Ep52 Growing Iowa’s Innovation Hub: Inside the ISU Research Park with ​Rick Sanders

[00:00:00] We're a commercial real estate entity with a million square feet of space at the research park, but we don't view ourselves as a commercial real estate entity. We view ourselves as a connector between commercial enterprise and Iowa State University for the good of the state of Iowa.

[00:00:16] From cornfields to high rises, office to industrial, houses to hotels, and every other asset class in real estate, we cover the people, the projects, and the profit. Welcome to the Investing in Iowa Show.

[00:00:28] This show is for go-doers, action takers, and business owners. It's for people like you who are sick of Uncle Sam taking a huge bite of your apple. If you're looking to get ahead of what's taking place in Iowa, learn who is doing what and how you can get in on the action. You're in the right place.

[00:00:46] Hosted by Neil Timmins, an Iowa native who has been involved in over $300 million in real estate right here in Iowa. Recording in studio from West Des Moines, here's your host, Neil Timmins.

[00:01:01] I've got Rick Sanders here on the show. Rick, welcome.

[00:01:03] I'm glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

[00:01:05] I'm excited you're here. Say, for the audience's sake, who are you? Where are you from? What do you do?

[00:01:08] Yes, I'm Rick Sanders. I'm president of the Iowa State University Research Park. I've been in that role since 2019, and I'm a reforming politician. So I was chair of the Story County Board of Supervisors for about a decade before that and just have loved my time here in central Iowa.

[00:01:26] The research park. So if somebody has no clue at all as to what in the world that even means or is, give us a little color.

[00:01:33] Yeah, sadly, that's a huge part of the population that is almost surprised to find this thing that is the ISU Research Park.

[00:01:42] So it's, you know, the basics, it's a $100 million entity that exists on 550 acres on the south side of Ames.

[00:01:51] But as you dig a little deeper, you recognize that it's an entity that was started 37 years ago by the university and state leaders who recognize that there was some intellectual property that was being created within the university that really was not making it out of the university into the hands of the public.

[00:02:08] And so when you think of a true land grant institution and the mission there, it's to create, share and apply knowledge in Iowa State's case to make Iowa and the world a better place.

[00:02:19] Well, it's hard to do that if it just stays in the confines of the campus community.

[00:02:24] And so it was created with this idea that they would pull some of that intellectual property out.

[00:02:30] And what it has really become over the last 37 years is an opportunity for business and industry to connect with the university and lean in on the assets both ways to make sure that there's more and more being created through that partnership.

[00:02:46] That partnership really is there to untap that intellectual property that Iowa State is known for.

[00:02:52] Yeah, I think the intellectual property, but it even goes beyond that, right?

[00:02:55] You can have pieces of equipment and expertise that are located within the university for an academic kind of pursuit, but it still has one-off potential one-off value to others who would never invest those kind of dollars to have something that they would use only occasionally, but now they have access to it.

[00:03:14] And then when you go to the next step, your hair is not quite the color of mine, but you and I are both of an age where we would finish college and, man, we'd be sending out resumes left and right to try to figure out where that first position was going to be and where we were going to head in our lives.

[00:03:28] It's changed for this generation where they're identifying early in their college career, and in some cases even before that, and build a relationship over time.

[00:03:37] Well, Iowa State University is graduating between 8,000 and 9,000 of the next generation of best and brightest.

[00:03:44] And so a lot of companies are finding real value in connecting early and building relationships so that they have that talent of the future.

[00:03:52] Give me some examples of how all this happens.

[00:03:56] Who's there?

[00:03:58] How a company connects, takes advantage of all the talent that is there.

[00:04:04] Yeah.

[00:04:04] So one of the beauties of the ISU Research Park as we compare to our peers.

[00:04:09] So there's just over 200 university-affiliated research parks in America.

[00:04:15] And when the decision was made in 1987 to create the ISU Research Park, at that point in time, every single research park in the world had two things in common.

[00:04:25] They were all urban in nature, and they all had a major existing business or industry already located in the footprint.

[00:04:32] Iowa State University had a 40-acre cornfield south of Ames, right?

[00:04:38] Didn't have either of those.

[00:04:39] And so had to really lean into this idea of how do we differentiate ourselves?

[00:04:44] What are we doing?

[00:04:45] We started out primarily as startups, but what that's involved into is we want to work with the company one at a time.

[00:04:53] And so we don't have this system that if you want to be part of the research park or plug it into the university, you've got to meet us on our terms.

[00:05:01] We want to meet you on your terms, and we view everything through a lens of return on investment.

[00:05:06] Clearly, we're interested in the return on investment for the university, but return on investment for each entity we work with.

[00:05:13] And so it really looks different.

[00:05:15] I'm a Venn diagram guy, right?

[00:05:17] So we view the world through the bubbles.

[00:05:19] And if you think of it in terms of Iowa State University and the research park, the three bubbles are specialized equipment and intellectual capacity.

[00:05:28] It's the intellectual property that is either already created and sitting there waiting to be tapped or that is in the process of being created.

[00:05:36] And then it's this talent base.

[00:05:38] And so we'll have entities that will approach us in one of those three areas.

[00:05:42] What we work hard to do is meet them where they are, think about where they're trying to head.

[00:05:49] And then we rapidly want to pull whatever entity we're working with out to the middle of the Venn diagram, where at some level they're utilizing all three of those resources that we bring to the table.

[00:06:00] Yeah.

[00:06:00] Maximum benefit, I would imagine that.

[00:06:01] Well, and great stickiness, right?

[00:06:04] So if you want to build maximum benefit, but what that creates is it means that as the economy tends to do what it does and the business cycle does what it does and we see startups doing what they do,

[00:06:16] you don't want to be the first thing that somebody looks at as an expense line item that's going to get cut.

[00:06:22] You want to make sure that there's as much benefit there as you can.

[00:06:26] And I think that's one of the reasons that we've had the level of success that we've had since COVID forever.

[00:06:32] Right.

[00:06:32] For the research park has been successful for all time, but really since COVID when commercial real estate went through and is still going through some really interesting times,

[00:06:41] research park went from a peak of about 35% vacancy to today we're about 2% vacant.

[00:06:48] Yeah.

[00:06:48] Yeah.

[00:06:49] Because you have a tremendous, you know, give us an idea, the type of property that's there, office investor, whatever it may be, and how much, what's the level of square footage that is inside the park?

[00:06:58] Yeah.

[00:06:59] So, I mean, just the basics.

[00:07:00] We're 550 acres.

[00:07:02] So, that's grown over the last couple of years.

[00:07:03] We acquired 150 acres, I think, in the early 2023.

[00:07:08] And so, we're at 550 acres of ground.

[00:07:11] We're just completing our 19th and 20th buildings on that property.

[00:07:17] And December 5th, we'll open something called the Alliant Digital Ag Innovation Lab.

[00:07:23] And that'll push us just over a million square feet of space.

[00:07:27] And so, within that million square feet of space this morning, we're working with 136 different entities.

[00:07:34] And I say entities because it's primarily companies, but there's also some pre-companies that are part of those 136 entities.

[00:07:42] And that's everybody from, you know, the level of John Deere and Berger Ingelheim and Merck all the way down to a, you know, two-person shop working on density of liquids in a lab beaker.

[00:07:55] Give me two examples, if you would.

[00:07:57] One at the, you know, small end of startup or somebody at the smaller end of the scale, you know, success story.

[00:08:04] Where did you meet them and their needs?

[00:08:07] And then the other side, you know, one of the big names and how they plug into what it is you guys deliver.

[00:08:13] Yeah.

[00:08:14] So, I don't know if I can, it's like asking me which ones are my kids or whatever and talk about them.

[00:08:20] Once I start, I've got to go through it.

[00:08:21] I'm going to start with PivotBio because it is an entity that we've dealt with at the research part that is entirely on my watch since 2019.

[00:08:31] It's a company that has moved, you know, when we first started visiting with them, they were a true startup trying to figure out how to better connect really more to Central Iowa and Iowa State University.

[00:08:42] And while they found great value in their connection to Iowa State University, it really was truly about thinking about the Midwest, Iowa and the Midwest.

[00:08:50] So, soon after I started at the park, I got a call from a good friend in Ames who is a huge investor and great entrepreneur.

[00:09:00] And he said, Rick, have you heard of a company called PivotBio?

[00:09:03] So, they've developed a unique way to deliver on nitrogen to corn plants.

[00:09:07] And I said, no, I haven't heard anything about them.

[00:09:10] And he said, well, they're a startup company, but they're really starting to expand.

[00:09:15] They've got a small location in St. Louis and they think they're going to start to expand in St. Louis.

[00:09:19] I believe they belong right here in the Midwest and really at the research park.

[00:09:23] Can you reach out to them?

[00:09:25] And I said, sure, I can reach out to them.

[00:09:27] And so, I just started calling up and down the list.

[00:09:30] And I finally got to a vice president who actually had ties to Iowa.

[00:09:34] He was going to be available the next week.

[00:09:36] And so, I had him out to the park and showed him around what we had and talked through what it could be.

[00:09:41] And he said, Rick, he said, I love the research park.

[00:09:44] And we really do need a presence right here, but I'm not going to have any people located in the office.

[00:09:50] We can have people, salespeople that are traveling through that might need to come here.

[00:09:55] But we're a startup.

[00:09:56] We don't have any money.

[00:09:57] And so, the people that work with me regularly know that I like, yes, I like figuring out how to put a deal together.

[00:10:04] And so, I probably got further out over my skis than I should, but I decided that we would find a couple offices and a conference room.

[00:10:13] And it would just be a drop-in spot, but it'd give us a chance to form the relationship.

[00:10:17] Well, you fast forward.

[00:10:18] So, that would have been 2020.

[00:10:19] You fast forward from 2020 to today.

[00:10:22] Now, PivotBio wholly occupies a research park-owned building of 36,000 square feet and runs all of their customer success right through there.

[00:10:30] And it has everything to do, I believe, with first establishing the initial relationship.

[00:10:37] We'll say regularly to entities that are kicking tires with Iowa State Research Park, one office, one person, and we'll prove to you the return on investment.

[00:10:47] And again, we don't know exactly what that return – it's different for every entity that we work with, but we believe strongly that, well, we want to work with innovators, right?

[00:10:56] And so, if you're an innovator and an entrepreneur and you think about the world that way, we view our role as knocking down any of the barriers that keep you from innovating.

[00:11:08] And in our worldview, worrying about a backed-up toilet keeps you from innovating.

[00:11:13] And worrying about who's the right person at Iowa State University to talk about this niche study that I've got, well, that's keeping you from innovating if you're worried about finding that.

[00:11:23] And so, how can we help you through all that?

[00:11:25] Some of it is a space play, right?

[00:11:27] I told you we're a commercial real estate entity with a million square feet of space at the research park, but we don't view ourselves as a commercial real estate entity.

[00:11:36] We view ourselves as a connector between the commercial enterprise and Iowa State University for the good of the state of Iowa.

[00:11:44] How do we do that?

[00:11:46] The value goes way past real estate, real quick.

[00:11:49] Think about it.

[00:11:50] It's how we connect.

[00:11:51] It's what we do.

[00:11:53] It's not who we are.

[00:11:54] Give me an example on the other side of it.

[00:11:56] A big company, it seems like they have all the resources in the world.

[00:12:00] How do they plug in?

[00:12:01] Why do they plug in?

[00:12:02] And I guess maybe just that, obviously, there's multiple ways in which they can benefit.

[00:12:06] Yeah.

[00:12:07] So, just give me an example.

[00:12:08] Yeah.

[00:12:08] I mean, Deere to me.

[00:12:10] I mean, you can go through Deere or Kent or Sukup or Bering or Ingelheim or Merck, but I'm going to use the Deere example because it hits on two layers.

[00:12:18] The first one is Deere actually acquired a startup.

[00:12:21] I believe the startup was in Silicon Valley, but it was all about artificial intelligence.

[00:12:26] And they wanted to use it for what they call sea and spray technology, which is where the sprayer will be moving across the field.

[00:12:33] And in real time, each spray head will identify the plants that it's passing over and provide exactly what that plant needs to live or die, depending on what they want it to do.

[00:12:44] Great technology, and it works in a lab so well, but a lab doesn't have undulation where spray heads are going up and down.

[00:12:52] It doesn't have wind.

[00:12:53] It doesn't have some things that we're going to have in the real world.

[00:12:56] And so Deere wanted to figure out the best way to really take this unique technology and start to enhance it to hopefully be in a practicable kind of resource.

[00:13:07] And so they came to the park based on that.

[00:13:10] They actually built their own facility there on the park.

[00:13:12] They plugged in with a fantastic ISU researcher who provides a lot of research help to them.

[00:13:20] And so they went down that path and have found great success in that and were excited about the possibility of growing that relationship.

[00:13:26] At about the same time, a little different, they recognized that they were having trouble maintaining connections with their rock star interns.

[00:13:36] So John Deere has this really robust summer internship program, and they take students from a whole bunch of different institutions, and they send them out into the John Deere universe.

[00:13:47] And they have these spectacular summer experiences with John Deere, and then they go back to school.

[00:13:52] And Deere was finding that they had a handful of a percentage of those interns that they were really interested in maintaining a relationship with.

[00:14:00] Well, those are the best, the best.

[00:14:03] Others are trying to get in with them, and so they were losing them.

[00:14:06] And so they ran a pilot project with us at the park, and they said, okay, we're going to take three of our rock star interns coming out of the summer.

[00:14:14] We're going to bring them and work them.

[00:14:16] We're going to give them real John Deere projects to work on.

[00:14:19] We're not even going to call them interns.

[00:14:20] We're going to call them full employees just working minimal hours, and they converted all three of those to full-time John Deere employees.

[00:14:32] So they came back the next year, and they grew the program and grew the program, and now there's over 100 John Deere interns that work at the research park through the school year.

[00:14:41] They work limited hours, 10 or 15 hours.

[00:14:43] John Deere pays them really, really well, but most importantly, they treat them like real employees.

[00:14:47] They have them working on real projects, and they're converting somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of those students.

[00:14:53] As they graduate from Iowa State University, they convert them to full-time John Deere employees.

[00:14:59] One year, this would have been 2022, they had 33 ISU students graduate that were part of their program.

[00:15:08] They offered all 33 of them full-time jobs.

[00:15:11] 32 of the 33 took the full-time job.

[00:15:14] One young lady did not.

[00:15:15] She went into the Peace Corps, and at least I believe she's going to end up at John Deere ultimately, right, after she goes and saves the world.

[00:15:24] Nobody has that kind of connectivity, and so we lean in on those are the kinds of things that can happen.

[00:15:32] It takes a real commitment from the company.

[00:15:34] It takes the ISU research park putting its best foot forward.

[00:15:38] It takes some resources within the university to make all of that come together and really have that kind of impact.

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[00:16:24] Well, I think it's interesting.

[00:16:25] We were talking so much about the companies that are deriving benefit from this, all the work you do at the company level.

[00:16:31] And until you just said all the level of interns, all the people who end up there as employees, my next thought is it's unbelievable how the student population benefits from plugging into ultimately what becomes their future.

[00:16:44] That their chosen path of education leads to their profession right down the street.

[00:16:49] Yeah.

[00:16:50] So personally, before I had really gotten engaged with the research part, back when I was still working for Story County, Iowa and the people of Iowa, my son was in school at Iowa State.

[00:17:01] And so just before his junior year in 2011, this new startup company had decided that they wanted to have some interns.

[00:17:09] And so he was either the first intern that they hired or among the first that they hired when they had 30 or 40 total employees working for the company.

[00:17:19] Well, that company is now worldwide, 1,800 people working in places like Amsterdam and Denver and Scottsdale.

[00:17:27] It's called Workiva.

[00:17:28] It was web filings at the time they hired him, but they actually hired him.

[00:17:32] He said, Dad, I would have never made it today with Workiva, but they were looking for these interns.

[00:17:38] I got my foot in the door.

[00:17:39] He's still with them today.

[00:17:41] He's gone over and he's established new development offices for them and is living kind of this dream life based on the ISU Research Park.

[00:17:50] And like I say, it was before I had anything to do with the ISU Research Park.

[00:17:53] But we see student after student after student who has an opportunity maybe to get in great with a company.

[00:18:00] I told you about the way John Deere does it.

[00:18:02] But maybe they just start to find out what their passion is or what their passion is not by working with some of these companies.

[00:18:09] And so we have between 400 and 500 students that are working as interns with companies or entities at the Research Park.

[00:18:16] And we think it's an untapped resource.

[00:18:19] In fact, we've gone so far that in the last two years, we created a program where if a company needs an intern,

[00:18:26] they don't have to go through all the process of hiring an intern, the Research Park will hire it, loan them out to this company,

[00:18:32] and then send the bill at the end of the month.

[00:18:34] And again, try to make it as easy as we can for these companies to really lean in on some of the resources that we offer.

[00:18:40] Breaking down barriers.

[00:18:41] I love that too.

[00:18:42] The simpler you can make it for anybody to do anything, it just becomes real easy to do business with them.

[00:18:48] Well, and let's, you know, some sports background, right?

[00:18:51] You don't ask your star wide receiver to go in and block a defensive tackle very often.

[00:18:59] If you do, you're not going to win that battle very often, right?

[00:19:02] But you want to set it up where you put them in space to do what they do.

[00:19:06] Same thing reversed.

[00:19:08] You're not handing the ball to your offensive guard and saying, okay, go gain us a whole bunch of yards.

[00:19:13] Maybe at trick play every once in a while.

[00:19:15] But you want to free up, you want to free up your entity to do what it does well.

[00:19:21] And all the time that it spends doing other stuff is time away from where you really need to be focused.

[00:19:27] You're spot on.

[00:19:29] Before we pivot to side down, because I want to talk about it.

[00:19:33] Any last things we want to touch on relative to the ISU research?

[00:19:37] Yeah, Research Park, you started with this.

[00:19:39] It's an unintentional, really well-kept secret.

[00:19:43] We don't want it to be a secret, but the number of people that spend...

[00:19:47] So when you come to Ames, so the people that come up to Ames for sporting events, you'll exit right there on University, and you'll come off the exit, and you'll go north right to Jack Trice Stadium or Hilton Coliseum.

[00:19:59] Or if you're going to a play over in CY Stevens.

[00:20:02] Now we're going to talk about Cytown, which is all north.

[00:20:05] If you just turn south, you would be blown away by what's going on in the park.

[00:20:10] I've told you there's 20 spectacular facilities out there all doing different things, but we're not going to stay it.

[00:20:16] We're going to break ground on three or four more projects yet this year.

[00:20:20] We're going to bring our first housing ever to the research park.

[00:20:22] There's what I would deem the best county park in the Story County system located right there in the middle of the research park, which is actually my introduction to the research park as we looked at developing that.

[00:20:35] We're this secret that we need to not be a secret, and you're going to hear more and more about us as we continue to grow and go down the road.

[00:20:44] When you hear the success stories, one after another after another, it just blows me away.

[00:20:50] I'm in agreement with you. That continues, and then there's a groundswell.

[00:20:53] It will not be a secret at some point.

[00:20:56] Yeah, it's about making sure that you're doing as much as you can with the resources that you're deploying on something.

[00:21:03] And so the research park wants to help with that.

[00:21:05] Our challenge right now is 2.5% of vacancy is not enough vacancy, right?

[00:21:10] To do what we do, we need to have a little bit of vacancy where we have the flexibility to bring in a pivot bio.

[00:21:15] We couldn't do that today because space is at such a premium, so we need to continue to develop and grow and be ready to fulfill our mission of making those connections for the benefit of all of Iowans.

[00:21:27] Sightown.

[00:21:28] So let's talk about that.

[00:21:31] I'm going to set up the same way.

[00:21:32] In case somebody doesn't know what Sightown is, doesn't have brand new, this is the first intro to it, give us a little context of what it is.

[00:21:40] Yeah.

[00:21:40] So I would expect the opposite of what we just said.

[00:21:43] Sightown, there's not any big secret with Sightown, right?

[00:21:45] We are, it's a little outlandish, especially the idea when it happened.

[00:21:51] Now you're starting to see a lot of institutions come forward and think about how they can maximize this combination of available property and the reality that they're already drawing a lot of people there.

[00:22:04] So how do you commercialize the people that you already have?

[00:22:07] The reality is for the space that include Jack Trice Stadium and the entire Iowa State Center, which is Hilton Coliseum and C.Y. Stevens and Fisher Auditorium and Scheman, there's 1.3 million visitors that come through that site every year today without anything, right?

[00:22:26] So I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of athletic directors in my career at a lot of different places and some really, really good ones.

[00:22:34] But I've never been around one quite like Jamie Pollard.

[00:22:37] Clearly, he's getting a lot of due credit right now for the success that Cyclones are having on the field and projected to have on the court this year.

[00:22:48] And it's all really well earned.

[00:22:50] But the best thing about Jamie Pollard is he's not a guy who ever rests on his laurels or spends a whole lot of time trying to pat himself on the back or look backwards.

[00:22:58] He's always looking at how do we solve a problem?

[00:23:02] How do we leave it better than we find it?

[00:23:04] How do we improve our prospects here?

[00:23:06] And we're so fortunate that the president of Iowa State University, Wendy Winterstein, has that exact same view.

[00:23:13] She wants to make sure that when her time as president of Iowa State University is done and she hands it to whoever's next, that she's dealt with some of the issues that she found coming in.

[00:23:26] And so one of the major issues that the university has faced through the years is this thing that's called the Iowa State Center.

[00:23:34] It was a visionary thought when Dr. James Hilton in the mid-50s had this idea that for an institution like Iowa State University to be all it could be, it needed to have access to the arts.

[00:23:51] It needed to have access to athletic events.

[00:23:53] He needed to be able to draw the best and the brightest to Iowa State University.

[00:23:58] And when you're in Ames, Iowa, which is, you know, granted, it's a little removed from Des Moines, but in the 1950s, it was really removed from Des Moines.

[00:24:06] You needed to be able to bring all that stuff right there.

[00:24:09] And so he came up with this concept of building a performing arts center and an athletic facility.

[00:24:15] And that was an outlandish thought in that day and age, right?

[00:24:19] Did it.

[00:24:19] And then what so typically happens with a university and all universities, they're great at building stuff and they really struggle with maintaining stuff.

[00:24:29] So all of these facilities were built mid-70s by the time these facilities were built and the deferred maintenance has piled up and piled up and piled up.

[00:24:38] And now what you've got is you've got multiple facilities.

[00:24:41] Hilton, when Jamie Pollard got here, would have been one of these facilities.

[00:24:45] And athletics has done a good job updating and maintaining Hilton while it still has some deferred maintenance issues.

[00:24:51] A lot of them have been taken care of, but C.Y. Stevens, this is a building that was voted architecturally building of the century for the 1900s.

[00:25:02] And it is in many ways functioning obsolete.

[00:25:06] I mean, what I say about it is, it is still a spare naked ladies played there two nights ago, right?

[00:25:11] It is a spectacular place to go see a show, to go see a play, to go see a concert, to go any kind of performing arts.

[00:25:19] It's spectacular. Once you get to your seat, and as long as you don't have to go to the bathroom, you don't want to go to concessions, there's not an emergency.

[00:25:25] It's spectacular. But if there's any of those things, there's stairs to navigate, it's confined spaces.

[00:25:33] It just was designed at a time that we didn't think about things the way we do now.

[00:25:37] So there's dollars that need to be invested.

[00:25:39] Well, anybody who follows the reality of university funding, state university funding, there's not more and more dollars.

[00:25:46] We're trying to figure out how to do more and more with less.

[00:25:49] You're not going to stop paying faculty members.

[00:25:52] You're not going to stop providing student services to students, nor should you do either of those.

[00:25:56] So where's the money going to come from to update and renovate things like this?

[00:26:01] So Jamie, again, in his wisdom, came forward and said, hey, we're parking cars on what is beachfront property.

[00:26:09] Why aren't we developing some of this property and utilizing the proceeds from that to take care of some of these issues that we have?

[00:26:16] It was an outlandish idea.

[00:26:19] And President Winterstein said, let's explore it.

[00:26:22] Let's see what's happening.

[00:26:23] So they put together a small group of us and included me and Jamie kind of as the co-leads.

[00:26:30] Jamie's the lead, right?

[00:26:31] Technically, I think we're co-leads, but he's the vision behind this.

[00:26:36] They pulled us together in 2019 to take a look.

[00:26:40] Is it feasible?

[00:26:42] Nope.

[00:26:42] No institution's ever done this before.

[00:26:44] Can it be done?

[00:26:45] And so we did a big study and we had gotten an initial draft of the study that said, yes, this is feasible at the end of February of 2020.

[00:26:54] And we said, hey, go back and just refine these things and clean this up and let's be ready to release this in March.

[00:27:01] And then we're going to hit the ground running.

[00:27:02] And so we're down at the Big 12 basketball tournament in March and COVID hits and everything stops, right?

[00:27:09] For all of us.

[00:27:10] Right.

[00:27:10] And so it went on the shelf for about 15 months.

[00:27:14] I remember Jamie making the statement at one point, until we're able to put people back in Jack Christ Stadium for a football game, we're not even talking about Cy Town or anything like it.

[00:27:24] Well, it became clear that the 2021 season, we were going to be able to put people back in.

[00:27:31] And so we decided we would dust this thing off and see what it was all about.

[00:27:35] Our first stop was going up to visit our friends in Green Bay who had just, well, they were six years into Titletown.

[00:27:43] It wasn't anywhere near complete as it is today, but it was close to complete.

[00:27:48] You could see it.

[00:27:49] They agreed to visit with us about our idea.

[00:27:51] And so we went up and we sat in the Green Bay Packers boardroom and they gave their presentation.

[00:27:57] And it was surreal because they gave their presentation of Titletown.

[00:28:02] And then we gave our presentation of this idea, wasn't even called Cy Town at that time, this idea that we had to do an entertainment district.

[00:28:10] And if you would have changed the color scheme from green to Cardinal and changed the logo from the G to the I state, it was the same presentation.

[00:28:20] They were just a little bit ahead of us.

[00:28:22] And so it really affirmed for us that we were pushing in the right direction.

[00:28:26] So from that point in time to today, it's been all about pushing forward with how we can do things.

[00:28:33] You know, I told you, you know, my great passion in life is trying to figure out how to make positive things happen.

[00:28:39] That's what Cy Town has been an exercise in.

[00:28:42] And it feels like we're getting really, really close.

[00:28:45] We've got a lot of pieces in place.

[00:28:47] I have to give you the disclaimer right now of the Board of Regents controls all Iowa State University property.

[00:28:55] And so until this thing fully passes the Board of Regents, it's pending Board of Regents approval.

[00:29:03] That said, assuming that ultimately that approval is going to come, we've got all the pieces in place where we've got a developer in hand who's ready to start going on buildings.

[00:29:12] We've got a finalized lease with McFarland Clinic that's going to build a 78,000 square foot medical center right there in the middle of it.

[00:29:20] Ultimately, what you're going to see is you're going to see eight buildings that will include an amphitheater.

[00:29:25] It will include office space.

[00:29:26] It will include this concept of Cy Town Suites, which we can talk more about if you'd like.

[00:29:31] It'll include a 200 key hotel that really is going to start to attach the existing area of the Iowa State Center.

[00:29:39] So if you think of Hilton and Scheman and CY Stevens really out in that space.

[00:29:44] And it will be a game changer when you think about if you accept that the space is already active two weeks a year, right?

[00:29:53] Seven home football games and then another seven events a year, be it Kansas at Iowa State basketball or something.

[00:30:01] It's active, you know, those 14 days a year.

[00:30:05] Well, that still gives us, what, 351 days a year to do more and more and more.

[00:30:11] Really excited, not only for Iowa State University, but for our community and for Central Iowa.

[00:30:16] There's a lot of people in Central Iowa who remember when you went to Ames, Iowa to see a big concert.

[00:30:24] You would go there to see the Rolling Stones.

[00:30:26] You went there to see Simon and Garfunkel.

[00:30:28] You went, you know, that was a focal point.

[00:30:31] Well, so many of our towns, including Des Moines, have done a fantastic job of really upping their game in terms of the amenities they offer.

[00:30:40] So I don't think there'll ever be a time that we'll see Ames ascend to that level again.

[00:30:45] But we should be getting some things.

[00:30:47] We should recognize that there's 30,000 young people there that we need to tap into.

[00:30:52] And so really, really exciting to be part of the project and to see what it's going to positively impact Iowa State University.

[00:30:59] It's going to positively impact the ISU Research Park.

[00:31:02] I think more broadly, it's going to positively impact all of Iowa to have an amenity like that.

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[00:31:41] Yeah, it's going to be very interesting.

[00:31:42] Well, in addition to all those things you mentioned, you've got, I suspect, some retail that goes in there.

[00:31:48] Well, in my restaurants, some level of entertainment that's there that helps not just keep people there.

[00:31:56] Because it goes way past the 14 days a year.

[00:31:59] This is going to be really a beacon that attracts people to come.

[00:32:04] Yeah, it's attracting the people that are already coming earlier and more often.

[00:32:09] And it is pulling people in on a Wednesday afternoon that probably have a love of Iowa State University

[00:32:18] or want to stop and have a beer at a good pub overlooking Jack Trice Stadium.

[00:32:23] Or we talked about McFarland Clinic.

[00:32:26] You know, they're going to have a thousand appointments a day coming through that facility.

[00:32:31] It gives them a spot to go.

[00:32:33] The hotel.

[00:32:34] Ames is this spectacular place with great hotel offerings.

[00:32:38] But we tend to have less on the higher end hotel offering.

[00:32:42] Now that's going to provide that.

[00:32:43] And then Sightown Suites to me is an exciting concept in that it kind of combines really nice hotel suite with the idea of the stadium suites in a football stadium.

[00:32:56] Right.

[00:32:57] And it's a place that you can come and, in essence, extend your stay in Ames for Iowa State University for the whole weekend instead of coming in on game day.

[00:33:08] And you talked about retail makes the whole thing work, but for the retail to work, we've got to have enough activity at all times.

[00:33:15] Right.

[00:33:15] Right?

[00:33:16] Well, it's exciting.

[00:33:18] It is going to be something spectacular.

[00:33:20] I think it'll be one of those moments people remember here in Central Iowa to go, this is when it happened because it'll forever change the face, like you said.

[00:33:29] When the whole area was built and finally finishing the 70s because it forever changed things.

[00:33:34] It changed things, but people's memory are really interesting to me.

[00:33:38] Right?

[00:33:38] So my wife and I were here just before Jamie Pollard got here.

[00:33:42] My wife is senior associate athletic director at Iowa State.

[00:33:47] And so she was really the last hire of Bruce Vandevelde, who was the previous athletic director.

[00:33:52] And so we know firsthand and pretty intimately what this place was before Jamie Pollard got here.

[00:33:59] And sometimes I get tickled.

[00:34:01] I think, you know, fans and spectators lose sight of where things start and where they've gone.

[00:34:07] But we got the question one time, I don't even remember where we are, but Jamie and I were sitting together and we were presenting SciTown.

[00:34:13] And, you know, clearly we're really passionate about it and we're excited and our excitement tends to rub off on others.

[00:34:19] And so whoever it was we were talking to got really, really excited and said, this is fantastic.

[00:34:24] When are you going to break ground?

[00:34:26] When does it start?

[00:34:27] And Jamie and I kind of looked at each other.

[00:34:29] And for whatever reason, I just said, well, we've already started.

[00:34:32] Because the reality is the Soup Cup End Zone Club is part of being able to do this.

[00:34:38] The Start Performance Center is part of being able to do this.

[00:34:41] Clearly the bridge that so many people seem to love so much.

[00:34:44] We can't do SciTown if that bridge is not built and we don't move the RV parking off of what now will be SciTown kind of parking.

[00:34:54] And so the reality is for Jamie's, he's got to have been here now almost 20 years.

[00:34:58] For his 20 years, we've been making this progress every step of the way.

[00:35:03] And I think SciTown will be a great culmination to kind of this era of what Cyclone Athletics has been.

[00:35:10] I remember where we were in 2003 when we were excited to get 30,000 people to a football game.

[00:35:17] I think we'll be disappointed if it's not sold out.

[00:35:19] Those kinds of things are just really, really cool.

[00:35:22] And to me, this is baking it into the cake.

[00:35:26] That this is not a blip on the radar for Iowa State University.

[00:35:29] This is who we are and who we're going to be.

[00:35:32] And I think SciTown is part of that.

[00:35:35] It helps make it happen, but it's also an acknowledgement of what is special there right now.

[00:35:39] There's no doubt.

[00:35:39] It's exciting.

[00:35:40] And it's going to be fun to see it finish, not start.

[00:35:43] Because you're right.

[00:35:44] Foundationally, it's been going for some time.

[00:35:46] So a lot of pieces have to fit in place for a giant vision to be formed.

[00:35:51] Yeah.

[00:35:51] I mean, so the beauty for us in terms of moving dirt is now we've got all the infrastructure in, right?

[00:35:56] Anybody who's been up there, the parking is so much better.

[00:36:00] Hell, there were cracks in the parking five years ago that you could fall into, right?

[00:36:05] Now it's all new parking.

[00:36:07] But even more importantly than that, we've put all the necessary infrastructure under the ground where we can actually now develop on top of it.

[00:36:14] We've taken care of some of the water runoff issues.

[00:36:17] You know, that's a pretty low area there.

[00:36:19] And while it's not in a flood plain, it is prone to flooding from time to time.

[00:36:24] And so taking care of those things.

[00:36:26] And so I am, well, we will break ground on the first building for sure, either later this calendar year or first thing in the spring.

[00:36:36] And I don't think we're going to break ground on one building.

[00:36:38] I think we're going to break ground on multiple buildings.

[00:36:40] I think you're going to see a couple years of construction.

[00:36:43] And so, you know, this is interesting since it will be recorded for all posterity.

[00:36:48] But my prediction is you will see Cytown largely finish, not completely finish, but largely finish by the time we get to this point in 2027.

[00:37:00] And then it will just be interesting to see what it ultimately turns into.

[00:37:03] It's exciting.

[00:37:04] Rick, I've asked you lots of questions.

[00:37:07] What's one question I did not ask that I should have asked?

[00:37:10] Yeah, so I want, from your perspective, you have a lot of conversations and really dig into this.

[00:37:16] Tell me what we're missing in our pipeline to really start to draw more and more of that funding that's so necessary for our companies to develop, grow, and thrive.

[00:37:30] And I'll give you my premise behind this.

[00:37:33] Part of what we do, well, part of what we try to do at the Research Park is really embrace what Iowa is becoming.

[00:37:40] And I'll go a little deeper there.

[00:37:41] So I believe that traditionally Iowa has been a commodity state.

[00:37:45] And so we've been worried about what we can grow and then all the services that flow around that.

[00:37:51] But largely, we would grow it and it would go somewhere else to be enhanced or have value added.

[00:37:59] And we seem to be transitioning now to more of a state that is interested in maintaining what we're growing and developing for as long as possible so that all the value add or most of the value add happens here.

[00:38:13] But that requires funding that is not native to Iowa, right?

[00:38:17] Clearly, the coast, you know, if you think of technology and the West Coast and you think of sciences in the East Coast, that's where the money seems to congregate.

[00:38:25] And it tends to make it about as far out as Chicago when you come to the Midwest.

[00:38:30] What do we need to do to get our ecosystem stronger, in your view?

[00:38:34] That is a fantastic question.

[00:38:36] I think things like this, having these conversations so that, I use a quote, spreading the good news, right?

[00:38:43] So that people get educated about what this is, what's here, what is available.

[00:38:48] Because, I mean, you think about innovation.

[00:38:51] Iowa State is a hub of innovation.

[00:38:53] The computer was invented at Iowa State, right?

[00:38:56] I mean, it is a hub.

[00:38:58] There's just no way around it.

[00:38:59] I think part of probably some of the unique challenges of the Midwest is get outside of Chicago.

[00:39:05] Some of these tier two, tier three cities or states even is just getting plugged into that capital.

[00:39:10] Not make it a flyover state.

[00:39:12] They're making a fly to state because there's gold.

[00:39:15] There's nuggets in what's taking place.

[00:39:18] We live in a very flat place, meaning knowledge is flat.

[00:39:24] You can compete with any place in this country, right?

[00:39:27] I mean, the internet, you can talk to anybody across the world.

[00:39:30] It is just flat.

[00:39:31] And so innovation does not, especially at a very young age, isn't necessarily all concentrated in one place.

[00:39:38] It is all over.

[00:39:40] And so continuing to, and that's one of the reasons I want to have you on because I think everybody needs to know about the research park and what is available.

[00:39:50] Yeah, it's a research park.

[00:39:51] I mean, we're a component of it, but I think you rightly point out it's so much bigger.

[00:39:55] It's bigger than the research park.

[00:39:57] It's even bigger than Iowa State University and might be bigger than the state of Iowa.

[00:40:02] But the case I'll make, and I'm so glad to hear you say all that is, if you think of Silicon Valley, but we go back in time to the 60s in Silicon Valley, the reality is you talk about kind of how knowledge is flat.

[00:40:15] The technology hub of the world could have developed anywhere at that point in time, and it happened to develop there primarily in Silicon Valley.

[00:40:24] And you get this gravity well that starts pulling things in, right?

[00:40:27] And I make the case pretty regularly that we have a generational kind of opportunity right now when you think of food and fuel systems of the future, ever-growing world.

[00:40:40] How are we going to feed it and fuel it and do the things that we need to do?

[00:40:46] Well, we're at least tied for first when you think of this.

[00:40:50] Why wouldn't we lean in and figure out if there's a way for all of us pulling in the same direction to look back in 30 years and say, look at the gravity well that we create right here?

[00:41:00] I think that's our opportunity.

[00:41:02] I totally agree with you, and I appreciate the work you do because it takes-

[00:41:06] Oh, it's a blast.

[00:41:07] I mean, it takes people like you, leaders in the field to get out there, to push the envelope, to push and to set a vision and get everybody rolling in the same direction.

[00:41:17] Because at the end of the day, everybody benefits here.

[00:41:20] The environment, as you've described it, the whole state wins.

[00:41:24] There's no losers here.

[00:41:25] I completely agree with that.

[00:41:26] You hate to, again, sports metaphor, you hate to go down looking, right?

[00:41:31] Congratulations to Los Angeles.

[00:41:33] You hate to go down looking at the third strike.

[00:41:35] I think we've got this thing set up right now.

[00:41:39] Somebody's going to end up filling that gravity well.

[00:41:41] Somebody's going to end up pulling in.

[00:41:43] Why not us?

[00:41:43] Why not us?

[00:41:44] Rick, I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to connect and have a conversation today.

[00:41:48] For people, they want to find you.

[00:41:50] They want to follow you.

[00:41:50] They want to connect with you.

[00:41:51] They want to learn more about the research park.

[00:41:53] Where should they go?

[00:41:54] What should they do?

[00:41:54] Yeah.

[00:41:54] So for us at the research park, isupark.org, all my contact is there.

[00:42:00] But more importantly, access to our team at the research park, and they're the rock stars in all of this.

[00:42:05] And then, you know, Iowa State University, pretty easy to dig into Iowa State University.

[00:42:10] But really, what we're interested in is we're interested in being helpful.

[00:42:14] And so if anybody out there thinks that there's a way that the ISU research park might be helpful to their entity, their idea, we'd love to talk to you.

[00:42:22] Links are below in the show notes for everybody.

[00:42:24] Perfect.

[00:42:24] Thanks.

[00:42:25] Thanks for listening.

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