EAST TEXAS UNFILTERED w/J. Chad Parker: Featuring Andy Bergfeld

Fifth-generation Tylerite Andy Bergfeld joins East Texas UNFILTERED with J. Chad Parker for a conversation about family, service, and the future of Tyler. Andy talks about growing up with a well known family name in Tyler. He also talks about the pressure that came with it. He explains why he never wanted to coast on that name. He wanted to build something of his own.

Andy looks back on his path from Lee High School to SMU, then to law school, commercial real estate, and years of service on the Tyler ISD school board. He talks about restoring historic properties and helping shape downtown Tyler. He also explains why strong public schools matter to the future of the city. He reflects on hard decisions that faced the school board, including the Lee name change, and what those moments taught him about leadership.

This episode is a strong East Texas story about legacy, leadership, and long-term vision. Andy shares what it means to give back to the town that raised him. He also explains why he still believes Tyler’s best days are ahead. Like, subscribe, and follow East Texas UNFILTERED for more East Texas stories.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Well, I felt an obligation to give back to the community that raised me. Um, I always told people Tyler's the best town in Texas. And I thought, you know, what better way to help your town than to get on the school board? Because that's where it all starts. That's the foundation for everything. You can either have an educated public or an uneducated public. And I wasn't really, I wasn't upset at Tyler ISD. I was like happy to think, okay, I can help by letting in them know what's going on freshman year at SMU. Um, what's going on in law school? How how do we study? You know, anytime you run for public office, I still remember sitting in the parking lot at the TIS administration office with my candidate packet that I'd already signed, and I'm like, all right, well, you're about to run for office. There's a chance you could lose. Um, are you ready for that?

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Welcome to another episode of East Texas Unfiltered. I'm your host, Jay Chad Parker. Today we have a fifth generation Tylerite, a name that you'll know right off the bat, um, but I don't think you know him. We're gonna learn about his story, what he's done, why he's done it, and what's important to him. Andy, thank you for being here. Glad to be here, Chad. Andy, most people um, you know, Tyler has grown since you and I have grown up to now what is close to 115,000 in the city limits, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, uh we've come a long way. I mean, we we pretty much felt like we knew everybody um in the late 70s, early 80s. It felt that way, didn't it? It did. Um now you had a a little bit of an advantage in in the sense that, you know, people knew Bergfell from the park and from the you know, from the shopping center, right? Yep. Um now growing up, um, what was it like um, you know, for people to know the name, you know, with your dad and you know, and your granddad and your great granddad, and you know, what was it like growing up like that?

SPEAKER_01 2:02

You know, it it was neat. Um it was neat that we had a reputation and that it was a good reputation for really trying to make Tyler a better place for multiple generations. Um so I could read about ancestors and see what they had done, and I guess it kind of motivated me uh a little bit to make a difference in this town. But also the the hard side of that was you don't want to just sit back and rely on your family name and then let it go to your head. And so it was real important for my parents to raise us to where uh we kind of did our own thing and that you weren't uh just because of who your name was didn't mean that you got anything special or any kind of special treatment. So that was the balance we kind of had in our home.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Well, you know, I have the benefit of knowing you for a long time, and I know what you just said to be true. Uh and you know, in Tyler, some people um in the past have simply relied upon their name uh to carry them forward as opposed to try to carry something forward for themselves. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yeah, for sure. And I and I didn't want to be the generation that, you know, it all stopped and that let every the rest of the family down. So it's kept me motivated a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Aaron Powell Well, you know, I did some research and of course Rudolph Bergfeld, he's kind of the pivotal figure um, you know, in the late 1800s that makes the Bergfield connection with the city of Tyler, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Right. Yeah, he um for reasons that we don't know anymore, um, wasn't passed down to uh myself or my father, but he ended up just leaving St. Louis where his family was and coming to Tyler, Texas in 1878. So um there were some things going on family-wise where I think he he had gone to Germany uh because his parents wanted him to go over there and work in the family business, but he didn't like it, so he got on a ship, came back, and was a bookkeeper for um Anheuser-Busch distributor. In St. Louis. In St. Louis. So he learned the number side of um of a bar, basically, and uh selling alcohol, and then came to Tyler and opened a saloon.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

Really, that's uh you know, that's interesting. We think about that because you know, Rudolph will face prohibition. Yeah. You know, I don't know when he died or if he was still alive when Prohibition got here.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yeah, he went through it, but he had sold everything by the time Prohibition came. Well, you know, he died in 1930.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

Aaron Powell I mean, that's so interesting because you know, there's very limited family history that I can look back on, research, and find out about my people, right? I mean, you've got uh, you know, generations back to Rudolph to kind of learn what they did when they got here. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Uh yeah, pretty interesting. And and of course he was a German uh son of a German immigrant and married uh daughter of a German immigrant, and so that was a little bit different socially as well. Uh most people were, you know, English, Scotch, Irish descent and uh Tyler at the time. Uh very southern town, and the Germans just didn't kind of think that way. Um so but he ended up uh he ended up getting into real estate and banking and hotels and all kinds of other stuff by the time he passed away. Um so it's pretty pretty interesting life.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

Aaron Powell Yeah, I mean it sounds like because you think about it, he shows up here, maybe he has some money um from you know what he's done before. Uh I I'm assuming money would probably spend a longer way when he gets to Tyler from where he came from, like buy more. Yeah. You know, real estate, that type of thing.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

You know, I d probably I haven't thought too much about that. Um but yeah, to start a business on the square, you would have to have something. But he also, I found out much later, he was on the uh Tyler School Board for I want to say like twenty years. And I didn't know that. I mean Yeah, I know. And that was after I got on the board when someone said, Hey, there's a cornerstone at Caldwell High School that's got a Bergfeld name on it. And I was like, Really? And so I had the board secretary, I said, look up and see who it was. And she said, it was Rudolf Bergfeld, and he spent 20 years on the school board. So uh that was after I'd already gotten on. So it is kind of strange that we both did that, but I think education was probably important to him, and having an educated community um was important at that time, just like it is today.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Yes, I can see that. You know, he um he probably felt like, you know, especially in the South, it may have seemed, you know, coming from St. Louis, as if there was a level of education that had not been reached here, and it was necessary for things to uh be more progressive, if you will. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

And the family business in Germany was actually a business. Um, so they weren't like they were farmers or something. I mean, they had been in business several generations in Germany before they even came to America. So that was kind of his background, was just the business side of things.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

Aaron Powell And and you know, p I mean Germans have historically been known for, you know, being, you know, the top in engineers, yeah, you know, manufacturing and things of that nature. And so that, you know, that that makes sense. He gets here, I guess he does well with the saloon, uh, and then either is forced to diversify and has the money to do it.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yeah. Yeah, and I think he ended up with maybe two or three saloons at one time. And then he's a franchiser. Yeah, yeah. And then uh open Bergfell Loan and Trust. And then that's when things I feel like really took off because that's like a bank where you loan money. It was a bank, and so then he started buying real estate and developing it, and then holding the notes as he sold land, he would finance it also, so he was getting interest on that plus a sales price. And Jeff Bowie followed his bank.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

Yeah, right. It's kind of that way. I mean, Bowie was one of the first ones, him and Cavalier and Tyler, to hold their own paper. Yeah. Right? Instead of selling the notes, they buy all their cars, they finance them. And so that's I mean, that's the kingpin of business when you can do that. Yeah, it it creates another income stream uh versus just the sales price. All right. And so um, what have you learned about, you know, um, because that's a lot of land. I mean, you think about Bergfield Park and you think about Bergfield Center, and you know, that's quite a bit of land just that, yeah. Kind of around the middle part of what is, you know, the Azaia district today.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yeah, and so that the Bergfeld we know today, Bergfeld Center, um, that was my great-grandfather inherited that land. Um so when Rudolph passed away, he had two sons. When did he die? Let's let's put this on a timeline.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Yeah, 1930. Okay. 1930. 1930 is when Rudolph died. Golly, he lucky for him, he missed the Great Depression.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Yeah. Missed the Great Depression, uh missed the East Texas oil field. He sure did. We kind of wonder about that. Y'all would have been billionaires if he'd have been there. My the word the rumor is, I guess, that my grandfather uh said it they thought it was too risky to put their money into something like that when they I guess had a good bit of money but maybe well maybe it will be.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

I know, I don't know. I'm just saying, like people that got in early, they said, Man, this is risky, and then you know Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Uh I mean they So for whatever reason, the Bergfelds did not participate much in the in the East Texas Warfield. Um so but yeah, um and that was a good time when when Tyler got all this wealth, they needed neighborhoods. And Rudolph had bought most of the land and been developing it up to about where Bergfield Park was prior to the East Texas Warfield hitting. From where downtown? Uh I would say probably Rusk Street, somewhere in that area. So you've got uh Mockingbird, um, you know, then it went first, second, third, fourth, from the Presbyterian church, yes, basically towards Bergfield Center. And uh and so uh like college, the brick streets, all you know, big wide college avenue going up there. That was his men that put the bricks in on all of those streets.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Well, th when you know I've heard, I don't know if this is true, that there was some you know brick street work done with some of the prisoners from Camp Fanning during World War II. Have you ever heard that? I don't know if they maybe repaired or redid, but Yeah, I haven't heard that.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

I talked to a guy, A.A. Arnold, who worked for the city of Tyler from like the 1920s when he was a teenager, and he was still alive when I moved back to Tyler, and uh somebody said, You need to call him. He's in a uh nursing home and he's got all these great stories, and he's the one that told me that he uh watched my great-grandfather's men lay the bricks for the brick streets, and he said in Mockingbird Lane, I also watched him uh plant all those pecan trees that are on Mockingbird. And so when I drive by Mockingbird between Broadway and college, it's kind of cool to see like trees that were planted uh by your great-great-grandfather.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Aaron Ross Powell And that would be planted prior to 1930? Yeah. All right. Yeah. So, you know, the park itself, the park was it sold or or or land donated to the city?

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Yeah. The way it was told to me it was donated originally, but there was a clause in it that it had to be developed within a certain number of years. And the city of Tyler hadn't developed it, so it reverted back to Rudolph. And then some years later, the city said, we want it now, and then there was a pretty nominal price for it. And uh and I think it was just a city park, and then when he died in 1930, they renamed it Bergfill Park.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

All right. Um after he died, we've got which generation? Who do we have next? Not Rudolph, but we've got what would be your great grandfather? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Julius Alexander and uh and Rudolph Pabst. They were brothers. Pabst. That sounds like the beer. Yes. And that was Rudolph's um wife's uh maiden name was Pabst. Any connection to Paps Blue Rill? I I don't know that there's I've heard there is, but not anything direct. Uh Julius Pabst, which is where we got our name Julia's from, uh he had gone to California to do uh was in the gold rush and had stopped off in Tyler. Yeah. I think it was 1848 when he went there. And then he had stopped in Tyler, and then I guess when they got done with the gold rush, he came back to Tyler. Um so he was here in the early 1850s. Um the Pabst were they were very early.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

So Julius, is this the first time the the the name Julius starts to enter the family? You know, and I haven't researched it beyond that, but yeah, Julius Pabst. Um and then you know, Julius, your dad. Yep. Uh and my grandfather. Yeah, and so Julius, you know, kind of is a um that's a common theme with all of the the men in the Bergfeld family, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:12

It is. And I yeah, I was embarrassed in first grade when they called my name out Julius Bergfeld. I was like, I want to crawl under my desk. Because it's your first name. Yeah. And that was always my first name. So I Andy. Yeah. I was like, please, Andy, and everybody laugh, and you know, but it's unique. Yeah, it is. I mean and so I've I my son's Julius Andrew Jr. and we'll see. Uh once kinda you get to six generations of Julius, you you kind of stick with it.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

Yeah, I mean uh and nowadays nothing seems, you know, uh out of the ordinary, really, to me. I mean, you know, you'd just knowing your dad, he kind of went by a nickname or brother, it seemed like, instead of Julius in a way, didn't he? Yeah, he did.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

I don't know where that came from, but his sister, his big sister couldn't say Julius when she was a baby. It was too hard of an of a word, so she just called him brother. And uh that stuck. Yeah so that's why he was brother.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

Yeah, I mean, I'd hear all kinds of people calling him that when I was growing up, you know? I mean, that was his name at at Texas was Brother Bergfeld. And so your dad went to um I guess he went to UT, Austin. Yep. And uh did he come back here immediately after coming back from college and go to work with his father?

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Is that he went to law school in South Texas and um and took the bar and then decided he was gonna come back and work in the family business. And so he came and worked with his father for many years and then ended up taking over all the management of all the Bergfeld properties.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

Yeah. W with the Bergfeld agency, you know, the one that's, you know, p really across the street from Brookshir's in Bergfell Center. Yep. How long has that facility been the place where the business was run from?

SPEAKER_01 14:59

You know, that was built in the eighties. Um, that office was. They had an office before that in the um inline shops on 8th Street. They were the last office when I was a little kid. Uh the last little retail space was their office for uh insurance and and real estate management.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

Because, you know, I try to think back. I think your grandmother was still alive after your grandfather passed away and lived over there behind, um, you know, kind of towards Sneed, back in there somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, their house was on the corner of Third and Sneed. Yeah. And then it got to where she couldn't get up the stairs very well. Um, and actually both of them, and then they moved into a townhouse after that. But that's where the family all grew up, my dad's family.

SPEAKER_02 15:45

About what year is it that your dad, Julius, takes over kind of the real estate business that's been built up to this point? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

I he and uh he and his siblings bought out their cousins and I want to say it was 83. And then at that time, um, that's when he took over complete management of everything.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

And then he would eventually it would eventually just be him as as as part of his siblings are still involved.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Okay. Um but he managed everything all the whole time from then on.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

And then and then we get to you, okay. Here comes Andy. Andy's coming up, you know, he goes to um I'm trying to remember, Hubbard probably. Yep. Because you're two years behind me. Yep. I know Lee, of course, but I don't remember. You probably didn't go to Andy Wood. Was that Andy Woods school? No, I was Rice. Okay. We had a big rivalry with Andy Woods uh in football.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

That's right. Yeah, the Rice Andy Woods rivalry.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Um But ultimately, you know, you know, you and my brother were close friends for a long time coming up, and we all knew each other. Yep. Um and you would graduate, and it it seems to be like, you know, um your speed, man, was unusual, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Yes. I was fortunate. Um I had some God given talent, but then we had some great track coaches when I was at Lee. And you know, running track's not really fun, and it's not easy. Track meets are the most boring, long-drawn out thing I've ever seen in my life. So, you know, the fact that Coach Taylor and Coach Johnson, do you remember? Oh, I love Coach Johnson and Coach Taylor.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

He's passed away. Yes, he has. Coach Taylor's married to Julie Hood. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Um currently the golf coach, women's golf coach. And um at Legacy.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

So those were my two coaches. So I ran my junior year because Coach Peterson told us we had to, if we were gonna play wide receiver, you had to run track uh junior year. And I was like, okay, I'm running, but I'm not gonna go to the meets. And he said that's okay. Well, about, you know, oh gosh, probably a month into track workouts, you know, Coach Taylor started in on me and he's like, you know what, I think you can I think you could do pretty well in this sport. And uh, you know, just kind of kind of coached me to the point to where, you know, I realized, man, I could do this. I can run.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

I mean, what was your I mean, how did you know you were you were faster than the average guy? Was it like in a hundred or or where was what was the event?

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Yeah, so you know, the four hundred is what I ended up being really good at. By yourself or on the relay? Both. Okay. But that's a hard race. And the workouts for 400s are. Yeah, and that's what it is to be good at it. What was your best time, can you recall? Well, I ran a 46 uh eight at the state track.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

Sub 50 seconds is pretty fast.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

Yeah. All right. You don't see many below 50, and 46 is getting down there. That was my last race I ever ran. That's speed and stamina. You have to have it both. And that's the di that's why having Coach Johnson and uh Coach Taylor, they worked us really hard. I mean, I'd guarantee our workouts were harder than anybody's. And I was just, you know, I was coachable enough for those guys that I just did it. And you know, once you get in shape, then you get the advantage over pretty much everybody because everybody can run 200 full speed if they were working out a little bit. But when you've got a uh closing speed for the last hundred yards when everybody else is dying, yeah. Um, and that's what that's what I had. So I I mean I do have to give credit to the coaching because I could have just been like everybody else and died the last hundred yards.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

But your 440 relay, I think with Tony Miller and that group, that uh y I mean, y'all placed in state.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Yeah, we got a silver medal. I think the only relay in the school history uh that's gotten a medal at the state track meet, still to this day.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

Now obviously that helped you in football, probably got the attention of what would be uh the SMU Mustangs, all of that combined, wouldn't you say? Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

I mean, speed and that's still what what teams look at. I mean, if you got speed, they'll make you into something. That I mean.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

I mean, that's right. I it and it doesn't matter if it's even baseball, even baseball. Yeah. They found out a guy's fast, you know. I mean, he's getting recruited in football for sure, right? I mean Definitely. Um we think about old Jamarian Miller, who just was uh, you know, drafted by the Patriots. Mm-hmm. Um that's another Lee alum that's done well. But you did go on to play at SMU just right after the death penalty, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:30

That's right. Um first recruiting class after the death penalty. I'd grown up watching SMU, just going to games, watching McElhenney and James and Eric Dickerson. I love those guys. Yeah. That was so I had a good I liked SMU. I thought well of the school. I did too. And um and then the education component, back when education really mattered in college sports, I just was like, man, this is the best opportunity in the world to get to go down here and start playing immediately. But also I just the education part of it was uh was huge.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Well you got there and you end up being number 15, I think. Right? And we're looking at we're showing you making a catch. It looks like it's against North Texas. That was probably your best game in your career. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Yeah, it was. It's um you know, football's interesting and in and being an athlete, if you ever get in a zone, what they call the zone, where they could have thrown me anything that game. And you would have caught it. I would have caught it. I was just in the zone. And you don't get that feeling all the time. Some games you're just playing and you know, you're you're you know, things work out good, but that game, I guess just matchups and the game plan going into it was to get me the ball a bunch. And so um, yeah, that was definitely one of the highlights of my college career, being player of the game in any division one football game as a wide receiver. Right.

SPEAKER_02 21:55

I mean that's that's that's things that most people c will never be able to say that It happened to them, right? Yeah. But you know, I think about SMU. I was this close and accepted to go into SMU and I was going to walk on. Yeah. Uh, because they had the death penalty, and then when I was playing at Lee, um, you know, I got a recruiting visit, but it was obviously for people who could walk on only because they had no scholarships. Yeah. And so it was a year it went down. Everything went down. Right. So I went on a football visit and uh on a football visit is a funny story. Uh I wanted to ask you if you've ever been to this place. Dave Richards, I don't know if you remember I know of Dave. Okay, he took me and some other guys on uh the football. They took me to a place called the Stark Club. And I've heard of it, but I never went there. I have heard of it and I've read stories about it. Oh my gosh. I was like a kid from Tyler. I was like, what in the world is this? But that's my favorite memory or my most vivid memory of an SMU football visit. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but it's kind of like SMU at at the time was. It was like the flock of seagulls, that band, and everybody in there looked like they were a part of the band. Yeah. That's cool. I didn't know you'd been there. Uh but anyway, I went on to UT and walked on there for a year and then just gave it up. So look, you know, I'm not serious. I'm not I'm not committed, uh, probably not coachable to use your word. So I'm going on. Now, do you play football the whole time you're there, or do you finally just kind of dig into academics?

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Yeah, so I played four years and uh I was on scholarship for five. Um last year I uh I wanted to go to law school. And uh, you know, football and school aren't perfectly compatible. It's tough because I I mean I'm down there every day from two until 7 30 at night, and then I gotta get to the I remember having to get to the cafeteria because it closed at eight, and then you eat, and then if you've got time, you study after that, and then you gotta be at class at 8 a.m. in the morning because you got to get your classes done and time to get down to the field house. So Yeah, that's a tough schedule. I did it for one semester, and it's tough. Yeah. So my last year, I want to go to law school, and I'm like, all right, I need to uh I need to show law schools what I can do when I'm not playing football. That is improve your grades when you have time to study. Yeah. And, you know, it's hard when you have football to do that and dedicate yourself to academics um as much. So that's that was kind of my story.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

All right. So you get accepted, you know, you do all the things like take the LSAT and all the things you have to hoops you have to jump through, and you go to South Texas just like your dad. Yep. And uh is my brother Todd there when you get there?

SPEAKER_01 24:50

He was. He got there a year before me, and uh and my roommate from SMU was also down there, Chris Hanslick. Oh, yeah. Chris and Todd knew each other just through our connection. And so, yeah, we already had I mean there were a lot of people down there. Hanslick went to UT, though, didn't he?

SPEAKER_02 25:06

No, he did SMU. Uh I guess since he was friends with Todd, I always thought he did, but yeah and didn't know him, but that's where he met him is through you. Yep. Because Hanslick's done really well for himself in Houston as a lawyer. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

And I knew he would. I mean, some people are really cut out to be lawyers and and just driven and he was he was always that way, man. We'd go out the night before and be up till 2 a.m. and that sucker would be up and dressed and ready to go at eight o'clock the next morning. I'm like, golly, you know. But yeah, he knew what he wanted, and and I'm I'm happy for him.

SPEAKER_02 25:42

He's done great. Yeah, no, I I got to see him. He had a uh one of his kids was in the Rose Festival a few years ago, and I saw him and talked to him. Well, okay, so you graduate and you do take the bar though, don't you? Yeah. And practice law.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Right. Um that was uh you know, law school was great. I learned more in law school than I learned in college. About life and just real stuff. Application, yeah. Like, okay, I could use this. I could see myself using contracts, I could see myself needing to understand. Torts property law.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

I mean, oil and gas. Yeah, all of it. Agency. I mean, all this stuff teaches you almost like you're a you're better prepared for business if you have a law degree. For sure. Um because you understand the language and the concepts people are talking about. Yeah. Um it was great.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

I love South Texas and and the education. Um and then and then of course everybody was like, oh well, you just got to go be a lawyer. Well that's a good thing. So I thought, okay, well, I've invested in this education and I don't really have anything else I'm dying to do. Um, you know, so that was you know, that was the route. And um and there were times when it was awesome and I loved it. And then there were times when I'm like, I don't want to do this forever, my whole life. And so um Some of it can be monotonous. Yeah, yeah. And I and then I I mean like the billing part. No, no question. You have to bill 80 hours or some set, and I'm like, well, I can't do that much work. I don't know how I don't know how I'm gonna do that. You can get creative with the pen, Andy. Yeah. And so I you know, and I don't blame Robin Davis?

SPEAKER_02 27:16

What do you mean? Well, I can't bill 80 hours. No, I didn't say that.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

No, I was grateful. I'm grateful for the opportunity. Um, but you know, in life, it and I after, you know, a while, a couple of years, I went home and I just told my wife, I said, I really want to be in commercial real estate. I just don't want to do this the rest of my life. And uh and she thought she was marrying a lawyer, you know, and had the security of uh of being a lawyer.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

No, your paycheck i is generally pretty stable from two week to two weeks. That's right. Uh huh. And it's not in real estate. Yeah, it's I mean, you're more like a plaintiff lawyer in a way where it's kind of it can be feast or famine or you know, absolutely right. It's like a paycheck.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

You go you go from getting a paycheck to needing commissions. Yes. And um, but there's a lot of opportunity, like you say, on the commission side to really there's no ceiling, you know. Right. I mean, if the deal's big, yeah, the commission's big.

SPEAKER_02 28:12

That's right. Your dad, had you ever talked to your dad as you approached, you know, uh passing the bar about coming to work for him, or did that that talk come later?

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Well, so we did not um that I can recall really, you know, I once again I was so independent. I really wanted to do everything myself. I just didn't want, you know, to come back and and it wouldn't have worked. Uh I've never gotten a paycheck from my father or from our family.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Is it hard for you to work with your dad?

SPEAKER_01 28:45

It was hard for me to work with my dad. Yes. It became easy. So what I ended up doing is uh practicing law and then I went to work for Burns Commercial as a agent because I had to have uh however many years, three or four years until you can be your own broker. So I did that and practiced law at the same time. And then when I qualified to to be able to be a broker, I um I decided to go out on my own. And my dad had all had, as we talked about, he had handled the family real estate and done some residential over his career. But Tyler wasn't really, I think Burns proved that you could have a strictly commercial real estate firm and make a living. Like this Burns and Noble was well known back then. Yeah. And they they were the only one. And so I thought, well, if you know, if they can do it, I can do it. And so that's when I opened Birdfield Realty Company, LLC, and I was officing in a building at 210 South Broadway in a single office by myself, and uh, and then I leased my office out. And so I was talking to my dad about it, and he said, Well, won't you just come in with us? You can have your company in here in in under our roof, but I didn't ever get paid by him. So that worked out perfect. It saved you some overhead.

SPEAKER_02 30:04

Yes, exactly. All right. So clearly, you know, you're giving us examples of um how you came back to Tyler really kind of, you know, dedicated to doing something in your own name. Yes. Right, other than, you know, just to work with your dad. I mean, you're you're you're kind of staking out your own claim in this commercial real estate sector.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Yes, on the on the company side for sure. And then even on the uh Bergfeld Center side, I made a little money practicing law and decided, you know what, I'm gonna buy out my dad's uh siblings, uh, his sisters, because that's what had to happen the generation before and the generation before. And I thought, well, that's what's gonna happen for our generation. So I approached them and I love them to death, and we get along great, but they were like, yeah, we don't want to sell. This is too good. We're we're gonna hold it. I mean, like, hey, if I'm uh I'm not sure I want to sell either. Yeah. So I was like, oh, they don't want to sell. And then I started looking at the next generation, and I think there's uh nine of us at this generation. The numbers game is not in your favor. That's right. And now I think, well, we could we're gonna split this thing at nine ways. That's not Yeah, this is not gonna work. I'm gonna be doing all the thinking work or a lot of it. Yeah. And so I just decided at that point, okay, I'm young enough. I gotta I'm gonna go do something. I'm gonna blaze my own trail, and um and that's what I've tried to do. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

So that kind of sets us up, the audience and me, to understand, you know, how you were kind of one foot in the law, one foot in the real estate, but really wanting to get completely into the real estate. That's where we are, right? Correct. I read an article about you that said what you just said. You made a little money on a case. I'm assuming it was a plaintiff case. My only plaintiff case. And uh that's okay. But what you did with that money, at least from what I understood, was to pursue what what would be called uh called the Dewberry Plantation Project.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

That was part of it went to Dewberry. Yep. Um Dewberry was its own animal.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

All right, let's put this animal. Let's yeah, let's find out how does this animal get into Andy Berkfield's head while he's back home. He shifted with his wife to not being a lawyer exactly.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

That was even before that, actually. Um it's funny because you know uh I don't know where you studied for the bar, uh, if you were still in Houston. I stayed in Houston. Yeah, so did I. To stay to stay undistracted. Yeah. And so three of us would go to the Rice University Library um to study every day. It was like a job. That's you know, nine to nine, you just put time in. Well, you know, if you're there all day, I would get kind of bored or burned out a little bit at times. So I would go to the history section because I had a history degree from college and it's always been a love. So I would just pull books off the shelf and I'd read, you know, about some interesting topic in Texas history or United States history. And anyway, I I came aco uh a book about historic homes of Texas, and I thought, and I was flipping through the pages and I saw this house, and it was a nine eight uh 1854 annabellum two-story house, and it said 15 miles southwest of Texas. I mean, of Tyler. Yeah. And I'm like, God, I've never even heard of that or not.

SPEAKER_02 33:26

Is that what it looked like when you first laid eyes on it?

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Yeah, it was uh it was that.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

Yeah, pretty much just like that. I mean, it's a dilapidated old, you know, from the research you said 1854, the stuff says that what Colonel Dewberry started on it in 1852, finished it in 1854. That's right. Um, and then, you know, obviously the Civil War ends in 1865, and then after that something point he dies, it goes on to heirs, you track them all down, there's fourteen of them, you somehow finagle a price and get the house.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

More or less, yeah. So I think there were more than 14 heirs, but if you found that, that that probably is right. I mean, I just took that you made. Um yeah, and so the heirs um were all over the country, but one guy had been buying up undivided interest, um and he loyalty. He was he was not family. The Edwards family bought it in 1908, and so all of their heirs are all over everywhere. And this guy, um, just a local guy out there, started buying these interests. He would just write, you know, these people and say, Hey, you've got an interest in this Dewberry estate. Mineral interest under the land? No, uh real estate interest. Okay. Yeah. Um anyway, he ends up buying 50% of it and gets a court order to sell the land because there was four hundred and something acres that went with it. So they came up with a plan to put the house in five acres and then divide all the land between the remaining heirs. And long story short, I ended up working a deal out with a majority owner where he took a little less for his part of the house so I could get the house, but he also could get his 250 acres, that uh that's really what he wanted. And it took us about a year to work that out.

SPEAKER_02 35:19

All right, so this is just kind of a project in your mind. You're working through this, you haven't had to put any money in it yet until the sale comes, right? Yeah. So then the sale comes, and I mean, um, I also read somewhere that, you know, they uh the article attributes 194,000 to the project. I don't know if that's right. Um the only reason I wrote it down is because it stands out as a firm commitment to this project in, you know, the late 1990s. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

This was, you know, they say labor of love. Um mistake. Money pit. You know, I don't regret it at all. Yeah. It's it's saved. It was it's the oldest two-story house in our county. Uh, it's the one of the most historic places in our county. Um, you know, so I just loved it. I loved every minute of it.

SPEAKER_02 36:10

You must have, because we're gonna have a photograph here where you're actually doing some of the work. Yeah. It's I mean, look at this photograph. I mean, oh my gosh. I mean, you know, like I don't look like myself either in my late 20s, so don't worry. Yeah. I had hair, some, not much. But anyway, you're out there beating around an old dilapidated house, you know. This truly must have been a labor of it.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

It was. It was. I mean, that's where I'd get up early daylight on a Saturday morning, and uh and then I'd be out there and I demoed everything.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

So I got it all back to basically the studs by myself and uh and then hired a contractor to come in and was the thought you striking out as this is Andy Bergfield's first deal where he purchases something, he improves it with intention to sell it.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

I wanted to keep it forever. Okay. Um, but between when I saw it in the Rice University Library and when I purchased it, I got married right after that. I married a city girl, love her to death, still with her. She had demands. Well, so so she was talking to her her aunt, and she said, Um, Andy just spends all this time out at this house um and uh working on it. And we were newlyweds and you know, it's just something I love doing. And uh and her aunt said, Well, it's better than a mistress. Yes. And uh so we laughed, Sean and I after that called it the mistress. And uh so at one point when I got it completely restored, we were doing events out there, and it didn't make enough money for me to hire someone to work the events. So then I'm out there closing up at midnight after a wedding. After the wedding reception, and then I get a kid, then kids get involved. You get a second kid, and I remember one time he was in his playpen out there while I'm mowing the yard and had snot coming all down his face and crying and I mean because you're out there blowing dust and kids all over. Yeah, I'm doing well, I just doing it all. You know, I gotta keep him in the playpen so he doesn't fall in the well while I'm mowing the yard. And it just got to the point where uh I asked my wife, I said, Are you gonna ever I kind of thought it might be a cool country home type situation? Um I said, Are you gonna ever really think you're gonna spend much time out there? And she was like, No. I said, Well then let's just sell it then. I said, We fixed it, we've saved it. Uh there was a building on South Broadway that I had my eye on um that was really uh more in the just straight commercial office, which I understood and knew, and I knew how to make it work. Uh so we just decided to sell it and that was it.

SPEAKER_02 39:00

Well, I'm just as we leave this topic, I mean, we kind of show what it looks like. And yeah, this is uh I think you said the grand reopening at some point. Yep. Uh the people that bought it, you know, uh there's a lot of activity, uh at least, you know, ghost activity according to some stories. I'm just wondering if you and your wife, you know, ever heard, felt, saw anything weird, ghost like at this uh Dewberian plantation.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

No, never did. I'll tell you one funny story. The first time we ever stayed out there, we had restored the hardwood floors. And so they had like a polyurethane on them. You heard some creaking. And when the what's it so we turned the heat on and it heated up the house because we're spending the night there and the floor started popping, and my wife jumped up and she was like, I am leaving, time out of here. So because she thought it was a ghost. I don't she just you know, she I got her out in the country, she's from the city, we're in this old house. She's looking for any excuse to get out of there. I guess so.

SPEAKER_02 39:56

So the mistress scared her out. All right. So uh you kind of transitioned to another part of your life uh because you first run for school board, I think in the year 2000. Sounds about right. So if I see this right, you're kind of selling Dewberry in 2001, you're starting this other um, you know, I guess it's more than an activity, certainly, to be on the school board, but it's it's uh uh it's it's like a job that you don't get paid for. Never never been paid a penny. Um but you know, you're kind of uh I I'm not ready for that yet, Chris. Yeah. This Berkfield sign is, you know, iconic in Tyler if you drive around, especially at night. Okay, 2000, you're running for school board, you're in the office with Julius, your father, at this point, right? Doing your own thing, kinda. I was at Burns when I ran for school board in 2000. Yep. Okay, that's right. I've seen 2004 is when you assumed your role as president of Burkinsville.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

That's when I made the transition, uh, was in uh 2004.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

Um Okay, so the school board terms are for how long? Uh three years each. All right, so you're already in one and into another one when you make the transition to Berkville Realty. Yeah. Is that right? Sounds about right. Yeah. All right. Now, people, you know, they might wonder, you know, you told us the Rudolph story, which you didn't know at the time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

Why the school board, Andy? Well, I felt an obligation to give back to the community that raised me. Um I always told people Tyler's the best town in Texas. Um when I went away to college and law school, though, I realized we're not doing some things educationally that r that might prepare us for the next level. And I thought, you know, what better way to help your town than to get on the school board? Because that's where it all starts. That's the foundation for everything. People that are educated, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:56

That then become workers, leaders, business owners.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

So I think at the time, and probably now pretty close, but there's about eighty-five percent of your kids in Smith County go to public school. About eighty-five percent of those stay here after school. Um so you can either have an educated public or an uneducated public. And I think for me and probably my great great grandfather, you know, it's it's a bigger picture than just what's best for my family. Right. It's what's best for this town, is to have an educated public. And um and so that's why I've been so committed to it is not just for the school, even for the school district, but for our town to be exceptional. We've got to have educated kids.

SPEAKER_02 42:48

I agree with that. But the one thing you said that I think is interesting, um, when you were off at college and law school, did you see your peers and say, you know what, they seem more educated than me? Did you did that ever cross your mind? Yeah, it has seemed you all the time. It crossed mine at Texas. I'm like, man, I've got to be a history major because I can't work any of this math. Yeah. I was a terrible math student. Yeah. Right? I mean you know, but yeah, exactly. And uh And I'm like, you know, how much easier was it for those people that we met in college um to handle the college courses and do well in them compared to how hard it was for us to study, work, to learn stuff that maybe we didn't know.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Exactly. And I wasn't really, I wasn't upset at Tyler ISD. I was like happy to think, okay, I can help by letting in them know what's going on freshman year at SMU. Um, what's going on in law school? How how do we study? So I thought I was I thought I was gonna go and help uh the school district. And, you know, anytime you run for public office, I still remember sitting in the parking lot at the TIS administration office with my candidate packet that I'd already signed. And I'm like, all right, well, you're about to run for office. There's a chance you could lose. Um, are you ready for that? And I just I was like, yeah, I'm ready. I want to get back.

SPEAKER_02 44:07

And you know, usually there's not really contentious issues normally in a school board race, is there? Not not early on. Back then, I don't think there was. I mean I it got contentious pretty quick. Um okay, so you you decided to run, and uh when you said you were committed, I mean you uh you have remained committed because I mean, how long have you been on the school board in some way, shape, or form?

SPEAKER_01 44:33

Yeah, I mean, I think probably twenty-two years, I'm guessing. I mean, almost solid. I did seven years, then I got off for five because I had another thing that I felt called to work on, and then when I got done with that, uh I felt like the school district needed me back again. So I got back on in um in 2012 and have been on ever since then.

SPEAKER_02 44:59

Well, I mean, I don't want to pry too deeply, but the thing that you were called to go work on, is that something that we know about or is that something private with your family and something else?

SPEAKER_01 45:07

It's um it was faith related. Okay. So it's pretty private. Yeah. Um and people know that know me, uh what I was doing at that time, but I really felt a calling um from my faith that I need to go help in another area. All right.

SPEAKER_02 45:22

So and uh would you say when you came back to the school district, I mean you were just that much more um, you know, dedicated to making the place better?

SPEAKER_01 45:30

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I learned a lot. You know, when I left, I thought things are in great shape. We had been named school board of the year for the state of Texas. I was the president of the school board, we got school board of the year, uh Robbie Lee won a state championship in football. Uh John Tyler had played for a state championship, all of this while I was on the school board, and we had reformed the whole way we were doing school. So all of that happened between 2000 and 05 to where I really felt like we were in we were in great shape. Um the reason we got school board of the year is because of all the reforms that we put in place to make our public schools um better adjusted for what was being measured. And anyway, so I got off. Well, then by the time I'd gotten back on, um, I mean, I'll just say it, that the superintendent that was there had run off our best football coach, our athletic director, our best baseball coach, um, and we had 13 improvement required schools. Uh you're saying, I mean, the car had definitely got off in the ditch.

SPEAKER_02 46:35

I think i everybody would, if they looked at it, would say it had. And when when is this period of time where the school board makes this push to rebuild all the schools and we have this three bond package thing?

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Well, it started, I mean, the the year I got on school board, if you remember, they proposed the school district proposed that the huge $294 million bond to redo every school. And got defeated. And got defeated. So that was probably the beginning of a wake-up call for us.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

To present these things in a more transparent, yes specific way.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

And have more buy-in from the community and from even political opponents, um, and to show success academically. Um so we had to fix ourselves before we could think about doing doing any more bonds. But that was great. We needed to.

SPEAKER_02 47:31

Um So when is it? How long is it between the the the big bond that was initially defeated and the first small bond, a smaller bond for the elementary school? I'm gonna say it was probably three years. Okay. So you guys kind of you know got back and what I've heard people say about that is and they use you guys as a an example. It's like, hey, the uh TISD uh they presented this school, this bond package, and they were gonna look like this. And you know what? When they were finished, they did what they said and they looked just like that. And that built momentum for the other bond packages.

SPEAKER_01 48:04

Do you think trust was everything back then? Um you know, even our political opponents trusted us after a certain time. Taxpayer group, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:16

I mean, that's they're still here. The same ones. I mean, we know we know grassroots of America United. We still I mean, you know, I'm not disparaging Joanne or anybody, but what I'm saying is they're constantly there to oppose what some people believe is necessary progress. Uh and they have a right to their opinion uh because it does cost taxpayers additional money, right? I mean, it just does sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

Yeah, it does. And and um, yeah, you frame that right. Uh I do think, though, that even Joanne and her group, once they saw and trusted us that we were on time under budget, and um, you know, managing our other finances really well, um, you know, they sat out a couple of bond elections. They didn't have an opinion. Um, she even, I think, worked on the one of the committees to reform our schools after the first bond died. So we have had a good working relationship with them, but they they serve a purpose, and that is to keep taxpayers um money spent efficiently.

SPEAKER_02 49:27

And and I I'm glad you said it like that because you know, a lot of people are just all or nothing on everything. Yeah. And it's aggravating as can be to me, right? Like, you know, Joan Fleming is not all bad. Yeah. Okay. Now I agree with a lot of what she believes. She may oppose your project or parts of it, but can we imagine a world where nobody opposes anything? Yeah. Then you just have these things that are done, proposed, the efficiencies are never in there. And our tax bill 20 years down the road is something we're we're we're like, holy cow, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

Well, we can we can look around at government today and see that a lot of money's wasted. And for you and I, I I mean, I'll speak for me, I work really hard. And I pay a lot of money to the government. And to see it squandered is you know, it's disheartening. I mean, I don't work that hard.

SPEAKER_02 50:20

I'm hunting tax loopholes. I got a bunch of municipality. Got a bunch of municipal bonds. You know, I'm just trying to I'm trying to, you know, go around the American system. No. No, you're right. I mean, we pay a lot of taxes, um, and but you know, um, if and if that happens, then you know you're you're ending up fortunate, right? You're working hard, but we are fortunate, right, to live in Tyler, to do what we do, and enjoy being here doing it, I think.

SPEAKER_01 50:51

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is the best place to raise a family and probably the country, I would say.

SPEAKER_02 50:56

Um I mean, people we continue to see our former, you know, friends, acquaintances say thirty years ago they would never come back here. Yeah. And then we sh go somewhere and we see that they are back here, right? And the numbers are bearing that out as well.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

Yeah. Yeah. And I think people are taking notice. You get some of these rankings, you know, the second best place to live and and stuff like that. And uh Utah license plates are driving through town. I mean, I've I was working on the square one time doing taking care of the uh rose garden there, and I had some people pull up with California plates, said they had gotten in the car and drove to Tyler, Texas, because they heard of our traditional values and they were gonna move here. And they did and they they're talking to me. I I looked like the gardener, and I but I knew a lot about Tyler and uh they're like, golly, this gardener is smart.

SPEAKER_02 51:53

He knows all about this city.

SPEAKER_01 51:54

This is a great place. So anyway, that was a fun conversation. But just to have someone that will just pack their car up and drive to your town uh for quality of life is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 52:06

Yeah, no, that's um that's either they are they have nothing going on back in California, or California's gotten so bad, yeah, or they're looking for a fresh start. And, you know, they said, well, hey, why not Tyler, Texas? Yeah. But, you know, we do need, I mean, we do need new people, uh, you know, the half cent sales tax and the revenue that we get there, you know, the infrastructure also gets a little wear and tear. Um, but the people that I've talked to on this podcast have constantly talked about the school district being kind of um one of the main things that attracts businesses here. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:46

Because your workers are are largely going to be public school uh parents. And um absolutely. So having every school in the district rebuilt uh once we opened Hubbard last year, um, so it's either it's either new or renovated. Every single school, public school we have in Tyler over the last, gosh, that would be about 13 years. Right.

SPEAKER_02 53:11

Um yeah, that's big. Well, I mean, certainly the economic development people think it's big and they say it is when they, you know, entertain and host these people that come into town looking as, you know, for Tyler to be a place to come.

SPEAKER_01 53:24

You know, in in public facilities, to me, I'm a conservative by nature. Financially conservative, socially somewhat conservative, but I think we have to have the best public facilities of any town our size, because that's the difference maker. Okay. If you're parks, parks, you know, your downtown square, your landscaping on your medians, um you know, uh courthouse. I mean, these are all indicators of a healthy uh town to me.

SPEAKER_02 54:00

And they're all coming together. You know, I guess, you know, we got to give Don Warren a little credit on the parks, right? I mean, it seemed like he was Yeah, he was a parks guy. I mean, he was the park man. Yeah. Right. I mean, uh now I know Don just lived right next to Burkefield Park, but uh it's easy for him to get there. Yeah, he he he w he wanted the amphitheater to be nice and uh and it is nice. Yeah. Um but you know, it's interesting. You know, I wonder what your kids' reaction was when they were old enough to realize that the park was named after their name. I mean, do you r recall a story or anything like that?

SPEAKER_01 54:35

No, I I feel like they sense well, and probably from me talking to them, um, the sense of obligation um to um what your family has built and um you know I think not not do a bunch of crazy stuff. Yeah, and I mean and I still and talking to them daily about, you know, the type of man that you need to be. I've got three boys, and um, you know, and I think I have told them there's a higher standard for you than you know other people you may be friends with.

SPEAKER_02 55:14

Right. And and you don't mean that I know how you mean that because I know you don't mean that like we're better than anybody. What you mean is is that if you got arrested, I promise you, you'll be on the front page uh uh of the of KLTV and somebody else might not be. Yeah. Right? I mean that's um yeah. So what you do matters, you know, and and and if you people are gonna think, well, you're spoiled, and you know, this, that, or the other. And you know, it is hard because these guys are probably rebelling a little uh uh back against you know, you're like, hey dad, you know, I mean, I I'm not trying to be like you. Yeah. I mean, have you ever heard that? I've felt it.

SPEAKER_01 55:51

I've heard it. Yeah, I've felt it. And uh and that's good. I mean, be better than me. That's what every dad's wishes are for their kids.

SPEAKER_02 56:00

Be better than me. Yeah, I've told my kids that, but they know they can't accomplish that. And so they're they're demoralized. They'll never have a podcast like this. No, but you're right. Son, there's so many things I've done that I, you know, I don't want you to make these mistakes, do this. I mean, right, that that's being a parent. Yeah. Um, but it's interesting, you know, we'll have to uh we'll have to watch for your boys. If anybody comes back, um, you know, you've got three boys, one of them's headed to Fort Worth. Yep. Um, one of them's probably gonna come back here. I think maybe.

SPEAKER_01 56:35

Maybe it's hard to hard to predict. It is like I said, I'm encouraging them to go get as much experience as they can in places that have um, you know, have bigger opportunities than Tyler. You know, we're still what, 115,000. So I can restore old buildings and make them cool, but there's a limited amount of old buildings that you can restore. That's right. And that may not be their niche. It may be new development. But what once again, there's only so much new development a town can take at one time.

SPEAKER_02 57:10

So Right, because I mean Berkfield Center, there was really no room for you to expand that area, was there?

SPEAKER_01 57:16

You know, I did when I was when I came back, so we did the CBS ground lease. Um, that was an Exxon. Yeah. That was originally a gas station. Uh we built we took down Cinema One and Two, uh if you remember that. Everybody hates you for that.

SPEAKER_02 57:32

Uh I saw Purple Rain in there. I've seen a lot of sh you know, Star Wars, Star Wars. Oh, that was a good one.

SPEAKER_01 57:39

You took it down followed by the M.A. Sims era. Yeah, MA Sims, we converted it into a uh restaurant uh retail, and then uh that kind of played uh its course, kind of ran its course, and then we had some people that wanted to do a restaurant but didn't want to do it in the old um in the old movie theater, and it was a good enough concept. It was the first watch, and so we decided to just take everything down, build a new strip center there, and just kind of because we kept trying to fit stuff into that cinema one and two, and it just it wasn't designed to really have much of an adaptive reuse.

SPEAKER_02 58:16

Um yeah, it's been good for y'all. It seems like that strip center has been, you know, pretty much filled all the time. Yeah. What about Brookshers? Is Brooks a part of that?

SPEAKER_01 58:25

Aaron Powell Yeah. So Brooks is um is a tenant of ours. Uh they started on 8th Street in the main uh retail there on the north side of 8th Street, and then they grew into where Tyler Internal Medicine is now. That was a Brooks originally. Okay, I didn't know that. And then when they needed to build a new store, we built them uh the store on the old soccer field and uh and leased it to them. And so they've been with us for that's the third location in Birdville Center.

SPEAKER_02 58:54

Really? Yeah, you know, a lot of people will remember the Lubies and wonder where did where did the Lubies go?

SPEAKER_01 59:00

Yeah, yeah, Lubies, poor Lubies. Uh loved it. It's a lot of memories after church going to Lubies. Um Lubies built that building and they built a crawl space underneath it um so that they could access all the plumbing for the kitchen and everything, which makes sense. Um, but it was designed in a way that water held underneath there and it had all steel um uh trusses underneath the floor. Started to crude. And all of those started rusting, and part of their kitchen floor dropped. So we had an engineer go in there and he's like, Yeah, this is not good. You can't and then and you can't access it to repair it economically. And so basically the building um got condemned. Yeah, it kind of ran its course too, and Luby's at the time had closed a lot of um a lot of restaurants and uh even the one uh on Shallow.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:02

Yeah. Right? They had one they'd moved south. When we were in high school. Um So the land still sits there, and a lot of people probably wonder, like, you know, hey, Andy, that's a great location. Why is nothing there?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:13

Yeah. I think that's in future plans. We've got some conceptual ideas that we're just kind of making sure everybody's on board with. Um and and you've also got what used to be Build A that just changed to Tire Service Center or something. You know, um, you know, it may make sense for us to get that whole block back to redevelop it. Um you have Broadway frontage. Because that's your expensive frontage. That's your best frontage right there. And yeah, it would be. You know, uh I don't want to say anything. I don't know what's gonna happen in the future, but uh we need to utilize that as as well as we can.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:53

I can't remember what that old there was an old bar restaurant. It used to be Western Sizzler. Yeah, Elmo's Elmo that's Elmo's yeah. Golly, I couldn't remember that. Yeah. Elmo's right when we first got back to town. Yeah. You know, I got back here in 1993. And that I think that may have been on the back side of where CVS is now. Um, right in there. Um man, I mean, everybody in in in the in the town that lives around the Azte District would kill me if I didn't ask you about, hey, when's the lost pizza gonna get ready? I know.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:25

Man, uh they've been paying rent for quite a while, but they've now pulled permits and there's there's construction going on. So I I'm excited about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:34

No, I mean it it seems like such a good thing to go there in Berkfield Street. I agree. I agree. I just think they should have hired my contractors for my building instead of theirs as slow as they're moving.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:45

I have no idea what the backstory is there. I'm just glad to see them working on it because that that's needed up there.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:51

All right. So we pretty much know that, you know, you mentioned this earlier that after Dewberry, you know, you identified something on South Broadway. And I'm assuming there's a time frame when you're making these smaller deals, right? You're just kind of developing your reputation and ability to get bigger deals.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:08

Yes. So bought a little strip center on University Place in 1999. That was my first purchase. Um, learned a lot there. Um, and then um Tim Brookshire came into our office uh one day paying for his insurance. Um, and my dad introduced me to him, and Tim said something to the effect, you know, I hadn't had great luck with some other real estate deals I've done. If you ever have anything you want me to look at, I I'd be interested. And I said, Well, actually, I've got this concept in mind right now, and uh it was taking an old furniture store. You know, you and I lived in Houston, I lived in Dallas and then Houston. I lived in yeah, Austin and then Dallas. And you and I saw things happening in those downtowns, this whole uh revitalization starting to take hold, but it hadn't come to Tyler yet. And uh anyway, I saw this old furniture store that was on Broadway, great address, but it was covered in yellow sheet metal on the front. Just looked awful. Um But then the more I looked at it, I kind of started thinking, well, what else could it be? And then I found out it had a parking lot next to it, which is key for downtown development at that time in the early 2000s. So I came up with this plan that we would take all the metal off, we would put a new front on the building and convert it from a furniture store to an office complex, office building. So I told Tim about it, which it was pretty out there. Like the second floor, I didn't have any ceilings. It just went all the way to the wood deck, and it was a barrel-shaped roof. So you had all these steel trusses going through there. You had AC ducts that we ran through, and then you're looking up at the wood deck of the ceiling. And that was not a concept people in Tyler were used to. You had to have a drop ceiling, it had to be nine feet tall, and yeah, everything had to be so cookie-cutter. Ceiling tiles. Yeah. And so uh fortunately he's he said, you know, yeah, I'm on board with it. So that was our first partnership right there. Um, and I couldn't have done it without him. Um so we renovated that building, and I've I'll tell you the short story. I didn't have any tenants for it, and I was about, oh gosh, I would say maybe two months from finishing it, and our construction loan would end, and then we'd be paying principal land interest, and I didn't have a single tenant signed up. And I started kicking myself, going, maybe this was just ahead of Tyler's time. Right. You know, I should have done something safer. And and so I called him, I said, Hey, we our loan payments coming due, and I don't have any tenants. And I was ready, you know, I'm an old football player, I get chewed out by the coach, and you know, we learned to take it. Um I just didn't know, I mean, I I just knew I needed to tell him that. And uh, you know, the it it's a memory I'll never forget. He I told him, I said, we're about to have, you know, a loan payment that's bigger, about five times what my house payment is, and I can't, I'm not gonna be able to handle it. My and and he uh he listened and then he said, You know what? I believe in you. He said, You've got a great plan, you've worked hard at it, and I just believe in you and it's gonna work out. And I was like, when I hung up, I was like, man. I mean This is Tim. Yeah, this is Tim. Tim, my n my across the straight neighbor. Yeah, yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:45

And I thought, what it that's what grace looks like in the flesh. I mean, but Tim, Tim is a kind soul, right? He's very nice, and I've not done business with him, but uh that sounds like something he would say. Yeah. And that's not something you'd hear many people that had a lot of money.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

Invested in a project.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:01

Trevor Burrus Yeah, unless they they appreciated the relationships and Tyler and things more than they did making every single penny. Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:09

That's kind of And the good ending to that story is probably a week later. Yeah, I did my first lease and then I did another one a week after that, and then we've been full, 100% occupied, loans paid off, and it's worked out great. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:23

So you go big next. You go uh later on. I mean, I'm assuming you're doing all these little deals, but when we get to the benchmarks of your career, that's one of them. And and and now we're going to the People's Petroleum Building, right? That's a big building. Yeah. Let's go to it. There we go. Uh let's go back to it. Okay, so that's a big one. You know, that was, you know, empty.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:46

Um I'm gonna say less than 20% occupied. Okay, that's that's almost empty. Yeah. And all the systems were wore out.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:53

I mean, everything. Renovation. Yeah. Is this another partnership with Tim Brookshire uh to kind of get this thing on its feet uh and utilize some of the great aspects of it, which was the, you know, the old bank, the granite, all that stuff, the Art Deco look that was in there? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:10

So the that one's a fun story. Um go back to Dewberry. I learned how to do historic tax credits. Um That's good. That it there that is if you're uh yeah, we could do a whole segment on those. Yeah. But you learned that. I learned that then.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:27

And you've been applying that everywhere you've been since.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:29

I mean, Greyhound. As much as I can. Absolutely. When you don't have to pay the IRS and you can make old buildings look pretty and useful again in your own hometown. Um so that was that. Um Tim looked at it probably I'm gonna say at least half a dozen times over the year that we had it for sale. Uh I had it listed um with the current owner at the time. And Tim would call me up, you know, every month or two. Hey, let's go look at that people's building again. And we'd go all through it. We'd like to. Three hours going through it every time. And uh But you were thinking about the commission. Yeah, there wasn't going to be much on that. Uh but what I did tell him, I I'd I would hint to him about the historic tax credits and what that would look like on a building this size and an investment this size.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:21

And um And you would be the partner that brought that knowledge. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a good way.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:28

I mean, that's a good business move. Yeah. I mean, I mean the building, like you say, is incredible. The finishes in there are the best in East Texas. You could not do that today. You could not. And so you have all that, but we've also got, you know, elevators all need to be uh redone. Electrical, some of it was from the 30s. HVAC was shot. I mean, everything needed to be replaced in there. But when you apply the tax credits to it, it makes sense. When you don't, it doesn't. It does not work without historic tax credits. So that's I I told him, I will handle all the tax credits on this partnership if you'll do this. Um and and we agreed to, and then he brought his son Garnett in, uh, who was living in Dallas at the time, to um manage the construction and the renovation, and that's how that partnership started.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:21

Well, that sounds successful. Now you also moved to uh next door, the big black building called the Plaza, right? Yes. How do y'all is it the same kind of partnership where y'all go in, you try to get some tax credits in some way?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:33

Aaron Powell Actually, Plaza did not qualify for tax credits. Um, so we finished Peoples and literally we're like 99% occupied. And so uh the three of us, Garnet and Tim and I, are talking like, well, what do we do next? You know, um, we're on a roll kind of need to keep doing something. Yeah. And so uh Garnet had a relationship with the owners of Plaza Tower and had kind of been talking to them about um, you know, us possibly taking that over and and uh renovating that. And I think over time it just um from what I was told, the current owner owners didn't want to invest that much maybe energy into what it would take to get it back. It was 52% occupied, Plaza Tower was. And so um we ended up working a deal out with them where we could buy Plaza Tower and really just reimagine the building. You've got the core office tower, but all the old Bank of America space, that was 34,000 feet on the first, second, and the mezzanine and uh or third. And so instead of trying to force a bank into there, which you banks don't need all this space anymore. No, they don't. My I started kind of learning through this process all about, you know, kind of urban renewal. Um what works and what is working in um in creating a downtown in 2020 that it's not what it was in 2000 and not what it was in 1980 or 1950. Um so we really I started studying that. Um we put a plan together with Fitzpatrick Architects to convert the old front office, which for all those windows were blacked out, um, you know, if you remember. And that's when we said we're gonna convert that to retail. We're gonna take the old rock garden and convert it into a community space that'll be kind of like the living room for downtown. And uh and just hey, we've got a big American flag hanging in there right now. We have the tallest Chris indoor Christmas tree in East Texas during Christmas season. We host 4th of July for all of our tenants. Um so we've just turned that into a really fun uh place to go to work. And it's now 99% full as well. Uh Plaza Tower is.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:54

Well, that's I mean, that's pr that's awesome, really. I mean, because I don't know as a developer like yourself, like what occupancy you're kind of looking for, you know, for it to be a good deal, 75%, you know. City averages mid 80s. Okay. So you've got you're in excess of both of those on both of those buildings. Yeah. Um and and the project downtown on the square, uh, that would only seem to increase the viability of these projects that you've been working on.

unknown 1:12:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:23

Yes. You know, the office market has stayed pretty healthy downtown. And in each of these buildings, you know, you've got Prime 102, you've got Texas Bank and Trust, which were all tenants that we handpicked to go in there. Chick-fil-A, um, Andes, uh, Crema Coffee. Um the majority of their the reason they make it is because there's 400,000 square feet of office right there on that side of the block. And so, you know, they've got uh daytime users, built-in walking traffic, yeah, people in those two buildings. Um and our office occup and I would say we're probably 90% office, 10% retail. So we're in good shape either way. Um what I would love to see with this whole square um renovation is the other parts of the square come to life. You know? The New Yorker store.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:20

They tore that down. They tore that down. Yeah. Um I mean, that sat there empty for years. I mean, come on, Ron Shonbrum. I mean, what's going on? The roof fell in on it.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:30

I mean, so that's the vision is that we become a destination downtown. Right now, we're a healthy office market downtown.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:38

With some places to eat. A couple of bars, Rick's, Don Juan's right, uh, the corner bar at Prime 102.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:46

You know, just imagine the, you know, if you travel like you do and uh go, you go places and you go see their downtown, you know, and you see what does it have? What kind of life does it have? And I think that's what a lot of us, you know, that are from Tyler that care about Tyler, we want our downtown to be a destination where it's talked about all over the state. You need to go to downtown Tyler. And uh I think we'll get there.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:12

I mean, you've been committed to this, I know because you I mean you've been a part of Heart of Tyler, Smith County Historical Society, um, probably had input to the master improvement plan uh that was that spanned to 2027. Yeah. Um so it sounds like you mean you've been part of the architects, if you will, of how do we make the downtown, you know, a place where people want to go. Yeah. I mean, that's the goal, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:38

That's right. Uh and so I mean it's at this point in my career, I mean, I'm 55. Um, you start doing things that that make a difference, you know? And to me, this whole downtown master plan is something that our generation can do that'll make a difference for generations to come. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:59

It'll be so nice. And it was it's it's almost amazing that we're to this point, just being born and raised here, like I have. I mean, the courthouse was a fight for years. Yeah. The fact that they were able to um work this deal out between the city and the county um to have this green space park and develop it all at once. Uh with Valencia Hotel, yeah. Um, I've been told it's gonna start construction on January of 2027. Yep. So this stuff's all gonna pull together by mid-2028 downtown, it looks like. Yep. I mean, I think so. And that's just the beginning, you know. Right. That I mean because those buildings that are around there, like you said, when all that's down there, then people are probably gonna want to buy a building, put a business in there, and and you know I think there's a a few more levers we can use to encourage the right kind of business in the right places. Um when you say the right kind of business, the businesses that will attract people. Yes. As opposed to a vape shop. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:03

Well, and we did get that outlawed in the in uh in in the central business district. Okay, well, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:10

I was just joking.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:11

Yeah, that was like little steps like that, and then yeah, encouraging uh places that um yeah, really add to your square and your downtown. And that'll that'll just keep happening. I've watched it happen my whole career. I mean, there's nothing downtown when I move back here except for rigs. And that was it. That's it. I mean, but it takes it's just one as a snowball effect, one after another, and then like you say, you get a Blackstone hotel on the square too. And uh luxury hotel with a bar in there. Yeah. You're gonna have place, you know, if you got a big group and you wanna impress somebody in Tyler, Texas, that's where you're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:49

Or if you want to come spend the night here and not stay, you know, at a regular run-of-the-mill hotel, you know, I mean, there's gonna be options. But what are the businesses that you would like to see or you think would be helpful to the downtown, you know, build out right now? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:05

So I was in Georgetown about a month ago, Texas. And uh if you haven't been there, and I was in Granbury. Downtown, I have not been to You need to go. It's um every ground floor use is either restaurant, retail, or entertainment. All around the square. And and I've talked to the city manager uh uh uh Tyler, and I said we need to reach out to Georgetown and see what they're doing because the day I was there, it's just people everywhere. Just people walking all around.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:39

I mean, is the city of Tyler are they do they seem eager, are they helpful partners in trying to get something going like this? They are.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:47

You know, Tyler, um I want to say Tyler, some of the things that are good about Tyler are also negative. Limiting resistance to change. Right. We've always done it this way. My grandparents did it this way. That'll never happen. You'll never sell beer or beer or wine.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:07

Wine, I was gonna say that.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:08

So it just And then Brooks led the charge. Yeah. I mean, they helped. Yeah. And then Green Acre sat on the sidelines. Right. I mean, in Tyler, coalitions have to be built. And we all know who they are. Yeah. If we were born and raised here. Yeah. And sometimes it's just like you said, they just sit on the sideline for progress to happen. Yeah. Now, what you know, Andy Bergfield's in charge. He's the mayor of Tyler. He has to he gets to set the agenda and he's gonna he's gonna win two years, two years, and he's gonna be here six years. What does he do about downtown after this is finished? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:47

Well, so Fitzpatrick Architects is a gem for us to have. Because they know everything. They love this urban development as much as anybody. And their brains are always thinking what could be. Not what is, what could be. So they have created kind of um a concept in the future that they're about to unveil at Plaza Tower. I think it's uh June 13th.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:13

Maybe I'm scooping a story here. Yeah. Aren't I? Yeah, it's walking into it accidentally.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:17

It's cool. And it in that that's the thing. You've got to envision what things could be. You've got to ghost other places to see what they've done. What they've done and what could happen. And Fitzpatrick's done that. I've done that. Um and that's what's exciting about it. You've got this whole landscape down there that isn't what it always is. Some of the I'll see some of the trolls on the it on you know socials just being like, Tyler never this, Tyler never that.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:45

And I'm just like And the architects are getting all the money. Yeah. I mean, right? You've heard that. But here's here's what I'll say that in the cameras. Look, who cares if they have good ideas, it makes the downtown awesome. More people come here, more sales tax revenue is generated. I mean, more property tax revenue, more sales tax revenue.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:07

I mean people don't understand what we could be even from the tax collection side if this all all this happens. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:15

And if they don't think it up, who's gonna think it up? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:18

Right? Nobody's trying to help Tyler. Yeah. And I'm not I can have ideas in my head, but I don't know how to put them in action on a grand scale. No question.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:27

They do. I totally understand it. Plus, you know, I think uh Fitzpatrick, uh, you know, uh they're they're kind of invested and they love Tyler too, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:36

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they were out in South Tyler, and uh, but they were always clients uh of ours, and we used them. And uh we started talking downtown. They were the architects that helped us with Plaza Tower redesign. And then one day Steve's like, you know what? We and we just hinted at it. Y'all need to come down here. Y'all need to come down here. And then one day he's like, you know what? I think we do. And he said, But I want these two floors right here, and I'm gonna move everything down here, which happened to be my office. But you didn't care. No, I mean the building owner, that's what you do.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:09

Yeah, it's life of a real estate man. I was like, here you go, here's the keys. Well, you know, what's interesting, and the reason I wanted to build the show and energy to this point is that we can see how much you've put into all of this to do a good job for Tyler, for yourself, to be your own person, and also serve other entities, which circles me back to the school board. Okay. So probably what will be the most uh frustrating and unhappy time of your life, if I had to guess, and I don't know, we haven't talked about this, would probably be the second tenure on the school board. Am I right?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:50

You know, school board, if you don't think it's gonna be frustrating going in, then you're you're in for a tough time. You're naive. Yeah, and you're not gonna like it because the nature of education right now, there's so much going on. There's so much being exposed to our children. Technology, what you can get with technology, good and bad. Just inappropriate stuff, what's inappropriate? I mean, all of it. Everything emotions and you know people try to get to society through our children. Right. Because they are not gonna come to me or you with some stupid idea because they know we'll just yeah, that's not gonna work. Well, they go get somebody whose brain hadn't developed and start working on them. Um so I felt I feel more like since 2012 it's been like the front line of a battlefield.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:46

Um Well, you mentioned that because you know, there's been uh a lot of social issues that have ignited since 2010 to this point that we had never encountered or dealt with before or had to talk about. And then those things went directly into the schools as well. Yeah. Right. Um, and and you know, I'm not making a comment about anyone or anything or any one of those. I'm just saying when you talk about um, you know, identity, um, sexual issues, racial issues, I mean, these are all compressed very hard and heavy from 2010 forward, right? Absolutely. And then they just wouldn't remain in the political arena. They would find themselves into the school board arena. Am I right? Yeah. And so I mean we were we were the bullseye for uh for quite a while. Um and you know, I found this picture of you because I just thought, you know, it just so perfectly captured what it must felt like to be on the school board during this period of time. And, you know, and part of that um part of that, I guess, animosity, anger, uh relations culminates with the name change at the school, doesn't it? Yeah. And you are the president. Yeah. At the time. Yeah. You had gone to Robert E. Lee like me, right? Probably never thought one time that even or even knew Robert E. Lee was a general for the Confederacy, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:23

I mean, I knew that generally, but I mean really I never I didn't I didn't dig too deep. I mean, and I did have a uh junior seminar in uh college was on the Civil War, um, but I had not studied it deeply or how we got to where we were. We didn't know why it was called Robert E.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:43

Lee. Yeah, right. And I had to do some research. And you know, there were some valid points made, right, about the timing of when the schools were named that. Yeah. Did you I mean I don't know. I think, yeah. I mean, I saw some stuff and I thought, huh, that's interesting. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:56

Why would they why would they do that then? I mean, that the Robert E. Lee one wasn't I mean, uh we were a very southern town, uh, you know, but I mean historically it was in Houston, it was everywhere. Yeah, it was. But then when the the the switch from Tyler High to John Tyler was to me, I'm like, well, why did they switch the name of Tyler High to John Tyler? Because it was Tyler High all the way up until they put it moved up, I think moved out on the loop, and then all at the same time you got Robert E and then you got John Tyler. Um you know, so that I felt like there was probably probably was some politics going on in the 1950s that I wouldn't understand today, but um I now researched a lot about Robertdy Lee and uh yeah, and just really at the end of the day came to the conclusion that yeah, this was probably political. This is not the way things are in 2020 you know two or whenever it was. Um it had come up one time the name change had, and and and I told people then, um, and you can I it's on the internet that all of my um uh words on this issue are, but I told people then I'm gonna do what's right for Tyler ISD, not what's right emotionally, you know, and I'm not gonna do anything that takes our district down. Um so that was the first name change where there wasn't even a second on on the uh motion. But then over the next few years It came back. It did, and we all knew it was probably going to. And but I think the community educated itself the first time on the name change, there was not a single public elected official that supported changing the name.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:53

That was the initial common reaction of people when you try to be you're forced to do something. Your immediate reaction is I'm not doing this, no matter what you say.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:01

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Not when outsiders are coming in trying to tell us how to do our business and run our town. Aaron Ross Powell And you really don't believe they're here for our best interests. It's more political agitation. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yes. And they just show up and it's people I've never seen. I don't know where these people come from. I don't know them. And I'm not gonna let them tell us what's best. I'll know what I'll know when the time's right for our district and our community. And I've always said I don't really care one way or the other about the name.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:29

Right or I don't think most people do that went there. Yeah. Like I talked to friends of mine from John Tyler, and they're like, I I can't stop calling it John Tyler, right? Yeah. Uh because it wasn't that issue for us that they turned it into in 2022. Yeah. Yep. Now, some people can attach grievances, legitimate grievances, to the issues surrounding the name and that, right? And and that's not to say that they're they they can't feel that way. Right. But we didn't feel I don't think the way that people tried to make it look weep out. No, we didn't. There was no connection to the person. It was a school. It was a school. I mean, REL, Raiders. I mean, you know, that's how it was. And uh, but you know, uh what do you think? I wonder what you because I mean you were right in the crosshairs of that whole thing. Yeah. Right? And um I'm sure you were attacked personally. Yeah. Yeah, I was, but that's okay. No, I mean tell us what you ultimately decided on this issue after the research, after it comes back up, what what do you say? This is how we have to go and why.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:40

Um so I stated early on in the first name change that I could see where it might be difficult when you know um all of the facts for an African American kid to go to a school named after the most prominent Confederate general of all time. And now it's that's all I said. I could see where that might, you know. I mean, that's natural.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:09

That's the lawyer in you. Like, hey, what is the other side? What's their best argument, right? As a lawyer, we always go, hey, how does this person feel? Why do they feel that way? What could they say? That's what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:20

So I felt like my job was to kind of thread the needle, um, gauging how the community felt, how how leaders in the community felt. And uh I wanted that to be a decision that Tyler made for itself. Do we are we gonna change these names? And if so, is Tyler ready to do this so that we we don't face a huge backlash as a school district because we're uh public schools under attack in a lot of areas. And vouchers? Yeah, I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:53

I mean a lot of areas. Private schools, vouchers. I mean, you know, those are different options, if you will, that people can say, I'm I'm gonna take my toys and go home if you change the city. If you make them mad enough, yeah, I'm done. I'm done. I'm leaving you. Yeah. Um most people can't afford to say I'm done, but a lot can. Yeah. And they can move to the suburbs, too.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:14

So I mean it's right. They can move out of the digital. As the leader for our board, I had to thread that needle to get it to where by the time it actually changed, you had the mayor issue a statement that he was for it, that it was time. Um, all the other elected, that was Martin Hines at the time. Was it Martin, not Don?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:34

No, it was Martin. Martin. I knew that dead gun Martin. He knew he was going out of office and he didn't take that heat uh or he took that heat for uh Don Warren. Yeah. So anyway, and then, you know, other elected officials that I don't even want to name that. No, it's okay. It's it's a shame that, you know, we have to worry about people seeing it as a negative, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:58

Yeah. And you just don't ever um people trust me with their information on some of these, you know, items and that are real sensitive. And so let's just say that there was nobody no community leaders were not for changing the name when it came around. Some may have not said it publicly, but behind the scenes, it was unanimous that it was time.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:24

But Andy Berkfeld was gonna have to stand out there nearly alone as as kind of the lightning rod for the decision on the name change. Is that accurate? I I hate singling myself out. Well, I'm saying I'm singling you out. You didn't say it. I'm saying it as a person who says, hey, we're gonna do what's best for the school um and the city. I mean, you kind of you're the spokesman, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:31:49

I I felt like people were looking to me um on that issue and that if I was okay with it and I'd done my research on it and I thought it was the best thing for Tyler ISD moving forward, that uh yeah, that probably helped some people.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:04

Um But I mean, also the criticism was the went to the lightning rod as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:10

I by the time the second time it came around, so yeah, our school board meetings were crazy back then. We had 78 speakers at one meeting. How long do those TV stations? Well, we limited it, I think we went from five minutes to three minutes and asked people if they have if if what you're gonna say has already been selled. Yeah. And but God, it was hours. And then, you know, big I'm not for democracy. TV stations outside.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:36

I don't have the patience for democracy. Not that kind of okay. Everybody keep listening now. This is Andy. He's successfully working these commercial real estate deals and and and advancing in his credit, and he's he's in the middle of this, okay? For love of city, right? Right. I mean, that's there's no benefit. No, there's no there's no fine. You're not gonna get a good deal on a commercial property because they loved you at the school board. No. All right. So uh I think that's worth pointing out. And so it comes to this name change, um, which I mean people have accepted and gone on with pretty pretty easily.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:14

Yeah. I mean, I I would say a couple of people are still angry about it when I talk to them. Uh but the vast majority were like, let's move on. Let's go educate our kids. That's the number one thing is educate our kids. We still try to keep social issues out of our um out of our district and and people get so emotional about issues. Books, at books, you know, coaches, inner Facebook. I mean, for us, we have just got to educate kids and we have got to teach them Tyler values while they're in our care and control.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:57

And that gets tougher, like you said. Um, you know, the book issue has made its way into the mayoral race. I don't know if you've seen that, you know, and um I don't know if it's true, but I mean one of the candidates said, well, the you know, the books that we're talking about at the library aren't allowed to be in a TISE library. And of course I hadn't done that research and have no idea. Uh, but do y'all get pressure one way or the other on the school board about books?

SPEAKER_01 1:34:22

I mean, not much. Uh we actually did a um we did a survey of our books before it became a big deal. Aaron Ross Powell, Because you saw it coming?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:31

Yeah. I mean, I've seen lawsuits since 2021 where all of these librarians at these public libraries have been, you know, have filed lawsuits because they've been fired. So and unfortunately for the city of Tyler, in this instance, most of those library uh people get paid a settlement because so which costs the city money.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:53

You know, we're fortunate in Tyler to have a superintendent like Marty Crawford. He's he's good. He seems good. Is he really good? Or are you just saying, hey, he's good? I I mean I hired him, but I didn't I don't get anything. Okay, full disclosure, I hired him. Yeah. No wonder that last superintendent was no good. He uh Marty is great. Marty shares the same values as this community. And so in education, that's not that common.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:20

Uh um, you're right. But those are bigger cities and they call themselves more progressive. Yes. Politics are able to wedge themselves into the process.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:32

Yeah, but that's not the case here, you know. Um Marty will say, Hey, this this issue, here's what happened. I'll tell him what I think. He'll be like, Yep, I'm uh we're on the same page. And I said, and don't be afraid to say exactly what it is, why our values are not being met in this instance, and then we'll move on. And I said, People need to hear that nowadays. They're so tired of the political pandering um, one way or the other. Let's just do it the Tyler way and not worry about the right or the left.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:05

Sometimes, you know, when you're not firm in your convictions and stand up like you said to Marty, people will take that as weakness and continue to ask for more, complain more, and before you know it, you're in a situation you're always just kind of, you know, answering to the, you know, the squeaky wheel.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:23

Well, I I feel fortunate to have had the parents I had um that really taught me right from wrong, and I don't get it right all the time. Um, but I do have a pretty clear concept and when I hear facts, what we need to do to make this city or this school district the best it can be.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:45

You know, people who hear this should um, I think, judge your commitment and sincerity against the fact that you've never really, I don't know if it's in the future, contemplated political office. Yeah. Has that been a calculus for you? No, I don't really want to be a politician. You've had your dose of it in the school board.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:05

Yeah. Right. I mean, that's where I felt called. Uh, how to what do I care about? So I care about my town. Okay. I care about my family, I care about my faith. I love being living in Texas, but I don't really want to go to Austin and represent people. Um I feel so where can I really make a difference? If I've been given some leadership skills, where can I really make a difference? And to me, that is right here in this town. And I've never felt the draw to go to a bigger office. Um, I think God has wanted me to be in Tyler ISD during these, especially these last 14 years. And um, every time I came up for, all right, am I gonna run again? I would go through the same thing. What do you where do you want me to be? And there was there's been so much going on that the answer was always you're right where you need to be.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:57

Did you ever get a political opponent on any of the I haven't. Okay. I mean I mean, nobody's I mean, they know better than to run against Andy when it comes to the school board.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:05

I don't know about that. As soon as you start thinking that, they'll run and beat you.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:09

I mean, he's as fast on the on the track as he is in the school board races.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:13

Aaron Powell I've tried to be steady, um steady, and I think people probably see that I really do care about Tyler and I don't care about myself in that way. Um so for whatever reason I haven't had an opponent.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:28

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Man, I hope this show, you know, shows the selflessness of you uh and the benefit you've brought, you know, and as we kind of get closer to the end here, uh the long-term goals seem to be what's kind of excited you now, some 30 years after getting here. Yeah. Am I right? You talk about the plans that are going to be unveiled on June 13th, what this downtowns could be, right? I mean, that seems to be kind of you know, your I wouldn't say your last chapter, but kind of towards the end of your career a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:01

Yeah. I mean, I I can't wait for the time to die, I can just sit on the front porch at Plaza Tower and look out over our square. Um in 2028 or even 10, 20 years beyond that, you know, when I really am in the twilight of my career, you know, looking out and seeing, yeah, I may have had some little hand in uh in making Tyler the best town it can be, and especially downtown.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:27

Well, yeah, and you know, certainly the all the guys like yourself that started started the downtown work. Um because if that hadn't been done, we would be right there back in 1993 or 495 right now, wouldn't we? I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:42

I mean our we tried to cater to the automobile really since probably the 40s after World War II. Everything done downtown was to cater to the automobile. How fast can we get the automobile through downtown? How can we make sure parking's right in front of every building? So they we've tweaked things, and I think people probably thought they were doing the right thing, but it's about what killed downtown. Um and so the whole downtown revitalization concept is so the parking garages are key. So you get the parking garages, you train people to park in the garages. We've got two of them now. Yeah, got two of them now, city and county. Um you you do a row, it's called a lane diet, a road diet, where you go from five lanes down to two, down, you know, or down to two each way, down to one each way. And over time, your downtown becomes this destination. You go and you park in the garages, or you park in Plaza Towers West Lot and you walk to downtown, and then you can walk around and you can go to shops and you can go to restaurants and you can go get a glass of wine and you can do all this stuff that people crave from an era gone by. That old downtown square where the community came and you know did their business.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:00

Right, because you think about it. If you went, if I went to a restaurant in South Tyler and me and my wife, we pulled up in the parking lot, got out, we walked. Now, I wouldn't be able to walk around anywhere else, really. I wouldn't be able to bump into someone else who had gone to a different restaurant or a different bar or whatever, right? Yeah, which will be possible and probable when this is all finished downtown.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:22

Yes, and it's happening now. I mean, like through my work with Heart of Tyler, I learned that that's such a cool little organization that just their sole purpose is to help downtown. So some of the things they do, like bar crawls, you'll go from every little restaurant bar to another and you'll end up somewhere and there'll be a band and you know, costume Halloween costume contest. Um, you know, there's so many little fun things that are going on downtown already that are just gonna grow, like you say. They're just gonna, you've gotta imagine and see what other people are doing to know where this is gonna end up.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:57

Well, the critics, you know, it's funny you mention um the lanes. Yeah. Because one of the primary criticisms of the uh downtown plan has been the decision to go from four lanes to two lanes. Yeah. Have you heard that? Yeah. Um now I'm not saying that like I agree with it or that it's a secret, but it seems to be a stark contrast between the two mayoral candidates right now is that somehow um going to two lanes is bad. And I think what I just heard you say was you think it's exactly what the downtown needs. Yeah, absolutely. So and there's it's not my research.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:33

Right, no, you're it's out there. Your sound like you're talking about something you've read. Yes, absolutely. That is the key. So if a car's going 45 miles an hour, they don't have time to look left or look right to see what shops are there, what restaurants are there. They're just zooming through downtown. They need to slow down. Yeah. And so they don't see what is there for them to uh pay, you know, go to, or where am I gonna eat? Oh, that's a nice little antique shop or this, that. They're just cruising through downtown. That doesn't help downtown at all. Um, what we need is people that are coming there for a purpose, and then you're gonna have sales tax, like you mentioned. Then you're gonna have the ability when retail uh continues to grow, then you're gonna have um other properties get improved next door. And it just kind of it grows on itself, and this is what's been done all over the country. Um re uh Valencia Hotel Black Zone is not going in because people can drive through downtown as fast as they can go. And there that would they would be like, no, I don't want to. I my people need to be safe to walk around, and that's the other thing. You got to be safe. And are you safe if people are flying through downtown? Not not the vision for the future.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:52

The hotel itself, uh, I think is suggested to the mayor and other people that, you know, because of what they were doing to renovate downtown is one of the primary reasons they agreed to come.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:04

Yes. They would not be here if our square wasn't being renovated. No. I they wouldn't have lasted one meeting.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:10

I mean, and that's just one use. There's gonna be more. I know it's funny though, you know, uh how unless you understand the the full picture of the downtown development and its different parts, you you you could be against one thing and not realize that, you know, if you knew all this other stuff, you probably wouldn't be against it.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:31

I think it's I just see it as a vision, the vision for the future. You've got to see that vision. If you see it the way it is now, or you see it the way it's been for the last 20 years, it might not make much sense to you. But if you've studied urban development and then you can see into the future how this works, and it's worked other places too. This isn't we're not the first ones to do this.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:54

Um, I mean Chattanooga, Tennessee. Yeah. Uh Charleston or one of those places that the TEDC group just went to. Yeah. I think they were in uh South Carolina, um uh Greenville. You know, around the city, I mean you moved your project with the Greyhound, which is kind of further to the west, right? Yeah. Than any place you'd been.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:17

Further to the north and then any so growing up, everybody's like, you can't do anything north of the square. Right. That's the just the graveyard for real estate. Right. And that's why everything went south. Yeah, and everything went south. And um but for the for the Greyhound Inn, contactless nine-room hotel. First of all, we had an incredible building once we got all the skin pulled off of it from the last conversion of the bus station. But these were also apartments originally in the 30s when they were built. The upstairs was on the left side. These were offices added in the uh 1946 for uh uh Greyhound. So do I already have that in place with this huge parking lot that I could fence? Um I'm just like, you know what? The only thing it doesn't have going for it is it's not south of the square. Everything else checks a box. But then I started thinking, you know what, these are people that aren't tyorites that are gonna stay here. Right. And they might be federal courthouse. Yeah, they don't know what the right side of the square is or not. They see a cool building, and in two years, we've had zero incidents of uh guests being uncomfortable by our location. Right, like there's no crime that's necessarily No. Uh I mean, you've got the sheriff's office three blocks to the east, you've got the police office three blocks to the west, you've got the federal U.S. Marshall circling the court, I mean uh the square, like every 15 minutes on the day.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:59

And so um anyway, where's growth going though, Andy? In the downtown area. Is it going east? Is it going west of this? I mean, where do you have room to develop the downtown area?

SPEAKER_01 1:47:12

Um East will, with the courthouse going in, East is gonna be um popular just because of that. Um uh South is always uh a good bet. Um I like West. Uh there's a lot of land west. Um about the West Loop project? No, I'm talking about from downtown going to Palace. Okay. Um yeah, there's a lot of land in there. There's a lot of land in there. Um, and then I like the north. Um if you look at First Baptist right now, they're adding a whole new education wing and it faces north. Everything has faced south for since 1908 or whenever they built that, 1905. Well, now they're facing north with their education. So all the young families that come to First Baptist are going to come in through that, through the north side of the church. Um So I think I think as we prove things out, it will continue. The next layer will get developed. And I think it can happen in every direction.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:13

I mean, once somebody takes a risk like you have and it's successful, then it encourages others, I'm sure, to buy property and do the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:20

Yeah. I mean, I used to be able to buy property for really cheap downtown. You can't anymore? It's hard to now. Um, you know, you've it's hard to, but also rents are going up and, you know, construction costs, inflation's been not great the last couple of years. Um there's a lot of factors that go into it. Um, but I still I I think it's a great place.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:45

Well, as far as the um the master plan, I don't know if this is uh a part of the master plan, but I've heard two people, Nick Pence is from Stanley's, Scott Martinez, both of whom been on the show, talk about a potential trail, a walking trail that might uh take us from TJC through the medical and on into the downtown area that we're talking about being developed. Have you heard things like that?

SPEAKER_01 1:49:10

Yeah. I mean, we've talked about that for 25 years, you know. Who's gonna move who's gonna move? Yeah, that's the hard thing is um these things don't happen in a year. They don't happen in five years usually. I mean, it is you get concepts. Um we're bringing in a group now to look at Tyler uh as a blue zone city. Um, and that's a that's a whole nother thing, but that's how walkable are you? You know, how um how many parks do you have? What's your quality of life um uh for health? And that's one of the areas that everybody keeps looking at. Like if we could connect downtown with the medical district, um, those two are close enough to where they could even fill in in between it. And I've sold a good many properties between the hospitals in downtown. Um and these are out-of-town developers. These are people that see things happening other places. And they see it. They're seeing it happen here. The foundation's being built, and people are already getting those early pieces, getting them off the table.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:16

They don't have some of the bias that the people that have you know, because you go, okay, hey, we're about to get over to uh, you know, basically um the barrio area that they refer to. It that and that that that's a magazine article reference, not my own. Yeah. Would that develop when Hispanics started coming here in increasing numbers between Beckham and Irwin? Yes. Right? You know, that little thing. But like some people, like you say in the old days from Tyler would go, hey man, there's there's there's nothing but, you know, hey, go north.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:46

Yeah, well, like my banker on my first project downtown, who is a guy I love who's been a great banker for me. When I sh told him I was gonna take an old furniture store and convert it into an office building downtown, he said He said, Son, you you don't understand. He's like, that's a terrible idea. I he's he finally just said, I'm gonna loan you the money because it's you, but I don't I don't see it. And then twenty years later, he calls me up when he retires and says, People's petroleum is a hot building to be in. Do you have an office for me downtown? So it's Who's this, Bill Claywater? Peter Moyd, I'll say Peter. Okay, yeah. Peter, he lives right around the corner from the Trevor Burrus. And uh so minds can change over time. Perceptions can change over time, but realities have to change as well. So I try to change the realities, and then the perception goes after that.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:43

Well, Andy, um I've covered a lot with you. I know this is much longer than you thought, but I mean you're an interesting guy. There's a lot to talk about, and I think people are interested in, you know, where's the city going? Why are they doing what they're doing? And I think what's the the best part about this is that at least people are thinking about it. Yeah. I mean, there are plans being proposed and drawn, and and so, you know, what do you think? I mean, what does Tyler look like in the next 25 years based on what you know? And and you can keep it downtown if you want to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:17

Um so much of it. I've watched the political will, you know, it's floundered for the I'm just using the window when I've been paying attention, let's say 26, 27 years, you know, getting the county in the right shape to be able to move something forward. Um you talked about Nathaniel Moran. It took a person like him, because we've been talking about a new courthouse forever. He carried the load. He was stable enough and people trusted him and believed him. Um so you had that and you had a good commissioner's court, uh, a lot of great uh county commissioners, people that just did it for the right reason. Um, you had that, and then at the same time, uh you had some three or four different mayoral um mayors that that did it right. And it might be more than that. The cities had a good string, and so those two coming together at the same time is the only way this would have happened. And so my fear is when we go back in if if we go back into factions or the cities against the county, and the cities for the lowest taxes in the world, and the counties screws up something, and then you can't get anything done.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:38

Um because people are afraid to what, have political repercussions because of their collaboration if it doesn't work out. You gosh. You know what I'm saying? Like I try to help, maybe we take a little less on the county side. You're taking a chance. You're taking a chance.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:52

Yeah. A lot of people it's easier to go through life without taking any risk.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:56

Um But like you, you don't care if you lose, right? I mean, if you ran another time and got beat, would you really lose a care if you lost? Just like if you're serving your community as a council person, uh a commissioner, or the school board, if you lose trying, who cares? Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:54:15

Yeah. I mean, uh you and I believe that. I do. But um, yeah, sometimes political positions are more coveted than others and stair steps to others. I mean, I don't I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:30

I mean, Andy, I mean, I think people should come away with, you know, the sincerity and and you have no political ambition, and it is totally obvious if somebody's paying attention. And we've been so lucky to have you, uh, and you've helped our city so much. And my kids and your kids are probably gonna, you know, can't believe they live in a place like this in the future, man. Thank you for being here on the show today. It's been great.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:54

Thanks for having me and really enjoyed the conversation.