Plain talk on building and development
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Blog: Plain Talk

Plain talk on building and development.

Brooklyn doesn't need your ass...
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"Find a place that you love that needs you.

(You may love Brooklyn, but Brooklyn doesn't need your ass. Go somewhere that does.)"

-Ryan Terry

Ryan Terry's statement has two parts and you might stop at the evocative  opening; "Find a place you love..." The second half is just as critical "--that needs you". Places that need you will need a lot of work. That is why they need someone like you that is willing to do a lot of frustrating and unappreciated work (because you care about the place and the people in the place. Swell places with high barriers to entry don't need you.

If rents are low, you may need to limit yourself to picking up trash and doing careful serviceable rehabs like the cottage shown above.  Don't forget that the project is the neighborhood not just the building.  That little garage has been rented since Dan Camp renovated it 30 years ago as part of his effort to transform a part of town nobody cared about.  

Be disciplined in what you are willing to spend in total project costs.  If rents are low or high, you still need to limit your project costs to what can be supported with the likely rents.

Do not expect to be welcomed or appreciated. Keep your head down. Under-promise and over-deliver. If you are a developer it will be hard to build trust in a place where people doubt or casually mischaracterize your motivation and methods. Do the work anyway. Any recognition or support you see from your neighbors along the way is a bonus. Take the long view and outlast critics who don't have anything resembling a genius plan of their own. Be smart. Run the numbers on multiple projects before you launch. Start small. Find and support local champions and colleagues. Few resources are as important as Stubborn Hustle in a person hungry to learn their craft.

If you are passing through Bryan, Texas, look up Ryan Terry and have him show you his project on the edge of the downtown.  He is walking the talk.

Year End Big Picture Thinking for Small Developers

advantage I am currently reading  The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni.  Lencioni is the author of Death by Meeting, a favorite of mine. The Advantage is about organizational health, something worth considering for any small developer.

You may have zero employees, but your work will require that you cultivate a real organization to have a stable enterprise. The organization may be populated by freelancers, brokers, consultants, architects, engineers, property managers, building trades, and investors, but you will need to built that organization/network intentionally. Building a healthy culture without a lot of drag and friction from dysfunction, politics, low morale, and low productivity is as much of a project as building/rebuilding a neighborhood. I look forward to other folk's impressions of this book. The end of the year is a good time for reflection and big picture thinking.

I spent years in an outfit that started out with just enough structure and systems to design, entitle, engineer and build a cool project or two.  With time, the head of the company figured out that he needed to intentionally build a company with a good culture and good systems/habits that happens to produce cool projects.  The transition was rough, but the lessons of that enterprise, (now dramatically reduced by the Great Recession) have stayed with me as we explore potential business models for Small Developers.

Patrick Lencioni is onto something in focusing this book on organizational health.  This book merits a weekend of reading and big picture thinking.

Lenioni's consulting firm is called the Table Group

 

Does Your Town Need an Authentic Asshole?

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One of the themes I have seen following the recent election, is that many people are tired of being talked down to by people who seem to think they are better.  Call it a backlash against smugness, for lack of a more precise term.  Recently I proposed that for people trying to build better places, the alternative to smugness would be to become authentic assholes. I am serious on this point.  Authenticity appears to be the quality that lets you get a partial pass on being an asshole, as long as you don't talk down to people..

I'm directing this approach to the Architects, Engineers, Planners, Policy Folks, and Academics who are members of the Congress for the New Urbanism or similar place making advocacy groups.  If being the fancy people who know stuff, (the people perceived as smug or condescending) is not working, then let's not be those people.  Let's be authentic assholes.

The fire marshal's mandate is not a collection of sincere feelings that we should help the community process through group hugs. It's bullshit that hurts the town. Some asshole needs to call the fire marshall out for being part of a calcified over-reach that makes no sense.

Off-Street Parking minimums? More bullshit that needs to be called out. Municipalities completely suck at guessing how much parking is going to be needed for all possible land uses, and the community was wrong to give them that job. The result was they picked numbers that produced fewer complaints and phone calls. Some asshole needs to call out that lazy bullshit in stark terms and poison the well. Make the position of advocating for such nonsense so awful that anyone who defends parking minimums (or maximums) is discredited for being a lazy bullshitter.

You want to make a difference at the local or regional level? Become a developer or a builder. Free yourself from the shackles of propriety and elaborate argument. Every community needs people who can build and rebuild the place. That's where we can find our place in the moral, economic, and cultural fabric of a place. Architects, Engineers, Planners, Academics have a professional obligation to at least appear to be interested in making the city a better place with ideas. People who are fearful see a host of horrible outcomes, real or imagined, when ideas are advanced in clumsy ways disconnected from the base concerns of daily life. Developers and builders are not burdened with those expectations and when the dust clears there are buildings built or rebuilt, people find benefit in the buildings or they don't. (--Keep in mind that the bar for a decent building or street is quite low many places). Nobody expects virtue from a developer. They may look to exact virtuous action from the developer under duress, but they really do not expect it as a natural expression of what is in the developer's greasy soul. An exaction or tax is often given reluctantly, out of resignation.  An unexpected gift can be a sincere expression of our better nature.

This is a framing thing. When New Urbanists propose a better place that starts to sound like some kind of utopia and the built effort that follows only delivers 68% utopia, folks get disappointed and pissed off because their high expectations (however unreasonable) have not been met. If a developer commits to meet all local codes and regulations and to deliver something the market seems to want and the built result is 32% utopia, people are accepting and sometimes even happy, because their low expectations have been exceeded.

Be virtuous in your heart, but don't wear it on your sleeve. Be cunning and deliberate. Have a plan for your neighborhood. Gather resources that others cannot access. If we can be the people who actually get stuff built during a recession (And that stuff doesn't suck), if we can build well, despite the severe shortage of skilled construction labor, who is going to mess with us at the local level?

If you would like a glimpse of what an insurgency of Small and determined developers might look like, wander over to the Small Developer/Builders Group on Facebook and see what those folks are talking about. We worked to keep the group fairly politics-free. If you are not on Facebook, find somebody who is and they can guide you.  Come to a Small Developer Workshop where you will meet folks who are serious about making a difference in their neighborhoods (even if other people think they are assholes).

Nobody suspects virtue in a developer. You can pick the opportunity to surprise them. Under-promise and then over-deliver.