Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:24:24
Scott Snodgrass
We built this Indigo equity framework that we've been working on for a couple of years now, really studying that and helping us stay focused on how we can. You know, our tagline is places for people. And so it's intentionally obtuse. It means all people. So how do we go and and really focus the work we're doing in a way that serves everybody and helps even to repair some of those inequities in the past.

00:00:24:27 - 00:00:40:05
Clayton Garrett
And I think on the the shift there is like, we feel like it's our job as developers to deal with all the problems. So the consumer experience, the home buyer, the resident, the, you know, the guest like that. They're not dealing with any of the sort of classic problems that people have.

00:00:40:07 - 00:01:05:00
John Simmerman
Hey everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Simmerman and that is Scott Snodgrass in Clayton Garrett from Indigo, a community in the Richmond, Texas area which is a suburb of Houston, Texas. And it is a very, very interesting community. It's got some agriculture to it. And their tagline is, Building Communities for people. I love it, it's really, really cool.

00:01:05:02 - 00:01:10:24
John Simmerman
We're going to get to it in just a moment. But before we get to that discussion, if you're enjoying this content here on the Active Towns Channel, please.

00:01:10:24 - 00:01:11:05
Clayton Garrett
Consider.

00:01:11:05 - 00:01:35:25
John Simmerman
Supporting my efforts by becoming an Active Towns Ambassador. Super easy to do. Just navigate over to active towns.org. Click on the support tab at the top of the page. There's several different options, including becoming a Patreon supporter. Patrons do get early and ad free access to all my video content. Okay, let's get right to it with Scott and Clint.

00:01:35:28 - 00:01:40:09
John Simmerman
Scott and Clayton, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns Podcast. Welcome.

00:01:40:11 - 00:01:41:04
Scott Snodgrass
Thanks for having us today.

00:01:41:04 - 00:01:43:01
Clayton Garrett
Yeah, we're happy to be here.

00:01:43:04 - 00:01:51:21
John Simmerman
Guys, I always loved, you know, sort of let my guests have an opportunity to introduce themselves. So what's the 32nd introduction as to who Scott and Clayton are?

00:01:51:24 - 00:02:05:11
Scott Snodgrass
Or. We're both the founding partners of meristem communities, which is a, development company, real estate development company based in Houston, Texas, focused on developing at the human scale.

00:02:05:13 - 00:02:24:18
Clayton Garrett
And we're both, have some agricultural background and, you know, have family ties to the, Houston region and, and spend our time both doing development and, and managing lots of team members and people and including, small children. So, very active, life right now.

00:02:24:20 - 00:02:47:23
John Simmerman
That sounds very active, very apropos for the active towns, channel that I like that, and and very, very dear to my heart, too. I grew up on a small ranch in Northern California, a little town called Farmington, called Lincoln. At the time, there was only, like, 4000 people living there. And I lived outside of town and would come in, every day for for school and whatnot.

00:02:47:23 - 00:03:12:10
John Simmerman
So, yeah, as somebody who grew up on horseback and spent had a flock of sheep and, we grew a little bit of, vegetables and all that, this is very near and dear to my heart. So I'm looking forward to understanding more about what you all are trying to do and really how this really fits with, you know, urbanism and New urbanism and creating, places for people.

00:03:12:12 - 00:03:24:15
John Simmerman
Go ahead and I'll, I'll turn it over to you, sort of give an introduction to what it is you are doing. You're cooking up a, a rather interesting little development here.

00:03:24:18 - 00:03:28:12
Scott Snodgrass
I think it helps to to tell our origin story a little bit. Do you want to start with that?

00:03:28:15 - 00:04:01:04
Clayton Garrett
Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, and and I think there's, there's also like the sort of framing that kind of where we are today was, was some sort of intellectual exercise that we got to a goal right when really this was a big part of this. And I think we don't come out. It's just an exploration of of our, you know, lives and then trying to respond and I think appropriate ways and also trying to question like, why are people making these decisions like, you know, one of the things one of the origin stories in terms of our master planning development was we went out to the market to people and asked them, like, if

00:04:01:04 - 00:04:28:23
Clayton Garrett
this was your property, what would you do? And we got a lot of great information. So, I mean, but to kind of circle back to early days and our agricultural roots, we kind of we've, we found each other as a partners in terms of, a small edible landscaping company in Houston. I was leaving a corporate position that was active in management that had just purchased and acquired a building and, and was sort of a nice breaking off point.

00:04:28:23 - 00:04:46:14
Clayton Garrett
I want to do something sort of with my hands in the dirt, you know, a little bit more engaged, on a human level. And, and Scott was already doing a lot of that work. And so, we kind of joined forces and, and again, it was an exploration of, like, what this could look like, what that business could look like.

00:04:46:16 - 00:05:06:25
Clayton Garrett
Fast forward a couple of years and we had a really interesting opportunity where, a master plan in the Houston area was, wanted to do some agricultural components, within the master plan as a theme, but, as an exploration, but as a way to build community. And they needed an outside party to help them with that.

00:05:06:25 - 00:05:31:16
Clayton Garrett
And so we jumped in and, thankfully, there was a they were a great, and continue to be a great partner for us and really had some great leadership that allowed us all to, to explore, what it could look like. And so, and in the long and short of kind of that version and that story is that that company has, six active farms across the country, three in Texas and three in Florida.

00:05:31:16 - 00:05:58:03
Clayton Garrett
And, and a lot of development conversation, ones that are sort of early stage where somebody is interested in putting some sort of agricultural component into some sort of neighborhood or hospital system or, you know, typically, typically for us, it's it's a master planning context. And, and we work alongside the development community and other consultants, landscape architects, to kind of envision what that possibly could be.

00:05:58:06 - 00:06:15:23
Clayton Garrett
And that company community, you know, company we're really proud of, our team members are incredible. I mean, I think it's probably cliche people talk about it, but every day that we get to spend on the farm with, our team is a certainly a highlight of that week. Especially kind of given the, the scale of what's happening.

00:06:15:23 - 00:06:36:03
Clayton Garrett
So there's some of our great team members. We've got goats on our property. There's a very serious looking, some leaders there. Headshots that, one of our great leaders just. And, who really kind of runs the show. So from a development standpoint,

00:06:36:05 - 00:06:59:15
Scott Snodgrass
So we're running farms for, developers, homeowners associations, public financing districts, across the country, like amenity and, like Clay mentioned, we got into all these conversations about development and started seeing how the process works, working with all the associated disciplines, and then very much so, Clayton and I are lucky to be able to have the beginner's mind.

00:06:59:17 - 00:07:25:08
Scott Snodgrass
We find that most people who have our positions in the real estate development world are people who either, have a family history of doing it, and they're kind of taking taking over for one of their parents, or people who maybe came up through in our market, specifically, civil engineering is one of the controlling disciplines that sends people, I know other places in the country, you'll see architects, also becoming, developers as well.

00:07:25:08 - 00:07:57:29
Scott Snodgrass
And so we started asking those beginner's mind questions, and we didn't have any of those preconceived notions or any of those, like, this is how it's always been done kind of moments. And so we were very curious and just openly asked a whole bunch of questions, about the development process. And around that same time we had purchased, a big chunk of land, a couple hundred acres, almost 300 acres, and we had started a large scale vegetable farm, called Loam Economics.

00:07:58:01 - 00:08:34:15
Scott Snodgrass
And so I think we've got some pictures here, from our farm days. And we were Houston's largest direct to consumer vegetable farm. We had 350 families that we sent a box just like that of vegetables to every single week. And, we were selling the restaurants in the market, and you know, we, we moved to large scale planting equipment and harvest equipment, and we're really trying to scale the farm up and get some of those economies of scale, while at the same time functioning in, you know, a chemical free and regenerative model for the land.

00:08:34:17 - 00:09:00:16
Scott Snodgrass
And so we were one of the few farms across the country, really, to push into regenerative vegetables, and, at scale, though not just at the hand scale on a small urban farm like our other farms. And so, we were, you know, farming on this property, going through the struggles that farmers normally go through with, you know, making sure you got a market to sell your vegetables, making sure you can produce enough hiring and training staff.

00:09:00:18 - 00:09:20:04
Scott Snodgrass
And at that same time as we started to develop the infrastructure, the, our county, our local jurisdictions started treating us like a developer. They said, hey, all the properties around you are getting swallowed up by neighborhoods just a matter of time. And so rather than letting us use the agricultural tract, at improvements to the property, they started requiring us to follow the more development track.

00:09:20:04 - 00:09:39:21
Scott Snodgrass
And that amongst the bunch of other things, we said, well, if we're going to be treated like developers, we also realized we were never going to have 300 acres of vegetables. That's just nuts. Right. And, and so that was going to be way too much. And 50 or 60 acres is what we were farming. And we figured that's probably as big as it's ever going to be.

00:09:39:23 - 00:10:05:11
Scott Snodgrass
So at a community, we've been putting farms in the neighborhoods. So in this scenario, why not put a neighborhood into the farm, to support the fun? And we just did the reverse. And we had, unbeknownst to ourselves, been getting this training from the developers that we were working for, that whole time and kind of learning how the process works in our market and learning what questions to ask and seeing the things that we would definitely do differently, along the way.

00:10:05:11 - 00:10:26:00
Scott Snodgrass
And so, and then we were looking at what kind of development we wanted to do, and, and I don't know if you've heard of it, but this little thing called Covid, hit and came along and all development stopped. And we were like, well, what are we going to do? And then all of a sudden, single family homes nationwide and really specifically in our market just caught on fire.

00:10:26:00 - 00:10:45:24
Scott Snodgrass
And it was very, it was a moment in time that, frankly, has allowed us to do what we're doing, like the fact that builders were so homebuilders were so desperate for land during that time to try and capitalize on all that demand. That that's really what allowed us to get our contracts signed and the development going at this scale.

00:10:45:27 - 00:10:50:20
Scott Snodgrass
So that's what we have. Indigo, which is a neighborhood that we're now developing.

00:10:50:22 - 00:11:19:09
Clayton Garrett
And we've, we got some of the loans. I mean, you saw Scott's, picture of his dog there and some some amazing memories. But we also kept, one of our major entry streets is loam. And, you know, it's near and dear to our heart in terms of, like, one of our origin stories, but also sort of this weird way that the classic development, like we are experiencing, you know, the classic development pattern, right, where we had an agricultural property, you know, we happened to buy it where there was already a lot of development around us.

00:11:19:09 - 00:11:38:03
Clayton Garrett
We bought it for agriculture. That was what we wanted to do. Blood, sweat and tears on the land, you know, grew it from nothing to humans. Largest organic farm and, you know, no time, and still incredibly challenging. Right. And, and, and a lot of the ways that agriculture needs to be supported in our country is not.

00:11:38:05 - 00:11:54:16
Clayton Garrett
And we experienced that from a little microcosm where, you know, we just wanted to put at one point, you know, the real origin story of our master plan in a ways like we just wanted to put a restroom on our farm. And so, like for our farm team members, like real Simple, we've got farm team members out here.

00:11:54:16 - 00:12:12:10
Clayton Garrett
We're required under the federal statutes to put a restroom in, the Department of Labor statutes. You got to have a restaurant for agriculture employees. And so we tried to do that and we couldn't we didn't have any city sewer, you know, city services to plug into. And then we, the city to agree that we could put in a septic system.

00:12:12:10 - 00:12:33:18
Clayton Garrett
We had plenty of land sort of made sense. Septic systems are in our area typically. And and so we kind of got stuck between a rock and a hard place. And for us to kind of fight the battle was an economic that it was a time in economics, right, where we had to go and, and really advocate for in certain ways that we just could not fight all of those battles on all of those fronts.

00:12:33:20 - 00:12:51:13
Clayton Garrett
And so, you know, Scott and I sort of looked at each other like, well, if they're going to treat us this way, then we'll become this and then we'll fight, you know, different sort of battles in certain sort of different ways. And, and we're, I think, both incredibly proud that there will be a farm on this property and we'll be it'll look different, feel different.

00:12:51:20 - 00:13:12:05
Clayton Garrett
Its purpose will be different, but it still will be like authentic agriculture building community. And and that's what we purchased this property to do. So in that way, I think it's, you know, it's a different flavor, but it's certainly an absolute, you know, commitment and, and like version of what we accomplish and, you know, this small street after it.

00:13:12:05 - 00:13:18:03
Clayton Garrett
And I hope that that story kind of continues and modifies in whatever way you know, it needs to over time.

00:13:18:05 - 00:13:34:22
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And if we zoom out here on the map, we can see sort of the relative, location that you guys are in. We've got Richmond, obviously. Now, is is the property technically in the city of Richmond? Is it actually within the city limits?

00:13:34:24 - 00:13:58:04
Scott Snodgrass
We had a small slice that was within the ETA. And so for that reason, you know, in Texas, we especially in Houston use, municipal financing. So we have a municipal utility district. And so the city has the right to say no to that in some ways. So it makes it to where you and we always wanted to go and negotiate with the city and find out what they wanted, work with them.

00:13:58:06 - 00:14:25:13
Scott Snodgrass
And so we went through about a, nine month development agreement process and negotiated with the city and, and got just about everything we asked for, including some pretty significant changes to the Unified Development Ordinance. The they taking our minimum lot sizes from 6000 down to 2000ft², allowing us to, to do cottages that don't have garages or driveways that are detached from the right away, you know, all that kind of stuff.

00:14:25:13 - 00:14:34:25
Scott Snodgrass
We were able to go in and negotiate in the city, really medicine, good faith and believe that we were trying to do something really good and wanted to be a part of the city. And so that worked out really well.

00:14:34:27 - 00:14:42:21
John Simmerman
And I can see totally what you mean by literally the communities are being developed all around you. Well.

00:14:42:24 - 00:14:44:21
Scott Snodgrass
Specifically sprawl all around us.

00:14:44:21 - 00:14:48:18
John Simmerman
And so we wanted I was going to let you say that, not me. Yeah.

00:14:48:21 - 00:15:10:19
Scott Snodgrass
Yeah. I mean, Houston is, you know, I think there's 4 or 5 cities in the country that are kind of the epicenter of sprawl, and we're at the top of that list. And so and I think that people are starting to recognize that we've, we've been amazed at how sophisticated the buyers are and how walkability is a narrative that is very strongly resonating with home buyers in the Houston market.

00:15:10:22 - 00:15:35:22
Scott Snodgrass
And so we're seeing that a lot. So Indigo's the name of our, our community. And just a couple of big picture items, you know, 235 acres. We will have, just under 700 homes for sale, a mixture of attached and detached. And then we'll have about 150 apartments throughout the community. And those come in a few different formats.

00:15:35:24 - 00:15:58:27
Scott Snodgrass
Our largest building, I think has 34 apartments in it. But we're doing, you know, we're licensing, optics designs, mansion apartments I'm going to be having. So those in the neighborhood, working on some other interesting projects, a little cooperative housing project as well. It'll actually be a cooperative, that owns it. And then we have, some commercial as well, like you're seeing here.

00:15:58:29 - 00:16:21:12
John Simmerman
Yeah. You mentioned Opticals design. I believe they were involved with cul de sac there in, in, Right. Temping. Correct. Yeah. In fact, this, this little, retail here, a little cafe reminds me of the the awesome little, restaurant that they have right there, in cul de sac. I was, like, staying in the little apartment right across the way from it, the little plaza.

00:16:21:14 - 00:16:46:10
John Simmerman
And, of course, Ryan Johnson, the developer there, at, at cul de sac, you know, really had this vision of being able to create something within the city of Tempe that's very, very close to the university and right along a transit corridor. So they're lucky in that they have literally a transit stop right there. And they're really leaning into trying to create car free living, car light living.

00:16:46:13 - 00:17:24:09
John Simmerman
And, it's it's really kind of, I think, wonderful to see those sorts of creative concepts coming to mind when you look at this particular development with that combination of the connection to the land and the agriculture and green scapes. And then you mentioned walkable, how do you really see that playing out logistically and realistically in terms of, you know, people who may want to live, more of a car light lifestyle, how feasible will it be for them to be able to to accomplish that, given the surrounding that you guys are in?

00:17:24:11 - 00:17:44:05
Clayton Garrett
I think Ryan does it. Ryan. John. Like he does a great job of like, discussing mobility. Rich. Right. So is that the shift on sort of the language? I think it has some nuance for a lot of people, but I think it's really interesting. What I think we've fundamentally done is we really changed the hierarchy, of from a car to the pedestrian.

00:17:44:05 - 00:18:06:18
Clayton Garrett
And so I think from a, from a livability standpoint, like a resident standpoint on the ground, I do think their day to day experience could be very different than the traditional suburban framework, where there really is an invitation to connect with people and the outdoors in a very different way than there is in a traditional suburban marketplace. Right, or suburban, you know, master plan.

00:18:06:18 - 00:18:25:27
Clayton Garrett
So and I think that that's, it's it's like the way we really frame it is it's just a bunch of layers and a bunch of small, you know, it's the summation of a thousand small decisions. And so, you know, there's lots of places to walk to. There's lots of interesting things to see when you're walking in indigo.

00:18:25:29 - 00:18:54:25
Clayton Garrett
There's a purpose that is, you know, there for it, for that actual pedestrian orientation. There's places you can buy and there's lots of freedom that can happen at all ages. So, you know, one of the things that's really happened when we create real separations, I think, is most of your, you know, listeners understand is, we aren't able to connect to other businesses and other places that people want to go because of the, the, you know, the barriers that exist.

00:18:54:25 - 00:19:14:28
Clayton Garrett
So I think when we when we strip away all of those problems and challenges, I think it'll be really fascinating to see how it actually lives for people. But I also have an expectation that it will sort of live in the way that most infill lives for a lot of people in most, you know, major urban environments. And we just happen to be in the suburbs.

00:19:15:00 - 00:19:36:28
Clayton Garrett
And I think from a from an economic standpoint, you know, I fully expect that there'll be significant price appreciation here for the purchasers because it'll be very desirable. And the problem that Scott and I see is like from a cost standpoint, this is the most efficient. There's some absolute, you know, challenges to doing development in this style.

00:19:37:00 - 00:19:59:10
Clayton Garrett
But from an absolute cost standpoint in terms of infrastructure, this is the most economical way to do this right. It's harder on the development teams, it's harder on the infrastructure currently because we're not we don't have a system to do that. And and especially in Houston, but from, from, you know, linear pipes in the ground square, you know, square footage or however you want to capture some of those metrics.

00:19:59:12 - 00:20:21:01
Clayton Garrett
It's very efficient. So, you know, we need a lot more neighborhoods like this. So whenever anybody is trying to do anything adjacent to what we're doing, we're we're pulling out plans and talking about the challenges and letting them know. Absolutely. So, there's a huge master plan going in, that is really looked to Indigo as sort of the forefront.

00:20:21:01 - 00:20:39:05
Clayton Garrett
And we were ecstatic about it because we think it's going to lead to better development, even though there, you know, technically a, you know, competitor. So, you know, really excited about I think the possibilities for how people live. It'll be interesting to see if people can go from, you know, three cars to two cars or two cars to one car.

00:20:39:05 - 00:20:56:28
Clayton Garrett
I think it's absolutely possible. I think there's a good economic argument to make for a lot of families that that's, you know, that, you know, they could even pay more if they needed to, even though they're likely to pay less here because they can drop a car off. But we're still we're on the third loop of Houston suburbs.

00:20:56:28 - 00:21:18:14
Clayton Garrett
So it is very challenging to do anything outside of our direct neighborhood without a vehicle. But you can I think you could certainly go down to one car if you had it, if you were a two car family and somebody was working remote and you had schools, you know, Jason and all those types of things. So, I think it's really exciting for the Houston marketplace, for sure.

00:21:18:17 - 00:21:36:00
John Simmerman
And I know that, in looking at the website here, I see that there's some opportunities for maybe to have a live work situation. There's like an opportunity to do like a little shop and then also, you know, have your domicile there, which is similar to, within, you know, cul de sac. They have a little shop, apartments there.

00:21:36:00 - 00:21:58:23
John Simmerman
And that opportunity and yes, to your point, you know, you're you are sitting in the middle of suburban, you know, sprawl is as we would see it. And so the, the likelihood of necessarily living a completely car free existence probably is pretty small. But to your point, maybe it's car lite and maybe it's the household is is down to one car.

00:21:58:23 - 00:22:28:05
John Simmerman
Because, you know, if somebody does have a local business within the complex there and is able to not necessarily do the the standard, you know, American, North American commute, that's entirely possible. Talk a little bit about that concept in embracing, the walkability as well as you guys are right in the middle of the bullseye zone of of climate challenges.

00:22:28:05 - 00:22:49:03
John Simmerman
And hurricanes that roll, you know, out of the Gulf, heading your, your direction. And so that ability to soak up as much storm water as possible and try to pave as little as possible, I, I love challenging the Dutch and how they really look at permeable pavers and, and doing everything they can to soak up as much water.

00:22:49:09 - 00:23:04:29
John Simmerman
So talk a little bit about that. That concept of the marriage of, you know, walkability and meaningful destinations within walking, walking and biking distance. And then also, you know, integrating with, you know, soaking up as much stormwater as possible.

00:23:05:02 - 00:23:41:07
Scott Snodgrass
Yeah. We so first off, across our entire property, we're only, it's we're 60% open space, across the entire property. So just step one is, you know, finding ways to preserve open space in general. A lot of that we've had to keep open for drainage and detention, stormwater purposes. And so, so that's there are, you know, what we've seen is the counties in the, in the Gulf Coast, maybe 8 or 10 years ago, started getting really serious about drainage because we started having a lot of flooding problems.

00:23:41:10 - 00:24:04:09
Scott Snodgrass
Our storms, while our total rainfall for the year hasn't really changed much. We're getting more in each rain event, and then our rain events are a little bit more sparse than they used to be. I remember growing up where it felt like in the summer you had rolling thunderstorms come through every almost every night, but they just dumped a 10th of an inch or 2/10 of an inch and then went on their way.

00:24:04:11 - 00:24:29:04
Scott Snodgrass
And now we have greater periods of drought and then just torrential downfall, downpours of water. Our property here in Hurricane Harvey, received 49in of water in four days. And so that's about our yearly total. And we got it in four days. And so, we have to prepare for that. So that meant the specifically our county shifting to new rainfall projections using Atlas 14.

00:24:29:06 - 00:24:51:06
Scott Snodgrass
And so everyone's attention kind of shot through the roof how much you had to build. But I think it's a good thing and it keeps these homes safe. It also provides more nature, space, more habitat for wildlife. And so, so not only are we having to, to develop that detention and drainage space, but then throughout the neighborhood, we basically created a street grid.

00:24:51:09 - 00:25:08:20
Scott Snodgrass
We have alleys for most of our homes. We created a street grid, and then we removed every other street, and let the alleys serve the homes and where those streets were, we've created linear green spaces. We refer to them as mews, following after our Peter Calthorpe, you know, kind of language that he's used here in the US.

00:25:08:22 - 00:25:25:15
Scott Snodgrass
So there are linear green spaces that homes front onto that have sidewalks. But they're not like a lot of the ones. Clayton, I went and did some benchmarking and other communities, and a lot of them is that we saw in Texas where like two sidewalks and a and Bermuda grass, you know, that was cut every week and.

00:25:25:15 - 00:25:25:24
Clayton Garrett
Sewer.

00:25:25:24 - 00:25:51:21
Scott Snodgrass
Lines and sewer like sewer lines. And so we said, hey, if we're going to build places like this, they have to be you know, our tagline for some communities is places for people. And so these had to every place has to be a place for people here. And so this was going to be a place for people, and so we've actually designed those meetings where they have, lots and lots of, of green space, small amenities, lots of plants within them.

00:25:51:23 - 00:26:17:02
Scott Snodgrass
I think everyone's shocked when they see the renderings of those spaces, and they don't believe that we're actually going to install them that way. But, but they're they're under construction now. A few of them are almost all the way done at this point. And we're investing in significant landscaping there, which is easy to do when the original budget called for a street, you know, no, no matter how fancy your landscaping is, it's not more expensive than building a road.

00:26:17:04 - 00:26:35:12
Scott Snodgrass
I promise you that. And so, we've we've been able to convert those spaces. So within those, we have low impact drainage facilities. You know, bio swales. You can see here running right to left through the middle of the commons, which is what we call our town center here. We have a bio swale. That runs and has kind of a bike.

00:26:35:12 - 00:26:54:03
Scott Snodgrass
Our north to south bike path runs through it as well. And so that'll be a lot of cypress trees and plants, in those spaces. And a place to hold water and slow it down before it actually enters our drainage system. And hopefully, save a few of our neighbors downstream from, from flooding in an extreme event, we also have farm.

00:26:54:03 - 00:27:15:29
Scott Snodgrass
We have 41 acres of farm. And not only is it farm, but it's, it's farm that's being managed without the use of chemicals and that's being managed towards soil health. And so there will be increased porosity of the soil and increased organic material, which are the two things you really need in order for the soil to soak up that water instead of it running off into the drainage system.

00:27:16:01 - 00:27:20:26
Scott Snodgrass
And so all of our farm will be managed in a manner that's making it just a giant sponge.

00:27:20:29 - 00:27:47:14
Clayton Garrett
I think also when we look at our the I mean, us question about weather and, you know, our farming background, like we look at the weather every day, you know, and in some ways, you know, big there's there's really a thing like this is something you really pay attention to. And then as we moved after we as we shifted really from agriculture to development, from a working day standpoint, we still brought in a lot of our agricultural framework.

00:27:47:14 - 00:28:13:15
Clayton Garrett
Right. And so I think to really answer your question, what we look at is how can we be resilient as a community? How can we build a resilient community fundamentally? And so food and agriculture is one of those ways that we do it, the infrastructure, how we look at that infrastructure. But really what we came to sort of synthesize you know, as we move through the process is like we had to build a community where people actually wanted to know their neighbors and how to do that.

00:28:13:15 - 00:28:31:15
Clayton Garrett
Well, we got to put front porch, you know, we got to have sort of these collisions of people where they can't just drive into their house, close the door, you know, drive into their garage, close the door and never see their neighbors. That's not the type of community we're going to build. But also, like, that's not going to build resilience within the actual framework.

00:28:31:15 - 00:28:51:04
Clayton Garrett
And so we've been through while we were doing this project, we've been through, you know, hurricanes and winter storms and whatever else you can talk about. And the way that people like there is going to be a challenge. Right? We fundamentally know that in some sort of format for people that live here, because that is the nature of our world always.

00:28:51:04 - 00:29:13:02
Clayton Garrett
It's always been the nature of the world, but certainly now it's a little bit heightened. And so then the question is how do we respond? And then what are the things that we can do as developers here to build in that resilience. So we, you know, it's economic factors that we pay attention to. It's the the infrastructure. It's the, you know, simple things like, you know, are we building transparent fences for people.

00:29:13:02 - 00:29:31:13
Clayton Garrett
Right. Or you know, and so it's again, the summation of the thousand small decisions. But weather is absolutely one of those components, and flood waves and, you know, detention and all those things. But we're also trying to build, you know, our amenity lake is a 25 acre lake and, it's a detention lake, but it's also amenity Lake.

00:29:31:13 - 00:29:54:00
Clayton Garrett
Right. So it's it's both of those things. It's not one with and so, you know, I think that's a real solution. It's, a very challenging endeavor. I think, to, to try to tackle things with the end user in mind. I mean, from a development standpoint, because you're prohibited for doing some things, for sure. By by state, you know, by instead of taxes by, you know, legislative rule.

00:29:54:00 - 00:30:09:09
Clayton Garrett
But, but it was also just some framework that we're just, you know, challenged against. Right? And so we're trying to work through all those issues. And that's why you see this look very different than a traditional master plan is like, well, it's intentionally that way to, to, you know, lead to some outcomes that we're trying to accomplish.

00:30:09:11 - 00:30:31:09
John Simmerman
You know, you know, it's interesting too. You mentioned the, you know, the the lake and the the ability to use that as both an amenity as well as stormwater management. That brings back that. My memory of of the lake that's in, in Miller Mueller, or old airport that has been redeveloped into, you know, really a thriving and vibrant community there.

00:30:31:12 - 00:30:52:09
John Simmerman
Obviously that property's quite a bit bigger in terms of size and scope and in the number of households. But, yeah, it becomes just this, you know, wonderful amenity to the community and it becomes part of the green space. And so it's green and blue. You've got the water as well as the, you know, the open spaces there.

00:30:52:11 - 00:31:17:28
John Simmerman
But they also did a great job of doing like a whole integration of pathways and trails throughout the entire property, as well as, the city's streets. And throughout the entire development, there is leaning into, best in class bicycle infrastructure. So they did Dutch inspired, protected and separated bikeways throughout the entire complex. Again, not a fair comparison.

00:31:17:28 - 00:31:51:02
John Simmerman
And just because of the scale of that particular development, you had mentioned in the one, image there of like, yeah, there's a meandering sort of, you know, bike path isn't your, intention that the streets that do exist within the community are incredibly low speed environments, so that they are technically all ages and abilities shared space where everyone could, you know, if they want to jump on their bike and get to you know, this delightful little, spot here.

00:31:51:04 - 00:31:59:15
John Simmerman
They can do so as a family, get on their bike and go there and they won't feel threatened because there's no high speed environments.

00:31:59:17 - 00:32:30:12
Scott Snodgrass
I think that's a, there's a lot of layers to that in Indigo. So one is we have the mews spaces that are completely separated from vehicular spaces. So, you know, kids and families can move. And that was partially done for independence of young children, for a parent to be able to kick them out and know that they were only going to run into 1 or 2 conflicts with vehicles on their way to the Commons, and that on their way here, anywhere that they did cross the street was going to be a raised pedestrian crossing, was going to be at the next down.

00:32:30:15 - 00:32:51:18
Scott Snodgrass
So we do have we have Bob outs and Nick downs, raised pedestrian crossings, raised tables at the intersections, not all of them, but most of them. And then on street parking, street trees. We are we parked both sides of the street, but we're 28ft back of curb tobacco curb, which means it's a yield street. Basically, if you have a car on both sides, traffic becomes one lane.

00:32:51:20 - 00:33:15:00
Scott Snodgrass
So it's going to be slow. I think what we're going to see is that people enjoy using the views to get from place to place. And so that family, their bikes, probably, unless it's a really busy day in the mews, they're probably going to choose to take them use and not drive on the street, but they'll have the ability to if they want to, to get on the street and go and, you know, we can't like our speed limit is 35 miles an hour.

00:33:15:00 - 00:33:31:26
Scott Snodgrass
That's a county requirement. We tried to get to lower it. They wouldn't let us lower it. And so we said, okay, what can we do? All these other things. And they said, yeah, sure. And we said, okay, well, great. Like we all know that speed limits signs don't actually make a difference and that they're created based on the driving patterns of people.

00:33:31:26 - 00:33:53:21
Scott Snodgrass
Anyway, on that 80th percentile, whatever. So for us it was like, okay, well, we'll do everything we can. I think going back now, we probably we probably try to get rid of a little bit of the on street parking because we have it on every single street in the neighborhood, and it's probably just more pavement need. But I think it is it is going to push, you know, push down on those speeds and make them safer spaces.

00:33:53:21 - 00:34:14:28
Scott Snodgrass
That's on our actual streets than the alleys. There's no parking allowed. They're only 20ft wide. There's no curb. There are sidewalks that interact with them all the time where it's just like sidewalk. It's the alley. And so those are really designed to feel a little more fun, earthy, you know, a little more like people should be walking.

00:34:15:01 - 00:34:35:00
Scott Snodgrass
You might have a grills that out on the alley, the basketball goal, you know, kids on bikes, like when you turn off the street onto an alley, every signal is going to be I should expect to encounter people here. Pedestrians. Oh, I should slow down. And and you're also by the time you hit an alley, you're in your last couple of hundred feet till you're home.

00:34:35:03 - 00:34:50:26
Scott Snodgrass
And so that, like that rush can slow down a little bit as you're if even if you are commuting by car. And so we've designed those layers to get people to slow down and to create opportunities for people to choose different mobility options besides the car.

00:34:50:29 - 00:35:04:02
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. On this particular, diagram that we're, we're looking at here, is this, like one little quadrants of the entire, community. What's what are you what is the description of this?

00:35:04:05 - 00:35:21:17
Scott Snodgrass
This is the commons, which is our mixed use town center. So you're basically seeing the the two streets on the right and left of the screen are the two entrances into the neighborhood. So the farm right there at the bottom of the screen, Harlem Road there at the very bottom is our major thoroughfare. It's a county road.

00:35:21:19 - 00:35:44:21
Scott Snodgrass
The farm is kind of like the entrance to the community. And then we've created two blocks of what we think of as very walkable urbanism. You'll see all the park, the sea of parking in the middle. Right. We've, thankfully, there is a shared parking use agreement, in our in our city and county, which allows us to cut 30% off the required parking spaces.

00:35:44:23 - 00:36:04:25
Scott Snodgrass
Unfortunately, with the amount of uses that we have planned in this space, we still need 380 parking spaces. Even cutting it 30%. We created the. We thought the best we could do is let's create two blocks, tuck all the parking in the middle so that most people don't experience it. And all of our businesses, are really engaging with the street.

00:36:04:25 - 00:36:21:08
Scott Snodgrass
And so we want those streets to be the vibrant places. And again, another way that we slow traffic down is by someone's driving down the street and they see a series of small shops and people walking in and out of those shops. It's going to pull their eye away a little bit. It's going to make them slow down a little bit more, as they're driving through that area.

00:36:21:08 - 00:36:40:26
Scott Snodgrass
And so that's what we've created. And so you'll see here the incremental retail buildings, and I think we have the brochure we can look at here, too, but those incremental retail buildings are the ones you referred to. They're kind of live work, but we look at it the opposite, their work live the priority is getting the getting a business to own the building.

00:36:40:26 - 00:36:58:24
Scott Snodgrass
And then if you want to live upstairs or if you want to lease out the space upstairs, you can and we think one of the most unique things about this is like the ones that, I know the ones in cul de sac have been fantastic and they've stayed very well rented, but they're still rental. And the goal here is this is fee simple ownership.

00:36:58:24 - 00:37:21:00
Scott Snodgrass
You are buying the land underneath it, and you are buying the building or building it yourself. And so this is, you know, showing here one option, which is you've got your retail store on the ground floor and you have two apartment units, you know, above it that you could lease out or live in, and there's a bunch of different options for the way these we wanted these to be flexible, but what we're hoping and we're starting to see this with our first buyer.

00:37:21:00 - 00:37:48:23
Scott Snodgrass
We're actually closing in ten days, with our first buyer on these. And, the Small Business Administration has a loan program that works great for businesses to buy their own real estate. You can get an actual 25 year mortgage, which can just bring that payment down so much. And then it's another resilience story. Then if we hit another Covid and all of our retail stores have to close for 3 or 4 months, you own your own real estate and the chances are you've probably built some equity in it at that point.

00:37:48:23 - 00:38:11:14
Scott Snodgrass
And maybe you can refinance, pull some money out to keep yourself going in the meantime. You don't have a landlord knocking on your door. You have a bank who's having the same conversations with every one of their loans you know about. Okay, well, will defer for a little while and figure this out. So those buildings there, we think you're going to be, really important, for, for the neighborhood and for the ecosystem that we're trying to build.

00:38:11:14 - 00:38:26:08
Scott Snodgrass
Not, not only on the residential side, where we're trying to serve all different household formations, but we realized that on the business side, we need to create an ecosystem of opportunities for small businesses to get a foothold and then work their way up until they own their own real estate. And, you know.

00:38:26:11 - 00:38:39:19
John Simmerman
I was going to say, you mentioned that you did have it. You're about ready to close on one of the first of the retail and residential. How about on the residential only side, how those, things been moving along?

00:38:39:21 - 00:39:03:18
Clayton Garrett
Yeah. I mean, I mean, you know, just from a differentiation, differentiation standpoint, you know, there's a tremendous interest. So these are cottages that the image that we're looking at right now, now, there were 17 cottages. They sort of, sit right on the commercial, area and they're, you know, 800 1400 square feet and I think they sold in, I don't know, 45 days or 45 days.

00:39:03:18 - 00:39:28:16
Clayton Garrett
I mean, it's expensive. Every two they increase, you know, the home by, builder increased prices. And so, you know, tremendous attraction. What really what's happening in our marketplace is we're we're offering product that just simply doesn't exist in other places. So, so currently there's 124, homes under construction. We're under contract with builders on 500 plus lots.

00:39:28:18 - 00:39:52:09
Clayton Garrett
And so we've delivered 261 lots essentially right now in section one. And section two is will be delivered this summer. And it's another, 260, roughly lots. And so and then we've got a little bit of a section three that kind of sits behind that. So, you know, our builders are very, excited about sort of the progress and the, the product and who's interested.

00:39:52:11 - 00:40:16:28
Clayton Garrett
I think from a buyer standpoint, this really has resonated in a way that we thought we were doing some interesting and special in a way, but we didn't think that I didn't have an expectation that people would really understand walkable urbanism, for instance. Right. Like and I think at a very fine grain level, people are really, really interested in and get a narrative in a way that's sort of not just a marketing narrative.

00:40:16:28 - 00:40:35:24
Clayton Garrett
I mean, the conversation we're having with you today, we have in a coffee shop with buyers, interested parties, real estate agents, you know, all the whole gamut. And people are like, well, tell me about this one thing, you know, and, and it's a very complicated it a project. I mean, in lots of ways it's very different from our vernacular.

00:40:35:27 - 00:40:54:14
Clayton Garrett
But I think the on the ground experience will be like, oh, of course, this makes sense. You know, it makes sense to have a raised pedestrian table and you like, you see that all the time. People don't really know the language around it. But, if you drive into any mixed use center at Miller or other places, you know, Stapleton, it's like you see the orientation, right?

00:40:54:17 - 00:41:20:27
Clayton Garrett
But people really are starting to understand the technical details and are excited about it. And so some of our products are speaking, you know, differently than we expected. And I think that's fascinating. And, you know, absolutely. The Houston marketplace, as a, for instance, I think will have to trend to what we're doing because of the price, you know, implication for, for land sales and, and, and the economics around density and development.

00:41:20:27 - 00:41:40:20
Clayton Garrett
So, you know, I think we're the vanguard in many ways. Like, I just I don't understand how it could continue to be the way it's been done for the past 30 years. I mean, you just there's too many threads you can pull and say, like, this just doesn't work anymore in that vernacular. So what we're doing, is a new style, but in many ways it's old world.

00:41:40:20 - 00:42:03:18
Clayton Garrett
I mean, it's the way things have been done in every place. And so when we would get pushback from, you know, people locally, you know, we would just simply say, well, where have they tried? Where does anybody try to do an alley load in Houston? And there's not examples. And we're like, this is just, you know, sort of style of conversation that, people don't understand exactly what it means, but our buyers are really receptive to it.

00:42:03:18 - 00:42:23:16
Clayton Garrett
And, you know, are excited about it. And I think it's priced it's really interesting. It's priced. Well, I think, you know, from a resilience standpoint for us to move through almost any market conditions. And then I think each of the product really speaks to individual homebuyers in a very specific way that a lot of the suburban framework doesn't.

00:42:23:19 - 00:42:45:13
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And even just, you know, leaning into the image that we have on site in, you know, for, for the listening only audience, you know, we're looking at, three houses here, the one on the far, you know, a left on screen here, is reminds me a little bit of the little cottage that I live in here in, in Austin.

00:42:45:16 - 00:43:16:19
John Simmerman
You know, it's a 1940s, six, you know, 700 square foot, you know, little cottage. And to your point, it's like. Yeah, we used to build like this, you know, this would be a starter hall, you know, 700ft². That was very that wasn't even considered, you know, a tiny home. It was just a house. You know, before, you know, the bloat of, you know, going up to, you know, 2003 thousand and 4000ft², the fact that, you know, just a simple home of of cottage size and that's that's wonderful.

00:43:16:19 - 00:43:39:14
John Simmerman
And I'm not surprised to hear that a lot of these got snapped up very, very quickly because you just don't see that in the marketplace. So being able to have a small home, you know that is like the architecture here to to your point, if you're Allie loaded, you can actually, you know, create a front porch kind of feel and create a walkable, sociable environment.

00:43:39:17 - 00:43:44:12
John Simmerman
That you're really encourages you to get to know your neighbors.

00:43:44:14 - 00:44:06:15
Scott Snodgrass
Absolutely. And there are pressures in the marketplace that have, you know, pushed homebuilders to larger homes. Like I want to recognize that. But at this time, like, we're kind of doing the back of the envelope math on this and we're like, hey, you're going to you're going to sell a lot more of these a lot faster than you would sell your large homes.

00:44:06:18 - 00:44:27:02
Scott Snodgrass
Like we've just the market has just priced so many people out that you've constricted your buyer pull down to this like literally 20% of the market, like the Houston suburbs. I feel like the master plan community is built in. The Houston suburbs are for the top 25% of the market, maybe. And that's it. So 75% of the market is of just the home buying market, right?

00:44:27:02 - 00:44:56:08
Scott Snodgrass
Not not all people, but people who are looking to buy a home. You've got this huge, huge, huge untapped resource there. And I mean, you know, our our builder on these cottages and their cost of materials and construction labor, $75,000. And so when it's that low, it's pretty easy to make money on a house like this. Not only that, but now as a developer, instead of, you know, these three homes are sitting on what would have been one lot.

00:44:56:11 - 00:45:22:16
Scott Snodgrass
And so, you know, that makes a big difference, that now we're, we're selling three, like, sure, you're per price. Your per home price is lower. But, they built all 16 of these cottages at the same time. And so literally the framers went from one house to the next house to the next house. The sheathing people followed behind, the roofers behind them, the drywall team, you know, plumbing and then drywall all followed behind the whole way.

00:45:22:16 - 00:45:40:21
Scott Snodgrass
And the efficiencies they got in doing all of this fast, I imagine even dropped the price further. And so this can be really profitable for the, for the, the home builder. And so we need developers who can understand how to lay these home products out in a way that's livable. And then we need builders are willing to build them.

00:45:40:21 - 00:46:05:15
Scott Snodgrass
And what we're seeing right now, at least in our market, there's a whole lot of interest from home builders. And looking at these smaller products because they're realizing, like, for someone to buy the first one of those cottages sold for $219,000. All right. You could be a teacher who's married with an, working spouse and a child and afford to buy this house.

00:46:05:18 - 00:46:16:13
Scott Snodgrass
And, like, and no other communities in Houston. Is that realistic? And so, we can build this product and serve those household formations.

00:46:16:15 - 00:46:33:05
Clayton Garrett
There's lots of conversations to do. Like, it depends on who you talk to you. Right. The city would say like, this is a 2000 square foot lot. The cottages as it just kind of continue that. And so, you know, I think the thing that immediately happens from a development like framework is like people are like, oh, I just want to do the whole community just like this.

00:46:33:07 - 00:46:55:27
Clayton Garrett
We're like, no, that's exactly what you cannot do, right? This is a specific product for a specific purpose for a specific buyer. And so that's what we're trying to accomplish. So you know we've talked to a number of the buyers there. You know, I would say there's there's a, there's a there's a much wider range. And I expected a buyer profile within that cottage, product itself.

00:46:56:00 - 00:47:18:08
Clayton Garrett
But, you know, our sort of my hypothesis around this was like, look, in our neighborhood, we're not going to have what is what we would like exist, you know, directly adjacent in our in this sort of, you know, competitor master plan where you have massive in-law suites. But this could function as that a simple, you know, mother in law suite, right?

00:47:18:08 - 00:47:33:12
Clayton Garrett
Where you have somebody that's either aging in place or somebody that lives out of the country part of the year, that wants to kind of boomerang back and, you know, or snowbird or like that kind of framework. I thought we would experience a lot more of that because we've seen that in other markets. And you see some of that for sure.

00:47:33:14 - 00:47:58:29
Clayton Garrett
And so this is like this speaks to people in a very particular way. There's no garage, there's no storage. Like it's not designed to be a place that is an equivalent to a traditional single family home. It's a different experience. And so for some people they're like, yeah, that's my stage in life where I'm traveling like this, like I want a place to be at certain places, and my family's in Houston or whatever it is.

00:47:59:02 - 00:48:25:11
Clayton Garrett
And so that's very attractive to certain folks. And other people are like, I just want to be in this neighborhood. This is what I can afford. And so I'm going to be here until I can move on and I can actually be part of my community immediately. And so as we look through the diversity of the product type, you know, the specificity with what you're trying to accomplish, individual components, I think really does speak in a very different way than your traditional suburban master plan.

00:48:25:11 - 00:48:50:14
Clayton Garrett
And, and I think the velocity Scott mentioned, sort of the, the, the, our ability to deliver lots to builders and our ability to sell to home buyers is increased by our diversity of product. And, and that is a very attractive component to, you know, from a institutional financing institution or a banking or lending framework to say, like, yeah, we're going to move through this neighborhood faster.

00:48:50:14 - 00:49:13:04
Clayton Garrett
And so there's not only efficiencies of the density and the dollars of the infrastructure, but there's efficiencies on the velocity with which we can move through a project. And all that goes to like, you know, we're a relatively small master plan in the Houston marketplace. But, you know, if we were in California, you know, you know, 607 hundred home plus neighborhood would be, you know, pretty, pretty decent scale.

00:49:13:04 - 00:49:28:12
Clayton Garrett
So, I think it's really so many of these components are interesting. I think when you sort of break it apart, it sort of loses its effectiveness. And, you know, I think the cottages are kind of a great example of that. There's kind of exactly what we're trying to accomplish.

00:49:28:15 - 00:49:39:09
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. What is sort of the timeline for the, and projection for having the community completely built out?

00:49:39:11 - 00:50:18:04
Scott Snodgrass
We'll be delivering in early 26. We'll be delivering the last lots to our builders. And so our, our guess is that the residential side of the neighborhood is basically built out and occupied by the middle of 26, you know, late 26 at the latest. And, the commercial side, you know, we don't I don't think we quite know the pace yet, but it feels like it's going to be we've just been kind of testing the waters a little bit and trying to get a feel for how to sell this brand new product type and even understand, like, are there enough contractors who know how to build in this manner, in this

00:50:18:04 - 00:50:32:12
Scott Snodgrass
area? And are there enough architects to understand how to design what the requirements in our area? And we're we're kind of working through that a little bit still, but it feels like it's going to take off. And and on the commercial side, we really expect it to be that kind of critical mass. It's like everybody kind of waits for a minute.

00:50:32:13 - 00:50:50:22
Scott Snodgrass
They see the first 2 or 3 things pop up and then they're like, oh, okay, I do like this. And then there's going to be a mad rush. So we're building an incremental retail building ourselves, kind of like a model, in the homeowners association, we'll use it as an office, but we'll also host events there and have it open all the time for people to see.

00:50:50:24 - 00:51:09:29
Scott Snodgrass
I think once that goes, a lot of people are going to say like, oh, this is a great scale. And I like the way this feels. And, you know, I like being able to to walk upstairs. I think people need to wrap their head around it a little bit more before we fully make that push to go to market and just, start blasting it out everywhere.

00:51:10:01 - 00:51:42:03
John Simmerman
Yeah. I was just over in Stapleton there. And Denver, of course, they they now call it Central Park, neighborhood, community there. And, in, in retrospect, especially seeing, you know, also how the Miller community got developed out. In both cases, I just I wish that they had embraced the concept or been allowed to embrace the concept of having, like, a corner market and little, you know, little businesses integrated in with the residential.

00:51:42:09 - 00:52:06:02
John Simmerman
It's still just feels so programed from a zoning perspective, you know. Yes, the the town center area does have mixed, mixed use with, you know, apartments and nearby, folks. But then you get out into the single family area and you're just like, oh, shoot, I, I'd love to have like a little corner store within easy walking distance.

00:52:06:09 - 00:52:26:28
John Simmerman
I mean, I have that in my little neighborhood here because, you know, basically was developed out, before, you know, the zoning said, no, you can't do that anymore. Do you guys have any flexibility being able to integrate some stuff like that, or is the property probably just too small for that even to be an necessity?

00:52:27:00 - 00:52:28:18
Scott Snodgrass
Or. We're dealing with this right.

00:52:28:18 - 00:52:29:20
Clayton Garrett
Now, actually. We're trying.

00:52:29:22 - 00:52:53:28
Scott Snodgrass
You know, I, we did the land plan and kind of, you know, the, the town, our town center, the commons, and is surrounded almost entirely by section one. So it's kind of like once you do section one and the town center, like you don't really have a lot of adaptability, you know, it would have been better to, like, develop a, a pie shape around the town center and then be able to adapt and fill out the rest of the pie.

00:52:54:00 - 00:53:16:28
Scott Snodgrass
But, I think, I think one of our great failures in land planning was not pulling more small reed small format retail into the neighborhood. So in section three, we actually are adding, we'll probably adding a small restaurant or store into section three. That'll be kind of on a green, and know a little bit of a density node with some, some row homes there.

00:53:17:01 - 00:53:33:04
Scott Snodgrass
We're also in the process of negotiating to purchase the historic train depot and move it to our property. That would function as some sort of an amenity building there as well. But, I think it's one of our great failures. So what are we doing to respond to that? Well, we can't really change the planning any further.

00:53:33:07 - 00:53:55:07
Scott Snodgrass
That's kind of like baked into late. So but we started looking in and with our local jurisdiction, we negotiated to designate our entire property mixed use. And so, so from a zoning perspective, because Richmond does actually have zoning. So from a zoning perspective, it's we're actually clear. So then we were working our way down through what are the other barriers?

00:53:55:07 - 00:54:16:19
Scott Snodgrass
And we realized our homeowner's association restrictions have a single family only every probably every single homeowner's association in the state of Texas. They single family only designation. So we, you know, kind of timidly went to our association attorneys and said, what would it mean to remove this language and amend our association documents?

00:54:16:25 - 00:54:20:18
Clayton Garrett
And that opened a can of work.

00:54:20:21 - 00:54:22:24
Scott Snodgrass
Now. So now we have a new association attorney.

00:54:22:24 - 00:54:23:02
Clayton Garrett
Yeah.

00:54:23:02 - 00:54:32:24
Scott Snodgrass
So we're and and and they are thrilled at digging into that question. Understand it and understanding it. Yeah. And working with, finding a solution.

00:54:32:27 - 00:54:54:24
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because it's not like, you know, you want to open the door to, you know, bringing in heavy industrial or a tannery or something, you know, the whole the whole reason why we ended up with, with, you know, separating out the, the uses is it's not. No, no, no, we just want to be able to walk to a corner store or have a, a pub at the end of the block.

00:54:54:24 - 00:55:16:00
John Simmerman
Something very, very simple like that. We're coming to the close here. Is there anything that you haven't already shared with the audience that you'd like to, get out there in relationship to the community and, and what it means to create a more people oriented place, more walkable, bikeable.

00:55:16:02 - 00:55:37:27
Scott Snodgrass
I think one of the cool things that we've been working on lately, is we've been doing some work on kind of social equity for the neighborhood. And this this all started with the question of, like, who is this neighborhood going to serve? Who's going to benefit from this neighborhood? And the first exercise we did was actually stakeholder mapping for the neighborhood, who all is involved and has an influence on what happens here.

00:55:37:29 - 00:56:00:14
Scott Snodgrass
And we spent like a month like really digging in and doing that work. You know, this was greenfield development, so there wasn't an existing resident class that lived on the property or anything. So we didn't have to do that. And like that would have and very that range even further. But I think we were just shocked as we started looking through the system and were like, how does money move through here?

00:56:00:19 - 00:56:19:01
Scott Snodgrass
You know, like we're borrowing money from a lender. They're making some interest. That interest is going to the state where they're based. We're spending money. Our contractors are mostly local, but not all. And we're looking at where that money goes and just trying to figure out, like in the creation of this place, both. How does money move through it?

00:56:19:04 - 00:56:41:27
Scott Snodgrass
But then who are we creating value for, and making sure that we were specifically targeting, as wide of a range of people and even more, we took we take a targeted universalism approach, which means, we identify the existing conditions, who's being left out of the system as it is right now. And then how do we target some strategies that will help to rebalance that?

00:56:41:29 - 00:57:03:21
Scott Snodgrass
So household formation is one of those things. Nationwide less than 20% of our households are now two parents with kids. Right. And yet in the Houston suburbs, 80% of the homes, 90% of the homes we built are for that household formation. And so, you know, this was something we discovered early on at Indigo. And so that's why you have the cottages.

00:57:03:21 - 00:57:26:03
Scott Snodgrass
That's why we have small square footage, row homes, three stories, you know, narrow footprint, row homes. We have duets. We, we've got cluster homes where four homes share a driveway. The homes are a little bit larger, but the lot small. And you're sharing the infrastructure, the driveway. So it helps bring the price down. So we wanted to serve this wider range of people.

00:57:26:03 - 00:57:47:07
Scott Snodgrass
And that that just took us off down all these rabbit holes. Of all of the ways that the real estate system, has not served everyone in our communities well. And so we built this Indigo equity framework that we've been working on for a couple of years now. Really studying that and helping us stay focused on how we can, you know, our tagline is places for people.

00:57:47:10 - 00:58:01:15
Scott Snodgrass
And so it's intentionally obtuse. It means all people. So how do we go and, and really focus the work we're doing in a way that serves everybody and helps even to repair some of those inequities in the past.

00:58:01:17 - 00:58:31:19
Clayton Garrett
And I think on the the shift there is like, we feel like it's our job as developers to deal with all the problems. So the consumer experience, the home buyer, the resident, the, you know, the guest like that. They're not dealing with any of the sort of classic problems that people have. So yeah, they're going to be things that are different and sort of challenge the, you know, but on a fundamental level, you know, we think it's our job and it's the industry's job to deal with all of the intricacies to make life better.

00:58:31:19 - 00:58:59:22
Clayton Garrett
And the design framework of where you live is a huge component of that experience. And so we just look at, you know, loneliness epidemic, you know, our, our National Institutes of Health, like, you know, our social dynamics and social emotional health. Like you look at, you just start to pick any of those threads and you start to see like, look how we live, how we interact with people are our neighbors, you know, resilience within a community framework.

00:58:59:24 - 00:59:26:07
Clayton Garrett
All those things are things that we actually touch as developers and, and get to have some influence on. And so Scott mentioned the economic dollars that flow through. I mean, Indigo, at the end of the day, we have an expectation will be assessed at it from a tax base value of close to $400 million. And you look at what that infrastructure means and what that valuation means for the county and the associated, you know, traffic and infrastructure and everything else.

00:59:26:07 - 00:59:46:13
Clayton Garrett
And you start to understand, like this is, you know, we have the ability to really make some progress here and in shaping people's lives. That and, you know, the Platte and everything else is going to live here for forever. You know, potentially. I mean, you look at it in Rome and, you know, inner cities and you've got people are dealing with, you know, things that are inflexible for a long time.

00:59:46:13 - 01:00:05:14
Clayton Garrett
So our goal is to be, you know, flexible, pay attention, resilience, strip away any framework. What we think that, will cause problems down the road, even if it creates some other problems. Right. We're going to try to pay attention to it in a certain way. And then really just keep the end consumer in mind and do the work that needs to be done.

01:00:05:16 - 01:00:25:04
Clayton Garrett
You know, in some ways, regardless of the cost associated with it. Because we also think we're building a place is very efficient in many, many ways. So, I'm, I'm hope I mean, you know, both of us in some ways want to live at Indigo. It's like our baby. It's something that we're really passionate about and also don't want to live in a place that, we know too much about.

01:00:25:06 - 01:00:43:13
Clayton Garrett
And have all the answers to. But I think, you know, we're both incredibly proud of of how it's shaping out to be. And we want people to get in there and, and make it their own, and, and hopefully create some lasting memories and be a good economic, you know, case for them and their families.

01:00:43:15 - 01:00:52:05
Clayton Garrett
So tremendously excited about it and so excited about the future, for our projects and, the people there, with us.

01:00:52:07 - 01:01:10:00
John Simmerman
Fantastic. And again, we've got your, website up here, Indigo community, dot com. Scott Snodgrass and Clayton Garrett, thank you very much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast. It's been a pleasure learning about this. And, I look forward to visiting one day soon.

01:01:10:03 - 01:01:13:01
Scott Snodgrass
Thank you. Open invite. Yes, absolutely. Thanks for having us.

01:01:13:04 - 01:01:27:17
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Scott and Clayton. And if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be ordered to have you subscribed to the channel. Just click on the subscription button down below and ring that notification bell.

01:01:27:19 - 01:01:51:01
John Simmerman
And again, if you're enjoying this content here on the Active Towns Channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an active Towns Ambassador. Super easy to do. Just navigate over to Active towns.org. Click on the support tab at the top of the page, and there's several different options, including becoming a Patreon supporter again, patrons to get early and free access to all of my video content, and every little bit helps and is very much appreciated.

01:01:51:09 - 01:02:11:01
John Simmerman
Well, that's all for now. So until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers! And again, just want to send a huge thank you to all my Active Towns Ambassadors supporting the channel financially via YouTube memberships YouTube super thanks. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and joining my Patreon.

01:02:11:08 - 01:02:15:21
John Simmerman
Every little bit adds up and is very much appreciated. Thank you all so much.