Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Hi, I'm John Coe and welcome to icons of D.C. area real estate, a one on one interview show featuring the backgrounds, career trajectories and insights of the top luminaries in the Washington D.C. area Real estate market. The purpose of the show was to explore their journeys, how they got started, the pivotal moments that shaped their careers, and the lessons they've learned along the way. We also dive into their current work, industry trends, and some fascinating behind the scenes stories that bring unique perspective to our industry. Commercial Real Estate before we dive into today's conversation, I'd like to share some exciting news.
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And now let's get started with today's guest.
Welcome back to another episode of icons of D.C. area real estate, the podcast where we explore the stories behind the leaders who have shaped and are still shaping the built environment of our region.
I'm your host, John Ko.
Today's guest is a powerhouse whose influence spans decades and whose chapter is just as compelling as her past. Roberta Liss after more than 10 years as president of Southeast and Mid Atlantic regions at Cushman and Wakefield, leading teams across one of the most active territories in the country, Roberta recently launched her own firm, LNSS Advisors, focused on one of the fastest growing sectors in real estate, data centers and digital infrastructure.
But Roberta's career doesn't begin or end at Cushman. With over 42 years in commercial real estate, she's worn nearly every hat in the business, from her early days in construction and development with firms like John J. Kurland and Henry Long Co.
To brokerage leadership roles at Trammel Crow, CBRE and Charles E. Smith companies, and even time on the client owner side at BCO Management.
Along the way, she's executed over 30 million square feet of transactions and advised some of the largest companies in the world.
What's especially fascinating is how her architectural engineering degree from Penn State and early technical work installing raised floors and designing mission critical environments laid the foundation for her current focus on digital infrastructure. You'll hear how those early insights now connect to today's demand for power, cooling, land and latency.
We also dig into Roberta's origin story growing up in Atlantic City and watching firsthand how the city transformed under the weight of casino redevelopment, an experience that sparked her passion for real estate's impact on place and people.
In this episode, we talk candidly about mentorship, career pivots, breaking barriers as a woman in the industry, and how Roberta continues to lead by example, balancing technical mastery, human connection and service. We also get into some exciting discussions about the future of cities, adaptive reuse, and how the rise of AI is transforming the real estate landscape.
This is a conversation rich with history, foresight and actionable wisdom from someone who has seen and built it all.
Stay with us as we dive into the incredible story of Roberta Liss.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: So Roberta Liss, welcome to icons of D.C. area real estate. Thank you for joining me today.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: Thank you so much. I'm excited to spend time with you and I really appreciate your gracious invitation to chat today. So thank you.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Thank you. Please share with the audience an overview of your new role LNSS Advisors and your rationale for initiating it as an advisor to participants in the data center and real estate business. If you would.
[00:06:09] Speaker C: Great. Oh, I'd love to. Well, I know we're going to get into my background, but I was most currently with Cushman and Wakefield for a decade as the president of, most recently the Southeast and the Mid Atlantic.
We'll probe more into that. In my background that set me up to take this next step, but as I've approached what I think might be my last chapter professionally, and it'll be hopefully a long last chapter, I wanted to do something that was driving toward the economic forecasts of what's going to be meaningful in our world.
And obviously with the advent of AI and all of the Internet and technology impact that we have in our life.
The host for all that, the housing, the real estate application for all that, is a data center. And I have always been very interested in data centers and actually have an early background in it. And so when I was thinking about how I envisioned my last chapter, I wanted to do something that brought together all of my past experiences that I loved and where I thought I could bring value to clients.
And so I formed Lyoness. I call it Lioness, it's spelled lnss because there's a, there's a really good series series that is, is on, I think Netflix or Prime for Taylor Sheridan called Lioness. And so he got the rights first.
And so I sort of played off of Lioness with lnss, which, okay, by all my last name list.
So that's how I came up with the name. But the focus is commercial real estate advisory.
Highest and best used and absolute of, of commercial property. We'll get into that a little bit more in a minute. And also, of course, data center focus, that's, that's how I, that's, that's what I'm focusing on right now. And I started the company technically, my last day at Cushman Wakefield was March 1st, and I started Lyoness technically March 2nd.
And it's been a pretty robust start and instructive as far as what the real need is. And the opportunity is data center space.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: We'll dive into that a little deeper if we can a little later on. And I did Turo Data center last year, so I understand a little bit of the mechanics of it, and it's fascinating. And then just understanding just the universal aspect of that industry that just keeps growing almost maybe logarithmically.
It's just growing so fast right now.
[00:08:57] Speaker C: It changes every day and it has to change because of the impact of AI. And, you know, the GPUs, you know, are, are what is creating the higher processing for all of, all of the, you know, gaming and AI and all of the great using. And so because that's changing so quickly. So is that the host, if you will, or the physical aspect of the data?
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Well, the infrastructure as well. And I want to get into that too, which is a big challenge for it.
So before going into further details, please share your origin story, if you would. Roberta, where'd you grow up and how'd your parents, if they did have influence on you, and other family members as well?
[00:09:44] Speaker C: Oh, well, that's a great, that's a great place to start. I was born in New York City, but my parents and my parents and my entire family are from New York City.
But my parents moved to Southern New Jersey just as I was born in 1960, because my father worked for the FAA at the FAA Tech center, which develops, develops and still is working on all of the technology for the commercial flight systems in America. And so my father actually, although he was not college educated, he did a lot of tech work, right? He did. He focused on landing, airplane landing systems, and just all kinds of early computer modeling and really.
Yeah, so he was, he had a very big impact on my life because of his natural ability on the tech side. My mom, though, was more of an artist. She was a stay at home mom, but she was much more of an artist. And so she developed the, you know, the left side of the brain, you know, in art school and sculpting and painting and drawing, and took us on little field trips to. To create art, if you will, to paint and do things. And so I had a really great impact by my parents having both the art side and the tech side, which helped form. Help form my decision to become an architectural engineer at Penn State, which I know we'll get into in Margate, New Jersey, which is southern South Jersey. And it is technically a suburb, a beach town, technically a suburb to Atlantic City.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:11:27] Speaker C: I. I was educated by. At Atlantic City High School. In Atlantic City High School.
And it was a very interesting time to be in Atlantic City and a very interesting time to be in that high school.
And I wouldn't trade that experience for anything because it was extremely formative to my personality, learning how to get along with a lot of people who sometimes don't want to get along with each other. But to be able to be immersed in that environment and know how to, you know, you had to, you had to get along with everyone in order to survive because it was a tough time. Right. There were a lot of racial riots and.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:12:06] Speaker C: And, and tensions.
And it was, it was a very special time. We formed great relationships and high school was a terrific experience.
Maybe not comparative to a private education or some of the other high schools in the country from an educational perspective, but I was able to get the best of it because I was happily, I was really strong in math.
And then because the influence of my mom was in art classes. And so I had a lot of educate. A great education about the technical side as well as the art side.
Earlier, John, you and I were chatting that I was also very fortunate to have had drafting in Atlantic State High School.
And maybe that Was a follow on to my middle school when I loved shop class more than I loved home ec.
I, you know, loved working with the big machine tools and create building stuff and creating stuff.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:13:06] Speaker C: And. Yeah, and. And then the follow on to that was. Was drafting in high school. And so that sort of set up my real interest in the technical aspect and, and then the drafting aspect would.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Serve me well growing up in Atlantic City. I've got a couple of questions there.
So first, you know, from a real estate standpoint, it's a fascinating place in that the game we all played as a kid is based on the grid system in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Monopoly.
So in fact, I think the game was actually formed there by Parker Brothers in that city. And so was there any, you know, discussion about that as a kid growing up and all that? I mean, just out of curiosity.
[00:13:56] Speaker C: Oh, goodness gracious. There was so much discussion about it and so much interest in. Could you find the original Monopoly sets? And was your street in the original Monopoly set? My. The street that I grew up on wasn't actually a street in Monopoly, but I could walk to Marvin Gardens in 60 seconds from the.
That is my childhood. So there's a lot of real estate. And boy, we, we played a lot of Monopoly. You did learn how to negotiate. You did learn how, you know, you could, you could leverage property, right, and win the game, so to speak. It had a lot of impact.
But I also want to say that Atlantic City's redevelopment to make way for the casino gaming industry had a lot of impact on me as well. What do I mean by that? Well, there's a lot of historic hotels in Atlantic City, which was built at the turn of the century, beginning of the 1900s. And because Atlantic City was a wonderful summer escape for a lot of the cities, mainly Philadelphia and New York. And there was, you know, just a plethora of beautifully designed and built hotels which were all aging. Some of them were smaller and some had to be aggregated to create enough real estate to develop a casino on. And my parents were great. You asked me earlier about, you know, the impact my parents had. They were great about always exposing us interesting things to grow our. Grow our interest and expand our minds. And my father was pretty insistent on taking us to watch the raising of a lot of the hotels.
And one that really captured me was the original Marlboro Blenheim Hotel, which made way for the original resorts. Casino was the first reinforced concrete structure in the world.
It was developed by some engineers and architects out of Philadelphia. I Think their name was White, but don't quote me on that.
And so it was fascinating and quite, you know, interesting conversation, whether this should be raised or not, this asset should be raised or not. And there were all kinds of development proposals to preserve part of the original.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Structure in the historic preservation, basically, correct?
[00:16:28] Speaker C: Yeah, a lot of historic preservation efforts, but there wasn't a business rationale for it. It created so much additional cost and so much additional engineering that. And. And then the actual usability of the space wasn't nearly proper for the hosting of gaming. And so, you know, as a kid, I remember reading all about that. Right. Highest and best use of an asset, how you can preserve or not preserve and why to preserve and the importance of building for building a. Building new assets for building a local economy.
And also. So that was all pretty instrumental. The other thing that was instrumental is that when my father and mother took us up to watch the raising of the hotel, I was fascinated about how they did it.
Where did you put the dynamite? How do you. Why. What's the structural integrity? How do you marginalize that structural integrity?
[00:17:27] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:17:27] Speaker C: It can efficiently take the building down. And that got me interested in structural design.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: That's pretty cool.
So, largest developers in Atlantic City. I think he came in the 80s, if I'm not mistaken.
[00:17:42] Speaker C: Yes, he did.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: Was our current President of the United States, if I'm not mistaken. Is that correct?
[00:17:47] Speaker C: Correct. Yes, correct.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Were you there at that time?
[00:17:53] Speaker C: Yes, I was, but I was also. I graduated Atlantic City high school in 1978. So our current president, President Trump, wasn't quite yet as entrenched in Atlantic City yet as he was following on in the early 80s. And so. And the late 80s is really impacted the city the most.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: Another podcast guest of mine, and you may not know this, Don Wood, who's the chairman of Federal Realty, was Mr. Trump's CFO when that hotel was built.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: I stoked that. So we have the confluence of discussions about our president the most. Don Wood, I did not know he was involved in Atlantic City drama.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: Yes. And he lived there at the time and tells his story in the podcast. So it's a. It's fascinating.
And why he left and all that good stuff. It was pretty interesting, I have to say.
[00:18:51] Speaker C: Can't wait to listen to that.
Yes, it's greatly.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: Yes. So, anyway, so from Atlantic City, you went on to Penn State University. So why Penn State? And, you know, what was your thought process there?
[00:19:08] Speaker C: Great question. You know, we all say in the world that it's better to be lucky Than good sometimes. But I believe you have to be lucky and good. My Penn State story was actually a lucky story.
And so I was very focused, by the way, for, for all the younger generation folks listening. I think it's always interesting to note that people in my generation, when we went to college, your parents didn't take you around to look at schools.
You either didn't see them, you had a big book called Barons, right. There's no Internet, or you went on road trips with your friends and then if you were fortunate, your parents took you to some school. So some of the road trips that I went on were to. I was always interested in architecture before I was interested in, before I knew I was that interested in engineering. It's not architecture. And so I was mostly interested in Cornell, Yale, Rhode Island School of Design, sure. All of which I visited with friends and was admitted to, but I couldn't afford them.
I did have an academic scholarship that paid for essentially first years of college, but that wasn't nearly enough. And so I had to make my decisions on affordability.
And so Penn State, although it wasn't my state school, was still a far better value and much more practical for me. And so I enrolled in Penn State before I ever saw it.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Really?
[00:20:46] Speaker C: Yes. And you know, of course I read and knew all about the environment, the actual environment of, you know, being in State College in the middle of the central part of Pennsylvania. Right. The, it's literally the geographic center of state.
And I was really lucky that when I got to Penn State on my visit to enroll, I was really lucky that I fell in love with it. The environment, it's quite intoxicating, a lot of fronts, but it's a special place. But I started out in the School of Architecture.
And it's interesting that you probed my interest or history before on historic preservation, because I actually started out in architecture and historic preservation and I enjoyed myself, but I missed the technical side. That's when my, my calling was speaking to me that, you know, I'm really not as left brain as I should be to be a great architect. And I saw that in myself. And I was really getting drawn more into the tech side.
And so here's where the luck came in.
I applied to the College of Architectural Engineering. Remember, I wasn't even in the College of Engineering yet. So I applied to the College of Engineering and the Department of Architectural Engineering, which was pretty hard to get into because at the time it was the top. There were only at that time 10 schools in America that taught architectural engineering. And Penn State was the top.
So it's hard to get into. I was so fortunate to get admitted and, and then I found my real home.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: That's great.
That's great. So what led you into that industry? And I mean, did you use that then to love yourself, get into the industry or what was your career plan once you got into that major?
[00:22:45] Speaker C: Oh, I would, I would love to tell you I had a great career plan, but it wouldn't be true. My career, my career plan at that time during Penn State was to graduate with an engineering degree.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: There you go. Okay. Just to finish. All right.
[00:23:00] Speaker C: And it's interesting because people have heard me say that I've done a lot of the aspects of commercial real estate, but one thing I've never done professionally was property management.
So interestingly my own experience property management was when I was at Penn State because I had a friend who had a company that owned like 10 houses and so he asked me if I would property manage them and I did. It was a great source of income and a phenomenal experience. And also I had to lease them.
Right. So I got both the management experience of leasing on a really small scale, but it gave me a good entree into that.
But I, I thought that I would be more of a, I didn't think I'd be more of a design engineer. I never aspired to be a bench engineer. I have huge respect for them, but I never aspired to be sure.
I became very interested in a few aspects. I became very interested in lighting design, acoustic design and construction overall.
And as you know, fortunately the five year engineering program, the fifth year you focus on, you do a thesis, you, you work on a thesis as well as.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:24:14] Speaker C: Finish up your, you know, what's now graduate level engineering classes. And although I did love lighting and I did love acoustics, I didn't think that was going to be my best, most exciting career. So I decided to go down the, you know, my, my fifth year, actually my fourth year, I decided to get into construction and then I spent a lot of time on the construction management courses and, and developing the business acumen in my, my final years at Penn State.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: So what was your first job out of Penn State?
[00:24:46] Speaker C: Great. Another great fortunate circumstance I worked for. It's the reason why I moved to dc. My first job was with John J. Curlin Mechanical contract.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: Oh sure.
Yeah, you're still around.
[00:25:02] Speaker C: Oh yes, they've done a phenomenal job. They, they were interviewing at the time back in the early 80s, I guess, late 70s, early 80s. They used to interview at Penn State. And I always laugh because I was their first professional female in the company in 1983.
They hired a bunch of young engineers from different engineering schools. And so I was their Penn State pick that year, and I was their first woman.
And that was a whole nother experience.
That was pretty formative in my life.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I bet.
[00:25:44] Speaker C: It was a terrific, terrific place to start.
I learned a lot. My first project when I moved here in 83 was the Clark building.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: Oh, sure. In Bethesda.
[00:25:56] Speaker C: In Bethesda, which, if you remember, in 1983, that whole site at Wisconsin, Old Georgia Metro center, that whole construction. Exactly. Because it's Bethesda.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Allen K. Was developing then, too.
[00:26:13] Speaker C: Allen K. Exactly. Right. So you had the Clark building, you had the hotel.
Right. You had.
You had that. Right. You had the Hyatt and the Metro all happening at the time. So, boy, if you were into construction, you could see it all at the Bethesda Metro.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: The plaza and underneath, the infrastructure was pretty advanced at the time it was built.
[00:26:37] Speaker C: Oh, absolutely. And don't forget Bethesda had an arts program then. Right. To get more development rights. And so that fountain was a collaboration between K and Clark and, you know, the hotel, they all had to contribute to building that center fountain. And that was interesting too, because the equipment for that fountain actually lives in the Clarkville.
And so, you know, got a really great experience.
And there was a lot of interesting things that, that you know about the Clark building, Not the least of which the building which was designed for Clark, but also for Wang, which answers the question about why the window configuration is the way it is, because it was built for a raised floor inside. Right.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:27:22] Speaker C: And also, Mr. Clark was commuting via helicopter.
And so there's a helipad. Yes.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Right on top of the building that.
[00:27:31] Speaker C: Was ever used on top of the building.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: So for younger listeners, explain what raised floors meant and why they were even exist, because that's long gone. Technology.
[00:27:44] Speaker C: Yeah, that. That specific technology. But raised floor is a flooring system that's built on maybe it's 8 inches raised, 9 or 12 inches raised.
And the floor is built on a structural component that holds floor tiles.
Now, obviously, it has to be very strong because what goes on top of it is all of the electronic equipment, all the processing equipment, computer equipment, but also all of your furniture. Right. Because people work in this space. And why raise?
[00:28:20] Speaker A: Two.
[00:28:20] Speaker C: Two reasons. One, you have a tremendous amount of cabling that connects into all of the computer equipment, and that equipment moves around a lot. So if you Fix those cables. It's. It won't work because you move things around and equipment breaks down or there's new equipment that comes in and smaller, and it's different with different cabling. So you have to have a chase compartment for all the cabling. The other thing you have to have is proper cooling, which for the computer equipment at that time was and still is in data centers fed from underfloor.
So it serves a couple purposes in flexibility in design, in the cabling chase for all the equipment and H vac cooling.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: So at Kirland, was that one of your responsibilities was doing the raised floor infrastructure?
[00:29:13] Speaker C: Yes, it was okay. Actually, my first entree.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: There it is.
[00:29:19] Speaker C: There it is. You got right to it.
You aren't good at this. You get right to it. I. That was my first entry. You know, I will tell you, there was very little conversation about race floor and the impact when I was at Penn State. I mean, computers weren't really even being used that much, so Wang Corporation, obviously, you know, was.
Was early on, and my, you know, understanding of what the raised floor is and why it's needed and how it will become a part of a viral part of our future really was born at the Clark Building. So that was my first. That was my first. My first.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: Well, you know, that all went away, you know, I don't know, say, 15, 20 years later.
And we didn't need it because the infrastructure of, you know, servers and all that changed and wiring became much more efficient.
[00:30:15] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: We can talk about that as we evolve this conversation because it's going to relate somewhat to the data center industry.
[00:30:21] Speaker C: It is. Because race floor still exists in data centers. And what you're talking about is race floor doesn't exist in office buildings.
[00:30:27] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:30:28] Speaker C: But in data centers, it's very much needed.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Oh, sure. Yeah.
So, Curlin, so you. Did you like that job? Did you enjoy doing that? I mean, what. What was. You know, did you.
[00:30:42] Speaker C: Why.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Why didn't you stay doing that?
[00:30:44] Speaker C: I guess I loved that job and I love that company.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:50] Speaker C: And I have so many stories which would really entertain you, but probably not appropriate for this podcast.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:58] Speaker C: So I'm welcome.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: Being the only woman, I imagine.
[00:31:01] Speaker C: So there's a lot of stories that are entertaining.
Boy, oh, boy.
At any rate, I learned a lot. And I learned a lot from a lot of people. I mean, what you would assume is you're. That I would learn a lot from, you know, the architects and the engineers and. And the, you know, the construction, you know, experts that are sitting in the office. But what I didn't realize is I was going to learn a lot from the construction experts on site building.
And it was a really, really important part of my learning and realization that I really haven't. Hadn't had enough on site training. Right. To understand what happens on a construction site. Because at Kirlin I worked in the office and I would visit Clark Building wasn't my only job. I had maybe six or seven projects going on at any one time and you would visit them all. But you know, you get a lot of office work too. So I wasn't on any one site every day. And I realized that in order for me to really understand the development and construction industry, I had to understand what happened on site every day.
And to answer your question about why not stay there? The reason I left was because I realized, and this probably is more relevant to the fact that, you know, I was a female in the industry when there weren't many.
I realized that if I was really going to get good at development, construction and real estate, I hadn't understand what happened every day.
And so I became more open minded about leaving Crowland. And I was a headhunter had called me about a bunch of stuff, none of which was interesting. But what was interesting is when they called me about being an on site construction manager for a company that was part of BF Sol Company. So I worked for Saul, but it was actually Franklin Property which developed a bunch of.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: You did you work there?
[00:33:02] Speaker C: I did. I worked for Saul for several years.
[00:33:05] Speaker A: So you and I worked for Frank Saul at the same time.
Which is hard to believe.
[00:33:11] Speaker C: That Unbelievable.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: I was hired by the Saul Company in 1985.
[00:33:17] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: And so you probably worked for Frank. What's his last name?
[00:33:21] Speaker C: Oh, no, no, no, no.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Start with an M was his last name. Who ran Franklin Property at the time.
[00:33:28] Speaker C: Oh, I'm gonna think of it. I'm gonna think of it as we know.
[00:33:32] Speaker A: I'm talking about. I think.
[00:33:33] Speaker C: Don't you do? Yes, they do.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: So and I joined in 85.
And so.
[00:33:40] Speaker C: Well, in the fall there and again we, we were. We were at SALT together because I. So I was at Franklin Property and I worked the. The gentleman, I think his name was Cliff. There was a.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
[00:33:57] Speaker C: And then Fran Speed was there at the time. I don't know if you remember Fran.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: No, I didn't work in Charlie. Charlie something too. What was Charlie's last name?
[00:34:07] Speaker C: I don't know. But we'll think of it as we.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:34:10] Speaker C: Further.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:34:11] Speaker C: I was on site at 8201 Greensboro Drive, which.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: Sure. In Tysons. Yeah.
[00:34:19] Speaker C: So that's the purpose that, you know, I wanted to fill, was being on site every day. So I, at that point, the base building was just delivering. So I helped punch out the base building. But more importantly, I built out a lot of space within. Within 8201 Greensboro Drive. And I got to do things like design, build. Like there was a restaurant in the first level, and I got to design, you know, the. And build the H VAC component right back and got the restaurant in. But I, I built out a lot of that space in 8201 Greensboro Drive. And a lot of it was for, like, unisys, sdc. Early tech companies. Right. Sure.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:34:58] Speaker C: Even more of a, you know, more of a view of race, flooring and technology and. But, you know, what I did, John, is I would go to work every morning early in my jeans and my hard hat, and I would take my plans and I would walk every space and look to see.
I really understood, like, what was happening on the construction site every day. First, second, third, what subcontractors, how it all works and fits together.
And, you know, I became pretty astute and understanding. Okay, you know, the, the drywall studs are up, the electricians behind the H vac boxes are hung. Where's the connection points? This guy's going to get buried. This is going to be a change order. So I was able to start to understand what happened on a construction site every day.
And that was a big part of my learning.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: Charlie Sharon.
[00:35:56] Speaker C: Charlie Sharon. Oh, great job remembering you.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: Remember Charlie Sharon?
[00:36:01] Speaker C: Oh, done. Yes, I did. There's a very good group of people at Solid Property.
[00:36:08] Speaker A: Yep. And then of course, there was this real. Real estate investment trust, and that's. That was Phil Karasi, who was running.
Remember Phil?
[00:36:18] Speaker C: Sure, I do.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: So, and then I worked for Pete Selwood, who was the finance guy that.
And he led our mortgage banking group.
So I worked with Graham White, Ken Jentel, and we had a pretty good crew. Lisa Walker.
Yeah. So we were correspondents to really, the Foundation Saw Company because Frank himself worked in our division before he took over the.
What the thing from his father Andrew Saw back in the 1960s and stuff. Of course, he started Chevy Chase bank and all that.
So you know, the salt company history.
[00:36:59] Speaker C: It'S the history of Washington D.C. absolutely.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: It's one of the reasons I love Washington real estate history, because the salt company was so integral, going back to the late 1800s, along with Jimmy Chase Land Company, which was our landlord yeah. And that building at 8401 Connecticut Avenue.
[00:37:18] Speaker C: So, you know, it's really interesting when you talk about the environment of Washington D.C. the business environment, and how collaborative and communicative and supportive your entire community is.
And, you know, it's. That's a very unique aspect of Washington D.C. because other cities don't quite have. Some of them have part of it, but not all of it. And. And others are really, really hard business places, of course, because, yeah, people aren't cheering for your success. Right. They're competing. And.
But when you think about.
Started early on with the relationships from, from our early, early business developers, of course.
Of course.
And so Mr. Salt, Mr. Clark, along with, you know, the Carr family, you know, of course, close friends, and there was enough business for everyone to progress beautifully.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: Well, it's interesting, I divide Washington and 2. Two large religious groups in the real estate sector.
There's the Catholic mafia and then there's the Jewish mafia. And it's really interesting because there's the schools and everything where all the infrastructure was there on both sides and you could see it.
And they all did business with each other too, beautifully. So, of course, Saul was on the. On the Catholic side and he was.
I mean, I live in Kensington and he built Holy Redeemer School, you know, church. The Salt farm is just south of where I lived, which was the family where he grew up as a kid. And his father, his grandfather owned the land here.
So all that. And then of course, the infrastructure, the, you know, all the Catholic schools around the region.
And so it's, it's an interesting evolution. And then, of course, the trades going in the 1940s in Washington were primarily the Jewish trades.
So the Bender family was, you know, Jack Bender was a painter. He painted the White House, etc. Then built almost, you know, about half of downtown Washington's office buildings with the FBI building. You know, all those buildings was better, you know, was Blake Construction. So it just, it's really interesting to look at that. And then, you know, Oliver Smith, don't.
[00:39:37] Speaker C: Forget, of course, in that conversation, Right?
[00:39:40] Speaker A: Oh, of course. Charles E. Smith.
You know, so there you go. And that's where you worked after that. I understand after you left the salt company, you go. Went to work for Smith. Is that what happened?
[00:39:52] Speaker C: I have to think about that for a second. No, after Saw company. Oh, no. I had another very important step. After bf, Saul and Franklin property, I went to work for Henry Lawn company.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: Oh, you. Oh, my gosh. He was one of my first clients financing. Henry was.
[00:40:11] Speaker C: And what did you finance for him? Did you finance.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: So Tom the CFO was Irish last name Tom, I can't remember. Tom McKay, I think, or something like that.
[00:40:21] Speaker C: Are you thinking Tom Abanezio? Was not.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: No. He was on the operations side. This was the finance. He was the CFO for Henry and I did three projects financings for them.
The two Sully Field Commerce center buildings were in.
In that business park there.
And then, you know, they were very large multi. Multi tenant industrial buildings.
We call them Data.
What do we call them? Flex. Flex buildings at the time.
[00:40:49] Speaker C: Yeah, flex buildings.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: Flex. And then his first, one of his first office buildings in Westfields Finance as well, which was their big land development.
[00:40:59] Speaker C: That was Meadows office building one.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: It wasn't Meadows, it was started with Ridge something. Ridgeview.
[00:41:06] Speaker C: Ridgewood or something.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Ridge something. Yeah, it's right next to the big conference center there.
[00:41:12] Speaker C: That's on the west side of 20, right?
[00:41:14] Speaker A: It's on the west side, not the Meadows, which is on the east side. Yeah, I know that real estate.
[00:41:20] Speaker C: You really do. Well, Ridge was where Henry Long Company's offices were after a while. Right, right.
Moved around. We were first when I worked at Henry Long Co. We were first close to George Mason University in Fairfax. On University.
And then when.
And then I guess when Ridgewood was after you did your great work and the building was developed and the conference center was just being delivered. Then Henry Lock Company moved out to Westfields, which was terrific.
[00:41:51] Speaker A: Right.
[00:41:52] Speaker C: But I actually went to work in. For. For Henry, I want to say in 86 or 80 80.
My dates are a little fuzzy. Maybe it was 85 or 86. And my original role was in leasing.
And so I leased Westward Center Drive and I was part of the leasing team in Tysons. Yeah, Tyson's. Exactly. There's four buildings that Henry had owned there.
And I also helped lease Meadows one, which was technically the first building that Henry built out there to validate Westfields.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:42:32] Speaker C: Really interesting story that I want to tell you about because has a lot to do with data centers. Right.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:42:38] Speaker C: We already talked about some of my early look at, you know, computers and, and hosting them and what, what it is to house them.
But from my. Before I got to Henry Long. Right. Just before, in the late 80s and early 90s, what was happening in Northern Virginia and formed the basis for Loudoun county and Data Center Alley. Right. You had AT&T and Sprint and PSINet all building their own portion of the Internet before they decided to connect together.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:43:14] Speaker C: And that was the formation why AOL came Out, right?
[00:43:17] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:43:17] Speaker C: Basis of the fiber.
So at that time I had, before I left Saul, been building out different spaces in the SAW portfolio, in the Franklin property portfolio. And some of them were the old network operating centers.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:43:33] Speaker C: You know, they were just a really early, you know, now archaic, rudimentary version of a data center with some old systems that are no longer used. And. But it was a great introduction for me on industry networking being built and the network aspect of it.
After I left Franklin property and went to work For Henry Long Co. I noted that I started out in leasing, but soon thereafter Henry Long company, they delivered their first building, Meadows in early April of 1980, I think 8.
And by the end of the month we had a full building, leased the full building lease to Martin Marietta. So the predecessor to Lockheed Martin, of course. And Martin Marietta leased that asset to bid for the FTS 2000 contract, which was the long, just the government, the GSA's contract for the long distance, voice, data, video and, and, and, and media, if you will, contract for all federal government.
And in order to bid for that government, there are three bidders, att, AT T, Sprint, and Martin Marietta. In order to bid for the, the contract, you had to be full, fully operational on every technical component to demonstrate that you can make it all work. Right.
[00:45:04] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:45:05] Speaker C: And so that first building for AT Meadows one was the tech, if you will, the tech heart to build for that had to be built to bid for the contract. And so Henry asked me to be the liaison with Martin Marietta, the architects, the engineers.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:45:28] Speaker C: And that is really where I got.
[00:45:30] Speaker A: You learned a lot there.
[00:45:31] Speaker C: Learned a ton. I learned a ton. And there was a very technical build out.
[00:45:37] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:45:37] Speaker C: I bet the people who don't know my background, which I really appreciate you're giving me the opportunity to talk about it. But people who don't know my background think that I just dreamed up this data center thing overnight. But I actually have a pretty big background.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: I knew there had to be a backstory. That's one of the reasons I asked you to join me.
[00:45:57] Speaker C: Well, thank you so much for that.
And so that was another incredible education and experience. And good news is we built this very incredible, technically able center to demonstrate that Martin Marietta could handle the FTS 2000 contract. The bad news is he did not get the contract.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: That's too bad.
[00:46:20] Speaker C: AT&D and Sprint got it. But what, what Lockheed Martin did, again, it was Martin Marietta at the time. What they decided to do was to use that as a consolidation Point to grow their Virginia operations. And so they relocated several of the buildings out of Greenbelt Office park and moved them out to. To Meadows, the Meadows Office park within Westfield. And those buildings, you know we, I became then I was still the liaison with Mark Marietta and those I became there. I did all the pre development work to design the buildings to host them and went great first experience going through the entire development cycle.
So you know, the pre development work, the leasing of the new buildings, incorporating all the different, you know, leases and assets, designing, developing, going through the finance. Right. Construction and then permanent finance, building out the interiors and then delivering and I'm.
[00:47:25] Speaker A: Pretty sure I quoted that deal when I was there. I'm 99% sure. I looked at it with Tom.
[00:47:32] Speaker C: You know, an amazing opportunity to talk about your background and my back.
[00:47:39] Speaker A: I'm sure I quoted it.
[00:47:41] Speaker C: Ironic is it that so many touch points in common, even work the same company. Incredible. Incredible.
[00:47:49] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean Henry was a. I remember taking a drive with him and I think it was a Jeep or Grand Cherokee or something and we were driving over the Westfield site together. This is before the first building was built over there on the west side.
So ironically I, I had quote, the reason I was in that neck of the woods and how I met Henry Long company is I had financed Sully Station with Gary Rapoport and, and Bob Kettler which was a shopping center to the west of there that was really the Safeway anchored center in the neighborhood.
[00:48:22] Speaker C: Of course.
Of course, yeah.
[00:48:26] Speaker A: So I met Gary Rapaport.
So it's, you know, that's. I started mining out there because no, nobody, none of the other mortgage bankers in my group were looking at western Fairfax at the time. So I said here's a market I need nobody else is in and it's really fast growing. And God, what Ketler was doing out there was just going nuts with housing development and everything.
[00:48:49] Speaker C: So it was at that point Route 28 was just four lanes.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: Two lanes actually it was two when I first got out there it was.
[00:48:59] Speaker C: Two, then became four. And that was.
[00:49:00] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:49:01] Speaker C: It was. Yeah, the two lane. That is so hard to imagine.
[00:49:05] Speaker A: It was nothing like it is today. Not even close. So if there's a largest changed area in the Washington region In the last 40 years, I would say that that Route 28 corridors and then of course the toll road and everything out there and the Dulles area was really just getting underway. The Dulles toll road had been open a long time because you know, was built when the airport was built. But when they, the toll, the, the actual toll lanes really didn't, you know, Reston was office parks. And they started when I got out there. There were quite a few, you know, you know, Lee Samus and a bunch of these companies and Henry Long building office parks and then the residential growth and Peterson companies doing subdivisions and everything else out there. And it was just growing so quickly. I mean, Fairfax county was just exploding. And then Loudon just took off when I. So I interviewed Art Fusillo. Oh, actually, you know, got Dulles Town center zoned and built that mall out there. And you know, he did another big center out there as well. So he knew the Dulles Market extremely well. And then in that whole area and so just, you know, learning that whole Loudoun county thing was fascinating. Anyway, we're getting off topic.
[00:50:29] Speaker C: Not really. It's very much on topic because developing all the tech infrastructure and all the support, the residential neighborhoods that the educated human capital workforce, all of it is what contributed to Loudoun County. Right. Of course, you know, you can't, can't have anything without available well priced package power.
Can't have any development without all of the fiber. And all of that was developing at the same time. Kind of somewhat unnoticed by many, but very noticed by a few who, you know, jumped in and began to build.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, AOL was really the backbone. They were the first Internet other than Prodigy, as I remember. Yeah, those were the only two services that you could have. And then, you know, when I first did it, I had a, a phone coupler that I dialed up to the Internet. You dial up the number and then you plug it into this, these two little cups and you hear this screeching sound and then it would connect.
[00:51:30] Speaker C: Exactly. I remember the first bag phone, that big battery that you had to carry around, which we had at Henry Long Co. Because if you were in Sully Station or Sully Field or Westfield, get stuck on, you know your car's going to get stuck if you weren't driving around one of the big jeeps. Henry Long Company Jeeps, you know, you needed to have that communication with you.
[00:51:53] Speaker A: At all times, obviously. Yeah.
Way before cell phones, of course.
Yeah. So you're with Henry Long for how long?
[00:52:02] Speaker C: I was with Henry Long until 1990. 1990.
[00:52:09] Speaker A: And first the market, he just went.
[00:52:12] Speaker C: Well, it was the rtc, right?
[00:52:14] Speaker A: Yes, it was.
[00:52:14] Speaker C: We had the RTC problem and development stopped.
Right. Money stopped. Money stopped blowing. Developments were starting to get looked at very differently from a solvency perspective. Even though they were solvent, there was different Regulations, you know, this way better than I do.
And it was. It became kind of a frosty market. And out in the, you know, as you noted earlier, Dulles area wasn't. It was developing, but it wasn't nearly as developed as it needed to be in order to sustain some headwinds. And so it became, you know, not as vibrant, not as great.
In the meantime, I was living in Maryland and I was driving an awful long way.
[00:53:01] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
Yeah.
[00:53:04] Speaker C: And so there's another thing that happened, which is interesting, which is I started to notice what fees, what brokerage fees Henry Lawn company was paying to the brokers who represented all these tenants. And I thought, well, if I'm going to make a move, maybe it's not such a bad idea to move to Maryland and get in the brokerage. And that's exactly what I did. And I went to work for Barnes, Morris and Pardo.
[00:53:31] Speaker A: Oh, sure.
[00:53:34] Speaker C: Bob Cohen recruited me, still a great friend, as well as his very talented and beautiful wife, Rose.
And Bob hired me, and I got into brokerage at the worst time you can imagine.
[00:53:48] Speaker A: Downtown or in Maryland?
[00:53:50] Speaker C: Well, I was in Maryland.
Yeah. I was in the Bethesda office. I focused mostly on Bethesda, but, you know, I was. I had to figure out how to, you know, make money. And I'll never forget my father, my poor father, who said, now explain this brokerage thing to me. How does it all work? And at the time, you know, if you were a broker, you could get basically a loan, right?
So that, you know, was a draw. It was a draw, right? So. And all you got, really, was a phone and a desk and.
And if you were very, very fortunate to be sitting around some incredible people. Right.
And I did, by the way. I'll talk about that in a minute. I was sitting around incredible, incredible people.
But I, you know, had this draw, you know, this draw that my father said, Explain to me how this works. Like, if you don't make a certain amount of money at the end of the year, you owe your company money.
I'm like, yeah, dad, that's exactly how it works. And he's like, I thought you were a smart girl.
[00:54:54] Speaker A: Girl.
[00:54:54] Speaker C: I don't know what happened.
I let you go to the big city and look what happened.
[00:54:59] Speaker A: The big pivot from engineering and construction work into brokerage, too. So huge.
[00:55:04] Speaker C: Huge. And, John, it was tough. I mean, it was really tough.
[00:55:08] Speaker A: 1990.
[00:55:08] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, it was tough. And I.
I was hustling as much as I could, but I wasn't sure I was going to make It, I mean, I was, I was at one point very seriously thinking, if I don't hit some deals by the end of December, I'm gonna have to get out of this and I'll just go maybe get a job at the government, which makes me chuckle a little bit right now. Right. Maybe I'll just go get another job and work for all these years to pay back my, my, my draw debt and that will be that.
But that's what, that's what I was thinking about back then. It's pretty dicey. Yeah, it's pretty dicey.
[00:55:46] Speaker A: Remember?
[00:55:47] Speaker C: But, but I made it through.
[00:55:50] Speaker A: So who's your big inspiration there as far as mentors in the brokerage industry?
[00:55:57] Speaker C: You know, there's so many people at Lawrence Morris who became lifelong friends.
When I was in Bethesda, I worked. Len o' Donnell was in the office with us.
[00:56:08] Speaker A: I was going to mention Len.
[00:56:10] Speaker C: Len o' Donnell was there. And you know, just for the audience.
[00:56:15] Speaker A: Real quick, let me just tell the Len o' Donnell story, please. So Len started. He left brokerage and started his own development group and hooked up with a company known as usaa, which is out of Santa Antonio, Texas, and moved down there joining them and now leads a company investing and maybe one of the largest institutional investors in the country in real estate, which is his company.
Quite a story.
[00:56:49] Speaker C: Yeah. And he's leader and he is one of the smartest guys I've met. Also one of the nicest guys I've met. But Len, it was fun because even if in the copy room, you know, Len would, you know, take things off the copy or put it aside, and he happened to put aside an evaluation I was doing, and he said, you know, you ought to make the change here. I mean, you could learn from Len just by passing by. Right. So we had Len there. We had a guy by the name of Dennis Taro who still works.
[00:57:18] Speaker A: Oh, sure, I remember him.
[00:57:19] Speaker C: No, he's a great human being.
Dennis is with Patronality Group right now, but he's also with Core Scale, which is a. Phineas's data center company.
So. So, you know, you have, you have that combination.
Oh, there are all kinds of great people in that. In that office. Larry Thaw led it. He's a good guy. Interestingly, I just ran into John Myers. I don't know if you remember John.
[00:57:44] Speaker A: Oh, he was a neighbor of mine.
[00:57:46] Speaker C: John.
[00:57:47] Speaker A: John Myers was.
[00:57:48] Speaker C: Yeah, Great human being. I just ran into John Myers Sunday after, I don't know how a decade probably up at Isaac Walton, up at shooting range. There, he's a range officer. Another skill.
[00:58:02] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:58:03] Speaker C: Anything? Yeah. So anyway, so there were just great people in the Bethesda office, and that's not even addressing who is in the, in the overall organization and downtown D.C.
but I noted that, you know, I was really struggling to build my business. And I laugh. You know. You know, you mentioned Dennis or I mentioned Dennis Taro. We were actually leasing a building that was down in Oxen Hill that at the time was owned by, I have to think of this for a minute. But it became part of, you know, national harbor.
[00:58:37] Speaker A: So I want to mill to sublies.
[00:58:40] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
But it was a hard business to build. But I, I ended up developing some really good business, both on the tenant rep side as well as on the agency leasing side. And I, I, I did work with CNA Insurance out of Chicago and worked for a long time with them. That was a great account that I, that was developed. And then I also did some work with Principal Financial Group.
[00:59:11] Speaker A: Oh, sure. I did a lot of business with Principal.
[00:59:14] Speaker C: Of course. You did, right. And East West Towers, which now.
[00:59:18] Speaker A: Oh, sure.
[00:59:19] Speaker C: Towers, yep. And you know, that was one of the first transactions that we hit, which was we did 100,000 square foot lease with Health and Human services and another 100,000 square foot lease.
[00:59:30] Speaker A: That's great.
[00:59:31] Speaker C: Safety Commission with Pat, me Haney, who was in the downtown office. I don't know if you remember, Pat.
And anyway, we, it was a really great place to work and to learn brokerage. And ultimately there was just a lot of great success, a lot of great client development.
But I really leaned into the investor side because of my background.
I made more money from tenant rep, but I leaned into the investor side.
[00:59:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:00:00] Speaker C: I was there until 1997 when I was recruited by Charles E. Smith.
[01:00:07] Speaker A: So what did you do for Charles e. Smith In 97?
[01:00:12] Speaker C: I leased a lot of the Upper Northwest and Bethesda assets for them.
I, I leased buildings in Chevy Chase for them and then at least to.
[01:00:26] Speaker A: Work for it at the Smith Company.
[01:00:28] Speaker C: The great Jim Creedon.
[01:00:30] Speaker A: Jim Creedon. Okay, sure.
[01:00:32] Speaker C: Wonderful. Jim creed.
[01:00:33] Speaker A: Was Ken McFery then there then or not?
[01:00:36] Speaker C: Of course Ken was there.
[01:00:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:00:39] Speaker C: Ken was there. He, he ran real estate at that time. So it was Ken Bury. And then Jim reported up to Ken and I reported up to Jim.
[01:00:46] Speaker A: Okay. And Henry Fonville, was he there then at that time?
[01:00:49] Speaker C: Oh, Henry was there, absolutely.
[01:00:51] Speaker A: Of course.
[01:00:53] Speaker C: Talk about an icon. I'm sure you've interviewed him.
[01:00:55] Speaker A: I have, yes. Yes, I have.
[01:00:58] Speaker C: Henry is an exceedingly talented human being. We are both property owners up at Wintergreen.
And, you know, if you happen to, you know, play tennis alongside Henry, you just want to get off the court.
[01:01:11] Speaker A: Because he's very good.
[01:01:13] Speaker C: He's a powerful athlete.
[01:01:16] Speaker A: He played at Wake Forest, I think. Yeah.
[01:01:20] Speaker C: He'S a killer.
[01:01:21] Speaker A: Yeah. He leads the tennis association locally. I think he's one of the. One of the leading people. Interestingly, Kenneth McVery trained me when I was at CB.
[01:01:31] Speaker C: Did you?
[01:01:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:01:33] Speaker C: Were you in industrial? Wasn't Ken McPhurian industrial then?
[01:01:36] Speaker A: Well, no, he. He led the office for CB before he went over to Smith.
So he led the downtown office. He was either the sales manager or the resident manager in the downtown D.C. cBRE office.
In 1982, when I trained OR 83, I came here from Chicago. And he's. He was an IBM trained sales guy.
So he. They took the whole. I mean, cbre, or at that time was called Banker, took the IBM training.
[01:02:06] Speaker C: Exactly.
[01:02:07] Speaker A: The Xerox or IBM, one of those training, and just basically replicated it. But they created this whole structure of, you know, reaching out and cold calling and approaching people and catalog. And this was before CoStar, so you had to accumulate all this data manually. It was hard work. You know, brokerage back in the 80s was hard.
[01:02:30] Speaker C: You know, John, I just found my notes from walking around street by street where I drew myself maps.
This is before costar, right. We had Black sky, of course. Yeah, right.
[01:02:42] Speaker A: Black sky, of course. Yes.
[01:02:43] Speaker C: And Hanes Crisscross Directory. You remember Hanes Crisscross Directory?
[01:02:49] Speaker A: And we also used the. What's the name of that?
The construction thing. Oh, that's where I got all my leads for financing. There's a. There's a construction guide service. You know what I'm talking about?
[01:03:00] Speaker C: Thank you. I can't think of what it was, but for the listener, James, Crisscross Directory was like a ginormous phone book. The crisscross component of it was if you were cold calling tenants for tenant wrap, what you could do is you could either search by phone number.
[01:03:17] Speaker A: Oh, there you go. Yeah.
[01:03:19] Speaker C: You can search by phone number, or you can search by name. So you had this big directory of, you know, it was the Bible. Right. So you had Haynes Crisscross, and you had Black's Guide, which was a big guide with buildings and building information, but didn't give data or anything that you can manipulate and use. So I remember walking around street by street, drawing myself maps with buildings, and then, you know, behind it, the information on the tenant stack and who. And then you go back and you change crisscross to fill in all the data of who, who to call.
But then you could get into buildings too. Right now you can't quite get into buildings.
[01:03:59] Speaker A: Oh no.
[01:04:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:04:00] Speaker A: Cold calling is different than day than it used to.
[01:04:03] Speaker C: My prospecting is a much different story today. It's a much different. Yes in a way at any rate. So I worked for, for Smith and what I did was, is I was, I focused on the buildings that some were Smith owned, some were not. And Upper Northwest down through Bethesda. And so Democracy North Bethesda area.
Smith's development was Democracy.
[01:04:31] Speaker A: So you probably leased Democracy Plaza when I was financed it. So one democracy, I financed that building in 93.
[01:04:39] Speaker C: Before or after we put all the NIH tenants in.
[01:04:43] Speaker A: Well, I'm trying to think it might have been about that time. So it was the first finance, the first permanent financing and it was a leasehold with of course the Camera family.
[01:04:56] Speaker C: Also another great client, Another great family, another great client. And I worked their family and their four buildings adjacent and then 1 and 2 democracy which as you noted families have, are part of the partnership. And what was interesting about that is couple things. Not only did I lease these assets, but I was also on the acquisition and dispositions team for bank of America, which I'm going to get, I'm going to get to next. But, but in, in North Bethesda Democracy 1 Democracy Plaza again being the leasing agents, one day I got a call that NIH was going to come through the building. They needed 500ft.
And I sat down and said now why do you need 500ft? What exactly are you going to do here?
And from that conversation came many others which were about relocating off of NIH's campus. Any non clinical function to clear base for clinical function because that is a 247 operation where all your scientists really need to have access all the time to go in and look at their, at their, their samples and things and projects. And so you remember John, from getting the finance structured there that we lease the majority of One Democracy to, to NIH and then at least a good portion of, to Democracy.
And you know, there are a lot of great service companies in those buildings as well local to Bethesda. So I leased those assets.
I also was part of the leasing team for the four buildings that the Cavalier family owns. And at one point all of North Bethesda was Cavalier family.
[01:06:41] Speaker A: Well, interestingly I moved into One Democracy in 83 as part of Lake Mason at the time.
So I was in that space. We were on the fourth floor of the building.
So I was in that building about the time you were doing the leasing then.
Because we were sold to Lake Mason from the salt company. My company was my group. Yeah.
So from 93 to 97, I was in that building.
In 97, we moved to Greenbelt because my new boss came in and he's from Baltimore and he wanted us closer there. So we moved to Greenbelt. We're up in Ivy Lane there. I've got the name of the park. And then from there Green Belt off Center, I think. Yeah, yeah. We came back then to Bethesda after that.
So Sunny Small was our landlord out there, of course. And then we came back to Bethesda to the Air Rights center at the time. And Low Enterprises was the. Our landlord at that time.
[01:07:40] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, that was.
I worked in that building as well. I worked in Air Rice as well when I was at Trammel Crow.
[01:07:50] Speaker A: Okay, so Charles E. Smith, then Tramel Crow, was that next?
[01:07:56] Speaker C: Well, yes, but finishing up on Charles E. Smith on the acquisitions and dispositions team for bank of America, that was a pretty rich experience as well, because it was very. It was a great learning cycle to understand how the bank dealt with their clients.
Right. Their Oreo and their own internal clients.
And again, we started out with a really small piece of space in Richmond that they needed to decide on what they were going to do, whether they were going to release or move. And that turned into a 300,000 sq ft consolidation for the bank, which ultimately they leased the Best Products Building, which recently was in the news. Not as the Best Products building recently in the news because it's, it's being redeveloped again, which is interesting. That was, that was a, that was a great experience.
Then tramelcro, I mean, and I know you'll remember Joe Satinius.
[01:08:57] Speaker A: Yes, I was just going to bring that name up.
[01:08:59] Speaker C: Well, Joe.
Joe was really and truly one of my only mentors.
And he. I didn't really know him before he started recruiting me to Tramel Crow, but once that cycle started, we became, you know, very close colleagues and friends. And he was a terrific mentor to me. Paid, opened a lot of doors and supported me in ways that, that, you know, you, you think that it's a natural because in 2025, it's a much different profile, you know, for women in the industry. But when I met Joe in the late 90s, early 2000, it. It was very different and his support of me was quite, quite instrumental and quite.
[01:09:44] Speaker A: That's great.
[01:09:45] Speaker C: Yeah, it was, it was, it was really? Really.
[01:09:47] Speaker A: Was Bob Murphy there then?
[01:09:49] Speaker C: Oh, Murph was there again.
Yes, of course. Chris Roth, Bob Murphy, Bob Shabiris had already moved on, but it's where I met, you know, Art Santry and Kurt.
[01:10:01] Speaker A: Oh, sure.
[01:10:03] Speaker C: Joe Callanan.
[01:10:04] Speaker A: And so were you in Georgetown? Is that where you were officed? Yeah, they built that project.
[01:10:09] Speaker C: Yep, exactly. So I. Thomas Jefferson, P.J. right. 10:25. But I @ first was in air rights.
[01:10:18] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[01:10:20] Speaker C: They asked me, Joe asked me to come to Crow and build the Maryland business, which, interesting. I really was hesitant to do because I had already been established back downtown and I didn't want to. Didn't want to make a switch again, but I did.
And again, a really good experience because we built a pretty great business and in Maryland, both on the tenant rep side, but also on the, on the investor side on.
[01:10:49] Speaker A: This was before the CB merger, right?
[01:10:51] Speaker C: It was. I joined Crow in 2000 and the CB merger was announced in, I guess October of 2007. No, October of 2006. And it was formalized in early 2007.
But. And so I was in Bethesda for a while and then I went downtown to Crow. And that was one of the richest experiences of my career as well.
[01:11:21] Speaker A: That's great.
[01:11:22] Speaker C: And you know, on the development side and the brokerage side, you know, things were again going pretty well. But then I was asked to actually get into leadership. And that was my first foray into. Into leadership at trauma at Crow. It was. And I ended up running D.C. maryland, the tax appeal practice.
All a brokerage and great experience.
I had to make a tough decision though, which was to give up all my brokerage business. And you know, for someone who's a, who's a deal junkie, that's a hard thing to ask someone to do. But I did it because I was so drawn into, you know, management, getting into leadership and management learning that aspect.
[01:12:08] Speaker A: Great. So in essence you, you probably took a pay cut, I'm guessing to some extent to do that. Right.
[01:12:16] Speaker C: Again, I think of my father who said, I thought you're a smart girl.
That's a really true statement, what you just said, John. Yes, I did. I did take a pay cut. It's amazing what you do to. In the short term in order for future advancement. Right. That I. It was painful to take a pay cut, but I knew that it was a skill that I wanted to develop. I knew that I was very interested in, you know, people aspects, the business leading. Right. And getting involved in the direction of, of how to grow the business. And how to grow.
And I was never going to learn that, just doing what I had been doing.
So, yes, I took a pay cut. I gave up my brokerage business. Two major strikes, right?
[01:13:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:13:04] Speaker C: And, and it was going really well. But again, when CROW decided to sell to cbre, because basically they talked about it as a merger, but really obviously CBRE bought crow. We all know that.
That was a really scary time too, because I, I now find myself without a leadership job in D.C. you know, they want, they offered me. CBRE offered me to lead Bethesda, but I, I was committed to staying in D.C. at the time and I basically turned that down. And after a lot of investigation of what to do next, I became a broker at CBRA.
So imagine this. Imagine this.
I was 47 years old.
I had no brokerage business.
I had no compensation anymore.
I had no partners.
And I decided to become a broker again.
[01:14:02] Speaker A: Did you team up with somebody there?
[01:14:05] Speaker C: So what I learned quickly was that I was best teaming with a bunch of different people for a bunch of different assignments.
But I did a lot of work with Art Century and Kurt Richter. Right. We partnered on a lot of stuff. We won a couple really big accounts.
I did great. I partnered with Bruce Pascal.
[01:14:30] Speaker A: Oh, of course. I just interviewed Bruce about a month ago.
[01:14:34] Speaker C: He is one of the most incredible people on this planet.
[01:14:36] Speaker A: We had so much fun.
[01:14:37] Speaker C: Oh, he's.
Oh, God, he's all over the place with great stuff and he's so funny and fun and you should read.
[01:14:46] Speaker A: You should listen to my interview with him. It was.
[01:14:49] Speaker C: I now have two of my top. That I'm going to listen to.
[01:14:52] Speaker A: We did it. The place we did it was at his warehouse in Gaithersburg, which is the, the toy, the, the tory. The toy place.
[01:15:03] Speaker C: I, you could just. Bruce ended up. He's a, He's a terrific human being. Bruce ended up buying a home in Bentner, New Jersey, which is in adjacent to Margate, where I grew up. And when he and his, his beautiful wife Amy bought it, he. Bruce one day said, hey, I'm going to come over meet your mom. Because my mom was still alive living in the house. And he did. Funny, from that time on, every time he would go to, you know, Ventner or Margate, he'd stop in and bring my mom something or just check in on her. Just, just the kind of people they are. But I would, if I were, you know, somewhere in Margate or Ventner and I'd walk around and I'd see a yard sale, I dial them up and Say, Bruce, they've got Hot Wheels here. You've got to get over here right away.
I don't know what you have, what's the address, you know, and of course he's scratch.
God forbid a Hot Wheels opportunity pass them by.
[01:15:55] Speaker A: Right.
[01:15:57] Speaker C: That museum is pretty incredible.
[01:15:59] Speaker A: It is amazing.
[01:16:00] Speaker C: It's amazing. But, but so I, you know, I work with Bruce Paschal and then I, I just, you know, work with other people throughout Crow. And you know, one of the things that was, was instrumental too was working with Property Group Co. David Half at 801 17th St. That was a incredible development. Right. That building was, you know, has one of the best views of the White House.
[01:16:23] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:16:24] Speaker C: That was a, that was a really great leasing assignment as well. So I did a, you know, just, I did a lot of.
[01:16:30] Speaker A: So you did landlord leasing at that time?
[01:16:32] Speaker C: Mostly I did, I was still doing landlord leasing, tenant rep leasing. And then I did over my career, both through Barnes, Mars, Trammel, Crow. I did some small, small, you know, triple net leases or triple net lease, building sales or private client kind of sales.
Barnes, Morris, I had done some, a few sales.
[01:16:55] Speaker A: Where'd you cut your teeth on the investment analysis part of the business? You know, understanding the economics of business.
Because a lot of leasing agents really never really understand the whole flow of capital in real estate into that well.
[01:17:11] Speaker C: So I couldn't get up to speed fast enough by myself. I knew I'd never be good enough by myself and my clients deserve excellent advisory and services. The only choice I would have made would have been to team up with the capital markets. And I did. Right. So, so, you know, well, you know the principal financial group guys.
[01:17:32] Speaker A: Right, of course, of course I do. I was leasing Marty Crop and the whole gang.
[01:17:36] Speaker C: Oh yes. Oh yeah. Frank Saw, I mean, Frank Sullivan. Frank.
[01:17:41] Speaker A: Oh yeah, Schmidt.
[01:17:44] Speaker C: Right.
All of those.
[01:17:47] Speaker A: Jim. What's Jim's last name? Jim Halliwell.
[01:17:50] Speaker C: Jim Halliwell, of course, Course.
[01:17:52] Speaker A: Jim Halliwell and Scott Potterbomb. You know, the whole gang. Scott Smith. I financed probably $200 million worth of deals with them with the, with the Bender family.
[01:18:06] Speaker C: Wow, you know them well. You know them well?
[01:18:09] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[01:18:10] Speaker C: Well, I had, I had worked with Bill K.
And we, I brought him into 704 Quince Orchard 7 sale. That principal person.
[01:18:20] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:18:21] Speaker C: And then there's another.
[01:18:22] Speaker A: They were very active with travel pro company. I knew that. Yeah. Out in Loudoun. They did a bunch of stuff there, a lot.
[01:18:30] Speaker C: So again, it does, it does underscore the importance of being with other great. Partnering with other great Trusted professionals to be, to be the right team so that you can deliver what you need to, to the client. So you, your question about how I cut, cut my teeth, I mean, I, I, I wouldn't have done that on my own. I didn't think it was right. And even in current day, you know, I noted at the top of the call, you know, that I was with Fisherman and wakefield up until March 1st. I think about the DC capital markets at Fishman and Wakefield, led by Bill Collins and Paul Collins and Drew Flood and Shawn Weinberg and Sean Collins. When I think about that team and all the support they have on their incredible marketing group. Right? They've got this great dedicated marketing team. They've got this great, great group of analysts. I mean, they're a big unit.
[01:19:27] Speaker A: You have to listen to my interview with those guys too. Oh, yeah, that's one you have to hear.
[01:19:32] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And, and well, you learn, you, you know all about this, right? About their history and how they.
[01:19:38] Speaker A: Oh, sure, yeah. Well, he told the whole story. You know, Sue Karras is why they're there, which I thought was really interesting. I didn't know that.
[01:19:45] Speaker C: Visionary sue, sue is known to be a very, very smart woman.
She also had a visionary component to her too, because that whole capital market seems there.
[01:19:56] Speaker A: Because he's fortunate to be with us now too. Of course, she went through a tough.
[01:20:01] Speaker C: Struggle recently, so he really did she again. And then George is another terrific, you.
[01:20:08] Speaker A: Know, and, and I Met George in 1989. 1990.
He's an interesting guy. So I tried to interview them, but they said no. So someday I'd love to sit down because the two of them would be an awesome interview.
[01:20:23] Speaker C: Just that really would be.
[01:20:25] Speaker A: Yeah, Talk them, talk them into coming to me, please.
Oh, John, I love to have them come.
[01:20:33] Speaker C: I have total faith in you.
[01:20:34] Speaker A: You're a good sales, you're a good saleswoman.
[01:20:40] Speaker C: All right.
[01:20:43] Speaker A: So you, you, you then joined. How did you join Cushman? Talk about that evolution. From, from CB.
[01:20:51] Speaker C: Well, I didn't join it right from CB. I left CB in 2010. 10. And for five years I worked for one of my original clients, Biko Management.
[01:21:02] Speaker A: Ah, okay.
[01:21:04] Speaker C: Did you ever do any work with bco?
[01:21:06] Speaker A: I quoted a couple of deals for them.
So I enter. I interviewed Michael Broder recently.
[01:21:13] Speaker C: Oh, great.
[01:21:14] Speaker A: So you, I assume you know Michael and his wife works for, for the BCO people.
[01:21:20] Speaker C: He did. She was one of the originals that work there. Chris, Chris Wallerstein, now Chris Roeder. And Michael, of course, has a really cool product in Rockerbox.
[01:21:29] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:21:30] Speaker C: Cool.
Anyway, at any rate, at any rate, I worked for Jeff Cohen was one of my original clients going way back when I got into Barnes Morris and they were very, they were focused on growing their portfolio portfolio and diversifying geographically.
And they also needed someone to head up their portfolio for leasing and become a senior member of their advisory group. And it was at the time where BCO had just acquired their asset in Charlotte, North Carolina.
And so they needed to expand. So I went to work for BCO and was great handled, you know, a small company, so deeply engaged in a lot of things. But my role was really to, to lease the portfolio. But, you know, obviously got into. Involved with, you know, all of the aspects of, you know, helping run the company with Jeff Cohen and, and the other leaders. So it was a really cool company. It, it, you know, the Bermans obviously are running it now. They're such smart, productive people. You want to talk about again, original families in real estate.
So I worked for Biko for five years and then I noted before that Joe Stetinius was one of my original mentors or really my only mentor, real mentor. Joe had been coming after me for a while and it just. I was very enjoying myself a lot at B GO and really happy in the company, making what I thought was a good impact.
So I didn't want to leave. But when he came to me and, and described the role of the president of the east region for Cassidy Turlaite, knowing that there was growth underfoot. Right. He couldn't talk about it. He wouldn't talk about it. But everyone knew what was going to happen. I had to say yes to that. And so I left bico in 2015 and that's when I joined Cushman Wakefield.
[01:23:40] Speaker A: So was Bob Pinkard there at that time? Cassie. Cassie Pinkard. Or, or had that broken off at that moment?
[01:23:48] Speaker C: When I came to Cassidy Turley again In April of 2015, when I came there, Bob had already, you know, moved on to his.
[01:24:00] Speaker A: And had started his own company. Okay, got it.
[01:24:03] Speaker C: Exactly. The Wally Piggard is still with Cushman Wakefield in, in Baltimore.
[01:24:10] Speaker A: Interesting.
[01:24:11] Speaker C: On another icon. Do you know Wally?
[01:24:14] Speaker A: No, but his brother, I think Peter is a partner with Dave Bramble and mcb. And so I interviewed Dave late last year.
So they're explosively growing in Baltimore and the whole region. It's an incredible company.
[01:24:31] Speaker C: Wally would be a really interesting, great person to speak to as well.
[01:24:36] Speaker A: Good to know.
[01:24:37] Speaker C: He's a. He's really very connected, hugely influential in Baltimore and another Terrific guy. Anyway, so Bob Pinker was out, had moved on for. To establish his own company.
And I came to work for Cushman and Wakefield.
And my first role there was a president of the east region, but it was for the Cassidy Turley. Well, actually then it was DTZ brand.
[01:25:06] Speaker A: Right.
[01:25:06] Speaker C: I think within probably six or seven weeks of my joining, the Cushman Wakefield merger was announced. And I thought to myself, God, I. I'm the last one in, the first one out. I think so.
But that, that didn't happen. It was great to go through the merger and learn how to, you know, merge a company, how to create the synergies, how to. How to marry the firms together.
And one of the greatest things was my role kept morphing and changing and learning and being exposed to different geographies and learning the different economies of every geography to understand where the growth vehicles were going to be.
[01:25:49] Speaker A: So was Joe your mentor at that time? Was he kind of, you know, counseling you?
Joe.
[01:25:54] Speaker C: Joe was. Joe was my boss. Joe was the president at that point. Right. So he. He was my boss and, you know, still a mentor, but more my boss at that point.
[01:26:05] Speaker A: Okay. And then of course, he passed away, so that had to been tough. Did you kind of step into his shoes then? To some extent at that point.
[01:26:18] Speaker C: I'll tell you that losing Joe was one of the toughest things I've ever had to go through I. In my life.
He was a great friend, a major influencer, an energy source, a creative vehicle, an inspiration.
He didn't put up with any, you know, tolerate any excuses. He wanted everyone to be their best.
And he pushed me and pushed me and pushed everyone to be our best and to be our best together.
And it was, it's still to this day, one of the biggest losses. So that was pretty terrible. That occurred February 1st of 2018.
And you know, at that point, I think it was. Todd Lickerman was the. Was the CEO of Cushman and Wakefield, if I'm remembering correctly. Oh, actually, I think it was John Forester. That was a time where John Forester was the CEO.
So, you know, I didn't technically work for Joe then, but it was a tremendous loss nonetheless. But basically what happened before Joe passed was, is that, you know, I handled the Mid Atlantic.
I also got involved in the Carolinas and. And then things started to grow. Joe asked me in 20, late 2016, to go help fix Boston because that was one area that was one geography where the merger between Cushman and Cassidy and DCZ didn't work well. You know, there were some. A couple of areas where you had great strength from every entity. DC was one of those places. DC was hard to put together because if you had one brand that was so far superior to the other, it made a little easier. But that is not what happened in dc. You had great strength from every one of those three brands.
[01:28:07] Speaker A: Sure, yeah.
[01:28:09] Speaker C: And had the same thing where you had great strength from all three brands, but you couldn't get them together. And again, we talked earlier about the collaboration environment of dc. Even though people fiercely compete, and they do because there's so many, so much great excellence here, professional skills and talents. People fiercely compete, but when they lose, they don't like it, but they're happy for the other person who won and they are confident that they'll get the next one.
[01:28:39] Speaker A: That's not the wrong view. People take the long view here.
[01:28:44] Speaker C: It's not exactly what happened in Boston at all. And so they couldn't keep all the entities together, although they tried hard. And so when a mate, when they, you know, major part of the former Cushman Group left and went to Newmark, Boston was needing to be rebuilt and reinvigorated. And Joe asked me to take Boston on and go do that.
And I'm proud of what. I'm proud of what we achieved there. When I got Boston in 2016, the revenue was short of $40 million. And when I handed over the business in 2022, when the regions were realigned at Cushman, it was north of like 92 million. And so we.
[01:29:28] Speaker A: That's great. Congratulations.
[01:29:31] Speaker C: Great business with incredible professionals.
[01:29:34] Speaker A: And was this repositioning people to some extent, was that the big part of it or getting well?
[01:29:41] Speaker C: Again, a matter of understanding what the economic drivers are going to be in that geography and understanding that, that at that point Cushman had not had a good enough position at all in biotech Life Sciences, did not have a good enough position in certain markets within Boston, like Financial District for on the investor side or not enough industrial brokers up in 28th corridor and not having capital markets both on the sales and the finance side. And so from identifying what's going to carry the economy there, where do you need to be and how could Fishman be a best service to the clients there? And then building around.
[01:30:24] Speaker A: It was a big competition there. JLO and CBRE are pretty strong up there.
[01:30:30] Speaker C: They are very strong. New markets as well. New markets as well. A lot of excellent competition in Boston. A lot of great talent there. No question about it. Of course, you know, you have private equity that's so vibrant, and anytime you've got private equity, you've got. Got, you know, just talents and brains that require equal in their advisory.
[01:30:56] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a lot of smart people up there. I mean, you got Harvard, mit, you got all the schools you've got.
And then some of the origin companies of real estate are from there. So the aews of the world, the Cabot, Cabot and Forbes, I mean, these are, you know, early pioneers in our industry.
So.
[01:31:15] Speaker C: That's exactly. That's exactly right. So. So getting back to it. So Joe, you know, would ask me, but really lean on me to do things that were hard and. And that, you know, required real commitment. And then he would expect me to do it, and he would be there for support. But it was. It was a. Just a fantastic learning environment.
[01:31:39] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[01:31:40] Speaker C: That ended well.
[01:31:41] Speaker A: So right place, right time for you.
[01:31:44] Speaker C: Yeah, it really was. It was a. It was a. It was. And then, you know, when Joe passed, you know, Cushman was led by John Forester, who's an incredibly talented man as well, based in London, no longer with the Cushman Wakefield organization. But, you know, my. My role kept morphing and changing when I was at Cushman in that my regions kept changing.
And so at one point, I had the Mid Atlantic, including the Carolinas and the Midwest, so I had Chicago and Minneapolis. And then that morphed and changed and I got all of the Northeast, which included everything from Boston all the way to New York, through New York, New Jersey, down through Philadelphia. Oh, I always had Philadelphia region. That's right. I forgot about that.
[01:32:38] Speaker A: But moving into New York and taking on New York, I mean, that's Cushman's core.
[01:32:45] Speaker C: That is our core. Great leadership talent up there too. You know, we had a really good work, and a lot of them are still up there, which is really great. But then you've got amazing, you know, you've got the Bruce Moslers of the world. You know, talk about icons.
You've got Moser, you've got Mark Weiss, you've got. I shouldn't name people because there's so many great people up there. I'm gonna. I'm not gonna include that, but that was. That was an unbelievable.
[01:33:12] Speaker A: When I joined the industry in 1979, you did business in New York. You did business with Cushman and Wakefield. I mean, they were the firm in at that time.
[01:33:22] Speaker C: Know exact.
Exactly. You know, and I also want to. You're talking about Kushman. You're talking about New York. It reminds me of John Kushman who we also lost I think now a few years ago, year and a half ago.
He also became an incredible supporter.
John Kushman could network into anybody and I, and I do mean anybody. And he sure more places of influence.
That man was one of the brightest men on this planet. He can talk to you about not just real estate. Yes, sure.
But you know, he developed an incredible museum, an art museum to house his art holdings in, in Idaho.
And it, he, he walked us through as the docent one day and the deep intellect and knowledge that he had, not just about the art or the artist, but the historical context and the people in the art. He's fast, fascinating human being, but he was also a very big supporter and great friend.
[01:34:31] Speaker A: That's great. So you had some great icons to look up to internally. That's phenomenal.
[01:34:36] Speaker C: I did.
[01:34:37] Speaker A: That's great.
[01:34:38] Speaker C: I did.
[01:34:39] Speaker A: So walk me through then this last year and your think thought process to make the change and why you decided to leave brokerage and leadership position to jump out on the entrepreneurial bandwagon here.
[01:34:57] Speaker C: Well, you know, at Cushman and Wakefield for most of the years I was there, I run, I ran big businesses. Right. Regards to what my region is, I ran, you know, nearly billion dollar businesses. Right. And they had to grow and they had to deliver a great margin in ebitda. And that was, that required a lot of focus on what are the economic drivers, what are the disruptors, what's the competition doing, what's next and where's the growth for America and the world. And so, you know, at one point from all of my activities up in Boston, I thought that one day I might have a future in real estate. Biotech, life sciences, real estate.
And one of the things that really is fascinated me about that is that biotech, life sciences labs and real estate, the real estate's developed around the functionality of the lab. What science are they focusing on, what are they creating, what's the ultimate result?
Right, but it's all rooted in the medical science of it all.
And I was really attracted to that. You know this goes back to like the architecture and engineering days. What are we developing? What's the built environment serving? What do we develop for?
And I, I got intoxicated by that idea. You know there's a per, there's, you know, obviously office buildings are for, you know, people to produce and industrial buildings are, you know, to deliver and to serve the logistics chains, I mean the supply chain and logistics. But I really Love the idea of the biotech life sciences lab building. From the science outward promise. I don't have a medical background, I don't have a good enough, you know, science or medical knowledge base. But then I remembered my background and you know, the technology side that serves the IT community and the network operating centers and the data centers.
And that is a very similar circumstance where what is a data center? A data center houses the application, right. And the application is the whole IT and cloud computing component, right. So now that I can understand that, I have a little bit of a background and so I shifted my focus the data centers as far as an interest. Now I didn't do this at Cushman, right.
The data center, obviously Loudoun county was in my region.
But you know, Cushman's position, growing strength and position in data centers is something that occurred really over the last two, three years and more on the capital market side and obviously on some tenant wrap or land, land acquisition side.
But I wasn't really deeply involved, me personally wasn't deeply involved in the data center set, but I became very personally interested in it and my husband and I started investing a little bit in some data centers and that stepped up my interest more and more.
So when I started to think about what would be my best last chapter, which I hope is a really long one, I really centered my thoughts around data center because it's the future of the world, right? Our economy, our global position, our influence, frankly our gdp, it all rests on, not solely, but it's going to be impact in one way or the other on technology and on AI and on how we deal with our digital economy as well as the globe, right? Every, every country has to figure out what their digital economy is or should be.
And so I got very excited about being part of something that will be a future for a long time. Not that I was running out of Cushman, but I was drawn into a high growth industry that I had deep interest in.
[01:39:04] Speaker A: So as you were, as you were getting into it, what kind of research did you do? You obviously invested. So you research the companies that are needing capital to do it.
You know that it's basically an industrial warehouse that you fill it up with a bunch of servers. So it's really, it's pretty simple from a real estate perspective, but there's an infrastructure behind it which includes utilities.
So there's cooling, there's H Vac, there's electrical, there's water.
So there's basically every utility, every utility that feeds into any buildings is very heavily relied upon by this industry.
It's low labor, typically, so there are not a lot of people involved in it, except obviously people the vendors and people involved with it. But it's a 247 operation that has to stay, you know, critical. It's a critical system similar to what we called skiff space in the defense setup where. And this whole intense, you know, critical environment. So it's. It's as important as just about anything going on in the Defense Department.
So it's got that kind of high security type aspect to it.
It's got the utility piece.
And I'm being very big picture here. So I want you to take my big picture and drill down on where you think with your experience you can add value to the industry and what you think you're going to do with your relationships in the industry to bring things together. So is that a good introduction to what you're going to talk about?
[01:40:50] Speaker C: I really want to call you out and compliment you on that fantastic summary, John. You have a really good handle on what it is and described it very beautifully.
And I think I'll start answering your question by saying this is where all of my background came together. So specifically you're talking about the tech side. Yes.
We're going to get to the fuel sources in a minute. What powers the data center? That is the biggest issue currently challenging data center develop. Now, we all know that, but the utility aspect is one aspect. But when you get on the inside of the data center, right. When you get behind the meter, so to speak, there's a whole lineup of mechanical equipment. Right after you get through the utility and the transform firmer and the switch gear. Right. The electrical component. After you get through all that in the. In the lineup of equipment, there's a whole lineup of mechanic H vac mechanical equipment that I have experience with. Right. You've got your generators, you've got your transfer switches, you've got your fuel oil tanks, you've got your batteries, you've got your ups. And then downstream of your. Your ups and you have all the pieces of equipment that support the IT components, right. You've got your power conditioners and everything connects into the. Into the IT trunk. It's really sophisticated. It's a beast.
These assets are a beast on the inside. Right? You're right. It's the actual physical enclosure isn't sexy.
[01:42:31] Speaker A: There's probably 10 different engineering components.
You know, expertise needed to deal with this, roughly mechanical, electrical, almost systems engineering, certainly, and then civil because of the real estate side. So basically, and then even Aeronautical to some extent. So I mean just about every kind of. And then energy.
So all that behind that. So basically almost every discipline in engineering is an, involved in this.
[01:43:05] Speaker C: And it's going to get more complicated because, and I, and I know we're veering off of the question, but it's going to get, and we'll get back. It's going to get more complicated because as you think about the fuel source and the power provider, you know, it's very easy and excellent to think that, you know, okay, it'll be power provided by the grid. But we know we have two issues here, right? We have really three issues.
On the power side we have.
First we have power availability really hard.
Then we really have a problem, a challenge right now with the distribution of the power, right. The utility providers. Is that distribution there? And if it's not there, how long is it going to take to get it there? And we have a challenge with not only the pieces and the parts and components, right. But we also have a challenge with and human capital availability. Right. Bandwidth is a really big issue facing, facing data centers right now. And then the third part of it is what is the cost to operate all that power? So can you find a place where you have power availability, good distribution and inexpensive power?
It's a challenge. So because of that there's a lot of other components we have to be thinking about about. Meaning what is the role of, let's say high pressure gas lines to feed gas turbines, right. What is the role of the renewables, the wind, the solar, geothermal?
What's the role of SMRs, right? Small.
Right. What's, what's the role of SMRs? What's the role of nuclear? You know, we saw what Microsoft did with, with Three Mile island, right? What's the role of all that? Then you see, you know, investors looking at maybe building their own little nuclear reactors or building their own power plant. Then you get into the environmental concerns, you get into, you know, you've got, and by the way, you didn't even know we had. We have to add to your list transportation engineers, right? All of this, all of this comes together.
So when you think about data centers and infrastructure, it's impossible to divorce just the infrastructure and the land use, the land assemblage, land use. It's impossible to separate that from what's the energy component and where are we going with it.
So the infrastructure side is very complicated because of all that.
And there's a multi layer assessment that one has to do when you decide whether a data center it. Land is right for data center, right. There's so many components. There's, there's risk. There's radio frequency inter, you know, I obviously RFI for interference. There are security risks, right? Is it close to an airport? That's security risk. You know, rail has vibration.
Then what about, you know, hurricane, hurricanes. What about seismic? What about soil conditions? Right, there you go. Soil for. To, you know, to house the data center and build on top. You have so many conditions, right?
[01:46:23] Speaker A: Well, there's, there's another aspect you didn't mention, land use and social impact.
So Loudoun county is a classic example of that.
[01:46:33] Speaker C: Yes, yes.
[01:46:34] Speaker A: There's, you know, sure, there's all these needs, but if the community says, hell no, not my backyard, then what. So that creates, you know, you got to leave the area and go find where, you know, the political infrastructure allows for that to happen. So there's another aspect, right?
[01:46:55] Speaker C: That's a big aspect, right? And let's not forget to talk about, you know, the fiber and the connectivity aspect.
[01:47:01] Speaker A: There you go.
[01:47:02] Speaker C: We talked about data centers being, you know, what is it? You need energy, you need, you need cooling, but you gotta have fiber, you've gotta have the connectivity. You gotta be in a good latency bubble, right? 2 millisecond latency bubble, because speed is hugely important.
And then we're not even talking enough about water, right?
Water is gonna be in short supply too. And then how are we cooling? Are we liquid cooling? Are we, you know, which is. And all water, obviously, but water. And then we're going to have a human capital issue. Do we have enough, even though they're low density, as far as creating new jobs and they're not heavily populated facilities, you have to have the right talent, right? Especially if it's a high secured and security is a huge issue, right?
You've got to have the right talent. So there's many considerations when considering topology and sites, whether they work.
And then you have the normal aspects of, let's say you have the land or you have the opportunity to assemble the land, and you identify that you probably have a good plan or could have a good plan for power, then the question is, what's the zoning? Can you get student zoning? It's so many aspects.
[01:48:22] Speaker A: Let's diverge for a moment and talk about the industry as it exists today and where you think it's going in the future. So I'm going to define what I understand it to be right now. And basically, as in many other real estate industries, we have a public sector and there's publicly owned companies, REITs that invest and own these data centers.
And there's also a private sector that owns and it's private capital, typically.
So one of the private companies I know of and actually interviewed one of the funders to it, Bill James of Ironpoint Partners, who invests in idi, which is one of the big private equity investors in the data center space. And their company is called Stack Infrastructures.
Stack has a lot of units in Northern Virginia, one of which I toured last year. Bill teed it up for me, fortunately, with the Stack guy that runs it there.
And that was the. That particular unit was the oldest data center in Northern Virginia, built by AOL in 1987 originally.
And it's been gone through at least three renovations since and expansions.
So now it's a completely different place than it was in 1987 with a, you know, the latest and greatest of infrastructure. We saw all the H Vac, all the electrical inputs and then the racks and the whole walk through the whole thing. Notice the temperature differential between the rooms. It's a fascinating process to see the inside of a data center and the outside walk around it and then up on top of the roof and they'll see the. All the units. I mean, it's nothing like anything I've seen before.
But talking about the industry, I'm stepping back for a moment. Two things that he talked. One he talked about. So he said you should help invest in land in Meridian, Mississippi, which is in the center of the state. I know the state because I was involved with an investor down there in Jackson, which is not far from there.
But Microsoft bought like 400 acres, the center of the state and they're building a big campus down there. He said if you buy land around that big campus, that's where expansion occurs. So people will be assembling because once they built the infrastructure, then people will build out from there. So it's kind of like a regional mall to some extent. Building a mall is going to attract other retailers. Building a data center campus is going to attract other data centers eventually because of the infrastructure that's being built in place. And then the other one is the half a trillion dollar project that is going on west of Austin, Texas, which I believe Elon Musk is involved in. And it's unbelievable what's going there. And I think the President, United States doing something to foster that.
And that may be the largest project in the world as far as scale.
And so. And I believe that there's at least three or four companies involved Then finally I'll say that one of my former counselee clients who used to work at George Mason and she was at OR Partners in Northern Virginia up until this last year, she went to work for Amazon Web Services and she's the real estate liaison person for AWS and she's out looking at sites for them.
So I asked her because she can't disclose too much because they're pretty secretive about their activities.
So she, I said, you know, I looked at the stack facility and Amazon was a tenant there.
But she said, we're moving away from multi tenant environments. We want to be have our own and own our own facilities and not just lease anymore.
So those are the big picture trends that I've heard in the industry. So maybe you can, you know, expand upon that maybe a little bit if you would.
[01:52:32] Speaker C: Great background that you just provided.
So because of what you said and because of the huge amount of infrastructure and cost to develop, you know, a lot of these data centers are north of 2 billion. The ones you pointed out are like up to 8 billion. Right. In or more or 500. Right. I mean it's half a trillion. Right. So you've got huge amount of investment dollars in these data centers because of the energy and all the infrastructure you have to build to support the data centers on a 24,7 on that high reliability scale. Right.
The trend is to go more of a hub. So these large tracts of land that you're talking about in places where you can have the power availability and the cost to operate lower are, are not, not a question the way most of the investors are looking at it right now and the users.
So you know, a 200 acre site's great, a 500 acre site's better. A 2000 acre site could even be better because you have the ability to, you have scalability, you have the ability to amortize a huge cost for the operations side to be spread over more buildings. Right. More data center buildings or a bigger environment.
So the hub component is clearly a direction.
But the advancement of the, so that's one issue. Second thing is the, you know, addressing the AWS go there next.
What we've seen AWS doing is buying land where they're on a track to get power. They don't even, not necessarily even powered land yet. But on a track where there's probable power, hopeful power, you know, discussions of power, the application for power in maybe that power is four years off, maybe it's five years off. But you see us buying a lot of land in that circumstance, betting on the future, if it's in the right location now, it's got to be in the location because does more than AWS work. AWS does work for some of the government agencies. I wouldn't say the three letter agencies, but some of the government agencies, you know, they will help plan and help, you know, help deliver data center. So they do a lot of things right. So AWS is being really smart about getting ahead of the, you know, ahead of it by acquiring a lot of land in logical locations. Right now, the AI advance of the, of it, the AI chip is creating a lot of challenge. And honestly, it seems like things I. People used to say it changes every day. I don't know, I think maybe it changes every hour. But with the advancement of the AI chip, I've had some of the hyperscalers say to me, it's kind of pencils down for a little while because I'm not 100% sure what to build. Right. Are we building all liquid cooled? Are we building only for AI? Is there still some enterprise use here or there? Or what is it that needs to be built? Right. So you have the advancement of the IT and of the, of the chip and the entire facility, entire infrastructure is built around what do you know, what's happening on the processing that, you know, it's, it's a, it's a kind of a challenging time right now.
So because of that, you have, you know, you have some of the other hyperscalers say, well, I mean, if you look at the COLO operators, they've got plenty of the hyperscalers as tenants now. That's what you address. Like they don't want to be in, in colos anymore, but sometimes they want to too, because they feel like that's a better next step than investing all the dollars in changing around their own facilities. Right.
So it's, it's a, it's an interesting. It's a very interesting time.
It's a very interesting time about where this is going.
[01:56:46] Speaker A: So how do you see yourself kind of plugging into the industry and your new services?
What are you actually attempting to try to accomplish, assuming you're using your real estate lens to things, or maybe you're looking at it from a technical standpoint and infrastructure? Tell me how you're kind of entering in and adding value to the industry.
[01:57:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Again, I hope you'll give me grace that I'm 46 days into this.
[01:57:14] Speaker A: I get it.
But you have a vision.
[01:57:18] Speaker C: I do, clearly. And let me give you my 46 day.
Okay. My original intention was to get into the infrastructure side by virtue of land assemblage, zoning and then helping get power. Right. So that, you know, to take it to power land or powered shell or whatever comes next. So that was my original intention. And because that was my original intention, you had earlier asked what did I do to get prepared for this? One of the things I did was as I took it upon myself on my own time, with my own resources to go to school and I went to, I went to International Data Center Authority. IDCA has a bunch of really great education programs. And so I went to the infrastructure school, one of the engineering schools which, you know, you've got to pass exams afterwards. And people you're in classes with are all the high tech people who do a lot of things, whether on the infrastructure side or the IT side.
And they're from, you know, whether they're architects, you know, mission critical engineers, co locate operators, edge providers, hyperscalers, whatever. You're in the mix with all these people. There's a lot of really great learning.
So I thought that, and still do think that a really great business basis is going to be on the infrastructure side.
So the other, the other thing is, is that a lot of the land that, you know, a lot of the land that's available on the bigger tracks are, you know, basically farmland. Right. So or agricultural land which, you know, creates some zoning challenges. Right. Some transportation challenges, some power supply challenges. Right. How close are you to a power provider which then gets into the environmental side.
So in a way I become like a project manager again, that.
[01:59:13] Speaker A: So if you're site selecting for a user, let's just say Amazon hired you.
So okay, help me find sites that are in the path of growth close to fiber, good utility access and a friendly political environment.
[01:59:30] Speaker C: You have to extend your thought there by saying what would be maybe not what is today? Because what is today, what is today is probably more expensive land. If you look at like Atlanta or Marietta, Georgia, it's certainly, you know, loud, which we're going to get back to in a minute.
Or in Texas, right. Or Phoenix, the really hot areas for data center, you've got expensive land, right?
So you have to expand into the future vision, which is, you know, on areas which will accept a data center but will have better value.
[02:00:15] Speaker A: How would Microsoft find a site in the middle of Mississippi to develop a data center campus? And where would the fiber come from there?
[02:00:26] Speaker C: And if it's not there or not enough of it there, what is that economic aspect?
[02:00:31] Speaker A: I mean there is an Air Force Base not far from there. So there is a Defense Department installation there.
So could that be kind of a source? Because, you know, the Defense Department typically has some secure fiber going into every base in the country. I'm guessing. I'm just speculating because I'm not.
[02:00:52] Speaker C: It depends on how much they really want to share that from a security breach.
[02:00:56] Speaker A: They won't share it.
[02:00:57] Speaker C: It's going the other way.
[02:00:59] Speaker A: That's why the Internet was formed in Northern Virginia, was because of the Pentagon. Right. So.
[02:01:04] Speaker C: Yep, Exact. Exactly. Exactly. By the way, they want to get onto their own little grid again. Right. They don't like sharing all this with everybody. It's security breach. We know that.
So it's a tough balance, John. That's why you can't forget, you know, we can't forget the fiber. And then you can't forget the latency issue. How quickly does the information come back? Once the, once the sender, the packet of information sent out, how quickly does it come back? And how much of your population? When you start to look at Northern Virginia and you start to look at, you know, the latency issues, you know, what percentage of population of America lives in the Northeast and Mid Atlantic, Very heavy percentage. Right.
So the sur.
So you don't have latency, but then you have the high population areas. We start looking at some of the other areas. I'm not talking out of Louisiana or Mississippi. Not talking it out of it. Anyone out of it. Because there's a good opportunity here. Right. But it has to be analyzed. All of these factors have to be considered. Right.
[02:02:12] Speaker A: I mean, a site in Texas is really remote. You know, the one west of Austin, it's way out there.
[02:02:19] Speaker C: Getting back to the scale, getting back to the hub and the scalability. When you start to bring in the infrastructure and the fiber, okay, so you're, you're, you know, you're not serving 10 buildings. You may be serving 50 buildings. Right?
[02:02:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Right.
[02:02:34] Speaker C: And then, and then you're going to get, you know, then you're going to start getting critical mass. Exactly, exactly.
[02:02:42] Speaker A: So in essence, you have to make this, it's all up front.
And you basically say, okay, this jurisdiction says, yep, we're all in. Bring it in. So then all of a sudden you get all the companies together and say, okay, we're going to build this monster here. This is where we're going. It's like the Saudis are doing in the country right now. They're building an entire infrastructure, ecosystem.
[02:03:09] Speaker C: Exactly, exactly. Right.
And so, you know, I noted previously, IDCA International Data center authorities, one of the things they also do is they advise countries on their digital infrastructure on how to grow it. Right, right. And so, you know, Saudi's being one of them, Oman, you know, the MENA countries. Right. About how to, how to develop it.
So there's, that was my original focus. Right. But what I didn't expect was, and I'm really excited about this part, what I didn't expect is how many people reached out to me saying, hey, I have 200 acres, I have 150 acres. It's in Pennsylvania, it's down in Georgia, it's here. I thought I was going to get it zoned industrial. Is that the highest and best use? What's the analytics behind my exit? If I go industrial versus my exit, If I wait the time and invest the capital to, to try to become data centers, is it data center, you know, potential? And if. Yes. What's that, what's that look like? That's really fun. That's really fun work. Right.
And then the other thing that I didn't ever anticipate, and this is a whole nother conversation to take another two hours, is I was surprised to be approached by owners of buildings in urban environments. I have an office building. It's. I'll make this up. It's 500,000ft.
I have 150,000ft available.
Could that be a data center?
Right. So there, then you have a whole other set of factors, right? You have zoning, of course, power, you know, who is the power provider and what's the cost of power. But then you have a whole other set of circumstances. If you're in, in an urban environment, do you have the physical space to put it all the inline equipment that you need, right. To, to back up and have the reliability. Where's all this stuff going?
Right. Do you have street, you have places in parking, in the street, on the roof. Then you have all other kind of, you know, questions. What's your floor to floor? First of all, structurally speaking, the, the slabs have been built for live load of 125 pounds per square foot. And this stuff needs like 250. So then you have to start shoring up the slab with more structural steel or however you're going to, you know, that reduces your cavity for your floor to floor. And then we talked about raised floor. Well, raised floors needed in data center. And so now you're shrinking your cavity. So how much room do you have left? And you got all kinds of stuff and equipment hanging off the ceiling. It's, it's a lot and it's. So then you, you know, that's, that's surprising.
[02:05:55] Speaker A: So is there a. Is there a reuse market for office buildings in data centers?
If there is.
If there is, my God.
[02:06:05] Speaker C: Could be. Could be. But it's pretty expensive. It's really expensive, but could be. But it depends on what city. Who would your user be? What would they be willing to pay? And that answer is it could be.
[02:06:20] Speaker A: So I have two things I want to mention about Northern Virginia.
So first is Evan Reagan Levine of JBG Smith walked us through National Landings new, set up my community.
We were one of the first tours. So he gave us the full blow after they just opened that new marketing. And if you haven't seen it, you have to see it.
[02:06:42] Speaker C: I haven't seen it.
[02:06:43] Speaker A: You've got to see that.
So they have a full data center underneath that building in National Landing. So obviously it's an Amazon run facility.
Amazon, you know, of course, it's HQ2.
There's a reason why Amazon is in Northern Virginia.
[02:07:02] Speaker C: Oh, yes, there's a big reason.
[02:07:05] Speaker A: Yeah. AWS is a big part of that.
And this has got to be AWS's largest investment in this market. I'm guessing. I'm almost certain of it. I imagine so. You know, this is kind of the center of the world for that.
And certainly National Landing is an urban environment.
So my question to Evan at the time is, why can't you go into downtown Washington, you got 20% vacancy, go right in those buildings and start building these things out and Amazon could do it. Why not? You know, or is that a possibility? And I'm not just saying just them other people, but you said it's very expensive, but if the demand is that high.
So that's one question. The other question, and this is again, so I interviewed Art Tresillo of Lerner.
And so last year, maybe it's a year and a half ago, they had a regional mall site in Gainesville, Virginia, which is about, about 100 acre site or so, something like that. And they sold the largest, highest price per square foot. I think it was the largest land deal in all of Northern Virginia history for that site. And I said, even if he had built a mall and leased it to all the top retail tenants in the country and sold it, he still wouldn't have made as much money as they sold on that of the sale of that land.
[02:08:34] Speaker C: That's why these analyses are so interesting, right? Yes, they are fascinating.
[02:08:41] Speaker A: Mind blowing, actually.
[02:08:42] Speaker C: They really are. They're mind blowing.
So, you know, and then. And Then I want to add another aspect and because you raised the point before about the community impact and the social impact and like, you know, the nimby, but you know, you start to think about how much tax revenue is raised, right?
[02:09:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[02:09:04] Speaker C: I mean, have you driven around Loudoun recently? Those roads are beautiful. Beautiful, yes. Great infrastructure. The schools are terrific.
[02:09:13] Speaker A: Well, it's the highest median household income in the United States.
[02:09:16] Speaker C: Highest medium. But where, what does the data center. You know, the interesting thing is, is how much tax revenue do data centers provide, right? A lot. A lot. I'll give you the number. It's just shy of a billion.
So it represents about, I don't know, 45% of their tax rate.
[02:09:37] Speaker A: That's just in Loudoun County, Right, Just Loudoun County.
[02:09:40] Speaker C: And so basically it's taxed. You know, you've got two parts of the, of the tax component. One is the real estate tax is, which is the inferior portion.
This, the major portion of taxes is based on, you know, the personal property. And that in every state, this isn't just Virginia specific. And that is, you know, a tremendous amount based on all the equipment. And the IT taxes are, are a major component. And so if you can balance out the idea of raising that tax revenue from data centers and still maintaining a good community aspect, but with maybe better schools and better roads and better available facilities. Facilities and infrastructure, there is a major benefit here that's worth.
[02:10:33] Speaker A: That's why, you know, if you can figure out sites where this could happen, you could take states like, you know, Mississippi, Alaska or you know, places that are, have economic problems. Virginia and basically, yeah, West Virginia, perfect example, basically turn around their entire economies.
So the other interesting analogy that I would look @ this is 1849 in California.
So it's like the gold rush.
It's the analogy of that where you have prospectors going out and doing what they did back then. And it's a similar situation, but it's a high tech version version of it.
[02:11:19] Speaker C: It is, it really is. And then that was the other thing is that the amount of conversations, interaction I've had with capital, you know, the actual capital for investment capital or you know, those who want to get into the capital stack in some way.
[02:11:34] Speaker A: How does that differ from venture capital? Because to me the question is, you know, are you, how much risk are you taking when you're speculating on land like this?
Is this more venture type deals and where does it become investment and where is it, where's the crossover point there when you're making those kinds of deals?
[02:11:54] Speaker C: Some Conversations ongoing right now for limited partnership in the, you know, to be in the capital stack with the, with the general partnership. Right. So taking an LP position.
You know, the capital stacks are really, really, really interesting because, because they're so big and so large. Right.
You know, I'm sure you talked to Bill Collins about this, but you know, when, when they're looking at, well, Bill.
[02:12:19] Speaker A: James is the one who really knows about it.
Yeah.
[02:12:24] Speaker C: So there's all kinds of positions here, but then it depends on what is it you're investing in. Right. What's the goal of the, of the development? What are you developing? What's your exit? What is, you know, what are we doing here?
So, you know, it's different.
It's different on, on.
[02:12:43] Speaker A: That's a good question. What is an exit on a, on a data center? Do you never sell? I mean, is, is it the idea just, you just buy and hold, keep expanding. Is there a.
Who's. Who would be a buyer when you build one of these other than one of the big users?
You know, if you're a Microsoft or you're a AWS or your Apple or whoever uses these centers and it's, you.
[02:13:07] Speaker C: Know, it's a large group because there's so much investment capital, capital flows that are coming from the meat, from mena. Right. Or from offshore capital that wants to come back. That's changing too.
So, you know, you see, look, you see Blackstone and Starwood and you know, just go on and on about everybody's got a, you know, billion dollar fund, $2 billion fund, $100 billion fund, what have you to invest.
So there's a lot of conversations about what they want to invest and where they would invest. But also what's interesting is, is that the investment strategies are solid but then evolving too because of what possibly is available, but also changing for the, the future. So it's, it's, it's a really interesting space right now. This vertical is really interesting because of it.
And then lastly, I'll tell you, and I, I think this is just more of a personal passion, but boy, the amount of conversations I'm having on the tech side, not the IT side, but the technology and invention side for pieces and parts that specifically interact with the energy components of data centers is really interesting. And so there's a lot about like, well, maybe have you talked to this person or this investor or. That's really, really interesting too. And there's a lot of learning that's going on.
[02:14:39] Speaker A: One idea I talked to a friend over at Stack is What, when will the data center companies get to the point where they're going to buy utilities? Utilities or more or less set up their own utilities?
Why rely on the public utilities? Build your own infrastructure, basically.
And basically you become the entire source for power and everything else and environmental, all the aspects of interface with human beings.
[02:15:16] Speaker C: There's a lot of conversations about this right now. I was in a data center meeting in Atlanta recently and there's a lot of conversation about data centers needing their own grid.
There is a lot of stations about, you know, look, Microsoft gave the nod when they, you know, transacted with Constellation in Three Mile island, you know, to generate, to buy most of that power, right? So there's all. And then the next conversation is, well, will we get to the point where there'll be a generation only for data set? I mean these conversations are ongoing. The issue with the renewables and the SMRs are just that. They're still far off on the renewables. On the wind and energy, the question is how do you store it and is it, is it reliable? Is it really? Wind is based on the wind and solar is based on the storage and you can't store that much of it yet. And it's expensive to store.
So that's advancing greatly but not fast enough for this wave. Geothermal, they're making really great breakthroughs there. But again, expensive to tap into.
Right. So how, how. And so there's that application smart that's, you know, maybe that's part of this administration's work on getting some of the regulation expedited so that it could be used better. Right. Used more effectively.
But there's a lot of, there's a lot of focus on this.
[02:16:51] Speaker A: So I guess the question I have is what would young people do and how? As if you're a young person in the real estate industry today and you're in, you're just peripherally interested or pivot like you did into this sector.
Where are the opportunities right now on the real estate side there? Now obviously, if you have utility understanding and you're good at infrastructure, there's huge there.
But on the, you know, just a deal making real estate person, where would you go today? Would you go out, speculate on land and start buying land?
Would you help with the development process of the projects or is there an investment trade business at all yet in the data center space?
[02:17:42] Speaker C: If you're really interested, the first thing you need to do is to get educated. You really have to have some education.
[02:17:48] Speaker A: Do what you did.
[02:17:49] Speaker C: You got to have some background you can't just jump into this again. I'm never going to be the expert. I shouldn't say never.
I don't see my near term being the expert on the IT component stack. Right. So, but, but you got to be an expert in some part of it.
[02:18:04] Speaker A: I mean, if you were building a practice and you were trying to grow it, how would you hire her and what would you be looking for? Just say, assuming that you get to a point where you're hiring people.
[02:18:14] Speaker C: Well, because the opportunity of land assemblage is in such a large geography, I can't cover that. All I need to have an alignment.
[02:18:24] Speaker A: There you go.
[02:18:25] Speaker C: Or a team, right. I mean we should talk again in a year and see how all this goes, right? What's going to happen. But there's a lot of opportunity in where's the land assemblage ideas and do you have that background to evaluate?
Listen, I would say forgetting about data centers, I mean this is always a good practice anyway to understand what the economic drivers are and where the future is. Obviously can you, can you assemble enough land or create a valuable proposition for something industrial, you know, but, and then you have to know a lot about industrial too. You can't just think everything's going to get industrial zone, right? You got transportation issues, you got dot, you've got environmental, you've got drainage, you got, you know, a lot of sites, situations there, you got distribution a lot there. So to get as educated as you can about land use I think is, is really, is really important. Now if you're in an urban environment, if you're downtown D.C. you might say to yourself, well, I don't really see that land use is going to, is going to help really expedite this. And I get that. Right. So that, that brings the next question you asked. The first question brings the next question question which is you really need to be an expert something.
So if you want to be an expert in urban real estate, then pick what it is you want to be an expert in and lean in and become the best one you can be. If you want to be an expert and you think you have a future in data centers, there's a lot of avenues, but you got to invest in yourself. You got to invest your time while you're still working and being productive and well, generating income.
[02:20:10] Speaker A: My next interview is with a guy named James Barlia who's setting up what's called a group called it's Station dc which is a tech eco ecosystem he's building in downtown Washington.
So I'M going to be talking about the district itself and where is the, where are the opportunities, you know, with it for tech, young people to come into tech? And I'm curious if there is a data center market in the city. If there is, could it be done in some, an existing building or does it have to be ground up and where, what parts of the city you could do it in?
And again, the density of the population is such that you're going to have to wean and teach people what having a data center in your neighborhood means, but you also have to teach what the economic benefits of the data center have too. And then the trade offs there.
So it's an educational process.
[02:21:10] Speaker C: It sounds like it's very much an educational process. And you know, when you asked me the question, could there be adaptive reuse for data centers and urban cities? And I said could be, but there's no way to say yes or no without evaluating all, all of the different components. And by the way, we haven't even talked about noise yet. Yes, right.
So, so you've, you've got that or urban threats. Right. Security is a big issue. So Amazon going below, you know, you've got a water table issues, but you certainly don't, you know, you can, you can securitize your facility. Right. Which is why a lot of, you know, a lot only want to, want to be in their own facility as well. So.
[02:21:53] Speaker A: Well, where else in the country do we have more security protection for things than Washington D.C.
national Security Agency, CIA, Defense Department.
[02:22:06] Speaker C: You know, in other cities who have big GSA or government populations. Right. Like I think of Atlanta, you know, there's certainly other cities who, who have that same protection and also have the same public potential users as well as private potential users. Right. That public side's big, right. To be close to your data center is of great value.
[02:22:34] Speaker A: Take a look at Southwest Washington D.C.
and from basically, and I've talked about this with many of my guests, Independence Avenue to The West Wharf, 6th to 12th is basically a wasteland of vacant federal buildings.
Why couldn't you make a data center campus right there?
Got all the infrastructure you got, you know, electrical power. Sure, Pepco would jack it up big time and they would, they could make it happen. It'd be a big investment. Probably close to 100 billion right there.
[02:23:11] Speaker C: I definitely believe that we are going to see reuse in certain cities with certain circumstances. Not every building, God knows, right. There's no blanket statement we're going to see some adaptive reuse with data centers.
[02:23:27] Speaker A: Those huge Sled buildings. I mean, the Forestall building, just gut the thing and turn into a data center.
[02:23:36] Speaker C: Now, we need Exelon and Tepco to be good partners in this. Right, of course.
But there's, you know, there's.
[02:23:44] Speaker A: I mean, you're the person that can assemble that.
[02:23:47] Speaker C: With pleasure.
Anything more fun?
[02:23:51] Speaker A: I have to tell Bill James. He'll help you finance it. Let's do the thing. You know, Right there. You're done.
[02:23:57] Speaker C: I have so many friends who are really bothered with me right now because I'm never available to play golf Monday through Friday or go to pickleball.
[02:24:06] Speaker A: You're having too much fun.
[02:24:08] Speaker C: And it's exactly what I was going to tell you. And they're like, I'm so disappointed in you. You're not. I thought when you left Cushman, you'd be more available. And I'm like, I am having too much fun. I. I'm having the fun I want to have. Like, this is.
This is a pretty incredible. Incredible time.
[02:24:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
I mean, you're. This industry is just eyes wide open and just there. It's like an infinite playground to play on.
[02:24:34] Speaker C: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
[02:24:38] Speaker A: So the question is, what do you focus on?
So it's one of those shiny object things. How do you, you know, where is the path that makes exactly right. Most sense?
[02:24:48] Speaker C: That's exactly right. Can we get back together in a bunch of months and I'll tell you exactly where I'm going?
[02:24:53] Speaker A: Maybe another year. Yeah.
[02:24:55] Speaker C: Yeah, another year and 46 days into it. And I think I have a. You know, I had a vision going in. I think I have a great idea what it's going to be, but we'll see.
[02:25:07] Speaker A: Okay. I've got a few other issues I want to talk to you about beyond the data center industry. So you just took on a nonprofit role.
So talk about the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington, why you got involved, and you know, what your passion is there.
[02:25:26] Speaker C: Kids are our future.
All of our kids are our future or all of our future.
And what we all know is that not every kid has an equal opportunity.
What I've seen from the environment that the Boys and Girls Club sets up on.
Right. You know, before we were talking, talking about, like, Joe's, you know, ability to push people to their best. Boys and Girls Clubs do that. When you're inside the house of a Boys and Girls Club, the focus on, you know, your conduct, your.
Your spending each moment wisely to upskill yourself or become more learned in some area and to succeed in school and then Also to have fun together. Really enjoy yourself while you're doing an environment that's safe, that you have a lot of friends there.
It's. It's phenomenal. And then when you think about what would happen if boys and girls weren't around, that's a scary thought because it's so easy to get lost in this world and it's so easy to go down a path that isn't supportive of your highest and and best growth in the world. And so I admire greatly and respect greatly and will support, support and am happy to support Boys and Girls Club because of the ability that they're providing to all these great kids for a great future.
[02:26:56] Speaker A: And have you ever been to the Ark in Southeast Washington?
[02:27:02] Speaker C: I have.
Wow.
Wow. Actually, it's funny. I was by there recently and I. I was. I was driving by there and had a girlfriend in the car, Cara, and I was talking about what the ARC does for the community.
You know, these, these groups.
[02:27:19] Speaker A: I interviewed Chris Smith, who developed that.
[02:27:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:27:23] Speaker A: And I'll tell you, it gives me goosebumps to talk about it. It's just such a special place. There's nothing like it. And Boys and Girls Club is a.
[02:27:30] Speaker C: Big component of really, it really, you know, Boys and Girls Club got right in the center of my heart.
[02:27:39] Speaker A: That's great. Well, tell you what, you could just set up a little cohort and you talk about this infinite future.
Just let turn them on to what that future could be.
[02:27:52] Speaker C: Exactly right.
Exactly. These kids are really impressive and it's a joy to be around them.
[02:28:02] Speaker A: That's awesome.
So you've received numerous accolades throughout your career, including being named one of Jewish Women International's Women to Watch and the Washington Business Journal's Women who Mean Business award. How important is continuous learning and professional development? You just talked about what you just did in maintaining a successful career and staying relevant in a dynamic industry like commercial real estate.
I've interviewed several women in leadership roles, including Linda Rabbit, Jody McLean, Kyle Shotman, and Moyna Banerjee.
Assuming you know them, what characteristics do you see in them and with yourself that are important for my audience to hear regarding female leadership in our industry?
[02:28:54] Speaker C: What we've learned is that the aspect of diversity that is the most valuable is the diversity of thought.
And so when we're in a room together of people who have experienced different things in their life while they grow up, or different educational value or different lifestyles or where they've lived, cultural aspects or languages they speak, or different kinds of hobbies or whatnot or skills we learn best from each other. We actually are inspired. We actually get ideas about what is valuable in our life.
That's the value of diversity. And so what we've seen is that when we're together in a room or in a board position or in a leadership position with men and women, different ideas come up, right. Different things, different, you know, things are, are inspired or thoughts could be manifested differently when you have all the different aspects.
And so, you know, the leadership aspect of women is critically important. Right. It just, it, it's just part of how we all move together. Together. It doesn't mean that, you know, it doesn't mean that you're not going to come up with great ideas. But when, when we are collaborating together with different perspectives and challenging each other in a different way, we always come out stronger. Right. So that's the aspect I love the most. And then you have the aspect of women helping women, right? So you talked about Linda and Jody and Kyle and I all were part of the wyand down society, right. Which was started. That started. It's one of her, I mean, most, most prized accomplishments. And we've all benefited greatly from it. You look at the women in it and how we've helped each other, it's is spectacular. And it also endorses the value of women supporting others or guiding others or, and, and every one of those women that I, I've mentioned and you've mentioned are women that have helped me and who I think I've helped.
[02:31:20] Speaker A: Yeah. So in 1983 when you started, you were the only female in this company.
How have you seen the role of women change in that 42 years now in the industry?
[02:31:34] Speaker C: It's just hard to even remember what 1983 was like. Some of the commentary, some of the. I'll give you an example, okay.
And this I could not make this story up. Totally true. In 1983, when I was interviewing a John J. Curlin and I was going to be their first woman professional, their first project engineer.
[02:31:56] Speaker A: Right.
[02:31:56] Speaker C: My interview in Rockville, Maryland, the question I was asked was as follows. Roberta, part of your role as a project engineer is going to be bidding work. You know, we're a subcontractor H Vac contractor. You're going to be bidding work from a general contractor. What are you going to do when someone says, I'll give you the work, but you have to sleep with me?
They asked that question, you know, my answer was.
You know what my answer was?
Well, I would say yes, and then I'll turn around and subcontract it.
You could be that humorous and quick on your feet.
[02:32:42] Speaker A: That's funny.
[02:32:43] Speaker C: Imagine 1983 feels like yesterday. Of course, it's many, many years ago. But that was the acceptable environment. Right? I know, I remember, you know, a lot of the commentary on sites was interesting and how, how seriously I was or was not taken.
You know, it was a whole different world. So the validation of women, the respect for women, the accomplishment by women all has been. Been really remarkable and so uplifting. And I thank and credit all of the men who have helped women advance because it would be impossible for women to ever have this position without the great men, the sensible men and the brave men, and the brave men who are willing to go that extra step and support women in their advancement.
That is all remarkable. But, you know, there's still an issue with communication, I noticed where, you know, there's still a situation with, in meetings where, you know, a woman's voice might not be heard as well as, as others. And we have to learn how to maneuver around that. Right. In a, in a graceful and respectful but also powerful way.
So there's still issues.
[02:34:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
What's interesting in the real young people is that women are taking more initiative than young men are.
And it's, you know, I'm not saying there's going to be a role reversal in the future and Gen Z, but I can see this, that, you know, there's. There's more trepidation with young men right now than there are with women because of the empowerment going on among women.
And the infrastructure of empowerment is deeper with women today, at least from what I've seen, than with young men now. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that's a. I hope that's not the case. I hope it's more balanced than that. But if you look at the statistics, young men are struggling right now.
Very young men, high school and younger.
[02:35:00] Speaker C: It's a real wakeup call for us. You know, maybe. Maybe part of it is that the. I'm not saying all of it, but maybe part of it is that the DEI efforts and the environment efforts to help pull up women have eroded some of the support for the young men. And that's a real wave of. Paul, it can't happen. We've got to fix this and get this balanced right. We need everybody to be able to rise.
[02:35:26] Speaker A: I agree.
[02:35:26] Speaker C: Not one cohort over the other. And that has been a challenge and we've got to fix it.
[02:35:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
Do you have children? I assume you do.
[02:35:38] Speaker C: You know, trying to be as efficient as I am. I decided to skip the step of children and go right.
So I, I don't have any children of my own, but my husband, when I met my husband, his oldest daughter was one month pregnant with her oldest grandson. So we have seven grandkids.
[02:36:00] Speaker A: Oh, wow, that's exciting.
[02:36:02] Speaker C: Happily, it recently turned out to be eight grandkids because the oldest grandson just got married in June and he and his wife were married in Deer Valley at the St. Regis with a couple hundred people and they asked me to officiate. So I was.
And it was one of the great privileges of my life. So we are all really, really close and it's a, all together, everybody together. It's a, it's a pretty beautiful family that's gotten created here.
[02:36:33] Speaker A: So that's great.
[02:36:34] Speaker C: So lucky, John. I am so lucky.
[02:36:38] Speaker A: Are you excited about your grandchildren?
[02:36:40] Speaker C: I am so excited about them. I mean, we hang out together, we do things together, we collaborate. My oldest grandson, who just got married, works for Google in data centers.
[02:36:52] Speaker A: Oh, isn't that something?
[02:36:53] Speaker C: So we have a lot to talk about.
[02:36:56] Speaker A: He may be a partner of yours someday. Who knows.
[02:37:00] Speaker C: Pretty cool place to work, I gotta tell you.
Yeah, Google's really good place to work, so.
[02:37:07] Speaker A: Yep.
So considering your extensive experience across various market cycles, what is one piece of timeless advice you would offer young professionals? Navigating the current economic landscape in commercial real estate.
And what personal philosophies have helped you weather past challenges?
[02:37:28] Speaker C: Well, two big questions. The first thing is, is that you've got to have an advocate in this environment. You have to have, you know, we always said a mentor. Mentors are critical. I wasn't smart enough early on to get mentors early enough on. Right. Had I had more mentors, I'm sure that, you know, I would have had much better strength and knowledge base behind me. I start a little too late getting mentors. Mentors are important, but advocates are really important. So when you start to think about, you know, if you are wanting to get a new job or first job out of college or change jobs, it's almost, it's so difficult today because everything is being screened and interviewed by AI.
So, you know, how do you distinguish yourself with an AI interview process?
You really have to have an advocate that helps you get into a company or helps network in that network component is critical right now.
So to have a mentor and have an advocate and know how to manage your network and help other people, it's not free. You gotta, you know, you gotta give too. Because if you've established your own network You've gotta lend your network to other people.
So I feel, you know, that's a critical component.
The second part of your question was.
[02:38:53] Speaker A: What personal philosophies have helped you weather past challenges?
[02:38:58] Speaker C: I have a word that I've used so many times in my life, it's not even funny. Which is next and why do I say next?
Because there's always going to be failures.
But if you have a lot of opportunities, not just one, but a lot of opportunities that you generate along the way, whatever one fails, there's always a next thing you can work on. There's always a next person you can call, an X Avenue you can travel or street you can travel down. There's got to be a next, because failure is happening, right? We're not always successful at what we do, right?
So you've got to have alternate ideas and you've got to have collateral flow so that you can survive whatever failure happens.
[02:39:51] Speaker A: For young listeners aspiring to become Future leaders of D.C. area Real estate and making meaningful impact upon their professional success, what is the most important mindset or habit they should cultivate in their lives?
[02:40:07] Speaker C: We serving others.
We are here to serve, whether it's a client, your company, your team, your colleagues.
Right? We are here to serve others. If you're very serious about doing your best work, not to. Not so much that you get the accolades and the focus upon you, but so that you know, you added value, you know, you contributed in a way that really made the solution better, made the client stronger, made your colleagues think differently so that they can be on a better path. Added more to your company that. That service mindset. Right? That service mindset is key. I watched my nephew who lives in Upper bank, and he works for Disney, but along his life he worked for a lot of other companies like DreamWorks and others. And I watched him stay late, and I won't name the companies or the films because it's not appropriate, but I watched him stay late and then go to the chief development people who develop movies and said, hey, I got into the old animations of this film and I was wondering why you animated this character this way instead of these two ways, which I developed on my own after hours. And they looked and said, adam, you know, this one wouldn't have worked because this, this one has some interesting ideas and this one's really cool. Tell me more about it. What he did was established himself as a real thought leader and a real creator and a real, you know, valuable part of the organization. And in that world of animation, it's Hard to get those top roles. But that's how he did it. He made himself a critical component of the organization.
[02:41:56] Speaker A: That's great.
[02:41:57] Speaker C: In his job.
[02:41:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, they're looking for creative genius in those places, of course.
[02:42:03] Speaker C: And new ideas.
[02:42:06] Speaker A: Talking about genius. There's a book that I read about Walt Disney that called Live Like Walt.
It was. It's quite a book.
[02:42:16] Speaker C: I need to read that.
[02:42:17] Speaker A: Quite a book.
[02:42:19] Speaker C: Okay.
[02:42:19] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
Leadership Lessons from Walt Disney.
Pretty cool.
It's actually written by the Orlando Magic's basketball coach or the owner. Actually the owner of the Magic, who met Walt early in his life and saw what happened, of course, with Walt Disney World down in Orlando.
But anyway, so this is my last question and we've been going for more than almost three hours now, so it's been a good one.
[02:42:51] Speaker C: Goodness.
[02:42:53] Speaker A: If you could place a sign on the Capitol Beltway for millions to see, what would it say?
[02:42:59] Speaker C: Roberta, be kind.
[02:43:04] Speaker A: Very good.
[02:43:06] Speaker C: And I don't just mean as you drive.
Be kind to each other. Be kind in your thoughts about judgment of others. Be kind in your giving to people who need it. Be kind in your giving of your. Your time, your effort, your ability to strengthen a community or a friend or a loved one or an organization that you see going sideways that you think actually is creating a valuable part of our community or society. And be kind about how you lend yourself to it. Just be kind.
That's what our. That's what our world needs.
That's great brilliance. We have exceptionalism. We have creators doing amazing things that are so remarkable.
We also need an overlay of kindness.
[02:44:01] Speaker A: I can't agree more.
So thank you very much, Roberta for your time and the audience is going to enjoy this one. Thank you very much.
[02:44:10] Speaker C: My thanks are to you. I had a great time chatting and thanks again for the invitation.
