“The Future of San Bernardino's Economic Development with IE Real Estate Mogul David Friedman” – Featured on Inland Insight Podcast with Manny Sandoval and Denise Berver.
David Friedman gives insight on the future of San Bernardino and the importance of community and collaboration to build a thriving downtown.
David Friedman was honored to feature in the Inland Insight Podcast. In the episode, The Future of San Bernardino's Economic Development with IE Real Estate Mogul David Friedman, he shared his ideas and involvement in growing downtown San Bernardino. He is hoping to bring in and expand small businesses hoping to make San Bernardino a walkable city.
Read the transcript to the Inland Insight Podcast below!
Manny Sandoval: Welcome to Inland Insight with IECN hosted by Manny Sandoval and Denise Berver.
Manny Sandoval: What's up Inland Empire and welcome to Inland Insight with IECN. My name is Manny Sandoval co-owner and co-publisher of Inland Empire Community News
Denise Berver: and I'm Denise Berver co-owner and publisher also.
Manny Sandoval: He has a pretty impressive rese and I don't want to mess this up so I'm going to read it verbatim so David is the co-founder and CEO of Realicore Real Estate Group a full service Property Management brokerage and development company he's also the co-owner of the iconic San Bernardino and beloved boba shop in San Bernardino Viva La Boba and he was also recognized by assembly Majority Leader Eloise Gómez Reyes as a top 30 under 30 leader in the area in the region and he's also a graduate of CSUSB. Welcome David.
David Friedman: Thank you. Hey, thanks for having me on your show. I'm so excited to be here. I should have you rewrite my rese. That was great, thank you.
Manny Sandoval: I will do that for $50. No, I'm just kidding.
David Friedman: That's a deal!
Manny Sandoval: Okay so I think $50 is the baseline for everything today.
David Friedman: Minimum $50, everyone should be charging $50 an hour.
Manny Sandoval: So let's start with Realicore. So what do you guys do in the city and what services do you provide to the region?
David Friedman: Yeah that's a great question. So that's a question I still ask myself. When I started Realicore 12 years ago, I was trying to figure that out. I think I started as a real estate agent buying and selling houses for clients, it turned into US flipping houses, from there it went to buying and developing commercial property, and now we're developing and doing Property Management. So it's just seen so many you know changes, growth, and services that we offer that I'm still not exactly sure how far we can go with Realicore, but it's been great so far. I mean we manage a lot of property, we're going to start on our first development which I know we'll talk about and we've just been doing a lot of community placemaking, so there's a lot that Realicore does but it's all real estate related.
Manny Sandoval: So what I found impressive though is your basically catalog or portfolio are the amount of buildings or spaces that you guys own. What's that number today?
David Friedman: Oh man, I think we have like 75 commercial units. We don't do residential anymore. We'll get back into maybe apartment development and stuff like that but we got out of houses and we're just yeah a lot of commercial property most of it in San Bernardino.
Manny Sandoval: So you mentioned obviously over 75 commercial properties, what are some of the businesses that have come in? I've heard through multiple people that you and your guys' business have provided a lot of small businesses the opportunity to have a retail space or have an affordable space where they can run and operate their business in downtown San Bernardino so speak on that.
David Friedman: So all of the businesses that we rent to are small businesses. We do have some spaces that we rent to the county but we kind of inherited those tenants but anything that we rent out new it's all small business. We're really passionate about small business it just you know if you're an industrial real estate broker you're dealing with these big boxes kind of boring you know. Manufacturing or logistics retail is just so interesting as far as real estate goes. I get to work with some of the coolest, most creative up and coming brands and a lot of them are just hardcore entrepreneurs who just want to make a difference in the industry that they're in and I just love being around that energy.
Manny Sandoval: What are some of those businesses? I know you guys have a barber shop. I think you've taken me to that a couple times?
David Friedman: Barber’s Club by Markie, Diverse Soul by Gus and his wife and you know they're one of the two first small businesses that I ever leased to that was actually the first commercial building that I ever bought. It was a 2 unit right in San Bernardino on E Street and we renovated it and put a lot of money into it, more than we thought we would have to, but it's okay we got it for a good price and it's thriving. Both those businesses are doing great. Recently just signed 5 year leases renewing so that's a big commitment to be in downtown San Bernardino for the next half of a decade but yeah those are great examples of small businesses that are thriving in downtown San Bernardino in some of our buildings.
Manny Sandoval: For those of us who also are kind of unaware of what the prices of commercial properties typically range from in downtown San Bernardino what does that look like these days?
David Friedman: That's a good question. So it can vary pretty wildly. I think we are pretty aggressive in what we buy. For some properties we paid 20 bucks a square foot which is literally nothing in the scheme of things as far as the Inland Empire goes. In Redlands you could easily start at $300 a square foot nowadays, that was maybe back in like 2014, 2015. Nowadays I think you could easily pay 100-125 bucks a square foot and even then that's still below what we call replacement costs. So if you had to build the same building today you couldn't build it. And so San Bernardino is just such a value-ad type place to invest in like you can if you know what you're doing or if you know how to create additional value out of a building that maybe a previous landlord couldn't, you can go in and make good money.
Manny Sandoval: Gotcha and Denise I think you have the next question.
Denise Berver: Recently The Fifth Street Gateway held grand openings for Starbucks, Del Taco, 7-Eleven and we're excited about the addition of Ono Hawaiian Barbecue so what is your involvement with that project and what can you tell us about the status of it?
David Friedman: At this point, thanks Denise, I've always wanted to develop property and I would say about 7 years ago some land across from In-N-Out came up for sale. This is before a developer was chosen for the rest of the First Street Gateway, before it was even for sale or the city was even considering selling it. I told my partners if it's good enough for In-N-Out it's good enough for us, so even though it was an area where like I don't know if you're from San Bernardino, fifth street right on that corner Fifth and G or fifth and H can get a little dicey. It’s gotten so much better and you know we held on to it for seven years and finally the city put up the other land for sale. I knew at that time I would have been 23 or 24. I'm about to turn 31 this month so at that time I knew the city would never work with some brat kid who had never done a development before and so I was like alright how do I force my way in. Okay if I'm the next biggest property owner next to the city's land maybe I can make my way in and so literally in the in the agenda item when they were voting on it to to sell the land in Council it said anyone who wants to develop this land has to reach out to David and Howard Freidman, Howard is my dad, to partner with them and see if we can make it a bigger development and it was great. It was nice. It was like we were getting courted by all these big developers, they're like who are you guys, how's your involvement and so two of them out of like seven that applied only two developers reached out. One of them I forget but he was from Rancho, the other one was Gian Torkan, a part of an ICO group out in LA, really just an amazing guy and just a very sharp developer. They ended up going with him and we co-developed together. I mean I was kind of riding his coattails, he was teaching me and you know I was lucky enough to be able to kind of be in his wings for this development. Being my first I had no idea what I'm doing but he helped do all the CCNR, he got all the approvals he just took me along with him every step of the way so it's been a great experience. I feel like I'm lucky to have all those mentors around me. I feel like I've avoided so many mistakes and pitfalls. So just to bring you all the way up to date we're about to start construction on Ono Hawaiian Grill next month. We'll have a groundbreaking, maybe I don't you know I'll invite you guys.
Manny Sandoval: I had to look at the camera for that one. I'm very excited about it. I said, he said next month all right
David Friedman: Yeah, get me on the calendar. No no I'll let you know, you'll be the first I promise yeah.
Manny Sandoval: I'm excited about that just because on you know Fifth Street now we have the Starbucks there is the Del Taco obviously the Panda Express there is the In-N-Out which are all fine places but I'm excited for the
David Friedman: Ono is a little more unique
Manny Sandoval: Yeah exactly
David Friedman: I do want to just say like it it wasn't my dream necessarily to develop a drive-thru and we can talk, I'm sure we're going to talk about this more, but like a drive-thru is the antithesis of walkability and it just so happens that that's what the market wants and that's what the market is you know. You can profit off of it, but it is a weird feeling for me personally to be developing a drive-thru. We can go over that more but I thought I would bring that up no
Manny Sandoval: So I mean let's skip around the
David Friedman: Sorry am I messing up your order
Manny Sandoval: No I was going to say let's let's skip around the BS when are we looking at this coming to fruition possibly, is there like a period that you could give us, a quarter, next year or something
David Friedman: Yeah I think it'll be up and running between January and March so first quarter
Manny Sandoval: That's awesome
David Friedman: We'll see cars going through there that quarter
Manny Sandoval: Got it and yeah you're correct we will get to the walkability and discussing that and the importance of that in the city but before we get to that I know off record yesterday well not off record but off you know camera and the mic here. My mic keeps falling so if you guys see me awkwardly like keep lifting it it's because it's falling to the floor but anyway so placemaking you know it's an interesting concept and you kind of brought that to my attention earlier this week. Can you explain to our audience what placemaking is, the philosophy behind that and why that needs to be integrated into San Bernardino and other cities?
David Friedman: So I just came back from a placemaking conference in Baltimore super cool, bunch of really cool people. 10 years ago there wasn't even a job for placemaking and now there's so many jobs out in all these cities that are literally titled you know placemaking director and all that stuff. Actually I kind of set you off on the wrong foot so, nowadays the cutting edge in placemaking as we call it place keeping and that's kind of like so we don't bulldoze over the existing culture and the existing art or the existing community that's there we call it place keeping. The reason is just the name, it kind of tells you right, we're just adding on to what's already there. Placemaking or place keeping is basically creating a reason for people to come to a certain place. Why do you go to a certain coffee shop? Is it because they have nice tables and nice chairs, it's comfortable, you like the coffee,maybe there's another business across the street you like going to. You know there's so many different facets of placemaking and that's one. The next is, is a place nicely landscaped, does it have a lot of greenery, like are you going to go take a person on a date there because it's a comfortable like serene place to you know quiet place to talk. Then like art, art is a big part of a place making you know maybe you're not staring at a mural for an hour but you're gonna walk by that mural and be like wow like you're gonna get a feeling about that place and it's gonna dictate how you feel about that place. So if you go to the Breezeway right now in downtown San Bernardino and you look at some of the new murals we put in there. We try to tell a story and it's going to tell you a little bit about a history of place, if you have no idea, you know nothing, no art critique bone in your body you'll still feel like oh wow those are bright colors it's a beautiful subject it's pretty to look at you know. I think anyone can enjoy those things and we may not know or understand all the pieces that make up a place that we want to go to but I think in your head you know places that you like going to and so it's about breaking down those elements of what makes up those places and then reverse engineering and creating those places. And it takes a lot of private partnership, public partnership, nonprofits, grants. It takes a lot of behind the- scenes work until boom all of a sudden you have a cool place with paper stones, nice businesses, it's safe, there's more lighting. So there's just so much that goes behind placemaking. It's such a cool concept that I think more and more people are realizing every downtown or every city needs these places where people can go and congregate and make friends and come up with business ideas and all that stuff.
Manny Sandoval: So you mentioned the Breezeway which is where Viva la Boba is located in downtown San Bernardino. Can you explain to the people watching or listening what the Breezeway currently entails? What you mentioned in the murals can you touch on that and basically what else you want to see happen in the Breezeway so you know move towards that you know placemaking you know notion or philosophy as you mentioned so yeah share with that?
David Friedman: So that kind of like this kind of interplay, actually wait can you ask that question one more time.
Manny Sandoval: Yeah no worries at all so it was basically when you talk about the Breezeway which is where Viva la Boba is located, what is currently in the Breezeway and what else would you like to see integrated into the Breezeway to kind of move forward in that notion of place making but you mentioned what was the other one place keeping?
David Friedman: Okay great so this kind of interplays back to your question of like who do we rent our spaces to and small businesses are actually a great part of placemaking. We're very particular about who we rent to and the reason being is like if I rent one of these ground floor retail spaces to say an attorney's office, not that there's anything wrong with that like we need attorneys for one reason or another, but if I do that you know you may have two or three attorneys in there sitting there all day. Maybe they come out once to get a coffee or whatever but you're not creating foot traffic and so starting just on the basic level of what kind of businesses you bring to a place makes the difference in what that place looks like. Trying to get, we call it a tenant mix in real estate like the more formal world, is what is what are some businesses that have Synergy together. Can you go get a haircut and then go get a drink and then maybe go to the movies afterwards or is there five coffee shops right next to each other and you're like okay well I have to make a choice. I'll just choose all of them actually if that were me but I think I'd like to see more restaurants in the Breezeway. I'd like to see more food that is always good, more entertainment type stuff. People are, especially like our generation, they are looking for more experiences right. Experiential retail is definitely a term that's being thrown around a lot so just businesses that work together. When I rent to businesses, can you pull it off financially? Are you a unique business? Do you answer that question of what makes downtown San Bernardino unique? Then three do you love San Bernardino? If you can't get behind, hey I'm going to have to deal with a few issues here or there but we're going to work together and get through it as a community then it's not going to last long.
Manny Sandoval: I think I heard at some point there was a restaurant coming somewhere nearby the Breezeway. What happened with that? Do you know it's still a possibility?
David Friedman: I don't want to reveal anything yet cuz like it's still in talks. We don't have a specific concept yet I don't have a specific person yet but there is a tenant in one of the buildings right now that wants to expand on his business and open a restaurant there. The idea well I don't want to, maybe someone will see this and want to be an investor so I will say. We want to come up with a concept where we're getting students from like San Bernardino Valley College because they have a really great culinary program here and they get a chance to open or be a chef at this restaurant so you know where else can you do you know of a place in the Inland Empire where you can go and try food from like up and coming chefs.
Manny Sandoval: I can't think of a place, no, but I remember that was something kind of like that the Art Institute used to do almost but obviously they were like nearly an unaccredited school I think. I think, allegedly.
David Friedman: Yeah I want to take that a step further and be like okay every time you go here your experience is going to be unique. I'm not saying it's always going to be great but you know it's a great place to have conversation and try something new and experiment and so that's the kind of stuff that I want to see happen here.
Manny Sandoval: I will say that I have tried food from San Bernardino Valley College the food truck and it's a 10 out of 10 almost every time I feel like they haven't missed with me yet like the chicken sandwiches 10 out of 10 their street tacos 10 out of 10 let's go and I would know look at the color of my skin I'm just kidding but you mentioned walkability and I believe Denise has the next question
Denise Berver: Yes, so one common element of cities that have had successful downtown renovation is a walkability factor. So how do you feel that it plays into what you're trying to do here because San Bernardino does have the infrastructure for it. It's perfect really when you think about it. It's very walkable. It's just the safety issue and the fact that there aren't very many people walking around San Bernardino right now, that you want to be hanging out with in the evening time necessarily. So how do you think we can start to improve that so people will want to come to downtown San Bernardino and want to walk around and have a variety of businesses to shop at to eat at and hang out in the area?
David Friedman: I love this question. I hope all the city council members watch this video or listen to this podcast. I'm going to teach you the secrets to a walkable downtown. It's simple and complex at the same time. Every downtown that you go to has its own unique walkability, like what makes it a special place that you want to go to. We can talk about downtown Redlands, which is very historic, easy to walk, trees provide shade, there's a lot of simple things that you can do that make something more walkable. Shade is a big one. There's a lot of trees missing in downtown San Bernardino and I know the city's coming up with a tree management plan like a master plan but you know that's something that needs to be considered. Alright do we have a nice and straight and ADA approved sidewalk, are there chips missing out from it, are people going to trip. Simple things like that make a big difference and I'm sure maybe you guys have heard this but like anything that's made to ADA standards is also accessible, it creates better accessibility for normal people too. So having a lot of places where people can bike is also important for walkability because people will bike there and then get off their bike versus just passing through on their car. Creating a lot of spaces where maybe there's some green space or park space, makes a place walkable. On one hand if it's just this huge long park you know that could get boring but on the other hand if it's just a huge long block of buildings that could also get boring. You can activate a street by putting certain businesses, places like a coffee shop is always going to be a great example because people always like to hang out there it's a cheap place to kind of hang out, you spend six or seven bucks for a coffee maybe more nowadays but that's a good example of like people will walk to go get a coffee and it activates that space. Now that other people see there's people there they're going to be coming to check it out they want to see what's going on. Then another business opens next door because they're like oh there's foot traffic here. Walkability it's great for the economy and I, you guys aren't funded by the county are you?
Denise Berver: We're not
David Friedman: Great so I'll just be real honest.
Manny Sandoval: Not yet anyway okay just kidding
David Friedman: Let's take this as an opportunity to learn. So the county just built their new DA building in Downtown San Bernardino and it's really frustrating for a couple reasons. One it's an eyesore, the way they designed it. I'm sorry whoever approved that it's so, you come into downtown and you see an eye sore. Two, they didn't put any ground floor retail so now you have half a block that's dead so it's not walkable. You're not going to walk there unless you have to go across it to get to somewhere else. Basically, essentially the county of San Bernardino is hurting the city of San Bernardino and its economic prospects because they've created a dead zone in downtown. The city can combat this actually. They can put in in their zoning and code that if you're going to build, what we need are not development maxims, we need development minims. If you're going to put a building in a downtown that's supposed to be walkable you have to have ground floor retail. It could be an art gallery. When I say retail it doesn't have to be somewhere that makes money the county could have even just put an art gallery down there or something for a community space so anything that's just accessible and open to the public. Really that would have been a huge change, is to make it like hey at a minimum you have to have some sort of ground floor activity but right now just a parking lot.
Denise Berver: So in regards to that type of building do you feel that it works counterintuitively to the other projects that the city is trying to, what would you say?
David Friedman: Absolutely, so I mean if the city's trying to develop the Carousel Mall bring in like 13,000 units of housing and then you have just this dead zone where the County's at they're not really contributing to the life, the streetscape of downtown San Bernardino. They're taking away from it they're creating a dead zone and you know it's not necessarily the County's job to think about that, it would be nice, but it's really the city's job to put put in our code a minimum on on requiring ground floor space that's somehow available to the public or to a bus a small business that will then open up to the public so it there is yeah there's a disconnect
Denise Berver: You would like to see something like that built into the infrastructure
David Friedman: Yeah so you mentioned infrastructure, a great word as far as walkability. The Inland Empire is in my belief on the cusp of just like a revolution in walkability and just having access to other modes of transportation besides cars. We have the arrow train from Downtown Redlands to downtown San Bernardino and it is the first zero emission train in the United States. Which just blows my mind that it's here in San Bernardino you know of all the places we got McDonald's, we got our zero missions train, we are a city of first.
Manny Sandoval: Taco Bell
David Friedman: We got Taco Bell yeah we got Taco Tia too. Infrastructure is huge, you know. Now that we have conser flights out of the airport that's big now. People can fly in. We have the only Guatemalan and Mexican and I think Salvadoran consulates outside of LA. That's huge when the Mexican presidential election was happening. East Street was shut down because there were like almost 3,000 people trying to go to the consulate to vote. Those 3,000 people they have to walk they're probably spilling out onto the streets. Maybe they all went and spent some money at some of the small businesses downtown. Some of them are flying in and out of San Bernardino airport. I hope they add flights to Mexico City one of these days. All that infrastructure makes a huge difference on getting to a place without having to drive your car and then from there you're going to have to walk so it's almost like a chicken in the egg problem. You get some maybe older more conservative people who are like well what about the parking that's always going to be a question from them and it's like you know what not everyone can or wants to live like you and if you provide housing with accessible options like maybe a car you can rent when only when you need it you don't have to pay for a parking space all the time or if you have a good bicycle parking area in your apartment complex that makes it nice and easy to walk or bike. If you offer these amenities and kind of take away the ability for people to have cars but make it you know if you can have a grocery store within 10 minutes of walking if you can have your coffee shop maybe at you know now we have a hospital in downtown because of Loma Linda so like if you can get all those life's necessities within walking distance that's also a part of walkability so we need to be trying to develop those connections and those small businesses and those those all those key metrics that make up a place walkable.
Manny Sandoval: I was going to mention I'm also part of the problem a little bit because I live in an area that is extremely walkable but I still drive. I'll literally drive around the corner for 30 seconds instead of walking the 3 minutes to Chipotle.
David Friedman: It's a California culture problem man we yeah I mean it's comfortable in our cars we got how it's 105 today I think or or yesterday yeah.
Denise Berver: I was in the on the East Coast recently and you walk everywhere walk everywhere and it's so easy there's everything you need is within a block and then I come here and I'm like do I really want to walk two blocks to get a cup of coffee now I'm going to drive so yeah
David Friedman: It's like our first instinct
Denise Berver: But it's so nice to be able to walk and get everything you need within a block or two
Manny Sandoval: Especially when it's not 100° outside
David Friedman: Oh yea going back to the trees right right if you had trees to to give you shade you'd probably walk more right if it was a covered path
Manny Sandoval: I do see people walking often but it is kind of limited to the business community almost so I do hope to see more of that moving forward
David Friedman: I think I think that's the seed that's where it starts as you get businesses who want to be close to each other not too different than like you know Tech up in s Francisco and then from there you build onto it and and everyone's realizing right now that office buildings are not in Vogue right now and so it's going to be housing and and so every downtown whether it's like a you know small downtown like tertiary downtown like Redlands or like San Bernardino or a big downtown like downtown LA they're all grappling with we need to build more housing or we need to convert these offices into housing so and that's what makes a downtown sustainable is people walking spending money
Manny Sandoval: David I know you kind of spoke out at a couple Council meetings I think you actually well there's been a few of them actually but one in particular was about property business Improvement and or the property business improvement district yes can you share with our listeners and readers what that is and what that means for the city?
David Friedman: Okay so I mean there's a reason I started a boba and coffee shop and it's because…Real estate, I think to most people it would be like doing trigonometry, it's not always super interesting and so a PBID is one of those things but it's really important. I like to use this kind of reference to get people to understand what a PBID is. If you have a mall and the mall owner wants to increase security or increase the cleanliness of the parking lot all they have to do is say yep we want to pay more to do it and it's done okay. Now if you have a bunch of small property owners and a bunch of small businesses all in a downtown and that's usually how downtowns are if someone wants to pay for security they are paying for it all out of their pocket maybe they only own one or two buildings in downtown or or they're just a business in downtown they don't even own a building and so now that 10 12 $15,000 a month they have to come out of pocket. So realistically that doesn't happen because it's not affordable, so with the PBID it's basically a bunch of property owners and businesses that get together we tax ourselves. A lot of cities and governments will participate especially if they're in the boundary of the PBID, and we will use that money to make it more Equitable for all the property owners so now it's like okay now everyone in this boundary pays $300 a year and between all of us we can afford you know security or we can afford additional cleanliness services or we can afford to update the medians with landscaping. PBIDs can even do some crazy stuff, they're a nonprofit so they can even do stuff like right now there's a parking structure in downtown San Bernardino that's pretty mismanaged they can create a management agreement with the city and manage that parking structure. So a lot of, for example Santa Monica parking structures are either owned or managed by the Santa Monica PBI. It's just this kind of organization that allows everyone to get on the same page it allows us to pull resources it it gives us some collective voice when we go to the city and say hey this is what the PBID wants you know this is what we need to succeed in downtown and so it just kind of brings some strength back to the grassroots small business property owner and stuff like that so
Manny Sandoval: So where does the city currently stand with the PBID?
David Friedman: Oh man you're going to get me in trouble. Okay so we've been trying to get the PBID I think now for four or five years. We've gone through three city manager changes and we've gone through Council changes. Last year the city finally agreed to pay for a study on how a PBID would be successful and like every single page of this 12-page study said it would be successful if it supported it. so great okay so then we right after that we lose a city manager. In fact the city manager wasn't even interested in it and so it's you know we want to be good partners to the city and the county because they're here there are neighbors.You want to be good partners to your neighbors but they have to be behind it too. The city owns the most property in downtown San Bernardino and we just so happen to be kind of sprinkled out you know around around the city and the county so we need everyone's collaboration on this PBID to be successful with it and and if we are all all collaborative you know we can get so much done. PBID can go after grants that the city alone wouldn't qualify for you know we can bring more money into downtown the the PBID is another like you know your chamber of commerce is typically supposed to go out and like woo business or like maintain and keep existing business we can add on to that we can be like hey we have this cool PBID this is how many streets we clean last year you know this is how many homeless people we we helped get Services last year you know we can add to that positive story of San Bernardino and just be another good kind of like branding opportunity for the city of San Bernardino. Even the business and property owner community is putting their money where their mouth is. We're paying additional taxes because we want to make it a better place and so it's a partnership. I'd love to see the city. PBID is still not formed, everybody's telling them they should do it, the only thing holding it up is politics. I do have a meeting with a city manager in August so I'm hoping that she is receptive to it and we can make a case and hopefully she will work with us and you know it's it's a give and take and we've been giving and giving giving and we want the city to kind of also put in. They have been giving grants and stuff but like we just want to be good partners with the city.
Manny Sandoval: So I have a you know listening to you scenario popped into my head. If you were the city of San Bernardino you know I think they're about to fully acquire the Harris Building soon within the next couple weeks or so. So what would, if you were the city, what would you be doing with that building in the months or years to come?
David Friedman: Well you know what I would do first because I commented on your Instagram about protecting it.
Manny Sandoval: That's why I'm asking
David Friedman: Strongly opinionated. We manage, back to Realicore plug, we manage law properties. Some companies do ask us to manage vacant properties so in the immediate term they really need to have a daily walk of the property perimeter, if something's broken or a piece of plywood is removed they need to fix. It's a problem that needs to be solved immediately and every day. In the coming years, that's a tough building, other investors have been interested in it. It has what we call a deep floor plate and so because it has such a deep floor plate getting natural light to the center of the building makes it difficult to be converted into housing. You would basically have to bore a hole down the middle so it becomes economically infeasible to turn it to housing. Museums don't have a bunch of windows right. It makes a great museum, it would make a great event space. We lost our what is it our not our conference, what do we have in downtown that we don't oh, the convention center. We lost our Convention Center. It would actually even make a great new city hall if the city you know wanted to do something else with our current city hall. I'm not trying to set them down a different path, it's already controversial but it could be a really cool asset to downtown. I mean now that they're getting it donated right it's like they're getting a present that they have to spend a lot of money on but it's worth it. They didn't have to spend money to buy it so spend all that money you would have paid towards buying it towards fixing it up, revitalizing it, get its historical features back like if you've seen some old pictures of that building the window it's just gorgeous it needs to be like a Showcase of when you come to downtown this is this is part of our history.
Manny Sandoval: Right so and it also just caught fire this week so sheesh
David Friedman: Were you waiting the whole time just to say that
Denise Berver: They did say the fire was not as bad as it looked so that's a positive
Manny Sandoval: It looked pretty bad with the 30 fire trucks lined up. Denise I think you have the next question on art
Denise Berver: We touched on this a little bit on the importance of art. What do you feel the role Arts play in downtown revitalization and the walkability factor? What do you feel the art brings to that aspect?
David Friedman: so I love artists I I feel like a they're hardcore like these are people that you know have just a creative soul and whether that's just through their life experience or they just happen to to think a different way than most of us or they put in the hard work to develop a certain you know type of Art and skill expertise they are just like hardcore people typically. It's unfortunate that this all ties into gentrification but it does and it's important to mention but it's unfortunate that typically when a downtown or like an area is depressed the first people to move in are usually artists because rent is cheap because you know they have a canvas to be able to work on that maybe people aren't you know they're not like hey stop skateboarding on my street. I'm already here like they don't have that pressure from the outside to not be there but what happens is they tend to beautify the area and then they get kicked out. It's tough but there's so many great things trying to counteract that in San Bernardino. There's Making Hope Happen Foundation is trying to come up with a co-op housing model you know for including artists too so these people can afford to be homeowners and stay in the city but then you also have like the super villains who are like trying to rezone everything around you know the airport to make it all industrial and and get rid of all those houses without coming up with a plan on or some sort of way to bring those houses back or put it somewhere else. Artists are just like these hardcore very tough people that bring so much life to a downtown or to a city that it's hard to put a value, especially a dollar amount on the value that they bring to a downtown. I feel like an artist myself, when we get to look at a building and it's ugly and it's downtrodden and it's fallen apart and we get to turn into something beautiful I feel like an artist and so I really relate to them a lot and maybe not every artist feels the same and they're like well you're a developer but I think maybe this is my chance to mention publicly. I think there are a lot of different types of developers and I hope that when history tells my story I'm seen as one of the good ones but you know there's the developers that will put a warehouse in your backyard like that's happening in Bloomington right now and they don't give a, can I say?
Manny Sandoval: You could say dang
David Friedman: They don't give a dang about the people that they're affecting around them and then there's developers like me, who there should be more of, that are trying to bring in and support small business and the money that we're making we're putting back into our community by paying artists to do murals or we're using that to expand on the beautification that we're already doing and or you're we're providing free or you know cheaper spaces for artists. It's just that's the kind of development we need and it takes a partnership like I was saying partnership with the city and the county and all that stuff. Artists are a big part of that revitalization too and almost like the country treats Veterans as like all you come back and we don't care about you anymore it's like they do all this hard work and then they get pushed out and we really need ,the city especially,needs to take a good look at that and see what they can do to counteract that.
Manny Sandoval: Perfect analogy right there. There's two things I want you to plug though you were discussing the murals I know there's going to be a ribbon cutting coming very soon when is that?
David Friedman: August 12th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. You can meet us at Viva la Boba. 455 West 4th Street San Bernardino. We're going to be giving out I think up to 100 free drinks, 100 free tacos from fire mariscos and wings, we're going to have live music and we're going to be doing an unveiling of two new murals in downtown. Super interesting stories behind them you got to come, we'll tell you about the history, you can meet the artist you can kind of learn about maybe other future projects that we're about to do and the mayor will be there. We'll have the Chamber of Commerce do a ribbon cutting for these artists. I just want to give these artists the recognition that they deserve. Hopefully I know it feels like you know we're putting on a clown show to kind of get some recognition and you know not all these artists like to be in the public eye but I want this to hopefully open more doors for them. I hope a lot of people come join us to have some fun, have some food, listen to some music, look at some art with us and hopefully these artists get some more opportunities from this event and just kind of shaking hands and rubbing elbows or whatever the term is.
Manny Sandoval: very cool, awesome and for you joining us today taking time from your busy schedule we'll make sure to plug that a few times before the event.
Denise Berver: We'll be there
David Friedman: I'll get you guys a flyers or two so we can spread that out
Manny Sandoval: The second thing I want you to plug is you know cause you mentioned you are developing the it's your first development the Ono Hwaiian in San Bernardino there's also something you're working on in Redlands second Viva location.
David Friedman: Oh wow you you do a lot of heavy heavy lifting Manny I don't have to do any work here thank you. We are opening our second Viva la Boba location in our beloved city of Redlands.Tansu, my business partner, the love of my life, the most funniest, best, beautiful person in the world. She’ll watch this. She is my partner in that and we're so excited to be opening to the Redlands Community. We both went to Redland High School, she grew up in Loma Linda like right on the border of Redlands. We live in Redlands right now and so you know after we open something in San Bernardino we were like you know we just have such a tie to the community of Redlands and that's what Viva is all about is community. We want to be a community space for people to meet up and do their thing and so yeah we're just so excited to expand into another place that we feel home at and San Bernardino is going to keep going strong and we're just you know we'll see what the next city is and but yeah Redlands is next no no specific time maybe like August.
Manny Sandoval: gotcha yeah I know I've been not necessarily hounding but I remember you know I think dates obviously this is this we've had many conversations about it off record but dates change so I'm excited
David Friedman: Dates change working with contractors is always tough
Manny Sandoval: What's really cool about that though is it's a pretty historic building too though it's the old skate shop which I think so many people know where that's at on Orange
David Friedman: Yeah you can say like the band skate shop and most people will know if they're over maybe 25 yeah. Or you just say across Trader Joe's so super easy to find we can't wait to be open and welcome all our all our guests.
Manny Sandoval: That's great you know let's bring it back to San Bernardino though so just to kind of wrap it up so San Bernardino obviously has a ton of history and initially was really formed with all the elements that would make a successful City you know and so what would you say is you know the why why is the answer always small business and why is San Bernardino so unique?
David Friedman: Yeah wait isn't is this the question that I created
Manny Sandoval: Well we kind of talked about it back and forth. Did you get stumped on something that you wanted to discuss
David Friedman: No I just was like wait I really recognize this one I promise I read it. Let's start with why it's so unique. San Bernardino in general, why is it the way it is or?
Manny Sandoval: Why the city in general is
Denise Berver: What separates it from the other cities in the area?
David Friedman: Well you know I think initially it was just because we had Norman Air Force Base we just had so much so much life in there. When that was removed we lost a huge economic driver and now we're having to fill those gaps with something else like small business right. It just has so much potential because of its location like we're surrounded by the mountains we're an hour from LA, we're 45 minutes from Palm Springs, 40 minutes from Big Bear. You can't, when they say in real estate location location location you can't get any better than San Bernardino. It deserves to be a bustling busy downtown where people go to work, to hang out, to go watch, get some entertainment and stuff like that. There's so much potential it's insane and it's just a matter of investing it's not just small business that is that is mostly the answer. We need to support small business and when they grow and get bigger then it makes more room and more jobs for other small business. If you have a big office building all those people maybe want coffee right that that big office building creates opportunity for small business come in. As you get these one level two level three level businesses it creates other businesses that fill in the gap so small business is always going to be the answer and we just need to support that we need to fund it. The city is actually recently doing a good job with grants, they put out a paintbrush program like 10,000 or 20,000 for businesses if they want to improve their signage or their facade. They gave out you know covid grants like if you were affected by Covid you can get up to $20,000 depending on your revenue.There's just so much opportunity for small business in San Bernardino.We need one of everything, we have some coffee shops now but at at the time when we started we needed them and we didn't have them. We have The Barbers club which is a barber shop but, and this is nothing against Marky he's a Hispanic man, we need a black owned barber shop. Even though there's a barber shop downtown we need more. There's still so many places for businesses to fill in the gaps and I'm excited to see all that happen. I'm excited to be here.
Manny Sandoval: One thing that the chair of the film department here at Valley College has mentioned multiple times is you know with the because he does ride public transportation from Redland which is where he lives and then he'll bike to the college here and so he's mentioned multiple times to me too where like after a 66ers game or you know at the Metro Link station or what not he wishes that there was somewhere to go in like dine and so that's one major element that's kind of missing. He's saying that a lot of times after you know going to a game at the 66ers that he'll have to either go to Redlands or Rialto to, you know, spend his money when he could be doing that here.
David Friedman: Hopefully you know I'm not telling you this now and then three years later it happens I hope it happens much sooner than that but I just met with this was maybe like two or three months ago with a really amazing Chef I literally almost cried eating his food in my office because I was like I have never tasted something this good in the Inland Empire. He loves San Bernardino he fits those criteria. he's got he's got the money he's excellent what he does he has a great business model he does catering and and he caters for like movie sets and he just he makes good money. If we can bring that good food down here it'll just change the game. Yeah we don't have any really good like dinner eateries bars anything like that I think when most people hear the word Bar and Grill they think of an American Bar and Grill like Chilis. No no no this is like you know tartar with a cilantro sauce on top that was all homemade and like custom made this is not a chain nothing like that this guy's amazing Chef. I really hope it works out we're we're trying to do everything we can to get them into one of our buildings. It just goes back to like you know we need help, we need investment . It's not cheap to open up a restaurant, especially a full restaurant, but I think when one happens it will bring more . It's like we always see it. When we fix up one of our buildings all of a sudden the neighbor starts fixing up their building I don't know if it's like a keeping up with the jonas' thing or what it just it just I think we'll start to see a chain reaction here yeah gotcha well
Manny Sandoval: David thanks so much for joining us again on Inland Insight with ICN everybody who has watched this entire episode Denise and I thank you so much for joining and we will see you next time
