Welcome to Brazos Matters.

I'm Jay Socol.

Today we're talking about economic development in the city of Bryan, and there is plenty to talk about.

But it wasn't that long ago when there wasn't much in that regard.

Times have changed a lot.

And we're going to get into all that with our guest, Bryan's managing director for economic development, Kevin Russell.

Kevin, thanks for being here.

Thank you so much for letting me come today.

Absolutely.

We've been threatening to do this for just a little while.

Yeah.

So 32 years with the city of Bryan, 32.

All right, let's see how accurate LinkedIn is, because you've got a lot of job titles.

So you started in 1992 as a code enforcement officer.

That is correct.

Okay, then Building services coordinator.

Correct.

And then and then I came along to the city of Bryan when you were development coordinator.

Okay.

And during that same time, you became director of planning and Development Services.

Does that sound right?

Missed one little thing.

But yeah, what did I miss?

What did I miss?

That would be let's see, what was it called?

It was called planning and development.

It was a manager position, development manager, development manager?

Yeah.

That got left out of LinkedIn.

That's probably my fault.

It is.

Director of Planning Development Services, then.

Economic Development Director?

Yeah.

Director of Development Services, Yes.

And now Managing Director for Economic Development.

Just a few things.

Holy moly, man, that's a that's an interesting career arc because for folks who are an economic development, is this a fairly common no way to get there?

No.

Well, tell me about that.

Well, so in 1992, I was an electrician before my government stuff.

Okay.

So I got married, moved away and came back and I promised myself I was not going to go back into construction.

Well, in 1992, there were no jobs.

Yeah.

So I luckily found a job with the city of Brian as a code enforcement officer and thought, I'll just be there for a couple of years maybe, and I'll move on and find something else.

Well, I ended up liking it, and as you can tell, I've done a lot of things for the city.

I will say that one of the most interesting things that I did as a code enforcement officer in 1992 was go to the LaSalle Hotel on Friday afternoons, Peel back a piece of plywood and yell, Y'all need to leave now.

I'm screwing the board shut for for all the squatters, right?

Yeah.

And so they would all leave.

I would screw the board shut, and then Monday morning I'd come back and they would have it unscrewed.

So it was a different time back then.

Even you had already been there for like eight years before I came along with the city of Bryan.

But even then around 2000, it was still a different city really than we experience now.

And I was just talking to our mutual friend Chad, who worked with me there, and he brought up he said, I think it was Kevin who used to take us into the LaSalle when it was pretty dilapidated.

Yeah, yeah, there was no windows, it was just plywood, it was extremely dark and lots of pigeons.

It was.

But that was the case with a lot of those downtown buildings.

Yeah.

That you could have bought at the time for a song Yeah, a lot of people did.

And now they're, they're reaping the rewards of it.

So tell me more about I guess, from an economic development standpoint, but also, you know, your experiences in in building services and code enforcement and so forth, what Bryan was in those early years for you, what do you remember about it?

Very slow.

The progress was very slow.

There were a lot of good ideas, a lot of planning, and things were were being put in place, but the growth was really not there.

Yeah.

And then and then as we got more, we got councils that were a little more aggressive towards economic development and understood what it was.

That's that's when things started happening.

You know, you've everyone's heard you have to spend money to make money right.

Well we spent a lot of money in downtown redoing all the infrastructure, the public stuff and that's what kind of kicked off the resurgence of downtown.

Yeah.

Now, if you've been to downtown and you think it's always looked like that, you know, pedestrian friendly, no overhead power lines and things like that, that's not how it always was.

no.

I wish I could find a video of the A&M professor that did a story on downtown and basically said, It's dead and I'll never come back.

Yeah, I remember that.

You remember that.

And and I wish he could see it now because he would.

He would.

I think he would be amazed.

Yeah.

That really was, it was sort of unsexy, decisions and spending and work by that council or those councils.

But you're right, I think that really was the spark to making what what you see today.

Yeah.

We have a little bit left the downtown north which the city owns a few blocks down there that that we're work we've been working with the developer on to spur that end of town hopefully you know in the next year or two we'll see we'll see some significant progress there.

Well let's talk about this.

So you're talking about the north end of downtown, I think between Main Street and Bryan Avenue.

And maybe before you get to MLK, where the Icehouse is.

That is correct.

So tell me what that transformation is supposed to look like in the next few years and starting soon, right?

Yes, We certainly hope so.

You know, we've been working on that downtown north piece for probably the last eight years.

Yes.

You know, significant work towards negotiating and trying to figure out exactly what what the market will support.

But it'll be a combination of what you kind of see now where you have the loft type housing units.

So apartments, condos, retail, first floor, hopefully, hopefully a venue for like concerts and and plays and things like that.

So a public space, some green space.

We're still trying to figure out where like the farmers market, we would like for them to have a space down there, but we can also move them to Midtown I think is kind of the plan.

you know, it's just it'll be highly dense.

Yeah.

And you know, which is, which is a good thing for people who want to live play in downtown.

So I know the plan has always been to continue that redevelopment and reinvestment all the way from from the south end of downtown to the north end.

But the kinds of development that you're looking at down there is that based on what you're told, what the city is being told by by residents, by business owners, by those who might be willing to invest.

Like are they saying this is what we want to see down here, or is it really the council and maybe the Bryan Business Council and so forth saying, here's what we're going to do because we hope it becomes this.

Like, how does that work?

Well, so we originally sent out what we call a request for proposal RFP.

Yeah.

And that's where we, we have these kind of the grand vision.

Here's what we want.

There's nothing it's a 20,000 foot level document.

These developers do their market study and they come in and they say, Here's what we believe your community can support, right?

And so so we pick the one we staff recommends, the council Council selects which developer that they want to work with.

And from that point, it's basically a market market driven document.

Okay.

So the first the first big building that is supposed to be constructed down there in my right, is it a hotel that was coming?

The first building has been constructed.

It was the apartment building at the I guess that's probably 23rd.

Yes.

Okay.

That was the first.

That was the first.

And then and then there is a hotel.

There is office buildings and things like that.

I don't know the we'll see what the order is, but a hotel is part of it.

But things are about to get vertical.

Yes.

The downtown.

Yes.

Not just the Varisco building.

We're going to go right.

We're going to go up.

We'll see how high.

I mean, and it could be anywhere from five stories to eight or nine, you know, We'll see.

I haven't, I don't know for sure.

Yeah.

Has, has council talked about like hey we would really like to see these bottom floors of these developments become X, Y or Z. Like is there that sort of granular vision at the moment.

Yeah.

They would like it to be nonresidential but they're not so set on.

It's got to be retail.

So I think there would be okay if, if the market said you only need 20%, the rest of it could be something else.

I think that would be okay with that.

Okay.

What else about downtown?

Since we're talking about there, what else should we know that is either coming or things you're you're hoping to work on for downtown?

Well, always, always trying to get out that there's plenty of parking down there.

There is, There is.

You just got to know where it is and you know, we have a giant parking garage probably with 900 spaces in it.

That's, that's pretty underutilized.

So we hope people will utilize that.

But there's tons of things to do down there from the restaurants, the mom and pop restaurants, the mom and pop retail first Fridays, you know, there's just events all the time.

So it's a it's a neat place that people should should go to.

Yeah.

Shifting gears a little bit, I wanted to talk about the Texas A&M presence throughout the city of Bryan, because when when we were working together, that wasn't the case for it.

And now you've got either A&M or A&M system presence in downtown or on the west side of the city and at the Rellis campus and I'm wondering how that has changed Bryan's ability to pull in retail and industry and so forth.

Industry, I would say, is is probably the bigger catch retail of Bryan College Station plays off of each other all the time.

We both win wherever it goes.

our residents need it, our residents want it.

So if it's in Bryan grade, if it's in College Station, great industry, that's your primary jobs.

That's the that's the thing that I think A&M helps us the most we have because of the research component.

It may be it may be that it's a it's just whenever we're talking to someone and we bring up that there's an ability to to partner with A&M on whatever component it is, it locks them in.

And then when we introduce them to a professor or whomever and they and they start having that conversation about, here's what I do you think you can help me with this and that.

They hit home runs every time.

Yeah, especially at Rellis, but also it feels to me and, you know, I'm I'm looking at this from a communication guy standpoint, that there's credibility, there's the street cred and legitimacy that comes with A&M actually being in Bryan now.

Yeah.

In all these different ways.

Because back when we work together, that wasn't the case.

A&M was across the city limits and and so that's where industry wants to be.

That's where, you know, retail wants to be in the whole thing.

But now it seems like, okay, I see the big A&M brand in downtown.

That's something.

there's a health science center.

what is this really like?

It's almost a permission structure for industry and whomever that when they come to Bryan, they are still in proximity of Texas.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah, I believe that.

And they, you know, it's it's a it's just the the presence of A&M, the logo, the brand.

People recognize it.

It helps it.

Obviously, you can see what it's done in College Station, you know and and I'm glad we're we're taking advantage of it now.

Yeah.

Any plans to sort of, extend that, footprint for A&M in any of those portions of Bryan looking to get?

We have some deeper presence.

Yeah, we hope so.

Can you tell me anything about that?

I know I'd love to, but that's one I can't.

I know.

I know.

Economic development is tricky because unless you see something coming out of the ground, there's still a chance it may not happen.

It may fall through.

Yeah.

And what I've what I learned, especially with retail, if you announce things too early, the the then you will have the people are vultures come in and pick them off and they'll get them to go somewhere else.

Correct.

So you don't say anything until they're coming out of the ground or until everything is signed.

I learned that when I worked at the city of Bryan.

Yes, Yes.

I got I got bitten a couple of times on that little Target.

Yeah, that was one.

Yes, sir, I remember that.

Listen, if you just two day and I'm Jay Socol you're listening to Brazos Matters.

And my guest today is Kevin Russell, managing director for economic development in the city of Bryan.

Here's something that I don't necessarily hear a lot about, but but then again, I may not be paying close enough attention.

Tell me about the importance of the biomedical corridor and is that something that will kind of continue to exist as it has?

Is there a need for it to continue existing like that?

I think so, yeah, I think so.

How about even sorry I threw that out there without explaining what the biomedical corridor is, Could you give a quick explainer?

Sure.

So the the bio corridor is around traditions.

It's by the Health Science Center and it's where Fuji Fuji is located.

And so they manufacture pharmaceuticals.

right now Fuji is the big player in that area.

There's some space out there for continued growth for both them and for other companies.

But, you know, it's it's changed a little bit to where it's not just bio.

It can be smart manufacturing, it can be defense.

There's multiple things that that ties the bio corridor into Rellis.

So because they're so close to each other, so and if you look at like the Army's futures commands and things like that, we have the bio corridor as it exists.

But the Bryan Business Council purchased approximately 200 acres across Highway 47 where the bio corridor drive ends, dead-ends and 200 acres for the extension of that type of development over there.

So that's a that's another long term play.

How are you able to now create some synergy between the bio corridor and Rellis?

Because when when the bio corridor was first conceived and and started emerging Rellis wasn't really in the picture?

I don't think so.

How do you create that synergy and is there a synergy or.

Yeah, I mean it's, it's natural.

It's just a natural thing that happens because of what's happening.

The research component at rallies, the and you know, the Department of Defense many times is bio, right.

So there's there's a lot of there's a lot of ability to to draw those types of companies in here, whether it's research or manufacturing.

I mean we've we've also had logistics companies look out there.

You know, the big one has looked out there.

But, you know, right now there are more focused on the larger metros like Dallas and Houston.

I see.

I see.

So so you as an economic development guy, you're still putting bio corridor properties and opportunities in front of various industries.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I also we respond to them from the state leads to yeah, you know, the state sends a lot of leads out where companies are looking to either expand, relocate or start.

And we, we reply to those and say we have a solution with this piece of property and, and then we try to get that's how we got axis pipe and tube right.

How competitive are we in that regard?

Pretty competitive.

Yeah, pretty competitive.

We are what we find.

What we find is that the state of Texas sometimes isn't as competitive as like Mississippi or Louisiana or Alabama, but because there's they're all in on that.

And the state of Texas a lot of times because our state's so big, we'll have 15 or 20 communities that are competing for one for the same thing in the state really can't step in and say, we'll give you this because they you know, they don't know what the other community is going to need.

So they want them to select before they do that.

Right.

Moving down, I guess it's Highway 47 and towards the Rellis campus.

Tell me about how the evolution of the campus and what happens there is benefiting the city of Bryan from an economic development standpoint.

First, that place is gorgeous.

Didn't used to be.

No, no.

But you're right.

I mean it is really transform it has yeah that has you know so I'll tell you that that the thing that we seem to go back to over and over and over again is the Futures Command.

We have had truck outfitters.

we've had other defense type are, could be defense type contractors that go out and talk to the folks at rallies because of their unmanned.

They just have so much technology out there.

It's crazy but they they tie in with all these different folks that are trying to start their business or grow their business and they want to be close to Rellis.

So we're continually going out there, having tours.

And then these folks are looking at properties in Brazos County, in the city of Bryan, probably College Station and I would think probably the you know, the counties that surround us, however, we're in kind of a better, I think, a better situation because we have we have the infrastructure in place, power, water, sewer in place.

So these these folks can develop what they need to develop.

Yeah.

So what is what is the city of Bryan able to do in support of Rellis and their transformation?

Like, what do you guys they're poised and ready to do or actively, proactively doing to try to help them, to help them?

Well, I think I think we we supply electricity.

And so we're we're upgrading our our if you've seen it, if you drop out, you'll see the the substation and you'll see the transmission lines and things that we've put in place so that we can support the type of industry they're bringing in, whether it's data centers, are are are there manufacturing, are there to support the research?

that's one aspect of it.

The other is we offer if it's a taxable company that they're bringing in because everything that goes out there is not owned by the system.

So it could be a private venture.

So we may be looking at incentives such as tax abatements and things like that, that that one would expect us to look at in a in just the anywhere in the city of Bryan.

Yeah, but what about also creating opportunities for restaurants and retail and all the things that would support a growing community that works out at Rellis?

What might that look like?

That's a good one.

You know, it seems it seems we're ready for it.

Yeah.

And I think the people that work out there are ready for it.

But when you drive a retailer down 47, they look at and they go, boy, this is green.

You know, they just don't see it yet.

Right.

But if you get off a 47, you know, like on Jones Road that connects Leonard Road to Villa Maria, you see quite a bit of development there.

They just can't see it from the from 47.

And then on the west side of 47 it's it's, it's still green.

It's a lot of agriculture, but we are recruiting some convenience type restaurants and fast quick serve QSR, quick service restaurants.

You know the low lying fruit is always a gas station.

Right now, you know that.

But it's not just your typical I mean, we don't it's not a Buc-ees.

We all wish it was.

Come on, man!

And so I wish we could.

But we're looking at things like that, you know, to get out there so people have options other than to have to drive all the way in, you know?

Yeah.

To town.

So you've mentioned a couple of times the Bryan Business Council and explain what the Bryan Business Council does and can do for the City of Bryan.

Okay.

The Bryan Business Council is a nonprofit.

It is it is an economic development corporation.

They're responsible are there.

The council has asked them to help with recruitment of hospitality.

So your hotel and restaurants, they've asked them to to help with housing type situation.

So the they they explore our incentives that we offer to two different four homebuilders or developers to make sure that we're keeping up with with what needs to to to help these folks develop.

They also look at education.

So they they look at Bryan Bryan, Independent School District A&M M billion as far as the ability to do job training types things.

So they're they're looking at making sure that our our people, our our citizens, wherever they live, are trained, and they can come in and fill the need.

If if an industry needs a, you know, a machinist, we need to make sure that these folks are trained on this particular type of machine.

Right.

And so they partner with the education outlets to do that.

They also have a finance subcommittee who really watches over their their money so that they can do these functions.

They they they they do some incentives themselves.

Like I mentioned, they bought property to grow the bio corridor.

The you know, that whole 47 area.

They also partnered with the the Marriott on the LaSalle they helped with the courtyard and and if you notice the structures that are out there, they they helped the courtyard do that and they're they're not quite finished yet.

They have a big giant TV they're going to put in there so you can have your fun game day stuff.

Yeah, right, Right.

They also look at basically they do the they if the city council needs them to interact, to review, to help with any type of economic development deal that's going on, they will step in and do that and then make a recommendation to council.

I see.

So we've got they're all business guys.

They're not they're all they all own their own business.

The majority of them do.

So they're they there's a different perspective there.

Got it.

So you and your office are doing what you do.

The Bryan Business Council is there to support in all kinds of ways.

You've got the council obviously giving direction throughout.

Tell me about the role of what was the Brazos Valley Economic Development Corporation now I think is known as the Greater Brazos Partnership.

That's correct.

How do they fit in?

So they're the they are the entity that looks at the primary job market.

So that would be your manufacturing.

Okay.

They're the ones that that we support.

We give them information.

We support them when they're doing or responding to these leads from the state, are going out and recruiting industry to come into the community.

We support that.

You know, whether it's whether it's by giving them giving them information about our utilities, our property, you know, whatever it is we support that.

Got it.

So I've got about, I don't know, 23 more questions for you, but I see the clock is winding down.

We only have a couple of minutes left.

What is something that I didn't ask you to talk about that maybe you just want to make sure folks know about economic development in the city of Bryan, Texas.

Okay, so I'll say this economic development, it touches just about everything.

Yeah, right.

And one of the things that that our council did that I think was maybe one of the biggest game changers in so far in the 2000, 2020, whatever is Midtown Park.

that's right.

We didn't even I got to have you back here to talk about the good gosh Well, it will come back.

Okay.

So.

So Midtown Park with, you know, the very first deal was was not topgolf, but big shot.

You now Topgolf has it, and it's just a legends event center.

Unbelievable place.

Okay, so I have to have you come back.

And we have a whole show devoted to what's happening at Midtown.

My gosh.

See, But what a great problem to have because 20, 25 years ago, Kevin, when we work together, we couldn't have filled up 28 minutes talking about economic development and excitement and momentum in the city.

You know, we were talking about tearing down houses.

Yes, sir.

We sure what is and shooing people out of the vacant.

LASALLE Well, I'm I'm happy for you and happy for the city of Bryan.

And I appreciate you coming in and chatting.

And I will have you back to talk more.

I would love to be back.

All right.

Well, I think we did it and by the way, these are a website in case people want to learn more about economic development.

And all you have to do is go to www.bryantx.gov and you will find it under the department's tab are actually on along the top it'll say economic development.

Okay.

That's how we track you down.

Yep.

Thank you, man.

Thank you.

Brazos Matters is a production of Aggieland's Public Radio 90.9 KAMU FM, a member of Texas A&M University's Division of Marketing and Communications.

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Thanks again for listening or for watching.

I'm Jay Socol.

Have a great day.