Show Notes

Matt (00:00):

Hey welcome the show, Dan.

Dan (00:02):

Thanks for having me, Matt.

Matt (00:04):

Glad to have you on this show. You’re, you’re quite the celebrity in the development real estate development rings with your introduction of missing middle housing and what you’re doing with Opticos. I’d like to kind of just start off here by getting to learn a little bit more about you and where you started out and, and then we will, we’ll kind of transition that to Opticos and, and missing middle housing and, and we’ll just go from there.

Dan (00:39):

Sure. Well just a little brief. I I’m trained as an architect. I have an undergraduate degree in architecture from Notre Dame and I practiced architecture in New York City for a number of years before deciding that I really wanted to work at the block, the neighborhood, and even the sort of city and regional scale. So I moved out to Berkeley, to go to UC Berkeley’s master of urban design program. And it was just, a perfect fit for indoctrinating me into the world of urban design and how to get projects implemented and, and really just good how to get good urbanism to happen and how to root those barriers. And so actually upon my, my graduate thesis won a design competition called housing, the next 10 million which was ha ways that the California central valley could grow thoughtfully and accommodate the growth without compromising its character and the agricultural economy.

Dan (01:44):

And so that, that, that launched Opticos just, just a little over 20 years ago. Now we had a 20th-anniversary CEL, well celebration. We didn’t really celebrate much last year due to COVID, but we we’ve re reached the 20-year threshold last year. Congratulations. Yeah. And one of the other reasons I started the company is because I did want to work on both architecture scale building scale projects, as well as those, that neighborhood and city scale that I mentioned earlier. And there was really no opportunity to do that even here in the bay area. And so, I decided I was just going to, I was just going to do it with my own company.

Matt (02:26):

Yeah. Awesome. I’ve got several questions from just that, but what kind of endeared you into the whole urbanism and, and this housing opportunity at the more of the local level, what, what kind of drew you to that?

Dan (02:46):

You know I, I think you know, at, I started reflecting back upon this when I started doing a lot of interviews. I introduced this concept of missing mental housing almost 10 years ago now. And so, as I was reflecting upon sort of how people were asking, well, how did you know, how did this idea come about? We’ve actually been integrating these missing metal types in our architecture and our planning practice. Since the beginning of Opticos, it’s almost 20. We wrote a, we created a, a, a master plan and wrote our first form based code in 2001 that had the missing middle types embedded in it. And it was for a plan called revision is Vista, which is in Santa, is a community in Santa Barbara county where UC Santa adjacent to UC Santa Barbara. And I told the story actually in the introduction of my book about how, how we needed to use the, the, the conversation about these missing middle types to shift the conversation away from the, the scary D word, the density word that the, the community was really cut up, caught up in and couldn’t get beyond.

Dan (03:56):

So, so in my, my great-grandmother lived in a duplex in the small town in Nebraska that I grew up in a block and a half from main street, and it was everything she needed. And you know, I’ve lived in places like Chicago New York, I lived in Brooklyn. And now here in Berkeley, you know, just lived in a lot of places that have these missing middle types, just as a core part of the, the choices that they deliver and have, have just been thinking about it for a very long time, both personally and professionally. Yeah.

Matt (04:30):

Yeah. I was, I was gonna ask, yeah, if you had some experience living in these communities and it just kinda, and then see hearing about your grandmother that is one thing we’ll get into, you know, the, the ability to walk places that you need to go. Yeah. Especially when, when driving is not an option anymore.

Dan (04:53):

Yeah. You know, when we Def, when I first defined missing middle housing for a smart growth network publication, it’s where we created the Graham as well. A, a part of this was you know, one of the primary characteristics is that these types are located in an walkable urban context, right. Mm-Hmm is, is because that’s where they succeed or they’re most successful. That’s where they deliver the choice where a lot of people wanna be where they can’t afford it, if it’s only single family homes that are being delivered. And so that that’s really important and, you know, jumping to optic coast a little bit more I just wanna, like, I think one of the really important characteristics or aspects of optic coast is that we are a mission and driven company. We are a for-profit, but mission driven company. And we became a founding B corporation, I think in 2007.

Dan (05:52):

So almost 14 years ago where we really made a strong commitment as a business to a triple bottom line where we’re thinking about environmental, social, and fiscal responsibility. And, and that commitment really drives all of our business decisions, ranging from the structure and hierarchy of our company, profit sharing, to the types of projects we, we focus, focus on. And we really are in a fortunate position where we get to select projects that will enable us to utilize our expertise in missing middle, as well as walkable urbanism. And we have two different types of clients sort of back to that point of wanting to work at the architect. Sure. And the, the sort of neighborhood city regional scale is we have public sector, clients, cities, and counties where all the projects even starting 20 years ago were always focused on delivering housing choices and walkable urbanism.

Dan (06:52):

Now 20 years ago, getting people to wrap their heads around, wow, there’s, there’s a demand for this. And through even the small town needs to be thinking about this was hard, but our projects ha in the public sector of range and scale from, you know, a downtown plan or a neighborhood plan or a transit-oriented development plan around a station two citywide plans like our Memphis 3.0 plan or the gym plan for Kawai county. And a lot of that that work over the last five years has, has included what we call missing metal scans and deep dives, where we’ve created this methodology based on our expertise to identify the barriers in policy planning and zoning, and give really specific recommendations of how cities can remove those barriers in places like, you know, towns that are exploding like Greenville, South Carolina, or Greensboro, North Carolina, San Jose, California, have where we’ve done that kind of work.

Dan (07:53):

And then in the private sector, right? Our work is includes both architecture and side and master planning. And, and I think we, we only work on projects that really are gonna push the development industry to, to deliver the type of choices and innovation that we feel is absolutely in demand and needed and, and, and markets really across the country. And, you know, it ranges from cold to SAC the 16 acre car-free community, which is now under construction and Tempe, which will be the largest car-free community to Prairie queen our bungalows on the lake, which is our 40 acre missing middle neighborhood that has about 20 acres complete now. And it’s been a huge for our client and, and the residents that live in it really love the neighborhood our muse homes right. We’ve done cottage court here in Healdsburg, California called Riverhouse and, you know, working in smaller towns all across the country, like a Florence, Alabama, or KPE Montana.

Dan (08:58):

So we’re really just we, we wanna find the right opportunities to like develop a model and to prove the concept that missing middle is viable. It’s in demand. And we, we have a lot of fun doing it. And I think the next frontier is really thinking about how modular can plug into those and inform those projects. And we’ve been doing some work with a modular company called fading west out of UN Vista, Colorado, and really excited about that partnership and, and what that can evolve into and deliver in terms of at obtainability. And in, in walkable communities.

Matt (09:36):

Wow. You guys are busy

Dan (09:39):

yeah, yeah. We’re, we’re having fun. So, and we’re not a, we’re not a big company, we’re just a little over 20 people. So a lot of people feel, look, look at our work and think that we’re a really big company, but we’re actually quite small and we’ve, we’ve stayed fairly all on purpose, just so that we can retain, you know, the, the level of quality that’s part of our brand and just be thoughtful about all of our projects, but also be really selective about what we work on, because everything we work on needs to reinforce our, our triple bottom line, as well as our just real drive and to, to, to, you know, change, change the way housing’s built way neighborhoods are built. So

Matt (10:23):

Awesome. Yeah. Well, before we, we transition a little bit. Yep. What’s the story behind optics what’s where did the name come from?

Dan (10:33):

Yes, so for about the first year, year of my company, we were called envision design and for various, for obvious reasons. But what we discovered is a couple of things is that it was a little bit too generic and, and people were having a hard time finding us. And, and actually there was another company nearby that a package of ours actually got sent to. So, as, as we’re searching for names you know, it’s really hard, number one, to find something that represents this full breadth of work that we were doing and wanted to be doing and the impact, and, and also just simple things like, can you, can you get the URL , you know, important things. So, so you know, there’s this term that Vitruvius uses in his architectural treaties that he uses the term logos Opticos, and what that means is it, it represents visual, visual harmony through thoughtful composition.

Dan (11:41):

And so what we thought is, is you know, whether you’re somebody without any training or an, or an architect or developer a planner, if you put somebody in a really good public space, they know that it just, they know that it feels good. Mm-Hmm they may not know what about that space feels good, but it just, there’s something about the space that makes them wanna be there. And you can say the same about well-designed buildings, right? That you can look at a building and you may not know exactly why that building is singing to you, but it just feels really good proportions, you know? And so that that was the premise. So that logos optic coast, we just shortened it. And that’s the premise of the work, because we do feel that, you know, the types of places we’re creating and buildings creating should really provide that sort of harmony and just, just innate sense of comfort and to, to people who are experiencing those spaces and those buildings.

Matt (12:37):

Awesome. Yeah. Thank you and now let’s, let’s kind of transition that into more of, like you said, you, you coined missing middle, like 10 years ago. Yep. Could you, in a nutshell, maybe in one to two sentence, describe what missing middle is for, for those who for may have been living under a rock for a while and don’t know exactly what it’s.

Dan (13:07):

Yeah. I, I joke that if, if, if we had been paid a dollar for every time, our missing middle diagram or used, I think I could have retired. But, but it’s, that’s why we, we made it, we left it shareware. We wanted people to be using it. We wanted it to inform the, the housing conversation in a way, give, give communities, community members, architects, developers, planners, a tool to effectively communicate about this. The range of housing choices that are really needed and definition most simply is missing middle housing are house scale buildings that just happen to have multiple units inside them. It’s like the duplex or the fourplex or the cottage core, or the mansion apartment in these housing types exist in every neighborhood prior to the 1940s. Mm-Hmm often next to single family homes, no one ever notices because the, the, the point here is that because you get, you put more units in a building doesn’t mean a building’s getting larger and larger.

Dan (14:08):

It’s that there’s just a thoughtful design of a housing type where it looks like a house from the street, but happens to have two, three or four units in it. And you might walk by it and never even notice that it wasn’t a single family home. And, you know, the middle part of that first and foremost is the scale. And I think a lot of times in the conversation about missing middle housing, it just immediately jumps to middle income mm-hmm housing. And we say, yes, it’s important. And, but first and foremost, we need it to be a range of housing types at a certain scale, that house scale and, and secondarily yes, historically these types have delivered at obtainability and attainable choices and desirable neighborhoods for middle income households. And to the point where when I was doing research for a missing middle presentation at the Chicago humanities festival, I came across this great article about the two flats in three flats in ha, which make up something like 26% of the residential fabric.

Dan (15:14):

And they called them the working man’s palace. And I thought that was a really excellent title. And you know, why do we call them missing if you look at the, the data. And we dove into that a little bit one we were doing the research for my book. Really the, the data shows that, you know, less than less than 10% housing, I think you could even say less than 5% of housing built in the last decade has been missing, missing middle housing scale. And really most cities have zoned just as a starting point of why most cities have zoned like 80 to 90% of the geographic areas of their cities for single family only. So it’s, hasn’t, they haven’t had the ability to, you know, deliver the missing middle. Yeah.

Matt (16:05):

kind of beat me to it. So, sorry. I was gonna ask you, you know, what, what are the barriers? And, and a lot of us know that often that we, we work on these projects and, and those not even in the industry realize that that single family often has zoning has restrictions that, that don’t allow this type of housing. And, and so zoning is obviously a, a big part of why, you know, we, we haven’t seen more. But are there other barriers to, to entry essentially for those?

Dan (16:45):

Absolutely. Unfortunately there are I wrote an entire chapter on barriers in my book. It was the first time I, you know, I’ve been talking for years generally about the barriers and actually got a chance to sit down and do a little bit of a deep dive in research, more on, and clearly identify these barriers. But, you know, the, the reason Opticos does zoning work and mostly form based coding, because we feel we’ve found that that is absolutely the best tool to enable and deliver missing middle is because that’s, you kind of, you kind of need to remove that very basic barrier before any of these other barriers even make sense mm-hmm to, to address, but at the same time, you can’t just assume you’re gonna remove the zoning barrier. And then all of a sudden, you know, missing, middle’s gonna show up on every corner.

Dan (17:32):

We wish so there’s unfortunately a long list, you know, in terms of in terms of zoning, because the other thing that I get a little bit frustrated by is like, there’s often this very general discussion, you know, even now at the federal level, as zoning’s in the way, you know, zonings a barrier, but it rarely gets down to actually identifying like, well, what is it about zoning? That’s a problem because I don’t believe we should just completely get rid of zoning. But I think we can do a, we, we need a new operating system, but other, you know, parking requirements, you know, that you might consider that part of zoning, but a, a huge barrier. I, I tell cities like just simply remove par off street parking requirements for these, especially these neighbor pre 1940s neighborhoods. And you, you may just start to enable some of these types building codes.

Dan (18:22):

Mm-Hmm right. Once you re reach that three unit threshold, you go from a residential building code to a commercial building code and the IBC, the international building code. And so it just starts adding a little bit more cost and a really important threshold actually just earlier this week, the city of Memphis, the first city to do this. And I think I’m hoping every city across the country will do this. They approved you unanimously an amendment to their local building code. Based on the citywide work we did on the comprehensive plan and missing middle being a core part of that. We identified the building code as a barrier mm-hmm and they adopted an amendment to their building code that allows up to six units under the residential building code. Oh, wow. And so I wanna spread the word about that because it’s a huge milestone for missing middle and sort of removing these barriers.

Dan (19:19):

Financing, you know, often is, is a bit tricky and especially in smaller to medium size towns where there’s no comparable that you can point out point at a bank for like just assurance that this is a good idea. And they, you know, they don’t, they sort of are okay with the risk that might be inherent in it, but, you know, luckily more and more we’re seeing good relationships at small local banks work to sort of enable small developers get the financing. And then condo liability is a tremend barrier, especially for, for sale missing middle types. And especially in a number of states like California and, and Washington. And I think Colorado, like it there’s too much risk inherent in the stacking of any units that mm-hmm , you know, you can, you can absorb that risk if you’re doing a 250 unit project, but if you’re doing like a four unit or an eight unit, even a 20 unit project, it doesn’t make sense. And you know, the last is just the, the lack of an industry like we have the single family building industry and the multifamily building industry, and there’s there it, the industry to deliver missing middle is, is missing and it will be, we remove some more of these barriers. Unfortunately, yeah, no, I

Matt (20:37):

Mean, that makes complete sense. I I’ve been to a, kind of a missing middle kind of learning session there in Fort worth. Mm-Hmm it was in the near south side, it’s a, they said it, they kind of created their own form based code mm-hmm and it, you know, it, it was exciting to see how they were trying to, you know, break down the barriers and make it a little more possible for, for those is that are interested in, in trying to create this type of, of housing opportunity. I, I do wanna transition that a little bit into somebody that maybe is, you know, listening or, or has seen some of these presentations in the past that is excited, wants to, wants to jump in and to develop their own type of, of housing like this. What, what kind of advice would you give somebody just trying to start out and, and, you know, start to try to chip away at, at some of this missing middle housing?

Dan (21:43):

Yeah, I, I think you know, first and foremost, I think fun a network of other people that are either doing this type of work are interested in ex in exploring doing this type of work. And you know, this, I don’t want this to sell sound too self-promoting, but I think reading my book has been really helpful to a lot of even, even folks who are existing developers that are wanting to deliver missing middle and just, aren’t quite sure just become familiar with the terminology, the range of project types that have been successfully completed in both for sale and renter and what sort of opportunities our other developers small develop, I guess, in larger developers finding, but mostly small. And I think part of the message is like in a lot of markets we see that the, the best first step is, you know, buying and renovating historic, missing middle building types.

Dan (22:46):

And even our client for our, our Prairie neighborhood started renovating MIS historic missing middle building types in Midtown Omaha, and sort of built up a portfolio of several hundred units and wow, of, of missing middle, you know, a multiplex at a time within a 10 minute walk and sort of he built the skillset and, and sort of knowledge and understanding of the local market and sort of went on to, to bigger projects, including Prairie queen start, start a local group of, you know, it could be realtors, bankers, builders, planners, maybe even city council members you know, have discussions about it. Do walking tours have book club conversations about, you know, any book related to walkable urbanism and in missing middle you know, Jim Hyde if you don’t know his work he just published a book called building small through ULI, which is a great resource as well.

Dan (23:50):

And he does a small development meetup through ULI that actually I attended last week, it was here in Northern California and the incremental development Alliance does similar work through the Congress for new urbanism. So I think part of just find like-minded people that you can support each other and brainstorm and share lessons learned, I think is, is, is most important. And you know, I’m finding that, you know, if you can find the right opportunities, there’s, there’s good support out there. And just a lot of really good people who willing to share their experiences and advice to, to, to enable more people to build missing middle successfully, starting, starting at the small scale.

Matt (24:35):

Yeah, that’s great advice. It’s just, yeah, maybe, maybe start out a little smaller and

Dan (24:42):

Buy, buy a duplex mm-hmm or buy a, buy a lot with a house at the front and a AU in the back, you know, or the, or a house with a detached garage where you’re allowed to convert the garage into an ADU, you know, just start small and sort of learn, learn your lessons at a smaller scale. It’s always better to make mistakes at that small scale.

Matt (25:04):

Right. Definitely would start. Yep. Has there been any developments that you’ve seen that have just done this incredibly, perfectly as, as far as like, have you seen any that have really done the, the missing middle? Well and, and, you know, you talked about your development there in Tempe, and that’s kind of a, that’s a, that’s kind of a wild card that, that doesn’t come up too often, but are there any other larger developments that have tried to try to incorporate this type of or missing middle into their

Dan (25:49):

Developments? Yeah, it’s yeah, the cul-de-sac in Tempe is definitely sort of at an extreme in terms of progressive and innovative. And I would love for every one of our clients to be asking for a car-free community, but we’re not quite there yet. Maybe, maybe after, or cul-de-sac a little bit further along, but a, a couple of things is many of the early urbanist neighborhoods, like a Kent lens project like integrated Haber sham in Beaufort county, South Carolina or even daybreak in salt lake city integrated a pretty nice range of missing little housing. It, it was mostly single family detached, so it’s, it’s definitely worth looking at those because they’ve been around for, for quite some time. But you know, daybreak in particular is a really interesting example and that’s where our muse homes project got built within. And it’s been so successful that it’s really, and the values have gone up so much that it’s really, they’re needing to get more innovative about smaller or footprint, more compact.

Dan (27:06):

I’ll use the D word higher density. I don’t like it, but higher yield housing type. So it’s a really interesting case study and how it’s evolving and they’re now shifting a little bit to more of their downtown area. So it’s gonna be interesting to see that. So I think those are interesting. You know, the, I, I, when I was pick trying to pick case studies for my book, there’s an entire chapter of private sector developer driven case studies. I try to pick a really broad range because I didn’t want anybody to think, well, there’s only one way or one scale or one type of developer are doing this range of projects, because, so I picked, you know, starting with, you know, a planner architect, colleague of mine, Garland Woodsong, you know, deciding he was gonna buy a single family home in Portland and convert it into a one into a triplex and one into a fourplex.

Dan (28:01):

And, you know, part of the lesson and learned with that, that case study was he, he did a great job. He was very passionate about it, but like his returns were pretty minimal, like in the end, because there were just so many barriers and added costs and just complexities of, of rent, you know, converting a home mm-hmm that it’s doable, but you have to be really thoughtful about it. And then, you know, it, it, it, it, it includes, you know, puck neighborhoods, projects like cul-de-sac and, and Prairie queen, but, you know the, the other project that I really like is the cottages on the green project. That’s the case study in there in Greenwich road island done by our colleagues at union studio architecture and community design. And it’s just a really great example of, you know, small town near downtown vacant.

Dan (28:56):

How big is the lot, I think it was like just under just under acre and 15 units. So, and it’s the, it’s all one story, really small footprint cottages. So I think that unfortunately there’s, there’s not like one place that you can go visit to see a lot really good missing middle, because it’s usually just kind of sprinkled around in terms of smaller scale. So it’s just, you kind of have to just pick and choose. And you know, I’m excited about the success of a project like Prairie queen, which is 40 acres. We, we, we didn’t really assume when we were first you know, branding this idea and creating this concept that, that we would be working at that big of a scale. We thought it would be more sort of incremental sort of lot by lot in fill.

Dan (29:51):

But it’s, it’s, it’s nice to work at that scale and prove that, that it can compete with other actually it’s outperforming class say multifamily projects in the Omaha Metro. Oh, wow. And then, sorry, on the other side, there’s a place like a south bend Indiana, which we did some great work with the city of south bend. And we were looking at downtown near Northwest neighborhood, which was in a, had been in a state of disinvestment for 40 plus years. Lot of vacant, lots other houses ready to fall over, but the city had this idea of, well, what if we remove the single family zoning and enable missing middle will it, will it encourage private sector investment in these neighborhoods? And so we, we created a pellet of missing middle types. They, we ran poor profit analysis on it. Actually incremental development Alliance did that work, and it proved that the missing middle types were viable. They were feasible. And so the city actually has already changed their zoning to allow that private sector investment, and it’ll, it’ll have a tremendous impact on that kind of neighborhood. So it’s there, there’s a really nice range of, of ways these types are being applied in, in different high value markets and low value markets cross country.

Matt (31:16):

Yeah, yeah. That it’s, it’s like you said, it’s tough to nail down just one, one way to develop these type of, of projects because it, it can happen at a single lot level to all the way up to 40 acres or more, you know, eventually, potentially what kind of financing do you typically see? I know we, we talked about that as being a barrier, and there’s obviously different ways that you can, you can attack this. I mean, you could look at condo style or department style if we’re looking at like more of the single lot level, but are there any certain financing mechanisms as you’ve seen as, as more popular for those looking, maybe we’ll just kind of look at a single lot level, you know, somebody’s, that’s looking yes. At that scale, I guess say.

Dan (32:15):

Yeah. It’s, I mean, what a lot of people don’t understand is that you can use a conventional Fred Mac a mortgage to build up to four units. Mm-Hmm so a lot of people think it’s, oh, that’s just a mechanism to buy single family homes, but to get a mortgage for a single family home, but it can actually be used for up to four units. You know, a lot of the projects we’re missing middle projects, especially at that just one lot scale are actually just using conventional financing. And I would say in the past five years in particular that has been more easily accessible. You know, I, I remember when I, I was writing the barriers chapter in my book, I reached out to a, a colleague of mine, Michael Lander, who’s a developer and he’s, he’s a developer from Minneapolis now lives in San Francisco, but he started out with missing middle and has sort of expanded into small, mixed use projects now.

Dan (33:17):

But I asked him, you know, can we have a discussion about, you know, financing barriers? And he’s like, well, there’s in, in his mind, there were, he was just like really confirmed. Like, there’s not really any barriers for financing this . So I was like, oh, well, that’s, you know, that’s not what I heard in these other places. But I think even just over the course of the last two and a half to three years, it’s really changed in a way that just based on where the lack of obtainability and the need for housing in every community, across the country, that even banks who five years ago wouldn’t have financed these kinds of projects are now more openminded and more willing to, to provide that financing for these projects. And you know, I’m also seeing a lot of private equity larger equity groups that are mission driven that are looking for missing middle projects to, to invest in. So that’s a really exciting sort of evolution that I’m seeing as well.

Matt (34:20):

Yeah. Yeah. That’s there’s always, there’s always an option, right. we can always, always find ways around to,

Dan (34:30):

You know, in the stories I heard last week at the small developers meet up in Healdsburg was a lot of, lot of these developers, their first projects, they were like, they asked their mom and add for, you know, $5,000 or what, you know, it’s like, they just kind of patch together, like enough money through friends and family to like, make that first small project happen. Mm-Hmm , which seems like a pretty common story. And that’s another reason to start small is like, you can sort of, you know you know, learn your lessons and on a small project and then build some equity and then move on to the next one. So right. It’s another reason for, for a smaller start strategy,

Matt (35:12):

Right? Friends and family. Yes. Come in handy sometimes. yes. Great, great. So you know, we, we touched on this a little it at near the beginning, you mentioned that there’s, there’s certain places that have something that’s not really tangible, but you know, it’s there and you know, it, you have that feeling you can’t describe it. And oftentimes it’s, that’s kind of what I hear about the term. Placemaking more of a you know, at a holistic level, what, like what it, what it feels like, what it looks like, but I, I’m always interested to hear people’s definition of placemaking. So I’d be curious to hear, you know, Placemaking’s kind of got this buzzword feel that, that came about fairly recently and, and just be interested to hear your thoughts on, on this subject.

Dan (36:11):

Yeah. It, I, I think you’re right, it’s it, I mean, it means a lot of different people, the different things, different people. And I think it, it means different things in different contexts as well. But I think just as I was thinking about this is like, just at a very general level is like a good place is a type of place where you know, your neighbors, right? You have a good connection with your neighbors. Mm-Hmm, , you know, the neighbors are hosting like block parties, you know, often say that the neighbor, the neighborhoods with the higher percentage of missing middle are also probably the neighborhoods that have the best block parties you know, it’s, but that’s, it’s, it’s that social aspect, it’s delivering mobility choices. Mm-Hmm right. Getting, getting, getting people out of their cars or giving them a choice that they don’t wanna in a car walking, biking grab the bus, jump on a train.

Dan (37:03):

And then diversity is, is really important in my mind, I guess, both economic and sort of racial diversity, you know, everyone in a, in a great place, everyone has the opportunity to be part of that community and, and feels welcome. And so, like, it’s, it’s almost like a lot of that’s intangible and it’s not actually designed, but like those are the, in some ways it’s the, it’s the result. But I, I think that’s just very general, like, you know, what I think about when I think about placemaking is, is just that social aspect and the equity D piece and just making sure everybody’s has the opportunity to be part and is, is, is feeling welcome.

Matt (37:47):

Yeah. Yeah. That’s and, and you know what you’re saying, the, to create that walkable community in a way reinforces the other other items that you discussed about, you know, social yeah. And racial diversity and social connection. Cause you’re getting out of the car you have more touch points, you know, it’s, it’s a little more social than having to jump in your car and not talk to anybody and drive .

Dan (38:20):

Yeah. For the first, for the first 10 years of Optico, our offices were one long block from my house. And so every day, you know, several times a day, probably at the beginning, end of the day and lunchtime, I was walking my dog back and forth, you know, that block long block to my office. And I was always running into people, running into my neighbors. And that’s invaluable. My neighborhood also has, you know, I would say about 20% of the lots have missing middle. And so what that enables is, you know, we, we realize at some point a couple years know that our our daughter’s first grade teacher lived in the triplex, another in the second unit her daughter, which was a third grade teacher at the same school lived. And then the third unit was occupied by like, like the AU and son-in-law who was a PE teacher at the middle school down the street. So it’s like, you know, it’s kind of those intangible things and opportunities and options that, that the, the housing choice and the walkability delivers that’s really important. How do

Matt (39:32):

You achieve that type of place, making that type of feel in your own designs, in your own consulting and, and, and what you do.

Dan (39:41):

Yeah. And I think that you know, this also ties back to the, the, the question you, you included, which was like, what’s, what’s inherent in a missing middle project if it’s done correctly or mm-hmm , or what’s made successful. And I think in terms of, of an approach our missing middle projects are typically different than anything else on the market. That’s been newly constructed, I think just as a start. And it’s, it’s great for our clients because they don’t have any competition. sure. It’s also great for the people who are looking for that choice and it hasn’t been delivered. You know, in, in the Prairie queen neighborhood, there’s been a, a flood of downsizing baby boomers, who said, we’ve been wanting to sell our big suburban house for seven years, but we don’t wanna live in a garden apartment complex.

Dan (40:34):

Mm-Hmm we wanna rent. We don’t wanna own anymore. We wanna to, we don’t wanna live in a garden apartment, but we also don’t wanna live downtown, like in an urban condo or apartment building. And so when they, they found this missing middle neighborhood, like, this is exactly what we, you know, this neighborhood scale is what we want. You know, these, these projects are not driven by conventional market studies or what’s been done in the past. Like, you know, when I was preparing for a ULI presentation recently, I was looking, just being more thoughtful about thinking about how to present our project and realize that the majority of our projects are clients. None of them do a conventional residential market study. And most of them are simply relying on their own knowledge and expertise in the market. And they’re still being very thoughtful, but they’re not looking in the rear view mirror.

Dan (41:23):

And, and then from a design standpoint, it’s, it’s, you know, outside of the individual lot scale, it’s a mix of types, you know it’s, you know, creating a sense of place, not just a project is, is, you know, back to the placemaking standpoint, cuz people are really longing for that. And I think COVID has only sort of made that even stronger, a focus on the public realm, you know, the streets mm-hmm, the, the public, the park, the plazas, the small public spaces, how the buildings activate them, just some really seems like basic stuff, but you would be surprised at how often it’s missed. And then just a mix of price points is really important. We, we, you know, we, you know, we don’t wanna create places that are only attain of to a, a high level of the market. And unfortunately some of our projects are so successful and there’s such a, a rarity that they end up costing more for people to live in than we would like. But the more we can build the, the more we can be successful in achieving that. Obtainability, and, and I think we’re always we’re is delicately balancing and trying to prove that good design does not have to equate to expensive construction and delivery. And mm-hmm, our muse homes project. The Prairie queen project are, are both really have proven that that’s very possible. For sure.

Matt (42:51):

Yeah. And you touched on all those items. So we had talked about earlier about walkability and yeah. Creating that, that sense of place and diversity and everything. So, yeah, that’s awesome.

Dan (43:03):

Yeah. And, and, you know, I think the other thing I’d like to mention is there’s a delicate, always a delicate balance between yield and usability and placemaking right. We wanna get as many units as we can for our clients to make sure that they can deliver the, the, the houses at good price points, but we don’t want to compromise the placemaking, which a lot of projects just, it’s always just to exercise about how many units you can cram onto a site. And you know, I think from a, I often like to remind architects that missing middle architecture is an architecture of restraint. like good missing middle buildings, rarely have that kind of look at me mentality. It’s usually like let’s just fit in and be part of the neighborhood. And so I think a lot of architects actually forget that at, and they wanna do something that’s flashy and like, looks like a spaceship that landed in a neighborhood. And I’m not saying that you can’t do contemporary architecture. I love all type of design. It’s just like, let’s be restrained about it and, and let it fit into a neighborhood. And so that’s another point I like to make.

Matt (44:16):

Yeah. And we could spend a whole nother episode on those two points. Yes. . So looking forward, what would you say or what would you like your, your legacy to be there at optics and missing middle as a whole? Maybe you can break those out into two different,

Dan (44:38):

You know, Matt, Matt, before we go there, can I, can I answer one other question that I loved on your list with what keeps me up at night related to this? Okay. Then we can jump quickly. I know you need to go soon, but but like, I, I think the biggest fear I have is that both cities and states are getting the implementation wrong. Okay. And that really makes me anxious because if we get this wrong and really bad results get delivered, that aren’t achieving a Team ability, there’s gonna be a true, tremendous pushback. Mm-Hmm this isn’t an, there’s not an easy solution. There’s not a one size fits all solution. And we just need to be more thoughtful about this and cities are waiting too long to number two, they’re we waiting too long to address this.

Dan (45:28):

And I, I don’t understand cities and planners. Don’t, aren’t actually realizing how bad their zoning actually is. Like 99% of zoning codes that we’ve picked up in the last 10 years have been tremendous barriers. Very few of them enabled this. And then the, the last piece is just like, I, I don’t know why. Well, I do know why, but the, the, the, the pace of change within the development industry, mm-hmm to deliver more housing choice. Just, it, it, it baffles me both in terms of delivering choice, more choices, non-single family, but also delivering walkable urbanism. So the, those sorts of things, like, I think we, we need to start tackling as the, the, the discussion about missing middle I, and we’re, we’re really thinking about, well, how can we be effective at implementing it? I’m just

Matt (46:17):

Curious on this last point. Yep. Do you think that’s because the data is lacking at the moment or is it just because it’s not, it’s not I guess popular yet, is it, is it it both, or what do you think

Dan (46:35):

Is it change is hard, especially if you’re a publicly traded company. Right. And it’s, it’s, I think most developers understand that they need to be changing, but the change is it’s just hard to make the change at a fast enough pace. Mm-Hmm to, to really respond in a way that’s needed. I mean, Chris Nelson’s research that he did for the chapter. My book proved that 60% of all housing built between now and 2040 would need to be missing middle housing to meet the demand. right. We’re not, we’re ne there’s almost no way gonna meet that, that number . But so the smart, you know, the, the developers who are, who are tackling this are doing really well right. And, and they’re delivering that choice, but it’s, it’s in some ways it’s not surprising, but it’s really disappointing just the pace of change and how slowly the change is happening.

Dan (47:36):

But you know, jumping then jumping back to your, the question you asked about kind of what I would love for sort of the Opticos, Missing Middle legacy to be you know, I’m hoping that, you know, just, I want people to just really reflect upon the, the, the nature in which we, I guess, and I elevated the conversation about this need for housing choice and at obtainability and walkable urbanism, and, and found a way to effectively communicate the need for this broader range of housing choices and, and kinda use this this very easily and accessible concept of missing, able to do that. And I, I also feel like I, I would love to be seen as a, a major force behind the, a push be behind introducing a much needed new operating system for our zoning to really enable our zoning, to deliver walkable urbanism by.

Dan (48:37):

Right. And, you know, and, and, you know, just as importantly, if not more importantly, that you can have an impact and be mission driven as a company, but still function as a four for profit entity. And I, I, I like to, to, to reinforce that we do this without, without a diva attitude as well. , I think there’s a lot of people that are sort of seeing the successes like we have, but they, you know, they ha come with an attitude. And I, I, I like to feel we’re very approachable. And we love having conversations with community members, council members, decision makers, you know, the full range of people about this, and it’s important to engage everybody. And so that, that’s what I’d really like to hope to see about kind of what people are saying about our efforts and my efforts in the, in the future.

Matt (49:35):

Well, you’re well, on your way, you, you’ve definitely made a, a, a dent in, in the missing middle conversation. You know, I mean, coin the term, right? So , that’s, that was big to actually come up with a vocabulary around it that people can actually

Dan (49:54):

Speak to. Yeah. You know, what it made it you know, for the longest time, even in our practice, we were talking about this range of housing types, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t tangible, or it wasn’t easy to communicate the message. And what this did is, is it gave it a brand and an identity. And when we created the diagram, it was something that anybody can point at and look at and go like, well, of course, we should be delivering this range of housing types. Why shouldn’t we, it almost makes it so rational that you can’t say no to it. So I think that was the real value. And, and like, I’m always surprised at any community Shrek process or public engagement, like you show the image and you no, no history of architecture, planning, just, just a member of the neighborhood. And they, they understand it and it’s used because either they lived in one of these, their kids do or have lived in one of these, they have a good friend that lives in one of these, my, you know, grandmother that lived in one of these, so that personalization makes it really successful and, and effective.

Matt (51:00):

Awesome. Awesome. Great. Well, I wanna thank you for all your time. I wanna give you a little time here just to let you tell us where we can find out more about what you’re doing, your mission, your brand Opticos Design & Missing Middle Housing.

Dan (51:15):

Can we, yeah, so there’s there there’s yeah, a couple of places. So company Opticos website is just opticosdesign.com. Feel free to sign up for our newsletter. We do about a quarterly newsletters. It’s just updates of projects missing middle housing.com, which we launched in 2016 as the precursor to the book, because there was so much interest in this information and the research we had done to get it out. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. It’s just Daniel Parolek on LinkedIn. Feel free to reach out and less active on Twitter. I’ve sort of done less and less Twitter, but Daniel Parolek on Twitter as well. And yeah, feel free to reach out and connect and share your stories and always like to hear what other people are up to on the missing middle front, or for based code front walkable, urbanism as well. So I always love to connect with people. Awesome.

Matt (52:13):

Awesome. Thanks for all your time again, Dan.