Pearl Lam (林明珠): Hello, this is Pearl Lam Podcast and today I’m in Miami. I have two really good friends joining me and I’ve I’ve known them for nearly 20 years. Yes. And, and I think at this point I would just have Mario and Robert. Robert and Mario just give a brief, brief brief about yourself to the audience.
Mario Cader-Frech: So my name is Mario Cader-Frech. I was born in El Salvador, Central America, came to the US to go to school. In the middle of my studying, I met Robert 35 years ago, and that’s how I stayed. Or that’s why I stayed. Not how I stayed. That’s why I stayed. Originally I studied international affairs and I had a very short stint as a diplomat and quickly.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): As a diplomat. I didn’t even know.
Mario Cader-Frech: So I went to Georgetown University and with a degree in international affairs at the time, I thought I wanted to be a diplomat. And I was for five years. And then I realised it’s not really what I thought I wanted to do. And I also studied marketing and communications before that. And eventually, luckily, I got a job with MTV. Yeah. And I worked there for a very long time, and that’s kind of what I’ve done most, the most part of my life. Separately from that, I have a passion for studying different things. And my last 10 years, I’ve dedicated to studying religion and to understand the intersections of religion and media, and more specifically, honing on Hollywood films and how screenwriters use religion, knowingly or not, intentionally or not, implicit or explicit. And what does that mean? And that’s what I’m trying to decode now.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Great. Robert?
Robert Wennett: My name is Robert Wennett and I studied finance and real estate first at the University of Pennsylvania and then at Columbia University where I did my Master’s degree. I’ve been working in retail, real estate and mixed-use projects for the last 35 years, first by developing lifestyle shopping centres and then transforming that into buying properties in downtown around the United States and creating sort of senses of place mixed-use projects where people can walk, dine, entertain and socialise.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I met Robert. Robert. That was during the time he was building 111 Lincoln’s Road. I think 111 Lincoln’s Road is really interesting. It is a car park turn to be a shopping centre and the both of you are still living on top of 111 Lincoln Rd. But what makes you I mean what gives you that take that you want to have a garage and then have a shopping. I mean you I mean we consider you as a as a visionary. I think many real estate world consider you as a real, I mean a visionary of building something different.
Robert Wennett: So I think that, you know, I recognise it was one of the most important sites in Miami Beach. It was the entrance to Lincoln Rd back in the 1920s. It had deteriorated over the years and they had built a brutalist building there in the 1960s, which basically was just cut off all traffic and, and iteration with the public. So my, my, really my idea there was how do I fold this property back into the public space of Lincoln Rd. And so the site kind of dictated the use. We really didn’t have that much ability to build so much office or retail or residential. We really only had the right, given the, the, the zoning requirements to build mostly parking. So I didn’t really want to build a parking garage because a parking garage is basically, you know, like a warehouse for cars. It’s not a very public programme. It’s not one that the public engages with. So I decided to to build something, you know that to hire a world class architect and to come up with a scheme to build a parking garage which was basically open to the public and would serve more like a black box where lots of activities could take place. And that’s kind of the the iteration of of 1111 Lincoln Rd, which was retail, parking and restaurants.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But even your garage is I mean that companies renting it for events. You never heard of any companies renting garage for and for event and yours, yours is really is a pioneer. You’ve done really something really special.
Robert Wennett: Well, I think the idea was that the garage itself, at certain times you would park cars in it and at other times you would do all kinds of other uses. So people, I mean, today people do fitness in the gym every single day. We do yoga, we have events. Almost every major brand has used the garage for, for their, for their brand, not only in fashion and music and in cars, in clothing. Because the building itself, you know, when you look at the building doesn’t look like a garage. It’s basically a sculpture. And it’s because of the ceiling heights, the very high ceiling heights and the openness, it really become functions as a public space. So you have to think about lifting the public space from the ground floor all the way up to the 7th floor. And that’s what I think is the success of that building, which is that the public really engages with the building at all times. You know, I’ve read many, many stories about this, but I think 1111 is one of the most liked buildings in Miami, and it’s one of the most photographed buildings in Miami. So the public has responded really well to this being part of their community.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): It is a landmark.
Robert Wennett: And not only a landmark, but it’s actually functions as something that people want to use. So if you think about, if we had built a parking garage there, there would be a very ubiquitous programme that would just serve as, you know, parking garage and, and be closed to to the public. And this is very open. People bring their friends to the garage and go up to the seven floor. They go to events. They, they, they marvel at the fact that there’s a penthouse on the top. So, you know, it just feels like something that is that is just so much part of everyday life. And, you know, I think the success of a project is how it’s received by the public. And you don’t really know that when you start to build something. And when you say you’re going to build a parking garage, you would think nobody would have any interests. And how did this project become such a such a landmark from Miami? It’s not because it’s a parking. It’s because it’s a space that people can engage with and they feel comfortable with and they love the architecture and it and it relates to the environment. It’s got a lot of concrete in it, which has a lot of history in in Miami in the 1950s and the 1960s. So there’s just so many things that people really want to utilise in this building and I think that’s their success.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I have to thank for you to build 111 Lincoln’s Road because you were lending me all the painters and all the builders to help me to do the art fair. I forever I am indebted to 111 Lincoln’s Road. I think one of the one of the very interesting thing you were telling me when you were building that building is and is still concrete because that was a concrete building and you were telling me that you were going around trying to get people to do to do the concrete blocks in, in the quality that you want. I think is is very interesting for the audience to to know how involved you are as a developer going to look at the quality of the buildings, the quality of the construction.
Robert Wennett: Well, I think in that project we actually didn’t didn’t want architectural concrete. So because architectural concrete is of another level and in some ways it was really too precious for a parking garage. So I think the beauty of the concrete is is quite bold, but it’s not trying to be a Finnish museum. It just took took a lot of time and a lot of patience.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But you are personally being, you know, you don’t have, you don’t ask anyone to supervise or to look at the final finishes. You yourself was really hands on. I mean that is very surprising for a developer who’s so hands on, he would really hands on. I remember during the time we were talking about it.
Robert Wennett: Well, I think I’m quite involved in all of my, my projects because it’s sort of a, for me that passion projects, you know, I’ve developed, you know, hundreds of projects over the last 35 years. And then certainly in the last, you know, 15 years of my life, my projects have become really passionate projects. So they’re with architects that I want to work with. They’re they’re more landmark projects. If you look at 1111 Lincoln Rd, you know, for many, many years people tried to bring a world class architect to Miami Beach to build a building and because of the zoning requirements, you know, most buildings got shut down. So we were really one of the first buildings that was that was this. That was a world class architectural building and it really created the Renaissance. I think people look at that building as really creating the surge of what you see in Miami. I think you were commenting to me today like how many buildings have just been built in Miami in the last 10 years? Well, most of them now have world class architects. That wasn’t the case. I think our building in 2008 when we started construction was really the first building done by a world class architect and it set the standard for what people needed to do. So there’s there’s a formula. It’s not just a glamour project where you just spend a lot more money and you don’t get anything in return. Not only do you get a project that is far better than 1 you would do with a normal architecture, but you also are able to achieve higher returns because people are more interested in being in the project.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): So your other half is doing something completely different from you. So Mario, you are doing a lot in in media about social, social media content. What brings you to do that? Because if you are studying as a diplomat and then you start to do media, you study media and then you brought in a lot of social media. I mean, you’re interested in and in that. Tell me more about it.
Mario Cader-Frech: I think it comes from my upbringing, the way that my family raised us with the values, the schooling that I had growing up from K to 12, I call it. It’s the extension of the social gospel, which is the which is the do good to others theory. So that was my upbringing. So it’s inside of me to do that right or to want to do that. So I studied communications and marketing. Then I studied international affairs and had the diplomatic stint and I realised it was great, but not really what I wanted to do. So serendipitously, here in Miami, I met the then president of MTV and she had this idea of using the power of the brand of MTV to shape youths mind with a positive impact. And her boss, who was the president of MTV International, had started a campaign to create awareness and prevention on HIV AIDS. And it was taken off and it’s called MTV Staying Alive. So the president here in the Americas, she said, I want to do something similar and something that it’s also a social issue with our US audience, with our Latin American audience, because that was the audience that we were reaching. So we added human trafficking, we added teen pregnancy, which was a big issue. It still is, but it was much bigger issue than voting, especially in the countries like the US and other countries in Latin America where you have to register to vote and it’s not mandatory like some other countries. And so we had all these large issues and we even took on some very small issues like the blue whales in Chile. So we we did big campaigns, global campaigns, America’s campaigns and then more localised campaigns. I stopped being a full time employee in 2017 and ever since then I still work of producing MTV documentaries about once 1 documentary a year more or less, so maybe every two years. So I started to question where all these issues coming from And he don’t want me that it’s related to religion but not the yeah.
Mario Cader-Frech: But not the devotional religion that I grew up with.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Because South American is, is, is very religious.
Mario Cader-Frech: Very religious, but not right. So I wanted to understand how can you, how can you study about religion other than the devotional aspect? And one thing led me into a into another until I found the Harvard Divinity School who offers both if you want to study.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Religion, by the way, audience Mario just graduate from his master’s degree in theology at Harvard, and I was at his party celebrating that in yes in May.
Mario Cader-Frech: In May.
Mario Cader-Frech: So I started to take 11 course at a time because I was working full time and eventually I left my my job to go more full time until I was completely full time studying it. The idea was to study. So Harvard Divinity School offers basically 2 tracks. 1 is to study religion from the devotional aspect. If you want to be a rabbi, you want to be a priest, you want to be ordained and a practitioner of religion. And then the other track is more of understanding religion from the theology side or how religion intersects with public life. And that’s the focus that I picked because I wanted to understand how religion intersects with media. And within media you have journalism, media, and then you have media and entertainment. Since I come from media and entertainment, that was my focus of studies. And what I’m trying to uncover is what is the social impact that all of these TV shows that we produce in the US in Hollywood that travel around the world often or almost always and not the other way around. It’s very seldom that ATV show from outside of the US comes to the US or travels around the world. It happens, but not in percentages is more out of Hollywood, right? So I am wondering what is the global impact these TV shows are doing when the social norms that are being used to write the script writing is the American norms and are we in a way capturing the world’s attention through film and what is that impact?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): And do you write a dissertation on that?
Mario Cader-Frech: The yes. So my thesis, it’s called Bringing Religious Literacy to Hollywood, and it’s a blueprint in how to do it, with some case studies of how I did it, but it’s an ongoing work.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Robert as his partner, what is your comments and your and your partners is completely the opposite of your of you. I mean, how do you think about your partner going to study religion?
Robert Wennett: I mean, I think that the reason the relationship has worked for so for 34 years is worth the Ying and the Yang. OK, so you know, Mario spent his career in corporate social responsibility and you know, my career was on was more on an economic impact. So, but I think like what’s, what’s fascinating about what Mario was doing is, you know, he realised that, that there was so much religious content in films and movie. And he, he approached Viacom and said, you know, I want to do a religious literacy campaign. And they said, oh, no, no, no, we don’t, we don’t touch religion. And what was interesting is that, you know, religious literacy for Mario from a corporate social responsibility standpoint was no different than LGBQIA issues or teen pregnancy or all the other issues. Mario wasn’t interested in teaching religion. He was just trying to for people to understand that work that people are producing, films and movies have put so much religious content in it. And for people to realise and what we’re absorbing, you need in order to be able to understand, you know, the people around us, you need to understand their religious background. So I think it’s really fascinating because it’s, you know, everybody says Mario went off to Harvard to study religion. Well, I think in reality he went off to Harvard to expand his knowledge in media and communication on religious literacy. So I was all in favour. In fact, I moved for the entire last year to Boston. Wow. Mario was was. Mario was there. He’s.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Supporting Mario to finish his degree, Yes, very admirable.
Robert Wennett: No. So obviously I was, you know, quite in favour of, of what he was doing and, and very proud of, of what he’s been able to accomplish.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): We, we are all very proud because who would look into that, that, you know, that’s very narrow.
Mario Cader-Frech: It is very perspective. When I started, which was 12 years ago, thinking about it, and I started to study nine years ago, that’s when I started studying it. People didn’t quite understand why I was doing it. They thought I wanted to become religious like a practitioner. They thought I was trying to push a religion and I was merely doing what Robert described. And I would probably add to religious literacy, media literacy for people to understand how to consume media and the impact that any, any comedy, any drama, any thriller, how you will behave next when you go to the streets, right?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Between the both of you, right, I mean the foundation that you done, Robert, you’re involved as well, right? The foundation. So does this fund, this art foundation that you created actually is impacted to how you think about religion?
Mario Cader-Frech: In a way it is because it’s the way that I now think of religion is more from the anthropological, sociological lens much more than the the the devotional aspect and how religion has impacted race and the different scales of race and class and the different scales of class and gender, the scale of gender. So looking understanding religion as the one thing that we’ve seen to all these issues or social issues. Yeah, it is. So there is a disadvantage for artists who are working out of countries like El Salvador. And now I’m focused on all of Central America, and the idea of our arts foundation is to to bring opportunities to this artist.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): And giving global platform?
Mario Cader-Frech: And now I’m going to throw the potato back at you because you may recall that I don’t know, 15 years ago we came to visit you and we.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): That’s how we connected.
Mario Cader-Frech: And we and we follow you in Beijing, in Hong Kong, in Shanghai, in Singapore. I can’t remember where else we went, Vietnam, Thailand, you. I want to told us that.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You missed out Brazil.
Mario Cader-Frech: I wanted to understand how you did what you did, how you started this amazing Chinese contemporary art movement and how you brought it to the world. And you said to me, well, it’s hard to explain, come and shadow me for a little bit and the conversation will flourish. And so you’re one of the mentors that we had in launching our arts project.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But your art project is very impressive. I always consider myself as lucky. I’m just at the right time because China, at that time, everybody is looking at China. When you’re looking at China, you look at the Chinese culture and art and I’m just happening at the right time and right place. That’s why I can say and then I’m I’m there witnessing the evolution of the Chinese contemporary art just there. And then I think you guys have done a lot for for for the South American art. You know, you create a foundation, you give opportunities. And then I think Robert using the building as as Eric is a vision. And now with this new projects you are doing, are you, I mean with Mario’s idea of and of those and of building, I mean giving opportunities for this, I mean for the South Americans, are you using this to think about your big, big real estate project which will be 10 years to finish, ten years?
Robert Wennett: I mean, it’s interesting, I think that Mario and I are working not only on the the future of the the real estate project here in a la Patra where.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): It’s a community.
Robert Wennett: On building a community in and around our value system and our social morals. But I think also in our foundation. So you were talking about the arts, but you know, we do many other things inside the foundation. So we we have a very large programme for LGBQIA youths and, and so and we’ve support a lot of AIDS and HIV.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I know you you make a donation on the.
Robert Wennett: So yeah, we have a programme centre right now where we’re working on the the first broadly neutralising antibody, which would be a functional cure for HIV. And we’re in final human trials, but inside the foundation also now as Mario and my ideas merged together, we’re actually right now working on a campaign to combat the rise of Christian nationalism. So that brings Mario’s religious religious ideas as well as my concerns for LGBQI youth. Because with the rise of Christian nationalism, you have a huge effect on on the LGBQI youth absolutely who are who are being persecuted by their own families and people around them, by the church, by all the people that they that they.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But I thought now the Pope is really is embracing all the you know.
Robert Wennett: Well, I think that that you know, the the Pope and race say gay marriage or LGBTQ is i it’s different than the the right wing national movement.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Of course that’s.
Robert Wennett: Going on in the United States. We live in Florida, which is, you know, one of the the most right wing states besides Texas. And if you look at all the, the bans, both on books and trans issues and LGBTQIA issues, there are a lot of mental suicidal, teenage issues, homelessness, things that we’re really are trying to respond to in our foundation right now and try to help you understand, you know, that they can be both LGBQIA and live in a state where you have a huge, I mean, there’s so many. I just read an article recently how trans families are all moving out of the state of Florida because they can no longer get gender affirming care and other things. So, you know, it, it has a huge impact on not only our youth, which is something that we’re we’re very much trying to, to help, but in terms of families in general, you know, the then that are so effective in Florida for just parents being able to do what they think is right for their their children. So, so I think you know, in the foundation we’ve been able to merge a lot of our common interests in finding new places to.
Pearl Lam: That’s amazing.
Mario Cader-Frech: So Robert’s passion, since I’ve met him, has been supporting LGBTQAI youth rights and services, right? So you merged that with my passion on religious literacy and my media background. And now we’re coming up with this campaign to educate while keeping the lessons learned at HDS, which is.
Pearl Lam: What is?
Mario Cader-Frech: HDS, Harvard Divinity School. OK, sorry. So while keeping the the takeaways of having studied at Harvard Divinity School, which is think what you’re going to do will not create more division or it will not create more hate. So with those two guiding questions, we’re trying to figure out a way to mitigate this pushback that LGBTQ people are getting from a religious group. A very large, well, not very large, a very powerful religious group that is pushing back on LGBTQ rights and services.
Pearl Lam: So your foundation is not just touching on South Americans, but is actually addressing and helping responding to the general issues.
Mario Cader-Frech: Yes. So basically we have a two prong approach. One is the arts, visual arts and very specifically Central American contemporary arts support. And from there it’s my, my, my being involved with my MoMA in New York, with the, with the Reina Sofia in Madrid because it’s the way to to make it global. And then the other prong would be the LGBTQ rights and services, which also includes the finding the cure of HIV AIDS.
Pearl Lam: Tell me your involvement with these institutions.
Mario Cader-Frech: About the arts?
Pearl Lam: On the arts.
Mario Cader-Frech: Aside other than you that has been an amazing mentor in in this particular track of our life, we have other significant other people who made a significant impact in our lives such as Amy Capelazo. The the advice that we received was one of us has to be present in these institutions to bring the voice because if you are not present, that voice is never going to really be heard. I came with a very clear agenda of what my role was going to be as I joined the boards of the MoMA Latin American and Caribbean Fund and the Reyna Sofia in the Reina Sofia Art Museum in Madrid. And while doing that, I was also learning how Patty Cisneros created the Cisneros Institute for Latin American Art at MoMA, because I had my vision of doing something like that for Central America. Luckily, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid responded favourable to the idea of creating an institute for Central American contemporary arts, and we’re working on that right now. Hopefully it will launch next year and it will be a Research Institute that also advocates for the Central American artist inclusion in, let’s say, everything that the museum Reina Sophia is doing or is planning to do, also will advocate for more research papers to be published. It will advocate for, well, publishing paper paper books as well.
Pearl Lam: It’s important because I mean, archiving, you know, there’s so many academics they want to do research and without these, you just you can’t go further. Robert, tell us more about this new project. 9 acres land around here I mean.
Robert Wennett: So, I mean, we start assembling land. So it’s, it’s fortuitous that we’re sitting here at the Rubell Collection because both the Rubells and myself in 2016 recognise that this was an, an emerging area that we wanted to be involved with. The Rubells, of course, had been involved in Wynwood. I’d been involved in Miami Beach in this area, which we call Alvapata is just W, just West of Wynwood and just north of the hospital district. And the hospital district is the number one employer in the entire state of Florida. So there’s a huge demand for, for services and things because of the amount of people that are here in this neighbourhood. So this was a warehouse neighbourhood, mostly wholesale produce and fruit. And so at the same time, which we didn’t know, we both recognise that this is an area that that we thought was an interesting area to buy in. And so I assembled about 9 acres of land here. They also assembled the properties where their museum is, where we’re sitting and properties around them. And we’ve been investing in the area since 2016 and we are we have hired Bjark Ingalls from the from the big group to work on a master plan to build residential and retail office and potentially hotel here in in Alapato, which will be about a 10 year project. We have the ability to build at this point with the new zoning in, in the state of Florida, up to 4000 new residential units and we’re the largest site right now in the city of Miami. So it’s a very valuable site. We currently operate the wholesale products market. So I’m in the wholesale products business right now, a new business for me.
Mario Cader-Frech: So I have always some vegetables.
Robert Wennett: Fruits and vegetables for the last since.
Mario Cader-Frech: Just like, just like Carmen Miranda. So.
Pearl Lam: Oh, it’s very good for you during COVID time.
Robert Wennett: Yeah, we were very busy during COVID. No. So we have a very active market and you know the the population is of course where, where we have Brickell on one side, we have Windward on the other side. We have downtown Miami, we have the design district just to the north. So it’s a it’s a really and and we’re on metro. So one of the most important things about this area, which I think the Rubells were also one of the reasons they were interested in coming here as well as we’re right on the metro. So the metro stop is actually on our.
Pearl Lam: Are you having metro here?
Mario Cader-Frech: the Miami metro.
Robert Wennett: And the ridership is increased dramatically both because the Metro is now connected to the Bright Line, which is the high speed train that goes all the way to Orlando stops in West Palm Beach.
Mario Cader-Frech: Connected to downtown.
Robert Wennett: So you know, mass transportation is going to be as you, as you’ve seen the amount of new buildings, hundred story buildings, building built all over Brickell. We don’t have enough room for cars. So our project will be a transit orientated residential and retail development project that’ll probably be built in four phases over the next 10 years.
Pearl Lam: You really I mean, this is like taking a risk, right? 2016 when you know when you didn’t even know any, you know you have no.
Robert Wennett: Well, I think, you know, if you look at my careers over the last 35 years, everything I’ve done has been in emerging markets. In 199899, I was one of the first developers to buy property in the Meatpacking District. Nobody was in the Meatpacking District but meat cutters. So I mean, I’ve always, you know, when I started my career in the late 1970s, I was selling townhouses in the South End for 20 or $30,000.
Mario Cader-Frech: In Boston.
Robert Wennett: In Boston, which are now say $1,000,000 houses and nobody wanted them. So my whole career has been about finding because I, I like, you know, I moved to New York in 1978. My friends were all artists and fashion people and I was really into the underground Culture Club scene. And so for me, emerging markets and, and finding new areas was always been of my, my interest. So almost all of my projects. So Alopatra was not very much different. I saw it as an opportunity. I saw it as a market that, you know, over time I, you know, would would improve in Miami. But you know, you fall as, as most people know in emerging markets, you know, you follow arts, culture, LGBQIA, all that is usually a sign of emerging neighbourhood. So it’s been very successful people here and we, we, we look forward to, you know, making a vibrant community here over the next 10 years without destroying the fabric. So we plan on, you know, utilising the warehouse concept in our retail spaces. So the ground floor should feel like warehouse spaces so that we just don’t wipe the whole fabric away from from the area.
Pearl Lam: Wow. I mean the same thing. You always have a vision and your vision always is very exact. You really have a good feel about it of what you do of your and of the location.
Robert Wennett: Yeah, I mean, as I said, I fall counterculture. That’s kind of if people ask me like what is it about me? And I say, well, I’ve always followed counterculture and it’s and it’s served me very, very well because, you know, counterculture is usually first into neighbourhoods. So I’ve never really felt as interesting because everybody said like even with 1111, how much risk, you know, it’s interesting for me. I’m, I’m always able to measure my downside risk. So like here in Alapatta, my downside risk was I was going to be one of the most famous operators of a wholesale produce market. So that was my downside risk. My upside risk was the vision that we have for the, for the neighbourhood. But you know, I always take calculated risk. I always believed that the neighbourhoods that were going into. They’re also neighbourhoods that are very close to urban population centres. You know, they, they are, they are out of favour at the time, but they’re they’re they’re close enough to realise when a city expands. And we’ve done the same thing in Washington, DC We’ve done the same thing in California. We’ve done the same thing in Boston. We’ve chosen neighbourhoods where we have a vision that just being patient over time, the neighbourhood will come to you. That’s totally been our strategy.
Pearl Lam: Is this why you’re attracted to Robert? His dynamism.
Mario Cader-Frech: Absolutely yes. It keeps me on my toes.
Pearl Lam: I love to talk about you too.
Robert Wennett: Well, Mario and I used to drive around for the first 15 years of our relationship and my idea of a date was to drive him around to show him property that I was.
Mario Cader-Frech: So hours and days.
Pearl Lam: And days and half.
Robert Wennett: And at that time we had a little convertible and we would put the top down and we would drive for hours. And of course there was there was, there was no cell phones.
Mario Cader-Frech: So we had to talk.
Robert Wennett: And and there was no GPS, so basically you had maps.
Mario Cader-Frech: I was the Co pilot.
Pearl Lam: So yeah, you.
Robert Wennett: Had to open up your maps and look at a map and you really had to have, you know, you really had to have a good sense of of intuition because you know, you really had to follow signs like today, you know everybody like you get into a car, you put in your GPS, it takes you where you’re going. You can fall asleep. Nobody really cares but.
Mario Cader-Frech: It was like one of those car racing road rallies my.
Robert Wennett: God, you really had to know what you were doing because if you missed a road, you know you could be 20 minutes, thirty minutes.
Mario Cader-Frech: Off the highway, which we did a couple of times, because the signage was not.
Robert Wennett: Well, there was no, there was no technology. I mean, we, we are, you know, we, we forget, you know, that wasn’t so long ago, 25 years ago that there really was not much technology. So you needed to have the old fashioned.
Robert Wennett: Like the map?
Pearl Lam: You would just drive around and and Mario you are co piloting.
Mario Cader-Frech: Trying to we had a book with the with the spiral binder with all the zoom insurance of the cities because the big map was sometimes not detailed enough. So you had to like, go from the big map to the book while he’s driving and you’re looking at the signs.
Mario Cader-Frech: It was a full time job being.
Pearl Lam: Together.
Mario Cader-Frech: Yes, those were our dates.
Robert Wennett: Served us well. But I mean, I think, you know, in order to really understand the city, you need to be able to drive it. And I think actually maps are are. I still use maps. I love maps because I think when you have to focus on a map, you really, really understand a city much better than when you just plug something in and tell you to take it there because, you know, you don’t see what’s around you. And it’s really important to see what’s around you because if you look at this neighbourhood, you know, as I said, we have like these booming neighbourhoods all around us. So it’s, it’s, it’s quite intuitive to think that you’re the whole kind of the hole in the doughnut. And which is exactly what we thought about. Let’s say in Meatpacking District, you had the West Village at Chelsea, you had all these incredible neighbourhoods around you. And then you had this just a little hole in the doughnut, which was called the meatpacking districts. And of course, nobody wanted to go there because, you know, it was all about cutting meat. But eventually you knew that that doughnut hole would get filled. So I think, you know, that’s just been our strategy.
Pearl Lam: For me this is amazing to hear how your dates driving around and how you try and find location but but do you ever make a mistake?
Robert Wennett: You know.
Pearl Lam: I mean, now experience will tell you, but when you first started, I mean, you must have made mistakes.
Robert Wennett: Well, we all, we all make mistakes obviously, but I think you know.
Mario Cader-Frech: Can you remember?
Robert Wennett: Fortunately for me, a mistake has has has only turned out to be as not a bigger success as some other projects. So if you look at 111111 Lincoln Rd. The multiple uninvested capital was so huge. It was such a, you know, such a home run. And other projects are singles and doubles and, you know, if you do your homework, which we always did, and as I said, I always understood the downside risk and I never over leverage myself. So I never put too much debt. You know, that’s one of the problems you see right now is in, you know. Big companies, really established companies are giving back properties left and right because they over leverage.
Pearl Lam: They over leverage.
Robert Wennett: So we never over leverage. We always understood that what our base case scenarios, what was our downside, what was the worst thing that could happen. I’ve learned from those projects, but fortunately we’ve never had a project that’s failed.
Pearl Lam: If any young person coming in and they said that Robert, I want to follow your example, what what and what will you advise him, advise him to?
Robert Wennett: Do I think it’s, I mean, look, it’s change because for me, you know, it was always about following artists and LGBQIA and I think today it’s maybe more about social media and other aspects. But somehow you have to get connected with the culture if you want to see something before everybody else sees it. You have to be able to figure out a way to get connected early on. And I think that’s, you know, whether it can be TikTok or social media or Instagram, you see an idea and, and, and I always said that like, you know, like, how did I ever find a, a project? And usually it was that somebody would drop an idea in front of me or I would be in a city and learn from, as I said, from counter culture, like, oh, like, you know, the artists are moving here or LGBQIA are buying these apartments. So I would say, OK, let me go take a look. OK. And that doesn’t mean that always that’s a.
Pearl Lam: Place that you want.
Robert Wennett: To to buy, but lots of times it’s a really good lead. So I think young people today need to look, everything is overpriced, stock markets overpriced, real estates overpriced. It’s not so easy to find things that are undervalued, but I think you really need to be able to, to find something that other people are not seeing. And therefore you need to be able to access people that other people are not accessing. And that to me is really always in the underground when it’s just starting, just like you and artists or the rebels, how they, how they, they come up with undiscovered artists. And so if you really want to do something that’s grassroots, you need to be able to connect with counterculture.
Pearl Lam: Bravo. And so Mario for you is the young person coming in and asking for your advice, advice, OK, asking for your advice, Like what am I going to do? Am I going to to do things not being paid or pay and earn very little money but I want to do social?
Mario Cader-Frech: Social good.
Pearl Lam: Social good? What are you going to advise?
Mario Cader-Frech: To answer your question, what would I advise a young person that wants to get into the media social impact industry? First and foremost, you have to dig deep inside and understand why you want to do it and what are your passions so that you can then identify an issue that speaks to that passion that you have and understand that issue. Study it, learn it, get involved. Then very importantly, get experience in media production. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing as long as you’re in front of the media production industry so that you so that you can eventually merge your passion. The issue with the media production and for today’s media consumer, the most important is to stay true because the audience can easily detect when it’s not authentic.
Pearl Lam: OK, But recently we learned that there are leaders of and of society, of country, but they use not very authentic works words to market themselves. I mean, but people buy all these untruth, I mean untruthful words. So I thought the world is changing. I mean, this is encouraging people not to be truthful.
Mario Cader-Frech: Right. So that’s where the media literacy component comes very handy. If you if you teach and if you learn how to consume media, it’s very important because then you’ll be able to discern from what’s authentic, what’s fake, or what is a misinformation or disinformation. But if a young person wants to get into which was the.
Pearl Lam: Going back to the question.
Mario Cader-Frech: Is whatever that they try to produce has to be original and has to be authentic, especially if it’s a brand that is trying to get behind a cost, which is called cost marketing, right? People can smell it when when, when the brand is doing something of social impact, very superficial just to look good. They can. The audience I think is smart enough to know it’s not authentic. Now going back to the second question, why is it that that same audience is, is smart enough to detect a not authentic media marketing campaign, social social impact marketing campaign? Why is it that they do buy into cults or, or or political figures? Why? I don’t know.
Pearl Lam: Because I think today, today people like to believe what they want to believe. They don’t even want to check anything. Well, the words that resonate them then they choose to believe.
Mario Cader-Frech: Right. So often that’s called the echo chamber, which means that you like to hear what you know over and over as an echo effect, like hello, hello, hello, hello or echo effect. I mean, I fall into that when I read something that I like and that agrees with what I the way I feel, my social norms and my values. I even share it. And then I’m, I catch myself thinking, did I even check the source, the intention, like all those little check marks that you’re supposed to be checking. It’s because the power of media has now gone from a trained journalist, let’s say, to the people and you, you have people giving their opinions and a lot of them present their opinions pretty convincing. And we’re living in such a fast-paced media scrolling. Yes, no, yes, no. That you just stop where you think sounds good and you check.
Pearl Lam: I agree, agree.
Robert Wennett: I would like to add just one other thing. I think I like the old fashioned networking and keep your ear to the ground. I think people just get lost in their phones and their social media. And if you want to be successful, I think you know that that old fashioned networking and listening to ear to the ground, being out there and listening for. It’s just almost, you know, more people for young people just forget how important that is.
Pearl Lam: I agree because a lot of young people just look at the screen. They don’t, they don’t have this physical contact with people. I think this.
Mario Cader-Frech: The truly hanging out building relationships?
Pearl Lam: I think the GenZ. The GenZ see social relation, I mean, and how they build their social network is really different from ours. So, So I really, sometimes I really want to learn from them how they can be, I mean.
Mario Cader-Frech: Some of them are immensely successful and even more successful than people in our generation. So that doesn’t mean that they will not be successful. But I think that Roberts advice, it’s pretty solid that hey, it’s better anyway. You, you, you get to feel what’s going on in the ground.
Pearl Lam: But a lot of, I mean, I, I, I think a lot of GenZ doesn’t even have the social skills because from morning to night they just stick, I mean, stick on the, the screen more. A lot of them is like that. Anyway, on this note, I want to thank you, my two very good friends, for joining the podcast. And anyway, we have dinner tonight. Yes.
Mario Cader-Frech: Yes.
Pearl Lam: Thank you
Mario Cader-Frech: Thank you.
