Construction Podcast For Manufacturers

ConstructionWire Podcast Ep. 3: Millennial multifamily trends and David Beckham’s soccer super project in Florida.

In this episode of the ConstructionWire Podcast, we dive into some intriguing headlines from around the industry and speak with the Head of MultiFamily research, Andy Jerrick. Host Luke O’Brien and Andy will discuss millennial multifamily trends.

We’ll also discuss this episode’s MegaMap project, a massive concept called Miami Freedom Park, in partnership with soccer star, David Beckham and design teams HOK and Arquitectonica.

For links to some of the projects and firms mentioned on this episode see the show notes below:

www.bdcnetwork.com/blog/emotional-…uction-industry

www.ashrae.org/technical-resources/aedgs
 
www.cleanlink.com/news/article/Gui…Buildings–24131

www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/why-the-con-l

For a free trial of our MultiFamily Construction data: www.multifamilydata.com/Free

To stay in the loop, subscribe to our podcast newsletter here: 
www.bit.ly/CWPodcastSub or via iTunes, Soundcloud, Google Play or your favorite podcast player.

For tips, interview requests and other inquiries:
lobrien@buildcentral.com

TRANSCRIPT

Luke O’Brien:                Hello, listeners, and welcome to the third episode of the ConstructionWire podcast. Remember, this is the podcast that, twice a month, takes the blue pencil to the biggest news in the construction market, and makes it accessible to you.

As always, I am your host Luke O’Brien, and the ConstructionWire podcast is made possible my BuildCentral, the Chicago based front runner in construction market research, whose data keeps you ahead of the game, and knowledgeable to every opportunity available, whether you are a vendor or supplier, contractor or developer, or anything else in between.

Luke O’Brien:                We got a great show for you today. We will be covering the most recent top construction news headlines from the last week or so, making sure you’re staying informed about the market and what’s going on therein.

We’ll also be shooting over to Miami for the Mega Map segment, the part of our show dedicated to the biggest construction projects in the United States, where we’ll be taking a look at what is called Miami Freedom Park, a pet project being developed by none other than soccer star David Beckham.

Luke O’Brien:                Following that, I’ll also be discussing customization, which is already, and is further becoming, one of the biggest trends in the multi-family market.

For that discussion, I’ve invited onto the show our own Andrew Jerrick, the multi-family research supervisor here at BuildCentral, who will be able to shed some light on customization, and what it means to the multi-family market. So, stay tuned, and for right now, let’s kick it off with some top headlines.

Luke O’Brien:                The first top headline that I would like to discuss comes from the bdcnetwork.com website, that stands for Building Design and Construction, and the title of the article is, Emotional Intelligence is Bettering the Construction Industry.

This article was written by Brian Dickson, who is a project engineer at Kinsley Construction Incorporated himself.

If you’re not familiar with Kinsley construction, they are a pretty prolific firm. They do a lot of east coast projects, Washington, Maryland, Virginia. They’ve been around since 1967, I think, and our researchers at BuildCentral have been tracking their projects since our own early days, and they do really great work.

Luke O’Brien:                So, as you can probably tell by the title of the article, again, Emotional Intelligence is Bettering the Construction Industry, this is definitely not a tech and spec kind of article, it’s a little more heartfelt than that.

It is essentially attempting to combat the traditional stereotypes of construction workers. In other words, that they are sort of low brow, grunt work individuals, which really is an insultingly lowbrow idea in and of itself.

On that note, to quote from the article, “Historically, construction has been known as a hard-nosed vocation for tough-minded men who lack book smarts.

This generalization couldn’t be any farther from the truth. Building design and construction is full of both men and women who are skilled and intelligent in how they think and process information. This is significant, because the way people in this industry are stereotyped and perceived has a subconscious impact on their emotions.

Exercising emotional intelligence in the construction industry will help combat this overgeneralized stereotype.”

Luke O’Brien:                I think that is a great point, and I would even take this article one step further and say that construction workers are far from the only individuals being viewed through this particular stereotypical lens.

It is across the board for blue-collar work in general, and they’re simply not being give their due as far as recognizing the level of intelligence and sophistication and skill that is intrinsic to their everyday work.

In my own research on the construction industry during the day to day at BuildCentral, I’m constantly speaking with project managers, and engineers, really all types of skilled laborers whose level of knowledge about their trade is deep, and extremely impressive.

Being able to exercise emotional intelligence on top of that already wide breadth of knowledge, I think, can only increase productivity on their end, and that cultivating a receptive and empathetic work environment will do just that, and help reshape the general public’s perception of construction workers in general. So, bravo, I thought that article was great.

Luke O’Brien:                Our second top headline today is definitely more of a tech and spec kind of article. It comes from www.cleanlink.com. It came out July 5th, and is entitled, Guide Designed to Promote Zero Energy Office Buildings.

Now, this is not so much a written prose style article insomuch as it’s just a quick piece of shared industry news that I wanted to make you guys aware of.

I saw when this first came out that other sites besides cleanlink.com were sharing pretty much the exact same thing, and just to make it easy and to quote directly from the article, “A new publication is now available from industry leading organizations to demonstrate to contractors and designers that zero energy office buildings are attainable.”

Luke O’Brien:                So, the title of the publication that this article is touting is Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small to Medium Office Buildings Achieving Zero Energy.

So, just to recap, all this is, is a new guide that’s being shared online for how contractors and designers can reach the goal of making a zero energy, or extremely environmentally friendly office building.

I thought going a little bit into this subject now during the top headlines segment of our show would be a great idea, and it would prep you guys later for my interview with Andy Jerrick. He’s my coworker at BuildCentral, and we’ll be discussing eco-friendly multi-family buildings a little later on. But for now, we’re going to stick with the office buildings.

Luke O’Brien:                Back to this guide on how to build a zero energy office building. The guide was created by an organization called the ASHRAE.

It’s spelled A-S-H-R-A-E, and ASHRAE is made up of the American Institute of Architects, or the AIA; the Illuminating Engineering Society, the IES; and the U.S. Green Building Council, the USGBC. They all make up the organization called ASHRAE.

So, it’s definitely a prestigious organization, and certainly the right people that you would want to get tips on how to create a zero energy office building from.

So, this is definitely making a splash right now, and I checked out the guides. There are three versions of this guide, one for zero energy building, one for 50% more energy efficient building, and one for a 30% more energy efficient building.

Luke O’Brien:                All three of these guides are available to download online for free to anyone if you go to www.ashrae.org/freeaedg. You will have to register on the website with an email address, but it is a small price to pay.

These guides outline the newest practical products and off the shelf technology that help you reach the goal of more energy efficient buildings.

We will definitely include the link I mentioned in the show notes as well for you guys, just for easy access, so keep that in mind. It’s good to know that zero energy buildings are going to become more and more prevalent in construction.

That is just a fact as the world becomes more and more environmentally conscious, and that is a good thing.

Luke O’Brien:                Creating zero energy buildings, and simply making buildings more eco-friendly create a lot of specialized jobs. It creates opportunities for new HVAC systems, new lighting configurations, adding solar panels, new FF&E, furniture, fixtures and equipment, new OS&E, operating supplies and equipment, all of the above.

BuildCentral is keeping tabs on all the new zero energy and eco-friendly projects going on in the U.S. So, if you are curious about opportunities where you can provide your own services on these projects, or to figure out where and when they’re happening, as always, go ahead and check out our website, www.buildcentral.com.

Luke O’Brien:                The third and final top headline that I wanted to discuss with you guys today was written in regards to the recent repeal of the Florida CON law.

That is the state’s certificate-of-need law, and the title of the article in question is, Why the CON Law Repeal is Groundbreaking for Florida Hospitals. I found this article on the jdsupra.com website, and it was written by Brett Bacot and Dale Webber of Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney PC, which is a law firm and lobbying group based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Luke O’Brien:                Now, for those of you involved with hospital and health care construction in the state of Florida this will affect you directly. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what a CON, or a certificate-of-need law is, nearly every state has one with a few exceptions.

To quote from the article, “Under CON law, nearly all construction, either of new sites or expansions of existing hospitals, was subject to review by the Florida state government.

Hospitals needed to prove that their plans to build were required to fulfill the specific healthcare needs of the surrounding communities they served. If regulators deemed the construction to be unnecessary, the project was killed.”

Luke O’Brien:                So essentially, under the certificate-of-need law, plans for new hospital construction and expansions of existing hospitals were required to prove that there was a need for them, that the community in which the hospital or hospital expansion was going to be located, there needed to be a need within that community for the hospital’s services.

Obviously, now that the CON law has been repealed, private and not for profit hospitals can be built or expanded any time, anywhere, in the state of Florida.

Luke O’Brien:                Now, this is important, because it will likely result in a minor boom in hospital construction in Florida. This will be because private hospitals that already had plans in the works under the CON law to build can now move forward with far less obstacles, and they’ll be able to break ground a lot sooner.

The repeal or amending of CON laws across multiple states besides Florida is definitely picking up speed these days. There’s a few other states that are discussing the emendation, or repeal, of their own CON laws. I think CON laws in general came into effect in the ’70s, and a lot of people now think that a large portion of them are either outdated or ineffective in some sense.

Luke O’Brien:                The Florida repeal took effect on July 1st of this year, so just a couple days ago, and one of the big arguments for the repeal essential posits that more hospitals will promote more competition between them, thus driving down prices for citizens using their services, which is a good argument.

Florida … It’s already gone down on your end for the rest of the 35 states with CON laws. It will be important to monitor the discussions about them, which we on the ConstructionWire podcast will be doing.

Luke O’Brien:                That will end our top headlines segment. Next on the roster is this weeks Mega Map, in which we will be taking a look at the Miami Freedom Park project, which we at BuildCentral have been tracking for some time now. There has been some recent and interesting developments on it, so stay tuned, let’s check it out.

Luke O’Brien:                All right everyone, welcome to the Mega Map, the part of our show where we take a brief, but deep dive into some of the biggest construction projects going on in the United States right now. I’m definitely excited about this one today.

It only seemed appropriate to cover a soccer stadium project following the United States women’s national team having just won their fourth World Cup Championship only hours ago. So, congratulations USA, well fought Netherlands, you both played your hearts out, it was an amazing game to watch.

Luke O’Brien:                So, the project in question that we will be discussing today is the Miami Freedom Park and Soccer Village project. It’s being developed by the international soccer star, David Beckham himself, and his business partner in the venture, a gentleman named Jorge Mas.

We all know who David Beckham is, Jorge Mas on the other hand, he is the current managing owner of Inter Miami CF, which is a professional soccer expansion team. They’re not yet active, they’re going to be based in Miami, Florida, and they are for whom the Miami Freedom Park and Soccer Village project is intended for and centered around.

Again, they’re a new team, and I think they’re expected to begin playing in the MLS, or Major League Soccer, in 2020, and their home stadium will be located within the Miami Freedom Park project.

Luke O’Brien:                So, what exactly is Miami Freedom Park? Like I mentioned before, BuildCentral has been tracking this project since 2018, I believe, and our research has shown that at full build out the development will include a 25,000 seat soccer specific stadium for Inter Miami CF.

I think potentially 750 hotel rooms, 400,000 square feet of office space, it look likes 600,000 square feet of restaurant, retail and entertainment space, and then underground parking for something like 3,000 vehicles. Now, those were the originally proposed numbers.

They will likely be subject to change, although still, recent reports are still quoting the same size stadium, and I think they’ve also added the likelihood of some sort of tech hub to the development, along with a number of public soccer fields and baseball fields, aside from the major league stadium for Inter Miami CF.

Luke O’Brien:                I’ve seen the renderings released for it. It looks amazing. There’s certainly a ton of open communal space. I believe, again, at full build out it’s supposed to cover something like 58 acres of land. That’s what’s being quoted in the news anyways.

Now, thus far, Miami voters, they have voted to allow the city to enter into negotiations with Miami Freedom Park in order to hash out a 99 year lease agreement. Miami voters have basically said yes to the project, but the lease agreement has not been finalized yet. For a project this big, likely over $1 billion in total costs, there are some very attractive aspects about it in terms of how the city is viewing it.

Luke O’Brien:                Annual rent payments are supposedly going to be something like $3.5 million, annual tax revenue as a result of the project will be much, much more, and the construction of the project would not be paid by city taxpayers either, which is very interesting.

In this case, Miami Freedom Park and Soccer Village, it would be funded entirely by private funds, which is impressive simply concerning the sale of it. Now, don’t quote me on entirely funded by private funds, but a number of the developments within it, including the stadium itself, would be. That’s the idea anyways.

Luke O’Brien:                Now, while all this is currently being negotiated in Miami, that’s going on right now, Inter Miami CF in the meantime has also started demolition on another stadium in Fort Lauderdale … excuse me, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

That would be the old Lockhart Stadium. So, that is getting torn down as we speak, and now plans for that location include a total rehab of the old site, and will eventually serve as the new training facility for Inter Miami CF.

They’re also going to be building, I think, facilities for a youth soccer academy out there, which is cool. So, home games will be at Miami Freedom Park, in Miami, and training will be done at the old Lockhart Stadium location in Fort Lauderdale, the latter of which is set to open first.

I’m not sure exactly when, but not long. We’ll obviously be monitoring the construction progress in Fort Lauderdale just as often as Miami Freedom Park in Miami, as well, at BuildCentral, so you can look forward to that.

Luke O’Brien:                Now, I love covering large stadium projects. I love researching them. They’re huge. They’re complicated. There a lot of moving parts to them, but they’re a ton of fun.

They attract a lot of public attention, and because of that they require a lot of really quality work to go into them. Everybody wants a fancy stadium, that’s why all of them look a little bit different, branded a little bit differently.

They’re really impressive, unique structures, and that goes for the surrounding land around the stadium as well. There’s a lot of unique buildings that go into it as well.

Luke O’Brien:                In my experience, work on stadium projects in particular is parceled out to numerous different types of specialties and contractors. A great example of what I’m getting at that’s underway right now is a new football stadium that’s going up at the University of South Alabama.

I found when I was researching that project that Wharton-Smith Incorporated is handling the work on the press tower. JESCO Incorporated is handling the operations building. Dant Clayton Corporation is handling the seating, just the physical seats going into the stadium.

They have Superior Masonry Incorporated handling the concessions and restroom buildings. There’s always a lot of players for these projects, and lots of work to be done.

Luke O’Brien:                In terms of Miami Freedom Park, I think Jorge Mas himself said that it will likely create somewhere in the ballpark of 11,000 construction jobs. So, if you want to stay on top of its progress BuildCentral will be following it the whole time, and if you want in on the data come check out our website at www.buildcentral.com, again, www.buildcentral.com.

Luke O’Brien:                All right, everyone, that brings us to the last part of our show, and this week I made it a point to set aside some time in order to have my co-worker, Andy Jerrick, on.

We’ve worked together for a few years now, and as the multi-family research supervisor here at BuildCentral, he’s uniquely qualified to help shed the light on something called customization. I’ve been interested in customization for a while now, and how it is continuing to grow into one of the biggest trends in the multi-family market.

So, with Andy’s help, I’d like to talk a little bit about it, and what it means for the future of multi-family. Let’s take a listen.

Luke O’Brien:                We have Andy Jerrick here, a close co-worker of mine at BuildCentral. Andy, if you want to just introduce yourself, and what your role is at BuildCentral, I think that’d be a good place to start.

Andrew Jerrick:             Sounds like a plan. So, I’ve been here for just over five years. I just celebrated my little five year anniversary in the middle of June. I currently-

Luke O’Brien:                Congratulations.

Andrew Jerrick:             Thank you very much. Currently, I am the manager of the multi-family research department that we have here at BuildCentral. So, that just sort of means overseeing new apartments, condominiums, town homes, senior housing, student housing, anything having to do with the multi-family space.

Before that, I was just kind of a researcher specializing in multi-family, but I got a little bit of a promotion about a year ago, and it’s been a lot of fun so far. It’s great helping out newer people, and getting everybody on the page in multi-family.

Luke O’Brien:                That’s really cool, man. Yeah, you are definitely the guy I wanted to talk to today. So, obviously the subject of our conversation is going to be customization, and I landed on this topic doing research for our last episode, if you listeners remember, the Mega Map segment that we touched on was a mixed use development in Tysons Corner, and customization, I think, is definitely a product of mixed us projects.

So, I definitely wanted to cover it more in depth, and Andy, I know what customization is in broad terms, it is the idea … It’s the driving force in multi-family development right now, and it’s the idea that developers, and people building multi-family projects are now customizing to sort of fit a target audience, or a sector of the renter population.

So, people are creating really specific kinds of buildings for specific kinds of people, and I wanted to ask you, what customization means to you. What kinds of customizations are you seeing more and more in different multi-family buildings?

Andrew Jerrick:             Sure. I think that the biggest one right now … Everything stems from millennials. It seems like a lot of these big development companies that are building these massive 300, 400 unit complexes are gearing them towards millennials in some way.

Once you start with the overview of millennials, you can kind of break it down into something like artist lofts for creative types, people who work with their hands, who build things, like pottery, and sculptures, and paintings, and stuff like that.

Andrew Jerrick:             You’ll have an entire building, or maybe half of a building just for them, and then maybe in that other half of the building it might be for your normal blue-collar types who … white-collar types, whoops, who show up to work in the offices.

They have co-working space, and big conference rooms, and places where you can have huge meetings. You can bring the whole company to your apartment complex if you wanted to. You can do stuff that way. They have super high speed internet. It’s just all … It kind of just, again, stems from millennials, and you can go in … it seems like now 20, 30 different directions from that.

Luke O’Brien:                Definitely. That’s … I’m sort of glad you said that, because I know that shared amenity space is definitely a big part of customization. More and more places are including these conference rooms, communal lounge space, there’s a lot of ground floor retail going in now that people off the street can walk right into. Do you think … So, your hypothesis is that it really is just a millennial mentality to want more of this communal living type of area?

Andrew Jerrick:             I think so. I think a little bit we’re moving away from living in a town … like in a community of an entire town, and turning that into a community of your building.

It seems like there’s a reliance of having everything in one place, like you said, you have your fitness center, your working areas, your lounge to just hang out with other people, a pool, rooftop decks, grills, all that stuff. You don’t even need to leave your apartment complex if you don’t want to, probably for an entire week.

Luke O’Brien:                Yeah.

Andrew Jerrick:             Other than maybe to go to the grocery store or something.

Luke O’Brien:                Absolutely, no, it’s like the city in a building sort of thing-

Andrew Jerrick:             Mm-hmm (affirmative), exactly.

Luke O’Brien:                … I know that’s a big thing in the Asian market as well right now. So, yeah, I’m definitely on board with that style of building. I know they’re getting really specific about it as well.

I’ve seen a couple of developments here in Chicago going up that includes stuff like podcast booths, like soundproof podcasts booth, that I’m super into, and it really is interesting just to look at how specific they’re getting about these.

Can you … I know that the biggest aspect of customization right now I think is definitely the smart home thing, like how they’re integrating technology into these buildings now.

Luke O’Brien:                You have projects like Smart Brickell going up in Miami. You have stuff like Axle, the 226 unit luxury smart home apartment in Seattle.

I think that was just completed last year. They have everything from Amazon Echo, they have Sonos PLAY, they have dimming lights, smart home speakers, just a crazy amount of tech going into it. I wanted it to see …

As much as technology benefits the renter or the buyer in the building, I wanted to see if you had any insight as to how a smart tech building could help the developer, or help the owner?

Andrew Jerrick:             Okay. Yeah, that is a good question. Well, I would say that it certainly attracts more people, and not even just millennials, it seems like anybody who just wants a slightly easier life, with the dimming lights, and the smart home speakers.

You could even just go farther to, “I don’t want to get out of my chair for the next four hours, so let’s make sure everything is perfect as I want …”, you’re sitting down to watch a move or something like that. You get your popcorn, then you can like, “Lights down.”, or, “Alexa, turn the lights down.”, and boom, it’s all done.

Andrew Jerrick:             It’s all convenience. It seems like more and more we’re just trying to make the most basic of functions, sitting down, more convenient to people.

I mean, that’s really attractive to anybody who’s got the money to pay for it. It’s a great selling point, and you don’t see it in that many buildings. There’s a lot of, like you said, smart buildings and really tech centered buildings coming up, but it’s still definitely in the minority of total apartment complexes.

Luke O’Brien:                That’s sort of a great segue into another thing that I saw an article online a little while ago. It was … The title of the article, it came from CREtech, their blog on their website, and it was titled, Multi-Family Tech Trends Shaping the Future. It came out in January of this year.

A really great point that I thought that they made, you’re talking about how attractive it is just to be in the comfort of your own home, and never having to leave, they talk about in this article the rise of telecommuting as part of the attraction there.

People are starting to work from home a lot more. I’m doing so right now, and I certainly wouldn’t mind a Nest thermostat, or a Sonos Alexa powered speaker system that I could play some music on in the background.

Those amenities are really attractive to people, and I totally agree with you saying that it’s not just millennials who would like that. I mean, the older generation appreciates that just as much.

Andrew Jerrick:             Yeah, you’re absolutely right with that. I mean, we have people in our own company who are in their mid 40s that are working from home too. They’re not millennials, but they can certainly appreciate all those cool things.

Luke O’Brien:                Absolutely. I wanted to ask, just off the top of your head, have you seen … What are some of the specific projects that you’ve seen recently that incorporate this idea of customization.

Andrew Jerrick:             Cool. I will go one farther on that, I was in Indianapolis this past weekend, and I stayed in a building called 9 on Canal, it finished it up I think about three, four years ago, sometime in 2015.

It’s a 300 plus unit project, and it’s one of those city in a building types. It had literally everything. After my girlfriend and I checked in, we just wanted to walk around and see all of the crazy stuff that they had.

They had a massive pool, a huge outdoor deck, grilling spaces, something called the boardroom, which had a couple different conference rooms, and then actually offices with computers in there so that you could have a one on one meeting with somebody.

Luke O’Brien:                Wow.

Andrew Jerrick:             There was a pool table, a lounge, a nice fitness center with good equipment. Again, if I had lived there … They had ground floor … They had a coffee shop on the ground floor, obviously underground parking, and a Burgerhaus restaurant.

Luke O’Brien:                Very cool.

Andrew Jerrick:             If you wanted to eat burgers every day for a week you wouldn’t have to leave your place.

Luke O’Brien:                Yep, yep, yep.

Andrew Jerrick:             Amazing. It was amazing, but-

Luke O’Brien:                Andrew?

Andrew Jerrick:             Yeah, go ahead.

Luke O’Brien:                Yeah, do you think … They touch on subjects like Airbnb as well, do you think the ability to have a unit in building like that, and rent it out, is also deriving the need for customization? I know that’s attractive to people as well.

Andrew Jerrick:             Yeah, definitely, because that way if you are going on vacation somewhere you might not even have to change your routine. You could still go to the gym every single day, in a nice gym.

It may not be as nice as your home LA Fitness, or whatever it is, but it’ll do the job for a few days. You won’t have to lose anything that way. If you wanted to go swimming even, if you were a swimmer you could swim in the pool every day.

You’re not changing anything, you’re just, again, making someone’s life more convenient, even on vacation if you’re 1,000 miles away.

Luke O’Brien:                Mm-hmm (affirmative). So, we’ve talked about the tech savvy millennial generation as being really the driving force, I would totally agree with you on that.

Obviously, the old generation to perhaps a lesser extent, but not a greatly lesser extent is driving it as well. You also mentioned that artist lofts are a big thing right now.

I’ve seen a couple of those go up. They might hire a different artist to draw or paint on every single floor, and just keep that diversity in the building. What other kinds of customized buildings are you seeing, besides artists lofts, besides the really tech kind of homes, are there any other styles of building that are using customization that you can think of?

Andrew Jerrick:             Sure. Well, one of them that is kind of on the come up are eco-friendly buildings, or green buildings, something built with the environment in mind.

One of them is called EcoPhx, it’s in obviously, Phoenix, Arizona, and again, it’s a green building, it’s got a ton of solar panels that produces as much energy as it consumes.

You’re obviously working with conservation of energy as well. It’s going to be about 70 units or so, not a huge place, but still a lot of extra energy being used there, and we’ve been tracking this one for a couple of years since late 2016, and it’s still in the design phase, but it should be hopefully moving forward early next year.

You got a lot of buildings like this. There’s another one up in Minneapolis, the St. Louis Park Eco-Village-

Luke O’Brien:                Got you.

Andrew Jerrick:             Yeah, this ones going to be a lot bigger, it’s going to be about 300 units, again-

Luke O’Brien:                Oh, wow.

Andrew Jerrick:             Yeah, renewable energy source is used to help with that one, transit oriented, there’s even going to be an urban forest with public art that’s going to be somewhere in the building, not sure if it’s going to be on the ground floor, or in the middle, or up at the roof, but-

Luke O’Brien:                Interesting.

Andrew Jerrick:             Yeah, these are really awesome.

Luke O’Brien:                I’ve seen a couple net zero and eco specific buildings, a lot of those are going up in California. I know it’s a lot easier to do a really eco-friendly building on small scale.

A lot of single family homes, especially in California are incorporating solar panels, all this terraforming even to keep both costs and the effect on the environment down, but for stuff like EcoPhx, I know that’s the Habitat Metro project, and I think they found the niche.

It’s a 70 unit building, as far as I can tell, that’s really the sweet spot for providing a decent amount of units, but being able to keep the carbon footprint down as much as possible. Anything over 400 units, that’s a lot. I had not heard about the Minneapolis project. I should definitely check that out. Is that in the BuildCentral database, are we tracking that right now?

Andrew Jerrick:             Yeah. That one we’ve had in since August of 2016.

Luke O’Brien:                Oh wow, okay, and [crosstalk 00:35:58]-

Andrew Jerrick:             They’re still … Developer is PLACE. P-L-A-C-E. Yeah it’s going to be designed by Meyer, Scherer and Rockcastle, also out of Minneapolis, and Stantec’s on that one, as well, as they’re on a million projects.

Luke O’Brien:                Oh, as a proud Minneapolis native that’s nice to hear.

Andrew Jerrick:             That’s awesome.

Luke O’Brien:                Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so Andy, just in closing, is there anything that you can think of that’s really particular to customization that you think our listeners should know about any companies, any projects, any final closing thoughts on it?

Andrew Jerrick:             I think you just have to be ready to evolve and evolve quickly. It seems like a lot of older buildings that were built in the ’80s and ’90s weren’t super amenity heavy like they are today.

There may have been a couple, maybe a gym, or a pool, but now it seems like every building has a ton of extra stuff, whether it’s a smart building with lots of cool tech in addition to the pool and the fitness center, or it’s just the office and the coworking space that takes the forefront. All the buildings being built today have a ton of extra stuff in them.

So, it’s really, I think, up to the developers to evolve a little bit, and constantly be willing to maybe try new things, or go in a direction that nobody else is, like Habitat Metro and doing a lot of eco-friendly stuff. You don’t see a whole ton of that right now. Feel free to just-

Luke O’Brien:                [crosstalk 00:37:36]-

Andrew Jerrick:             Yeah, go ahead.

Luke O’Brien:                No yeah, just I get where you’re coming from. It’s just that foresight. You got to do your market research, you have to understand what the population you’re looking at trying to market is what they want. It’s all about amenities and convenience, and that is the point of customization.

Andrew Jerrick:             That’s absolutely right.

Luke O’Brien:                Awesome. All right, Andy. Well, I think that’s going to wrap it up for now. Thanks so much for coming on the show. I’d love to have you back, and I will be seeing you in the office next Monday, but I hope you had a good fourth of July.

Andrew Jerrick:             I did, I hope you did as well. Thanks for having me on.

Luke O’Brien:                You got it. All right, take care, Andy.

Luke O’Brien:                All right, listeners, that about wraps it up for today. I hope you enjoyed the show. I, of course, want to give a big shout out to Andy Jerrick again. Andy, great talking to you man, hope to have you on again soon. For anyone out there who is interested, we do have another webinar interview with Andy available to listen to, and you can find that at www.multifamilydata.com, again, www.multifamilydata.com.

Simply go to the website, click on the Learning Lab icon at the top, from there click Webinars, and his interview is entitled Multi-Family Deep Dive: Is the Boom Over? It is extremely interesting, and I highly recommend checking it out.

Luke O’Brien:                As always, we will be back with more content, news and discussion about the world of construction soon, but in the meantime if you can hit the Subscribe button on whatever podcast platform you’re using to listen in, whether it’s Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, or whatever else, give us a follow, that would be amazing.

Also, if you liked the episode, go ahead and leave us a five star review, that helps us out a ton. Thanks again for listening to the ConstructionWire podcast, brought to you by BuildCentral Construction Data, covering new projects in the commercial, hospitality, medical, and multi-family construction spaces.

You can grab your free trial and demo today at www.constructionwire.com, again, www.constructionwire.com.

For tips, interview requests and other inquiries:
lobrien@buildcentral.com

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