Chris Hoard, BTG Ambassador and President of Distinctive Living Development, discusses strategy for developments, design and real estate deals.

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Welcome to season six of Bridge The Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. Powered by sponsors Accushield, Aline, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. The contributors are brought to you by Peak Senior Living and produced by Solinity Marketing.

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Lucas 00:49

Welcome to Bridge to Gap podcast at Senior Living Podcast with Josh and Lucas here in Park City at the Asha Summer membership. Not a retreat. It's more like a conference.

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Josh 1:00

It's the midyear meeting.

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Lucas 1:01

It's the midyear meeting. Okay. Now that we've established that we can move on to our good guest today. He's a very big deal at Distinctive. He has several titles: President, Chief, he's over development and a good, good friend and ambassador of BTG. Chris Hoard, welcome to the show.

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Chris 1:16

Thank you. Thanks for having both of you.

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Lucas 1:18

Thanks for letting us rib you a little bit. No, but most of our listeners, they know Chris and he more than likely has had a positive impact on your life in a variety of different ways, because ever since I've known you, I'd say 10 plus years, your motivation has been to advance the industry.

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Chris 1:37

Yeah, absolutely.

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Lucas 1:37

By whatever skills that you may have. Not necessarily, this is my job or my business, and I only want to advance that. You have been about the industry so much so that I believe, and maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, but it has morphed into your new role so that you can 100% focus on the industry.

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Chris 1:53

Absolutely. A hundred percent. I think starting my career off on the construction side of things, really coming in at the very basics. So I started off in the finishes as a subcontractor and then morphed into the general contracting field, which you know, a little bit about. But had the opportunity to grow over the years, learn a lot, and caught that little bit of a bug for development, and started putting cap stacks together. Actually Josh and I had some opportunities to put a few deals together, and as that has morphed, as I've had the opportunity to grow in that, it was always with the intention, and I've shared it, I believe even on this podcast about who our resident is, who's that individual, the one that we can go talk to and go make an impact in their lives. You guys call 'em love stories. So it's been an amazing journey and I feel like it's just starting all over again. So I'm really excited.

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Lucas 2:45

That is exciting. And you've been a great supporter of Bridge The Gap since the beginning and an ambassador. You've always been a great encouragement to us.

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Josh 2:52

Well, and Chris, we just kind of touched on it a little bit, but I kind of want to pivot into more of that conversation and the times that we've had to work together. I mean, even when I first met you, I think we actually got to know each other for a long time before we actually did any work together.

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Chris 3:07

Absolutely.

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Josh 3:07

Just because I was impressed that you were interested in building relationships and actually figuring out what it was that I actually really needed to advance what I was doing. And I remember you put a lot of people in my pathway that helped a lot of my projects that really were unselfish. It really had nothing to do with what you were doing specifically in construction at that time. But as you've used building those relationships to really get you to the success you've had and where you are today, how is that uniquely positioning you and your brand for like the very challenging times that senior living has been through? And I don't think we're finished with.

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Chris 3:46

No.

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Josh 3:47

And everybody here, even at ASHA is talking about things like in our executive board meeting was, "Okay, what is senior living gonna be called in the next five years? What are the preferences of what the consumer is actually looking for in next generation senior housing?" So all of these big thought provoking topics, you have built so many relationships and such a network. How is your brand and you uniquely positioned to be successful now because of that?

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Chris 4:17

Well, that's a lot to unpack. I think.

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Josh 4:19

It is! And we've got like 20 minutes.

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Lucas 4:21

Let's solve all of those problem right now.

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Chris 4:23

We've got lots of time. So let's just dive right in. Josh, I appreciate you saying that actually, because it really wasn't "Hey, what job do you have for me? What project do you have for me? What can you do for me, Josh?" I grew up in a time call it the mid eighties to early nineties especially in construction, it was, so, "Here's the nail, I'm gonna take my hammer, I'm gonna hit it." And that's how it went. And that's how everybody dealt with each other. And it was just, it just didn't sit well with me as a human. It didn't sit well with me, just who I was as a person. And I just thought I could do something a little different. And I think what I found was everybody can work through anything, whatever the challenge may be, but they just have to be treated with respect. And hey, let's gather everybody around and see how we can overcome these obstacles. Or maybe even not an obstacle. Maybe we just have something that we all need to work on together. And there's a couple different good ways we could go, what's the best way we can move this thing forward? I've always felt if I give, it'll eventually come back. And I know it's kind of a little bit cliche, I know there's lots of that around there, but it's very true. I've always found that if I can go help Josh somewhere down the road, Josh and I are going to have the opportunity to work together or he's gonna put somebody else in my pathway, which has happened by the way, right? So I think our brand today, we call ourselves at Distinctive Living, a "boutiquey" operations, right? We're Distinctive Living. And so we're trying to focus on the positive.

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Chris 5:49

We want people to come and live. It was 1980s, those 1990s. It was as if we were taking our adult parents, our grandparents, and we were putting them away. The atmosphere was very hospital, right? It was very medical and it wasn't a home. And so after going through that with a few of my own family members, even before my own family members, just being in the industry as a whole, and we didn't call it senior housing back then, felt like it could be a little bit different. You know, I felt like something could happen because I watched all these residents who were sitting around nurses stations, right? Or sitting in a living room by themselves and nobody talking to 'em. Yet, every interaction I had with them, I would find this download of history and amazing lives that they lived and they weren't done living.

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Chris 6:36

And so I think that's what our focus is today. I think that's what my passion has been. My passion is people, it's great that I get to go do construction. It's great that I get to do development, get in finance, but at the end of the day, we're talking about human beings and we're talking about family members who are making these unbelievable choices of I got to somehow separate myself from my mom or my dad who's always taking care of me. How do I put them out? Or a spouse, how do I put that spouse away? And how do we bridge the gap, excuse me, of not having that thought process of "putting away." Hey, we're going into a new chapter and it's going to be a lot of fun and we have this wonderful environment. We want the grandkids to come, we want the children to come and we want them to live more experiences and memories. So I think for me, going back to hopefully your original question here, what can I do? What can we do as an industry? I think that's be community, watch out for one another. And I have done it with you guys. I have a lot of people in my network where I don't know if I've done any deals with them, but what I have found is opportunities to help somebody else. And I see that come back. So that's what I'm grateful for.

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Josh 7:43

Well, and I think that gives our audience, maybe the few people in Europe that don't know you a little bit of context on your why, which I think is very important. And again, I think that's attributes to your success. Let's shift to maybe a little bit more transactional conversation and strategy behind what you guys are working on, because you're kind of leading the development efforts by all the conversations here and, and my experience, we're kind of in a difficult market for development, and we're also at a time where everybody's reinventing their community prototype and entering into things like active adult, where people have not been before in senior living. Unpack at least what you can tell us without having to kill us, the strategy behind what product type you are currently seeking to develop and why. And then maybe some of the challenges and how you're overcoming getting these deals funded. Because that's a top question at every event I'm going to.

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Chris 8:43

What we're focusing on is our traditional independent living, assisted living, member care. That's really the crux of what we do. But about two years ago, we started to pivot and start to focus a little bit more on this active adult and try to understand what that is. Again, I'll go back to the eighties and nineties, we saw the 55 plus and we knew, I knew what that was. I drove through them and I was around them. Top of the world was a big one, right? And all over Florida. I think we just got back from Dallas, right? We had the active adult conference in Dallas. And for me anyways, at the end of that conference, they had a panel of four or five women who were up there who were actual residents. And they talked about why they're there and what they were doing there and what brought them to the community and why they're staying at the community.

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Chris 9:24

And it kind of goes back to the conversation you just asked me. They wanted to live and a lot of 'em ironically lost their spouse. I think 75% of 'em did not have a spouse. So they're single and they wanted another community, another extension of their family. We're busy. We're at conferences every week. I'm not there for my mom and dad all the time. So they need somebody else who can relate to what they're going through, who can interact with 'em on a regular basis. We're really focused on living again, I'm going to keep driving that word back home of hey, how do we create environmental spaces that people can not only continue to grow, continue to learn, continue to live, but how can they have some really good interactions? How do we create environments and spaces that drive connections? And, and so kinda of goes back to your original question, right? Why do I do what I do? I think it's what everybody wants a sense of belonging. They want to feel accepted, they want to feel like they still have purpose. It's amazing when you sit down with these residents, they want to give more and sometimes they just don't even know where to start. They don't even know where to begin. I have a daughter in college, my oldest daughter, her Nana sat down with her and taught her how to crochet before she left. Just, I mean very minuit, very small potholder or something, which morphed into her going on YouTube. And she just finished a blanket for her grandma, right? So what an awesome opportunity that her grandma, man, I got to share this little skill, which now has turned into, that's what she does when she watches tv. She has to feel like she's accomplishing something. And so it's passing down through those generations. I think those are the things that we're looking to do in independent in our assisted in our memory care, creating those spaces that families can come in. One of the things we're doing right now, we're creating activity rooms, right? We all have activity rooms. That's pretty normal, but we're adding a game room on top of that. My architects are going, is that gonna work? Is it going to perform out? It has to because we have to have these engaging moments for the grandkids to come in and want to be there with grandma and grandpa or great grandma and great grandpa. We want the kids to be able to come in and sit down at in the pub and just have dinner and watch a football game with their dad or their mom. Creating those connections and those inviting and engaging opportunities is really what we're about today and focusing on.

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Josh 11:43

Speak to, just a minute, I know there's a lot still of new developers to the industry that are starting to enter. For the developer out there looking to get projects funded, what is the unique challenges and maybe some strategy that developers, owner, operators that are getting deals funded that they can do to position themselves to be able to check the boxes that the funding sources are now asking that maybe five, 10 years ago weren't as important?

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Chris 12:13

Thanks for bringing me back to the question.

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Josh 12:14

No, no, no. Really good job. I think you answered 1b.

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Chris 12:19

You mentioned it earlier. We're at these conferences, we constantly hear, "Oh, this economy, oh this financial state, it is so difficult. Nothing's getting done." And I would say, "I don't think that's true. I think things are getting done." We are seeing deals now. We're not getting as many done. We're not seeing them come out like they were maybe pre Covid, but we still are seeing a need for it, number one. And we're seeing a pathway to get there for us, for me personally, and I think for our group distinctive living, you have to have partners. You have to have great partners. You got to have a Lucas and say, "Hey Lucas, I've got this repositioning that's going on and I think this is where I'm seeing the pricing. What are your thoughts? And here's where it's at geographically. What are some of the challenges I should be expecting and what kind of contingencies should I be putting in there?" And this is happening way before I go to talk to anybody. On the finance side, one of the things that we really want to focus on is having this network of people, a network of vendors, a network of relationships that we can go to. I would say we're killing about 90% of what comes across our desk.

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Josh 13:18

Wow.

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Chris 13:18

And I look at a lot. So we still have a lot of deals. I mean, we've got 19 projects that are in our development pipeline. Nine of them are in some form or fashion of design and is pushing forward. The other 10 are still going through, you know, conditional use or some kind of rezoning. Still just betting it out in general. But I think the key is once we get a performa going very early in calling some of our financial partners and saying, this is one I vetted out. Here's some of the markers that I see is three to four times seems to be a key for everybody right now. They don't want to see us coming in there and taking, you know, every bit of 80% of what the unmet demand is. I think also coming to them with realistic numbers, construction obviously being a big one. And that's one that they want me to come to them with a real number. If I come to 'em and say, "I can build this thing for $160 a square foot," I lose their confidence and they won't even help me help myself go find and source the equity and the debt we need. So I think bringing realistic projects to them and and not wasting their time and them knowing how much time I'm spending on the front end has really made a difference for us. Because they're bending over backwards.

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Lucas 14:26

So you can't just check the box anymore and just kind of do the status quo and push this through and expect to get a deal?

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Chris 14:29

I don't think so. They have to put their stamp approval on it early to go out to the market. Whereas we used to be able to go out to the market and start talking to everybody and I just don't think that's happening today. I think you have to have your village get behind you and everybody have some confidence in what you're doing. And as that's happening, then some other people start to get some interest. I think good deals get done if we try and throw whatever we can up against the wall and see what sticks. It's just not a great concept and we probably could do that a few years ago. I don't think we can do that today.

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Josh 14:58

We would be amiss if we didn't talk just slightly more about construction because we got two construction experts here. And this is something I can't weigh too heavily in on, but between the two of you, construction seems to be that huge number and I think honestly that's probably what's scaring a lot of developers from even attempting to do development because they're like, there is no way I can afford to turn out a product with the construction costs the way they are. What are things that you're looking for that are able to put you at the table and have meaningful conversations with partners in a construction partner? Who are you looking for? What, what kind of boxes do they have to check?

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Chris 15:40

A couple things. So having a GC background and having come up through the industry as a contractor helps tremendously. It's amazing how many conversations I can have and they gain confidence. Again, just like our financial partners, if I bring 'em a deal and it's unrealistic what I'm bringing to 'em, it's the same thing with my construction partners. If I go to them with unrealistic expectations, if I come to 'em and say, "Guys, I think this is where I need to be on the budget. This is where I have to try and get to" and I'm 20, 30, $40 below a square foot, they're not even going to waste their time. And I again, lose that real partnership where they're going to try and go work hard for me because everybody's got to go work hard together. What we are doing is going out to them very early. I think having the conversations extremely early in the process. So whereas not bringing them a set of drawings, not even at the DD stage of drawings. I think we're talking at conceptual, "Guys, this is what we're thinking. Here's the kind of product we think we want to build. Here's the materials we think we want to build. One of the cities in Florida that we're looking at, GP partners really had a piece of land, they really wanted to make it work. The man was there, it made sense, but it was a little bit smaller community. So the rents are definitely going to be a little bit less. So one thing that we came up with is where we're in Florida, everything's gonna be blocking plank. We realized, "Hey, this is a little bit more center of the state. Maybe if we keep this thing down that underneath two stories, now we can go all wood frame and we can drive that cost down and that might work for this area that's very specific to that geographic area.

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Chris 17:05

But understanding that and then being able to go to one of our construction partners and say, "This is what I'm thinking. What do you think about that? Will it work A and B, what will you do for me with your vendors? What are you doing with your guys? When's the last time you had lunch with your mechanical, your electrical, your plumbing contractors?" And asking that and them going, "Oh yeah, we don't have time for that," red flag for us. I can tell you we have three or four partners that go, "Oh no, we have standing meetings. I go personally meet with them," and that's the president of the company. And as those types of things are happening, we're starting to get this community, this network where everybody's - I call it "all oars are rowing in the same direction" and now all of a sudden we're really starting to see something that could work.

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Josh 17:45

Well, I think that's exciting. And I think that speaks to your boutique approach. A lot of what I would consider more of your merchant developers that are developing product in every type of industry, whatever the flavor of the week is, they're seeking just path of least resistance. Where can I build this shell over and over and over and over again. And if they run into an obstacle, they just abort mission. The approach of bringing a full team together in and problem solving, how can we meet the demands of this market and adapt what we're doing to face the challenges and drawing on the experience of the team that you've been able to assemble. So a very exciting conversation. I get to see you a lot, but I don't know if our listeners get to hear you enough. So thanks for taking time. I know you've got a full slate of meetings here at ASHA and Lucas. I know we're going to connect our listeners to everything that Chris is doing.

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Lucas 18:33

We are. But I'm not letting Chris go just yet. I'm not letting him go just yet because I have one last little round of questioning and it's about design. Is there anything new under the sun? Is there something unique? Is it specific to an area or are you saying we want this design aspect across all 19 properties? Or are you reinventing the wheel at all 19?

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Chris 18:51

There's some distinct elements, I'll say, that we're trying to add to every community, that's us. It's all about Distinctive. Maybe this is known, maybe it's unknown. It's really interesting. We have to have package rooms now. We have so many packages coming and being delivered by Amazon. Yes, we have the Amazon hubs. They don't hold all the packages, so we're actually having to design in package rooms. That's a little thing, but not so little when you have a hundred packages stored up and stacked in the corridor and people can't get through. We're really pushing engagement. We're really adding a little bit more on the, we call 'em "engagement areas." How do we find some spaces, both inside and outside by the way, that we can have, again, some of those inviting opportunities for spouses to go out and meet other spouses. How do they do that? Where do they do that? Are they on their balconies? Can they do that? What happens if another Covid comes through? So we're trying to create more spaces that allow that flexibility. I mentioned the game room earlier, that's a big one. Where we have ski ball and we have video games, Miss Pacman, they still want to do those activities with the younger generation. Our libraries obviously are always big, but we're really starting to find that not everybody just wants to sit and read. They really want to do puzzles, but they want to do it in big groups and they want to do puzzles together. They want to get groups of people together doing things. And so I think we're really trying to just be intentional about how do we create those opportunities for them or those environments that'll allow them to have those opportunities together.

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Lucas 20:19

That's great. Spaces where people can thrive and people can live. It's not necessarily a groundbreaking concept, but it's an opportunity to kind of reimagine, rethink how older adults of today want to live out maybe, potentially, the last chapters of their life in a very meaningful way. Good conversation.

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Josh 20:38

Absolutely. Very good conversation from development, building your team and your village, construction, design. I don't know what else there is to talk about on this and it's a lot of bonus content for our listeners.

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Lucas 20:53

So final word, Chris, what is your encouragement to those that may be new in the industry in whatever form or capacity? It could be working for an operator that could be working for a provider, maybe a vendor provider to the industry. What's your word of encouragement to them?

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Chris 21:07

You just mentioned it. Thrive. Listen, we all have great opportunities right around us. Let's be more intentional about being grateful for what we have right in front of us. Let's take advantage of those opportunities. I just recently had a Walt Whitman quote come up and it said, "Keep going." And so I think that's it for me today. Hey, let's keep going. We're doing fine. We're doing good. We're doing all right. Yes, things are tough, but we got a lot of really good things to celebrate as well. Let's keep celebrating those and let's move forward together.

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Lucas 21:35

Great. Well said. I appreciate it. So to our listeners, we so appreciate you listening in to this great piece of content that we have here at the ASHA membership meeting. We encourage you to go to btgvoice.com and check out this episode and many others. Connect with us on LinkedIn and our social channels. And thanks for listening to another great episode of Bridge The Gap.

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21:55

Thanks for listening to Bridge The Gap podcast with Josh and Lucas. Connect with the BTG network team and use your voice to influence the industry by connecting with us at btgvoice.com.