Welcome to the second episode of On Air with Team Jensen: The Art of Industrial Real Estate. Today, we’re very excited for our first guest, Chris Gutierrez of KC SmartPort. Chris, thanks for coming on with us today.
Dan Jensen:
Welcome to the second episode of On Air with Team Jensen: The Art of Industrial Real Estate. Today, we’re very excited for our first guest, Chris Gutierrez of KC SmartPort. Chris, thanks for coming on with us today.
Chris Gutierrez:
My pleasure, Team Jensen. Glad to be here.
Dan Jensen:
Let’s jump right in. I wanted to have you share more about KC SmartPort and your role in driving growth in Kansas City.
Chris Gutierrez:
Absolutely. KC SmartPort and KCADC are the regional economic development groups—18 counties, 50 communities, both states. Our job collectively is to bring new investment into the region. KCADC is the umbrella group, and they focus on corporate headquarters, financial services, animal health, data centers, technology, and they have a whole group that does talent recruitment because, you know, all of us that lease buildings and bring new deals, you’ve got to have a workforce. So, they’re working on the talent side. SmartPort specifically is industrial, manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, and again, promoting the region globally for new investment. And we don’t help existing companies that are moving around—it’s only that new-to-market activity. SmartPort’s been around since 2000, and I’ve been there since 2003, so a long run of regional economic development, specifically industrial.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, so you guys have probably been pretty busy the last handful of years, I’d imagine.
Chris Gutierrez:
Kansas City is on fire—has been for the last 10 years. I mean, you can pick the class of industrial. We were just talking about cold storage a minute ago, food processing, etc. Kansas City has always been a transportation logistics hub, but I think the market has embraced that now, and developers like you guys and others have put their money on the street and built spec. It’s really raised our exposure out, so yeah, activity continues to do very, very well.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, well, and what—kind of moving back even further—what was or what were you up to before you were with KC SmartPort?
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah, out of college, I worked for the Missouri Department of Economic Development at the state level, doing similar work—trying to attract foreign investment into this state as well as helping Missouri companies to export. So, great experience out of college—got to travel the world and work with some of the biggest companies in Missouri, helping them go internationally. But it gave me exposure to Kansas City and other markets and what’s going on. My wife and I moved this way—actually, I didn’t stay in economic development. I went to work for an advertising firm, helping them grow internationally. Then I worked for a manufacturer doing international, and then, oddly, when I was at the state, I helped set up SmartPort and had the opportunity to join that again. So, I’ve always been doing economic development in this region. I grew up in Ohio, worked for the State of Ohio’s economic development group as a college intern, got a little exposure to what this market was.
Dan Jensen:
One thing I’d say about Chris and his team and SmartPort is that they really—well, A, they really put a shine on Kansas City and do a wonderful job of selling Kansas City and helping us sell Kansas City when the requirement is from out of town, looking around at multiple municipalities. And the other thing that Chris and his team have always been good at—that a lot of EDC groups haven’t been good at historically—is a lot of our business in the brokerage world is about control and about confidentiality. And when you can’t share facts with people like Chris, it makes it harder for Chris to do his job and SmartPort to give us the information to our clients, get the information for our clients that they need. And I just say, Chris is always—and his team—have always been very, very good at keeping confidentiality and also keeping their role in the process because, again, you know, A, you’ve got egos with brokers, but also, it’s important.
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah, well, yeah—present company excluded—there are times where certain EDC groups sometimes you feel like try to take the deal over, and it creates frustration and sometimes problems.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, and I just—I can say in the 20-plus years I’ve been working with Chris, we’ve never had that.
Chris Gutierrez:
I appreciate that, Dan. And we’ve got a couple of sayings we say internally at the office: Our job is to be an advocate of the deal, not the community or the region, not either state—it’s the project itself. And before that, we stay with the person that brought us to the dance. So, if it’s your project, we work for you on the advocate role to the company. It stays locked down because it is a competitive market out there, and the first rule of economic development: You start talking about a deal, you lose it because they go somewhere else.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Absolutely. And what would you say—you know, obviously, the animal health and a lot of the manufacturing we’re seeing reshoring and a lot of things coming to town, the big EV battery announcement out in DeSoto—what do you see as the next, you know, three to five years of growth in Kansas City? Would you say there’s a sweet spot or a particular niche where we’re really going to be showing the country what we’re up to, or is it really going to be pretty spread out evenly throughout those different niches?
Chris Gutierrez:
You know, I think it goes back to the legacy of this community. We’re a transportation hub—you know, used to be called “Cowtown.” We’ve always—we had the second Ford automotive plant outside of Detroit, so we’ve always been an automotive sector. So, you look at the trends we’re having right now: food and beverage, EV industry, transportation, distribution, e-commerce still continues. So, our growth right now—probably 80 percent of the deals we’re active on, where the deals we’re working, are manufacturing, and 80 percent of those are foreign companies that see an opportunity to reshore, nearshore, or ally-shore—whatever you want to call it—into the U.S., into North America. So, we’re very active with European, Asian companies right now. And again, when you look within it, it’s food and beverage, it’s EV manufacturing—and not the EV manufacturers, the assemblers of vehicles. I don’t think we’ll ever get that because of the legacy auto industry that’s here, but the supply, the parts, the batteries—the supply and parts, the batteries—more active in all of that. And again, it continues to grow. I think Kansas City, for a lot of reasons, is on a global stage right now. So, I’d say three to five years is going to be this and continued. You know, there’s people talking that spec’s gonna drop below 50 percent of where it was last year. I disagree with that. I think we’re going to continue to see activity in Kansas City. It’s not going to slow down.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, and I mean, you know, the last year with rates doing what they’ve done—you know, a lot of people seem to think that commercial real estate’s slowing down, and you see the big headlines, you know, on the news that these notes are coming due, and there’s going to be a lot of landlords hurting. I mean, from your standpoint, I know we’ve talked about it with Team Jensen—you know, we don’t really see that in the industrial sector of Kansas City—but have you noticed projects moving at a slower velocity and things of that nature, or kind of what impact have you seen that have on deal-making?
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah, I mean, I think even in Kansas City, we’re affected by what’s going on with the economic pressures in the financial market, but maybe not as bad or as hard as coastal cities. You know, we’ve seen rent increases going up, which is good for you guys and good for the market, but we’ve seen it not go up as it has on the coast, so it can allow us to continue to be competitive. Wage rates are going up, so we’re feeling the effects of that. We’ve had a few clients that have paused just to see if their capital outlay is now or should they re-engineer an existing facility to gain a little bit more capacity. But I don’t think it’s ever been canceled or put on a long-term hold. It’s just a little pause. I think the only project I’ve had over the last two years that has stopped for a period of time is because there’s so much demand for their product because there’s a shortage of it. They’re enjoying the fact that there’s a shortage of their product, so they’re pushing the project out a little bit. It’s a big manufacturing deal. We think it’ll start going up again in the fourth quarter. So, I don’t think it’s affected us. I mean, I think you talk to the development community—three years ago, you got your money, you built a building, and you had 20 potential seller-buyers of the building. Now, maybe you have two, and you have to do a hundred more steps to get them interested. So, that’s caused a little risk reversal—let’s pause a little bit. But think about Kansas City and some of the national major developers around the country—they’re headquartered here, and a few of them don’t have to worry too much about the debt market. They’re self-funded. That doesn’t mean they’re going crazy, but they’re still playing in the market, which is a good thing for Kansas City.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, well, the market’s really changed from when we got started in it a long time ago. But, you know, it used to be locally driven, locally controlled, very conservative. One group would put up a building and wait for it to get leased, and the other group would put up a building. You know, NorthPoint, in general, kind of threw that all out the window and started building buildings—multiple buildings in their own first project. And then, all of a sudden, you looked up, and they had multiple projects around the city and the country. And, yeah, it really—I think that, as well as VanTrust—you know, there’s been that real push that has, I think, put Kansas City on the map logistically.
Chris Gutierrez:
Well, and I would imagine one of the primary reasons Kansas City continues to get looks from out-of-town groups looking to, you know, start an operation somewhere is just due to the cost to operate, cost of living, and all that stuff just again not being as drastic as the coasts.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, and I mean, that’s got to be one of the primary drivers.
Chris Gutierrez:
Again, also proximity and location to the central U.S. But absolutely, if you look at our economic makeup, it mirrors the U.S., so there’s not a huge industry that dominates. So, we’re stable and dependable here. We don’t see those ups and downs. And then, you look at the cost environment—from, again, personal housing and cost of living to building and business operations. And, you know, back to Dan’s point, I gave him credit the other day that this spec boom that started in Kansas City started because Dan had the nerve and the gumption to put a spec building up, and the market started looking—what’s going on in Kansas City? A much bigger than the small market Kansas City used to put up. We’d get excited about a hundred thousand.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, those used to be the big ones.
Chris Gutierrez:
People would get, you know, like, “What are they doing? They’re putting up a 100,000-square-foot building without a tenant.” Now, it’s so much bigger.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, and then you look at the market here, and you mentioned two big ones, and then you’ve got some smaller ones that are headquartered here that are national now.
Chris Gutierrez:
I think that work ethic—that conservative, meant reality of the Midwest in Kansas City—is really taking these companies. And, you know, we joke at the office—there’s this true thing called “KC Nice.” And I always pick on the competition. So, the Southeast U.S. is nice, but they don’t mean it. Here, there’s a nice list. So, when people start to work with you guys or NorthPoint, there’s a commitment that these guys are going to go out of their way to make sure I’m successful in the business I need and the building I need. And that relationship carries forward to the next deal and the third deal and the fourth deal. So, it’s a good atmosphere.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, there’s goodwill there. And that’s, I mean, you know, we go to a lot of the SIOR conferences, and, you know, when I was first attending those—you know, seven, eight years ago—no one really talked about our market. We—there would be, you know, big economic presentations, and they’d be talking about the economy, and there would be all these data points, and rarely did you see a data point on Kansas City. And I would tell you, the last really three years, especially, everyone knows about our market. Everyone knows the players in our market because they’re all over the country now. And so, it’s awesome for Kansas City—the exposure we’ve seen. And I do—you know, I—we’ve been in other markets too where their EDC folks have talked about the team you guys have here in town. And so, you—I know you guys are very well known too around the country.
Chris Gutierrez:
And again, I’m not trying to win brownie points with Chris, but—
Dan Jensen:
Well thought of and well thought of around the country.
Chris Gutierrez:
Right. Well, that’s what I meant—the way that SmartPort and KCADC present Kansas City and themselves is well-respected throughout that industry. A leading example, isn’t it?
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, yeah, exactly right.
Chris Gutierrez:
And, you know, we look at it differently. You know, Eli Bowen, my colleague, and I call ourselves “industry people.” We’re going to go to an industrial real estate conference. We’re going to go to an automotive conference. So, we’re industry people that just happen to be economic developers. That really resonates with people. And we were at an industrial real estate conference earlier this year—you know, 450 people from all over the country. We were the only economic development group that was there. And that was an invitation to your point—there was a credibility to what we do and that we’re not going to hear something and spread it around. Right? You’ve got to focus on that. And I think you really understand the market and what drives clients versus, you know, “Oh, we have incentives, and we have this.” There’s so much more to the deal that a lot of economic developers don’t embrace. And I think you’ve got to look at the totality—the total picture of the deal—to really gain that credibility.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Gutierrez:
So, absolutely.
Dan Jensen:
Well, what do you see—do you think, in the long view, 10, 15 years, do you think we can look up and—you know, I know we compete with the Dallases and Chicagos, but do you—you know, if you had a crystal ball, do you think we’ll get to that size from a sheer product standpoint? I mean, is that—I guess, what are some of the goals for KC SmartPort as far as growing the community?
Chris Gutierrez:
If you look where we are now—that’s a great question. I mean, we’re at over 300 million total square feet in the Kansas City market—one of 15 markets nationally. So, we’re already up there. You know, I don’t think, in my lifetime—maybe you guys’ lifetime on the other side of the table here—no offense—we’ll get to a billion like Chicago and Dallas and some of those markets. But I don’t think we want that. I think there’s a continued growth that works for all of us, right? But I think you’re going to see this market really focus on the connectivity because we are a sprawling market. So, transportation’s key, infrastructure’s key. There’s a lot of things that we’re already moving forward that other communities aren’t when it comes to public transportation or getting workers to the job site. You know, economic development—I’ve been doing it for 30 years, and I’ve never talked about daycare. But now, it’s a critical part of deals because people have got to be able to address their personal lives, their family lives, to get to work.
Dan Jensen:
Oh, yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
And housing—I think you’re going to see that continue to grow. We’ve got to stay ahead of this infrastructure curve and utilities. As I talked about more manufacturing, well, they have much bigger utility capacity needs. Other markets aren’t addressing that like Kansas City is. And again, it’s electric, it’s gas, it’s water and sewer—power, power, power.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
And we can all sit at this table saying we’re not addressing it enough, but if you look at some other markets, I don’t think it’s raised up. And again, it’s to you guys’ credit and ours and others—we’ve raised it up to the local community at the highest levels because it’s got to get addressed because these companies’ decision-making time is so fast now. If they see one issue, one hiccup, they’re going to the next site in another market.
Dan Jensen:
Right. They might be able to solve it, right?
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah, and you don’t get a chance to go, “But you’ll get a chance to be reactive there.”
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, and also, I think part of Kansas City’s growth and success has grown from—and has come from—the oversize of Chicago and Dallas, where some of those markets are getting so congested and so big that it makes Kansas City more appealing. It’s—right—it’s a large small town, or it’s a small big city. You call it what you will, but I think that we do benefit from that. I don’t think there’s any—many site selections going on where someone’s looking for a facility in the Midwest where Kansas City’s at least getting a look.
Chris Gutierrez:
Right. It’s great to drive a client around, and they’ve got an aggressive schedule—they want to see all this property, and we hit every visit on time. And they’re shocked that there was never congestion. And again, the four of us at this table can complain about I-35 or I-70 in certain parts of the day, but there is no congestion like other markets.
Dan Jensen:
Oh, yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
And it resonates with those people. And then, they start to think, “This is going to make my freight move more efficiently as well in this market.” That’s a selling point. You bring people to Kansas City—we call it the “epiphany of the visit” from a business standpoint. Quality of life—I use the term “big little town.” You know, everything you would want in the big cities here, but it’s also that small-town atmosphere that they’re going to genuinely work with you. And again, here, not dealing with the stresses of big markets on congestion and costs and crime—it’s—you never want to be a salesman and say it’s easy to sell your project product, but it’s getting easier to sell Kansas City right now.
Dan Jensen:
Well, and I’ve said before to you guys—when I was about your age, I mean, you know, I used to work with clients that—well, gosh, I got transferred out here to Kansas City, and, you know, they thought they’d been sent out to Siberia, you know? I mean, just because of Kansas City, they were afraid it was out in the middle of nowhere. And then, you find—once they get here and once they get adjusted and figure out what Kansas City is all about—then they won’t ever leave. They try to transfer them back out, and they leave the company.
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah, yeah. Stewart and I have been working with someone that he moved to town from another smaller market in the region. And, you know, he had been with the company that acquired a local company, and, you know, he even did the Airbnb thing for a little while, looking around at where he wanted to stay. And he found the right neighborhood, and he—we were talking to him just a couple weeks ago, and he talked about how he loves Kansas City and he’s ready to live here for good and how he, you know, saw the opportunity to move, and he jumped at it—didn’t think that would be the case at first.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
So, another segment of that is the veterans. We’ve got—what—four or five military bases in town, and they get transferred to that base from all over the country. And when they’re getting discharged, they want to stay here.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
And that workforce—quality of workforce that the veterans bring is another advantage to Kansas City. We’ve got—I think I saw that 6,000 veterans are discharged a year out of this market, and a lot of them want to stay here. And again, ability to jump right into the workforce.
Dan Jensen:
Interesting. Interesting. Hadn’t really thought of that. That’s—
Chris Gutierrez:
Well, and part of attracting talent too, I think the Chiefs have helped quite a bit.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
But, you know, I figured—and I know we—you know, I don’t know what we can or can’t talk about—if there’s any knowledge you have of it, but the KC site for the potential Royals downtown stadium—what’s your opinion of all that? Do you—are you excited about a downtown stadium? I’d imagine yes is the answer, but just kind of curious. I’ve never talked with you about that before.
Chris Gutierrez:
Absolutely. I mean, look at all the things in our market that benefit us to do more deals—new terminal at KCI, the front door is incredible, the infrastructure that’s being built, the NFL Draft that we just hosted, and we’ve been getting national attention. And the Chiefs—Royals, not this year—and Sporting getting better. We’ve had national titles across the board. The women’s soccer team came in second last year. I mean, that sports focus here. So, I think the Royals—it’s time for them to move to a new location. I don’t have any inside baseball on which of the two sites, but, you know, I either one—I mean, I favor the downtown one. Again, Chris talking here—I think that really brings the core a little bit better connected. Plus, they’re talking about towers and housing and other things around that and a quality of life of that. It’s time. And think about what the Chiefs are going to do then with that space out there.
Dan Jensen:
Oh, I know. A lot of real estate to work with.
Chris Gutierrez:
Oh, yeah. Amazing.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, and then World Cup—it’s coming, right? A couple years from now.
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah.
Dan Jensen:
And, you know, you talk about Chiefs winning the Super Bowl—talk is every match of the World Cup is about 10 times as big as the Super Bowl, and we’re going to have eight to ten matches here in about a six-week period.
Dan Jensen:
Now, has that grown? I thought I heard where they were—we’re going to have more games because of—
Chris Gutierrez:
Yes and no. World Cup itself, for the first time in 2026, there’ll be more country teams than ever. Okay? So, it’s grown. First time they picked 16 cities in three countries. Grown. And the first time they’ve allowed local host cities like Kansas City to really control a little bit of what’s going to happen here. And there was always talk, Dan, that it’d be four to six matches, and none of it’s been defined because the Women’s World Cup starts in a couple weeks. After that, they’ll start to really lay out plans. But I think we’re going to get eight to ten, and I’m pretty confident we’re going to get later rounds. So, again, much more global exposure. And the thing people don’t realize—let’s just take Germany. The German team will pick a city, and again, since there’s multiple cities now, they’re going to pick a city, and they’re going to stay there. And they’ll travel to Vancouver for a match, they’ll travel here, but then they’ll come back. Their fans will do the same. So, that whole six-week period—that economic impact—and we might get two or three country teams here.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
They turn out too.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, and the match—you know, match at Arrowhead Stadium is going to be—match is incredible. The biggest party is the watch parties, right? Because your team may not be playing—you just want to be in the environment. I have no doubt that Kansas City is going to show out well for that, and people will be treating all the visitors nicely and, you know, just like Kansas City people do. I mean, you’re going to welcome them with open arms. It’s going to be great.
Chris Gutierrez:
Once we got picked, Global Financial Times ranked the 10 best cities for inward migration for housing, livability, running your business, etc. Ten cities globally—only one was in the U.S.: Kansas City. And they were ranked number one.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
To get exposure for us on a global stage.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s going to be—it’s been very cool to see what the city looks like by the time—when the Cup has come and gone, I mean, it’s going to be—by 2030, Kansas City’s, you know, like, in a good way, I think it’s going to be unrecognizable.
Chris Gutierrez:
And I think the local committee that’s putting that together—they obviously have to respond to FIFA, the organizing body for the World Cup, right? They want these 10 things, 100 things. I think that committee is going to look at them for the long term.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
We need this for the World Cup, but look what we can do differently with that to extend to the market. So, you’re right—2030, this town’s going to be unbelievable.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, no, there’s a lot of good stuff going on. We’re excited about it. So, industrially, it’s still—you know, we still think our market is one of the better markets to be doing deals in. So, we’re excited about the growth there. And as far as globally—you know, Kansas City, the animal health corridor stuff—do you—I think we’re probably—are we a top market for that around the globe? I would imagine.
Chris Gutierrez:
I mean, yeah. If you look at the industry itself, from a revenue standpoint, 65 percent of the global revenue of the animal health industry is in Kansas City.
Dan Jensen:
Wow.
Chris Gutierrez:
You know, our heritage started there as the “Cowtown.” I’d like to joke that their customers are here—so, you’ve got chickens and beef and pigs—they’re all here. And global companies’ North American headquarters are here. It’s an industry that’s seen a lot of mergers and acquisitions, and every time one happens, there’s a focus on putting that facility in Kansas City. We host the Animal Health Corridor team—hosts a global conference every year, and a thousand-plus people come from all over the world to Kansas City. And it is our event to promote Kansas City, but they think of it as their industry’s biggest event. We give out this thing called an “Iron Paw” every year to the leader in the industry, and it’s got our red KC logo ball on it. I mean, it’s ours. And they’ll stand up there and say, “I’m so excited to get the industry’s most prestigious award.” There’s a recognition that this is the animal health hub—you know, center of the globe. It raises our caliber of recognition of business, you know, to that industry that spreads to other industries.
Dan Jensen:
Which has been under a lot of stress in the last three years with COVID and all that.
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah, and there’s the inflation and all that kind of stuff too.
Dan Jensen:
I mean, as everything, but I know that there was some tough times there with, you know, the ag shortages and, or, the pork and all that stuff too. So, I mean, that industry got hit really hard.
Chris Gutierrez:
But the industry that’s here is cutting-edge, leading to fix those solutions.
Dan Jensen:
Right.
Chris Gutierrez:
And coveted. When we all went home, one of the biggest product sales that grew was pets and pet supplies. Chewy.com picked Kansas City in 2020 during COVID and never did a meeting—everything was virtual. If you drive by that Chewy plant now, seven days a week, every holiday, 15 hours a day, they are open. It’s crazy.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah.
Dan Jensen:
How did the—you know, it’s been a while now—there’s less pandemic talk and impact of that, but how—you know, talking about our market the last handful of years—you know, what would you say the biggest impact you saw on the industrial market in Kansas City was from COVID and the pandemic?
Chris Gutierrez:
Everybody went online. So, companies had to increase their capacity to deliver online shipments. UPS, I think, said their five-year projection of online packages hit that number in five months during COVID. And you put Kansas City right in the center of North America—our ability to hit 85 percent of the U.S. population in two days—that was a focus for us in 2020. Chewy—substantial investment. Urban Outfitters at Kansas City—two gigantic facilities that picked this market because of that e-commerce growth. You know, you hate to say that COVID had positives, but we had a record year in terms of investment in that market. That record year’s continued. We had a little bit of a slowdown in 2022 as companies started to think, “Did we do too much?” Right? You know, we’ve got too much product because we tried to up-order during the global supply chain. Now, we need to figure that out. But 2023—it’s almost July 1st—the SmartPort team has already hit their goals and actually asked our board—I’m going to get in trouble for this—to increase our goals early on because we saw it coming, and we’ve blown those goals out. This market has done very well so far this year.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, no, that’s great. Yeah, I mean, it’s—the pandemic was a huge windfall for e-commerce, for growth, and warehouse distribution. And I just—I don’t—you know, I don’t see it changing—uh, slowing down—uh, was necessary because the way it was going for a few years there was not sustainable.
Chris Gutierrez:
Right.
Dan Jensen:
Well, it forced the general consumer to consume that way, right? That, you know, maybe we were still years away from, but now that it’s slowed down, people are settling back into their ways of comfort and how they prefer to maybe, you know, transact on certain things. But they’re still—now that people—it’s opened people’s eyes too, so it’s—
Chris Gutierrez:
Well, it might be slowing down, but it’s still totally prevalent—climbing. And a couple indirect things—we changed the way we eat and the type of food, and COVID really excelled that for obvious reasons. That’s why we’re seeing more food and beverage deals because there’s different diets, there’s different restrictions, there’s different control and security around food sources. And then, the other—the global supply chain has always been right on the eggshells. I mean, it’s just been a group of companies, partners that have worked together but delicately. COVID crashed them together, but because of that, that’s why you’re seeing all these foreign companies coming to the U.S. It’s more efficient, costs better—everything is good to come into the U.S. market as opposed to, “We’ll just supply it from where we are.” They’ve got to be here. And so, the manufacturing then was taken on.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, the reshoring has been—I mean, I think that’s what—because to your point, Dan and Stewart—like, things have, you know, in a—and I think in a healthy way, things have slowed back down to a less explosive and dynamic market where the velocity is moving in a healthy path and not putting, you know, it was very over-levered for anyone who had product the last couple years. But I do think that slowdown—you know, I think what’s going to change that moving forward is the reshoring. I’m getting mixed up with my words, but the reshoring—I think is really what’s going to give us legs and wind here moving forward the next couple years. To your point, I think you said 80 percent of what you’re working on right now is manufacturing, and I don’t think we see that slowing down anytime soon.
Chris Gutierrez:
And the EV battery stuff—you know, when we were at SIOR, talking about that, they were just showing how they think it’s a—you know, we’re not even scratching the surface of the demand that our market—that our, you know, our country is going to see. The underlying theme was, it’s going to get a little tough out there in commercial real estate unless you’re maybe—unless you’re in industrial. And in the industrial venue, if you are in or around the EV and EV battery-type industries, that’s going to be a good place to be.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, so I mean, it was kind of interesting the way it pinpointed it.
Chris Gutierrez:
Right.
Dan Jensen:
You know, I’ve been learning over the last few months—you know, you look at the EV battery industry and all the raw materials and rare minerals that go into that and where those come from and issues around the world. Missouri and Kansas have been legacy battery regions back to the lead battery days—still some of those mines. And we’re learning a lot that when you mine lead, there was a number of byproduct materials that came out of it that really didn’t have as much of a value that are now critical to the EV battery industry. So, there’s a group trying to bring that together to say, “Look, you not only can you locate here like Panasonic did, there is a supply chain here.” And, again, it’s not ready to turn on tomorrow, but there’s an opportunity for us to really be a magnet for that as well. And, again, I don’t understand the chemistry and everything around it, but it potentially is going to be huge for this region.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, well, the way I saw it after the SIOR conference—we saw, you know, we saw an economist talking about it, and I mean, it’s comparable to e-commerce in, like, the late ‘90s, early 2000s right now. I think we’re just scratching the surface, and I think there’s going to be a 10-, 20-, 30-year run of EV, you know, battery-driving needs. So, we’re excited about it.
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah.
Dan Jensen:
And point of clarification for the nerds out there—we keep throwing around SIOR. SIOR stands for the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors. It’s a national organization of about 4,000 people—international, actually. And it’s a network organization. It’s a—we team with, like, kind professionals around the world, and it really is an organization that you have to qualify to become part of. You have to have a number of years in the business, and you have to have a number of years of significant production in the business before you would be able to be admitted as a member. And so, you know, when you’re working with an SIOR in a marketplace, you’re dealing with someone who has some competence and some minimum capabilities. So, just because we’ve been throwing around SIOR, I just thought—
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Jensen:
And Dan’s been an SIOR for what—almost 20, 30 years?
Chris Gutierrez:
30 years.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
And there’s a lot of good SIORs in our market here in Kansas City, which is a big reason why we have such a strong market and good relationships throughout the brokerage community. So, it’s a fun market to work in. And I can tell you from going to a lot of those conferences, there’s a lot of other markets that are not as—oh, I don’t know—community-driven. A lot more cutthroat in a negative way, I would say. So, we’re lucky to be working in a level-headed playing field like Kansas City.
Chris Gutierrez:
And again, I think that’s the Midwest definitely approach too. It’s, you know, we all—I think we all think we can win together. We don’t have to win at someone else’s expense.
Dan Jensen:
Right.
Chris Gutierrez:
Sometimes they’re almost too nice.
Dan Jensen:
There’s a guy in our office that calls all of this the “Coalition of the Willing.” I mean, we’re all wanting to move things forward.
Chris Gutierrez:
Right.
Dan Jensen:
You don’t have to, but it benefits you to do it.
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah.
Dan Jensen:
Well, thanks for coming on with us. I mean, I did want to kind of ask a little bit about just—you know, I know you’re from Ohio—Columbus. Where did you go to college, Chris? Are you a Buckeye?
Chris Gutierrez:
I’m a Buckeye. I went to Ohio State. Grew up in Canton, Ohio—home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Dan Jensen:
No, wait a minute—you didn’t say “The Ohio State.”
Chris Gutierrez:
I like to point out that people that didn’t go to Ohio State call it “The Ohio State.”
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, I went to Ohio State.
Chris Gutierrez:
Cool.
Dan Jensen:
Who’s your favorite Ohio State football player now or in the past ever?
Chris Gutierrez:
You know, I don’t know that I’d pick one guy. There’s—I grew up with two or three of them that were linebackers back in the day—you know, a long time ago. But, um, they played against our football team in high school. But, um, I’m not going to say I have a favorite. I mean, the Buckeyes put a great team out every year.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, you got a chance at a national title basically every year.
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah, just like Mizzou.
Dan Jensen:
Just like the time.
Chris Gutierrez:
The pontificators certainly think they do.
Dan Jensen:
Hey, we’re a basketball school now.
Chris Gutierrez:
I’m driven by that stadium once, and it is impressive from the outside.
Dan Jensen:
That’s true. I mean, it is crazy big.
Chris Gutierrez:
What is it—my youngest daughter was on a tour—boy, it’s been eight years ago—that she might think about that. And we’re walking around, and she’s like, “Dad, I thought you went to school here. How come you don’t know where any of this is?” It didn’t look like this.
Dan Jensen:
What is the—light image and likeness? NIL?
Chris Gutierrez:
Name, image, and likeness—NIL.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah. Do you think that is a benefit to Ohio State, or do you think that’s going to be a disadvantage?
Chris Gutierrez:
I think it’s an advantage. I mean, everybody—I mean, my wife gets mad. We can travel all over the world, and you’ll see an Ohio State shirt. That brand is out there.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
I talked to a guy locally—I’m not going to say his name—that likes that other team in the Big Ten that is up north. He went to the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta the other day, and he asked the guy—the docent, whoever—you know, “How do we work this?” And the guy goes, “Well, it’s probably easiest to pick a team that you like—like Ohio State.”
Dan Jensen:
Yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
But I said, “Hey, the first team on anybody’s list is going to be Ohio State when it comes to football.”
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, it’s certainly up there.
Chris Gutierrez:
When you—you guys played—I just remember growing up—you guys played K-State in a Cotton Bowl. That was—I feel like K-State and Ohio State always had a little bit of a rivalry because of that.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, once you play somebody, you’ve got that—you want to go back and get them again.
Chris Gutierrez:
And, you know, my dad used to love—I went to Ohio State, never went to a football game the whole time I was there because we were always at our party that we used to have. Now, I go back to two or three games a year—either at home or an away game. It’s just the way for my roommates to get back together.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah.
Chris Gutierrez:
But for sure—there was so much going on on campus during game day, you didn’t have to be in the stadium.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, so you didn’t generally attend the games?
Chris Gutierrez:
Not when I was there. None of my roommates did.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, it was just—
Chris Gutierrez:
Well, what else—what do you like to do when you’re not working?
Dan Jensen:
I’ve got three daughters, and as of four months ago now, we have four grandkids. So, I have a 13-year-old grandson who is amazing—great basketball and football star, wants to get into esports now, so he’s looking at that. But a great kid. A six-year-old granddaughter who’s an angel, plays—is in gymnastics. A three-year-old grandson who can’t lose his smile every time you see him. And it’s an amazing—you know, how excited you are when your grandkids—and then, we just had my middle daughter just had a four-month-old little boy who’s also again wonderful. So, spend a lot of time with them. My wife and I have some land south of here that we built a cabin in Stockton Pond, and it’s a great way to get out of the city and relax a little bit.
Dan Jensen:
That’s awesome.
Chris Gutierrez:
Unfortunately, we got the Wi-Fi thing so that we could keep in touch with the kids because it used to be that you could never reach us down there.
Dan Jensen:
Right.
Chris Gutierrez:
But, so we do a lot of that, and we travel as much as we can when work allows it.
Dan Jensen:
What’s that—an hour to your cabin?
Chris Gutierrez:
Hour 15 door-to-door. And it’s great. We’ll go down there this weekend for the Fourth.
Dan Jensen:
Is it industrially zoned?
Chris Gutierrez:
It’s in the county, so it’s not zoned at all.
Dan Jensen:
I had to ask.
Chris Gutierrez:
But it’s completely off-grid. It’s solar-powered. We collect the rain off the roof.
Dan Jensen:
Very cool.
Chris Gutierrez:
There’s a gray water system, so it’s pretty amazing.
Dan Jensen:
Did you guys do a lot of the work yourselves?
Chris Gutierrez:
No, my wife kind of pencil-sketched designed it—what she wanted. And we had a local architect who’d done some stuff in the green off-grid stuff come up with some systems, but then we hired a local builder down in Clinton that had never done one of these, so it was kind of a fun project. Everybody—it was right during the global supply chain issues with COVID. It took a little longer than we wanted, but, yeah, it’s built now, and it’s awesome.
Dan Jensen:
When did you meet your wife? In college?
Chris Gutierrez:
Met her in Jefferson City, Missouri, when I started working for the state.
Dan Jensen:
So, she’s a Missouri gal.
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah.
Dan Jensen:
And where did she go to school?
Chris Gutierrez:
She went to Lincoln University in Jefferson City—got her teacher’s degree, and then she got her master’s from UMKC here.
Dan Jensen:
Okay, interesting.
Chris Gutierrez:
Got any advice for a father of two daughters?
Dan Jensen:
How old?
Chris Gutierrez:
One-month-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old.
Dan Jensen:
Daughters are amazing. I mean, they’re just fantastic. Everything about them is incredible. But get ready for the boyfriends and the stress because you might be the best person in their world right now—that’s going to change. It’ll come back around. You know, my daughters are fantastic now, but my dad used to say—there’s always that advice: What do you do for their first boyfriend? My dad used to always say, “Look him in the eye and give him a handshake that they know they shook your hand.” And, you know, don’t hurt them, but let them know that you’re there.
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah, that’s a good one.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, we’ve been calling them “girl dad.” He’s got two now.
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah, it’s been fun. We’re getting some sleep right now, but it’s getting better.
Dan Jensen:
Good for you.
Chris Gutierrez:
Well, thanks for coming on with us. We really, really appreciate it. And, I mean, is there anything else—you know, for folks wanting to learn more about KC SmartPort or if there’s anyone that you know has something they want to be talking to you guys about related to industrial needs—you know, what’s the best way to go about reaching out and connecting with your team?
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah, well, you know, the way we’re set up—we’re supported by our membership. Team Jensen’s a member of that, so if you want to know about SmartPort, talk to one of these three guys. They’ll get you connected. But our website is kcsmartport.com. It’s a wealth of information about this local market—workforce, incentives, real estate, what’s going on. And our contact information is there. But, again, back to the “Coalition of the Willing”—all of us need to promote Kansas City together to drive deals. So, a lot of ways to get connected in. And, again, we will support whoever brings us in to make sure a deal gets done in Kansas City and not in Dallas.
Dan Jensen:
Awesome.
Chris Gutierrez:
Yeah, absolutely.
Dan Jensen:
Absolutely. They will—they go out of their way to get the deal done and to make you look good doing it.
Chris Gutierrez:
Yes, sir.
Dan Jensen:
It’s nice to have an ally like that.
Chris Gutierrez:
Absolutely.
Dan Jensen:
Absolutely. Thank you.
Chris Gutierrez:
Thank you so much.
Dan Jensen:
And that ends number two. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Gutierrez:
Thank you, guys. That was great.
