David Belt:
And I realized that I could sell every one of my hours for the rest of my life and that would mean success and I just thought it was a horrible thought to me and I had this idea that if I just had time I could think of really cool projects that I'd be interested in, maybe other people would like.
Ofer Cohen:
Today I have the pleasure of having a true renaissance man in the studio, David Belt, who takes a very different approach to real estate and the world. So David, welcome to Hey BK. We just met on a train in Tokyo and we just chit chatting and I'm asking you what do you do? What do you say?
David Belt:
These days I would probably tell you since we were in Tokyo that I'm the CEO and Co-founder of New Lab.
Ofer Cohen:
New Lab opened its doors in 2016. It's a community of entrepreneurs working advanced technology in a former shipbuilding warehouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Is New lab just the sexiest thing to put high on your resume or it's just really taking, you know, 99 percent of your attention right now?
David Belt:
It's taking a lot of my attention. It's the most challenging thing and it's also the thing where I potentially have the most to offer that as a project has the ability to really kind of transcend normal kind of place-based real estate project.
Ofer Cohen:
I thought I knew a lot about David Belt, but I didn't know that a real estate developer known for his creativity started out in punk bands back in the eighties.
David Belt:
I will tell you that, that most of my aesthetic and attitude and things that are interesting to me are of direct lineage from the eighties punk rock scene. It changed my life because I had never left the east coast. We circled the country in a van. There were like four of us. You know, I was in San Francisco. We played a show in San Francisco and I was like, I can't believe you're allowed to live here. Like it was so beautiful in San Francisco. Like it was so different, you know? And so I moved to San Francisco as a result of that and I wouldn't have. And then I got a job as a laborer or doing construction and then that kind of set me on a different course. And, you know, one of the things is I grew up kind of broke and I never romanticized being broke in the punk scene that wasn't the appealing part to me or like being dirty.
Ofer Cohen:
I'm interested in having this show about being about the people, about their path and their journey and I'd want to have the people that are the most interesting sort of people behind the Brooklyn transformation, but I don't want to necessarily make this be a real estate show and your sort of like the perfect guest on the show because it's hard to talk to you about real estate and it's easier to talk to you about everything else. Tell me a little bit about how do you even become a real estate developer in that sense?
David Belt:
Well so, some people advance in their careers because they're good at things. Some people advanced because they're bad things and they just can't do that thing anymore. I'm in the latter camp, so like, I got a job as a laborer and I didn't like that because it felt like slavery and then I got a job as an assistant carpenter and I didn't like that. And then I was a carpenter but I wasn't a very good carpenter. So then it became like an estimator and then a lot of numbers. And so I became a project manager and so everything in my career was like, I just didn't want to be bossed around anymore, so I want to do the next thing and I wasn't good or comfortable in wherever I was. And so that's sort of been the theme. So it was more on and in my younger days I was doing things almost out of anger, you know, I didn't have a college degree and I wanted to prove that I was as smart as that guy because he's not smarter than me or whatever. And it wasn't until like 2008-2009 that I started doing things more out of love or projects that I was interested in.
Ofer Cohen:
Because you didn't need the anger anymore, you didn't need to be rebellious?
David Belt:
I guess you hit a certain age maybe or what happened was, I tasted success, but it was the kind of success that felt unsustainable. I also own a project management company. We're doing about a billion dollars in projects right now and we're building schools and we're building a theater at the World Trade Center. A bunch of stuffs in predevelopment and in 2008-2009, we were doing well and I realized that I could sell every one of my hours for the rest of my life and that would mean success. And that was a horrible thought to me. And I had this idea that if I had time I could think of really cool projects that I'd be interested in maybe other people would like. But I had no time.
David Belt:
So that moment was around 2008-2009?
Ofer Cohen:
The economy had collapsed, we had built a bunch of condos. We got out of those okay. We made money, right? But we were lucky we sold a bunch just before and the point is, I did this project in Rome and I was really proud of it and I couldn't believe like every day I was Rome, I was like, Holy Shit, I can't believe I'm in Rome.
Ofer Cohen:
Right? I'm actually doing this.
David Belt:
I'm getting paid. And I'm like, it was very glamorous sort of. And, and then I came home and I was at my parents for Thanksgiving outside of Philly and I was driving on route one and the real estate market had tanked and all these shopping centers were closing. And so I had this like weird moment where I'm like, you know, it's one thing to take a beautiful building in Rome and renovate it, but all these strip malls are actually my legacy, like these junk spaces are where I'm from, what can we do with those? So I came up with this like, I don't know what happened. It might've been actually in retrospect, like some kind of a manic episode, I'm not quite sure. So I've made this project, I worked with all these friends of mine who are architects and everyone was out of work so they have plenty of time and we collaborated and we thought about like what to do to repurpose these old things and as part of that, they have big parking lots. So I wanted to take over shopping centers and make them into like community centers and I wanted to do the thing that everyone was thinking about those times for like urban community farms and farmers markets and flea markets and like, you know, all kinds of crazy ideas and we did all these renderings about that.
Ofer Cohen:
Sounds like it was kinda like a coincidence, maybe like the fact that it was in the middle of the great recession and the fact that you said, you know what, I'm not going to just sell my hourly for the rest of my life. I just want to do something more impactful.
David Belt:
Well there were some really key signs. Like one sign was like, when you're a consultant you hope to get clients.
Ofer Cohen:
Right.
David Belt:
And what was happening to me is like, you've heard of a paperless office? I wanted a clientless office. Like I couldn't take it, like people were calling me up and I was like, I don't want to think about their problems. I want to think about my problems, so I was getting cranky and my leadership was suffering as a result.
Ofer Cohen:
While David was figuring out what to do with shopping malls. He heard about a plan to turn the dumpsters into swimming pools and that's what he did right here in Brooklyn.
David Belt:
So I rented a lot in Gowanus. I built these swimming pools and I made a country club in this junkyard and I didn't pull any permits and I didn't ask for permission. We just lined these dumpsters and we put the pumps and filters in and you know, it was not dirty, it was nice. But we had a party of some of our friends who owned a magazine. We ended up on the front page of the art section of the New York Times. And I had no plausible deniability about it. Like I couldn't say, oh, I didn't know you needed a permit. We're building all kinds of stuff. And so we got in trouble. They called us into the health department or not we, me. And then the health commissioner at the time said, we sent you the letter at the end of the summer because we thought it was a cool project and the Bloomberg administration wants to sponsor your pools and make them street legal. So the next year, we built street legal dumpster pools, and we had them on Park Avenue. And so that was like a weird little project, but it changed everything because it weirdly gave me access to a whole other set of people in the creative community. And also weirdly in city government. Like weirdly, it changed the trajectory of my career.
Ofer Cohen:
But it also unleashed you creatively, right? Because project management...
David Belt:
I don't know if it unleashed me creatively, but it gave me the confidence to keep trying and keep saying like, well New York City is a wonderful place where money follows vision and it is the kind of place where you can do this kind of bootleg punk rock illegal project in a dump, in a junk yard, and then the mayor's office would sponsor you to be on Park Avenue. And that people with money and people with like civic intention will support you if you have a vision and you prove that.
Ofer Cohen:
That's empowering. How did you conceive of New Lab? Full disclosure, I'm on the board of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but tell us about the very beginning of New Lab and how did that come about?
David Belt:
So 2009, I did the pools. 2010, I did them legally on Park Avenue. I had this idea. My wife was a costume designer and we went a lot to St Ann's warehouse. Susan was going to lose her theater and I love St Ann's and I want to do something that my wife would be proud of, and then I ended up building St Ann's warehouse,
Ofer Cohen:
That's when he met Andrew Kimball back then president of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The task was to reimagine the abandoned machine shop that housed tens of thousands of workers and it's hay-day. Building the most advanced ships for both world wars.
David Belt:
When Andrew took me into that building and it was this beautiful rusted out Shell and he said, what should this be? I was like, this should be the new state of manufacturing, right? This should be a nondenominational MIT media lab. This should be like the place in New York where if you're working on a hard problem that has social relevance, but you're an entrepreneur that you want to be. This should be the aspirational place where tech kids and flyover states want to get to. You know what the Castro or fire island was to the Gay community in the seventies and eighties, I wanted New Lab to be the Geeky tech kids and fly over states. Like if I could just go there, that's where my people would be. And so that was the aspiration and that's what we tried to build and that's how we ended up with a project and it took us a long time to raise the money, long time for the Navy Yard to give us the building, a long time for them to believe we could do it a long time for us to kind of cement the vision and figure out the financing. But in the end we did it and now it's great and it's hard and it's not a tremendously obvious business model, but it's, it's something that a lot of people feel passionate about and that I really want to be a good shepherd.
Ofer Cohen:
New Labs, 84,000 square feet of space featuring over 100 companies working in the most advanced technology, robotics and hardware coexist and collaborate.
David Belt:
We're not an incubator, just taking kids out of college who might have an idea. These people are real, you know, and what I love about them is that they're at the top of their game intellectually and they're at the top of their game, you know, technologically, but they're very vulnerable because they're entrepreneurs. They could fail at any moment and so that vulnerability is like super attractive and I feel the same way. Like I could fail at any moment. And so I think that needs to be the more of those people in New York.
Ofer Cohen:
Well, does it make sense to have a second New Lab in Brooklyn, then?
David Belt:
I've been talking about, again, I'm all about narrative and so I want to understand the why and I understand like the emotional reason to do it as well as the financial and business reason. And so one might imagine that there could be a New Lab geared towards food technology in Brooklyn. One might imagine there could be a New Lab geared to data for social good, right? Or companies, you know, I'm the guy who loved the light bulbs store that only sold light bulbs, you know, so like the more that you can create a community around a specific intention that always feels much more poignant to me. And so maybe there would be another New Lab in Brooklyn. I mean I've been talking to other developers about it, you know, interestingly people like it as content for their buildings and it becomes an attractor, which hopefully it will be for the Navy Yard. But like, and I guess it has been to some extent, but people will give me almost free buildings or free rent, but again, it's, there has to be a bigger why than just, than just that because it's not a real estate model actually.
Ofer Cohen:
Right.
David Belt:
It's not. I mean we make about less than half our money from the real estate.
Ofer Cohen:
What are some of the most amazing technologies or entrepreneurs that you have encountered in New Lab?
David Belt:
So there's a company called modern meadow that grows leather, not from animals. But it's real leather. It's like they grow it in the lab and Collagen and there are real scale, they've raised a lot of money there. They're a very, very interesting company. They're working with fashion brands and it's a whole different model.
Ofer Cohen:
What stage is the company in?
David Belt:
They have the product, they have a huge lab and their design group and their senior managements in New Lab. They also hold a bio-fabricate conference every year. Last years was in New Lab. It was super interesting and some of the most brilliant minds in biofabrication were there. I love people who have an amazingly ambitious idea and are also able to raise a lot of money.
Ofer Cohen:
The fear is that in order to grow, they're going to move to another town.
David Belt:
I'm taking another 40,000 square foot of space to create some like flexible situations.
Ofer Cohen:
You're basically a catalyst for them, a catalyst for Brooklyn, catalysts for the city.
David Belt:
Yeah and so the multiplier effect of having those companies in close proximity is that they can hire better engineers because they get to collaborate with a bunch of cross-disciplinary companies, right? The place looks cool. That helps. They can raise money better because all the venture capitalists come through. Right?
Ofer Cohen:
So what's next for David Belt?
David Belt:
I like people with patient money and who want to do something significant and it follows a vision and that also are good thinkers and want to collaborate, on a high level. So a utopian idea would be to create a living-learning community around something like New Lab where people could come from different areas of the world and stay for a period of time and collaborate. So who knows, something like that could happen on like governors island per se or somewhere like that. But like we have a problem with housing being so expensive and hotels being so expensive in New York and the more expensive it gets, the less interesting things could happen. So, someone who saw both the economic and the social value in doing something where you know, there could be these new platforms for collaboration and didn't need to make an eight percent immediate yield with a 20 percent IRR and an exit in five years, which is basically everybody, which pisses me off, you know, I mean, you're just flipping to another fund. No one wants to build long-term value. No one actually cares. It really bothers me.
Ofer Cohen:
Can I ask you a question? Why not do something like this as a nonprofit?
David Belt:
Because I want to make money and I'm on the board of a bunch of non for profits and I don't believe that that's the right model for this. I believe it has to be self-sustaining. I don't want to be at the mercy of rich philanthropists, right? I don't want to be at the mercy of grants. I want to eat what I kill and I want whatever project I do to eat what it kills the other passion of mine, which is going to sound completely crazy to you. Maybe or maybe not, is like. So I guess we don't have all of these panels about like cities of the future. I think actually refugee camps are the cities of the future. I really do like, like an average refugee stays in a refugee camp for 17 years. It was horrible like and with what's happening with weather events and what's happening with like global warming and what's happening with like political unrest and people closing borders. So we're working with a very prestigious Ivy League school who I won't mention and I'm working with the D.O.D and I'm working with all these technologists. I would love to build an off the grid deployable emergency structure for refugees or people surviving storms and stuff and I think that could influence the housing market and other places in the country. We're almost there with batteries and solar. Right. So like when I like think about like what's next for me, that's probably what's next. And I have a lot of experience building small spaces for student housing. I own an insurance consulting business which I mentioned. So I've been in a lot of places, have disasters, like I understand a lot of characteristics of it. And that feels just like a pretty good way to spend some time. So who knows, maybe five years from now when you have me on here, I'll be a refugee housing guy.
Ofer Cohen:
And as David Belt tackles world problems, as he's doing it from here in his home base in Brooklyn.
David Belt:
It's an amazing, amazing time to be in Brooklyn. I mean, I can't even believe it, you know, like I mean between like New Lab and what's going on in downtown Brooklyn and St Ann's and pioneer works. It's just incredible, you know? And, and I guess I'm really cognizant of the fact that it's temporal and that it's a time when, you know when interesting things can happen on a bunch of different levels and people are really trying from a civic point of view as well as a financial point of view. I think it's kind of a special time.
Ofer Cohen:
Thank you so much, David. I really appreciate it. I'm Ofer Cohen. Thanks for listening to Hey BK.