Podcast Transcript

Chris Arnold: Welcome back to the Transforming Cities podcast. Each episode highlights ideas around rethinking the ways cities are evolving. We discuss planning, design, technology, development and other fields that contribute to the urban experience.

Paul Hyde: The more we kept working and having success, we found it was from collaboration with others and listening to others and solving the problem together that created the good outcome for everybody. I think that's traced to my academic training. Also, it just ended up becoming who we are as a business. I think that's been, at least for us as we've seen, a point of difference in a time where real estate's becoming global. Its owners are national, international that if you could still act local and treat people local, you could have success.

Chris Arnold: On this episode, I'm speaking with Paul Hyde, CEO of Hyde Development, a family-owned commercial real estate developer investor based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Paul and Mac Hyde co-founded Hyde Development in 2012 with a focus on urban redevelopment in brownfield sites. Since then, the company has completed over 3.8 million square feet of industrial and office development in Minnesota, Colorado, and North Dakota. Current developments include the 1.8 million square foot Northern Stacks Industrial Park in Minnesota, and the 1.7 million square foot 76 Commerce Center project in Denver. In addition to his development work, Paul has been named to the Business Journal 40 Under 40 and one of the 100 people to know in 2018 by Twin Cities Business.

Chris Arnold: A few quick notes before today's episode. If you enjoy the podcast, please share this track and others on your social accounts to people you think would be interested. Also, please rate it on iTunes or other platforms where you listen. This is how we grow, and it's much appreciated. This podcast is driven by Authentic Form & Function. We're a design and technology studio working on tools and platforms to improve the urban space. You could find out more online at authenticff.com. Finally, we want to hear from you. Email your feedback and ideas and who else we should speak with to podcast@authenticff.com. I'm your host Chris Arnold. Let's jump on in.

Chris Arnold: Paul, thanks so much for joining me today.

Paul Hyde: Hey, happy to be here.

Chris Arnold: You live and work in and around Minneapolis these days, but you also grew up in the area. What were you like as a youngster living up north?

Paul Hyde: The great north. It didn't used to be as cold as it is now. Thank Game of Thrones for that. Pretty average kid. Very lucky to have a wonderful mom and dad. I was the oldest of three. Wasn't a particularly over-achieving kid in elementary school and grade school and middle school and was alerted to that. Just loved being outside. When I was a really little kid loved playing with trucks back in the day they were called Tonka toys. They were made actually in Minnetonka, Minnesota, hence the name. They were replicas of all the sort of irons you'd see on a construction site. Loaders, excavators, off-road dump trucks, compactors, etc. I loved playing with those. My dad had built a gigantic sandbox at our house in the backyard. That's where I grew up playing in the sandbox.

Chris Arnold: When you say a big sandbox, you mean a very big sandbox, right?

Paul Hyde: Yeah. This wasn't one of those little rinky dink things like the size of your plastic pools. I mean, it was probably 75 square feet or something like that, maybe 100 square feet, really big. These, for me, I found it allowed my imagination to expand because you had to, in my mind, kind of develop all that sandbox with different things and roads and different uses. Yeah. I didn't figure that out until I was older, but that's where it started.

Chris Arnold: Yeah. No. As I understand it, I think you told me the story about how quite a few public schools were actually shutting down as you were growing up. By the time you were preteen and teenager years, you actually had to end up going to a private school. Is that right?

Paul Hyde: Yeah. Yeah. I was on the end of the baby boomer era. A lot of those schools that were built for the baby boomers didn't have enough kids anymore. There was a massive consolidation of these baby boomer schools. I was getting consolidated along with a number of other schools. My parents decided to send me to a private school where I went seventh through twelfth grade. A place that my dad had gone, a kind of a college preparatory school that was more academically rigorous and started to challenge me. It ended up giving me some opportunities in terms of college that were meaningful in my career path.

Chris Arnold: Do you find yourself still doing things like building or kind of exploring the design and architectural sides of things as you were in high school as it evolved maybe away from the sandbox?

Paul Hyde: Yeah. Not as beautifully as you put it, but more on the labor side. I started out mowing lawns, but then ended up working for a friend of mine whose dad had a number of car dealerships and different real estate, as sort of a laborer. I would work, whether it was mixing concrete or hauling bricks or block to the masons or cleaning buildings or putting down different floor surfaces or doing demolition or outside landscaping. Painted a water tower one summer. A lot of labor stuff into high school and through college.

Chris Arnold: Speaking of college, I know that we're moving right along here but that's great because I'm excited for this next phase and some of the stories you have. When it came time to go to college, you ended up setting sail for the East Coast. Where did you end up and what did you set out to study?

Paul Hyde: Yeah. The school I went to was a college preparatory school. It pushed kids, at least in our town, to leave the state to go to school. A lot of folks went to Denver or some went to California or Seattle or Portland. A number of them went out East. I ended up going to a college in New London, Connecticut called Connecticut College which is now a co-ed school, but was originally one of the seven sisters. Seven in all women's colleges that some went co-ed, some that have stayed single sex. It ended up being a great environment for me because it gave me the chance in a small liberal arts environment to kind of explore and to get a bunch of leadership positions and student government and so forth that really helped me grow kind of beyond the classroom. It ended up being a great experience.

Chris Arnold: You didn't actually go to school for any sort of architecture or building-related degree. Is that right?

Paul Hyde: Yeah. In the classic liberal arts tradition probably a fair amount of real estate developers, I went just for a liberal arts degree and I had a double major in anthropology and history. Well, that has absolutely nothing to do with commercial real estate and the math and the mechanics of it. I think it has everything to do with understanding people and communities and culture and developing an ability to listen and empathize with others that I found is so vital in terms of how we relate to our communities that we're active in and to our tenants and to our stakeholders.

Chris Arnold: You said to me that the empathy that you gained from that time traces all the way to some of the relationships and some of how the deals have come together for you to this day. How do you think that that has translated over the decades?

Paul Hyde: I think everybody kind of has to find their own style. I think whether it's the business news publications or our culture it sort of promotes this idea that you have to be super tough and super aggressive and win at every encounter in order to be successful. I thought that for the first few years, and the more we kept working and having success, we found it was from collaboration with others and listening to others and solving the problem together that created the good outcome for everybody. I think that traced to my academic training. Also, just ended up becoming who we are as a business. I think that's been, at least for us as we've seen, a real point of difference at a time where real estate's becoming global, and its owners are national, international that if you could still act local, treat people local, you could have success.

Chris Arnold: Yeah. I would say, from what I understand, that is probably also tied back to what you did on campus outside of the classroom at Connecticut College. You were also into student government and honor core. Can you tell us a little bit about that and those experiences?

Paul Hyde: Yeah. Just certainly never set out to do it, but kind of like a lot of things in life, you sort of fall into it or somebody has this idea of, "Hey, I want to run for this student government position. Would you run with me?" That's what happened. For me anyway, I had those opportunities at a smaller institution, and was able to run. Yeah. I won every single time. We went to student activities counsel representatives for sophomore class. Then became the chair of the student activities council where I managed a budget and all the on-campus concerts and entertainment for a year. Then flip flopped to becoming the head of the judiciary board or honor core, I guess you'd call it. It really gave me a good experience, not only interacting with other students but in respecting that different people had different roles.

Paul Hyde: Then, working with the administration and the Board of Trustees, ultimately, to get stuff done. That really became the ultimate measure of, "Did you get something done?" You can see a lot of people that sit there and complain and that's fine and it makes them feel good, but nothing ever gets accomplished. I was always concerned with getting something done. That really helped give me the first introduction to that, and frankly, the self-confidence to do that.

Chris Arnold: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. As you rose through the rankings in that college environment, one might think that after you graduated you've gained these valuable skills. Not only in the classroom but also with communicating with others and certainly the empathy side of it, early leadership skills. At that point you are heading out into the real world. In theory, it's time to jump right into a job, but that's not what happened, right? What's the story there?

Paul Hyde: Yeah. It seems so clear now. My father had always been a lawyer. I guess I sort of defaulted into that as being the trajectory for me after school. That was the plan. After we graduated, a bunch of friends of mine and I went to Newport, Rhode Island. We all worked at the Tennis Hall of Fame which is the actual international Tennis Hall of Fame. They have a couple tournaments there, and it's also a club. I ended up working on the grounds crew. You see the manual labor thing again. From that, in a small capacity really developed, along with my work in high school, an appreciation for the men and women that actually do the work, the construction work, whether they be earth workers or iron workers or carpenters or laborers or cement masons. Once you've done that kind of work, and you know how hard it is, and you know how hard those people work, you really have a respect for them that I don't think you otherwise would get. I got that in part from doing that Tennis Hall of Fame experience.

Paul Hyde: I also met a lady out there who, we started dating and her dad was a real estate developer. I just really enjoyed learning from him about the real estate development business and what was involved. That was my real first exposure to the nuts and bolts of what it is and how you do it. I just absolutely loved it, and was able to kind of get the real estate bug from him in the years that we were dating. It turned out that wisely, I think, on her part she decided not to follow me back to Minneapolis, and stayed in a beautiful oceanside manor in Newport, Rhode Island. It was a wise choice. That relationship went its way, but I had discovered the real estate business. That's what led me into kind of starting our own company.

Chris Arnold: I think you were speaking to it in a little bit of a shy way because the way that I understand it is, it was actually kind of another league in terms of the type of people that you were able to get access to and almost understand and observe at an early age which in, I think, many ways probably also translates into the development career that you've built today.

Paul Hyde: Completely. I got elected to the Board of Trustees after my senior year in college. I served for three years on that Board and was treated as an equal among Wall Street bankers and famous East Coast families and intellectuals. After three years you're not really intimidated by that, at least I wasn't. Really got to know them and how to speak and talk to them and get things done.

Paul Hyde: Then, the same was true with this woman I met in Newport. Her family knew a lot of very famous people from Martha Stewart to Ivan Lendl to Roger Staubach, who was in the real estate business. They're just regular folks. Once you get to see them and get to know them like that it's, "All right." Whether I'm going to talk to a big investor or bank or city council or political official about a project we're doing, they're all just normal people, too. You're able to be a lot more comfortable in your own skin which makes you communicate more effectively. If we're doing our job, it hopefully allows us to convince them of some of the merits of our point of view. Ultimately, that leads to getting projects done.

Chris Arnold: Right. One might think, early career now. You're transitioning right into the real estate world, but there is something that happens between that experience and actually getting started with your entrepreneurialship. How would you describe that because I think that's a really interesting piece of the puzzle for the Paul Hyde story so far?

Paul Hyde: Well after college, got the real estate bug. I still was following this idea of going to law school. Went to law school. My dad had done that, and I ended up just loving it. I went to a very diverse school in Boston called Northeastern and as a white male I was the minority which probably was not the case at most any other law school in the country at that time. Again, it opened my eyes to all sorts of diversity. Also, taught me kind of the rules of the game. I never wanted to be a lawyer, but I sure enjoyed school because you learned laws what governs all of our relationships, our transactions, etc. etc. Once you know that, again, nobody can take that from you or tell you that you're wrong when you know the actual law yourself.

Paul Hyde: I loved law school, but graduated in a really crappy economy in New England. At that time, tech market crash of the early 90s. Went and got a Master's Degree in Banking Law and Finance at BU which was helpful because now I knew not only regular law, real estate law, corporate law, but I knew what the banks ... how they were regulated. I knew how to do loans and loan documents. That gave me a lot of information in terms of ... a huge part of our real estate development process is getting the capital and that usually majority comes from banks.

Paul Hyde: Still I didn't know what I wanted to do, Chris. I went at the suggestion of my mom to some career counselor and after two days and $500, he told me I should be a baker, a politician or a rodeo clown. Real estate nowhere in the mix and it wasn't until my engagement to this gal I'd broken off that I'm, "You know what? Screw it. I've got nothing left to lose. I've worked as a lawyer for nine months after law school and moving back to Minneapolis. Paid down all my loans and while it certainly wasn't cool, move back home with mom and dad and started a company in their basement with a $12,000 Gateway computer that weighed about 500 pounds and AOL dial-up Internet... is to research what was a fast developing arena in states which was the redevelopment of polluted sites.

Chris Arnold: Yeah. Talk about that. This is mid-90s, AOL years, we all remember that time. That dial-up sound, I think, is probably permanently etched in our memories. You started to take a closer look at your dad's work. Talk to us about how that evolved and what that meant for you.

Paul Hyde: Yeah. Just another example of kind of life happening to you, and just having your eyes open to it. I think the moral when we're done is you can't just force this stuff. You've just got to see what comes your way. Be open to it, and then kind of roll with it and try it out. In that case, I was telling my folks and my dad, I'm, "I just hate being a lawyer. I hate the narrowness of it. I just don't like the idea of the only way you get paid is your billing other people. You're worrying about billing people when you're eating a sandwich or running to the bathroom. It just wasn't a program I wanted to sign up for." He was an environmental lawyer his whole career. Minnesota was the first state in the country to pass comprehensive laws to encourage the redevelopment of polluted sites. Why was this a big deal?

Paul Hyde: If you remember, the dawn of the environmental movement was really started by Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring where she was the first person to start to connect the impact of the Industrial Revolution, the development of industrial America, new man-made chemicals, and the disposal and use of those chemicals, it's impact on human health and the environment. It wasn't until 10 years later or more, 20 years later, that the Federal Superfund law was passed and that had a cataclysmic effect on real estate development. Why is that? Because the superfund law without knowing what it was doing, imposed liability on anyone it could find related to a polluted site. Whether it was you who just bought the site and never polluted a day in your life or someone that owned it 20 years ago or someone that hauled something to or from the site. Whether it was a bank that loaned to somebody who owned a building on one of those sites.

Paul Hyde: Everybody got dragged into the mud, and had potential liability for 100% of the cleanup cost. The result of the superfund is, a) it was a lot cheaper for companies to fight than to actually clean, and b) anything that had a whiff of an environmental history was passed over from a real estate perspective. It had a massive, massive impact forcing urban sprawl because any growth, whether it was homes or retail or office or industrial, wanted to jump over the older sites because they could be sued for having some environmental liability there. They went to the farm fields. It wasn't until the 90s that states and cities started to say, "Wait. I'm an entering suburb like Denver or a first ring suburb. I'm getting left behind. All these companies are fleeing my community. I have a significant reduction in my property tax base because these buildings are no longer occupied. I still have the same bills to pay for school, fire, police, etc. We're in real trouble here."

Paul Hyde: It's when those communities started to push back, and states, not the feds, responded by passing their own laws saying, "We will allow innocent people, innocent developers to develop the site and anyone from their bank to their tenant to their successor will share that exemption from liability in exchange for doing a cleanup. Once that cleanup's done, the state will issue you a liability protection. Now there was a carrot for developers to do cleanups and to take on polluted sites. Typically, it was supplemented by grant programs of various sorts which helped cover that extraordinary cost of doing that environmental remediation and getting the site clean again. My dad did the first couple of those in the State of Minnesota and that's where I started to get the bug from him.

Chris Arnold: You wrote a business plan actually around this strategy and you, I believe it was for the first decade of the 2000s, you had the first iteration of your business based around these principles. What were those projects like?

Paul Hyde: It was a very interesting time because there was no clear path on how this would end up impacting the commercial real estate community. It doesn't matter whether it's apartments or shopping centers, etc. There was a number of folks, Denver and Minneapolis were really two of the biggest hot spots for leading the movement on this which is really cool. Where I first saw and fell in love with Denver, there were a number of environmental insurance companies started in Denver. There were several development companies that focused only on cleaning the land and then slipping it to a later developer. We quickly learned that that's kind of selling yourself short. That the real thing that this is about is trading environmental risk for better real estate risk. That we needed to see the project through, not only through the cleanup but to develop the buildings, lease them up, own them and manage them.

Paul Hyde: Then, you had a competitive advantage to the folks out in the suburbs beating each other's brains in with similar projects across the street from one another. That's how we executed our business plan under ... our name was Real Estate Recycling really from the mid-90s through 2012.

Chris Arnold: Okay. I believe it was right around that time, too, that your business actually pivoted entirely which is really fascinating to me. It goes back to what you said around not trying to force things and really sort of pay attention to maybe what needs to get done or what the opportunities are. Around that time, you official started what is today Hyde Development. You mentioned this idea of cycles in the industry that can spark ideas and new business practices. What was that transition like and kind of walk us through that shift?

Paul Hyde: Yeah. You really have to be open to and enjoy change, I think, to be successful. At least from my view in the real estate business. We saw two things. We saw the real estate market, which has always been a cyclical business. There are periods where there is development happening. Then, there's periods of slow down when there's less capital, etc. There have been different reasons for the slow downs in different cycles in the past from 9/11 to a Russian bomb default crisis in the late 90s. What happened in 2008, which has been well documented, was a capital crisis, a liquidity crisis caused in large part by overzealous lending, primarily in the residential real estate business. Also, in the commercial business where these loans ... people had loaned more money than the projects merited, whether it was good or bad. All of a sudden the music stopped and when that happened all the liquidity just got sucked up into nothing.

Paul Hyde: Even though you owned stuff, you couldn't borrow or sell. It just froze for three years. That was a very good lesson for many of us, and we survived, a) because we didn't have a ton of big vacant land positions or big empty buildings, b) we kept a bunch of our buildings, so we still had some income coming in, and c) we hadn't grown our overhead so big that you couldn't afford to feed the people working for you. At the same time that that was happening, on the environmental side you saw a shift from our first project in 1997 which was really regarded as kind of a big deal taking a pretty significantly polluted site and turning it into a building that we sold to a publicly traded REIT that kept getting more and more routine which is a good thing. There became less and less opportunity in just the polluted sites. More and more people were comfortable doing them because the program in the states was working so well. The banks were more and more comfortable with doing that kind of deal.

Paul Hyde: We pivoted in 2012 to say, "Okay, on the environmental side, you can't just stick to a polluted site. That's too narrow." What we're really talking about in this cycle is an infill site. Our sites were polluted which meant they were using in the entering suburb or first entering city or the first string suburb, infill became the new word and as it happened, became the new hot trend in the real estate community. We saw these new influx of capital after having seen so many people get burned or nearly destroying their business in the last cycle, using just their own money. There was now an influx of global capital that has continued through this day. You make those people your partners now. That helps you diversify your risks. Takes advantage of what we're good at which is being a developer and an operator. With having less of our capital on the line, it allows us to do more work and have less risk. That's not just us that figured that out. That's kind of a new model these days which is capital partners and infill projects.

Chris Arnold: Yeah. I think that you also referred to it as the value adds cycle which you've done on quite a few of your projects. I think you've mentioned to me 76 Commerce Center outside of Denver, something similar that you did with Lynn Hall in Minneapolis. What are a couple that come to mind that are worth mentioning that follow that new trend?

Paul Hyde: Yeah. Our project in 76 Commerce Center in Denver, just north of Denver in Brighton is a great example. Rightly or wrongly, we looked at Denver for three years and really enjoyed the market, saw a much more stable economic base than it had been in the past which is more speculative oil and gas, kind of upsy-downsy. It's a very different economy in Denver these days. When we look for sites, we kind of saw sites where everybody else was. Then we said, "Where's a value add site for us?" We ended up buying a 122 acre site in Brighton, Colorado, right on I-76. Why was that a value add site? Well, we were kind of pioneering in the real estate term. There were not other people up there looking at this location. We got the site at a good price which gave us some breathing room to be more aggressive on rental rates if we had to, to compete with the established I-70 Airport sub-market. We saw an interstate site with premium visibility and direct link to I-80 which is one of the major east west intermodal transportation routes in the United States.

Paul Hyde: For whatever reason, it had been overlooked by some of the folks in Denver. We've got one building up and leased. Our second building will be done in the spring. They're seeing a lot more attention on I-76 quarter right now. I'm aware of at least four other sites that are about to or are for sale near or around us as well as other developers starting projects on I-76. That's what we try and do is find a way to add some value as opposed to just copy what other folks are doing.

Chris Arnold: Yeah. From my own observation you, and I say you in terms of Hyde Development, your entire team, does a great job creating places to work that aren't the trendy downtown office spaces but that bring those same amenities and those same concepts into these spaces that are maybe a part of different industries and business that aren't necessary up a skyscraper in downtown Denver, downtown Minneapolis. In other words, you can build the cool urban projects but you've been able to take that skill set really into these more niche narrow industrial campuses. I guess you would say that's by design, correct?

Paul Hyde: Yeah. I think maybe it comes from having worked in labor fields. Maybe it comes from some of the anthropology or empathy ideas. We're also very fortunate to have some groups. My friend, Max Musicant, who's started to realize that you can program spaces. At first that sounds really nebulous, but when you look at 76 Commerce Center or our Northern Stacks project in Minneapolis both 1.8 million square foot, 120 acre sites. These projects are going to have 1,000 to 2,500 people working at them every day. If you can give them trails to walk on, activities during the week, and food trucks on Fridays, and something that makes it feel more like a neighborhood and less just like an anonymous Mr. Robot dreary business park.

Paul Hyde: You're going to find that not only do the workers like it more, but they tell their bosses and the boss is in a competitive environment to find help, that they've got a place that's easy to recruit and retain workers which will likely lead to happy tenants and hopefully lease renewals. It's the right thing to do. It's a concept we sort of pickpocketed from the office folks who are doing it in a big office towers as you noted. Boy oh boy it's really working. I think that the culmination of that is we just opened a brewery at our Northern Stacks project. We're going to try to do the same thing in Denver. It's become kind of the neighborhood Cheers for the industrial park. You get all these different folks working in different buildings meeting each other. It's really cool. It creates community outside of the house. That's really when you're doing the development stuff right.

Chris Arnold: Talk to me a little bit about the idea of scale these days as compared to two years ago. I know that you had a couple good thoughts there and I don't want to move by those quickly.

Paul Hyde: We talked about the two trends, sort of value add, infill. Then the capital piece. I think scale is the third big trend. If you said, "Geez, Paul, what do you have your eye on?" It's scale. Why is that? There's so much money in the world in this economic environment not earning a return. Whether it's Japan or many parts of Europe, zero percent interest rates or even negative interest rates and that money wants to find a place, not only to not lose its principal value, but to earn some return. Real estate's become a very good way to do that. A much more appreciated way than it was in the past. That's lead to global inflows into the United States of capital, and that there's so much coming in, it wants to move itself in big chunks. That wanting to move capital in big chunks leads to scale.

Paul Hyde: You're seeing it with the Prologis acquisition of Liberty Property Trust. They bought several other REITs. You're seeing it with Blackstone buying other real estate companies. They will tell you that they only can afford to work on stuff that's a $50 to $100 million transaction because there's so much money coming in if they spent it in smaller bites, they're actually behind in terms of the money coming in and getting in place. That leads to scale. For us to be successful, we want to be able to have scale to be able to attract those folks as investors or buyers of our projects. It also gives you exposure in a market where it used to be a number of small local folks each with a building. I think these days, at least in the industrial world, you need to have pubs.

Paul Hyde: We saw that leasing 76 Commerce Center. We've seen that leasing Northern Stacks. Hey Tenant A, I can't put you in building 5, we just filled it up. We can accommodate you in the next building because we're building that one right now. Once that one's going up, we've got another one coming after that. That ability to have 1.8 million feet, 2 million feet and not just 200,000 feet allows you to stay and be active in the market.

Chris Arnold: As we begin to wrap up, Paul, you've made some great points around three key themes. That's a great segue into this final question which is around the cyclical nature of the industry and kind of your vision, your forward-thinking visions around what's next for Hyde Development. How would you describe Hyde Development's mission looking forward? What do you look towards? What are you seeing in the next 5 to 10 years yourself?

Paul Hyde: Yeah. I'm certain there will be change that we don't know or think of now. We better be ready to move towards that. We're always open and looking to that trying to learn seeing what's changing. I think you're going to see as a result of this trend toward scale as we discussed, there's going to be a reduction in the number of kind of the local family-owned developers that were the bread and butter of the 90s and up through, I'd say, 2004 or 2005 or 2006. You're going to see more large international investors trying to partner with smart local operators who can take their capital, put it to work in a project, and go through the work of getting the building developed and title and leased, etc. I'm trying to position ourselves to be that kind of person where we've got a track record and we've got a point of difference that some of those folks are going to be interested in. That will be the path of the future.

Chris Arnold: Paul, I really appreciate your time today. I have one final question and this is kind of the red carpet question. Who else should we be paying attention to out there that's doing ground-breaking or inspiring work? You have so many great ideas and so many great observations, I'm really curious who comes to mind.

Paul Hyde: Yeah. I'd say it's different people in different markets. I've always admired United Properties who's active both in Denver and Minneapolis. There a family-owned business but they've figured out how to play with the global capital. They're still fast and nimble. It's folks like that that I emulate. It's also folks that are willing to take risks with things that don't seem conventional. Both our 76 project and our Northern Stacks project, when we first started, plenty of people turned up their noses at us or behind our back. I say that just as a fact, not as anything I'm proud of. Once you validate the project in the location, then they start to say, "Oh geez, tell me do we need a site up there?" I like looking for those kind of people that are willing to take that sort of risk. In Denver, I think of McWhinney who really did that with Union Station. The change is downtown. That was a big risk. I'd say the same of my friends United Properties here in Minneapolis. You've taken on hard projects that need vision, then end up making them a better community.

Chris Arnold: Yeah. That's fantastic. We'll be sure to add those into the show notes for the podcast here. Paul, before we go, please tell us where to find you, what you're up to. Any links or suggestions if folks want to follow up with you or Hyde Development?

Paul Hyde: Yeah. Thanks for asking. Our website HydeDevelopment.com is the best place. That will have links to each project's specific website, so if you're interested in some of the kind of creative brick and timber projects that we've done, you can see those. If you interested in some of the large industrial parks, you can see those all on our website, HydeDevelopment.com.

Chris Arnold: Great. Paul, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a pleasure chatting with you.

Paul Hyde: Thanks. Thanks so much.

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Podcast: Smart Infill and Industrial Campus Projects

Podcast Transcript

Thinking about your next project?