325 - Creating Change Through Real Estate with Arturo Sneider & Leandro Tyberg

Sep 17

Arturo Sneider & Leandro Tyberg in Cafe con Pam

325 - Creating Change Through Real Estate with Arturo Sneider & Leandro Tyberg

Listeners, we are back this week with Arturo Sneider and Leandro Tyberg

Welcome to another episode of Cafe con Pam! In today's episode, we have the founders of Primestor, Arturo Sneider and Leandro Tyberg, joining us. They are here to talk about their mission to bring resources and economic development to underrecognized communities. We'll dive into their journey, the impact of their work, and their commitment to creating change. So grab your coffee and get ready for an inspiring conversation with Arturo and Leandro on building stronger communities.

Mr. Sneider is the founding partner & CEO of Primestor Development, Inc. His responsibilities include acquisitions, project inception and design, capital structuring and corporate management. With a strong focus in largely underserved communities, Primestor’s diverse portfolio has maintained an approximate ninety-five percent occupancy rate in approximately eighty projects.

Primestor is currently working on approximately a million square feet of new development, managing over three million square feet in diverse Minority markets and overseeing a portfolio of approximately seven hundred and fifty million dollars. Since 1990, Mr. Sneider has acquired and transacted in dozens of properties and projects located in CA, IL, NV, FL and AZ and have ranged in size and costs from under $1MM to over $100MM with an aggregate cost basis of approximately seven hundred and fifty million dollars.

Mr. Sneider is a member of YPO, Board Member/Director of the LA County Capital Asset Leasing Corporation and Trustee of ICSC. He has been an advisor to the City of LA’s Economic Development Dept. as well as board member of the City’s Development Industry Advisory Council. Mr. Sneider was born in Mexico City and resides in Los Angeles.

Mr. Tyberg is President and Co-Founder of Primestor Development. His primary responsibilities include oversight of company culture, operations, corporate management, enhancing the well-being of the team, and ensuring our company values are infused into every service our company provides. Mr. Tyberg has been responsible for the successful development and construction of every project Primestor has been involved in since its inception. Mr. Tyberg currently serves as Chair of the Building & Planning Cte. for Stephen S. Wise Temple, Board Chair and co-founder of Diversity Builders Alliance, Advisory Board of ULI-LA, Advisory Board for The Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, and has served on numerous other Boards and not-for-profit groups throughout his career. Mr. Tyberg is happily married with two sometimes wonderful children.

During our conversation we talked about:

How they met and became best friends
The different experiences as immigrants
Starting to understand the immigrant experience
The 1992 LA civil unrest
Starting to work in development without knowing anything
Primestor
Working with the communities for the communities
The Urban Vision Fund

Pam: Hello, everyone. This is Pam de Café con Pam, the bilingual podcast that features Latina and people of the global majority who break barriers, change lives, and make this world a better place.

Welcome to episode 325 of Café con Pam. Today, we have a conversation with the founders of Primestor. Leandro and Arturo.

Arturo and Leandro met when they were teenagers after immigrating to the US and have been best friends ever since, with dreams to help their community, the pair founder Primestor, an urban impact real estate development focusing on bringing resources to under recognized communities.

For the past 30 years, Primestor has been the vehicle to create real change. Building fresh produce grocery stores or bringing in financial institutions to areas that historically lack them. As Latino founders, creating homegrown leadership, self representation, and unprecedented opportunities is always top of mind for Primestor. They create a positive impact by addressing community needs, hiring within the communities they're working in, and simultaneously producing meaningful ROI for their investors all from a place of humility.

Listeners, this conversation with Leandro and Arturo was actually a lot of fun. I do wanna give this caveat that their internet was a little funky. And so the whole time I couldn't see their faces, and this was a true, like, I had to really pay attention to what I was listening in because I couldn't see them. So it was awesome to explore their story and really see and ask questions about the beginning stages of their business when they decided that they were going to do something that was going to have an impact.
Y bueno, sin más, aquí viene la entrevista con Arturo y Leandro.

Welcome to Café con Pam, Leandro y Arturo, cómo están?

Leandro: Muy bien, excelente, gracias. I think for the sake of the record so that the audience knows, I'm the handsome one.

Arturo: No. But we're actually the same person. It's just, it's the same.

Leandro: It's ventriloquism.

Arturo: Yeah. Exactly. We've been together so long that it could be either way.

Leandro: We've we've been best friends since I was twelve years old.

Pam: Wow. We'll talk more about that. But just for the listeners that are not watching the video, tell us who with your voices. I am *blank* and I am *blank*. So we can identify you.

Leandro: I am Leandro, president of Primestor and Arturo.

Arturo: Arturo, CEO of Primestor.

Pam: Awesome. Entonces, the first question that we always ask, is what is your heritage?

Arturo: I was born in Mexico City, both mom and dad are from DF.

Pam: Okay.

Arturo: Or now as they'd like to say, it's CDMX.

Pam: CDMX, claro.

Leandro: And I was born in San Miguel de Tucumán in Northern Argentina. And we were there for about 4 generations, since the 1880s and then moved to America in 1977 when I was 5.

Pam: Oh, fun. And when you say 4 generations, what does that mean?

Leandro: We originally came from far western Russia or Eastern Ukraine depends on where the borders are and somehow ended up in the 1880s in Argentina, Northern Argentina. But we identified for a long time as Argentinian. And frankly, now we identify as American.

Pam: Wow.

[laughs]

Pam: Pero así estamos todos, no? Tell me how you met. Entonces, hace rato dijiste que se conocieron when you were 12.

Leandro: When I was 12, he was fifteen.

Arturo: I was almost seventeen. Oh, jeez.

Pam: Wow.

Leandro: We had actually met through cousins of Arturo who lived here in Los Angeles. They were friends of mine from playground in LA. They were the only other Latino kids that I could really hang out with, and he was visiting from Mexico, and he ended up meeting myself and my sister, and from there, an entire life happened.

Pam: ¿Arturo estaba de vacaciones?

Arturo: Yeah. So I came on vacation just about to finish high school. My cousin was my best friend at the time, and I was looking into whether I was gonna be staying in Mexico or come to the US. And that was a trip that sort of was an exploration. Eventually, about a year or later, I moved to Los Angeles. It was 1986 when I moved here.

Pam: And what was the deciding factor?

Arturo: Well, the reality was that I had started having a conversation with my father about the fact that in Mexico things were starting to change dramatically. Growing up in DF, it was just a beautiful city, vibrant, the full of life, but eventually with a change in politics and the sort of overtake of the narcotics business and lack of safety it became an unreliable place to start from zero, which is where I was where I hadn't really built the foundation for anything. And rather than starting something there at a time when it was questionable where things were headed. My brother was living in the US. I came to see if I'd liked it up here, and I sort of decided to stay after I started working in a in a restaurant that both, Leandros' father and my brother were investors.

Leandro: Arturo was the chef.

Pam: Arturo was the chef.

Arturo: Yes.

Pam: Did you have a background?

Arturo: Yeah. So I worked in DF in restaurants, making desayunos and that kind of stuff. And then, like, you know, it became a passion of mine, it still is to cook Mexican food and gourmet Mexican especially. And, I worked there for, almost 5 years from prep to assistant, to cook, to chef.

Pam: Entonces, okay. Arturo moves to the US, starts working at the restaurant where Arturo's brother and Leandro dad are investors in this restaurant.

Arturo: Correct.

Leandro: Along the way, of course, we became extremely close friends arguing who was better Pink Floyd or John Lennon. And for some reason, Prince would always win.

Arturo: And Beethoven.

Leandro: So, most of our conversations when we were younger revolved around art and music and politics and rock and roll and philosophy. And we just found that, you know, though we think very differently, we end up at the same place with with a lot of heart and humanity and what we wanna do with our lives.

Pam: And when Arturo is cooking at this restaurant, what is Leandro doing?

Leandro: Oh, I'm I'm so eating. Oh my god. You have no idea how good his food is. And you have no idea what a good eater I am, it's really amazing.

Pam: But you don't have a role at the restaurant?

Leandro: No. No. Just I'm I'm head customer.

Pam: You're the taster.

Leandro: Yeah. Exactly.

Arturo: He was in high school or middle school.

Leandro: I was I was literally, like, middle school up. Like, yeah.

Arturo: Yeah. He was still a student.

Pam: Si, porque eres más chico. Entonces mientras Leandro está en la escuela todavía, en middleschool, then what happens with the restaurant and with that trajectory with Arturo? How do you reconnect again? I mean, you've always been friends, but I'll how do you decide that you're gonna do something?

Arturo: We stayed very close. So what happened was, in the restaurant, I became pretty enamored with the reality of my coworkers' existence in their life in the US. And I had no concept of the immigrant story of the US for Latinos eventually for minorities. To me, it was you come to America for a better opportunity, but every day at work, I would hear the life stories of my coworkes and Rosa and Armando, Hector, you know, they just became this sort of, fascinating group of friends of mine that really described the fear and the concern and the struggle and the reality of being here. And it confused me as to this is not as I understood it and, you know, why are you here? And a lot of them had this sort of deep sense of loss of family, culture, connection. And that what happened to be, at a time and place where I was really fascinated by it from a social perspective and be began sort of spending a lot of time with them and their families and kinda getting a sense where they lived and how the reality was. And Leandro's father was, in a property management business that he owned. He owned some properties in those parts of the city and others in South LA, East LA, etcetera. And he was managing these properties and we started talking about that interest of, hey. It's the the community that this sort of environment exists and why is that? And I became very curious about what is that the reality? And do I wanna have a role in impacting it in any way if I can. And during that time, Leandros' life took a quite a different turn.

Leandro: Yeah. I ended up going to high school in Italy, and then the real defining point for us was I was attempting to go to school, in college in Boston for 1 year and the civil unrest of 1992 happened in Los Angeles, and most of, the properties that my father and Arturo were managing had burned to the ground. And, you know, Arturo called me and said, you know, you've been away for a long time. Everything's on fire, and we're likely gonna lose the business, do you wanna come back and consider helping us rebuild. And for me, that was an opportunity to try something that I'd always wanted to do, which was community redevelopment, but didn't really understand how. So the summer after the civil unrest, Arturo put together an amazing opportunity with the LA County Office of Education to do something called a "Head Start" program for kids. And my responsibility was to how to figure out how to build it. The two of us basically spent that summer, you know, marinating in all of the pain of what had just happened in the burning of Los Angeles and working in a very, underserved, undersupplied, ignored and disinvested part of South LA and we both built this, you know, head start program for kids for the county. And we looked at each other at the end of that summer and said, you know what? This is it. This is how we affect change. This is how we, you know, become a part of the communities that we love. This is how we create, you know, economic empowerment and even some degree of brotherhood within the black and brown community. You know, why don't we just do this? Let's do this for the rest of our lives. That was our company's first project. Over 30 years ago.

Arturo: Yeah. 69th and Western in South Los Angeles.

Pam: Wow. But we're gonna break it down because I have a lot of questions. So everything that's happening in 92 is happening. How do you know it's possible to work with the city to do something. Where did you gather those resources or knowledge?

Arturo: We didn't know anything. And really, I still feel that way, but we really didn't know anything. So, you know, what happened was nothing in that 1991, 92 year sort of made sense to me about why this was the reality of underserved underinvested communities to begin with. Of course, I didn't understand the subtext of lack of investment, infrastructure, the sort of environment of redlining and neglect and all that stuff, it became later clear to me. But there was a a strong desire to understand it from a social perspective and then figure out whether there could be some way to change it and, you know, neither Leandro nor I, went to college or he he started going to college. I didn't I didn't. And so what I decided was that everything that would be available to read or ask questions, I would make time for. Going to city hall, going to plan check counters, going to planning department, going to architects, engineers, you name it. We made every mistake in the book, knocking doors with banks that Leandro's father had some sort of connection with, but, of course, know, he wasn't a developer, so we had to learn everything and build new relationships. And the fact is, you know, we had more negative results and answers than positive for nearly a decade.

Leandro: Yeah. I like to say, Pam, that we learned one change order at a time. It was a very expensive education.

Arturo: Yeah. We didn't know what change order was.

Pam: Do you wanna tell us what a change order is?

Leandro: It's when the contractor presents a cost that you had not anticipated to ownership seeking reimbursement or additional compensation for. That was very foreign to us.

Pam: And it happens all the time.

Leandro: It happens.

Arturo: Well, we we've become better at it not happening. But back when you're a teenager and all you've got is relentlessness, they show up and say, well, who's your civil? And I was like, I'm not married. And they're like, no. I mean a civil engineer, and I'm there looking quickly at the book oh, I need a civil what?

Leandro: The the contractor would ask us what color do you want on the wainscoat? And I was like, who's Wayne? What does his coat have to do with this?

Pam: Yeah!

Arturo: Yeah. No. This is literally what how it went down, Pam. It was and so we learned on the job making mistakes, asking lots of questions, and It was a 20 hour a day, 7 day a week existence that we loved every minute.

Leandro: Absolutely.

Pam: Did it help that your family both your families had some sort of involvement already doing business?

Arturo: I would say definitely. I think the the one thing that I was able to glean is to understand that that I was very comfortable in the neighborhoods that Leandro's father had properties. And his business was basically buying and renting or managing existing small kind of brick buildings 3, 4, 5000 Square Foot buildings and just seeing the flow of, you know, how do you collect the rent, how do you go pay property taxes in person? I used to stand in line down at the all of administration for hours check by check by check and ask questions about the bills. And so that was very, very helpful. And at the beginning, I was working at the restaurant and in real estate at the same time. So it was it was, a lot and it was very, rewarding.

Leandro: I think the other thing that both of our parents taught us was both of them, you know, had a tremendous work ethic. And they worked so hard to provide for our families and, you know, in there were many times growing up where I really felt like my father was absent because he was working. We were an immigrant family. As I got older, I realized the sacrifice that he was putting in. And, I very much am appreciative of the sacrifices what of what he and my mom went through to bring this to America.

Pam: Did you ever feel the immigrant child guilt of, like, my family came to provide for us, and now we have this life, I don't dare to complain because I just need to be grateful.

Leandro: You know, my experience was different, Pam. I was leaving, you know, a civil war in Argentina that was pretty violent. And we basically came seeking almost asylum and left most of the grandparents and cousins behind. And so for me, at five years old, you know, this was 1977. This was the year of Star Wars. I wanted to just learn English and be an American and have my father take me to baseball games, and he didn't. He was busy working. And so for me, it was really almost like a feeling of, you know, why am I so different from all the other kids at school? Why is my family so different? Why is my family always working? Why doesn't my father take me to little league? And it took years for me to really appreciate the difference and and understand the sacrifice.

Arturo: Yeah. For me, it was totally different. I've been, self sustained by myself. I was sixteen and a half. I came here and started working day 1. So I've supported myself since I was a teenager.

Leandro: And you took care of your father.

Arturo: Well, yeah. And then my father got very ill, and I brought him from Mexico because he couldn't work anymore. So I took care of him through his heard of infirmity and then his passing. But, no, it's fascinating question you asked because I was having dinner with my daughter yesterday, and she has that. I just for her, it's exactly the guilt thing that you're describing. Yeah. She she does.

Pam: Yeah. It's an interesting conversation around the guilt of the first and second gen because I've had it many times with different people and everyone experiences it different depending on your background, depending on the upbringing, and it always kinda like sneaks in. It's it's a very, like, immigrant child. My partner's a white man, and I have conversations with him about this. And he's like, what? I don't even under-- like, doesn't even understand that's something that could exist, feeling guilty of having a good life.

Arturo: My daughter Samantha was telling me that, and she's about as sort of grounded socially aware human you could encounter. She's 27, and she literally is, last night having that conversation, just saying, you know, how how was it? She was asking me these questions and that she's just beginning to grapple with that reality. And and, you know, it's fascinating. For me, it was a totally different experience.

Pam: For sure. So to bring it back to you, both of you working together. So you're super young, and you're kinda like, building as you go, how do you decide who does what in the business?

Leandro: That was very easy. Because we have very different skill sets and passions. Arturo in my opinion is a financial genius. And can model capital and philosophies related to economics in the industry on a very, very deep and intuitive level. Whereas I just like to build things. I really like it getting out in the field and putting things together, understanding connectivity, understanding community relations. And so we almost naturally gravitated towards what each of us were very good at. And because we wrote the rules of our relationship when we were so young, we don't argue. We don't fight. It's like, no. That's what you like to do. This is what I like to do. And it's worked out very, very well. It's a very complimentary, you know, hermanidad.

Arturo: Yeah. For sure. It came very naturally, I think. And as the business has evolved and our our roles have amplified and diversified. I think they almost like water. They just find their ground level naturally with the team. But the common thread for our business and our philosophy is humility. And so with that in mind, you're always coming with hey, I don't know better. I'm open to suggestions, other thoughts, other ways of doing things, and we've always built the business and our relationship on that.

Pam: Okay. Let's take a quick coffee break, and then let's, we'll come back and keep talking about how you build your business.

***
Pam: ¿Cuál es su bebida favorita?

Arturo: Mezcal.

Leandro: I drink a lot of Mate.

Pam: Si, el mate, pero el mate, yo lo intenté en, I have team members que son de Argentina, and I'm like, look, I need someone to make it for me, porque no, I can't.

Arturo: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody has 4 hours. And...

Pam: Si, no, it's an art for this. I don't have the patience. I don't have the skill, pero respect for mate.

Leandro: Although, I do admit that café de olla, it's just delicious.

Arturo: Yes.

Pam: Café de olla. Si. El café de olla es uno de mis favoritos, what happens with café de olla es que it's so good. I just keep drinking it, and then all day. I don't sleep for 3 days.

Leandro: You start to vibrate after a while, you're just like, [makes a noise]

Pam: Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a favorite coffee shop that you wanna give a shout out to?

Arturo: You know, it changes all the time. Right now, I really love Verve at the arts district. I really like that place.

Pam: In LA.

Arturo: Yeah, downtown LA.

Leandro: For coffee, there's a beautiful place in East Illinois called Cafe Tepito. Which is absolutely intimate and delicious.

Arturo: And South LA Cafe, we're actually working with them.

Leandro: Yeah. That's wonderful. Wonderful company.

Pam: That's awesome. Is there a place that makes mate, good mate cocido, in LA?

Leandro: Mercado Buenos Aires, in the San Fernando Valley.

Arturo: Yeah. Yeah.

Leandro: They make a beautiful mate cocido. And I mean they also make a beautiful steak and beautiful empanadas and many other beautiful things that I like to eat.

Arturo: Nothing that I eat.

Leandro: Everything that I eat.

Pam: Awesome. Well, on my end, ahorita, en este momento I'm drinking green tea because it's like, in the afternoon where I am, I'm in San Diego. And I've already had my coffee. I, this morning, I went to a meeting at Mostra Coffee in San Diego. And I had a honey lavender latte. Half sweet because I can't deal with all the sugar. It was really good.

Arturo: I bet. Honey Lavender sounds phenomenal. We're gonna be down in San Diego for the, shopping center convention in October. So I gotta check it out.

Pam: Yeah. Let me know when you're here. We can have some cafecito in IRL, in real life.

Arturo: Dale, pues.

Pam: Okay. Let's get back to the show.

***

Pam: Hola manis, by the way, if you are enjoying this conversation and you wanna keep talking about it, if you have some comments and maybe some questions that you have, follow me on social media and let's keep the conversation going. This is your reminder to screenshot and tag me @cafeconpampodcast on Instagram and Facebook and let's keep talking about it. Tell me what's resonating, tell me what isnt. Tell me what do you wish I asked the guest, this is your chance. And if you are on TikTok I'm @cafeconpampod as well. Let's stay connected!

***

Pam: Entonces you start with this one project al principio and you learn so much. Was there ever a time when you were like, sabes que? This is too much like, where we've been doing, like, let's go back to what we know, how did you keep going?

Arturo: No, we never asked that question.

Pam: So you just knew that it was just the next, one step after the other.

Arturo: Yeah. Like Leandro said, you know, 1993 and we were so in passion by the impact, the community,
you know, back in the time when we were in in that sort of very dark space, ourselves personally and the city, and I think the country in some ways, to see the impact that something in relative terms so small and yet so huge had, we felt very fortunate to be in that space where you find the the balance between what you care about and the work you have to do, and they find a way to talk to each other that just feels like you're not working a day in your life. That sort of ebbed and flowed. Of course, there were years when we were, you know, screaming words, you know, on sound radio. And others where we were just like, this is the best place we could ever be in, but but we never questioned, hey, do we wanna go ahead and do something else?

Leandro: You know, Pam, I'll tell you that, you know, one of the blessings of being an immigrant is when you come to America and see the city, you analyze it with a lot of different eyes, and I could not understand why such incredibly powerful areas as it relates to human intelligence and capital. We're so ignored, so underappreciated, so disinvested. And it was kind of the incredulity of why is it this way that forced us to learn the history of how it got there, but then also see the other side of the opportunity to say It doesn't have to be this way. There is a different way to live within our society as long as we're helping each other out. And that personal passion for both of us is our remedy. It's what keeps us going. It's what makes us feel like Yes. We believe in commerce. We believe in the American way. We believe in capitalism only so far as is used for the purpose of helping people. And that's what we try to do with our business is, you know, create economic opportunity really for, you know, ourselves and the common good, you know, the more we feel like we are healing properties, the more we're healing ourselves and of course the people that, you know, choose to join us on this path. So it all becomes very personal.

Arturo: The other thing that happened was, I volunteered for Gloria Molina's campaign, which was running for District 1 in LA and got to meet her and spent some time with her, and she was a force of nature, rest in peace. And it became pretty evident that there was an entire massive people before us and and coming in waves that really wanted to influence change. And when I saw, a deed in a property that we were looking at that basically said, hey, you cannot buy this property because you're Mexican. I was like, okay our business idea is not gonna work. I had to ask a friend of Gloria's, and he's like, oh, you know, that's not legal. It's unconstitutional. I was like, okay. It starts now making sense why these neighborhoods were underinvested as people moved.

Pam: Wow.

Arturo: That that's still today. If you've pulled deeds of properties because they were handwritten into their no person from Mexican descent or black origin could own real estate in many, many neighborhoods across, you know, the country, of course, but certainly in the areas that we wanted to create impact and and, that even made us more interested in my fury.

Leandro: Yeah.

Pam: For sure. And I love that you talk about capitalism, and there's this whole thing that people are not talking about conscious capitalism. And throughout the years, how have you stayed grounded into the vision of actually helping communities because as your business grows and I've seen it with other business owners. Once they start making money, it's like, oh, let's just keep making money. So how do you keep yourselves grounded in the actual vision of helping people?

Arturo: Well, we we didn't start this endeavor as a business. Right? So we never had to we ground ourselves in that regard because the driving force of the business is community impact. Economic development for and by community. And it we started engraining it into our legal contracts. And so that is what drives us today. It has never really changed. That the, we were the first company out there that was enforcing local hiring in our leases with national tenants. We were pushing for procurement to be local. And really working diligently to understand the makeup of ownership and and figuring out how we could legally implement those kinds of practices. And then when we looked around at the industry and we said, well, you know, who better to hire in in the business than the folks that understand the communities we're trying to serve. And hopefully, somebody that knows what a civil engineer is, there was no way. And so we started, like, the industry was, you know, white male. And we were like, well, what do they know about this community? And we got a find people that understand the community, that understand the business as well. And since they were just graduating college or in college, we started hiring people with little to no experience, and many of them are still here. And we developed a business plan that is just focused on diversity makes us better and stronger and more grounded. And so we've never really abandoned that initiative, even as the business has grown, It has been the same.

Leandro: Abandoning the initiative would be like abandoning who we are. And, you know, adversity reveals character, but it doesn't create it. This is what we have always wanted to do in life. And, you know, arguing when we were young teenagers about philosophy, art, sculpture, Beethoven, Pink Floyd and John Lennon, you know, 35 years later, we're still arguing the same things on what does it take for us to have a better society, and what are we gonna do about it? And and that core humanity is, you know, why I love Arturo, why he's my best friend, why he's the godfather of my kids, and why he's okay with me saying that I'm the better looking one of us.

Arturo: No. I think the other thing too is the capitalism, conscious capitalism, I think, is the only way forward, certainly for America. Latinos are, you know, for certain the majority of the country in the future. And there's a social fiber that comes with that. And I think we're seeing it. You know, we're seeing it in, and we just closed to have the first closing of our, institutional discretionary fund, which was a very big goal of ours many, many years ago, a fleeting goal because we we found a lot of barriers to capital, but now that we're sort of turned that corner, you realize that there are a lot of people within organizations, endowments, foundations, pension funds, etcetera that are diverse, that are creative, that are passionate, and are starting to push the needle to say, we are part of the solution. We need to be part of the solution. Capital is always there. Latino community has repeatedly said, we don't want charity. We want opportunity. We want doors open. We will take it the the rule take the labor from there, and we wanna bring that energy to that through capital as well. So and I feel it changing. It is like molasses in winter if you ask me, but it's changing.

Pam: Let's fast forward. You started with this project. Tell me now about Primestor. So how did you decide the name and what do you do now?

Leandro: So originally, the name was actually created by Arturo in the early, early 1990s where my father had the property management business in the garment district of downtown and he managed a bunch of little stores that were primer locations. And that occurred to Arturo you know, as a headquarters, we were the Prime Store. Now there's no e at the end of store because at the time, we couldn't afford a vowel. And he always wanted us to be a little bit different, throughout the industry. As to where we stand now, we are, you know, proud that, you know, 30+ years later, we're currently managing a portfolio of about a $1,000,000,000. And Arturo was able to raise this, social impact equity fund that just achieved its first closing. This is gonna be an opportunity for us to deploy capital intentionally in transit oriented, undersupplied, underserved neighborhoods, that we care the most about.

Arturo: Yeah. And the the beauty of it is we have a [inaudible]. This is a key anchor partner there. So we have the state's pension fund with the teacher system as our partner and partners as far away as LGT, which is their base in Switzerland is very focused on, you know, environmental, social, and governance metrics and and very, very, open minded about how powerful diversity makes, you know, business stronger so we're bringing in, you know, large scale institutional capital to the neighborhood and then narrowly defining where it can be used. And so our capital is only for the purposes of impact for and by community, and it cannot be invested elsewhere.

Pam: Tell me about Evermont.

Leandro: Evermont is one of the most incredible opportunities that we've had a chance to work on. You know, we started the company in the ashes of the civil unrest of 1992. And the property that we first worked on at 68th in southwestern is only about Twenty Blocks from where Evermont currently is. And the corner of Vermont and Manchester also burned down in the civil unrest. And has sat fallow for 30 years. And the project is in partnership with the LA County which it's really a fascinating experiment. We've got a 300 unit boarding school for kids. Ground floor, our anchor is target. On the 2nd floor, we've got an office of innovation and training center for Metro Los Angeles. And then from floors 3 through 7, we're gonna do a 180 units of permanent support housing, affordable housing, full spectrum restricted housing for people who need it most. There's gonna be a small business incubator, a local, black owned coffee company called Southlake Cafe. Along with some other retail and civic uses. And you put all of those different concepts, all those different uses together and we think that that's how you actually affect change where you're not looking at real estate and saying, well, It can only be an office building. It can only be a retail store. We think that the best thing for society is really to be able to look at property and say, what does the community need this to be? What does it want to be? And then how do we create something a little bit more holistic by doing community outreach, community engagement, community participation, and making sure that the community is involved as an active partner. For us, when you think of the arc of history of starting in the civil unrest, you know, aftermath and 30 years later breaking ground that same week on the anniversary of what happened to Rodney King was extremely emotional. Yeah.

Arturo: They started with the county. It came full circle.

Leandro: So the project is now into construction. Thank god we've had no safety incidents, and things are going extremely well. We no longer suffer from the problem of change orders because we've learned how to manage that. And it should be open within the next 10 months, and it will be frankly, a catalytic economic engine for South LA for a neighborhood that really deserves it.

Pam: That's fun. How do you make decisions on where to go next? Aside from thinking about the community impact, is there, like, another checklist that you talk about while you make decisions?

Arturo: It's a pretty good checklist. And when you go raise a capital fund that you're they call us, quote, unquote, emerging managers. It's a and you could do an entire episode on just that title. But, when you go out and raise capital and you're as, you know, new at it as we are 32 years at it.

Pam: That's new?

Leandro: Well, we're we're emerging managers, so we still have training with

[laughs]

Pam: -- Wow.

Arturo: You know, old habits die hard. We have to define a box very, very well, as to what makes us unique and different. And, certainly, in a world of you know, you have a doctor for your left ear and a different doctor for your right ear. Specialization is so important. We do develop a very comprehensive checklist that includes growth in the demography, within the minority sector. So we look at age and age distribution, school enrollment, and and where families are growing. We look at traffic patterns and changing traffic patterns as a result of the infrastructure growth that's happening in the region with public transportation, mass transit, etcetera. We look at, sort of voids of services and basic needs. So where do you have food deserts? Where do you have you know, lack of access to stores and banks and fitness centers and health and wellness, you know, options and so we look at all those things, and now we layer in also what is the need which is endless on homelessness housing, affordable housing, market rate housing, and eventually homeownership. So we layer all those things and helps us prioritize which projects we need to be working on first. And then also with the complexity of entitling and building and designing, layering in our schedules into being very efficient about what we can tackle when some of our projects are very, very large scale, and so you can't take on, you know, multiple large scale projects at once. But you can take a couple and then have, you know, a peppering of smaller and medium Primestor along the way. All of those things come into play. We we are pretty fairly vertically integrated. So we do leasing and house asset management, property management, consensus planning, community outreach, and every one of these leaders in the in the business, whether it's Elena or Louis or Delilah or David, they have a a direct and decision making capacity to influence and decide what should we be working on next.

Pam: It's a lot. It's a big checklist.

Leandro: It's a lot.

Arturo: It is. It is. It's not easy to find where to, dedicate the kind of capital and time that we, we're we're tasked to do so responsibly for, you know, the pension funds and others.

Pam: For sure. How big is your team now?

Leandro: Currently, we're at about 51 people and growing.

Pam: Fun. Who was your first employee?

Leandro: She's still here.

Arturo: Claudia Cárdenas, She's, the head of community outreach and consensus,

Leandro: Yeah, and as well as local higher compliance, making sure that all of the commitments and values that we have promised are held to an extremely high standard. She was literally our very first team member and has been here almost 30 years.

Arturo: You know, she's, she can tackle anything we throw at her with passion, with dignity, with humility.

Leandro: And cariño. I mean, she is such a caring person.

Arturo: Yeah. We actually didn't It never went before she was married before kids before anything.

Pam: Live life together.

Arturo: Really. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Pam: What was her first role compared to now?

Arturo: Oh, lord, you know when I met her. She was selling, tickets to go into the museum at Lacma. And, she was my assistant at the beginning, which is a nice title for we were both learning everything together at the same time. So, yeah, literally, it was like, pull up the dictionary. What that hell does that mean?

Pam: I love that. So now it's fifty one people and growing.

Leandro: Correct. We are actively trying to find a vice president for our housing division. We are looking for senior project managers. We're looking for qualified property managers, asset managers, We have a lot of opportunity. And we we always choose to make sure that the people we bring on understand the values that I share are representative of the neighborhoods that we serve and they don't have to have it, all the skills from the outset. So long as they are curious and caring, there is a path to growth together.

Arturo: An incredible work ethic and they know that, what we do is brain damage.

Leandro: It's hard. It's hard and wonderful. Yeah.

Pam: It's he dichotomy of, it takes a lot, and it's very meaningful. Right?

Leandro: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Well, look, and and and frankly, we are we are working in people's communities in their backyards, they deserve the respect that we give them our best. And the work that we do is extremely tangible. These are built environment assets that, you know, ideally, will be there a 100 years. It affects communities. And as as we read once, what Winston Churchill once said, we shape our buildings thereafter. They shape us. That is an tremendous responsibility.

Pam: Indeed. So I'm curious because as I talk to so many business owners, one of the hardest things that I've heard people talk about is dealing with people.

Leandro: Dealing with people is the whole business. That is everything.

Pam: Totally.

Arturo: I mean, for us, it means in the office out of the office, of course, every kind of possible deal.

Pam: Yeah.

Leandro: Arturo hinted at earlier that so long as you stay humble, recognize that you are a guest in people's communities. Even if you're building in your own backyard, that doesn't mean that you should treat it like you are the owner. You know, frankly, people know better what they wanna see in their neighborhoods than we do. And it's important that we listen to that. And that works the same way with elected officials, with community stakeholders, with capital partners, listening, listening, listening, and then finding a way to create alignment so that the project gets done is is frankly what I think we thrive at. And I think that, you know, we've built very positive skill set in doing, but, the challenges cannot be understated. And frankly, you know, one of the issues that we don't often talk about in the worlds of capital structures is, you know, frankly, how much we have contaminated our land many of the properties that Arturo and I seek to redevelop have significant contamination from historical misuse. And that's a part of working in urban communities is learning how to ameluate them how to remediate them and and how to go through the regulatory process to get to the place where suddenly the regulators are also your partners in the deal. And, you know, willing it to move forward as well. But sustainable practices in the built environment, frankly, is something that we are also extremely passionate about and is really, you know, a requirement of everything that we do.

Pam: Yeah. Because the earth is suffering.

Leandro: Well, we you know what? The earth suffers. We suffer with it.

Pam: Totally. 100%. Tell me about Urban Vision Fund.

Arturo: So Urban Vision Fund started the idea. It's about 2017. We had a for about 7, 8 years before that, tried to raise capital to develop in our communities. And like everything else in our career, we got a resounding no from almost everybody. And, the idea became more tangible when we created some institutional joint ventures where institutional capital would still have total control and say over what we did and approve projects and sort of handhold our, us through the process on the capital side, and we had repeated success in that space and became a little bit more known in the tree for doing well and doing good. And so he said, you know what? Let's give it another try. Let's go ahead and raise capital from institutions now that we have some institutional track record along the way, the institutions did teach us to be better at reporting, better at managing, better at systems and, you know, investing in our software and hardware. And we went down the road, on the heels of having a very successful joint venture with Calsters. We exited that portfolio by contributing that portfolio to our partners at Federal Realty who we are still partners with. They're a publicly traded owner operator of real estate across the US. And we decided to go raise the fund and then COVID hit literally on the week that we launched the effort.

Pam: Oh, no.

Arturo: It was literally March of 2020. Where we started sort of handshaking or I should say elbow bumping, and then it got shut down. And so I I switched my role. I went back to the 19 nineties and became operator of the business. During COVID. We were open as a essential services company, maintaining supermarkets, drugstores, banks, operating in the community providing food banks and services and health and everything. And then we restarted, once things look to be settling down. And it is, one of the very few development, 100% minority owned and controlled investment funds for development, it makes use urban infill projects, of institutional size. So we we are raising $300,000,000. We are on our way to our second closing. We have about a 170 some $1,000,000 now in commitments. We closed in late February and have started investing in communities such as Cudahy and Linwood, and Southgate and Norwalk.

Leandro: Los Angeles.

Arturo: And the city of Los Angeles quite a bit in the valley and in in the south Los Angeles. And we will continue to do so, over the next 10 years of this fund. And then at some point in between that we will begin raising a second fund. But the idea is to put capital in the hands of minority led, minority focused folks that can really, you know, look at the, the model of Again, community improvement by community for community.

Pam: That's awesome. Bueno, tell us all the places and spaces where people can find you and whatever you wanna share, links, etcetera, etcetera.

Leandro: Probably the easiest way to go is, wwwprimestor.com, there's no e at the end of store. And, also, feel free to email Arturo and I. It's literally leandro@primestor.com or arturo@primestor.com Those are the easiest ways to reach us.

Pam: So cool. What is next for you aside from Urban Vision Fund, which is what you're working on right now?

Leandro: We think frankly that the Urban Vision Fund will be able to give us an opportunity to amplify the work that we do. And ideally within the appropriate, you know, space of time, we can then start to really translate the work that we do and the messaging of how we do it into other markets throughout the United States. We think that regionality is something that will come next.

Arturo: Yeah. I think right now, we've got some pretty incredible leadership in the region. You know, you've got 5 very, very talented strong county supervisors. You've got a great mayor. There is a huge leadership with Metro with Stephan [inaudible]. I think there's a great push and desire to connect the city, make it more accessible to our communities through public and mass transit, And the vision is to to really create a metropolis that allows people to change the old adage of low income communities from what's my ticket out to now I have a reason to stay and invest in my own commute. And when you don't need a car and when you don't need to continue creating traffic jam, and you can live work, play in your community or commute easily in your in your train and your subway. We wanna build those projects that give community pride, but also diversity of income and diversity of uses, through that network of public transportation. And I think that's the next, frontier for Primestor in scale. And then as Leandro said, we'll see where where that takes us at the next, iteration of ourselves.

Pam: That's awesome. The last few questions. Do you have a remedio that you wanna share?

Leandro: My remedy is my kids, then my wife and then my guitar. Ay mi amor, but it's in that order. And then at work, it's the community outreach. I love meeting with community members and It's a very raw and primal opportunity to hear people and listen to their concerns and their dreams and aspirations and find alignment.

Arturo: You know, my remedio, I think that there's a a confusing, approach to life where having a routine and discipline around the routine actually gives you tremendous freedom. And so my remedy is having a consistency of routine because I have a moral and a practical obligation to my family and my partners and my colleagues and my community to be healthy and to be present so that I can execute on my responsibilities. And so I keep a very structured sort of lifestyle so that health and wellness is always a part of my day and my week in a consistent basis. Not as an option, but as part of my obligation.

Pam: I love that. And do you have a quote or mantra that you live by?

Arturo: Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.

Leandro: Pathfinder, there is no path. The path is made by walking.

Pam: I love that.

Leandro: For me, it's a radical acceptance. It's what Arturo taught me when I was much younger and accept who you are, the good and the bad. The flawed and the sublime, but always be yourself.

Pam: Yes. And last question, do you have a productivity tip ,trick or tool that you wanna share with us?

Leandro: For me, you know, the tip, trick, and tool is whenever I, you know, embark on something here at the office, or my personal life, I ask myself is this something I should be working on? And that is something else that Arturo taught me.

Arturo: For me, it took a lot of effort, work on myself to learn that being present is something that you can learn. And, a lot of work around tuning out the noise and the background and the chatter that happens when you need to apply a practical tool, you know, Vedanta principles that teach you to separate the mind from the brain. I think for me, that is a a tool that I implement consistently throughout the day. I find that to give me a more efficient [inaudible]

Pam: Nice. Okay. I have so many more questions, but we are out of time. This was awesome. Thank you so much for coming to Cafe con Pam and for your work. Can't wait to check out all the things that you've done. I'm in San Diego. So maybe let me know when you bring your work to San Diego. I don't know. We'll see.

Leandro: And why not? We'd love to.

Arturo: We would love that. Thank you so much for your time, Pam.

Pam: Thank you!

Arturo: Felicidades y gracias.

Leandro: Gracias por el tiempo y el interés.

Pam: Claro que si, gracias a ustedes.

Arturo: Listeners, sigan brillando!

***

Okay. Listeners. That was my conversation with Arturo and Leandro. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I know you probably have a lot questions, and they were really generous to share their emails. If you might be curious about exploring more of their work, how they are doing it. Maybe you are curious about getting into this real estate game. Why not reach out? And, also, one of the things that they said is that they were constantly hiring. So you if you are in the LA area, that is something that, if you are looking for a role, perhaps they might have something for you. Check them out.

And, of course, let me know what you think about the episode, screenshot, tag me and tag them. You'll see the links in the episode notes. And let us know what you think about this episode.

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Listeners, thank you so much for taking the time. I so appreciate you giving me your ears and gifting me the hour or so of this episode. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here. And let's stay connected. You can follow @cafeconpampodcast on Instagram and Facebook, you can check out the newest, the newest and newest Annual Manis Pass. This is the Annual Manis Pass. And this is the newest thing that Cafe con Pam is launching. Right now, we are as I'm recording this before this is dropping. I don't know where we will be. I'm talking from the past into the future, but right now, we are, we have launched the founding members option. And so if you want to be a founding member, there are only so many spots available for you to get this role of being a founding member. How cool it is. I think if you are someone who's been listening for a while, why not be a founding member? And I'm sending you gifts. So if you are a founding member, I am going to send you some goodies from me to you as a thank you for trusting my work. The Annual Manis Pass is for those of you who are looking to start a business, for those of you who are looking to get things done through a project that you might have. And the primary objective of the Annual Manis Pass is for you to commit to your growth. We are going to explore a lot of nervous system regulation. We're going to hold ourselves accountable for bringing in joy and rest into our lives, and we're gonna do a lot of tapping inside of the Pass, Annual Pass. And there's going to be some options to choose your own adventure depending on what you need. You can go in and kinda like the way that I'm thinking about this is how do we make it the funniest for you, the funniest experience for you? So I invite you to check it out, cafeconpam.com. And you'll see it all in there, and we also have a new website. So why not? Explore it. By this time, when you listen to this episode, we already have launched other things on the website. So I'll leave you with that. So you can go check it out and let me know because there's other options now outside from the podcast for you to learn about new awesome people. But let me know when you go explore. I hope you join the Manis Annual Pass, cafeconpam.com Right there, you'll see it. First button. Join the annual pass. Thank you so much for being here. It's an honor to be in your ears. I don't take for granted. Thank you so much. Stay shining!