Andy Ansin, CEO, Sunbeam Properties

Andy Ansin is the third generation of one of South Florida's most enduring families. His grandfather Sidney founded Sunbeam in 1953. His father Ed turned WSVN-Channel 7 into a Miami institution and built the Miramar Park of Commerce. Now, as CEO of Sunbeam Properties and owner of WSVN, Andy is writing the next chapter at a pace that feels a lot like the newsroom he grew up in.

Over a cocktail, we trace the whole arc: a Miami Beach kid running camera cable in the WSVN newsroom as a teenager, coming back after Brown, and stepping into the CEO seat in 2020. Then we get into what he is building now. Miramar Cove, the 125-acre lifestyle center he broke ground on this year, on land his grandfather bought for about a hundred dollars an acre. The Isle of Dreams towers rising in North Bay Village. And the family philosophy behind it, including why he builds with cash instead of debt.

This being a biography show, we also get the side most people never see, including his passion for spearfishing. Turns out the guy running two megaprojects at once finds his head clearest underwater. Grab a drink and settle in.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:13

All right. Awesome. Cool. We got Andy Hansen here. We do.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

We do. And he came in hot with gifts. I know. For for those that can see, he brought in two coolers of what kind of fish was this, Andy?

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Those are mangrove snapper.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Mangrove snapper. I know. Might be the coolest gift we've gotten. I think so. Next guests better set their game. I know, right? Everyone always just brings up the thing. Now we got fresh fish. Damn. Well, thank you for bringing that. It's amazing. And if you give me back the cooler, you might get more.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

Oh. We'll do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

We'll do.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

Um, well, welcome, Andy. Welcome to Bureau. Um, and thanks for joining us uh today. Uh, we actually got connected. I was uh I was prospecting uh warehouse owners in uh in the Golden Glades. Really? And apparently Andy owns a little warehouse up there.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

That's how you that's how you found them?

SPEAKER_03 0:59

Yeah, and so I you know, I started sending him emails and I think we exchanged a couple emails. Um, and then uh I looked at like the TRD, like who's who in real estate, and this fucker was on it. I'm like, like, like, hold on a second here. I gotta do my research before I start reaching out to these people called you recognize the name, yeah. And so I'm like, oh shit, like this is Andy Anson. That's hilarious. Um, and uh their family owns WSVN uh channel seven here in Miami.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

I had a similar epiphany. I said, Oh shit, this is Felipe from the Built World Podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

That's funny, and then the irony of it is that we have Paola here from Top of Mind PR, which has been a huge supporter of ours. You work with her, and uh and so this came full circle. Perfect, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:48

And they've been doing a terrific job.

SPEAKER_03 1:50

All right, great. Yeah, Paola's been a huge supporter of ours. So shout out to Paola, thank you. Yeah, thanks, Paola. Um and uh and so cool. Well, let's start out with a cheers. Oh, we have to. Yeah. You can stay right there, Andy. All right, welcome.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Cheers, cheers.

SPEAKER_03 2:15

So Andy, you said you stopped drinking a few years ago, right? I did. What what uh what brought that on?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Oh primarily the free diving and spirit fishing.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

And they just didn't it didn't go very well with the you can hold your hold your breath longer without uh blood blood alcohol content. Your head hurts less.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

You're not one of those like California sober guys, are you?

SPEAKER_01 2:36

I spend a lot of time in California.

SPEAKER_03 2:38

Yeah. California sober is like you can do everything but drink alcohol. Is that is that what you are? You're California sober?

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Oh no, I I don't do much.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

Um so uh so you so really just for health reasons and and and the spear fishing, but you also do like real deep diving as well, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Yeah, it's free, it's free dive fishing.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

How how how how how many feet deep do you go?

SPEAKER_01 3:05

I'd say a typical dive would be you know 65 feet for a minute and a half. Dang. So but your your fish came from a little deeper. Yeah. Oh really? Yeah, how deep? Those were like 70 to about 70.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

So you went down to 70 feet yesterday?

SPEAKER_01 3:22

For those fish, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:23

Dang, dude.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Yeah, how do you get that deep? Just big long flippers?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

I have big long flippers, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

And a lot of training over the years. How long you've been doing this? I have a swimming and water polo background, so that helps. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 3:35

Yeah, how long you've been doing the the spear fishing and the deep sea diving.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Wow, I guess with the intrinsic. Or free diving. Um yeah, I always did some as a kid, right? Growing up growing up down here, but I'd say it's been 30 years. Wow, wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Where do you go to find fish like this?

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Is that yeah, it's offshore? Those fish were a little north of Fowee Lighthouse. If you know where that is, I don't. Uh off of Kibiscane. If you go to like Cape Florida, you look out, there's a lighthouse out there on the water.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Just a little bit north of that. Okay. Where the big those are where the bigger snappers came from.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

Offshore. Uh. Yeah. Yeah. And so do you anchor out there or you just let the boat float? And uh generally we anchor. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

How many how many people do you go out there with? Um depends. Uh most of the time it's just me with the driver.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Yeah. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Yeah. You have weights on? You have weight belt?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

I have a wetsuit and weight belt. Yeah, you're neutrally buoyant at about 30 feet. Okay. Then after that, you're kind of free. You're still fallen. Just gotta be popping those ears, huh? Yeah, you have to make sure you don't have a cold.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:39

So, I mean, so you're you're you're holding your breath for a minute, a minute and a half.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

That's the typical dive.

SPEAKER_03 4:46

Yeah. How many dives do you do when you go out?

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Depends. Like if it's lobstering, it's a lot shallower, and you could do a hundred over a hundred dives. If you're going deep with free diving and spear fishing, you know, maybe 30. Holy shit. That's intense. But it's all day. I mean, I'm out there all day.

SPEAKER_03 5:02

Like how how many hours?

SPEAKER_01 5:04

In the water, six.

SPEAKER_03 5:05

Dang. That's fucking no joke. Must be a decent swimmer. I know. Well, dude, listen, polo polo players are fucking no joke. Yeah, that's a that's like the most brutal. No, people don't realize that it's one of the most brutal sports there are. Like, there is a lot of a lot of shit that happens below the water, and uh, and it's pretty violent, and you got to be in sick shape to do that shit.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

A lot of elbows, a lot of pulling down.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Yeah, that's cool. He's like, yeah, he's like so so the uh I went to practice one day and I knew this real estate broker, uh Paul Bexkayhazi. At the time, he worked for what was it, Caldwell Banker, industrial. He's an industrial broker. So I knew him from Miramar Park of Commerce, a brand new business park. So he made an effort to meet all the brokers in town. And also I show up for water polo practice, and Paul is there. And I didn't know it, but Paul was a former Olympian. He had swum for Brazil. And the reason he swam for Brazil is he could have gone to the Olympics with the U.S. water polo team, but he wasn't sure they're gonna make it. I guess he didn't do well at the Pan Am games or something. So he said, okay, I'm just gonna go swim for Brazil. So he does, and he ended up getting fourth place in the relay. They based on today's timing, they would have tied for third with the Germans. But back then the time clock went out to the one thousandth of a second. Today it only goes out to the hundreds, so he would have tied. Anyway, so he's in there and he's a bit he's like a Hungarian, just Brazilian, super strong guy, and a lot of muscles and hair and everything. And the next thing I know, uh, I'm guarding him in what's called the hole, which would be kind of like the center in basketball. And I feel his foot on my swimsuit, like it's up on my hip. And I know what's coming, which is he's gonna push off of me. He's gonna kick on me as hard as he can and get separation, and someone's gonna throw in the ball. He's gonna try to score. So I grab his bathing suit. We're both wearing speedos. So I grab his bathing suit and I'm holding on. And when the kickoff comes, I break his string. And he's really mad at me. He's like, You broke my string. I'm like, hey, you kicked off of me. That's what caused your string to get broken. And then he laughed about it. He said, That hasn't happened since I was in California. And we became very good friends after that.

SPEAKER_03 7:22

Yeah, Brazil has a very good water polo team, and Hungary does too, as well. Hungary historically. Yeah, it's been one of the strongest water polo teams. Sounds like scary dudes. Yeah. Um, well, cool. So we wanna, I mean, your your family's been around Miami for a long time. Um, your your great grandfather came down here. Uh and so let's let's get into a little bit about your grandfather because the the story really starts in in bought in outside of Boston, right? Uh right.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yeah, they had uh my great-grandfather had uh and my grandfather had shoe factories outside of Boston, maybe an hour and a half, uh in Leminster and Fitchburg, Massachusetts, uh, which are on rivers. So they used the river powers back then to uh power the factories. And then the workers, many of them came from Canada. Apparently, there must be a highway or something. They'd come down and and they would they would work at the factories uh making shoes. And at one point they were making shoes for the U.S. Army.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

Oh, okay. And so so your your your great grandfather started the factory.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Great grandfather.

SPEAKER_03 8:26

What year was that, more or less, you know?

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Well, it must have been in the late 30s, 30s. For the World War II. I'm I'm not sure exactly when they started.

SPEAKER_03 8:34

So he was manufacturing for World War II soldiers um in in the late 30s, early 40s.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

That was part of the part of the business, yeah. Yeah. They'd come over the family came over from Russia uh just after the turn of the century.

SPEAKER_03 8:47

Got it. And they the they they all went to the Massachusetts area.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Both sides of my family, both my mom's side and my dad's side.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

Are both from from from Russia?

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Uh both from Russia, Eastern Europe, and they both ended up in the Massachusetts area. Yeah, in Massachusetts, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:05

All right. Boston area. So your grandfather starts the company, um, and then your your great grandfather starts the company, your grandfather takes over. Um, and what happens after your grandma?

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Grandgrandfather takes over. This is the shoe business. My grandfather takes over, and then my father had one brother, uh, and he worked with my grandfather in the shoe business, and it became a very difficult business. Uh initially you had uh Mexico, and then ultimately China, you know, producing a lot of less expensive shoes and so forth. So many of these, I think most of these factories closed. Uh in the in their case, they decided to go uh up upscale, very high end, and they created the brand Kohan.

SPEAKER_03 9:50

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

And that way they were able to stay in business for much longer. And I think they ultimately sold Kohan. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

Yeah. I thought it was a small little shoe company. Yeah, exactly. Wow. When did when did they create Kohan?

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure. My cousin was telling me that story. But I remember ordering from the Kohan catalog, and you'd call my uncle's secretary to basically place your order, and that would have been in the late 1980s. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

I have a pair of Kohans at home. I do too. Yeah, yeah, they're really nice shoes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. My wife loves them. Yeah. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 10:26

Um, all right. But then, so then your your your grandfather or your it was your father that moved to Miami.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Well, actually, what happened was my grandparents and uh my father and my uncle, they used to vacation uh here on Miami Beach. And they said they came down a lot. They were down during World War II and stuff. They saw the U-boats offshore and everything. Wow. Uh and then eventually he my grandfather ended up, this my father's father ended up with a uh a heart condition, something of that sort. And his doctor said, Oh, you better go retire, take it easy in Miami Beach. You got a house there already. Uh but he was never one to retire and take it easy. Uh he loved uh buying and selling things. Uh so he actually would travel all around the state, and he loved nothing better than to get in the car and meet with brokers, be it in Tampa or over in Vero Beach, whatever, and he just bought land. He would sell it the next day if he can make a profit. He did that downtown occasionally, he'd buy something and sell it. He would have been analogous to a modern day, like day internet trader, stock trader. Um, so we have land all over the state. The only place he wouldn't buy was in the central part of the state. So we don't know anything. He bought nothing in Orlando. He figured, why would anyone come to Florida and not live on the water? Right. Uh, so in the course of that, he encountered a lot of people, and and that's how we found out about the TV business.

SPEAKER_03 11:54

Uh, I got it. So your grandfather is buying is buying land here, and then he discovers the TV business. And how well what was that connection? How did how did that happen?

SPEAKER_01 12:06

They were building houses uh and was now kind of Miami Gardens, West Park, that area, uh just just just west of 95 around Hollandale Beach Boulevard. Uh, and they also own land further west on the Miami side, the Dade County side of the county line. And Channel 4 was the first station down here to get a television license, so WTVJ. And they they needed a site to put their tower. And all the big towers, the thousand-foot towers that broadcast for television, are located in the same area, right on the county line. Because it's midway between Miami International Airport and Fort Lauderdale. So it's the no-flight zone. No flight. That's where the tower starts. They came to him, they said, we need 10 acres. The reason you need 10 acres uh is because this thousand-foot tower, if it falls, they don't want it falling off the property. 10 acres. He gives them the price, they say, okay, they buy it. No negotiation. Then Channel 10 comes, they get the next license, WPLG. They come in, they say, We we need the same, we need 10 acres too. So he doubles the price, no negotiation, and they close. Wow. So Sydney's like, must be a pretty good business. Maybe I should get involved in this. So when the license came up for uh what was then became CKT, Channel 7, uh, he put his hat in a ring. But he was one who put his hat in the ring for everything. I remember reading a book about the old Miami Dolphins, and when Joe Robbie got the franchise, my grandfather tried to get the franchise. I mean, he anything that was out there, he he tried. He was just extremely gregarious and fun, and actually was campaign chair for United Way in I think 1963, so 63 years ago. And think about how small Miami was back then. He raised 14 million dollars. Like he just knew everybody and was out there. Um, so puts his hat in the ring, doesn't get it, it ends up going to a partnership between Cox, which is now uh Cox Radio, Cox Broadcasting, uh Knight, which is Knight Ritter, Miami Herald, McClatchy, and then uh a fellow by the name of Niels Trammell, who had been the president of the NBC television network. So he knew television. And they built the Channel 7 building, got the license, and went into business. But about three years later, uh they were up for their renewal. You have to renew your FCC license to this day every three years, and you have to show that you're providing community service and so forth, and it's subject to objection. Well, my grandfather didn't object, but he threw his hat in the ring again as someone that would uh like to have the license. And that just so happened that that year the Justice Department cracked down on people who are either renewing or getting licenses having improper contact with FCC officials. And turns out that everyone except for my grandfather, including the owners of WCKT, had improper contact with the FCC officials. And the magistrate calls my grandfather up and says, Sydney, why are you the only one that didn't have improper contact with FCC officials? This is like incredible. Now, what you have to understand is my grandfather is the first one who would have had improper contact with an FCC official. Because if you look at the family pictures, you'll see him. And he and his buddies, middle of the day, are at the cabana at the Fontainebleau, or it might have been the Eden Rock because he had cabanas at both. And they're surrounded by skimply clad cocktail waitresses, and they're drinking and they're smoking cigars, right? And and it was like the rat pack. And that's what he'd do. He'd invite people to come over to cabana and he party and have a good time. So he would have definitely interfered with an FCC. He wanted to hang out with his granddaddy. And um so then the magistrate asked him, why didn't you have any? He says, Because my attorney told me not to. Gets the license. Wow. And then uh CKT, the partnership, was required to sell him the real estate. So they sold us a third of what is was called broadcast key in North Bay Village, where the physical plant is, as well as the broadcast tower.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

Uh so we I think the the broadcast tower being the one that was on the on the on the uh Dade County. One that was on the line, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

The one the property that he had sold to CKT, he got back.

SPEAKER_03 16:28

Got it.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

He got that back.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

So and that that okay, and then um so how many acres did you get on uh on on uh on North Bay village.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

North Bay Village. Uh that was roughly two acres. It's very, very small. And most of the parking was not on the property that we uh acquired. It didn't stand alone. Uh that peninsula was shared by the TV station, which we got, that that that building, and then there was a second building for the radio station, which the same the old partnership CKT continued to uh own and operate. And it was called to this day WIOD, which stood for Wonderful Isle of Dreams, which is what this broadcast key was referred to, and they were 610, it's still on the dial. Um so we got the sliver and they had to enter into what was called the Biscayne Agreement, and under the Biscayne agreement, neither party could do anything that was gonna negatively adversely affect the broadcast business of the other, and we got the right to park on their side of the property uh and there's some other restrictions on use and so forth, but it later became a matter for litigation for 14 years uh when the radio station sold the property because they moved to Miramar, uh still kept the two big radio towers on the property, uh, but sold the real estate, and uh we ended up in litigation over that for 14 years.

SPEAKER_03 17:59

And did you guys end up buying the getting that real estate?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Ultimately, uh, because the person who bought the property from the radio station uh got a mortgage, then got a second mortgage, uh the second mortgage got a UCC filing. Now I didn't know about these things before, but you know, normally in real estate you go and you you give a first mortgage, right? And then when the lender wants to foreclose, it can be very lengthy process. You hire an attorney and it can be years before the foreclosure is affected. But in the in the case where you had a second lender, uh the second lender oftentimes gets a UCC, a universal commercial code. And under the UCC, you don't have the same defenses that you have in real estate foreclosure. So it happens very quickly. So the second lender lender ended up with the property. Um okay. Still subject to the first. No, no, no. He he foreclosed. He foreclosed the first.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Yeah, actually, he had he had become the first lender also over. He bought him out. He initially was the second, then he became the first to become the second. Still had this UCC. When payments weren't made, he gets the property, right? Um Okay, I didn't know he had gotten the property. It was really interesting. So when my father passed away, which is six years ago, uh, the person who had borrowed the money and at that uh point had title. My dad had been in litigation with him for nine years or something, ten years at that point. When my dad passes away, all of a sudden I like get some type of filing from this guy in the courts. And I figure, okay, he's just testing me. He wants to see if I'm as tough as my old man was or something. And my wife, who's like a genius with the internet, she goes on and she says, You know, Andy, he doesn't own the property anymore. Right? I'm like, What do you mean he doesn't own the property anymore? She goes, Well, he lost it to the second lender. Look at this. Oh, that's interesting. So I contact the uh corporate representative at Greenberg Farig, and I said, I'd like to like to have a meeting with uh the owner that you represent. And this is in the middle of the pandemic. And he said, Okay. So I get on the phone, tell him what I'm interested in. I said, I'd like to buy the property. And uh he and I sit down. There's a man by the name of uh Andre Rondant. He's he's since passed away. Uh and Andre and I sit down at Panther Coffee in uh Sunset. Sunset, right, right there on Miami Beach. And we we it takes us a number of meetings to kind of get to a deal. But each time it seems like we kind of have a deal. Um and when he when when he would show up for a meeting, whoever was there first, we'd both stand up and shake hands. Uh remember, this is the middle of the pandemic. And when the meeting would get done, Andre would get up and leave. Wouldn't shake my hand. And I'd go back and tell my wife and my turn, like I we kind of have a deal, but we don't have a deal. They go, What do you mean you don't have a deal? I go, he didn't shake my hand. I go, well, it's the middle of the pandemic, Andy. Right. So long story short, in the course of this negotiation, we hit an impasse and we kind of put everything on hold. And I find out that the property next to what Mr. Rondant owns, so the property next to the old radio station property uh is also for sale. And that's where the traffic light is. Like we have this six-acre peninsula, beautiful piece of property in the middle of this game bay, halfway between Miami and Miami Beach, but it doesn't have a traffic light. And everyone's gonna want to put you know big condominiums and eat all this traffic. Oh, so let me buy the property next door. It has a traffic light, and then I can go back to Mr. Rondant. And if I can't buy his property, at least I won't be in litigation. I can negotiate something because he's gonna need access to this traffic light. Okay. So I end up buying the property, and my wife is saying, Andy, you had a problem now because Mr. Rondant is the hole in the donut. You can own all the property all around him, but But you need his donut. I go, yeah, but I'm the donut. And he needs the traffic light. I'm sure we'll work something out. But I didn't want to uh become partners or something like that. So we we meet again and uh oh yeah, and she warned me, look, he's gonna raise the price because he's the hole in the donut. Yeah, he's gonna raise the price. So we sit down, he raised the price, about 10%. We agree, he gets up, he shakes my hand. Like, we got it. Got it done. And then we close.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

So so how so how many acres do you guys have there, North Bay Village now?

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Well, now we have 13. Uh, because I bought a couple more uh acres nearby, adjacent across the street.

unknown 22:40

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Across the street as well. Yeah, the Presidente supermarket. Oh, wow. Kind of a land cover.

SPEAKER_03 22:46

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

I don't I don't know of 13 acres that exist anywhere in Miami. So waterfront's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 22:52

How many of it is contiguous though?

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Um well it's either some of it's across the street. Yeah. So that would be maybe four and a half acres across the street. We have half a mile of bayfront. Dang. Yeah. It's gonna be amazing. It is gonna be amazing. But even the property that's across the street, it's all single family. So the views are spectacular.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

You get up 20 feet. I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Well, we kind of jumped ahead. Yeah, we did. We got to go back.

SPEAKER_03 23:21

Oh, we do have to go back.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

The beginners.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

There's so many cool things I want to talk to Andy about here today. I think we're gonna be here for a while.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Yeah, yeah. Um we left off with I think your grandpa was it your grandpa buying that that first tract of land?

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Grandpa grandpa buys land. Uh they do they're developing single family homes, gets into the TV business, so now he's the NBC affiliate here in Miami. Um and my father was really, really very good at entitling land. So my grandfather had at that point, at one point, we were up to about 2,000 acres in Miramar. Oh wow. Which, and some in Pembroke Pines, uh, a good portion of which, I guess most of which, uh, we were selling to single family homeowners and uh single family home builders and apartment builders. Uh and that kind of kept going. My dad was really very, very good, exceptionally good at uh getting the property entitled.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

Uh you guys weren't doing the development, you guys were just buying entitling and initially we were just selling.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Yeah. Entitling and selling. Uh but then in the early 80s, uh, we started the Merrimar Park of Commerce, uh, which we ended up uh building ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 24:32

And that's an industrial park.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Five million square feet, uh with the largest uh family-owned, uh locally owned uh business park in South Florida.

unknown 24:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

That's essentially what I've been working on. I've worked on since I got out of college, was Marmar Park.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Oh, is that right? Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

When uh where were you where did you grow up? Uh we grew I was born in Miami Beach at Mount Sinai, and but I grew up in Corrigables. Yeah, my dad built a house there.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

What was it like uh growing up in Miami?

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Well much different than it is now. I'm sure.

SPEAKER_03 25:07

Uh you were born what year?

SPEAKER_01 25:16

I was born in sixty-three. You know, one of the biggest differences would have been and it's gotten better, uh, safety. Uh in that I remember when I was in high school, I would I needed to get to Channel 7 in North Bay Village, and we're in Coral Gables, so I take the bus. I didn't have a car. So I would actually take the bus, change buses at roughly where Omni is now, and then have it continue on to North Bay Village with no particular concern. Uh that and and certainly traffic. Like my we lived in Coral Gables, but it took 20 minutes to get to North Bay Village every day. There was you didn't have all the traffic on US one, you didn't have the traffic on 95. So I think those things were different. And pricing. I mean, things were things we didn't realize it, but things were much, much less expensive then. Yeah, it was more of a small town back then. It was a small town back then, and so I grew up in high school during the uh 80s. I was class, I was class of uh 81, so 70s.

SPEAKER_03 26:15

That's like prime cocaine in cowboy days.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

It sure is, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:18

Yeah, were you hanging out at the uh what's the the mutiny?

SPEAKER_01 26:23

So no comedy, no comment. But what I remember very clearly, and I'll kind of bring this comment forward, was in high school, you saw bumper stickers that said, were the last American, please take the flag. Yeah. And there was this whole group of people that were leaving Miami because of the Cuban wave, the Cuban migration, right? And I think what happened is you know, I've talked to many of the families who've moved here recently, say from California, uh, New York, particularly California, and they're they're really surprised at how welcoming we are in South Florida. Like they're not accustomed to people being so welcoming and friendly. I think part of it was self-selection. I think the people who didn't want to have an inclusive community left.

SPEAKER_03 27:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Right. And the ones that were left are more inclusive. Plus, we like to sell condominiums.

SPEAKER_03 27:15

Yeah. True. True. So you're you're you're born in, so you guys have this your dad buys uh the media business what year?

SPEAKER_02 27:29

It's like a pop quiz.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

More or less. 60 years, so mid-sixties, early 60s, mid-sixties.

SPEAKER_03 27:42

Okay, so about the time you were born.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 27:46

Yeah. So you were really brought up in in that business and more than the real estate business, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Yeah, I grew up in the newsroom.

SPEAKER_03 27:53

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Um that had to be a trip.

SPEAKER_03 27:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

Yeah, it was great. What was that like? Where you'd get to see the set?

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Like what was the well that part was fun, but the really fun part was uh I would I would go out on an assignment with the reporters and the photographers. Oh, cool. So back then, at one point, uh you had a cameraman at the camera, and then we were recording on videotape, but the video recorder wasn't part of the camera, it was a separate box, and there was an umbilical cord that connected one to the other. My job was to put the box, put the strap on my shoulder, it wasn't that light, and follow the cameraman around. And like if we were at the courthouse and had to backpedal down because San Pedro or someone was coming out of the courthouse, it was my job to hold his belt and help him back down the stairs so he could keep rolling.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

Was this high school job?

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Yeah, it was high school job.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

That's a what a cool high school job.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Yeah, it was great. So the the most memorable part was the McDuffie riots.

SPEAKER_03 28:48

I want to talk a lot about this because this is really interesting. And I don't think we've really talked about this on the podcast. Um, because it it's it's a significant piece of history and it it changed Miami quite a bit, I think, right? Um, I actually just read this book. Um, maybe you've read it too. It's uh The Year of Dangerous Days. Have you read it?

SPEAKER_01 29:06

No, but I'm familiar with it.

SPEAKER_03 29:08

Yeah. Uh and it talks about the the title of the book is The Year of Dangerous Days, Riots, Refugees, and Cocaine in Miami 1980, and how that was kind of a very transformative year for for Miami. Um, and uh let's talk a little bit about the McDuffie riots. Um, can you share what that what that is? And you were in the newsroom when this broke, right? Um, because it really broke because of a Miami Herald reporter. Um, and then um it it then eventually I think it caught up, you know, and and it really became something that that TV started paying attention to, but it took a while for for it really to come to fruition.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Well, they had the trial, right, and and they released the results of the trial, which was the uh they weren't convicted, they found the police were found innocent in on a Friday. Yeah, so afternoon.

SPEAKER_03 29:58

So it was a it was a black guy that was riding through some part of Miami that was severely beaten by a number of police officers, um, and they basically said no, he it was he he fell off his motorcycle. And people started investigating, it was like these injuries are not consistent with a a bicycle crash. Um, and so it it it this investigation went on for a while. They went to trial, and the evidence was uh showed that this was not a cr this was not a motorcycle crash, but they were all found not guilty.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

Um and so there was a huge riot in Miami.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Yeah, well the verdict came out on a Friday night. Yeah. Which was a big mistake. Because then you had people drinking Friday night and Saturday and riot and rioting. Yeah. And then I was in the I remember being in the newsroom, and I think it was two Canadian tourists, a couple that got pulled out of their car from one of the neighborhoods and and killed.

SPEAKER_03 30:58

Yeah, they were beaten and killed, right? Yeah.

unknown 31:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:01

But but there were there there was there was a were there more deaths during the McDuffie riots? How many deaths were there? Do you know? I don't recall.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Yeah. A lot of property damage. A lot of property damage. I mean, it was you could see. So I was we came from Channel 7 and needed to go over, because now I'm working with the news crew, uh, to go over and try to film some of this, right? But you really couldn't because it was too dangerous. Yeah, you you you'd have buildings, and if you came over the causeway, you'd see the Miami skyline was just a huge on fire, just big flame balls.

SPEAKER_03 31:34

Where was where was the majority of the damage done?

SPEAKER_01 31:37

It it was from the 112 expressway, so from 36th Street north to maybe a little north of uh of 96th Street, maybe in the low hundreds.

SPEAKER_03 31:48

Oh wow. Yeah. It's a pretty large part of uh like 17th Avenue and that area. Uh-huh.

unknown 31:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

So we go over, we're in the in the news vehicle, news van, and they're like, You want to go? Yeah, I want to go. So we jump in and we're going over, and you see all these flame balls and fireballs on the skyline. And they're like, Okay, uh, we got a building that you guys can go film that's on fire, uh, because the the SWAT team has moved in to police the area and to protect the firefighters. Because a lot of times firefighters couldn't go in because they would get shot, right? That's snipers and stuff. So we're like, okay. So we we go there and we're filming it from the ground. There's a warehouse that's on fire somewhere in Liberty City. And then the the uh people that are in the apartment building next to it, it's like a three-story apartment building, maybe four-story apartment building with outside stairs and outside hallways going to each unit. And the people are up there watching the fire, right? And like, hey, channel seven, channel seven, you want to come up here? And the cameraman photographer looks at me and goes, What do you think? Hey, let's go. I'm like 17. Let's go. So we start walking up the stairs, and I'm carrying the recorder and tethered to him. And the whole way up, they're like, Hey, channel seven, channel seven. So we get up there and from the third or fourth floor, and we're shooting down over this warehouse with the fire like emanating and everything. And then we get the call, like, uh, SWAT team's about to leave. We're like, okay, we're leaving. Trudge our way back down the stairs. And then that night, uh, Tom Brokaw with the NBC News, the backdrop behind behind Tom was the video that we shot.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Oh, wow. Yeah. I remember Tom Brokaw, NBC Nightly News. Um, so you're 17 doing all this. Is that what you wanted to do? Like as a career? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

I wanted to be a uh war correspondent or war producer. Yeah. In generation. Sounds like you were training for it with that kind of shoe.

SPEAKER_03 33:45

We had a little war going on in Miami in the 80s. Like you didn't have you didn't have to leave Miami.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

Back then, back then, reporters and producers didn't get killed and kidnapped the way they do now. It wasn't quite as dangerous.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

It was still dangerous enough.

SPEAKER_03 33:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

Yeah. And what were you good at in school? Did you enjoy it? Were you a good student? Did you enjoy any subjects more than others?

SPEAKER_01 34:04

I was a good student.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

Yeah.

unknown 34:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

Uh in college I got two degrees, one in computers and one in economics. And then I had an undercurrent of studies in urban studies. And you went to Brown, right? Went to Brown.

SPEAKER_03 34:16

Another another overachiever on the podcast. Oh, yeah. Paola, we gotta screen these people, Paola. We want C students here. Exactly. Um, but you so so grow you grew up you grew up in Coral Gables. Um were you you spent a lot of time at the at the at the at the TV station?

SPEAKER_01 34:41

A fair amount, yeah. And on Mami Beach, my grandparents lived in the house there. So I got you spent time with them there.

SPEAKER_03 34:47

Yeah. Um and then summer jobs, any summer jobs in high school?

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Well, those were at Channel 7.

SPEAKER_03 34:53

All at Channel 7. So you kind of grew up in the business. Yeah. Um what uh what kind of sports did you play in high school?

SPEAKER_01 35:02

I played water polo and I swam starting my junior year.

SPEAKER_03 35:05

What what uh what uh style swim?

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Uh sprint freestyle and breaststroke.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:11

Did you swim in college too, or no?

SPEAKER_01 35:13

I did. I did both.

SPEAKER_03 35:14

You played polo polo in college too?

SPEAKER_01 35:16

Oh, four years for both. There are only two of us in my class. So we're class 85. Only two of us swam and played water polo all four years. Uh, one of them, uh Steve, he was uh all-American uh swimmer and all American water polo player. I never won a race. Yeah. But I was thinking you gotta beat somebody. Yeah. If you're gonna win the race, someone else loses. So I was the guy that always lost. Uh, but enjoyed it, enjoyed the uh camaraderie and the team sport and played water polo until I was 40.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

Yeah. Were you uh into the whole spearfishing thing back then, too? For free diving and spearfishing?

SPEAKER_01 35:51

No, not really until my 30s.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

Okay. It wasn't as much of a thing back then, huh?

SPEAKER_01 35:55

Not for me. I mean, we would do some in the Bahamas, certainly. Yeah, I did it then, but not not with the intensity.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Got it. So you go off to college, you go off to Brown, and then you knew you wanted to come back and work at the in the newsroom, or no, not necessarily.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Uh at Brown, I had a lot of friends that were going to work for big uh investment banks. And since I had the economics and computer background and they knew me and so forth, like, Andy, if you ever want to come work for whatever one of these banks are, I'm sure you'll we can get you a job there. So that's what I was planning on doing. Um or I could have gone to business school. But I figured I'd go work for the bank for a couple years and then go to business school. Um, kind of a conventional path. Uh, but my dad didn't really want me to do that. In fact, he didn't want me to go to business school. He thought it would make me too, I guess maybe structured or process oriented or too numbers-oriented. Uh, wanted me to be a little more maybe entrepreneurial or free-thinking. Uh, and he really wanted me to come work for the company for a while. Uh, and thought I should work in the real estate because our business park there was just starting. Do you have any you have any siblings? I have a younger brother and younger sister. All three of us went to Brown.

SPEAKER_03 36:59

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

Yeah, but we Brown is in Rhode Island? Rhode Island. Okay. Providence. Providence, Rhode Island.

SPEAKER_03 37:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

Yeah. Uh so then I came back. He talked, he talked me into coming in and doing the real estate. Thought I'd still go back to business school. I did end up going to a program uh at Harvard. Uh they do three weeks a year for three years, which was terrific. They call it OPM, which was really good. Um, but but what's OPM? I think it stands for owners and presidents management class. You have to be either the. I just think of other people's money. They take a lot of money. They took a lot of our money for that class for sure. Uh, but that was that was really very good. And then uh the the real estate was good. As my dad described it, the TV business was pretty well established. And it wasn't like I was going to get anything really new, particularly out of it. Uh, a lot of people to manage the with television, real estate, much fewer people, and able to do really all aspects of a business. You know, you could do the initial performance, if doing the building made sense, what rents you could get, what type of building to build. Uh, then you had in our case, we manage the buildings, lease the buildings, we do the property management once the buildings are completed, and continue to do that. So for me, that was a lot, that was a lot of fun. And was that project initiated by your father? It was. Uh, there's a fellow, Jim Goggins, who he had worked with in Indiana, uh, who came down uh and he worked with a group called uh SWA, uh landscape land planters and postbuckley, uh, the engineering firm back then. And uh they they came up with the concept of the business park and sold it to the city based on doing something similar to Arvida Park of Commerce with the setbacks and the swales and not heavy, not not heavy industry.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

Where did the idea come from? Because from uh you're if you know your dad's in the media business, obviously he owns tons of land, but uh commercial um industrial real estate's a whole nother thing to learn, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:49

Like so uh Philippe saying said this is something that kind of came out of the McDuffery riots and some of the other civil unrest that we had in Miami. So there are companies that were leaving Miami uh because their businesses got burned in Liberty City or they just felt it was unsafe. Uh so they're leaving uh you know Central and North Dade, and they were going all the way up to sunrise because there were no industrial projects between North Dade and Sunrise. And I remember he was hearing anecdotally, he might have been at a fundraiser from Motorola. They're like, hey, you know, we would have rather stayed close to the county line on the Broward side of the county line, but there's nothing available. Uh so kind of with that information in that sense, uh, he said, okay, let's do the industrial park on the county line, and we literally on the county line at the turnpike, um, and use that as a transition from North Dade to the residential portions of Broward.

SPEAKER_02 39:43

That's awesome. I mean, so he identified a real need in the market and went after it. Yeah, very much. Just figured it out. He's pretty he's pretty entrepreneurial.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

That's cool.

SPEAKER_03 39:50

How many acres of land was it?

SPEAKER_01 39:52

Uh the business park is 500 acres.

SPEAKER_03 39:54

500. How many square feet of uh five million? Yeah. And you guys still own that? We do. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

Yeah. Is it what uh is it it's more like office small bay flex type property or no?

SPEAKER_01 40:09

Roughly, would be warehouses. Although our warehouses are uh they tend to be more heavily parked than what you would normally find and heavily landscaped and planned, so you don't really see the trucks, which has allowed us to diversify in a lot of different uses. Then a million square feet of that would be flex space for single story office space. We really heavily parked those, oftentimes seven per thousand, if not more. Uh, and those have become uh back office administrative offices for a lot of the companies in town.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

So that project, how how long did you work on that project? You you that was your first project out of college? Yes. Were you running proformas and everything? Or what everything. Right. Just full in. I fixed the sprinklers. How uh how was how long did you work on that?

SPEAKER_01 40:56

Well, I still work on it.

SPEAKER_02 40:57

Okay, that's fair. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Uh I mean, now it's it's mostly management because the new activity is our mixed use project next door, uh, Miramar Cove. Um, but uh yeah, we still we still manage it. So we have a very good team out there. Um 98% leased, uh probably 100% leased in the warehouse. Wow many years.

SPEAKER_03 41:15

When did you guys break ground on that?

SPEAKER_01 41:16

Miramar Cove?

SPEAKER_03 41:18

Yeah. No, no, no, on the uh on the industrial park.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

My dad broke ground on that when I was in college, so that would have been like 1984.

SPEAKER_03 41:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

The first tenant or first owner, actually, because we sold the site to USA Today. Uh they were building printing plants around the country at that time, and he had a penalty of ten thousand dollars a day if we didn't deliver the road and water and sewer to the site. We met the deadline.

SPEAKER_03 41:43

Um and then let's can we talk a little bit about the media business? Yeah. Um I how is that going? Is that still you know, uh do you listen to to Scott Galloway at all? Uh I know the name. Yeah, he's uh he he's a professor, I think he was. Um but he's he he he he when he talks about media, he thinks that like TV media is kind of had his heyday. Um what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 42:18

Oh, he's right.

SPEAKER_03 42:19

He's right. Yeah, very much so. Yeah. Um and is this something that you guys are gonna continue to to keep? Is it's I mean, is it still profitable for you guys? I mean, it sounds like real estate is probably where uh going forward the the the business will be more profitable.

SPEAKER_01 42:37

Well it inverted. It used to be that our TV business was much bigger and much more profitable than our real estate business. Uh but because of the decline in the uh television business and the growth and the and the reduction in cap rates, our real estate business is much, much, much bigger. And so let me let me uh example. Okay. So in its peak in the heyday, uh a television station would trade for somewhere around 20 times earnings. Right. And netter gross. Well, they call it uh broadcast cash flow. So it's basically basically a beta. So it's earnings before interest taxes, yeah, depreciation, amortization. Um then and and that time real estate, so that would be 20 times, and real estate told for 10. Because most everything sold at like a warehouse would sell for 10%, right? Now it's it's the opposite. The warehouse sells for 20 times at 5% cap rate, and the TV might sell, maybe sell for 10%.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

That makes sense. And you guys are continuing to keep the media business alive, aren't you?

SPEAKER_01 43:42

Because I saw you're building a a new location once you Yeah, we were under construction to move off of North Bay Village. Uh very much under construction. And it was much much harder decision uh what what to do there, uh, in part because we only had the one T V station. uh channel seven, which is the Fox affiliate. Uh but last August uh we picked up the ABC affiliation. So now we also have Channel 18, which is a new TV station kind of created out of the ether. Um and it it broadcasts ABC. We have one news, we produce that seven news and it shows on both stations. So that's really the key is by consolidating uh we have the efficiency and the news which is either your first or second largest expense and we don't have that expense.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

And how does that what do you see the future in that business? I mean do people still have the antennas on the TVs to to pull these stations in or like what's the I think some people do.

SPEAKER_01 44:38

Not everyone has cable on every set. Right. Right? Right. What's the few the future is consolidation that you'll have more situations similar to what we have where there's two stations consolidate and have one new so that they can be be profitable. And you'll continue to see the huge dominance of the NFL I think eighty eight out of a hundred of the top programs every year are now NFL football games and they continue to demand more and more money from the networks and are expanding as I'm sure you know on Amazon and other uh media. So YouTube. So it becomes it it it's it's scary I think for the broadcasters because the the NFL is trying to create an international brand. Yeah they want to have football games all around the world. So then they if they do and they're successful with that they can get a Netflix or YouTube or an Amazon to pay a lot more money potentially for the games for the programming because they can market it to the world. Whereas if you're NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, you're only able to market to the United States. Yeah so where the rights fees are going other than up it's hard to say but the networks have to have the NFL in order to be viable. So to a large extent broadcasting has really just become a distribution arm for the NFL.

SPEAKER_02 46:06

I I I I maybe this is incorrect, but my sense is I feel like local news used to play such a more prominent role. I remember my parents watching the news every night um local news always like at 5 or 6 p.m my dad sitting in his office watching TV and that's kind of seemed to not disappeared but certainly diminished as people have smartphones and watch look at Instagram all day. Yeah what's the distribution look like for local news because I feel like there's still a strong need for it but the distribution is the question in my opinion like how do people receive the news? I think I think local news is strongest when there's a big pressing live local event going on you know hurricane or a fire or something of that sort then people people turn to local news so you have to but how do they find it like if you don't have the bunny ears and you're not banging on the set to get the the radio waves coming in where where else do you find channel seven on is it on YouTube?

SPEAKER_01 46:57

Is it like it's on YouTube. It's on cable it's on satellite uh so distribution's everywhere it's on your phone sure okay right no it's it's everywhere um but there's a tremendous amount of competition for the eyeballs that are watching news uh I'm gonna go follow channel seven right now on Instagram I was amazed uh you know with Paula we we we got some of the um I guess you'd call influencers on Instagram to pick up the Mirror Markov groundbreaking which we had last week seems like it was a while ago now but but it was just last week and I I mean we had we've had close to a million views between between the different the different influencers yeah one guy one one fellow has over 400,000 now dang yeah and so that's that's a tremendous amount when you I mean I realize it's over a long period of time but still when you when you realize there are a lot of people who are getting their news from an Instagram feed or from a TikTok or that type of thing and and we have to compete against that.

SPEAKER_03 47:57

And you have some healthy followers you have 2930 now 293 and one for channel seven yeah yeah yeah but but let me ask you I mean we'll get we'll get a million people uh if it's a big breaking event that that'll view but uh our so social media content whatever right channel it's on um but the the the audience that's watching TV is gotta be it's got to skew so high the age of the demographic, right? It's got to be like 65 plus I don't think it's it's not quite that old the average but it has.

SPEAKER_01 48:35

I saw a graph the other day that showed when TV first came out the average age was in the 30s and the average age today is late 50s anyway.

SPEAKER_03 48:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:44

I think it's such an interesting lesson to be what's the word diversified. When you have your your money making business and you use that to invest now the investments are subsidizing the up the what used to be the money making business and it'll be probably they're they're not subsidized.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

Okay but it'll probably flip-flop again like who knows you know it's it's an interesting use case you don't think so I don't think it's gonna flip flop no media is media is on its way out um I think broadcast is is very challenged again unless you can consolidate right so what's your plan for that I mean it doesn't look like the you know there's a there's a healthy pass for path forward for TV well I mean our TV business is profitable now particularly since we have both both stations and we really feel we're providing a tremendous public service. You know our family could could have afforded to run the station at a loss and felt that was like anyone else that's providing a community service like a ballet or an orchestra or something like that would be worthwhile journalistically sound. I think now it's even more important uh because you know we get a huge percentage of the news viewers every night and that that we continue to produce the news in a sound journalistic fair balanced manner.

SPEAKER_02 49:58

That's uh rare these days more common to find in local news than it is yeah on the national level everyone's looking for a click so it doesn't even matter if it's true or not it's just put it out there.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

Yeah they're all competing for those ID and how does did the is the news uh the the the the income streams purely from advertising from commercials you have uh it used to be uh but now a large portion of your income comes from what they call retransmission so the cable companies satellite companies the cellular companies they pay us in order to rebroadcast our signal interesting interesting yeah and do you guys is is channel seven do you have any other programming like what's the what's the programming like but we have news and then uh channel seven we're the fox affiliate so we have fox programming and on channel eighteen with the abc affiliate affiliate so we have seven news plus the abc program got it cool NBA finals yeah how did the Knicks do last night they won they came from behind came from behind was that the final game no no it's the first game in the series first in the final they're still home they're still home court yeah they did really yeah I heard it went on but I didn't I didn't see what happened yeah I haven't watched the NBA in a while I'm from New York so I'm I'm happy for the Knicks rooting for them they took a long time man it did they we looked it up 1973 I think the last time I paid attention to the Knicks was Patrick Ewing era yeah that was their prime era yeah that's that's the one we had a shot yeah yeah I remember that that's funny and did your was was did your mom uh found the Miami City ballet she did she did that's so cool out of our out of our kitchen out of your kitchen yeah what what inspired that was she uh she she had been uh uh a dancer never made it professionally um always just loved dance uh she'd been promoting the arts here for years and years uh through various organizations so she kind of knew how to uh promote and I forget exactly how but I know she she wanted to have a ballet company uh Edward Vallella who's probably the most decorated well-known uh American uh dancer particularly at that time uh he was um the artistic director for a dance company I believe in Oklahoma uh so she knew that he might be available and uh approached him uh found a number of other friends and people she knew to raise some seed money and uh created Miami City Ballet yeah that's cool forty forty years ago that's who puts on the nutcracker right correct we do the nutcracker I love taking my daughter to see that every year we see it almost every year.

SPEAKER_02 52:23

Oh right yeah it's a phenomenal production yeah love it and they re they redid it a few years ago too they did I think we didn't go last year but we went the year before and it was it was awesome. Yeah last year my son was a little too old he was too jealous so we couldn't leave him home.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

So we just celebrated uh Mami City Ballet's 40th anniversary wow uh with and and and had a we commissioned we being the Anson Foundation commissioned a ballet for my mom's 85th so from her birthday we had it this ballet and they and they performed it on opening night the rest of the season and then afterwards we had a big party for her with all the dancers and that's amazing a big contributors that's incredible. Yeah she was very happy do you do you have an artistic side no from that not no no I really don't no I have to use chat GPT if I ever want to like draw anything your art is freediving I guess that's a bit of an art.

SPEAKER_02 53:15

It is an art I think so that's like a sport and an art in it you know to to find those fish and hold your breath that long I know holy shit that's an art that's an art form um let's talk about the uh Mirmar cove Mirmar Cove what's going on there well we just broke ground on Wednesday okay had a big had a you were I think both of you are out of town or had something I was out of town yeah yeah I don't know his excuses but I was out of town I was out of town too no I had something else going on so we actually started taking the trees down and moving the dirt uh maybe a month or two priority this is 900 acres of land that you guys own uh it's 100 and what is it two 125 acres what did I what did I think it was okay still it's still a lot of acreage 125 acres you guys own yeah in Miramor so my grandfather bought that after World War II uh he bought all 125.

SPEAKER_01 54:07

Oh he we ended up with 2000 right but he would have bought that for 125 acres for twelve thousand five hundred dollars I was gonna say about the basis is laughable we had the groundbreaking I'm like look you can look anywhere you want to the tree line and beyond to the street over here to those apartments all that land was twelve thousand five hundred dollars uh and he actually was upset with my father because a number of years later my dad came into the office and said oh I bought some of the land next door well how much did you pay? He said 500 an acre so 125 acres and it's swampland and it's no it was swam land at $100 an acre it was what they called seasonal cattle pasture. So half the year it was underwater the rainy season the other half the year it would dry out and then the muck underneath the land would catch on fire and you had muck fires. So it wasn't until okay so what happened was the government owned the property and after World War II they didn't need it anymore. During the war they'd used it as a missile testing range large parts of North State Southwest Brown does that affect you you have to go look for unexploded ordinance or anything we found exploded ordinance. Never found anything unexploded that'd be so sick big old bombs so the government decided to sell it in order to pay the Army Corps of engineers to create the drainage system to drain it. So my grandfather buys it and then I don't know five ten years later it becomes dry property that's developable. Wow yeah did you have to do any kind of remediation to make it well we still we still have we have muck little little bits of muck now and then nothing major uh and then you have wetlands and I guess what they call hydric soils where the soil could grow wetlands if the guy wasn't farming on it that type of thing. Got it. So yeah so yeah we have large estuary bodies that have been created to mitigate so what was the genesis of this project was this where'd this come from? Okay so this was our last 125 acres and up until this point we had been uh selling the sites for the apartment builders and then uh after my dad passed I said okay what are we gonna do with this what are you gonna do with North Bay Village because I had acquired the 13 acres uh and our attorney uh John Schuben who's been very very helpful with with all of this uh he he said oh I know a guy uh he's been working for at that time Seritage which was the Sears real estate arm if you remember Eddie Lampert bought all the Sears and Kmart's and then ended up closing I think every one of them and either selling or developing uh so James Bree uh was was down here he'd been in New York 15 years an architect 15 years as a developer and he'd been working for Saritage uh the big project here was the Esplanade which is the mixed use center next to Aventura Mall where the Sears used to be uh the sofers just bought it and uh so he was he was available uh and came on and I really brought him on initially for the North Bay Village project uh but said oh we also have this 125 acres in Miramar I'm thinking maybe we could do apartments there and he just kind of took that and said okay that'll be fun uh and then came back to me with a charrette with a group called 505 group uh now part of Cooper Carey and they came up with this idea of um doing the cove of it's a five and a half acre essentially swimming pool about four feet deep crystal clear water kind of like they have at uh Solomia similar different completely different technology different company designed it um but it it but we'll do different than what Solomia has done is our apartment buildings kind of like they've done with the condo now but all of our apartment number of the apartment buildings will be directly on the cove uh and our retail the restaurants and shops there's a boardwalk and they'll be directly on the cove so you can sit outside of the patio of the restaurant and be on the water there's a spectacular fountain show that'll be on you know every hour or something and and really activate it with the water. There's also other large uh green spaces and lawns so the kids can be out there running around while you're at the restaurant outside. Uh and so he shows me this idea and I and and what dawned on me this this is the pandemic was that this could be really good because I know a lot of the companies were having trouble and then coming out of the pandemic getting the employees to come back to the office. Well if you have something like Miramar Cove and you put it next to Miramar Park of Commerce the idea is that it'll make it easier over time for the companies to attract employees to their offices in Miramar Park of Commerce. And then the other side of that is there's 15000 people working at Miramar Park of Commerce and so there are natural clientele customers for Miramar Cove both for the apartments as well as the the retail and the entertainment Wow so what's the how many what's the total breakdown of what you guys are building there? We have entitled uh 2800 uh apartments uh 400 000 square feet of retail I think it's about a hundred thousand square feet of office uh plus uh I forget how many keys but a very large uh hotel um you have a brand yet for the hotel do not but we have we have a lot of we have a lot of interest in it I'm sure what a fun project to work on oh it's great how many phases kind of depends on how you count them there's two major phases so we're in I guess phase one a right now which is three apartment buildings totaling eleven hundred units which is a lot to come on at one time uh together with a a fair amount of the retail and and uh restaurants and then the office building um I'm not that excited about office as a investment uh but if we can get a couple good tenants for it we'll we'll move forward with it.

SPEAKER_03 59:54

Have a little co-working space like Bureau over there. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 59:57

Yeah we have a a floor of the office building and a lot of interest from co-working. All right and is the cove like swimmable? You can you can Yes. Okay. Yes it's all swimmable. It's interesting because originally I wanted to make the cove like the the floor of the cove like a light blue I thought I thought it would help make the water look a little bluer. But what I what we found out was that in order for a body of water to be a man made body of water to be swimmable the bottom has to be white. And that's so so if someone passes out or whatever is on the bottom of the pool, if the bottom of the pool is some other color it blends in maybe with their bathing suit or with them and the lifeguard or whomever can't see them. What about the ocean? Well the ocean's not man-made oh or lakes lakes are dark people swim in them. But it it's probably part of the reason why a lot of times these uh man-made coves or lagoons have been built very close to the ocean and the people a lot more people will go to the cove than to the ocean that's one of the reasons is there's an element maybe a heightened element of risk when you go to the ocean I guess yeah but is but this is not chlorinated right what's the chronor it is chlorinated okay interesting it is yeah it the the it's all automated in that it monitors itself and will uh titrate the chemicals to have the right mix in the water uh also the right movement of water because the more you can move the water and cycle through the more that you can cleanse it how many acres is the lagoon itself? Five and a half it's a big lagoon it is a sick but it also has like little fingers coming off yeah going through the bridge over to under the bridge going to the boathouse and so it's it's it's not just one big massive water body yeah has a lot of contour so the there'll be a beach club which is for residents only which is where the swimming can happen which is a a portion of it and then the rest of it they'll have the gondolas and probably kayaks and that type of thing but for special events we'd be able to open it up to have anyone swim anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:59

Pretty cool that's really cool. Yeah I love the idea of bringing the water to non-waterfront area. Yeah we're bringing the waterfront to Southwest Broward. Yeah yeah that's very cool yeah um and tell us a little bit about the uh I know we talked about it in the beginning but I feel like we didn't finish the conversation on the uh is it called the Isle of Dreams now? What's the one on Isle of Dreams Isle of Dreams.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:21

Yeah we too we took the name that that what what's the name from the name is from the the original name for broadcast key was broadcast key was the original name and then they another on W IOD they'd say broadcasting live from the Isle of Dreams and their call letters were W Iod which is Isle of Dreams.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:40

That sounds like a bewitched episode I love it right it sounds like straight out of the 60s or 70s like uh Isle of dreams I want to see like a dinner club there with like uh Frank Sinatra or something.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:53

Well he used to have a club Dean Martin had a club there. Oh really Frank and Sammy would you see the old pictures they were in North Bay Village. It was like the entertainment place back I guess in the 50s was your granddad partying with him I'm sure he was oh yeah he had to be I don't want to hang out with him so bad you have no idea like the the clubs restaurants bars used to stay open in North Bay Village to 7 a.m so it's a big after hours place are you gonna do any kind of entertainment thing like that there on the new development? We plan to we have it's an entertainment district similar to Miramar Cove where you can have open liquor open containers throughout the property. So what's the Isle of Dreams development going to consist of uh well we got entitled again with the help of John Schuben for 7.2 million square feet uh which includes the parking parking garages but it uh just under 2000 units uh together with the retail and office component as well all condo or rental both TBD I would like to be able to do it as rental i i don't know if the market's really there because the the the prices are gonna the rents are gonna be so high but with with the building we've designed we've designed to be a really a high end condominium you know the ceiling heights the number of elevators the width of the uh the balconies and so forth the finishes um the thinking is we would our competition would be condominiums that have units that are available for rent and those go for a lot of money and particularly in the Miami Beach area um and that you could have people who want to live in a building that has professional management as opposed to renting a unit from a owner who good chance they may not even live in South Florida and you're trying to get something fixed. So that that's kind of the business model. I think there's a lot a lot of the one of the issues in the high end uh residential market well the residential market for single family in general in that part of the county is what do you buy? Like if you sell your house where are you going to go?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:50

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:51

And the market's kind of locked up. This gives people the ability that some of the units are large up to 4,000 square feet that you can move out of your house and potentially move into the rental building either on a permanent or uh short term basis a year minimum uh and figure out what you want to do next. Similar to what uh Armando's done in uh Regency Park uh where you can sell your house put the money in the bank pay rent and you have this capital preserved and maybe you figure out something else to do with it or give it to your kids whatever whatever it may be.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:24

Because I saw you talking about that you want to build like a what's the 15 minute city?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:28

15 well North Bay Village hopefully will become a 15 minute city. Miramar Cove and Miramar I think we we will have a 15 minute city.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:37

Right. I think I was thinking more North Bay North Bay Village but I mean that area is so obvious but it's it's amazing that it's been underdeveloped for so long and now you see development sites left and right when you drive across the causeway.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:49

Yeah it was really something I think it was the the zoning uh at that prior to them prior to North Bay Village enacting MBV one hundred their current zoning code I think you Could only go 17 stories and with a limited density. So all the development went to Miami up and down. And it was kind of working its way there with Edgewater. But it wasn't until they increased the allowable height and also increased the density that the development actually came.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:17

Do you think all the other projects will get built that are being proposed there? There's a lot. There's a lot, but there's a lot that's actually started now.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:23

Has that the continuum is very much underway?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:26

Yeah. Showma. Shoma's. Is that getting built? Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:30

Publix is underway. Okay. And the uh condos.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:33

Uh there's gonna there's a Publix going there too? Oh, I didn't realize that.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:37

Which is terrific because that goes towards your 15-minute city. You need to have a grocer. Yeah. Uh Tula restarted. Palm Tree Club is in the continuum project, but they're moving out. Okay. Uh eventually. And then Tula, uh, you have Pagani, uh, which broke ground.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:53

They did break ground. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:55

And then uh related is is uh they're not breaking ground and maybe not for another year, year and a half, they say, but with the Rich Carleton. Uh so there's a lot.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:04

It's a lot going on. It's gonna change that whole that whole area is gonna be unrecognizable.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:08

And when are you guys planning on breaking ground?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:11

Where we are in for permit and just kind of moderate. I'm a little bit concerned with the amount of condos that are being built.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:18

And every condo can become a competitive rental unit. So I'm kind of not rushing for it too quickly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:25

And when are you guys gonna move uh the TV station to the new new?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:30

We'll be on air May of next year.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:32

Okay.

unknown 1:07:32

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:34

You uh you become quite the real estate developer. A more known real estate developer. More known? I guess yeah. You were working in the background with uh the commerce park.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:45

Yeah, I mean, I won a lot of awards. I mean, a company and I did, you know, Developer of the Year, Asset Manager of the Year way back in the day, South Florida Business Journal. But it wasn't until we announced the Isle of Dean Dreams project and gotten the entitlement, and there's this beautiful picture of the rendering that we had done and and condo that you know it became clear to me that like the condo developers in town are the rock stars, right? Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:08

Can be a little and David and yeah, you're just kind of flying under the radar.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:13

I was flying under the radar.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:15

It's kind of nice flying under the radar, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:18

And then you you get the couple of articles about doing a condo, and the next thing you know, people are coming up to you at the gym. Oh, I'm a real estate broker, and what I realized is fucking brokers, fucking brokers. You're not a rock star because of what you have built. You're a rock star because of the project that you're going to build. Because I had our team putting it together, and we have probably a hundred different vendors for the tower in North Bay Village, between the attorneys and the engineers and the audiovisual guy and the interior designers. And you figure for each of those, you maybe interview three. Right. So now you got 300 companies you're out there, and everyone wants your business. So everyone's inviting you now to F1 and the World Cup and everything else, all of which I didn't need because you know I've kind of done all that a lot of that stuff when I was younger. But it was amazing. It's just like it's you just get this different type of visibility because of the product you're building. And it's not even what you've built, it's what you're planning to build.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:18

Well, you're on this podcast because there are strings attached to it too, right, Ben? Absolutely. Tip for tat. Tip for tat. The fish isn't enough. No.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:28

I mean, I'm happy with the fish. Are you uh are you thinking about doing any other projects in the future, or your your plate's pretty full of these monster projects you got going on?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:39

Uh we've got big projects and we've got operating businesses that I'm the CO of as well. Uh the other leg on that stool, I guess, is is uh education. So uh my high school, I went to Ransom Everglades, uh, and then for 16 years now, I've been on the board. It made me emeritus uh a year ago. Um and in the course of that, you know, we would hear so many families that would say, we're thinking of moving to South Florida, but we're not going to move unless our kids get into ransom.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:08

Maybe Gulliver, maybe, well, certainly Carrollton, uh, and then further north, Miami Country Day. So there's just a limited number of schools, I think, that families felt would be comparable to the schools that they were attending in the Northeast. Comparable both from the standpoint of education and comparable in having an equivalent chance of getting into the the top schools, the top top colleges. Uh so when I kind of looked at this landscape, I've always wanted to do something uh philanthropically uh significant, you know, something with some legacy. My mom, Miami City Ballet, uh, my dad was very active in town, my grandfather, of course, my my dad created the Anson Foundation. Uh so we've been very supportive. And I always thought it'd be nice to do something big. So then I don't know exactly how the um realization came, but I said, okay, uh two things that I'm pretty good at are uh buying property and entitling property. Uh so I said, okay, uh let me see if I can find a site that's large enough for a large uh middle school and high school and the quality, the caliber that would continue to attract families and businesses to South Florida, because that's certainly one big impediment. I mean, there'd be many more employees and companies here if we had more good classroom seats. Uh and also looking at that landscape, uh, the top schools can't get any bigger. They certainly can't get any bigger on their current campuses, either because they just don't have the geography, there's no land to do it, or they have restrictions with the municipalities and a student cap, and they're against up against that cap. So even if you wanted to give them $50 million and said add 500 students, they wouldn't be able to. So I said, okay. Um, maybe the philanthropic part is let me acquire a site, get it entitled, if it isn't already entitled for school, uh, and then make it available. I don't want to open a school or operate a school, but make it available to a school either on a lease or for on a sale uh at a reduced rent or a reduced price so that the school can be economically viable. Uh so I actually previously looked at three sites because I felt it also to be most beneficial needs to be in the northeast part of the county. Uh so you mentioned Miami Shores earlier.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:28

Are we gonna get a high school? I my son needs to go to high school next year. Are we gonna get this built for the next year? Not for next year.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:34

But yeah, you look up in that area and there's just a lack of good classroom seats. Yeah. Uh, you know, Archbishop Curly uh closed not too long ago, and a lot of the people in that area are Archbishop Curly graduates, and they don't have Archbishop Curly anymore. Uh so you end up with a lot of families that are sending their kids to schools up in Broward, St. Thomas, American Heritage, or having to send them down uh south to the Ransoms and the Gullivers and Carrolltons and so forth, which creates a lot of traffic. It creates a lot of wasted time, obviously, going back and forth in that traffic. But what it also has done is it is it's driven up the price of real estate. Because if you want to go to the a lot of the people will now move from Miami Beach once they have school-aged kids, and they're moving to Coral Gables, Pinecrest, uh, and those neighborhoods, Coconut Grove, and that's just the prices there have just gone crazy. Uh so if we can get a good school in the northeastern part of the county, I think it's going to preserve those areas. Otherwise, it's going to be hard for families to move in there. It'll also help us with traffic and maybe to some extent affordability.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:38

Have you guys found land for this already?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:40

Okay. So I looked at three other sites originally. Um, one I didn't spend too much time looking at, the one that Adam Newman bought at 85th and Biscayne. Nel Portal. Uh the former little farm trailer park. Is it for sale again? No, but before he bought it.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:54

Wait, uh it'll probably be for sale again. Wait, the the one on 85th and uh Biscayne. Yeah, right behind Big Daddy's. Oh, okay. Yeah, that'll be for sale soon. Yeah, he paid 85 million for that thing. Yeah, that's way too much.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:09

That's paid a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:11

You can only convince so many VCs to do so much dumb shit before you gotta give it up.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:17

Uh, but that I had issues with that site, regardless of the price that he paid. I didn't participate in the auction uh because it has the has the Big Daddy's liquor store, right? And on the opposite side of that main entrance is a triple X bookshop. Figured that's not really nice. I mean that's great for a high school.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:34

I mean, you couldn't pick a better location. Now eventually maybe you could special.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:40

There then there's there's environmental contamination on the site, which is no secret. Oh, is that right? And I didn't realize that. So that was going to be a job. And the level to which you'd have to clean that up, I felt was much higher if you're gonna put a school there than if you're gonna put an apartment building. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Um, so I never bid on that. Um, then I did make an offer, all cash, to the former Archbishop Curly site. Uh that school is now demolished just to make a piece of land, 15 acres uh just north of Design District on the east side of Second Avenue.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:10

There was there was gonna there was a really ritzy school that was supposed to go there, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:14

Avenues were supposed to come there from New York. Uh Avenues was owned by the Fisher family out of San Francisco. Uh their father, the the patriarch, is the one that founded the gap. Uh they're also involved with Kip schools. Uh, but apparently they decided to either downsize or get out of the Avenues business, so decided no longer to put the school there. Uh but they bought the land, right? Yeah, they paid 60 million. Uh and I offered 15 acres. I offered them significantly more, all cash, gave them a contract. Uh but they would rather uh joint venture it and do some type of mixed use and have it in the partnership. Yeah. Um so then I looked at another site uh just north of that, the design place apartments that low rise. Yeah, and it's really interesting. Have you driven in there? Oh, yeah. I have, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:01

I've ridden my bike through there a bunch of times. Interesting, right? Yeah, and 54th, right? It's actually a really nice development.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:07

It's very nice. Yeah, but the owners are kind of tough, aren't they? No comment. I feel like I've talked to them before years ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:16

The Podolskis. Yeah. It's uh two brothers and a and a son, yeah, mostly involved there. Years ago, and it was it was tough. Um it it and part of the problem there from a redevelopment play, even though it you know the idea was primarily school, is you have a lot of people living that that is workforce housing. Yeah, that's like the workforce housing. If you had to like pick a place for the rents they're getting, the proximity to the jobs, I mean a lot of them are getting out of there in the mornings on scooters or bikes. It's not the type of place that would feel good to shut down. Yeah, and the more I kind of focused on that and some other things, I said that's not for me. Uh so now I'm I can't say where at the moment, but in that northeast area, we have a very large site under contract and are in the process of uh clarifying a couple things that I'll be able to close. That's great. Yeah, that's exciting. Yeah. Yeah, then we have to find the school. There's a lot of interest from schools. We have to find a school that's the right fit, uh, the right fit for the neighborhood. Uh that I want the high high caliber school and one that can raise the capital needed to build the school. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:21

What uh how many acres do you need more or less for a school?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:24

If you're gonna do a uh a good middle school, high school, you you probably need 12 acres or so, depending how vertical you're gonna go and how much that you're gonna provide in the way of sports facilities. Yeah, but to provide something of good quality, you need you need at least that.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:39

Does Cushman have a high school?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:40

Cushman does, it's small. It's that office building on Biscayne, right? It's kind of weird.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:45

Yeah, small. It's really tiny. Yeah, well, the the actual campus is tiny, then they have that weird office building on like whatever 40 something. Yeah, yeah. Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:54

And so when when will you announce if uh you guys acquire this this uh school site? Only close. Any idea when, more or less? So tough to say.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:04

It's it's hard to say. We'd like to get it done quickly.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:06

Yeah, yeah. Cool, that's interesting. That's pretty exciting.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:10

It's very exciting. Yeah, it's very exciting. I think it'll be great, great for the uh great for the region.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:15

Okay. Do you guys finance everything in-house? Like how would you finance something like Miramar Cove or like the Isle of Isle of Dreams development?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:23

Do you bring in outside partners or in addition to be very good at running businesses and entitling land? My dad was also very good at uh amassing capital and taking the profits from the TV business and the real estate business and retaining it. So we have a large capital base, and for the first phase of each, we we don't need to have a partner or a finance.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:43

That's that's gotta be such a a way more fun way of doing business and in uh in real estate.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:50

Well, I don't know any other way, but I will tell you that it's a little scary because there's no one to say, oh, that doesn't make any sense. I can do whatever the fuck I want. So it's a little it's a little scary because some people do tell me it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, yeah. But they at the same time they don't hold the purse string.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:10

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's great. It's a lot of freedom. I mean it gives you a lot of freedom.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:14

And when you're thinking generationally and long term, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:17

You know, you you're you're you can make decisions that maybe other people would want to just squeeze every dollar out of, but you can make more qualitative decisions that enhance the project in ways that wouldn't maybe make sense if you had LPs. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:30

Uh when we started a conversation, you had mentioned that your grandfather had bought land throughout the state. Do you guys still own land in other parts of the state?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:39

We do, although over the years uh we sold off a good portion of it. Uh the biggest holding still would probably be in Indian River County, so west of Drill Beach along uh I-95. So it's a couple thousand acres there.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:54

Are you still actively buying land anywhere?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:57

No. Doesn't make sense anymore, probably. Uh it's just a question of time. Yeah. How much I want to travel and work on the other projects and so forth.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:06

You like you like traveling?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:10

Not as much as a lot of people do. I did a lot of traveling when I was younger. Yeah. Yeah, my dad was running the business and and he with a lot of control. Uh so that gave me the freedom, rather than fighting with him over things, it gave me the freedom to do a lot of traveling, particularly for the spirit fishing and stuff internationally, and seeing a lot of places when I was younger. Uh so now most places I've that I want to see, I've seen. Others that I'd like to see, I kind of really enjoy working on these big projects. There's just so many aspects of it to work on. Uh, that for me, uh it's almost more interesting at the moment just to be home working on the project. You have how many children do you have? We have four. What ages? They're from eleven to twenty.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:48

Okay.

unknown 1:20:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:50

Are they a spearfisher? Anyone spearfishing with you?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:52

They do a little bit, yeah. Spear fishing and lobster. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:55

A little bit.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:56

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:56

How how uh how often do you go out uh spear fishing? Twice a week. Twice a week. Yeah. And what do you got what do you do during the week for exercise besides that?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:04

Uh I try to swim once or twice a week, lift weights, do the Peloton.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:08

Yeah. Yeah. You swim in the ocean or the pool?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:12

Mostly the pool.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:12

Yeah. Yeah. What do you uh what do you would you uh how far do you swim or how long do you swim for? I love swimming.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:18

Are you like swimming? Yeah, I do. Uh well, I went the other day, I did what, 2100 yards.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:22

Okay. So nice. Is that is that far? That's a pretty good distance. Yeah, yeah. Can you do it? All freestyle?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:28

No. I did uh 16. I warmed up with 400 mixed stuff, and then I did 16100 imms. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:38

Dang.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:39

What's IMs?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:40

How long does it take you?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:42

For each 100 im? No, for the full thing. Yeah. Oh, it's probably 45 minutes or something. Yeah. He'd probably kick your ass. You tear me apart from the size of you. I mean, at my age, a lot of my time is spent not lifting weights, but I do lift weights still. But uh a lot more time. It's another thing that inverted. Uh I used to go to the gym, you know, and you'd warm up for 10 minutes and lift for 50 or whatever. Now it's warm up for 45 and live for 15. Yeah. But a lot of it's on, and I do yoga. I do yoga once a week. Uh that's great. It's um a lot of it's mobility work now.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:21

Yeah, that makes sense. And how how long how often do you wait train a week? Three days. Three days, dang.

unknown 1:22:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:28

You have a world record black grouper.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:31

Well, that record got broken, but yeah, I had that.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:34

Well, let's pretend it didn't. How big was this thing?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:37

If I remember right.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:38

No one on this podcast knows. Was it 61.4 pounds or 59.4 pounds? Something like that. Okay. And but you had a monster too, didn't you? A 200 uh a black marlin weighing 400 pounds.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:51

That wasn't a world record, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:53

That's I know, but still, like, how do you reel that in? With a spearfishing? Spearfishing. Spearfishing. How do you deal with that? Because that thing could take you for a ride, couldn't it? Oh, yeah, it did. It did. Sure. Well, you just ride it. How do you how do you reel that thing in?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:05

Okay. Well, you saw Jaws, right? Yeah. With a harpoon. Yeah. The big shark. Yeah, yeah. And then they had buoys and and then the drums. Sure. Okay. So what you you have a spear gun and the spear detaches from the gun. Okay. And then that spear has a line on it, which is tethered to a number of buoys. Got it. And then that keeps uh just tires it out. Yeah, the a marlin will fight to its death. That's wild. Yeah. Where was that? Well, most of the marlin's were in uh Mexico. Mexico.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:39

Pacific side? Pacific. That's real ocean over there. Big fish. Yeah, that's that's big, scary ocean. Big scary ocean. I don't think of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:48

I think of the the it's more scary here, actually. Really? Yeah. Why? Bull sharks. Bull sharks. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, there they have Makos. I got the Great Whites. Okay, if you if you want to worry about a Great White, but I've seen great whites here. So really? Yeah. Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:03

Uh where do you live here?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:04

Miami Beach.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:05

Okay. And so you're you just go where where where you go when you go spear fishing, where do you usually go?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:11

Uh we come out of government cut, typically in anywhere from let's say Hollover, a little bit north of Hollover, down to I don't know if you're familiar with the whistlebuoy, but ocean reef.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:20

Okay. Okay. What kind of boat? Big boat?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:23

It's uh classic. It's uh uh 28-foot center console.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:27

Okay. Not so not that big. No. Don't those waves get pretty gnarly for a 28-footer out there? Uh if it's that rough, I'm not spearfishing. Okay, got it. Yeah. Because I I'm a big wakeboarder and we have uh 25-foot mastercrafts. But I we tried to go out government cut one day and I turned around right away. I was not in the back.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:47

Oh, government cuff is just tough. And hollover can be worse. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:50

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I follow those accounts that track uh wavy boats or whatever. It's pretty funny. Oh, it's the best. People just stuffing the nose in the waves. I love it. I love it. Well, Andy, this is an absolute blast, man. Thanks for joining us. Oh, thank you for having me, man. It'd be great to hear your story and the fish or thank you for the fish.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:07

For dinner? For dinner. Yeah. Thanks for dinner tonight. Are you a cook? Uh I will cook that up on the grill today. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:14

Oh, yeah. We both are.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:15

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Hope you enjoy it. Thank you for the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:20

Yeah, thank you. It was great to meet you, man. Good talk. Yeah, absolutely. Have a great afternoon, Wendy. Cheers, cheers. Cheers.