Tampa Bay developer. That's the worst name you would name something if you wanted to get into politics. Our guest today is Garrett Greco, the Joe Rogan of Tampa. I think that these conversations are valuable to be in the light and if I was to stop doing it, that would suck for the public. One of the big reasons I do what I do is I just want more people to give a s*** about local politics. If you want to save the world, you start with your house and your street. You have the option to speak with the mayor of Tampa, Clearwater, St. Pete. Officials from a very low level of city government to obviously the highest level. Do you think Tampa local government is set up right now? Were there to be meaningful change? You've probably seen the administration attack city council. Some particular members of city council attack the administration. That needs to end.
Stefan: You're now tuned in to Only Agents by ASG Luxury Realty. Welcome back to another episode of ASG's Only Agents podcast where we have real guests, real conversations and fake sponsors. Mm-hmm. I'm Stefan Alvarez and with me is my co-host, Alan Schoenbrunn.
Before we get into it, do we have a sponsor today? I mean, the Tampa Bay developer podcast is sponsoring this. I expect a cashier's check at the end of this. Yeah, that's right. Look out for it. Garrett might be our most high-profile guest and I know if things were reversed and we were on his podcast, which maybe one day we'll be able to make it on. Intense. I don't think we are more high-profile than like Jeff Vinik or Cathie Wood, but we're ASG. You guys are in the cut for sure. Don't sell yourself short. The podcast has made it. It's real now. It's real. As we know, our guest today is Garrett Greco and I think it's safe to say you could probably call him the potfather of local Tampa Bay podcast.
It really is unbelievable. The Joe Rogan of Tampa? Yeah. What you've created with the podcast and Tampa Bay developer, but really quick, I was lucky enough to meet you and connect I think like four years ago. Before the pod, yeah. Before the pod existed. I don't know if it was even an idea at that point yet for you, but you were kind of growing the real estate brokerage and that's how we initially connected. And then over the last four years, we've been lucky enough to continue a professional relationship and then grow into a friendship, which has been really cool. And it's been really awesome to see how things have evolved and grown for you from the real estate brokerage to the podcast to we'll get into later on the podcast, but very exciting recent announcement of running for the city wide open seat at city council, that's right, which is very, very exciting.
I think kind of talk about it, but all these things have kind of culminated to that moment, I would say for sure. Yeah. I mean, think about how much has happened in the last four years, right? Even personally, I've gotten married and bought a house and had two children. And then everything in my career too. Four years ago, I started to grow the real estate brokerage here. Stephanie, you were one of my agents. That's right. 18 agents here in the Tampa office. National, right? Association of Realtors lawsuit. We have this weird market shift into kind of what it's evolved into today and I've focused sort of my attention on commercial investments, buying older buildings, fixing them up, leasing them out.
And then all along that journey started the show, right? And it's amazing. Shout out David Deco. He's producing this podcast for you guys. That's right. But David jumped on in the very beginning and having that producer come in and edit the show and dial in the social media, I kind of have to give all the credit to him on the work side of it. I just talk. He does all the work. I mean, at the end of the day, when we were going to start a podcast, I was like, there's only one person. Yeah. The first that I want to talk to you is Steven's even a good idea. I think I reached out to you. 100%. And then second was, can you please introduce us to David? Who's your guy? Yeah. Who's your guy? Well, I mean, David has a lot to make us look good.
David has a great presence on the pot too. I've seen some of the, you guys do some episodes just, just y'all and we rip it. We do a thing called no guests, no filters, where it's just me and David, we shoot the shit. And there's always something to talk about, right? Like, this past week, we had a guest cancel because they got sick, which was interesting because I was sick the week before and I was like, I can't go two weeks without a pod, right?
So I'm like, fire up the mics, let's rip it. And there's always something to talk about. So we chop it up and have a good time. So something's always happened in the city. It's always happened. Yeah.
So I kind of want to take it back to, because I think one of the other things that you and I, four years ago when we first met really bonded about it wasn't just real estate and real estate investment because you do, like you said, have a really keen eye on identifying unique commercial properties, seeing the potential, buying them and improving them, bringing them back to kind of their past glory. But I think we also bonded over the history of Tampa and our family roots going back to my Sicilian grandparents. I was, I was laughing about the story of my grandfather riding a horse in Ybor City when it was just like dirt. And that's how he used to. When was this? Oh, this was when he was a kid.
He was a teenager and he were like in middle school. Got to be maybe before, yeah, 1800s. No, no, no. But they would raise horses in Ybor City. Well, when was your grandfather born? And was he born in Tampa? My grandfather was born in 33. In 1933. He was born in a house in Seminole Heights. Seminole Heights was one of the first suburbs in Tampa.
So all the Latin community had moved up to Tampa Heights, Seminole Heights. And then if you really made it in the Latin community, you got to move to like Beach Park, South Tampa, Swan States. And then some of the people from West Tampa did the same. You know, they went to South Tampa, became doctors and lawyers and all that sort of stuff. Right. Right. Or Davis Islands. Yeah. Because you're your grandpa, right? My grandfather was a Brooklyn guy and then he came to Tampa and I want to say like the 30s right after the Great Depression. And he was born in 1905.
So same year as Columbia, I grew up being like, how old, you know, I always knew how old the grandpa Louis was, because it was the same as the 1905. Easy to remember. Yeah. But my dad was born off Bahamas Circle in 1947.
So I used to live on Bahamas Circle. We were I think he was 51. Bahamas. 51. We were across from the Jeter House kind of category. Yeah. Which sucked because I heard they were going to tear it down. And I was thinking, Jesus Christ. It probably flooded though. Yeah, it definitely did. It actually flooded three months after I moved out. And I wanted to buy it really bad because I loved you. It's probably one of the coolest neighborhoods in Tampa, just the proximity to downtown. It's super easy. They've got their own little village, golf cart lifestyle, right? And obviously the real estate market is super hot there. But a couple of years ago, I put an offer on the house I was in, a house down the street.
I couldn't get anything. And I was paying way more than I probably could afford. But hindsight, thank God, I didn't win any of those bids because the house we moved out of, the lady that had moved in had to get rescued out of the front window.
So and then we moved to Dallas Point, which was great. Water came up on the street, but no further. So yeah, it's but Davis Island is awesome, man. My dad grew up there in the fifties and sixties. He told me that back then, Davis Islands, he said every other lot was was an empty lot. Like really now it's hard to imagine. But back then, it was sort of like it was a cool area, but it was kind of ratty. And, you know, the homes were 15 or 20 didn't have the same cache as it does now. I mean, growing up, I was in North Tampa. I was one neighborhood over from Avila. And I felt like in the 80s and 90s in Tampa, that's where a lot of the athletes and coaches were always in Avila. Davis Island.
So much house over there. Davis Islands was, I'm sure they had some, but now it's like everyone that's an athlete is either there or maybe open water on the other side. It's also all public, right? Like you've got the gas stations and the boat ramp and some of the city parks, whereas a place like Avila or New Tampa, it's all gated communities. That was hot, right? In the 1980s and 90s, people wanted that suburban lifestyle. 14,000 square foot homes. Yeah. Yeah. Which are now 10, 15, 20 years later, all being torn down to build new 15, 20,000 square foot homes. Did you guys get that lot under contract? Was it Adalia? Yeah. Yeah. It's under contract. Amazing. What was the last asking price on that?
8.25 was the last asset. 8.25 for the dirt, right? For dirt for less than half an acre and about 100 feet of open water. But yeah. Yeah. That's one thing that they're not making more of on Davis Islands, which is open water. Right. So. Yeah. They've appreciated so much in the last, jeez, only, it's crazy to think that that appreciation has really occurred in the last maybe six or eight years. Yeah. And 80 Martinique, the Turkels old lot, that just closed for 7.7. For 7.7. Yeah. Allen Mesra was the listing agent for that one and that one closed late July. Martinique has that beautiful full bay view. Sunsets. You can see Bayshore. On Adalia, you're facing Bayshore right there, right? Still a beautiful view.
You get a little bit of both though. So, you get the best of both worlds, I think. It's like you get like a little bit of the downtown skyline and the bridge, but then you've got Bayshore Boulevard right in front of you straight out and then you get the open bay, the mouth of the bay. If you could go over. What's your favorite open water street out of like, you know, like, you know, with Riviera and Ladoga and Blanca. I mean, if you could take your pick, where to be on the open water. On Davis Island. Yeah. It's got to be even Bahama. Bahama is beautiful too. Kind of that angle towards south on Bayshore. I love, like in the evening time when the sun is setting and the buildings on Bayshore are illuminated and you can see Bayshore Boulevard.
It's so pretty, man. And interestingly, it's some of the rarest real estate in Tampa because we have Bayshore Boulevard. You don't get any waterfront availability. You have it all, you know, then you have the air base. Yeah. Right. Right. And then West Shore Yacht Club and all those apartments down south.
So, outside of Davis Islands, you have what? You have Beach Park and just a couple of those like finger like kind of, you know, but waterfront in Tampa is rare, really. And rivers has always been sort of like you got, you got to kind of have a particular kind of personality. Yeah, once you get down under the bridge over there, which I love, I love it down there. I love it. You've got friends that live on the river in the Heights. We looked at a house up there and you can get some elevation on your property, which is kind of cool. And some people have those terraced gardens going down the river, which I love too. Yeah. But yeah, it's a rare breed. I think they're really neat. Well, so we talked about obviously your roots in Tampa, but I mean, it wasn't always, because you were born in Tampa, but then you moved away for a little bit.
Do you think your family roots and your love for the history of Tampa, that's you always kind of knew like you wanted to come back? I can tell us how you ended up back in Tampa. Yeah. I mean, my long story short, my parents split when I was young and I moved to Sarasota with my mom. I'm an only child sort of raised by a single mom, but I was 10 years old when I left Tampa and I was, I remember crying on the, on when I was leaving, going down to Sarasota and being so upset because growing up here as a little kid, you know, my dad was a judge and my grandfather was the mayor and I would get to go and meet all these really interesting people that ran the city or were influential or business owners or whatever.
Right. And I felt really connected to this place. And plus my great grandmother used to watch me after school and she was actually born in a house in Ibor city. And so she would tell me stories of her and her husband's hardware store they owned on 8th Avenue and she would tell me about the lamp lighters on 7th Avenue before Ibor was electrically lit. Right.
So she would have all these stories she would share with me. I just felt really connected to this place. And so leaving when I was 10, it was just like heartbreaking for me. So I go down to Sarasota and it's a bunch of older people. I go to this private school where I know, you know, nobody except my cousins who went to that school. I just felt out of place. I don't know. The kids would say I looked foreign. I kind of had like darker, even more dark features when I was younger. And I think a lot of those kids were like Anglo. You know, in Tampa, that like Alvarez or these Latin last names were very common. Alvarez and then my grandparents and my mom's side was Lorenzo. Lorenzo. The Italian Sicilian side.
And a lot of those names had became successful in Tampa. A lot of the doctors and lawyers and all that share that legacy. Right. And in Sarasota, it was like all these Midwestern people or people from other parks. Retirees, maybe? Yeah, kind of thing. It was just this a little bit of a culture shock being down there. And I didn't feel like it was home.
So as soon as I got down there, I was like, I gotta make it back to Tampa. So it took me a long time. I mean, it took me 15 years and middle school, high school, college, and then. We're doing college. Florida State. You went to Florida State. Go Noles. Go Noles. At a great time, too. We had Jamis Winston National Championship. I was that was perfect. It was amazing. What year did you graduate? 15. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It took five years. I was there. I was there during like the Chris Ricks White Sexton. No. It was a mess. The football team was horrible. I was fortunate enough to be there in an unbelievable football era. That was like our friends. Our friends that went to UF because we were 03 to 07.
Exactly. For college. So that was when I was in high school and even in high school, Florida was like obviously massive at that time. They had two national basketball titles and then two football titles. Well, Tim Tebow at that time was such an electric type of person. He was just like America's freaking guy. Oh yeah. Yeah. But anyway, you know, after college, moved back with my mom, saved up a little money. And then as soon as I could move back to Tampa, I did.
So my then girlfriend, now wife, moved to Tampa in late 2017. I didn't know anyone and it was a long time ago, right? So my grandfather was last elected in 1999. My aunt said moved away. Couple cousins had moved away. I moved back really not knowing anybody. I mean, although my last name goes way back and I didn't have the high school friend. I didn't have any of that. It was kind of like moving to a new city even though you had this like family connection to it. It was like moving to a new city because I didn't know anybody. However, I loved it. Just being back in Tampa and Ebor and like we said, it felt like home. It felt like home. Yeah. For sure. Your mom had been doing residential real estate already.
Yeah. For quite a while. Forever. So she used to work at Bayshore Title Insurance Company on Henderson. So I remember she would take me in there and they would have these Otis sponkermire cookies you'd put in the oven. They still have the cookies out there. They do. I just did a closing at Tampa Title. They had the same damn cookies. We did a closing at Tampa Title. They had the same thing. Yeah. I walked in and I was like, those are the Otis sponkermire cookies. Wow. Our office just smells too good so we don't do that. That's right. Your office does smell really good. Yeah. But you know, I grew up kind of in that world. My mom did the marketing for them. She was always meeting real estate agents and stuff like that.
And that was in the late 90s and the market was decent at that time. She would do wholesaling on the side. She would take me to these estate sales. My mom has a funny story of me in the back seat when I was like four years old. We drove by house and I say, mommy, that's a three bedroom, two bath, right?
So just like grew up around real estate. By the time I graduated college, my mom was working at Michael Saunders and company in Sarasota. And she was doing really well. She didn't have a team or anything like that at that point. She was on her own. Her volume was like 10 to 15 million, 12 million a year crushing it. She was doing unbelievably well. And I think because I had went to college and taken business courses and stuff like that and was younger, I just saw it from a different lens, right?
And so immediately I was like, why are you giving your broker 30%? I'll get my broker's license. We'll keep that. We'll use it for marketing and advertising and whatever. And that was at the same time. Zillow was really popping up. This was 12 years ago, maybe something like that, right? And I saw a shift where the consumer could have their own knowledge outside of a broker, right? Back then the brokers talked about international affiliations and market reach with the internet. It was kind of a hard sell for an agent 12 years ago.
Now I feel like the business is so much more agent centric. You don't need to be with this powerhouse brokerage. You can sort of self expand your own brand through social media. Social media. I mean, that's why we're sitting here doing what we're doing, right? This is a part of that.
So it took me a few years to convince my mom and some of the people she was working with that that would be a good idea. And I wouldn't screw it up. But eventually I got my broker's license, brought my mom over, brought a couple people she was working with, brought a builder that was working with my mom. And then a few years after that, after I tried to focus on not screwing that up, moved to Tampa, started the brokerage up here, expanded the team and all that sort of stuff ended up with 30 agents. And that's a lot of agents. Yeah, too many. Yeah, too many. Real estate. Look, being an agent is a fantastic business. I still think it is despite all these different market changes. But the brokerage business is really difficult because it's so people centric in an ultra competitive world where so many people have real estate licenses.
There's brokerages can't justify that 30% fee anymore. The number is about 10 to 20. And because I was focusing so much on expanding the brokerage, it was just all management related, people related training, hiring, firing, it was putting out fires. And I just looked at the whole model at the same time the market was shifting at the same time the show was blowing up at the same time I was doing some commercial investing. And I was like, you know what?
So it was like three or four years ago? Two and a half, three years ago. I was like, you know what? I'm going to keep the brokerage obviously, continue to manage that. But we're going to try to whittle down some of our agents, just have a boutique brokerage shop. And then I'm going to go all in on this commercial investing thing.
So that's kind of been the focus of the last three years. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have the kind of same mindset with our team is keeping it very kind of boutique and just small. We're not trying to grow some like massive team with 20 agents or anything like that. That's just not our business. No, no. Not just like collecting desk fees and having hundreds of agents. I mean, that is a model and it can work very well for some, but no. That really is the new form of the brokerage, right? These 100% shops that charge a fee, oftentimes they include a title component, they move their agents to the title. $1,000 per transaction. Exactly. Maybe just give that to the consumer. Right. I just can't imagine that liability with that many agents.
Well, no, that's the other thing that would keep me up. Yeah. You're talking about how like you've been kind of seeing the writing on the wall with certain things and trends and how technology, like with Zillow 12 years ago, I was watching one of your old podcasts that when you had Cathie Wood on, obviously as a finance guy, I've been following Cathie Wood for a long time. She's always been a big Bitcoin, Tesla, like disruptive AI type thing. And she said something about how AI is usually, or how technology is a net gain for jobs.
So job creation comes from technological disruption. How do you see the real estate industry? What jobs are going to be lost? What jobs are going to be gained? Well, how are you trying to position your brokerage and your real estate mentality with the AI that is coming and that's here? I think that for agents, you probably will see your everyday retail transactions shifting to some sort of an AI model generally. But there's also going to be particular people that want to be handheld through a transaction. And I think on the luxury properties, I think on new people moving to a market, they're going to want a human to tell them like what you guys do, right? Where's the best restaurants? What are the most interesting neighborhoods?
Give me some of the history of this place. What are some of the quirks that AI can't tell me? There's always going to be the need for knowledgeable people to help transact property. Generally, though, I could see a situation where, look, I've lived in Tampa, for instance, for 20 years, my wife and I are downsizing, I need an AI model to help me navigate a quick contract on a condo we're buying. I could see a portion of market share being taken by AI, but I don't believe all of it will be taken by AI, especially in the higher end market. If particular people are used to traveling with full service, everywhere you go, you stay at the Ritz Carlton, you're used to that. You have an expectation of service.
Well, those same people, when they go to transact a property, they want that white glove sort of transactional service and AI can't do that. Only a top agent can do that. I think that will always exist. There's always been for sale by owner. There's always, you can list your home on Zillow and stay like that. Definitely Zillow and builder.com and those platforms. They're going to lean more heavily into it, I know, 100% of the Nardi Wallsuit settlement. That was a big push for them. Yeah. I think there could be a portion of market share that grows in that regard, but generally agents are always going to have, a knowledgeable agent is always going to have a place in the market.
So like 10% of the agents. 10%. Yeah. Well, yeah. Hopefully more. There's too many real estate licensees. I mean, it's kind of crazy really to, I mean, I've been licensed since I think 2014. So you were still in college? Still in college. Yeah. Yeah. The first deal I ever did was I sold a little commercial property to an ex-girlfriend's dad who was buying a little office in Ebor City. And I made more money doing that than I worked for an entire summer at a, as a foreman's assistant to a multifamily project. And I was like, holy shit, like I've been sitting here for I think 10 hours a day at nine bucks an hour in the Tallahassee sun. And then I go sell one little property, you know, in 45 days.
I mean, yeah, that was a big thing both on the title and legal side. So it started on the law firm side because I was, you know, I would people would engage me to help represent them on a small commercial residential transaction. And I would either do like a flat fee or like an hourly depending on how complex it was. And then with the title company, same thing where obviously we're prepping these settlement statements, closing each of these transactions. And I'm seeing these disbursements and I'm doing the accounting. And I'm like, man, I'm on the wrong side of these transactions. I did. And then also there was like a massive gap in quality professional services. Because like you said, but these agents would be there's so many licensees.
It's so easy to get a license. These agents that would be receiving these checks would be asking you and depending on you for advice throughout the transaction when it was under contract. Yeah. I mean, and like you said, there are a lot of really good agents, especially in our local Tampa Bay community, but there are a lot of bad agents that are just getting their license. And especially when it was so easy on the residential side to get a sale. Yeah, I saw a lot of bad practitioners, but it's like any industry. They're a bad attorney.
So that was the gap though that I was like, oh, we can, we can provide a service here and a gap or like our small niche South Tampa community. And that was how ASG kind of was born originally. It's shifted so much. I mean, the NAR lawsuit I think has changed a lot. And it's probably put more scrambling on our side of it rather than the public side. But you do see that rub that there are those interesting situations that pop up where maybe a buyer is apprehensive to sign that form. Like, hey, I just met you. Why do I do that? Buyers are still like, it's not common knowledge that yeah, like buyers think they can just kind of like, oh, I have eight real estate friends. I'm just going to tell them kind of what I'm looking for.
And I want all of them to go out and look for me. Yeah, how do you feel about like the kind of the fallout from the NAR settlement now? I guess well, two years. I think that's fair enough from the public side, right? Like, I always try to look at it from a consumer perspective. I think if we as real estate professionals only looked at it from our perspective, we would be doing a disservice to the public.
So if you think about it from the public's perspective, the consumer's perspective, like you just said, if you have eight people you know in real estate, like, yeah, rightfully so, why wouldn't you reach out to all the people you know in real estate to help you try to buy a home or sell a home or whatever that may be? And I think this lawsuit has put scrambling on our end and maybe created some confusion on the public side, which sucks. And but I also think any industry change just takes time to settle out. Yeah, I think we're in the middle of that right now. The entire consumer psychology that they think they don't need to make any sort of real commitment to their agent. Right. I mean, there are states that have forms like this that are required that have been required long before the lawsuit.
Yeah. Now, Florida is one of the states, right? So I think it'll just sort of fizzle out, hopefully. I think so. I think it has already, even within the last, you know, it's been one year last July, right? Yeah.
So it's been a year. I mean, there's been weird situations that I've had to deal with. But again, any change, you know, you figure it out and get better. And hopefully, the public gets used to this process, right? Yeah.
So well, so you mentioned, in addition to the brokerage, then you started kind of getting more into the commercial investing side of things. What was your first commercial investment, first property?
So the real shift into that was I had bought a little office on Westland Avenue, and we were working out of that. And then I had the opportunity to buy a larger office that was over twice the size of the previous one. And the way I found that was I was with my first born son at two in the morning, giving him a bottle, just going through the suck of having a one month, two month old baby in the absolute trenches. And, you know, as any good real estate person does when they're bored, they're like on Zillow or Loopnet or whatever looking for properties. And I found this one in Seminole Heights that was just an absolute screamer. And I immediately underwrote it. I couldn't believe the price on it.
And the very next morning I made an offer on it. And I was extremely aggressive. I mean, I didn't have the cash to buy it, but I wrote a cash offer. It was full price. I bothered the broker. I couldn't get ahold of him.
So I called his assistant. I called the principal broker of the company. I'm like, what is wrong? What's going on? And the guy emailed me back and told me to relax and that he was on a trip. And he would get back to me when he came back in town. And I'm thinking this property is worth, I think, hundreds of thousands of dollars more than my contract.
So if I get this thing, it's like it's a screamer deal. It's a slam dunk. Eventually, he called me back and was like, hey, you know, you've been really aggressive. I really want you to get this property. I'm like, hell yeah. And I'm not taking a commission. You can keep the whole thing too. We have a wink, right?
So I did that deal with the intention of expanding the brokerage. This was three years ago. I remember talking to you three and a half years ago. We actually walked out after you. Yeah. Were we part of this brokerage at the time? This was before I jumped on? This was Priya. I think so. Because when you jumped on, I'm getting ready to finish the story, but we had already moved out of the office and we were... That's right. We were from the... What's that place called? Like the... Oh, hide house. Hide house from the same......armorature works. Yeah. But anyway, I buy the deal. We get a hard money loan and I go to... I have a meeting with my agents, right? I think we had 15 or so at the time or 18, whatever that number was.
And I'm like, okay, we're buying a new office. We're expanding. It's going to be sick, right? And at that time, I'm doing the math on my brokers and I'm like, I need to have 50 to 100 agents to really make this brokerage. Very profitable and have a real business here. At the same time we're doing that, I get approached by a medical company that wants to lease out the building, the bigger building I'm about to buy. And it was an unbelievable 10-year lease. It was at market rate. And I talked to the broker and I talked to my mom, who's my partner on everything. And we kind of take it... And I had already at that time negotiated a lease with Serenity Title to take over the old business. Yeah.
So that's what it was because we were at Anderson House, Anderson House, that historic Redbrook building as you come off Davis Islands or as you're going on the bridge to Davis Islands. We were in there, since we started, they sold.
And so then you and I started talking about, you were buying or under contract or bought the the new contract. And we walked in and we're like, oh, maybe we can split this building in half and like Serenity can take one half, the brokerage can have the other half. And then that's when we started like, oh, maybe Westland is the right. Westland, right?
So Serenity goes to Westland and they have this medical company that wants to take the new building. So there's a situation where I didn't have an office, right? All of a sudden I didn't have an office. And I hadn't signed the deal yet, but I had a meeting with all my agents and I'm like, how do you guys feel about not having an office, right? I have this opportunity where I could lease this out. It's obviously a great deal, but I also want to expand the brokerage. How do you guys feel? And they're like, dude, we don't care, right? We're out meeting people, doing open houses. A real estate agent is not making money if they're sitting in an office. They're making money being in front of people and they didn't care.
And I was like, okay, fantastic. We'll go to hide house or whatever. And so we did that medical deal and we did the deal with Serenity Title. So now I have these two leased out commercial properties and they were both fantastic deals for us. And it was great for us for the Westland property for Serenity. I think it was a win-win-win, right? Like you guys were happy because it was your own standalone building, which is a beautiful office, by the way. And then the medical people are happy because they've been looking for like 10 years to try to find a spot in Seminole Heights. And I was happy because I have these two commercial investments now, right? With the brokerage. That was all at the same time as the lawsuit kicked off, the market shifted.
Remember, interest rates at that time, that summer, so this was, was it summer 2023, they went from like two and a half to six. The market shut down. All of our sellers are like, oh my God, did we miss the market? The buyers are freaking out and actually exiting the marketplace and saying we can't buy right now. We're going to rent for another year, right? That whole thing shifted. And I thought, man, here I am growing a brokerage. I have these 15 people. I'm trying to expand. Well, now I have these two commercial investments, this podcast I'm doing that's really fun and taking off. And then I still have the brokerage, but clearly it's not the right time to grow to 50 agents.
So that's when I decided that summer to make a shift with a new baby in my hand, right? Like, okay, let me consolidate the brokerage, right? I'm not going to hire any more agents, focus on what we have, not only focus on managing these two commercial properties, but let's try to buy more, right? Leverage these two we've already bought to try to buy more. And then expand this show, right? Because the show at the time was getting me in front of these really cool people that were in all these different industries. And I figured relationships are everything in business.
So let me just keep doing the show to try to meet more people. And it's fun, right? At the same time. So that was like the career shift I had a few years ago that sort of led me to where I am now. Now we have 14 agents at the brokerage. We're about half what we used to be. It feels like a good number. It's a great number. It's manageable. I have people that I've hired that helped me manage it. Obviously, David produces my show. I just show up and talk. He does the rest. And then we've acquired five commercial buildings that I manage and I have someone help me manage and we're looking to buy more.
So it does feel like you cracked like you figure out the blueprint starting with Westland and you cracked the code. Because I mean, also for people listening or watching, I mean, these buildings, these were not like turnkey buildings where it was like, hey, I'm going to buy this building, put some pain on it and then put a new tenant in there and cashflow this thing. You had a vision or an eye for each building when you bought it, right? Yeah, definitely. It's all a risk calculation. Some of the ways you mitigate risk is just first of all, I think the more you know, the more you can mitigate risk, right? For instance, the properties that I'm buying are not in a flood zone. They're block construction.
They're newer built. They're built in the 90s or early 2000s. Just based on those factors, it's going to give you the right structure to be able to go in and put some lipstick on and make it look nice without having to deal with lower ceilings of the 1980s vintage or 70s building. It's going to have probably the right parking code associated with it. It's going to have, you know, it's not in a flood zone. It's not going to require flood insurance. It's not going to be required to move up to some of those flood code standards.
So focusing on properties that although maybe give you a more narrow buying pool, but when you do find the one, it's a jackpot, it gives you a better sense of confidence to be more aggressive with it, right? Right.
And so I think I've carried that through the years. And although I'm not buying multiple properties a year, I think I've only bought one property a year in the past since 2021. So the last five years, it's allowed me to mitigate that risk and not make mistakes. There's a bunch of different ways to be in the real estate business. Some people, you know, own 10% of everything and they raise money, right? And they have a bunch of investors and they're a little bit more risky and they like deal volume and they take a fee right from those deals we do. What I'm trying to do is just create a family asset portfolio. It's just me and my mom buying these properties and fixing them up. My mom focuses on the residential sale side.
She's just kind of, she's absolutely crushing. And we've been so fortunate to be in a position to capture some of that demand that's moved to Florida, right? We get calls from Portland and Beverly Hills and New York, people moving down to Sarasota, which is primarily where she sells real estate.
So she's focused on that. I'm kind of focused on the commercial and the administrative side on the brokerage. She peeks over and makes sure like, what do we got going on? Okay, cool. Things are good.
All right, see you later. I'm going to go focus on this. It's a good setup. But it is a good setup and it's been a great family business. And I'm so glad I took that plunge and got my broker's license 10 years ago. That was the best bet I ever made was as a 25 year old, just to get my broker's license and break away from that big brokerage. I mean, 30% commission over the last 10 years has enabled us to save a lot of cash to be able to be more flexible with, whether it's creating our own advertising platform, putting that money into these other properties. Really most of all, no corporate red tape. I mean, me being the broker and my mom being the agent, it's like this incredible team where we can do whatever we want.
There's a lot of rules in place that companies are these bigger brokerages, right? But as an independent broker, you guys know this, it's just a lot more flexible. And I didn't need to be more nimble and and I think from a business perspective, that's obviously has its advantages. But from the relationship perspective, with your customer, right with the client, you can bend over backwards for that person when you when you hold that broker's license. Yeah, the big, big box brokerage isn't demanding company policy they have or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. You're offering with your hands tied a little bit on certain things. Well, I mean, to bring it full circle, those are the you just closed on your most recent commercial building, right?
Yeah. So it's like you're bringing your full circle. And now you're establishing and setting roots down in Historic Ybor City. Yep. Was that part of the goal? Oh, always. Yeah. So and what's that building going to be for you guys?
So that'll be that'll be the new HQ. So it's two buildings. It's a, you know, it's about like a 14 or 1500 square foot main building and then a little it's like a studio efficiency, right? So that little efficiency, I'm going to turn it into the podcast studio. And then the main building will be my real estate office. And it's a cool property. It's got a courtyard and a little bar area. Like we'll do events there and have and have some fun with it. But yeah, man, to be in Ybor City is means a lot to me. My great grandfather grew up in hardware stores and paint stores.
And so from the time he was 12 years old in the early 1900s till he died at 70, he was in the hardware business. And so he's, you know, sweeping floors, doing inventory, he eventually in 1926 bought into a hardware store called the King Hardware Company, which became King Greco Hardware Company. And it was at the corner of, yeah, it was at the core. And then my son, and this was not planned. But my son, my youngest son's name is Rex, which means King, King Greco. But Rex was actually my, my wife's grandfather's name, but it was kind of funny how that worked out. But yeah, you know, in 1926, they incorporated that King Greco Hardware Store on the quarter of 8th Avenue and 15th Street. And it was disbanded and I think 1976.
So my family's been out of Eborr since 1976. So for me, I think I'm the fifth generation to purchase that building in Eborr City and come back and I'm super stoked about it. Yeah, just closed last week on it. Yeah. Yeah, congratulations. Thank you. It's exciting. It's a cool building too. I mean, the history behind it as well, which I know someone like you, like you're the kind of guy that's going to honor the family that built that, that building operating into the new generation.
So you mentioned the podcast and that being new HQ, having a dedicated studio now in this new building. And I know we've touched on a little bit, but I mean, it's pretty unbelievable how you've grown this podcast. I don't know if that was always the goal or like what originally inspired you to even start the podcast? Was it to kind of help brand and feed the brokerage at the time? Certainly. Was that the idea? Yeah. I don't think the goal for a podcast could ever be to gain that notoriety or those followers just because it's happened in such an organic way. I could have never planned for that. Who are your first like five, 10 guests that were they just friends that you had? Oh my God, it was random.
It was like, like the first episode was me and this young guy, Tyler, that was one of my agents who helped me with some of the other stuff with the brokerage. I'm like, dude, buy some mics in like a roadcaster and set it up and we'll just rip this thing. And that was episode one. Episode two, I think was my cousin who was opening up a pop art studio on Central Avenue in St. Pete.
So from the very beginning, it wasn't all real estate. It was like history, culture, how are we growing? What are the new businesses popping up? How does this, you know, new headquarters of this particular corporation coming to the region mean for all of us or this election that's happening? It was just like, all like city of Tampa related. It's like dynamic conversation about sort of a story of how we are growing. Yeah. But the reason, yeah, it was like a marketing platform for my brokerage. I saw, as you guys know, all these realtors doing like TikTok videos and stuff like that. You're like, I'm not going to dance. I'll talk. Yeah. Like, you know, but I did, I started out, you know, I did like a neighborhood video where I would do like, here's the five reasons why you should always hire a real estate agent, right?
Like these short form videos, but I wanted to do something a little deeper. And I was like, I like podcasts. Why don't I just start a podcast? I have this beautiful conference room. We'll set up some cameras and a microphone just rip it. Yeah.
So it was like me and Tyler and then me and my cousin and then I had on a hard money lender and then I had on a general contractor and then pretty quickly it evolved where the city reached out and wanted to have on Hannah Webster, who worked in the communications department with Solid Waste. They were doing the show called Grime Fighters, which was like dirty jobs of Tampa. Yeah.
So she came on to talk about that. And they, a part of that show before we shot the episode, they had me down to the Sulphur Springs, like sanitation building. And I got to see the inner workings of that. And it, way back to my childhood, it kind of gave me that feeling of like, oh, man, I remember as a kid, I would walk around the police headquarters or my grandfather let me meet the city attorney. And I remember thinking how cool that was. And then here I am as an adult, I start this like silly podcast, right? And then the city's reaching out to show me some sanitation building. And here I get to have a conversation about that. And it was just really, it kind of brought back that like cool feeling of how a city works.
Yeah. I think a lot of us just live our lives and take the trash out, but we don't think about how a municipality handles all these critical components, right? Of how a city works. So it just, the podcast immediately became fascinating for me. And I just stuck to once a week Tyler helped me produce it. David, you hit me up on episode three. How did you find?
So David DMed me. Oh, really? Okay. On episode three. Dropped into your DMs. Yes, he dropped into my DMs. I want to be a part of this. Literally was like, this is super cool. Do you have an editor? I'm like, I don't have anything. I just bought a mic. Yeah, I have a mic and a camera. That's a really, really beautiful bookcase behind me. In a nice setting, right?
And so he's like, I can edit your stuff for you. He's like, if you just upload it to the drive, I can virtually edit everything. And so David's been doing that. I think we took a little break. But yeah, for the last 200 or so episodes, David's been helping me with the whole thing. Stuck to one a week, never skipped a week. What a clip. That's insane. And just kept ripping it for the last over three and a half years. I think episode 199 we're going to shoot today. It's amazing. And as long as I'm having fun and people enjoy it, I'm going to keep doing it.
So I feel like you struck the cord because it was the right time because there's obviously so much development happening and so many things happening in the city of Tampa right now. And like you said, everyone's living their daily lives or they're consuming information in like 15, 30 second bite size clips, right? But to be able to have a long form conversation and really give kind of the everyday person and resident of Tampa behind the scenes look or even just a platform to think about and have a conversation with their own friends, but through your conversations about what's happening in Tampa, how do we want to grow? How do we want to develop for generations to come, right? Because I think a lot of times up until the last 10 years, those conversations and those development decisions were happening in a silo with a handful of people making these decisions.
And that's how you end up with urban sprawl or not thinking about the residents and what the residents truly want or what is best in this day and age for the community. So exactly. And I think that's why a lot of people have used that word development in a negative context. That's because we have had a lot of bad development. I mean, we've had a lot of things in the city that have been built that are just crappy and only add to the negative externalities around it, like more traffic and concrete walls up against a crappy sidewalk that's broken and infrastructure that's not being supported by new development.
So people look at development and growth in a negative way, but it doesn't have to be looked at that way. Like we can really push for quality here. And I think this show is the first real like public facing opportunity where those conversations have happened in the light. Because typically, yeah, you're right. It would be like, you know, the developer meets with the politicians and the city and the money flows here in there. And then you have a hearing and residents come and they kind of like, you're not really, no one's having a conversation with the people that are the decision makers about the why, like why are you doing it this way? Or why are you saying yes or no to this project or this development?
Or why aren't you asking this question about how this section of the city should be redeveloped? A hundred percent. And I think that is created a bigger purpose with the show and fuels the reason why I keep doing it because it's a hobby of mine. It's not like I'm making money from it, but it's kind of a public service at this point. I think that these conversations are valuable to be in the light. And if I was to stop doing it, that would suck for the public because I think the public wants to hear Jeff Vinnick. I mean, yeah, we get it, right? But why? Or Darrell Shaw or some of these other elected officials and business owners and change makers in the community, why are you doing what you're doing?
And then how do we make it better? Or what are the challenges you're facing along the way that you need to work through? And then maybe someone listening to the show hears that and they can bridge that gap, right?
So it's become this public service in a way that I think has actually helped driven the region's narrative about growth forward because we're not going to stop growing. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of people moving here and they're going to continue to move here, but we don't have to have this blind look at growth. We can have a real stake in our own city, in our own region, and push for quality.
So the things that are built actually help the community. It's not just a crappy little stick apartment building that puts pressure on the infrastructure. It's a project that maybe includes space for small businesses or a fund that fuels the infrastructure around it.
So the people in that neighborhood can actually benefit from the growth and development, not just have something new pop up in their neighborhood with 500 other cars that clog the roadway on a broken road, right? Something that actually benefits them.
So I know you probably already had going into the show and obviously, like we've talked about your background in real estate and grown up around it, like your own opinion or perspective on what smart growth looks like and coming back to the city of Tampa and like how to help propel Tampa to that smart growth pathway. But 199 episodes, how much is your perspective or your vision in that space of what smart growth means and how the city of Tampa can do it? How much has that changed or evolved or has it actually solidified how you already looked at it with all the guests that you've talked to? I've learned an unbelievable amount. It's certainly shifted over the years. I think some of the things I knew or thought I knew about growth and development or how the government works have been completely turned upside down by the conversations I've had on the show.
And it's not just development, right? Like I've had on the chief scientist of Tampa Bay water or like a biologist who's uncovered these secret springs like the Yulei spring or like, I don't know. Well, it's like so many little things that no one thinks about or no one even knows about. Exactly. I mean, it's like a city is like a human body. There's a biology, there's a skeletal system. Exactly. And you have like this love of Tampa and you really are kind of a historian and you have a lot of heritage here. And the podcast seems like that's been your vehicle to be, you know, because you're very civic-minded. Yes.
And so the podcast has been the vehicle for the last few years. And now it seems, I don't know, is that where the seed was first planted politically to be like maybe or were there a lot of guests that came on that said, hey, you would be great. Get more involved in a different way. Yeah, more so of that. You know, more so of like, hey, you've learned a lot and you talked to a lot of these interesting, influential stakeholders. Would you ever consider running for office? I didn't set out to run for office. I mean, first of all, I was joking about it with David, but like the name is the worst name. The Tampa Bay developer? Tampa Bay developer. Like that's the worst name you would name something.
If you wanted to get into politics, I named it because that was the name of the Instagram handle I had. The Instagram I started just to take some pictures of some of the stuff I was working on or like a new city park and talk about how great it was. And then a couple years after that, I started the podcast on that platform and the name was Tampa Bay developer, which I couldn't believe it wasn't already taken. But that was the name of the show. Yeah, like if you were going to get into politics, you would name the show like smart growth podcast or whatever, right? Like community development. We're doing this double series. Yeah. Trying to be like, all right, what should we name? Yeah, you know, you want to be more like respectful or neutral or whatever when you name stuff like that.
You don't want your voters are consider voter based thing and like, oh, here comes big development running for office. And I've already gotten that since seven hours, right? And I knew that was coming in a few years. Well, but it's opportunity for a conversation. It's it's the reason I got in the race early was to have that conversation with the voters of the city. Yes, my last name is Greco. You know, we do have a political history that's going to come with. Do you think that helps or hurts you a little bit or a little bit of both? I think it mostly helps. And I'm really proud of the work my dad and grandfather did. They were incredible public servants and they did great things for the city.
I had a couple cases when I was a prosecutor in front of you. That's actually awesome. That's cool. Yeah, he's been retired now five years. He lives in St. Augustine. Oh, nice. My grandfather turns 93 next month. He's been out of the business for a long, long time. I'm proud of them. They were great public servants. They did a lot of good things and always respected this community. However, you're not going to get 100% of the vote and there's going to be a particular group of people, many people that think, you know, I'm a nepo baby or a carpet, but whatever, right? And I got in the race early to have that conversation.
So those people can talk shit to me and express their grievances towards me or we don't need another Greco or whatever that may be. And okay, let's have that conversation, right? Same thing with the developer word, right? We've had so much bad development in the city and in Florida that I think people look at development in a negative way, like we talked about. Well, let me, if I'm going to do this, let me get in the race early to have that conversation about, hey, look, my show is called Tampa Bay Developer, but that's because we discuss cultural development, societal development, transportation development, the development of our infrastructure systems. Yes, real estate development too, because it's important.
But we talk about development holistically and I wanted to share that idea and that perspective as a candidate without getting in the race late and not having an opportunity to at least have that conversation. But no, the reason I'm running for office is to hopefully just be a part of this positive change and bring a better perspective to city council. What do you think city council is lacking right now? Because you mentioned a different perspective or a better perspective? There's a lot of great community advocates on city council, meaning one of the jobs of city council is to bridge the gap between the local government and the people. And I think that the people on city council do a pretty good job of listening to their constituency, some of the most vocal people of that constituency and holding on to that and bringing that to city hall.
That's a good thing, right? The administration in the mayor's office has a more of a disconnected role politically. It's impossible for the mayor to know every single voter or every single person that lives in the city. But for a person on city council, that's a way closer relationship.
So that's a good thing I think that council does. Something they're missing I think is just a broader perspective. A big picture perspective about what their role is, how to use their role with forward thinking policies they bring to council rather than reactionary policies, like let's be creative and be progressive about city policies that can actually help us versus reacting to everything that happens before us. Or as a small example, when the shooting was in Ebor City, it was suggested like let's shut down Ebor at 11 p.m. That's a reactionary policy that hurts small business and doesn't necessarily take out the root of the problem, right? Let's be forward thinking when we think of these policies.
So I mean, I'm not disparaging anyone on council or anything like that. I'm just saying some of those more progressive policies that we can be creative about. That's something I want to bring to City Hall. We don't have to be the pioneers either, right? Like there's a lot of municipalities that are way further along in terms of parking reform or these other development policies that Tampa could probably take a look at. But again, maybe we're not because of the crowd's reaction or dealing with everything that comes before you. I think the city council should certainly take that into account. But look at a more holistic perspective of how do these policies we create and vote on actually move the city forward?
Again, rather than just like reacting to the news of the day or whatever currently comes before them. How's this the podcast that you have? How are you thinking about that? Because you mentioned that you're getting your new commercial space as a podcast room.
So you're doubling down on your podcast. You're not, you know, a lot of times podcasts and politics, it could be a liability versus asset. So are you being more intentional in the future about who you have on? And are you giving it a more thought? That's a good question. I was even thinking like, are you going to use the podcast platform as a way to do open forums with actual individual citizens? Certainly. I think it could be an incredible representation of public transparency in government. If I was to win and be on city council and have the opportunity to have a podcast, I could have what's going on at city hall this week. I could talk about some of the policies being pushed forward. People would love that.
Your fellow city council members would love it. Right. Some of the men love it. Some of the men not love it. But yeah, I think there's an opportunity to be transparent. I'm all about transparency. I think we live in this world of transparency. There's no reason to hide anything today. There's no reason to pretend like backroom deals need to continue to happen. That was old school Tampa. That was probably my grandfather's Tampa maybe. It's not possible with social media. It's not possible anymore.
So let's embrace it. And I did think a little bit about that. I'm like, can you be a politician with a podcast? I'm like, there's no example here locally. I mean, there's no local politician that I've seen that has a show. Gavin Newsom has or had a podcast for a little bit. Did he have one before he was like radio shows where you've been like a radio broadcaster, right? Or had a radio show and then give it into politics? I mean, like, was it Reagan? Yeah, Reagan was like the first like actor. And then of course, people have said like, people ask me, like, are you allowed to do that? And I'm like, dude, there's no rule like also Trump is on like Twitter going crazy. I mean, I'm certainly allowed to have a share point.
Like, are you allowed as a public elected public official or public servant to have a platform that has a conversation? I know for sure you wouldn't be allowed to have on another member of council. You probably wouldn't. Well, you're not allowed. Like if I was on city council, I can't have another member of city council that would break the Florida Sunshine law. When the members of the same body get in a group, it has to be a publicly noticed meeting.
So it's more public than a podcast. Well, if you think about what city how city council currently operates, they kind of already do a podcast. It's audio. David, get ready. I think you're going to be setting up cameras and city hall. Clipping me. Yeah. No, I'm going to continue to do it because it's good for the city. I think it's I think these conversations I have on the show are transparent. They're they're unedited, long form conversations about these really intricate things. I think people enjoy it and I have fun. I'm going to keep doing it no matter what happens politically. I thought for a second, I was like maybe because I'm a candidate, people won't want to come on the show or something like that.
But that hasn't been the case. If anything, more people have reached out. I'm sort of surprised by it actually. No, I'm going to keep ripping it for sure. No, you have to. I mean, I think you're providing information and we've talked about it already. But every everyday people, they don't spend their time like digging into these little things about city politics or city city decisions that impact their daily lives, even going down to like waste management or water quality and things like that.
And so to be able to put that information out for people to be able to just access via YouTube or wherever they listen to their podcasts, I think is great because you're creating a more informed voter base, which I think is really important when they go to the ballot box and and make a vote. Well, also when people either vote or don't vote for you, they they can look at 200 episodes of you speaking. Oh, yeah, or bad. And they give you like, oh, I definitely can't hide what he's talking about. Yeah.
So that's for sure. There's so much of you out there. So people will be super informed versus like, you know, my wife and I are going through like, who should we vote for in these elections coming up? And I'm like, I don't know any of these people. Yeah. And I don't know what they stand for. I'm gonna have to start googling and then, you know, so I mean, one of the big reasons I do what I do is I just want more people to give a shit about local politics. People are so inundated with all this Iran war and social issue and what's Trump going to say today, right? And we do have a lot of competition in our content and shout out to David, who does a great job at, you know, you're swiping through social media, we shot off another missile at Iran, Ukraine did this, and then you go to my content and it's like the desalination plant in Tampa is changing its chemical, right?
But which one's going to impact your daily life? Correct. People didn't really competition of that, right? It's like on your algorithm, David's figured out a really good way to generate 50, 100 or more thousand views on a very nerdy, detailed local clip. And that I think is extremely valuable all by itself. Because if people just pay attention to who the president is and who we're at war with, you're going to forget a lot of really important shit in your municipality. And we still have local elections. We still have a lot of local control over the way our city operates. It's real hard to save the world. And I don't know, Marco Rubia is talking about Cuba and this and that. Hey, that's all a very important conversation.
But we can't forget about our own backyard. And one of the reasons why I'm so just nerdy about local issues is because I think it's seriously more important. I really do. It affects us. If you want to save the world, you start with your house in the street, make your bed, your neighborhood in your city, right? Make your bed. And we might not be able to save the world, but we can save Tampa. Well, I think the first time that I remember people starting to talk about local politics was during COVID. I mean, I was living up in New York City. And then of course, I'm from Tampa. And that's the first time I think a lot of people were like, oh, wow, like your local government means a lot when something like this happens, like depending on who you have elected.
That's so true. And so I think that kind of has jumped started people actually caring more about local governments. And maybe your podcast is one of the the beneficiaries of that because people are like, oh, I'm interested because if something happens on a federal level or a macro level, like my local government actually has a lot of influence on how we live day to day. Yeah, I think it's social media too. The ability to clip a podcast and put it on social media and have it be crafted in a way where the algorithm can actually pick it up and promote it for you has created this unbelievable amount of hyper local content. That's why I've seen some of the stuff you guys have been putting up. It's gained an amazing amount of popularity.
And you've been doing your content for less than a year or so, correct? It's about a year and a half. But I've seen you've gained thousands of followers. Some of those clips have gone like viral. There was one of them, I forgot which maybe it was the pizza one as a sushi sushi is it? People love there's right. Yeah. And the way social media and those algorithms have shifted over the years, they've actually become more narrow rather than more broad. Like 10 years ago on Facebook, you couldn't talk about your local sushi hotspots, right? But these algorithms have gotten so good at identifying what user would be interested in what particular content. I think it was the TikTok algorithm that now everyone has been chasing trying to replicate.
And David, we're on TikTok too. I don't even have TikTok downloaded. Who knows the comments on that? We're on TikTok as well. Yeah, we're too old to be on it. I know. I'm like, how's it going, David? Instagram is enough for me to stay busy with 100%. Should we get on Snapchat? I heard MySpace. I saw that. I do. I do that. That's MySpace. Then Justin Timberlake and some of those people like buy it back in the day, a bunch of musicians try to like turn into like a like a social Napster. Well, MySpace is always kind of like a musicians platform, too. Yeah. Oh, I remember you had your like whatever was like top eight or top 10 that you could do with your friends. But then you could also put music on MySpace.
And I remember when my wife, Nina, and I were dating like very early on, we just started dating. And I would put like songs on that were like a message to her. And then she would put songs on that were a message to me. Nailed it. Yeah. For the kids out there listening, this was like a whole thing back in the MySpace days. Unbelievable. Yeah. I wonder if you could like log into your old account. I've tried. Pull up your old songs. Yeah. Like your idea, I'm imagining 199 conversations. You've had the opportunity to speak with the mayor of Tampa, Clearwater, St. Pete, officials from a very low level at city government to obviously the highest level, I think, in the mayor's office in a lot of respects.
I don't think you would run if you didn't think there was an opportunity to actually make real change. Do you think Tampa local government is set up right now for there to be meaningful change? So I sit on the city of Tampa's charter review commission. And what that is is basically every seven years, the city looks at its charter and makes recommended changes, puts those changes up to the voters to vote on, right? And hopefully we put forward some good initiatives that help our city government more efficient. But out of that process, I've gotten to look at the actual city's charter at a really, really dedicated lens. And I've peeled through the entire thing front and back like 10 times. And it's given me a really deep understanding of how the city government works at a codified level, right?
The city's charter is like our constitution. There's two branches of government, right? We have the executive and the legislative branch. The mayor is the executive of the city. That's the hiring and the firing, the city's administration, a lot of those contracts and the mayor is in charge of every city department. The city council is the legislative branch of government. On city council, which is the role I'm running for, you are one of seven. You can't do anything alone. Anything you do has to be approved by at least three other members to move forward. You need four votes to move something forward. Five votes if you want to override the mayor.
And so by myself, with this role, I don't necessarily have any, if I win, no authority, right, necessarily. It's not like any sort of crazy idea I can have, I can do. What my job would be is to be a consensus builder, a bridge builder. What I talked about earlier, bridging that gap between the people and the local government, I think is really important. Bridging the gap between people like a Daryl Shaw, Jeff Venick, some of these biggest business and development people down to like a Stephanie Pointer, who I've also had on the show and all these other neighborhood advocates, right. I've found that through the show and through some of the civic stuff I do and my advocacy that I'm really good at bringing people together.
And if I could accomplish one thing in a term on city council, it would be that, right, bringing people together. I think the city is in a spot where there is a lot of distrust. I think that there's a lot of people in neighborhoods that feel like they're being crushed by development. I think people see certain policies by the city or initiatives by the city that they don't agree with and yet those initiatives happen anyway. And again, although on city council as one member, you can't, you're not the king, right? You're not someone who can do things by themselves. You can absolutely work together with your constituency and the business leaders and the neighborhood leaders. And then of course bring those concerns to the city council to initiate policies that you convince the other members of city council are good to pass, right.
That's how we have a new legislation for the city. And so that's what I hope to do. And city council, I think if you watch the media, you can see them fight with one another. You can see city council in the mayor's office have issues. You see fighting between the branches of government.
Another thing I hope to bring to the table, not only as a candidate, but hopefully as a member of council is that collaboration between the elected officials within the government. You've probably seen the administration attack city council and some particular members of city council attack the administration. That shit needs to end, right? It's these two branches of government are supposed to work together for the people of the city.
So people are like, oh, who are you supporting for the mayor? Who do you think is going to? I don't really give a shit. Whoever it is if I win, I'm going to work with that person because it's not about that person. That's about that office, right? That administrative role. And as a member of council, you work with that office to create policy that works for the people. I think that's been lost a little bit. I see way too much fighting. Fighting within government only hurts us. Well, it's campaign season too. There's a lot of political motivation behind it. Obviously, the most recent public fight is probably around the raise. The raise, yeah. Redevelopment proposal and tax dollars being attached to the raise plan.
Yeah, I mean, I'd be curious. Well, one, what do you think about the plan overall? Where do you think there's missing pieces that need to be changed or fixed to make it a better deal for both the city, but also for the raise and then the redevelopment around it? But also, how can the conversation between city council, the city, residents itself, and then the mayor's office be better? I think a lot of it, you're probably right. It comes down to, you have three members of city council running for different seats. You have a mayor who has been at odds with a couple particular members of council. You certainly have that, those political implications and then some of the personality of it too. Yeah.
The good news is there's an election every four years, right? All eight seats are always up every four years. You get new people in and those dynamics can change. It's not like it's going to be bad forever. Hopefully we get reasonable people in all those different seats who want to get along with each other to help the people of the city. On the raise, I mean, I haven't seen the exact MOU. First of all, that should be public in my opinion. I think people should be able to look at exactly what those details are to make a judgment on that, especially someone like me who's a candidate for office. I mean, you're asking me, what do I think of the deal? I need to look at the deal, right? Well, they're asking taxpayers to contribute to be a major contributor.
Taxpayers, right. Exactly. Yeah, we all should take a look at what those details are. That was like the initial fight, right? And they said it's public, but like, good luck. Like there's no website, raisedeal.com. It doesn't exist. But look, in general, I mean, to have the opportunity as a city, to have a professional sports team come in the city limits is an amazing thing. Cities all across the country and the world beg for something like that. And the fact that Tampa has that opportunity after having had this conversation the last 20 years. I mean, I think we've, I mean, since I moved back to Tampa 10 years ago, we have had that conversation. Remember, Raybore City and all that stuff. And even before that, it was talked about.
So starting with the opportunity, I think it's amazing. Obviously, the devil's in the details. For me personally, and just as a candidate for city council, my position is the deal should leverage us into fixing some of the grievances we've talked about for the last 30 years.
So what has Tampa always talked about? We have terrible roads. It looks like not good. Okay. It looks, it looks bad out there. A lot of crumbling streets. A lot of crumbling streets and potholes. And it's not just a particular, you know, low income neighborhood that has bad streets. It's all across the city. Which contribute, which storm drainage is a contributor to that? Storm drainage, right? Storm resiliency, storm water capability, right? Sidewalks that lead to nowhere, pedestrian infrastructure. Some of the, you can't even see the road paint. I'm sitting here with my wife and two kids trying to cross the street. There's no road paint. It's totally unsafe, right?
So that infrastructure, public transportation assets, right? All that infrastructure has been put on the back burner for a long, long time. If this raise deal is a catalyst for all of that, meaning if the deal, if done, could it provide that tax revenue to pay for all that stuff in an expeditious way? Not, oh, we're going to give the team a billion dollars and then it'll pay us back in 30 years. I'm talking like you start to see some of those benefits really quickly. Then I think it's a good deal. There is an opportunity for a deal to occur where there's a big public subsidy to the raise stadium and it takes away and adds time to fixing some of those infrastructure projects. That's a bad deal in my opinion.
So the whole deal to me is based on what do we put in and what do we immediately get back out? And there's a lot of those details that have to be worked out. We are doing a show today with the raise that is going to talk about some of those deals. I haven't seen the exact deal structure. I wish I'd done it before I came here. But I'm excited that there's people in elected office and also some of the people that work in the county like the county administrator, some of the staff at the city that are working for that better deal. Because I think again at the genesis of it all is this amazing opportunity. It's a freaking professional sports team. People come here. They're in hotels. They're spending money.
They're adding to our economy. It's creating jobs. It's creating small businesses. Like that could all be a catalyst to get what we've all been complaining about for as long as we all have grown up in Tampa. Do you think it makes it better to you that it's not just a stadium proposal? The proposal is tied to also a mixed use development that's supposed to serve as this connector, a connection between obviously the small midtown Tampa development that went up to the West Shore business district all the way to the heights to then Yor City, Water Street, and downtown Tampa. For me, the development itself is not exciting because I know it'll create a lot of negative externalities in that area. It's going to add a lot of traffic.
It's going to add a lot of noise. I don't think you add that development. And then all of a sudden Drew Park suddenly becomes an amazing neighborhood. I think there's still going to be a lot of that industrial blight there. I think however if this stadium deal was to be put in the downtown area in Ybor City, it would create that authentic experience that could be a catalyst for other small businesses in the area. If that were the case of Del Mabry, you would have already seen it with Raymond James. Like there isn't anything around Raymond James. I don't think that's provided any positive externality to that area. I think it's actually created a lot of negative externality with traffic and parking and all that sort of stuff.
What do you think the highest and best use then I guess for that area, that space is moving forward? Or do you think it's just... Look, I mean it's public land right now, right? It's school, it's Hillsborough County or state property, right? It's the Hillsborough Community College.
So look, it produces no tax revenue right now. Right. I mean if you're going to carve out a stadium and build a real estate development around it, it's going to generate an unbelievable amount of tax revenue. There's certainly an argument that that tax revenue can pay for improvements all across the city like we talked about earlier, which is a great thing. I just think at the end of the day, it's going to be this car centric sort of like suburbanized development that you drive to and there's like Buffalo Wildlings and Chipotle and maybe a branded hotel. Is that good economically? Of course. I think there's no question there. Does it add to the culture? Does it add to the city's lived experience?
Yeah, you probably wouldn't qualify that as like your vision or version of smart growth for the city. I don't think I would, no. You know, it's to me, it's like a bigger version of a midtown with a ballpark attached to it. Yeah. There's an opportunity to get it right. Because we talked about it. The ownership group. We've seen other places do it. We've seen other places do it. Yeah, other places in the country. You know, but does it create that authentic experience you can't find in Atlanta? I don't think it necessarily does. I think if it was an Ebor city, it creates like a Wrigleyville or a Fenway or a real stadium district that you could only find in Tampa. Yeah. I think the one off Dale Maybury, again, is much more of a car-centric midtown plus, which is fine economically.
But look, if you look at the ownership group, and here's kind of like the silver lining. And again, I'm speculating, right? I haven't looked at a development structure. I don't know what these guys are planning on building, but I will say this. They're real estate people. The ownership group, they're all real estate people. They probably are forward thinking creative enough to produce a real quality-oriented development. I'm excited at the opportunity of it. Like I said, I'm having them on the show today. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I'm definitely going to ask those questions. Like, should the community expect that this is basically like a midtown plus with like a bunch of corporate tenants?
Or are you guys going to try to create a real unique development that has like another 1905, like a Columbia, or like could Goody Goody go in there? You know what I mean? Could you have small businesses interact with this place? Are you thinking about a holistic transportation approach? Or is it all going to be parking garages and parking lots and cars? A holistic transportation in Tampa? Look, there's an offer. I mean, they're self-driving cars now. The only way we tackle big challenges is big projects, right? I think the idea that this city is going to get a real light rail network or expand the streetcar without development is impossible. Right. You need development as a catalyst to fix these things we all complain about.
You just don't want to give it away for nothing. You just don't want to have like plywood palaces and 300 unit apartment buildings with no commercial and these huge parking garages. You want this like mix of use with small business opportunities with affordable housing and workforce housing involved in like a mix of uses and one particular project generates more of that economic action.
So there's an opportunity with it. I think the reason why so many people are apprehensive about it is because this community has experienced so much crappy development. Right. Again, like you just said, you're like transportation in Tampa is even, you know, we're all so apprehensive, but it's a big project. There's an amazing opportunity. That's where I maybe I'm naive, but I've always looked at it as like, okay, this is an opportunity to hopefully, yes, get it right with the redevelopment, but it's also the facilitator to create an opportunity for there to be some sort of extension of the streetcar. Exactly. Because like otherwise it's a streetcar system to know where right there in the middle of in between TIA, the West Shore Business District and downtown Water Street and Ebor.
Exactly. And so that's the hope is that they can create something that provides that anchor and reason to extend the public transportation system. And it has the bones, right? Like the governor has came out in support. FDOT is saying they're going to build like pedestrian improvements and road structures, Hillsborough College maybe getting new buildings. I mean, there's an opportunity for it to be done right and be an incredible development, but there's also a risk that it just becomes this like corporate, boring, large car-centric model that I don't necessarily think at least three of us want in Tampa, right? Outside of Water Street and Gasworks, and then I know we're running long, but outside of Water Street and Gasworks, what's been your favorite redevelopment in Tampa?
Outside of Water Street. That could be the first rapid fire question. Let's do that. Okay, rapid fire, yeah. Oof, there's so many development. What's been done that's done right, you know? I'm trying to get this question right. There's no wrong answer. You know, I think large-scale development, I don't know. I was going to say Hyde Park Village, but I think they've sort of pushed out some of the- I think they're going in the wrong direction. Middle, well, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, I think they've pushed out some of those middle-income things I used to enjoy with my family. Like, I'm not taking my wife and two kids to go get like, you know, a- Prom bag. Yeah, right? I don't know. I don't know how to tell you the truth.
I mean, no, I think that's a good answer because I think Hyde Park in this most recent like, version of itself has been great. Yeah. And now I don't know to be interesting to see what this next- I know. And I know they've got more planned. I think they're going to do some residential. But that model, like, if I could just use the model of Hyde Park where you've got some of those, you know, living quarters up top, you've got retail on the bottom. Great walkability. It's beautiful walkability. Like, I think that is sort of the future of the city. Maintain the historical charm of it. Not necessarily the future as in the demographic or the income level, but future is in that lifestyle. Yeah, yep.
What's your- Well, I just keep it as rapid fire as possible. The property tax thing. Yeah. Yay or nay or maybe a small caveat. I'm all for it because I think people need relief on their property taxes. I know I do as a young father, someone who just bought a home. But they put BS in there about home rule. Like, the state is going to dictate how local government, how we in our own community can spend our tax dollars. They should remove stuff like that. Yeah. I'm all for property tax reform. I would vote yes. But they add- If it was a clean. If it was clean. Clean, yeah. But they sneak in stuff like that.
So, I'm apprehensive. Took typical political pork. Yeah. Best Cuban sandwich in the area. Speaking of health. Now the controversial questions. Yeah. I mean, I got to go with the Columbia, right? Like, I just feel like that's an OG. Carmines does a great job on 7th Avenue. And I like mine with some fixings. I like to add the- Oh, what do you add on there? Tomato. Well, this is real controversial now. Yeah, I know it is. I know it is. But I like to add a lot of extras in there. Have you had- Have you had- So, it's not really a Cuban, but have you had the El Mixo at Boosie Pig? No. Oh, man, you haven't. Is it good? Oh, dude. They just had a- They're- I might pop it in there. They're blowing up now.
This is like my old neighborhood spot in- They were on- They were on diners. Diners. Diners are new guys recently. Yeah. Which is great. I love to see Andrew in this family because they so deserve it. They've worked so hard. And that's- You know, he's third generation Tampa, but yeah, they're El Mixo. It's like an Italian and a Cuban had a baby. Can I also say just real quick, as I've done the show and met all these people and all stuff, one of the coolest things about Tampa is these future generations. Me, you, you guys, right? The person you just mentioned- Hey, Andrew, they started with a country store in Ybor City in the 20s. Dude, the fact that there's multi-generational businesses happening here, people that have stayed, expanded their family's business, started new businesses, I think that's what makes this city super, super cool.
Like the, sort of that heritage, some of those last names, you still see working in this community. I'd love to see that. What's one building you would want to be preserved forever in Tampa and what's one building that you'd want to bulldoze right now? Holy shit. One building I want to bulldoze. I mean, I'll start with that. I would say, I mean, first of all, that's strong. I'm not, let me just say this, right? I'm not suggesting you bulldoze the Pendry, okay? But to me, to me, the scale of that building is taking so much away from what I remembered about our iconic skyline coming up. There's an answer in our recent development that maybe you don't think is so great. Yeah. Is the Pendry where the Trump Towers were supposed to be back in the day in 07?
And look, a lot of merit, mix of views, hotel component, activate the Riverwalk. It's all great, but- I mean, it's gonna be a beautiful building. That's one where I'm like, ooh, that's a lot for a little. And then something to be preserved. The Mirasol Hotel, that's a whole different podcast to talk about, it's so complicated the way you would get that approved and all that. And I know it comes with controversy. If you can put that aside and just talk about that building. Well, because it's adding a lot to what it currently is and a lot of the people that in that neighborhood feel like it's gonna overimpose on their lifestyle, right? Their single family home, their lifestyle they enjoy, it's gonna add to the traffic and all that sort of stuff.
But putting all that aside, dude, that building, you walk in, the pecky cypress ceilings, it's got that original architecture. That would be a shame if something happened to come up. To come up to that building from the water. That's our vernoi. Oh my God. It's exactly, it's our vernoi. It's such a beautiful opportunity to revitalize for the DI community and for Tampa overall. What about a dream guest for the Tampa Bay Developer Podcast? What's one dream guest you would love to have on in, let's say, 2027? Well, I've been so fortunate to have anyone I could want, right? Episode 100. That's why we did not get on the podcast. Hey, Jeff Vinnick was, after that episode 100 with Jeff Vinnick, I was like, shit, now what?
Right? Yeah, we're not. I felt like that was the pinnacle. One of the things I want to do though, and hopefully I can make this happen, is after the primary, I want to have a gubernatorial debate. So, you know, whoever wins the Republican and Democrat nomination, presumably Byron Donnells and David Jolly. Man, if I could have a conversation on my show with both those guys about the link between local government and state government and those relationships, right? That would be a dream show for me to do something like that. I think that'd be great for everyone. Yeah. No, that would be, yeah, that would be really cool. Well, actually before this one, most underrated Tampa neighborhood, in your opinion right now, that is the most upside.
West Tampa has an amazing opportunity to be a good mix of old and new. You've got some beautiful old brick buildings and a great street grid and a ton of parks with amazing proximity to downtown and a new West Riverwalk. You just need a little bit more help with some quality development in that area. And I think that neighborhood could be one of the coolest in the city, if not already, honestly. Yeah, I love what's that. I mean, that's where we moved when we first came back home from D.C. was West Tampa area, which I guess they'd now changed it to Midtown, but that whole West Tampa corridor and then even going on the other side of 275 to Old West Tampa, backing up to the river and the rum yard development.
Yeah, tons of opportunity over there. Finish the sentence. Tampa in 2050 is blank. The full expression of itself, and what I mean is there's a Tampa Tribune quote from the late 1800s at the Tampa Bay Hotel and it's from Henry Plant and he says, Tampa's future is a glow with opportunity. Her future is bright with promise. And in the late 1800s, for someone to have that vision for this city and then to be where we're at now and to see the growth and some of the amazing neighborhoods and all that, I think in 2050, if we could fully express that. It's like a campaign slogan, right? That might be the campaign slogan. I might need to put that in my pocket. Well, this will be live next week, so you can reference it.
Beautiful. Garrett, thanks so much. That's a great way to wrap it up. Yeah, I mean, honestly, we could talk for hours. Maybe we'll have to do another one as you get closer to election time. It'll be on my show. Yeah, we'll do it on your show. And then we'll have you back episode 100 for us. We'll just keep switching back and forth. Yeah, there you go. No, thank you, guys. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, thank you, man. This was great. Beautiful. Well, best of luck, obviously, on everything with the campaign. And yeah, thank you, guys, for listening.