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Spencer Levy
With a legacy that dates back to an immigrant with Ukrainian roots who came to the United States in 1905, the subject of this episode is part of a very traditional American story. His family's journey from a scrap metal business started by that immigrant, his grandfather, to a real estate enterprise founded by his father, which he himself now runs and has grown into one of the most influential developers on the West Coast. On this episode, a snapshot of this elaborate history and the firm's approach to the market right now.
Jordan Schnitzer
I've always looked at building this business sort of one property at a time, like building a foundation of a house. And even though you're dreaming of what the roof is going to be like, you’ve got to get there by one block at a time.
Spencer Levy
That's Jordan Schnitzer, President of Schnitzer Properties, a privately owned company founded in 1950 and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with regional offices across the western United States. Schnitzer's portfolio includes a mix of asset types, comprising of around 190 properties with more than 30 million square feet of real estate in six states. Jordan balances his work with a family foundation that's deeply rooted in the arts, too, sponsoring programs and collections in the Pacific Northwest, including university art museums in Oregon, Washington and beyond. Coming up, a story builder and investor with a colorful history in the art of real estate and a particular eye for industrial. A portrait with insights into the state of the market today and crafting a business to stand the test of time. I'm Spencer Levy, and that's right now on The Weekly Take.
Spencer Levy
Welcome to The Weekly Take. And I'm here with my good friend and client, Jordan Schnitzer, President of Schnitzer Properties. Jordan, thank you so much for coming out today.
Jordan Schnitzer
Well, thank you, Spencer. You know, I've listened to your podcast for years, and without trying to butter you up, they're always informative. We learn about personalities and their perspectives, and also the data that CBRE produces for all of us, just like other firms too, is invaluable to making decisions about what to buy and what to build.
Spencer Levy
Well, great. Well, with that, we can end the show today. Thank you very much, Jordan. But Jordan, thank you for that. Very kind words. And Jordan, just for our listeners, tell us about your roots and the story behind your business.
Jordan Schnitzer
I live in Portland, Oregon. My grandfather was an immigrant, came over in 1905, started a scrap business that my late father, Harold Schnitzer, and his brothers grew up in. My father decided to leave his four other brothers in the scrap business, which became Schnitzer Steel and get into the real estate business in 1950. And that was certainly fortunate for me. I'm an only child. I grew up in Portland, Oregon. Started working when I was 14. I was a janitor. I was a painter. And yet when he would take business trips to Seattle or San Diego or San Francisco, I'd put a suit on and go with him. One of the big lessons my father learned is when he watched his immigrant father – eighth grade education. He grew up in the Ukraine, my grandfather, a little hut with a dirt floor, as poor as you could be. And he came to this country: land of dreams. He started the scrap business. But my father watched his father. And as my grandfather built the scrap business, the two main customers were Bethlehem Steel and U.S. Steel. So when my father decided to leave and go into the real estate business, he wanted a business with lots of customers where your customer didn't set the price and basically control you. And therefore, through his words and deeds and genetics, we like businesses, real estate businesses, properties that have lots of tenants.
Spencer Levy
Well, that's great. And you've been in business 73 years, and we're here in Vegas today at one of your properties – many properties in Vegas. I believe you have over 20 million square feet in Vegas.
Jordan Schnitzer
11 million…
Spencer Levy
11 million in Vegas.
Jordan Schnitzer
… in Las Vegas.
Spencer Levy
But overall, your portfolio of industrial?
Jordan Schnitzer
It is 24 million and our total portfolio was 33 million feet. We have 82% industrial, 12% retail, 6% office, and 2% multifamily.
Spencer Levy
Well, sticking to the real estate nuts and bolts just for a moment, the industrial that we're in today I would classify as flex-industrial. It's one story. You have lots of smaller tenants. They service local tenants. And I would say this just matter-of-fact: From an institutional perspective, the institutions tend to go for the big box warehouse distribution, not flex. Why flex, Jordan?
Jordan Schnitzer
Well, you know, if you think about it, being a privately held company that has always just used our own capital, not only do we have to figure out where we want to be and what asset types to be in, but figure out how to avoid bumping heads with the much bigger institutional companies. So just because you're smart and say you want to go someplace, well, most likely everybody else is there, too. And I love all the asset types. I remember my ex-wife saying to me once, well, what's the best type of real estate? And I said, well, Mina, you can make a lot of money in office, industrial, retail, senior housing, student housing, biotech. And you can also lose a lot of money in all those. Study them each and see which one speaks to you. So as I said, I love all the asset types, but I have veered more towards industrial because I was always puzzled with the late great Sam Zell and equity office–is how do you have millions of feet of class-A office across the country and what kind of executives do you hire to make those very expensive decisions about lease terms and tenant improvements? Whereas with the industrial, it's much simpler in terms of the decision making. You have less expensive TIs. Now, again, when I got into industrial, I thought there was always more money than God on Wall Street, and Dermody, Panattoni, BancTrust, Trammell Crow, Flint, others. They'll always want to build the big boxes with one tenant and then flip it. Why? Because the institutional money, whether it's Houston's Fireman's Fund, LACERA, Ohio STRS, whatever, they want to figure out the credit worthiness of a tenant. And therefore, I figured that was a very competitive part of the industrial, those big boxes. And if we went to roll up your sleeves, like the apartment business, went to the flex side, there would potentially be less competition.
Spencer Levy
And what's interesting, Jordan, is not only are you going away from the institutional, but you built this niche that certainly gets you a competitive advantage because the capital is probably somewhat more competitive for you to do it here versus there, where it gets very, very expensive.
Jordan Schnitzer
Right. And look, that age old thing about find a niche and fill it. So I figured long term, there would always be a need for smaller size businesses. The need to service the growing population of the West Coast cities we're in. My father was a bottom fisher, and every year or two we'd get a property and generally they were pretty darn good deals. But when I took over in 1990, having worked there since 1976, I figured I wasn't as smart as my father. I think for all of us, it's always better to assume you're not as smart as the next guy. You've got to work a little harder. And I figured if I bought things in strong demographic markets, if it was an okay deal and I had the patience and we didn't over-leverage, it might end up being a home run. And if we happen to buy something that was really good, it gets even better. So I have offices in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Las Vegas, San Diego, Tucson, and Phoenix. And years ago we had stuff in Denver, and would there be other markets I'd love to be in? Sure. But our strategy is trying to get a lot of property in one market, because in the end, in any business, you work hard to get a customer. And in this case, the tenants we have – our average size tenant’s 9000 ft in 24 million feet of space. And they tend to grow or contract. And it's nice to have a space that if they want to grow, you can help them expand into a bigger space. Or if something happens, they need to contract a bit, you take him down in square footage.
Spencer Levy
You said something that speaks to me. You said a lot of things that speak to me, Jordan. But one thing you said is that you find a market with good demographics and it might be an okay deal, but it's going to grow over time. And one of the things that I say is that it's better to have the worst real estate, or better stated, the worst asset in a growing market, than the best asset in a shrinking market.
Jordan Schnitzer
That says it all. And that's why the data is so important. You know something else, too? I've got 300 folks that I report to every day. You know, most people's organization charts are, you know, like a triangle with the boss at the top. Mine is a V and I'm on the bottom. Why? I don't say this to be super sweet, whatever. I've always had lots of dreams and goals. And I figured unless I want to work alone, if I work with a lot of people, I can't achieve my dreams and goals unless every single one of those 300 people above me achieve their dreams and goals. When I took over in 1990, we had about $200 million of property, and basically all the decisions were made at my father's desk or my desk. That’s not much different if you looked at–you go across the country, real estate people start off with nothing. And they don't have a chief financial officer. They don't have HR people. They don’t have all these other–You do everything. As you build up, yes, you get more staff. And I figured long term, if I wanted to grow and follow a decentralized strategy, because my father was wise enough to start buying property outside of Portland in the early 50s. He bought the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, a medical building in San Francisco, apartments in Seattle. So I grew up going to multiple states, but I figured if we wanted to grow, you know, you put more people in a home office or I get better people in regions. So we went to a decentralized model. So we are very empowered and wonderful people in our seven regional offices. I’ve helped them have a sense of owning their business. And I think that's what's helped us flourish and grow.
Spencer Levy
Well, speaking of growing, it's fair to say that industrial construction right now is at its lowest level that I've seen, maybe, in a decade. And that's after the biggest boom we've ever had that’s been over the last few years. And that's because of financing costs, labor costs, materials costs. And then there's been some softening of demand, certainly in a certain segment of the market. But I'm sitting here holding a spreadsheet of yours which has 10 million square feet of projected new construction, and you have several under shovel right now. Tell us about that.
Jordan Schnitzer
Well, I think the investment world is caught up of the moment. And if we stand back a second and look at industrial, there was solid, steady growth prior to the last big recession. The recession hit, everything stopped everywhere. But in the meantime, population kept increasing and so forth. So when we came out of the recession in our business in 2014 and 15, there was a lot of pent up demand. Next, when the pandemic hit and everyone realized that the Japanese theory of “just in time” maybe wasn't the best thing all the time. And there was a huge flurry of reshoring here. Plus the last 25, 30 years, without getting into the political ramifications, as especially China and the Southeast Pacific produced a lot of clothes, shoes, items, cheaply, you had a huge influx of product coming to Long Beach, LAX, and Houston and the eastern ports, too. And that caused huge industrial development. Next, you then had the high tech industry. So when we say that big boxes are overbuilt now, which they are. My gosh, there's been a wonderful 15 year run on those. And there may be 27, 500,000 buildings in Phoenix that aren't leased right now. Maybe it takes 2 or 3 years for those to lease up. But the meantime, in terms of the flex market, we're like that tortoise. And you know, there really hasn't been overbuilding because it hasn't been that attractive. When the Dermody’s, Panattoni’s, all the commercial builders, CBRE, whatever, Trammell Crow, they can make a lot of money building the big boxes, filling them up, flipping them, because there was a huge institutional appetite. So while they were doing all that, making the big bucks, we were slow and steady, building up a solid portfolio, serving the communities with tenants that deliver goods and services with the growing population that all of our markets need.
Spencer Levy
Well, I would say that the beauty of your portfolio, just big picture, is its diversification, is the fact that all the tenants that are here are serving the local community. The challenge of it is, you’ve got to work it. You’ve really got to work it. These are not set it and forget it kind of assets because you've got how many tenants, Jordan?
Jordan Schnitzer
We have 31,050 tenants in the industrial group. We have 4,100 tenants in the entire company.
Spencer Levy
And each of those tenants, they're small businesses. Not all of them, but most of them are small or smaller businesses, and don't have credit or traditional credit.
Jordan Schnitzer
Right.
Spencer Levy
And you’ve got to work it. So tell us about why somebody who was listening to this call right now says, why would I want to do flex-industrial versus big box? Sounds so much harder.
Jordan Schnitzer
I've always looked at building this business sort of one property at a time, like building a foundation of a house. And even though you're dreaming of what the roof is going to be like, you’ve got to get there by one block at a time. I've also always said –whether it's an acquisition – I've done 2.5, 3 billion of acquisitions – or whether it's a development project, we spent 74 years building a reputation of never having had a default or missed a dime. And I always look at the next deal to say if the Earth opened up and swallowed up that deal, am I going to have to go back and let people go and go through the agony that I've gone through several times before in my life? Plenty of problems I've created and had to live through. So we're always judicious in that next step. I've always said if I want to do bigger projects, grow the company so that next size project is still bite sized and won’t hurt us if something happens.
Spencer Levy
What's interesting, Jordan, is how as the world has gotten bigger–you mentioned you had about a $200 million portfolio in 1990. Now your portfolio is multi-billion dollars. But still, in the world that we live in today, you're mid-size.
Jordan Schnitzer
Yes.
Spencer Levy
And as a mid-sized developer, when you speak to many of the bigger banks, they'll say, well, you know, we're going to lend to the bigger developers, the brand name, all of which you know. What I mention to them every time is I say, “do you know how many mid-sized developers I know that has a story like Jordan's where you've never defaulted on a loan in 73, 74 years.” Reputation for you is everything. And for some of these other firms, maybe not as much.
Jordan Schnitzer
It's interesting you ask that, because I've studied all those big companies for years and admired them. And so far we've been fortunate. In the recession, I was scared to death every day. We got through it unscathed. Looking back, there were a few loans we had to work through. I made some terrible decisions in the past. It's interesting about decision making. I started a management training program 12 years ago, bringing very bright college kids with no real estate experience to the company. Brought 13 in, 8 still are working with us. I’m so proud of them all. They're doing fabulous. One young man was a star baseball player and he played on a team that won a national championship. And then he hurt his shoulder and when we finished up learning operations and leasing, we moved him to development. And he said, well, on these development projects, I'm so scared about making a mistake with the proforma. And I said, you know, tell me, what was your batting average? He said, 333. I said that's a pretty darn good batting average. I said, you know, Rob, that meant every time you went up to bat, two thirds of the time you'd strike out. And if you focused on the strikeouts all the time, you'd be so intimidated you'd never get the third of the time of hits. I said, in business, you can't be afraid of making a mistake. The only people that don't make any mistakes are the people making decisions. But you have to be thoughtful and make sure whatever you're making a decision on, if something goes wrong, it doesn't sink the ship. And you better make sure it doesn't happen a second time. So there's risk in everything we do in business and that makes it exciting. We've got $475 million of industrial developments underway in six key markets we're in. That's a lot for us. Am I worried about it or nervous? You bet. And any time I stop running scared is when I should stop being in business. But, it's thought out with our teams. They're all supportive of it. I work with the brokerage firms. I think we have a better than 50/50 chance they're going to lease up when they're done. One thing about the spec stuff is there's never any pre-leasing. You don’t find a 5, 7, 10, 15, 25, 30, 40,000 tenant looking a year in advance like a 250 or 500,000 tenant. So it's all spec stuff. In terms of financing, you wonder about that. We work with–years ago, growing up in Portland, we worked with First National Bank, which became First Interstate, which became Wells Fargo. I was 28 years old. I got a call from a fellow at U.S. Bank that was headquartered in Portland. Wanted to take me to lunch. I went to my father and I said, Dad, a man from U.S. Bank, Larry Morris, just called, and wants to take me lunch. My father said, like most cities, there were generally two banks, and was like that for the McCoys. My father said, well, Jordan, your grandfather worked with First National Bank. Your uncles worked with First National Bank. That's who we bank with. So call Mr. Morris back and thank him for the invitation, but you don't have to go. Of course I went and I developed a $2 million line for my company, Jordan Schnitzer Properties, separate from the family companies. I was doing some apartment development. And lucky I did, because some years later, First National became First Interstate and got in trouble, good thing we had U.S. Bank there. When I took over in 1990, what I'd seen, like all of us have, is a huge conglomeration by the biggest banks buying each other up. And I figured there may be things above the real estate group that go wrong, so we need multiple banks. So I worked with four banks, then. Now we have seven. We're very loyal to them. They’re loyal to us. All of our long term debt is with insurance companies. I've never done a CMBS loan. But again, our loans are 15 to 75 million. And the insurance companies like working with us a lot.
Spencer Levy
You talked about the ability to take risks. But there's ultimately the moment of truth. The ability to make that decision. I guess, as a baseball player would be, when are you going to swing the bat? But as a business decision, it’s when am I going to say go with the money and put the shovel in the ground? And you mentioned that you've got to be a rock star mathematically with the finances and the numbers. But finally, when you get to that moment of truth, it's your gut. Tell us about that.
Jordan Schnitzer
You know, I've thought about decision making my whole life and how we make decisions. And what I've concluded is, it is normal for any of us, no matter what the topic is, to want to know what the answer is. What's the answer going to be? What I've tried to do with myself and preach to my 300 fabulous folks that I work with is, don't worry about what the decision is going to be. Think about the process you're going to undertake to arrive at the decision. If you come up with the right process, the decision will appear to you. Now, in our acquisitions or development, I'm a fiend for data. That's why I appreciate all the reports that you and the other firms produce. So what I say is that you want to quantify everything you can quantify, and then follow your gut. In life, I think all of your listeners now would agree that, you know, intellectually we say A to B makes sense, B to C makes sense. Let's do it. And yet, in the end, think about A to B, B to C, whatever, but then go back to your gut. What does your gut tell you? If your gut is nervous, then your system is telling you, everything that you’ve ever been and are. It is giving you a sign that something's not quite right with that decision. And it's hard to do that because in real estate, we're always optimistic. We want everything to work. And sometimes that isn't always the case.
Spencer Levy
Well, I think real estate, one of the beauties of our business is that we'd love it to be linear. We'd love it to be sitting in front of a Bloomberg machine, pressing a button, trading stocks. I don't think we're ever going to get there. And that's why the human gut, which is this indefinable thing, is so valuable in our business, and I think always will be.
Jordan Schnitzer
I couldn't agree more. The one given is, markets always change. And, you know, it’s just like an NBA basketball team. They say that no matter what the record is, no matter how good or how bad a team is on any given night, any team can win or lose. And for any of us that just think because of our experience with last recessions or other economic cycles that we have all the answers about the future, the cycles always come differently in ways that you don't expect. The other given, though, is this: leverage is fabulous on the way up. God it juices those returns. It's so exciting. But as we mature in our real estate business careers, we realize it also is like a guillotine on the way down. And the other absolute given is, by the time you realize what you should have done, it's too late to do it in terms of repositioning a portfolio. Maybe you waited for a lease, whatever it may have been. So in the end, moderation. I guess I would say aggressive moderation has been my approach. I always want more, always want to grow. And I got to Las Vegas yesterday. We've been here since 1994. I can tell you about Las Vegas in particular, but I drove around Inspirada to some of the neighborhoods and I get so aggravated. I go crazy thinking, God, I should've done more multifamily or I should’ve done more retail. God, it was right here for us. Now the other voice comes in and says, are you done whining? And sometimes I'll say, no, I'm not done whining. And the other voice says, okay, tell me when you are. And the other voice says look, you could have done this or this or this, but then with your balance sheet, you can only do so much at a time and therefore you would not have done the things you did do. Are you happy with what you have done building the company? Yes. Okay. The one thing about this industry is there's always more to do. There's always another opportunity; in product type, geographically. We are so blessed and lucky to be an industry that is fulfilling, helping communities build and grow, putting some food and clothes on our table at home, and challenging us every day. How exciting.
Spencer Levy
Let's turn to philanthropy now, Jordan. And I'm proud to say not only that we're friends, but your name, your family's name, is on half of the museums in and around the Portland area. You have one of the largest private art collections in the world. Tell us about that and what it means to you.
Jordan Schnitzer
You know, essentially Lincoln High School in Portland has a speaker series. And about eight years ago, they asked me to come speak. And the first question was, well, what's it like growing up in a wealthy, politically influential family? And I said, wait a second, folks. I remember in grade school there were times on Sunday night, once a month my mother would do the bills and she'd say, Harold, I need X amount of money. And he'd say, honey, I don't have the cash. I say, it wasn't always like that. My father started off with a little bit of money when he got bought out from his brothers, and I always said to him, the first building you bought was the riskiest deal we ever did. We could’ve lost everything. But we lived well. There was never an issue about clothes or food, but there were still tight times. And, you know, building a family business, it's one step at a time. I'm just not that smart to buy a $500 million project and sell it for $1 billion. But I watched my parents early on, when they didn't have a lot of money, devote a lot of time. And as the business grew and my parents did more, it was only natural for me to grow up with an attitude of giving back. And so I started early on. But two things. One, in the end, with the way I think we are built as human beings, when you do something for someone else, it makes you feel good. In the end, no one wakes up saying I want to have a crappy day. And there are two ways to not have a crappy day. First, to get up, have a place to go, to work with others in business, philanthropy, and come together and create common good. You feel good about yourself. I've said before, I said to my daughter, my daughter said to me, my 27 year old daughter, so proud of all four of my kids. She was interviewing for a job in Los Angeles. And in the six weeks that she was interviewing, she said, what do people do who don't work? I said, Arielle, if you've worked your whole life and want to retire, it’s fine. If you're a full time mom or dad, don't let anyone fool you about how much time that takes, or even part time. But if you're able bodied and you don't get up in the morning and don’t have a place to go, it would be like prison for me. I said in the end, Arielle, we all want to feel good about ourselves. And when you're in business and you work with others, you feel good about it, even during the tough times. I said, the reality is, I know this may sound counterintuitive, but working in business is the most self-indulgent thing we can do. There is no easier and better way to feel good about yourself, even when you're working through problems. Because if you didn't have the risk of problems, there'd be no joy in success. Now on the business side, what I learned a long time ago about me is, you always run scared. And second of all, if you ever think you're so good, then the real estate God sends you a bolt of bad luck. So on the real estate side, I've worked hard and I’ve done a good job. And maybe, just maybe, down the road I'll pat myself back and say, you actually did a hell of a good job. But right now, I've done the best I can. I bitch about what I didn't do and hope that what I'm doing is the right thing. Now, on the civic side, whether you're working for a church or synagogue, whether you're working for a food bank, a hispanic center, whatever. Therefore, when you accomplish things there, you can go outside and scream to the stars about how wonderful it was to do something. Whereas in business, you can't be cocky. The only people that are cocky end up having big trouble. So that's why it's good to have a balance of working together on community projects and also keep your nose to the grindstone and running a bit scared on the business side.
Spencer Levy
I know you have an enormous collection of some of the biggest artists of all time: Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol. But we were having dinner last night. You were talking about a lot of the local artists that you promote. Tell us about the art collection, what it means to you, how you try to cultivate it, and how you try to share it with others?
Jordan Schnitzer
Sure. Well, as an only child, when I went to first grade at Ainsworth Grade School, my mother enrolled in the Portland Art Museum Art School, which is now called Pacific Northwest College of Art. It operates in the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Design Center. And the dean is the Jordan Schnitzer dean. But anyway, so she went to art school. And then three years later, at the urging of the artists in town who generally had to teach because they had to put food on their table, she opened the Founding Gallery for Art, and for 25 years she had a preeminent Pacific Northwest artist gallery of artists from Seattle, Portland, and people from San Francisco. So first I saw my mother flying out of the house as a working mother, like most people's mothers today. My father was building our real estate business. At 10:00 at night, she'd be on the phone with a dentist trying to trade an artwork of an artist for a filling the next day. So I grew up loving art of the Pacific Northwest. When she gave the gallery to an assistant in the late 80s, I was on the board of the Portland Art Museum. I came up and there was a show of prints and multiples of what I'll call the New York school. Jasper Johns and Ellsworth Kelly and Frank and all these folks. I went down, bought a few prints, bought a few more prints, kept buying Northwest paintings and sculpture. And then the University of Oregon Art Museum years ago, before it was nicely named for me, did a show of works from my collection. And it was so exciting walking in to see the way the art, most of which had been in storage then, was curated. And then seeing people come in. And when I saw especially parents and kids come in, I was overwhelmed by as much passion as I had about the art, seeing other people being excited, smiling, frowning, puzzled about the art. I thought to myself, I was lucky growing up in a house with a mother that brought art into our lives. And not everyone is so lucky. Most people out there think that art museums are for some elitist few, not for them. So I thought maybe I could buy of the post-World War II, of the biggest American artists, prints and multiples to buy in mass to create a teaching collection. Now, of the current artists like Jeffrey Gibson, the American artist at the Venice Biennale, the U.S. artist, Hank Willis Thomas, Alison Saar, vanessa german, Mickalene Thomas and on and on, we’re buying paintings, sculptures, prints, too. Whereas I keep buying, of the big masters from post-World War II, we have 1400 Warhols. We have 350 David Hockney's, on and on and on. We've had 180 exhibitions at museums, big and small, around the country. We're fortunate we do that with no cost to the museum and we always give outreach money. Tell me about your outreach program. And there's always a need for especially less-served communities, lower income kids of color, seniors, high school, whatever. So we give 10, 20, 30, 50, 100,000 bucks at each museum. And it's very gratifying.
Spencer Levy
Let's come full circle now. Very often when I lecture, I talk about, you don't need to stick your nose in that spreadsheet every day. You need to go to the movies. You need to read a book. You need to go to an art museum. Is that where it comes together?
Jordan Schnitzer
I think so. Two aspects of it. One, on the practical side, there isn't a company in this country that's hiring people, no matter what widgets they're making, what software, what A.I., whatever, that doesn't say they want people who are technically trained, but that proverbial think outside the box. And there's nothing better than an art education, art appreciation, even if you're a biotech or chemistry major, whatever. Take an art class. It helps you see the world a little bit differently. So it's that issue of STEAM versus STEM. So that's the practical side. Second of all, there's the personal side. You know, I've talked a lot at wealth conferences, and I've said to some people, if you're lucky enough to have created a little more money than you need, you're working with wonderful people at Fidelity, Vanguard, U.S. Bank, JP Morgan, whatever. And you're working on trusts for your kids or grandkids and figuring out what they should get when and so forth or whatever. In the end, that's nice to do, but I think the most important thing all of us parents want to do is teach values. Second of all, there isn’t a parent alive that doesn't wish they had a wand to wave so their kids would not go through all the issues we've gone through. Relationships, illness, death, jobs, relationships. You name it. But we don't have that wand. What we can do, though, is if we help our children and grandchildren, nieces, nephews, neighbor kids have an appreciation for the arts: visual arts, dance, music, theater, that's fine, too. And maybe, just maybe, when they're facing those crises in their life, they can get away a bit. Go see an art exhibition. Go to a theater. Go to a dance. And maybe for that moment. Be taken away from their issue and inspired, consciously and subconsciously, so when they go back to their issue, they have a better and fresher perspective on it. So I think, as I said, from a job standpoint, it's critical. From a personal standpoint in terms of a quality of life, I think it's as critical as the first. So what I say to parents and grandparents: you’ve got some time with your kids? Stop by a gallery. It's free! 15 minutes, then go buy them the Barbie dolls or the Hasbro toys or whatever. Grandparents, you get some time with your grandkids? Buy them some art. Yeah, you can buy the Star Wars toy or whatever, buy it whether it’s $5 from a Saturday market or 50 bucks or 500 bucks. I guarantee you, 20 and 30 years later, they won't know where those Star Wars toys were, but they'll have that piece of art.
Spencer Levy
On behalf of The Weekly Take, Jordan Schnitzer. What a great discussion. Thank you so much for coming out today.
Jordan Schnitzer
Thank you so much.
Spencer Levy
For more on the art and science of commercial real estate, please look for related content on our website, CBRE.com/TheWeeklyTake. Send us your feedback there or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to share the show and subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen. Tune in next week for more stories and insights, and a return to our series of market snapshots of cities that are shaping the future. Thanks for joining us. I'm Spencer Levy. Be smart. Be safe. Be well.
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