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About this Episode
Eric Brown spends most of his time designing beautiful buildings and doing urban plans for his firm, Brown Design Studio. But, when you get him away from the desk, you find someone with a good sense of history, and an understanding of how to get things done. We partnered up together in Savannah to help create the Savannah Urbanism Series (a guest lecture series), host CNU 26, and create the Savannah 2033 Plan for greater downtown.
With all of Eric’s many accomplishments, he’s a good person to talk with when we try to understand the bigger landscape of change and cities. So, we cover a lot of ground including the role of the business community in planning historically, what all is going on in Savnanah, and what he’s seeing with new, greenfield development. He talks a bit about his project Selah, in Norman OK, as one example.
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 (00:01.346)
Welcome back to the messy city podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg Got my good buddy Eric Brown with me today. Eric is architect urban designer man about town Savanian What what else should I have on your resume here?
Eric (00:22.818)
Probably my best accomplishment, which is being a father.
Kevin K (00:25.718)
There you go, there you go. All right, well, I'm in that with you now as well, although I was a little later at the party than you, but it's a pretty awesome responsibility and I know Nick's a great kid, so congratulations on that.
Eric (00:41.494)
You haven't seen him in a while. He's six foot one now.
Kevin K (00:45.142)
Jesus, it's taller than me? That's not possible.
Eric (00:47.982)
He's a, he's still grown too. He's a big boy. He's going to be a big boy. And, uh, you also haven't seen ace the wonder dog.
Kevin K (00:57.418)
Yeah, yeah, I know. It's been a couple of years since I've been back. Although watch out rumor is we're gonna make a trip back this year, so I'll let you know. So I wanted to, there's a lot of things Eric and I talk about and there's any number of directions we can go with this hour today, but I do wanna hit a couple of things specific to like what stuff that you work on and some things that we did years ago.
Um, Eric and I were kind of partners in crime in Savannah, um, really trying to, um, bring more discussion about new urbanism and, and better long-term planning, uh, to the city. And that may seem like a strange thing because Savannah is famous for its planning, uh, and its built environment. But like a lot of cities in the last several decades, um, it's really just been kind of the default.
same stuff that you see everywhere, other than the historic district. So one of the things that Eric and I kind of put our heads together on was to get a group together and do an updated master plan of sorts for the greater downtown area of Savannah. We did this in 2018. We called it the Savannah 2033 plan. And...
We called it 2033 because not just because it was like 15 years was a nice round number away, but really because 2033 is the 300th anniversary of the founding of Savannah. Savannah is actually older than the United States as a country. So it felt like a great benchmark for us to give. And I flew the coupe a few years ago, so I haven't been in touch in Savannah with every...
as much of what's going on, but I wondered, Eric, if you could talk a little bit about that plan and effort and any legacies from that and what might be going on today, sort of good, bad, or indifferent, regards to thinking about planning in downtown Savannah.
Eric (03:11.402)
Um...
That's a good question. And you know...
I'm gonna kind of circle back to that answer in a second. But, you know, we also, you know, you and I also kind of had our little CNU group here, brought the Congress here in whatever year that was. But, you know, as part of that CNU group, we did a series of...
Urban Speaker Series. You know, we had Mayor Riley, we had Deiru Tadani, we had Rick Hall. Um, we had, yeah, we had a, um, you know, the top talent and, you know, I'm sure I'm forgetting a few on there. And.
Kevin K (04:01.738)
Chuck Morrone, yeah, Joe Menard goes there, yeah.
Eric (04:14.634)
you know, when I'm really kind of proud of our efforts, you know, even after all these years.
Eric (04:23.242)
because people still talk about that. You know, they still talk about those. And, you know, if you were listening to you and I back in 2018 or 17 or whenever that was, we were doing those, 19. You know, our mission, what we told everybody our mission was is to raise the bar of discourse and education here on urban planning matters and.
You know, I got to say buddy, congratulations, because it took a while to sink in, but we did it. You know.
Kevin K (04:56.175)
Well, things move a little more slowly in Savannah, right?
Eric (04:58.938)
Absolutely they move slow.
Kevin K (05:01.586)
Although, honestly, they move slowly everywhere. So, what are you gonna do?
Eric (05:07.531)
But I've seen the effects of some of those. And I think.
You know, we've given people the vocabulary and in some cases, passion to go deal with some of these issues. Some of our elected officials, some of our staff members. And so I just wanted to kind of tell you that, you know, all those efforts that were pretty much thankless at the time are still somewhat thankless. But, you know, we did do it. We had an effect on that. So.
I'm real proud of you and our efforts on there. So I wanted to throw that out there. There's some significant changes coming that I really can't mention. I don't think it's appropriate to mention right now. But when they do occur, you'll be shocked and you'll know exactly how much of an effect we had.
Kevin K (05:54.046)
That's great to hear.
Eric (06:17.038)
exciting to see if that does come to fruition. And everyone out there in podcast land, cause I've talked to other senior groups about doing this or those grassroots education efforts, they are thankless, just they're important though. It's really the most important thing I think you can do as a local group. So hammer away at that stuff, cause it does bear fruit.
But back to your planning question, you know that master plan...
Eric (06:57.246)
was really good work. That our team.
you know, just did some really amazing work in a very short time for what we were doing.
Kevin K (07:08.89)
on a shoestring too. I mean, we did that on a ridiculous budget.
Eric (07:10.51)
Oof.
Yeah, yeah, we did. Um, but.
Kevin K (07:17.078)
I mean you and almost – you and basically everybody else donated huge amounts of time or else it never would have gotten done.
Eric (07:24.47)
Well, you know, again, I think it's kind of the same thing. You know, we did get, you know, city council to adopt that guide.
You know, I don't know that they have ever gone back and looked at it since then. Um, but it has. Spurned off and affected a lot of things. You know, the tide to town has been a success here, which is, you know, kind of linking up, um, some bike trails with some of our canals Savannah's got a lot of canals, um, and waterways.
and kind of tying all those together so that you can really get somewhere substantial on a bike that's in a nice interesting setting, you're not sharing the road with automobiles. So that's just, they just got more funding for their next phase. It's very, it's a huge success story and that's probably the biggest one that came out of that effort. You know, there's
There's continuing work with the Civic Center, which is one of the focal points of that plan. And the work we put in there is a good kind of milestone, I think, to judge the future work by.
Eric (09:00.246)
And the Waters corridor has finished up and it looks really nice. I just went, I was over there the other day. And so, you know, those efforts kind of helped that area a little bit, which was part of the East side charrette as well from the Congress.
Kevin K (09:21.13)
Yeah. You know, one of the things we used to talk about, Eric, it kind of may help people to have some context to know that this was basically a planning effort that we put together that was outside City Hall. We worked kind of through the remnants of Savannah Development and Renewal Authority, but we also went out and raised money privately and
and pieced it together. And that was something like, you and I used to talk about that all the time, how, I wonder if you could just expand on this, you know, that one of the frustrations we have is that in so many cities, the business community and people who ought to know better about development and, you know, things that would work well, at least financially in a city.
the business community largely has kind of stepped away from being involved in planning and we used to just, that's something we kind of wrung our hands about all the time. Even in a great historic city like Savannah that was often the case, but clearly cities all over the country, you know, it's just been a sea change in how people think about that. And I wonder if you could kind of share some of your thoughts on that.
Eric (10:43.033)
Yeah, so...
You know, I'm a big history buff, history fan, as it relates to planning, but just in general. And, you know, when you look at some of the great plans that have been done.
Eric (11:05.366)
plan for San Francisco, the plan for Chicago, heck, even the 1815 plan for Manhattan. You know, it wasn't the city of Chicago didn't do that plan. It was the business community that wrote Dan Burnham and Unlimited Check to go get it done, make us a world-class city.
And San Francisco did the same thing.
It's because the business community needed a competitive city to be competitive in an emerging national market, you know, and never in our history until probably, I would guess, posted.
post-war or maybe probably during the depression that started where you had you started to rely on government agencies to do that.
you know, because there was no planning profession prior to 19 something, 1912, maybe. Um, and so that's interesting. Um, again, how we used to do it. And, you know, not, I sound like an old man, get off my lawn kind of thing, but, um, you know, it worked and it, those were beautiful plans and they've stood the test of time. They've built magnificent world-class cities.
Eric (12:31.282)
Chicago is a top three, top five US city, however you want to rank it. San Francisco same. So, you know, you know, so where's our business community? What's the question you and I kind of asked ourselves over some beverages, I think one or two nights and you know, it's.
It's different. It's different now. And I don't think we realized this at the time, but you know, let's say in 1893, you know, the business community in Chicago and you had some national, you know, obviously Sears was based, I think Sears was based out there at the time. And you know, you had some national companies, but you know, businesses were for the most part locally owned.
Eric (13:30.042)
So you had the department store that was locally owned. It wasn't a Macy's yet. It wasn't a Woolworths yet. There were locally owned businesses that did things, steel mills, building cars or mufflers or whatever it was. And all that's gone. Literally that whole class of independent businessmen.
that are locally based and care about where they actually are and where they live and how their kids are going to view all this. Those guys are gone and they're replaced with global.
corporate MBA dipshits that just care about stock price. And so they're running a global company out of somewhere. And it's real hard to get them to do anything other than for the PR work. And raising funds for CNU, I think we've got a taste of that. But what was interesting is Delta's based out of
Atlanta Chick-fil-A is based out of Atlanta. And so they were willing to fund some efforts in their home market they perceived it as. So we got lucky with a few of those. But Gulfstream here is one of our few major businesses in Savannah. And they do a ton in the community. They do. But they don't give
s**t's about the planning work here. It's just not on their radar.
Eric (15:18.166)
You know, so I think that.
that whole shift is something to be cognizant of. And you have to find kind of that civic leadership somewhere else. And by all means, if you have a local-based business, then lean on them. They're just not that prevalent like they used to be. Before we relied on the city.
You know, here we have obviously tourism groups that are interested in the planning. So, you know, they provide some of that leadership, right or wrong. And...
Eric (16:07.678)
I think you have to, you know, as a...
You know, as like what we were doing is basically, you know, guerrilla warfare, you know, I always viewed it as, you know, working outside the system as the system isn't getting it done. You know, we were trying to model our efforts on, you know, what some of the great planners before us, Daniel Burnham, and them were doing and engage that business community. And, you know, we found some success here.
And so for people that might be trying that same thing, I would do some research into where some of the capital or trusts are in your city. Those are usually good sources for funding efforts to do stuff like this.
Kevin K (17:04.594)
Yeah, I was thinking about like, even here in Kansas City, we had a great City Beautiful Plan like a lot of American cities did, starting sort of 1880s and all the way through the 1910s. It's interesting that there's a couple of great books that talk about how the creation of the Parks and Boulevards plan here. There was a core group of local business people, including the newspaper publisher that basically
town and lobbied for that thing to happen. They hired a famous landscape architect at the time, George Kessler, who was an Olmsted disciple. And they basically went around and lobbied to make sure it would happen. And over 100 years later, that's as big a part of what the city is known for as anything for people who come here and see it. And you can see the Parks and Boulevard
Kevin K (18:02.814)
I mean, that's pretty common all over the place. I think you make a great point too about just like the local civic leadership in like, do you ever think about that like in your, compared to your native Ohio? So Eric grew up in Ohio and you know, Ohio is interesting because let's say, you know, 70, 80 years ago, there was unbelievable wealth and industry and local leadership and great cities that were built.
As a result, great architecture, but it's probably suffered as much as any place with a lot of those companies becoming part of what you describe. They all eventually got absorbed and combined and merged or dissolved. And there's not as much of that local civic leadership as there probably was.
Eric (18:56.934)
No, it's not. You know, all those rust belt cities. Pittsburgh's actually probably the best example of a city that was able to pivot quickly, in part because they have a variety of higher learning institutions there that really help them become a research center in many ways and survive the shift away from making steel.
Eric (19:25.955)
and you know.
Cleveland in 1920 was a top five city. It was number four or five city in America in terms of population. And it fell off a cliff there. I mean, it's still a big city, but it's a skeleton of itself. Everybody lives in the burbs, mostly.
You know, they don't make, Cleveland never made cars or they made some steel, but they made a lot of the stuff that went into cars, mufflers, transmissions, engines, um, all sorts of that stuff and some steel. But I'll, you know, a lot of that's gone. Not all of it, but most of it.
Eric (20:14.026)
But you know, I think.
Eric (20:18.334)
I think those grassroot efforts to find better planning and better design work and expecting better.
I think it needs to start with somebody in the community. If that business community is not there, then maybe it's a neighborhood association or downtown association or somebody needs to start it. And I think just follow that path of educating and doing some demonstrative projects, which I know you've done both in Kansas City and-
time here in Savannah, you know, just showing how you can, nobody knew what a parklet was. You know, after that, I did one and, um, you know, COVID kind of opened that box and in many places.
Kevin K (21:06.385)
So we just went out and did one.
Eric (21:17.778)
I think it's just, but you're fighting uphill guerrilla warfare, but it's actually easier that way because you don't have to answer anybody. You just kind of do what you do. And so I really enjoyed that time we were doing that stuff here.
And you know, we just met, a couple of us met again here in the fall. You know, we're going to pick up on some of that again, which is somewhat falling off the radar here. I just haven't had the same time that I had when you and I were doing it.
Kevin K (21:54.73)
Yeah. And Savannah also is, I guess it's kind of unique when you think about it because it's got, they're probably more like multi-generation families and people who are really invested in the place than there are in other cities in the country. We had a lot of luck with like realtors and other people who also cared about real estate value. But there definitely were, there are.
some of those still legacy families that give a damn about the place and what it's changing into for better or worse. I think probably a lot of cities have that, but it felt like maybe some of those older southern cities, Savannah, Charleston, Beaufort, where it used to be, might have a little more of that than other places.
Eric (22:46.226)
Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. You know, this, this whole topic is really almost worth.
Eric (22:55.147)
a CNU sub-chapter or, you know, boot camp for guerrilla warfare or something.
Kevin K (23:01.508)
Ha ha
Eric (23:03.574)
You know, how, how to affect change in your local city. That would be actually an interesting session to do. Cause I get asked a lot on stuff.
Kevin K (23:16.914)
Yeah. Well, and you've also done it not just in Savannah but in Beaufort. You were there with like what, 14 years? Yeah. Something like that. All right.
Eric (23:24.082)
I don't remember yet, a long time. No, more than that actually, but because I'm getting old now. But yeah, and you know.
Kevin K (23:31.736)
Hehehe
Eric (23:36.866)
There's, you know, once you start waving the flag, people come out of the woodwork and say, yeah, you know, that's a good point, or I agree with that, or, but, you know, you got to, somebody's got to light the fire.
Kevin K (23:51.651)
Yeah.
So what else is happening in Savannah these days? What are you seeing from a development or a design standpoint? I know when I left town and since then, there's been a lot more, I guess what we call, large-scale development east of downtown and a little bit on the west of downtown. And then we had a lot of discussions about, how do you make incremental?
change and make some of that missing middle stuff easier in the older neighborhoods? What are you seeing these days? Is it kind of gradual change? Does it feel like things are moving faster or what?
Eric (24:35.596)
Um...
Eric (24:39.702)
No, it's there's, you know, if you drive over the bridge into Savannah from South Carolina, you know, I did it the other day and I don't know, there were 13 cranes, you know, the amount of cranes in the air is always a good judge of what's going on. And, you know, we are in that stage where.
We kind of are coming out of a stage where we couldn't build hotels fast enough anywhere.
And they've kind of run out of downtown space, although not entirely.
actually they two of the biggest buildings you know
just sold to hotel companies that are going to convert them back. The one building used to be a hotel that sits on Johnson Square. That's going to be converted back to a hotel, so we're losing all that office space. And the one East Bryant building, which is the tallest building in Savannah, was just bought. It's going to be at Ritz Carlton.
Kevin K (25:42.58)
Okay.
Kevin K (25:54.63)
Oh wow, that's quite an upgrade. It was a great building.
Eric (25:57.59)
Well, yeah, it's a great building. It's just, you know, it's displacing. We're losing two of the major office buildings downtown. Um, and you know, there's a ton of hotel buildings still going on. Um, there's a couple on their construction. I can see out my window here. Um,
And the other thing is the large apartment building that takes up as much, you know, it's as much of a Texas donut as you can fit on whatever site you're on. So there's probably.
Eric (26:37.558)
six, seven of those going on in various parts of town right now. And some just finished, some just finished up. There are several kind of over by the bridge. There's a lot on upper Montgomery Street that are either built or coming online. That whole area is kind of marching southward. There's a couple of infill ones over by where I live. There's two right, right by my.
Eric (27:09.858)
And you know they're just they're huge big buildings and the ones inside the historic district you know have enough of a review process. I was walking by the one the other day and you know it's got a really nice brick to it. It's got nice windows you know but the all the you know all the details are kind of crappy. You know the
They made them put brick lintel up there, but it's fake. You know, it doesn't overhang the masonry at all. So, you know, all that little stuff that we kind of gripe about, you know, that stuff's not a hundred percent, but you know, the building forms okay and the materials are okay. But then you look at the ones that are outside that district and holy s**t, it looks just like the fourth war in Atlanta or, you know.
any big city is that nameless, shitty architecture.
the crazy colors and the rain screen b******t and the ins and outs and the balconies and all sorts of just, you can just see that those fall apart within 10 years. So we're getting some of that, you know, wherever they can do it, they try that. Thankfully, historic district kind of protects us from that to some degree. These are the same issues, you know, Charleston faced as well.
We're usually about seven years behind whatever Charleston's going through.
Eric (28:50.647)
And but you know, it's especially during COVID.
You know, all the downtown real estate in a span of 18 months doubled in value, doubled and had already, you know, I'll be here 10 years.
Eric (29:10.527)
in October.
Eric (29:15.514)
And you know everything's over four times of what it cost when I first moved here. Coming up on five times. So, you know, there's...
Kevin K (29:27.182)
It was already kind of at a high basis by then, at that point, honestly.
Eric (29:34.376)
It's, you know, coming up on, you know, residential stuff in my neighborhoods.
Eric (29:46.622)
eight, nine hundred bucks a foot. Something like that, you know?
which is pretty expensive.
Kevin K (29:56.786)
Yeah, that's the understatement.
Eric (30:00.987)
You know and so that's kind of what's going on here. You know it's really filling in and you know the
Midtown District, which is south of the Historic District, south of Forsyth Park, that continues to thrive.
Eric (30:26.07)
you know, some businesses, mostly food and beverage stuff opening up. And, you know, that neighborhoods, which is your old neighborhood, that's, that's also seen a similar, you know, bump in value, you know, which was a lot more affordable back in the day. It's even be hard pressed to find something, you know, under a million bucks up there now or something close to that.
$800, $900, $800, $900. And tons of people, especially during COVID, they flocked here, man. There's so many people that cashed out of, my old neighbors were from Brooklyn. Sold whatever they had in Brooklyn, paid cash for whatever and put money in their pocket. So it's so cheap compared to those kinds of places.
Still, still is.
But yeah, it's a big jump in population here. And it's been interesting, because it's a big jump in.
Eric (31:39.586)
people living, so that's good. And then, we're still overrun with our, and most people I'm sure won't know that, but Savannah's got a hellacious take rate for Airbnbs, short term rentals. I've never come across anywhere that has any sort of ordinance like the one we have. It's 25% non-owner occupied.
Kevin K (32:00.33)
Hehehe
Eric (32:09.226)
by ward, which is our neighborhood system, if you will. So that doesn't include the owner-occupied ones or the illegal ones. So just the economics on that math drives a lot of... A lot of the Victorians were picked up as Airbnb investments by holding companies. I mean, they would sell without even looking at them just because they can do the math, right?
Kevin K (32:39.286)
I keep wondering when that bubble's gonna burst. Feels like it's bursting nationwide in different places, the Airbnb bubble, but Savannah, Charleston, those cities are so popular. I don't know.
Eric (32:52.49)
Yeah, the tourism numbers here are ridiculous for a city of this size, honestly. And with the last round of hotels online now and more coming, it's really overrun with tourists. It just wasn't designed to have as many people as we have here. So it's like, you need reservations now to go get dinner. It's like Manhattan.
It's hard to roll in unless you find a neighborhood joint. There's a few left. You can just roll in and you happen to know somebody and you get dinner. Otherwise, there's her standing in line for some of these dumb restaurants. It's like.
Kevin K (33:35.498)
Hmm. Yeah, that's a new thing.
Eric (33:37.975)
this.
Kevin K (33:38.998)
So I also want to talk a little bit about how your practice has changed over the years and like what all you're doing today. Eric's firm is Brown Design Studio. He's an architect. He's done architecture and urban design and urban planning but probably heavier on architecture. And I'm curious like – so you've been doing this a couple of years now? And –
You know, obviously a lot has changed from when you initially started doing like new working in new urbanist communities and doing the architecture you're doing. What do you see in today that what if anything is kind of different about your approach and what you're working on, who your clients are, that sort of thing?
Eric (34:30.783)
Um, that's like, you know, that's a good question.
I think, and this is our 26th year in business. So we've survived a couple minor meltdowns and one major one, but our whole focus, we don't do anything that's not, that wouldn't be classified as new urbanism, whether it's infill work or.
Greenfield work or something in between. So, you know, we're not like local architects doing whatever comes in the door locally. You know, we work solely in New Urbanist projects, you know, across North America and a few other spots. But that's what we continue to do. And so, you know, not much has changed.
In that regard, that's always what our mission was. And we're still on our, it's like the Starship Enterprise, we're on our 26th year mission to help build healthy, walkable places. And it's worth it. It's been a fun challenge. So we continue to do that. We have long-term relations with a lot of, most of our clients are developers. And we have...
You know, we have some long-term relationships that, you know, we're here when they need us. They know what we do and, you know, what we're good at, what we're not good at. Um, so that's, that's our, that's our core. That's our core right there.
Kevin K (36:19.658)
Do you find yourself doing more infill these days as opposed to greenfield stuff or is that not the case?
Eric (36:31.054)
Um, no, it's, you know, we always, we've always done, you know, because something that plugs in a new urbanist community also plugs in an older urbanist community. You know? Um, and so those always went hand in hand for us, but you know, to, to the heart of your point, yeah, after, you know, definitely after, you know, when the market came back in 2012, 13, whatever 14, you know, um,
Definitely we're doing a lot of smaller infill projects. Some of them are pretty random. We'll get a call from a guy in Michigan somewhere that wants to do six townhouses on an urban property his parents owned or something. All sorts of stuff like that all over the place. And some bigger projects, there's still some bigger projects kind of plodding along.
we were able to do.
Eric (37:34.562)
project in Oklahoma, outside Norman, in between Norman and Oklahoma City. That's pretty interesting, a greenfield project. It's big, 720 acres. We did that planning work about three years ago and last year we just got some finished vertical architecture done. So we're continuing to work on that project that we're real proud of.
which is called Salem. And it's been fun, you know, doing the land plan, you know, internally. A lot of times we work with some other land planners. So this one we did in-house and then you know with some other team members, but it's been real fun, real rewarding and then you know delivering the architecture to build it out. That's keeping us busy as well, you know that project.
But yeah, we've always somehow been known for our missing middle work. We were doing that before anybody knew what to call it, before Dan had invented that term. And so that's still one of our bread and butters. We're still known for that somehow.
Eric (38:55.714)
done a lot of multi-family projects, continue to do those a lot, a lot of townhouses. And what's interesting is I finally got...
Eric (39:08.054)
You know, over the years, and I'm sure you've done this as well, you know, where you, you want to take a garden apartment guy and get him to do what we want him to do, right? And I've failed. I failed probably. I'm probably, I'm now like one in 17. So I've got one that I got to actually do it. Um, that's not totally true, but, um, this was a big, you know, 350 unit.
project and we got him to build it out of, you know, four, six, eight and 12 pack units. And it's under construction right now. So that was interesting. I think that's going to be a good case study going forward because his rent, you know, I'm anxious to see how his rents compete. It's in a, it's in a, you know, a decent walkable community.
So I'm interested to see how the financial case study works out.
Kevin K (40:13.557)
Where's that one?
Eric (40:14.942)
That one's in Bluffton, actually, which is across the river in South Carolina. Near for people who don't know it's near Hilton.
Kevin K (40:16.842)
Okay, cool.
Eric (40:25.425)
Um.
Kevin K (40:27.476)
How have the conversations changed with builders and developers since the early days of doing this stuff? Did you have to do a lot more arm-twisting early on with some of your early clients? Is it an easier sell now to do the kind of work that you want to do?
Eric (40:50.27)
Well, no, it's not. It's the same cell. However, you know, I'm not the smartest guy, but I eventually learned to stop chasing those clients. So, you know, I don't waste my time with them. If you want to do something else, you know, have fun. Here, I'll give you some names of people to call. You know, we can't help you. Um, because I don't give a s**t. You know, if you want to go do some five-car garage, houses somewhere, go have fun.
Um, but, you know, so we only take on projects that, you know, are in line with our vision, our mission. And, you know, that that's just what I learned to do, you know, be selective about, you know, who we're going to work for, because we don't want to do everything. We only want to do, you know, something that helps our, our mission, which is, you know, building great communities. And, um, if we're, you know, in alignment,
When people do call us, we're gonna run through a wall for them. And we believe in what we do every day. And so I guess I got smarter is what happened.
Kevin K (42:02.292)
I remember a lot of those conversations too. I got, my God, we went through trying to convince so many crappy builders and developers to do something better.
Eric (42:12.31)
And what was your, you know, and I did the same thing, man. Um, we were both young, you know, I have similar backgrounds and, you know, had young companies and were young men. Dumb young ideals that you probably put, you know, what was your, what was success rate on?
Kevin K (42:14.378)
there.
Kevin K (42:24.259)
Yeah.
Oh, almost zero. Yeah.
Eric (42:28.726)
Yeah, it's like me with these apartment guys. I finally got one, a big one to do it. You know, we've done lots of little ones, but to get a 350 unit thing, that was a big win, but it took me 20 some years to do it. So that's not a good use of my time. But I think what's interesting.
Kevin K (42:45.311)
Yeah.
Eric (42:56.014)
is in my, you know, my, my victory that I'm kind of patting myself on the back about there with the apartment, they wouldn't have come to me.
if they didn't get rejected prior, because it was, they had to conform with a form, form-based code that we have in the right. And so that's how, you know, otherwise they would have just happily built their normal shitty garden apartment. You know, so that code reform is still critically important.
you know, part of our world. Cause you really, you know, convincing someone, you know, to do what we would term the right thing versus, you know, what they're planning on doing. It's a low percentage win rate for anybody. I don't care how good you are, you know, as a closer or whatever, but, and it's just, you know, it's a waste of all of our time and efforts cause it burns you out cause you lose so much.
Kevin K (44:00.979)
Yeah.
Eric (44:01.954)
And, you know, I think our efforts would be better spent into, you know, guerrilla warfare to get the codes changed so that these developers now have to start doing the right thing. And then.
Kevin K (44:12.698)
Yeah, and nurturing like other younger developers who want to do something different, helping bring them along.
Eric (44:23.254)
Yeah, for sure. Um, you know, but a lot of these projects, you know, are still the big boy, you need $40 million in capital to tackle and you know, those, those guys, you know, I love the small income stuff. We do a lot of that. Um, but you know, it's like, you're talking about the market share of like a Bugatti versus, you know, Volkswagen or something.
Kevin K (44:30.098)
Yeah. Yep.
Kevin K (44:51.902)
Yeah.
Eric (44:52.374)
You know, you got to change Volkswagen. You got to change the mass market.
And so I think that guerrilla warfare into code reform at a local level is something that we don't advocate enough for, which goes way back to our start of our conversation. So I think that's, if I could do something besides outlawing traffic engineers.
Kevin K (45:07.358)
Yeah.
Eric (45:22.814)
That would be one of the things is push us on this code reform where everybody's working off some type of form-based code.
Kevin K (45:32.166)
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because even after working in that world for almost 30 years or whatever, we've seen some good efforts with code reform and some good efforts with regulatory reform but there are a lot of days where it feels like we've made zero progress depending on where you're working.
Eric (45:56.)
It is, you know, it's and I've.
You know.
Eric (46:03.734)
Like the analogy is...
Eric (46:08.27)
You're.
You know, somebody's spending all sorts of time and effort to build stuff downtown here. Great. And we're trying to, you know, expand downtown even, which is a, which is an awesome thing that we're able to do here a little bit, you know, expand your urban core. Meanwhile, you know, out in our suburbs are happily building, you know, Costco's and targets and all sorts of b******t subdivisions. And it's like.
Eric (46:40.502)
You know, we don't learn. And we don't learn. And some of the strong town stuff makes so much sense when you look at how the life cycle of those suburbs. And it's funny because poolers now, after spending all sorts of money on all sorts of great police stations and city halls and all this stuff, now all of a sudden, they've got funding that's different.
Eric (47:10.847)
It's just so funny because you know they're hitting that seven year curve on a lot of stuff.
Eric (47:18.358)
But, you know, I guess that's just, you know, it's just frustrating that the, the conventional model is still building, you know, what, 90% of our built environment here easily. And, um, you know, I guess
Kevin K (47:31.986)
Yeah. Easily. Yeah.
Eric (47:40.526)
You know, I've just kind of almost accepted it. It's like almost you have to let that happen before you can come back and fix it in maybe 30 years or urbanize it in 30 years. It's almost like, you know, the old patterns of.
development where you would build, you know, one story buildings down on Main Street. And then all of a sudden it made sense to somebody build a two story building and made more money than everybody tore down the one story buildings. And you just have to maybe go through that process, I guess. I don't know.
Kevin K (48:14.198)
Yeah, I mean, it's such a machine. All that stuff is such a – I mean, so you have to envy it. It's an incredible machine. The efficiency of it is amazing. It makes a ton of money for people if you get your timing right in the market. Of course, you could lose a ton of money if you get your timing wrong. But yeah, I like –
I always think about like, I make the military analogy. So if you're somebody who cares about traditional urban planning, it's like we fight hand to hand combat in our older neighborhoods and we're really excited when we're in a battle or two. In the meantime, it's like the enemy is carpet bombing, you know, everything outside the older neighborhoods just at will and we kind of willfully ignore it. But yeah.
It will continue on I think as long as it can continue on, it seems to.
Eric (49:16.246)
Well, you know, we're...
were how many, you know, it's the expected lifestyle. You know, there's no more generations. There's very, you know, very few percentage of people that have not been raised in the suburbs. Yeah, so it's the normal and, you know, driving, you know, 25 minutes to.
Kevin K (49:34.43)
Yeah, exactly. It's been like four generations now, yeah.
Eric (49:44.75)
go to your super Kroger or whatever, or a grocery store, is normal for us.
Kevin K (49:51.706)
Yeah. That's like, so like the last thing I wanted to ask you is, I mean, so you just mentioned you've, you're working on this Greenfield project in Oklahoma. And I know, I know you well enough to know that you've worked, you still work on some other Greenfield projects here and there. But, but by and large, it seems like I might have the wrong impression about this. I fully admit that I could be wrong about it. You're more plugged into the, this world than I am, but it seems like there's a whole lot less.
of those Greenfield New Urbanist projects going on than there were say 20 years ago across the country. I don't know. I guess I wonder, do you think that's wrong or right? If that's the case, what's going on? I think we all thought that once Seaside and all those projects and then Kentlands and once they were all 10, 15 years old.
and people saw how cool they were that we would see like an explosion of these around the country and that clearly hasn't happened.
Eric (50:55.65)
Not exactly. And I think you're, you know, I think you're right. Our, I think our expectations 20 years ago that we were going to change the machine or if not the machine, at least the, my thought was always you would show the market there alternatives.
Kevin K (51:18.678)
Admittedly, we were like naive and idealistic. I mean that was also part of it.
Eric (51:23.67)
Well, you know, I'm still kind of that same naive, idealistic person in many ways, which is both pro and cons. But, you know, I think...
Eric (51:40.466)
I think these projects.
Eric (51:46.102)
have shown people.
that there are alternatives to living in the cul-de-sac, conventional neighborhood world.
Eric (52:00.358)
And I think that if you look at the market research, it shows you the prices in Ketlin's, the prices in ION, the prices in Norton Commons is significantly higher than its competitor that's a conventional thing right next door or right down the road.
Eric (52:30.076)
But it also takes 10, 15 years to do something like that. And meanwhile,
You know, most of the development work is.
Eric (52:45.398)
you know, it's easier to go to a D.R. Horton and be done in three, four years, five years. You're done. Right. And the landowner got their money in the first year.
They didn't get as much money as they could have, but they got it the first year and they're out. They're on to the next thing.
You know, and I think there's just a perfect storm of all these variables there. Those are some of them, you know, the time investment that it takes. I think, you know, we've all, UI has stolen most of the good ideas of the new urbanism that they can make sense of on a spreadsheet, right? And they've thrown all the other stuff away. So they, you know, they have,
co-opted some things from us, but you know, UIs, those folks are developing most of the stuff here, you know, not the Urban New Urbanist group, NTBA is a fantastic group that I really enjoy spending time with.
Eric (53:56.066)
You know, those are developers that are in one, two, three, four places, you know, for 10 years, 15 years, or, you know, you can only do so much. Even the bigger, more sophisticated ones. You know, meanwhile, these other guys are just, you know, knocking down 10,000 houses a year.
Kevin K (54:22.686)
Yeah, and while I think we kind of recognized how hard it was to do those first TNDs 30 years ago, and I think it's gotten a little easier, it's still incredibly hard. Everything about it is incredibly hard, and you really have, it's kind of a unique personality of a developer who wants to take that on and push for it, because you're gonna be fighting, even today, you're still gonna be fighting so many battles.
to just execute even a mediocre T&D.
Eric (54:56.626)
And, you know, I think there's, you know, there's still a lot of Greenfield work. I think you're seeing a little bit of, you know, obviously no one, not many projects survived 2008. And so, you know, you didn't see many come back on.
It took a long time for them to come back online. And in some places, our sailor project, which has virtually very little regulatory oversight, it took three years to get vertical, which is unheard of anywhere else. Most places are still in their entitlements in year three. It takes you five years to come out of the ground. Most places.
Eric (55:45.89)
You know, it's just a long investment. And, you know, again, the ULI guys are typically...
A lot of those guys have to answer to the capital.
And the capital is not that patient generally. You know what I mean? They gotta have a plan to move so much dirt or lots or whatever it is. And they just can't wait into something for 10, 15 years, it's hard. I think for that group to understand that. And I guess, you know, that's.
Kevin K (56:04.233)
Mm-hmm.
Eric (56:25.858)
you know, maybe something that we have never solved is how do you engage that industry in a different way. And, you know, you remember back to the New Urban Fund that was supposed to show them how to do it. Um, that didn't quite work.
So I don't know, you know, it's that.
Eric (56:47.362)
I, you know, I'm a market guy. So the market guys believe the market's going to kind of tell you what to do. And, you know, they're going to go the easy route, but they're going to put in the big pool and all the stuff that helps them increase their sales rate and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, it is what it is.
But the people who do, you know, trail with outside Atlanta, they're doing great. They're killing it. You know, so whenever we do these, you know, Norton Commons continues to kill it.
They just dominate the market. Once, once you do it, you can do it right. We haven't been able to set up the machine in most cases, you know, the industry to, to continue that it's always been kind of a family or one-off or. You know, very few of these have been done by corporate folks, I guess, just like watercolor that there's been a few, but, you know, they quickly went back to selling pine forest or whatever they were doing before that.
Kevin K (57:54.102)
Yeah, exactly. Like St. Joe Company did watercolor and water sound and stuff and they own so much land and I think they – it seems like they've kind of gone away from that back to a hybridized version of what they were doing before.
Eric (58:08.574)
Yeah, and it's, so I don't know, man. I, you know, I do think, you know, if you, if you look around, there's also a lot of smaller projects that we don't really hear about. You know, if you call up Mike Watkins or somebody like that, Mike, Mike's extremely busy and that's what he's working on. You know, he's working on these a hundred acre little projects that he's, you know, nailing and, you know, we do a lot of work with Mike and
Tom Lowe and those guys. There's a lot of smaller projects that just you aren't gonna hear about. And they're never gonna be, you know, we've done some DPZ. We've got a DPZ project that's stuck entitlement in the entitlement process that we're set up to do some of the architecture on. But you know, it's year four.
Kevin K (58:42.536)
Interesting.
Eric (59:00.394)
So they'll call us when they need us, but there's not as many getting the limelight that we used to get. And I, you know, I just had this conversation with Rob Studeville, who used to do one of my favorite things, which was write the New Urban News. I love getting that magazine every month. Remember? Um, so it was good to catch up with him about that, but he, you know, he had those same thoughts and, um, you know, I just don't think maybe as a movement, we're communicating what we're doing very well with.
Kevin K (59:15.936)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin K (59:29.534)
Yeah.
Eric (59:30.13)
other. You know, nobody knows about my Salem project. It's probably one of the bigger ones. You know, Mike doesn't, you know, Michael shares stuff, you know, when he needs one of us to come in and help him on stuff. I don't know what they're doing.
I don't know what DPZ or Dover Cole is doing, unless we're working on a specific project with them. So we really don't share as much as we used to.
Kevin K (59:57.67)
Yeah, I think that's a great point. You know, it's like another, we could do a whole other hour sometime on how CNU itself has changed and gotten away from a lot of the practical side of just building great communities. And I think a big part of that is we've lost, we're not talking to each other about who's doing what. And we used to actually have a running list of all these places all over the country. I don't think that even exists anymore.
Eric (01:00:25.798)
I don't think that's a priority anymore.
Kevin K (01:00:27.558)
No, it doesn't seem to be.
Eric (01:00:30.434)
But you know, I think.
Eric (01:00:34.282)
you know, that, that CNU group.
has gotten away from communicating and with each other our successes. Cause that's a large, cause it kept you going. You know, we'd all go back to our little hometowns after seeing you and you feel, I would feel renewed and re-energized. And, um, you know, I would, I would love getting New Urban News in the mail. And I would, whatever I was doing, I would stop and sit down and read the thing. Cause it was great to hear about, you know, some new exciting stuff or some new projects.
And ironically, in an age where it's very easy to communicate these days, you know, we don't. We don't pat ourselves on the back. We don't share our success stories.
Kevin K (01:01:21.242)
It's kind of like seeing you never evolve and communication wise we never evolved past the email to serve.
Eric (01:01:28.53)
No, you're right. You're exactly, you're 100% about that. The most painful way to communicate that's ever been invented, I think.
Kevin K (01:01:29.618)
Kind of hilarious. Yeah.
Kevin K (01:01:36.864)
No doubt.
Eric (01:01:38.114)
except maybe the group text, I don't know.
Kevin K (01:01:42.697)
Yeah. Eric, I think we'll wrap it there. It's been about an hour. What are your, what's your favorite spots in Savannah? Your favorite hangout spots these days.
Eric (01:01:53.902)
Hmm, that's a good question. Depends what my mood is. But, you know, I've got a...
I've got a couple of establishments, you know, two blocks from my house that you're most likely to find me in one of those three places. You got, you know, the most famous dive bar in the world, Pinky's.
Kevin K (01:02:16.159)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin K (01:02:19.914)
Mm-hmm.
Eric (01:02:23.642)
There's a place called Savoy, which is run by the people who own Pinkies. And I think that wasn't there when you were here, was it? So that while you were here, it was this kind of shitty wine bar that nobody ever wants. So it's in that space in the Drake Tower. And it's, you know, you go in there and it's 95% locals, 90% something like that. So, you know, I hang out there and then, you know, over by the...
Kevin K (01:02:32.05)
I don't think I don't remember it now.
Kevin K (01:02:37.57)
Oh, yeah, yeah. OK.
Eric (01:02:53.198)
Perry Lane Hotel. There's some stuff there. Those are my hangouts these days.
Kevin K (01:02:59.454)
All right, so anybody listening, if you're in Savannah, you know where to find Eric, buy him a drink and talk about all this stuff and much more and find out what he's up to. So it's been great to catch up with you. I'll get my butt down there to Savannah one of these days soon so we can dive a little deeper and do the off-color stuff.
Eric (01:03:25.17)
Okay, good. I don't think you have to censor anything. So I was on my best behavior. But, you know, I, again, just want to reiterate, I think it's great that you're doing this. This is a great way to communicate with folks. Again, we need to do kind of more of this stuff. And, you know, I think just to reiterate earlier, you know, we accomplished a lot here, man. So I'm proud to.
Kevin K (01:03:30.11)
Not this time, yeah.
Eric (01:03:54.606)
have had you here as a Superman to my Batman or whatever, whatever you want to term it. So I miss you.
Kevin K (01:04:00.29)
Thank you.
As long as it's not Batman or Robin.
Eric (01:04:07.158)
I don't want to see you in tights. That would not be a pretty sight, but miss you here, buddy. I appreciate you.
Kevin K (01:04:10.305)
Nobody.
Thanks very much. I definitely miss you, Miss Savannah. I need to find myself there more often. So good to talk to you. See you.
Eric (01:04:22.466)
All right, buddy.
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