Places Made with Purpose: The Business Case for Art in Development with Adam Rhew, Lauren Harkey and Andrew Baysden

This is a podcast from the Queen City Podcast Network. Welcome to Building Connections, the ULI Charlotte Podcast brought to you by the Urban Land Institute and the support of Yellowduck Marketing and our visionary level annual sponsors, where we explore the people, development projects, and ideas shaping the future of the Charlotte region and beyond. Hello, I'm your host, Adam Rue, with South Park Community Partners, and today I'm joined by Lauren Harky with Hodges Taylor and Andrew Bayesden from Crescent Communities. In this episode, we're talking about places made with purpose, specifically the business case for art in development, how creative work can build trust, strengthen community connections, and create long-term value. And before we dive in, let's get to know our guests a little bit better. We're going to do a quick fire lightning round, one word or one sentence answers, and I might jump in here too. Lauren, let's start with you, your Charlotte comfort food go to order. Fenwix tomato soup. Classic, Andrew. Moose heads, wings. Also a classic. I mean, I don't know how you top either one of those. I would go with Kat's Club at Arthur's in South Park Mall. You know, we're going to talk a lot about place in this episode. If you could transport yourself anywhere for inspiration and then come back. Where would you go, Andrew? Well, top of mind, I just got back from Costa Rica. And generally speaking, the ocean is sort of always been my guiding light. It grew up at the beach and any time I'm around the water, I feel fully energized and inspired. Lauren. Well, and then I'm a total anger file. Just put me, put me down. I think for me, it's very situational. Depending on what I'm working on, if I'm working on a park project, I want to go see every park I can. If I'm working on something more urban, drop me in the middle of every city that I could possibly see. Yeah. Just a very, very context specific for me. Hidden talents. I'm dying to know, Lauren. Oh, this is always like, are you boastful or are you humble? I'm just going to be funny with it since they Kat whisperer. A long time Kat whisperer? Yeah, it's an eight. It's not a learned talent. What does that mean if I'm a, if I'm a, I don't know. This is one of those that I, how many cats do you have? Two. Don't choose the limit for me. What about you, Andrew? Um, any cats? I grew up with cats, but my wife won't allow them now. I guess my hidden talent would be, I play guitar, but when I was in the stage of life where all of my friends were getting married and I was in a lot of weddings. I turned my toasts at the receptions into guitar song parodies. So I think I've done about eight to 10. But I'm pretty close to retired now given that I haven't been to a wedding in probably ten years. I was a polevolta in high school. I'm not sure I could do it anymore. I don't know that my body can bend like it used to, but. I can, I just can't unbend. Well, that's probably the issue. That's exactly what age do you start that? I started in high school, but some people start, I guess earlier than that. And I am just total stumbled into it. Okay, last question that we're going to move on to our, our, the meat of our conversation. First job out of school, Andrew, what, what did you do after college? I went right into working in the real estate development master playing community field up. My first job was for a company called the River Dunes, not River District, but River Dunes company, which was a Marina community in Oriental, North Carolina in Pamela, Co county. Beautiful, beautiful place, but very much off the beaten path. Lauren, what about you? I was a family law attorney after graduate school. So I'll leave it to that. I was a radio reporter, started my career doing, doing the news on the radio. And spent 10 years in journalism before kind of shifting gears into the nonprofit space. We all have these interesting experiences. And yet as we prepared for this conversation, I think one of the things that we all sort of found as a through line was our passion for place and our passion for creating these memorable experiences. And I think part of the conversation that we're going to have today is really about how art intersects with place making and place building. When people hear art in development, they often think of it as a finishing touch. But more and more, we're seeing art influence projects from the very beginning. And maybe let's start talking about timing and risk and value. We spend a lot of time in the prep for this, talking about the risk profile that people need to be comfortable with in order to integrate art into their projects. I'm curious and maybe Lauren will start with you because you're consulting with people at various stages of the process. Is there an ideal time for art to enter the development process the way you see it? I think at the very beginning, I mean, if we're talking about a city planning or publicly accessible space at the very beginning. And what's interesting and lovely about Charlotte growing up here, especially too, is the development of living avenue contemplated, of course, the public space in front of those buildings, which was great partnership between the city and those architects involved out of Atlanta originally. But I also think on the private side or, you know, a meaning private development or a private individual, really when you're kind of doing the schematic of what is this right? Who does it serve? What kind of businesses are here individuals? The earlier you can think through, where do I need, you know, power or any sort of engineering or reinforcing the less risk you have. So I do feel like those kind of go hand in hand. And I know that's a vague answer. But at the beginning, right, it should be an intentional start. Well, and what I'm hearing is a little bit of it's important from a storytelling and a narrative. Correct. And a strategic standpoint. But it's also important from a very tactical, practical perspective about where do you put power and where do you need to pour footings and those sorts of things. Andrew, how do you guys think about this at Crescent? I'll try to make this not super long-winded. Crescent places a heavy emphasis on art in every single project where a multi-faceted real estate development company. So we have industrial office, multi-family and master playing communities. Generally speaking, and that's a lot of different asset classes that have different budgets and uses, et cetera. Generally speaking, we start every project with a process called Canvas, which is basically a design charette that helps the development team, the finance team, the marketing team, the asset management team, takes them through and identifies sort of the ethos, the mission statement, the purpose of that project. It also almost always includes community members in relation to wherever that project is. Because it's important for us to have their way in, buy in, et cetera. So even as early as the entitlement phase of a project or once it's been purchased and we're just starting design, art can very much be a discussion that early in the process. Again, it's not a one-size-fits-all and different projects sort of dictate different timelines. But there is a mandate for every single Crescent communities project that there has to be a piece of public art. And there is, we may talk about this later, there's, there is a percentage in the pro forma, but that's also very flexible given the project. You mentioned community engagement, obviously for us as a nonprofit, everything we do has to be rooted in, you know, stewarding the community's vision for the places we serve. But that's the same ethos that you talked about in Lauren, I know that that democratic process is really important to informing decisions you make for your clients. How do you guys think about that community engagement? When do you do it? How do you do it? How do you balance all the competing interests as you start to go down that road? Yeah, I think sometime, I think informing it's almost like being neighborly, right? If you're building a house, you think about, okay, I'm sorry, I'm going to create some mud, let's make friends here, right? So it's, it's also thinking through, if you are soliciting feedback, a kind of planned approach to how that gets captured document, but also kind of a start and stop to it. Right? Because there is a point where you can't go back, right? You can't change things. Things have to move forward with the construction and the development of the project. So oftentimes what happens with an, I also said in the Public Art Commission here in Mecklenburg County and the community engagement can take a different lens of how what exactly happens, right? Is it an activity? Is it literally the public helping with the painting of something? It can be a lot of things, but typically when there's a project proposal that's been massaged and kind of married and engineered not final, but it's very well fleshed out. It then has a community response standpoint, but not at the very end, right? So that then informs, and that can be very simple things like how do we, you know, go the lawn around this, right? It can be, it can also be, we know my grandmother grew up in this neighborhood and I just want to share a story with you. So it can mean a lot of different things, but then you have that documented as I kind of speak now for verbal jupis, but we love when people talk about projects, right? And we realize that's great that they're engaging with the art, I think. And I think the, you know, important point here is that it's about listening and it's about receiving the feedback. There are lots of different things you can do with it. And you don't have to wait at all the same. And one of the things that we find, and as we're working on projects, is that you know, in certain situations, different stakeholders, feedback gets weighted differently based on all sorts of variables. And for us, for example, as we manage the municipal service district in South Park, we've got rate paying stakeholders who pay a special property tax to shape the work that we do. And we have stakeholders that are outside that boundary. And so how we contemplate the feedback is really different because we've got some folks who are paying for the projects that we're completing and some folks that aren't. And so those get considered differently. I'm sure you guys think about that similarly, Andrew. Yeah, I mean, for me, like in my role in position in marketing, like in you both, I think mentioned it, like storytelling is really what's most important to me and what resonates. And so the importance of bringing in, you know, local community members early on in a project, which not a lot of developers do, by the way, from my lens, I'm trying to hear from them a nugget or a tidbit, or anything that's unique that separates or differentiates that we can then build a story off of, right? And you know, there's dozens of examples of that. One of the big ones that Crescent did in Uptown was the Whole Foods site, which was 10 plus years ago. But that was a tremendous amount of different community members. And it was aside from the Harris-Teter that's small Harris-Teter right down the street. This was going to be, you know, Uptowns first, like real grocer. So we even had gosh, I remember doing, you know, focus groups with young professionals that lived in Uptown to, you know, to get their point of view on that. But yeah, that overall, when you bring in the public, you want to find something unique or special, like did you know that 50 years ago, there was, you know, a gentleman that grew tobacco on here, you know, whatever it is. Not sure if that answer your question, but yeah, it does. And we're going to come back to storytelling a little bit later in the conversation. We talked a little bit, again, as we prepared for this discussion about the, you know, different ways of completing these projects. Obviously, Crescent, you guys are funding these and delivering these as a private company and, you know, have the mandate to do that from your leadership, Lauren, sometimes you're commissioning art again for private companies. And then all of us, I think, have been involved in these public private really complex projects. It's different. There are different approaches to kind of handling those. I'm curious if you guys have a perspective on when one approach is better than the other or when one is more suited than the other to delivering something extraordinary. I mean, I think that the partnership is kind of key, however, however, those kind of players and involve themselves because to, you know, what Andrew's talking about, the kind of early ideation is, you can't really do that in a vacuum. And that's not only your CEO, your, you know, your leadership saying that, right? So you're got a design partner involved. You've got, can you members involve? You've got your focus groups. You've got other folks. It can get too many, right? Too many cooks in the kitchen is a thing. And also, for me, it's important, I think, to think about like, who, what's the voice, right? And so if you are essentially, you're not lending a space, you're giving a space to this kind of public forum and you're inviting an artist or an artist group or a range of artists, right? It could be tiered in terms of the project to speak. And in a permanent or semi permanent manner needs to be kind of clear, we're giving them the, the mic right now, right? You know, and we're not going to kind of overanalyze or micromanage stage mom, if you will. Exactly what's being said and how it's being said. They're of course necessary protocols in terms of how people are involved and, and who's the ultimate decider. But I think sometimes when you have the luxury of a project that doesn't have to be informed by, you know, an ordinance statute or taxpayer direct response, right? It's always going to be a conversation. You can be a little more, you know, you can take somewhere risk. You can, you can do some different things that serve then as these really nice precedents for municipalities to say, hey, that worked. Let's chat about it. Would you learn? I think, I think Center City has done an amazing job of those two putting those two kind of lessons learned together. Probably one of the bigger risks that Crescent communities took many years ago. Again, we're in the Ally Bank building across from Bank of America. And that was a legacy, you know, it was formerly the Good Year tire store. And we, our intention was to build an office tower there, but we had to find an anchor tenant for a very long time. But the Good Year tire store was just sitting empty for many years and was kind of an eye sore. And we all got in the room one day and said, listen, we've got to create, we need to create buzz for this part of uptown, which really was, you know, it was the old Charlotte observer building and it was the Good Year tire store. And there wasn't a lot going on. And South End was was also not as mature as it is now. And I'm old now, so I can't remember everything. But we came up with this concept where we would transform the Good Year Arts building into basically an art studio for local artists. And from a development standpoint, you've got to understand taking that to our senior leadership to say, hey, we're going to start this artist in residence program in a facility that probably has oil all over it and is not maybe the most secure place. But we think it's going to be a really good for the arts community here in Charlotte, which is doesn't have a lot of creative space to operate in number one. And then number two, they can actually use the building. We know the buildings and get torn down. So it is a canvas for them to ID8, create, etc. So long story short, you know, that turned into the Good Year Arts program that was operating in that building for at least two years or maybe more. And then eventually the build, the, you know, the Good Year Arts did come down. The Good Year Tire did come down. But the program was able to sustain itself and is now in camp north end. Well, as a former Good Year Arts board member, thank you for taking that leap. It's awesome. It's underutilized properties. That's a win-win situation. I typically like to take personally odd projects that could completely flounder. But fortunate now twice, that would be the first time I did it with again with other colleagues involved and then Pete with the big feed is definitely the second opportunity that's happened. Well, and, you know, we talked a little bit about how those can, those projects can help give permission right to others. And so you see the VAPA Center today in uptown. Like the Good Year Arts helped prove the case that it's possible that you can solve the questions around insurance and liability. And all of the things that people sort of throw up as hurdles, anytime we do one of these projects as a community and it's successful, it gives somebody else the playbook and the permission to go try it again, right, Lauren? Correct. Yeah. And I mean, their space in camp north end didn't have HVAC for years and years, years, and you just knew you were just went and July and sweltered in the studio. And you loved it because it was, it just felt like a, that space is the most important calculation, I think, in giving artists creative space. And where they, there's several artists that are near and dear to me that really took some risks with those, that building because it wasn't for a perfect, you know, white, wild space. It wasn't something they had to really be overly cautious about either. So it was a fun place to go hang out during the process. Yeah, sure. Again, it was very, we did not overengineer it and that was the key. As it relates to risk, you know, it was a basic insurance setup. They did, the artist did get paid stipends, which was super helpful and then a, you know, a series of showcases, events, et cetera. But as someone that was not in the arts community at that time, I was sort of tasked as the, you're the landlord for these artists, Andrew. So keep an eye on them and I'd go over there and drink beer and hang out, you know. It's interesting. I was at Center City Partners at the time and so we're telling this story about Charlotte and uptown and the things that are happening here and what good your arts enabled us to do is tell a different story, a more nuanced story about Charlotte, about the creative economy, about the type of place that Charlotte is mature. into and so not only does it enable you as the developer, you know, thinking about just that one site, or you learn as the board member for this nonprofit that gets stood up, but it enables us as a city to tell a more robust and nuanced story. And so I think you mentioned Pete the troll part of what Crescent has been able to do at the river district by bringing in this incredible piece of experiential art is not just tell a story about your project, but it starts to, again, feed this master narrative. And so maybe, Andrew, could you talk a little bit about Pete the troll and that experience and maybe how Crescent is using it to tell a bigger story? Yeah, I'm sure. And again, we're in the very infant stages of Pete still. I mean, Pete's been around for four months, but already it's like it's evolved more than my imagination could have ever dreamed of. Get ready, Carolinas. The 2026 ULI Carolina's meeting is headed to Raleigh, North Carolina on March 23rd through 24th and you won't want to miss it. Join hundreds of real estate and land use leaders for two days of bold ideas, fresh perspectives and powerful connections that shape the future of our region. From cutting edge development trends to community driven solutions, this is where insight meets action. Mark your calendar and learn more at Carolinas. ULI.org. The river district, we talked earlier about how all Crescent communities projects have an art mandate and I shouldn't even say mandate. Everyone just understands that art creates value for our projects and it helps differentiate it. So it's not like a, all right, we have to do this. What are we going to come up with? That's not the situation at all, but it was daunting with the river district, which has been in planning since 2016. So conversations about art probably began at the river district in 2019, 2020. But what's daunting is that we have 1200 acres. Like how do you begin to put a plan together for that? And then on top of that, it's a master plan community. It's not an office building. It's not an apartment complex. It's largely horizontal development, right? And we're delivering lots to home builders. There's your providing homes, but then there's all these other uses as well that in most cases, Crescent is not the land, you know, doesn't own. We had a casual conversation one day with our art consultant who I will call out Leslie Marshall, the great Leslie Marshall with articulation art. She's based in Texas. She said, have you guys seen these trolls on Instagram? And I had seen them. I'd seen them in the Pacific Northwest and I said, yeah, man, that is, that is the river district. That's perfect because they're always in the woods. They're made out of recycled material. We have a, we have a really committed sustainability principles at the river district. We're owned by a timber company that worship woods in Japan. So, but I didn't sense that there was any chance that we could land this. And ironically, Thomas Danbo, who is the artist behind the trolls, who has trolls in over 20 countries and he has millions of visitors across the world. We reached out to him. You never know until you try and he had already worked something out with the city of Raleigh and Dorothy Dix Park. And then we had to sell him on Crescent communities and the river district vision, which is a lot all about walkability and trails and access to the river and sustainability. We are a development company. So, we do have to cut down trees, but we try to do it responsibly. And so, that was a pitch to him and not knowing if it was going to resonate and luckily it did. And the response has been overwhelming. People from all over the world since November have come to CPT. People are almost protective over him. When we first got on the ground, Pete is the largest troll that Thomas has built, but he's 90 feet long. He was supposed to be 60 feet long. A lot of his trolls are standing up and so they don't really lend themselves to climb. But Pete is so linear that it's almost like you want to climb all over him. So, the first weekend that he was out there, I mean thousands of people came out and you almost couldn't see Pete's body because there were so many kids on top, which was a little bit like, "Oh, we need to get that under control pretty quick," which we did. But there are these troll stewards that like to try to educate the rest of the public on how you're supposed to interact with Thomas's art. So, the troll stewards were a thing. And they reach out to us all the time. That's part of the interesting thing about Pete is that the programming around him and the public was, again, we commissioned Pete as a private developer, which again was an interesting sit-down with our executive team from a money standpoint and all we had was a hand drawing. And we had a good feel for the location. And obviously his reputation, Thomas's spoke for itself, but it was a big risk for us to take, like hands down. And then they asked us, "Point blank, our leadership team, do you think if we're going to give you money for a signature piece of the river district, do you think this is what it needs to be?" And I said absolutely. It's interesting, you're talking about how art starts to draw people into the river district. And I think all of us appreciate that successful places invite people to stay. We're not just, is it not transactional? It's not just people passing through. Certainly for us, at South Park Community Partners, as we're working on this big revitalization of Symphony Park, we're thinking about how art can compel people to stay. And deep in their emotional connection to the place and not just be a thing that people see as they pass through. Lauren, as you think about the works that you are facilitating for your clients, how do you find that right balance of something that is special and creates this moment where people want to be in a place and feel something while they're there? Yeah, I think there's a, I think it's nice to kind of start with, almost like you would starting to design, what do you want this to communicate? What do you want this to feel? What is your goal? What's the outcome here? And I think that that can be a lot of different answers, not really a wrong answer. And seeking out a practice that has enough chops from their past work, but to make folks comfortable and kind of know that you have an execution level, but then also take some risks with it. But I do think there's something to be said for not everything's for everybody, right? We know that. And that's perfectly fine. And there's an, oh, it's interesting, you talking about the stewardship, I think just thinking about that more broadly, the developer or property owner or whatever, if it's a combination kind of situation, they own it technically. But what happens when you invite the public in, even if it's inviting someone into your private lobby space, right? Or, you know, on your land where you have a sculpture park or whatever it may be, you're kind of inviting them to have ownership and take pride in it. And it becomes, you know, when you have, obviously think of what do you do when you have out of town visitors, right? Where do you tell them to go? What do you tell them to do? And I think there's something, moments of pride, you know, you have these great moments at airports, which I really love, which Charlotte Airport has been doing to really fold in consciously art to the expansion project. And it's just, just now completed with what the initial tackle was, which is incredible. But what is your entree, right? What do people see? What do they feel? What do they remember? Everybody has buildings and streets and, you know, hopefully everybody has parks. But what do they remember as an experience, I think, is a key thing there. How does social media factor into that equation? Just as a quick note, I love when we encourage folks to, and I do this personally, just for record keeping, but documenting the process of, you know, the development of what it is, but the physicality of creating art, I think it's interesting. I love looking at construction photos and, you know, walking through sites when they're in progress. I think looking at having an artist speak to, and video, and imagery. We're literally talking about imagery. So we might as well use collateral that is imagery, right, to discuss it. Having studio, you know, updates and shots and kind of letting people be a part of that process. And then I think that engenders like a more of appreciation for what goes into it. So in terms of kind of when an unveiling may happen, I've worked with clients that companies that want to be a little more in-house about what becomes public, right, in terms of if we have to file a permit, we're very vague if we have to think about what may happen in terms of image sharing. We don't use their name for a while, right? And then there's a kind of unveiling during the installation, the installation process could be up to a few weeks, right? And so informing the public at that point is with, you know, here's what's coming. I've done a project with another company where actually in collaboration with Center City where we use the plywood in front of the signs to block off our clearance for a participatory art project. I had enough room that the arm swing of the crane would not get anywhere close to the public. That was an exciting calculation. But I think that got people excited about it. But then you could also be just come out the gate. If you're looking for funding or looking for, like there's a different model where you see nonprofits and other kind of arts institutions that it is very mission-specific, they do want to, you know, get a people really excited from the get-go. I think it was lovely what our library did in terms of the renderings of what's going on with getting people really excited about Snow White as design. It was a smart move. So that may be a good segue to really get into the tactical weeds and talk a little bit about, you know, how we break this very abstract process down into something that's super practical. I'm curious, let's maybe start on the funding side. This is a tricky question. Andrew, you said that there's a number that goes in the pro forma. Lauren, I imagine you've gotten a thousand questions from clients about budget and I can add a little bit about how we've approached this. But I'm just curious, where do you start on that? It feels like it could be $1 sign to $5 signs. How do you help guide people to make smart decisions there? I can, this is the question that I, if you, someone asked me, what's a rule? And I wish there were rules, right? It would be a lot easier to say. Here's a guideline. I think if we look at what's happened, and I don't, I think we'll probably get into the percent for our conversation, but since actually since 1959 in Philadelphia, where Louis Conn architect proposed a percent for art idea for city, you know, municipal areas, that's of the construction cost. And it's above a certain threshold, typically what's been adopted in like 350 municipalities across the country, which is amazing. It's above a certain dollar threshold. I think it's, you know, typically a couple hundred thousand dollars. And it's a housing units above in some cities, five, right? So housing developments above five units. I think that's an interesting guide because, okay, what's being done? And then some cities have particularly in California, but also some cities in Florida have kind of led the charge of making that a mandate for private development. You either have to do this percentage or pay a fee. That's not abnormal to what we do with city tree planning, right? Or all kinds of things. But I think it, it, you need to start with, it is an investment. I don't mean the sense of it's going to be sold in 10 years, right, for a profit. I mean, it's an investment in the sense of what are the reasons you want to do this? And is that, is that on a temporary basis, right? Is it something that's meant to be permanent? Also, what do you want it to say, right? Is there something where it's a lighter touch? There could be a tiered approach. You could have kind of A, B, and C or just A and B in terms of the level of execution. But I, I typically what happens, which is ideal is we work or someone in my role works with the project to kind of look at it as a whole and figure out a budget, that budget then informs you then say that to the artist or artist group or people that you're sending it out to. To do it the other way around is the biggest variable possible, right? And it's the artist response, really. I mean, within that number, just to speak about kind of how public art is like, what is, what does the number go to? It's not any sort of necessarily retail calculation. So if you see an artist work in a gallery, that's a retail calculation, that's taken an account, all the other cost. This is something where if we have 100%, 15 to 20 goes to their time, right? A small percentage would go to someone is the project manager consultant organizing and everything else is like materials, you know, fabrication, engineering, installation, all of these other costs. So it's an all-in, do not exceed unless we expand the scope kind of budget if that makes sense. And that's just a, it's good practice to do that with anything, right? So I don't know if that helps. I'm not going to say a number because you know, I want to pitch it all the sky's your limit. The sky's the limit. And heard you guys think about it that same way where you sort of set that you set an allowance and then you figure out kind of here, here's what we want to do within that allowance. I would say the simplest way is certainly to say that there, there's an allowance, but there's room for negotiation, right? Like, for example, if our budget for Pete was ex and we met, you know, the threshold of that budget, I would have gone to or any other people on our team would have gone and said, guys, can we pull from contingency? Can we, this is too important? This idea needs to happen. It's going to be, we will have a return on investment that is greater than what we're spending on this. And that, obviously, that's very hard and a lot of instances to measure. Pete is a very unique case. Pete doesn't come around a lot. You know, generally speaking for most Crescent Community projects, it is a percentage of hard costs. Right. But again, that's for an apartment building. So it is a little bit more formulaic, but I would also say that no one on the Crescent Community's team treats is like, okay, we've got $300,000 to spend on a piece of art. Let's go find that piece of art. It really is about the idea and the process of making sure that it makes sense. If we had not done Pete or found Pete at the river district, like we may still be looking for a piece of art, we weren't just going to spend what our budget said just to spend it. It goes back to story and narrative and that experience. And usually we find our way there, like in some form or fashion, right? But again, a lot of that goes back to what I mentioned earlier about the Canvas process and trying to find a kernel from the initial ideation purpose of the project who we bought it from, the what was the land before, how was it used? And I also don't think it necessarily means that if you have a $300,000 budget, that means you've got to spend $300,000. Again, the idea could be, you know what, there's this really great graffiti artist that would do a series of $50,000 pieces that we can all connect together and that will create a story that's larger than one installation or something. Well, and for us, I would say, you know, we've as an organization commissioned temporary place making, we've got a holiday retail window mural program that is in the scope of what we spend on other things, like very modest investment, highly impactful, highly visual. It's funneling dollars to local artists to do something that enhances the experience. We've done some middle of the road, sort of semi permanent, you know, things that that are a larger investment or around for a greater amount of time. And then obviously at Symphony Park, we're going to spend, you know, a significant amount of money on public art that we hope will be iconic and enduring and connects to the story. And so I think it's also worth noting that there are lots of different ways to incorporate public art. And it doesn't have to be a six-figure commitment for perpetuity, although that's really important, but there are lots of place making opportunities that can happen organically. Yeah, and I was lucky to have Center City loot me in for the rail trail lights for several years, which was a, uh, generously funded by US Bank. And it was one of those things where it was, yes, it's temporary to ask an artist to do a sculpture that meets, you know, cats right of way criteria on a temporary basis for, you know, X dollars. And also the public won't get hurt. Is a tall order, but what's happened with that is that, for example, Edens in South End saw one of the pieces loved it and decided to commission one of those artists for a more substantial permanent. So I think, and that that's also, there's a, you kind of speak, delayed approach in terms of temporary, temporary or appropriate. permanent. I also think there's a layered approach as to what type of artist you invite, right? So an example of, you know, Pete, that's a, I would say, global, if not national moment, right? And there's practices, I think, the ones that have the most richness in terms of, we want to celebrate Charlotte, okay, there's something that maybe a connection to, we forget our history, right? We forget our oral history. We want to have a moment where there's a, there's a nod to Charlotte, right? Whether that be the maker, what they're doing, how they're saying it, there's also something that puts us on a bigger map that I think is really important because guess what, we're on those maps, we're, you know, we're there, which is lovely to say, being a Charlottesian, but it's, it's inviting that I won't say bigger name in terms of social media followers per say, but, but respected practice to add to kind of the kind of fabric of our city, I think is really nice. And then the artists that are younger or less established or purely their reaches local, get a kick out of being in the same, literally the same sandbox as those that they're, you know, and there's a really lovely kind of reciprocation of that, I think. So box over, right? I'm going to wrap us up in just a minute, but I'm curious as you guys think about advice to others who are trying to get started on this journey or sort of staring at, you know, an opportunity in front of them, what would you tell them? Maybe as a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Sorry, the lawyer in me is like, who was them? Defined them. I think it's anybody who is, whether that's a property owner, it could be a nonprofit, it could be a community member, right? A neighborhood association that says, hey, we want public art in our community, but we don't know where to start. What does that look like? How do I, how do I do it? I think you have to ask a bunch of questions, and also have some meetings and figure out how to establish. I mean, Andrew, it's wonderful that you guys have a, you know, a calculation, right? And a commitment, I think to get to that point, you have to have literal buy-in from the idea. But then also, you know, taking a, it's really easy to speak in hypotheticals, which is kind of what we've done a lot rather than something, but it's taking a real live project or something on the docket and thinking through, let's use this as an example, or a recently completed project even, right? How could we have incorporated and what would have looked like, who would have been the partners on it in terms of 1% for art calculation, that's 85% of that. So that's hard cost of a, you know, a public city-owned building, fire station, whatever it may be. 85% goes to the art, 15% goes to admin cause for ASC to oversee that. I'm actually leading a panel this afternoon to help select an artist. That's amazing to have that, you have to have that partner that isn't the artist and isn't the owner that's the, we can speak all these languages and put it all together. I think that's, that's key. I'm not trying to promote me or my business, but I think having somebody in that role to, to be a PM quite honestly is really important. That would be my advice, hire Lauren or someone like her to, I mean, dead serious, like we would not have been able to, to do Pete without Leslie Marshall. And, you know, part of that, though, is she understands our company and she understood what are we wanted at the river district. And I, and by the way, there was a lot of back and forth with Thomas. Thomas and there should be with any artist and we dealt with this at the Good Your Arts program. There was a lot of healthy disagreements on things. And if you're not disagreeing or pushing them and then pushing back, you're not going to get a great output in my opinion. And, and that was, and every little detail of, of that troll was agonized over and where the wood was going to come from. And again, from my standpoint, again, I've said it too much, but storytelling, like I can tell everyone, every little piece of that troll where that piece of wood came from. And, well, and both of you hit on, what I would say, which is build in the time for all of those things, right? So build in the time for your PM to help you create a great process for the healthy disagreement. Everything takes longer than you'd think it will. And so if it's something that you want to do and it's important to your organization, your project, you got to start now and build a long runway because it will be more successful than waiting until the end and being like, oh my gosh, we gotta get this thing. And be, and be ready to pivot and audible and change. Totally. Like, even day of, yeah. Yeah, I mean, again, three years ago, we were headed down a completely different direction with art and it was kind of a gut check. We all looked at each other and said that this just isn't, this could be great. It might be great. But this is before Pete, but we, this is, we're going to wait, you know, we're going to wait for the right idea, the right situation, the right artist. All right, as we wrap up, quick rapid fire answers, two word reactions, biggest misconception about art in development, Lauren. It has to be safe. Andrew. I don't mean physically. I mean, conceptually. It's a it's a a a performance buster. It's it's not. Yeah, it's too risky. Yeah. And then top two places anywhere, projects, cities, whatever places that nail are driven, placemaking. I'm quite fond of the Highline I mean the Highline project in general in New York, but the Highline Plint particularly it's this really wonderful overlook, but it started in 2018 or 19 with Simon Lee, but it's it's you know the mayor's office NEA grants, but it's part of New York Foundation for the Arts as well. But they and there was an interesting question of kind of when do you share? So it's a international committee that that selects a group of artists to do a proposal. Those proposals, it wasn't the first iteration, but are now publicly shared for feedback. And they they aren't necessarily the selectors, but the feedback's really interesting, but people have the I think there's a pigeon up right now and people don't want it to leave, you know, but artists like Simon Lee she represented America and the Venice Biennale, not the last iteration that are Asian before. And she I'm familiar with her gallery at the time and that like launched her incredibly in an international, but it also was this moment of like we're literally putting on this elevated walkway that everybody enjoys this moment that could easily just be kind of forgotten, right? But this extension of this highly traffic space, everything is really wonderful, that the fact that that's funded as a rotating and super ambitious sculptural project is incredible. Andrew Lauren is much better at answering this question. I am not as well traveled number one. I'll give to generic I went to Montreal one time and there was something along the bike path that was like incredible and inspirational and I can't go into any more detail about that, but shout out Montreal if you've never been there. It's a really cool place. And then the other thing I'll just I love the high line in York. I mean anything that incorporates nature, I'm a sucker for. There's been some pop up nature exhibits at Palme de Bluff where I grew up that have been really interesting. And I will also shout out Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden that also does some really cool temporary Chinese lanterns and those sorts of things. Yeah. I would say Charlotte does a great job and we don't necessarily give ourselves credit for some of the great public art that's happening in our community that we sometimes drive past and don't fully appreciate. Right. Well we have had such an amazing conversation. I think as we've heard art isn't just decoration. It's not just something that comes in at the very end of a project. It really shapes the identity and accelerates the momentum and builds trust and creates those places that people really choose to be. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Building Connections and a special thank you to our guests for sharing your time, your insights and your expertise, Lauren and Andrew. Thanks for being with us. Conversations like these help us understand both the art and the science behind creating meaningful places. Thanks to everyone for listening to Building Connections from ULI Charlotte. Join us for future episodes of Building Connections brought to you by ULI Charlotte and the generous support of Yellowduck Marketing and the visionary level annual sponsors, LS3P, New Point Real Estate Capital, Papas Properties and UNC Charlotte Childress Client Center for Real Estate. As we continue to build connections, share lessons and uncover how Charlotte's brightest minds are shaping the urban landscape and the built environment of tomorrow. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your preferred platform. CleanCityPodcastnetwork.com