This Town Survived the Hurricane—Here’s Why

00:00:03:29 - 00:00:33:01
Sara Gutterman: Welcome to The Valuation Metric, a podcast about the risks, rewards, roadblocks and revelations reshaping the way that we measure worth. I'm your host, Sara Gutman, CEO of Green Builder Media, North America's leading media company focused on green building and sustainable living across our economy. Quiet truth is becoming impossible to ignore. We're valuing the wrong things throughout our society, our markets, and even our culture.

00:00:33:07 - 00:01:17:18
Sara Gutterman: We've built systems that reward extraction over contribution, speculation over service, and accumulation over connection. Because in a world driven by speed, scale, and quarterly returns, the metrics we rely on often tell us everything except what truly matters. They might capture price, but not necessarily purpose. Efficiency, but not necessarily resilience. Footprint, but not necessarily well-being. Today's conversation brings us to a remarkable place where those distinctions blur, and where a new model has emerged already.

00:01:17:20 - 00:01:51:12
Sara Gutterman: Babcock ranch in southwestern Florida is often called the town of the future, but it's it's here today. If the first fully powered solar community in the US, it's designed for climate resilience, human well-being and long term value not just financial, but planetary and social. And beneath the headlines, there is a deeper story. What does it take to build a community that is not just high performing, but truly alive?

00:01:51:14 - 00:02:26:19
Sara Gutterman: A place that doesn't just withstand storms but strengthens people. A place that doesn't just feature resilience but includes it as a philosophy. And who better to explore that than someone who has helped shepherd this community from vision to reality? I am thrilled to welcome Lucian Pierce, vice president of economic and business development for Kitson and Partners, one of the leading architects and developers not just of Babcock Ranch's physical form, but of its ethos.

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Sara Gutterman: Lucien, welcome to the valuation metric.

00:02:30:05 - 00:02:35:00
Lucienne Pears: Thank you so much, Sara. It is absolutely such a pleasure to be with you today.

00:02:35:01 - 00:02:55:17
Sara Gutterman: As I mentioned, Babcock Ranch has been called the town of the future, the first fully solar powered community in the US, designed from the ground up with resilience and wellness in mind. Talk a little bit about the original vision for Grant and how was that vision evolved as the community has grown?

00:02:55:19 - 00:03:28:04
Lucienne Pears: I'd be happy to. Sara. So interestingly, Babcock Ranch was really born out of a love affair with the Earth said kits in is our president and CEO. He will tell you first and foremost, he's an environmentalist. The world that we live in is an absolutely wonderful place and we only have one. So our challenge at Gibson and Partners is how do we build communities that leave the Earth better today for our future generations?

00:03:28:06 - 00:03:58:13
Lucienne Pears: We have a mission statement here at Kitson and Partners, and a portion of that mission statement that really resonates with me and gives me the goose goosebumps, is we are creating extraordinary environments that enrich the human experience, and I really want to focus on that, enrich the human experience. So when we purchased Babcock Ranch, we purchased 91,000 acres, and we held on to that 91,000 acres for about a half a day.

00:03:58:15 - 00:04:33:09
Lucienne Pears: We sold 73,000 acres back to the state to be preserved forever. Forever in perpetuity. Old Florida Natural Florida is such an incredibly special ecosystem. It has plants and species that don't exist anywhere else in the world. So being able to dedicate land forever that will continue to support those non Cuban human species and ecosystems, and then also be able to contribute to the water quality of the state of the Gulf of Charlotte Harbor as a whole.

00:04:33:10 - 00:04:40:23
Lucienne Pears: It's just an incredible experience. But surely it is a love affair with the earth.

00:04:40:26 - 00:05:19:27
Sara Gutterman: So, Lucien, what you're saying is so refreshing and by the way, have been able to spend some time in that kind of old Floridian ecosystem, and it really is precious. But your words, your ethos, it's so different from most master plan communities. So talk a little bit more about the guiding principles that you drew from that came from that love of nature that then informed the design, the infrastructure and the the just general development principles at Babcock Ranch.

00:05:20:00 - 00:05:46:05
Lucienne Pears: Absolutely. Sara. So, you know, that love affair with the Earth was from the get go. We purchased 91,000 acres, immediately placed 73,000 acres into preservation forever, retained 18,000 acres. Frame of reference. That's about 29mi². Again, to kind of put that into frame of reference, that's about one and a half times the size of the island of Manhattan. Immediately after that, we entitled it.

00:05:46:06 - 00:06:10:23
Lucienne Pears: We knew we wanted to build a complete city, not just continue to divide up Florida drill wells, put in septic tanks, and just continue to chew up the land. We wanted to build a comprehensive city, so we sought approval from the local two counties that we exist within and the state of Florida. And we were approved for 20,000 residential units and 6,000,000ft² of commercial.

00:06:10:24 - 00:06:34:02
Lucienne Pears: So that equates to a town of about 65,000 people at buildout. Now you ask about what are some of the where do you start when you're when you're building a whole brand new city? Where do you start? And we went back in time. Really. You know, the USGS Geological Survey has has tremendous mapping and has had tremendous mapping capabilities for a very long time in this country.

00:06:34:04 - 00:06:58:28
Lucienne Pears: So we went back to the old 1940s aerials. And we said, you know, before a lot of things changed. Where did the water go? Water is a huge consideration in the state of Florida. And our perspective was, let's restore the natural ecology. Let's return the land to what she wants to be so that she can act and live naturally the way that she was created.

00:06:59:00 - 00:07:36:15
Lucienne Pears: And then from there we will build the town around it. So quite honestly, the first year was was undoing a lot of man made impacts, restoring hydrology, making the land wet again, bringing back natural habitats, removing exotic and invasive species. But really, the entire design of Babcock Ranch really comes down to those 1940 maps. Looking at the soils, looking at the water, looking at the flow ways and saying, how do we restore this and then build a city around it that celebrates it?

00:07:36:17 - 00:08:09:08
Sara Gutterman: I love that, and just to give our audience some perspective, you know, when you think about most master plan communities, I'm from Colorado, and I think about the master plan communities on the Front Range of Colorado. And what do you imagine? You imagine just just these huge swaths of bulldozed land with very little consideration for things like natural swales and water, you know, channeling of of stormwater or, you know, just wind flows.

00:08:09:08 - 00:08:36:28
Sara Gutterman: And, you know, it's so nice to hear that you all spent a year thinking about the natural elements and how that was going to impact the occupants of this community, but also thinking about how you can best preserve, nurture and protect nature itself before you even put pen to paper in terms of of the design. And that's wonderful.

00:08:36:28 - 00:09:16:21
Lucienne Pears: In addition to, you know, really looking at what what had nature originally designed or had in mind for the land Babcock Ranch, the entire 93,000 acres was a working ranch, cattle, silviculture, mining, row crops, I mean, you name it, it was actually an economic center of Southwest Florida. So it was really interesting and incredibly rewarding to be able to say, how do we recognize and do both continue this incredible economic engine while also preserving the environment?

00:09:16:21 - 00:09:51:18
Lucienne Pears: And one of the ways that we did that, that may not be obvious, and it's kind of on the map over my shoulder, is we're building 90% of the town in areas that were already impacted. So to your point about, you know, clear cutting, I'm not saying we've never cut down a tree. I'm saying that we have worked very, very hard to take those areas that were impacted and to build in those areas so that we can integrate with the environment as opposed to kind of wipe the environment away and then put the town there.

00:09:51:20 - 00:10:15:24
Sara Gutterman: So, Lucien, let me skip to my next question, which I think is a nice dovetail. So Babcock Ranch really became a national headline after Hurricane Ian when it emerged virtually unscathed. One of the only communities in your area of Central Florida that didn't flood and never lost power because of what you did with respect to those natural swales.

00:10:15:24 - 00:10:46:04
Sara Gutterman: And you maintained, from what I understand, mangrove forests that could that could absorb stormwater. And then, of course, because of the large solar array solar storage that you have to keep the community powered. Talk a little bit about that. The design and infrastructure decisions that have made Babcock Ranch this kind of fortress of resiliency in what is a really, you know, changing, quiet climate, especially in Florida?

00:10:46:07 - 00:11:13:19
Lucienne Pears: Absolutely. I'd love to. I mean, this is one of one of my favorite things to talk about. You know, as with most, most things, there's never a singular solution or there's never a singular contributing factor. And Babcock is much the same where it was really an understanding that it took multiple things to come together to end up with the result that we had, which was no loss of power, no damage, no loss of life.

00:11:13:21 - 00:11:40:23
Lucienne Pears: When this state's one of the worst storms the state's ever experienced. So first and foremost, I have to shout out to probably one of our favorite partners this Florida Power and FPL. They own and operate 150MW solar generation facility that solar power is generated in. Babcock comes into Babcock first. But very, very importantly, all of the power that is not consumed here goes out into the grid.

00:11:40:24 - 00:12:06:17
Lucienne Pears: So there is interconnectivity with the grid and it's Florida Power and Lights commitment to hardening that grid off site of Babcock that was able to assure that the power was able to say on here at Babcock, all of the power lines are buried. There was no no damage to any of the infrastructure. So power was one thing that was able to be connected.

00:12:06:17 - 00:12:37:20
Lucienne Pears: But a hurricane is really two things. It's wind and it's water. The wind comes first, and generally the water comes after that. So from a wind perspective, every single structure at Babcock Ranch is required to be built to Florida green building coalition standards. And a part of that standard is about wind, wind resistance. So a minimum standard, I think it's 175 mile an hour wind resistance in all structures here at Babcock.

00:12:37:20 - 00:13:08:15
Lucienne Pears: So not only do we have a regional shelter for those folks that don't live at Babcock to be able to evacuate to safety, every single home and building in Babcock Ranch is technically a shelter as well. So providing that personal safety through the structure was really, really important. And our builders have stepped up to the table and they offer impact glass and hurricane shutters as a a base, as a requirement for every home that is here.

00:13:08:15 - 00:13:33:02
Lucienne Pears: So it's phenomenal that the Florida building code works. It really works when it comes to wind. Now water water is the tricky one. Or is there going to be a surge? How much rain is there going to be? Where is it going to go? Are the ponds going to be big enough? So I think the first most important thing to surviving the water and the storm surge is that we are 30 miles from the coast of, of Florida.

00:13:33:02 - 00:13:58:19
Lucienne Pears: We are 30 miles east of the Gulf, and our base elevation is 30ft above sea level. So to build a town of the future, first of all, identifying the location of that was critically important. And Saum safety is one of our key pillars for construction of this town. So location getting away from where that title surge is going to be is important.

00:13:58:19 - 00:14:30:18
Lucienne Pears: But then from an engineering perspective, we have really three levels of stormwater management here. So when I was talking to you a few minutes ago about what is the land want to do, what was the land originally? Well, part of restoring those flow ways is creating those natural storage areas that used to exist in the environment anyway. So by creating healthy wetlands, those wetlands are actually a secondary storage facility for water in an extreme catastrophic, catastrophic event.

00:14:30:20 - 00:14:52:21
Lucienne Pears: So we've built a stormwater system out. Then we interconnected that system, we manage it. We can tell how much water is in each pond. And we've also installed pumps so that we can manage the water levels based on rainfall or flooding, or off site sheet flow that is coming into the system, interconnected that with the wetlands for secondary storage.

00:14:52:21 - 00:15:16:22
Lucienne Pears: And then we've also made the the streets really the area of last resort that can add storage for water in an absolutely catastrophic event. So while we are talking about Hurricane Ian, Hurricane Ian was actually the third major hurricane to ever hit Babcock Ranch. We also experienced Irma. There were a whole bunch of other little storms in the middle there.

00:15:16:22 - 00:15:41:13
Lucienne Pears: Michael. Adelia I mean, the names are endless, it seems like. But we didn't flood, no buildings fell down and we never lost power, internet or had disruption to water again. All of those things coming together. It's not just one that made that result what it was. If you had water with no power or vice versa, the result would have been far different.

00:15:41:20 - 00:15:49:25
Lucienne Pears: So it's really saying there's never won silver bullet. Everything is a systems approach..

00:15:49:27 - 00:16:33:03
Sara Gutterman: Now, Lucien, you work with a wide array of builders within Babcock Ranch, including some production builders like Pulte and Lennar. And those builders do things differently in Babcock Ranch than they do in other locations. Now, what do you attribute that to? Is that a blend of the requirements that Kitson and Partners and your other development partners have put in place, plus Florida code that you were referring to earlier, or is it does it also include just a different mentality of innovation that kind of spurs the builders to do things a little bit differently in Babcock Ranch?

00:16:33:06 - 00:16:55:23
Lucienne Pears: I think it's in all of the above. It's an all of the above, you know. Absolutely. Pulte and Lennar, they're here. They're building. They're going gangbusters. Doctor Horton is here. Meritage is here. These are all incredible national production builders that all have very different focus areas, I might add, on what type of home or what the value that they're looking for it.

00:16:55:24 - 00:17:31:15
Lucienne Pears: But across the board each of them have corporate entities really focused on what is the future hold, how are we going to deal with labor shortages? How are we going to deal with supply chain challenges? How are we going to deal with new, more, more green materials? How do we incorporate these sorts of ideas? So each of those production builders, as well as many of the regionals that we work with, have those corporate entities that are thinking about, wow, what could we be now?

00:17:31:15 - 00:17:57:10
Lucienne Pears: I think the unique thing about Babcock is that we provide the sandbox instead of just dreaming and ideas about, well, what if we could build a robot that could actually lay the bricks for us? And then that could be a labor supply solution? Well, Pulte went ahead and did that because Babcock Ranch provides that sandbox. Now, it's not just Babcock Ranch.

00:17:57:12 - 00:18:29:13
Lucienne Pears: We happen to exist within about 80% of our project is in Charlotte County, and the majority of our early construction has been in Charlotte County. And that jurisdiction has absolutely embraced sustainability and innovation. So whether it is a systems construction, a robot laying blocks, an alternative insulation material, a different HVAC system, it's really critically important that the permitting agency in the jurisdiction embraces that.

00:18:29:20 - 00:18:56:25
Lucienne Pears: So we have a great relationship there. They've been embracing it. Now you have these production builders that from a national corporate level, they have desires around sustainability and innovation. Now the realities are at the end of the day, we all report to KPIs. We have to deliver certain things on time, on budget, and oftentimes innovation doesn't have a great little cell in that spreadsheet.

00:18:56:27 - 00:19:20:15
Lucienne Pears: Well, I think what Babcock does is it inspires people, you know, hey, we could do this. We could do things different. You know, the residents here are so excited to engage with new technologies in my role. One of the things that I do is I offer Babcock as a platform for a living laboratory. So, for example, if you invented a robotic garbage can.

00:19:20:20 - 00:19:49:19
Lucienne Pears: And if you've invented that, but you're not sure how the market will receive that will bring that technology to Babcock, and then you can test that, do your beta testing in the real world with real residents in a real city. So having that that population base that is early on, doctors that sees themselves as pioneers, that that really values innovation and improvement and and just being part of the change to improve the world.

00:19:49:19 - 00:19:57:01
Lucienne Pears: I think all of those things coming together, it's hard to come here and not be excited to do those kinds of things.

00:19:57:03 - 00:20:13:13
Sara Gutterman: Yeah. So that's a nice segue into a burning question that I have for you, Lucien, which is when people visit Babcock Ranch, they often say that it feels different. What do you think they're responding to.

00:20:13:16 - 00:20:50:02
Lucienne Pears: In the field? Which is such an answer. And I've really been thinking about this one. And, you know, in planning and architecture circles, this is starting to be called third places or things like that. And honestly, Sara, that's what it is here. Babcock is built on eight founding core pillars energy, environment, education, health, technology, recreation, storm safety. I think I might have missed one in there, but but it's basically saying these are the things that you can have in this town.

00:20:50:02 - 00:21:13:25
Lucienne Pears: And we're doing that with a nod to innovation. So it's this feeling that you get when you come here, no matter how much you look at the website. And, and it's like reading a study about what people want in their homes, or what's the new playground equipment, or what's the best new resort. Babcock is the the embodiment of that study.

00:21:13:25 - 00:21:49:03
Lucienne Pears: And I think it's truly all of those things coming together. It's not a brick. It's not a building that makes Babcock Ranch. It's not an infrastructure solution. It's really all of that coming together, creating a town where families, people of all ages truly feel welcome, safe, hopeful and happy. None of that has to do with engineering. But there's a really the the end result of of trying to have a multi-dimensional look at sustainability.

00:21:49:06 - 00:22:37:20
Sara Gutterman: Yes. Now I want to bring it back to the topic of this podcast, the Valuation Metric. And I want to talk specifically about some things that I've learned about Babcock Ranch relative to our economic system that, frankly, were pretty disturbing to me. And I'm going to start with the fact that despite all of the planning and intention that you and Kitson and partners and your builder partners have put into enhancing resiliency, your homeowners don't receive any kind of discount on their insurance premiums from neighboring their neighbors in surrounding communities.

00:22:37:22 - 00:22:48:10
Sara Gutterman: Talk a little bit about that. And, you know, it just it's mind blowing to me. So to walk us through that and how you feel about that?

00:22:48:15 - 00:22:52:18
Lucienne Pears: Well, you're exactly right.

00:22:52:21 - 00:23:26:07
Lucienne Pears: And while it's frustrating on the surface level, whether it's Ibes, any of the major insurance companies or MMA secondary markets, when you really talk to them, Babcock is such an anomaly, is such an anomaly at this point in time that we really had to stand up and prove that all of the ideas, all of the engineering, all of the studies, all of the calculations really actually did deliver.

00:23:26:09 - 00:23:52:27
Lucienne Pears: And then when you talk about, you know, what does it take to ensure a house, the level of visibility that an insurer has into what consumes a house is so extraordinarily minimal. How many square feet is it? How high is the elevation and is there a roof on it is basically the context of of insurance. And then what's your your family's credit score?

00:23:53:00 - 00:24:14:04
Lucienne Pears: Well, we're saying and in partnership with the Insurance Institute is like, okay, we understand how we got here, but how do we get away from here? What does that mean? And what does that look like? So we're really working hard in partnership with them now to say, okay, we all recognize that this is not the ideal solution. Good behavior should be rewarded.

00:24:14:04 - 00:24:36:02
Lucienne Pears: And the industry is very much at the table saying, we agree with you that good behavior should be rewarded. And what we're doing now is working on how do you validate that good behavior? How do you certify that good behavior if you're building to fortified standards, how do you prove that? How do you document that? And how does that information make it through to the insurer?

00:24:36:04 - 00:25:04:08
Lucienne Pears: So when when at first, you know, the kind of hurricane seasons ramped up here a couple of years ago and, and the state as a whole was experiencing, you know, insurance costs and rising insurance costs, it was definitely upsetting to recognize that in spite of the fact that we didn't have any damage in Irma in and the power didn't go out in and we had no claims, there was no reward for that.

00:25:04:08 - 00:25:21:11
Lucienne Pears: To their credit, the insurance industry is coming to the table and saying, let's create that reward system now. So I'm really excited for 2026 to be able to be the embodiment and the implementation of that reward system.

00:25:21:14 - 00:25:56:09
Sara Gutterman: That's very exciting, Lucien, because you know this. But just again, for our audience, you know, the insurance fiasco that we're facing right now, and I'm not even going to talk about health insurance, but just within the housing market, as we see these intensifying and, you know, intensifying climate events that are becoming more frequent and more costly, frankly, we see the impacts that they have, not just on people and families and communities, but on pocketbooks, on insurance companies, on municipalities.

00:25:56:16 - 00:26:27:29
Sara Gutterman: Municipalities take a huge hit when a wildfire or superstorm or a big flooding event occur. We're starting to see defaults across the country for literally from coast to coast on municipal bonds. And, you know, communities and municipalities really hurting because of the expense incurred by these climate events. And we're also seeing these National Insurance players having to pull out of certain markets because of increased risk.

00:26:28:00 - 00:27:03:23
Sara Gutterman: And so, on one hand, it opens up some opportunity for more kind of agile regional insurance companies to fill the gap. So we are starting to see a few players kind of come in and some interesting dynamics that are just driven by pure supply, demand, economics and competition or really lack thereof. But I'm so happy to hear from you that in your conversations with organizations like IVs and the insurance companies themselves, that they're now looking at some new models because it has to happen.

00:27:03:23 - 00:27:27:27
Sara Gutterman: Because the truth is, if the housing insurance sector collapses, then the whole economy is a house of cards that just collapses with it. So I'm curious, you know, talk a little bit more about what you think the insurance industry can recognize and reward with respect to resilience, and then what it's going to take to change the current model.

00:27:27:27 - 00:27:36:25
Sara Gutterman: And frankly, the actuarial equations that they're using to value and create valuations for home insurance policies.

00:27:37:00 - 00:28:15:06
Lucienne Pears: Well, full disclosure, I'm an economic development, not an actuarial. So this will be my interpretation of the science. But to that point, you know, we've had a good bit of conversation right now. Where are you choose to build matters, where you choose to build matters 30 miles inland, 30ft above sea level. Even with those considerations, every single parcel at Babcock Ranch, whether it's a commercial parcel, a residential parcel or a municipal parcel, is required to be elevated and secure.

00:28:15:07 - 00:28:43:21
Lucienne Pears: A loan from the Army Corps of Engineers, which is a letter of Map amendment, which then says, we guarantee that our house is built to this modern elevation, which recognizes the risks of a 500 year storm. So there is definitely a certain amount of personal responsibility that has to be borne by both the developer and the homeowner in just choosing type and location of construction.

00:28:43:23 - 00:29:12:24
Lucienne Pears: Now, because we were so serious about being storm resistant, we did require all of our builders do require all of our builders to build to Florida green Building coalition standards. Today, the Florida Building Code has really caught up to those standards. But we started construction ten years ago, so ten years ago, that was a big difference and a big change that we had to justify to not only the builders and the homeowners.

00:29:12:24 - 00:29:56:07
Lucienne Pears: And what that is, is a long term approach. We weren't building the homes for the profit. We're not building the town for the profit or building the town for the purpose. And when you have that purpose driven approach and that long term look at things, then the initial increased cost was nominal over time. I mean, even if it was and I'm making up a number here, even if it was $1 billion more on day one, the lack of damage, lack of claims, lack of power loss, lack of downtime, lack of of inoperable time was eliminated.

00:29:56:07 - 00:30:04:09
Lucienne Pears: So one storm already really kind of right sized any ROI that there might have been.

00:30:04:11 - 00:30:34:28
Sara Gutterman: Solution. You've been a part of this ongoing conversation that Green Builder Media is trying to facilitate around shifting away from price per square foot, which really only tells you two things about a home how big it is, and what it costs today to value per square foot, which is a more comprehensive and accurate valuation metric. And it incorporates things like environmental sustainability, human sustainability.

00:30:34:28 - 00:30:53:24
Sara Gutterman: So health and happiness and connection of the people that live in Babcock Ranch. So tell me a little bit about your vision for a metric like value per square foot, what does it include and why is it important?

00:30:53:27 - 00:31:23:03
Lucienne Pears: So I'm going to answer it this way. I'm going to take you back to a couple numbers. Originally purchased 91,000 acres. Sold 73,000 back. Retained 18,000 to build the town. The city itself is being built on 9000 acres. So when you think about it, the city is built on 10% of the total land that we're acquiring. So environmental sustainability is about being very thoughtful in the footprint.

00:31:23:03 - 00:31:54:22
Lucienne Pears: And what happens with that outdoor space? Is it more value ecologically to being a lawn or to be in a habitat for, for water quality or for protected or listed species or just any species? So I think the commitment to that and then the way that the environment lives within Babcock Ranch. So 50% of our town footprint is dedicated to greenways, parks, nature paths.

00:31:54:22 - 00:32:21:07
Lucienne Pears: We have 150 miles of trails embedded within the town of Babcock Ranch that not only gives you access to exercise, fresh air, a mental break, educational opportunities. So really, the environment is so incredibly embedded within Babcock Ranch. But then we recognize that not everybody wants to just be walking around in the woods, even though that might be my preference and probably your preference.

00:32:21:07 - 00:32:47:00
Lucienne Pears: Sara, you know, there are other things to do. So so we've gone ahead and invested in those active parks to serve different populations. You know, we built a park entirely dedicated, dedicated to the I'll call alternatively abled or the handicapped community. So we have an all ages handicap accessible playground that is a public park, because that is a huge part of who we are.

00:32:47:02 - 00:33:12:18
Lucienne Pears: Imagine never being able to engage with the outdoors just because of something that occurred to you that most likely wasn't your fault. So fostering wellbeing, emphasizing environmental sustainability, human sustainability. Again, I can't I can't say it enough is a holistic approach. So what does a person need to be healthy? They need air. They need water. They need food.

00:33:12:19 - 00:33:25:25
Lucienne Pears: They need shelter. They need community around them. So that's everything that we're trying to provide at Babcock Ranch. And we just happened to be excelling a little bit at that community park.

00:33:25:27 - 00:34:25:23
Sara Gutterman: So we talk about the difference between value and values. So value might be price per square foot. Short term financial returns, quarterly returns versus values, which frankly are all the things you just talked about. Right. So wellbeing connection resilience equity community connection with nature. And how do you how have the things that you have deployed and executed at Babcock Ranch and the lessons that you've learned extrapolate those to give some advice to building professionals and even to consumers, homeowners, aspiring homeowners, in terms of how we need to rethink the way that we develop communities and build and live in homes here in the US.

00:34:25:25 - 00:34:51:06
Lucienne Pears: Honestly, I think that we've we've kind of evolved into a society that is our homes dictate to us how we will live. And that seems kind of backwards. You know, we're human beings. We should be able to engage and act and do the things in our homes that we need, whether that's access to health care, access to education, remote work opportunity, connection with family and friends.

00:34:51:06 - 00:35:24:11
Lucienne Pears: With that is, I think, one of the the big things that we need to think about shifting from value, the efficiency of the model, the inefficiency of the construction, the rate of return is you are always going to win when you put a family in a home that works for them in the long term, whether that is the third spaces, whether that it is split floor plans, whether that's a multi-generational home, you know, that is becoming incredibly important.

00:35:24:11 - 00:35:28:17
Lucienne Pears: And we're seeing a lot of that here.

00:35:28:20 - 00:36:06:29
Lucienne Pears: This is such a hard question to answer because it really says, how do we put emotion, comfort and connection out front as kind of the KPI and then backfill all of the metrics to that, in a strange way, is already happening here at Babcock Ranch. And it's really that collective that's happening. The community that comes from this, from this type of development, really valuing togetherness, really valuing connection with your neighbors.

00:36:07:02 - 00:36:35:21
Lucienne Pears: It seems in Florida especially, we had really turned to almost like a garage door kind of neighborhood lifestyle where, you know, you saw the garage door and then the entire family and the entire relationship existed in the back of the house. And for all intents and purposes, there was no community. Well, that just didn't sit well with us because we knew that we wanted a very vibrant, very engaged, healthy community.

00:36:35:21 - 00:37:05:20
Lucienne Pears: So we did, and we said, let's cut these yards really, really down and create these wonderful spaces in every neighborhood and in every nook and cranny where people are able to know their neighbors, engage with each other and do those things. So that was the the values, ironically, the value of of is is skewed a lot because you have more house on less land because we're providing smaller lots.

00:37:05:20 - 00:37:17:25
Lucienne Pears: But the values that are created in the, in, in the collective are, are far superior. I feel like I'm not able to answer this question really well yet. Sara.

00:37:17:27 - 00:37:51:19
Sara Gutterman: Well, and I don't know that any of us are. I think we're just starting our exploration. And so I'm hoping that conversations like this will continue to move along. The thinking about how we can integrate values into our valuation metrics. It's the whole purpose for this podcast and many other conversations that I know we're all having. So, Lucien, talk a little bit about the policy and the industry shifts that need to happen to pull through something like a value per square foot metric.

00:37:51:21 - 00:38:19:22
Lucienne Pears: So I think there's there's really three things that we could talk about here as think developers, developers such as ourselves and builders being receptive and open to innovative approaches to community planning and building is absolutely a great starting point to make resilience and sustainability more accessible and affordable. Being open to doing things differently. Stop using that. This is the way that we've always done it.

00:38:19:22 - 00:38:58:15
Lucienne Pears: So this is the way we will do it going forward. Be open to change. Next, if Babcock Ranch national homebuilders, they were hesitant about our green building and sustainability standards and all that green woo woo magical stuff. I mean, any Wall Street traded company would naturally be nervous about that. Smaller and regional builders were the first to buy in, and their early success raving success, raging success was really what demonstrated to a lot of the production builders that this this passion for the environment and sustainability.

00:38:58:16 - 00:39:29:15
Lucienne Pears: We were really on to something there. So we cannot thank enough those those regional builders who really said we believe in this also and were part of that proof of concept really from the get go with us. And then I think the last one that's really critically important is consumers. Consumers, counties and builders are like, we're all taking very progressive steps and adopting new standards for climate resilience, whether it's building codes, technology advancements.

00:39:29:17 - 00:39:58:12
Lucienne Pears: But it's the consumer saying, yes, the environment matters to me. The the access to the outdoors matters to me. Having a different lifestyle, having a community matters to me. And I'm going to vote with my wallet on that every single time. And when I vote with my wallet, I'm voting for a community that is sustainable, that does create a space in a place where our whole family and our whole community can thrive.

00:39:58:18 - 00:40:21:19
Lucienne Pears: I think that naturally, the Babcock experience is already seeping out into the rest of the country, and you're starting to see it. Certainly in Florida, you're starting to see a lot of Babcock Ranch values be replicated in other communities, and that is something that we strive for. Anybody that wants to know what we did here, we are happy to share that with them, because we think that that's the true measure of success.

00:40:21:20 - 00:40:57:12
Lucienne Pears: Every single person should be able to live in a home and in a community that is disaster resilient, that does protect their their health, their personal safety. That does create an incredibly exciting and inspiring kind of family lifestyle. So as far as like, how do I see this, this moving forward? And I already see just organically other communities, whether that's in your state of Colorado, whether Utah and Nevada, we're seeing a lot of thing, a ton of construction and projects in Texas, North Carolina.

00:40:57:13 - 00:41:23:29
Lucienne Pears: We're talking with developers there about how do we look at things differently, and how do we have patience to say, hey, the up front is the most important spot to really be focused on making those decisions, not cutting any corners, not value engineering anything. Because over the long term, that's what's going to to make your project so incredibly successful.

00:41:24:02 - 00:41:44:23
Sara Gutterman: Wonderful. And so two last question that I ask all of my podcast guests. First, what is Bellevue per square foot mean to you? And if you could rewrite our national valuation system, what would that look like? What gets changed? What gets disrupted? Who wins? That's question number one.

00:41:44:25 - 00:42:11:17
Lucienne Pears: Treated the value GDP. You know. What do you mean like what are we able to do. What are we able to produce like incredibly successful humans from this. Are we able to extract carbon from the air? Are we able to create homes that consume less energy? I love the idea of moving from value to valuation being and what that creates.

00:42:11:18 - 00:42:28:12
Lucienne Pears: The humans that were in there within that structure, and what their impact can be on the rest of the world. Versus how much is that brick? What does that mean? And and it does that then equal good somehow I love it.

00:42:28:19 - 00:42:36:06
Sara Gutterman: Yeah. It's like the country of Bhutan measuring gross national happiness as opposed to.

00:42:36:08 - 00:42:40:02
Lucienne Pears: Illness or mental health or all of that.

00:42:40:04 - 00:42:57:03
Sara Gutterman: Indeed. Okay. So then question number two and final question, listeners, if listeners remember only one idea from you today, one thing that might seed some change in the way that they perceive and value the world around them, what would that be?

00:42:57:05 - 00:43:23:13
Lucienne Pears: I think it's it's systems and community. There's no one singular thing that is going to make a happy, healthy or successful individual. It is a system of things. It has to be your health. It has to be your environment. It has to be your relationships. And I think that is exactly the same for a town.

00:43:23:15 - 00:43:57:04
Sara Gutterman: Wonderful. Well, every episode of the Valuation Metric brings me back to one core truth. We often measure what is easy, but not necessarily what is important or essential. But conversations like this one remind us that value is not a spreadsheet exercise. It's lived. It's felt. It's generated by the everyday experiences of people whose lives are safer and healthier and more connected and more joyful because someone dared to imagine differently.

00:43:57:06 - 00:44:19:19
Sara Gutterman: And Babcock Ranch is not just a resilient community. It's a philosophical statement, one that suggests that our metrics are too small for the world that we inhabit and too narrow for the future we aspire to build. So, Lucien, thank you for your leadership, your vision, and your courage to value what truly endures.

00:44:19:22 - 00:44:22:28
Lucienne Pears: Thank you very much, Sara. It was a pleasure to be with you today.

00:44:23:00 - 00:44:47:10
Sara Gutterman: So if you enjoyed today's conversation, subscribe, share and leave a review and join us next time. As we continue to challenge the assumptions that shape our economy, our communities, and our lives. Because when we change what we value, we change what we built. And when we change what we build, we change everything. Thank you for joining me on the valuation metric I'm Sara Gutman.

00:44:47:12 - 00:44:49:21
Sara Gutterman: Let's revalue what matters.