Banking on KC – Diane Botwin of Botwin Commercial Development
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Kelly Scanlon:
Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode is Diane Botwin, the owner at Botwin Commercial Development. Diane combines her work as a small scale developer with her passion of working with nonprofits in Kansas City's arts community. Welcome, Diane.
Diane Botwin:
Thank you.
Kelly Scanlon:
Well, so good to catch up with you. It's been a while. And you've been busy. Let's go back to the beginning. Your path to becoming a real estate developer has featured some different twists and turns. You got a music degree from Tulane University, and then you went on and you got a law degree from UMKC. Tell our listeners how those two courses of study, music and law, actually prepared you for your current career in real estate.
Diane Botwin:
I have an undergraduate degree, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music. And I played an instrument, the flute. And as part of my college education, I was fortunate enough to play in several... Well, many, many chamber ensembles and small orchestras and spend a lot of time doing performance. Well, how has that been useful to me in my later career? First, when you're in an ensemble environment, say you're in a small chamber group, you each have your music, your job, your voice, but you have to listen very hard to all the other performers and all the other voices. And you have to blend in because what you're trying to do is something that you're creating that is a whole piece, you're not just playing as a solo instrument.
And I think that in any business endeavor, and certainly in commercial development, that happens almost identically. You have different performers, different contributors, different disciplines that are coming together, and you're trying to create some holistic thing; a building, for example. And everybody needs to know their part and everybody needs to contribute, but you also need to listen very hard to the other players and you have to work together so that what you create actually all fits together. So it sounds a little corny, but I think that is something that I learned when I was going to music school is the idea of listening very hard and knowing my place within the whole, and also having the expectation of the other players or team members.
Kelly Scanlon:
All the relationships you have to form, the collaboration that goes into some of the deals that you negotiate, you're exactly right. It's just like a music ensemble.
Diane Botwin:
And so then going to law school, I learned contracts, I learned negotiation, I learned litigation, I learned how to study, how to prepare an argument, how to be a lawyer. And I think that has absolutely been invaluable to me in my later career, given that I'm dealing with people who are dealing with contracts.
Kelly Scanlon:
You did something interesting in between earning your degree at Tulane and music and then going on to get your law degree. You went to Paris, you put your negotiation skills to work pretty quickly with your parents because if I remember right, you graduated early and you convinced them that the money they saved because you graduated early, could be well spent on a trip to Europe, particularly France. What was your fascination with Paris?
Diane Botwin:
Well, I wanted to go see the world and I had gone to school in New Orleans, which if you've ever been there, you know that it is a very cosmopolitan environment and there's lots of diversity and there's lots of different influences, both European and American that you'll find in New Orleans. The impetus for wanting to go to Paris was that my two closest girlfriends in college were both going to Europe to have a semester abroad. I had graduated early and they were taking this semester to go abroad and they were going to Paris.
So I figured out that if I could go to Paris, I could have a couple of girlfriends that I could travel with, which would be fantastic. There was also a very well-known flute professor who had an opening, and I applied and was accepted to be his student, and he was in Paris at the time. It was a great opportunity to learn how to stand on my own and to see a city that is magical on so many levels and to be that young and that free and that able to go and see and do it was great. It was the best.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yeah, it really gave you the confidence to know that you could do anything you set your mind to.
Diane Botwin:
Pretty much.
Kelly Scanlon:
Before you started your real estate career, you actually did work as an attorney though for about a decade. How did that lead to your current endeavors with real estate?
Diane Botwin:
Well, I worked for a wonderful small litigation firm, just a fantastic firm, and one of our clients was the JC Nichols Company, and I was low man on the totem pole. I was the youngest associate, and one of my assignments was the landlord tenant docket of the JC Nichols Company. And I took these cases and started to jump into them, and I found that I really enjoyed the aspects of lease negotiation, of working on a relationship, defining what your relationship was going to be, and then acting on that. So as I was doing those cases, I found I really liked that in comparison to litigation, which is often the opposite of negotiating a relationship. It is understanding and ending a relationship more often than not.
And I found that I really liked the idea of creating a relationship. So I was a young married woman and we wanted to have children, and I couldn't figure out how to keep my billable where it needed to be, practice litigation and have children all at the same time. So I came up with this brilliant idea, of course, thinking I knew enough to do this, which looking back on it, I had no idea what I was doing, but I went to my parents and I said, "Parents, you want grandchildren. I want you to have grandchildren. I need a way to continue to work and figure this out. So let's start a real estate company together."
Kelly Scanlon:
So this was in around 1986, I believe. You started this real estate company with your parents. Tell us about how it evolved.
Diane Botwin:
Well, my father, who was a surgeon and on the side would from time to time as other doctors would, that he would buy a building and have it. And he liked it and enjoyed doing that. And so we, in 1986, purchased a couple of buildings in the Waldo neighborhood that we still own today and started a small property management company. And that gave me the flexibility to work around the times that my children needed me. And then once my last son was in kindergarten, that's when I did my first development project.
Kelly Scanlon:
Are you concentrated in certain areas of the metro?
Diane Botwin:
My home base is Waldo, been there since 1986. I also have properties in the Crossroads and also properties in Columbus Park. So I would say I am a real passion more for urban areas.
Kelly Scanlon:
And I've heard you say that your focus is to provide neighborhood sensitive commercial development. What do you mean by that?
Diane Botwin:
I think the best way to describe it is to say that I want to observe and listen and understand a neighborhood and whatever I do in that neighborhood, I want it to be the appropriate thing for that neighborhood. And by that, I mean, is what I think is a good idea, is that the right scale? Is that the right shape? Is that the right size? Will it have the right type of tenants in it? Is it sensitive to what's going on in that neighborhood? Have I listened to what those neighbors really want in their neighborhood? And can I create something that is still true to my own creative nature and also complimentary or would fit in to whatever that neighborhood is.
Kelly Scanlon:
Are there some projects you've been involved with? You mentioned the Crossroads and the Columbus Park area, both very well-known areas in Kansas City. What are some of your most memorable projects you've been involved with?
Diane Botwin:
Well, one of my most explosive ones was in 2007, I had a building in Waldo that burnt to the ground.
Kelly Scanlon:
Oh, I remember that. Yeah.
Diane Botwin:
I made the decision after that building was destroyed, that I wanted to build a building back that fit into the neighborhood. I think now that it's been alive for approaching 20 years, I think that it has integrated very well into the neighborhood.
Kelly Scanlon:
And what's in it now?
Diane Botwin:
Well, now it houses Crow's Coffee Shop and Boru Ramen, and there are offices upstairs. There's a lovely hair salon called Lumine that's on the second floor. And then there's an architecture firm, Garcia Architects, now house that lovely building. In Waldo, I had the opportunity to create a small apartment building for young adults, aging out of foster care. I had a parking lot in Waldo, and this is an outgrowth of my involvement with reStart. I've been involved with reStart as long as my company has been involved, maybe even a little bit sooner. HUD developed a program whereby you could apply for a grant to build housing, affordable housing, and I saw an article on the front page of The Star that announced that a grant had been given to the State of Missouri to study the needs of young adults, aging out of foster care. And I thought to myself, well, this is a sign.
Kelly Scanlon:
And you were already involved in reStart at this point?
Diane Botwin:
Oh, sure. I was involved with reStart from its inception, and so this took place in 2008, so many years. And I had been chair of that board and involved with fundraising and just all aspects of that.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yeah. And just as a reminder, reStart is an organization that combats homelessness. In fact, we've had the current CEO, Stephanie Boyer on the show several months ago. So you were involved with it as well since its inception, and here we are in 2008, you read about a grant in The Kansas City Star.
Diane Botwin:
And I thought to myself, I've always believed... I know this will sound silly, but I've just always believed that really the true answer to homelessness is permanent housing. And it fits with the common term now of housing first wherein you create housing and people who are without a home are given a home or found a home or assisted in obtaining a home, and then they can develop the skills to stay there. So I saw this article and I called the then Executive Director of reStart, Evie Craig, and I said, "Evie, this is it. This is a sign. We have to do this. This is going to be a good thing." And she said, "That's the funniest thing, because the Director of the Missouri Department of Mental Health is sitting here in my office, and we were just talking about the needs of young adults. I'm going to put you two together."
So we discovered that HUD had a grant, and I don't know about you, but I'd never applied for a grant from HUD. And it was a complete straight uphill learning curve for me and my team, and it took us five years to accomplish it, but we were able to build a small apartment building with 14 apartments for young adults. And it's been in operation now for eight years. And it's really something. It really is. I have to say I collaborated with ReDiscover and with reStart and with SAVE, Inc. And those three organizations are incredible, just incredible. And they make it possible for these young adults to have a safe and nurturing environment. I think it works. I really do.
Kelly Scanlon:
I actually had all three of those organizations on this show. And in the work that you're doing is just incredible. You were also part of the rejuvenation of the Crossroads area. What was your role in that?
Diane Botwin:
So in 1999, I bought a building at the corner of 19th and Main and literally nothing happening around it. The building was covered in plywood and little... You know what a trowel is, that you apply plaster with. So someone in their wisdom had nailed thousands of trows all over the front of this building. It was covered in plywood and it was painted pink and I don't know, I just bought it. We took the plywood off and found the most beautiful terracotta underneath. And the transoms of all the windows were Frank Lloyd Wright original glass tiles. And I renovated it, it was three buildings. We put it together and it now houses Affare restaurant, Lumine Hair Salon, their second location is in my building in the Crossroads, Gown Gallery is there. And it's a lovely little building. It really is.
Kelly Scanlon:
So what are some of the things that you're involved in right now?
Diane Botwin:
Well, I'm working on a project with my two development partners, Andrew Ganahl and Kevin Klinkenberg. We are working on a project in Columbus Park, which is also a delightful little neighborhood. And we are building 10 town homes that we will be selling and 10 apartments that sit behind the town homes that we're keeping.
Kelly Scanlon:
When is this set to lease?
Diane Botwin:
Well, we are in construction right now. Most likely it will be this coming fall, September, October. Everything should be done and ready to go.
Kelly Scanlon:
Sounds like you've done new construction. And then thinking of the 19th and Main experience and probably some others that we haven't talked about, you've also been involved in rehabilitating older, somewhat historic structures. What are the different challenges that you face in those two different types of building rejuvenation, I guess you'd say?
Diane Botwin:
Everything has its challenges. Everything has its rewards. With an old building, which is how I started my redevelopment work, was renovating old buildings. The excitement there is you just don't know what you're going to find. So for example, when we bought the building at 19th and Main, so I've got my architect and the contractor and we're walking through the building and it's not in great shape. We're going to renovate it. And so we're walking down this staircase and we walk to the bottom of the staircase and the contractor who's leading the line steps in front of us takes one more step and falls into-
Kelly Scanlon:
Oh, no.
Diane Botwin:
It wasn't that deep. I mean, I guess maybe two or three feet into the rankest, smelliest, grossest water you can imagine. So you just don't know what you'll find. You don't know what you'll uncover. So it's a mystery and that can throw you for a loop. But on the reward side, you find things like these Frank Lloyd Wright Luxor glass panels, which is a bit of history that's really, really fascinating. With new construction, you are dependent upon how you do it. And all of my new construction has been on urban sites, small infill projects. And so when you start a project, you don't know what's in the ground underneath, and you can spend an awful lot of time and effort fixing the ground underneath so that you can build up. You are able to create exactly what you want, which is different than renovating a building, which the building itself tells you what it wants to be. The challenges are economic on both sides. Trying to bring a vision into life with new construction can evolve very quickly. And so that's a little bit different than just doing renovation.
Kelly Scanlon:
Sure. And especially in the area you are where space is at a premium because you said you're building up because you're limited to the amount of footprint that you have with the historical buildings in addition to what the building tells you what it wants to be. And you get surprised by some of these really rewarding fines, discoveries that you make. Also, just the idea of bringing something back and having it be a vital and vibrant part of the neighborhood again, I would imagine gives you a lot of fulfillment.
Diane Botwin:
It absolutely does, and I am not a nostalgic person, not at all. But I love history and I want to understand the time and place of any given building. And I hope that in renovating it, that I can give a nod to history and be respectful of history without being nostalgic because we are in a contemporary time and I am a contemporary person.
Kelly Scanlon:
You mentioned reStart. You're also involved in several other nonprofits and your business keeps you very busy. Why is it number one, that you feel compelled to be involved, because you're not just tangentially involved in not-for-profits, you're all in with the non-profits that you work with. How do you find the time for that? And second of all, how do you decide which ones you're going to give that time and energy to given everything else that you've got going on?
Diane Botwin:
Well, I think that the collective we, have an obligation to repair our community, to make our community better, and we can do that in lots of different ways. So from my upbringing and my culture and my religion, those are very strong tenants. And so that's, I guess the short answer as to why I have been involved in volunteerism. It's also extraordinarily rewarding because you meet people who are truly exceptional. The organizations that pull at my heart are organizations that can address a need. My involvement with reStart started when I was in my 20s. As part of my synagogue, we had a speaker come, Stuart Whitney, who was the original executive director and started reStart. And Stuart, he was just an amazing individual, a big man, and he came into the room and he started talking, and I felt my heart just crack open.
And I looked at Stuart and I said, "What do you need? What do you need right now?" And he was at the time, opening the doors to his church on the corner of 9th, and I think it's grand two individuals who were without a home, and it was cold and it was freezing outside. And he opened the doors to his church and he said, "Well, I really could use some coats and gloves and hats and blankets." And I said, "I'm on it." And that was my first encounter with what would become reStart. So when you're touched in that way, you can't help yourself. The other organizations that I just love being involved with is more recently I have become involved with the Kemper Museum and the Nelson-Atkins Museum. I am a docent at the Kemper Museum, and I am in training to become a docent at the Nelson Museum.
Kelly Scanlon:
So I've read about what it takes to be a docent at both those places. And it's pretty intense course of study.
Diane Botwin:
It is. It's like getting a little art history degree when, of course I didn't study art history, but it's really fascinating. And because I have enjoyed working with particularly local artists throughout my career, this is a nice way to continue that type of involvement.
Kelly Scanlon:
How has your work in real estate allowed you to better engage with the arts community? Like you just mentioned?
Diane Botwin:
I've been able to work with several local artists who have been a part of my development team on every project that I've worked on. But artists, their thinking is invaluable. It will take you in directions that you hadn't thought of, in levels that you hadn't thought of. And I have always found that having an artist or an artist's outlook or perspective with what I've been doing has enriched it deeply. So for example, in the building that I built in Waldo, I worked with Anne Lindberg. We gave her a challenge. I needed to have sun screening on my windows, and I wanted to have her figure out what to do about that. And so she drew on the windows and we took her drawing and took it to the manufacturer, and then he etched it into the window panels that surround the building. So it's actually an art installation, makes up the second floor of that building.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yeah. And then it serves a functional purpose as well. You've obviously had a lot of different influences into your career, from the degrees that you went after to the arts community that you've worked with to your parents. I mean, it goes on and on. Who or what do you think has been your biggest resource as you have grown your company?
Diane Botwin:
That is a really difficult question. I mentioned Stuart Whitney earlier. Stuart was a mentor, not necessarily in how to build a building or how to be a developer, but Stuart taught me that what we do can make a difference in another person's life. And you don't save anyone. You just create an environment where that person can be the best person that that person can be. We're just trying to do the best we can so that other people can interact with it. And I think that has been an influence for me. So if I extrapolate that out and I say, "Okay, I'm going to make this building, and here it is," that building really isn't alive until people come and interact with it. And I'm just doing the best I can to create an environment where those people can have the best life that they can.
Kelly Scanlon:
What's been your biggest surprise as a business owner?
Diane Botwin:
My biggest surprise, well, I would say a few years ago I was asked by a dear friend, Sheryl Vickers, to get involved in an organization that she and her friend Audrey Navarro, were going to start in Kansas City called WIRED, Women in Real Estate Development. And Cheryl invited me out to lunch. And if you've ever met Cheryl, she has more energy than the sun. And she was very enthusiastically telling me about this organization and that I should be involved. And the surprise was that I'm not really alone.
And that again, sounds sort of silly, but in my career at the time that I have done most of the things that I've done, I was kind of the only girl in the room doing them. And as a result, I sometimes would feel like I was alone in my journey. And this little organization, because it is filled with young women, vibrant women, some older women, some women even my age, who have had experiences and are genuinely open to talking about them, sharing, comforting, nurturing, supporting, it's been a most wonderful surprise to be around that even at this point in my career, that makes me feel very warm inside.
Kelly Scanlon:
I know you said you're not a nostalgic person, but I am going to ask you to look back over your career and then also think forward to the future. What do you see as your legacy to Kansas City?
Diane Botwin:
Oh, my gosh.
Kelly Scanlon:
We all have a legacy, whether we want it or not. It's kind of like a company has a culture whether they want it or not. You have a legacy, so here's your chance to tell. What would you like it to be?
Diane Botwin:
Oh, my gosh, those shoes are very big to fill. They really are. I don't know. I guess, going back to where we started the conversation that I hope that my legacy would be that I listened very hard and that I paid attention, and that I did my homework and that I showed up on time, and that the permanent things I've done, or the people that I've interacted with or the relationships that I've been lucky enough to have, that I did that to the best of my ability. That's what I would want my legacy to be.
Kelly Scanlon:
And that's all we can ask of anybody. So Diane, thank you so much for all that you have done throughout your career for individuals and for Kansas City as a whole. And thank you for taking the time to come here and be with us today. We really appreciate it.
Diane Botwin:
Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Joe Close:
This is Joe Close, president of Country Club Bank. Thank you to Diane Botwin for being our guest on this episode of Banking on KC. Diane's philosophy toward urban development is rooted in her love for the arts and a passion to make a difference. Her small scale mixed use projects reflect an understanding and respect for the neighborhoods where they're located. She believes the true impact of her work lies in creating environments where individuals flourish, emphasizing that a building only comes alive through human interaction. Diane's larger message urges us to question the scale, shape, and purpose of our own endeavors. We may not be commercial developers, but we can all be architects of positive change. We each have the power to influence our environment positively, and in doing so, enhance the lives of those around us. Thanks for tuning in this week. We're banking on you Kansas City, Country Club Bank, member FDIC.