%20(6).png)
Main Street Reimagined Podcast
This is a podcast for dreamers, creators, developers, and entrepreneurs to learn, share, and be inspired to change your community through small business.
Main Street Reimagined Podcast
Episode 45: Never Take No for an Answer; A Developer's Journey with Jared Jablonka
From humble beginnings sorting mail at a DC law firm for $12 an hour, Jared found his passion in real estate development after his grandmother noticed his habit of photographing buildings. His timing proved fortuitous—entering the market during the 2007 recession allowed him to learn valuable lessons managing troubled properties while others fled the industry. Starting with house flips in up-and-coming neighborhoods, he gradually scaled to larger projects, eventually securing backing from a New York hedge fund.
After a whirlwind career and personal changes, Jared took two years to travel the world, volunteering for disaster recovery in Puerto Rico and exploring cultures across continents. These experiences gave him fresh perspectives on architecture and community spaces that would later influence his development philosophy when he returned to his native Ohio in 2021.
His latest triumph is the transformation of three adjacent buildings in downtown Delaware, Ohio—formerly the county health department—into mixed-use spaces including retail, a Venezuelan restaurant, co-working offices, and the latest project: the Leisure Club Lounge. This nostalgic basement bar features a blend of 70s-90s memorabilia, creating an atmosphere that feels like "your dad's basement or your granddad's garage."
The project wasn't without challenges. Post-COVID financing for office space conversions required approaching multiple lenders with detailed business plans. The basement space itself needed extensive work before potential tenants could see its possibilities. But Jared's persistence paid off when the Leisure Club opened to overwhelming positive response during Delaware's First Friday event.
Guest Links:
Website: https://www.leisureclub.co/
Main Street Reimagined:
Facebook: facebook.com/MainStreetReimagined
The Main Street Reimagined Podcast, Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqfkmF5bRH0od1d3iiYKs3oEn_gvMYk7N
Henry Development Group:
Facebook: facebook.com/henrydevelopmentgroup
Website: www.henrydevelopmentgroup.com
Developing News Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/33110524eb5c/developing-news
Luke Henry:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/luhenry
Facebook: facebook.com/luke.henry.148
#FromMailroomToMillionaire #EntrepreneurJourney #PassionToProfession #ReinventionStory #RealEstateVisionary #PurposeDrivenProjects #BuildingWithHeart #DelawareOhio #OhioDeveloper #SupportLocalOhio #DowntownDelaware #CommunitySpaces #HistoricPreservation
You got to massively reset your expectations and like if you get told no once, that doesn't mean anything. Like most stuff I've tried to do, I get told no dozens of times before. Like you got to adapt and find a way around it.
Speaker 2:Yes, this is the Main Street Reimagined podcast, a show for people ready to turn visions into realities and ideas into businesses. Hey, I'm Luke Henry and each week, I lead conversations with Main Street Dreamers who took the leap to launch a business, renovate a building or start a movement, their ideas, their mindsets and their inspirations, as well as some of the highs and lows along the way. This is a place for dreamers, creators, developers and entrepreneurs to learn, share and be inspired to change your community through small business. Enjoy the show. Hey friends, this is Luke Henry and this is the Main Street Reimagined podcast. Thanks so much for being with us this week.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to be bringing another great interview, and this is a cool one because we are on site. I am here with Jared Jablanka. Hey, jared, how you doing. I'm awesome. Thanks for hosting me here. We are at the Leisure Club, one of downtown Delaware, ohio's newest establishments, and so if you're not watching on YouTube, I invite you to go over, pop over, check this place out. You get a little bit of a feel for the vibe with where we're recording here. We've got a great fluorescent light behind us with the Leisure Club, cool leather couch. This is just a really, really cool environment. So, jared, tell us a little bit. If folks haven't been into the Leisure Club which they likely haven't because you just had your grand opening last weekend what is this place? What would people find if they come in?
Speaker 1:So Leisure Club Lounge. So we're in the basement space of 1 West Winter Street in downtown Delaware. We're below the First Commonwealth Bank branch at Sandusky and Winter. So we're about 3,000 square feet of kind of lounge bar space. We just opened this past weekend First weekend in June was our grand opening. We just opened this past weekend First weekend in June was our grand opening. So we're kind of digging out of the sort of you know grand opening rush. So we have leisure club is a brand that's been around the Columbus market for a while. Matt Barnes was the founder of the company I want to say 2016, 17 maybe okay and he's had several locations around columbus um, on the south side, in the fort, and then they were in grand view for a while. They've currently got um another club in old town, east okay yeah, at the Trolley Market.
Speaker 2:East Market.
Speaker 1:And Matt and I and our other partners, Jason and Felicia Ronk, got introduced in January of this year and we've been spending the last six months kind of building out the space, tweaking the business plan and the model and all that. So it's kind of a hybrid between a membership club and a bar. So we're open to the public. Leisure Club's other location, downtown Columbus, is strictly membership, but this one is open to the public. We do have membership options here that get you benefits like access to curated experiences we do like stand-up comedy, live music, group trips and it gets you access to the space like during sort of non-service hours, Like you can come do some co-working stuff here if you'd like a special happy hour menu, discounts on merchandise, that type of thing, but you don't need to be a member to come.
Speaker 1:We're open, that type of thing, but you don't need to be a member to come. Um, we're, you know, open for now. We're doing Thursday, friday, saturday, three to 11 hours and then, you know, expand from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, very cool. So, um, you know, what was the uh, what was sort of the, the vision, exactly when you uh set to, to kind of set the space here. I mean, what's again for folks that haven't been in, how would you describe the theme here and the decor and some of that?
Speaker 1:So we've got three main areas the front room. When you walk in, if you walk down the stairs off of Winter Street, the room that you walk into looks like kind of a nice sort of higher-end bar. There's a nice round horseshoe shape bar to your left and then we build a bunch of custom booths around the perimeter on the right side, so it looks and feels like a nice you know cocktail bar up front and then behind that in the rear there's another room that's definitely more loungy.
Speaker 1:We've got four, five, six different kind of like living room setups sort of so that if you've got whether it's a, you know if you're by yourself or you've got a couple or a bigger group of like six or eight, you can kind of like pick your spot and hang out and it sort of feels like you're. Some people describe it as like your, your dad's basement or your granddad's garage.
Speaker 2:That's everything.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of a lot of nostalgia from like the late 70s, early 80s, some 90s stuff, but it I think I think there's a lot of stuff in here that's interesting to people of all different ages and demographics. But if you're in the like mid 30s to mid 40s, you're probably going to see a bunch of like you know, maybe posters you had on your wall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, that's good. That's what I was going to say too. As I'm looking around this is the room that we're sitting in here, so I see a michael jordan poster got a dale earnhardt bruce lee. There's a you know, uh old, uh marlboro, uh advertisement, some quirky stuff.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, matt, my partner, matt barnes, was, was the. He's the vision, for sure. He's very artistic, very creative and he kind of intentionally has a mix of some kind of, like you know, casual playful. I don't want to say lowbrow, but like approachable stuff right and then, at the same time, we've also got, you know, reproductions of some of the classic artworks. You know, we've got Van Gogh, Rembrandt. You know anything you could imagine?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's great. Some modern furnishings, some kind of throwback retro stuff. Yep, see the Coca-Cola lamp over there.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's a whole vibe here and uh, so really really neat space. So, um, that's really just a very small part of your story and uh, so I definitely wanted to dig in. You've got a very unique history and, and when we met a couple of years ago, uh, you know, I was so fascinated with all that you've done, and so I'd like to kind of take folks through that personal and professional journey that led you to doing projects like this in a smaller community like Delaware, Ohio, Sure. So, yeah, kind of start at the beginning and talk us through what that looked like and kind of how that all got you to here.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, I guess I think I'd summarize it. I guess sort of this way, if the audience is primarily folks interested in real estate, development type stuff. So I grew up in Pickerington, ohio, which is 10 or so miles east of Columbus, did my undergraduate at Ohio State, finished undergrad in 2005. At the time I wanted to move to a bigger city to try to, like you know, make my way or what have you. So I moved to Washington DC in 2005. You know, didn't know anyone in the city, didn't have any connections or anything. So I got a temp job at a law firm sorting mail and like stapling, collating papers for like 12 bucks an hour. Start at the bottom. Yeah, that turned into a full-time job at the law firm. For a little bit I thought I wanted to go to law school. Turned into a full-time job at the law firm. For a little bit I thought I wanted to go to law school. So I applied, took the LSATs, got into a couple of decent schools and then realized that I didn't actually want to do that.
Speaker 1:I was doing it because my parents were encouraging me to. So I was kind of I think I was what early must've been early. You know, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And um, I w I was on a trip with my mom and my grandmother and we were just kind of talking about things and my grandmother said you seem to take a lot of pictures of buildings, like so anyway, I had a like an old digital camera and she called, asked me to call up the roll of photos and we're looking. We had been on this vacation for a week or so and there was very few pictures of people, it was all buildings. She's like you should do something with that. So I applied for a job.
Speaker 1:I got an entry-level property management job at a big real estate firm in DC called JBG, who's now publicly traded a massive company. I worked there for a little while and I got fired because my boss thought I was trying to take her job, which I wasn't. But I think I've always been an entrepreneur. I've always been self-starter. I've been the type of person that if I have an idea, if I think it's the better idea. I will propose it and pursue it and um the like corporate hierarchy of you know the senior director said this, so everybody has to do this. Like it never made sense to me. I'm always like like a best idea wins type of person, no matter who it comes from, right, yeah, so I did that.
Speaker 1:And then I went and worked for another kind of boutique real estate development company in DC and this was 2007, 06, 07. And depending on you know how old folks are that are listening may or may not even remember or have lived through that as a working person, but that was a pretty tough time in the real estate world.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes indeed so the company that I worked for. When I started, we had about 50 employees, and I was the youngest and the least experienced. At the time, I didn't even realize what was happening. But, every couple of weeks I'd show up and there'd be another empty office and then another empty office, and anyway, it was the Great Recession, the subprime mortgage thing, that blew up the market, and so that company went from 50 people to a couple of months later. It was literally the owner and me, and that was it.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And he kept me around because I was the cheapest. You were the cheapest, yeah.
Speaker 2:The cheapest, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I ended up doing a whole bunch. I worked there for about 18 months and I did probably 10 years' worth of stuff in a year and a half, just by necessity, like working out all the troubled properties and troubled loans and that type of stuff.
Speaker 1:So I was way over my head. I made a hundred mistakes a day for 18 months and kind of got the crap kicked out of me every day. But I loved every minute of it. I learned so much. And then I came out the back end of that and you know a lot of the guys that I knew almost everyone I knew in the real estate industry at that time. Everyone lost their jobs. Everyone had to either go back to business school, go back to law school, find a career in a different industry because the jobs didn't exist for a couple years. But I was fortunate to have had that opportunity to really learn a lot of tough lessons on someone else's dime you know, yeah, um, so I did that and then I after that I started my own firm.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't even say my own firm, but, um, I started flipping houses in dc, essentially so you know, bought a house in a up-and-coming neighborhood, put every single nickel I had to my name into it, lived and breathed it, you know, night and day, for six months, fully renovated it, sold it made you know a little to believe, like the risk tolerance like putting every single cent you have to your name into a project and just hoping that it works out, yeah, I mean this is the way that a lot of people in real estate if they're working for themselves like that's how they started was doing something residentially.
Speaker 2:They bought a rental, they bought a flip or whatever. But I mean most of the people that I know that did it lived in the Midwest. So this is like a $100,000 risk, but in DC these are not $100,000 houses that you're buying.
Speaker 1:It was bigger dollars.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was bigger dollars, although in those days they were way cheaper than what they are today Way cheaper. Yes, All the foreclosures and everything. Perhaps that was good timing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, our first couple of projects. We would buy a condemned shell house that you would never set foot in in a rough part of dc, and we would pay three, four hundred thousand dollars for it right, put another 150 or so in, sell it for like seven or eight hundred grand somewhere in there.
Speaker 1:And to me that was huge money because like I, you know, grew up, you know, middle class in columbus. Those were obscene prices. But that's, you know, that's what the market is. So we did that for a little bit and you know, I kind of graduate up like did a bunch of single family flips and then you know we bought a duplex and then a fourplex and then an eight unit and you kind of work your way up and if you're lucky I was very fortunate to have good timing I started at the bottom of the market.
Speaker 1:Right, right and there was kind of only one way to go. And for a while you know me and a couple of other guys that were doing the same thing same market, same time we kind of like created a little informal, you know group to kind of help each other out with referrals and ideas and stuff and for a few years there we all thought that we were like the smartest guys on the planet because we were just riding the wave of that's all we were doing. Better be lucky than good. Yes.
Speaker 2:I guess as the saying.
Speaker 1:Yes, Um, so, yeah, so I did that and um, uh, you know it did a whole bunch of interesting projects in DC. Um, it was primarily self financed at first, so it was for the DC market, like relatively small projects had some successes. Um, you know, friends and family or friends of friends asked if they could, you know, invest that type of thing.
Speaker 1:Um so slowly started to do bigger and bigger projects and um, I believe it was 2013, kind of went on like a little bit of a road show, sort of Raised like real institutional capital from a New York hedge fund guy who basically wrote a blank check like an eight-figure check. So he said you know, we wrote a bunch of case studies on our projects, these are our returns, that type of thing. And he said, you know, go make a real business out of it.
Speaker 1:So, started a company in 2013, hired a bunch of young folks, got an office, you know, did all that. So 2013 to 2016 or 17,. We were kind of like off to the races. We did, you know, 10, 12, 15 projects a year, just kind of like running a hundred miles an hour, you know, having fun making some money.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What kind of projects were those?
Speaker 2:A lot of those were.
Speaker 1:We did a lot of condo conversions. So the neighborhoods that we worked with in DC there were a lot of historic neighborhoods, like kind of right around the you know Capitol and the monuments, so a lot of historic buildings that like you buy a building converted into like four, eight, 15 condos, sell them out, that type of thing. A lot of adaptive reuse stuff. Like we bought old office buildings, converted them to apartments. You know, bought warehouse buildings converted into apartments. You know church, school, that type that type of stuff.
Speaker 1:So it was pretty much you were turning everything into residential primarily not not exclusively, but primarily there was like in that time period and it's changed since covid, but in that time period there was a massive influx of people that wanted to live in DC. So it was. It was wild, like, uh, you almost didn't have to do like a demand side study, it was just obvious that the demand was there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Going back to the, you know, when you went on this road show you found this hedge fund that wanted to invest. I mean, what do you think that it was that that kind of sold them on on you and the opportunity? I'm sure that they, those types of places, get all kinds of pitches. You know, did. Did they ever say? Or, you know, did you get a sense of what it was that they saw in in you and in your projects that were attractive?
Speaker 1:Well, I think it was a combination of things. One, it was personal connections. For sure there were some relationships involved that other people sort of like vouched for my character. I guess.
Speaker 1:And honestly I think if it weren't for that, it probably wouldn't have happened, because I was just like a kid from Ohio that had an idea. But I think it's character, it was pretty thorough underwriting, like you know, obviously all the financial analysis and stuff like that. But even during that timeframe I could tell that there was a lot of like sort of like tests or something you know like put putting us in situations where they wanted to see how we'd respond. I think like just testing character.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, Interesting, yeah, interesting. So you went through that run through 2017 or so and then continued right in DC. Yes, Do you have?
Speaker 1:another project. Well, 2016, sorry 2016,. We had. 2016 was a combination of things. But on the business side, donald Trump was running for president and he was all about like drain the swamp. You know that was his big thing, drain the swamp. And at the time I took that to heart. I thought he was actually going to do it and if he did, it would have decimated the DC real estate market, you know so, and they're they're kind of experiencing a little bit of that now there. But the first time he said he was going to do it, so we kind of got scared. We wanted to like deleverage a little bit, so we sold about half of our portfolio, um, kind of just in case, just in case, he actually did that, you know. So we pulled some chips off the table. Of course it didn't happen, and 2016 to 2020 was like just another four years of more up, huge run up, yeah, and then COVID was a little blip and then another four years of up, but anyways, we did that.
Speaker 1:And then I took some time off. I got divorced in 2016. And that, along with like paring down the portfolio I had been working like a hundred hours a week for a decade and I just took some time off. So I did the thing where, like, I sold the house, sold a lot of stuff, put some stuff in storage and then, like, literally just traveled the world for a couple of years. So I looked like I lived on a vineyard in California for a year, learned how to make wine, lived in Seattle for a little bit and then I kind of got on a circuit of doing volunteer opportunities like disaster recovery stuff around the world. So I lived in Puerto Rico for six months after the hurricane. Um, we thought we were going to be rebuilding people's homes, but the level of devastation was so much that we were just for six months clearing out debris yeah yeah, so I did that and I traveled.
Speaker 1:I traveled all over europe, uh, asia, south america for a couple of years and had some really fun experience. I'm I'm very glad I got to. I had the opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a lifetime of experiences in two years, yep, yeah, and in some ways I learned more from the travel than you know anything else Like.
Speaker 1:I'm a big believer in traveling is like it opens up your mind to so many different cultures and like ways of looking at things and, yes, definitely find that you know. Of course, you do like the big sort of big capital cities because you want to see. You know rome and london and athens and all that stuff, but I had the most fun visiting like small little towns and villages and like second and third world countries that most people have not heard of yeah, they're just meeting like regular people and you know they speak different language and stuff, but you really understand like people are the same Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow, very, very fascinating and I'm sure yeah, I mean not, you know the interpersonal lessons, and then you know I mean talk about architecture and design and just inspiration galore from going to those places and seeing we just recently did a Europe trip as well restaurants and the patio spaces and the public squares and the way that they're using public spaces for gathering and just creating community is really, really fascinating and inspiring, and I think there's just so much to be learned from that One of the things I love about going over to Europe, especially in some parts of Asia as well, but they're so much older than our.
Speaker 1:you know, society is here, we're only're only you know a couple hundred years old, but a lot of the work that I do and I think you're the same way. It's buying historic buildings and here in the states, historic buildings means it's like 100 years old right and that's like impressive. But you go to, you know some of these other parts of the world and they've got buildings that were built like a thousand years ago right, exactly, yes, yeah, puts things in.
Speaker 2:The new buildings are 500 years old. Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah, so, uh, okay, wow, that. So I mean that was a significant part of your story, for sure, yep, uh, but then you kind of came back from that and uh, and then what?
Speaker 1:yeah, I came from that kind of threw myself into work again in DC in 2019. And after having that kind of whirlwind experience, dc just seemed kind of dull, a little bit, like it was kind of riding that high of so many fun life experiences. And then you got to kind of go back into like DC corporate real estate and it just kind of like wore me down. I wasn't thrilled about it. I kind of like you know, faked it or whatever for a year and then COVID hit and just totally decimated DC.
Speaker 1:Obviously the whole world shut down for a while. The bigger major cities on the East coast and West coast kind of bared the brunt of it. Like the lockdown policies are pretty bad. So, anyway, I left, I moved back to Columbus end of 2020, early 21. Like I said, I grew up here. My parents are both still here. I have two brothers in town. They're here and I just wanted, like you know, kind of a new start sort of.
Speaker 1:So moved back here I guess four and a half years ago, um, and uh, kind of decided, like you know, on a professional front, like I wanted to start another similar company to the one I had in dc, um, but I wanted to do it sort of like organically and kind of more my way, because when I was in DC, the parts of the projects that I loved the most were like going on site, like doing the demo. I'm not a good construction guy at all my brothers won't be the first to attest to that but I like that part of it. I like being on site talking with contractors, vendors, like figuring out what are you going to do with the space. Yeah, um, and as we grew in dc, like I got further and further removed from that because, like we hired like a development manager, right project manager. So it's like I ended up getting sort of shoved to the side and doing nothing but like approving contracts and right, yeah, yeah so I wanted to get back to like the what I consider the fun parts of the projects here.
Speaker 1:um, so I started another company here, jamal real estate partners early 21, with the focus of, you know, buying, uh, historically significant but underutilized commercial properties in and around columbus. So we've in the last couple years we've bought a couple of buildings German Village, brewery District, short North, our projects here in Delaware and we're always looking, but you know, kind of that mentality of like you know taking buildings that used to be beautiful and kind of making them that way again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what Main Street Reimagined is is all about you know, that's, that's where we started and obviously that's the level on which you and I connected and have a really shared passion for that and and have, you know, met some other people along the way.
Speaker 2:I know both of us have that share that passion. It's kind of a a niche but growing thing to to find people that are looking to reimagine what places can be, because a lot of these old buildings they can't be what they once were the, the uses are different people, culture, community is different than what it was when they were built, you know, 100, 150 years ago, and even from 20 or 50 years ago. But to reimagine those new uses. So so, talk, talk a little bit about the, the project here. So you've got you acquired like three buildings that are all adjacent here in downtown Delaware, and it was the old health department, from what I understand, and so they had vacated and so there there was a bank still that remains, but otherwise the buildings were all empty and in need of reimagination, right, yeah, so late 22,.
Speaker 1:We were coming off of a 1031. We had a building in the brewery district that we didn't intend to sell but got approached with an offer that was kind of like, too good to say no, to Always have to be open for those yeah. Yeah, of course We'd owned it for less than two years. So we were looking at a pretty big capital gains tax. So we did a 1031 and kind of cast in a lot of nets and we found these buildings and put an offer, put them in contract January of 23. The Delaware County Health Department occupied all three buildings. So we bought 41 North Sandusky, which is a building we're in now, and then three, one, three and five West winter street as well, and, like you said, they occupied the whole thing they were building. They had grown out of the space, so they're building a much larger facility down the street to move into. So essentially we were buying a vacant office building and at that time, like in the just post COVID years, the office market was like not a very favored product among lenders.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I bought some at that time too, and yeah they were like nobody's going to use offices anymore.
Speaker 1:It's 2021.
Speaker 2:People are never going back to the office.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, yeah, very difficult to finance. We ended up having to do like a lot more equity than we typically do. The financing part was tricky, but we finally got it done. So we closed March of 23. The health department had some delays on their new facility, so they ended up staying for a couple of months. Okay, but that gave us a couple more months to like, figure out design and execution and stuff you know.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, we spent the last two years um breaking up the property into so it was sort of single tenant in a way when we bought it. We've reprogrammed it into six tenant spaces now, um, so we started with the smallest building, at five. Five was winter. Um, it was previously like a women and infant, uh, walk-in clinic. It was previously like a women and infant walk-in clinic and we reprogrammed that space into retail storefront, so there's a pottery studio there. And then we moved next door to 3, west Winter, which was like a 7,000-square-foot building that we put Cocinamos, which is a Venezuelan bakery, and they're now a full-service restaurant as well.
Speaker 1:But we did that build out and then we moved over here to the largest building on the corner and the upper four floors are. We did like a full-gut renovation. We did keep it as office use. It's a Regis HQ furnished co-working space, so that one. We had to think on that one for a long time. We got a lot of pushback from our lender and every other lender in town. They were not thrilled with the prospect of sinking another seven figures into an office renovation with no tenants lined up, no revenue. So it was a big risk and we had to that that took a while to get that part done.
Speaker 2:But how did you overcome that with with the bank? I mean to to to have conversation, you know, if you're saying, hey, we need additional funding for this, and they're like, we don't feel comfortable with that. I mean, what did it take to to get over the hurdle?
Speaker 1:I think what created like a 50-page business plan loan request and shared it with seven or eight lenders and they all said no way, and a couple of them second time said no and a couple of them third time said no. Buckeye State Bank is one of our best lending partners. We've done several loans with them and they ultimately did come through. The terms of the loan were not super advantageous to us but when you're trying to finance like an undesirable product, generally speaking right. But I think it was just a lot of determination and just gathering additional data points. Like we worked with Regis's corporate team.
Speaker 1:So Regis is a publicly traded company. They have 4000 locations. They're in 120 countries. So that helped. You know the bank's credit committee get comfortable with it, bank's credit committee get comfortable with it. We were able to pull a lot of data points from other centers that they have in the market. You know this is their. You know revenue per square foot this is their lease up pace. This is what they're stabilized at To help get the bank comfortable with. Like this is there's a reasonable expectation here that, like there's six or seven other identical product types within a 30 mile radius they're all doing doing this. It's reasonable to assume we should be able to do a similar thing.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, yeah, I think there's a lot of gold in in what you're talking about there. First of all, you know you had to get comfortable with what you felt was going to be successful and then really believe in it and be passionate about it, to take it to these different lenders. And I meet so many people that have a business idea or they want to get into real estate or whatever, and they tell me that they're so discouraged and I'm like well, how many banks have you talked to? And they're like well, one I said well how many times have you talked to her?
Speaker 2:once it's like, well, okay, you know, let me. Times you talk to me. Once it's like, well, okay, you know, let me. Let me set the expectation for you that, just like any other business deal, like, you're going to get told no. And so different banks have different appetites for different things at different times. And some and you have to be your own advocate you've got to put on a little bit of a sales hat here to really sell them on why you believe this idea is going to be successful. And it can't be all smoke and mirrors. There has to be substance to it, but you also have to be really passionate about it.
Speaker 2:And it sounds like that was your approach and it took some doing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, sometimes I joke like sometimes you meet new people these days and I ask you know what do you do? And sometimes joke like sometimes you meet new people these days and I ask you know what do you do, and sometimes I say I get told no, like that's what I do for a living. I get told no. It feels like there's a lot of days when yeah everything you're proposing, whether it's like asking for a zoning variance from the city no.
Speaker 1:Asking a historic preservation committee to do something no. Asking a lender for money no.
Speaker 2:Asking a tentative or something no right, you just got to find ways asking public utilities now you're still on hold right, we'll eventually get told no, probably there too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just have to learn to. You got to massively reset your expectations. Yeah and um, like, if you get told no once, that doesn't mean anything like yeah, most stuff I've tried to do. I get told no dozens of times before, like anything like yeah most stuff I've tried to do, I get told no dozens of times before. Like you, gotta adapt and find a way around it yes, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2:That's so, so critical. So obviously you got over that hump and uh, and then this lap, the, the leisure club lounge was kind of the last piece of the puzzle here.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep yeah, this, yeah, this space is the last part of the project for us. When we bought the buildings two years ago, I mentioned to you that the basement here wasn't even included, like not even in the plans, not included in the square footage. That was advertised.
Speaker 1:It was just kind of like a dingy little like cafeteria break room for the health department and I just had a feeling like I knew that at some point it could be something really cool.
Speaker 1:So we spent the first, you know, 18 months or so focusing on upstairs, getting the street fronts activated, putting retail tenants in there, getting the office space done and ready for tenants to move into, and the whole time. It's kind of like we always come down to the basement and know like there's going to be something really cool down here one day. I'm not exactly sure what it's going to be, but I know it's going to be a fun spot. So, like I said, my brothers own a construction company and kind of like over the last two and a half years in between jobs type thing for them We'd come up focus for a couple of weeks, we demoed it, then we white boxed it, then we like, did a little bit more, build out and we had the space available for lease the whole time, but couldn't find anyone with the vision to, like you know, make the leap.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we ended up taking the build out further and further, much further than you typically would. As you know, speccing out a retail bar space is kind of expensive and you run the risk of, if you go too far, you customize it a little bit too much and you turn people away and you might sign a lease and then they want to rip everything out and do something else. Right, but we did that. So we built the custom bar, we built the booths, put ceiling tiles in, did the lighting design, built a little mini kitchen in the back and met up with the Leisure Club. Folks got introduced to them at the perfect time.
Speaker 1:And they were able to take what we had started and really take it up to the next level.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is again oftentimes what it takes. Speaking of vision and passion and everything, again, sometimes, when people don't get the vision you know we've talked with some other developers, you know on this podcast before and you know they've talked about we can use photos and models and some of that to articulate the vision, but sometimes people still don't get it. To, just out of necessity, build something to a point where it's going to be really consumable for someone to come in and say, okay, we can take this the last 20% or 30%, the rest of the way to, to make it something really special.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And like I understand construction and design from like a real estate perspective, I don't have a design bone in my body as far as this stuff. So, like I said, it was very fortunate timing that we connected with Matt and Jason and Felicia at the perfect time because they sort of took the baseline that we had and just like, really, you know we've only been open for a week or so, but so downtown Delaware does, I think, all first Fridays. So this we, we intentionally, you know, tdr opening up to in conjunction with the June 1st Friday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, smart.
Speaker 1:Um, so this past Friday we had probably 200, 250 people or so walk through the space and, um, overwhelming positive uh feedback. Uh, very, you know it's very nice to like put your heart and soul into something for a very long time and it to have it be well received, it's very nice. But very you know it's very nice to like put your heart and soul into something for a very long time and it to have it be well received, it's very nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and again, as sometimes is out of necessity, uh, or, you know, out of desire, you know you put a lot of heart and passion into something you're you're kind of staying on as as part, of the owner of the business as well, although you're not, you know, kind of a front lines operational player in the in the game. But but yeah, I mean you know we we've done that. Other small developers we've talked to a lot of them, you know end up being involved in the businesses just because you get your, you're into it and want to see it be successful and try to align interests with your operating partners to to bring something special to the community, and I think you guys have. So I know that we could talk about this for hours.
Speaker 2:We're on Jared's, got to get off and keep moving projects forward and everything here. So we'll land the plane. But it's great hearing your story and just the road that kind of brought you back to Ohio, which is super cool. And then we connected because of mutual friends here in Ohio as well. But you still got your ventures in Washington DC. You still got some stuff going there and a team as well, yeah, we own 25 assets in Washington DC.
Speaker 1:I've got a team there that kind of handles all the leasing management day-to-day stuff. I typically go back once a month just to check up on our properties. I do that. We didn't cover it, but I'm a licensed commercial real estate appraiser as well.
Speaker 2:Oh okay.
Speaker 1:So I do appraisals in not in Ohio actually, but DC, maryland or Virginia. I've been doing that for 15 years as well. So I'll usually fly back once a month pick up an appraisal or two check up on our portfolio, and I used to do it in like 72 hour trips and then 48 hour trips, and now that my wife and I had a baby in September and I'd hate being away from him even for a night, so I'll fly back or fly out 6 am flight back midnight same day don't need to stay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but the classic entrepreneur, uh, you know, just uh winding a little bit of this, a little bit of that, just keeping uh different, uh different experiences as part of it. So that cool. And now that this is wrapping up, I know we talked to you're looking for for the next project here.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, excited to find it the next extremely challenging, really messed up project that that I could throw myself. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a, it's a sickness. We just, we just have to go from one to the next, don't we. We just got to keep setting ourselves up. You get a place where you can coast and you start back at the bottom of the mountain and start climbing again.
Speaker 1:I get bored so easily. I told my wife I'll take a week to recover. She's got a pretty extensive honey-do list at home.
Speaker 2:I can understand.
Speaker 1:I ticked off a couple this weekend actually.
Speaker 2:Well done.
Speaker 1:Excited for the next challenge.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, thanks again for taking the time with us here. Just real briefly, if you don't mind, share how folks can follow along with the Leisure Club. And then you know you personally, your upcoming projects.
Speaker 1:Oh sure, yeah. So yeah, leisure Club, we're LeisureClubco. We're on social media Instagram and Facebook. That's not really my foray that my partners are social media whizzes. I think I have like 20 followers. I'm not the best social media guy, but yeah, we have a good presence. Yeah, come check us out. Like I said, thursday, friday, saturday, 3 to 11. It's usually a pretty good scene, if the first weekend was any indication. Pretty fun, very good.
Speaker 2:Okay, Well, thank you again, Jared. Thank you to those that have tuned in to watch and listen here. Hopefully you took away some lessons and some learning points here to inspire you and educate you forward for your next project, Hopefully reimagining something and bringing something better to the world. So hope that you'll join us again for our next episode. Thanks again. Thanks for listening to the Main Street Reimagined podcast. To learn more about Main Street Reimagined Henry Development Group or our work in downtown Marion, Ohio, please visit MainStreetReimaginedcom. If you want to connect or if you know someone who we need to interview, shoot us an email at info at MainStreetReimaginecom. Until next time, keep dreaming and don't be afraid to take the leap.