Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to k MET fourteen ninety am, ABC News Radio
and the Southern California Business Report with Evett Walker, a
show dedicated to highlighting successful Southern California businesses and the
people behind them.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome and thank you for joining Southern California Business Report
on ABC News and talks KMET fourteen ninety AM, ninety
eight point one FM and km ET TV. I'm Evet
Walker live blasting our signal from the center Southern California,
serving a population of over twenty five million. Get us
crystal clear and on demand by downloading the free livestreaming
(00:39):
app on Google Play and the Apple App Store. As always,
a huge shout out to the team Mitch, Bill and
Sean I love you guys, and of course to our
special advisory committee that can be found at www dot
scbr talk dot com forward Slash Advisory Committee. Click on
(00:59):
the link and learn about the remarkable leaders doing the work.
And of course, speaking of leaders, I have none other
than Randal Lewis, who is the executive vice president and
principal of Lewis Management Corps, part of the Lewis Group
of companies, one of California and Nevada's leading real estate developers.
With over fifty years in the industry, he has helped
(01:21):
the Lewis Group develop master planned communities, over thirty five
shopping centers, and numerous apartment and industrial projects. The company
owns thirteen thousand plus apartments and has built more than
sixty thousand homes and apartments to date. A dedicated philanthropist,
Randall supports health, education, entrepreneurship, and the arts, with centers
(01:44):
bearing his name at the University of Laverne, Claremont, McKenna College,
Chafey College, and cal State Samordino. He has held leadership
roles in regional organizations, including the Building Industry Association and
the Southern California Leadership Council. Randall's contributions have earned him
multiple prestigious awards and two honorary doctorate's recognizing his impact
(02:05):
on the region. Thank you so much for being with
us today, Randall Jibeat.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Thank you for having me, and thank you for the show.
It's inspirational to be here. So many great people you
bring on the show.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I appreciate you, and you know you are one of
those various inspirational people. So let's just start by talking
about when your career began, you know, it began with
a single step. Can you take us back to your
earliest days in the real estate industry and share what
motivated you to pursue this path.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Well.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Ours is a family business, so my parents started a
home building company in the mid nineteen fifties. I wasn't
very active then. I was four years old when they
started it in three and two, and they were planning
on it. So I was taking my first steps then,
and it was just a family business that was all encompassing.
I mean, I have three older brothers. As we were
(02:58):
in school, we all worked in the family business, and
my parents gave us options. In fact, they didn't want
us to go into the family business. Their dream was
that we had become accountants, and luckily or unluckily, I
think we all hated accounting, so we all ended up,
one way or another going into the family business. So
it wasn't a conscious thing, and we were lucky because
(03:18):
as sons we were born into a business and as
our brothers and I got out of school the company.
When my oldest brother got out of school in nineteen
sixty five, the company had already been around ten years.
I got out of nineteen seventy three, and so it
was eight years later, so we were already an established business.
We were very fortunate that my parents chose to move
(03:40):
to the Inland Empire. It was rough on them because
I know this area was not growing as much in
the fifties and sixties, but it was great for us
because we came into a mature company in a very
rapidly growing area.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Right, and can you take us back to your first
job within the family company.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Well, we all had lots of jobs, and we literally
started at the bottom. I know back then we build
houses sometimes on raised foundations. There wasn't a basement, but
there was a crawl space underneath it, and I know
all of us spent time underneath picking out trash and
cleaning out spider webs. We all did work at mowing
lawns or doing landscaping. We did work sweeping out houses.
(04:24):
As we all got older, we migrated into office jobs
and sometimes it was emptying trash cans and then filing
and then running errands. So it was total, all encompassing
for us. Growing up. We had great parents. They were
great teachers and very charitable to us and very charitable
to the community. But it was just something it was
(04:46):
in our DNA to work in the family business and
also to give back to the communities where we live.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Well, what a wonderful family legacy. And today the Lewis
Company now spans master planned communities, shopping centers, apartments, and
industrial developments. What are the most exciting projects you're currently
leading and how do they reflect your vision for the future.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Well, we're a multifaceted company. As you said in the introduction.
We do master playing communities, but we also do apartments,
we do shopping centers, we do complex mixed use developments,
we do property management, and we also do industrial So
there's not one project that I'd say what I'm most
excited about. As developers and I'm involved on the more
creative side, i always say the most exciting project we're
(05:35):
doing is whatever the next one is. We dow our
company in the industry almost like a living laboratory. We're
always trying new experiments. We're trying to say what worked,
didn't work, and how can we continually get better and
try new innovations. So I'm very excited about all the
new developments we're doing. We try not to do ordinary communities.
(05:56):
We try to do what we call signature developments that
lead the lasting imprint on the communities where we do business.
We're really motivated to make better communities and better lives.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
And it's really evident in the design of your housing,
retail and industrial projects. And of course, with fifty years
of background knowledge and data collection, it's clear to see
why you've really excelled and are where you are today.
So Randall tell us, California faces obviously a persistent housing shortage.
(06:29):
How is the Lewis Group innovating to address both the
supply and affordability challenges on the sales and rental sides
of the market.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
That's a great question of that. There's a lot of
discussion on what kind of housing should be built in California.
Some talk about should it be infill housing or suburban housing,
or luxury housing or affordable housing, and the proper answer
is all of the above. We are so short as
a state in providing the needed housing for all the segments.
(07:00):
Really has to work on all of them. All segments
of the state are short of needed housing. I think
as a specialty for our company, we're doing a lot
of work and what's called missing middle housing. There's a
real gap between sort of the luxury housing and the
very very affordable housing. And it's probably more important now
(07:21):
than ever to say what's in the middle, sort of
townhouses and condominiums and higher density detached housing, housing that
normal people can afford. And so we're doing a lot there.
We're also doing quite a bit of event in our
communities to try to say, how can the projects we do,
whether it's an apartment or a planned community, how can
(07:42):
it change people's lives. So we try to build in
a very strong health component. We partner with local health
agencies or organizations. We put in walking trails, and generally gymnasiums.
We generally have people doing programming on wellness classes and
eating classes and stress reduction. We're really trying to think,
(08:03):
what are the different populations that are living in our
communities or apartments, what are their different needs, and how
can we contribute to them having better lives? All the
while remembering the main product or selling is some sort
of housing, of course, so we try to say, let's work.
If it's a home for sale, we work with what
we call guest homebuilders. We don't build the homes anymore.
(08:26):
We work with some of the best homebuilders in the
United States, and if it's an apartment, we will work
on that. But we work very hard on what we
call segmentation to try to make sure that we do
all sorts of different kinds of housing to meet people's
needs at different ages, different lifestyles, different demographics. And then
we also work very hard on the programming to make
(08:48):
sure that we can bring in events and classes, as
I said, but we also work on a lot of
the physical elements too, So we do one of our
master planned communities try to look at the plan to
say is it a plan that will promote healthy living
and that would be done by a lot of things.
Do you have walking trails? Do avoid hazardous conditions? Is
(09:11):
are there safe routes to school? So we spend a
lot of time on the physical part. We also, more
than a lot of our competitors, will invest pretty heavily
in amenities like swimming pools and gymnasiums. It's hard for
someone to swim with there's not a swimming pool, it's
hard to work out if you don't have a gymnasium.
We try to put those in wherever we can to
(09:32):
promote health. We also do a lot of partnerships on
our communities. We try to think who are the best providers.
It might be a school district, it might be childcare,
it might be someone like San Antonio Regional Hospital, it
might be the Boys and Girls Club. We partner with
a lot of organizations to say what are the social
(09:52):
needs that need to be put into a community, and
who's the best provider. In a lot of cases, it's
not us. We try to say who are best in
class providers that we could partner work with as we
look at some of the policy elements. We try to
work with a number of the cities we're involved in
on their policies, especially on health and education, to say,
(10:15):
how can we put in the general plans things that
will promote healthy living or to promote a better education.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And that's really been a signature, a moniker of all
of your developments. And you know, we were just speaking
to Councilwoman Christine Scott of Rancho Cucamonga that talks about
that master plan that goes back decades and how all
of that is deeply rooted and integrated into those master
plans and it's just a testament to the beautiful development
(10:45):
that we see today. So Randall, talking about development, you've
recently pioneered a build for rent model that blurs the
line between apartments and single style homes. What insights led
you to the strategy and how do you see it
changing the rental landscape.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
That's also an excellent question. So probably the hottest segment
in housing across the country now is what people are
calling build for rent, and it's a recognition that more
and more people are going to be renters, some because
they can't afford the down payment, but in a lot
of cases it's renters by choice. And so it used
to be that the home ownership rates and a lot
(11:25):
of California are over sixty percent. In many parts of California,
that's slipping the closer to fifty percent. So we recognized
as more people were trying to we're renting, choosing to rent,
what kinds of things did they want. There's still a
very very strong market for what you'd call conventional apartments
(11:45):
two through or four story apartments, typically one or two bedrooms.
Typically they have some sort of clubhouse or some sort
of recreation amenity. But they're the kind of apartments that
you probably grew up in and your parents may have
grown up in We saw that that's a good market
for many people, but it's cost have gone up as
the incomes have gone up, as lifestyles have changed. We
(12:08):
began to see a call for something different. And these
would be people that say, well, I want to rent,
but I don't want to be in that kind of
one or two bedroom apartment. I'm not sure I want
somebody on top of me or below me. So we've
been working on this for about twenty years, but we've
really ramped it up in just the last two or
three years. And so a typical build front across the country,
(12:30):
the characteristics would be they're smaller, they're typically in groups
of one hundred maybe two hundred homes. They typically feel
in some way like houses, so generally their two story,
they're occasionally three story. A lot of times they're detached,
their little bungalows. We do them with garages, but they
offered the lifestyle of a house, but then they offered
(12:54):
the professional management of an apartment community and some of
the lifestyle components. We just finished the build front community
called Independence at the Preserved in Chino and it was
a real success. The rents are three thousand to four
thousand dollars a month, but you get a two car garage,
you get three bedrooms or two bedrooms, you get access
(13:16):
to really good recreation facilities, and best of all, you
get professional management. And a lot of the communities across
the country, anywhere from ten to twenty percent of the
housing stock is rented at the detached houses. A lot
of people don't know that, and typically it might be
mothers or fathers that are doing it. It could be
(13:36):
a family owns two or three rentals, or a dentist
or a doctor or an attorney makes a little money
and sell these owners and that's a nice segment for people.
It's a good investment. But often those kinds of owners
change their mind. Either they decide to sell the home,
or they don't have the neat the ability to keep it,
or they want to bring in a family member. And
(13:58):
so we've heard in our market Recepece, a lot of
people say, you know, I want that single family lifestyle,
but I really want professional management. As something goes wrong,
who's going to fix the leaky roof or change the
lights or take care of the landscaping. So our model
is what we call build for rent. We're doing this
project we just finished in Chino, kind of a grand
(14:18):
opening in northern California for a community in Dixon that
will be called the Independence of Dixon. We've just started
building one in West Sacramento. We hope to do one
in Renal Valley. We're going to do one in Grand Terrace.
We're going to do one in Riverside. I hope we
can do one in Fontana. Altogether, we probably have ten communities.
There will be a couple of billion dollars worth of business.
(14:40):
It's a big commitment on our part, and based on
our preliminary results in Chino, I think it's going to
be a big, big success.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
One of the things we found on some of these rentals,
people question, you know, well, I don't want rentals across
the street, but on these communities, the only difference between
our renters and some of the home owner nearby is
that our renterries usually have higher incomes. And so it's
a very interesting niche and we hope to do quite
a bit of it, and I think you'll see more
and more of it throughout southern California, not in the
(15:12):
close in areas. You won't see it in a lot
of La County or the heart of Orange County. But
I think you'll see more and more of it in
the suburban market places where land is a little bit cheaper.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Well, it really sounds like this type of development hits
the head on every best part of residential living, right.
So you have a professional management company that is taking
care of the grounds for you, so busy professionals and
families that have soccer games and work to go to
don't necessarily have the time to invest mowing lawns and
(15:45):
trimming hedges have that done for them. And of course
the beautiful exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
We're also doing a lot of housing for sale like
that in our planned communities for those same kind of reasons.
When my parents started building the fifties and sixties and seventies,
people had bigger lots, they had more children. Having families
with three or four children was very common, and they
spent a lot of time in the backyard. But today
(16:12):
the lifestyles have changed. Probably half of the households in
our communities don't have any children at all, and a
big number are the ones that do have one child
or two children at all, and typically they're doing after
school sports or they're doing classes or math or something else,
and so they don't want to spend time mowing the lawn.
And on weekends, those who have families are doing family activities,
(16:37):
So we're doing quite a bit. Most of the housing
we're doing is sort of what they call this missing middle,
to try to hit the lower price points, but they
also appeal to the new lifestyles. There's still a lot
of resale homes on the market and some new homes
for those families or individuals to say, I want a
big home on a big lot. There are plenty of choices,
(16:58):
but we have found there's a lot more demand now
for things that are more affordably priced and where the
homes and the life sizes and the programming is tailored
to their lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Well, it's really exciting to see these ten projects come online,
and two billion dollars is a tremendous investment into housing.
So thank you so much for being a big part of,
you know, closing that gap with the housing crisis that
we're all experiencing, which of course I'm sure has only
been compounded by those devastating fires that occurred in La
not too long ago. How does that play into the
(17:31):
landscape well, the.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Fires were a tragedy, and unfortunately they're probably not the
last fires that we'll have in southern California. My wife
and I are sensitive that because we've had two houses
burned twenty years ago in different fires, so we're well
aware of it. I think it didn't the fires didn't
have a bat impact here. Initially we got a few
(17:54):
renters in our communities, but I think most of the
people that had that tragedy found housing out to Dean
or closer to the Pacific Alasades. What it's had done
has made us a lot more sensitive in the entire
industry in the cities to say, how do you build
houses that are more resilient, How can you do different
kinds of landscaping? So it opened all of our eyes
(18:16):
to pay more attention to those kinds of issues.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Absolutely, so switching gears because you hit various segments of development.
We're going to head into the retail markets because of
course we know that they've been appended by e commerce
and shifting consumer habits. How are your shopping centers adapting
and what do you see as the future of brick
and mortar retail.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
We've seen an interesting few trends. I mean, people predicted
with the Internet that retail was going to die and
know on and go shopping, and almost all those predictions
were wrong. What we've seen is that bad retail either
in old locations are sort of not very good tenants.
Those have struggled. But there's strong, strong demands for good retail.
(19:05):
And so we've got over thirty five shopping centers. We've
got a very strong retail development team. They just wrote
the shopping Center Conventions Sunday and Monday in Palm Springs
and reported very strong interest. We see that there's going
to be a strong market for good retail. Good anchors
like we do a lot with State or Brothers that
(19:26):
we work with other tenants too, but new centers with
a good anchor, and then good tenants doing things that
you can't do on the internet. So most of our
centers now will have a grocery store, They will have
some sort of coffee, whether it's Starbucks or someone else.
They sometimes will have a drug store. They definitely will
(19:46):
have restaurants, and a lot of times they'll have personal services.
It could be a hair salon or a dentist. Things
that you're not going to do on the Internet. So
we have found for us that good retail is a
very good investment. We're aggressively looking for more retail sites.
What I think it means for Southern California is there'll
(20:07):
be some opportunities for what I characterize as not such
good retail, and I think in many cases those will
be redeveloped. Throughout Southern California. They may keep the elements
of the shopping center that are doing well, but in
often cases though not some of the older parts down
and replace it with apartments or for sale housing.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Wow. Well, that makes a lot of sense, especially when
you drive to various parts of Southern California. It's clear
that some evolution is necessary to you know, update and
innovate the surrounding community.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
With that said, it's interesting that you have been able
to pinpoint the exact dynamic of what it takes to
create a successful retail center, and you know, talking about
those services, like you said that the hairstyle is the dentist,
the coffee shops. One of my new favorites are the
t shops right with the jelly and the boba. It's
(21:05):
great and I feel like they're a little bit healthier
for me because a little bit less caffeine. But what
other anchor tenants in addition to State Brothers and similar
retail owners like that, have you seen come online to say,
you know, Lewis Management Corp. And Lewis Corp. In general,
(21:27):
we want to be a part of these retail centers
and are committing to be part of those anchor tenants
throughout your commercial developments.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Are you're definitely food? I think the retailers are also
looking for a number of things. They're looking for parking,
They're looking for good signage. Sometimes it's hard in cities
that don't want signage, but the retailers need signage and
parking to make it as easy as possible for the customers.
They're looking for a sense of place. The retailers like
(21:55):
being somewhere where people go and say, well, I'm going
to shop at one store, but I may walk around
in a perfect shopping center world. You hope they're going
to go to two or three other stores. In some cases,
there's what's called experiential retail, how to do something that
could make people stay longer. It might be some sort
of entertainment, or it could be different kinds of uses.
(22:17):
So we're always evolving as a company, and we're lucky
because a good number of our shopping centers are insights
in our master planned communities. We spend a lot of
time on our master planned communities trying to put them
together to say, where should the shopping center go, Where
should the apartments go. If there's family housing, put it
next to an elementary school, if they're seniors housing. Think
(22:39):
we're some access to transportation or other services. So as
a community developer, we spend a lot of time planning those.
Back to the retail part of the question, Yeah, the
retailers want to be in successful areas that look good,
have good architecture, but make it very easy and attractive
for the shoppers. Because at the end of the day,
(23:01):
it's the shoppers and the retail centers who write our
checks who make us successful. So we do a lot
of market researching what are customers looking for. Unfortunately, they're
still eating, and they're still going out, and they're still
geating these personal services.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Absolutely. So with that said, Randal, we are coming up
on a break, so that was perfect timing. Thank you
so much for that everyone listening. Eva Walker with ABC
News and Talk Southern California Business Report here today with
mister Randal Lewis, Executive vice president of Lewis Management Core,
shaping California and Nevada's real estate landscape for fifty years.
(23:37):
A visionary developer and philanthropist, his leadership and generosity have
transformed communities, supported education and health, and earned him widespread
recognition and numerous honors.
Speaker 5 (23:50):
When we return, Hi, I'm Dana Radamaker with MGR Property Management.
(24:11):
A lot of people wonder about.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
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Speaker 6 (24:15):
Property management can include all property types, including residential, commercial,
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Speaker 3 (24:20):
It is valuable because property.
Speaker 6 (24:22):
Managers are experienced in what can happen at your property.
We're aware liabilities, We're able to do predictive and preventive maintenance.
We know what is coming up with the changes in
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capital projects that your property are. We're able to best
negotiate contract pricing, legalities with your tenants, and anything else
(24:45):
that you may need to ensure that you're getting the
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Speaker 2 (27:08):
Welcome back everyone, Yvette Walker with ABC News and Talks
Southern California Business Report here today with mister Randall Lewis,
Executive Vice president of Lewis Management Corp. Shaping California and
Nevada's real estate landscape for fifty years. A visionary developer
and philanthropist, his leadership and generosity has transformed communities, supported education,
(27:30):
and health, and earned him widespread recognition and numerous honors.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Randall, thank you. You're welcome.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
So prior to the break, we kind of had a
brief overview of the various types of development that you
are dedicated to providing our community. We're going to kind
of switch gears, but before we do that, I want
to talk about, with all that you do in development
and in your philanthropic efforts, how do you balance and
(28:00):
family and your career obligations.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Sure it's a hard thing to do. I mean, we're lucky.
The company has almost eight hundred talented women and men,
and I have three brothers who are involved in the business.
But we've got a great group of people. Our CEO
has been with us for forty five years. His son
will be taking over in a couple of years as
the next CEO. We've spent a lot of time on
(28:26):
succession planning. We've got a very strong group at every level.
We do a lot of work on succession planning. And
then I get a lot of support at home. My wife, Janell,
we've been married over thirty eight years. She's very tolerant
and helps me. I've got three children and luckily all
three of them work in the business. Sarah, Riley and Rosie,
(28:47):
and they all have important roles in the company, and
I hope they continue to have important roles in the company.
And more fortunately, we have two dogs at home, Scarlett
and Jared's. They bring us a lot of joy too.
So a lot of the things I do, I mean,
my wife is in charge of everything, all sorts of
domestic affairs, so that frees me to get some time.
(29:08):
And then, as I said, we just have a lot
of great team members at the company that allow me
to do what I do. I try to do a
lot of my non work stuff either at nights or
weekends because I've still worked full time. But it gives
me a lot of joy to also work on that
community in philanthropic endeavors.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Well, you know, everywhere we look, we see your fingerprint
on so many important and critical parts of these philanthropic efforts.
So your philanthropic investments have led to the creation of
four major centers at Chafey College, the University of Laverne,
Claremont McKenna, and cal State Samonandino. What unites these initiatives
(29:49):
and how do they collectively advance entrepreneurship and innovation.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
When I was in School at Claremont mccannon in the
early nineteen seventies, I took classes from an named Peter Drucker,
who was one of the fathers of modern management and entrepreneurship,
and it always struck with me. And then growing up
with my parents who were true entrepreneurs, and my brothers,
so I always was interested. And so over the years
(30:15):
I've tried to study entrepreneurship in innovation and tried to
think how can we do that as a company. But
then as we got more resources and I got older,
I said, let's try to create more of a culture
of entrepreneurship in our valley. So I'm in the fall
starting more in geographic order. The University of Laverne. We
worked with President Lieberman at the time to set up
(30:36):
a center for entrepreneurship. They do a lot of great
work with the community. They're very outwardly focused, but they
also do a lot of inward work. Some of the
students set up little businesses or sole products. My alma mater,
Clama mcanna, had a center and I made a naming
gift and they're doing a lot of great work there
(30:57):
and it's a different kind of student body, a lot
of them are going to go into finance. A lot
of them are going to start major companies. At chafe
Ee Community College, I've worked with the board and doctor
Shannon to set up a center for entrepreneurship there. They've
begun to do some very interesting programs and I think
they're going to do even more great stuff in the future.
(31:17):
And then sort of the biggest of all of them
is at Kelscate Semnentino, that already had an existing school
of entrepreneurship, a very mature program, and I was fortunate
enough to get involved with them when they're leadership there.
We just had a meeting last week in fact, where
we had all four the centers in one room and said,
let's learn what each of you are doing, but let's
(31:39):
also learn how we can collaborate together, how can we
pull some pieces together. And I think some interesting ideas
came out of that grouping. I was in a meeting
today with someone from UC Riverside, and I have one
this weekend with the chancellor, and I know they're very
focused on innovation and entrepreneurships. I'm hoping we can help
support a lot of the efforts there and other ORGANIZATIONSW
(32:02):
Baptists is doing a lot, and Redlands is doing a
lot in the community colleges in our regions. So I'm
hoping to keep supporting the existing organizations, but also to
do some more work. It's important on entrepreneurship as we
work on it to recognize it's not just in businesses,
entrepreneurship and organizations profit and not for profit. It's equally important.
(32:26):
So we're trying to focus on the not for profit
sector also, and we're also trying to focus not just
on the entrepreneur Entrepreneurship can happen in any level of
an organization, so we're trying to think how can we
create an entrepreneurial mindset for everybody, no matter what level
in the organization. So it's an interesting challenge as I
(32:50):
look at the region and we've been blessed to be
a part of it for almost seventy years now, really
concerned can we keep growing job bases. It's something that's
important for us as a company. We try to work
on a lot of quality of life issues, but we
also try to work on a lot of the issues
just on workforce training and creating jobs because we want
(33:11):
to give back, but we also want to create the
customers of the future and the workers of the future.
And so for me, working on entrepreneurship is a really
good way to help support business growth and higher paying jobs.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
That is absolutely remarkable, especially when you're talking about the
workforce in general, right, embedding and developing that entrepreneurial mindset
to bring to their employers, right, how to be more efficient,
more streamlined, more creative, more resourceful, all of the things
that you know, entrepreneurs that start these businesses have to
consider when they are starting, and you know, being as
(33:46):
efficient and analytical as possible to ensure that their efforts
are being successful and they're able to measure them. So
I love that principle of integrating that mindset into the
broader workforce. That's that's a great initiative.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
And part of it that is, I mean, in Southern California,
we're blessed with a lot of good things. We have
a lot of challenges in Southern California, and I think
one is not enough leaders recognized we compete with other
parts of the state and other states and other countries.
And so part of what I'm trying to play a
small role and help us be even more competitive with
(34:22):
these other states and countries to say, how can we
showcase all that's good in southern California and especially the
inland out fire when we do so much work, and
how can we have the right workforce and the right
mindset to compete in the decades ahead.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Absolutely, that's just a brilliant vision to really integrate and
bring to the top of the mind of our youth
right right, of the next generation of workforce leaders. Absolutely exciting. So, Randal,
how do you ensure that your philanthropic centers collaborate and
avoid working in silos? You mentioned that you brought them
(35:00):
together recently, you know, especially when it comes to fostering
entrepreneurship and well being, because I know well being is
a huge part of your efforts and how that all
comes into play and is integrated together.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Well, First off, that the centers run themselves. MY job
is to be the wind beneath their wings and to
do all I can do to help them. But these
are independent organizations with great leaders and great team members.
So I'm just trying to help by saying, have you
thought of this, Let's do some convenings, what might be
some synergies. But that they are independent groups. I don't
(35:36):
want anyone to think I'd run them. They've got far
better people than I am running those organizations. But bringing
them together, I think was an important step, and we
hope to have more gatherings in the future, and we
hope to cast a wider net to try to bring
in a lot of other organizations. A lot of people
are doing entrepreneurship in the region. We're not always talking
(35:56):
to each other the way we should.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
You know, bringing everybody together and having those conversations is
such a critical part of identifying those resources and those
opportunities and how to leverage them together to meet that
common goal and hit those those benchmarks that you're that
you're referring to. And you know you've heavily invested in
higher education, from the UCR Policy Fellowship Program to the
(36:23):
kel Poly Pomona Lyles Center Fellowship and the UCLA Lewis
Center for Regional Policy Studies. Why is supporting academic research
and student development so central to your mission?
Speaker 3 (36:37):
I think it goes back to my parents. My parents
grew up during the Depression, especially my dad was very,
very poor, so we just ingrained in all of us
as a family. If we enjoy success, we have an
obligation or responsibility to give it back. But they also
felt we should try to focus. They said, you can't
support everything. Try to pick a few things where you
(36:58):
can make a difference. And they also said try to
do it with people smarter than you are, which is
easy for me to find people smarter than me, and
that in a lot of cases we found that working
with the universities and also the high schools and junior highs,
it's a good way to shape minds. It's a good
way to learn from very smart not just professors but students,
(37:19):
and a lot of these colleges, the students know way
more than I do or a lot of our people do.
And so we've been involved at UCLA. My parents got
us first involved there. They started something called the Lewis
Center for Regional Studies, and they realized as developers that
we have impacts. There is traffic, there is pollution, there
is a need for more parks or more schools. So
(37:42):
they set up a center to try to study those things,
and usually has been at it for over forty years
and they're doing a really good job. I recently have
gotten even more involved. They're trying to support their work
and also support a housing initiative. In this case, I
just give monetary support and a few ideas, but doing
all the work. And they're very independent, so they should be.
(38:03):
So I don't say do this or do this, but
I say, have you looked at this or thought of that.
I'm quite involved at USC and also really involved at
help Poly, which is local. We have sponsored interns to
help work at the Lyles Center. We've sponsored a couple
classes at help Poly. We've sponsored interns working at Dublin
School District of Nutrition and Farming and Agriculture, and so
(38:27):
I hope to continue that relationship. And we have just
found that working with students, especially when they get internships
or fellowships, it's a triple win and sometimes the quadruple win.
It's obviously good for the student because they get some
real world experiences. It's good for the institution, it helps
them recruit, it's very good for the organization they work with.
(38:51):
And then the fourth that I'm trying to think how
we could do a better job is to build a
body of knowledge, to take some of the work and
make it more longitudinal. Say, can we study some things
over years or decades. So that's sort of the fourth thing.
So when you ask why how did we get involved
in why, it's because of those multiple benefits. It's a
gift that keeps on giving.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Absolutely, I mean, it's a multi generational gift and a
true legacy that you know, obviously your parents have set
the tone for and so brilliantly so with their children
forging forward with this philosophy. So thank you so much
for that Randal. And you know, the Randall Lewis Health
(39:33):
Policy Fellows and the Lewis and Antonio Healthy Communities Institute
represent a major push into public health. What inspired your
focus on the intersection of real estate and community health.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
I didn't even know that public health was a field
till about twenty five years ago or twenty eight years ago,
and I started to read some articles about the field
of public health and realize at where you live, what
your zip code is, what your community's like, can really
have an impact on health. And so I just immersed myself.
I talked to a lot of experts, I got invited
(40:10):
to attend some conferences, and I realized it could be
one of the real contributions we could make is to
try to support public health and try to support healthy communities.
And do it through financial support, through leadership, but also
by showcasing it in the developments.
Speaker 4 (40:26):
That we do.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
So public health has been really important to me and
it continues to be important, and I know it will
be for my children going forward. I think one of
the best programs that we've been involved in something called
the Randall Lewis Health Fellows, and it's run by Dora Billa,
who you know well and is one of the leaders
in the state and the country on public health, and
(40:47):
Janie Woarn. It's a great program because I don't run
at someone else does all the hard work. But it
involves masters and PhD students. This year, I think we
have twenty six of them. Over the years we've had
over three hundred and fifty. And we give them a
stipend and we act like a matchmaking service where we
(41:07):
match students at the graduate level with either cities or
hospitals or agencies and they'll study things like access to healthcare,
access to transportation, career pathways, healthy gardens, healthy food in schools.
We try to match the needs and interests of the
student with the needs of the institution. They do projects
(41:29):
at the end where they present all the work they've
done and now they're farming of their own network that
they're over three hundred and fifty. They've formed a really
good network. So it's a fantastic program. We also support
the Lewis San Antonio Healthy Communities Institute that's done some
great work. It does clinical trot, clinical visits, it does
(41:51):
shadowing programs. John Chapman has been very supportive of this
at San Antonio. Fium is very grateful and Eileen runs
that program now. It also does stuff with the high
school students and the junior high school students to try
to teach nutrition, to try to teach career pathways. I
know that they're currently working with Ontario Moncler School District
(42:12):
with the recognition if you want to get people interested
in healthcare, you can't wait till they're in graduate school
and a lot of time we want to get them
excited in junior high school so that in high school
they'll study the right classes and then make the right
choices even after that. So those two programs have been
really fantastic. Based on the success, we just started a
(42:34):
program at U SEE Riverside at the School of Public Policy,
and it's called the Randall Lewis policy fellows, and I
think this year there's twelve of them that just announced
it last week. It's a similar model that worked for
a school year. They're primarily graduate students and policy not
all of them are graduate students for this first year,
and they'll be either with the city or the county
(42:56):
or agencies to try to match needs and do good work,
and the students get a real good experience. They also
get something on their resume. So my wife and I
have really enjoyed success with these internships and fellowships, and
I know we will continue that as a family.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
For a long long time, absolutely, and we know that
healthcare has a tremendous need for workforce development to meet
the needs today's needs and the needs of the future.
So thank you so much for those contributions and for
that vision to support those efforts that are so important,
and especially from a much younger age as you mentioned
right junior high, to start cultivating that curiosity and being
(43:36):
their horizons. It's about what opportunities actually exist, and especially
in healthcare because oftentimes when people think healthcare, they're thinking
blood and needles, but it's not necessarily true because there's
clinical and non clinical career pathways that are available to
anyone and everyone with you know that wants a wonderful
career with obviously job security. Well into the future, everyone's
(44:01):
always going to need healthcare, and the better healthcare is
going to.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Need healthcare at least for a while. It won't be
replaced by robots, it won't be replaced by AI. It
may be supplemented as always. When you look at our region,
health care and education and government services are some of
the biggest sectors. So we want to help create that
educated workforce and let people know you don't have to
be a doctor to go into healthcare. There's a lot
(44:26):
of different career paths that have stable employment and very
good income, So try to do a lot of career
technical education and healthcare is one of the primary things
we focus.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
On tremendous and so from the Lewis Museum of Art
in Claremont to the Randall and Janelle Lewis Library in Eastvale,
your projects often combine culture, education, and community. How do
you see these investments shaping the civic fabric of the
inland southern California.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
Well, in this case, I probably wouldn't call them those investment.
Those are more just thank yous that we've got involved.
In Claremont, it's called the Claramont Lewis Museum and it's
run by a group in the city of Claramont has
been very supportive. E Scale is going to be building
a library. And then in Rantrokucamama there's something called the
Randall Lewis Second Story which is above the library and
(45:19):
it's fantastic place for parents to take their kids and
it's run on by the city. I just helped support it,
but they designed it to be a family place. So
some museums are just for kids, are just for adults.
This is one for families to do things together. There's
a new exhibit I haven't seen yet, but they've done
a good job. And we've done a lot in Fontan
(45:40):
in this nature too with the library and other things.
So I think what you will see if that is
for our family every year or every other year. I
hope to make some major gift to something more as
a way to say thank you to those communities for
letting us to do business there. And you're right in
a ways investment, because the more we have quality of life,
(46:02):
it may make people say, yes, I'm going to stay
in this community because there's a museum or a library,
or hiking trails or good healthcare. So I think of
them as gifts, but you're right, they are investments in
the future.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Also, absolutely, And so you've also been a tremendous and
obvious champion of public private partnerships. What are the most
effective ways that business, government and nonprofits can collaborate to
address complex challenges like housing and health.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
There's not enough money in California or really anywhere in
the country to solve all the projects working in silos.
We just can't solve the housing issues, the transportation issues,
the health issues working alone. So I think there's some
good organizations. The Inland Empire Economic Partnership is one, Inland
Empire Health Plan is one. There are a lot of
(46:54):
Royal I egos one and growing Inland Achievement. We try
to get an in a lot of these again to
support people that are doing work that are better than
we are. I mean, one of the very best is
Inland Empire Community Foundation. Michelle Decker and her board and
staff have done a phenomenal job. And I think it's
incumbent on all of us to support these existing organizations
(47:18):
use them as conveners use them as sources of raising money.
I think a big thing a number of I'm working
on is how to increase the culture of philanthropy in
our region. Our region lags other areas in terms of
attracting foundation money but also just raising money amongst our cells.
So I think groups like the Community Foundation are just
(47:38):
doing a fantastic job. But that myral again is to
support people smarter than I am that are doing that
kind of work and just how can I help them
achieve their goals because together we all will make a better.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
Region without a doubt. Randall And speaking of the Inland
Empire Community Foundation and community in general, how has your
own definition of care community evolved over the years and
how does that influence the projects you choose to support
or develop.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
Community is a word that is a home builder. We
really never thought of it just wasn't a big part
of our vocabulary. But we started doing master planning communities
in a big way in the early two thousands, and
then we realize that community means a lot of different things.
I don't know the formal definition, but when I think
of a community a master planned community, it's one where
(48:27):
there's a lot of planning where someone's using foresight, where
the pieces go together, you have the right architectural standards.
But as we got more involved in the way, we
realize community is more than that. It's building volunteer groups,
it's building connections. Where's so many people that feel isolated.
Now there's work on what's called the otherness. You want
people to aware others. We want everyone to be together.
(48:50):
I spend a lot of my time trying to think
how to build community, and not just in our communities
that we develop, but in the cities and counties where
we do work. So more and more. If you said,
what word has really evolved in my mind in the
last twenty five years, is probably the word community and
what we can do to build more community.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
So, Randal, as you look to the future, what is
your greatest hope for the legacy of the Lewis family,
not only in real estate, but in the lives you've
touched through your philanthropy and community building efforts.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Well, I'm proud of I mean, we're humble, but I'm
proud we've been able to give back. I know for
my brothers and for me and our staff members. We
get a lot of pleasure driving through communities that we've developed.
We get a lot of pleasure when someone says, I
shop in one of your shopping centers, so I grew
up in one of your homes. That feels good. And
we get letters and we get people talking to me
(49:47):
all the time about the impact of something we did
that makes me feel good and encourages me to do more.
I mean the hope through my children, through my wife,
through my nieces and their cousins, feuse that we can
keep it going. But it's a lot more than the
Lewis family, and it's the Lewis Group of Companies too.
As I said, we've got nearly eight hundred people. We
(50:10):
hope we can become an evergreen company, that we can
keep doing it and that we're able to enjoy success
so that we can continue to reinvest and give back
to where we do business.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Thank you so much for that. Randall, you have my
full support in all of your mission and all of
your activities as always, and we just covered we skim
the surface of everything that you're involved in and all
the ways that you and Lewis Group of Companies invest
in the community. But thank you so much for sharing
your insight and your passion for philanthropy, education through health
(50:48):
and public policy, entrepreneurship and innovation, so many critical aspects
of what it means to be a successful and thriving community.
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Thank you. And if I I just met with a
message for those who are listening, I mean be involved
and get involved. As I said earlier, there's so much
need for good talent, and so get involved in your communities.
Get involved in the organizations. Find things that interest you.
There's so many needs, whether it's health or sports. There's
United Way, there's lots of Goodwill, there's lots of great organizations.
(51:22):
Pick ones that you care about and get involved because
together we will build a better region.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
That is the truth. Randal, thank you so much for
your time and your insight for everybody to thank you us.
Thank you so much, Randall. So for everybody listening, don't
forget to find us on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Check us out on SCBR talk dot com. Don't miss
my conversation with Christine Scott, president of Calcidis and Inland Empire,
(51:52):
and Rancho cucamonga council member who shapes regional progress as
so Calgases public Affairs manager, celebrated for her dynamic leadership, advocacy,
and award winning services across Southern California. Her impact unites
communities and inspires change throughout the Inlan Empire. And speaking
of mister John Chapman, next week, we will have John Chapman,
(52:16):
President and CEO of San Antonio Regional Hospital in Upland, California,
where he has driven financial resurgence, program growth, and national
recognition since twenty eighteen. Under his leadership, San Antonio Regional
Hospital has achieved a four star medical care ranking, top
fifty cardiology hospital status and expanded its services with a
(52:38):
regional medical group and a new center for aging. Chapman
has improved bond ratings and is leading regional efforts addressing
mental health and addiction. He chairs the Hospital Association of
Southern California's Inland Empire region and previously held executive roles
at Highland Hospital and UCSF and holds degrees from UC
Berkeley and the University of Phoenix. You do not want
(53:00):
to miss it. We will see you all next week
Welcome to k MET fourteen ninety am, ABC News Radio
and the Southern California Business Report with Evett Walker, a
show dedicated to highlighting successful Southern California businesses and the
people behind them.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome and thank you for joining Southern California Business Report
on ABC News and talks KMET fourteen ninety AM, ninety
eight point one FM and km ET TV. I'm Evet
Walker live blasting our signal from the center Southern California,
serving a population of over twenty five million. Get us
crystal clear and on demand by downloading the free livestreaming
(00:39):
app on Google Play and the Apple App Store. As always,
a huge shout out to the team Mitch, Bill and
Sean I love you guys, and of course to our
special advisory committee that can be found at www dot
scbr talk dot com forward Slash Advisory Committee. Click on
(00:59):
the link and learn about the remarkable leaders doing the work.
And of course, speaking of leaders, I have none other
than Randal Lewis, who is the executive vice president and
principal of Lewis Management Corps, part of the Lewis Group
of companies, one of California and Nevada's leading real estate developers.
With over fifty years in the industry, he has helped
(01:21):
the Lewis Group develop master planned communities, over thirty five
shopping centers, and numerous apartment and industrial projects. The company
owns thirteen thousand plus apartments and has built more than
sixty thousand homes and apartments to date. A dedicated philanthropist,
Randall supports health, education, entrepreneurship, and the arts, with centers
(01:44):
bearing his name at the University of Laverne, Claremont, McKenna College,
Chafey College, and cal State Samordino. He has held leadership
roles in regional organizations, including the Building Industry Association and
the Southern California Leadership Council. Randall's contributions have earned him
multiple prestigious awards and two honorary doctorate's recognizing his impact
(02:05):
on the region. Thank you so much for being with
us today, Randall Jibeat.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Thank you for having me, and thank you for the show.
It's inspirational to be here. So many great people you
bring on the show.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I appreciate you, and you know you are one of
those various inspirational people. So let's just start by talking
about when your career began, you know, it began with
a single step. Can you take us back to your
earliest days in the real estate industry and share what
motivated you to pursue this path.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Well.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Ours is a family business, so my parents started a
home building company in the mid nineteen fifties. I wasn't
very active then. I was four years old when they
started it in three and two, and they were planning
on it. So I was taking my first steps then,
and it was just a family business that was all encompassing.
I mean, I have three older brothers. As we were
(02:58):
in school, we all worked in the family business, and
my parents gave us options. In fact, they didn't want
us to go into the family business. Their dream was
that we had become accountants, and luckily or unluckily, I
think we all hated accounting, so we all ended up,
one way or another going into the family business. So
it wasn't a conscious thing, and we were lucky because
(03:18):
as sons we were born into a business and as
our brothers and I got out of school the company.
When my oldest brother got out of school in nineteen
sixty five, the company had already been around ten years.
I got out of nineteen seventy three, and so it
was eight years later, so we were already an established business.
We were very fortunate that my parents chose to move
(03:40):
to the Inland Empire. It was rough on them because
I know this area was not growing as much in
the fifties and sixties, but it was great for us
because we came into a mature company in a very
rapidly growing area.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Right, and can you take us back to your first
job within the family company.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Well, we all had lots of jobs, and we literally
started at the bottom. I know back then we build
houses sometimes on raised foundations. There wasn't a basement, but
there was a crawl space underneath it, and I know
all of us spent time underneath picking out trash and
cleaning out spider webs. We all did work at mowing
lawns or doing landscaping. We did work sweeping out houses.
(04:24):
As we all got older, we migrated into office jobs
and sometimes it was emptying trash cans and then filing
and then running errands. So it was total, all encompassing
for us. Growing up. We had great parents. They were
great teachers and very charitable to us and very charitable
to the community. But it was just something it was
(04:46):
in our DNA to work in the family business and
also to give back to the communities where we live.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Well, what a wonderful family legacy. And today the Lewis
Company now spans master planned communities, shopping centers, apartments, and
industrial developments. What are the most exciting projects you're currently
leading and how do they reflect your vision for the future.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Well, we're a multifaceted company. As you said in the introduction.
We do master playing communities, but we also do apartments,
we do shopping centers, we do complex mixed use developments,
we do property management, and we also do industrial So
there's not one project that I'd say what I'm most
excited about. As developers and I'm involved on the more
creative side, i always say the most exciting project we're
(05:35):
doing is whatever the next one is. We dow our
company in the industry almost like a living laboratory. We're
always trying new experiments. We're trying to say what worked,
didn't work, and how can we continually get better and
try new innovations. So I'm very excited about all the
new developments we're doing. We try not to do ordinary communities.
(05:56):
We try to do what we call signature developments that
lead the lasting imprint on the communities where we do business.
We're really motivated to make better communities and better lives.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
And it's really evident in the design of your housing,
retail and industrial projects. And of course, with fifty years
of background knowledge and data collection, it's clear to see
why you've really excelled and are where you are today.
So Randall tell us, California faces obviously a persistent housing shortage.
(06:29):
How is the Lewis Group innovating to address both the
supply and affordability challenges on the sales and rental sides
of the market.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
That's a great question of that. There's a lot of
discussion on what kind of housing should be built in California.
Some talk about should it be infill housing or suburban housing,
or luxury housing or affordable housing, and the proper answer
is all of the above. We are so short as
a state in providing the needed housing for all the segments.
(07:00):
Really has to work on all of them. All segments
of the state are short of needed housing. I think
as a specialty for our company, we're doing a lot
of work and what's called missing middle housing. There's a
real gap between sort of the luxury housing and the
very very affordable housing. And it's probably more important now
(07:21):
than ever to say what's in the middle, sort of
townhouses and condominiums and higher density detached housing, housing that
normal people can afford. And so we're doing a lot there.
We're also doing quite a bit of event in our
communities to try to say, how can the projects we do,
whether it's an apartment or a planned community, how can
(07:42):
it change people's lives. So we try to build in
a very strong health component. We partner with local health
agencies or organizations. We put in walking trails, and generally gymnasiums.
We generally have people doing programming on wellness classes and
eating classes and stress reduction. We're really trying to think,
(08:03):
what are the different populations that are living in our
communities or apartments, what are their different needs, and how
can we contribute to them having better lives? All the
while remembering the main product or selling is some sort
of housing, of course, so we try to say, let's work.
If it's a home for sale, we work with what
we call guest homebuilders. We don't build the homes anymore.
(08:26):
We work with some of the best homebuilders in the
United States, and if it's an apartment, we will work
on that. But we work very hard on what we
call segmentation to try to make sure that we do
all sorts of different kinds of housing to meet people's
needs at different ages, different lifestyles, different demographics. And then
we also work very hard on the programming to make
(08:48):
sure that we can bring in events and classes, as
I said, but we also work on a lot of
the physical elements too, So we do one of our
master planned communities try to look at the plan to
say is it a plan that will promote healthy living
and that would be done by a lot of things.
Do you have walking trails? Do avoid hazardous conditions? Is
(09:11):
are there safe routes to school? So we spend a
lot of time on the physical part. We also, more
than a lot of our competitors, will invest pretty heavily
in amenities like swimming pools and gymnasiums. It's hard for
someone to swim with there's not a swimming pool, it's
hard to work out if you don't have a gymnasium.
We try to put those in wherever we can to
(09:32):
promote health. We also do a lot of partnerships on
our communities. We try to think who are the best providers.
It might be a school district, it might be childcare,
it might be someone like San Antonio Regional Hospital, it
might be the Boys and Girls Club. We partner with
a lot of organizations to say what are the social
(09:52):
needs that need to be put into a community, and
who's the best provider. In a lot of cases, it's
not us. We try to say who are best in
class providers that we could partner work with as we
look at some of the policy elements. We try to
work with a number of the cities we're involved in
on their policies, especially on health and education, to say,
(10:15):
how can we put in the general plans things that
will promote healthy living or to promote a better education.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And that's really been a signature, a moniker of all
of your developments. And you know, we were just speaking
to Councilwoman Christine Scott of Rancho Cucamonga that talks about
that master plan that goes back decades and how all
of that is deeply rooted and integrated into those master
plans and it's just a testament to the beautiful development
(10:45):
that we see today. So Randall, talking about development, you've
recently pioneered a build for rent model that blurs the
line between apartments and single style homes. What insights led
you to the strategy and how do you see it
changing the rental landscape.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
That's also an excellent question. So probably the hottest segment
in housing across the country now is what people are
calling build for rent, and it's a recognition that more
and more people are going to be renters, some because
they can't afford the down payment, but in a lot
of cases it's renters by choice. And so it used
to be that the home ownership rates and a lot
(11:25):
of California are over sixty percent. In many parts of California,
that's slipping the closer to fifty percent. So we recognized
as more people were trying to we're renting, choosing to rent,
what kinds of things did they want. There's still a
very very strong market for what you'd call conventional apartments
(11:45):
two through or four story apartments, typically one or two bedrooms.
Typically they have some sort of clubhouse or some sort
of recreation amenity. But they're the kind of apartments that
you probably grew up in and your parents may have
grown up in We saw that that's a good market
for many people, but it's cost have gone up as
the incomes have gone up, as lifestyles have changed. We
(12:08):
began to see a call for something different. And these
would be people that say, well, I want to rent,
but I don't want to be in that kind of
one or two bedroom apartment. I'm not sure I want
somebody on top of me or below me. So we've
been working on this for about twenty years, but we've
really ramped it up in just the last two or
three years. And so a typical build front across the country,
(12:30):
the characteristics would be they're smaller, they're typically in groups
of one hundred maybe two hundred homes. They typically feel
in some way like houses, so generally their two story,
they're occasionally three story. A lot of times they're detached,
their little bungalows. We do them with garages, but they
offered the lifestyle of a house, but then they offered
(12:54):
the professional management of an apartment community and some of
the lifestyle components. We just finished the build front community
called Independence at the Preserved in Chino and it was
a real success. The rents are three thousand to four
thousand dollars a month, but you get a two car garage,
you get three bedrooms or two bedrooms, you get access
(13:16):
to really good recreation facilities, and best of all, you
get professional management. And a lot of the communities across
the country, anywhere from ten to twenty percent of the
housing stock is rented at the detached houses. A lot
of people don't know that, and typically it might be
mothers or fathers that are doing it. It could be
(13:36):
a family owns two or three rentals, or a dentist
or a doctor or an attorney makes a little money
and sell these owners and that's a nice segment for people.
It's a good investment. But often those kinds of owners
change their mind. Either they decide to sell the home,
or they don't have the neat the ability to keep it,
or they want to bring in a family member. And
(13:58):
so we've heard in our market Recepece, a lot of
people say, you know, I want that single family lifestyle,
but I really want professional management. As something goes wrong,
who's going to fix the leaky roof or change the
lights or take care of the landscaping. So our model
is what we call build for rent. We're doing this
project we just finished in Chino, kind of a grand
(14:18):
opening in northern California for a community in Dixon that
will be called the Independence of Dixon. We've just started
building one in West Sacramento. We hope to do one
in Renal Valley. We're going to do one in Grand Terrace.
We're going to do one in Riverside. I hope we
can do one in Fontana. Altogether, we probably have ten communities.
There will be a couple of billion dollars worth of business.
(14:40):
It's a big commitment on our part, and based on
our preliminary results in Chino, I think it's going to
be a big, big success.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
One of the things we found on some of these rentals,
people question, you know, well, I don't want rentals across
the street, but on these communities, the only difference between
our renters and some of the home owner nearby is
that our renterries usually have higher incomes. And so it's
a very interesting niche and we hope to do quite
a bit of it, and I think you'll see more
and more of it throughout southern California, not in the
(15:12):
close in areas. You won't see it in a lot
of La County or the heart of Orange County. But
I think you'll see more and more of it in
the suburban market places where land is a little bit cheaper.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Well, it really sounds like this type of development hits
the head on every best part of residential living, right.
So you have a professional management company that is taking
care of the grounds for you, so busy professionals and
families that have soccer games and work to go to
don't necessarily have the time to invest mowing lawns and
(15:45):
trimming hedges have that done for them. And of course
the beautiful exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
We're also doing a lot of housing for sale like
that in our planned communities for those same kind of reasons.
When my parents started building the fifties and sixties and seventies,
people had bigger lots, they had more children. Having families
with three or four children was very common, and they
spent a lot of time in the backyard. But today
(16:12):
the lifestyles have changed. Probably half of the households in
our communities don't have any children at all, and a
big number are the ones that do have one child
or two children at all, and typically they're doing after
school sports or they're doing classes or math or something else,
and so they don't want to spend time mowing the lawn.
And on weekends, those who have families are doing family activities,
(16:37):
So we're doing quite a bit. Most of the housing
we're doing is sort of what they call this missing middle,
to try to hit the lower price points, but they
also appeal to the new lifestyles. There's still a lot
of resale homes on the market and some new homes
for those families or individuals to say, I want a
big home on a big lot. There are plenty of choices,
(16:58):
but we have found there's a lot more demand now
for things that are more affordably priced and where the
homes and the life sizes and the programming is tailored
to their lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Well, it's really exciting to see these ten projects come online,
and two billion dollars is a tremendous investment into housing.
So thank you so much for being a big part of,
you know, closing that gap with the housing crisis that
we're all experiencing, which of course I'm sure has only
been compounded by those devastating fires that occurred in La
not too long ago. How does that play into the
(17:31):
landscape well, the.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Fires were a tragedy, and unfortunately they're probably not the
last fires that we'll have in southern California. My wife
and I are sensitive that because we've had two houses
burned twenty years ago in different fires, so we're well
aware of it. I think it didn't the fires didn't
have a bat impact here. Initially we got a few
(17:54):
renters in our communities, but I think most of the
people that had that tragedy found housing out to Dean
or closer to the Pacific Alasades. What it's had done
has made us a lot more sensitive in the entire
industry in the cities to say, how do you build
houses that are more resilient, How can you do different
kinds of landscaping? So it opened all of our eyes
(18:16):
to pay more attention to those kinds of issues.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Absolutely, so switching gears because you hit various segments of development.
We're going to head into the retail markets because of
course we know that they've been appended by e commerce
and shifting consumer habits. How are your shopping centers adapting
and what do you see as the future of brick
and mortar retail.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
We've seen an interesting few trends. I mean, people predicted
with the Internet that retail was going to die and
know on and go shopping, and almost all those predictions
were wrong. What we've seen is that bad retail either
in old locations are sort of not very good tenants.
Those have struggled. But there's strong, strong demands for good retail.
(19:05):
And so we've got over thirty five shopping centers. We've
got a very strong retail development team. They just wrote
the shopping Center Conventions Sunday and Monday in Palm Springs
and reported very strong interest. We see that there's going
to be a strong market for good retail. Good anchors
like we do a lot with State or Brothers that
(19:26):
we work with other tenants too, but new centers with
a good anchor, and then good tenants doing things that
you can't do on the internet. So most of our
centers now will have a grocery store, They will have
some sort of coffee, whether it's Starbucks or someone else.
They sometimes will have a drug store. They definitely will
(19:46):
have restaurants, and a lot of times they'll have personal services.
It could be a hair salon or a dentist. Things
that you're not going to do on the Internet. So
we have found for us that good retail is a
very good investment. We're aggressively looking for more retail sites.
What I think it means for Southern California is there'll
(20:07):
be some opportunities for what I characterize as not such
good retail, and I think in many cases those will
be redeveloped. Throughout Southern California. They may keep the elements
of the shopping center that are doing well, but in
often cases though not some of the older parts down
and replace it with apartments or for sale housing.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Wow. Well, that makes a lot of sense, especially when
you drive to various parts of Southern California. It's clear
that some evolution is necessary to you know, update and
innovate the surrounding community.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
With that said, it's interesting that you have been able
to pinpoint the exact dynamic of what it takes to
create a successful retail center, and you know, talking about
those services, like you said that the hairstyle is the dentist,
the coffee shops. One of my new favorites are the
t shops right with the jelly and the boba. It's
(21:05):
great and I feel like they're a little bit healthier
for me because a little bit less caffeine. But what
other anchor tenants in addition to State Brothers and similar
retail owners like that, have you seen come online to say,
you know, Lewis Management Corp. And Lewis Corp. In general,
(21:27):
we want to be a part of these retail centers
and are committing to be part of those anchor tenants
throughout your commercial developments.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Are you're definitely food? I think the retailers are also
looking for a number of things. They're looking for parking,
They're looking for good signage. Sometimes it's hard in cities
that don't want signage, but the retailers need signage and
parking to make it as easy as possible for the customers.
They're looking for a sense of place. The retailers like
(21:55):
being somewhere where people go and say, well, I'm going
to shop at one store, but I may walk around
in a perfect shopping center world. You hope they're going
to go to two or three other stores. In some cases,
there's what's called experiential retail, how to do something that
could make people stay longer. It might be some sort
of entertainment, or it could be different kinds of uses.
(22:17):
So we're always evolving as a company, and we're lucky
because a good number of our shopping centers are insights
in our master planned communities. We spend a lot of
time on our master planned communities trying to put them
together to say, where should the shopping center go, Where
should the apartments go. If there's family housing, put it
next to an elementary school, if they're seniors housing. Think
(22:39):
we're some access to transportation or other services. So as
a community developer, we spend a lot of time planning those.
Back to the retail part of the question, Yeah, the
retailers want to be in successful areas that look good,
have good architecture, but make it very easy and attractive
for the shoppers. Because at the end of the day,
(23:01):
it's the shoppers and the retail centers who write our
checks who make us successful. So we do a lot
of market researching what are customers looking for. Unfortunately, they're
still eating, and they're still going out, and they're still
geating these personal services.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Absolutely. So with that said, Randal, we are coming up
on a break, so that was perfect timing. Thank you
so much for that everyone listening. Eva Walker with ABC
News and Talk Southern California Business Report here today with
mister Randal Lewis, Executive vice president of Lewis Management Core,
shaping California and Nevada's real estate landscape for fifty years.
(23:37):
A visionary developer and philanthropist, his leadership and generosity have
transformed communities, supported education and health, and earned him widespread
recognition and numerous honors.
Speaker 5 (23:50):
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Speaker 2 (27:08):
Welcome back everyone, Yvette Walker with ABC News and Talks
Southern California Business Report here today with mister Randall Lewis,
Executive Vice president of Lewis Management Corp. Shaping California and
Nevada's real estate landscape for fifty years. A visionary developer
and philanthropist, his leadership and generosity has transformed communities, supported education,
(27:30):
and health, and earned him widespread recognition and numerous honors.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Randall, thank you. You're welcome.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
So prior to the break, we kind of had a
brief overview of the various types of development that you
are dedicated to providing our community. We're going to kind
of switch gears, but before we do that, I want
to talk about, with all that you do in development
and in your philanthropic efforts, how do you balance and
(28:00):
family and your career obligations.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Sure it's a hard thing to do. I mean, we're lucky.
The company has almost eight hundred talented women and men,
and I have three brothers who are involved in the business.
But we've got a great group of people. Our CEO
has been with us for forty five years. His son
will be taking over in a couple of years as
the next CEO. We've spent a lot of time on
(28:26):
succession planning. We've got a very strong group at every level.
We do a lot of work on succession planning. And
then I get a lot of support at home. My wife, Janell,
we've been married over thirty eight years. She's very tolerant
and helps me. I've got three children and luckily all
three of them work in the business. Sarah, Riley and Rosie,
(28:47):
and they all have important roles in the company, and
I hope they continue to have important roles in the company.
And more fortunately, we have two dogs at home, Scarlett
and Jared's. They bring us a lot of joy too.
So a lot of the things I do, I mean,
my wife is in charge of everything, all sorts of
domestic affairs, so that frees me to get some time.
(29:08):
And then, as I said, we just have a lot
of great team members at the company that allow me
to do what I do. I try to do a
lot of my non work stuff either at nights or
weekends because I've still worked full time. But it gives
me a lot of joy to also work on that
community in philanthropic endeavors.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Well, you know, everywhere we look, we see your fingerprint
on so many important and critical parts of these philanthropic efforts.
So your philanthropic investments have led to the creation of
four major centers at Chafey College, the University of Laverne,
Claremont McKenna, and cal State Samonandino. What unites these initiatives
(29:49):
and how do they collectively advance entrepreneurship and innovation.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
When I was in School at Claremont mccannon in the
early nineteen seventies, I took classes from an named Peter Drucker,
who was one of the fathers of modern management and entrepreneurship,
and it always struck with me. And then growing up
with my parents who were true entrepreneurs, and my brothers,
so I always was interested. And so over the years
(30:15):
I've tried to study entrepreneurship in innovation and tried to
think how can we do that as a company. But
then as we got more resources and I got older,
I said, let's try to create more of a culture
of entrepreneurship in our valley. So I'm in the fall
starting more in geographic order. The University of Laverne. We
worked with President Lieberman at the time to set up
(30:36):
a center for entrepreneurship. They do a lot of great
work with the community. They're very outwardly focused, but they
also do a lot of inward work. Some of the
students set up little businesses or sole products. My alma mater,
Clama mcanna, had a center and I made a naming
gift and they're doing a lot of great work there
(30:57):
and it's a different kind of student body, a lot
of them are going to go into finance. A lot
of them are going to start major companies. At chafe
Ee Community College, I've worked with the board and doctor
Shannon to set up a center for entrepreneurship there. They've
begun to do some very interesting programs and I think
they're going to do even more great stuff in the future.
(31:17):
And then sort of the biggest of all of them
is at Kelscate Semnentino, that already had an existing school
of entrepreneurship, a very mature program, and I was fortunate
enough to get involved with them when they're leadership there.
We just had a meeting last week in fact, where
we had all four the centers in one room and said,
let's learn what each of you are doing, but let's
(31:39):
also learn how we can collaborate together, how can we
pull some pieces together. And I think some interesting ideas
came out of that grouping. I was in a meeting
today with someone from UC Riverside, and I have one
this weekend with the chancellor, and I know they're very
focused on innovation and entrepreneurships. I'm hoping we can help
support a lot of the efforts there and other ORGANIZATIONSW
(32:02):
Baptists is doing a lot, and Redlands is doing a
lot in the community colleges in our regions. So I'm
hoping to keep supporting the existing organizations, but also to
do some more work. It's important on entrepreneurship as we
work on it to recognize it's not just in businesses,
entrepreneurship and organizations profit and not for profit. It's equally important.
(32:26):
So we're trying to focus on the not for profit
sector also, and we're also trying to focus not just
on the entrepreneur Entrepreneurship can happen in any level of
an organization, so we're trying to think how can we
create an entrepreneurial mindset for everybody, no matter what level
in the organization. So it's an interesting challenge as I
(32:50):
look at the region and we've been blessed to be
a part of it for almost seventy years now, really
concerned can we keep growing job bases. It's something that's
important for us as a company. We try to work
on a lot of quality of life issues, but we
also try to work on a lot of the issues
just on workforce training and creating jobs because we want
(33:11):
to give back, but we also want to create the
customers of the future and the workers of the future.
And so for me, working on entrepreneurship is a really
good way to help support business growth and higher paying jobs.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
That is absolutely remarkable, especially when you're talking about the
workforce in general, right, embedding and developing that entrepreneurial mindset
to bring to their employers, right, how to be more efficient,
more streamlined, more creative, more resourceful, all of the things
that you know, entrepreneurs that start these businesses have to
consider when they are starting, and you know, being as
(33:46):
efficient and analytical as possible to ensure that their efforts
are being successful and they're able to measure them. So
I love that principle of integrating that mindset into the
broader workforce. That's that's a great initiative.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
And part of it that is, I mean, in Southern California,
we're blessed with a lot of good things. We have
a lot of challenges in Southern California, and I think
one is not enough leaders recognized we compete with other
parts of the state and other states and other countries.
And so part of what I'm trying to play a
small role and help us be even more competitive with
(34:22):
these other states and countries to say, how can we
showcase all that's good in southern California and especially the
inland out fire when we do so much work, and
how can we have the right workforce and the right
mindset to compete in the decades ahead.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Absolutely, that's just a brilliant vision to really integrate and
bring to the top of the mind of our youth
right right, of the next generation of workforce leaders. Absolutely exciting. So, Randal,
how do you ensure that your philanthropic centers collaborate and
avoid working in silos? You mentioned that you brought them
(35:00):
together recently, you know, especially when it comes to fostering
entrepreneurship and well being, because I know well being is
a huge part of your efforts and how that all
comes into play and is integrated together.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Well, First off, that the centers run themselves. MY job
is to be the wind beneath their wings and to
do all I can do to help them. But these
are independent organizations with great leaders and great team members.
So I'm just trying to help by saying, have you
thought of this, Let's do some convenings, what might be
some synergies. But that they are independent groups. I don't
(35:36):
want anyone to think I'd run them. They've got far
better people than I am running those organizations. But bringing
them together, I think was an important step, and we
hope to have more gatherings in the future, and we
hope to cast a wider net to try to bring
in a lot of other organizations. A lot of people
are doing entrepreneurship in the region. We're not always talking
(35:56):
to each other the way we should.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
You know, bringing everybody together and having those conversations is
such a critical part of identifying those resources and those
opportunities and how to leverage them together to meet that
common goal and hit those those benchmarks that you're that
you're referring to. And you know you've heavily invested in
higher education, from the UCR Policy Fellowship Program to the
(36:23):
kel Poly Pomona Lyles Center Fellowship and the UCLA Lewis
Center for Regional Policy Studies. Why is supporting academic research
and student development so central to your mission?
Speaker 3 (36:37):
I think it goes back to my parents. My parents
grew up during the Depression, especially my dad was very,
very poor, so we just ingrained in all of us
as a family. If we enjoy success, we have an
obligation or responsibility to give it back. But they also
felt we should try to focus. They said, you can't
support everything. Try to pick a few things where you
(36:58):
can make a difference. And they also said try to
do it with people smarter than you are, which is
easy for me to find people smarter than me, and
that in a lot of cases we found that working
with the universities and also the high schools and junior highs,
it's a good way to shape minds. It's a good
way to learn from very smart not just professors but students,
(37:19):
and a lot of these colleges, the students know way
more than I do or a lot of our people do.
And so we've been involved at UCLA. My parents got
us first involved there. They started something called the Lewis
Center for Regional Studies, and they realized as developers that
we have impacts. There is traffic, there is pollution, there
is a need for more parks or more schools. So
(37:42):
they set up a center to try to study those things,
and usually has been at it for over forty years
and they're doing a really good job. I recently have
gotten even more involved. They're trying to support their work
and also support a housing initiative. In this case, I
just give monetary support and a few ideas, but doing
all the work. And they're very independent, so they should be.
(38:03):
So I don't say do this or do this, but
I say, have you looked at this or thought of that.
I'm quite involved at USC and also really involved at
help Poly, which is local. We have sponsored interns to
help work at the Lyles Center. We've sponsored a couple
classes at help Poly. We've sponsored interns working at Dublin
School District of Nutrition and Farming and Agriculture, and so
(38:27):
I hope to continue that relationship. And we have just
found that working with students, especially when they get internships
or fellowships, it's a triple win and sometimes the quadruple win.
It's obviously good for the student because they get some
real world experiences. It's good for the institution, it helps
them recruit, it's very good for the organization they work with.
(38:51):
And then the fourth that I'm trying to think how
we could do a better job is to build a
body of knowledge, to take some of the work and
make it more longitudinal. Say, can we study some things
over years or decades. So that's sort of the fourth thing.
So when you ask why how did we get involved
in why, it's because of those multiple benefits. It's a
gift that keeps on giving.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Absolutely, I mean, it's a multi generational gift and a
true legacy that you know, obviously your parents have set
the tone for and so brilliantly so with their children
forging forward with this philosophy. So thank you so much
for that Randal. And you know, the Randall Lewis Health
(39:33):
Policy Fellows and the Lewis and Antonio Healthy Communities Institute
represent a major push into public health. What inspired your
focus on the intersection of real estate and community health.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
I didn't even know that public health was a field
till about twenty five years ago or twenty eight years ago,
and I started to read some articles about the field
of public health and realize at where you live, what
your zip code is, what your community's like, can really
have an impact on health. And so I just immersed myself.
I talked to a lot of experts, I got invited
(40:10):
to attend some conferences, and I realized it could be
one of the real contributions we could make is to
try to support public health and try to support healthy communities.
And do it through financial support, through leadership, but also
by showcasing it in the developments.
Speaker 4 (40:26):
That we do.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
So public health has been really important to me and
it continues to be important, and I know it will
be for my children going forward. I think one of
the best programs that we've been involved in something called
the Randall Lewis Health Fellows, and it's run by Dora Billa,
who you know well and is one of the leaders
in the state and the country on public health, and
(40:47):
Janie Woarn. It's a great program because I don't run
at someone else does all the hard work. But it
involves masters and PhD students. This year, I think we
have twenty six of them. Over the years we've had
over three hundred and fifty. And we give them a
stipend and we act like a matchmaking service where we
(41:07):
match students at the graduate level with either cities or
hospitals or agencies and they'll study things like access to healthcare,
access to transportation, career pathways, healthy gardens, healthy food in schools.
We try to match the needs and interests of the
student with the needs of the institution. They do projects
(41:29):
at the end where they present all the work they've
done and now they're farming of their own network that
they're over three hundred and fifty. They've formed a really
good network. So it's a fantastic program. We also support
the Lewis San Antonio Healthy Communities Institute that's done some
great work. It does clinical trot, clinical visits, it does
(41:51):
shadowing programs. John Chapman has been very supportive of this
at San Antonio. Fium is very grateful and Eileen runs
that program now. It also does stuff with the high
school students and the junior high school students to try
to teach nutrition, to try to teach career pathways. I
know that they're currently working with Ontario Moncler School District
(42:12):
with the recognition if you want to get people interested
in healthcare, you can't wait till they're in graduate school
and a lot of time we want to get them
excited in junior high school so that in high school
they'll study the right classes and then make the right
choices even after that. So those two programs have been
really fantastic. Based on the success, we just started a
(42:34):
program at U SEE Riverside at the School of Public Policy,
and it's called the Randall Lewis policy fellows, and I
think this year there's twelve of them that just announced
it last week. It's a similar model that worked for
a school year. They're primarily graduate students and policy not
all of them are graduate students for this first year,
and they'll be either with the city or the county
(42:56):
or agencies to try to match needs and do good work,
and the students get a real good experience. They also
get something on their resume. So my wife and I
have really enjoyed success with these internships and fellowships, and
I know we will continue that as a family.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
For a long long time, absolutely, and we know that
healthcare has a tremendous need for workforce development to meet
the needs today's needs and the needs of the future.
So thank you so much for those contributions and for
that vision to support those efforts that are so important,
and especially from a much younger age as you mentioned
right junior high, to start cultivating that curiosity and being
(43:36):
their horizons. It's about what opportunities actually exist, and especially
in healthcare because oftentimes when people think healthcare, they're thinking
blood and needles, but it's not necessarily true because there's
clinical and non clinical career pathways that are available to
anyone and everyone with you know that wants a wonderful
career with obviously job security. Well into the future, everyone's
(44:01):
always going to need healthcare, and the better healthcare is
going to.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Need healthcare at least for a while. It won't be
replaced by robots, it won't be replaced by AI. It
may be supplemented as always. When you look at our region,
health care and education and government services are some of
the biggest sectors. So we want to help create that
educated workforce and let people know you don't have to
be a doctor to go into healthcare. There's a lot
(44:26):
of different career paths that have stable employment and very
good income, So try to do a lot of career
technical education and healthcare is one of the primary things
we focus.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
On tremendous and so from the Lewis Museum of Art
in Claremont to the Randall and Janelle Lewis Library in Eastvale,
your projects often combine culture, education, and community. How do
you see these investments shaping the civic fabric of the
inland southern California.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
Well, in this case, I probably wouldn't call them those investment.
Those are more just thank yous that we've got involved.
In Claremont, it's called the Claramont Lewis Museum and it's
run by a group in the city of Claramont has
been very supportive. E Scale is going to be building
a library. And then in Rantrokucamama there's something called the
Randall Lewis Second Story which is above the library and
(45:19):
it's fantastic place for parents to take their kids and
it's run on by the city. I just helped support it,
but they designed it to be a family place. So
some museums are just for kids, are just for adults.
This is one for families to do things together. There's
a new exhibit I haven't seen yet, but they've done
a good job. And we've done a lot in Fontan
(45:40):
in this nature too with the library and other things.
So I think what you will see if that is
for our family every year or every other year. I
hope to make some major gift to something more as
a way to say thank you to those communities for
letting us to do business there. And you're right in
a ways investment, because the more we have quality of life,
(46:02):
it may make people say, yes, I'm going to stay
in this community because there's a museum or a library,
or hiking trails or good healthcare. So I think of
them as gifts, but you're right, they are investments in
the future.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Also, absolutely, And so you've also been a tremendous and
obvious champion of public private partnerships. What are the most
effective ways that business, government and nonprofits can collaborate to
address complex challenges like housing and health.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
There's not enough money in California or really anywhere in
the country to solve all the projects working in silos.
We just can't solve the housing issues, the transportation issues,
the health issues working alone. So I think there's some
good organizations. The Inland Empire Economic Partnership is one, Inland
Empire Health Plan is one. There are a lot of
(46:54):
Royal I egos one and growing Inland Achievement. We try
to get an in a lot of these again to
support people that are doing work that are better than
we are. I mean, one of the very best is
Inland Empire Community Foundation. Michelle Decker and her board and
staff have done a phenomenal job. And I think it's
incumbent on all of us to support these existing organizations
(47:18):
use them as conveners use them as sources of raising money.
I think a big thing a number of I'm working
on is how to increase the culture of philanthropy in
our region. Our region lags other areas in terms of
attracting foundation money but also just raising money amongst our cells.
So I think groups like the Community Foundation are just
(47:38):
doing a fantastic job. But that myral again is to
support people smarter than I am that are doing that
kind of work and just how can I help them
achieve their goals because together we all will make a better.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
Region without a doubt. Randall And speaking of the Inland
Empire Community Foundation and community in general, how has your
own definition of care community evolved over the years and
how does that influence the projects you choose to support
or develop.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
Community is a word that is a home builder. We
really never thought of it just wasn't a big part
of our vocabulary. But we started doing master planning communities
in a big way in the early two thousands, and
then we realize that community means a lot of different things.
I don't know the formal definition, but when I think
of a community a master planned community, it's one where
(48:27):
there's a lot of planning where someone's using foresight, where
the pieces go together, you have the right architectural standards.
But as we got more involved in the way, we
realize community is more than that. It's building volunteer groups,
it's building connections. Where's so many people that feel isolated.
Now there's work on what's called the otherness. You want
people to aware others. We want everyone to be together.
(48:50):
I spend a lot of my time trying to think
how to build community, and not just in our communities
that we develop, but in the cities and counties where
we do work. So more and more. If you said,
what word has really evolved in my mind in the
last twenty five years, is probably the word community and
what we can do to build more community.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
So, Randal, as you look to the future, what is
your greatest hope for the legacy of the Lewis family,
not only in real estate, but in the lives you've
touched through your philanthropy and community building efforts.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Well, I'm proud of I mean, we're humble, but I'm
proud we've been able to give back. I know for
my brothers and for me and our staff members. We
get a lot of pleasure driving through communities that we've developed.
We get a lot of pleasure when someone says, I
shop in one of your shopping centers, so I grew
up in one of your homes. That feels good. And
we get letters and we get people talking to me
(49:47):
all the time about the impact of something we did
that makes me feel good and encourages me to do more.
I mean the hope through my children, through my wife,
through my nieces and their cousins, feuse that we can
keep it going. But it's a lot more than the
Lewis family, and it's the Lewis Group of Companies too.
As I said, we've got nearly eight hundred people. We
(50:10):
hope we can become an evergreen company, that we can
keep doing it and that we're able to enjoy success
so that we can continue to reinvest and give back
to where we do business.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Thank you so much for that. Randall, you have my
full support in all of your mission and all of
your activities as always, and we just covered we skim
the surface of everything that you're involved in and all
the ways that you and Lewis Group of Companies invest
in the community. But thank you so much for sharing
your insight and your passion for philanthropy, education through health
(50:48):
and public policy, entrepreneurship and innovation, so many critical aspects
of what it means to be a successful and thriving community.
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Thank you. And if I I just met with a
message for those who are listening, I mean be involved
and get involved. As I said earlier, there's so much
need for good talent, and so get involved in your communities.
Get involved in the organizations. Find things that interest you.
There's so many needs, whether it's health or sports. There's
United Way, there's lots of Goodwill, there's lots of great organizations.
(51:22):
Pick ones that you care about and get involved because
together we will build a better region.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
That is the truth. Randal, thank you so much for
your time and your insight for everybody to thank you us.
Thank you so much, Randall. So for everybody listening, don't
forget to find us on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Check us out on SCBR talk dot com. Don't miss
my conversation with Christine Scott, president of Calcidis and Inland Empire,
(51:52):
and Rancho cucamonga council member who shapes regional progress as
so Calgases public Affairs manager, celebrated for her dynamic leadership, advocacy,
and award winning services across Southern California. Her impact unites
communities and inspires change throughout the Inlan Empire. And speaking
of mister John Chapman, next week, we will have John Chapman,
(52:16):
President and CEO of San Antonio Regional Hospital in Upland, California,
where he has driven financial resurgence, program growth, and national
recognition since twenty eighteen. Under his leadership, San Antonio Regional
Hospital has achieved a four star medical care ranking, top
fifty cardiology hospital status and expanded its services with a
(52:38):
regional medical group and a new center for aging. Chapman
has improved bond ratings and is leading regional efforts addressing
mental health and addiction. He chairs the Hospital Association of
Southern California's Inland Empire region and previously held executive roles
at Highland Hospital and UCSF and holds degrees from UC
Berkeley and the University of Phoenix. You do not want
(53:00):
to miss it. We will see you all next week
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