EV Charging, AI, and Green Studios: Transforming NYC with Wildflower

Hi and welcome to the Impact on FinTech TV.

I'm your host, Jeff Getterman, down on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

I'm joined today by Adam Gordon.

Adam is the managing partner of Wildflower.

We're gonna dig into electric vehicles, Wagyu beef, and studios that are now sustainable.

Adam, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

So, let's talk a little bit just about you before we get into all the cool things that you're doing.

Why the focus on sustainability in the first place?

What drove you in that direction?

Uh, for me it's been a topic of interest since I watched Jacques Cousteau as a child, read National Geographics, a little later worked at Alwood Audubon Center, where I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, even though I'm a born New Yorker, the Natural History Museum in Dayton.

So, um, sustainability, nature, um, and caring for the planet has long been a part of my ecosystem.

So you do 3 different things, at least that I know of, probably 12 other things beyond that, but the 3 that we're gonna focus on today, the WaU, the studio, and the electric charging, where do we start?

Yes, so my day job is managing partner of Wildflower.

We develop urban infrastructure in New York City.

We're Amazon's most active e-commerce developer.

We're probably the most active developer of electric vehicle fast charging in New York City.

Uh, and then the thing that people actually want to talk to me about is my partnership with Robert De Niro and building the world's first vertical film studio, Wildflower Studios in Astoria, but I think they're all related, so.

I was sitting on the board at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, I was very involved with the inception of the 100 year campus master plan, and when you start thinking in 100 year ideas, your decision making becomes very different.

So when I started working with Amazon, I said, how do we keep you happy for 40 years instead of for 10 years?

And they said electric vehicle charging for the Ribbean delivery vans that we haven't received yet.

Yeah, so we powered Amazon's first parking lot in New York City and in powering that we started to think large scale about the electric vehicle transition in New York City and how that would happen and New York is different.

We're a city of renters.

We don't own our own homes.

We don't have garages, we don't have Walmarts, we don't have big grocery store parking lots, so electric vehicle charging is gonna happen on private sector land.

So when we had that kind of aha moment, we decided we wanted to invest in an area and now we have one opening up at LaGuardia Airport anchored by Revel.

We have what will be the largest one in the city at JFK Airport, uh.

We have Hunts Point, which is where our food comes in, and various other strategic locations around the city.

So just talk a little bit about some of the challenges that you're facing today based on the current administration's point of view on clean energy versus what was going on during Biden.

Um, I assume a lot of this was built out during the Biden administration.

Is it more difficult now to get this done under the current administration?

I would say a few things.

The first is.

We focus on doing the work.

We think that it's important work.

We want to get it done.

People talk about the Zoran administration.

Uh, years ago they talked about the Adams administration before that, the Blasio administration.

Being here, being born here, being 4th generation New Yorker, I would say New York City has always been dysfunctional, incredibly difficult, challenging place to do business, but on the other hand, once you get in and establish yourself, the motive is challenging for everyone else.

So we, you know, we're focusing on doing the work.

I think also it's important to think as a developer I wanna meet somebody where they are, meaning that we have parking lots with high returns, we have Amazon warehouses with high returns those buildings also are incredibly sustainable whether we're doing rooftop solar, whether we're doing EV charging.

But that's a bonus that the capital markets has never particularly felt very strongly about.

And so we need to deliver returns agnostic of our sustainability virtues and then quietly.

Add the sustainability on top.

Sell return first and deliver sustainability after that, that's right.

There's no point in running around with a hat and a slogan.

You just, we want to get the work done, which is getting it out there.

So how does this translate into the studio that you opened at Astoria, Queens?

Tell me about that.

For sure.

Well, everything we do has strong sustainability virtues.

This Wildflower Studio is the most sustainable studio, um, in the world.

We elevated the studio by an entire floor that makes it flood resilient.

So if another Hurricane Sandy event happened and it got flooded, it would flood through what is a parking garage of 4.5 acres, and water would go in, water would go out, and we could be filming Severance, which is what's there now, unabated.

Great show.

But another thing, by taking 4.5 acres into our building, we took 4.5 acres away from our neighborhood.

Without the negative impacts of having a studio of this size, so sustainability is not just about the building, but it's about the, the community you're part of.

We also have, of course, solar on the roof.

We're highly energy efficient.

Uh, we have indoor air exchange, one full air exchange an hour, so it's healthier for the occupants.

So there's a whole series of kind of ideas which are embedded in and improve the lives of people not only who work in the building, but the people around in the neighborhood.

I was.

Look, think about this, we need to talk about this, we had a conversation about this before.

Do people feel the difference walking into a building that is more sustainable, more integrated with the community?

Do people, without you saying anything, say, you know what, the energy here is better, it feels better.

What are some of the comments that you get?

I hope so.

I mean, certainly.

We talk about sustainability.

The media companies are very focused on it.

They have really thoughtful sustainability groups that come in.

They're doing things like recycling parts of used sets.

So when that school is built and it's no longer needed for a few episodes, they take it apart and recycle a lot of building materials into the next set.

But also in the middle of the afternoon after a long day of work, people wonder why they don't feel as tired, and part of that is because our materials aren't off gassing into the air they're breathing, and the fresh air exchange what they've been receiving all day makes them feel better.

So some things they notice, some other things we point out.

Amazing, amazing.

So I imagine employees.

Feel better about working there.

Sure, yeah, sure, that's incredible.

Talk to me about Wagyu and uh the best beef around.

Uh, how did you get into that?

Um, 15 years ago I bought a 227 acre working cattle ranch in Sonoma County right in the middle of wine country, and the first thing that people do when they buy a big piece of land is throw the cows off, plant the vines.

I had a different idea.

I think that most of my friends out there are winemakers or wine adjacent, so I, I love the wine.

I didn't think I had anything particularly important to say in the wine world, and I didn't think the world needed more wine, but what I did think is that large herbivores.

Elk, bison, antelope, deer, um.

Eat the grass to reduce fuel which minimize fires, so I was thinking really about first having something sustainable for the land, and then I wanted to have something unique and sustainable for the chefs so that you would have to go out to wine country to experience it.

And what I saw was there was no really high quality Japanese Wagyu beef there, so we decided to raise our own.

We only share it with chefs who work in their kitchen.

Chefs like uh Kyle from Single Thread and Sean from Troubadour and Elliott from Charlie's local restaurants.

So chefs work in the kitchen, they're cool, and they're within bicycling distance of the ranch, so we don't ship to New York, and that's part of our sustainability mandate.

So it's as much an advocacy project as a food project, uh, and people love it, so come on out and visit.

Amazing.

So you're fighting a little bit of an uphill battle these days where Everyone's talking about AI and you're being grounded in sustainability.

Where do you see AI impacting all the things that you're working on?

Um, look, we've always embraced the future and embraced technology because it creates tremendous opportunities.

Uh, I think, for example, With in with Knight's Valley Wagyu, our, our Wagyu business, um, the more people experience a globalized life, the more they hunger for something that's natural and authentic and unusual and rare and of a place.

So I actually think a lot of that is our best advertising because we're not online, we don't do any advertising.

These are our chefs and our customers who tell us they want to be other places.

Um, in terms of the studio business, of course, AI has been monumentally effective and will continue to, uh, to grow in importance.

That's just changed.

What we do, and I think the reason that Wildflower Studios has been successful is our studios are more efficient to work in than any other places.

But they're also high touch, high hospitality, so you're, you're working with a person.

My partner Robert De Niro, of course, started Nobu Nobu Hotels.

He operates the Greenwich Hotel, and so he, he and I both share, and our third partner Rafael De Niro, his oldest son, we share the hospitality gene, how to make people happy and comfortable, and I think again in the AI age that's, it's more important than ever when so many people are feeling isolated to feel like they're coming home.

Yeah, I mean, human connection is something that AI cannot replace.

I mean, it's trying, and people are dating their AI agents, but at the end of the day, you can't really replace hospitality and the idea of feeling close and warm with another human beings.

Yes, I really applaud the work that you're doing.

What's up for the next 5, 10 years of Um, Right now we want to build out our electric vehicle charging platform.

We're seeing the rise of autonomous vehicles now.

The, uh, Waymo is approved in at least 25 odd states.

We're seeing them approved in New York State.

They'll eventually be in New York City autonomous.

Vehicles are gonna give rise to autonomous package delivery, and all of those autonomous vehicles want to be on the road 23 hours a day, so fast charging is required for them to be successful.

So we want to provide the infrastructure for them to succeed.

Amazing.

Adam, thanks for being on the show today.

Great to have you.

Good luck with everything that you're doing.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you.

That's it for the impact on FinTech TV.

I'm your host, Jeff Guderman.

Until next time.