah.
Cary (01:20.884)
No, it's true. It's the same bunch of us kind of keep getting hit up. Maybe we're the ones who'll enjoy talking about it. Others are just doing it and being quiet. I don't know.
Kevin K (01:29.816)
Could be, could be. There's a whole lot of people who just, you know, proceed on in the background and do really cool stuff. So anyway, Carrie is in the Seattle Metro area and is doing some really neat stuff up there and has for a long time. And I wanted to talk obviously about some of the projects you've been doing, but you also have a really interesting background getting into this.
Cary (01:36.212)
That's right.
Kevin K (01:56.236)
that our mutual friend, John Anderson, kind of clued us into. And I wonder if you want to start by talking a little bit about like your own journey to being where you are now. I think we're probably around the same age, ballpark. so, yeah. And so, you know, by the time you hit our age, you've probably had two or three different lives, it feels like, or certainly professional lives. And there's lot of different paths that people take. So let's talk a bit about where you started out.
Cary (02:03.541)
Yeah.
Cary (02:09.865)
early 50s.
Cary (02:17.214)
Yes. Yes.
Cary (02:25.974)
Sure, no, I think that's a really good way putting it. I have a lot of friends who are five to 10 years older and some of them didn't know me when I was younger. I do joke, I've had many lives, I've lived many lives because I was a bicycle mechanic for much of the 90s before I finished my undergrad degree and then went later and got a master's in architecture and became an architect 20 years ago. So I...
30 something years ago, I spent six months in the Virgin Islands working as a cook when I was just casting about traveling. So these newer friends, yeah, was great. Yeah, on St. John, US Virgin Islands at Eco Resort. And so yeah, I've had these interesting paths and I worked for Seattle Public Utilities after my undergrad degree before I got my architecture degree. This is in the late 90s and decided
Kevin K (03:01.964)
That's cool. That must have been a... I think we could do a whole podcast probably just on that experience.
Cary (03:23.828)
At the time, my policy wasn't too thrilling to me, but I did some policy work for a while around Seattle Public Utilities work. I was a project manager for a watershed action plan. anyway, my route to where I'm at today, yeah, I was doing that. I've been actively involved in the outdoors here in the Northwest, biking and hiking and backpacking and stuff. But I've always been intrigued with architecture.
Even when I was younger, I thought I'd go be an architect when I was in high school. And then I kind of got into a little more carefree lifestyle in my late teens, early twenties, and really didn't apply myself very well when I was in community college and when my friends were off at the universities and stuff. So I had kind of a more circuitous route to getting married in my mid twenties and then deciding to finish my undergrad degree, doing that policy work, Seattle Public Utilities in the late nineties, and then deciding.
hey, I've got kind of got my life together more. I'm better at studying and applying myself. I'm going to go pursue that architecture degree. So I did do that at the University of Washington from 2001 to 2004. And that's how I got my start as an architect in 2004. I've always been in the Seattle area. I was born in Tacoma, just south of Seattle. And I grew up actually one town over from where I am today in Bothell, Washington. I grew up in Woodinville, Washington next door.
So I've stayed local, love the Northwest. So I became an architect and like many of us, became an intern at a good local firm in 2004. And we were just working as fast as we could as architects with that firm, which is still around today until many of us got, most of us got laid off one by one in 2008, 2009. And as we all who live through that, know that story, I think something like 40,
Kevin K (05:19.468)
Well, nope. Still have the scars.
Cary (05:21.782)
Yeah, you know, yeah, exactly. 40, 50 % of the architects, I think, in the country got laid off within a few months, something like something crazy like that. Yeah. So I'd only had five years experience at that point, but had done all kinds of work and been working a lot. So I had enough to then quickly get licensed within a year or so. And I was in the process of beginning my own firm because my wife's a librarian and a teacher. so
Kevin K (05:29.154)
Yeah, it was brutal.
Cary (05:51.03)
firms didn't have work in 2009 or so, but these teachers are still employed. And so a couple of them, we want to do an addition, we want to do a deck, whatever. I started a small firm kind of out of necessity to make a living. And that actually worked pretty well. So I was actually doing okay during the recession, starting a small firm and learning how to do contracts and all kinds of things.
But all along, we started owning houses. My wife and I bought our first house in 1997 prior to my becoming an architect. And my dad had always been kind of a frustrated engineer architect. we actually lived in a couple of architecturally significant houses growing up. So I was sort of steeped in design. so along with that, he was always remodeling our houses. So I kind of had this DIY spirit. And my brother was, at that time, a
professional contractor and general contractor. He's now a professional architectural photographer. Interestingly enough, he shoots my work. So immediately we would remodel each house we own. We had a few houses through the year before the projects we have now that we own now. And so I wasn't afraid to put on the tool belt and learn how to do things. So I say that because we were starting to look at getting into design build when I was at the firm I worked at, Johnston Architects.
And I actually built out the offices when we moved offices in 2007 or so. I was the lead on that and literally cutting the wood and building the desks and all kinds of things like that. Cause I had experienced doing that and brought remodeling houses. And about that time I learned about Jonathan Siegel down in San Diego. Most people know who he is these days and this line of work. And one of the guys in the office had gone to one of his in -person.
seminars where we taught people how to be architect as developer. I thought, hey, I've always been interested in design build and building my own projects, self -initiated work, but I didn't really understand. You could just decide you're going to be your own client. This is an electrifying idea.
Cary (07:58.932)
So it was planted. didn't do anything about it for a while, but I thought, okay, well, I'll keep remodeling my houses and doing work for clients. And got a lot of on the ground construction administration, construction observation work, doing projects, not only when I was working at Johnston for that five years, but then later on my own being very hands -on, both designing the projects and walking clients through those projects. So that gave me a pretty good feel for working side -by -side with general contractors. And I could be comfortable with that.
So I started getting this bug that I wanted to self -initiate projects and become the architect as developer, you know, idea person like Jonathan Siegel. And I was finding out about others at that time in New York and other places. And so I took the online course by, what was it, 2014 or so that Jonathan Siegel offered online. He decided it was too much work to do tours and keep speaking. So that...
Kevin K (08:55.17)
He was probably having too much fun in San Diego too.
Cary (08:58.3)
Exactly. know, by then he'd already had a lot of good projects under his belt. I think a lot of us saw his stuff winning awards and everything. So he would become pretty high profile. So that course was extremely empowering and convinced me that, I've got the skill set and he, you know, is very empowering in that way. You can go do this and you've got the skills and you've got the, you know, the intelligence and everything. And he was right. So that led to us.
Buying an existing triplex in the downtown core. I'm actually in that triplex right now. And with some extra land on it. And that was 2014. So we learned how to be, had tenants already, so we remodeled some of the units over time. learned how to be landlords.
We even sold our house nearby and moved into one of the units of our family of four, my wife, myself, our two daughters who were younger at the time. And we lived in the upper floor of that existing triplex that we bought in 2014 while I designed and planned a new building for the front yard.
Kevin K (10:06.776)
So how big, just describe the units in that triplex. How big a space were you looking at?
Cary (10:12.95)
Yeah. So the triplex was actually, its origin is, it was a barn built in 1913 by one of the early families, that kind of a founding family, the Erickson family of the city of Bothell. And it was a barn where they raised rabbits, a rabbit hutch. And it's 30 feet by 40 feet, two stories, with the gabled roof. Like literally just like the diagram of a gabled house, basically that children draw.
And it had two units, has two units in the downstairs and one unit upstairs. And then I've carved out a little office out of a shared foyer on the upstairs that I remodeled into my office where I'm sitting now. And we will replace this eventually with a building I'm working on what it will be replaced with.
Kevin K (11:02.552)
So you were in basically 1 ,200 square feet with the four of you then. A couple of little kids.
Cary (11:05.386)
Yep, correct, actually. Including my office. what I'd carved out from my conference room, so just a separate door and a deadlock, deadbolt stuff that I use now. We didn't use it at the time when the family was living in the hall upstairs. My wife's in my bedroom was the small conference room, which I've never really used in conference room, but it worked out great.
Kevin K (11:28.856)
So did that, at the time, that feel like a bit of a sacrifice, kind of moving into that space? Yeah.
Cary (11:33.29)
Yes. Yeah. was, so we've remodeled it. was kind of nice and shiny and new and, know, certainly an old building, but we made it look pretty nice and permitted all the work. I moved a bunch of walls around and built new bathrooms and all kinds of stuff. And we were over here with, with friends kind of looking at it one day after we got the final sign off. And I thought we should move in here and save money so we can build the new building soon. And I thought my wife's, my wife's a gamer. She's pretty flexible.
And I thought, well, I'll wait day or two and see what she thinks. So I proposed the idea a couple of days later, and we'd been living in a nearby town next door, Kenmore, for 11 years, had a quarter acre lot, and a mid -century house. I'd remodeled every square foot. It had pretty good equity in it, and it could help us with the future project. And so I proposed the idea, let's move in, let's save money. We will travel little more for a few years, and she loved it. So that's what we did six months later.
And so yeah, we kind of made a sacrifice about three and a half years we lived in that little 1200 square feet. But the cool thing, you know, cause I'm an urbanist too, this is a small little downtown. We're right in the middle of downtown. City Hall is a block away. They're building multifamily all around us. Most of it's built now. There was more going up, but at the time there was only one out of about 10 buildings that had been built in that last 10 years. So,
Kevin K (12:31.596)
Fantastic.
Cary (12:55.39)
We really wanted to, I wanted to walk my talk and the family was into it too and be in a walkable place where we could drive less and we were in my transit and bicycling and stuff. So we've really been doing that. And we had that, you know, immediately overnight. So it was a, it was an adjustment, but it was really been fun.
Kevin K (13:13.176)
So by way of context, what was the local real estate market like when you bought this place in 2014?
Cary (13:18.966)
So at the time, know, it always seems expensive at the time, right? Never, it's so much worse than it used to be. Well, it seems downright quaint and affordable now looking back on 2014. It was a very hot market. We got a great price when we sold our house and we had a really good price on the Triplex because the family owned this old building kind of, it was one of many and it was very run down and they just wanted to get rid of it. So we got a great deal. It's more than double what we paid for it. So yay for us, right?
but it all felt like a stretch at the time. I honestly don't know that we could get it today. not because of competition, but because of the cost of land and, and, properties down here now. a key factor there was, because of being an architect and into local planning issues. And, and, we lived in the town next door, Kenmore, which does some overlapping planning, at the county level and so forth with, with the city of Bothell where I'm at now.
Bothell had a master plan and a new downtown code and zoning code and things like that. There was sort of a hybrid for the downtown, sort of a hybrid form based code that I was well aware of had been written and put in place. It was kind of a sleepy place. A lot of people didn't know. So I was well aware that this town was going to rapidly change and grow because they had set the table for it. So for once I got in at kind of at the right time, but it was a stretch.
Kevin K (14:47.606)
Yeah, right. So at some point you decided to take a closer look at that vacant lot next to you. And was that the next project you undertook or was there anything else after that?
Cary (15:00.938)
Yeah. So we actually, I guess we would call this the covered land play because with the triplex, the triplex lot here, the city had actually bought about four feet because right after we moved in, they rebuilt streets and sidewalks fringes and really made these beautiful deluxe streets, replaced all the infrastructure, daily at a creek across the street. did millions and millions of tens of millions of dollars worth of downtown improvements as part of this plan.
But otherwise, the triplex came on a lot that was 6 ,750 square feet. And so we already had the land as part of the triplex property. So when I eventually designed and built the building that I'd become known for, I built it in the front yard. already had the land. I short -platted it as part of the building permit. And I short -platted.
because otherwise the old building rides with the new building on the financing. And that would sort of drag it down. So I realized I needed to split the lot and create a brand new fresh lot that would give me some equity because there would be value given to that lot. And at the same time, have the finances completely separate from the old triplex that we owned on the lot. So I turned it from one lot into two. And I would do that over and over if I could.
Kevin K (16:22.336)
Interesting. Yeah, and I
Yeah, so why do you say that? was the advantage of that from your perspective?
Cary (16:32.054)
You basically, give yourself a free lot and in small development, as you and probably many know, the land basis or the cost of land or getting a chunk of land to build on is one of the most difficult hurdles for small operators. Bigger developers can often do a purchase and sale and wait until they entitle a project to pay their five or 10 or 15 million for their property. That's how all the bigger projects are done around here.
But small mom and pop sellers for the size of lots, I'm usually looking at five, six, seven thousand feet, whatever. They just want cash upfront. so you kind of have to commit. So to get a property that already has a building that can sort of help offset the costs, in our case, the mortgage with renters, while you split the lot, you're effectively giving yourself a new tax lot.
at very little cost. Just really the cost of splitting that lot is the cause of any taxes you eventually start paying on the property tax.
Kevin K (17:39.669)
So, what would a like that cost in Bothell by way of comparison, just if you found a vacant lot in a neighborhood?
Cary (17:45.59)
Yeah. So at the time, that lot, is only the building I built is on a lot that's just about 2 ,600 square feet, 2 ,625, very small. There's no minimum lot size in our downtown, fortunately, like there is other places. The valuation five years ago was 400 ,000. It's probably a little bit more than that now. So it's not inexpensive land down here. We're doing a project now that broke ground for a four unit just a few blocks away from here. So it's a good comparison.
Kevin K (18:08.141)
Yeah.
Cary (18:14.358)
I'm working on it with two other partners. doing four townhouses. We wanted it to be more, but that's another story I can talk about later. And that lot is 5 ,400 square feet, I believe it is. And it was $640 ,000. And lots have sold in the two years since become even more expensive per square foot. So, yeah.
Kevin K (18:42.872)
That's That's amazing. My Midwestern brain has a hard time getting around those numbers.
Cary (18:47.772)
yeah. When I look on the social media groups I'm part of, the Neighborhood Development Group that John Anderson started, and Income Mill Development Alliance and others, Kansas, where you are, and of course, Grand Ure in the city, where property probably costs a little bit more. And then in the South and the Midwest, my jaw drops when I see what you guys can get land for and lots for.
Kevin K (19:13.196)
Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a different market in lot of ways. So let's talk about the project you built there, which I've seen pictures of. I haven't seen it in person, but it's a really cool project. It's kind of in many ways like the classic example of a small mixed use project that we talk about in a hundred different seminars that you were actually able to execute. So I'm curious about like why you chose that particular kind of project and some of the pros and cons of doing that.
Cary (19:15.583)
It is. It is.
Cary (19:42.26)
Yeah, no, I love to talk about that. learned so many lessons, but really fundamental to this was meeting John Anderson after I did the Jonathan Siegel course. I really had a lot more I needed to learn about sort of scrappy on the ground, get things done, part of the small development. And John Anderson, I met just at the perfect time.
and incremental development alliance was young then. I actually went down to Texas and took one of their boot camps in 2016. But he taught me about the, for a first project, don't get too crazy. Do three stories you can do with like a single stair. I already knew about that. Single stair is hot now, but at the time it was okay. We'll keep it three stories or less, single stair. International building code allows that. And design it around what can be allowed with an FHA 203B loan.
B or C, can't remember. The ones that are renovation loan. But this is the vanilla FHA home loan that millions of Americans have gotten to buy anything one to four units. So if you're going to buy your first house, this is that loan. The unique thing is, unlike most mortgages, you can do one to four units. So that's not unusual. But they allow up to 49 % commercial. There's no other.
vanilla mortgage that allows that. And I was really interested in doing mixed use because I had a corner lot in downtown. And I just felt as an urbanist who wanted to place make and create places for people that this should be a corner shop, commercial shop. So I had my sort of template then. All right, I'm gonna do four units. Originally I was gonna redevelop the entire lot all at once. And I realized that was.
biting off more than I wanted to chew and I didn't really want to get rid of a cash flowing triplex because this is my first project. So I thought, well, this is perfect. I'll split the lot. I'll do a single stair FHA compliant building that's not going to get me out of my ski tips. This won't be built much differently than a single family home, which I had a lot of experience with, like commercial. And I'll general contract it myself.
Cary (22:05.242)
And I don't get too fancy, it's a simple shape. And that was kind of the premise. And what I call it is a well -detailed simple box. But that was the groundwork for the project. To do that, and I was allowed to work on it for a few years, kind of refining and working on it. But during my spare time.
Kevin K (22:28.504)
Let's talk about a couple aspects of it, the FHA 203B thing, know, not everybody knows about all that. Did you have a hard time like finding a banker or bankers who understood, you know, financing it this way?
Cary (22:33.833)
Mm
Cary (22:41.686)
Yes and no. So most mortgage folks I talked to knew about it. Many of them were unwilling to originate them. I don't know if there just wasn't as much fat in it for them or what. The original, when I was finishing the project in late 2019, just prior to the pandemic, the mortgage broker I was working with at the time had done a great job for me doing a refi and a home equity loan or a
sorry, HELOC on the Triplex so I could use the Triplex as a sort of cash machine, which is another small developer ploy. He'd been really spectacular for me, really experienced. But he was very reluctant and quite frankly unwilling to originate an FHA loan because I suspect he wasn't going to get paid as well. So he brought me a commercial loan just as the pandemic was beginning and it was really
awful terms and we had to bring a lot of money to the table. And so I quickly had to go find another experienced mortgage person. a lot of them will say they're interested and then you get into it and they try and deter you from doing one, the FHA. So that's information that I should share.
Kevin K (23:56.418)
So you really have to kind of push through. I think John has talked about this before. It's almost like you have to know more about some of these programs, or know as much as your banker does, or your lender.
Cary (23:58.571)
Yes.
Cary (24:04.032)
Yes.
Yeah, John makes that point. I completely agree. I downloaded the 600 page, whatever it was, manual on HUD lending that he recommended. Granted, just not to scare everyone, you're not going to read the whole thing. You're going to skim it for certain sections. so, yeah, I would quite literally call these mortgage brokers up, or lenders, and have to tell them they were allowed to make this loan. And this is why. And here's the terms. And so it's so true.
I got a little disgusted at certain points that I was extricating with people on their own business. Yeah, but I did find this guy who was incredible. He was basically ready to retire, but he was just having fun, still doing things. And he found the pandemic loaning to be really tough, but also a challenge. So lucky for me. And I paid a lot of extra interest. That was the only thing in my project that went.
Rye as it were the the designing the permitting the construction. I want really smoothly it was throughout 2019 Getting the final loan mortgage that FHA mortgage to take out the construction loan Which was high interest because I was a new developer was the only really challenging and expensive part of the whole project
Kevin K (25:21.194)
Interesting. what would that product, I guess talk us through if you did the construction loan, like what sort of percentage equity did you have to have to do that? Or how did you finance it? then when you do the permanent financing, how did that convert?
Cary (25:29.813)
Yeah.
Cary (25:37.206)
Yeah, so I was a little unusual in that I did talk to multiple banks. I'll cut to the chase. I got a hard money loan from a small two -person LLC that I was put in touch with from my mortgage guy at the time. And they loved me, these lenders. It was 12%. Doesn't sound quite as bad today, but at the time it was twice what banks were lending for construction loans, so it was expensive. But it was easy and it was fast and draws were
were painless and they trusted me. They visited the site once and completely believed in me and the money was, you know, we did all the paperwork. They had a first position and all the normal stuff a mortgage company would do paperwork wise. was just not fly by night. But because it took extra five or so months at the end to get the takeout mortgage, the final mortgage, that FHA mortgage, I paid something like $125 ,000 in extra interest. So that was painful.
I did that but I had talked to two different kinds of banks and this is the kind of information I love to share with people. I did have banks that were interested in loaning on the building. One type of bank was the one type of loan I should say is banks who are wanted to loan to myself and my wife as a husband and wife entity building basically a house. One to four units they just kind of saw it as a home loan basically. They don't care if you do four units.
And though they were wary of the commercial part, for fair warning, they were like, we don't really loan on commercial. So we hadn't really sort of do that because we weren't offered the loan in the end. so they actually they did offer us a loan. was much it was several hundred thousand less than we needed. Ironically, it was because I had spent a fair amount of time of my own office time working on my project. I didn't make as much money for the prior tax year. So I kind of
was stung by the fact that I was putting my energies into my own building, doing the construction drawings and managing the design. I looked much better on paper for the prior tax year and they were like, well, what happened here? You you you dropped like, well, I was, you know, giving myself as sweat equity as it were, as an architect. And there's value in those drawings, but they don't care about that. They want your tax return. we couldn't borrow enough money.
Cary (28:01.742)
to with a bank that wanted to loan us the money as a private home project. So they're out of the picture. We would have had to bring too much money to the table ourselves. I also talked to a commercial lender. They liked it. They wanted to loan the full amount, but they wanted a guarantor. Not unusual. I did not have a guarantor. So we probably could have used a family member, but we didn't want them to have
power or decision -making power on the project. Because they're the person I'm thinking of, they're in real estate as well. And we thought, well, we want to do our own thing. So we eschewed that and went hard money. So I didn't go a traditional route there. But I also learned that it's not unusual for those of us doing it for the first time to seek out private money or hard money like this. Yeah.
Kevin K (28:55.638)
Interesting. What was the total size of the project? What cost?
Cary (29:01.11)
Yeah, like the stats. Okay, yeah, the the total cost we borrowed 1 .3 million. It cost about 1 .5 in hard cost construction costs total 1 .5 million with with soft costs. No, excuse me. I apologize.
trying to recall here, hard cost for closer to, I think it was closer to the original 1 .3 million. And with soft costs, we were at about 1 .5 million. And the total value of the project in the end at the lower end was about 1 .8 million, putting a lower kind of lower end price on the value of the land. So yeah, was a, you know, so all in, you know, if you're around about a $1 .5 million project.
Kevin K (29:52.672)
Interesting. And then were you as the architect able to pay yourself a fee for that and for the construction management?
Cary (29:59.99)
Yes, I love to talk about that. So I didn't pay myself for construction management per se, but what I did was this project took a lot of planning. And this is the kind of thing I love to share with other architects doing this. I had learned from Jared Devalle back in 2011. He was one of the other people I learned about the architect as developer model when I went to an architecture conference in 2011. And I was intrigued with his
I think his company was called Alloy working in like Dumbo and New York City. And he had expressed how you have these different companies, you own them all, but they're arms length transactions. So you have your development. And in my case, the development, the building is called Fur Street Flats, because the 183rd street out in front of my building was originally called Fur Street, like the tree, Douglas Fur. So it's called Fur Street Flats. And that was one LLC.
And then I had my established architecture firm, Westerberg Architecture. And then I also became a licensed general contractor. And that was my firm for that, Shelter Lab. And so they had arms length transactions with each other. So First Street Flats had a written agreement to provide architectural services. Westerberg Architecture would provide architectural services to First Street Flats.
Now granted, that money is just being shuffled between my different business accounts. And I had to have business accounts and you go to the bank and you get a business account and you have to show them your LLC agreement and your state certificate and all that. But yes, so that's a long -winded way of saying, Westerbrook Architecture got paid by First Street Flats a fee to design the project. What happened then was I made sure that I continued to give myself a paycheck as I acted as the journal contractor for a year building the building.
My architecture firm was giving me a regular salary, even though I was not doing architecture work. This was so that I paycheck consistency that the mortgagers want to see when you're done with the project. So you don't have a, they want two years. So I just had continuity there. So I used that fee. Once I got my loan, First Street Flats paid Westerbrack architecture for the design. And I used that money to live on just basically as my paycheck that I would have been earning as an architect. I just.
Cary (32:22.358)
prepaid it and drew on it as I built the project. So that essentially covered me to work as a general contractor and I did not pay myself a general contractor fee or a developer fee. I considered it all basically I get to keep the building because I'm not selling the building. I get to keep the building and that's my that's my equity stake and my payment. So it's a little unusual but I learned all that from these various people I studied.
Kevin K (32:45.496)
Interesting. Yeah.
Kevin K (32:52.536)
Well, I mean, it's interesting because obviously for any architects in the audience to think about getting into development, that's just an aspect of it, which is paying yourself, covering your overhead during that process, the design process and construction process. I mean, it's pretty cool that you also did the construction management. There's probably a lot of architects who wouldn't do that.
Cary (33:02.838)
key.
Cary (33:14.474)
Yeah. Yeah, that's really a critical thing to understand going in. Are you comfortable being your own general contractor or not? And then if you're not, and you're going to have someone do it, which is not uncommon, you're going to pay a little more. It's smart for lot of people though, because there's so many pitfalls in construction if you're not skilled at it. I had my snafus here and there, but I handled them.
they're going to happen whether you're building it or not yourself or not.
Kevin K (33:48.024)
So when you get this project complete from the construction standpoint, how did it go from a leasing standpoint?
Cary (33:54.55)
so I'll add one more thing that I hadn't shared is, my family designed the entire third floor, top floor for our family to live in. we designed it custom for ourselves. It's not like super fancy, but it's each floor has 10 foot ceilings. There's a lot of glazing. there's a couple of exposed steel beams. It's got the top floor has three bedrooms, two baths, a nice kind of big great room.
People really like the space. It's nicely proportioned. So we were building a home for ourselves as well. So we are living. And that's another thing FHA loan requires. It requires the owner, owner occupancy for the FHA 203B. And that was one of the things I hadn't mentioned. And that's very different from my commercial investment property, where you were actually not allowed to live in the building. It's completely different. They literally disallow it. So that's another reason that FHA loan is unique. But anyway, lease up was
Kevin K (34:31.063)
Interesting.
Cary (34:49.078)
almost effortless. That's not the right word, but we really only had a couple units. So my mom lives in the one bedroom. We have a one bedroom, a two bedroom, and we live in a three bedroom. And then we have the commercial space on the ground floor. October, two months before we got our certificate of occupancy, October of 2019, I started to kind of just.
getting word of mouth out that I had this small commercial space about 650 square feet on the corner available. People saw it too, and it's a very visible corner. So there was already a lot of buzz. And I had a ton of interest. So right away, a broker actually, a very busy broker in town brought me a barbershop. And I actually had gotten my haircut from one of the two owners that wanted to start this barbershop. And I thought, well, they're a good tenant. It's idea was better than the other offers that I'd had.
And so we quickly worked out a you know, broker -ridden lease a couple months prior. I helped them do their, few drawings they needed to submit to the city for a small TI build out. And so that went very quickly. And I always say this, and I say this to my friends in city council, and I'm on planning commission as well. This is really important to know. There aren't enough small spaces in my town and around here, especially these newer...
These younger West Coast cities, they don't have the plethora of old buildings with small affordable spaces. People are always looking for small spaces. I could have leased that 650 square feet out a dozen times over. Whereas when they're building these bigger buildings, these five over ones in town, which we have a lot of, they're sort of a lost leader where they've got the retail that's hard to fill. It gets filled here because we're a busy place on the edge of Seattle, but they're 3 ,000, 4 ,000, 5 ,000 square feet. They take a big...
you know, national or at least a very successful local business to fill those. So there aren't nearly enough of these small ones. So leasing that commercial space was really easy. It went very quickly. And I had mom for the apartment. And then we were advertising on Craigslist at apartments .com, maybe one of the two other places for the two bedroom, which again was filled within a week or two, probably a couple of weeks. I showed it three or four times and it was snapped up. And then we were done.
Kevin K (37:04.728)
Yeah, that's great.
Cary (37:08.406)
And we had to fill our unit because we were moving out of the old triplex, but it also found a newly married couple who started a family right away and they were there for the first few years throughout the pandemic. So we had everything filled in no time.
Kevin K (37:09.218)
Yeah.
Kevin K (37:26.488)
That's ideal in many respects.
Cary (37:30.452)
It is, I mean, I really feel like I should knock on wood or something that went so well. And we've stayed full ever since. I've had a lot of people who've asked me, because the building is popular, the new building's popular, people, get compliments on it still all the time. And people are always asking if there are units available. So I'm flattered, but I, there's been no turnover.
Kevin K (37:50.104)
Well, it's also nice from a small scale standpoint that you just have a handful you have to deal with. That's kind of a real advantage.
Cary (37:57.778)
It is. It's plenty. I've said, so we've got seven units, including the commercial unit and our own personal unit between the two buildings, the old building and the new building. It's about as much as I want to manage because I've got a full, very full life in other ways and volunteer things and run my business and some development. So it's about as much as I want to deal with. If it gets much, if I get more units that I get to, you know, that we get to keep, I will have to go, I will decide to hire a management company.
One of my clients actually runs a good firm doing that, I'll hire her.
Kevin K (38:32.396)
Well, there you go. So what happens after that, after first street's up and leased and then kind of where do you go from there?
Cary (38:41.194)
Yeah. Well, interestingly, so I had been reading about this pattern from John and others who successfully have done this in the past, John Anderson and many other small developers. You get your building stabilized and then you borrow against it to build the next project. And I was all prepared to do that, but the pandemic hit. So I was just happy to get the thing mortgaged and keep it. Because there was a couple of months when we couldn't get the mortgage in line.
very quickly that we were worried we were gonna have to sell the building because the plan was always to hold it. So I was gonna go do another project. So it's been years until I've got a couple years ago another property that I partnered with two other people because I couldn't easily borrow against my building. So it's taken me more years than I planned to try and get to the next project.
So that was kind of what was next as far as the last five years. And it continues to be challenging to really try and find land and investors. And then right now, even if you could find that to make projects pencil out is tough because of interest rates and the cost of land in our area and the cost of construction.
Kevin K (40:00.46)
Yeah, yeah. Have you thought about, I'm sure you've thought about it, but like what types of projects, if you imagine that you would want to do next, if you could find the right site and everything else, what are you looking to do?
Cary (40:02.08)
So it's been hard that way.
Cary (40:10.09)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
I'm still really intrigued with infill and small scale, urban or close in suburban work. I've looked at and I was pretty serious about a cottage project because I'm on planning commission and we just passed middle housing, missing middle housing code for our city that I helped write.
I was actually the nerd six, seven years ago who would bring articles about middle housing, missing middle, the Opticos had written to council meetings and planning commission meetings to hand them out. So it's really exciting to be that annoying guy and finally get our way. I wasn't on planning commission then. so I've, really been interested in bungalow courts and cottages and stuff. And I say that because it's not necessarily my, to me, that's not like the pinnacle of what I want to do, but I like that it's sort of the,
Kevin K (40:53.944)
Yeah.
Hahaha.
Cary (41:09.867)
the gateway drug for some people who are used to single house on single lot. They seem more open -minded to, we'll put four small homes that are more affordable. They're still expensive, but they're more affordable for our area. And they're gonna be a little closer to schools and shops and services. So it's sort of this entry. And so we're starting to see some proposals in the city that. So I'm interested in that and have had a...
of stops and starts on a couple of those. Doing some townhouses right now with the two partners that I mentioned earlier. We actually wanted that to be about a 10 unit, because of parking, which we're working on eliminating those parking mandates, but because of parking requirements and then interest rates, we couldn't do the build and hold model that we had hoped. we're doing four townhouses, but I remain interested in, you know, if I could have my way, I'd still keep doing mixed use. Very similar to my first First Street Flats project.
but probably more units. I'd love to do 10, 20, 30, ideally over. I'd love to create some sort of a community space that I program, that I could hold and keep. Even if I had to sell condos or something like that and only keep like condo -wise commercial space at the bottom, I'd love to have sort of like a community space I could rent out for events and artists and things like that. It'd be great sort of as my equity piece.
So and I may be to do that in my replacement for this triplex so what I've designed for this this lot to replace the triplex right now that I'm excited about is We had local state legislation here in Washington State legalized co -housing which is also essentially micro units and Because we're right near transit frequent transit in downtown here There is no parking required and we're also about a mile
Kevin K (42:55.234)
Mm
Cary (43:05.078)
from University of Washington Bothell campus. It's a satellite campus. It's about a half an hour to the main campus, but it's a very busy branch of the University of Washington. And they're really close. There's students all around. They don't necessarily have cars. So that need for parking space is not strong. There's a co -located community college there on the same campus. So they're growing all the time.
And there's a lot of people in tech here who ride e -bikes around and walk. And so a lot of people don't necessarily put high priority on car ownership. So suddenly, the project I've been trying to figure out how to make work on this around 4 ,000 square foot site, which is the old Triplex I've been talking about that we own here that I'm sitting in. Suddenly, it works. 20 to 22 units, 350, 400 square feet each, the kitchenette, the bathroom.
The key is you have to have a community space with a shared kitchen and so forth, which is fine. It's fun idea anyway. And a bunch of them have been successfully built in Seattle. So I'm not really excited about that right now because I'm trying to make that happen.
Kevin K (44:09.386)
Interesting. So are there like code, zoning code challenges or anything associated with that building type?
Cary (44:15.538)
Fortunately, nothing special. We have to codify it because there's now a ticking clock. All these cities in Washington have to allow them. So we will be, enough, tackling that in planning commission, I'm sure, in the next year because we'll have to. the similar buildings have already been built, like I mentioned, in Seattle and elsewhere. So it's really going to be a standard, like in my case, five -story, IBC compliant.
building that we've got to put an elevator in, a couple of stairs and so forth. So that would be tight, but it works. But otherwise the zoning here is pretty generous. I'm in the second most dense zoning for the city of Bothell. And so we can go five stories, 65 feet taller bottom story, zero lot line except the back, there's a five foot setback. And then like I said, I get out of those parking requirements, which allows me to really use maximum
Maximum use out of the site.
Kevin K (45:14.826)
That's really cool. And it seems like the student angle really makes a lot of sense for that type.
Cary (45:20.468)
Yeah, yeah, because the students rent apartments around here all the time. And so probably a great option because most of the apartments around here are a little more expensive and a more nicer. Not nice finishes, but I mean, they're larger or more expensive than maybe a freshman or sophomore would want to pay for.
Kevin K (45:41.964)
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, and it's nice, you know, as a student to be able to get your own place, you know, even if it's really small, it doesn't matter. Like when you're that age, it's just cool to have your own space.
Cary (45:46.816)
Yes.
Cary (45:50.57)
Yeah. Yeah, I make that point like in planning commission meetings and elsewhere, people say, because there are certain folks who think it's really inhumane to live in a micro unit. And I do not. I don't think they should be making decisions about how other people want to live, make choices about they want to live. But I lived on Capitol Hill in Seattle, a very dense, walkable, urban neighborhood, very popular neighborhood in Seattle when I was younger.
I had a space that was actually the first year about 120 square feet. was like 10 by 12. Bathroom is down the hall, so it's more like a boarding house. I absolutely loved it because it was super cheap and I was just gone a lot anyway. So it was great. And then I had, I felt like I really arrived because the next year I had one that was about 300 square feet. That seemed huge. So it's all relative.
Kevin K (46:27.746)
Mm
Kevin K (46:38.04)
Well, and it's, you know, it's sort of that like what's old is new again. Because that type, you know, back 100 years ago, there were all manner of types like this, not just boarding houses, but there was the classic building called the apartment hotel, which was really this type. And people rented a room in the apartment hotel and it had some shared amenities. And we had dozens of them. Most older cities had them.
Cary (46:44.074)
Yes.
Cary (47:04.476)
yeah. Yeah, Seattle had a ton, like you said, we were all tracking this these days, but most cities had a lot of them. They outlawed them the seventies, eighties, nineties. The building I was in that I mentioned that I lived in with the bathroom down the hall with both units, bathrooms down the hall. It was a similar building. It was like a single room occupancy type, but they were all different unit sizes. There were some full size apartments, small, medium, large. It's still there. In fact, it just sold a couple of years ago.
Kevin K (47:31.872)
Interesting. Yeah. So one thing, you know, obviously in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle, that area has been one of the leaders for quite a few years in the whole single stair building type deal. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your experience with that and understanding of like how important of a change was that to allow that to happen in Seattle?
Cary (47:44.544)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cary (47:57.078)
Yeah, Seattle's had it for 50, 60 years, something like that. So we've had it for a long time. And there are lot of sort of sleeper buildings that have utilized that single stair for my entire life. And they make a small site work. In fact, I'm friends with Mike Eliason, an architect who helped put the single stair idea on the map and gets a lot of deserved notoriety for it. And Mike spent many years in Germany.
working and so he was really familiar with that type of building, which so common around the world. Yeah, it's for folks who don't know, and I know Kevin probably knows a lot of this, but it makes a small site much more viable because you can create a lot less hallway and circulation space by doing a single stair. Usually the building will be sprinklered so it's safer than you would think. And it allows each unit, usually you can...
total is usually only four per floor. So you usually have at least a corner and two aspects for light and air and cross ventilation. Sometimes like our building, we've got three. So it makes it much more humane to live in. And most people really respond to a building that it's not, for example, folks listening, we've all been in hotels with a single hallway and then that's a double loaded corridor and they've got apartments or rooms off of each side.
Most apartments in the United States built today are that double loaded. So you might have a long deep unit if it's two or three bedrooms. It's uncommon, but let's say two bedrooms or even one bedroom. And there aren't a lot of windows. So all the windows are on the outside edge and you can't get cross ventilation and you don't have light from more than one side. So a single stair makes a much more livable, desirable unit. Most people, again, walk in one and they respond differently.
than they might to one of these double loaded corridor units. what you see in a lot of countries say they want to do a really big building. They build multiple side by side. every, you you might have one every 50 feet or something like that. each stairway serves a slice. So you might end up with five of them in a row and they each have their own stairway, but then they have like a firewall between
Cary (50:19.272)
each of these individual buildings might look like one big building. So there are different ways to put them together. And they actually have, as Mike Eliason and others have been riding on for some time now, very good safety ratings. In fact, fewer fire incidents that we do in the United States with our two -stair buildings. So there's a lot to recommend them and there's momentum behind making them more legal. Washington State, in fact,
passed a law this last year, one my friends, a representative here at Bothell helped push the legislation that the city, excuse me, the state of Washington has to have a up to six story single stair building code amendment essentially or ordinance that any city can adopt. They're not forced to, but they can adopt it and ready to go in about a year. I think it was a year, year and a half.
I think other states are starting to do it too. California might have it on theirs. But the key thing is that it allows buildings like my three story, but you could do four, five, six, and it makes a small lot instantly more developable. The reason we see a lot of these big block size, half block size buildings, we call them podium buildings, five over ones, whatever, with 100, 200, 300 units is because they have to aggregate land into these huge.
plots so they could do a big enough project to merit two stairs, multiple elevators, and make them viable. Whereas once you can just do a single stair, maybe a single elevator if it's needed for accessibility, you can make almost any little slice of a lot work. So it opens up enormous amounts of our building, our zoning, the fabric, the land in America that we maybe have looked at and not been able to utilize.
Kevin K (52:13.645)
with them.
Kevin K (52:17.976)
Yeah, I kind of think of it myself if I were to go back to thinking about how I lived like when I was in college and the standard college dormitory that I lived in, and I think a lot of people lived in, was a double -loaded corridor, little shoebox rooms that two people stayed in together with one window. And they weren't particularly pleasant. You're 18 or 19 years old, that's not a big priority, but it's not like,
Cary (52:46.025)
Okay.
Kevin K (52:47.244)
They weren't like the most pleasant places to live. And then when I remember, you know, especially at a college and I started having some friends that rented some of these more historic, like four and sixplex apartments that had exactly what you described. So they had a single entry and a stair in the middle of the building. And then they were flanked by usually one bedroom apartments, sometimes two bedrooms, going up two or three stories. And what was so cool was you would walk in, you walk in those places.
and it's windows on three sides. And it just immediately felt, even for like some of these places that at the time were like really old and hadn't been renovated and God knows how long, they just felt so much better because of the presence of the windows and the light and the cross ventilation. And that's a huge benefit of this approach.
Cary (53:33.173)
So true.
Cary (53:39.798)
It's true. I don't even know if I felt completely as strongly about it as I do when I was working on my building and taking advantage of this aspect. I mean, I knew as an architect, because I'm always trying to get bedrooms with two sources of natural light. are pattern language kind of things we reflect on as architects, right? But until you, I think, like you said, walk into one and experience it and kind of know you're comparing it to something with that single window.
aspect type of apartment, it really kind of smacks you up in the head. Like you said, it doesn't matter how old it is, whatever. It's just, it's so much more humane. with us as a culture, as a society, as a country, waking up to how, we could have that and it would be good for us. And a lot of people would enjoy it. And we just kind of have to legalize it as a, it's a pretty powerful thought that, we could have, we could have nice things as the meme guy.
Kevin K (54:33.846)
Right, and it's not like we're giving something up in order to get it. It's really just kind of a silly adaptation of how the building codes have grown and changed over the years.
Cary (54:36.672)
No.
Cary (54:43.702)
Precisely. Yeah, we could just decide to do things differently and have these nice things and hey, we might even be safer for it.
Kevin K (54:51.384)
Yeah, yeah, no doubt. So, you know, one of the things, Kerry, is like we joke about here in the middle of the country is that like all the trends, of course, start on the coasts and then eventually, you know, like 10 or 20 years later, they find themselves here in the Midwest. what other obviously you all, especially a lot of West Coast states have really been leading the charge because of your your housing crisis is much more intense than
Cary (55:02.238)
Hahaha
Kevin K (55:20.118)
what we are having, so there's a lot more reform happening. What else is going on that you're seeing that we might be hearing more about as time goes on?
Cary (55:26.794)
Mm
Cary (55:31.286)
One of the hot ones right now that I think is going to happen and this is gonna fit right into the whole Midwest and Heartland because you guys have to tell me the corner store idea We're starting to warm up in the state here and various cities and and the people like just your average citizen Really responds well to this like why don't we have corner stores anymore? Well, let's set aside the fact that they're hard to necessarily operate and run and make work. Let's you know, that's maybe
going to have to be tackled, but it doesn't have to be a store per se. It could be a wine bar. could be a cafe, whatever. So we're starting to see a trickle of bills and ideas and cities experimenting with the idea of re -legalizing corner stores. Granted that West Coast is covered with these dendritic cul -de -sac laid out neighborhoods that are not grids.
And they do not lend themselves well necessarily like a grid does to having corner stores and walkability and everything. So we're going to have, we have some challenges, but that's one of the things we're seeing people really wake up to is how do we allow low impact mix use in our residential neighborhoods again? And Spokane has a program that goes back, I think to 2017, because Spokane is an older city in Washington.
It's not old compared to Midwest and back East, but for us, it's, you know, they were going gangbusters in late 19th century. They had a lot more corner stores that were turned residential, kind of turned into homes because they outwalled them. Well, they had sort of an amnesty program beginning, I think it was 2017, with some success where you could take anything that was clearly on record as being a commercial store or commercial use.
could be turned back into a commercial use. They have a whole program for it. And Volkan's really been on the forefront of programs like that, Missing Middle and other things as well. So that's one I see coming that gets talked about a lot.
Kevin K (57:36.768)
Interesting.
Kevin K (57:41.248)
Mm -hmm, interesting. Well, if I could marry two things that I just personally really love. One, as an architect, I love small buildings and small spaces. And the second is I love the, especially what you see in Japan, the Japanese approach to really, really small businesses that are run by one person, but are fanatic and excellent at what they do. And to have more of that in our communities would be.
Cary (57:50.656)
Yeah.
Cary (57:56.842)
Yes.
Kevin K (58:10.319)
would be pretty cool.
Cary (58:12.18)
You and me both, I'm fanatic about having those. really, yeah, I'm so envious when I see those cute little, beautiful little Japanese stores serving just specialty teas or donuts or whatever. Yeah, it's amazing.
Kevin K (58:25.25)
Yeah. Yeah. Or like, it's a, it's like the best restaurant you've ever eaten at in a head and it seats like six people, you know, so yeah.
Cary (58:31.958)
Yeah, exactly. back in 10 minutes. Yeah, it's gorgeous. Yeah, exactly. We've got to open the doors just to have people be able to sit on the stools, right? Yeah, it's great. Yeah. And so we're seeing people get more comfortable with that. And like I said, it's actually a popular idea with lot of people who aren't necessarily into policy and planning and design, the people who live in neighborhoods frequently.
Kevin K (58:41.036)
Yeah, no doubt. No doubt.
Kevin K (58:56.13)
So one last thing I wanted to ask you about, Kerry, was obviously you've been on the planning commission for some time and wanted if you could talk a little bit about why you got involved in that way. And maybe as somebody who's not just a designer, but a developer, and you have a foot in all these different worlds, what were some of the advantages for you to get involved in that response?
Cary (59:11.115)
and
Cary (59:15.254)
Yeah. And a little bit of background on that. know we don't have much time. Something I didn't talk about here, but I've been a member of Strong Towns for, gosh, probably 10 years now, of earlier days, not super early. And so I've been on their podcast a couple of times and I've been a fan and been part of some of their classroom, know, their classes and things like that. Anyway, so I've got a
Program background and then I had a very successful now kind of quieter group called Bopop Botha lights for people oriented places Our town is Bothal, which is one of the early local conversations That strong towns now fosters really strongly anyway that led me to going to lots of planning commission and and built a city council meetings and then as friends and I were doing that We've
ended up taking over many of us who were in BoPOP or were peripherally related to BoPOP. City Council, five people now, and most of Planning Commission, and some have cycled from Planning Commission. So anyway, my pitch to getting on Planning Commission was at the time, four years ago, I'll be up for another four years this next winter, there were no people on Planning Commission who were...
architects, developers, builders, engineers, anything like that. And I feel like they usually, she should have at least one or two who actually work in the codes and build and develop or plan or whatever. So that was actually my pitch. And some of my detractors since then have said, he's this, you know, developer, shell, architect, blah, blah. And I very, very, you know, I'm very out.
Kevin K (01:00:55.44)
Ha ha ha.
Cary (01:01:01.086)
out about that. Like, yeah, that was literally my pitch is we should have people who are doing this work who were reading and using the code who are the ones helping to modify it and build it and change it. I'm very unabashed about that. So that is why I wanted to be in there. And that's what we've been doing. And sometimes it's a bit boring and tedious to put it mildly. But
It's important work and I encourage people to seek that out if you have any interest in it. Most people are still somewhat lay people, but we have a couple of people who are civil engineers, planners, lawyers. So there are people who do work related to making code and law who are fit right in. But we like to have people who are not necessarily related to, because we like diverse perspectives on planning commission. As long as they're willing to bone up and learn about how to.
Kevin K (01:01:51.212)
Yeah.
Cary (01:01:53.972)
how to operate and read the code and ordinances and things.
Kevin K (01:01:59.798)
Yeah, it just seems, you know, honestly, logical to me that if you have a commission or anything that is heavily involved in regulating one industry that there ought to be some people from there who interact with those regulations every day and who are involved. Just like, like if you had a commission to regulate barber shops, you would expect like there'd be a few barbers, you know, on the commission.
Cary (01:02:18.72)
Yeah. Yeah. That's why I kind of chuckle when people think there's this conflict of interest. And I say, no, I was, that was literally my pitch was you need people who do this work, who are helping to shape these, these policies. And, it's been, it's been good for me. And then I think, I've helped, helped get a lot done. I believe that it's useful for pushing us forward and streamlining and, and, know, helping to housing is just a major, major issue.
How can we sort of stay safe and compliant, but grease the skids for more housing? It's been a big, focus.
Kevin K (01:02:57.014)
No doubt. Well, Kerry, it's been a real pleasure. It's been a lot of fun. feel like we could easily go on for another hour or two, but I think we'll call it right there. And I really value having your experience and sharing that with everybody. And hopefully we get a chance to talk about this again at a future date.
Cary (01:03:04.874)
down.
Cary (01:03:16.446)
Agreed, my pleasure. Like I said, I can keep, keep put a quarter in me and I keep going, I hope, hopefully some of this is useful.
Kevin K (01:03:23.2)
and how if somebody wants to try to find you either, you know, internet or social media or whatever, what's the best way.
Cary (01:03:30.068)
Yeah, I can be found. Well, my website is westerbeckarchitecture .com. And you can always drop me a note there. But the easiest way, I'm still on Twitter under my own name. We'll see how long that lasts. I've jumped onto Threads social media, which I've been spending more time. And I can be found under my name there. So those are both good ways to find me. And then I have a business page on Facebook.
I don't go on there very often, but if anybody tries to message me there or finds me there, I will see that. So I can be found pretty easily on those platforms or my website certainly. And there's a number for my firm on the website, so people could feel free to call or text me if they want to. And many people have. I've been contacted dozens and dozens and dozens of times since finishing my building five years ago. And I'm always happy to help.
Kevin K (01:04:26.459)
that's fantastic. All right, Kerry, well, really appreciate the time and look forward to talking again. All right, take care.
Cary (01:04:32.736)
Thank you, Kevin.

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Jim Heid and the Small-Scale Developer Forum
13 ago 2024· The Messy City Podcast
Abby Newsham and I have some fun with a joint podcast this week, as we host Jim Heid. Jim runs the Small Scale Developer Forum, and has a new book called “Building Small: A Toolkit for Real Estate Entrepreneurs, Civic Leaders, and Great Communities.” He spent some time in Kansas City while preparing to host his next forum here in October. Registration is open now!
Jim is a wealth of great information for emerging developers. A landscape architect by trade, he came to development mid-career. He shares his story about why and how he did this, working as a small developer in the California context, and why he thinks real estate should be the noble profession to solve a lot of our ills of today.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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Missouri's Favorite Topic: KC vs St Louis
6 ago 2024· The Messy City Podcast
This week, we take a little different tack and explore a time-worn Missouri rivalry: Kansas City vs St Louis. I invite two born-and-raised St Louisans, Abby Newsham and Jason Carter-Solomon to explore what is working and what is not with these two cities and metros.
These two regions dominate this part of the Midwest, but have entirely different cultures and growth trajectories. If you go back far enough to Joel Garreau’s “Nine Nations of North America” you may remember that he labeled Kansas City as the capital of the “Breadbasket” region, and had St Louis as a border city between the Breadbasket and “Dixie.”
Today, Kansas City is growing with sizeable numbers for a Midwestern city, and St Louis is fairly stagnant. What gives? Why is this so, since St Louis has such obvious assets? We explore this, as well as the horror that is St Louis-style pizza.
Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.
Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.
Intro: “Why Be Friends”
Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

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A Conversation with Dhiru Thadani

Designing Beauty in Housing, by Being Intentional

Building Culture in Oklahoma

Exploring Small Scale vs Large Scale Development

Boomerang to Help Your Hometown

Is Your Town a Bitterness Factory or a Hope Factory?

How to be a Small Developer that Makes a Big Impact

A Conversation with Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt

Can Design Charrettes Teach Us How to Fix Broken Systems?

The many virtues of urban courtyard living

Building the Not-Quite Missing Middle

How to Hack Your Life

Turning love of your town into a development crusade

Getting to Affordable Infill Development

Travel Lessons

How Does a Small Developer Actually Make Money?

Cities and Parents: Let's Get Real About What Matters

Exploring the Mechanics of an Architect’s First Small Development

Jim Heid and the Small-Scale Developer Forum

Missouri's Favorite Topic: KC vs St Louis