[00:00:00] Ward Davis: We focus on best of breed local food and beverage operators. We're not trying to like lift a successful business that's in Austin or someplace and see if it'll work in northwest Arkansas. We're generally trying to see what's out in the market and then try to help amplify their business. There are a lot of things that are different that we would've never anticipated.

I don't think anybody who the pizzeria Ruby was gonna be just as unbelievably a phenomena like it is, you know? In fact, we gotta build a more neighborhood around it so that the weight is more palatable, you know?

[00:00:39] Cameron Clark: Good morning, guys. Morning. Good morning. Thanks for coming on. This is kind of a special one for me. Just obviously love what you guys do. Yeah. Um, yeah. Jason and Ward High Street. Um, why don't y'all, uh, I mean I gave your names, but like, maybe give a little bit, bit of background here, uh, before we dive in.

[00:00:59] Ward Davis: All right. I'm [00:01:00] Ward Davis. Um, I'm a principal with High Street Real Estate and Development, Jason Keith Lee is my partner. Um, I have been developing real estate in northwest Arkansas on and off since 2005 when I first moved up here at just in time to get my teeth kicked in by the Great Recession. And, uh, but uh, I've been doing, focusing almost exclusively on, um, town center projects or downtown type projects in, in, in Arkansas.

So my background before that was finance. Uh, so I come from a finance background, um, versus kind of other avenues into real estate development. 

[00:01:38] Jason Keathley: Yeah. All right. Uh, my name's Jason Keithley. Uh, my background is actually construction. Spent 20 plus years in construction, built a company, got out of it, and, uh, ward, uh, talked me into coming over here to High Street three years ago.

Somehow, somehow, you know, it's been a lot of fun, but, uh, I [00:02:00] think I'm working more now than I, I have in, in the past, you know? 

[00:02:04] Cameron Clark: That's cool. 

[00:02:04] Jason Keathley: Yeah. 

[00:02:05] Cameron Clark: Talk. So talk about like, the challenge of building these walkable communities that may, you know, I think whenever, I mean, you guys first started, you, you and Morgan Bush started.

I feel like it, the big critique was this is not possible in northwest Arkansas. This is not like we're, you know, we're too small. It's never gonna be like this. Talk about changing the landscape and like, what, I don't know. What keeps you believing that that's can be possible and like. How do you do that?

[00:02:36] Ward Davis: Boy, there's layers in that question. Um, I'll tell, I'm gonna take it in, in, in kind of pieces. Um, if you don't mind and let Jason kind of fill in the gaps. 'cause part of the, part of the fun of the, of the, uh, town center stuff is Jason's kind of evolution on his, on his thinking about, uh, projects like Johnson Square, which is, which is our, um, kind of most obvious [00:03:00] project right now.

Um, the impediments to, uh, to developing a kind of mixed use neighborhood. Um. Are regulatory first and foremost, but we're kind of, we've kinda gotta the point where we've built enough that people, that, that cities appreciate what we do. So the regulatory hurdles aren't as, aren't as high as they used to be.

And really at this point, the biggest impediments to doing a, a, a, a mixed use project is that there are so many components that you have to be. Conversant in each one of the components. You don't have to be an expert in each component, but you have to understand the individual pieces. So we're not apartment developers.

We need to, to understand apartments. 'cause that's a big part of what we do. Mm-hmm. We're not single family lot developers, but they're important component of what we do. And then the big one is, um, kind of retail, food and beverage. It's such an anchor for, for the, for the neighborhoods. We build that [00:04:00] understanding what, you know, what what, what rules you can you have to follow and what rules you can break to make, uh, retail successful.

Um, I, I find that that's, that, that's the piece where, um, other developers that have come from a different background that evolve, try to evolve towards mixed use. That's where they really stumble is, um, that the. Uh, that the retail slash food and beverage piece is really awkwardly handled and therefore not, not very successful, you know?

Mm-hmm. A lot of times you'll see an apartment developer, you know, with a, you know, with a very conventional apartment building and they'll try to have ground floor retail and it's just not cool and it's a disaster. Yeah. It's just doesn't do very well. It doesn't do very well at all. So those are the, those are the big pieces.

I'll let Jason tell his, his thoughts on, on how he's evolved on Lake Johnson Square. Yeah, so I, I, 

[00:04:55] Jason Keathley: I come from a very black and white background, and so I, I built [00:05:00] all of the, the major projects in Johnson. 

[00:05:02] Ward Davis: Any, 

[00:05:02] Jason Keathley: anything, uh, commercial wise? 

[00:05:04] Ward Davis: Yeah. It was the contractor for when it was the contractor, yeah. For High before 

[00:05:08] Jason Keathley: that and had, had a, had a long relationship with Morgan and Ward, you know, during that timeframe.

But, uh, the first building was, uh, for Washington Regional and. And, uh, I, I was quoted, uh, in the office of going, man, I don't know what these guys are doing. This seems totally crazy. They're, they're putting this nice building in the middle of a field. I just hope the check ca cash is, that was, that was my statement.

And, and then I've come, come from, okay, well they, they got a good tenant. It looks like it's doing good. And then we do the next one. Mm-hmm. And I'm like going, well, okay, here's, here's, here we go again. You know, hopefully this works. And then by the time we got through with RMP and uh, building and then the, the last medical office building, I was like.

Even as, as [00:06:00] the contractor, I was asking Ward and Morgan, how can we get involved thinking, uh, my contracting group would get involved on the, you know, investing side or, or whatever. Because I became a, a, a believer, you know, and I think that a lot of it is, is proof of concept. You know, it's finally at that point and you can, people understand, understand it.

[00:06:20] Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. 

[00:06:20] Jason Keathley: But I think that it's hard to describe and create the secret sauce of making one of these projects work. And it's really how people interact with the buildings and the places in between the buildings, you know? And, and that's just a hard thing to, to, to get right? Yeah. But it's really easy to get wrong.

[00:06:40] Cameron Clark: Hmm. 

[00:06:40] Jason Keathley: And I, I feel like we've got the, right now, we have the right. Secret sauce in Johnson, you know? Mm-hmm. And just can we build upon that? Yeah. So 

[00:06:52] Ward Davis: I had an architect describe it, and it sounds really cheesy, but it's actually spot on. And I guarantee you Jason Keithley will never use this phrase to [00:07:00] describe it, but the, uh, but if, but our kind of North Star is trying to build a place that's worthy of love, is how it was described.

And it does sound a little bit soft and fuzzy, but if people love what you're building and if you, you can, it's pretty powerful. You know? And there are people that, that, um, appreciate Johnson Square differently than we ever anticipated on the, the front end. Yeah. So, um, I, I just noticed a couple of times we mentioned Morgan Hooker.

Morgan Morgan was my partner and he was friends with Jason. Before I was even, uh, Morgan passed away in 2022, suddenly, but, uh, and he and I were, uh, started Johnson Square and started High Street. 

[00:07:38] Cameron Clark: Yeah. Talk, talk about building the business like your, your background and like the origination of of of High Street with, with Morgan.

Um, 

[00:07:47] Ward Davis: yeah, so my background, when I first moved to Arkansas, I worked for the Stevens family in, in, in Little Rock and kind of spent a decent amount of time working on corporate finance type projects, but also a decent [00:08:00] amount of time working with on family Stevens family investments. And so I got, you know, kind of a, a little bit of transactional knowledge and a little bit of, um, of kind of high finance investing knowledge and found myself, um, interested to the value proposition of real estate and started doing real estate.

Uh. Investments in the most basic areas of, uh, which was really single family homes in, in, uh, in, uh, little Rock with a, with a couple of folks. Um, did reasonably well with that and, um, started thinking more about wanting to move to the real estate side. I got introduced to, to Morgan, uh, by a friend of mine and, and ended up moving to northwest Arkansas, um, to work on real estate stuff.

Um, I really kinda liked what we were working on, but historically I'd always found that wherever I moved, I would live in the historic district of town and was [00:09:00] attracted to that. I wasn't exactly sure why, you know? Yeah. But it was it. But, um, uh, but I always would pay more money to live in an older area of town that was walkable and you could get to coffee shops and that sort of stuff, and hadn't put the pieces together.

Morgan was, was, um. Had just gotten in contact with a company, Dwane Pla Zy and Company, their planning firm. They had their initial claim to fame was a project called Seaside in Coastal Florida that a lot of people in Arkansas have visited. And, but it really kicked off kind of the, the new urbanist movement.

And by talking to the folks that, that, that we, that, that Jason and I still work with there, um, that, or our alumni, alumni of that firm, um. I started seeing the zeros and ones of why I like different places. Yeah. You know, why did I like going to Europe and then wandering around for hours on end? Why do I, like, you know, why are my favorite neighborhoods [00:10:00] in my favorite neighborhoods in Arkansas would be, you know, Hillcrest and Little Rock or the, or the historic district in Fayetteville or downtown Bentonville now, which has come on in, in, in Downtown Rogers, which Jason and I both love.

Why why am I attracted to those places in Arkansas? And if you broaden it, why are my favorite cities in United States, Savannah, Georgia, and you know, the, uh, seaport in Boston and, uh, magazine Street, new Orleans. And, you know, why do, why am I attracted to those, those places and all have a. A couple of things in common and um, really you can kind of distill it down to, um, they have a mix of unit types.

So they have a mix of people. They have, um, a mix of uses. Um, so you've got people living there, you got people working there, and you've got fun things to do. And then the key element is walkability, because you can have the first two. And if you don't have it walkable, then it's not that great, you know, and the, the example I've been [00:11:00] using lately is, uh, weddington on the west.

Just on the west side of Weddington, you actually have a wide, you have density, you have a wide range of unit types. You've got little, little homes, big homes. You got a lot of apartments, you've got tons of commercial, but it's not walkable. You actually got a lot of public space. It's not very thoughtfully utilized, but it's got.

It's got almost all the components, and if it had the last components it component, it'd be great. So anyhow, I get to cover the soft and fuzzy parts. Jason gets to cover the, 

[00:11:33] Cameron Clark: and so, so you realized, hey, there's, there's an element of like, you like these things. And then what was, and so you're talking to this firm that, that Oh yeah.

That, that led with In the seaside, uh, yeah. Development and kinda what happened after that. 

[00:11:46] Ward Davis: Yeah. So, so Morgan and I started working on, uh, projects with, um, with that firm, you know, started, started working on, um, uh, project in Fayetteville, which is mine, and Morgan's first, uh, [00:12:00] together with a, with a third partner.

Um, it called, we called Ruskin Heights, which now is Mission Heights. And we went through a bruising regulatory process. Eventually got the project approved, but approved just in time to get smoked by the great recession. But at that point. I couldn't unlearn what I already learned. I, and what I had learned was people really appreciated, you know, people pay more to live in downtown fables, and that's because the, it, there's a limited supply of that stuff and they, uh, and people appreciate it enough that they'll, they'll pay more for it.

Okay, well, how do I turn that into a, into a, into a business model? There ought to be a way to capture non-commodity profits if you can. Yeah, if you can, if you can develop something that people appreciate like that you should be able to, to, to make a, to make a strong return on it. It turns out it's a lot of work to do one of these projects.

So my old boss, Stevens, would call it high return on capital, low return on aggravation, you know, [00:13:00] which is probably about right. But we've gotten to where we've figured out the aggravation part pretty, pretty well. But, um, that's, that's how I first got into it with the Great Recession. Um, we lost that project.

Morgan and I lost that project kind of. Got sent back to the bottom of the Chutes and Ladders board, just like most people that were developers at the time. Um, but I was lucky enough to, through a friend of mine that I'd met through the new urban world, he was a developer that had kicked off a project called The Village at Hendricks for Hendricks College.

It was designed by the same planning firm. Mm-hmm. Um, and it was interestingly enough at about the stage we had gotten to with, uh, with, uh, Ruskin Heights, which was infrastructure in the ground. The first couple of buildings started, uh, and he's was outta North Carolina. He said, listen, they're about to fire me.

Um, they need somebody on the ground to run this thing that, you know. So I went to, um, Hendricks and I took over that project and, um, [00:14:00] really what I had was a little bit of knowledge and a lot more just absolute conviction it would succeed. Mm-hmm. And, um, just ground away on that project and it became. You know, in a time when there wasn't a lot of noise in the market, I took over that project in 2010, which people forget how just dead the world was.

Yeah. I mean, just the, the entire, entire real estate market was just, not much was happening, and so there wasn't noise, you know? Mm-hmm. So that project got a lot of attention and it was, it really, the first year was a slog, and the second year was a little bit of a slog. And by the time we wrapped it up in 2015 or wrapped up, what, what Hendricks has done, um, the homes were selling at a 70% premium per square foot to the local market.

Seven zero. Wow. Which is too much and not sustainable. And it hasn't, it hasn't, it's maintained a premium for foot, but it hasn't maintained that premium for foot. 

[00:14:53] Cameron Clark: Mm. 

[00:14:53] Ward Davis: Um, but it became a little bit of a, of a phenomena and, um. And it's a pretty modest pro, uh, [00:15:00] pretty modest neighborhood. It's not big. It's not, you know, uh, you know, it's, it's not as fine as, as Johnson Square will be or other projects that we're working on, but it, but it was impactful and it was impactful for that town.

Conway's a great town and people really appreciated it. So it was fun to work on and kind of see that what I thought I knew in concept actually worked in practice. 

[00:15:23] Cameron Clark: I mean, it's a beautiful project. I've been there multiple times. It's crazy. It's like, yeah, it's pretty, it doesn't fit in right. It's touch, touch there 

[00:15:30] Ward Davis: comfortably between the, uh, Walmart, the interstate, and, you know, kind of the hood a little bit.

Yeah. You, 

[00:15:35] Cameron Clark: uh, so yeah. So you had momentum there and then talk about coming was you came up here after that. That was the. 

[00:15:43] Ward Davis: Yeah, so, so in 2015, Morgan and I Morgan had a relationship with a, a guy Gerald Johnson, who was, um, was CFO of Tyson Foods kind of during the halon years. And, um, uh, Morgan was trying to help him figure out what he wanted to do with his [00:16:00] piece of property and had had thought about a town center neighborhood, it actually already started working on it and, uh, asked me if I wanted to come up here and, and help him with it.

So I started coming up here part-time, and then he and I formed High Street and I moved up here full-time to partner with Morgan again. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, uh, during the meantime he had done a bunch of, he'd done some brokerage work, you know, it's probably where you met him at some point, Cameron, I would imagine.

But he had, and he, and he did custom. Construction, kind of very high end custom construction. But, um, yeah, so I came back, back up here and joined up with them. 

[00:16:36] Cameron Clark: Well, and just so people know, like how, I mean, it's how, how are you like living, making money along while you're, while you're doing this? Do you get a SA salary from some of these projects?

The, I mean, it's, it's, I think the really unique thing about the world you guys live in is like, there's no script on how to get there. There's no like, no, there's no, no degree is gonna, you know, make sure you're successful in this, in this [00:17:00] industry. 

[00:17:00] Ward Davis: No, there's, that's the thing about real estate development in general is that there's no, no, there are, you know, everybody that I know that's in the business successfully has gotten there from a different route.

Mm-hmm. Jason's here from, from construction. Right. Well, construction's a huge component. That's actually a great way to get there. 

[00:17:18] Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. 

[00:17:19] Ward Davis: Uh, you're Cameron, you're from a, from a, um, brokerage background. Mm-hmm. You know, so you know a lot about it, real estate, but you, everybody, everybody has holes in their knowledge.

Yeah. Because there's. So many aspects to development. You really gotta be a jack of all trades, master of, of none and fill gaps. I don't know anything about construction. I can't swing a hammer, but that's why parking with Jason is so, is so good because he's, his background is exemplary in that area, you know?

That's hilarious. Um, Jason will tell you that's true.

[00:17:55] Cameron Clark: Well, and, and, and talk about, so when you're planning for, like, so you know, when Johnson [00:18:00] Square was announced there, like, I, I feel like there was, I mean, you're saying like there was a lot of noise for the project in Conway. There was a lot of noise here locally and it was kind, it was the first thing of, its kind nothing like it, but like how, how much planning goes in before you can start turning dirt and like, and how much, you know, and when and when, uh, you know, when you're build, building a deal like this, are you, are you, are you trying to hold it forever?

What's the, you know, where it's 

[00:18:28] Jason Keathley: a frustrating amount of time mm-hmm. On the front for, for a construction guy? Yeah. So a construction guy, you know, you, you get a set of plans 'cause they're, or they've already gone through all that regulatory stuff and, and you price it and they go, yeah, it's in budget. And you sign a contract and you start in two weeks and.

Six months, eight months, 12 months, you're handing 'em the keys and it's done. And, and the whole time you've got your foot on the gas and never on the brake. 

[00:18:50] Cameron Clark: Yeah. 

[00:18:51] Jason Keathley: Well, development world is very frustrating for a guy like me. I mean, because I'm used to putting my foot on [00:19:00] the gas and never letting off. And man, there's just one hurdle after another hurdle with the regulatory process.

Hmm. Do you have sewer capacity? Do you not have sewer capacity? Do you have, you know, does this meet whatever design code? Do you have enough parking spots? Do you have, you know, you know, all the, all that kind of stuff. We don't like this, you, you know, from city officials and, and all that type of stuff. So it is, uh, it is frustrating for me.

You just gotta figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so it's been a learning that's been a learning process in, in general. And I, and, and one of the first things we did when we became partners is we kind of got several projects. Due diligence started on 'em and drawing started on 'em and everything. And it's taken almost three years for us to go from hitting on no cylinders to hitting on maybe six of eight.

Yeah. You know, fire's going, yeah. Fire's [00:20:00] going The year 

[00:20:01] Ward Davis: we, we may be humming. 

[00:20:02] Jason Keathley: Yeah. And next year we'll be hitting on all eight. If, if all these little things happen, you know, all these little ifs. You gotta be ready though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if this doesn't happen, then we're gonna go over here and do this other deal and, and what have you.

But, uh, you know, we, we have to pay the house is what I call it, which is. Our salaries and employees and rent and all that through basically development fees. So we, we have to start a project to collect a development fee. Mm-hmm. You know, and that, and that. Yeah. It 

[00:20:33] Ward Davis: takes a, it takes a, I was doing the math on it the other day.

We had to, we had to build about, um, $35 million a year in real estate to break even on without paying ourselves on, on staff and overhead. 

[00:20:51] Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. 

[00:20:51] Ward Davis: Well, that's not a non meaningful amount. It's not a huge amount, but I mean, for us to pay ourselves a for decent salary, need to be developing $50 [00:21:00] million a year in real estate.

Mm-hmm. So it's a, it's a lift, 

[00:21:04] Cameron Clark: you know? Oh, it's super, super impressive. The talk and talk, so you kind of alluded to it a little bit. I think y'all's secret sauce is the food and beverage, the retail component of like, of really programming. So talk about Johnson Square, how. Is that you? Is that Morgan? How, how?

How'd you do that? 

[00:21:24] Ward Davis: Morgan was a lot of that. Um, but I'm. Picked up a lot from him, but also, um, you know, kind of added my own little piece to it as well. But it's funny, I'll talk to a lot of developers, you know, um, I talked to one actually last week that was from out of Town. It's like, man, y'all got lucky with the, uh, restaurants.

And at Johnson Square I was like, we can get lucky, you know, at all. I mean, restaurant, restaurant owners especially because we focus on uh, best of breed local food and food and beverage operators, we're not trying to like [00:22:00] lift a successful business out of that's in, in Austin or someplace and see if it'll work in northwest Arkansas.

We're generally trying to see what's out in the market and then try to help amplify their, their business. Um, and so you spend a lot of time. Uh, just, just talking to 'em. Mm-hmm. You know, talking to folks that, that have good restaurant businesses or good bar businesses or whatever, and trying to understand what their individual needs are, and if we're working on a lease, um, that, that means you're doing a lot of listening, you know?

Mm-hmm. The, the structure of Pizzeria Ruby's Lease and the structure of Hell Fellow, well, Mel, which is, you know, Onyx, uh, they're completely different. So, and they're a function of what each business was trying to accomplish at that time. And as we're working on, uh, kind of future leases right now, you know, sometimes it evolves for, for those operators, you know, so.

Uh, I'll use kind of hypothetical example. If, if somebody is a, um, is, has opened and run restaurants [00:23:00] before, but has never owned a restaurant, you know, they may, they may be capital constrained and you can do a, uh, and if you believe in 'em enough, you can do a percentage rent deal and you can participate in their upside success.

And, uh, and that can work out really well for you, but also take, take a lot of the risk out of it from, from their standpoint. And, uh, and, you know, sometimes a, a business is, is, uh, operators really successful and they, um, you know, are generating a lot of cash and, uh, they wanna keep their rent as low as possible.

Well, you can structure a deal where they, you know. Pay for their finish out, out of their own cash and you keep, keep their rent a little bit lower. 

[00:23:40] Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. 

[00:23:41] Ward Davis: Um, to some degree, you know, we'll prompt the pump, you know, to get the right operator by, by, you know, letting them have lower rents than, than other businesses in the, uh, the neighborhood.

Definitely willing to do that, but, but, um, don't always ha have to or don't always lean that direction because, um, [00:24:00] it's a two way street. You build a great neighborhood, they also wanna be in, in your neighborhood. Mm-hmm. But, but, but they are an important component of what we do. So we, we try to be really flexible with how we, how we structure those.

Those relationships and then, you know, just little things at the margin. We, uh, we did one thing during COVID, uh, you know, remember at the beginning of COVID, nobody thought any restaurants were gonna exist. Mm-hmm. You know, after COVID, you know, they're all gonna go out of business. And, um, regardless of where you've.

Land on the political spectrum. One thing that Trump did unassailably well was re respond exceptionally quickly to the COVID crisis with, with, you know, financial support for businesses. And part of that was the PPP program. Uh, which, which, you know, help, help keep businesses alive. And it was based on number of employees and a lot of it was aimed in food and beverage.

Well, we did a PPP loan for High Street, which was a small company, and our CFO said, listen, this is so easy to [00:25:00] do. I got the relationship with the bank. I've got the process for filling out the paperwork all already worked out. And, um, it was his idea, our CFO, Randy, Randy Meyer. Um, and so we ran the PPP process for 47 different businesses that range from my parents', little long hair business to pretty much all the, all the restaurants that we worked with and their restaurant tour friends and architects.

Wow. And it was particularly important for like restaurant, independent restaurant folks, because they're afraid of two things in the world. One is the government and the other one is banks. And you gotta deal with both of 'em to get that 

[00:25:35] Cameron Clark: Sure. Financing, 

[00:25:36] Ward Davis: but it was so important to helping them. Over the hump.

And just, just by Randy having his ear to the ground and us having relationships with restaurants, we were able to help them. And those guys talk, you know, they're like, you know, and you become friends with 'em. Yeah. It's hard to get in with 'em, but once you're friends with 'em, they trust you a little bit and they don't necessarily [00:26:00] trust developers usually.

And, um, um, and, and, you know, you can kind of, you can kind of build on that you, you know, if, if you're somebody that's building something in an environment where they wanna be, and you listen to what their needs are, and you structure a deal with them that responds to those needs, and that if something weird comes along, you've got a plan for, for helping them.

Uh, you know, that, that's, that's a big deal. Um, we got a project in downtown Rogers, the, um, most susceptible businesses during COVID. The second that COVID hit, it had a, it was a 1907 building where Onyx has their headquarters. The, uh, we, um, we got a, a loan. A loan, um, we went back to our bank and got a, you know, kind of basically deferred some of our loan payments and were able to immediately, you know, pass that along to the more vulnerable tenants in that building that couldn't operate so that they could, okay, we'll extend your lease a little bit, but you don't have to make pay.

We're not having to pay the bank. You don't have to pay us. Mm-hmm. And when we [00:27:00] start having to pay the bank again, you'll, you'll, you'll be able to do that. Well shoot, you know, those, those folks, they remember that, you know. Oh. So anyhow, that was a long form answer. But, but, but there are a lot of components to having those relationships and we spend a lot of time on it.

[00:27:16] Cameron Clark: Yeah. And when, so when you went into the Johnson Square project at the very beginning, did you kind of, did you know the full scope of like, Hey, here's. I mean, you, you, you started the second phase right? Now, did you know that, like kind of when you, when you first went into it and what was the. When you approach something like that, what's the, 

[00:27:32] Ward Davis: well, uh, I'm, I'm kind of answering the question I think that you're asking about, like, do we know what it, the, the neighborhood was gonna be?

We knew that it was gonna be mixed use and we knew that it was gonna have, you know, small houses, big houses, apartments, and uh. You know, commercial, but, but there are a lot of things that are different that we would've never anticipated. 

[00:27:50] Cameron Clark: Yeah. And 

[00:27:50] Ward Davis: I'm looking behind you right now at the plan. The lower right plan was what was designed at the original Charette and it's got less, you [00:28:00] know, apartments and less, uh, in particular the big differences.

Less office, but also less food and beverage. Um, 'cause we didn't realize that, that we didn't fully appreciate how convenient the location is. Yeah. And so, um, uh, the plant has evolved kind of that to the left. And it's even, and it evolved yesterday even further. Yeah. But, uh, you need to, by having a plan that the rough forum is in place, but the, but the components could be flexible.

Um, you can respond to what the market demand is. We didn't, we didn't understand that the Medical Mile was gonna start getting built in Springdale. Mm-hmm. And so now we've got a lot more medical interest and we anticipated. Because if you wanna be in the medical mile and don't wanna be in 150,000 square foot building surrounded by a parking lot Yeah.

We're your guys, you know? Yep. So, um, so we beefed up that, that component of the, of the neighborhood, so, wow, 

[00:28:57] Jason Keathley: that's incredible. Yeah. So 

[00:28:58] Ward Davis: flexible flexibility is [00:29:00] like, and then there are a lot of things like, no, we had no idea what was gonna happen. You know, we, we got. You know, on one hand we recruited in the, the food and beverage tenants and you know, like when somebody says we got lucky, I kind of bristle about it.

But we did get lucky that they're as good as they are. You know, I mean, I don't think anybody who the pizzeria Ruby, was gonna be just as unbelievably a phenomenon like it is, you know? So three hour waits. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ridiculous weights that people are patient for. In fact, we gotta build a more neighborhood around it so that the weight is more palatable, you know?

[00:29:33] Cameron Clark: Yeah. Oh yeah. I, I believe it. The, and so talk about, so, so you did that, that was kind of the inner first form of, of Johnson Square and then the focus on downtown Rogers, kind of the 1907 building, kinda when that happened, and then obviously what y'all are doing right now in downtown Rogers. Um, give us, give us a little snippet on like w why that became the next focus.

I mean, it seems like it was kind of clear from like, Hey, this is this style of things that you enjoy. [00:30:00] Well, I 

[00:30:00] Jason Keathley: think that 

[00:30:00] Cameron Clark: was, uh, 

[00:30:01] Jason Keathley: Morgan, you know, looking around one corner in another corner and maybe looking at his, his back. Yeah. The second corner. I, I met him at the 1907 building, one cold morning. I think it was a, probably a November morning or something like that at like 10 o'clock.

Was not any cars in downtown Rogers at all. Picked your spot you wanted to park. And he wanted to show me that building along with a couple of other buildings. That building had, uh, like trash cans collecting water from a tarp that they bought. Wow. And he was so excited about what I saw as a. Something you tear down.

Yeah. You know, and he was so excited about a coffee job. We paid $12 

[00:30:44] Ward Davis: a foot for that building and it was vastly overvalued 

[00:30:48] Jason Keathley: and so rough. He's looking for a budget on getting this thing to a certain deal. And he's telling me all of his great ideas and, and everything. And, and, and Morgan and I were, were close enough [00:31:00] friends.

He wasn't just a client. He was a friend. Yeah. And so I just told him how it was all the time, you know? Yeah. And didn't worry about it, you know, I knew I was gonna get work from him one way or another and he was gonna give work to somebody else. Yeah. But I told him, I was like, man, I don't know if we're the guys for you on this, but, but, uh, 'cause this is gonna be a lot of handholding and I don't have.

That kind of staff. Yeah. I have the staff that you, you have a design ground up construction. We are your guys. Mm-hmm. You won. You, you know, we have that staff, but I don't have the handholding staff. Yeah. You know, I'll give you a budget so you can take it to the bank and you can work off of it, and I'm sure you'll find somebody cheaper.

Yeah. That, that was my comment. But I'll, I'll, I'll do what I can. And, uh, so I put some numbers and, and gave it to him and he, he later found the right guy. Mm. You know, to put it together. But the whole time I was like, what the heck is he thinking this town is, this is dead. I mean, things they're Yeah.

Boarded up everywhere. Yeah. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. Yeah. You know, you go through on the way to the lake. Yeah, yeah. It's just, yeah, exactly. 

[00:31:57] Nick Beyer: And when was that? 20 17, 20 [00:32:00] 18. Before that 2015 when we bought the building. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was nothing happen. Rogers 

[00:32:06] Ward Davis: It was, it was dead. That was the most catalytic thing I've ever.

Been a part of. Yeah. And mor it was, that was Morgan. I, I, I would not have done that. But for Morgan, yeah. I mean, I, I gotta give him credit and then he and John Allen with Onyx. Got together. And that was before Onyx is what it is now. I mean, they'd opened the Bentonville office and they were definitely rolling, but uh, but you know, it wasn't a phenomenon that it is now.

Yeah. But, uh, but John and and Morgan were the ones that could really kind of see what was going and they built off of each other from a design standpoint. And of course, Morgan was a design genius and John. Unrestrained design genius and has great support with, with the architects that he works with as well.

Bradley Edwards in particular, but, um, he, uh, those two, man, it was a hell of a thing to watch. I've got a dinner coming up at Heirloom at the beginning of September, and that's a space that, [00:33:00] uh, you know, it's obviously got an unbelievable chef, but the chef and Morgan had a budget of $115,000 to finish out the entire space.

Including cooking equipment? 

[00:33:09] Cameron Clark: No. Which 

[00:33:09] Ward Davis: meant they couldn't hire a designer. So the two of them figured it the hell out, and I think they spent like 125 grand or something like, you know, we busted the budget about like 10 grand. Wow. When I'm in that space. That's, that's, that reminds me of Morgan more than any, any other place because.

It took all that he had in his nogging to like help that place come together. And now it's, you know, I mean, I don't know how many years it's been open, but it's still the hardest, hardest reservation Arkansas get into. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. 

[00:33:37] Nick Beyer: Talk about how important conviction is, and maybe for you, how you've learned, like, 'cause that's, that's just conviction.

Someone just being convicted when they walk in that space, right? You're a construction guy, you're a numbers guy. Like, how have you adapted your mindset from 

[00:33:53] Jason Keathley: Well, I, I've always, uh, been the type of person that just will lean into it and, and [00:34:00] make it happen. Mm-hmm. Like, like I'm not, there's some, there's a roadblock.

I'm gonna figure out a way to get around that roadblock and, and, and if I'm a believer, you know. And so, um, it's, it's not any different in that, but it's just now I have some uncontrollables. Yeah, you know, with cities and stuff, because generally in construction I have all the controllables. If that sub's not working out, I'll make a few phone calls, find another sub, that supplier doesn't have something, make four or five phone calls, find a supplier that has it so that we ke keep on schedule, you 

[00:34:35] Cameron Clark: know, 

[00:34:36] Jason Keathley: but it's hard to, very difficult to do that with the, the city, city aspects and utility aspects, you know?

[00:34:43] Cameron Clark: What do you, I mean, what do you think's the big if, if, if we could, you know, try to educate or change, you know, something from uni municipality level across northwest Arkansas? What, what do, where, where do we need to, you know, I think it's a collective effort on anything. Yeah. Whether we're, we're, [00:35:00] whether we're, you know, construction development and then, but the municipality side.

What, what, what do we need to like, try to steer over the next 10 years, um, moving forward? It's, it's a, it's 

[00:35:13] Ward Davis: evolved. It's. It's interesting, it's evolved a lot. Yes. Where, where I think that, um, that the issues lie on the municipal, municipal front. Uh, when Morgan and I started this, especially with like Ruskin Heights, where we had, again, I mean it was a knockdown drag out to, because the idea of a mixed use neighborhood sounded a whole lot.

Like, you know, bringing in, you know, scummy apartment renters into somebody's fancy neighborhood, you know. Um, and now people understand, okay, when they develop something mixed use, it's, it's, it's actually fabulously nice and it's, you know, energetic and that sort of thing. So we don't get kind of like the zoning restrictions.

We don't get the, um, uh, reluctant [00:36:00] city staff or even planning commissioners, city council members, uh, anymore. We almost run into more kind of regulatory burden because. Um, because cities like what we do, I mean, they, they kind of get in the weeds with us too much, you know, and, and like, listen, we're the pros, you know?

[00:36:20] Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. So, 

[00:36:21] Ward Davis: so kind of give us a lot of flexibility. They almost get in the weeds with us too much because they like what we do. We, we are doing a little bitty building in downtown Springdale, which has, you know, Patsy Christie, she just, just retired. She was very knowledgeable about what, what we do and they have a, a form-based code that is really supposed to support what we're, what we're building down there.

And they were incredibly supportive of this little building that we're doing. And it took forever to get to a permit there. And it wasn't because they didn't like what we were doing, it was because. You know, they, they rules got place. Yeah. Yeah. The rules that they had put in place to try to help us, and [00:37:00] they, they, they did not, you know, they were, they were in our way.

We need, what we need generally is, is, is flexibility to do what we do. Um, uh, you know, and that, that, that comes up over and over is that, you know, that, that, that, that places will kind of, kind of try to tinker on our stuff a little bit when we really, we've got it, got it. Pretty well licked. So we need flexibility.

Jason and I need flexibility and, uh, and, but the catch is, I don't necessarily want them to give every developer flexibility because I don't know that every developer develops like, as responsibly as we do, so. 

[00:37:34] Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. 

[00:37:35] Ward Davis: Um, the, from a, from a bigger picture standpoint, the, um, you know, when we start talking about housing issues and not building enough in northwest Arkansas, and definitely, definitely that's happening as well.

Um, the, the issue used to be at the zoning level, you know, trying to, you, you couldn't develop apartments here or there, that sort of thing. Now it's [00:38:00] much more at the code level, just if you read through city code, it's the, and, and the, the, the cities know this, you know, uh, when you talk to the planning director and Fayetteville, he understands there's lots of.

You know, incongruous code in their, in, in, in favorable, um, 

[00:38:18] Cameron Clark: explain what you mean. So people who have no background in this at all, like code, what 

[00:38:22] Ward Davis: are you, whatcha talking about? Yeah, so code, code is the, you know, zoning is kind of the, the big, the, the big picture. Where you can put mixed use, where you can put single family, where you can put industrial, well, that's kind of been, been made flexible enough that it's in a very comfortable level.

We can do what we do, you know, but, but protect folks that, that, that want that need protection. The, and, and that took a while to get that modulated, but code is, um, the hundreds of pages of, you know, the very fine grain minutiae of how parking works or how signage works, or how setbacks [00:39:00] relative to roads work and that sort of thing, and, and code when it evolves over time.

A lot of times somebody will develop something, the city won't like it, and so they'll put in another piece of code to pre prevent that from ever happening again. Mm-hmm. But they almost never take anything away from the code. So, you know, naturally over time you get, you get a lot of it that each individual piece was probably very rational when it was added to the code, but.

As a whole, it becomes very difficult to work within that, within that, that matrix. And so every once in a while you probably need to scrap the whole thing and like be very, be very, uh, um, deliberate on, on what you put together, which is exactly what Rogers has done and exactly what Bentonville is doing right now.

And, um, I hope Fayetteville follows, follows behind. 

[00:39:50] Cameron Clark: Yeah. So talk about what's that, what's that been like in Rogers? I mean, you guys have projects rolling in Rogers, so what's the, how's, how's the experience been? We love what they do. What they do in Rogers. Yeah. We don't, [00:40:00] no, 

[00:40:00] Jason Keathley: Rogers is probably one of the easiest cities for us.

It's not for everybody else, but for us, uh, to work in because they work with us. Mm-hmm. They're, they're supportive of what we're doing and they understand what 

[00:40:12] Ward Davis: we're doing and 

[00:40:12] Jason Keathley: they Yeah. Yeah. And they know that we care. Yeah. You know, we're just not throwing up something that's. You know, cheap and 10 years later you're tearing it down because it's just, you know, we're building quality and something that fits within the, the, the neighborhood.

Mm-hmm. You know, we're, we're wrapping up two apartment buildings right now behind the 1907, hopefully getting a TCO today. Oh, wow. We'll see. Congrats. Yeah. Hopefully. How many, how many units? 45 units in two buildings total. Okay. So 20 something in each one. Wow. Yeah. 

[00:40:43] Cameron Clark: One beds, two beds. What's the Yep. 

[00:40:45] Jason Keathley: We got, uh, one bedrooms studios and two bedrooms.

Okay. We're, we're, we're, we're excited about that one. 'cause it'll be the first project since I came over mm-hmm. That, uh, that we're completing. 

[00:40:56] Cameron Clark: Yeah. I mean, you know, and you're right in the middle of all the, even, I mean, obviously nine [00:41:00] seven, but like the Ozark brewery, I mean, you're, you're just, you're in the middle of Oh yeah.

Of everything there. Yeah. You're, you're a 

[00:41:06] Jason Keathley: chipping wedge away from 1907, the brewery and a couple of restaurants. Yeah. You know, which is. You know. Great. And, and we did and we kind of stepped out there. We'll see how it works out. But we did, uh, convert a two bedroom into a one bedroom. Then we have a secured bike storage.

'cause we're right there on the bike trail. There's tons of bike trail stuff. So if you own your own bike, you don't have to carry it all the way up to the third floor. You go on the first floor mm-hmm. Fob in, you go in there, you lock up your bike in, in this room it's got little workstation and everything in it.

Mm-hmm. Hopefully that, that pays off. We think it's a, a good ad, you know, for, for the 

[00:41:42] Ward Davis: location. Anyway, it's interesting because, you know, we were just talking about how dead downtown riders was not that long ago. And now the amenity for this. This Spar project is downtown Rogers. Yeah. We don't have any conventional amenities.

You don't Amenities. Yeah. We don't have any. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's be beautiful units in an awesome location now. [00:42:00] Yeah, that's awesome. Half a block from, you know, first and in Walnut, which is Maine and Maine, you know? Yeah. And I've betting 20 years. That's an irreplaceable location. You won't be able to do it, you know?

[00:42:11] Cameron Clark: Yeah. Well, I don't know what architect to use on that deal, but it, it really, it's real sharp. Yeah. I mean, it fits, it looks like those have already been there in a way. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It's, well, 

[00:42:19] Ward Davis: we've got it. And it'll look more like that in 10 years. Yeah. It'll look more comfortable. Yeah. You should tell, uh, 

[00:42:24] Jason Keathley: about the history, uh, that made up history.

Oh, awesome. Yeah, we, uh, 

[00:42:30] Ward Davis: well, it's, it's funny we've got, with, with people working on it, Rob was kind of trying to draw architectural. Uh, you know, inspiration from kind of local stuff. And, uh, one of the buildings was named the Ritter Building, and I'm not really sure the history of it. One of the buildings that was there, it was a very small building that was dilapidated when we bought it.

And, uh, and so he started going off of the name Ritter and then he said, well, but this looks like a. Used to be a factory here. What did they make? He's like, you know, he said they made spools where they put wire and this sort of thing. [00:43:00] We hired a guy named Dayton Castleman to do, uh, some artwork on the building.

Really kind of signage, you know, kind of signage based artwork. Well, Dayton is a, he is an expansive thinker. He is a art curator. That's his, his main background. And he, uh, started doing a little research on downtown Springdale and he, um. Started putting together a history of, uh, the Ritter, the Ritter brothers and their spool company, which started off making, you know, like, that's all, I don't remember what it was, like barrels that been evolved into spools with wire and then like, and really took off during like the heroic age during, you know, world War II and all this stuff.

Wow. And he wrote an entire history on of these buildings. All this, it's all bullshit, you know, it's like complete made up history. Well, we're gonna have a couple little Easter ends. Yeah. Like QR codes. Yeah. Yeah. Takes to the, tell you all the history of these buildings. Yeah, those buildings. [00:44:00] Yeah. Yeah.

Their brand's making new, but, you know, but, but, but don't necessarily look that way. 10 years from now, somebody will be like, yeah, 

[00:44:07] Cameron Clark: someone's, someone's gonna move here from Austin or whatever and be like, oh my gosh, this is a cool old building. It's like. Yeah. 

[00:44:13] Jason Keathley: No. Oh, we, we've been in the 1907 building and had people walk in and you, the, when you first walk in, it's, it's got tile 1907.

Yeah. And talk about how, how they remember that as a little girl seeing the tile. No, 

[00:44:25] Ward Davis: we played 

[00:44:25] Jason Keathley: it in, 

[00:44:27] Ward Davis: we named it because when it was built in 1907, it was the 1907 building till now. 

[00:44:35] Cameron Clark: Well, and that's like, I think the, the, the, the reality of Northwest Arkansas is we were so small when in the 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds, there's just not, there's not that many old, there's new architectural history, you know, except, 

[00:44:49] Ward Davis: you know, you know, Faye Jones kind of kicked in a bunch, but, you know, but no old architectural history.

Hardly at all, you know? Yeah. Creating 

[00:44:58] Cameron Clark: it. Y'all, y'all are creating it. [00:45:00] Yeah. 

[00:45:00] Ward Davis: We're sitting in a house that was built in 1851, where our office is, which is maybe the oldest building up here. I don't know how many, how many pre-Civil war. Buildings are in Northwest Arkansas or in Fayetteville. We were looking, you know, the four of us were looking this morning.

Uh, this building was 22 years old when old, old Maine began construction. So, you know, it's, there's just not much that's, that's old here, 

[00:45:23] Cameron Clark: you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, and talk about, so I think every developer's got a kind of a unique style. Y'all, you know, obviously talked about like what focus is the, what's, you know, what do you, right now you, you talking about, you finishing those buildings in downtown Rogers more coming, there is talk about like what's, you know, what are you working on right now?

And, and then I wanna talk about the future too, kind of what, what that holds, but 

[00:45:47] Jason Keathley: yeah. Yeah. The, the big project is right now is the warehouse district in Johnson. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That we're working on, we're broke ground there, but we're still working through leasing and still fine tuning the buildings. Um, that's a big [00:46:00] project.

Uh, what is it? Okay. Uh, well, this is, um, the idea is, is, you know, in northwest Arkansas, there's not, we just talked about there's not any old buildings, right? Mm-hmm. Well, if you go to Miami, Detroit, you know, any of these big cities, they have these old warehouse districts that used to do. Uh, make zippers or clothing or buttons or whatever.

And that's all been offshore now. 

[00:46:23] Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. 

[00:46:24] Jason Keathley: Uh, and so those buildings set there dilapidated for years and years and years. And then finally some developer went in there and bought 'em for a dollar a square foot and, and renovated 'em. Right. Yeah. And, and now it's the cool place to go have a beer coworking beer, whatever.

Coworking. Yeah. It's, it's now the, the place to go hang out. Uh, and probably the closest thing, uh, to, that's in Miami, there's a place called the Wynwood Walls, and it's kind of art based old warehouse, uh, district. Mm-hmm. And I got a close friend that, that, uh, that works down there. And, uh, but this, we're creating that.

Mm-hmm. [00:47:00] So we're gonna build some new buildings that are gonna like old warehouses. We're gonna put a lot of art-based signage and other art all through the, through the deal, uh, through the project. And, uh, you know, of course our anchors are gonna be two great restaurants. 

[00:47:15] Cameron Clark: Yep. 

[00:47:16] Jason Keathley: And, uh, and so that's, that's the concept.

It's gonna be a true mixed use with 72 apartments, you know, a 40,000 square foot med office or office, you know. Uh, and then these restaurants, it's mixed in retail. 

[00:47:32] Nick Beyer: And how big is a project like that? 

[00:47:35] Jason Keathley: Uh, this one's got roughly 81,000 square feet of office in retail. And the 72 apartments, you know, we're at what, 50 something million total?

55 million. 55? Yeah. Mm. 

[00:47:46] Nick Beyer: And the way you guys structure these deals, is it different across deal type, like taking on land, holding it for long periods of time, or your hold time's similar across projects or, 

[00:47:56] Jason Keathley: well, the whole time when the land's different, uh, but our, our [00:48:00] methodology is buy the land in cash.

That way we don't have an interest clock, you know, stressing us out, having to think about it or whatever. Then capitalize on opportunities within the marketplace and design and, and, and start a project. So, um, that's, that's the way we've been been handling it. But a lot of times we have land partners too in the deal.

Sometimes it's just us, but, uh, on the land side, it, it's d different in every, every, every deal. So 

[00:48:31] Ward Davis: more recently we've been recruited into, into properties, but we're picky as hell about the piece of land. It's gotta be exactly right. It's location, location, location. 

[00:48:40] Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. Yeah. What's, what's, what's, what's in y'all's box?

What's right? 

[00:48:44] Ward Davis: Um, we love anything on 49 between Fable and, and. You know, Bentonville Rogers, you know, so we like, we like being close to the spine in northwest Arkansas. We love downtown Rogers. We just feel like that energy is fantastic. We, we, [00:49:00] we really like what's happening in downtown Springdale, but find it a very hard place to break in.

Um, but, uh, encourage, we got a little project there, but we, we, uh, we love, we love what's happening there. Um, but, uh, we haven't done anything in downtown Bentonville, but downtown Bentonville doesn't need us. You know, it's, it's, it's got folks that are doing great stuff without us. So, um, but yeah, our, our, um, you know, kind of our, a lot of our big opportunities are up and down 49 and downtown Rogers.

[00:49:32] Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. 

[00:49:34] Jason Keathley: Yeah. And our, in our mindset that, you know, when I first moved up here was 2006, downtown Bentonville was dead. Yeah. I wish I'd have bought every house. I wish I'd moved there. Just bought houses. Everybody start rent houses and didn't, did whatever. Uh, now look back at it and we really feel like, you know, Rogers and Springdale are, you know, they're just less than 10 years behind [00:50:00] what Bentonville is right now.

May, maybe, maybe it doesn't get to the level of Bentonville, you know, but it's not gonna be very far behind. Mm. And probably the Rogers has got the, it's got the best location for, to have the best shot of getting close to, to what Bentonville is now in 10 years. Uh, just because it's. You know, 15 minutes from the home office.

It's got the best bones in northwest Arkansas 

[00:50:23] Ward Davis: too. You know, it's what few old buildings exist here it down. Yeah. It's several 

[00:50:27] Jason Keathley: blocks of great old buildings where, you know, if you really think about it, great grid, you know, Bentonville just had the ones around the square. Yeah. And it got off the square.

That wasn't much, you know, and Springdale just has, you know, just a handful Right. Around Emma and, and Holcomb, you know? Yeah. And that's, that's it. You know, it's not like what you, what we have in Fayetteville with all of Dixon and, and in the square, you know. So 

[00:50:48] Nick Beyer: has that plant in downtown Rogers been a deterrent at all, or do you think it's, it's, you're able to kind of work around it?

[00:50:55] Ward Davis: It 

[00:50:55] Nick Beyer: doesn't 

[00:50:55] Ward Davis: help, you know, but it's, but it, you know, it's downtown, you know? Yeah. It's [00:51:00] also got a train track that runs one inch from our apartments, you know? So, sounds like it's going through your brain when the train comes by, you know, people live downtown, like, you know, just overlook stuff like that.

Yeah. It's part of 

[00:51:11] Jason Keathley: the deal, 

[00:51:12] Ward Davis: you know? Yeah. 

[00:51:14] Jason Keathley: Yeah. And I can't see that, you know? 20 years from now, who, who's to say that plant's gonna be there? Sure. You know? Yeah. You know, things get more efficient. More efficient. Mm-hmm. And, you know, old plants, you know, are less efficient. They'll, they'll, I can just see that being mm-hmm.

You know, changing into something else. It seems like there was one done in Ville mm-hmm. Like that too. 

[00:51:32] Ward Davis: Downtown Rogers needs is more people living there, you know? Mm-hmm. I mean, downtown's function much more effectively when you have people living and working and, and enjoying it. Downtown doesn't work very well.

It's just an entertainment district that people come to for the weekends. It doesn't, doesn't work well. Yeah. Down even downtown Bentonville hit another gear when, when people really started living there, you know? Yeah, 

[00:51:56] Cameron Clark: yeah, yeah. Well talk about, so con construction right [00:52:00] now, I feel like one of the things I keep hearing over and over again and experiencing and is just where are cost?

How do you keep them in control? Oh, how do you, I mean, as long as you've been doing this, like what's the. How hard is it right now compared to the last 10 years? And, and what are you kind of seeing on the horizon, you know, next? Oh, next. 

[00:52:20] Jason Keathley: I, I don't know how you keep it. You know, I wish somebody would tell me that, uh, how, how you keep the costs in, in track, you know, on, on track of whatever.

Um, it's a constantly moving target, but it seems like it's always moving up. That's the problem. Mm. You know, so it, it is a struggle to get, you know, uh, you know, construction costs in line to make a performer work and current rent rates and all that. Uh, I focus here mainly on the small things. Some people get caught up on, oh, this is a pretty building, whatever.

Well, I'm trying to tweak the things that, that the average [00:53:00] person walking up there will never see. You know, that's going to add just incremental small dollars to the bottom line over and over and over again. And before you know it, that few thousand dollars is turned into four, $500,000 in savings on the construction side.

Well, and that, that could be from like shortening a, a waterline, Hey, just don't run it this way, let run it that way. 

[00:53:21] Cameron Clark: Mm. 

[00:53:22] Jason Keathley: To, you know, cha elevations on buildings and, you know, we're, we're digging into all those little details and the SD drawings and the DD drawings and trying to get it all right. To make sure that when we have construction drawings, there's no ve mm-hmm.

You know, that like, Hey, we're hitting budget. We've thought about it. We, we already got it figured out, and we're moving forward. Instead of, I feel like a lot of developers, you know, design the Taj Mahal the greatest thing there, and they, they love it and it's beautiful and it's, it's great. And then they can't afford it.

Yeah. And that's what's happening in the marketplace where we're trying to design [00:54:00] to what we can afford and then stick the landing one, and stick the landing on the, on the construction price at that point. And, and we've been successful on that on the last two of the three projects. Mm-hmm. Where we were, we were successful.

Like got the numbers in, it's like, great. This thing's under budget. Yeah. All right. Do we want to add that art piece in? Yeah. You know, or, well, we can always add that in at the end. Let's just go ahead and build it and in case there's any issues, then we will pack that on then. Yeah. You know, so the project in Rogers, you know, we stuck the landing on it.

Um, managed, managed it, you know, really well with, within our office. Mm-hmm. And was fortunate enough to select a great contractor and, uh, I, I think we're gonna end up with like, hardly spending any contingency. Wow. So, so that contingency now can roll to a, a, a budget for maintenance. Yeah. You know, and then all of our spp, month and a half 

[00:54:57] Ward Davis: off a construction timeline over what we had.

So [00:55:00] that's two, you know, month and half interest carry we've saved. 

[00:55:03] Jason Keathley: So we, we've done all those are what I'm talking about, incremental things mm-hmm. That we can save along the lines. Mm-hmm. To, to, to help. And, uh, so I, I mean, I'm pretty proud of all, all of those mechanisms. Now, if we can just get it leased up in a pretty quick timeframe, I think our investors are gonna be real 

[00:55:19] Ward Davis: happy.

But part of this business model too, like, so, you know, um. Where we do spend money is we want something that's gonna be enduringly beautiful. 'cause we're trying to build stuff that's class a day one and has a shooting, have a, has a real chance to be class A in 30 years, which sounds ridiculous, but if you do it right, it can be, can be done.

So you spend a little bit of money on, on design, and we spend money for the same reason on durability. We'll, we'll, we'll spend some money to make sure that we don't have water infiltration issues because we're not flipping it to somebody else that's down the road. Generally we're, we're, we're a lot of times holding on to stuff and um, so we spend a little more, more money on durability.

But you get away from those [00:56:00] two things, and I mean. We build some beautiful apartments. Those apartments in Johnson, or the apartments in, in Rogers. There's three story walkup. They are simple buildings, fundamentally simple buildings. You spend a little bit of money and it's made out of brick and is, you know, durable and beautiful, but you're building a fundamentally, uh, uh, simple building.

And it's in such a great location that we're not, we're not putting in a bunch of ostentatious uh, amenities that might not get used. You know, it's next door to, you know. The best coffee shop in north, north, the northern hemisphere, you know, according to whatever, whatever rating that was. And the, uh, you know, um, the same thing with, with Johnson Square.

Right now our amenities are restaurants and that sort of thing that, that, that actually generate rent and add to the bottom line. They aren't just consuming cash. So, you know, so we thoughtful about how you, you put the ingredients [00:57:00] together and you can have something that, that, that fuels more. And it is more expensive if you just look at an individual piece, but as a whole is actually less expensive.

Mm-hmm. The, and, and higher quality. So. 

[00:57:17] Nick Beyer: Wow, that's cool. So design number one, location number two, hold it forever. Number three, location 

[00:57:24] Ward Davis: number one. Yeah. Location number one, uh, design. And that includes a, a a lot. Yeah. Which includes, you know, kind of durability in, within that is, is number two, business model is, um, that we can't predict what interest rates are gonna ha do in the future, which means we can't predict what cap rates are gonna do in the future, which means we can't predict valuations in the future.

Uh, but if we build something that's durable and that is enduringly beautiful, then we can choose when we sell. And we don't necessarily. We aren't going in and saying we're [00:58:00] going to hold onto this forever. We're going in and saying, we can hold onto this forever. 

[00:58:05] Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. 

[00:58:05] Ward Davis: But if 2022 rolls around and cap rates getting the 4% range again, we're gonna unload some real estate.

So 

[00:58:16] Cameron Clark: how, how do you have that conversation with an, with an investor though? Just like, Hey, this is this. Yeah, I mean, 

[00:58:21] Jason Keathley: that's a good question. Long term view. That's a great question. 'cause a lot of investors look at that, Hey, I'm gonna invest in a market rate apartment complex and, and they're gonna sell it in five years and this is what my return is.

And yeah, I like the area, I like the project, I like the developer. And they, they did and they go that route and, and it's having to change that mindset. You know, that, Hey guys, this is a long term deal, you know? You know, of course our goal is to get your investment back to you and. And as, as quickly as possible, you know?

Yeah. And then we're playing with house money, but, uh, it, it's, um, if we were market rate [00:59:00] investors with some of the stuff we have, you know, uh, developers, I think grazing money would be a lot easier. Yeah. Mm-hmm. You know, because that's the, it's the mindset of, of that, you know, deal. But, uh, I mean, the ones that we have on, give you an example.

The one the investors we have on Ritter and Spool, we sent out the warehouse district. I mean, almost all of them doubled what they did in ERs Bull Wow. Or more, and said, we're in, like, within like a few weeks, we had raised, you know, quite a bit of money Mm. Uh, without any problem. And of course I got the big heads like, well, this is gonna be, this one's gonna be easy compared to ERs bull raising money in capital.

And, uh, so now I'm having to work a little bit the last little bit. Yeah. For the last little, little touch, which is not a lot in the big, big picture. 

[00:59:46] Cameron Clark: Yeah. And, and are most of these, uh, uh, folks local? Or are they, are they, I mean, obviously we're getting so much attention in our markets, getting so much attention now regionally.

Um, yeah. What's the, most of them are 

[00:59:59] Jason Keathley: local or have local [01:00:00] connections. Mm-hmm. Like, like they're, they're from here and they moved away, have done well for themselves in whatever businesses they're in. Mm-hmm. And, uh, like, like the area and trust us. Yeah. You know. Uh, that's a lot of it. But, you know, we got a group coming in, uh, from, from Miami next week, you know?

Oh, yeah. To, to look at everything. They may do something, might not do something, I don't know. Yeah. The, yeah. 

[01:00:23] Ward Davis: The, um, you, you know, when you, when you have a long term or you know, an, uh, open-ended, um, investment mentality, you lose a swath of real estate investors, you, you lose private equity Yeah. Funds.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. They have, they, for very good reason, they have a, we're gonna take your money on this date, and in 10 years you're get getting all your money back, which means any given investment, we got a, you know, three to five year time horizon to, to get out, which means whatever has happened with interest rates and therefore valuations, that's just the deal, you know?

Yeah. You're not, you're on any given asset. You're not able to maximize your, uh, your, uh, function of [01:01:00] timeline. Well, there are, what we've found is that family offices are wealthy individuals. Um. They don't like that aspect of, of necessarily, not all of them, but, but a lot of them don't like that aspect of being roped into an artificial time horizon that doesn't profit maximize on, on individual investments or not allowed to profit, maximize on individual investments.

So the ones we're just looking for the ones that have recognized that and have, have a shared understanding of how that works. And the, the, the same group also understands that, um, the, the concepts of, uh, reinvestment risk, you know, when you sell something, finding another investment that, that performs well as hard.

Mm-hmm. It's not easy, especially right now. Good luck, especially right now. Good luck. Where you, where you going with that? 10 31? Yeah. Yeah, buddy. You know, and then the um, and then the uh, and then also the timeline, you know, so if you're calculating, okay, if we can flip this in [01:02:00] three years. It looks like we've got a great return for three years and our return maybe over 10 years, and it may be a 15 or 16% IRR, and the three year may be a 18 or 19% IRR.

But by the time you calculate an investment risk and, and your money's set on the sidelines for a year, ours is looking pretty good again, on a, on a pure math basis. Yep. Mm-hmm. Well, if you can, if you can add a couple of elements to that, uh, and for us, um, a big piece is, you know, again, is that, is that ability to hold at a higher level longer, you know?

Yeah. It, um, uh, then, uh, it gives you a lot of flexibility and actually kind of, kind of juices returns over the time. These are at the margin, little bit esoteric arguments and, and so forth. You have to have somebody that has already kind of come to those conclusions themselves. You know, we got a couple of those, you know, and we, and each, each project we kind of add one or two more, and, uh.

And, uh, we we're kind of getting to where we can [01:03:00] cobb it together pretty well, so, yeah. You know? Yeah. I mean, yeah. We are not pros 

[01:03:04] Jason Keathley: to that. 

[01:03:05] Ward Davis: No 

[01:03:05] Jason Keathley: capital raising, especially from my world, you know? Yeah. I never had to do that. So this is all kind of new to me, so let's calling buddies up, you know? Well, you start going 

[01:03:15] Cameron Clark: through, you, you, you guys are humble 'cause you're, you're doing it.

Um, here's a, another piece is 

[01:03:19] Ward Davis: we add a lot of value to land. Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah. If we own a piece of land, like Johnson Square was worth X dollars, it was farm. When, now when we roll into projects, we get, you know, we get pretty pretty. Staggering, you know, appraised values for developed paths that are, that, that then allow us to, to leverage a decent amount mm-hmm.

Going forward. Mm-hmm. By adding, by doing stuff that's kind of got that, that's, you know, it's a flywheel. It takes a while to get it turning, but by adding, by adding a lot of value to a, uh, the, the overall piece of property, you can kind of, you can kind of roll some profits forward. 

[01:03:55] Nick Beyer: Mm. 

[01:03:56] Ward Davis: Very effectively.

[01:03:57] Nick Beyer: Could we dive a little deeper in Johnson Square? I'm just [01:04:00] curious. Like, I don't, I I can't picture another piece in my head that's similar, where you have professional office space, medical office space, single family home, you know, multifamily food and beverage. Like, it's just a super unique deal. So when you put something, it's just like every 

[01:04:17] Ward Davis: downtown, I mean, one idea, it's unique and another idea it's not, you know.

Yeah, yeah. But go ahead. Yeah. But, 

[01:04:23] Nick Beyer: but from one raw piece of land, doing it from the ground up, I mean, it just, just seems unique. Um. Are y'all holding the, the pads that you got ready for single family? Are you holding the apartments? Like, how does, how does that work? 

[01:04:40] Ward Davis: We, we basically, we, or groups that we're involved with own all of the anything commercial.

Okay. Which includes multifamily to us. And, um, and then, you know, sell, sell lot, single family lots. We're kind of evolving in how we do that to, uh, going forward. But I [01:05:00] mean, the, the best, the, the people that make the most money in a, in a neighborhood like Johnson Square are the first home buyers. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because, you know, you're, mm-hmm. They're, they're just kind of sticking their neck out a little bit. They get a, you know, we're just trying to get something built that shows the neighborhood. And so the first folks that built in, John, that, that built homes in Johnson Square are gonna, they're gonna stomp it.

I mean, you know, they already, they already have, but they really will when we kind of get the next phase. Oh my gosh. Rolling. I mean, you. These, these neighborhoods do, you know, it's a criticism, but it's also a measure of success that they appreciate like Matt. Mm-hmm. You know, and Johnson Square will be a good example.

I mean, it, it just, it just will. Yeah. You know? That's awesome. But, but we're, you know, we're working on other town center projects in mm-hmm. In the region, so 

[01:05:46] Cameron Clark: Yeah. Drake Farms, let's talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. Drake Farms 

[01:05:48] Ward Davis: we're partnered with a specialized real estate group, um, on Drake Farms, um, which is North Fayetteville between Garland and Greg and on and, and, [01:06:00] uh, between Drake on the south side and the interstate on the north side.

So just west of the, the hospital in my mind, and I think, um, can say this objectively, it's the finest big piece, undeveloped piece in Fayetteville. I say undeveloped. The first phase is in construction right now. We built one office building that Jason was a contractor on for the Pendergraph family. It's beautiful, beautiful building.

Yes. It's the stone. Buildings It is. Or these building. Yeah. It's the nicest thing I've ever been associated with being built. You know? Me too. Um, and the, uh, but the first phase is being built around that, which has got a couple of food and beverage locations, nothing to be announced yet, but a couple of food and beverage locations, and then has some apartments and some town homes.

And it will be a mixed use neighborhood like Johnson Square, but more dense and more intense. Um, walkable. Walkable, yeah. Walkable, definitely. You know, um, couple of no commercial nodes that'll focus on food and beverage. Elementary school, elementary school. The, uh, this is, this is announced. The, [01:07:00] the, the, that the, um, uh, we haven't closed, but we, um, but the, uh, school districts are buying a, a parcel and working very closely with us on how it integrates into the neighborhood.

Washington Regional has. Um, I think ultimately 40 acres, and I think they've taken down close to 30 so far. So they'll have more square footage. I think they'll definitely have more acreage, more acres for sure, on the west side of Greg than they do on their current campus on the east side ultimately.

That's crazy. So that's a, so, you know, a heavy medical kind of anchor. There's also a 12 inch, a 12, uh, acre, um, walnut grove that was planted a little bit over a hundred years ago. That's being preserved in the neighborhood and being developed, you know, thoughtfully around. It'll be a. Cool piece. So, uh, but the first phase is under construction right now.

The second phase is in heavy design, and the third phase is in conceptual design. Yeah. So, I mean, it's, it's, it's more than the rest of our careers to be developed probably. Yeah. It's a, it's a 15, 20 year deal. 

[01:07:59] Cameron Clark: [01:08:00] Yeah. 

[01:08:00] Ward Davis: Over a billion dollars. Yeah. It's so ambitious. I can't think about it all at once. It's too intimidating.

Yeah. You gotta, you gotta, when you're eating an elephant, you gotta do it one bite at a time, you know? Yeah, sure. We're one biting it right now. 

[01:08:11] Cameron Clark: How do you, I mean, so I, I assume you kind of set like project goals year by year. Hey, we hope we're here by this date. Yeah. To this day. I mean, you kind of have a roadmap of a 15 year plan is what you're essentially Yeah.

Basically. Yeah. Yeah, 

[01:08:23] Jason Keathley: yeah. Yeah. And you're also watching the market. Yeah. You know, because since this is heavy, Drake's heavy multifamily and, uh, you know, what's the absorption rate Yeah. For apartments, you know? Yeah. You know, you wanna roll out, you know, I think we're, this first phase is roughly 120 second phase is gonna be roughly the same amount.

Mm-hmm. And so on and so on. And it'll be like every. 12 to 14 months. Mm-hmm. Something like that, you know, based off of whatever the market demand is. 

[01:08:51] Cameron Clark: Yeah. Let's talk about the future. Like what is, what, what do you, I mean, obviously this project's a 15 year project. Outside of [01:09:00] that, like what types of things do you want work on?

I mean, obviously you have this like, history now of like, you can look back and see the impact of a lot of these deals. Um, what's the focus gonna be over the next decade, five, 10 years? 

[01:09:18] Jason Keathley: Uh, next decade it'd be, uh, of course Drake, you know. Yeah. Uh. I would say 10 years from now Johnson will be pretty much done, unless we don't have an office tenant and we have an office pad or something like that.

Yeah. But I bet that's probably, probably, uh, complete. You know, uh, we probably have done a couple other big projects downtown Rogers. We're working on stuff down there. Uh, not really ready to announce or anything on it. Mm-hmm. But we're working diligently on some stuff down there. Uh, we got a couple of bigger 

[01:09:51] Ward Davis: kind of town center potential projects that we're, that we are in.

Due diligence and discussion, I would say [01:10:00] on those that, again, aren't that another 10 or 15 year 

[01:10:02] Jason Keathley: deals? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I think, I think Johnson's given us the credibility to, um, for now landowners are coming and say, Hey, I don't, I don't know what to do. I bought this. I wanna build my office here, but I bought 40 acres.

I only need five. What do I do with all this? Would you guys help me? Yeah. And so we're, we're working through processes on how to do that. 

[01:10:25] Cameron Clark: Well, it's way easier said than done. It's like, yeah. You know? Yeah. People don't know where to start on something like this. Yeah. No, nobody does. You know, 

[01:10:35] Ward Davis: it's, yeah. When you've been plugging away at something for a while, stuff that seems obvious to you is like Absolutely.

Completely not to somebody else. Yeah. And then there's, and with the town center stuff, it's so different than other types of development that it's very, that, that you, you can see when people start talking about it, the same pitfalls, keep, keep coming up in, in conversation. Like, ah, this is the reason not to do it that way.

But it's [01:11:00] not, it's not a, like you said, there's not a, there's not a playbook for becoming a developer. There's certainly not a playbook for kind of mixed, mixed use town center type projects. It's just, that's, that's, that's well understood. Yeah. I mean, there is a playbook. It's just not well understood yet.

You know, 

[01:11:16] Cameron Clark: I mean, like you're saying, it's a team sport and y'all offer such a great value to landowner, tenant, investor who, I mean, who, you know, wants to be a part of, you know, something like this. Yeah. Just, yeah. And doesn't have any bandwidth to do it. Um, um, and it just takes a, it just, 

[01:11:36] Ward Davis: it's a lot of work, you know, a lot of elbow grease.

We were having a conversation with a group yesterday and. We put a lot of value in the elbow grease side of doing something like this. You're starting to see a lot of town center type projects being announced in northwest Arkansas that are very much half baked when they're announced. Yeah. We don't, we, we hadn't publicly announced Drake Farms yet, you know, and we're under construction, you know, like with, [01:12:00] so the, uh, uh, which, which to me gives the, and I think because people have seen it done with, I think, honestly, I think it's Johnson Square, you know?

Yeah. It's Johnson Square, you know, because it's, people get it, man. And, but, but because it's been done, it must not be that hard shoot, you know? Yeah. What do you think? Because we pulled it off, didn't mean, didn't mean it was easy, you know? Yeah. So, uh, on one hand I wanna discourage more, I want to encourage more development like this, but on the other hand, I want, I want, uh.

You know, help people understand the lift that's required, you know? 

[01:12:37] Cameron Clark: Yeah. Because 

[01:12:38] Ward Davis: it's, it's a lift. 

[01:12:39] Cameron Clark: Yeah. 

[01:12:39] Ward Davis: Mm-hmm. 

[01:12:40] Cameron Clark: Well, kind of, you know, getting towards wrapping up here, the, I don't know if you have any, anything else here, the, you know, couple questions we asked everyone at the very end. So why build a business in northwest Arkansas?

Number one. So why, why, why do this in northwest Arkansas right now? Well, 

[01:12:58] Jason Keathley: I'm from [01:13:00] Arkansas, so, uh, I've lived in central Arkansas, little Rock, Russellville area, and all the growth is in northwest Arkansas. Yeah, there's a, I mean, I feel like just about anybody could come up here with some hard work and be successful mm-hmm.

In something where I, I, I don't think that it's necessarily, all other parts of the state have that same mentality. Yeah. Like being acceptance, you know, no matter what your age is or whatever. As long as you're talented and you're, you're working hard Northwest Arkansas out of everywhere else in the state, I feel like is you have a higher success rate.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. There's a lot more collaboration up here is not building fences around what you're doing. You, you can go find somebody if you're interested in something, go talk to 'em and they'll, they'll, they'll, I mean, somebody came in here, I'll tell you everything. I don't have anything to hide.

'cause there's plenty of work and there's plenty of things to develop around here. You know, I can't do it all. No, no. You know, [01:14:00] so, uh, um, I think that's the reason Northwest Arkansas's as successful as it is. 

[01:14:06] Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. 

[01:14:07] Ward Davis: For me, there's kind of two pieces. One is you'd have a hard time dragging me away from Northwest Arkansas 'cause I like living here so much.

You know, it's, it's got a lot that's going on on the weekends. 600,000 people plus, you know, the philanthropic juice that's been injected by, in particular the Walton family, you know, and that, that, you know, filters through live music and bike trails and all the other wonderful things we all enjoy. But it also is 600,000 people.

It feels like a couple of small towns because that's what it is right now. But. So that's a big piece for me and I really worry that we lose that if we don't grow thoughtfully. And I spend a lot of time kind of thinking about that stuff. Um, we're hosting the Congress of the New urbanism next year, and I'm the, uh, co-chair of the local host committee along with John McCarty from Rogers.

And we're [01:15:00] doing a lot of thinking about how the region grows. From a, taking it back to kind of just a dollars and cents perspective though, for investing in northwest Arkansas. We got, in our pitch decks, we've got two graphs that I'm, that I, that I include in our pitch book. Let me get these for you.

Where one of 'em is population growth on the, in the US compared to Northwest Arkansas, and the other one is per capita income growth in the US versus north versus Northwest Arkansas. Northwest Arkansas is stomping the US Wow. As a whole. In both of them, the, the, and I hadn't put this in a pitch book, but I should, the statistic, looking at the incomes statistics, in 2000, the area median income, and I need to convert it to percentages, but the area median income in northwest Arkansas was four grand per household, less.

I guess it's per capita, per person less than the US now we're, [01:16:00] uh, $11,000 per person higher than the median in the us So massive swing in relative income in northwest Arkansas, which has all sorts of downstream po positive effects. Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it's been, it's, it's, you know, from a dollar and cents perspective, it makes a lot of sense, but it's almost unique in that it feels like small town America while having the stuff to do.

Like, I don't, hadn't even started looking at what I'm gonna do this weekend, but there's a million things, you know, there'll be more things to do than I want, than I, than I have time to do. So, uh, yeah. Gosh. And you can get a Buffalo River in an hour and a half, you know? Yeah, yeah. So, oh, there's multiple rivers you can go to, or like Yeah.

Or, or Fantastic lake, beautiful lake, you know? Yeah. This is great. 

[01:16:46] Cameron Clark: Last question in both of you. How do you define success?

Oh, this 

[01:16:53] Jason Keathley: is, uh, you want me to swing at it first? I'll let you swing at it first. I've got an idea, 

[01:16:58] Ward Davis: uh, in my head, [01:17:00] having fun, making a living, you know, and feeling like I've made a relevant impact in the world. 

[01:17:06] Cameron Clark: Hmm. 

[01:17:07] Ward Davis: So, Monday mornings are fun. Like, I look forward to Monday. I spend all weekend thinking about what I'm gonna be doing on Monday morning.

[01:17:13] Jason Keathley: I like this job. I, I, I think for me is, uh, it goes back to people and relationships and how, how many, you know, I love helping people succeed. You know, either mentoring or, you know, maybe seed money. And, and I, you know, I've done that several times, you know, to help people get started in a business or what have you.

Mm-hmm. And, and I always look at it as, you know, I, I'm looking forward to the day they buy me now. 

[01:17:45] Cameron Clark: Mm. 

[01:17:46] Jason Keathley: You know? Yeah. So, I, I, you know, I think it's helping people. 

[01:17:51] Ward Davis: For 

[01:17:51] Jason Keathley: me is, is it, 

[01:17:53] Ward Davis: there's also thinking about the same question and, uh, working with the Pendergraph family on [01:18:00] Drake Farms, they, they own the property and, and, um, Neil Pendergraph and Mark Blackwood are best, best friends and Mark's involved with the project as well.

Um, they're are, you know, late sixties, early seventies, and constantly remind me when we're having a, when we have a any kind of reach, a milestone of any kind, they just constantly say, Hey, enjoy it right now. Because when you look back, you know, we're gonna all make a bunch of money and we're gonna all build something beautiful.

But when you look back, it's gonna be having fun like this that you're gonna really appreciate and the friendships you make doing it. So, try to make myself remember that piece is not always easy, but that's. That's part of it. 

[01:18:42] Cameron Clark: Hmm. 

[01:18:42] Ward Davis: Anything that's, you know, worth doing is worth, you know, is kind of gonna be fulfilling in ways that aren't fin 

[01:18:48] Nick Beyer: financial.

Yeah. Yeah. Good. Well, one of the things we do at the end of every episode is just kind of share the, the big things that we learn from y'all. And we think our listeners, your business owners, entrepreneurs, will [01:19:00] learn from y'all as well. And I think the first thing we, we touched on it, um, pretty early on was just how persistent each of you are coming from different backgrounds.

I mean, constant roadblock after roadblock in this industry that you're in. And, uh, yeah, I mean, just being persistent. I think that speaks to any business owner. There's gonna be roadblocks and there's gonna be things they have to overcome. And so just having a partner, having someone to, to process through with it, but just to keep going.

And I think you guys have modeled that really well. The second thing that really stuck out. Um, you're stubborn. 

[01:19:33] Ward Davis: Like we have a lot of, we have a lot of, uh, complimentary characteristics. Yeah. And, but one thing we do share is we're most stubbornness and hardheaded and, and impatient. We're both impatient and stubborn.

A very good, gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's required that, that's like when somebody asks what's, what's required characteristic to develop real estate. Well, it's stubbornness is the required characteristic. Yeah. That's good. It's not smart, it's not knowledgeable. It's not hardcore, it's not stubborn. Yeah.

That's good. [01:20:00] 

[01:20:00] Nick Beyer: Yeah. Other one, the second one is conviction, and we talked about that kind of midway through the conversation, but just how convicted you have to be when you walk on a property, whether it's a raw piece of land and envisioning what's gonna be there, or a building like 1907 that 

[01:20:14] Cameron Clark: Yeah. 

[01:20:14] Nick Beyer: Is just not in a good spot when you're walking through it, but the conviction that you have to have to bring something like that.

To life and to do it over a 10, 15, 20 year time horizon. You can't do something like that unless you have conviction around it. And I think every business owner, if you don't have conviction for what you're doing, you won't succeed long term. That's right. Totally. And then I think the last thing that, that I found really fascinating was, was the word care.

And I know that's kind of an interesting word, but the way that you care about the design of your buildings, the way that you care about the durability of your buildings. The way that you're thoughtfully crafting the food and beverage in each of those spaces. There's just a lot of care that goes into those projects.

And when we came in here and y'all were like, ah, I don't know. [01:21:00] I don't know what makes us, you know, this. I don't know what the special sauce is. I think that's the special sauce, is that you, you care about each project, you care about each, you were even talking about all the little pieces that go into building.

Yeah. Like you care about those things. 

[01:21:13] Jason Keathley: Yeah. 

[01:21:14] Nick Beyer: And I think that's really what sets. Y'all apart as developers and, and something that all of us can learn from as business owners. So thanks for, thanks for teaching us and thanks for sharing your stories with us today. 

[01:21:26] Ward Davis: Thank you. Thank you. The care, the care piece is interesting because there's us caring about it, but it's, but when you care about it, it is, it inspires other people to care about it.

And that's the, that's actually the holy grail. Mm-hmm. Not us caring about it and doing something because like we talk about doing art like in the. Warehouse district, but it's gonna be, the tenants are gonna be driving the arts signage. It's gonna be their businesses, and they're gonna be inspired by the environment.

Um, the, uh, so we, we actually, we care, but, but we set the bones in place and then the people that live there and the tenants that. [01:22:00] Work there. Uh, we want it to become theirs as quickly as possible because organic energy is, is much more powerful than, than all the ideas that Jason and I can come up with alone.

So inspiring care is maybe even more important than just caring by ourselves. 

[01:22:17] Cameron Clark: Hmm. 

[01:22:18] Ward Davis: So good. 

[01:22:19] Cameron Clark: Wow. Thanks guys. Yeah. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of NWA Founders, where we sit down with founders, owners and builders driving growth here in northwest Arkansas. For recommendations are to connect with us, reach out at nwa, founders@gmail.com.

Lastly, if you enjoyed this episode, then please consider leaving a rating, a review, and sending it to someone who you think would benefit from it. We'll see you in the next episode.