82: Building the Largest US Private Development With Dean Shapiro

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This is Real Estate Investing Live from New York with James Nelson, the principal and head of Avis and Young's Tri State Investment Sales Group. In this program, you'll learn about the world of commercial real estate and find out why it's one of the largest investment opportunities in New York and around the world. Now here is your host, James Nelson.

Welcome everyone to show number 82 of real estate Investing Live from New York. This is your host, James Nelson. I am principal and head of Tri State Investment Sales at Avison Young. And thank you again for listening in and really appreciate. It means so much to me to see the comments, the ratings, the questions that are coming in. I've been getting a lot of activity on LinkedIn, which I love. I think it's such a powerful network there. So if you haven't done already, link in with me at James NelsonMYC. You can also follow me on Twitter, Instagram. You get great updates on the shows and also research that we put out. I've got the Clubhouse show that we're now doing on the first and third Thursdays of the month at 12 noon. So we're having a lot of fun and there's a lot going on. We've been very, very busy in New York. It's like someone has turned the switch back on after being in hibernation over the past year. Suddenly there's breakfast lunches and events. So I look forward to seeing many of you out there in person. So if you missed last week's show, definitely give it a listen. David S. Rose has a really interesting platform that he's rolling out. And for tonight's show, we have Dean Shapiro with us, who is the senior vice president, head of US Development for Oxford Properties. And listen to this. Dean has worked not only on the Harbor Point project in Stanford, but now the largest private development in U.S. history. Yes. Hudson Yards here in New York City, 18 million square feet that they are doing this. I've heard that that amount of square footage is actually larger than the whole office market in Denver. It is absolutely remarkable. And he gives insight in how this deal was actually struck that I'd never heard before. Incredibly fascinating. And even if you're just getting into the business, working on doing your first deal, hopefully this inspires you or maybe motivates you to join maybe a larger firm where they're taking on projects of this magnitude. So I think you're going to get a lot out of the show. We're going to have a brief word from our sponsor and we'll be right back. Thank you.

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You are listening to Real Estate Investing live from New York. To find out more about James Nelson or Avis and young, visit avisonyoung.com now back to our show.

And now it's time for our Investor Spotlight.

And with us today is Dean Shapiro, who is Senior Vice President and Head of US Development for Oxford Properties. In this capacity, Dean is responsible for leading a 25 member team executing on major US projects including St John's Terminal in New York City, an array of life science projects in Boston, San Francisco and Seattle, and Hudson Yards, co developer, the largest private development in US history. Dean has over 30 years experience in the real estate industry including as partner in BLT from Stanford, Connecticut where he was involved in the transformation of South Stamford, Connecticut into a vibrant mixed use destination, and at CBRE where he held various positions ultimately as the leader of the New York City business. So Dean, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today.

It's a pleasure.

So tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up getting into the business.

I'm a native New Yorker, actually fourth generation, so I'd say that I had New York in my blood. I went to school at Riverdale and ended up going to college down south. I mean, I would say that in my life I've had a series of situations where most people went right and I chose to go left and that was what I chose to do. When I went to college I went to Vanderbilt, which at the time no one from Riverdale had ever gone to. I did that because I felt that college was much more than an academic experience. It was a growth experience. And for a New Yorker to spend four years in Nashville, Tennessee in 1980 would have been a growth experience. And it certainly was. I got out of school and I went to work for a guy named Don Carter, who really changed the paradigm for the proxy business. And I found myself in the middle of all the major proxy fights and hostile tender offers that were going on at that time and just had a very wild ride, but decided after three years, go back to B school, use that as an opportunity to pivot, figure out what I really want to do long term. And I was actually recruited at a business school to join what was then the Edward S. Gordon Co. To join their consulting group, which today is still together. All the people I started with have become kind of superstars in the business. They're all close friends of mine. And it was an amazing opportunity. And of course, ESG was acquired by Insignia, which ultimately was acquired by CBRE. So I was there during the three iterations of the company. In total. I spent about 19 years at what ultimately was CB. I had about nine different jobs there. And for somebody who has a diverse skill set and a lot of interest like I do, it was a great opportunity because I got to do many, many different things. And as you said, ultimately running the New York business. So after 19 years, and I probably would still be there, I got a call one day to join a probably the leading development firm in Connecticut, blt, and they were right in the sweet spot of, you know, on the precipice of stupendous growth. And they had gotten to know me through my tenure running the Connecticut business for Insignia, and then cb, and they said, we'd like you to join us. So they brought me on as a partner right at the beginning of their foray into Harbor Point. And, you know, it was an amazing opportunity to work alongside incredibly talented people to be in an area of the business I always wanted to go into and learn it. And about three years into that, my mentor at cb, guy named Blake Hutchison, who was the president of Oxford, called me and said. And he had left CB around the same time to run a hedge fund in New York. He had left that. He went to run Oxford about two years into my foray at blt. Anyway, he called me one day and he said, just bought into Hudson Yards, and I need somebody to run it for me. And nobody better than you, because I know you and I trust you, and now you have totally relevant experience. So I want you to come over. And in spite of the fact I had a great opportunity at blt, I always wanted to work with Blake. And what an opportunity. In spite of the fact that in 2011, when I joined, we were still on the tail end of the financial crisis. Hudson Yards had been talked about for decades. It was far from certain whether or not we'd actually be able to execute. But I joined at the very, very beginning of that project and I'm still working on it today. So I always like to say that I went from freshman year of development right into the PhD program because there's no project bigger and probably no project more complicated than that one. So it's been quite a wild ride, no doubt.

And it's just been such an amazing thing for New York and I mean, such an incredible feat, what was accomplished there. So I definitely want to get to that. I want to talk a little bit about Harbor Point as well, which is only about a five or ten minute drive from, from, from my house.

Spent a lot of time there.

And it's amazing what you did there as well. But I want to go back to those, those early days at Insignia, because, you know, you're right. I mean, there was so much talent that came out of that shop. Steve Siegel, Marianne Tighe. But you know, and I never had a chance to meet him. But I know clearly there's one of the most prestigious awards, the Edward Gordon Ward for Rebny and, you know, just, just a legend. But talk about that environment, you know, I've heard these incredible stories, everyone, you know, on the desk at 7:00am And I mean, what, what was that like working there?

I mean, you can write a book about that. I mean, it was a different time, right? I joined in 1989 where it was still kind of the Wild West. I mean, things had not fully developed like they are today. From an HR perspective, Ed Gordon was a true New Yorker.

And.

He was old school, he was super smart, and he was, I would call him a refined street guy and he prided himself on that. But what was amazing about Ed Gordon was in spite of the fact he had a lot of conviction and his view of the world, he also had a bunch of humility. And he knew what he was good at and what he wasn't good at. And he used to say, the beauty of me is I just surround myself with people who can do what I can't do. And that takes a lot of humility. The consulting group which I came out of was incredibly prescient. And it's a model that has been emulated to this day with probably every major firm. The story goes, he saw the business changing and he saw, particularly with regard to large deals, the buyer values were changing from somebody who just knew space to people who knew book and Tax, financial structuring and had a more sophisticated viewpoint and I would say a means to deal with CFO types, CEO types who are increasingly becoming involved in large complex deals. So he created the consulting group with mostly MBA and accounting types to complement the skill set of the typical broker that was great at negotiation, great at identifying space and opportunities, et cetera. And he said, if I can get these groups to work together, I'll be able to capture major market share and then that end of the market. And it absolutely worked. He had Marty Turchin and John Powers come over to help lead that. But, but the idea was let's find those people, let's train them to become super brokers and throw them in the mix and support the culture of working together. And if we can do that, we can do great things. And that's what happened. And Ed Gordon was all the stories you hear. He wanted us to be white shoe, although we were still rough around the edges. He wanted us to appear to be white shoe. He was a big believer in professionalism, not only in how he acted, but in how he looked. So white button down shirts, ties, dark suits and lace up shoes. And if he caught you with loafers, he would tell you about it. And so he was, he was quirky that way, but it worked. Wow.

Well, I heard two stories and maybe you can confirm or deny them, but one was that if you weren't at the desk at 7am, he was famous for actually taking the phones. And these are back in the days when you didn't take phones and you'd have to go into his office and grovel to get your phone back. But the other amazing thing that I heard that just know speaks to the humility was that I heard that he had written his own. He took out a full page ad in the New York Times the day, the day he, after he passed away, just thanking New York. And I've got to search for that because I've heard that it was just an amazing thing. And you know, he had such that dedication to New York and that belief to give back.

He was a true New Yorker and it was intoxicating. He was famous for his ads, by the way. So there's probably three ads that he's famous for. One was a series where he became agent for the Chrysler Building when it was being redone. And it was, I don't know if it was two or three ads, but the first ad was a blank page with just like the tip of a spire coming out from the bottom. And then the next day was you could make out the top of the Chrysler Building. And I think the third day was the Chrysler Building saying the resurgence of the Chrysler Building. So it was, and people talked about it and I think that that really firmly put him on the map. The second ad was when Goldman Sachs announced that they were going to go into real estate brokerage. And he put an ad, full page ad in the time saying you stick with your business and we'll stick with ours. And it was just a frontal assault on the most prestigious investment bank. So he was very brash, he had total guts. And as you probably know, the distinguishing characteristic for brokers at the top of our business are those that really have the gumption and the gravitas to deal with very senior people on an equal level. And he was one of them. And some of the names you mentioned earlier in the broadcast are those too. And there aren't that many of those people agree.

Oh wow, what wonderful experience that I'm sure is really stayed with you throughout your whole career. So talk about blt because you know, now that Harbor Point is built, I mean it seems so obvious, you know, high rises right there on the sound. But at the time I gotta think that was pretty pioneering. I mean it's still, I mean they run the trolley back and forth but it's still, you know, 10, what, 10 minutes maybe to get over to the train station and there wasn't much over there when you all did that. So you know, maybe talk a little bit because, and I know this will also, I'm sure part of your story at Oxford about creating communities and place making. But you know, how do you, I mean that was a pretty big bet. How did you all think that that was going to work?

That's a good question. So we were not the first ones in. The land was put together by a company called Antares, who you probably know, Jim Cabrera and John Benonotti, Joe Benonati and they had put it together pre financial crisis with opm. Lubert Adler was involved others as well. They were forward thinkers and kudos to them for putting it all together. But the financial crisis came around, I think they, I don't think they had the wherewithal to execute and the whole thing just kind of came apart. Carl came in, Carl Keener, who is the, the founder of blt, the head of the company and really the, the driver got involved with Antares to kind of help them out and when it became clear that they weren't going to survive, he kind of took over and he had significant Capital in his own right that he was willing to invest. With any development like that, it takes an individual that is a driver in order to be a catalyst and to make it happen. He was just in the sweet spot of his career to do that. And he pulled together, you know, a core team of people. You're right, there was, it was a bit of a wasteland down there. Now it all looks great. On paper it was a peninsula. There's water on three sides. It's very close to a major transportation artery. But it was also environmentally challenged. There was a ton of blight and crime down there. And we hadn't built a new office building, by the way, in like 20 years in Fairfield County. And from a residential standpoint, again, you know, we're talking 2008. There was no financing, there was no nothing. What we did have is we had a lot of land and it was cheap land, but you had to build critical mass and you had to change people's minds about living down there and working down there. And you need to have sustained momentum to do that. And you need to develop a lot of credibility as a developer because nobody wants to be a pioneer down there only to find that the whole thing didn't work. It's a common theme in everything that I've worked on from a development standpoint. And I, it's amazing. And I've only been in development 13 years of my 32 year career, but I'm now working on my third transformational neighborhood building. So Harbor Point was the first, Hudson yards was the second, and we own 42 acres in Boston. The psychology of doing that is consistent, which is you need to get people excited about the vision. You need to create a vision, you need to cultivate a vision, you need to get people excited about that, but then you need to establish enough credibility that you're actually going to be able to execute on the vision. And at Harbor Point, Carl Keener is probably the most self confident person I've ever met and he's a complete doer. And the most important thing you can do is start building your first building because that will go a long way to neutralize people's cynicism about whether or not you're actually going to execute. So not only do we start building, we did a lot of infrastructure work, including remediating 90 acres of land and putting it in a position to be developed. So now within a short period of time, we've built a whole city down there. So it's been an amazing accomplishment.

I was going to ask you about it. I mean, because today there's a lot of talk about, you know, the 15 Minute City and having everything within walking distance. But I mean, it definitely took foresight there. And I wonder, I mean, now you've got multifamily retail office, you've got a marina. Did it all. Was that all envisioned from the start or. It started with the apartments and then once you had some people there, you figured, okay, well, we need to provide some, some services and retail for them. And then did the office come later?

No, the office came early. Believe it or not, the office came early, which kind of defies logic. I think the first thing we did is we renovated one of the coolest buildings down there is the old Yale lock factory, which is the long brick building. I mean, that Carl had a lot of history with doing historic rehabs, saw that as a perfect opportunity and obviously a cost effective way to start. Hired a great architect and renovated that into incredibly cool apartments with 11 foot ceilings and mushroom columns. And around that time UBS was there, there was an appetite for that kind of real estate. People wanted then, and they certainly want today, authenticity. At the point where we brought that on, we had cleaned things up down there, particularly on that site, and we brought on the market, a type of real estate that really was in high demand and low in supply. So that building kind of flew off the shelf. At the same time, we wanted to start on each of the major components of Harbor Point. And one was on the waterfront where we were pushing a lot of dirt around. And we created kind of a waterfront park and that was called the Square. And There we built two office buildings into a market that had like a 30% vacancy rate and was high priced. But what it proved was that markets are complex. There was no appetite. You wouldn't build a class B office building, but we built office space the likes of which was nowhere to be found in that area of the market. And it didn't have to be a deep market. It only had to be deep enough that there were people looking for that quality of space. And we filled it up. It took two and a half years to do it, but we filled it up at rents that far exceeded anything else in the market other than downtown Greenwich. Wow.

Well, it's beautiful product, but that was a huge bet at the time. That certainly paid off. So now it's just. I know it's thriving and it seems like they're rolling out a new apartment building every, every year down there.

That's amazing. Yeah.

So you get the call from Oxford to Come join them. And it was to oversee the Hudson Yards project. So I mean in Hudson Yards I've got to think is probably not only is it the largest private development in US history, but I also think is the most complicated. I mean for starters you're building over an active, you know, radio. So there was the decking that had to be done. So maybe talk a little bit about the coordination. Your co development partner, what was the division of labor related and what part were you tackling and responsible for?

Well, why don't I start with how Oxford got involved in this. So Oxford's been around for 60 years. It was acquired by owners. I always forget the dates back in the 70s. So like a lot of pension funds in Canada, they actually have their own real estate companies. They used to be passive investors, now they own their own real estate companies. So Oxford is not unusual in that regard until about I'm dating myself, call it 15 years ago or so. Oxford's portfolio is primarily Canadian. We're Canadian fund. There's a lot of pride in Canada. Obviously we knew everybody in Canada. We know all the real estate, et cetera. And it was easy to capture market share in a market that you know very well. And the difference between Canada and the US is it's the same general land area but it's 10th the population. But it's also a stratified society. So as I said, you know everybody, everybody you need to know is a phone call away. So that being said, you know, Oxford and Omer's fund continued to grow over time. Today it's over 100 billion. Five years from now it could be double that. So we simply exceeded our capacity in Canada and we needed to diversify geographically, A because we got too big and B because from a risk perspective we needed to diversify markets. So in a true Canadian way we grew carefully and we grew into what I would call the tier one markets around the world. We sent a contingent out to Europe, they located in London, they started to focus their efforts there. From there they dabbled in Paris. Now in Berlin. Today we're in Asia as well. Primarily in Australia and a little bit in Singapore. Then in the US we set up shop 2010 or so we sent a couple people down and we focused at that time on New York and Washington. Today we're in, well we're in Boston, we're in Seattle, we're in San Francisco, we're in la and we're in a couple other markets from a multi res perspective. But when Hudson Yards came across her desk it was at the very beginning. It was in 2010. Blake Hutchinson was new in the seat. He had just spent three years in New York, you know, as a president of a hedge fund. He believed in New York and in it for, I would say, a true Canadian story. The way we got involved in Hudson Yards is because Blake had a relationship with a guy named J. Cross, who was the president of Hudson Yards, who was a Canadian and had been friends with Blake for 30 years because he used to date Blake's sister. And what had happened is, I think, as most people know, Hudson Yards was initially awarded to Tishman Speyer. The financial crisis hit, Tishman Speyer lost their anchor tenant. They dropped out of the process. The MTA went back to Related, who was a runner up in the competition, said, if you still want in, you need to make a deal with us this weekend. Related cut a deal. It was a provisional deal where it gave them time to close and get their financing together, et cetera, but they had to put down significant deposits, et cetera, et cetera. They had Goldman Sachs as a partner. Goldman Sachs ended up dropping out as well, leaving related to having to find a. A deep pocketed institutional partner. They spent a lot of time trying to find one, but in the wake of the financial crisis, it was super difficult. Very late in the game. Jay Cross reached out to Blake, said, have this great opportunity. Are you interested? And because Blake was intrigued and because it was the right thing at the right time, given where we were in our life cycle, we agreed within a very short period of time to sign onto this project, not exactly knowing how it would roll out, but what we did see is great opportunity, a irreplaceable piece of land with a very capable partner, and we ended up jumping in. So that's how we got involved.

I've got to say, for a cautious Canadian.

Totally out of character to jump.

In on something like this, I mean, because did you even know at the time, I mean, I heard the cost for the bridge alone was in the billions. Did you know the scale? Did you know, was it entitled for a certain amount of square footage? Did you know exactly what you could build? Did you even kind of know the costs? What, like trying to do the math on that?

Yeah, we did. We knew we knew what we could build. We didn't exactly know how it was going to be done, but the reality is all we had committed at that point is $75 million. That's all it took in order to secure this thing. We were not required to close on the ground lease with the mta until certain economic triggers were hit. And that was the deal that was cut, because the MTA wanted to make a deal. They wanted to bring somebody on who would ultimately enable them to monetize this. But they also knew, as a practical matter, that nobody was going to commit hundreds of millions of dollars in the type of environment we were in. This is 2008 now. There's no financing. There is no confidence in the system. Were all reeling from the financial crisis. The deal that was made was we had to put real skin in the game in terms of a deposit. But until certain economic triggers were hit, which essentially were a proxy to a conducive development environment, we weren't going to be required to really go all in. It was risky, but our risk was significantly mitigated. But obviously, things changed. But in order to get us to the point where we would be willing to commit, we had to get certain things done. We needed to move design ahead, and ultimately we needed to secure our first tenant and get our first building locked down. And the way Hudson Yards works is the original Hudson Yards block, which goes from 10th Avenue to 12th Avenue, 30th to 33rd Street's, a perfect rectangle bisected by 11th Avenue. The Southern third of the rectangle is on firm ground. It's not over tracks. The north two thirds is over tracks. And the reason that's significant is you can build on the terra firma piece without building your platform over the tracks, which is enormously expensive and extremely complicated from a coordination perspective. So it was the logical place for us to start. And we knew one of the things that we were dealing with. There's so many obstacles that you can talk about that were in our way in executing on Hudson Yards. One of them was cynicism, right? Hudson Yards had been talked about for decades in New York. And I always like to say New Yorkers are cynical by nature. Imagine trying to convince the public that you're going to build this thing. In the wake of the financial crisis, the only way to change people's minds is to actually start building. And in order to do that, you had to secure significant tenancy. Every one of the buildings at Hudson Yards is gigantic because. Because we had a lot of far and relatively little land area, because by mandate, half of our land area had to remain open space. So everything there is very tall. There's not a building in Hudson Yards that is less than $1.3 billion. And our first building, first office building, is 1.8 million square feet. So we needed a big tenant to even think about capitalizing the thing. And that was not an easy thing to do. But fortunately, our first tenant was Coach. They did not need to be sold on the area because they were already located there. They needed to move operationally because they were in two different buildings. They were in 450 West 33rd and they were in their own building on 34th Street. And it just made sense for them. And moreover, they were used to owning and they were willing to buy. So that really helped our capitalization problem because out of 1.8 million feet, they were willing not only to move in, but they were willing to buy a 750,000 foot condo, which left us with a million feet, which we pre lease 60% of. And we were able to secure a loan from a hedge fund for the balance. And that's how the whole thing started. Nothing's more significant than Coach's commitment and drilling the first caisson for 10 Hudson Yards. That was the big milestone.

Amazing. And so many other tenants and companies followed suit. And you did end up selling, I don't know if that of selling the leaseholds because that ultimately was. There was a swap also with, with, with Time Warner that brought over there. So is there other companies that, that now own there as well?

Yes. So the next iteration of the story. So we had gotten started with 10 Hudson Yards. 15 was also in terra firma. That kind of made sense that the shed is in between. It was a mandate for us to donate that land to the city for the shed, et cetera, et cetera. But the next big step for us was to get started on the platform. And the platform, as you said was. Well, at the time was a billion and a half dollars. Today I would say it's probably more than that. With certain overruns, very expensive. The only way to do that is figure out how to get financing for it. And not only that, you need to execute on the balance of the eastern rail yard in order to rationalize it. Because the way it works, it's like you're building a subdivision, you build all your roads and sewers, et cetera, up front. But the only way to do that cost effectively is to build all your homes quickly because they all contribute to the recoupment of your infrastructure investment. And that's the way Hudson Yards worked. Not only that, but some of our largest tenants, like Time Warner, said, look, I'll commit, but you need to execute on all of this because I'm not going to be the guy or gal that commits to this only to find that you haven't succeeded in creating the vision that you sold me on. We had to get six buildings capitalized with within a short period of time and get them built. So the logistics alone were incredibly difficult. But I would also tell you that one of the major obstacles to Hudson Yards was just the sheer magnitude of what we were doing. Exhausted things like supply of steel, concrete, insurance, conventional debt financing. Because a lot of these producers either couldn't produce that much or would be hesitant, like with an insurance company or a bank, to lend that much money within a confined geography. It just kind of blew apart their risk methodologies.

Square footage, I heard it's close to 20 million square feet. When you factor everything in, it's 18.

Million for all of Hudson Yards, including land that we bought after the fact. But we've already constructed 10 million feet of office space.

And so this will be bigger than all the office space. And I've heard that it'll be bigger than all the office space in Denver. So I try to tell people, you know, New York City, we now have Denver, you know, located over in this whole new neighborhood that you've created. I mean, it just blows my mind. I mean this might sound like a strange question, but I mean, how many people does it take to build something like this? And we've got a lot of listeners on the show and they're. Maybe they're in college or you have associates out there. But you know, what is your. I mean you lead a team of 25 people. You know, Related's got their team. I mean, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of workers it takes to pull something like this off. But what, you know, what was the team dedicated to this and what was your day to day like in, in running this?

Yeah, I mean so the day to day operation of the development was done by Related and Oxford was, is co general partner. So we have all the skin in the game. You know, a lot of people think we're the money partner. It's not. That's a misconception. We have the same amount of money in as does Related. And most of you know, every building is capitalized separately. We have third party equity and everything. Nobody could build all of this with their own equity. It just, I don't think there's anybody who could or would do it. You know, I can't remember the numbers. We had a remarkably few people from Oxford working on this. I was on location. I had a very reliable second in command is still with us. Overzer. We had various people around the organization who were also spending time on it, but not 100% of their time. I would say in total, from Oxford, we had probably eight people spending time on it. Remarkably few people relative to the magnitude of this thing. Related had probably 100 between construction people and executives and development people and accounting people, et cetera. And it was wild in terms of workers on site. I think at our peak, we had about 3,000 people working on site, you know, on a daily basis.

Amazing. Just the coordination of it all. I mean, it's tremendous. It's mind blowing.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and the engineering is obviously significant here to build over an active rail yard. But I'd say the most complicated thing was just the coordination, because from the MTA's perspective, of course, they wanted to monetize this, but that was a distant second to maintaining the operational integrity of the yard. It was the utmost importance to the operation of Penn Station, which is so important to New York.

So, I mean, look, we could. We could speak for hours about the projects because, I mean, Oxford and I sign your site that you all have over 100 million square feet of office, retail, multifamily, data centers, hotels across four continents. I was trying to think, is there an asset class that you all haven't done? So, you know, just touching on, you know, some of these other projects and, you know, maybe talking a little bit about, you know, that. That community impact, and there was a big emphasis on the social responsibility. So maybe next you could talk a little bit about St. John's terminal, far away from Hudson Yards, down in the West Village. But this is a building, and I remember taking a golf cart from one side to the other, that if you stood it up, because it's. It's two. Two levels, but it stretches, I'm not mistaken, you know, three or four blocks. So I was told that if you stood it up, it'd be higher than the. Taller than the Empire State Building. So that's not true, but I'm sure that that was a real. You know, you're in a community that's mostly low rise, historic. You've got a pier across the, you know, the street there, so. And yet you were still able to get some development potential. Talk about that whole process of kind of getting approvals and how that that worked and to deliver that in a way that the community would be pleased with.

Okay, well, first of all, you know, I mentioned I've lived in New York my whole life, and I've been in the business 32 years now. So like many people, I've known St. John's Terminal for a long time, and everybody has St. John's Terminal stories. You do talk to John Mechanic. He's got about 100 of them. I've had ideas around it. Most people have, et cetera, because it's a big amorphous mass sitting in a great spot, and it's a spot that just got better and better with age because things started to grow. Tribeca came up. Hudson Square was coming up. Chelsea in the Village was coming down. And one day, Andrew Trickett, who was running investments for us, I had now returned to 450 park from Hudson Yards. He said, St. John's is on the market. And my immediate reaction is I said we should develop that. And, you know, went on the market. It had taken decades. People had been trying to get their arms around that for a long time. The owner was not interested in selling. Ultimately, Westbrook and Atlas got control of it. They never intended to develop it. They wanted to rezone it, add the value and trade it, which they did. They did an amazing job with that. They took it through a UluRP, and at the last minute, they were able to get some latitude on the ULURP to say, we could do a hybrid, which is, we'll adhere to the ULURP on the north site, but we can build as of right, and build straight office on the south site, which is what we bought. And they brought it to market, and there were 11 bidders. And honestly, we were lucky enough to acquire it because we had created a relationship late in the game with Westbrook and Atlas, and we developed a great sense of trust. And that was very important because Westbrook and Atlas was going to continue to own the north site. And there's a relationship between the north side and the south site, where we could do or not do certain things that would really impact the value of what they were keeping, keeping. And it was important that we had the credibility to do what we said we were going to do, and we had the integrity that they were looking for. So all of a sudden, in this serendipitous moment, we got our arms around this site. It was an amazing opportunity. And for me personally, I was kind of the ranking member in development. And they said, dean, this is your project. And by the way, this is the largest project Oxford had ever undertaken to this day. We bought it. We bought the land for $700 million. And, you know, the. The budget for this thing was $1.7 billion, so.

And you don't have a code GP this is going to be your. Your development you're going to execute on this, correct?

We ended up bringing in a partner. We brought in cpp, who we done over a lot with. We were the gp. They put in a fair amount of equity, but we had no tenant. But we had this incredible opportunity. We didn't have to do a lot on zoning because it had been approved. That being said, you're never out of the woods. You still have to deal with the community. You still have to deal with the electeds who had approved this, who had a lot of skin in the game. And I would tell you, we made two or three very critical decisions early on. The first was we stayed with Rick Cook as the architect, who is just the right person for this. Highly passionate and really linked up with us. Our vision for this is this was our opportunity to build the workplace of the future because of the dimensions of the site, the location of the site, and I knew where we were and the life cycle in New York, and I knew that there was an appetite for that. The second major thing was we had the ability to go up to 300ft in height and make it narrower, but instead we chose to make the building as low as possible and to preserve to the greatest possible degree the large floor plates, because again, we knew that there was an appetite for that and not a lot of supply. And. And again, it's like with Harbor Point, it may not have been a deep market. It just had to be deep enough. And I knew that there were enough tenants out there that would aspire to be on those floors. And the third was to retain the existing historic structure and build over it as opposed to tearing it down and building from scratch. Because where the market was going was not only a desire for big floor plates, but a desire for authenticity. So we had the right building, we had the right massing, and we had the right architect, who, like us, was passionate about building the modern workplace. So we worked highly collaboratively at Oxford. I worked very closely with Adam Fraser, who's our head of leasing, with our investments group, with our legal group, with our construction group. That's amazingly talented. And we designed an amazing building. And early in the process, we brought it to Google, and I had been introduced to Paul Darrah from Google, who also worked at blt. And they took one look at our renderings and they said, this is exactly what we want. And we're building a second campus in Hudson Square, and this fits right into that. And they signed on very early and, you know, we brought them into the tent on design, but they made. We've made very few changes to the basic design of the building. So it's just gone beautifully. And you can't ask for a better partner than Google because they're as passionate about it as we, and they obviously have the financial wherewithal to make it even greater. And it's just been an amazing journey. So that's kind of the story. And every day the building is coming online now, and it's just spectacular. We could not be happier with how it's coming out.

It's wonderful to hear and such a great thing for New York. And Google has just the fact they've been expanding here and it's. It's just been such an amazing thing for New York. And excited to hear that they're saying that they've asked their employees to come back by September. So, yeah, hopefully we'll be seeing them around town very soon.

For sure. Yep.

Exciting. So we only have a couple minutes left, but I'd love to ask you because again, a lot of the listeners to our show, either they're in school or maybe they're a couple of years in business, but maybe maybe talk a little bit about, you know, the advantages of, you know, working for a larger, more established shop. You know, what do you look for in a candidate? Or on the flip side, maybe doing something a little more, you know, at a smaller entrepreneurial shop. I mean, what would you say to someone who's looking to get into the business?

You know, I've counseled God knows how many people trying to get into real estate. I mean, the first thing that I always point out is real estate is such a vast profession. There's a thousand different avenues you can pursue in real estate, and they're all different. I encourage people all the time to try to understand themselves, to figure out what they're good at, what they're not good at, and most importantly, what they're passionate about. And then if they're lucky or they're savvy in how they approach things, they'll figure out that aspect of the business that links up their passion and one particular avenue in real estate. Because if you're passionate about it, it'll naturally make you successful and happier in what you do. And we spend so much time at work or thinking about work, you better like it. In order to figure that out, you need to be exposed. So if you're just getting into the business, pick something that's going to give you a lot of exposure to different avenues of the business. I like entrepreneurial shops because a lot of times it'll make you a jack of all trades. We hired a guy named Zach Reiner onto our team who, you know, and we love him. He's been at two or three small shops where he's done a bit of everything. By the way, if you're interested in getting in development, that's a great background because development ultimately is a bit of everything. You're working in the left side and the right side of your brain, but a big firm can do that for you as well. And, you know, I was very fortunate to spend 19 years at CB and the two other companies because I had nine different jobs there, and I developed all kinds of skills doing that. I honestly think where I am now is a great place for me to be because, as I said, development requires multiple skill sets. I'm not the best in some of those, but I do have the ability to dabble, and I don't think I would have that unless I've had all the exposure I have, not only to different areas of the business, but the other thing I would say is pick a place that will expose you to great talent. And again, I'm blessed. I got to work with some of the biggest names in the business. Steve Marianne, Bob Many, John Powers, Marty Turch, and many others. And you end up learning something from all of them. And at the end of the day, what we become is like a mosaic, which is bits and pieces from what you've learned from all these great people and all these great experiences. So get as much as you can and try to get it early. And even if you're not making as much money as your friends, ultimately, that is experience. That's super valuable.

Incredible advice. Really great to hear about his story as well. So, Dean, I guess the final question I would ask you, just because the people around you have been such a big part and a key to your success, how do you find the right people? How do you know when you're looking for the right people to work for? What you know, what are those characteristics.

In a company or an employee company.

And the people there, the culture? How do you, you know, how do you find out?

So if I were looking to join a company.

Yes, yes.

I mean, you learn a lot from the people. First of all, you'd want to interview with multiple people there. And I would always look for consistencies in their profile, meaning do they have attitude, are they humble, how do they regard their colleagues? And I'd also like to know from them whether or not there's consistency and values coming from the company. And you get that both by the personalities of the people and what they say about the company and how they describe the company and what they like about the company and what brought them to the company. And then ultimately you look for synergy between what they're saying and what you aspire to.

It's a great way to end. And I could not agree with you more. I started the business in 1998 working for Bob Nackel and Paul Massie and just even meeting with them for one day, I immediately, immediately had that gut feeling. And yeah, so wonderful to hear that you've had the same experience. So, Dean, thank you so much for joining us today. This was amazing to hear your story and Oxford's and everything that you all have done to reshape the landscape here in the city and around the world. So thank you again for joining us.

Great. Thanks for having me.

And this is James Nelson, your host of Real Estate Investing Live from New York. If you have not already, please connect with me at James Nelson, NYC, LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. And if you like this episode, please share it with a friend and feel free to subscribe. Leave your comments at itunes, Spotify or wherever else you get your podcast. So until next week, thank you so much for listening and we will be in touch very soon.

Thank you for tuning in this week to Real Estate Investing Live from New York. Please join your host, James Nelson for another program next Tuesday at 7pm in New York, 4pm Pacific Time on the Voice America Business Channel. All shows are rebroadcast on Wednesday mornings at 7:00am Eastern Time and 4:00am Pacific Time, as well as always on demand. We'll talk again next week.

SA.