#13: Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay)

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Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:00:00]:
It's about creating this new sense of place, this new sense of innovation, introducing, you know, people to to place, to people to a new product type, to a new way of living, you know, all this kind of stuff. So making that introduction.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:13]:
Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we're exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I'm your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, we're going to take a more literal interpretation of what is meant by what people are building in Cleveland by talking about literal physical buildings, and the innovation and entrepreneurial story behind them. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Dan Whelan about Intro. Intro is the 9 story construction complex currently undergoing development adjacent to the Westside Market on the corner of West 25th and Lorraine. Dan is the vice president of design and development at Harbor Bay and has spearheaded Intra's development from inception to where it now stands en route to be one of the 1st and tallest mass timber buildings in the entire country.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:05]:
We cover a lot in this conversation from the benefits and prospects for wood construction as a ecologically, structurally, and cost superior construction material to steel and concrete, to the implications of intro to the Westside Market, and ultimately, the vision for intro and its completion. I'm very excited to spread the word here about the scale and significance of the innovation that is happening right here in Ohio City. So please enjoy Dan and my conversation. So like we were talking about before we turned on record here, I've lived in Ohio City closing in on 4 years now just south of Lorraine by San Ignatius. And over that time, just walking around the neighborhood, I've seen a lot of changes. But nothing struck me quite like the demolition of that dual purpose surface parking lot, mini shopping center that occupied the space adjacent to the Westside Market. And I've been super interested since then in understanding what we would see in its place going forward. And so I've been following along as information has been made available.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:09]:
But I think like many Ohio City dwellers have been super excited to learn more about this development, which is why I've really been looking forward to having this conversation with you. So really appreciate you coming on, Dan.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:02:21]:
Well, Jeff, thanks for having me, man. I'm excited to talk about it. I'm glad people are interested in it. Obviously, the scale of it and the location of it are pretty high, profile. And, you know, from from there, there's a whole lot of depth to the story, how it happened, how it continues to go forward, and sort of what it'll mean for the city of Cleveland and, you know, the broader region.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:39]:
Yeah. Yeah. I am excited to to hear and learn as well. And I'd love to do that. But but just before we dive into the specifics of the project and the history and and all that, I love if you could just tell everyone a little bit about yourself, your personal background, and how you ultimately, you know, came to to spearhead this project.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:02:58]:
Yeah. Well, I'm a Cleveland guy, so born and raised in the east side in Willoughby. Went to Willoughby South High School. I went to Case Western Reserve. A lot of people locally know me because of my football career, but after school, ended up going away for a couple years coming back. Went to grad school. And at that point in time, I was working for Snavely Group who built some projects, you know, down the street. They built a quarter most recently and worked on some other stuff, but that was kinda my first foray into real estate.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:03:23]:
And at the time, that was 2012, 2013, we had gone after the Market Plaza site and tried to purchase it with a plan to develop, and there were some studies done locally, and they never materialized with with Snavely. So I went to Chicago, took a job there. I actually worked for Scott Wolstein at Starwood for about 4 years, and in the meantime, I had been still kinda keeping my eye on Market Plaza. Right? And I've been talking to the guys at Ohio State Incorporated. I've been talking to the owners. I was rubbing elbows with people in the neighborhood, and so, it was really my side hustle to try to make something happen there. And through all the discussions, you know, I was a, what, a 26, 27 year old kid and everyone that I talked to, Tom McNair and, you know, the councilman and they all kinda looked at me like, how are you gonna make something happen on this site? Right? And, the price tag and the discussions with the owner and all that kind of stuff, but I just stayed on it and just kinda hustled my way through. And a lot of things happened in the background, right place, right time with our group at Harbor Bay and just, the trajectory of my personal career.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:04:27]:
But eventually, got the owners of that site, who was, Daryl Young and his brothers, who built the center in 1989, I believe. They'd owned it ever since, and legacy was super important to them and, like, not just what you know, their legacy is, but what happens to the property after they let go of it, and and what does it become, and how does it help the neighborhood that they genuinely care about that stuff. So for us, I had a plan and vision and, like, was able to describe what what I wanted to do. At the time, none of that included timber, but it did certainly include, you know, this mixed use large scale dense transit oriented project that was a little bit bigger and far reaching than what other people had proposed over the years. And so got Daryl comfortable and we made the deal and now it snowballed into what it is today.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:14]:
You say made the deal like it was a piece of cake.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:05:19]:
Not at all, not a piece of cake, but you know, a long time of kind of rolling up the sleeves and very slowly getting people comfortable that, you know, they're not trying to screw them over because that's always the thing. People gotta like you. To make a deal, it's not all always about money. Right? Money's important and there's economics to every side, but it's also like you gotta wanna work with the person. You gotta wanna deal with that person, sit across the table, and and work in good faith. So I think there was just a lot of time spent in building a true relationship with with the Young family as well as, you know, the the Ohio City Incorporated group and and then at the end of the day, also the neighborhood block club. So that's where, like, all the heavy lifting went in. So that by the time we got to the finish line, it was not not a whole lot of, of stress.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:04]:
Yeah. So as you went about talking with these different stakeholders and and and building consensus and ultimately to the point where you can proceed and and get this green light. What what was the vision you were painting for this development?

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:06:17]:
Yeah. I think it was mostly around playing to Ohio City's strengths. Right? Ohio City already is an amazing place with with really great bones, and it's it's got history. It's got authenticity. Obviously, the most historic piece of it is the Westside Market right across the street. It's an amazing building both architecturally, what it stands for, kind of what it is as an operating asset for the city and and for all of the jobs and all of the individual unique small businesses that operate within it, and the way it connects the fabric of of the neighborhood and the larger region, and the tourist, attraction that it provides. So all of that, plus the fact that you have this ongoing investment with improvements to to bike infrastructure and the towpath trail and the Red Line Greenway and continued, you know, businesses that that wanna be in Ohio City, and the fact that you have access to downtown and the lake and, you know, the river and Tremont and Gordon Square, all within a short, you know, 5 minute walk or 10 minute bike ride in some instances. Those are all amazing selling points.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:07:22]:
Right? And the fact that you're also in a neighborhood as opposed to being downtown. You still have access to downtown. You have all the things that you want to be able to do within a short short distance, but you also get to feel like you're part of the neighborhood and part of a, you know, a community. And so all that really plays into sort of what the vision for the project became, and it was density. Right? At the transit oriented corner, you've got a train line that connects you one stop into Tower City. Right, and that's that stop will soon be a half a block from Sherwin Williams' new headquarters. You have all the other companies that that house downtown, and right now, it's a little bit of a weird time, right, because nobody's necessarily going to work at the scale they were before, but that'll that'll change and that'll get back to normal hopefully sometime soon. And then in the other direction, you've got the airport at a 15 minute train ride.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:08:11]:
You've got 9 bus routes that converge to the corner. You have metro that provides 7,000 jobs. Their main campus is going to undergoing a $2,000,000,000 renovation right now. So all this stuff kinda come together. It's like, well, why is there no where to live at this corner? Right? Why is it still a 1989 strip center with, a slew of tenants that, you know, one could argue kind of have have gone by the wayside and they're no longer relevant. So we just started to materialize and litigate on the whiteboard and throw ideas. And the first idea we had was how do we make the project different than anything that exists in Cleveland? And that's where we started to to get into the timber and, you we always wanted to do density. We always wanted to make it a sizable project for the number of units and the number of apartments that we could provide, and then, obviously, add dynamic retail too, because Ohio City has a lot of great stuff, but it also has some things that it that it's lacking.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:09:03]:
Right? It's it's got a need for for other sorts of retail and destination oriented, services and daily needs type of things that are still a void in the neighborhood, so that all kinda comes together and and pieces into, like, with the program, and then the way the timber story evolved was something else. But that's that's kind of the vision for for the project and why, you know, this corner really demanded high profile building and with the with the mix of uses.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:31]:
Yeah. No. It's the the vision is clear. I I love it personally. Before we dive into the timber story, which I definitely want to explore in-depth, I'm curious, just just some, like, hard facts about the the site and development, like, what is the estimated timeline? How many people from a density perspective, do you do you foresee in this in this place? Just just those kinds of ideas.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:09:55]:
So, I mean, if if you've been by the site recently, which I know you have, because you live in the neighborhood, it's under full swing, you know, deep into construction. We're probably about 4 stories up right now. The timber is on-site. It's being erected, so optimistic that the schedule is is gonna land where we think it will. And right now, we're slated to kinda be wrapping up construction at this time next year, so right around end of January, early February, which seems like a long way to go because, as you drive by, it's still very much a building structure that's only halfway up, but the timber will start to go really fast. We'll be chasing it with with windows and walls, you know, very, very soon. So that's, like, kind of the estimated timeline. We've already got some retail deals working that are also, you know, what I want to do is I want to open our retail space with retailers in it as opposed to finish the building, have the apartments leased, or or, you know, open, but then we're still half empty with retail.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:10:50]:
So we we're on a really good trajectory to make that happen as well. I think we have 35,000 square feet of retail, give or take, and we are either signed leases or working on leases for over half of it. And then a couple early discussions, which all things considered during this whole COVID experience, I think that's that's a pretty good sign. I think we're gonna come out of this alright, and Ohio City, especially in the south side of Lorraine, here's gonna have a whole new bunch of retailers and and restaurants to, supplement what they are. There's a bit of a changing of guard happening at that end of the street if you've been around there lately, but, I think it's gonna be good. I think refresh is is not not a bad thing. As for the rest of the building, we've got 300 apartments, and they're a mix of studios, 1 bedrooms, and 2 bedrooms. And then there is a penthouse floor that has a little bit more extravagant, larger floor plans that that have a a whole another level of sort of unit amenities and technology and and features that that are above and beyond what the standard units have.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:11:49]:
And then something I'm really excited about is our top floor. The 9th floor has a full fledged tops of the line state of the art event venue, and that's completely separate sort of from the residential experience. So it's not necessarily a common area. That's that's a business that we're gonna operate up there, which had, you know, can accommodate weddings of up to 400 people, other events that are like standing room cocktail type of events of up to a 1,000. It's got a wraparound terrace that's got unobstructed skyline views right at the level of the clock tower at the Westside Market, so it's pretty stunning. The defining features of that space are heavily geared towards the timber, and the the trusses that run across the ceiling is is something that people are just gonna be, like, awestruck by, I hope. So really excited about that, and, that kinda rounds out the program. We do have parking, you know, I failed to mention that, but kind of on purpose.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:12:38]:
You know, there's there's underground covered secured parking, which is obviously an asset in the city of Cleveland, but at the same time, being such a heavily transit oriented site in a neighborhood where you can pretty much accomplish everything you want on foot, I think we have a fair bit of of people that that utilize the neighborhood assets from a transit standpoint to get around.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:58]:
Yeah. I was gonna ask about parking and, the reception and feedback you've been getting on that. It's it's definitely a hot topic, I think, for for local developments of of any kind considerations for parking. But no. I I think the in the transition to more density and the the access to public transit that it is right there, I hope that that more people are gonna go that route.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:13:23]:
I really do. I mean, I think I think it's a bit of a learning curve that'll happen sort of organically. Because it's like, if you don't live near transit, you're less inclined to take it or utilize it or if you don't work near it. Right? So the fact that now we can provide a bunch of housing units right on transit station, essentially, and between the retailers and restaurants, a bunch of jobs too for people that get to work using the bus or or the train. I I think what'll happen is you may not use the train day 1 living in an apartment, but maybe a couple months in, you're like, yeah. You'll let me try the train to the airport. Let me try taking the train over to Cleveland Clinic. And then you're like, wow.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:13:57]:
This is really easy, and it's, you know, $2 each way, and it gets me there on a very precise time frame. Like, this is easy and I can answer emails and I can take phone calls and do that stuff with that I normally maybe couldn't be as efficient with with our driving. So that's what I think will happen, and I I think people, if they give it a shot, will really start to see the advantages of of public transit, especially the fact that it's right there at your front door, you know, less than a 100 feet from from the building.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:24]:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Alright. Let's, let's talk about wood. I know that it is the foundation literally of what this building is ultimately going to be. I've just been very personally interested in this topic. You know, it's one of the oldest building materials around, and and all of a sudden in the past few years, we're seeing a bit of a resurgence of it and application in large industrial construction, skyscrapers, apartment buildings, structures of this size and scale.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:52]:
And I am very curious to understand why wood and where did that decision come from, and we can definitely dive a little deeper from there.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:15:01]:
Yeah. It's a good question. And, again, it sorta happened by accident. We were finishing up a project in Minneapolis. And right down the street, Heinz, who's another large developer, they were finishing themselves a timber office building that they had just kind of dreamt up, and it was one of the first ones in the country. So we wandered down the street, and one day, we were in Minneapolis. We literally broke in the back door, kind of. Someone was walking out, and we we kinda propped our foot in and just started walking around, and it was amazing.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:15:32]:
It was a it was such a unique environment that they created, and it was just strictly because of the building material and because of the way that the timber was exposed. And as opposed to it being, you know, this old 1900 turn of the century type of thing that was very rustic and industrial, it was the opposite of that. It was very modern and sleek and contemporary and clean and bright. And so it was like, that's new and that's different. And so as I mentioned, the kind of the center of our idea web when we were coming up with what the project was actually gonna be was differentiation. Right? Because you see a lot of stuff in Cleveland that's very much the same, and, unfortunately, one of the challenges in Cleveland is cost to build is very expensive and rents, you know, when you look at them on a national basis, are are very inexpensive. And so those two things make up for a misalignment when it comes to development and being able to spend extra money on things that people recognize as as quality or or as design aesthetic, things like that. So usually the first thing to get chopped is the stuff that makes a building just more aesthetically pleasing, I guess.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:16:39]:
Right? And so we had the opportunity to start exploring and and understanding timber, and we went to Austria, we went to Northern Canada. Like, I flew on a single engine prop plane in the middle of a snowstorm up to basically the Arctic Circle to go see this logging factory that then was being used to create panels and beams out of, you know, of mass timber. And so we kinda went to all ends of the Earth to really learn about the project, literally, and came back and we're like, we have to do this. We have to try and make this happen. And there was challenges, right, with logistics and how are we gonna get materials here and with cost, issues that I mentioned previously. It was like, alright. We'll get to really, really try hard to to make this happen and dig in and do our our research and understand how to how to make it feasible and we did. We we found great partners.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:17:29]:
We found outstanding engineers who had experience, you know, the guys erecting the building, specifically the timber timber portion. They built the tallest one in the country. And so their their crew is in here from Vancouver, and they've done this before. This isn't their first rodeo, and they're training Cleveland carpenters to do the same thing. And they're working with our general contractor and our other consultants to to really teach and get everybody acclimated. So, you know, all that said, it was kind of we stumbled upon this project down the street from ours in Minneapolis and that was kind of the thing that set the tone and really tipped us into going into the deep end and and beginning to explore and research and understand and eventually become experts on the topic ourselves.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:13]:
Yeah. It's a amazing exploratory story there. Where is the the wood ultimately coming from now?

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:18:19]:
So I mentioned I went to Austria, so we with the project of the size and scale that we have, there were actually only a few companies in the world that could produce what we needed to produce and deliver it without really limiting their utilization and capacity for other projects, right? We narrowed it down to 4 companies. None of them were in the United States. They were either Canadian, Italian, or, in this case, Austrian. When we really touched and felt the product and then went to see their facilities, it was a no brainer. So Binderholtz is a company that's supplying our our timber. They're based in Flugen, Austria which is, not too far from some of the largest cities that people have heard of there, you know. So the differentiating thing about their product, even from other mass timber, is that the European spruce and and the fir that that comes from the trees there is an entirely different color, and it's just brighter and whiter and cleaner than some of the wood that you'll see come from North American forests. So even that provides even another level of sort of uniqueness to our project.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:19:20]:
And if you drive by or walk by, you'll see how just stunning the the wood is when it's in its raw form. So that's where the wood's coming from, and that's why it's coming from so far away is just because it's a a pure supply demand thing. And until there's more, companies in North America that are able to to get into the mass timber game, it's gonna unfortunately be that way for a while. But I I I think we've established a really great relationship with Benderholtz, and I think we plan on using them for the foreseeable future. Among everybody we talked to and interviewed, they were the most sustainable in terms of their practices. There's not a single ounce of waste that comes out of their factory. In fact, all the shavings and pellets and and, waste that that happens in the process of creating timber is all reutilized to fuel the schools in their towns, the post office, the city hall, all that stuff. So they basically have this entire community in the valley between these mountain ranges in Austria that are kinda self sufficient and fully reliant on, the process that they've built.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:20:20]:
So it it's really, really good in terms of its carbon footprint, and we felt like that was a major important store piece of the story to, to incorporate.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:29]:
Yeah. Absolutely. I definitely wanna dive deeper on the the benefits of mass timber construction. But I do wanna address kind of the what I imagine is the purple elephant criticism or fear that you're probably sick of hearing at this point. But there's an old fable I remember from childhood is like the 3, 3 pigs and the wolf and you know, you build your house out of straw and or out of wood and you know, the the wolf's gonna blow it down, you build out of bricks, you know, it's gonna stand the test of time. And then with that, you know, there's the concerns of of fire and wood. And I know it's far more nuanced than that. And I kind of want to dive a bit into the nuance.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:09]:
But because, you know, most of these cities have some history of some unprecedented historical mass fire that I think, kind of planted probably seeds of doubt for wood buildings much in the way that, like, Chernobyl has made it very hard for us to come to, you know, some kind of comfort with nuclear power. And so we abandon wood for steel and concrete, and our short term reversion has maybe gone too far. And maybe the pendulum is swinging back. But I would love to hear, you know, what what is the reality of the risks or not of wood construction?

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:21:43]:
It's a question we come across almost every day, right, with from someone that we're teaching or someone that's learning about it. And, honestly, there were questions we had when we start started getting into the research and understanding of the product. So, you know, those those old, you know, the Chicago Fire and the fires that have happened in certain cities across the country in the olden times, it's like it's easy to cling to those as, like, the examples, but, you know, those are once in a generation type of events. Yeah, there's fires in wood buildings and, at the same time, you know, there's lots of 4 story wooden buildings that get built around Cleveland and around tons of major cities across the country every day. Right? Problem is when you start going up taller than that, that's when you have to use concrete and have to use steel structurally more than anything. Right? It's not so much that that the fire concerns are are a major issue. It was, well, 2 by fours can't support that height of a building beyond 4 or 5 stories, so it was just like default. You know, you had to go go use other materials.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:22:44]:
But as you start digging in and start really watching all of the research and testing and studies that have gone into the mass timber construction industry and and development of the product itself and the engineering, it performs light years better than those other materials in almost every instance, in in earthquakes, in fires, in explosions, in you name it. Right? Like, it's not just resilient, but I don't know if you ever heard the book Antifragile by Nassim Taleb. But, like, it's not just, oh, it can rebound when the events that of of it it it's actually stronger than it's even remotely kind of crossing people's minds. So I think the the beautiful thing is we have the opportunity to educate. We have the opportunity to walk people through. We have the opportunity to teach people and show physical data that's been compiled over the last 5, 10 years in support of the product. And it really does. It acts completely different than what your mind might tell you a wood, you know, wooden building would do in the event of a fire or a catastrophic event.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:23:48]:
Right? So it's something that most people just like we have a discussion. They they ask the question because it's like, hey. They gotta ask a question, and then they they kinda get on board. But I don't I don't have too many people. They're like, oh my gosh. I can't imagine living in a a 9 story timber building. I mean, there's there's tall wood buildings in other parts of the world that have been standing for many, many years. I mean, there's there's buildings in China made out of wood that are multiple 100 feet tall that have been there for almost a 1000 years.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:24:15]:
And so for every anecdote about a fire that burned down a city, there's there's someone there's one like that to kinda offset it. And, you know, these are not small pieces of wood. They're not 2 by fours, 16 inches on center. They're, you know, 2 foot by 2 foot pieces of wood that have been compiled using smaller pieces and glued together and hydraulically pressed and and form these large columns and beams and and floor plates. Right? So the floors themselves are made out of that product as well. And the event of a fire, they're designed to to develop a char layer, and that char layer basically insulates the log and protects it and eventually will fizzle out. And so the part that does burn is the nonstructural portion, and it burns at a very precise rate, which one of the things that we we had on our agenda to talk about was, like, discuss with the building department and fire department. Well, when a fire fire goes into a steel building, he or she has no idea how long they have until that steel gives out.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:25:13]:
Right? Same for concrete. Like, the concrete gets too hot, it'll explode, and it'll do so spontaneously. Steel, you don't know how hot it is at any given point of fire, and the hotter it gets, the more likely it is to to fail structurally and melt. Well, wood burns at a very precise rate. You know exactly to the eighth of an inch, how much of that log or how much of that beam or column is going to burn based on when the fire started and over what time period. So this is all stuff that we have a book. You know? It's like 1200 pages thick to to support, and that stuff all got the, building and fire department on board with us going to what we're doing. And so, you're gonna see more and more projects popping up around the country because the engineering and the science is in a much faster pace than the building code and then the rules and regulations that are still based off of things that occurred in 1850.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:26:02]:
Right? So that's my long winded description of sort of the whole conversation about structure and and performance in, in fire. So I'm excited to, honestly, for people to get a look and and really start to understand it. And I think people will. I think they'll they'll do the research on their own, like, just, hey. I'm I'm curious. How does this work? Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:22]:
Yeah. No. It seems really exciting just as someone interested in the topic and who is also interested in the ecological considerations of it, but you have what seems to me is like this renewable, low carbon, like prefabricated resource that that like obviously, to everything that you just explained, can can do the job and probably better than some of these materials we've been using, and it's very exciting.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:26:48]:
Really is. And and, you know, another question we get and and, I guess, a challenge that we get is, well, how is it better for the environment if you're cutting down trees to make these buildings? Well, the the amount of wood that is produced to use to create our building is grown in in North American forests every 12 seconds. Right? So, like, when you put that in context, trees keep growing. They're not hard you know, they're harvested sustainably, and, obviously, a big portion of that is heavily reliant upon how how sustainably the forests are managed. Right? You can't go chopping down everything because then you're you're gonna run out of resources and trees don't grow back overnight. You know, it's important to note that we're not cutting down 80 year old trees that have, you know, lived these long amazing lives and grown to 300 feet tall. It's like these are mostly young growth forests, and they're trees that are 8 to 10 years old, and they're they're thin, and they're they're easily reharvested and replanted, and and that's the business plan. Because obviously, if you were to cut down all the forests, the companies doing this would would run out of work and run out of economic benefit too.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:27:51]:
So there there's a a big deep chain of of the way that this all works and, you know, another reason why I went to vendorholtz is because they're out in front of it. They're they're ensuring that every step of their process is sustainable, renewable. You know, you meant you did mention renewability. Like, what is the only renewable construction product out there? Right? Like, you can't like, concrete doesn't grow on trees. You know? It's like steel has to be produced. The carbon footprint of actually producing those materials is insane. Right? You talk about the amount of construction traffic on-site. Well, if you had watched the project kinda happen during the concrete phase of the parking garage and whatnot, there's a ton of trucks, a ton of pumping, a ton of all this kind of different, what I'll call pollutants, right, that that that happen, whether it's through the truck traffic or whether it's through the actual process of pouring and making concrete versus wood, it all comes in on, you know, far less number of trucks and it's lifted up with a crane put into place by 2 guys with a wrench and they move on to the next one.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:28:54]:
So it's it's a lot less intrusive, it's a lot less disruptive construction process, and I think just front to back, for the whole entire life cycle of the building from the time it's a tree harvested in the woods to the time that, you know, the building finishes out its useful life a 100 years from now, the the carbon footprint reduction will be so enormous. And so that's really what we're trying to to put forward. That's why, you know, the building is gonna be a case study. It's going to be a place that people fly in to Cleveland to to look at, to understand. We already have people through the construction process that have been visiting during COVID, getting on planes, coming to sea because they're really wanting to get involved and try to figure out how to grow it and and do it themselves. So that's one thing I don't think people, both regular old citizens of the city as well as the government and the people that we worked with to to get this off the ground. I don't think everybody recognizes just how how big of a deal it is and how different it is and how special. You know? And, yeah, I'm the developer of the building, but, it's it's pretty pretty cool.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:29:58]:
And, to be able to do our first timber building as a company in my hometown at arguably its most high profile corner, I mean, it's kind of a fairy tale. Right? I'm excited to see it all come together.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:09]:
Yeah. Me too. Me too. One thing I I'm I would love to get your take on, you know, you mentioned the lifespan of of a building, if you will, you know, around the, yeah, a 100 years century, you know, potentially. What I've been curious about is, especially for a project like this, is how you think about and ensure that the infrastructure will be able to adapt to the rate of change of new technology and kind of stand the test of time? You know, when you think about, I don't know, 2,120, right, like, literally 100 years of now, and this thing is an elder building. How do you think about, you know, the the longevity of a project like this and and the impact that it could have and your vision for that?

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:30:48]:
Yeah. I mean, such a good question. I mean, right across the street, you have one of the most historic buildings in in the city. Right? And it's been there over a 100 years. It's been it was built in, you know, 1912. Before that, I don't know if how much history you know about the Westside Market. It was across the street in a smaller format. And before that, really, there was, like, the Central Market down kinda where Progressive Field, you know, kinda stands.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:31:11]:
And so there's just this history of these historic buildings, and we wanted to make a building that, again, in 50 years, people are gonna be looking back and go, that's historic as well, in an equally different way, in an equally different timeline, what it symbolized at the time it was built. So that was that was another kinda piece of the pie as to why we did timber. Right? And I really do believe that because our project is is so large, because of its, you know, its height and scale in terms of there's nothing there's not been a building in the United States at all, in in Canada who's way out ahead of us on this, cross laminated timber trajectory. Like, there hasn't been a building as big as Intral. Like, there just isn't. And so it won't be the tallest building for probably more than a few months. There's there's a building going up in Milwaukee that is gonna be 25 stories of timber. And so, you know, we'll we'll soon be eclipsed by that, but the the never the goal is never to be the tallest.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:32:06]:
The goal is just to make statement, and the goal is to to innovate and do something, you know, groundbreaking and and different and unique and do it in Cleveland. Right? Like, in a Rust Belt city that has this narrative and this notion that, like, it's it's the kinda little sister to all these other great cities, and then just has this, you know, 50 years of of population decline and yada yada. Like, it's like, let's do something that people can rally rally behind, and then you throw in COVID that just kinda the week we break ground, COVID, you know, the world shuts down. It's like, I think, more symbolically and more like what the project stands for in that regard is is I think what I'm gonna end up looking back and be proudest about when it's all said and done. It's the thing that, again, when I'm walking my kids down Ohio City, 25th Street in 25 years or whatever it may be, right, Say, yeah. Well, here's what here's why that building is just as historic as the one across the street in its own way. That's that's kind of, like, again, a defining feature. It's more than just a regular old apartment building.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:33:07]:
You know? Those are a dime a dozen. They get built every day, but this has had a lot more pieces, parts to it that that tell a pretty sweet story.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:15]:
Yeah. So speaking of the proverbial building across the street, I would like to talk about the the Westside Market for a sec as, you know, it is it is kind of Everybody

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:33:24]:
started on that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:26]:
Well, yeah. I'll I'll just let you run. Just Westside Market.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:33:29]:
Well, you know, I've become fully ingrained with with relationships there over the past 3 or 4 years, specifically as our projects got rolling. But, you know, you have many vendors who have had the keys passed down from their parents and their parents' parents and, you know, they're running the stand that that their uncle started in 1940. Right? Like, that exists, and that exists in in large quantities. You know, you also have a new contingent of of people that have started businesses and have have taken a chance at launching in the Westside Market and doing something from the ground up within this this context. And then you have the notion that the city is the operator owner of the building and the processes and the systems and, you know, the maintenance and all this other stuff that takes place. All those things coming together create a lot of challenges. And, again, I'm an outsider looking in. Right? But at the same time, I have a brain.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:34:24]:
I can look. I can I can think? I can take notes and observe, and I see a lot of small little tweaks that can be made at very cost effective to to, you know, very little capital intensive adjustments, and they're not being made. And you have the city at fault big time, wholeheartedly, just neglecting it. Right? You walk by the market on a given Wednesday, 10 o'clock in the morning. Most times, you can't tell if it's open or closed. You don't know. It's not lit. The doors are, you know, I don't know how old.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:34:56]:
They've got chain link, you know, metal in in the glass. They've got all kinds of things that really almost inhibit you from from being able to come inside if you don't know that the market's open on Wednesdays, then you're more than likely, you know, not gonna notice that by looking at it right standing in front of the building. So little things like that, like, the building doesn't have adequate heating or cooling. In the middle of summer, it gets 95 degrees. There's no air conditioning in that building. Alright? And the infrastructure is not updated and the plumbing and you have challenges with that. Brighton City is responsible for all kinds of things like that, and they really truly don't understand how to operate that business nor really do they have the skill set to to try. And so, there's a stubbornness that's been taking place politically to to let go of the operation of of the market.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:35:46]:
Right? Not the ownership, they own the building. The city's gonna own the building probably to eternity, but the operation and and the caretaking and the focus and the sense of urgency, right? That's something those four things are city will never have no matter who you put in and and who's got control. So that's a problem. Right? And then you have vendors that, quite frankly, they're all on different pages. And you have some that believe one thing and some that believe another, and there's a really big fear of change and evolution there for the vendors that have been around a long time, and that goes down to what must what the stands look like. It goes down to what other types of vendors should be allowed in and shouldn't be, what types of services are gonna be provided in the market, what hours they're gonna operate. Like, some people still wanna have the hours they had in 1950 when, by and large, women were at home and doing the shopping during the day while kids were at school and the husbands were at work. World doesn't work that way anymore.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:36:41]:
Right? There's needs there's changes. There needs to be different approaches, and when you have a a building that's got a 100 plus unique vendors in it, they really gotta all be moving the same direction. There's gotta be a process. There's gotta be a means and methods to get, you know, buy in and consensus and then, you know, debate, figure it out, and then, unfortunately, if not everybody goes the same way, you okay. Well, we vote, you go. Right? That's that's unfortunate how it has to go, but you have people that won't open on Wednesday at 9 AM because they don't do any business between 9 and 12. And so you go into the market on a day it's open, and half the vendors might not be doing anything. Right? They might be dark, and so no one is completely like, I think there's multiple parties at fault, and there's a lot of low hanging fruit to tackle.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:37:28]:
I have, like, this that I've been writing over the past couple years of, like, just I spend almost every day down there when I'm in town, right, because I'm right across the street and I walk by and I walk through and I talk to the vendors that I know and I talk to the market operator and manager and the city. It's like there just needs to be effort, there needs to be energy, and there needs to be a focus, and none of that currently exists. Just a lot of fighting and lack lack of aptitude, right, from the city's perspective. They just they don't have what it takes, and that's not it just needs to be put on the table because it's not an opinion. It's a fact. And so until there's a a change in how the market is operated and how it's funded, I I think you're gonna have a challenge. But go back to one of the reasons that we chose to develop this corner, it's because of the market. It's because this one of a kind public asset that's there.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:38:16]:
It's been there for a 100 years and, you know, hopefully it's still there a 100 years from now in terms of what it is and what it's again stands for. But, its current trajectory, we're gonna have some problems if if, there's not some sort of collaboration and, change of direction.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:33]:
Yeah, one of the things that has just been a debated topic amongst myself and some other people living in this Ohio City neighborhood as we've walked by the building and kind of theorized about the future prospects of it is, you know, whether or not it would be a boon or, you know, competitive with the Westside market in any way. I'm curious your your take on on that.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:38:57]:
You mean in terms of our project, either competing or supplementing?

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:00]:
Yeah.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:39:01]:
Yeah. I mean, our business plan has always kind of harnessed the idea that we go as the market goes and not the other way around. And we wanna support it. I wanna put density right there so that there's 500 people living right across the street that realize just how easy it is to go buy a pound of meat on Tuesday and fruits and vegetables on Thursday, whatever. Those are bad examples because the market's crazy these days, but but you get my point. Like Yeah. Yeah. The fact that you can live across the street from a market that if you go look at the prices too, you can get meat in the Westside market, super high quality butcher meat, for less than, like, you're gonna pay at almost any other store, sometimes less than than it's sold wholesale to restaurants.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:39:46]:
And so not only that, but you can do it just by walking, you know, pressing the crosswalk button and going across the street, grabbing it, and going back to your apartment. I mean, that's that is such a major selling point. Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:56]:
Yeah. It is.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:39:57]:
And there's no other building literally in the city of Cleveland that can say that. That can say, I can walk to the Westside Market within 3 minutes, get what I need 5 days a week or how many times you wanna shop, whether you wanna shop per meal or shop, you know, in bulk, you can do it. And look, anything you can't get there, Dave's is actually a pretty darn good option as well. I mean, the Dave's in Ohio City does does a good job. I mean, there's not everything you can you can get there, but between those two, between Ohio City provisions, between the grocer grocery, like, there's there's options across the board for for that sort of thing. And I think that opens up this wide net for us to the type of person that wants to rent at our project. Right? I think there's a lot of older couples and even some families that is like they just they would wanna rent. They'd wanna live in the city of Cleveland and move back from the suburbs, but haven't found the building that checks enough boxes for them.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:40:51]:
Right? Doesn't have access to green space. Doesn't have access to the grocery. It doesn't have a a a great nightlife scene. And at the same time, the things we mentioned at the beginning of the call, like the access to Tremont, to downtown, to Gordon Square, to the lake, to the river, to the airport. Like, again, it's it's all these reasons why our we felt the project demanded special attention both, you know, from the scale and and then eventually, you know, to the type and material and the construction that we chose, and it tells a really awesome story. So all of that supports more why the city of Cleveland and the vendors who operate inside the market need to get aligned and need to to figure out how to find common ground and, you know, do we always need to open the door to consultants and committees and and all these different people and then take 12 months to to make plans to make plans. It's like no. It's like it's eventually time to, like, just do stuff.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:41:46]:
Right? It's time to, like, stop putting pallets and trash cans out in the alley between the large building and the the arcade portion. You know, put some picnic tables out there. Don't let your city electric trucks park in there. It's like, take care of the space, you know, and encourage vendors to do the same and require them to do the same. Yeah. I could go on and on. It's such a I'm I'm telling you, I have I have a 15 page document that I've just been adding bullet points to over the past couple years, And I've just been watching the discussions that take place both on Twitter and in the paper and on cleveland.com and, you know, in in the political, arenas. And it's like everyone wants to over complicate it.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:42:26]:
It's just it needs attention. It needs some capital injection to take care of basic things that is just deferred maintenance. And then it it needs, you know, people to be okay with getting on the on board with with evolving and getting into the 21st century. Right? Because people's tastes have changed, people's shopping patterns have changed. I think you can only have so many stands in the market that sell raspberries, and you can have so many stands that sell pork shoulder. Right? Like, I don't need 12 butchers. Like, I just don't need that and I don't think anybody else does. So eventually, you're gonna have to offer up the the potential for other types of businesses to kinda get in there.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:43:07]:
But that's, just the tip of the iceberg for

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:10]:
Yeah. I would I would love to dive down that rabbit hole and and definitely, we are coming up on some kind of time here, though. I I do have a few more questions, though. I'm curious what the public local perception and and reception has been to to intro.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:43:27]:
Yeah. Well, the name intro too kinda came from just us figuring out what we wanted it to be about. Market Square was very identifiable. It's like when I tell you where the Westside you know, we're next to the Westside Market, everybody goes, oh, yeah. Okay. Good. Got it. But intro was really about this idea of, you know, if you go to the website, intro cleveland.com, which we've kinda set up as a landing page for people to check out when, you know, just to get interested, get acclimated.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:43:51]:
Eventually, that'll have floor plans and whatnot as as we get closer to being ready to do so. But, it tells you what, like, what the name is all about. Like, what is in the name? It's about creating this new sense of place, this new sense of innovation, introducing, you know, people to to place, to people to a new product type, to a new way of living, you know, all this kind of stuff. So making that introduction and talking about that and and doing so with the block clubs and the community groups that we had to to actually get on board with ahead of time before the project was actually able to push forward. I was expecting there to be a lot of community pushback just because it's scale. It's a large project, and it's it's different. Right? And it's parking and it's congestion and it's this and but when it came down to it, we we didn't come into the block club meetings and the community process to, to basically shove stuff down people's throat. We listened.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:44:44]:
We asked questions. We proposed what we wanted to do, and we proposed you know, it's kind of what you it didn't really change much from what you see in the renderings and and in the news, and the the feedback was resoundingly positive. You know? Sometimes you go into Ohio City block club meetings depending on which block club you're dealing with or Mhmm. It's not unique to Ohio City. It so I don't wanna pick on it, but and and you'll get people, you know, saying, not in my backyard. We're not doing that here. I like the project just not there. Move it move it over, you know, one neighborhood away.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:45:13]:
But we didn't have any of that. We had I think our block club, when we took a vote to to allow the project to kinda go to the next phase of of public approval, it was, like, 19 to 1. Right? And so I don't know who the one was, and I don't know why. Right? But when you look at that and you look at the fact that we only had to go through that process once, where some developers in other parts of the city have to go through it 5, 6, 7 times, and their project changes and evolves and, you know, gets gets chopped in half, all these kind of things. Look. We didn't have to do any of that because I think people realize that this corner demanded something that has been lacking for such a long time. And so, you know, that it's insulated being on a commercial district and all that kind of stuff, so we didn't really have to, you tried our hardest not to displace any of the businesses without having a plan on where to put them. And so you'll notice that when you drive around the immediate area and, 5 or 6 of the tenants that were in Market Plaza are relocated into brand new spaces that were previously empty, you know, down the street.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:46:18]:
So not only did we work really hard to to keep those businesses operating, but we filled vacancies in other places that previously had no retail in them. And so that's only more beneficial for the neighborhood too. So, you know, KeyBank, Sherwin Williams, H and R Block, Spectrum, those those businesses, the nail salon that was in Market Plaza, they they're all still up and running. They're just in the new new locations, and that's a real success story too. So I think across the board, the community process has been resoundingly positive. Just people seeing the building go up too, they're just amazed that, wow. It's it's not what I expected. It's different.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:46:55]:
You know? And once we get to to get past the construction phase and actually walk people into the finished product, I think it's only gonna be, you know, exponentially further and better than than the the feedback we've already gotten.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:08]:
Yeah. I am very excited to see see it come together. So we spent a lot of time really geographically focused on this specific corner of Cleveland. But one of the things that I like to ask everyone coming on is, to ultimately paint it like a collective collage of people's favorite things throughout Cleveland. And, you know, maybe it is the West Side Market and we'll stay we'll stay honed in on this, this block, but, I'm curious what your, you know, favorite aspects of Cleveland are and and, you know, your your hidden gems?

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:47:37]:
Oh, man. I I, there's so many. I mean, I I really think Cleveland has a lot of potential. You know, it's got a lot of great things. It's also got a lot potential. Every time I bring people to Cleveland for the first time, they're kinda awestruck, and and they're like, well, this is surprisingly cool. I'm like, well, maybe your expectations were too low to begin with, but it's it's like a I'm batting a 1,000 on that, like, bringing people to even for the first time and and they're like, man, this place is great. And so I think I think, you know, setting that aside, some of my favorite places around town, I mean, there's there's such great little dive bars.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:48:12]:
There's, you know, places to to to go have a beer and hang out. Cleveland has such a great beer culture. I think its restaurant scene needs to kinda catch up. I still I still feel like we're living on the coattails of of Michael Simon and Jonathan Sawyer and, you know, Zach Bruel and, like, those guys are outstanding, right? They they set the tone for what the food scene is, but they also have been around, like, you know, 20 years, and a lot of their restaurants have have been around almost as long. And so it's time to evolve, it's time to do some cool stuff. You know, Cleveland lags behind sometimes when we talk about development and hospitality and and where it's going. Not to say it's not disparaging, but I love getting out on the towpath to go running. I mentioned I'm in town almost every week right now for construction.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:48:57]:
I'm actually in the process of relocating back to Cleveland permanently for permanently indefinitely, you know, whatever that means, but, at least for a few years. So, I'm actually packing up. I've spent 7 years here in Chicago. I'm gonna come home, finish the project out, and we're actually starting another business that we're launching right there in in the city, which I could talk about soon. Not quite yet but, it will

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:20]:
be We'll have you come back, we'll have you come back.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:49:22]:
Yeah, for sure and and I'm excited about it and it it directly pertains to some of the stuff I was just mentioning so I'll pull you in. You know, but and my mom still lives in in the east side of Cleveland. My brother's there. There's just there's so much to it. Like, there's there's just a quaintness to Cleveland in general that I think is is hard to to capture. And obviously, the sports culture is one of a kind. So, you know, for me, coming back after living in Chicago for 7 years, which is like this huge cosmopolitan, you know, massive place with just about anything you could ever want. Well, Cleveland has a lot of the same things, maybe on a smaller scale, but, you know, world class orchestra and amazing research facilities and institutions and great sports and awesome outdoor spaces that are only getting better as entities like the Metro Parks and and other, you know, community development organizations put put more effort into creating connected neighborhoods and stuff like that.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:50:17]:
So, again, I'm being long winded and I'm kinda dodging your question about, you know, specifically what types of places are my favorite, but it's home. It's it's where I grew up, and I'm excited to to where it's going. So we will see.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:30]:
Yeah. We're excited to to have you back. Well, yeah. I really appreciate you coming on, Dan, and and sharing your story and and everything that's going on with intro. I I personally am stoked about everything that you guys are working on and and really, have enjoyed just on my runs every day, just seeing how it how fast this thing has come up, and, it sounds like it's gonna be going even faster. But

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:50:53]:
Yeah. It's it's, it's really coming along. I'm excited. I really think it's gonna be a game changer. You know, I think the dynamic street level stuff we're doing, the park space we're creating, it's it's all thoughtful, purposeful, community oriented. So, yeah, I'm I'm excited. I mean, I I hate to use that boring word. Excitement is just kind of like a a lame boring loud word, but it's true.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:51:14]:
I mean, there there's just so much cool stuff going on, and I'm proud and happy and grateful to be a part of it all.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:19]:
Well, if, if people have anything they wanna follow-up with you about, learn more about intro, you mentioned intro cleveland.com. Is there any other place people should be reaching out?

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:51:29]:
You know, for now, that's the way. You'll start to see opportunities to, to check-in on apartment availability probably late summer of this year, 6 or 7 months before we start occupying apartments. We're gonna start marketing the event space here shortly, and that'll be the first thing that we kinda put out there to the public eye. And, we'll set up a little booking space and office there on 25th Street where Wild Cactus used to be is what it appears, we're gonna be utilizing. So, that'll be happening in the next 30 to 45 days. And from there, we'll just continue to, to unveil marketing, and imagery and unit types and all that kind of stuff as as, things go

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:05]:
on. Awesome. Well, looking forward to it, and thank you again. Really appreciate it.

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:52:09]:
Thank you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:11]:
That's all for this week. Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so shoot us an email at lay of the land at upside dot f m, or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland, at thetagan, or at sternjeffe,

Dan Whalen (INTRO Cleveland | HarborBay) [00:52:25]:
j e

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:25]:
f e. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please email us or find us on Twitter and let us know. And if you love our show, please leave a review on iTunes. That goes a long way in helping us spread the word and continue to help bring high quality guests to the show. Takin Horton and Jeffrey Stern developed the Lay of the Land podcast in collaboration with the Up Company LLC. At the time of this recording, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the companies which appear on this show unless otherwise indicated. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Founders Get Funds and its affiliates, or actual and its affiliates, or any entity which employs us.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:06]:
This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. We have not considered your specific financial situation nor provided any investment advice on this show. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.