Strategic Facility Planning and Design

On this episode of the Facility Playbook, I got to sit down with Vance Repka of VSR Design. We met at an in Mid-America Sports Complex where he helped revamp that entire baseball facility into a turf complex with new lighting, new food and beverage. Pretty much upgraded everything about the facility that's been around for 20 to 30 years. So whether you're building a new facility or revamping your old one, you're gonna wanna listen to this episode with Vance. Hope you enjoy. Do you own or manage a facility? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Facility Playbook. I'm Luke Wade, founder and CEO of Facility Ally, and this podcast is about helping facility managers and owners learn from pioneers and veterans in the industry who have built and managed successful sports facilities, entertainment venues and clubs. Did you know that most of those facilities use between four and six different softwares to manage the reservations, memberships, lessons, leagues, camps, clinics and more? Revolutionize your facility with facility allies on one system. Learn more at FacilityAlly.com. Today, we're actually talking a little bit deeper into facilities, not about management, not really about oversight, but more about the design planning and redesign. And today we're here with Vance Repka from VSR Design. It's so great to have you here today. Thanks for being with me. Well, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. I listened to your podcast, so it's great to be online. That's awesome. I appreciate that. And can you, before we jump in, tell us a little bit about your background and what led you into your VSR Design company. Okay, so I'm a landscape architect. I got my degree in 1984 from K-State. I'm originally from St. Louis, but went to K-State and have been working in Kansas City since really the first of 1985. Worked for a couple of the big sports firms, HNTB and then the populous guys. And then I've been on my own for about 20 years and worked from essentially major league baseball and NFL football all the way down to small parks and rec and any other kind of sports facility design. That's awesome. You've been through a lot. You've done a lot. You've worked with some of the really big companies also in Kansas City, which is my favorite. I love that you're here now. And yeah, I consider you a local. I always ask people, "How long before I say I'm from Kansas City?" 'Cause I'm not from here either, but I've been here about 15, 20 years. You're from Kansas City. I'm from Kansas City now. Well, can you talk about maybe some of the projects? Today we're here at, you were in Johnson County. We're at the Mid-America Sports Complex. I actually met you at the Shields Complex with Michael Aplan. So you've gotten around town a little bit. Can you tell us about some of the cool, unique projects that you worked on? Well, I started in the sort of in the sports side of the big way in 1994, the strike year. And when I was at HNTB, we were tasked with converting Kaufman Stadium from the old artificial astroturf that was laid over asphalt into natural grass. And so my golf course design background led me into that project because of the understanding of how grass grows in sand. And so we converted that field in '94 from there. I went over to Populus. It was HLK Sport at the time, but it's Populus now. And worked with them on fields like that all over the country, actually all over the world. And so that's been great. What's one of the most unique projects you've worked on or your favorite project? Well, I think they're all my favorites. He's kind of like asking a parent, "Who's your favorite kid?" They're all my favorites. And they're all a little bit different. There are some, we do some high school stadium work. And some of those have been a lot of fun 'cause you have full design on a green field site. You're able to, in one site in Sedalia, we were able to bury the field in the track down in the hillside and had a really nice setting for the field and the architects on our team, designed the stadium around it to make it feel like almost like a college bowl is what it was. So those are lots of fun. This is a blast, and this is a renovation to go from really a 30-year-old worn-down place that needed a facelift. And we've kind of gone a little bit beyond that with fencing, backstops, incorporated a lot of shade, new lighting, and then the facility like this with more fan accommodation than it used to have in the old types of parks and rec type facilities. So they're all my favorites. I know that's kind of a chicken way of answering that question, but they're all different. They're all fun, whether it's natural grass or artificial. I enjoy doing both and embrace both. And so it's been great. - So this was a really, really big one. How many fields are here that you actually did the redesign on? - Oh, on this facility, there are 12. There are 10 300-foot softball fields for adult and youth. And they're also used a lot for youth baseball as well. And at Mid-America West, which will be another phase starting up this fall, there's another 12 fields there. And those are smaller, essentially girl softball, 'cause they were 200-foot fields for the most part. And some of the younger youth baseball can play on those fields as well. - So all 12 fields were re-turfed, redone, and you were part of all that? - Yeah, yeah. So what was, what was, what's something that a facility like this, or even smaller, should think about before they consider an expansion or a redesign? What are some of the things that should be top of the list? - Well, I think when you consider it, I mean, so this project started in a couple of phases, as a matter of fact. And it was, hey, we've got to get rid of our fences. The old galvanized chain link and the backstops were kind of falling down and needed to be repaired. So as we repaired all of the fencing, we essentially put, and if you can look out there, you see a concrete mostrip around all of the fencing. And so that's what you need to do synthetic turf. You attach that synthetic turf to that curb. So with natural materials, you don't need that curb. So we incorporated that. It was a little bit of an upcharge to get that done right away. And as it turns out, we did the turf about a year later and it, so it really wasn't an upcharge. But that did save money on the next phase 'cause you don't have to do that curb anymore. And I've done some renovations where the fence stays in place and you try to pour a curb around an existing fence. And it's not a lot of fun and it's not easy and it costs a lot because there's just a lot of labor associated with that. So you try to think as far as you can, are we gonna do synthetic turf someday depending on where you are? Maybe the initial goal, but it may be a long-term goal. And so you incorporate some of those things. There's also the playability of turf, synthetic turf versus natural. And so when you have long grass, the ball tends to stop with baseball and soccer. And so you also need to have surface drainage. So that tends to be a steeper slope. So when you take a steeper slope type field and put synthetic on it, which is like a short pile carpet almost, that ball can roll for days. And soccer coaches love that typically at the high end, at the bottom end, they don't. And this is not the George Tomah era of water the grass real heavy when you have a fast team coming in so that they can't run fast and the ball dies if they try to bot. You don't get to do that on synthetic. It's gonna be fast no matter what you do. So it's that sort of thing. You try to incorporate game strategy, understanding what those long-term goals are and find out what budgets are. And let's face it, budgets, big deal with pretty much any business nowadays. - So when you went in to do the fencing, they had the foresight to say, "We're gonna do turf someday, "so we should probably put this curb in." - Yeah, now we didn't know if it was one year or 10 years. But either way, it was going to save us in the future. - And so that was one thing they considered. What was the reason they decided to switch to turf instead of grass? I know this is a big discussion. Messi doesn't play on turf. Some people don't play on turf. And so as a facility at this size that's throwing huge tournaments, why would someone decide, "Hey, let's switch to turf or let's stick to grass?" What are some of the benefits? - Well, and so the biggest thing here is this is a facility that hosts a lot of tournaments, like you said. And so when, and it's kind of like the old, when Kaufman and Arrowhead were originally artificial turf, they went to artificial turf because people were gonna come from all over the place to see games here. The Kansas City metro area isn't reliant on, isn't gonna take care of all of the attendance and all of the teams that play here. People are here from Iowa. I mean, you see Iowa and Nebraska licensed plates at Oklahoma from all over the place, the Dakotas, you name it. And so when those people come into town, they don't wanna have the chance of a rain out. So when they know, they won't be rained out. Now, the fact of the matter is, when it's raining, you're not playing. But after the rain is done, you can get right back on it. You don't have to go work on the infield and put down the kitty litter and the diamond dry and all that kind of stuff and work it and work it and work it. Facilities like this, unless you're at the major league or minor league level or division one, where you have a tarp to roll out over your infield, there's no way a place like this is gonna have 12 tarps and 15 people to unroll and roll those tarps. And so, major league baseball can do that because they've got a lot of people that can roll it and unroll it before and after a rate of that. You can't do that here. And so, went to synthetic and when this place was first built, these four diamonds actually had an infield that was made out of the artificial turf. Same thing that Kaufman and Arrowhead had. And that became, this facility really was a huge adult, men's softball. It was a big, big time, big mecca for the nationwide. And so, as other facilities upgraded and they started to put some of this latest generation of artificial turf on, this facility sort of dropped in the rankings, if you will. And so, we wanted to get back up there. And so, and it brings in, I can't quote you dollars, but it brings in tons of economic development. The tournament fees and that sort of thing are one thing. And the restaurant and the beverage, food and beverage here is increased a lot from those tournaments, but the economic development of just hotel rooms and restaurants and everything else and just fill it up your cars with gas here. That is huge, you know, the city of Shawnee can probably give you numbers on what that means to them, but that's a big deal. Now, back to the turf question, why does it messy play on synthetic? It's a huge debate in the industry. We saw Aaron Rodgers go down with a torn Achilles a couple of weeks ago, and immediately everybody blamed it on the synthetic turf. You know, the NFLPA is generally against it. You know, I kind of counted up the number of NFL stadiums and there's, I think there's about 10 stadiums out of the 32 that have synthetic turf. Now, when you're at a dome, unless you have the $100 million roll in and roll out and I make that budget number up, but like Las Vegas does and like Phoenix does, you're not gonna retrofit a stadium to do that. You can do it with pans and things and to roll turf in and out, but when you're in the Northern climates, nothing's growing in Indianapolis or in Green Bay or anything. So it really doesn't do you any good to take it outside. So there are the theories anyway and some of the feelings that natural grass is a little more forgiving than the synthetic. And it all depends on the synthetic and it all depends on the natural grass. You know, when you're playing on the frozen tundra in Green Bay and that, if that's frozen solid, it's not a very forgiving surface, but there are part of the newer versions of synthetic turf allow you to put a pad underneath it and help with that concussion problem. It allows you to put different infills in so that your feet grip. There's cleat, you know, there's research done on the cleats of shoes and whether they grab too much or slip too much, it's all become sort of science now. And it's way beyond my pay grade. - Same. - But that's part of the deal. And I think that FIFA and a bunch of the soccer folks, especially from Europe, don't want to play in synthetic turf. - Kind of a preference. And I think for a facility like this, who's obviously not at a high level of FIFA or the NFL, you know, they really, I think the main points that you said, it was like rain, right? Rain outs, like since it's mostly tournaments and traveling, that's horrible for the families, the people that are staying here, all that kind of stuff. So that's a big piece of it. And to your point was like maintenance, I feel like as well, right? There's less no mowing, you know, I feel like you save a lot of money on that side of things. So that's, I think it's, in my opinion, it's preference, right? - Right. It's really hard to prove whether somebody's getting injured more, the play's that different on turf versus grass. Unless there's studies out there, I'd love to see them. But I think it really comes down to preference. And for a facility like this, it's mostly youth or, you know, low in a competitiveness, it's more about people want to play. They're not worried about the actual turf they're playing on. And so as long as it's not raining them out and they're able to play, then that's really what they care about. - Right, exactly. - Yeah, cool. So some of the other things we talked about a little bit earlier was, you know, lighting. And so I know you mentioned you did the fencing first, you know, you then went in with the turf. Was the lighting done at the same time? You mentioned, you know, LED versus normal lighting. So we're gonna get into another battle of what's right. - Well, and so, yeah, so the next project, after we did all the fencing and the back stops, we did dugouts and we did seating and shade as part of that seating for all 24 fields. We came in to do, really renovate this facility. And so there was a whole team of architects and engineers and different people, playground designers and everything to renovate this. And part of it was the sports lighting. And the older sports lighting was not bad. It was still good technology, but it wasn't new technology. And the light levels had degraded a little bit. And so we've replaced everything with LED. So it does help with, you know, your operating costs, obviously, it's nice that there's incredible cutoff. I won't get into the dive into the details of that, but in the old days, that field, just the back lighting in the spill from those lights would light this whole area up at night. It's dark here. We have to have our own whole set of lights to put light on this. And so behind those poles, it's really dark. And so that creates its own issues as well, 'cause we used to rely on that spill for concourse lighting and other things. And now it's no longer there. - Yeah, so that's a negative in some degree. - It is in some degree. Now, neighbors will love it because, you know, and in a facility like this, where you have multiple fields all playing at the same time, the spill, the light that shines, you know, kind of horizontally that would be in your eyes. So if you're on an outfield here and you're looking at a pop fly from over there, those lights aren't gonna blind you now with this new LED technology. It's so focused on the field that you don't have that glare. You don't lose the ball in lights from a different field. And that's also the positive for, if we had neighbors here, we don't have any neighbors here, but we've got, there's a number of facilities that are built with neighbors, you know, a hundred feet away in houses. And so that's one of their biggest complaints. They can't really complain about it anymore. Now they just complain about noise and cheering for it. - There's always some kids here. So then financially, it's, it sounds like there's a lot of benefits, a couple of negatives you have to put more lighting in in some scenarios, 'cause you're not getting that spillover. But financially, you know, is it worth it in your opinion to go LED today? Even it may take several years to pay for it. - Yeah, it'll take a long time. I mean, depending on how old your lights were that you're replacing, if they were only five or 10 years old, those were pretty efficient lights. And so the cost savings probably isn't gonna pay for itself for 10, 15, maybe 20 years. But these new LED lights will last, you know, I won't say forever, but a lot longer without having to be relamped. The other ones had, you know, sort of big bulbs that would have to be relamped, you know, every thousand hours of use or whatever their number was. I don't know exactly what it is, but they'd have to be relamped, depending on how much you use. So like Shields, the Orland Park Soccer, they run their facilities so often or so much that they have to relamp much more often than a typical high school or, you know, even colleges do, or even a parks and rec kind of facility. 'Cause this place will shut down from November through March, virtually shut down. And they don't. I mean, they practice 12 months a year and they have those lights on all the time. And so they relamp all the time and so that's why we're going through an RFP to relamp or to redo the lighting at Shields with Mike, you know, as we speak. - So it depends on the facility, their kind of their planning and whether, how much they use it and all that. - Yeah, the more you use it, the more savings you get. - Okay. - Believe it or not, you know, it's kind of a weird little play there, but the more you use it, the more it helps. And really, the other part is the quality of light and the uniformities, you have to see them side by side or go from one facility to the next, you know, in the same night. And it's pretty remarkable how much better the light is. - That's awesome. Well, so since we're talking about kind of like finances and, you know, kind of cost savings and things like that, what are some of the things that a facility should think about when it comes to financial planning for a revamp or, you know, building out something like this from the beginning, like what are some of the top things that, hey, when you're planning out your finances for your project, these are the things you need to consider. - Yeah, I mean, other than, I mean, we all, every architect and engineer is gonna come to you with initial costs of how to construct this and how to build it in or how to demo something and take it out. The real issue that I think people forget about is while they are reducing the amount of water and fertilizer and other things that they're gonna put on their lawn and they don't have to mow anymore, they still have to do a little bit of maintenance, but in 10 years, you're gonna have to replace that tour and that's not cheap. And so it's always better, Mike over at Shields knows that and he's been putting money away. The guys here with Johnson County, they know that and so they are gonna start to put money away and so that in 10 years, they can replace the turf. So that's like the big ticket item. Everything else is to try to, when we do new facilities, we try to design ball plexes like this so fields are close enough together so we can share light poles and you don't have six or eight per field. The ones that are in between, you can share that pole and light from both directions. So there's things like that that have been the issue forever. A lot of times we know with soccer, soccer in La Crosse is becoming a much bigger sport now, but even if it's just soccer, you play a lot of small-sided games where they're not the full length, you don't really need the full length field. And so you gotta be able to flip the fields 90 degrees and run smaller, you know, smaller sides, you know, up to a three-on-three and you may have like 12 or 16 fields for one field. So take that into consideration. The other part of that is when the younger your kid, the kids that are playing, the more people come to watch. So grandpas and grandmas come and watch those games and it's like the tee ball when you do a little tee ball field, you'll have more people for that field watching that game than you will for two high school baseball games. Because not everybody's gonna travel. And it's, you know, Johnny or Susie's first game and everybody wants to see it, so. - So we talked about, you know, the turf and putting money away that's always makes sense, right? Save for future maintenance. So maintenance, obviously, number one, lighting, turf, you know, is there any others that you think are like big ticket items when you're designing or re-ramping a facility? - No, I mean, that's the biggest thing. I mean, those are the big ones. I mean, the parking, you always try to allow yourself to have, to add parking, you know, it's an old saying now in the real estate business, but you don't, you really hate to build your parking lot for the day after Thanksgiving. Now with, you know, all the online buying and stuff, it's not as big a deal. But in the old days, you would, you know, that day after Thanksgiving, parking lots at all the malls were just packed. And so what you don't want to do is that you may have three tournaments here a year that are just massive. And so if you build enough paved parking for that, you're only gonna use 50, 60, 70% of that the rest of the year. So if you can try to, to allow for some grass parking, you know, that's just some overflow parking, you know, other facilities have arrangements with other facilities nearby that maybe you can park there and shuttle people back and forth. Those sorts of things kind of help you long term. But you gotta have to think long term. And a lot of it's league versus tournament. And the other thing is try to build in flexibility with field size. So this, they will, they have temporary fences that are, you know, they're just stored and they'll put them out on this field so that this can be a 200 foot field. So when they get the fields on the other side of the road down at Turft and a permanent 200 foot field and they put the temporary fences here, you know, you've got 20 fields, 200 foot. And especially for girls, fast pitch, softball, I mean, that really gets you all the way through college. And so, you know, the thought is you can have high school college showcases, you can have big tournaments, all kinds of things open up for you. And they do big tournaments here during the summer. But some of that flexibility, because when you, on those 200 foot fields, you can't play men's softball on it. It's too small. But you could always take those fences up and do it here. - That's one of the things I always say is like, try and be flexible, right? If you can have a volleyball court, be a basketball court, in a pickleball court, be a foot saw court, like, yeah, be flexible because you never know what you may wanna do or need to do in the future. - Yeah, and pickleball and tennis are a perfect example. And I don't know if tennis is gonna come back and I don't know if pickleball is ever gonna go out of favor. I mean, today it doesn't look like, it looks like tennis will be steady at a small rate and pickleball is only gonna grow, but nothing is forever. So I always look at when we do tennis courts and pickleball courts, let's make sure that we're, we can restripe in the future if we need to. - Yeah, that's great. So what's something, you know, when a facility comes to you and they're like, hey, we wanna do X, Y, and Z. Is there something you wish they'd have thought about or like planned more in advance before they come to you? - You know, not really, 'cause most of them come to us without any knowledge. It's nice when they know how to run it, when they know how they're gonna run concessions. You know, there's a newer, you know, doing the grab and go now like a, you know, like a quick trip model where you just go in and grab food and go to a station. A lot of that is driven by the difficulty in getting staff to run a concession stand and having a full kitchen. So this facility has a nice full kitchen and that was part of the reason they built this and rebuilt the whole facility was to have different food offerings. And so it's hard to retrofit that if you start with the plate old concession stand that has, you know, you've got ref rooms on one side and you've got just the concessions on another and you've, yeah, in your window and you've got hot dog rollers and popcorn and it's hard to put a full kitchen in there. And so knowing that sort of food service is important to know ahead of time and not figure that out later. But most of the time it seems like most people understand now what they need, at least from the big level and they don't know how to design it and how to carry it out but carry it through construction. But they know everyone seems to be much more educated than they used to be. Now we still do get people, and this is the one thing that is interesting is that these kinds of facilities are not just cash cows. Everybody thinks, 'cause I have calls from people in rural areas that say, 'Hey, I've got 40 acres and I've seen my kids go play baseball at this other place. I want to build one of those and just start raking in the cash.' And, you know, so when you start to tell them how many millions of dollars it's gonna take, they get kind of quiet and say, 'Well, yeah, maybe that's not.' So what if I don't do turf? How much is natural grass? It's like, and so it's significantly less but it's not, you know, and you still have parking. And you still have your buildings and you still try to do batting cages and warm-up areas. And the square footage doesn't go down. It's just the square foot for that turf. And then you have the, you're taking the risk of losing rainouts. So, yeah, that makes sense. So you mentioned food and beverage, you know, how does that play into when you're designing facilities, talking turf, lighting, you know, how does food and beverage play into like, what a facility should be thinking about when they're designed? Well, and so, yeah, yeah, so food and beverage is big. I mean, that's really where most of these folks will make money. And, you know, the fees and everything, the tournaments, those will cover officials, they'll cover the staff to kind of clean the place. But if you want to make money over that, a lot of times it's food and beverage. And so when we do these, the designs, when it's multi-fields, such as this, we try to funnel people through very select spots. So that when you either take gate and you control everybody, you don't want to have five gates and have to have five people try to take, you know, five bucks ahead or 10 bucks and hope that that works. We've got everybody coming through one gate here. And so part of the design of this was as you come in that gate, the first thing you see at a distance is this facility, which is food and beverage. And so that's always an issue. And when you turn down each alley, you can see that, well, I don't know if you can see that the distance. As you turn down there, that was very specific that when you walk down there to get to those four fields, it says concessions. You know, restrooms are on the other side. You don't walk into the place and say, "Well, restry." It's like, "I can't wait." And so both sides do that. And so the buildings actually mirror each other and they are so that they say concessions. And we try, if you can, to put a facility like this in a location where everybody passes back throughout. So it's, you know, the old Disney mousetrap where Billy and Susie want to get that power aid or whatever the drink or the cotton candy or whatever it is as they pass through. And so you start that with your design. Now upgrading the type of food offerings is different. And that just means you probably means a bigger building. You've got other infrastructure underground to take care of, you know, the cooking waste and that sort of thing. You know, the one thing that came up here that we underestimated a little bit is when they run these big national, regional, national men's softball tournaments, they're able to sell a lot of beer. And coupled with the fact that there, a few years ago, there were the driver shortages. And so where you would normally have, you know, the Budweiser truck come up every day, pick up old empty kegs and take them back and give you new ones. They said, we're delivering on Thursday night and we're coming back Monday. So we got to give you all those kegs right now. And yeah, and so storage, and even storage for the empties was a problem. And so we've built some ancillary facilities, just fenced in areas that are kind of out of sight that we can store those empty kegs. - Things I would not have thought about. - No, and you know, we didn't even think about it. And a lot of it really came from that trucker shortage. You know, truck drivers were just in a shortage back at the sort of, as we came out of the pandemic. I don't think it's as big an issue now, but. - Something to definitely think about. And so to kind of recap that is, since food and beverage is such a big piece and makes most of the money, putting it forefront right when they walk in, seeing it here, seeing it there, making it easy. And it seems like, like you said, hot dog rollers and popcorn, when I grew up, it was a grab the candy bar or whatever, right? But now it's a little bit more expanded. Like we're here all day, give me something good to eat, give me some barbecue. And so taking it and making it a little bit nicer and offering better food. - Right, yeah. And so we've got smokers here. We've got allocations to have smokers here. And as you know, being from Kansas City, that smoke wafts throughout the whole area and it makes you more hungry and it's awesome. And even at older facilities that we've done, even if you just bring a little Weber grill out and start to grill burgers and hot dogs, that's a better offering than something you're getting off of a flat top. And so those things matter. So if we incorporate it, it just makes it easier to run, easier to clean the whole thing, just makes it much more efficient. - Sure. So for most of the facilities you work with, do you see any sort of like new technology or anything that's being infused with some of these facilities? - Well, we see some outside of the technology of the LED lights. There are, we have cable that goes to the front desk so that there can be point of sale there. So when people come in, and that can come back to wherever the brains are in this building. And so there's some of that technology, check into your teams and all that sort of thing, try to do that much more electronically. We've, we're also looking at, there are some facilities that will have some cameras on every field. And so, so that grandma and grandpa from North Dakota that can't drive down for the tournament can get into a little subscription and watch the kids play on the field. We don't have that here yet, but I think that's in the makings. And I know that Shields is looking at, and a lot of those places are that run those tournaments. Colleges tend to do that, I think is, I think they are forced to do that by their, their... - Yeah, even my, you know, my nephews, I was able to watch as high school games live. You know, they're doing the high school level now for sure. So with cameras, obviously you need Wi-Fi. So that's probably a big... - Well, and Wi-Fi is, yeah, is required everywhere now. I mean, it's gotta be everywhere. I don't know the specifics of it, but I know that it's, you know, wherever you put it, it's like it's not enough now. Because now there's too many people on it. They know there's Wi-Fi here, so now it's really slow. And so, so whatever that, whatever that technological innovation is, you gotta do more of it. And so you gotta figure on more of it. I would tell people to always run bunches of spare conduits when they're running, you know, wiring to light poles, run an extra conduit, and just try to run it throughout the whole facility because you just never know. You don't really wanna break up any concrete to get into the building. And so you just have conduit out of the building, out of the back, and so you can route it around. So we do that pretty regularly on all of our sports facilities underneath running tracks at high schools and everything. We always have extra conduit so that you don't ever disturb some of the hard escape that's put in play. - That's great. So what's one thing that you don't wanna hear when a facility comes to you for a redesign or planning project? - Well, so there's one thing that makes me nervous. And sometimes it works out great. Sometimes it doesn't. And it's when somebody comes to us and says we wanna do this new facility and we've got a lot of our own volunteers that are gonna help do it. And so I've had some that does, that works out great. And they know their place. They'll come in, you know, we get in the remote areas, we'll get farmers that come and move dirt basically for free. And, you know, you can't get that in town here anyway. And so you kind of have to be careful. And what I always caution people is that volunteer labor is great. I mean, take advantage of it as you can, but volunteer anything is volunteer. And it doesn't necessarily come on your schedule. So if you're in a deadline and you wanna get this field done quick or this facility done quick, that may not happen because somebody may have to go out of town along the business trip. And so then they can't be there that weekend. And so that really puts you behind. But that's the scary one. - Well, yeah, and we run into this a lot with events. I work with a lot of non-profits and they're like, we're gonna have 30 volunteers, 40 volunteers. And I'm always like, well, what happens if they don't show up? And well, they don't have a backup plan. And what happens is most of the time they don't show up. And so I always tell them, you know, the best way to guarantee somebody shows up is to pay 'em. And you want them to do the best job ever, pay 'em well. - You see exactly, that's exactly right. - Yeah, and we do have, a lot of times we'll do fields where we're converting, you know, the sacred football field of some high school into synthetic turf. And everybody wants a, you know, I know everybody's gonna want a piece of the old grass that's on that field. And so we're gonna have, you know, a sod cutter out here and we're gonna, and everybody's gonna take a chunk, put it in their trunk or put it in their pickup. Nobody ever shows up for that, you know. I mean, they just don't. - You got the truck full. - Yeah. And it's like, well, okay, we just wasted a whole weekend and the contractor could have just plowed it all under and taken it away. So those sorts of things, they're kind of funny, but they don't really hurt you that much, but you have to be careful about volunteer labor and getting that. I mean, the other part is some of the, if I have a local contractor that does certain trades, so some of the concrete, curbing, some of the grating, so the precision that you need with the synthetic turf is far beyond doing a parking lot curb. It's far beyond, you know, the asphalt and your parking lot is nothing near what you need to do for a high school running track. The precision that you need for some of those facilities is well beyond what a lot of the normal contractors can do. And that's why there's specialists that just build tracks and fields and courts. And that's all they do. And so you have to be aware of some of that, hey, I got a local guy that will do this for me. A local guy that wants to do some of the landscaping, that's fine, you know, but beyond that, you just got to be careful. - That makes sense. Going back to the Wi-Fi real quick, I had a thought, and I know a lot of facilities miss out on this, but have you ever seen the facilities who like me can put an email in or, you know, to get access to the Wi-Fi? And I know you're not a Wi-Fi expert, but I always find that, I feel like it's a missed opportunity, right? You have thousands of people here. And most of the time, if it's a tournament organizer that's running it all at you, is the facility don't get their information and they're contacted by, which is valuable, right? - Yeah. - It's a facility. And so my thought is always like, why aren't they gating this with an email or a phone number to access the Wi-Fi? And so I didn't know if that came up at all in any year. - It doesn't to me. - You know that a landscape architect isn't the Wi-Fi or I get it. - But that's, yeah. So I mean, you know, keep doing those podcasts and tell the guys that operate. I mean, to me, that's kind of the magic, to be honest with you. I think my job's easy compared to what they do. And that really makes the place operate. You know, without people here and without the revenue, it doesn't really, it doesn't matter how great this is, but. - Other than volunteers, is there any strange request? Like what's the strangest request you've got from a facility? - You know, I really haven't had that many strange requests. I think you get more of those at the higher levels with, you know, when you're doing suites and when you're doing, you know, coaches, boxes and things and in something that's regarding recruiting, you know, with these rec level things, there really isn't, I mean, we do have some of the groundspeople that think that they would love this whole thing to be concrete and so they wouldn't have to mow at all. But as you can see, they do a great job here and, but it's maintenance and everybody has pressure to keep your costs down and that's one thing. So it's not a weird request, but it's, yeah, I don't really have any weird request. I wish I did. - Well, that's not, no, that's not a bad thing at all. So, you know, if you started all over today with facility design, obviously the world's changed a lot since 1985, you know, what would be one thing you do differently? - I, you know, I don't know if I would, you know, I kind of look back and think I would, I would have maybe taken a different path and kind of looked at things, but things have worked out pretty well for me and so I don't know that I would change that as much. I think that really the, you know, the computer aided technology of doing drawings and things kind of happened shortly after I came out into the world. We had none of that kind of stuff in school. And so we were, you know, everybody from my age and older really is at a disadvantage when it comes to that sort of technology. I've embraced it and I do a lot of that CAD work myself now. I wish I had gone a little bit further and knew a little bit more and did more 3D renderings. So the architecture firm that did all the vertical stuff here, you know, they've got a guy that built the whole facility in 3D and some of his original pictures, especially like of this facility. You know, there'd be a picture out there looking through here and I look at those old renderings from three or four years ago and think, is that a picture or is that real? And it's gotten that good. So that would be good because what I do know is that facility owners, for the most part, have a difficult time reading blueprints and plans. And so stuff that we draw in 2D, you know, I will draw a circle or a square or a field. And instantly in my mind, it's all in three dimensions. I mean, it looks like that, you know, I can visualize the backstop and everything. Nobody else can do that. I mean, not nobody else. But the non-designed professional doesn't see it that way. And so being able to show that in a 3D format, and it's, you know, it's getting better and better and faster and faster and cheaper for us to do. It used to be you'd have to hire an artist to spend a week, you know, trying to draw, you know, a helicopter shot. We didn't have drones then either. So those are new. But yeah, so that's probably all I would do. I mean, I really wouldn't change a whole lot. I think my, you know, your path from big firm to little firm is all of just personal preference, whether you like it or not. I mean, there are times that I love being on my own. There are times I hate it. But, and there was the same way with a big firm. There were times that I loved it and times that I hated it. And so it's, I wouldn't change anything. I'd probably get into the technology a little bit sooner. I mean, especially when a technology first starts, you don't know if it's a fad or a real technology. And so we were not real sure, 'cause at the time the computer aided drafting took a long time. It was not faster than hand drafting. And so most of the people were like, you know, I'm out. That doesn't really seem to be very promising. Now it's nobody draws by hand or hardly. So, so you've done baseball, soccer, tennis, pro level, you know, pickleball, the different things. So what does the next three years look like for you and BSR design? - Well, it's, you know, like I said, this thing, the next complex is over the next couple of years, two or three years of the softball and baseball. And there are football conversions from natural grass to synthetic. That happens, you know, all the time. And, you know, in my sort of radius of where I'll work is, you know, four or five hours, six hour drive, radius kind of thing, actually more than that probably. But that's what I see a lot of, you know, I do see, I see people keep on building sports facilities. I mean, the colleges keep upgrading and I think it just sort of keeps ratcheting up. There will potentially be another facility that wants to compete with this facility that has to get designed. And so it's those sorts of things just seem to keep coming. I don't typically try to count on it. And I wouldn't tell you that I can predict the future. You know, when I left Populus, because I was a little bit more tired of travel than anything, I kind of thought, you know what? The, all the NFL stadiums are new now and they're all been rebuilt. Division one colleges have got to stop at some point. You know, that was 25 years ago. I was definitely wrong about that. So I'm not going to prognosticate or what's going to happen by any means, but that's what I would see. And I think that I think things are still going to keep growing and things are more fan focused now than they used to be. You know, my focus has always been because it's at the rec level on the play itself. And so the priorities start inside the fence and then kind of move out beyond that. And I think once you get to the higher level, it's all fan experience and there's a lot more. So I just kind of do sort of the basic stuff and the real, the real new cool stuff is based around the fan experience and keeping those people engaged. I'm a baseball guy. So I hope that baseball looking forward to it moving downtown. I don't know if that's a reality or not, but I think there's a lot of energy with baseball and, you know, being next to a place like a power light and energizing those areas. I don't see that with footballs because you're only playing, you know, eight. Yeah, I agree. I think with that many games a year, you want people to come. You got to put it closer to everybody. And so having a downtown, you get tourism, you get the people that are living down there, whereas like the chiefs stay in, which I'm a huge chiefs guy. And like, I want to go and tailgate and be at the park and you want the space. And so I think it's definitely a different experience. But well, if you're a facility manager or owner, hopefully you got something out of the design planning from this with Vance. Thank you so much for coming on. If you're looking to manage your facility, your reservations, your memberships, your lessons, camps, clinics, and more, check out facilityally.com. If you're looking to learn more about facility management, design, and more, make sure you check out the next episode of Facility Playbook. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks, Rav. See you next week.