Joe Brady – Partner, LRG Investors

NATHAN GRIFFIS
Joe, thanks for thanks for sitting down with us today. Appreciate you. Spend some time, excited to be working obviously a project with you, but I I'm, I want to spend more time on how I and I did we didn't meet at the event. But we, we were at the UF trends conference that I think you were the chair of.

JOE BRADY
I did chair it this year.

NATHAN GRIFFIS
You talk talk about that event. It was a wonderful event. Talk about that event and, the role that you play in it and what's going for the future?

JOE BRADY
Well, the the trends conference this past year was really focused on what's around the corner. Many of us go to conferences and we hear speakers and tends to be in an echo chamber. Right. You hear a lot of the same stuff. And I was, thrilled to lead a fantastic committee working with our staff at the Bergstrom Real Estate Center to bring in, just a top, top level, group of speakers.

JOE BRADY
And it ranged from Ray Cordero from JPMorgan, who is in charge of, global capital projects. So he's a guy that only spends $5 billion a year.

NATHAN GRIFFIS
Sure. For sure. Just 5 billion.

JOE BRADY
And that was one of my first questions to him. And Ray's a dear friend. We worked together at JLL. And when I was at JLL, still he, he went over to JP Morgan and we promoted him to client. So we took good care of him. But, but the fun question was, Ray, how do you how do you spend $5 billion a year.

NATHAN GRIFFIS
In Richard Pryor have that movie where he was trying to spend $100,000 in 24 hours to get multiple million. So, yeah, how do you spend $5 billion? Yeah.

JOE BRADY
Well, it turns out that that conversation went from where does JP Morgan view the future of office to, how do they view Florida, given that we were we were all collectively in Florida. And what's interesting is, Tampa and Orlando are both global hubs for JP Morgan. And they just added Jacksonville to that global list. Wow. And so as a hub, the investment dollars per year.

JOE BRADY
Extraordinary. And you know, there's JP morgan's probably investing at least on their own corporate campus side close to $1 billion in Florida. It's it's astounding. So, great to see that. But it was also terrific to talk about the the topic to jure, which is, yeah, what's the future of work? And so we talked quite a bit about JP morgan's new headquarters building within New York.

JOE BRADY
Amazing. 270 Park Avenue. Just got a text last night that yesterday, the very first 600 people were able to occupy the new building. Wow. And it's, you would probably geek out on this.

NATHAN GRIFFIS
Oh, no, I've I've I've I've, I've done fly thrus and I've seen. Right. Yes.

JOE BRADY
So the foster and partners, I just love how David Arena, by the way, who's the global head of real estate for JP Morgan is probably the best global real estate leader period. Right. There's you know, he's so far above whoever's number two. Just a visionary and a brilliant guy. And many people have been mentored by him, including me.

JOE BRADY
And I'll tell a funny story later, okay?

NATHAN GRIFFIS
Sure.

JOE BRADY
But the, the vision to reach out to Norman Foster and to engage him in building community at 270 Park was extraordinary. And you think about that entire city block. You have 48th and park over to Madison to 49th. Two stories of just pure glass. And it is basically a city park that they've created. And and so it really it really resonates, about what this future of work is.

JOE BRADY
And frankly, there's for us in retail, and I wrote a book on this called Workshop It. We've seen the movie already. We've seen how technology has evolved rapidly. It's changed consumer behavior. And you have to explore whether the real estate, the built environment is kept up. Yeah. And we've seen over ten years that irrelevant retail and irrelevant retailers have gone away.

JOE BRADY
But those that are relevant, that have created experience, that have driven a movement, at least in our retail world, have excelled. And and so JP Morgan is, is probably everyone wants to focus on them because Jamie Dimon says everyone's back five days a week. Yeah. The conversation's almost irrelevant if you get to go to 270 Park Avenue.

NATHAN GRIFFIS
Yeah.

JOE BRADY
Which is one of the finest office buildings in the world. So, you know, all the all the accolades, you know, it's fully, environmentally sound and so forth.

NATHAN GRIFFIS
Can't remember how many restaurants.

JOE BRADY
So there's 20 some of restaurant venues. Yeah, there's an Irish pub on the top floor. There's of course. And by the way, the art collection that JP Morgan has is beyond compare. Well, on the top floor, when I, I used to go to 383 Madison, which was the old Bear Stearns building that Jamie got for ten bucks.

JOE BRADY
It's only worth a million bucks now. Probably more are the pistols that, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton used in their duel. Right. Like you think you think about these types of things. It's extraordinary. So.

NATHAN GRIFFIS
But I think that's how corporate America, frankly, sometimes people forget. So in Bentonville, Arkansas, there's an amazing, amazing art museum.

JOE BRADY
Right? The Waltons, they. Yes, they curated it. Yes.

NATHAN GRIFFIS
And so, we spent a little time yesterday with, with Josh, from cross Mark and, and we talked a little bit about how office has to have a hospitality environment. Like that's part of the reframing. It's not about a lease, it's about it is about an experience. And if you are going to bring people back to work, you need to have something maybe a little bit different.

NATHAN GRIFFIS
For them.

JOE BRADY
It was a failed on. No. Okay. Bring them back to work. Okay. I'm going to challenge you. Okay. That's like saying hot water heater. The water's already hot. You don't need to heat it. Everyone's been working. And that's the thing I wrote this book called workshop, and my thesis is that sharp evolved from a noun to a verb.

JOE BRADY
A place you went to spend money physical for walls to a thing you do or did you do irrespective of place, whether it's online, in the brick and mortar, in any combination? I argue that work is just going through that same evolution. Okay, it pre pre-pandemic work and office were almost synonymous weren't they. Where are you going Nathan?

JOE BRADY
I'm going to work. Well that meant you were going to New York which is a really nice office, by the way. And thank you for showing me around. And for those who get a chance, you should definitely check it out now. Work in office or decoupled. And if you think about the age we're living in, we're going through a platform shift.

JOE BRADY
One of the biggest technological platform shifts in humanity. And it's this AI platform shift that's happening now.

NATHAN GRIFFIS
Significant.

JOE BRADY
And it's it's significant. If you think about the turn of the last century, we were deep in the Industrial Revolution doing research for my book. I said, you know, I wanted to tackle the idea of technology, stealing our jobs. Right. There was a South Park episode.