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Schnepf Farms home developer has eye on the future

BY PAUL MARYNIAK

Tribune Executive Editor

Richard Felker keeps one eye on the ground and the other on the future.

If that seems like an exaggeration, consider his track record.

From managing and owning two family businesses in Milwaukee in the 1970s – one that sold furniture and the other that ran coin-operated washers and dryers – Felker started signing up university dormitories and apartment buildings for the latter.

“I would call on apartment developers to get them to sign a lease with me put my laundry equipment into their buildings,” he recalled. “And that led me to say to myself, ‘Well, why don’t I try and get involved in real estate? So I became an entrepreneur who said, ‘well, let’s build a couple of buildings and see how it goes.’”

How it went is this: Felker sits atop The Empire Group, a Scottsdale company that over 40 years has accumulated more than $1.5 billion in assets and built a legacy of commercial, single family and multifamily residential and industrial development.

Now, he is riding the wave of a multibillion trend that experts say will radically change the single-family housing landscape forever.

Empire’s announcement in December that it will build 144 single-family rental homes on 14 acres of Schnepf Farms – the celebrated Queen Creek agrotainment venue best known for its peach festivals and annual October Pumpkin and Chili Party – was just the latest in a series of build-to-rent communities Empire has on the drawing board, already is building or has finished. The company’s first was the Village at Harvard, a nearly fully occupied 184-home community in Goodyear. Then there’s the 208-home Village at Olive Marketplace in Glendale that’s 65% leased and 50% occupied. A 194-home community is rising at Camelback Road and 107th Street, as is a 180-home development in Avondale along with the 272-home Village at Paseo de Le Luces in Tolleson. The Village at Schnepf Farms is the company’s seventh in the Valley and one of 21 seeFELKER page 22

Developer Richard Felker has a firm footing in a growing trend in new-home construction: building houses not to sell them but to rent them.

(Courtesy of Empire Group)

Nikki Schachtel and Rob Genet own Krazy Air Trampoline Park in

Mesa. (David Minton/ Tribune Staff Photographer)

Mesa trampoline park hopping with fun

BY DANA TRUMBULL

Tribune Staff Writer

The only thing “up in the air” at Krazy Air Trampoline Park is kids. And with 28,000 square feet filled wall-to-wall with trampolines, foam pits, aerial silks, jousting, slam dunk basketball, dodge ball, a ninja course and more at the park, 4310 E. McDowell Road, Mesa, the kids will stay there for hours. Even the floors between sections are spongy soft, so wherever a child lands between jumps, it will be kid-friendly.

Perhaps the best part about the park, though, is that, while their kids play, parents have the option to hang out in the comfortable lobby chatting with friends, playing on their phone, or getting some work done online using the free wi-fi.

They can head to the “as quiet as it gets here” area to relax in massage chairs, or they can tap into their inner child and jump with the kids. They can even go run errands or indulge in a date-night dinner, while the young-at-heart staff at Krazy Air watch and play games with the kids.

Every jumper must have a waiver on

projects in a market area stretching from Casa Grande to Prescott.

And it’s hardly the last as Felker eyes not only further expansion of build-torent single-family homes in Arizona but in other states by the end of 2022.

That expansion is extending a footprint that Felker began making in the Phoenix region not long after he came to the Valley for a vacation in the 1970s.

By the 1980s, he had become “the land guy” to homebuilder Geoffrey Edmonds and Associates and together, “We built $700 million or $800 million worth of homes in Gainey Ranch and Scottsdale Ranch,” Felker said.

Over time, Empire has become just that – an empire of almost every conceivable kind of development you can imagine, even including self-storage facilities.

“I try to be on the cutting edge of something new,” he said, crediting the company’s growth as well to his two partners, Geoffrey Jacobs and Randy Grudzinski.

That cutting edge includes several highrise apartment buildings that helped to reinvent downtown Phoenix in much the same way that Marquette University reinvented downtown Milwaukee more than two decades ago, Felker said.

“I had seen what Marquette University did to downtown Milwaukee over a 20year period and it just blossomed because of the university,” said Felker, who added to that blossom a 27-story apartment building overlooking Lake Michigan.

“With ASU and the bio stuff downtown,” he said, “I just figured it was going to be the same kind of thing happening here. And so, we went ahead and we took a bunch of risks to do those couple of downtown projects.”

He added that Jacobs “was really responsible for seeing the high-rise opportunity in downtown Phoenix.”

Felker stressed that kind of risk-taking isn’t just a matter of having that rare vision that builders possess. And it explains why he’s jumped into the build-to-rent market with both feet.

“It does come kind of naturally and intuitively. But it’s all based on data that you gain with being around in this industry for a long time. In the downturn, we bought houses and rented them. In this market and in many other markets, we’re just trying to stay ahead and this asset class of these single-family build-to-rent homes just appeals to everyone.

“If you look at our rental base of people who move into this kind of product, they’re in their 20s, their 30s, their 40s, their 50s, their 60s, their 70s. Our first project had three or four 80-yearolds and two 90-yearold people. It appeals to everybody because there’s nobody living next to you, nobody living above you or below you. It’s your own space. And you have a little

Empire Group’s The Village at Schnepf Farms will offer 144 rental homes on 14 acres of the iconic Queen Creek farm known for its agrotainment. (Tribune file photo)

back yard.”

And it comes maintenance-free as the people who move into one of those buildto-rent homes simply call the on-site

Besides rental homes, Empire Group also has built hi-rise apartment buildings, including the 312-unit, 19-story Phoenix building called The Stewart, located on the former site of the Stewart Motor Company, which was built in the 1940’s as Phoenix’s original Studebaker

THE MESA TRIBUNE | FEBRUARY 13, 2022 maintenance crew if there’s a problem – no different from calling the custodian in an apartment building.

Florida-based housing economist Brad Hunter said build-to-rent not only appeals to consumers who desire a “lock-andleave” lifestyle in their home base but also to investors.

“Investors seeking yield are having difficulty finding enough built homes to buy,” Hunter says on his website. “So, they are shifting more attention to ‘ground-up’ development of brand-new rental homes.”

He told the Wall Street Journal last June that by the end of 2022, investors already will have ponied up $40 billion in that trend.

His analysis of eight markets across the country showed that the Phoenix area is possibly ground zero for that growth, with 3,920 build-to-rent houses completed in 2020 and another 4,259 coming on board last year. The next biggest isn’t that close: In Dallas/Fort Worth, Hunter reported, 2,580 rental homes were built in 2020 and 2,906 last year. In a five-year production forecast, Hunter predicts that even as the number of new BTR houses hits 180,000 units nationally by 2025, “overall demand for rental homes still exceeds production.”

Hunter believes that the number of buildto-rent houses will account for 12 percent of all new houses by 2024. Taylor Morrison, the nation’s fifth-largest homebuilder, says that percentage eventually could reach half of all new single-family homes. And the commercial real estate finance company Walker & Dunlop notes, “The rapidly growing BFR market will continue expanding as more residents prefer to rent single-family homes with yards and upscale amenities on a long-term basis.”

Empire approaches the construction of its build-for-rent communities with the same care and attention to detail and a traditional homebuilder would bring to the table.

With the Queen Creek development, for example, owners Mark and Carrie Schnepf “kind of interviewed” Felker about his vision before signing a deal with Empire, recalling how they told him, “’We don’t want something that doesn’t look good’” because of their popular and widely-visited agrotainment attractions.

“We actually did some charrettes and spent a lot of time with Mark and his wife on coming up with what the architecture

23 Chandler woman gives birth to her retail dream

BY PAUL MARYNIAK

Tribune Executive Editor

Erin Dragoo made it out of school before COVID-19 hit.

With a degree from Arizona State University’s Cronkite School of Journalism, the Chandler woman had her sights set on a career in web design and social media studies.

But she also helped out at her motherin-law’s 4-year-old Ocotillo boutique called Judy Wear.

That experience gave her the retailer bug – and that itch blossomed last week into the grand opening of her own store, Lunch Money at 2430 S. Gilbert Road, Chandler. The store reflects a certain nostalgia that Dragoo has to the 1990s. Though born in 1990, she explained, “Fanny packs, baby tees, butterfly clips, oversized scrunchies, chokers, printed leggings – it just brings back some nostalgia for me.”

Hence, she said her “entire store is curated” with an inventory that “took me three months of heavy research and online shopping.”

“It’s carefully selected to ensure that everything goes together, that everything is fun, that nothing is basic or ordinary,” Dragoo explained, stating that she also looks for handmade items to sell because “they make the most unique gifts for both the people we love and ourselves.”

So, Lunch Money brims with a variety of handmade wares: clay and resin earrings and hair clips, concrete phone holders, photo holders and soap dishes, hand-mixed confetti packets, candles, hand-painted blankets, sage bundles and incense burners, resin bottle openers and wine glass holders, dried flower arrangements, wood flowers and wall hangings, paper maché bowls and animal head wall hangings “and some really cool art prints.”

“I will say that I’m very picky,” Dragoo said. “I’ve had a few artists approach me about carrying their product and I’ve turned them down because it doesn’t go with the Lunch Money vibe. Of course, I also carry bigger brands like ban.do and Erin Condren because I have always loved their products, and I never dreamed that I would be able to sell them.”

There are also tarot cards, funny greeting cards, planners and “so many cute gift items.” Erin Dragoo last week cut the ribbon at the grand opening of her new Chandler store, called Lunch Money.

(David Minton/Arizonan Staff Photographer)

Dragoo’s playful approach – reflected even in her grand opening last week, when she cut a ribbon with giant pink scissors – also extends to the way she decorated Lunch Money: wild black-and-white floor tile, bright green walls and a flower wall for selfies.

A Tucson native who has lived in Chandler for more than 10 years, Dragoo makes no secret of how working in Judy Wear at 950 E. Riggs Road for more than three years only deepened her desire to run her own shop.

“I began by helping her build her logo and brand identity,” she recalled. “Then I created her website and became her social media girl, posting every day for three years. But somewhere in there, I decided that I wanted to be a bigger part of her shop, so I also became the jewelry buyer.

Erin Dragoo decorated and stocked her new store, called Lunch Money, in an eclectic way that to some degree reflects her nostalgia for the 1990s. (David Minton/Arizonan Staff Photographer) And I found that I loved doing that, more than I loved building websites and creating social media content. “I loved creating the displays and finding different ways to show off our product. I would find myself going to Judy Wear Boutique after hours just to change everything up. It was my play time, my happy place.”

After working there so long, she said, “I was just starting to feel a little unfulfilled.” “I wanted something that resembled me, something all my own. My close friend, Alisa Moreno, sent me the Instagram page for a tiny little shop in San Diego called Simon Limon, owned by Alexandra Scarlett Perez Demma, and I just fell in love. I was inspired. I wanted my own Simon Limon. So I just decided to go for it.”

As for the store’s name, that also is somewhat nostalgic for Dragoo.

“When I was in high school, my mom would give me $20 at the beginning of each week for lunch and expect that it would last until Friday,” she explained. “I never did use that money to buy lunch. Instead, I would take it to the mall and spend it on little knick knacks and clothes. That brought me so much more joy than eating lunch ever did. So, my store sells everything that I would want to spend my lunch money on. It’s a compilation of everything that I love.”

Now that she has opened, Dragoo has an interesting take on competition.

“I’m not nervous about competing with the big chain stores,” she said. “I love the big chain stores. I think that just being a small business is a competitive edge in itself. I have found that more people want to support local businesses than chain stores as long as they provide the right product and excellent customer service. And I know that I have both of those going for me. “I’m also confident in the uniqueness of my products, like the handmade earrings and other goodies — you won’t see that at Target or any of the department stores. Also, Lunch Money is an experience. It’s almost sensory overload. It’s an absolute joy to come into my store; it’s more than just shopping. …Everything is bright and fun. Customers will always see me when they walk in and we’ll get to know each other, making it a much more intimate shopping experience.”

Information: lunchmoneyaz.com, 480622-4220.

file, complete with contact information, so if parents are needed, staff can quickly reach them.

When Krazy Air opened in December 2014, owners Rob and Melissa Genet were new to the business.

“We’ve got four kids and we had taken them to a couple different trampoline parks,” Rob explained. “And I just kind of started looking around and I thought, I can do this better.”

The Genets, who owned a commercial cleaning business at the time, did some research and “decided to go out on a limb.” They never imagined that limb would branch into 10 locations within the next seven years, with each location pulling in roughly $1 million annually.

Krazy Air is the original and the only one bearing that name. The rest operate as Elevate Trampoline Parks. Three of the parks are in Queen Creek, Goodyear and Tucson, Arizona. The remaining locations are in New Mexico, Iowa and Illinois.

“We really enjoy the business,” said Rob. “But it’s not like we’re actively looking to expand.” If an opportunity to build presents itself and it makes sense to put a park there, he said they will do it. “We’re opportunistic, you know. But we’re not

FELKER from page 22

looks like, what the fencing looks like around the outside, and what the landscaping looks like,” Felker recalled, “because they were very concerned about what was being built next to their family treasure.”

Now, Felker said, “we’re going to be really proud of that one as it comes out of the ground and finishes.”

He said the community will “have a little bit of that farm feel to it.”

“It’s going to be a little different from the rest of ours,” Felker continued, “because that’s how the Schnepfs felt comfortable selling it to somebody who’s going to develop it.”

He anticipates it will take about eight like, ‘oh, we need to go build more parks.’ We’ve lived and learned and gotten better through trial and error along the way. It’s been fun.”

He insisted that the secret to their success is finding, hiring and empowering the right people. “We compensate them well and try to tie our managers to the bottom line. We want them to take ownership in the company.”

Nikki Schachtel, the manager at Krazy Air, agreed. She said that she can take any idea to the Genets and know that they will be supportive.

In turn, she passes the same attitude on to her employees, training them on employability skills, but also requesting their input on how to do things and encouraging them to offer their own ideas and solutions.

“If it doesn’t work, we’ll just go back to the other way tomorrow,” Schachtel said.

She knows that encouraging her team to be creative and validating their ideas helps them to grow both independently and as a team. “For me, that’s the best part. The better they work as a team, the better the experience for anybody that comes here.”

Even though the Genets now have nearly 400 employees company-wide, they still consider themselves to be a “mom and pop” company.

months to lay the community’s infrastructure and that “I’m thinking we’re going to start leasing probably 18 to 20 months from now.”

Peering into the future with the same vision that has guided the growth of Empire for four decades, Felker said the only thing that could stop new build-to-rent housing in the immediate vicinity of Phoenix is a shortage of land.

“It’s a kind of a new asset class but it is so well accepted by every age demographic,” he said of build-to-rent. “It does require more land. So, the more urban the city becomes, the less you’re going to see that this type of thing. But we are going to be in other markets as well.”

“Places like Casa Grande are going to be the recipient of a lot more rental construc-

“We want to keep that feel. I want any of my managers – really, any of our employees – to be able to call me anytime. I don’t want to lose that feel,” Rob said. Genet said the one thing he definitely will not do – “no matter how many times I’m asked” – is add an arcade in the park, explaining, “This is someplace kids can come and burn some energy and do something real.”

About 900 kids every week burn energy at Krazy Air. Memberships drive activity during the week, with Krazy Kids attracting toddlers, ages 18 months to 6 years, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (two hours max) Monday through Friday. After-school memberships bring in the school-age kids in from 3-6 p.m. (90 minutes max) Monday through Friday.

Homeschool memberships are also popular. On Monday-Thursday from 10 a.m.-2 p.m., homeschool students, ages 5-17, can jump, eat lunch at the in-house café, then do their schoolwork in the lobby, using the free wi-fi.

On Saturdays, from 8-10 p.m., teens and parents only have the place to themselves.

“On teen nights, we turn off all the lights and have black lights and disco balls, so everybody glows in the dark,” Nikki explained. “It’s a safe, controlled spot where a lot of groups hang out.”

tion,” he said. “Once you go into the San Tan Valley, we’ve got two or three developments that are going to be in those areas. So yes, it is expanding.”

And his biggest worry has nothing to do with the availability of water but that for the average household, “costs keep escalating.”

“In the Phoenix market, we’ve been really low for a long time in terms of the percentage of our income that people can spend on housing. It’s been 25%, 26%, 27%. In San Francisco and other California places, people are spending 43% or 45% of their income and we are gradually bumping up against that.”

He estimates that people in the Phoenix area are spending at least 31% or 32% of their annual income on housing and that

THE MESA TRIBUNE | FEBRUARY 13, 2022

Also popular with teens are the monthly Lock-Ins. On the last Friday of every month, nearly 100 teenagers show up to be locked in the building from 9 p.m.-1 a.m. “We feed them pizza and drinks and just play games all night,” said Nikki.

Saturdays are also big days for birthday parties, held in the party room.

On the weekly “Thankful Thursdays,” jumpers can bring in a donation for the featured charity to support the local community and receive more than half off the price for two hours of jumping. For February, Krazy Air is hosting a baby supply drive to benefit Sunshine Acres.

With so many people coming through the trampoline parks, Rob emphasized that cleanliness is really important to them. Having previously been in the cleaning business, the Genets take sanitation very seriously.

“It’s a big deal – especially in the current environment,” he said.

“We’re all about customer service,” Nikki added. “Everything’s really directed toward making sure everybody has the best possible time, whether it’s customers or staff. I want everybody to want to come back and have those moments with their family that are just genuinely loving and fun.”

Information: krazyair.com. ■

with soaring appreciation in non-rental single-family homes and 15 percent annual increases in rent, places farther away from Phoenix will become far more favorable to homebuyers and renters.

As a result, what might be broadly considered the Phoenix metro area will be not much different from how people view Los Angeles.

And Empire gives every indication that it will continue to be a major player in that expanding megalopolis, especially with build-to-rent.

“I’ve been around, obviously, a long time and done a lot of different things,” Felker said. “But we’ve gone very deep in this space…It takes a lot for me to get excited, and I’m very excited about this space and what we’re doing in it.” ■

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THE MESA TRIBUNE | FEBRUARY 13, 2022

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Anchovies on pizza? Only in weird Arizona

BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ

Tribune Columnist

Having made it this far in life without landing on Death Row,

I feel confident a lethal injection won’t be my fate. With that said, I have my last meal all picked out: A large pepperoni pizza from any restaurant not named Domino’s or Papa John’s. What I’m saying is, I am a certified pizza lover, a man who can hardly go a week without a slice or three. While I did not partake on Feb. 9th to mark National Pizza Day, I certainly will on Super Bowl Sunday, the busiest day of the year for pizza shops, ahead of New Year’s Eve and Halloween.

Unless, of course, I am served an abomination like pizza topped with anchovies. Which, according to the food blog “How to Cook Recipes” is the most popular pizza topping in Arizona, at least according to rankings by Google search throughout 2021.

Yep, anchovies. Ahead of pepperoni, extra cheese, sausage and pineapple in the state’s Top Five.

People, must everything in this state be weird all the time? I’ve lived here 25 years and I love the place. But every time I speak to someone from out of state, it’s always, “What’s wrong with Arizona? Did the desert heat fry your brains?”

I’m sure you get it, too. “Joe Arpaio this, fraudulent election audit that. What’s up with you guys and _______.” Insert Gov. Jan Brewer wagging her finger in Barack Obama’s face or Arizona leading America in COVID-19 infection rates.

I would suggest there’s something in the water here, but given the drought, we barely have any water left.

Now we’ve desecrated pizza. Though, to be fair, anchovies were also the most searched-for pizza topping in New Mexico as well. Just what we’ve always dreamed of: being associated with the home of Roswell in a national list.

Slice, the country’s leading app for independent pizzerias, put together their own study of the most popular pizza styles in the nation. Arizona apparently prefers Sicilian pizza, which I can get behind. As for popular toppings, Slice broke it down nationally: Pepperoni (of course) ranked first, appearing on 37 percent of pizzas. The rest of the Top 10 in order: mushrooms, extra cheese, sausage, onions, bacon, black olives, green peppers, Italian sausage and meatballs.

Anchovies didn’t even get a participation ribbon. In an effort to disprove this halfassed accusation – and potentially win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism – I spent a solid two hours Googling pizza topping rankings in various fashions. A rival ranking list, assembled by the health and wellness experts at YorkTest, arrived at a different answer, again using Google searches.

Drum roll, please.

They say Arizona’s favorite pizza topping is … pesto. Which is only marginally better than anchovies. And again, it’s weird. Though arguably not as weird as putting fruit on pizza, you pineapple people. Pizza was not meant to be topped by fish or things that grow on trees or fungus or anything that’s green, if you really want to get down to it.

As a pizza purist, I just crave your standard cheese pie topped with something sold in the meat aisle. I’m not even a huge fan of the frou frou fancy pizza sold at places like Pizzeria Bianco or Pomo, though I’ll dabble in a pinch. Please just give me a few slices from Nello’s or Spinato’s, NYPD Pizza or Lou Malnati’s.

Frankly, I’ve always subscribed to the idea that there’s really no such thing as bad pizza – until I contemplated my fellow Arizonans all fighting for the last slice of something topped with anchovies.

They say “pizza is life.” You serve me a slice with anchovies and Death Row may not be entirely out of the question. ■

Fed program would foster drug abuse, addiction

BY JD HAYWORTH Tribune Columnist

One century, one decade, and one year separate us from the birth of Ronald Reagan. With each passing day, especially in these troubling times, we are reminded of Reagan’s basic goodness and yes, greatness.

Derided by the Manhattan elites and the Georgetown Cocktail Set as a “simpleton,” Reagan’s genius was his ability to simplify the seemingly complex.

“If you want less of something, tax it,” Reagan said, succinctly explaining the rationale for tax cuts. History recalls that the reduction of tax rates led to the expansion of economic opportunity during the Reagan Era.

But our 40th President also understood the absurdity of the big talking, big spending, big government Left. “If you want more of something, subsidize it,” Reagan warned.

Sure enough, Joe Biden is buying bigger and bigger problems for our nation and our future.

Among the outrageous examples of “your tax dollars at work” comes this gem: the funding of the distribution of crack pipes to drug addicts.

Courtesy of Senate Democrats and Vice President Harris, who cast the deciding vote, the American Rescue Plan features a “harm reduction” grant program.

Of course, it comes with a cheap price – at least by Washington standards: “Only” $30 million. As it stands now, that dough will be divvied up into $400 thousand chunks and sent to local governments as well as selected “nonprofit organizations.”

The goal? To make drug use safer for addicts.

How will that be accomplished? In part, through the purchase of “smoking kits and supplies” for addicts. The all-knowing, allcaring, sensitive bureaucratic souls at the Department of Health and Human Services will oversee this beneficence. An HHS official confirmed this “forwardthinking action” to the “Washington Free Beacon,” explaining that the smoking kits will include those precious, specially made pipes for users to smoke crystal meth, crack cocaine, or “any illicit substance.”

But faced with a strong and immediate backlash from media reports concerning the inclusion of crack pipes, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra issued an “11th hour revision.”

A press release stated that “no federal funding will be used…to put pipes in safe smoking kits.”

So the “safe smoking kits” remain…addicts will just have to furnish their own crack pipes. Got it!

But Ol’ Joe and his gang didn’t limit the giveaway-by-grants to just smoking kits. Other items to be distributed included fentanyl strips, syringes, and condoms!

And…with a bureaucratic bow to the American Rescue Plan, also detailed Ol’ Joe and his gang don’t limit the giveawayby-grants to just smoking kits. Other items to be distributed include fentanyl strips, syringes, and condoms.

Also detailed among the items for which your tax dollars can be spent are “disease screenings” and vaccinations. Remember, this was enacted during the COVID-centric days of “crisis,” and as we’ve collectively learned, the Left never lets a “crisis go to waste.”

Undergirding this entire exercise is a wrongheaded idea that government should shoulder the responsibility of making drug use more secure and “healthier.”

To the extent government is involved, its resources should be focused on the prevention of drug abuse.