 Lakeland Public Television presents Currents with host Ray Gildow, sponsored by Niswa Tax Service, offering tax preparation for individuals and businesses across from the City Hall in Niswa and on the web at niswatax.com. Hello again, everyone, and welcome to Lakeland Currents, where tonight is a special treat. For the past 10 years, we spent a fair amount of time every year talking about economic development and how to attract businesses and industries into our communities throughout Minnesota. So tonight, we're gonna talk about the other side of the coin. Entrepreneurs, people who have started new businesses in a variety of places, and what it is that's made it attractive to them to come into some of these communities. And so maybe some of you folks in economic development, chambers of commerce, whatever, can get some important clues tonight from our program. It's a real pleasure to introduce to you tonight Mary and Mike Ives, who are from Grand Rapids now, but they've traveled around, and we'll talk a little bit about that. Welcome to Lakeland Currents. It's a pleasure to have you here. It's nice to be here. And tell us, maybe you could start telling us about the businesses that you do before we get into some of the current projects that you've got. Current businesses are what we've done in the past. Yeah, what you've done in the past, probably. That's true, Michael. Well, I guess I pretty much have worked only for myself since I was 21, and Mary and I were married at that time. And for most of our married life, we've worked together, started out in the manufactured housing community business in Say Cloud, learned very quickly that you had to be in the sales business. What was that, was that on the north side of town? No, it was actually on the south side on Highway 10. And I had a community and a dealership called Sherwood Homes. Oh, sure. And sold a lot of houses. Market was quite good in the 70s, late 60s and 70s. Sold a lot of houses there, and got to love the business. As you go north on Highway 10, by the way, there's a community called Rockwood Estates. And we built, Mary and I built that. Really, just north of the river. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And consequently, we sold it in the mid-80s. But I guess we've been in the, well, from there we got into the radio business in the, in the 1980s. A natural progression. Well, here's the reason. I was used to a couple million dollar inventories. And what fascinated me about the radio business is one of the mechanics. I like mechanical things. But the mechanics of it. And number two, it was a sales business. And number three, I didn't have a couple million dollars worth of inventory. It was only time. I mean, you're selling time on the radio. And so, we started a station in Thief River Falls. I had a partner. And that was, that went okay until had a divorce with the partner. Different philosophy on how you pay bills. Well, anyway, then we got involved in a station in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. And that was a, what was called back then a class A FM, about 6,000 watts. We made it into a 50,000 watt station. And it's a, you know, it's a sales business and the people were interesting. And I enjoyed it very much. But we were having little problems in the late 80s. And so we left our home in Rice, Minnesota and moved to Grand Rapids. And? Well, you know, just an interesting side light that I could share. When we started our station, our radio station in Grand Rapids, we would fly in. Mike is a pilot. And we would fly our plane into Grand Rapids. And the airport in Grand Rapids is very close to the downtown area. So we were able to actually walk to the radio station and do our business all day long and then fly back home. But when we made the choice to move from Rice, Minnesota up to Grand Rapids, it was a very good move. It's an excellent community, very vital, healthy community. And it's a wonderful place to live. Both of our children were in college at that time. And so they were out of the home when we made that move to Grand Rapids. And, but they found us. They both arrived back in Grand Rapids and are working in our company together. But the radio station was coming online and growing to 100,000 watt station at a time when computers were just starting to be utilized to track all of the minutes of advertising that we were responsible for. So I really got involved in bringing that computer system online for our radio station. But we were still live. We did live broadcast. And not like many of the stations today, there are more remote. They really changed the industry. They have changed. It has changed dramatically. It took what, on the bigger stations were good paying jobs and they became less so. I know we used to have a radio program at the college where I worked at. And it got harder to get people into really good paying jobs unless you went to a real big market. A large market. Well, and then as the market changed, we owned the FM station and another gentleman owned the AM station. And there was a need to combine those. So either we had to buy him out or he buy us out. He bought us out in the early 90s. And that kind of entered our radio business. And we went on to acquire bigger housing communities. And out of our office today, we worked with about 1,300 residents in four different communities that we managed. Consequent then after that, well, in Duluth, we have a big community called Xena Terrace. And right across the street, if you go into Duluth through Proctor, there is an American there. And that was the first hotel that we built, was the American in Proctor. And 1996, that was. And what we did is there were four of us. And we kind of built a new hotel a year and ended up with hotels in Iowa, Michigan, a couple of Wisconsin, and Minnesota. So you folks have been in the business long enough now. You've seen these extreme swings of things doing very well and things not doing very well. As recently as 2008, when we went into the Great Depression, it's survivors like you that I think are good mentors for younger people who are going into business. Everybody has their missteps along the way. I don't think there's anyone who doesn't. And entrepreneurs are usually risk takers. Are you folks in that category? Are you pretty conservative? Oh my goodness. Well, if you're going to be in business, then you have to be in the risk. I mean, there's definitely risk in whatever you do. Calculated risk. But you have to know the opportunity in what you are actually risking in going into that opportunity. But he enjoys the challenge. I think you both do. Well, we do. But I think we complement one another rather than compete. And I'm kind of his mop up person. Yeah, I always said I like to make deals and Mary mops them up. So she's the detail person. I'm the detail person, right? And we do work together well. And not all entrepreneurial couples do that. But we've been able to do that for many years. Well, just to give a little background to our viewers, when I first met you folks that was in the spring now of 2016, because you're doing a project in Staples called Timberlake Hotel. And you also purchased a restaurant right next door to that that you're going to be remodeling and tying that together. And shortly after this show airs, you will be having a grand opening, I'm assuming sometime in the spring of 2017. Yes. And the thing that really interested me about you folks, I've done a fair amount of work in economic development with different businesses and companies. But you brought a different attitude to the community than any that I've really ever been involved with. And the attitude was that we're coming to your community to become a member of your community. And that's hard to say and hard to do when you're so diversified as you are. But I know we had an awards banquet not long ago. I wasn't able to be there. I was doing some political debates back then. But I know you came to that event in Staples. And that has not only impressed me, it's impressed a lot of people in the community that you've made a commitment to doing good things in the community. And that's not as common as one might imagine. That's pretty unique. And you have your whole family, as you mentioned, your two children, grown-up children are involved in the business now. And your son's name is it Ben? Burl. Burl. But his real name is Michael, Michael Jr. And everybody calls him Burl Idle, which is kind of cute too. Thanks to the football coach. Oh, really? And colleges. Wow. So anyway, so you've gone from that radio business and then you got into housing. Are these rental facilities? And you have your housing? It's a land lease community. And the homes are manufactured and brought into the community. But there's been a lot of changes in that industry as well, and we're still totally operating communities throughout the area. It's a wonderful form of housing. The housing product has certainly improved over the years. We started in that business in 65. And we've seen great improvements. And there's also some wonderful improvements in the housing communities, which is our end of the business, including the ability to build garages for the residents, have the residents own not only their home, but a garage on their land lease property. So do they own the actual building, and they lease the spot then? That's exactly right. They lease the land, but they own their home. And that home ownership is a real important aspect of manufactured housing communities, because that gives them some pride of ownership. And so they feel very committed to keeping their properties in good condition. And then the sales piece, and Mike spoke about that when we were starting in the business, we learned that in order to keep your communities fresh, and clean, and up to date, you needed the opportunity to replace a home, a home that was smaller and less well maintained. It can be removed from the land lease property, and a new one can be brought in. So the synergy of the sales and the leasing of the community property go together very nicely. And our daughter works in that end of the business. She's a broker. We're all real estate agents, but she's a broker and works very specifically with manufactured housing. We've been in that business for so many years. And matter of fact, every member of our family has chaired the state association, lobbying, and legislative work, sure. So are these homes, do they have basements, or are they just on grade? They do not have basements. No, they're on grade. And do you develop the homes to then, and sell them, or are you just... Well, we buy them from factories. Okay. Yeah. So you buy the homes, and then you make them available for somebody who wants to purchase it. That's correct, yeah. And we do kind of a turnkey. We make sure that the home is properly set and aligned, and that it's well landscaped, and sidewalks in the right places, and makes a big difference in the look of a community. Tell us a little bit about your hotels, because I know you have a number of hotels. You're pretty diversified. I mean, that's one of the things I found that was really fascinating. What's the story of your hotels? Well, the hotels, like Michael mentioned, came into our life in about 1996. The nice thing about our hotels are that we are very careful about our location and the standards of the management of the property. It's very important to us that the people that work for us in that property are from that local community. We don't bring in a team of managers who are like a management company would. We recruit and train people in the local community, help build the local community's vitality. We encourage our employees to be involved in the community. We give them time off to do nonprofit work. We run projects and collaborate with nonprofits in the community. And we feel very strongly that our job is to help these employees become the best expert they can in the hospitality industry. And the question is asked every single day, is this good for the customer? Are we doing this for the customer? And that, we think, is the way to go about that business. We have also learned that you have to have a certain size hotel to have a distance from us. You know, if it's not owned and operated by the same person, you have to have a certain size hotel to make that financially feasible. So you have interest, or do you own two in Brainerd, the Baxter area? We have some partners. I have some partners. We've been partners for over 30 years. And together we have, we just bought another hotel. We have 13 hotels as partners. And our family has three and we're building the fourth one in Staples. That's strictly our family. Wow. Yeah. Is it Super 8 in Comfort Inn in Sweets in Baxter that you're associated with? It's the Super 8 in the Country Inn in Sweets. Country Inn in Sweets, yeah. And we just did a major remodeling down there. So it's a good opportunity for people to see some of the changes being recommended by that particular franchise. And they are going to a different look. You know, when you say the word country, you have in your mind kind of a country atmosphere, but they have gone much more metro, kind of simple, straight line, and different color schemes. They're keeping up with the trends in the marketplace. And so we just completed that remodeling about a year ago. So you have a very successful family business and family businesses are often targets for takeovers by larger businesses. Is that something you have had to deal with in the past or have you been able to stay, keep your independence? You know, I guess we're not ready to quit working yet. So no, we haven't had to deal with that. I mean, well, let me rephrase that. In the community business, we get a call a week for people wanting to buy the communities from around the country. It's just amazing, yeah. And we get calls even on our hotels, but we're not ready to sell and quit working. Well, and it's also kind of a mindset, don't you think? Because some entrepreneurs actually set their business up with the prospect that this is something as soon as I get it up and running, it's available for sale. Our philosophy personally is that we like to hold, maintain and do a good job of maintaining that property into the future, but we like operating our properties. So it's not a build and flip or sell. It's we maintain and operate. So what is it that you look for when you go to a community? What are some of the keys? You know, what I, in fact, I got involved in Staples because your economic development director in Todd County, Rick Utec, who used to be in Grand Rapids, he was at Nevada and he said, Mike, he said, you, they're looking for somebody to build a hotel in Staples. You ought to come up and check that out. Well, we did, but what I look for in a community, is it growing, you know, what's the employment base? Where are people working? What's the overall economy? Where are my, where are our customers going to come from? I think you've got to, you've got to be able to answer those questions. The second thing is, is government friendly. And I will tell you that in Staples, they wanted, they wanted to be helpful and work with us. That's not always the case. Really? You get over, over in other communities that we've, and I'll just name one Duluth over the years. It's been challenging. It's been very challenging. And they've changed now, but I will tell you 10 years ago, it wasn't that way. Which is really odd when you think that every community would want to invite, you know, new entrepreneurs and businesses, especially the hospitality industry, into your community. It would be, it's hard to imagine somebody making it tough to do that. But I can believe you. We could do a whole show on that. I'll bet we could. So is it often, is it, is it regulation that you're usually dealing with? Building regulations? Zoning. Zoning. Regularly, very often it's zoning issues. And then you had a lot of anti-neighbor groups that didn't want any kind of change. And that sort of thing that you have to deal with. Which kind of drained you out after a while. Sure. Understandable. You start to ask why. And I know that you folks have a strong interest in the trades and attracting young students. Because without students doing the brick laying and the construction, we aren't going to have our communities. Well, that's true. And what does it you do when you're trying to attract students to what you do? Well, you know, we have, Mary and I, both have a strong interest in education in general. The trades being one of those, I feel in our country forgot about the trades for many years and people weren't out of high school. Everybody had to go to college. Well, not everybody does. If you've got a good work ethic and like to work with your hands, there's great ways to make a living in the trades. And I find that there's a lot of shortages in the trades. That's one of the issues now with rising construction costs. When we had that five year downturn, a lot of people left the trades and didn't come back and you didn't have young people coming up through to take those replacements. So consequently, there's a shortage in the trades in many areas and it's caused rising prices and especially in commercial construction. But I think we need more opportunities for the trades. So what is it you're doing at Staples? You're going to have some of the classes come through and look at what you're doing. Yes, we were just talking about that this morning. We'd like to bring the classes, if they're willing, if the instructors are willing, into our project several different times so they can get a feel for what we're doing now and then as we get closer and then towards the end and they can vision themselves working on a project like that. And we do have great support and have had it in various numbers of our projects from our architect and our construction people. Matter of fact, our architect was going to be meeting with Mary Clem from the school district to arrange times for various classes to come engineering classes and some of the trade classes. But even as we get further on, we will make contacts to bring them in for business classes too because not only the trades but also the business side of our hospitality gives us opportunity to talk to students about career opportunities and ways to contribute. Tell us a little bit about what the project is at Staples. Well, sure. The Staples Hotel is going to be kind of an upscale property and we want to have some of the amenities that will actually support and compliment the community. So that was one of the reasons that we visited a lot of the businesses in the area and the hospital and NJPA, I think it is. I always mess up the leather stuff. But we know that there's ways that we can work together and have some real synergy for the lodging side of our business. And we also saw a great need for the restaurant and the event center. Now, we operate those in two other communities. So we understand how they can work together very well. And so this project will give us about 52 rooms. We are especially designed some of them for long term. The hospital was explaining to us that they have doctors coming in from other areas and they also have families that need places for longer than one night stays. And so we have like six, like many apartments, I guess you would call them with a separate bedroom and a living room, dining room, kitchen, exactly. So, and we would probably made less of those had the community not recognized that as a need. So we're trying to listen to the community and build what they think they might enjoy. We also have heard that you could use another swimming pool in a place to have pool parties. And so we'll be accommodating that. So it'll be an interesting property. It's being very well designed. The architect from WSN. Yeah, Mike Anglin, Whit Smith. Yeah, very, very good company. We've worked with them before and they've looked at that site which was a beautiful piece of property and it had some elevation changes that allowed us to design a building that's gonna be aesthetically very nice on that property. It's gonna require some landscape because we lost some trees and that's very important to us to get that landscaping in place. We also pay a lot of attention to energy efficiency and Mike is very good mechanically so he's always making sure that we take that into consideration. But we're looking for a nice place for a person to celebrate reunions, weddings, family events, graduations. So we're gonna be able to accommodate both in the hotel itself and also in the annex building with the restaurant and event center. Many of the needs of the community. And I think it's important that you fit together with the community. And it is different in different places. And it's gonna be called Timberlake. It is Timberlake. Timberlake Hotel will be our second Timberlake. And the other one's in Grand Rapids. In Grand Rapids, yes. And this will have, I know I looked at your plans and kind of a lobby with a theme of the area. Yes, well, you know, we did, when you look at a location, you need to learn about that location, not just the visibility from the highway, which is always something that people do as they start a business, but we also wanted to know about the community itself. Why it grew, you know, what was part of its history. And of course, you have some logging history and you have a wonderful railroad history. So we'll be bringing both of those amenities into our decoration and decor. So. We're down to our last minute here. Oh, wow. But do you belong to any organizations? If what if there are younger people or just people interested in learning more about what you people do. People on the entrepreneur side. Do you have a state organization that does that sort of thing? Well, well, you know, you get the Minnesota Lodging Association. If you want to learn more about that, there's trade publications that are actually free. Hotel Motel Management is one of them. And there's some others that students or schools can get on that list and get free publications. Now, do you have a website? We do, yes we do. And it's timberlakelodgehotel.com. And I would guess that if anybody's interested in working for you folks, and they could go to that website. They can. And get your application. Absolutely. Information about what might be available. And our application is online. They're willing to take that and send it to us. We'll be in contact with them very quickly. We'll be starting interviews for that this spring. And what's the next project in line? Are you too early to say? I was gonna say, Ray, that we're always looking for good, high-energy employees. Right, and good communities. And good communities. Well, I think you will find them. And I think they'll find it's fun to work for you folks. So thank you very much for being on the show. And good luck with your new endeavor. And we hope this is very successful. Well, thank you for having us. You bet. You've been watching Lakeland Currents where we're talking about what you're talking about. I'm Ray Gildow. So long until next time.