Tag: Hank Kelley

The Downtown Connection

Aerial Downtown Little rock Arkansas USA

As published in Arkansas Business, March 14, 2021
by Hank Kelley

 
At Kelley Commercial Partners, we focus a lot on downtown properties because it’s been home to our company for so long. When we tour the market with out-of-town clients, we proudly tell the stories of our landmarks and the amenities that define us.

James and Deborah Fallows, the authors of “Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America,” helped shape my view of Little Rock and central Arkansas. The couple traveled the country for five years focusing on thriving flyover communities and outlining attributes common to each of these progressive cities. After they published their book, they visited Little Rock to discuss their findings. They believe communities that have positioned themselves to thrive possess these traits:

  • People work together on practical local possibilities, rather than allowing disagreements about national politics to keep them apart.
  • Citizens can name local patriots.
  • The phrase “public-private partnership” refers to something real.
  • People know their civic story.
  • They have downtowns.
  • They are near a research university.
  • They have and care about a community college.
  • They have distinctive, innovative K-12 schools.
  • They embrace diversity.
  • They have big plans. Municipal governments are where real improvements can be done.
  • They have brewpubs and/or distilleries where the product is made and served in a setting that encourages people getting together.

This is a good list of priorities worthy of focus, commitment and action to help Little Rock become its best. But of those priorities, the Fallowses believe a downtown is the best single marker of the condition of the town. Downtown Little Rock has changed for the better since we first moved into the Simmons Tower 38 years ago, thanks to the combined efforts of city leaders and the private sector championing progress. Today, downtown is home to the arts, history, retail, housing and entertainment. From historic Robinson Center to the $142 million Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, from boutiques to farmers markets, from historic homes to high-rise condos, there’s something for everyone. The past decade has added marinas to both sides of the Arkansas River, along with hundreds of apartments and homes for those who want to live in an urban environment.

Speaking of North Little Rock, Argenta plays a huge role in our downtown. Dickey-Stephens Park, Simmons Bank Arena and the restaurants that line Main Street provide countless entertainment opportunities. With two cities across one river, we punch well above our weight in concerts, performing arts and local dining options. While the Arkansas River may seem to be a dividing line, the cycling, walking and running along the Arkansas River Trail connect us.

With 33% of the local total commercial real estate inventory (12.7 million SF), downtown is the largest submarket in the metropolitan area and offers the greatest value. In fact, businesses, offices and residents have never had a more exciting and diverse menu of amenities downtown — benefits that can’t be replicated in suburban areas. Downtown boasts the lowest average cost per square foot in the area and can satisfy the needs of users large or small. And the Interstate 30 rehabilitation will provide the best regional access to downtown for occupants and visitors.

Whether it’s a national grocery store, restaurant chain, fashion retailer, office user or manufacturer, all our prospective commercial real estate clients want to know what’s happening downtown, which is why we must think of downtown when making key decisions about infrastructure, business expansions, education initiatives and other items on the Fallowses’ list.

These prospects know that American downtowns serve as benchmarks as to where a community is headed. We need visitors to clearly see new developments happening on both sides of the Arkansas River, making this place a great place to live, work and play.

So I challenge you to reread the Fallowses’ observations. Where does Little Rock stack up? Where are we going? What do you want to see next? If you want to listen to the music I hear, call me. Let’s meet and walk to lunch! In downtown of course.

Kelley Commercial Partners Adds New Shareholder Partner

Kaley Tucker, Property Manager, Partner

Kelley Commercial Partners is pleased to announce the appointment of our newest shareholder partner, Kaley Tucker. She will be joining existing partners Hank Kelley, Daryl Peeples, Maggie Hogan, Nick Kelley, Brooke Miller, Jessi Miller, Kevin Pledger, Gary Smith, Eric Varner, and Cheryl White.

“I knew Kaley was coming to the firm with a solid education and strong work ethic, but she has exceeded every expectation. Her professionalism makes her a joy to work with for team members, clients, and customers. I am excited to see what the future holds for Kaley at Kelley Commercial Partners and honored to be her partner,” said Daryl Peeples, president.

Tucker began her career at the firm nearly 7 years ago, just weeks after graduating from Ouachita Baptist University. She started as an assistant property manager and was promoted to a manager role in 2019. Tucker manages some of Little Rock’s largest Class A properties, including Simmons Tower, and several high-rise Property Owner’s Associations. She coordinates overall management, leasing activities, construction management, and financial oversight for more than 1.3 million square feet of property across central Arkansas.

“I had never considered a career in real estate and was certain I was headed down the CPA path after graduation, but I have grown to love what I do and the people I get to work with every day,” said Tucker.

In October 2021, Tucker completed her RPA® (Real Property Administrator) designation through BOMI. Only property managers with a minimum of three years of experience are eligible for the program. Tucker completed the coursework in less than two years and says she gained a more in-depth knowledge of every aspect of managing a commercial property successfully.

Tucker attributes her success in the company to the close-knit team. “I truly could not do what I do each day without my associates, Alex [Graham] and Abby [Turner], and the mentorship I have in Eric [Varner], Maggie [Hogan], Hank [Kelley] and Daryl [Peeples] as well as the support from my husband, Curt. Any property manager will tell you that not every day is sunshine and rainbows. There are some really hard days, but those are the days that I learn the most,” said Tucker.

Tucker is a member of BOMA GLR and is involved in her church, Immanuel Baptist Church. She and her husband have a feisty little red-headed toddler named Tessa.

Predictions about commercial real estate in Little Rock circa 2050

In this month’s issue of the Arkansas Times, Hank Kelley shared his thoughts about what the commercial real estate industry will look like in 2050. 

Hank Kelley, CEO

Hank Kelley, CEO

Connectivity

There is demand now — and will be in the future — for unique living and workspaces in multiple-story buildings so your space can be close to other residents and professionals, and to other recreational and educational uses. The way we “go to work” now will change over the next 30 years, and the need to have the same level of hard-wall separate office areas within a building will change. More emphasis will be placed on a building’s connectivity for virtual connections than exists today. Even today, mobile professionals regularly chart their destinations based on the connection to credible Wi-Fi. In 30 years, the need for high-quality connections will be a constant and core requirement.

The exterior of buildings will hopefully be a source of energy generation through advances in solar panel technology, but not at the expense of views within the spaces. More filtering will improve indoor air quality. Rooftop decks and balconies with sunscreen canopies will be the norm as people continue to want to be outdoors but become even more concerned about sun exposure.

Mixed-Use

I believe we will continue to see an evolution of larger office buildings to include a mixture in their uses. The cost of converting their use, though, will have to be feasible before developers will invest in the remodeling needed for conversion. The conversion of office buildings to residential and or hospitality (hotel) requires extensive plumbing and mechanical alterations, and those changes will only happen when adequate demand for those uses justifies the conversion cost. In the short run, we will see workspaces within the buildings compressed to more flexible work environments and, in some cases, with even more open floor spaces for cubicle and tabletop workspaces. Landlords will become more flexible on tenant expansion and contraction needs to retain their tenants and use the surplus space they have to attract growing businesses.

The office buildings and existing residential condo buildings in Little Rock’s Central Business District represent the highest density of population per mile in our city and region, and companies will continue to be attracted by the excellent accessibility to both I-30 and I-40. People who live in midrise and high-rise buildings in the Central Business District enjoy walkable amenities now — the Central Arkansas Library, the Robinson Center, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts — and we believe the demand for walkable amenities will grow over time.

“’Hoteling’ of office space and rotation of in-office and out-of-office workdays will become more of a norm.”

As regards trends toward remote working, we don’t believe the majority of companies will choose a completely remote workforce because of the challenges in maintaining the culture needed to compete. “Hoteling” of office space and rotation of in-office and out-of-office workdays will become more of a norm. We continue to believe there is value in the separation of workspace and living space. The networking component of “going to work” is now and will continue to be a valuable need for workers and companies.

Energy Efficiency

We will see great advances in products and technology to conserve and generate energy, water and land at both the individual user level, but also at the utility provider level. We are hopeful those advances will reduce operating costs and help preserve our natural resources. The office building industry has been active in conservation efforts through the LEED certification process. Maintaining buildings to operate at peak efficiency will become a requirement to own and operate a building, and utility providers will charge non-compliant building owners penalties for excessive consumption.

We expect that fewer people will own their own cars, meaning we will see less of a need for parking spaces.

Finally, inflation will increase interest rates on the debt and the cost of services to maintain existing buildings. Some building owners are not prepared for their debt and operating expenses to increase, as they have been trying to maintain current rent levels with tenants. This means less income is available to pay debt and reinvest in building upgrades needed to maintain an efficient and attractive building. The squeeze of increasing costs will challenge some building owners and cause a change in ownership if those owners don’t have adequate reserves. Tenants will seek out buildings with owners who have the financial resources and desire to reinvest in their properties.

Hank Kelley is CEO and Executive Broker at Kelley Commercial Partners, and has been working in brokerage and property management in Little Rock for 36 years.

Maggie Hogan: Nominee for Arkansas Business CFO of the Year 2021

Maggie Hogan, CFO

At a luncheon to be held on November 3 at the DoubleTree Hotel, Arkansas Business will honor chief financial officers from small private companies, large private companies, nonprofit organizations, public sector organizations, education, banking, and hospitals.

For the past 13 years, Arkansas Business has recognized the men and women navigating these challenging and often behind-the-scenes positions. Kelley Commercial Partners’ Chief Financial Officer, Maggie Hogan, is among the finalists for CFO of the Year in the small private company category. Other finalists in this category include Scott Dendler of Assembled Products Corp. of Rogers, Stuart McLendon of Dyne Hospitality Group of Little Rock, and Scott Rosenberg of Travel Nurse Across America of North Little Rock. Lifetime achievement awards will be presented to Vickie Judy of America’s Car-Mart, Inc. of Rogers and Johnny McCaleb of Simmons First of Pine Bluff.

We salute all the CFOs being honored as well as those yet to be recognized for the essential work and support they provide to their companies. We are especially proud of Maggie Hogan for her leadership and dedication to our firm.

Kelley Commercial: Creativity, repurposing rules CRE market in 2021

As seen in The Daily Record

March 15 – 21, 2021

by Dwain Hebda

 

Of all the industries shaped by the events of last year, the impact of COVID-19 on commercial real estate is arguably the most profound. Beyond just impacting a tenant’s ability to pay, 2020 represented a seismic shift in how companies think about leased space and the role of such spaces in the still-dawning era of mass work from home arrangements and the ubiquity of residential retail delivery.

As a result, commercial real estate companies find themselves with the daunting task of reimagining their inventory right along with tenant and public usage patterns, even as the battered economy begins to plod along toward recovery.

The Daily Record sat down with several partners of Kelley Commercial Partners in Little Rock to catch a glimpse of where the market currently stands and what successful commercial real estate (CRE) firms must do to ride the change current brought on by the pandemic.

Change is the only constant

In almost every conceivable way, CRE has transformed market thinking in ways large and small, from the size of space footprints to the way those spaces are configured.

“Heading into the pandemic, I don’t believe that I really saw a lot of people trying to downsize their footprint. Everything was pretty much going on as normal, depending on the type of business that they’re in,” said Cheryl White, senior property manager.

“What we’re seeing on renewables is that a lot of the tenants are either wanting to downsize because so many people are at home and wanting to remain at home,” said White. “Or (they are) trying to work with them while they transition to see what they’re going to let their employees do, whether they’re going to let them remain at home or if they’re going to try to bring them back into the office setting.”

White said CRE companies that demonstrate sensitivity to tenants’ needs as they bring their people back or look for a new space will be critical. This means being flexible on office modifications that promote social distancing or making other investments that speak to health issues within a building.

“We’ve really tried to assure our tenants that we’re doing what we can with our building to promote health and safety,” she said. “From our cleaning and janitorial to having hand sanitizers in the building, we want to make it to where they feel safe enough to come to the office. We ask that they wear their mask and going through all of that protocol as well.”

Even so, most CRE firms are still in a reactive posture when it comes to such measures, given the large amount of uncertainty that still surrounds COVID-19. This puts pressure on management companies and building owners alike to remain light on their feet to adapt and adopt, quickly.

“As it relates to the near future, I’m not sure anybody can really guess or estimate what’s going to happen because we don’t know what’s going to happen with policy making or how the government’s going to address a lot of tenants’ needs,” said Nick Kelley, executive vice president. “People who have been getting [stimulus] help from the government, may no longer get it. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen in a lot of the spaces that we manage.”

“I do see encouraging outlooks, as it relates to commercial real estate. There’s been an increase in activity with the announcement of the vaccines. But the truth is, the immediate future is going to be hard to know because we don’t know what’s going to happen with the pandemic.”

Challenges related, but not identical

Specific needs within the CRE market, while all stemming from the same challenge of COVID-19, continue to vary widely. Not all segments come under duress at the same time or to the same degree, demanding something more than one-size-fits-all solutions.

“The three segments of the market that we deal with are all different: retail, office and industrial,” said J. Daryl Peeples, president and principal broker. “At the start of COVID, I spent a majority of my time dealing with retail as it was the retail tenants that couldn’t pay rent. So, we were working with our clients and with our landlords on a daily basis, negotiating rent forgiveness or rent deferral or a combination of those two things and trying to negotiate something on the back end of the lease to give them a little bit of relief.”

“The office spaces were dark, but office tenants, by and large, were paying rent. We weren’t dealing with the nonpayment of rent in our office environment,” continued the local real estate executive. “Today, the larger firms haven’t come back yet, but some of the smaller firms have. So, you’ve got the needs of that segment of the office market and then the segment that hasn’t come back to work.”

Peeples said the industrial market, by contrast, is one of great opportunity, particularly as it pertains to distribution and other flex-type spaces. It’s an example of one segment’s loss is another one’s gain.

“National companies, in general, are trying to focus on distribution, rather than having a retail presence,” he said. “It’s delivery to the homes and trying to improve their distribution of their products. I think they’ll be looking for more flex-type space to provide that product directly to their customers, rather than through a retail environment and that’s a very active market that we want to participate in.”

To that end, Central Arkansas has a distinct advantage with amenities such as the Port of Little Rock and other large footprints that have successfully lured the likes of Amazon.

“Little Rock’s been on a consistent growth pattern for 25-plus years,” Kelley said. “We get back to that rate with a slight uptick because of some of the industries that have started to look at Little Rock as a great opportunity thanks to our shipping ability, our intermodal transport. The Little Rock Port provides a service that’s second to none in the country and people are starting to catch wind of it and taking notice of it.”

“As the community adopts these new people moving in, these new companies and new employees, I think there will be an even greater push for Little Rock to continue to grow in that sector, which will benefit all of us.”

Adapt, adapt, adapt

Capitol Center 12th Floor Executive Suites

Kelley Commercial Partners is converting the 12th floor of Simmons Tower to executive suites which offer professional, affordable spaces with flexible terms. The remodel should be completed by April 1, 2021.

All the partners interviewed agreed that some of the changes that have occurred as a result of COVID-19 are likely to be the norm rather than the exception going forward. The CRE companies that thrive in this new environment are those that can nimbly adapt to fundamentally new ground rules, be it in lease terms, office design or repurposing spaces for alternate uses.

“We have managed to increase and put some new tenants in and it’s all been because the landlord was willing to meet the needs of the tenant and give them the flexibility that made them comfortable to move in,” said Maggie Hogan, chief financial officer. “When people get back open, we’re going to see combinations where maybe not everyone has a private office because they don’t work everyday from the office. Or, people will still want to have an office, but maybe those offices are shared offices throughout the month.”

“I think the trend toward having higher density [in offices] is going to be less, even when COVID’s over. People are going to be a lot more aware, should another pandemic come around, of what we have to do to make sure that we’re prepared. I think people are going to be much more aware that it’s a possibility of having to make changes and being able to adapt quickly to changing situations.”

Peeples said repurposing of spaces will be of paramount importance moving forward. For instance, Kelley Commercial has transitioned several floors of Little Rock office space into “flex space,” what company leaders describe as an “office Airbnb” where drop in and short-term clients can utilize office amenities.

Similar repurposing is in demand. In a retail sector pummeled by online shopping and home delivery, yesterday’s retail store or bank branch is increasingly finding new life as something entirely different.

“The market tells you what’s going to work and what’s not going to work,” said Peeples. “Medical’s an excellent example. Health care entities are very active and are looking for 2,000- to 4,000-square-feet and landlords very quickly have to say, ‘Okay, what’s it going to take to accommodate that tenant?’ It might take a significant amount of money to refurbish a property for that type of use, but landlords are quick to adjust to the market.”

4261 Stockton Dr, NLR

Stockton Medical Plaza at 4261 Stockton Drive in North Little Rock offers a great location and space ideal for health care providers.

“From my perspective, anything that’s B-retail is eligible to be converted to service office use, medical use, et cetera,” said Hank Kelley, Jr. CEO and executive broker. “This is a fantastic opportunity for the hospitals, the medical practices and the clinics that need retail-like locations to go grab some of those locations at a fraction of what they would spend to go build a building.”

“Look at all the bank branches that are around. They’re being repurposed. Why are they being repurposed? Because, they’re at some of the best locations that exist in the market. Most of them have drive thrus. In the restaurant world, if you have a vacant restaurant building that has a drive thru already built into it, somebody’s looking into that. I don’t care what part of town you’re in, somebody’s looking to do a drive thru business.”

More questions than answers

The pandemic situation still poses far more unknowns than concrete trends, the partners said, both for the company and for present and future tenants. From economic recovery to health aspects and availability of vaccines to as-yet unimagined government and regulatory changes, the CRE market is fluid at best.

“Today, you’re saying, ‘Well, what’s going to happen with the office market?’ I think that’s yet to be determined and I think the challenge will be in the next few years, as we deal with lease renewals on these offices,” Peeples said. “What is that going to look like now that these larger firms have had a year of working remotely? How’s that working for them? Is the savings of rent worth continuing to work in that environment?”

“We don’t know the answer to that yet. I think people are still in a wait and see mode before they make any decisions on where they’re going to lease space. We’re hopeful that in the second half of this year, the leasing activity will pick up.”

Hank Kelley said uncertainty in the market can also work in the company’s favor when talking to prospective clients trying to decide between building a new headquarters and leasing existing space.

“The availability of capital is more important now than it’s ever been,” he said. “On one hand, if I go to the bank and borrow 50% of the cost of the project, I have banks lining up to make that loan to me because there’s no risk to it.”

“But most people want to borrow 75% loan-to-value and the banks and the lenders are very risk-averse right now. Even though they don’t have a lot of loan losses, they can see where the potential for loan losses lies on the horizon and they’re being very cautious about what they’re lending.”

And even if a project can access capital, Hank Kelley said, clients are finding money isn’t going as far given higher construction costs such as materials and labor, only some of which is pandemic–related. Therein, he said, is CRE’s ace in the hole.

“The advantage we have as managers and owners of existing buildings is that the cost of our space is maybe 50 percent of what the cost of a new building is now,” he said. “We deliver extraordinary value to the users of those buildings, as compared to if they decide to move and go build something themselves. The last resort of any client that I’ve got is to come out of the ground with a new building on a piece of ground right now, unless it’s build-to-suit where no other building can be adapted to the client’s needs. We’re developing several of those right now and we’re glad to have that as part of our business.”

“But even then, any client that comes to me and says, ‘I’m thinking about relocating,’ I make them go through buildings that are existing to see if a building can be upgraded or remodeled because the end solution is going to cost them a fraction of what it would cost them to build from the ground up. So, there is hope for these buildings that are may be dormant right now. When the market comes back, existing spaces will have a real advantage.”