Ben Uyeda

It's definitely been gentrified to some degree.

And when I saw that there was a Whole Foods going in, I started looking for empty lots right around that.

I actually saw that there was a proposal for Whole Foods to come.

So smart.

local thing, local, some sort of media or website, and that some of the current residents were protesting it or were sort of mildly against it because they thought it was displacing a sort of more traditional sort of ethnic grocery store.

I sort of looked at it as the analytical side and doing sort of comp research and stuff like that isn't the part I enjoy the most.

I prefer the sort of design and construction part.

So I said, well, I'm sure Whole Foods did their due diligence on sort of picking locations.

So I will sort of piggyback off of their research and start looking for land within about a half mile radius of them.

And that's how I found the lot.

And typically, when developers sort of do these kind of things, they try to use as little capital as possible and then go as fast as possible.

And I

knew as a designer that I was going to want to take my time and really figure out what was the opportunity to build something really amazing on this site.

And I didn't want to go fast.

So I had to figure out a different model financially for thinking about how to make that, again, not be a liability.

I had to figure out how to make my interest and the things that I think I'm good at not actually cost me money, but instead sort of amplify the financial opportunity.

Right, it's all speed and capital.

We got an empty piece of land, and that's how I dealt with my guilt about gentrification.

We weren't displacing people.

We weren't buying an old building, tearing it down, and building new luxury condos.