A Conversation with Sean Slater: Navigating the Current Retail Landscape

 Hello, and welcome to the creative viz podcast, where we dive into topics related to architecture, development, and visual design. Today's episode, get the pleasure of talking with my longtime friend and client, Sean Slater, who is a senior principal with RDC heading up their San Diego office. Sean, thank you so much for joining me today.

I know you're a crazy guru in the world of retail and architectural design I just wanted to get the, conversation started today talking about what you're seeing in the retail world and how, things may have changed post pandemic. You know what works today that might not have worked quite so well a few years ago.

Sure. Thank you, Scott. It's a pleasure to be here with you. And as you said, we have known each other for a very long time back when we used our hands to

 I know crazy, right?

Yeah. That is a blast from the past so interesting topic, because I think that for the last 10 years, this retail apocalypse is all that anybody could really talk about.

And, you know, since that's so central to my career and what we've been doing, it's been kind of scary, of course. The reality is that we've gotten into mixed use and there are many assets to retail, design and development that weren't impacted by the sort of the Amazon effect and the online ordering.

But I will say the first few months of the shutdown scared me to death because I thought, here we go. Everybody's going to get so used to this, to having everything delivered to their doorstep, instant credit cards. All of this is going to create such friction that we may not see any more retail development.

This may be it. And I'm happy to say, you know, however many years later we are now that was wrong. I don't think anybody could have really predicted the social impact of that isolation. And in that shutdown, as we sort of went through year one and then Omicron and anxiety started to build.

And then you could start to, I mean, at least we could in our firm, the discussions, there's going to be pent up demand here. There's got to be a moment where people are going to want to get back out and shop again and we started hearing, you know, anecdotally, people would say like, yeah, every day I get like 12 boxes on my.

Doorstep and it's all this cardboard and it's all this stuff and I have to send it all back and you know, I'll get three of the same thing and only one fits and I send it back and it's just this big hassle. And gosh, remember the good old days when you went in, you tried something on it fit, and then you bought it, when I started hearing that and I started realizing, oh, even women who have kids and families and are just busy, busy, busy, they would still rather go to Target. They would still rather go to the mall and shop for back to school clothes. There are certain things like. Dog food that you probably don't have to go get dog food at a store, but the things that you want to try on the things that you want to see if that color looks good on me. I mean, there are just a million things that in person experience and shopping could never be replaced online. And I think that what COVID.

I mean, I think what covid ended up doing was actually the opposite of what we thought. And it's really sort of prompted people to get back into the nostalgia of being around people and shopping. And of course, food and beverage is a huge part of it. And that's kind of the biggest change over the really the last 15 years.

 So I think that this is, it's been a really good several months. Let’s say last six months. We've started to really feel and the statistics are starting to prove it out that people want to go back that bricks and mortar retail is really strong. It’s also has to do with the lack of other.

Avenues for investment right now. So with office kind of catering with residential construction being extremely slow right now. People are putting their money into retail projects. Whereas before there were a lot of industrial sort of sucked all the energy out of the markets for a while. That's kind of hit a good spot, I think, as far as supply and demand. So they're looking for avenues for development. As I tell my team, all these developers have to develop. That's what they do. If they don't develop, they don't have a job. So they're looking at our sector now, the mixed use and retail sector and saying, well, there's still opportunity there.

And now that we're seeing people shopping again, let's put our money back into that. So it's been an interesting sort of ride over the last three or four years, but really the last 10 years has been what's really been interesting.

Yes. Many questions here. So from the real estate, development, aspect, you think that there's more, money moving into, retail mixed use for, kind of short term investments or do you think they're looking more long-term?

I think both. I think there's always this renovation market

Oh, sure.

Properties need to be upgraded every 8 to 10 years or they fall apart. So that's sort of a steady thing, but I think what the difference is that we're, starting to see. The big developers look at their assets and say, we're not just going to upgrade it.

We're going to transform it now. We’ve been doing the cosmetic stuff for 10 or 12 years as we've all been worrying about. Is this even going to be a market in 25 years. Well, now I think that the confidence that we've got a good piece of property here.

We have good tenants. Now we need to make it a place that people want to come and stay. And that's been, the mainstay of the mall really has been dwell time that you could get people. It had enough shops. It had the anchors and activities and programming that you get somebody on site and they're there for hours.

That's the goal. So even smaller developers are starting to see that instead of just painted up, fix it up. They need to add. Trees, they need to add benches and water and play areas for Children and grassy areas just to soften the space up. So a lot of what we're looking at right now with existing properties is that and new, construction has been much slower because we are way over retail as a society and especially in the United States.

So I think a lot of it really is just rethinking current properties. and then the mixed use part we'll talk about

 So the types of retail, you touched on this with food and beverage, but I can imagine, things like trying on clothes, an AR app will only get you so far, do you types of, retailers, thriving, versus some that, you know, electronics stores, as a classic example of something, it just may not be what it was 10 years ago,

 And that, that's okay. The evolution happens within any market. Interestingly, the two markets that were the most very negatively impacted cinemas and fitness. When the pandemic first started, restaurants could go outside.

 That was a wonderful kind of urban experience for a lot of people would eat outside for the first time, even in snowy. Northern climates I want to go out to eat. I got to sit outside. So I think they were able to survive the peril, their online platforms had been built out.

 You could still buy Nike. If you couldn't go to the mall and get it. But fitness, you got to be there to work out. And as we all saw with some of the online fitness apps and a lot of the online stuff, Peloton being the poster child for this, they just went like this and then they went immediately down.

 That means people went back to the gym. They didn't just get fat like me. They went back to the gym and in a serious way, the cinemas, however, the investment that folks made into their home. Setups their home theater setups. That’s a grandiose term, just a big TV with a good sound bar, really.

 Then what the cable companies and all of the streaming companies putting original and first run content on, I don't know what's going to happen with that market. And that was such a mainstay for entertainment districts. It worries me fitness back. For sure, back, cinemas, not so much apparel has been struggling for a while.

I think it's probably in the same place. The folks that do it really well, Nordstrom for men, for instance, they have maintained their customer base. I think that a lot of the more boutique and really luxury always kind of rises to the top. When you go to South coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, California, there's a line outside of.

 Versace. There's a line outside of Ferragamo. It’s insane, so there's still very much a market. It's the commodity stuff, t shirts and underwear that used to go to Macy's to get. You don't need to do that. And nobody wants to do that. So I think that sort of the really commodity clothing, you can go to target and get the same quality now when that was not a.

Thing that happened about 20 years ago. So I think that the bifurcated markets, very luxury fitness experience oriented. And then there's really just perfunctory daily needs stuff. They're both really strong. The other thing I'll say in our firm is very involved in the grocery store market.

And again, when it first hit, when COVID first hit, I thought, Oh my gosh, what are we going to do with this? Nobody's ever going to go back. Well, it did two things. It requires much more physical. Real estate to do delivery. So you have to have whole rooms for people to do the shopping and collect the bags and then, infrastructure to get it to cars.

So we, our firm was doing a lot of that, taking parking lots and taking two or three parking spaces and figuring out how would you do delivery. From the inside of the store to the outside of the store, the physical space inside whole departments kind of went away to create room for that delivery piece of it.

 That’s been an interesting thing to watch. I think that's probably here to stay when you think about it, going to the grocery stores. Often not the most fun thing. You know, whole foods or one of these beautiful Erewhon markets, which we do, those are fun. Those are purely about shopping for food.

And I think that's an experience that people absolutely love, but getting your post toasties and all of that stuff, you could do that online. You can just tell somebody to put it in a bag for you. I personally don't do that, but I know that the time saving for a mom to just kids in the back of the car, just grab your bag.

Curbside and take off man. What a, great innovation that has been.

Oh, absolutely. So, so you're in touch with these retailers. Do you hear from them that, people are shopping in person more often, versus doing, the Instacarts you know, people are, they're shopping more and they're carrying fewer bags. I guess that's the story that I would say they're back in their numbers are back. And in fact, probably ahead of where they were in 2019, as far as pure foot traffic, but sales in store have not recovered, but that's okay.

They're buying online. They're there to see something, to feel the product, to feel like they're part of a brand. So the upfront, let's say the first 20 feet of a retail store is not product necessarily. It's a story they're trying to tell about their brand, about who you are when you come into their space.

So we have a store design group that, does rollout, but then also does bespoke design. And they've. Then booming also because the thinking about is the experiential nature of it. It's much less merchandise and they don't need back of house really, because you don't need every size of everything because they're just going to order it online.

So it's really about how do we present who we are as a brand, bring you in, make you loyal to this brand, and give you a good experience. You know, before the pandemic, the. Shinola is one that I always use. The watch is made out of Detroit. You’d walk in and the first thing you got was a beer.

And if you're a guy shopping, that's kind of a nice thing in a chair to sit in. And I just always thought they're starting to understand that if you want people to come into your space and spend you get whatever that experience of if it's a tea shop, you're for sure getting some tea, right?

You know, what do you do in a clothing store? How do you bring people in with that? And there are many, many methods that different retailers use, but it's about getting that traffic back in knowing that then they're going to go on their device or they're going to go home on their desktop or laptop and make the purchase.

But the loyalty was built really in the in person physical shopping.

But there's still an allure to coming to the shop. Do you feel like that is that’s still a problem for a lot of retailers. Okay, we got you in, but the point of purchase might be happening. You might go back and buy the thing on Amazon

 I think anecdotally the Macy's at Horton Plaza, for instance, was doing more in returns than it was in sales for years. So that's a bad balance right there. That just says that the physical real estate's not working for that particular retailer and that a smaller format or a different location or something was really called for.

 And department stores have been they're not coming back. I would say in there, 1980s format. They're not coming back. They have much smaller footprints. They're really a fulfillment center. Honestly. You want to be able to go and return your stuff or pick up, you know, the right size shoes that you ordered.

I think that, a small format. Macy's just opened here in San Diego and I thought, what in the world is this going to be? And it's the weirdest thing because it's a little bit of everything for everyone, because you're not literally buying the thing on the shelf. You could, but you're seeing what range of product they have.

Then you're going on the app or going on your desktop and then you're buying. So they've kind of, they understand now they get it that the consumers are not. Going in there to buy, you know, a packet of socks necessarily, they are going in there to kind of see the full range of socks. You've got then they can go back home and buy it.

So it's kind of an acknowledgment that world has changed.

And they're able to do it with a smaller footprint,

Exactly. And you don't need the back of the house. You don't need 27 people working. You don't need a shoe infrastructure. If you think about it, the usually have a huge. Either downstairs or in the back of house every size because if you don't,

 Somebody going to not buy.

So you don't need that. You just need for people to be able to see your options in some cases, try stuff on, but, otherwise they can, go home and do that. It comes to their doorstep. So it's this interesting hybrid has been created where it's more important than ever to have a great physical space.

So beautiful, great, engaging, very open, very themed and brand centric, but then don't expect people to buy, they're going to go home and buy, they might buy there, but that's not why they're building these things out.

Looks a little different.

It looks different. Exactly.

Well

So as an architect, what do we do with all of these big spaces? A lot of the tenants we're talking about have very large footprints, high ceilings, department stores, cinemas, underperforming retail today, you know, potential big box, locations.

What do we do with all that space? Our landlords, re imagining them, you know, what kinds of, opportunities do you see, there?

Good question. You know, again, going back to my comment about how. Problematic some of the other big vertical markets are the office market. Port plus is a good example, but there are many others department stores are built like tanks. They're really robust structures. They were, owned and built by the company or by Nordstrom.

 So they took pride in them, and they have very high Florida floors, 18 feet, often Florida floor height. So you have great lofty spaces. That, you know, very regular column grids. You have that sort of donut in the middle where the escalators are that you could open up to the sky and put skylights down the middle.

So office is a great use for it. Biotech life science, because of the plenum space for the sort of air evacuation, but those markets aren't currently growing very much. So I think a lot. Of the department store boxes are going to be probably fallow for a while. I hope that developers don't just tear them down because of the.

Embodied carbon waste of that, but also I do think that market will come back. I think that, you know, the creative office, which is what we were all talking about, you know, until March 20th of, 2020, that evaporated because Silicon Valley was one of the earliest ones to say, you don't need to come back and we'll just send you your infrastructure home.

Now, all of those tech companies are starting to lure their people back. And we're all realizing, and I've called, you know, an architecture firm tech adjacent. So we have a concierge, office experience coordinator for a 200 person architecture firm so There's always a party. There's always something going on.

There's usually a huge potluck, at our office. It drew people back into the office. Well, we didn't think this up. The tech companies really thought it up. So I think the first people to take some of those department store and larger formats will be, creative office

 The idea of a room full of brains, working together is just so compelling and it's been proven to works, for innovation forever. I think that hopefully we'll start to absorb some of those spaces. Some will be torn down. Been doing retail subdivisions of those boxes for many years.

I think that's probably at the end that some of that will still happen, but most of those boxes have been divided up, however, they're going to be divided up. And then the number one thing that's happening is that they're being torn down and apartments are being built in their place. So malls.

Are being now sort of spotted with apartment complexes when those department stores go down, then they build an apartment community, and then I guess the idea being that at some point, it's a full ring of apartments with some residual retail in the center as an amenity to the apartment.

Interesting. So, mixed use truly.

 Yeah, I think that's the most likely solution for a lot of people is to go mixed use,

That's great. So leads me to the next question. What does retail look like in mixed use, development, environments versus retail only, you know, we're all very familiar with what the mall is. And what the anchors and the subtenants might be, but what's the mix like for, the project that's envisioned as mixed use?

you know, it's interesting, Scott, we are brought in more and more often now to take a look at those ground levels and help them figure out what the heck they built, you know, they built a bunch of apartments, they built a bunch of condos, whatever it was that they. Build the developers built.

It was almost like just a loss leader to put that retail. And I've heard that over and over again from residential developers. I don't know retail, but the city makes us do it. So we'll just put some retail and what they built is terrible, terrible retail. So very shallow depth, sometimes lots of columns right in the middle of the space.

No loading doc. And the worst thing that they do, often it's very low ceiling. Restaurants really have to have a 18 or 20 foot ceiling in order to get all of the ventilation in order to create that ambience that you want when you go into a restaurant.

We're building spaces with, you know, a typical 12 foot, floor to floor

retailers don't want that space except unless you're a dry cleaner, unless you're a nail salon, So what we would call sort of, you know, higher end retail, apparel, retail, They're not going to take that space.

So I think that what we often do is like, say, we'll go outside the building and pop up if you can, if you've got any sort of amount of room to get a taller ceiling to get that piece

Okay. Yeah.

 Or. The natural thing to do post COVID is just really push all of that activity outside onto the

Sidewalk, if possible.

 At Texas medical center in Houston, Texas, there's a 6Million square foot, tech campus being built research campus being built and. Gosh, you know, it's probably been under design and development for a decade. So it's been through the entire retail apocalypse story and it's opening now and they're realizing, oh, we didn't think about this.

We weren't thinking. We built these beautiful parks. It's a pedestrian environment. It's got thousands of highly paid doctors and research scientists up above that are going to come down and we didn't give them. A great place for their wives to come visit or their husbands to come visit them and then on the weekend to come back to.

So we have, gone through a process of sort of taking each of their office buildings, which are beautiful, beautifully designed research buildings and saying, but your ground floor isn't working. So how do we engage the park? How do we create a restaurant space? That's going to work. I would say that, like, over 50 percent of mixed use.

Ground level is food and beverage now, and that's those are expensive deals. They're expensive to fit out I think. The latest statistic that I see, it's still 50 percent of restaurants fail within the first year, more than soft goods, which don't have the sunk cost into it. So I think it's a risk and it's the risk that most of our clients are willing to take because they know if you don't hit people kind of in the stomach in the place, their hearts and their stomachs where they want to engage, then you're not really.

Hmm.

So if you've got the cool pub, if you've got the great sushi place, if you've got, you know, the place that the kids just make you go to, that's going to work and it's worth the investment into the food and beverage spaces themselves. So it used to be like 10 to 20 percent and developers hated those restaurants because they were such expensive deals.

Now it's 50 to 60 percent and they're still hard,

 The turnover is harder, they're more custom, there's a lot of equipment, there's all kinds of overhead, that works for them, because it's, getting enough foot traffic, yeah.

It's also the way to bring in local. so one of the things that in my career, which I'm nearing 30 years on now has been, we've always had a really hard time. So developers need national credit. That's kind of one of the things that they've always said that they're not going to take the risk on a mom and pop at a large percentage.

So when we would design regional malls, they would start with the story of, oh, 20 percent is going to be local. Never happened. And if it was, they didn't make it and they turned over pretty quickly and then just your national tenants went in. Food and beverage is an exception to that.

 Every city has its own sort of set of great local restaurants and many of them would love a new outlet, a new place to go, but they're not national. They might be regional, but they're not national. So they do have credit. They have sort of proven themselves that they've been open for 8 or 10 years for a restaurant.

That's pretty great. If they're ready for a 2nd or 3rd outlet, that's a risk. I think that developers are willing to take and embrace because it's got name recognition within a community. It's probably going to make it if the food has been vetted for a decade, it's probably going to be good and people are going to enjoy it.

So, you know, to put in another Chili's now, it would be a negative. You bring in a mom and pop from downtown that's moving, into a neighborhood. That's a positive.

 You’ve got that built in sort of constituency that already knows the name already wants to come there.

 Then you can take some risk. Then the ice cream guy that's just starting up, you can take a small risk like that. I think that's a really big shift. That’s got to take place in mixed use developments, and it is taking place in mixed use developments that the nationals don't draw people the way that they did when they were all under one roof at a mall.

A standalone gap, a standalone J crew just doesn't work very well. It needs to be in a mall setting, but, a taco shop from San Diego that's got a huge following.

 You know, put it in, in the ground floor and you're going to have people there and drinking beer and having fun.

Awesome. Well, you mentioned a minute ago you're looking at converting these spaces, is tend to be an additive solution or is it possible to make it work with, the structures that you have, or is it maybe a combination of the two?

Usually it's a combination, but I guess the, easiest solution, it all has to do with the, ceiling height. If, you've got a good ceiling height, there's a lot of room to move what we do a lot of time. We’re often constrained by our sidewalks. So if you have a 10 foot sidewalk and you have a tree great and then there's parking or live street, that's really not enough room to get much patio seating.

So you're not going to be able to extend your brand out. So we say, move the storefront back underneath the building. So you've actually got outdoor space undercover. Before you get to the door of the restaurant. So then you've kind of doubled your patio space and that's specific to restaurant and food and beverage.

Soft goods retail can be made to work in a lot of mixed use. If it's a 600 apartment complex that ground level is most likely going to be service. So the things that people need a wine shop, things that can kind of live within that and then restaurants.

And if you can pop people outside, then the ceiling doesn't matter.

And then, how do you deal with parking, with the, radical change of use like this, because food and beverage has a higher parking requirement than soft goods, right?

Yeah, there are many complicated formulas, but the biggest complication now is that many cities and I'm sitting in one are creating these overlay zones, which requires zero park. We’re in a crisis, a climate crisis, and I think that the world, especially elected officials are waking up to this in a way that they realize we have to take drastic action.

San Francisco, when I lived there had a zero parking requirement. San Francisco is a really special place in the world. I kind of get that. But I mean, Dallas, Texas, places like that are going to start adopting zero parking requirements. Now, a retailer is going to say something different.

They're going to say, I need 10 spaces per thousand square feet. And the developer is going to say, well, I'm required to give you zero. You want 10. Can we settle at five? And there will always be a need for parking, either onsite or proximate if you're not near transit. A really vibrant transit, not just kind of a bus stop never really brought a lot of people.

 I think that parking solutions, regional parking garages. So, when you find a really great mixed use district, and often these develop over a long time, Pearl Street in Boulder, something that we all talk about just a beautiful place. They have regional parking. So, the solution is you don't need to go park for that tenant.

You park in every third block, there's a pretty sizable parking garage just like you would at a mall. That's how you shop it. I think that in apartment villages, and I think that some developers probably should start looking at using some of their land to build serious parking garages that could serve a larger area than just their block or half block because a, there's a lot of money to be made in parking and B, there's going to be a demand.

And if a regular apartment developer just puts kind of traditional retail at the base, they're not going to give you maybe one spot for each place. So how do those people park? They're not all living upstairs. So they're going to need a parking solution somewhere in the vicinity. They'll walk a block. They don't necessarily have the performer to build enough parking on site for every single retail and then food and beverage, is. Really 10 parking spaces per 1000 square feet, is what the U. L. I. as an average. And often we can't do that, certain markets, Texas, Florida.

You’ve got

But not San Diego.

Hot, really cold, really rainy, but not San Diego, not the West coast.

Yeah. Yeah.

 There’s sort of transition happening where people are getting their heads around the fact that we may not build any parking for the retail. And will it be successful?

And then you have to think of all of the other ways to draw people

 Yeah, then it's a chicken and egg. What kinds of retailers are going to be able to survive in a zero parking, environment, or a low parking environment. Yeah. I guess one of the last things I want to touch on is, kind of the territoriality of this. So you might be dealing with one developer to develop the retail as you're doing mixed use.

Are you working in partnerships or are, developers sort of getting out of their own box and, creating their own formulas for different uses.

 I say, 20 to 10 years ago, it was all about teaming so you had your apartment guys; you had your retail guys and let's get together and do a project. I don't see that much anymore. I think that people are the mobile piece. So the developers themselves will move.

So if you're. Avalon Bay or an Amelie apartment developer. You may have a guy that came from Simon or who came from Brookfield who knows retail on your team now; instead of we need to team with Brookfield because the margins are just too skinny to have a partner of that scale. So I think what's happening is that no, it's gone the other way.

It's more we're going to do this in house if we have to build the capacity and then hopefully they lean on us as architects to help them. Solve these problems. I mean, that's what we do. So I think that more and more, maybe we're seeing companies take on the whole bundle now in a way that in the past, it would have been more of a collaboration or a team and they lean on us and they hire, you know, hired guns, essentially in the development world who know how to put together a complicated process, they work on that project, maybe they work on one more and then they go off and work for another company.

So it's a, it's a little bit of a different model than we would have seen over the last couple of decades.

I guess I'd like to think it's less designed by spreadsheet you know, cause those easy sites are, are spoken for at this

They're gone.

It's a

Yeah, they're pretty much gone. The low hanging fruit has been taken up, not always by the best use, but it's certainly been taken up. And so creativity, urban infill, there's just a lot of exciting sort of one off. Projects, and then I guess the last thing I would say about that is, and it's been very interesting.

We are seeing private wealth. Invest in real estate in a way that's never really happened before. if you want to put your money in the world, somewhere safe, it's United States real estate you know, the land here has held its value. And if not grown, better than anywhere else in the world.

And for sure, better than a lot of stocks and bonds and a lot of other investment. So people, investors from around the world and families that have, you know, large trusts are putting their money. Into real estate and they don't know how to develop. You know, they came from, sharecropper.

I don't know what, whatever field they came from. They made their money and they're asking us and they're asking their, friends, how do I do this? So they're hiring. These kind of hired. Guns in the development world that don't go over to the Middle East. They actually stay here, work with these families or these trusts that have billions of dollars and start to actually develop projects.

Horton Plaza was not developed by a development company. It's developed by a capital fund. And they hire developers to, like I said, 1 or 2 people, 3 people can do a half a billion dollar project within the organization of a large capital fund, rather than building out a whole Brookfield to do projects.

So it's a lot more agile and, it's personal money, which also stockholders are the family. Not anybody. So it's a little less pressure to make that money immediately to get your stock, keep your stock price up. A CEO is not going to lose his job because they made an investment. That's going to take 10 years to pay off and. I don't have 10 years. I got to make that ROI now

Yeah, that's a really interesting point, that the horizons are longer for these types of projects,

They have more patients, the capital fund. If they're going to invest their money, it's a long term investment in the bonds. So it's a long term investment into real estate. So I think that those are very analogous places to put your money, and a very safe thing to do. But again, they don't know how to do it.

They've never done it before. So they're either hiring a developer or they're hiring us and a developer to kind of help walk them through that process and use our experience and tell them the truth. The truth about how hard it is a to do it and be how important it is to do it right and that you can, invest that money any way you want.

If you don't do it right, you're not going to get the return that you want and that your family members or your organization wants. So the quality has to keep going up and I think that the internet has been the great equalizer. You can Google Ferragamo right now and see what a Ferragamo store is.

And before only a. 1 percent knew what that was. So everybody knows quality when they see it. Every single person who shops understands quality in a way that they never have before. So what we always preach is you've got to bring it. If you think you can do this cheaply, your consumers know that and they are going

It's not good enough.

TN on that and they're not going to come back and they're going to say, I don't like that

It's competitive.

And it might be visceral or it might be literally tiles falling off

The

No, there's that too.

A wide range, you know that if you don't pay for it up front and really invest in that, then you haven't made a very good investment.

So to me, that's a great sign

 I think that's just about all the time we have today. I could spend another hour.

For hours, right?

A great topic. Thank you so much, Sean. I'd love to have you back on again.

Once we've got some, new things to talk about here. And I'd love to hear about anything else that might be top of your mind.

Like to sort of say that, ULI, fall meeting was in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago. I really felt a change in the atmosphere. I felt there was energy. There was a keen. Search for knowledge. I felt that maybe has over the last several years, even pre pandemic has been a little stale.

I felt like the energy is back. I feel like there are a lot of new players in the field. So, to me, it was very invigorating. I'll be at the center build conference, which is a conference at the end of November. And I expect to feel the same thing that the. Development world is waking up to kind of a new way of doing things and that COVID has just dramatically changed the way we think about real estate and that it takes new thinking.

And that's very exciting for me because I'm always trying to change and innovate. So I think it's a, great moment to kind of be in our world. I think things are going to change. And I think in a very positive way.

I think so too. Always good to end on a positive note. There's so much glim and doom out there, in real estate otherwise. I'm with you right there. Thank you so much, Sean.

Avoid the news and watch Scott's podcast.

Hey, thank you so much.

There we go. Love it. Thank you so much, Sean. Make sure you guys follow, to keep up to date with all of this and we will see you next time.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.