CEO Podcast: Todd Fenton and Nick Posavetz, Plante Moran Realpoint

Paul Krutko: Welcome to Ann Arbor SPARK's CEO Podcasts…Conversations on Economic Opportunity. My name is Paul Krutko, and I'm the President and CEO of Ann Arbor SPARK.

Today we're talking about something that's at the heart of a lot of successful economic development: how the public and private sectors can work together to move projects and communities forward.

Joining me are Todd Fenton and Nick Posavetz, both vice presidents with Plante Moran Realpoint, Plante Moran's commercial real estate advisory practice. What's particularly interesting about both Todd and Nick is that they've spent significant portions of their careers on both sides of the table.

Todd brings more than 15 years of economic development and municipal experience, including leadership roles with the City of Royal Oak and Wayne County. In Royal Oak, he helped oversee $100 million in transformational projects across the city's municipal campus.

Nick also brings more than 15 years of commercial real estate and economic development experience. Before joining Plante Moran Realpoint, he led economic development and market research at Bedrock and, prior to that, spent nearly a decade working in economic development with Macomb and Wayne counties.

Todd and Nick joined SPARK's Public Sector Committee last year to discuss how communities can unlock the potential of publicly owned land for targeted development. Today, we're continuing that conversation and looking more broadly at what it takes to build successful partnerships between the public and private sectors - and how each can be a better partner to the other.

Todd and Nick, welcome to the podcast.

Todd Fenton: Thank you, Paul. Happy to be here.

Nick Posavetz: Yeah, thank you, Paul. Appreciate being here.

Paul: Great. Well, we're glad to have you. So we're going to go through some prompts here to get your thoughts. So both of you work on the public and private sides of economic development and real estate. How has that shaped the way you think about what it takes to create a successful public-private partnership?

Todd: At least I come from fairly significant public sector background, nearly 20 years. I started out of law school actually with Wayne County in economic development before I knew what economic development was. And I kind of think having that public sector experience allows you to really understand where the opportunities are with the public sector, where the limitations are, which can actually in some ways be even more important on what a public entity can and can't do. And then on the commercial side, this is matchmaking. So you're really trying to figure out how can each of these sectors that really perform in very different ways, what common mission do they have? What common goal can they move toward where actually one plus one equals three in that sense? And I've always said, and I think it was actually at the Ann Arbor SPARK, the event that you hosted that we were at last year, somebody had asked a question of, "Well, what are the statistics on how many public-private partnerships succeed versus how many fail?" And I'm like, "That's a really great question. I don't think that there's an answer to it because you only hear about the ones that work, that succeed." A lot of putting together of a public-private partnership is one, determining whether that is the right mechanism for what the public sector is trying to do, and in some ways the private sector. So to P3 or not to P3, that is ultimately part of the question.

And then it takes a lot of time to vet these things out. And so my inclination is, especially the more complicated the project is and the more complicated the service delivery is of that project, more probably failed than not. But when you get one that is successful, it eclipses what either entity could do on their own.

Paul: Yeah. I think one of the approaches that I've taken in my career that I've talked about on this podcast with others is something that I learned from the president of San Jose State when we were engaged with the city engaging with the university. That's a different kind of partnership. But he always approached things in sort of a two by two matrix. And if you think about what you're talking about, the private sector has something it wants to try to accomplish and it's things that it's not really interested in trying to accomplish. And on the other axis, you've got the public sector, things they're trying to accomplish and things that they're not interested in. And you've got to hone in on that one part of the matrix where you're achieving something that both of them want to accomplish and having an understanding of what each is trying to do.

So when we talked last year, we did focus a lot on publicly owned land and how communities can think strategically about those assets because many public entities have significant holdings that are not being used strategically. So when a municipality has a piece of property with development potential, where should that conversation begin?

Nick: Yeah, I mean that's a great question, Paul. I can't be as Shakespearean as Todd was about public-private partnerships, perhaps a little bit more literal about it, but a piece of land is not a goal. It's not a priority. And so starting with a communication of the public-private partnership, having a community that is accountable to its constituents, its residents and the public, having a private sector partner who is accountable to either a spreadsheet return or some other particular goal or outcome, having a clear understanding as to what is the opportunity here for both sides? The community's got things that they're going to need to see out of a public-private partnership? Is it housing? Is it public space activation? Is it tax-based growth? Is it job creation? Depending on the location, the needs vary. Having a good understanding and communication early between both sides can really help a public-private partnership succeed.

Too many of these things, when you talk about the failures, derail because there's not a clear understanding of how one side is helping the other to get what they want to get into a bigger picture of everything beyond just a physical structure on a parcel.

Paul: Yeah, you're absolutely correct about that. If there's not a clear understanding of what the public side wants to achieve, it's hard for the private sector to discern how to proceed. You can't guess. And it's particularly true because of the difference between the two, the money at risk that is involved in moving a project forward like that. So from the private sector perspective, this is an interesting question. What makes a community a good partner? What signals to a developer or an investor that a municipality is truly ready and able to move a project forward?

Todd: I think, and Nick brought up a really good point in his answer, that clear and concise and transparent communication in terms of what you can and can't do. And when I am advising public entities, my first question is, will you have a piece of property? Is this an economic development strategic goal that the city or the county wants to pursue? There are some cities that are not development-friendly, or they're not looking to develop their parcels. Is this a parcel that's restricted? Where is this coming from? Is it coming from an economic development official or is there alignment at the elected official level that ultimately can help you get there? And I think the more that the public sector can have those questions answered before they're entertaining conversations with the developer, that may be a few more steps down the line in terms of, okay, we know a little bit about the site, we know a little bit about market conditions and what we think might fit there, but is there really alignment in the community? Are we going to be spending a lot of money on due diligence trying to figure out whether a project can go or not when we don't actually even have buy-in from the cities and the officials that make those decisions there?

And so I always reiterate, if you can go back to an actual articulated strategic plan or a master plan or an economic development plan that is communicating both to the development community and your constituency that these are items, these are the things that we want to pursue, and one of them is developing, let's say, underutilized assets and a piece of property, then that didn't come out of nowhere. It didn't really blindside anybody. And when you hear a lot of the sort of "not in my backyard" criticisms of projects, it feels like it's been blindsided versus there are other cities that have been very open and clear in accorded development because they've been putting these plans and these ideas out there for five, 10 years. And it may take, unfortunately, especially with inflation construction costs the way that they are right now, it may take five years for a project from conception to completion, even if the city has a really, really good plan. These are very, very difficult projects, especially when you're getting into real estate and construction where the timeline is already very, very tricky. It's already very difficult. And the more boxes you have to check on the municipal side just adds the time. And at some point you add enough time where that project probably won't pencil up.

Todd: A good developer can manage the project risk. A good community is someone that can handle the political risk of a project, having all the ducks in a row. And if you're looking at things that you would want to recommend a community do to signal that they're a good partner, having an updated master plan, having a supportive zoning framework for development in the community, consistent messages where the elected officials are speaking the same things as the township managers, are all on the same page, and the ability to make a decision in a reasonable timeframe. Indecision can be a major hindrance to a project even with a clear vision.

Paul: Yeah. I guess one of the other things that I would share that I think you both have experienced is the certainty of the process. I think one of the things that can cause projects not to move forward when there is a desire to have a public-private partnership is where demands on the project are not articulated completely upfront. And as the project is moving through the process, new requests for the developer to fulfill certain policies. There can be a tendency to, when you have a very significant project, maybe it's, I don't want to make it sound pejorative, but sometimes when you see a public sector entity Christmas tree situation where the developer thinks, "Okay, I've done everything that you asked me to, and then I come to the next meeting and there's a new request of some benefit that the community is trying to achieve." So it's not only, as you guys say, the certainty about, well, okay, we've master planned and we've got these lands, but what are the other public policies that the community is trying to achieve that they want to try to have this or any other project help them achieve? And that can be problematic as well.

Todd: No, I think that, and this even you see this with state economic development policy where it can change from administration to administration and everyone else is playing catch up with that. It's the same at the local level. And I've worked with developers that when November is coming and there's a possibility that four out of seven votes can flip, how might this actually impact my project? It can be four people that we've put two years into this project and now it's gone? Or to your point, are they going to now request a bunch of different things to satisfy different policy preferences that didn't exist at the actual inception time of the project?

Paul: Yeah, I guess there's a perception of a community at a certain point in time. Well, that's a managed growth or we don't want our community to change. And then the politics change and there's a group of folks that are concerned. I mean, one of the things that I always say is people understand economic development and the kind of work that you do in public-private partnerships when we're in a recession. When the economy is going well, which is the time to, well, whatever the phrase is, go and make things happen while the things are good, that's your best opportunity.

That's a lot of times where communities are not as proactive about this.

Well, so on the flip side, from you guys' perspective, what should municipalities be looking for in a private sector partner? How do you distinguish between a developer who's just simply interested in the site and what they can achieve from it versus one that is focused on, "Hey, I want it to be a win-win. I want it to be a situation where I accomplish…" We talked about that matrix. "I'm accomplishing what I want to accomplish, but it's also helping the community accomplish objectives that it has."

Nick: Yeah, that's a great question, and definitely the other side of the coin right here. Encouraging communities to be diligent, not just in vetting the actual project, but vetting the person that is proposing the project. Does this group have a track record of performance of similar projects in other communities? If it's got someone who's been a good actor across a lot of different areas, that's definitely something that I think buys a lot of goodwill in a new community. So the newer the organization, I think the more scrutiny I would give a project. Get to know each other. Have the local elected officials reach out to the folks at the organization, make sure that they have a truly good understanding of your community because they may not. And so making sure that it's a fit from both sides. Any entity who wants to enter into a meaningful public-private partnership is absolutely going to be willing and excited to make the time to take that ability to have that relationship with the community.

Paul: Yeah. It's interesting because in a parallel way, many times when we have a prospect of a company that's looking to relocate here, that's a precursor to the development project that you're talking about. We often put them in the room with other companies that are all here already and step outside and let them have that kind of conversation, which is a parallel thing to what you're talking about.

Well, one of the challenges that I think we've already alluded to is that there are differences. There's differences in timelines in terms of what the political climate is, and what success is for both parties.

So given that, and you guys in your experience, what have you seen that maybe there's multiple things, that cause the most friction that the developers and communities need to think about and try to work to overcome?

Todd: I think, and I'm stealing this from a developer that actually does a lot of public-private partnerships, but he says they're actually not P3s, they're P4s. It's public-private partnership and patience. And patience is a very, very important part of the process because this is not going to move at the speed that the private sector generally will move at. And even just baking in a city's formal approval schedule, if you've got two meetings a month, you need to build that into you're not going to get a decision made in a week. And if you're making a meeting, you got to have materials in 10 days before that. There's a lot of different things with timelines. And so the more that you can have just that open line of communication.

And I'll say to the flip side of the question you had just brought up before, doing your homework and investigating who potential bad actors are, are very important as well.

There are developers that will say, "Okay, we're going to work together and we're going to sign an MOU and it's not legally binding and we're going to explore this over nine months." And then the city says, "Well, we're going to go in a different direction," and then a lawsuit is filed. Overly litigious developers, and there are some that are out there that have a hankering of we're going to bully our way into this, that's not really a public-private partnership, but it is something that is by reputation. And Nick is right. If you're a city and you're entertaining a developer, you generally have a network, not only of other cities around you, but do your homework where this person or this company has done work before to try to determine where those hangups have been. And I say, and I'm going to pick on the public sector for a while too, make sure your expectations are realistic. When I was the economic development director in Royal Oak, the first and second and third thing I heard was open up a Barnes & Noble and an Apple store downtown. Not understanding what the market climate in 2014 actually was for both of those and how having them two miles away impacts what goes on in your city.

Elected officials tend to look at their boundaries as a fiefdom, but it's actually in terms of the corporate private sector, you're looking at it regionally. And the region can go much longer than Oakland and Wayne and Macomb. It can touch into Washtenaw counties and stuff. And so that is one of the hangups that I see where you've got two entities that are sort of speaking the same language, but very much specialized in very different degrees of that language. And the cities generally know how to promote themselves as work-play, but they don't have an honest framework to evaluate their market. To some extent they're biased on that. And the private sector is really trying to meld the public sector into their format. And the more that you can both relax some of how you do business and then commit yourselves to, we're kind of learning this together, and that's why it takes a while to put these successful public-private partnerships together. Because if one entity could do it alone, one entity would do it alone.

Paul: Yeah. I think one of the things that is important on the public sector side, if they're large enough and can afford it and have the development opportunities, is that they really think about, I'm talking about a sort of a facilitator, an expediter or somebody inside the city. Because I think in my experience in Cleveland and Jacksonville and San Jose, having played that role, what I think is challenging many times for the private sector is the moving from office to office to door to door.

We did a study for the City of Ann Arbor on the topic, looked at other college town economies around the United States. And what we found consistently is the ones who were being successful had somebody in city government that was playing that role. I always use an analogy that guys might enjoy that that kind of position is sort of like when the old Star Trek shows. The Klingon is talking to the Romulan and the Human and you go, "Well, how is that done?" Well, if you read the literature behind it as well, they had a universal communicator on their uniform. I describe successful municipalities having somebody in their team that is a universal communicator that can talk to the Public Works Department about the infrastructure needs for the site, can talk to the building and code enforcement folks, but also can talk to the private sector partners. So that's something that we really think at SPARK is really important that we can help in many ways to help be that universal translator.

So again, not every project, not every community is necessarily ready. We've talked a little bit about this already, and you've given some thoughts about what needs to be in place before a community starts this process. Are there any other thoughts you have about that? What are signs that you would say you guys really aren't ready to think about this kind of P3 arrangement?

Todd: If you have an actual strategic plan or an economic development plan, you've got alignment with the elected officials. Everybody sort of understands the goal that you're trying to get to. Understand that site, because commonly when you see projects go up out of the ground or not go up out of the ground, it's because you haven't really completed a lot of that site due diligence. And then you start doing it and you're finding that you've got a wetlands issues or your grading is off or you've got Indiana bats that are somewhere in the area that is going to mess up your permitting. To the extent that you can understand the site, you understand the utility lines, you understand all the infrastructure around it, that can make the project go much quicker or it can actually take a lot of time off. And you've seen the MEDC over the last few years spend a lot of time on site readiness regardless of what the end use is. The more that you understand the site that you have, it makes it much more attractive to the development community because those are dollars that they don't have to spend on that site due diligence.

Nick: Paul, I feel like we spoonfed you that question even though we didn't, because it's a very important question. Here at Plante Moran, we actually have a P3 site readiness assessment that we can give folks that is something anybody can go on. It's on our website. They can fill it out. And it asks a couple of questions from both sides of the project that are things that both sides should be thinking about that really give a pretty good indicator of, okay, is this thing ready for a P3? And one of the common missteps people often make is that the P3 is not a substitute for the homework and the planning. The P3 is the tool to then go out and implement the planning, dome up with i6.

Paul: Right. Exactly. Yeah, it's interesting because all three of us probably have multiple war stories about where surprises have happened. And part of one lesson I learned is sometimes you need to go way back in time to be able to consider what the opportunities are ahead of project that I worked on that we thought the site was no issue. And then once we started development of it for housing for townhouses, it was discovered that in the 1700s it was a burial ground. And then you had to deal with that whole, how do we respond to something like that? So it's not only the current conditions, it's sort of, well, what was this site back in time in the city?

Todd: I've worked on projects where, especially when you're working on urban projects in cities that have been well-developed for the last hundred years, and you've read every survey and you know where the lines are, and then you dig and you find weird things like a bank vault in the ground, that happened. And it's like, okay, so it's going to be a quarter of a million dollars to get this bank vault out of here. Wasn't in the budget.

Paul: Right, exactly, exactly. And part of it is what is the economic situation of a particular community to be able to deal with that kind of situation? An example that folks know here in Washtenaw County is we were and still are significantly involved in the American Center for Mobility. Well, that was the Arsenal of Democracy. There was no concern about chemicals and what we were doing. We're trying to win World War II, and I don't even think people were that cognizant of the danger from the chemicals. Let's just be clear. So that limits the development potential that we could do on that site because of the economics of doing development here. In my past career, I had a similar site in California and the economics were different and we could clean the site because the economics of doing development there would allow the developer to recoup and make a profit from doing that. So sometimes it's the economic condition of the particular community that can cause you to be able to do something or not to be able to do something.

Well, I've only got a couple more questions for you guys. So yeah, this is a good one. What's an example of a public-private partnership you've seen work particularly well? And in your mind, what were the ingredients that made that successful?

Todd: I'm going to probably do a victory lap from when I was in the city of Royal Oak with the Civic Center project, which really started off as an economic development project. And so you have the key foundations that we had mentioned before about successful P3s. You had a plan. In this case, the Royal Oak City Commission and the Downtown Development Authority came together, they commissioned studies, and they made a development goal of 180,000 square feet of new Class A office space in the downtown by 2020. And this was in 2014. And the real reason for that was they were seeing a lot of their market share, especially in hospitality and people visiting the city going to Detroit, whereas Royal Oak was much more of an entertainment destination. And so you needed to round out what the economics were. So Royal Oak not naturally being an office town lended itself to we should explore public-private partnership opportunities because you're not going to naturally attract an office developer into the city. You're going to have to put out some incentive to get that. And the incentive that the city of Royal Oak had was both financial and land. And they were looking at developing surface parking lots. And so this is a project that eventually took, I think from concept to completion, it was 2015 to 2022. There were a lot of elements. It was over $100 million, but it ended up being a developer approaching the city with a solution to one, I know you've got outdated facilities, and two, you want an office building down here. I can build 140,000 square foot office building and you can be a tenant in that building 30,000 square feet.

And so it's a win-win-win. And I was the economic development director at the time, and I like to think of myself as reasonably intelligent. And I guess I knew what I didn't know, which was I needed help on this. And so I actually hired Plante Moran at the time to vet the parameters of the deal to make sure that the return on investment that the developer was getting was appropriate. You don't want to get caught after the project is built that, oh, this person got a windfall out of that. It's not really a true partnership if one side gets this and one side gets this. And it was actually through that that the city had made the determination to relocate its facilities and handle that aspect of the development. And the developer was on their own. What we didn't understand was the developer was counting on the city being a credit-worthy 30-year tenant in that building, which actually helped them finance it. And without that, it was purely speculative and it could not be financed. And so at that point, the public-private partnership could probably have dissolved. But after working together for three years and having a really good working relationship and understanding each other's pain points, we figured out an incentive mechanism so that the building could get financed without the city giving direct money to the developer. We would back the loan in a creative way so the developer would build their building, and then we mitigated risks by having a tax payback schedule on that for that developer. And then the city gets new facilities.

And at the end of the day, the other part of the alignment that can be tricky with projects like that is community engagement and making sure the community is in favor of it. And I'd be lying to say if every member of the community was in favor of what the City of Royal Oak did, but a majority were in favor of the one element that was going to be the last part, was a two acre central park that would be activating a green space that had never been there before. And the community got to sound off through charrettes and essentially designed this element for them. And it is now where you see winter blasts take place and a lot of different events in the city. It's got an economic impact that it's driving all on its own. And it's a really great example of, the developer has a project that has got a rent-paying tenant for 30 years that is a stable part of his portfolio. The city has got their economic development goal of bringing in more office use, more daytime foot traffic to help existing retailers and restaurateurs. And then the residents itself have an area that is now like, it used to be a sea of cement parking that is a fully activated place that is now bringing new events into the area. And so that is a win-win-win. And it took, again, like the P4 patience, that the larger the swing that you take, the more that you really have to spend time on the planning part that is so critical to make sure that you've got everything locked up in terms of the development agreement and phasing of a project and schedule, and especially if you're in an urban environment where closing down streets at certain times can be very problematic. I mean, I was always very worried that at the end of this, this is going to be great, but we cannot close the city and ruin all of the businesses that we have here for this goal that we're going after. We have to balance both of these. And that to me is probably the project that I am asked about the most, both on the public and now on the private side, is how did you do that? How can we do that?

Nick: Yeah, I have to give Todd a bonus lap on that one. I mean, him and I are here because we have the public side experience and the private side experience. I want to talk about my private side experience on Todd's project. As a Royal Oak resident, Todd is entirely underselling how cool this project actually was. For anybody listening to the podcast right now, open up Google Maps, find 11 Mile and Main Street in Royal Oak, and pull up Google Street View from 2012, 2013, whatever the most recent thing is before they did the construction, and then look at that project today. He is right. It was a sea of concrete. It was surface lots. They were some in better shape than others. But today you do have a beautiful park. You have a beautiful park that is activated, I don't know how many days of the year, but a major majority of them. You have people doing yoga out there on Saturday mornings. You've got major signature events like the Motown Winter Blast, which moved from campus marshes in downtown, which is also a pretty cool space out here to Royal Oak. It's been fantastic for the businesses of Royal Oak because you do have a major anchor tenant in Henry Ford that took that major office building. I've done physical therapy there. Shout out to the Royal Oak team. It brings a lunchtime crowd. It brings a daytime crowd five days a week. And what is a physical part of downtown that was successfully transformed through the implementation of a successful P3 is now accretive to the overall success of downtown Royal Oak as a whole. And I forget if you mentioned some of the perks of what were the outcomes of the P3, but the new, was it eight-story parking structure that residents can park in? I mean, it's made downtown more friendly. It's made downtown more accessible. There's programming going on down there. And just as a Royal Oak resident who had nothing to do with that project, I'm just excited to give Todd and everyone who worked on it a pat on the back. I mean, Paul, you guys at SPARK, you got some really cool members. You've got some really awesome heavy hitters on the public sector side, and you've got some private sector folks that are doing some really innovative, awesome things. Imagine what they could do if they work together.

Paul: Agreed. Agreed. And our role is to be the intermediary between those two and the other very large institution we have here that has a big yellow M on its stadium.

So I'm going to close out with, and I think we've talked a little bit about this, and it's always unfair to say what's the one thing, but you have some sense, you've been looking at the various communities in Washtenaw County, and we do have publicly owned, underutilized properties and redevelopment opportunities that we think could be unlocked. What's the one thing that we could be doing, or any committee could be doing, to position those assets for the right private sector partnership?

Todd: I think I would run down the list again. Have a plan, have buy-in from top to bottom on that plan. Make sure that you have a sense of what you think the outcome in terms of use could be, and whether that's you need some help with commissioning some highest best use type work, or maybe you are very specifically like Royal Oak, looking for a targeted use. Make sure you have patience because that may not be the correct use, and you may have to go back to that point. And if you're testing the developer market, you'll probably know pretty quickly whether that is something that the development community thinks is feasible or not feasible, but for some very significant incentivization. But the more you understand what you have, both financially in terms of what you can incentivize and what the actual parameters of the property are, and what is underneath that land, the more that you have all those boxes checked, it's a much easier discussion to have with the developer because it looks like you've done your homework. You're not necessarily speaking developer speak, but you know enough to get the conversation rolling.

Paul: Yeah, I think I would want to get your guys' thoughts about another aspect, which I think is how the world has evolved in variety of ways in social media and elsewhere. I really think that being able for the private sector to feel comfortable about the level of citizen engagement in the development of that plan, I think is really, really important because -

Todd: I agree 100%. And it's one of the first questions when I'm working with. There's a city right now that is interested in retaining us and they've put forth things that they want, and one of them is community engagement. And that's fine. That can be a pro and it can be both a con. I think it's nothing you can ever ignore. But what is the degree of that? Because it not only is going to inform our work, but it also informs the developer or the development community on there may be a much longer runway to take off here because this community in particular values that input from whether it's the business community or whether it's just your residential constituents, then maybe some others do. And that is going to be part of informing. It's almost like a design process. That feedback is going to absolutely find its way into ultimately what the project is. And you need to develop or be very aware that that is a step. And it could be nine months, it could be longer than that, it could be a year. There does come a point where is this community engagement, community feedback, or is this community bullying? I think both sides have to be cognizant of that because you can actually charrette something to death. I've seen it happen before in communities where you started off with one idea and it just by the end of it, you don't even remember why you started the process to begin with.

Paul: Yeah, there can be a tendency to boil the ocean. One of the things I just want to share with the audience is that one of the things that your firm can do is that we have big cities, medium-sized cities in Michigan, but then we have a lot of smaller communities that just don't have the capacity to validate what the developer is telling them. I mean, in some instances, your work is you're bringing a project forward. But in other words, you're offering the opportunity for a community to have a trusted partner to help them evaluate the opportunities that might be coming to them. And one of the things that, and I'm just saying where I was going with this from how the world has kind of changed, is there is tremendous skepticism of all kinds of things in the environment today. And so where you would be representing, this is what this means, whether it's the elected official or it's an appointed official saying, this is what this is going to bring to us, there is the need to have a validation of that, that it will achieve these kind of returns to the community. I mean, there's the kinds of returns you talked about where you've created a place that benefits a crew over time for businesses and others that are around it. And then there's what is the project actually going to achieve relative to tax base or anything like that? So one of the things, not overselling what you guys offer, but the point that I would make is that many communities are not large enough, but have development potential and the ability to find a trusted partner who is not in it for the developer. It is really trying to help the public sector partner have a good understanding of what the opportunity is, is I think what your firm is offering.

So we look forward to seeing what you guys do in the region. We appreciate your willingness to participate with SPARK and try to provide some background and education to our communities about the way that they should think about approaching development opportunities.

Todd: No, we appreciate the conversation, Paul, and we've always looked at Ann Arbor SPARK as one of the preeminent economic development organizations in the state. So being able to speak to your membership through you is absolutely the easiest yes I can say on a Friday afternoon in July.

Paul: Yeah, Friday afternoon in July. That's what we should tell everybody when we're recording this. So again, I want to thank you both for taking the time to speak with us today. Thank you.

And I want to thank our audience for listening and learning more about SPARK and how we impact the Ann Arbor region's economic future. These conversations are brought to you by Ann Arbor SPARK. For more information about Ann Arbor SPARK, you can find us on the web at annarborusa.org. We're also on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Don't miss an event, announcement, or job opportunity. Get news delivered to your inbox and stay informed about what is going on in tech, business, and talent in the greater Ann Arbor region.

Subscribe to our newsletters