EPISODE 4: Planning for Growth | Craig Van Pelt

Craig Van Pelt has worn a lot of different hats. Hear how Craig moved from his early days as a city planner to his current role as a commercial real estate expert. He’s made some unique stops and learned some helpful lessons along the way.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Craig Van Pelt has worn a lot of different hats. Hear how Craig moved from his early days as a city planner to his current role as a commercial real estate expert. He's made some unique stops and learned some helpful lessons along the way.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Think about it how an occupier or a company would look at space and what are those decisions now. And they're becoming more and more complicated.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Welcome to New Least On, where we talk about the latest in least accounting and least administration and share stories of changes in perspective and new beginnings. I'm your host, Matt Waters. Let's dive in. Craig, welcome to New Lease On.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Well, thanks, Matt. I'm happy to be here. It's always fun to do these podcasts. It says it's uh nice to uh be able to talk a little bit about what I do and kind of where we're coming from and certainly interesting times right now, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Oh, for sure. So I mentioned Craig is in research and uh it's commercial real estate related. And so we're gonna talk in a moment about hot topics and commercial real estate leasing. But first, Craig, let's get to know you a little bit. I know you started out your career in a consulting capacity and you've made a few shifts along the way. Tell us a little bit about that. How'd you go from consulting and end up where you are today?

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Well, there's even a little bit before that. I was an urban planning major in college. I always was really fascinated with urban design and physical space, really, and how it impacts our our lives. And one of my really influential books to me was uh Jane Jacobs, who wrote a if you're in the urban planning world, you know, she wrote The Life and Death of Great American Cities, which is still one of my favorite books, even though I think she's half Canadian, but she still you know wrote this book about America. But what was really cool about it was from my opinion, I'm kind of a nerd about these things, but it was talking about how physical space and how public versus private space can make our lives better or make it worse. And that kind of fascinated me from a design standpoint. And you know, there's real power in that. When I was an undergrad, I was in finance, I was in computer science for a while. I got finance minor, but I ended up in urban planning, and my first gig, in fact, out of school was as a city planner. So I was a city planner down in a city called Port St. Lucie, Florida, in southern Florida, for a couple of years. I worked down there doing what city planners do. I did a lot of growth management plans, I reviewed a lot of zoning applications, that sort of thing. But it gave me a real understanding of either working in the public sector, how stuff gets done. So I was there for a couple of years, and then I had some friends in Chicago who worked for a consulting firm. They're like, you know, we have a real estate services group at one of this firm, so they pay a little bit better, honestly. That wasn't the real one of the reasons, but it's one of the reasons.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Yeah, it doesn't hurt.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

No, and so uh this will age me a little bit, but I worked for Arthur Anderson. I got hired by Arthur Anderson, which is one at the time, is one of the six big accounting firms. I think there's four now, but at the time there were six, and I worked in the real estate services group, which essentially was appraisal work. I did a lot of portfolio, office, and industrial appraisal work, and that was a really good area for me to learn about underwriting, about learning financial modeling, investing, divesting the properties. It was honestly a great crash course just for me to kind of understand how all these things work. And I was there for three or four years, and then a little something called Enron happened. Again, if you're not old enough, you kind of know what that even means. But Enron, Arthur Anderson was the accounting firm for Enron, which was an energy company down and based down in Houston that was involved with some fraud, and our firm was uh the auditors, so it was big enough at the time. We were, I mean, I don't know how many people were to Arthur Anderson at the time, but well over 50,000 people, and within a matter of months, that went away. So very quickly, so this was in gee, 2002. I'm a proud gen Xer, right? So when I graduated, I didn't have a cell phone or an email address in undergrad. Really happened just after me. The internet bubble just burst, I just lost this job, and but I landed very quickly on my feet at a boutique consulting firm in Chicago, where I stayed for over 10 years. And there one of the principals was a city planner, and the other one was a lawyer. Uh, but what we did there was we did a lot of highest and best use kind of cases scenarios for clients. We're looking to develop a piece of property. We did a lot of site selection. But one thing that we did that was very niche is we were expert witnesses in cases involving some sort of property diminish. So, for example, we were involved with there's a class action lawsuit after Hurricane Katrina. This class action was brought against the US Army Corps of Engineers, a bunch of other companies as well, mostly in response to the levies. That's neither here nor there. But in these kinds of cases, we would look at hey, what were the property values before an event like Katrina, and then look at them after. So we do these really in-depth case studies that took years to kind of play out. And that's really where I got into data and analytics and kind of the research of things, and I really enjoyed it. We did a lot of those kinds of things for I was there for well, I was there for a long time, so I must have somewhat enjoyed it. But then I went and got my MBA at that time. I thought I needed another degree if I was going to continue doing that kind of work. But then my wife, I got married during that time and had a kid, and my wife got transferred. We were in Chicago down to Atlanta, so we moved down to Atlanta, and my wife took this new role. We had a small kid, and I worked remotely for a while down there, but I was looking for something else. I just finished my degree, so I had all this commercial real estate knowledge. I had done a lot of these deep research things over years, and to be honest, I think I'd heard of Cornet Global, but I don't know if I knew them that well. And Cornette Global happens to be based in Atlanta, and the role came up about it's called these knowledge communities. So I was the director of research for the knowledge communities. So what does that mean? So so now I go in for this association, and it was really a cool gig, right? Because I got to work with some really the leading experts around the world on different topics like sustainability and workplace solutions, portfolio planning, supply chain. So we would work together in these little groups and we'd produce content. It might be a white paper, it might be some sort of survey, but it was taking a topic that was interesting or timely, and then we would turn that around. And I wrote most of the stuff, and we worked in collaboration with a lot of great people to do these reports. Yeah, that's how I got into research, and that ultimately led me to JL in Atlanta, and I was directing research for the Southeast for JL, and I had like 10 people on my team, right? Those are good times in pre-COVID days, and then again I followed my wife, Matt. So she got a gig up in Nashville. So we moved to Nashville, and I worked remotely from there for a while, leading a lot of business development, quarterly reporting, and different types of things for JL. And then Crescer reached out about four years ago. So they had a national role to really put a flag down for research because it had been done on kind of an ad hoc basis before that, meaning local offices would do some research on their own, or there would be a few white papers here and there, but there was no real central source of knowledge or reporting or well, just research, right? So I came on board and then they hired me. And really, that's kind of started this journey where I've been. It's an interesting job because coming from JLL, coming from Cournet, you know, it's really an opportunity just to think about things through an occupier's view. Not so much interested in investors or landlord work. And when you pull all those things together from a research standpoint, it gets a little muddy because you have conflicting. Right. You don't need to say the real estate market in some market is terrible. If you're also trying to lease space a market, that's now that's not a good thing for a research person to say, maybe, but that's kind of the reality of that kind of those kinds of gigs. And Cressa, I really had an opportunity to come in and and just focus on occupiers. And I didn't take anyone's role. This role didn't exist. I got to pretty much define and talk about what whatever interested me, but more importantly, what would impact and be helpful for for our clients. So yeah, and four years in, we've done quite a bit in that time just to try to really raise brand awareness for Crescer because there wasn't a lot around thought leadership before this role was developed. So yeah, it's a short slash long version of where I came to be. And it's a cool place, a cool role right now. I really like it because it gives me enough opportunity to see what is something really interesting going on in the marketplace right now. Think about it, how an occupier or a company would look at space and what are those decisions now? And they're becoming more and more complicated as the days and years go by, especially, especially now.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

So for sure, yeah. Craig, I love that story. I actually have a follow-up question, but first I want to say we have a few intersections there that I didn't know about before. One, I was also uh somewhat caught up in the Enron scandal. I had my first big, like real job in accounting in 2001. I was an intern at a big five accounting firm at that time, and I was a consulting intern, right? I wasn't an auditor, I was a consultant. And the partner called me into his office and said, Hey, this thing happened in you know, Texas, this is called Enron, and we're not sure we're gonna be consultants anymore. So unfortunately, we can't make you a full-time offer. And you know, I just my hopes were dashed, right? As a newly graduated, you know, newly married at that time, had to go home and tell my wife we had these things mapped out, these plans mapped out, and everything's changed now, right? And it was a huge disappointment. But now I see that as one of the biggest blessings in my life because what came out of the Enron scandal was the SEC's scrutiny on off-balance sheet financing, which kind of parlayed into changes to lease accounting, which I've basically built my whole career around, right? So, you know, when something like that happens, I think we can see it between the lines in your story too, right? You're not at Arthur Anderson anymore, right? You know, nobody is, but you did use that experience ultimately to work other places at Cornet and then build more experience now at Cressa. And so that's really my question is with those big shifts that you've made, you have such a diverse background. And I'm guessing that everything that you did, even starting with city planning, right? And and then consulting and then Cornet and then real estate firms, how did they prepare you for what you do now?

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Yeah, that's that's a great question. And I think about this also because it's I've written my resume many times in the past, but you know, I've worked for a nonprofit, right? Cornet. I worked for the city, so I worked for the public sector, I worked in the private sector, and a private sector, huge private sector gig at Arthur Anderson, two eight people in the office and a smaller boutique firm. And then even in this current role, I mean, Crest is a mid-sized brokerage firm compared to the other really large ones. I think you take something from all of them. You know, I think the public sector, you've learned how to deal with people, sometimes reasonable, sometimes unreasonable, and you're providing a service to them, right? I mean, that's that's what I always thought about when you I always provide a service, but I mean it's a little different when you work for the for the government in some ways.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

So you take that experience in the process of how hard it is just to get entitlements and zoning changes and all the things that go into doing anything in real estate, or anything in life, really, but in my case, real estate. I I learned all about that through working in city government, right? And then from large firms to small firms, at the end of the day, it's all work, right? But you learn from all those things, and and I understand working in an association, how challenging working for an association can be. I think there's a lot of real goodwill that you're trying to do with that kind of a job that is different when you're working in the private sector trying to make as much money as you can. And also when I pivoted on the research side, I was always on the revenue side of the equation, right? And now I'm on the cost side of the equation. Right. And I hope you do. You have to be thoughtful about that. You need to bring value on both sides, but when you're on the cost side, I'm very intentional about things I do and the clients that I get the opportunity to sit in front of, that I'm bringing something of value that will help us ultimately, oh sir, whoever I'm working with, you know, not just win business, because that's important, but to make the right decision based on whatever my experience is. Yeah, you learn from everything. I've also I've lived in Chicago. I lived in a lot of places. I keep getting to smaller towns, man. I went from Chicago to Atlanta to Nashville to Charleston, South Carolina. I don't know where I go from here. Maybe Alabama.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Yeah. Well, you're welcome to join us in Alabama, but I'll tell you what, I am extremely jealous about the Charleston, South Carolina location because that's one of my favorite places in the world. But yeah, you know, another intersection is Cornet. And even on this season of New Lyson, I've talked with Alec Wynne, who's a real estate broker. And Alec closed the biggest deal of his career that set him up for countless other deals. And he earned a seven-figure commission, he told us on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

That was based on knowledge that he learned from Cornet. And specifically in that learning organization that you talked about, a class that Alec and I now teach together called Real Estate's Impact on Financial Statements. Alec, when he took that class the first time, he picked up some accounting knowledge that helped him close that big deal, right? So all these intersections become just so important. And yeah, just fascinating that you spent time at Cornet. You spent time associated with an accounting firm, and then all of it kind of starts to weave together.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah, it's never part of the plan. It never is, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

A lot of it is just timing and where I was in my life at that point. But yeah, it's led me to a pretty great place. I I literally, this is my I've enjoyed this job as much as I've enjoyed any job. I used to travel 40 weeks a year. Oh wow. I saw 48 states in the continental United States and in Alaska. Never got to Hawaii for that last job. But so that was a good learning experience too. One of my jobs, um, get on a tangent, but I was appraising right-of-ways for railroads. One of them ran from North Platte, Nebraska to Vancouver, British Columbia. So literally, I got in my car, my rental car, and I had to drive, take pictures every so often, and pull comps from North Platte to Vancouver.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

And I saw a lot of America doing that lonely trip, but it was uh it was interesting.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Well, Craig, really appreciate you joining us today. Always a pleasure talking with you. And again, I'm super jealous where you get to live there in Charleston, South Carolina. And hopefully I'll get to visit you sometime. Thanks a lot.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Anytime, Matt. It's a pleasure. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Thank you for joining us. I'd be grateful if you would like and subscribe wherever you listen. Perhaps today is your day to get a new lease on. Would you like to learn more about lease accounting? Check out the CGLA program. That's Certified Global Lease Accountant. You can earn 16 hours of CPE credit, study at your own pace, and earn the CGLA professional designation. Find out more at CGLA Institute.com.