HIBT Lab! Babcock Ranch: Syd Kitson

What would it take to build America’s first solar-powered town? What about a town that could withstand a direct hit from a hurricane? In the early 2000s, Syd Kitson, a former NFL football player and real estate developer, set out to do both at the same time. The result was a community in southwest Florida called Babcock Ranch. This week on How I Built This Lab, Guy talks with Syd about how he negotiated the purchase of a 91,000 acre parcel of land, conserved 80% as a nature preserve, and developed the remainder into an innovative planned community. Plus, how advance planning enabled Babcock Ranch to survive Hurricane Ian, a Category 4 storm in 2022, with minimal damage. This episode was produced by Chris Maccini and edited by John Isabella, with music by Ramtin Arablouei. Our audio engineer was James Willetts. You can follow HIBT on Twitter https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 5:12Guy Raz?

  Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So extreme weather means we'll have to figure out how to build more resilient houses and towns. Last year, when Hurricane Ian swept through Florida, it caused over $110 billion worth of damage. Ian was one of the strongest hurricanes on record. And yet, one community that took a direct hit from the hurricane was largely unscathed. It's called Babcock Ranch, and the 5,000 people who live there rode out the storm without ever losing electricity or even the internet. And the reason Babcock Ranch did so well? Well, it was designed that way. The town is the brainchild of a real estate developer named Sid Kitson.

• 5:57Guy Raz?

  His story of how he built the town actually starts back in the mid-1980s, when he left a career as a professional football player for the Green Bay Packers.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  It was a very different game back in those days. I was a third round draft choice and I made $40,000 my first year. So it wasn't like you were living this lavish lifestyle. By the time I got out of the game, I had actually five seasons. I actually, I went through six training camps. And think about this for a moment. So six years, really didn't make a lot of money through that, that timeframe.

• 6:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  And then I'm six years behind all of my peers. So when you went into the business world, all of a sudden I'm starting, you know, six years behind and, and trying to catch up.

• 6:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah, because you're, you were 27 years old or something like that. You're, you'd had five years in the NFL, which a lot of people might be like, oh my God, this is amazing. I'm sure a lot of people may have said that to you at the time, but your peers that you graduated with had five years of work experience at that point.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Certainly there were, there were things from athletics and football that were incredibly helpful to me in my career. I mean incredibly helpful. But on the other hand, it just didn't translate into a business career if you wanted to get into it. And again, during the off seasons, you're training, you're getting ready for, for the, for that coming season, didn't have a lot of time to work or to gain skills that you needed for when you were out of the game.

• 7:24Guy Raz?

  A lot of guys will go into coaching. They'll go to high school or college, or if they're, they can, they'll, you know, get a job in the coaching staff of a, of a major team, or, or maybe to see if they can get to television. Did you ever think that you would do something like that? Or were you kind of set on figuring out some, something in, in business?

• 7:44Speaker 01

  I was dead set on going into business and I wanted to work for myself. One of the things football taught me was I didn't want my life in somebody else's hands. So that entrepreneurial spirit was, was born right out of, right out of the NFL.

• 7:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  You know, I was one of those guys that if somebody said, here's my card, gave me a call, I gave him a call. And I loved learning about what successful people did and how they got there and their stories. Everyone had this incredible story. And I learned very quickly that overnight success thing doesn't happen very often. You hear about it a lot, but it just, it just doesn't happen very often. It's not real. No. And this, this, this real estate guy from, from Winston-Salem started driving me around. And I'll never forget it because he goes, see these two, this house I bought, well, I fixed it up and I sold it. And then he, he just kind of took me through his journey. And then he started showing me some of these large subdivisions he had built. And the excitement in his voice and looking at these things he had created,

• 8:44Speaker 01

  looking at the people who are living in his homes and in his neighborhoods or, or working in his buildings. I just, I remember thinking that's, that's exactly what I want to do. Now, getting from point A to point B was a whole nother, whole nother story, but that was really an inspiration. So I actually started out in New Jersey in 1986. And Guy, if you remember, 1986, it was, things were flying. Yeah. And, you know, people were, were buying homes, they were flipping them and. And that's what you were doing? You were, you were buying homes and fixing them up? No, I actually, I teamed up with a couple of local business leaders. And we actually started to go out and buy some property to subdivide. So I got right into the development business almost from the beginning.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  You know, it's really interesting. I think most entrepreneurs or businessmen, they, they, there's sort of a moment in their lives where they discover what it is they want to do. And I think it was 1993 where I, I was up in New Jersey and I sold this failed property. And there was a sign out front and it was a golf course community that was trying to get off the ground. I made a cold call to the owners. And, and I'll make a very long story, very short, I convinced them to let me manage and operate their property. Soup to nuts, build the houses, manage the golf, replat it, redesign it, build the clubhouse, all those things. And it turned out to be a big success.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  I had, and it was a great experience. And I remember thinking, oh, this, this is life changing because this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to build master plan communities. And then in 1995, we had the opportunity to take over a, a project that was failing in Florida.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  And really enjoyed what Florida was all about. And the opportunities down in Florida were so much greater than up in the Northeast, where prices were going up, you're competing with builders. And at the time, I had kind of changed over from building houses to being a true developer, where I was creating places versus building homes. And Florida just seemed like a great place to make that happen.

• 10:57Guy Raz?

  So, obviously, we're going to be talking about the property that you would eventually focus on. But while you were involved in developing some of these properties, did you begin to develop a perspective on what you thought was maybe wrong with them, or not right with them, or that you wanted to improve on? I mean, I'm curious if you started to think, you know, maybe, I don't know, maybe a golf course here isn't efficient, or maybe this isn't a really great way to use this land. I'm just not judging it, I'm just curious.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  No, you're spot on. It was frustrating to constantly be trying to work through other people's problems. And really, what I wanted to do was grab a blank sheet of paper, a piece of property that we could do right from the beginning, rather than taking over a property that had problems. And the other thing, and you know, this probably goes back to when I was young, is I had a deep appreciation for the environment. I spent a very significant amount of my time hiking through the Adirondacks, the Appalachians, the Smokies, and spent so much time camping and just really appreciating the environment

• 12:15Speaker 01

  and what it's about. And so that sounds strange when I'm sitting here telling you, really, I'm an environmentalist, yet here I am, a developer, yet I think it's a perfect combination, because what you're saying is 100% right, and that is, when you build on the land, you create impacts. And so we wanted to set out and prove that a new town, a new development, a new city could work hand in hand with the environment. And when you look at, you know, Florida as an example, a thousand people a day are moving down to the state of Florida. Boy, we better get this right because if we don't, you know, we're the very thing that

• 12:55Speaker 01

  people are coming down for is the great water that we have, there's these great natural resources that we have. If they disappear, are people really going to want to come to Florida? And I don't, I don't think so. So we need to pay attention to that and we need to prove that we can make this right.

• 13:11Guy Raz?

  All right. I guess you come across this, you know, an opportunity to purchase this large piece of land called the Babcock Ranch property. And this was owned by one family for like almost a hundred years. And I guess the state of Florida tried to buy it, but couldn't. They want to preserve it. And you and, and some of your partners had an opportunity to, to buy it with a different plan. Tell me what, what, what the story is and how did you come across this?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, it's an unlikely story. But you're right, the state of Florida really wanted to buy this. They were trying to create this wildlife corridor from Lake Okeechobee to Charlotte Harbor. It was 91,000 acres and they negotiated with the family, but the family would only sell the stock and the state could only buy the assets.

• 13:58Guy Raz?

  By law, I think that's Florida state law. They were not allowed to buy.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 14:03Guy Raz?

  Right, okay.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. So they were at an impasse as to how they could make this happen. So the family said, okay, we get it. So we're going to put it back on the market, which they did. And there were people from all over the world coming in, trying to buy this, this land. But all of the offers that were coming in, and they were significant, they wanted to build on the entire parcel, all 91,000 acres. They wanted to put in thousands and thousands of ranchettes. And you want to talk about the definition of sprawl. Well, there it is. And you were talking four or five acre parcels just spread out all over, all 91,000 acres. We came in and we, we talked to the family and, you know, it's 91,000 acres. That's 143 square miles, by the way.

• 14:45Guy Raz?

  It's massive.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  It's massive. And so when you first see this, it's daunting. I mean, you're, you're, it's overwhelming, but what a beautiful piece of property and really a, just a fantastic location. Talked to the family and said, look, we have a different vision for this land. We want to preserve 80% of it. We want to sell that to the state. And then we're going to take the remaining 20%. We're going to build a new city and that new city is going to be the most sustainable new city that's ever been built. Now, this is back in 2005.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Most people didn't even know what sustainability meant. And, and so I'm, I'm trying to convince this family that this is great for their legacy and it's great for Florida, great for Southwest Florida, and we can set an example for how to do it right. And you know what? To their credit, we were not the highest offer, but they, they went with us and they gave us one year to do what would normally take five, maybe seven years to do. We had to negotiate with the state of Florida, the sale of 73,000 acres. That normally takes many, many, many years, but, and, and you know, what happened was, was Governor Jeb Bush, um, at the time, really wanted to preserve this land. And people don't realize, you know, he's known as one of the great governors here because

• 16:00Speaker 01

  of his passion for education, but he also, um, was really, uh, adamant about purchasing as much land as he could, uh, for environmental purposes. And he, he wanted to buy this land. I went in and met with him and, uh, I only met him one other time. So he didn't know me and I didn't know him, but I, I told him this vision I had for Babcock Ranch. And I said, and, and we'll sell you 73,000 acres and we'll negotiate a price and we'll go through all this and, and here's, I just gave him the whole story. And he looked at me and he said, look, if you're crazy enough to do it, I'll support you. And, and that's how it started.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, more from Sid Kitson about turning an undeveloped plot of land in Florida into a solar powered, climate resilient community. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

• 16:55Guy Raz?

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• 20:04Guy Raz?

  Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz and today I'm speaking with Sid Kitson, founder and CEO of Kitson and Partners. It's the real estate development firm behind Babcock Ranch. It's a climate resilient, solar-powered community in southwest Florida. So, all right, so let's talk about what the vision was. Because now you've got this land to develop and the developer is gonna, traditionally, you want to build lots of boxy, square buildings to pack as many people in as you can to get maximum amount of money per square foot. And you want to have retail locations and centers so people can, are attracted to go there and all kinds of things. That was not the vision here. What was going to make this totally different? How are you describing it?

• 20:49Speaker 01

  You know, building a new city, as they said, is complex. And when you're trying to be innovative, it's even more difficult. But the vision was very clear. I remember when we first announced that we were going to buy Babcock Ranch and then we had a press conference and I said, I want this to be the most sustainable new city. In the world and a reporter raised his hand and said, Mr. Kitzman, what does that mean? What does sustainability mean? This is in 2005. That's how far things have come. There was no iPhones, no iPads. It was just a, just a different time. But we laid out a vision, one that was to prove that, that the environment and a new town, a new city can work hand in hand. And we put together these seven initiatives. And this is, this

• 21:33Speaker 01

  is really the heart and soul of what Babcock Ranch is. We say, we're going to focus on the environment, which meant we were going to preserve the wetlands. We're going to, we're going to make the wetlands part of this great place rather than taking a bulldozer and, and covering them over. They were going to be part of the landscape of Babcock Ranch. Energy was critical to us. We wanted to be the first solar powered town in America. And back in, again, 2005, people were looking at us going, solar energy? You're going to have this town powered by solar energy? We wanted to focus on education and transportation and technology and health and wellness. And, and a big one for us from day one was storm safety. So we took all those initiatives that we had and, and, and got after every

• 22:18Speaker 01

  single one of them. And, and really started to say, okay, how can we do different? How can we be innovative? How can we be better? And how can we do this the right way? How can we take the impacts from, you know, building this new city and, and make this, this a great place to live? But again, one that had a minimal impact, if zero impact on the environment. And that's something that we wanted to leave for our kids and our grandkids. It's something that I think we've been able to achieve.

• 22:47Guy Raz?

  All right. This was going to be a long, long process because I think you closed the deal in 2006. But the first people wouldn't move in until 12 years later because you've got to develop the land and you've got to build, start building these, you know, housing units and, and retail spots. Let's talk about the location first. So it's about. 10, 15 miles outside of Fort Myers, Florida.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 23:13Guy Raz?

  And so it's about 30 miles inland.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:16Guy Raz?

  From the ocean and it's on the western side of Florida. There are a number of challenges, right, building anything in Florida for obvious reasons. Very few places in Florida are very, you know, high, right there at sea level.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:30Guy Raz?

  It's prone to hurricanes, huge storms, high water table. And so I guess the first decision you made was let's not build it right on the coast. Let's go 30 miles inland.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Key to everything that we were doing, you know, during this last hurricane, people go, wow, you're just so lucky. 30 feet above sea level. So there's no luck in that at all. It was very purposeful. We wanted to be above the storm surge. We want to be certain that during a hurricane, that our residents, that we all be safe. That it wouldn't flood and that a storm surge wouldn't be, wouldn't be an issue. And so picking that location, as you said, was very purposeful and very important to us.

• 24:16Guy Raz?

  This, the piece of land that you, once you set aside, the, you know, the state of Florida bought a big chunk of it to preserve. And then you were left with about 18,000 acres. That's bigger than Manhattan. And, and so that was what you were going to develop and build a town that will eventually be big enough to house 50,000 people. So you're building, you know, you're going to build thousands of units. I mean, it's, you know, basically from, I don't know, April to November. It can get, it can be pretty unbearable outside at times in Florida. Let's talk about how, what does sustainability mean, for example, in cooling those homes?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  It meant that you had to find a form of energy that was renewable. And the obvious answer was solar.

• 25:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  And when I first thought about this and, and we wanted to create the first solar powered town in the United States. I thought that would be welcome news and this was going to be really easy. And again, and I'm sure you've heard this from so many of the other people, innovation is just hard. And there are so many people, when you innovate, that don't want you to be successful, that don't want you to, to do something that potentially could impact their bottom line, if you will. So we.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  We had this idea, okay, we want to be solar powered, but how are we going to do that? Well, we knew we had a partner with a local utility. So it was Florida Power and Light. And I remember, I'm thinking, well, how am I going to meet the CEO of Florida Power and Light? And I really didn't know anybody do over there, didn't have a way to get an introduction. So I asked a few people, you know, how could I, how can I meet with this, with this CEO? Well, it turns out he was appearing before a subcommittee up in Tallahassee. So I said, well, you know what, I'm going to go up to Tallahassee, I'm going to wait till when he finishes, and I'm going to go ahead and, and when he's on his way out, I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if I can grab him and tell him my vision for

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Babcock Ranch, this first solar powered town. So I got up to Tallahassee, and he's up there and he does his speech and whatever he's talking about to the subcommittee. And he comes out, and he finishes, and he jumps into an elevator. So I jump in with him, and this is the true elevator speech. And then, and in two floors, I told him everything we're trying to do at Babcock Ranch, and how we want it to be the first solar powered town, and is there somebody we could meet with to, to talk about how we can make that a reality? And he said, you know what, that sounds like an interesting idea. I'll have somebody call you. So I left there, wondering if, if that was actually going to happen or not. But sure enough, the next day, one of the, a guy by the name of Eric Solaji

• 27:02Speaker 01

  gave me a call from Florida Power and Light. We got together, and we started talking about how we can make Babcock Ranch the first solar powered town. By the way, we spent eight years, eight years, putting that together, and working through all of the regulatory issues, but we're able to get it done. And today, we have 150 megawatts, just to put that in perspective, that's 700,000 panels on 840 acres. And to me, you know, in order to be sustainable, you've got to find the right energy source, and we were able to do that.

• 27:41Guy Raz?

  How you, I mean, you're essentially creating a new town. It's not near a major, I mean, Fort Myers is, you know, 20 minutes away, but you know, you're not near Miami or Orlando or Tampa. You're, you're, you're not super close to those places. So how do you build in a, let's say, a kind of an off the beaten path place? How do you build a town that is going to be attractive to, to families? Which is really what you need if you want to build a sustainable town. You need, you need families, you need kids, you need schools, right?

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Yep, you, you got it. And, and so think of all the things that you have in your town right now. Well, we had to build all that from the beginning, from scratch. And then the other thing we did is we wanted to be multi-generational. This is really important. We didn't want to be a place where it was just for empty nesters.

• 28:33Guy Raz?

  Right, right.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  We wanted to have a true multi-generational community. And in Florida, you've got to be really careful because you can easily default to just wanting to have.

• 28:42Guy Raz?

  Retirees.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  You got it, exactly. So how do you prevent that? Well, you have to have two things. One is jobs, but more importantly, a school. So we started with a school. We built a school at Babcock Ranch before anybody lived here. I remember we had, we built a school that had 156 seats. And I remember my partner and I were going, gosh, I hope we just lose a little bit of money here. We were hoping to fill half of the, of the seats. And when it was announced that we had a public charter school, it was, or when it was published in the paper, we immediately filled all 156 seats and we had a 300 person waiting list. And, and, and so that sounds great. You know, our school is, is going to thrive and that's all good.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  But the mistake we made was we now didn't have any seats for people moving into Babcock Ranch. So, big mistake. So we quickly pivoted and we actually built a brand new school that could handle all the, all the students. And we'd have students for, for those moving in, into Babcock Ranch. But it is the heart and soul, the heartbeat of, of Babcock Ranch. We're incredibly proud of it. And, you know, Babcock is a hometown. It's a real town. You know, I knew that this place was different. When you drive by the school during the day, you see hundreds of bicycles out front. And when the bell goes off at three o'clock, the kids come running out, jump on their bikes, and they're going fishing, they're going to the playgrounds, they're going wherever

• 30:11Speaker 01

  they're going, they just scatter all over the place. And it's really a throwback to what it was like when I grew up.

• 30:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, and I know that the idea for Babcock Ranch is to attract a wide variety of residents. You've got condos that are about a quarter of a million dollars, all the way up to four million dollar homes. So you've got a broad range of homes. But is there a world where, I mean, you know, there are different views about density, right? There are arguments that developers and sort of, quote unquote, smart city advocates argue that people should live in densely populated areas, even if it's outside of a city, you know, it makes more sense for people to live in apartment buildings, that that's actually the best, most efficient use of land, and it's the best for the environment.

• 31:02Guy Raz?

  I mean, is that, in your view, is there room for that in a development like Babcock Ranch, where you've got maybe some apartment buildings there?

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Well, we do have apartments going up right now. We have four-story apartments going up. And so I do believe that is part of the answer, with a caveat, and that is making certain that there's a lot of open space around it. And so it's not a matter of just building dens, it's combined with that preservation of land.

• 31:35Guy Raz?

  So tell me, I mean, once it's fully populated, you know, I know one of the ideas was to create an environment where people don't really have to commute. They don't have to drive to Fort Myers, or to Tampa, or wherever, or Naples for jobs, that there will be jobs there in the community. How will you attract businesses, companies, to build?

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Office space, headquarters, industry there.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  It is important. You need to have the jobs here so people don't have to commute. And to be truly sustainable, that is one of the, you know, key initiatives. So you're 100% right. And we are attracting businesses here. As a matter of fact, a lot of the people here that moved here opened up businesses here. And half of the people here work from home. And that's something we didn't expect. The number of people that actually don't leave because they work from their homes, they have a gigabit. And so it's very convenient, easy for them to do that. And as we grow, we have 6 million square feet of commercial space.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  And we've already built, you know, several hundred thousand square feet and are about to start several hundred thousand more feet. Now, will they be large headquarters? You know, that world's changing.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  So we're looking at how office space is starting to change and how we can make that sustainable. So a lot of people who work here will live here. And we will continue to work with other companies to move here.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, more from Sid Kitson about building the communities of the future. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

• 33:27Speaker 04

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• 34:02Speaker 02

  Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Sid Kitson, founder of Babcock Ranch, an energy-independent community in Florida that's designed to withstand natural disasters like hurricanes and floods.

• 34:15Guy Raz?

  One of the crucial ideas here, in addition to building a new city, was to make it resilient to the elements. And so that means that it had to be built in a certain way to withstand a Category 5 hurricane. So what did-- tell me what that means. How do you make a Category 5 hurricane resilient city?

• 34:39Speaker 01

  You know, it starts from day one when you start planning it. So we went back and looked at maps from the 1940s of Babcock Ranch. Because what we wanted to do was to have all of the water go into the natural flowways of the land. So in order to do that, you really have to identify. Because over the years, there's farming, they put in canals, they drain the land, but you have to find where the natural flowways, where that water wants to go. And we did. We went all the way back, and then we designed around those. And we kept all the wetlands in place. And one of the things that-- one of the things I try and tell people is, Mother Nature is going to put that water where it wants to put that water.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  You can do all you want, but Mother Nature's going to win every single time. So we said, let's work with the nature. Let's not work against it. And sure enough, we found those natural flowways. We preserved all those areas, and we used it as part of our water management system. So we had this water management system that has natural flowways, and then all the wetlands that we kept within Babcock Ranch. We kept the wetlands, and it's beautiful, by the way, because it's part of who we are. But we also added more wetlands. And these were, these store and take on an enormous amount of water. And then we have a lake system. And our lake system actually has a smart water management system.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Where it, a computer can predict what the weather is going to be like in seven to 10 days, and then regulate the amount of water that's in that lake. So we got this great water management system. We have native plant materials that are used to these windy conditions and these wet conditions, and they survive better.

• 36:30Guy Raz?

  So let's talk about September 22. Hurricane Ian hits Florida. This was one of the most deadly hurricanes in Florida since the 30s. 150 people died. It was a category four storm. You had 100 plus mile an hour sustained winds for like eight, nine hours with 150 mile an hour gusts. I mean, that's crazy for houses, buildings, trees to withstand eight, nine hours of 100 mile an hour winds. First of all, were you there at the time?

• 37:00Speaker 01

  I was there.

• 37:02Guy Raz?

  You were in your house?

• 37:04Speaker 01

  I was in my house.

• 37:05Guy Raz?

  And what did you do? Did you put like boards on your window? Did you like sit in your living room? Just tell me, what were you doing?

• 37:13Speaker 01

  At first, when it first started, I was kind of going around the community, believe it or not, trying to see how we were performing. And then a couple of the gusts came and actually put my car on two wheels. So I figured I better get back to my home.

• 37:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  But I have impact glass. So I was confident that my home could withstand the winds that we were expecting. But when that storm came over Cuba, and you remember this, it then hit the Gulf as a category one, and then it just exploded into a strong category four hurricane. I remember sitting in my home and hearing the weather person say, this category four storm is heading right for Babcock Ranch. So if you're at Babcock Ranch, you need to take necessary precautions.

• 38:02Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  And that's when it started. And the reality of this guy was really unbelievable because I had promised over 5,000 of my neighbors that they could shelter safely at home. And all the work and all the things that we had planned on for the last 10 years to prepare for this, it was now about to be tested.

• 38:24Guy Raz?

  This was it.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  You can plan all you want. You can do all the things that you think are right. You can spend extra money. We spent millions of extra dollars to harden Babcock Ranch, make sure that the electricity would stay on. But you don't know until it actually happens. And very candidly, if you had asked me that I thought we were going to be tested this early, I would never have said that would happen. And sure enough, it hit for eight straight hours, 100 plus mile an hour winds. And it was, when it got to that 150, it was like a freight train running through your house.

• 38:59Guy Raz?

  I can't even imagine because I've just been through an atmospheric river here in Northern California. And we got occasional gusts of like 70 miles an hour. That was crazy. But 150, I mean, that's like, that's like a Ferrari racing past your home for eight hours in a row.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Yes. And think about this. We're the only place in Southwest Florida that didn't lose electricity. So you're watching it live on TV.

• 39:24Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  You're seeing this storm sit on top of you. We were on the eastern side, the nasty side of that storm, of the eye of the storm, and just watching it sit on us.

• 39:33Guy Raz?

  And was your house shaking?

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Yes, there was, yeah, it was, it actually got pretty spooky because I have these sliders and they bent in. They actually started to bow in. And I'm on a lake, so I actually had waves crashing that right up to the side of my home. It looked like you were at the ocean. And sure enough, the force of the wind actually took the water underneath the sliders, and it made this screeching sound. I didn't get a lot of water, it was just a, you know, just a little bit, but it was very eerie.

• 40:06Guy Raz?

  And you told everybody in the community, hey, you can stay at home.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Yep, you can stay at home safely.

• 40:10Guy Raz?

  Just don't go outside, but you're just gonna be inside for eight hours. It's still nerve wracking, it's because it's basically hurricane is like, I mean, it's kind of like a giant tornado, just but, you know, for eight hours.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  It just wears you out, and I'm thinking about 15 years of my life, 20 years actually of my life invested in this town and all the planning and all the things that we've done, all the people that were involved in creating this place, all the neighbors, my partners, homeowners, it was just, it was just all coming together. And it went through the night, and I remember just waiting for the next morning for the sun to come up, and didn't sleep at all, obviously. And it wasn't until the next morning that you really had any idea as to what had happened. But, you know, when I got out the next morning and drove the property, drove over for four or five hours just meeting with neighbors,

• 41:04Speaker 01

  and other than maybe some shingles on some of the homes, there's very little damage.

• 41:08Guy Raz?

  Wow. And what about flooding? I mean, how are you able to mitigate the flooding? Is there a drainage system that was designed on the property to mitigate that?

• 41:20Speaker 01

  We did, we used the natural flowways that drained right into these areas where, you know, for centuries.

• 41:29Guy Raz?

  The wetlands.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  The wetlands, but also these natural flowways. And we also had a lake system, this is really interesting. We actually told the homeowners that in the unlikely event that one of your lakes overflowed, they're designed to do that. And it'll actually drain between your homes into the roads and then off the property. Now, we never got close to that. I think we still had, we had plenty of room left in terms of capacity. But we even have a failsafe if there is a catastrophic rain event that goes beyond what we could even have imagined.

• 42:07Guy Raz?

  So now, I mean, looking at what you've done with Babcock Ranch, obviously, this is a well-planned development and, you know, built with sort of future sustainability in mind. And now you've got, in the next year or so, you'll have up to 10,000 people living there. How do you, I mean, is this something that you can build and replicate anywhere in the United States? Or is this something that has to be done in a very specific location? In other words, could you just like do this, you know, on the New Jersey shore? Or probably, you know, if we're thinking about the future of climate change and increasing

• 42:49Guy Raz?

  heavy damaging storms, probably even with these mitigation technologies that you've put in there, probably still want to build it away from the ocean?

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that's sort of a two-part question. One, people are going to want to live on the water. It's just human nature. So how do we, how do we make that safe? And I think that's the tricky part. If you're going to be on the coast, you have to build in a way that is resilient and can handle the wind loads, can handle the water and the storm surge that can happen. So to rebuild a house the way that it was built 20 years ago is, in my mind, is a big mistake because these storms are going to happen again. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  So if you're going to build along the coast, we prefer not to. We want to stay above the storm surge, but if you're going to, you have to build in a resilient way and then you have to take a look at the infrastructure and make sure that is also resilient. And I've talked to people all over the world, actually, asking us how we did it. And one of the things we talk, I've talked to them about is, look, start somewhere and, and start with the infrastructure.

• 44:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  And hardening your infrastructure.

• 44:14Guy Raz?

  And I mean, it's sort of, you have this opportunity to really do radical things there, like, for example, you know, I'm here in the Bay Area, so there's, this is not weird here to see an autonomous vehicle driving around. You do see them, you see humanless cars driving around the streets. But there you, you actually had a, for a while, I think you had like a, an autonomous vehicle as a shuttle working. Is that part of the vision to, to, to try these things that might be sort of untested elsewhere?

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Oh, when, yes, and we're doing it. We have, so we, we are going to reintroduce our autonomous vehicles. We stopped that during COVID.

• 44:49Guy Raz?

  It's going to be like a shuttle, right?

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. But we have something called Innovation Way here, where we got the three top builders in the country to build homes with technology in them that's not being used today and to test it, see how it works and then ultimately, hopefully, implement that into the homes that they're building. And you can actually tour those homes here at Babcock Ranch. And now we're doing Innovation Way 2.0, which is going to be materials. We're looking for materials and, and building techniques that are, are more environmentally responsible. And, you know, for cement, for example, you know, creates a lot of carbon and how do we, so how do we come up with different building systems that, that, that are more sustainable?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  And hopefully, build homes that, that feature those materials. So we are a living laboratory and we are proud of that and we're going to continue to do that.

• 45:43Guy Raz?

  All right. So what happens when, when it's done? I mean, do you, you're the, you know, kind of founder of this, this thing? Are you the, I don't know, sort of the honorary mayor? Are you the, the autocrat dictator? Like, where do you, where do you go from there, Sid?

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Well, you know, that's a great question. I do live here. I do have a home here. And I probably spend 70% of my time here and really enjoy it. So, you know, hopefully, I'll be able to enjoy everything that we've created here for many years to come. I don't want to be mayor, but one thing we're talking about is the form of government here. What can we do to make sure that Bad Cock Ranch maintains the vision that we've had for it from the beginning? I don't have the answer to that, by the way. But, you know, eventually, we'll incorporate. It'll be its own town, and it will have, you know, whether it's a mayor or whatever form of government that ultimately is here.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  But I think for me and for my partners and for everybody, I think the most important thing is to not only do this the right way, but to hopefully, and I think it's happening, have others just copy what we're doing, emulate what we're doing. I've certainly had enough phone calls of people wanting, you know, to get, if you will, the playbook for how we've done it. And I hope that ultimately becomes the legacy.

• 47:11Guy Raz?

  Sid Kitson, thanks so much.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Thank you very much, Guy. Enjoyed it.

• 47:19Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built This Lab. Please make sure to follow the show wherever you listen on any podcast app. Usually, there's just a follow button right at the top, so you don't miss any new episodes, and it is entirely free. If you want to contact our team, our email address is [email protected]. This episode was produced by Chris Messini with editing by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was James Willetts. Our music was composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, J.C. Howard, Liz Metzger, Sam Paulson, Kerry Thompson, and Elaine Coats. Neva Grant is our supervising editor. Beth Donovan is our executive producer.

• 48:04Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

• 48:13Guy Raz?

  People say, "I'll never live in California. I'm afraid of earthquakes." I'm afraid of alligators in my backyard, but, you know, hey, everyone's got their thing.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  We do have a few friends that float around and entertain people, for sure.