Latest / The Land Development Podcast with Ryan Glick / Building a 12,000-Home Master Plan with Lee Farris - TLP183

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Building a 12,000-Home Master Plan with Lee Farris - TLP183 · The Land Development Podcast with Ryan Glick

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Here in Las Vegas, most master plans, you build a wall around the community you build.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's one entry in.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they put a gate.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: We have no entry monuments.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have no gates.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: We planned the community in a way where we had the builders kind of turn the community inside out and we really pushed them to put homes fronting the perimeter of their property and just kind of tried to do uncommon things with common materials.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, what's going on, everybody?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Land Development Podcast.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Ryan Glick.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited today to have Lee Ferris joining me.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Lee is the president and CEO at the Landwell Company.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Lee, thanks for joining me.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me today.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I was uh in preparation for this.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking at your background and some of the things that you were involved in before your current role.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And from the looks of it, and I may be wrong here, but it looks like your background is in civil engineering.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if true, is that what first got you into land development to begin with?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is true.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: I went to school to be a civil engineer, and I was a civil engineer here in town for 10 years before I came to work for a land well company on the development side.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's absolutely what got me involved in development.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh started doing drainage studies and then moved over to the land development side, putting improvement plans together for builders, master plan communities in town.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Got to meet the folks in the municipalities, got to meet all the utility folks.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: You kind of kind of create that network as a civil engineer.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then that kind of translates pretty well, I think, into the development world.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it seems like a relatively, I don't know if I'd say common path, but I do feel like over quite a few of these conversations that I've had, there have been several who started out as engineers.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems like having that engineering background gives you a different perspective on projects and everything that people who come into it, maybe not with that engineering background, you know, they they miss out on that.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of those things that you feel like you lean into from having that civil engineering background?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think the biggest thing for me is as certainly as on the front end of planning any community, an engineer will come at it from a very different perspective than the planning side will.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: And as the planners come bring you ideas, you're able to kind of quickly diagnose whether those will work from an engineering perspective.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Can I get water to it?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Can I get sewer to it?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Why won't, you know, my sewer is over here, so I need the site plan to kind of go a certain way.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um that civil engineering background just gives you kind of an insight as to how everything's going to work out in the field.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it helps short circuit maybe some planning ideas that won't work and helps, I think, steer us the right direction from the beginning.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I should, we should talk about Landwell really quick.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so for those who are listening in that may not be familiar with Landwell, could you talk about the types of projects the company does as well as where you operate?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we're based in Henderson, Nevada.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: We are a unique company who we we are owned by uh industrial companies that used to operate in the industrial center here in Henderson, Nevada.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: We were kind of the leftover products when they bought their individual plants in 1952.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: So our assets were purchased in 1952.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um we started the development side in the early 90s, and we have essentially gone through our land.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: We sold some early on to home builders directly to do their stuff.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: We developed the Valley Automat, which is the largest auto uh new car dealership uh place here in Las Vegas.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and we've developed industrial parks, all of that leading in some mixed-use development too.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: All that leading to now the Cadence Master Plan, which is the best-selling master plan west of the Mississippi.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're proud to say that.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: The rankings came out, I think, today from uh, and we're fifth, but all the four in front of us are all in Florida.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we are a unique company that we have a fixed amount of assets, but everything we've done has been in in the city of Henderson, and everything we've done has been kind of master planned.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what was the name of that uh master plan again?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: You say cadence?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Cadence.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Cadence with an H.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Cadence with a C.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: C O.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, with a C.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I did say that right the first time.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So Cadence.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I do want to talk about that master plan in just a little bit here.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but before we jump into that, another thing that I'm always interested in too, because people in the industry have all sorts of different paths getting to the role that they're in.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And with you, you know, leading Landwell, you had different roles in the company, you know, from when you started there, it looks like, you know, working your way up, getting to be a VP and then president, and then CEO.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: What did that journey look like for you?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And what were those things that you always were striving to?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, did you always want to be the CEO of the company, or did you just basically head down, do your job, and those opportunities came to you as you just were doing a good job in your role at the time?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly never had aspirations to be CEO.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think vice president was probably the highest I really kind of envisioned myself going.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: I got very lucky.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: The gentleman that was the president and CEO uh had a wealth of experience in master plans, but was not an engineer.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: He came from a planning and marketing background.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um so he had a very different perspective on things, but had worked a very successful master plans, Summerland here in Las Vegas, which is probably the longest running, most successful master plan here in Las Vegas, but worked at Celebration for Disney and worked for some master plans in Colorado.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So he had a wealth of experience, but from a very different perspective than I did.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think I was the civil engineer for Landwell before they hired me Oprah.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so they were my client before I came to work for them.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, early on he brought me in just to kind of handle that engineering work, get all the parcels ready to develop, get the entitlements done.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we all kind of had our lanes.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: And um over time, uh he kind of helped introduce me into some of the land selling partions of it, let me kind of start working on land sales, uh, let me start negotiating contracts, let me negotiate land sales and you know, kind of he worked me in through the process.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: I've been here 22 years.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: So he he worked me through the process and prepared me, I think, to be the CEO one day, but never had aspirations for it.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, as you said, you just put your head down, do your job, and you know, if you do your job well, you'll get rewarded.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Funny enough, I've had several different uh young civil engineers who have reached out to me and, you know, have listened to the podcast and they basically said that they're aspirational developers.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're engineers right now, but they want to get to the point where they can do some projects.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you look back on your career and what you've gone through and everything, what advice would you give to some of them who are who are engineers right now, but they do want to get into the development side of the business directly at some point in the future?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I would first say it's a much better job on the developer side than on the engineering side.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: Being the owner is much better than being the consultant chasing the work and reporting to somebody else.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So um it's great to have be able to determine your future by being on the development side.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: My advice to engineers when they ask me this is as you're going through doing your job as the engineer, pay attention to what everyone else around you is doing.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Read all the reports that come through, feel free to ask questions, visit the sites, learn how things are built, create relationships with the government folks you're gonna deal with, the municipalities, create relationships with the different utilities you may have to deal with.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because in the end, it's a relationship-driven job.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: I I have to be able to, when I have a problem, pick up the phone and call somebody who on the other side can help me get a problem solved.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just personal relationships that you build over time.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't happen overnight.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: You just got to build them, foster them, feed them, and and and create a wide enough set that you can kind of get things done when you need to get things done.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I didn't really think about that, but as you were talking about those relationships, the interaction with the city officials and the people with the city, I feel like that's something pretty common for engineers to do on behalf of developers on certain projects and everything.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I would imagine having that experience before you actually become a developer would be a definite advantage for you getting into that spot because you are, like you said, building some of those relationships.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's um they're the most critical relationships you have because you can't do anything unless you can process your things through those folks.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that relationships that you start to build, and I always tell engineers, make sure you're forming those relationships with the planners.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: I always encourage them to attend public hearings, listen to how people make decisions, listen to how the governing bodies make their decisions, listen to things they like and don't like.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's great ways to learn if you just are willing to invest the time.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that knowledge base just helps you because you you'll have a better sense of how to get your project approved, how to get your project on the road and time is money in this in this profession.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: So anything you can do to trim time is important.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's talk about cadence.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: So could you describe the the project, that master plan community and and what it looks like?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: So Cadence is a 2,200-acre master plan community in Henderson, Nevada.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: It has approved for 12,000 units, and we are 90% through those 12,000 now.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: All the land has been sold.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Builders are finishing up their parcels.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we have two parks left to build.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: But it's I I think it's a it's an interesting master plan.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of came into the master plan realm here in Las Vegas and looked around to competition.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: And like I said before, Summerland is probably the gold standard here in town.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it has a certain clientele, and there's others around us.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: There was Tuscany, there's Lake Las Vegas, there's Green Valley Ranch, Seven Hills, there's Anthem, there's a bunch.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of positioned ourselves, I think, a little differently than what most do.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: We tried to, my boss used to use the term bread and butter housing.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we kind of were looking for that first-time buyer, maybe move up buyer, but really wanted to kind of create a great master plan that everybody could move into and then create opportunities for people to move in from first-time buyer to move up to even to executive.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: We have some of those type homes.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we we tried to do that by doing things a little differently.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: We here in Las Vegas, most master plans, you build a wall around the community you build.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's one entry in, sometimes they put a gate.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: We have no entry monuments, we have no gates.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: We planned the community in a way where we had the builders kind of turn the community inside out and we really pushed them to put homes fronting the perimeter of their property and just kind of tried to do common, uncommon things with common materials.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: All our materials were off the shelf to kind of keep costs down.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So everything was about trying to make it affordable and make it an attainable thing for everybody in Las Vegas, which is, you know, master plan communities usually are the next step up.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we really thought there was a market for folks who wanted that lifestyle, but maybe we're first-time buyers.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And there were so many young folks who hadn't bought their first home yet, or folks who were just waiting, that we really saw that as an opportunity in a market.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it it's, I think, a master plan like any other.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: We've got our parks or open spaces.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: We're getting ready to start construction on a hundred-acre sports park with 24 lit ball fields.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we've got commercial, we've got multifamily, we've got it all that a master plan brings.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Just done differently, um, planned differently, and really nothing really custom, everything kind of off the shelf, all in an effort to kind of make it someplace everyone can move into.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when you talk about attainable housing and uh making it so that people who you know live there in in Las Vegas can afford to move into some of these homes, what what do you generally look for in trying to find that right price point?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because it feels like it feels like we we get to the price some somewhat backwards now because we used to be able to say, all right, what can people afford and try to build a home to fit that?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's a lot of restrictions on what we can actually build in some of these developments and in certain communities.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know what it's like out there in Las Vegas, but you know, did you was it just market research, try to understand what people can afford in that market, and then try to figure out, you know, materials and everything on how to get to that price point?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I think for us, we just kind of looked at what typically drove up pricing for builders.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And and look, most of them can build a home.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: They kind of know what that price per square foot is.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: The variables are usually what you have to do on the outside of the house, how much the land costs, and how long it takes you to go from purchase to selling homes.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so our development, we have a development agreement with the city of Henderson that kind of prescribed what we could do, but it gave us a lot of freedom in return for building parks.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: We built the fire station, we did some things.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: That that's kind of the trade-off you have with the city is you you build them things and then you get you get flexibility.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: But as important, just as important as that was again trying to keep our architecture good but affordable, um, using common off-the-shelf materials so that there was nothing custom that would drive the price of a wall up or a streetlight or something like that.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then as importantly for us was we leveraged our relationships with the city and helped our builders process themselves to the city as quickly as possible so that they were building homes, you know, hopefully six months, three months faster than they would on a normal project.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: That we had built the process with the city.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was prescribed, and we used our relationships.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: If they had an issue, we were involved.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we used to tell our builders um we're essentially a de facto staff for you while you're building in Cadence.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: We will serve you at the city in any way we can to speed you up.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I guess I asked that question as if you were building the homes, and I know you're you're not building the homes.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: You have builders that you're you're selling the lots to and everything, but it does seem to be a challenge, you know, throughout the country of trying to meet some of these price points that people can actually afford.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we're seeing certain metrics and things go higher for first-time homebuyers that I think the last I saw was around 40 years old, being the median age for first-time homebuyers, which is pretty crazy to think about.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you you had mentioned uh this master plan community, you said 12,000 units, I think.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when did this master plan start?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like how long ago did you actually start the development on this?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we actually initially entitled me, entitled it in 2007, late 2007, which was a bad time to entitle.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um and obviously the way the economy went, we just kind of put it on ice and we worked on some of our commercial and industrial developments and had to wait the market out.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then we came back in 2011 and re-entitled it with the city, adjusted for the new market realities that you know what was happening in 2006 was not feasible in 2011.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: We actually dropped our unit countdown, we changed some of the things we were doing and kind of right-sized it, brought in an age-qualified uh component to it, a 55 and over community to kind of help early on sales, because those sales were still going on.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was gonna, I was gonna say on the 12,000 units, one one of the things that I'm always interested in and hearing perspective on is when you have a master plan community that is this big and runs over the number of years that it runs, um, it feels like it can get easy to lose focus on that initial vision that you had for the the actual community and and everything within it.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: How have you managed to keep that focus on cadence?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I will say we've been lucky.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't think I finished answering your question.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: I apologize there.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we started we we broke ground in 2014.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Our first home was sold in 2015.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we're on an 11-year track.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're ahead of schedule because Las Vegas has just done fairly well.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I think we're ahead of where we thought we'd be.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I I think you know, that's a great question you ask, and I think that is the primary job of of folks like me, which is to enforce the standards and the expectations on the first sale the same as the last sale.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And to not let those standards slide as prices are going up and builders are starting to kind of you know kind of tell us, you know, gee, if I you make me do this, I'm not gonna be able to sell any houses.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Which, you know, may be true, but you you you have to kind of set your focus, you have to kind of get your consultants in line.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we have been very fortunate.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: We've used the same set of consultants the whole way through.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: We've used, for the most part, the same contractors the whole way through.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think assembling a top-notch team early on, keeping that group together so everyone understands their role, but also everyone understands what what our expectation is.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then for us as we build parks, as we the things we're gonna build, fire station, we built them to the standard that we built the first office building to.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we built the first office building in a master plan.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: That was the way we set the standard was we built the first office building right in the entry of the master plan.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's where we put our home finding center, that's where our HOA is housed today.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we built it to the level that we expected everyone else to build to.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we set the precedent ourselves and we put our money where our mouth was.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we also built the first 10 acres of what we call Central Park, which is a large park in the middle of it, before we sold a parcel to a builder and before a home was sold.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Those things existed.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that was just to set the standard, I think.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's just, you know, you got to be diligent on what you're doing, and you have to be committed to those principles, um, which can be hard for sure.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you mentioned uh not finishing that other question.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: I interrupted you on that one.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: So my my bad.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: I went I went right into the next one.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: But um I think another another thing, talking about the holding that standard from the first, you know, the first parcel sale all the way through to the last you know, sale that you have for a lot.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing that I feel, especially for some of these long longer projects, that changes is some of the preferences of the people buying the homes from the home buyers.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for instance, you know, we've seen over the last, I don't know, last five years, five, ten years, that, you know, now pickleball is all of a sudden, you know, all everybody's excited about pickleball.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that was more of something that you'd probably see in more of the 55 plus communities back before that, where you'd have a lot of you know, older people playing that sport because it's easier on their joints than playing tennis, but it's becoming big with younger people now and and younger families.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so how do you keep your pulse on what people are looking for that may be new today compared to when you first started the development?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's, you know, you have to do it in a number of ways.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I always say talking to our competitors, which are they're friends of mine, just trying to get the feedback they're getting from their buyers.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: We certainly, as because we were running the HOA, we had constant contact with the people buying in the master plan.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: We used to actually pull through the HOA our residents as to what amenities would you like to see us build.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: In our agreement with the city, we built in flexibility.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we had a bunch of different housing types, and all we really had to do in each individual village was meet a minimum unit count, but we could assemble it however we wanted.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: So if a housing trend started, a lot size started, something kind of changed in the market, and it will change over, you know, we're on 11 years.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly the market today is not what it was 11 years ago.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we built that flexibility in so we could kind of mature with the way the market was going.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Same with our parks.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: The parks were built kind of on a walking level, and we built in the ability to kind of change the amenities, I think, to kind of fit what the residents needed.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's an important thing to do.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we did it by polling our residents.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think you talk to a lot of folks, you you you try to talk to folks in the business to hear what they do.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: You do a lot of reading.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of folks like to tell you what to do.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, our landscape architects were great at this.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: They were going to parks conferences around the country.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they would bring us back kind of new playground equipment, new exercise equipment, new facilities folks are putting in these open spaces that residents like.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we then tried to incorporate those as best we could.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: This episode of the Land Development Podcast is brought to you by Maverick Water Group, a trusted water partner to some of the largest master plan developers, builders, and leadership teams of the fastest growing cities in the country.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: With a growing portfolio delivering more than 1.5 million gallons per day, Maverick is a purpose-driven water infrastructure company that is addressing our growing water stress and supply crisis by bridging the gap between rising demand and limited public funding.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: They accomplish this by designing, capitalizing, owning, and operating non-potable water systems that are fit for purpose, reduce infrastructure costs, ensure supply certainty, and improve land stewardship.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: To learn more about how Maverick saves developers and builders between$5,000 and$15,000 per lot versus traditional potable water infrastructure, visit maverickwater.com.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's M-A-V-E-R-I-C-K water.com.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's get back to the show.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: When you look at cadence and you think about what success looks like, and I'm sure there's measurements of success throughout the project, right?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: And what that looks like.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: How do you look at the project and decide or determine whether things have been successful?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I always said um the greatest way I knew we had done something well was when we would go to a we would hold events with the HOA or we'd hold events in Central Park, we did car shows and um, you know, the things that you do, uh summer swares where we put the lights out and have a DJ movies in the park.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I would we'd go to those events, I'd wear my name tag, so everyone knew I was, and you just talk to the residents.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And when they would tell you how much they loved it, telling you how happy they were there.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: There, tell you how much they appreciated you building that park near their house.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: That to me was the ultimate measure of success.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Folks were happy to be there.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think the other measure of success for me is our resale rate is slow.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: So folks that are buying in aren't moving out.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have a tremendous amount of turnover.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Those to me are the two most tangible ones.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: The folks telling you they like it there, and then folks staying, I think are the biggest marks of success for me.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think like every developer, you just kind of churn through these things, and rarely do we stop for a minute and look back and kind of look at what we did and and you know assess it.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we I I tell I think developers were all a lot of like, we can tell you about every failure.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: We don't always keep track of every success.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we know everything we did wrong, that's good, that's how you learn, but we rarely track what we did well.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we rarely, you know, look back on our success and look back on what we did and you know, kind of enjoy the view, I guess, as you're looking back.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not, I think, in our nature, because we're always kind of head down moving forward.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always you're kind of looking 18, 24 months ahead.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: So you just never get to kind of live in the present.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's pretty hard to do in this job.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's just hard to do.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's almost like uh, you know, Nick Saban when he was back at Alabama and he would uh, you know, they win the national championship, and in the press conference after the national championship, he's already talking about next year, next season, and what what he needs to do to get ready for the next national championship.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think, I think you're right.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're spot on that uh there is constant looking ahead at kind of the next thing, how are we gonna keep ahead in the right direction?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very rare to have that reflection on the past and and some of the wins that you've had, because yeah, you don't want to get complacent and too like, I don't know, you don't want to pat yourself on the back too much for the successes and everything as well.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: We we used to kind of joke that we would have a big land sale and title would say, Okay, you're closed, we've wired your money.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it would be like a one-minute good job, and then you just went back to your office and kind of got to work, or you'd have a ribbon cutting for a park opening, and you just would go back to your office and work, right?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: You just didn't kind of reflect on those things.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can't live in those.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can enjoy it for a minute, like you said, and then you got to move on to the next thing.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, you met you mentioned that we uh you know often look at some of the failures and you know think about those more than some of the wins.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm gonna dig into that a little bit.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: What are there some some failures that you can remember that were lessons learned for you maybe early on or at some point in your career that you could could share?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I tell people I can remember every detail of every land sale that didn't close, but I can rarely recall the details of land sales that do close.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think what you learn going through that process and the lessons that I learned are just kind of how to deal with folks who are buying land, home builders, industrial folks, what's important to them, what things will make them not want to close, what information do you need to have on the top of your head so that when they call in a panic the day before they're supposed to close due diligence and have a question, you're prepared for it and you're ready to answer that question.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the things that I think are are are what I learned most from those failures.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then I I think the other thing is we we try sort of like we tried to put Wi-Fi in our parks because when we built the first part, my kids were little, and I went to my boss and said, you know, I'm at the park with my kids.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone, all the parents are looking at their iPads, right?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Their kids are enclosed, and all the parents are working on their iPads or their phones, and we should provide Wi-Fi because the cell service wasn't great.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it just became you you just quickly figured out that folks would go into the park, log on the Wi-Fi, and start to like hack websites and steal things and down, like you just don't think of these things, right?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of think through a good idea, maybe a great idea, but what could be the downside of that idea?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you need to think through those things a little bit, and you can't necessarily do it on a whim.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: You have to really sit down and think through what you're gonna do and why you're gonna do it and what could go wrong, and how do I make sure that doesn't happen?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you talked about earlier about how throughout this entire project you've been working with a lot of the same consultants and contractors throughout the project, and you know, those are other types of relationships to be able to maintain in your company and everything.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what are you generally looking for in these uh partners, these uh consultants and contractors, as far as uh, I don't know, what what makes them, what what are the good qualities that you look for that make them great to work with?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say on the consultant side, it's um because that's in the design side.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: You need somebody who shares your focus and vision that I think will work at your schedule.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we're building big, large city scale projects, but we're not necessarily on a city schedule.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: We we're we want to go much faster.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're willing to take a little more risk and and how things go.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just folks who you think will understand what you're trying to do will, and then share your vision, share your passion for the project, and and and have some feel like they have a little ownership in it, that a little bit of it is theirs.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: I that to me is the most important thing, and all our consultants have that.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: On the contractor side, I I think you know it's it's you have to have a trust in that person because they're out doing a lot of things where you just can't be there every day.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to trust them that they're gonna be on time, be on schedule, be on budget, they're gonna get the things done that need to get done, and they're gonna do it well so that you don't have to go back and tell them no, tear that out.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that that that's a trust thing.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, those contractors we've had, I've worked with for my 30 years here in town in some way, shape, or form.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you just form those relationships, again, like everything, and you just have people that you know, if I call you on Saturday at two in the afternoon, you're gonna answer the phone if I call you.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because you know I'm only calling you if there's a problem.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that you will go fix it right away.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that that's the kind of relationship.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of things we look for in those just folks we knew we could trust, folks we knew we had confidence in, folks that shared our vision.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: What do the conversations look like when someone's not meeting the expectations that you know you've set out in the beginning in that relationship?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is that just a straightforward conversation, right to the point that, hey, this is this is what we expected in the beginning and we're, you know, we're not living up to that right now, or you're not living up to that right now, and we need to get back on track, or what do those conversations look like from your perspective?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, interestingly enough, one of the other things we look for that I didn't mention was we need people who will tell us when we're wrong.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because we can be wrong, we can give poor direction, we can send you down a bad path, and we need somebody who's not going to just go, okay, you're the client, I'll give you what you want.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: We'll go, hey, I don't think that's a good idea.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: So they need to be able to be frank with us, and then it needs to go the other way, which that conversation would be hey, this is what we agreed to.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: You're not living up to your side of this.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: I need you to put the people, resources, effort to get back on track so that we can go get this one done and go to the next one and go to the next one.
• 29:18
  unknown: Right.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think the benefit of being a developer of a large master plan is you have so much work ahead of you that it, you know, they can kind of you can keep a group busy, but we had the same engineer for almost the whole time, the same project manager, because we could just feed them one project after the next.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: The team stayed consistent.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: So when we got off schedule, we usually knew pretty early.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was easy to tell early on, and we were early and saying, hey, this is not looking like it's going right.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: We need to fix this now.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's important you have those conversations rather than let it fester, rather than let it go on.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: You just got to nip it in the bud, figure out a plan to fix it.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think approach it as a team.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like you may be having a problem, but it's now my problem.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: So how can we together find a solution that gets us back to where we need to go?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: And not just, it's easy to just blame them, but it could be something we've done.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you got to kind of look at it as a team approach, I think, and you got to uh work together to find a way to get you back on try it.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I'm glad you brought up that uh, you know, challenging, challenging you and your team as well is is an important thing that I I overlooked there.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I'm glad you brought that side up as well.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: When you're looking uh out into the future, you know, there in your market and uh cadence and anything else you have planned for the future, I guess what are you what are you most looking forward to?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we are a fixed set of assets.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: So when we're done with cadence, this land well will be no more.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um like I said, we we were bought in '52 as a side asset to a bunch of things, and our owners are not in the development business.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: They just found that they had this asset they needed to monetize.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: So for me personally, I'm ready to move to the next master plan.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to kind of to start over.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's fun to start.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I enjoyed the startup process.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's just a lot to figure out, there's a lot of moving parts.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think once you kind of get into the development, it it becomes kind of routine and it becomes kind of an assembly line of go to the next one, go to the next one, go to the next one.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there's not a lot of planning, there's not a lot of deep thought.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's just kind of becomes robotic in a way.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, I'm ready to kind of start with a new piece of land somewhere and and start from scratch and kind of figure out how do we position ourselves, how do we get to where we want to go?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: How do we do that in a timely fashion?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's the fun part.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's uh that's really cool.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, and you and what you talked about throughout this whole episode is all those relationships that you've built.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: So having those relationships is going to make that very possible for you because you know a lot of people, you know the people who are doing a lot of these other projects in that area and probably have connections even outside the area in this industry and everything.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: So definitely leaning into those uh connections and relationships, I'm sure.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's uh just looking at the time here, just over 30 minutes.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so let's move into the last segment here, which is what I call the lightning round.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got five questions for you and all related to your experience and everything.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: First one, what do you think is the most important skill every developer should have?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I think the most important one is you better be able to form relationships and you better be able to keep them healthy.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and you better be able to respect those relationships and those folks you have them with.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because without those you can't do anything.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: All right, second one.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: What is one lesson you've learned from a project that didn't go as planned?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's one is a tough one.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think this is gonna come across, I think, as wrong, but don't be over-ambitious sometimes.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we as developers get so ambitious of what we're gonna do and how fast we're gonna do it.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you just need to be practical on what you can do and when you can get it done so that you don't overcommit and that you, I guess, undercommit, overdeliver.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: And some of the biggest failures you've had is we were just late.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're late, it just it messes everybody up.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the biggest thing is being honest with myself, being honest internally that what what can we do and making sure that we can deliver on what we promise.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: All right, third one.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: What do you still enjoy most about this business after all these years?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, meeting the residents.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can't beat it once you meet somebody who's moved into a community, you've helped design and been a part of, and they love it, and they tell you how much they love it.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: It just it's the greatest part of the job by far.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: All right, fourth one.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: What is one piece of advice you uh you still think about today that someone gave to you in the past?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, the biggest one, uh my boss when I came here was a handshake deal guy.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: If he committed to it, his word was his bond.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: That was the same way my father raised me to be.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so probably the two men in my life who were most influential had the same exact uh thought process, which is your word, your bond, you better live up to it.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if you agree to it, you gotta do it.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter if something goes, changes, doesn't matter.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you say it, it doesn't need to be in writing.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you say it, that's it.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're a handshake deal guy.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it is amazing if you just honor your word to folks, even when it's to your detriment, maybe a time or two, it will help you when you need help.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you do what you're supposed to do, when you need somebody to help you, they'll help you because they know that if you know you'll you'll do what you say you're gonna do.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you can kind of, you know, even like the city folks with contractors, with anybody, you can say, hey, look, I I I need this done.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: I promise you we'll get this under contract, we'll do this, but I just need you to go out and do it.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they'll go do it for you.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because they know if you say you're gonna do something, your part, you're gonna do it.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that that would be the biggest piece of advice I think that I I carry with me every day.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because without it, it's hard to get anything done.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right, last one.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: What advice would you give to someone just getting started in land development?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, I I just would say, you know, try to do a little bit of every job.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: So don't just get yourself where this is all you do, but in a company where there's multiple roles, as much as you can kind of move around a little bit and kind of get some experience in every little bit of it from the planning to the engineering to the construction.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to advance up, you need to kind of understand how it all works.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: You need to know understand how they all work together.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: You need to understand how they fit together so that, you know, when you're in charge, you kind of know how to put things in place to be successful.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: So do many jobs if you can.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: Don't get stuck with one.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Try to move around as much as you can internal to your company or however you want to do it, um, so that you can expand your knowledge base.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, do you think it's uh beneficial for people just getting into land development to actually go work for someone else where they can actually get exposure to all these projects versus trying to go and you know do a single project on their own, um, maybe in just a single asset class, you know, doing that first will prepare them to be able to go out and do their first project on their own.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, folks I know who like that, we always I would always suggest partner up with a somebody who's done one.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: Those guys are not always, you know, they're they're all happy to bring on a partner in a lot of ways.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: You may be a minority partner, but and then you know, they'll they'll put you under their wing and they'll show you kind of how it works so you understand how it goes.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not an easy job to do.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of little nuanced parts of it.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can get a partner, partner with somebody with that's you know had success and done well, and do a deal or two with them to kind of get to your feet and then kind of you can branch out to do it on your own.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Lee, uh, I guess that brings us to an end here.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a lot of uh really good information and uh really interesting hearing about Cadence and your background and you know, some of the your path getting to where you're at today and everything.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: What's the best way for people listening in to connect with you and to learn more about Landwell?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I always handed out my cell phone number to every resident of Cadence, which people thought was nuts, but I figured if you want to talk to me, it'd be best if you just call me so we can talk directly.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you can call me on my cell phone 702-523-2920 or email me at landwells, L-F-A-R-R-I-S at landwellco.com.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'll throw those over on the show notes page.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, maybe not the phone number.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: You should listen back to the phone number if you uh if you want to hear that.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the reasons I love this industry too, is because I have an amazing number of people who will give out their uh cell phone numbers just right on right on the podcast.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully people reach out and take, you know, take you up on some of those conversations and everything.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: But uh yeah, thanks again for uh hopping on here, Lee.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really do appreciate you taking the time to do this.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you for having me.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot of fun.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: All right, guys, that's all for this episode.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not already subscribed, please click that button.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love to have you back for the next one.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, we will talk to you all next week.