Upzoned - What Happens When Malls Start Charging for Parking?

0:00Shopping malls around the country are starting to charge for parking spaces closest to the entrance and there's been plenty of backlash. At some malls, tenants have complained about fewer customers coming through and in response several operators have already backed away from the fees. A recent USA Today article by Jessica Gwynn titled Shopping malls are charging for prime parking. It's not going well. Looks at these experiments and the reactions to them. By putting a price on these spaces, the malls have raised the basic questions about the trade-off. Is being 50 feet closer to the door convenience that I'm willing to pay for? Would I rather walk a little further? And does the fee change how I think about that convenience?

1:03Well, we know at Strong Towns, the cost of providing that parking was always there. In the land, the pavement, the maintenance, which changed, of course, is that now the shoppers are being asked to pay for that cost directly, instead of having it buried somewhere else. That starts us with a bigger question. What do we do when something we've always experienced as free finally comes up with a price? Welcome to Upsound, a podcast from Strong Towns, where we take a story in the news and look beyond the headline at the systems, trade-offs, and assumptions shaping our cities and towns. My name's Carly Alibar. I'm so glad to be welcome today by Monty Anderson and Tony Jordan. Welcome, guys. Hello. Hey, great to be here. Yeah. Monty, of course, is familiar to many of us. He's a developer based in Duncanville, Texas, where he spent decades working on incremental development and bringing new life to neighborhoods and older commercial properties. He's president of Options Real Estate Investments and a managing partner at neighborhood evolution.

2:04And Tony is based in Portland, Oregon and is the founder and president of the Parking Reformed Network. Since starting the organization in 2019, he's been focused on how parking policy shapes housing, transportation, development, and the way community uses land. So I'll get started and I'll start with Tony. Start with you. What was your first reaction when you read this? Well, I mean, I'm not surprised. I read a lot about parking. And so I've come across a lot of the articles actually cited in this article. I thought it was pretty well balanced. I really appreciated that it talked about the costs. It even gets into like high end to college campuses and other land uses and the cost of the parking. I also appreciated that it had a quote from at least one person who enjoyed paying for the parking for the convenience. So I think that this is something that more malls should probably do. Everyone should manage parking

3:08for the best use and for access, good access to the amenities that it's supposedly supporting. Right. Monty, how about you? What was your first reaction when you read the piece? Well, the first, my thoughts on paid parking in parking in general are different than when I first saw the title of this. I thought, why would anybody charge at a mall? You can't get people even coming to the malls anymore. So my thought was, you know, where's a mall that could actually get away with this? You know, and there is a mall. There is one, I think there's one mall left in the Dallas Footworth area that's actually can get away with it. But, you know, the, I mean, the cost of, it's somebody said was like a grab by the developer, you know, in the article. They're talking about it being a, but I can tell you this. I mean, managing a parking lot is expensive. I mean, sweeping it, stripping it, keeping it clean from people that dump stuff on it, keeping people off of it that

4:09are not supposed to be their selling stuff, trucks pulling in it and tearing up your parking lot, running over your landscaping. I mean, you know, it's, it's like 100 things. I was saying before my phone, the photos of my phone are full of parking lot pictures of violations by some body. I mean, it's, it's expensive to manage this. And it seems to be getting worse. I mean, people just think they can put, like these donation boxes out on your parking lot. They just come and put them on your parking lot. You know, they just show up there and, you know, I got a tear them down and throw them, you know, throw them away. But it's very expensive to keep up a parking lot. So I can understand why any developer or anybody that owns a piece of land like this would figure out how to, how to make some income from it. What I can understand is how we got here in the first place, we built all this parking with no income coming in from it. And how expensive it is to build it. And you know, why would we wouldn't do that from the beginning? So that's what, that's what my thought was is like, how can you do that? If you think about it, you know, how much it cost?

5:14Right. The thing that stuck out to me was the parallels I think we see with our, our local governments coming under financial stress. To me, this is an example of private landowners coming under financial stress and then needing to consider like, oh, well, we have no revenue associated with any of this land. What can we do about that? Right? And to me, it's, it is kind of the, another theme of the high cost of free parking, as we would say. So, you know, I want to talk a little bit about the, you know, there's so many themes, especially I know Tony, this is the kind of stuff that you, you deal with every day in your work. I think that like people are used to free parking. And you see this when you work in communities all the time. Like how, how do you work in communities and help manage the transition and the expectation setting for whether it's residents in a community who are all of a sudden asked to pay for parking in a downtown area or a business district. And

6:19then, I mean, this is, this is the same thing. It's just, it's the shopping mall, you know? One thing I, I recommend is always thinking about value. I think there is a lot of education outreach that needs to occur around what the goal is. And I also think the motivation behind the goal is important in a way. If these are developers that are hard on their luck and they're trying to, you know, get blood from a stone or a turn up or whatever, you know, by charging for parking. I mean, I think to Monty's point, that's not going to work, right? Like if no one wants to go there, you're not, and we do see cities around the country, my own here in Portland, in fact, that are trying to raise rates on not parking sometimes in places where it's really not justified. Yeah, they're trying to fill a budget hole rather than expanding paid parking to other areas. And so, but I think that if you, if you're approaching this, if there is a reason, for example, this is, you know, they're trying to keep rent slow for the tenants in the mall, right? Or they're trying to, you know, they're trying to provide convenience or a more, a more, you know, maybe,

7:22maybe those, those paid parking spaces are, are of a higher quality. They're shaded or something, right? That I think that if you provide a reason and a value for what you're doing, and you're charging enough that someone driving in there can find a space, right? Then that's something people are, they're not happy to pay for, but they're, they're not as mad. People tell me all the time, no one wants to pay for parking as if it's some sort of special magical good, and I, if I know and wants to pay for anything, right? If I go buy a cup of coffee, I would rather not pay for it. Given the choice, if I, if it's free, I can't complain about it as much, right? If it's cold, let's freak a cup of coffee, beggars can't be choosy. But if I pay for it, it has to provide a value. And I think that's where a lot of the disconnect in the anger comes in communities is cities charging for parking or vendors charging for parking that provides no value to them. They're still circling or it's a bad experience. And then yeah, you paid for something that you didn't get a value for, and you're rightfully angry. Monty, I'm curious from the, from a developer's perspective, you know,

8:26what are the things that could lead you to think about either charging for parking or, you know, I know you have developments where you've chosen to use parking differently and actually intensify the land uses rather than parking. So, you know, is that an option for some of these land landowners? I mean, you know, I think one of the, one of the quotes was in, was how the mall had 7,000, still more than 7,000 free spots left for the people that would have to pay and, and, you know, 10% were designated as paid spot. So, how do you, how do you recommend developers look at this question even? I could see you charging for parking when there's, when the pressure gets there, first of all, when the, I mean, if you pull into a mall and there's, you know, about 7,000 spaces in here's 700 occupied. That's a different story than if, if I put a bunch of townhomes out here on the parking lot or apartments on the parking lot and I pull in and there is not good parking,

9:29you know, there's, I would expect to pay for parking in an urban area where I go and, you know, there's not much parking around and I don't even think about it now, you know, if I go into downtown Dallas or somewhere and I'm parking down there, I just prepared for it. It's really odd, I would really think not to pull into a mall that's empty and have to pay for, for parking like that. But what I'm doing right now to create value on the parking lots is build residential on them and like here in Duncanville at Wheatland Plaza, I got the zoning on a 90,000 square foot neighborhood shopping center built in the 60s. So it's built with a neighborhood around it and I got the zoning to put 50 units on the parking lot and by the time I got to that and used to seeing what my parking pressure was going to be is I'd least up the shopping center or retrofitted the shopping center to new uses and by the way, I retrofitted it to be like Main Street uses not like retail. So the, so the shopping center pretends to be Main Street where, where only 20% is retail, you know,

10:31this government services, we got medical, you got, you know, karate studios, you got other things that are here. And so what I did was I downsize that from 50 apartments to 12 townhomes when I saw the pressure was happening because what I thought is if I push the pressure too much here, if I push it too much and I start charging today in Duncanville, we'll never get another one done. We'll never get another one. So I said, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to bring them along. I'm going to go back to where they're at and bring them along with one step at a time just with 12 units and no, but I could see me in the future is the best spaces you want a good space, you know, up against the building you pay for it. I could see that actually happening and that would, that would keep just like, you know, everybody, you know, what they would do that would keep employees from coming in and parking up against the building. So right now the worst thing is we got employees that run these little retailers and they'll pull right up to their front door and park there. I say, well, what is wrong with you? I mean, don't you want your customer to have a good

11:36experience? But I think that's what, I mean, reusing these spaces, you know, and I've done it in office buildings too. I put low kiosk in the front parking lot. I did just finished it on an office building. We took away a bunch of parking, you know, and put a park and two food kiosk up there. And I could probably get away with charging for parking up in front of those kiosk. I probably could now for for where you have to park in the back and walk a little ways you could probably do that. But, you know, we're not used to that yet. Like Tony said, it's education and I mean, thank you this for Tony and his people because here in Dallas, really, we did a pretty good job on parking reform here. And we got a lot of, I mean, we went from having just horrible parking, you know, to now we've got really, really good stuff, you know, that's that we're able to get a white, you know, get by with. But I think that, yeah, I could see, I could see maybe in my lifetime in Texas, we might get to a point of charging for parking and shopping. So I don't know about them all, but maybe a

12:38shopping center. Well, what I hear, what I hear embedded in everything you just said about talking about Wigland Plaza is the the incremental nature of what you do, right? So, you know, you're like maybe I'll charge for a couple spots or when you're talking about building the housing, you're like had went from 50 to 12 because we weren't ready for the 50, but maybe one day. And I think that that's you know, that was one of the things also that stood out to me in the article, I think, was the the the backlash and you know, the the places where they've had to scale back and kind of, you know, did they move too fast and you know, is this or this is this just a bad idea? And you know, maybe Tony, if you can talk a little bit about the incrementalism in parking reform and why that is so important. Yeah, I mean, it's well, it's funny because on one hand, when it comes to abolishing parking mandates, we're not for incrementalism, right? We feel we do feel like you should just go

13:42all the way because these numbers are arbitrary at any stage, but I think for for enforcement, incrementalism can work, especially now, I this is, you know, I think that that 10, 15 years ago, I mean, we there's a thing we have technology now, right? And so, one of the things that enables a mall to do this maybe now in a way that is that might work is it's more cost effective to actually meter or charge for just a few spaces now than it would have been in the past, right? If you want, if you had to buy hardware or do a lot of intensive money collection, the overhead for that would be hard. So now, actually, I think I think that there is an opportunity for communities or businesses to experiment with less risk, right? They don't have to buy a pay station to charge for this parking, right? They don't have to spend that invest $10,000 in a pay station. They can just put some QR codes up and see who pays. And I think the proof would be in the pudding for some of these. I would be curious, you know, like if if people are willing to pay for these spaces, then clearly it's okay,

14:45right? If now they have a charge for parking area and it's empty, then I think that they've they've got it made a mistake. We had a presentation at the last national gathering and one of the things we talked about, we kind of did this math showing like how much city, you know, just kind of backly envelope math of how much you could make on parking spaces. And I think one of the keys there is, you know, if you're not investing a bunch, just look at there's got to be a couple spaces in your town. You're maybe not going to charge for everything, but you know, the most valuable or the most, you know, privileged spots can be can be where you go. So I think that that's a smart, a smart approach. And I don't know if these, you know, malls are have a good theory behind what they're doing or not. But yeah, I do think you make it making the point about the infrastructure just being different that gives landowners more flexibility to experiment is is a really good one. And you know, we at Strong Towns all the time talk about small bets and, you know, these,

15:46this allows people to make small bets on, you know, charging for parking. Now it's not clear, you know, reading the article, it seems like maybe there are a few places that made some big bets that, you know, then backfired. And so now they're they're recovering from those. But, you know, it is it is a method where it's they don't have a lot of sunk cost other than, you know, if they really anger some people, I guess that that becomes a problem. Yeah, wouldn't it be funny if these people decide? I mean, I guess they they named Amazon is what they would pay for instead. But I mean, there is some irony just in the whole the whole topic of, you know, the malls that kind of hollowed out the main streets. And now, you know, like our, if they start charging at the malls, our people are going to go, you know, maybe they would be willing, if I'm going to pay a dollar for parking anyway, I might as well be on a main street rather than in the mall. I don't know if that's a calculus people will make, but, you know, I mean, that's kind of another story because how do you make them all main street? You know, that's what we're, you know, that's how we think about it,

16:47you know, how do you make them all main street? In most places, you can't tear them down, you know, like in southern Dallas County where I'm from, you know, you can't, if you tear stuff down, it won't come back, you can't, it won't come back. It'll just be a land for a long time. So in retro fitting this stuff, you know, I think that you've got to take into, you want to really look at all that stuff, I think that becomes a big. And, you know, some of the main streets around here, the cities own all the parking here, they own the parking and they're having a problem right now, keeping up the parking, keeping up the trash. And so they're saying, well, we'll just put a pit in, you know, a public improvement district and charge all the tenants. But I was just thinking as we were speaking, maybe they just start charging for parking over there and that's how you pay for that. And so the people that use the spaces get, but then if nobody comes to the businesses and uses something, then you've got to profit, you know, so it's that education thing, you know, coming along a little bit at a time that incrementally coming along slowly over time, I think,

17:49is important. There's some, I've talked to folks in places, I mean, someone called me a couple years ago from Lansing, Michigan, right? And I go Google and I look around and I'm like, this is rough, right? I'm downtown Lansing has a lot of parking and it's like, you can't push a string, right? Like it does, there's not a way to really, there's a point where you have just, there's places that have a problem that, you know, the good problem, they need to charge for parking, or there's technically, quote unquote, not enough. And then the far worse problem is you've got so much that you can't do anything. And I think that from that incremental approach, you know, I think that a place that's really trying to deal with that, like the Main Street through mentioning Monty, it seems like the best option nowadays is to try to, try to activate those spaces in another way with food carts, with kiosks, with pop-up type temporary, you know, temporary retail or something, you know, low, low, low stakes stuff that can fill those spaces, and then you attract that, you attract activity, which then increases the parking demand,

18:52which makes it possible that you actually can charge for that parking, and then you're also collecting rent. So I think that there's a pretty, you know, good formula we can use to, to rehabilitate some of these places, but it does, I mean, you also need to have the rules and the regulations allow people to start businesses with low friction, or they're not going to be able to. First, you got to create some parking pressure first before you can really charge for it. You got to create the parking pressure. So how do we do that with food trucks, or traders, or kiosk in the parking lot, or townhums, or whatever we do? So I think it's a two-step, you know, we got to create that pressure, and these models don't have any pressure, you know, so it didn't make sense to me, it is much, this may be some places, but rarely to parking conversations or articles really make a whole lot of good sense, except your step-toney. Yeah, it's, but it didn't, so it's interesting. It's the high cost of parking, it's a lot more than

19:58just the paving that's out there. It's just what people do to you is a property owner to your parking lots. So they do lots of bad things to you. And so it's, it's, it's, it's, it needs to, it nearly needs to be monitored, you know, and the bigger you get, you know, you need to put security there now, you know, now if somebody gets their car broken, now it's your fault, you know, it's, you know, it's like they call it, they're, what are you going to do about it? Somebody, you know, you know, somebody hit my car while I was here, and what are you going to do about it? You know, it's like, I don't know, what would you do if you were at the Walmart down the street? Somebody hit your car, would you call Walmart? I mean, that's, I don't know, you know, do this. What if you parked in front of your house and somebody hit your car? What would you do then? You, you call your insurance company. Don't call me. Monty, do you think this helps us, Granted, we're seeing some backlash, but does it help us think

20:58about public infrastructure differently when we see privately and owners, you know, struggling with their costs too? I mean, I think that that is at least implied, I would say, in the decision to charge for parking, is that these places are trying to keep up their buildings, keep up their infrastructure. And so they need revenue to do it, and they see this as a potential revenue source. Do you think it helps the overall conversation about infrastructure, or is it going to get too caught up in other things? Yeah, no, I think it should definitely be part of the infrastructure conversation. You know, what, what, you know, it's easy when a place is really new, and it's got clean parking and no grease on it yet, you know, it looks a certain way. And then when it starts to look old, the stuff, I think you have to plan when we're planning these, we're planning our cities, you know, I mean, I hope we're waking up to that, that you're planning

21:59for that. How long, how's it going to last the next 50 years, 75 years? How's it going to look when the, all the tenants, the original tenants leave, you know, and what's, what's got to be left, and who's got to get the calls when there's a pop hole in the parking lot out here, the cities get calls, you know, I mean, what the cities should first be saying, we don't want a bunch of parking lot, we, we got to have at least so much per acre, you know, on our tax rolls. So you're going to have to figure out how to get that. So if you want to build a parking lot in charge, and we can get some taxes off of it, okay, you know, it's, I mean, I think the, the planning of the, I always say, how to survive the boom, not the bust, how to survive the boom, it's really easy to talk about surviving a bust, because you're busted, you know, in your desperate, and you got to do, but when it's booming, like we are in North Texas right now, how do you go and say, hey, what are you going to do about this parking lot when it's, you know, what are you going to do when it's, because the slay fetching go, what do you mean, we're going to live forever, you know, we're, you know, and I think,

23:04you, I think we got to really look at past, way past the consequence of, of change and what's got to happen and the, how our infrastructure is allocated, because even then the sewer lines, the stuff that go across these places and all of that stuff, the cities, whether the private owners got problems or the cities got problems, the cities got to have the problem, because the cities got to have come out and get involved if you don't fix it up and do things. So the cities are going to always have problems, I think, definitely you got to, you got to get, get on the cutting edge of the infrastructure where we're going, you know, 20, because 20 years is not very long, you know, 20, 30 years is not very long for now. I mean, it's just, you know, it's, and so, you know, we definitely got to get at least a, at least a short term plan, longer than the private equities, three year plan to build and fill them up and flip them, you know, or, you know, shopping centers or whatever it malls or. I mean, maybe think about just even the stormwater, right? Like, I mean, you know, you get to get

24:04that big, that big mall and I mean, that's something to see, every taxpayer in these places is paying that stormwater bill every time it rains, you know, that that mall from 1980 is in, you know, it's in dealing with it and, and yeah, it's tough because, you know, how do you, who, how do you make people pay for that? You know, it's, it's, it's, um, yeah. Yeah, especially where you're from, uh, Carly and life yet, you know, you got those, I mean, you got those problems more, you're closer to sea levels, so you got those, you know, I mean, we're not dealing with that stormwater, but that's, that's a huge, huge one here, those flash floods we have here. Yeah. That's been, well, uh, you know, speaking of, you know, Monty, I know you're helping out with a mall redevelopment here in Lafayette and it's, uh, you know, between you and the folks that are on the project, it's, it's, it's really turning into quite a remarkable story here, but I think I, I think their parking lot will probably prove to be one of their greatest challenges as well. Um, you know, because they've, you know, I'd love for you to share

25:09a little bit about it, but they're doing an amazing job, but they have an expansive parking that is going, going to be a big investment for them as they move forward. Yeah, um, we're working on one in Lafayette and, um, that one you're talking about the North, get mall, um, and then there's another one in Elkhart, same, the same way Elkhart. And these malls have these crazy, uh, that, that one's got a crowbar and some other things and the malls still left over and they got these crazy view lines and you know, they got these, you can't, you can't go and build on the mall parking lot because of all these crazy storm sewer lines, sanitary sewer, you know, view lines from retail tenants who have to have views on the street and stuff. The good thing about the one in Lafayette is none of those people are left, you know, they all, they're all gone. They've all gone out of business so they can do what they want. But yeah, right now until you start to deal with that, um, one of the things that that first they're doing is, is going to turn the mall inside out. So you get, you get storefronts

26:14outs to the mall with, they didn't have any of that except for the entrances, you know, so you go turn it inside out and then, and figuring out, you know, what you're going to do inside the mall, you got to stabilize that mall first and get the, and get the occupancy there so you have a demand for the parking. So right now we have no, you know, the parking lots, no demand, holes in the parking lot, right, and things like that and you can't afford to fix them, can't, you know, fix them, somebody's got to fix them. So they're going to reach out to the, you know, the city or the economic development authority for help to fix, fix those up. And then, and then so you got to create the demand first. So it's a long term. I would say in a mall like the one in life that you're looking at a, you're looking at a 10 to 20 year, a 10 to 20 year plan and, and who plans like that these days? And you know, you know, who you got to really, we should be looking at that quickly. Now, in, in Elkhart, the city owns the mall. So the city is actually putting in the infrastructure

27:17right now for the future streets and townhomes and small retail buildings that are going to be built in the mall parking lot. So they're, they're doing that as we speak and it's hugely expensive. It's hugely, because, you know, you're not looking at working with a clean sheet of paper, you're having to work with existing conditions built by mall developers 50 or 60 years ago that didn't ever think the mall was going to ever be bad. So they didn't plan on any, they didn't have any infrastructure plan. There was just what's the cheapest place to dump our stormwater, house the quickest place we can get a sanitary sewer. And if it goes sideways across the mall or whatever, you know, cuts it up in a wrong way, you, you know, you've got to, you've got to deal with that. And that's, you start moving those lines and it begins to be really, really expensive and a lot more. And so then you say, why would I do that? It's just too much trouble to do it. And so then the mall deteriorates more and more. And then finally, the city tears it down, you know, because people have it. Don't pay taxes on it. And, you know, just let it go. And so it becomes a city's problem

28:22by not planning for the infrastructure and the other, you know, just not a long-term plan. So it's, yeah, it's, you know, I love to think about it and work on it. I love to figure out, but the, the solutions are going to look odd if we do it affordably. It won't be a perfect urban. And we're all here in this room, new urbanists, you know, all of us here are, but it won't look, it's got to look odd. It's, and somebody's going to say, well, why did they do that? It's, you know, it's not going to look like it made any sense except that you didn't know what happened underground. So we're getting close to the end. I'm, I'm just wondering, Tony, what does this really say about how we value land in our community? I mean, can this help change the conversation? Maybe. I mean, I think anytime there's a, there's a parking conflict you go into, I mean, sometimes I'll go and tick-tock and argue with some of these people. I mean, there's always an opportunity for some conversation. Actually, I, I grew up in Townsend, Pedro, California, and they just did a harbor area, a beautiful

29:23redevelopment. And they were talking about charging for parking. And there was an Instagram story where they were complaining. And I, someone said, you know, why, why is, why are they charging for parking for nearby residents? And I was like, why did nearby residents need parking? Just like, walk down there, you know, like, what are you doing? And I got, I actually, you know, got a little argument with someone and then laid down some, some real content, honest. And I think change at least one person's mind, right? So I think like that when these things happen, I don't do it all the time. It's a little bit of practice. It's not the best use of my time. One-on-one arguing on Instagram. You can go, you can't, these conversations can bring things up. I mean, I think that the, the, as Monty points out, there's a lot of complicated aspects here. It's not always, it's not even always the parking mandates that are the problem anymore at least. One of these posts mentioned was perimeter mall and Dunwoody, Georgia. It got rid of their parking mandates in 2019. That stuck out to me when I read it. And, you know, for all the reasons Monty mentioned, and many more, it's not always just the city requiring this. A lot of the businesses that go into

30:25malls go into malls because they have corporate requirements that say how much parking their franchises are required to have. And so, yeah, in the end, I think, you know, these kinds of articles are always an opportunity for a conversation like ours. And I encourage the folks from, you know, the listeners who are a little more educated probably than the average person to, you know, engage in, engage in the debate. Absolutely, absolutely. And not miss an opportunity like this one when you see the, you know, I guess when, when I read it, I see the partially the stress of the mall developers and the landowners having all this land and, and needing to be creative about how they can maintain a nice experience or halt the decline of their mall depending on the situation. It's, it's really interesting to me. But certainly in the context of the debate, you know,

31:26never miss missing the opportunity to have the conversation because, and maybe Monty, this will be the last question for you. I'm curious like, if in your work, you see the kind of like the cultural element of free parking we've had for so long that people expect particularly in mall environments and things like that. And the coming back from that is, is hard, you know, coming back to a place where land has a value is, there's, feels like there's just a lot of twists and turns to that pathway back. Yeah. For sure, the cultural is definitely, you know, we've got a bunch of old baby boomers who used to parking, you know, and they're used to pulling up to the diner, getting the space right at the front, you know, that's, they complain if they don't have that, you know, and this. So, you know, the cultural is going to take a generation or two and that's why, you know, appreciate Tony's work and work we do too. We push it, we're pushing those. So how far can we push it and not break it

32:27and not break it where the city just says, we're not going to experiment anymore with your crazy ideas, Monty or Tony, you know, we're not going to experiment anymore. So, it's that how do we push as much as we can, you know, and then, and then bring people on and then a little bit of death here and there always solves a few problems, you know, we got a road warrior here in town and he's not, he's gotten old and he can't talk much anymore and so he's, you know, he's not, we don't have to talk about six lane roads, you know, with, with 15,000 traffic count anymore because he's, you know, he's not, he's not active anymore. So you got that kind of thing that's happening, but I think that that's, you know, we're not going to, we're not going to not drive our cars a few blocks until we get pressure, until we get pressured, until there's the pain. So we don't, we don't learn from, we don't learn from things that are easy, we only learn from pain and that's where it's going to get and so somebody's going to have to be the first one there and to do that we have to

33:31recreate places that people really want to go to and we really have to do and not just the artist or the restaurant but, you know, the medical, you know, the doctor or the department of motor vehicles office here or, you know, whatever it might be, you know, until we, until we do that, we're not going to, we're not going to quit driving our cars, even if it's just a few blocks, even me, I mean, even myself who walks very, I walk seven days a week, you know, I like, you know, it's, I'm staying healthy now, I'm trying to, but, you know, we're about to drive. You make it easy on me to drive, I'm going to just drive, especially in 110 degrees temperature like we have down here. Right, right, absolutely. But anyway, that's, I think that's my thoughts, you know, on that and I, I see us moving in a good direction and maybe the young people that we're bringing up now will, will see this better than we have people might. Yeah. You know, it's, it's funny. We posted in,

34:33in the commons, which is our member platform right before we, before we recorded and one of our members, Chris had this, Chris P had this comment to say, which I think is, is interesting and maybe we'll, we'll wrap with this before we go to the down zone. I think this makes sense if the goal from the start of the malls was to have premium parking cost of fee, but it's coming when most malls economic vitality or viability is ending. And so it reads to me more the last gasp effort to monetize before the whole thing goes under. I'm curious, you know, Tony, do you have a, Tony or Monty, do you have a reaction to kind of, to that? Yeah, I hope the sake of the people as businesses are in the malls that it's not the case, but I think that, I mean, I, I think the work that like Monty and his folks are doing is fantastic. I highlighted it all the time. I think that is the way out here is to, is to, you know, use these spaces and create, let a, let a million main streets bloom, right? You know, like, like, there's a lot of opportunity to, to reactivate these spaces and,

35:36and, and create tremendous value and opportunity. So yeah. Yeah. Monty, any thoughts? Yeah, I'm right there with Tony and we, we, you know, we definitely speak the same language, Tony and I, you know, grateful for, for what, his, something like they're doing to, in you and what Strong Tows is doing to push this. And when we were talking about parking lots and Black Friday and all that for, you know, several years now, and it's always, you know, I mean, I'm just grateful that that conversation's happened because it wouldn't, this wouldn't have happened in Dallas without people like the two of you, your organizations that wouldn't have happened here. And let me tell you, it ain't hurt nothing. It ain't hurt in our business here. In fact, I think it may have, my businesses better. That's really the odd thing because people want what they can't have. If they can have it too easy, they're not going to want it. We're not going to go to the restaurant when there's too many cars

36:38in the parking lot. We want to go to the one that's full of, you know, full people are setting outside and you can see in the wind as, you know, that's where we want to go. Yeah, I think that the thing that is, it's interesting to me because I think that the, there's a perception that, you know, malls are struggling, but the reality is that the malls that are probably successful and in charging for parking are probably the ones that aren't struggling, you know, because it's, it's, they've created high demand places, which allows them to capture this revenue from customers and potential customers. So there's a lot at, there's a lot of both, you know, there's a lot of behavioral kind of things that play here that make it really complex and interesting. So, you know, one thing is that, you know, today, think about it, runs status real quick. Every mall's shopping center office building single-family home has to be retrofitted. None of it is well,

37:44everything that we, everything that we know has to be retrofitted because we're living, we're living different. I mean, our family living in a house is different, our retail is different, office buildings have completely changed. You know, our income, our wealth gap is wider, you know, with, with, you know, what we need. And so, it's history repeating itself. We have to go back. I think people have to make more wealth. And, you know, we have to have more entrepreneurs, which means we might have more things in the parking lot, you know, and to do more things to do, more small things, small, small, like our country was built, right? It's like the history repeating itself. Well, Monty, as you said earlier, it's, it's always awesome to do this work alongside you guys. So, thanks for all the work that you're both doing. I'd love to switch over before we, before we leave everyone, let's switch over to the down zone. I'm going to ask Tony to go first. I think he's got something in mind. What are you reading, watching, learning, that you want to

38:47share with us, Strongtown's community? Oh, I, we're, I've been working a lot on, I mean, I came back from a trip to England, which was really fun. And I got to see a lot of, you know, really great mainstream activity there. But I'm also working on a project for climate week in New York. We put together a panel you can go to urbanclimatesolutions.org and, or urbanclimatesolution.org, I think. And, and see we put together 10 panels for climate week with partners like NRDC and WRI and Metropolitan all the abundance projects. I was a bunch of, I'm doing a panel that I think might be particularly of interest on why the corner has no store and about zoning. Oh, wow. Why, we don't have neighborhood commercial and kind of it ties a lot into this with some folks. So, check that out. It's a bit of, it's all I'm, all I'm working on lately. So it's kind of the only thing in my mind. But, um, yeah. That's great. Monty, I'm going to go second because I'm going to talk

39:48about you and then I'm going to pass it off to you for my down zone is that I get to see Monty next month in Penscola at the Civic Leader Summit from October 6th through 8th, which is in partnership with the Center for Civic Engagement down there in Penscola that we at Strongtown's do. And Monty's going to be one of our keynotes talking about housing and then he's also going to be joining us to talk about that mall that I was sharing in Lafayette. So, um, Monty, it's, you know, I always love when I guess see you in person. So that's, that's what I'm certainly looking forward to. If you don't mind, I'll, normally I would go last just out of courtesy, but I wanted to brag about you a little bit. So I hope you don't mind. Well, I appreciate that. I always love, um, doing stuff, you know, been around Strongtown since the very beginning, you know, since the very first uh, event, some people don't know this, but I was the very first keynote speaker for the very first Strongtown's in Minneapolis, you know, many, many years ago. So that's, that's, uh, it's, we go back a long way. So I think there's two things really like I'm into like,

40:51as I got older, my health, I should have been into it a long time ago, but like the walk, you talk about walking. So I want to walk down the street. I want to park way away because I try to get 13,000 steps a day in seven days a week. So I'm really, I'm really working. Now my whole office has got a whole thing going for the month of September on walking and getting our steps in. And so I thought, this is a really good way to not drive our cars. You know, this is a really good way we, we're, we got this health thing. Let's talk about, you know, because it's really real because my good, my partner here's, uh, having a lot of health issues right now. My old, lane allows my partner for many, many years and so, and so it's, you know, that walking is a big thing. But I think the other thing is part of the health thing is too. And I'm talking a lot about money lately because a lot of us, with strong towns and, in new arbonists and we're do gutters, you know, we want to do good. All of us do, but we don't make enough money sometimes. And we don't, and a lot of our little entrepreneurs and stuff, they work really hard and they don't make money.

41:53You know, and I'm talking the, the thing that I like to say is making money is the most important thing and doing good is equal. But I didn't say do good first. And so I encourage people today to be a little more focused on money. And I like books like Thinking Grow Rich is an old book, you know, it's been around forever. And it's one of my favorites. And to think about the money. And then because, because without the money, we can't do the next thing. And I don't care if that's building on the parking lot or sweeping the parking lot. It's, you know, selling memberships to your organization, whatever it is, you have to, we have to do that in it. So I think that, I think more and more you're going to hear me talk about, you know, about that. It's like, you know, what are you doing? And building that middle class wealth back and owning your own properties in your town and stuff and building your net worth on your balance sheet, you know, I'm going to, and that doesn't sound like it's very sexy, but I can tell you this, I can get a restaurant to come to Duncanville, Texas. If I'll show them how they can own a building.

42:57If I talk to them about leasing a building, I can't get a good one here. But if I can get somebody to come to Lowell, Arkansas, I was in Northwest Arkansas last week, which is very impressive what they're doing up there. But I was in lowell and it's like, how do you get a good business to come to you get them to own a building, you help them build net worth, you help people build money, we help each other in our village, we help us build each build. So it's very important to me that my tenants and my colleagues and people that I have make money and have money. So, and I'm not talking about, you know, becoming, you know, having a private jet, although I'd be nice, but not eating my cards, but it just, just the basic stuff, you know, where we, we're, we're, people that do good can also make money. Yep. Yep. And it's a lot easier to do good if you're not worried about money. So, well, I've had money, I've had, I haven't had money and I've had money, and it's a whole lot better to have it. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, well, I think that's about it for

44:00up zone this week. Thank you so much to our guests, Tony Jordan and Monty Anderson. If you've got a reaction to this conversation or if you want to take part in it yourself, you can go join us on Strong Pounds comments at commons.strongpounds.org and participate. We've shared the article there and joined the, you can join the discussion. We'll of course be back next week with a new article and a new team to chat about it. As always, take care and take care of your places. Thank you so much, gentlemen. Thank you. This episode was produced by Strong Pounds, a non-profit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you. Deep in your connection by becoming a Strong Pounds member at Strong Pounds.org.