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How did Steve Nygren get people to move to Serenbe when there was nothing here but trees and an idea?
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How did Steve Nygren get people to move to Serenbe when there was nothing here but trees and an idea? After investors balked at his idea and declined, he knew it was up to him to show people what Serenbe would be. Steve worked with Robert Rausch and Ryan Gainey to develop an image box with drawings, imaginations and descriptions of what he was building in Chattahoochee Hills.
Steve realized he would need to be the first to make the move into the Serenbe community, so he turned their 1905 farmhouse officially into an Inn and built what is still his townhouse just across from the Blue Eyed Daisy Bakeshop. His sister-in-law followed suite, then a close friend purchased an estate lot, and Steve realized he could just go house by house as people gradually "got it." He wrote a follow-up letter to those who'd received the mailer telling them about each lot, what houses were already spoken for and what the cost of the available 20 lots would be. Within 48 hours all the houses were spoken for and Serenbe was on its way. Now...he just needed builders.
All the home builders were in North Atlanta, so Steve's next step was to get them here. Many were unsure of building in South Fulton, but Steve mentioned the 40 pre-sales and convinced the first builders to trek to the south side of the city. The next few years moved very quickly, with Steve breaking ground on new sections of lots in Selborne and the Crossroads each time the previous section sold. The Blue Eyed Daisy was opened in 2004, and interest was building in what Serenbe was offering. Because of the success of the first 100 lots, Steve doubled what he'd been borrowing to break ground on 120 lots all at once to start developing the Grange neighborhood.
Then the 2008 recession hit the country and builders started dropping out of projects. Luckily, only 7 lots had entered into foreclosure because they had not started building yet. Looking back Steve realizes it was the best it could be under the circumstances, but at the time he wondered how they would continue.
Ever the innovator, Steve Nygren reevaluated his product and made adjustments to change buyer perspective. In the early 2000s, people weren't buying smaller homes. Small and tiny houses came into vogue during the recession though, and Serenbe has continued the smaller home trend into its newest neighborhood ten years later. Steve also realized he would not be able to get investors to commit to commercial when they didn't yet have a full community, so he leveraged properties he owned in Midtown Atlanta to finance the development of each neighborhood’s commercial districts. He knew having restaurants and services would help attract people to the community in the long run.
Why did the first residents choose to move to Serenbe?
How did Steve Nygren show future residents what his vision was for Serenbe?
What is Les Dames d'Escoffier's connection to Serenbe?
How did Steve Nygren finance the first homes built in Serenbe?
Who were Serenbe's residents at the beginning?
What were the first "small homes" in Serenbe?
How did Serenbe succeed through the 2008 recession?
Why did Steve Nygren use his own funds to build commercial centers in Serenbe's first neighborhoods?
What does Steve Nygren want to build next in Serenbe?
How does Europe's treatment of seniors differ from America's?
Forage & Flower Botanical Design Studio
Monica Olsen (1s): Hey guys, it's Monica here. I wanted to tell you about a new podcast that I've started with my very good friend, Jennifer Walsh called Biophilic Solutions. Our last season of Serenbe Stories, Building a Biophilic Movement was so popular that we decided to dedicate an entire podcast to it. Every other week Jennifer and I will sit down with leaders in the growing field of biophilia. We'll talk about local and global solutions to help nurture their living social and economic systems that we all need to sustain future generations. More often than not, nature has the answers. You can find Biophilic Solutions on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and follow us today so you don't miss an episode.
Monica Olsen (41s): All right, now let's get back to Serenbe Stories. Serenbe is a place where people live, work, learn, and play in celebration of life's beauty. And we're here to share the stories that connect residents and guests to each other and to nature. This is Serenbe Stories. Steve, here we are again, we're on episode eight.
Monica Olsen (1m 27s): Welcome back.
Steve Nygren (1m 28s): Thank you.
Monica Olsen (1m 30s): We are going to talk about today, how the first house broke ground and not only really about the first house breaking ground, but how in the world did you get people to move here without anything here? Just a bunch of trees and woods and an idea. What did you do?
Steve Nygren (1m 47s): Wow, that does take me back a few years. It all seems now... so, it happened. But as I think about it, I've talked about how we got caught up in what needed to be done. And so this was just sort of stepping into this and we were busy in 2001 and 2 bringing the community together, then changing the overlay regulations and then transfer development rights. And so hold this whole time, I had been thinking about what we would do with our land and we had been designing a basic plan.
Steve Nygren (2m 26s): And then of course I hit that stumbling block I've mentioned about. That all the investors I thought would be so excited to join me in this venture didn't and now I find out they laughed all the way back to Atlanta. And so then it was that challenge to finance it somehow, because I'd, I'd pass through that, that threshold of, of passion that we had to do it. And so I was totally focused on the idea that we were, we had to get it done. It, I never thought about was anyone going to buy a house here? Again that just seemed like the natural, of course they would if I built it. Looking back, I was really naive, but I was naive enough to really ride that wave of passion that this had to be done.
Steve Nygren (3m 16s): And that it was so obvious to me that once people saw it, I, you know, we always hear the story of Steve Jobs and the iPhone, you know, how could you, no one was buying an iPhone before they saw it. I didn't have that direct correlation. I was in that same attitude that, that I just knew it was the right thing. And so we just had to move forward. And so the whole time I was going through this process of trying to raise money, we, we had worked with Robert Rousch and Ryan Gainey to develop a, a image box because here we were in this forest, there wasn't much going on. And so we wanted something that we could touch that really communicated in a very artistic way that we were doing something different and working with Robert or Ryan, we came up with this fabulous box and the tagline that we were going to build a community of people in a community of trees and an entire imagery that, that came through that.
Steve Nygren (4m 15s): And we, we picked up an acorn from the woods here and had that cast in bronze to go on each of these boxes and you lifted a little door and there was the whole hand cutout image of someone walking through the woods into a village.
Monica Olsen (4m 32s): So tell me a little bit about the box. We have one here at the table and we'll put it online so everybody can see a picture. But tell me about a box. Like how big is the box? Like, describe it for us.
Steve Nygren (4m 43s): So this box is probably about a, what a 10 by 14, and it's all custom wood stain, dark, and on the very top is a little door and you can see that you could open it and you use the acorn as the handle to open this box. This is just a fourth, maybe of the surface of the, of the top. And, and you open that and here you have this, this hand cut image.
Monica Olsen (5m 11s): So it's like a pop-up book, almost like a kid's book. And when you open the handle, you know
Steve Nygren (5m 16s): Exactly. And then we commissioned an artist to do the hand drawing and then commissioned a, an artist to do the hand cut. And so you just don't see that, but this is, this was really the beginning
Steve Nygren (5m 25s): In a lot of ways to say this is honoring concepts and principles that we haven't seen for a while, but the touches us all in very meaningful ways. And, and the acorn that to really start to open that story, you had to touch the acorn and the acorn is a seed of new thought we felt. And that was our representation of what we were doing. We were very aware that we were doing something new and that we were planting a seed or a different way for community development that we haven't seen in a while. And then, because we were going to be doing something so out of the box, we felt that it was appropriate to look in the box, to see what we were up to.
Steve Nygren (6m 10s): And so on the right side of the box is a branch again, that was picked up from the property and cast in bronze. And you use that as the handle to open and the entire top of the box slides out. And then you see in there a book and it is full of hand drawings that really began to communicate what we were doing. And it has the maps that what we were planning to do here. And then there is a beautiful quote carved into the wood from AJ Downing. And so that really in, without saying anything, communicated to people that it was something very special.
Steve Nygren (6m 53s): And so that was for my investor crowd that also we had about seven of them I think. And then also we had around when people came to visit right to communicate what we were about to, once I, I had secured the funds, we realized, oh, we need to let people know we were going to really be doing houses. You know? And so again, working with, with Robert and Ryan, we developed a mailer for anybody that we knew. And here again, we wanted to communicate that we were doing something very authentic. We were in the rural landscape, but this was a very sophisticated approach.
Steve Nygren (7m 33s): And this mailer, and I believe we have one here and we can get that, but it was taking traditional brown cardboard and cutting an opening and putting a screen, almost a rusted looking screen. And it shared what we were doing just in very basic terms. And this was all mailed in a burlap little bag, you know, here I am, 16 years later and I still run into people, some really important type people that tell me that flyer is still on their bookshelf. It was that unique that they had never seen it before.
Steve Nygren (8m 15s): And it was so simple. So I did the two things at once. It was just, wow,
Monica Olsen (8m 20s): Where did you get that idea? Cause, I mean, I think, you know, as a marketing person, you know, large corporations maybe still send out, or we did, when I back in the day, when I worked for a large corporation, we would send out to press, you know, these really interactive, 3d, handheld pieces that really communicated whatever we were launching, you know? And that was sort of the big thing that we did, but I don't know if that still happens anymore. Like where did you get that idea? Was that something you used in hospitality?
Steve Nygren (8m 50s): No it was really working with Robert and, and Ryan, and we wanted to go back to something basic, but the, that, that opened your imagination in a way. And I don't know if they still do those wonderful cutout books pop up books.
Monica Olsen (9m 6s): Oh yeah, they still do.
Steve Nygren (9m 8s): So, so the, the idea of, I mean, that was kind of, that was kind of magical. And, and we knew we, it was very important to have something very simple, but elegant, and those are easy words to say, but when you start a project to have simple and elegant, when you head towards elegant, you tend to be a little over polished generally.
Steve Nygren (9m 35s): And I think as you see Serenbe today, one of the, one of the things we hear is it's so authentic looking and it's because we have continued to have that elegant simplicity that has carried us through as we've, as we've built a community. And so it's very obvious. And so here we had to communicate these concepts in a very easy way. And I had really sort of resigned myself to the fact that this was going to be very slow going because people were just not catching on to what I was talking about is what I felt because the financial and regulatory community had been so difficult. So I realized the kids were headed off to college and that we didn't need the big farmhouse.
Steve Nygren (10m 21s): And we could turn that into an inn and we should build a townhouse because even people that began to believe I was going to do something, was thinking these little rural houses, little rural estates. And when I said townhouses and live works, it just like it, it could not comprehend.
Monica Olsen (10m 37s): Right. Who puts a townhouse in the woods? Right it doesn't make sense.
Steve Nygren (10m 39s): So I said, well, we'll build the first house. And people can understand that. And of course being hospitality, we'll do the first coffee shop. We have to have a coffee shop. And so we would do that and we knew how to do that. And then my sister-in-law was visiting from California. And she said, "oh, I love this idea. I'll, you know, I'll buy." And in fact, that was the weekend we built the labyrinth that they were all here. And I took them on a walk after the labyrinth and we had just started staking the roads to see where it was. And we walked through the woods and we would come to steaks and I'd say, this is what's gonna go there. And there was not a tree had been taken down. It was just stakes in the middle of a woods.
Monica Olsen (11m 19s): Wow. So did you even have a road going through like even a gravel road, nothing, nothing just stakes in the woods. Wow. So you sold Serenbe, or you sold people into Serenbe with the box and the mailer and some stakes in the woods
Steve Nygren (11m 32s): And so that was the first house. She said that she would do a house and then a friend said he would do an estate house. So I thought, Hey, we're going to have four buildings. And of course, I've, I've heard Robert Davis tell the story of Seaside and how they put a lemonade stand out to try to get people. And they literally did it brick by brick on the streets. And it was one house at a time. And so I thought well, that's sort of, we'll go house by house. People will eventually get it. You know, I, I realized we didn't have the traffic to put a lemonade stand anywhere, but, and so that that's really how we began. But then once I really had the, the money secured for that begin the infrastructure, I decided I better let people know we were really ready to sell.
Steve Nygren (12m 23s): And so people that had expressed interest either from getting my mailer or from visiting, we had opened the, the, the bed and breakfast at that point on the hour. I think I, I I've talked about that at some point. So I'd collected all these cards. And so I just did a simple letter I believe it was, that we were actually going to start construction of the road, or I think maybe I'd actually started the construction on the road at that point. And here was the plan on 40 lots and here were prices on half of them. And so I had half the townhouses, half the live works, half the cottages and half the estate house. And I just want to let them know. And 48 hours later, all 20 were spoken for.
Monica Olsen (13m 8s): That's incredible.
Steve Nygren (13m 9s): And I mean I was amazed. Wow. I mean, this was the first like, whoa, you know, there really is a market for it. And I took the prices of 20% and released the balance of them. And six weeks later they were gone. And so suddenly I had reservations on a bunch of houses and some conceptual house plans and facades and no builders. I here I've got my buyers and I've got my land plan, but who's going to build these. And so the builders we wanted, you know, they, they weren't building around here.
Steve Nygren (13m 47s): They were all up in Atlanta, In Atlanta, north Atlanta. And so we started calling builders to see who could come meet with us. And that led us into then, you know, when it was like, well, I don't know, you know, south Fulton county and not think so. And so I said, well, I got 40 presales. What? And so then they would meet with me or a couple of them. They didn't still all meet with me. And so that's when, that's how we began.
Monica Olsen (14m 25s): So I would think that a developer would listen to this and think like, that was the most backwards way to go about planning a neighborhood without builders,
Steve Nygren (14m 33s): Total back, everything is totally backwards, but it's so fantastic. This is why the passion piece was leading. And then Angie Mosier, who, who was a great food stylist and photographer. And, and we'd gotten to know Angie very well because we conceived the Les Dames D'escoffier event. And back in those first days, it was basically Angie and us pulling out the tables and making that happen.
Monica Olsen (15m 2s): Oh, so that had happened, that Les Dames had started before.
Steve Nygren (15m 3s): So this, well before this, you know, we were already in our fourth or fifth year, by the time we were doing this. And so we were talking about this whole thing, and Angie said, "you're going to have a bake shop. Oh my God, that's my fantasy to always have a bake shop. Can I do it?"
Monica Olsen (15m 19s): So she came in with Vaco?
Steve Nygren (15m 20s): So Angie came in and she was our first and then her husband's a musician and he was tired of being on the road. And so they stepped out of their very successful careers at both a musician and a food stylist photographer to open the Blue-Eyed Daisy. That's how, and so it was Angie who named it, The Blue Eyed Daisy. And this was a whole story on something very fond to her.
Steve Nygren (15m 46s): And she was fabulous. And it was, it was just great. Of course, as we became busy, Angie found out what it was like to be in the operations side and the fantasy side. And so she decided she'd better go back. And now, you know, she's pretty, well-known
Monica Olsen (16m 2s): Very well known. Yeah. That's fantastic.
Steve Nygren (16m 4s): And Johnny's got back to the music. So sometimes when when you think there's something that you're after you have to try it so, you know, you can go back to what you've been doing.
Monica Olsen (16m 16s): Exactly, well and they were probably the perfect people to open it.
Steve Nygren (16m 20s): Oh my gosh how fabulous was it was, you know, in those early days, you know, we sat around and it wasn't all there weren't huge lines clearly. And so there was this just very charming, you know, and it was a destination in the middle of the woods, scary unknowns. We had The Blue Eyed Daisy opened by the time the fourth resident moved in. Which again, by developer standards of counting house tops to do any commercial, especially food service, it didn't meet any of those. And of course it was not on a main road. In fact, it was in the middle of the woods on a road that we had created. So we've, we've broken all the rules.
Monica Olsen (16m 59s): That's great. After the first residents moved in, or sort of the pre-sales, I know that the, you then were able to take out a loan and you were able to get one at that point, I think for the next 120 homes, is that right?
Steve Nygren (17m 10s): What happened is all of a sudden I turned around and I had nothing to sell, and I had a master plan, but I had prepared myself for this long run. And so all of a sudden I had to start for the next phase with all the engineering drawing. So that's another eight months before
Monica Olsen (17m 31s): Oh so it's not
Steve Nygren (17m 34s): Before you can even have another lot to sell. So during the period of time that they were really building the houses, I was busy trying to get the next section done. And so that was, so we broke ground in 2004, built those houses in 2004 and 5 started infrastructure on the next section in 2006. And then they were all built out in 2006 and 7 in those houses. And then I did the same thing again, down in Grange, in, in, in then. So this was 2007 that because actually I had three phases to begin with the first 40, and then the next part of Selborne, and then the Crossroads.
Steve Nygren (18m 19s): So I conservatively did three, three ways, and it was the crossroads and Selborne Way, which is where all the townhouses going up that way. And so each time I did it, they would immediately because now I had builders clamoring for lots. So literally I had lots on the market, 24 hours again. I mean, the minute I would release a lot, the builders would take them all down from me because we were just doing this incredible job. So I decided this was really great stuff that I would go ahead and borrow big money because each time I would totally pay off everything and I was rolling the money. But if I was going to get ahead of this, this was long haul you would sell,
Steve Nygren (19m 0s): Then eight months to a year later, you'd have more product to sell. Then I'd have that sold, take the money and start all over again. So this was a very long ripple. So I decided, so at this point we had about a hundred lots that I had sold. So I decided to double money, or double my gamble or whatever you want to say. And so I borrowed money to do a 120 lots. And we did that all at once. Put all that infrastructure all at once. I had contracts from four builders basically to take down all the lots and I was willing to sell, which paid off all my debt.
Steve Nygren (19m 41s): And then I had what we call what we refer to as the estate lots, that would be my profit, that we would sell those to individuals. But my four builders were taking down all the loss that paid off all my loans. It just was, it was just brilliant. This development stuff I decided was so easy. And of course we released those lots to the builders at the end of 2007. And then through 2008, the builders started falling one by one. The largest builder we had here was the first to go, who going into it, you would think was the most secure that it would be fine. Well, they were actually the first to go. Now luckily they all had signed contracts with take-down schedules.
Steve Nygren (20m 23s): And so they'd each only taken down their first group a lots. And so the biggest builder had taken down seven lots, the smallest to taken down two lots. And they had all started on those. So as they started two went bankrupt and two, just stopped building. And with the two bankruptcies, we were able to work with the bank and the builders to finish those and sell them. And I just, and we tore up all these contracts for the remaining. So luckily we only had seven lots that had not started construction that were in foreclosure.
Steve Nygren (21m 6s): So it was, it was the best of what it could be in that very uncomfortable period of time.
Monica Olsen (21m 12s): Right. One of the things that, so, cause I, I think you did some interesting things in that time period specifically with the nest sort of pocket neighborhood, which I want to hear a little bit about, but before you get into that tell me, did the people who moved in, were they different from one group to another? Meaning like, were they all retirees or were they all families like, did it change as the word got out? And did you envision who was coming to that come to fruition? Like
Steve Nygren (21m 44s): Absolutely. In that first 40, it was only one full-time resident with children. And there were only a couple households too, that I can think of that had children as a second home. And so they were mostly empty nesters, either older or younger, but mostly, and I would say 50% of the first buyers were second homes. And so that was sort of the profile that I thought we were headed into. And so in the, in the second group of 40 houses, the other side of Selborne, we designed those houses for the empty nester.
Monica Olsen (22m 31s): Oh I didn't know that.
Steve Nygren (22m 34s): And we said but there could be one or two families that come. And we had one house that was, we really tried to think out what it'd be like to, for a family. And so we had playroom planned on the top floor. We had three equal bedrooms, a master. It was just going to be the perfect family house and a 70 year old couple bought it. And we had family squeezing into the perfect two bedroom bungalow. I realized that we can't predict what's going to happen. And then in the, in the Crossroads, which was, you know, as you had to drive through the various things, we had a family that had all their toys on the front porch.
Steve Nygren (23m 18s): And my first thought was, well, that's kind of cluttered, but then so many people I'd see at the Blue Eyed Daisy were, "There are families here?" And this was about the time of Richard Lou's book and talk about kids to neighborhoods. And so that front porch really was a huge marketing piece. You say, there are children living here, right.
Monica Olsen (23m 45s): Where you at first thought, oh God, I don't want the plastic toys on the front porch from the aesthetic- I don't think I want that. But then you're like, wait, that's a good signifier.
Monica Olsen (23m 54s): Well, that's interesting because I, I do remember definitely families that I met when I first moved here, that they said that they were sort of the first families, if you will. And then it just seemed to be like a waterfall, you know, tons of families have moved in, but also still your 70 year old, your empty nesters, your single. So it seems it's a really great mix, but that wasn't maybe what you had envisioned in the beginning. You just, assumed.
Steve Nygren (24m 20s): Well, I realized I hadn't envisioned, as I've said, I think when we were doing the planning, I hadn't envisioned. And then when I saw my buyers at first, I thought, oh, well, I guess that makes sense. You know, so I would just kind of go in with the flow and then, and then it, the toys and the families and Richard Lou, it was just obvious, perfect for families. And then it's just roll. So this is why, and now you see the people that are here, it's a total mix of everything from any, any way you want to profile people is a total mix. And so that remains one of my greatest surprises is the people who moved in here. Not that I had thought about it, I didn't, but just the fact I could not have imagined the fabulous mix of interesting people and the diversity of those people.
Monica Olsen (25m 7s): Yeah. And well you were a bit of an outlier by moving your family down here, even, you know, people thought that that was sort of a wild choice. And so yeah, it would make sense that, oh, people would have second homes or, you know, it would be empty nesters. So let's get back to the nest. So in Grange, there's this wonderful little I'll call it a pocket neighborhood was it 15 homes? That was originally....
Steve Nygren (25m 32s): So we did in our plan, we, you know, these were basically the cottage district was quarter acre lots with a 2300 square foot house. You know, we had tried doing smaller houses and that wasn't the market in 2007. And so then 2008 is the only year we sold absolutely nothing. Now in the restaurant business, I had certainly had recessions, of course, with our restaurants, we always seemed to do well. So I hadn't really noticed it, but I was aware of recessions did happen.
Monica Olsen (26m 5s): You still have to eat in a recession.
Steve Nygren (26m 7s): Exactly. And if we, if you were of value, you did better in a recession actually, then you sell, oh, you know, I recognized it was a recession.
Steve Nygren (26m 14s): We were busy, you know, making things happen. And then in 2009, like the rest of the world, we started wondering how soon this was going to be over. It was, it was getting tiresome. And 2010, I realized that maybe we were into something different than we'd ever experienced. And certainly that's what markets and press, and we were in an unknown period of time. And so what, what do we, because at that point, our plans were for $500,000 houses. And $500,000 houses were not selling, people- nothing was selling. So we took five of those cottage lots and redesigned 15 small lots.
Steve Nygren (27m 2s): So we worked with Lou Oliver on that to come up with these plans with 900 square foot houses starting. And we thought that this would be something great that we could actually go to market with, very environmental. So they were all geothermal and solar ready. And if you added the solar, you wouldn't have a power bill along with it. And we offered the first cottages for $265,000. So in 2010, that seemed like a real value to have the we'd established a, about the community and the quality. And we had a lot of interest with people coming down.
Steve Nygren (27m 44s): And that really was one of the things that we were early in stepping out of the recession. And one of my favorite stories is a couple who had been looking. It was a second home. And then we hadn't heard from them like so many people. And so they showed up and they shared with us that, you know, they thought about it, but they decided it was just not responsible in this time of period to have a second home. And, but a $265,000, you know, it was like, we could do that and not feel irresponsible. Clearly it wasn't a cash issue. It was just a matter of, not a prudent thing to do. And so they started looking at the plans they wanted to of course expand the bedroom five feet.
Steve Nygren (28m 25s): And the property line was five feet out, the bedroom window, you know, that was impossible. Well, they ended up buying a lot for $280,000. So, you know, and their accurate textural fees were probably that much as well, but it was that change of perception that brought people back and they all weren't buying those houses, but they, we started then stepping out. And, and so in, in 2010, we really started moving out of this and we were able to one of the work with one of the builders who had survived, they just stopped building. And so we offered that if they would build a spec house that we, that they would be our contractor for all those.
Steve Nygren (29m 5s): And so that also lifted them out of the recession. So,
Monica Olsen (29m 8s): And I think the small homes, obviously we've had this since then this sort of tiny home phenomenon, obviously, that, that sort of caught the eye of everybody, culturally, whether it's on wheels or truly a tiny home, but, but, but that concept of a 900 square foot home did sell really well. And out of the nest, many of them are, but then you've taken that concept in the newest neighborhood. And that's kind of fascinating because even today there was some naysayers of nobody's going to buy a 900 square foot home. But tell us a little bit about like, what maybe that taught you as far as like product mix and size of homes.
Steve Nygren (29m 46s): Well, we definitely, one thing that I believe happened through the recession that we saw is we tried selling smaller houses, 2004 or five, then, you know, not a tiny home, or a 900 square foot, but, but less than 2,500 and people weren't interested, they always wanted that bigger house, the bigger, the bigger. And I think that recession was a readjustment where people and what they really needed. And I think there's more talk about living in community also, because one reason you don't need a larger house at Serenbe is you live in community and that's a big difference.
Steve Nygren (30m 29s): So I think it was just five years of the recession basically was a reset in the market as to what was really important. And the tiny house movement I think is while the tiny house is one product, I think is really a tagline for an entire movement of living in smaller spaces. And our houses here are smaller houses. We have a lot now in the 900 to 1200 square foot, but they're, they're done with great design and light and vaulted ceilings. And they're just, it's good design and interesting design. And one of the things we talk about is, is living small or living large in small spaces.
Steve Nygren (31m 16s): And that's what we're able to do here because we live in the community, we step out on the streets on the front porches, in the restaurants, in the theater. It's a huge thing. I think, you know, some of the families that, that have shared with me how in Atlanta, they, they had a, maybe it's even you Monica, I'm not sure, but when they opened the front door and they're in their city house, they always said, we're home. And then once they moved to Serenbe, when they pulled in the front entrance, it was we're home. And I think that's a good indication of how people regard living in a community like Serenbe the whole place is home.
Monica Olsen (31m 54s): Yeah. It's a very unusual feeling, but it's true. Talking about commercial centers, you know, you did the first restaurant, the Blue Eyed Daisy, but it, but it appears that each of the commercial centers, you really had to stand those up on your own. Do you want to talk a little bit about like, why you felt like you needed those places and then sort of what, you know, what the market said you know, no, and why you had to do it and continue to do it in each of the neighborhoods? I believe you've, you've built all the commercial
Steve Nygren (32m 23s): Well we were very clear in the beginning that we were a mixed use community and, you know, no different than towns a hundred years ago, there was always a little store and the little, you know, food, something, whether it was a grocery store, the little drug store, coffee shop. And I really was, was adamant that, that we had to have that same thing. But of course, in the traditional development lingo, you had to count house tops within your immediate area in order to make that viable and to get any kind of funding you had to show those kinds of markets and that just didn't exist.
Steve Nygren (33m 4s): And they're in the financial immunity there, there's not a line that talks about being Placemakers. And we were creating a destination. We weren't serving an existing population. And that's a very different thing when you're talking about the, the funding sources to do this, but I felt so strongly about it that I realized we couldn't have a bedroom community with just one coffee shop, that there had to be more to it. And while we had the live work, we'd sold, the live works. And so we had the art gallery and we had a little hair salon. I don't think the hair salon had come in yet. And there was a little grocery store, so we had a little bit of it, but it was just a touch.
Steve Nygren (33m 49s): And I realized we needed a full service restaurant. We needed office space. We knew we needed more shops and I couldn't raise the funds to do it. But fortunately I was a big believer in Midtown Atlanta back when that was no man's land. And I, that was my first restaurant, eventually four restaurants and my corporate headquarters. So now in the seventies, I bought property in Midtown that I still owned. And so I gradually started selling pieces of that to then build the commercial here. And so here we have, what is this?
Steve Nygren (34m 29s): This is, I think, 25,000 square feet that houses now the Hill restaurant and the various shops and offices. And so this was a real commercial center that was very viable on anchored the corner and, and an important part that really said, this is a, this is a small town, this is a bedroom community. And that was just very important. Then the same thing is, as we were coming in, and that was 2007, we opened this. So we had that all done before the real recession hit. And so we had this restaurant opened and gradually gained. Then we were coming out of the recession and I realized that Grange needed that same place.
Steve Nygren (35m 9s): And we, the little grocery store had ceased to exist and we needed a bigger grocery store. And then Bosch was looking for a, a model house and they chose Serenbe as the one place in the United States to do this. And through our conversations with them, we talked about the need for an experience center. So they said, well, you know, where, where would you do that? And I thought, okay, we need a grocery store. We need the experience. I just got to build a commercial area down in Grange. And so again, I sold more of my Midtown property and built the first commercial buildings there. And then our Montessori school we had was outgrowing.
Steve Nygren (35m 50s): They were in a little house and they needed space. I just stepped forward and built the next two storefronts for them as a temporary space. And so it was the need was there. And luckily I had the resources because I believed in Midtown when nobody else did. That I could actually sell those properties to do that.
Monica Olsen (36m 8s): And the same things just happened. We just opened here in May of 2019, the newest commercial building, but it's in the third neighborhood, Mado.
Steve Nygren (36m 16s): And here we are, I realized that we, we needed a office building to deal with health services. And I really wanted to distinguish between services that keep you vitally well versus services that address your sickness. And here again, it just became very, we just had to do this to, to demonstrate the difference, both in how the building might look and the people that would be there. And again, everyone was looking well, an office building, right, who who's going to lease an office building, even though we had examples on what we had, but it was all small scale and more small. And so again, I fortunately had an acre on Peachtree street in Midtown, and I sold that to build the office building that we're just now have opened here in 2019.
Monica Olsen (37m 3s): Well, and now we have what five restaurants that are throughout, including a sushi restaurant across the street from us here, a bookstore, a flower shop, a bike shop, design shops, galleries, hair salon, grocery store, and then the One Mado building. I don't even have time to list everything that's in there, but from Eastern and Western medicine or our latest restaurant, Halsa, I mean, it's
Steve Nygren (37m 25s): Like kind of centers, gyms, spas, yogas. I mean, and here we are, we're just opening it and we're 90% leased. Yeah. Yeah. So it's the both in developing the community in creating the commercial areas, it, it just becomes more and more evident the problems we have in the financial services requiring feasibility studies. And you can only get a feasibility study by looking in the rear view mirror is what we've done in the past. So for all those people out there trying to do something forward thinking, they have to find private equity or have the resources to move forward.
Steve Nygren (38m 13s): And that's, I think a problem that we, as a society need to figure out, and I don't know what the answer is. Cause you, you, you can't fund everybody's dream, but there has to be some sense of being able to understand what, what does have merit to stand on its own without purely having to check the boxes on feasibility studies. We're in the very thing with, you know, I have very specific ideas about senior housing assisted living memory care, and a it's a whole concept we see in Scandinavia that to my knowledge does not exist in America, but yet we can't see any way to fund this progressive approach.
Monica Olsen (38m 55s): Right. So tell me, I was going to ask you sort of like, what's next, if you will, like sort of, you know what I mean? Obviously there's more houses and more neighborhoods, but, but sort of tell me, let's touch on that for a second. What's next in the senior housing? Cause I know that you've traveled and you've tried to talk to everybody. Doctors, physicians, assisted living, and it's almost like you're looking for this thing that doesn't exist. So tell me a little bit about, you know America versus European philosophies
Steve Nygren (39m 25s): In America, maybe other parts of the world as well, we are so fear-based that we tend to put our children and our seniors in prison. You think about how we treat both and you know, our, our, our kids are so sheltered that they are missing a lot of experiences in Richard Louv with Last Child in the Woods. And that was, has really brought this to the forefront. We're actually causing problems and damaging them rather than, than protecting them.
Steve Nygren (40m 6s): But I think people are starting to talk about aging in America, but I'm not sure we really delved into what's happening in our whole attitude of putting them into these facilities that are lock downs. You know, when most senior housing you have to go through gates that would remind you of going through a prison gate. And I don't think we've, we've really put those dots together. There's, most people have an idea of senior housing of trying to emulate a country club atmosphere or a fancy hotel.
Steve Nygren (40m 47s): And as you reach the end of your life, I'm not sure that that's the stimulating thing that people are wanting, especially as the baby boomers. I think my parents' generation ahead of the baby boomers, that was post-World war two and the beginning of, of social security and the idea that people could retire in luxury as a whole concept that was, was introduced. And as the baby boomers have watched how their parents have dealt with that, I don't believe we see it as the thing we all want to aspire to.
Steve Nygren (41m 29s): It's maybe, you know, there's not, you know, there's not one formula that fits all, but I think we're all going to stay much more engaged. And even as we start maybe losing our capacity and we're going to want something different. And I think a good example is, I, in Sweden going into a memory care and they shared with me that that at the end of life, the way you keep the brain engaged is very similar to the beginning of life. And primary colors are very important. Those are those vivid, bright colors. And so they use that same palette when they're designing senior housing, as well as, as nurseries. And so just imagine senior housing rather than these beautiful upholstered things with dark, dark panels and all that going in with red sofas and big yellow throw pillows and bright lights, a totally different look.
Steve Nygren (42m 23s): But if, if, if your, if your mind is, is changing, you want stimulation rather than, than luxury comfort. And so it's, it's, it's that approach in many ways that I think we can do something very different with our senior housing.
Monica Olsen (42m 40s): Well, Steve, thank you so much. This has been really interesting. And I, you know, as a resident, I look forward to seeing it all sort of unfold over the years. On our next episode, we're going to talk about the arts a little bit more. And so we'll sort of dig in about the Serenbe Institute, which is a really integral part of the community as well that I don't think we've touched on. So thank you so much.
Steve Nygren (42m 58s): Great, it's great fun to remember these things.
Monica Olsen (42m 60s): Thank you for listening to Serenbe Stories. New episodes are available on Mondays. You can subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts. For more details visit our website, serenbestories.com.
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Steve’s early career was in hospitality and in 1972, he opened the Pleasant Peasant, which became a restaurant corporation that grew to 34 restaurants in eight states by the time he departed in 1994. Steve and his wife, Marie, retired to a farm just outside Atlanta with their three daughters and six years later, he became concerned about urban sprawl invading their adopted country paradise.
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