4/10/26 Getting Down to Business with Nicholas Ortiz of Tejon Ranch

The Moneywise Radio Show and Podcast Friday, April 10th BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Radio Show & Podcast" call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www. MoneywiseGuys.com facebook: Moneywise_Wealth_Management LinkedIn: Moneywise_Wealth_Management Guest: Nicholas Ortiz, SVP, Corporate Communications & Public Affairs at Tejon Ranch website: https://tejonranch.com/ The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. Nicholas Ortiz & Tejon Ranch are not affiliated with nor endorsed by LPL Financial or Moneywise Wealth Management].

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Live from the basement inside the historic Woolworths Building in downtown Bakersfield. Call or text in at 661-396-1000.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  Now, let's start the Money Wise Show.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Hey, welcome to the Friday edition of the Money Wise Show. We're live from the basement of the historic Woolworths Building in downtown Bakersfield. For the next hour, you're here with us on News Talk 96.1 FM and 1230 AM, KERN, streaming live at MoneyWiseGuys.com. You can call or text into the show anytime over the 24 hours a day, the 23 hours that we're not on the air, at 661-396-1000, 661-396-1000. We actually have a couple of questions that popped in that we'll get to here in just a moment, but we are your hosts. I'm Justin Leland here with...

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Debbie Lewis.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Debbie, how are you?

• 1:23Speaker 02

  I'm...it's Friday.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  It's Friday. That was a pause. That was a pregnant pause there for a moment.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  It's been a busy...April is a wild month. Lots of activities, events, fundraisers.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  It is definitely...

• 1:38Speaker 02

  I'm tired.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  It is definitely event season.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Um...

• 1:42Speaker 02

  But good, I'm good and well.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's fun. I mean, I love it. I love the events because I like visiting with folks and seeing people out in the community. And I know you do as well, Debbie, but at some point as, um...

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Relative introverts. Man, it takes a lot out of you.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  If you're going back to back. I want to start an informal slash formal petition locally that people start doing their events during the summertime when nothing happens.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Right. When it's 112 outside.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Air conditioning units around town. Let's use them.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Let's use them. Yes. Yes. Um, yeah, we don't have to have all of our events in from late March to early May and/or October. That's pretty much it.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  But it's just how it continues to go.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  And we keep showing up and

• 2:36Speaker 01

  At least a couple of times a week. You're out until eight, nine, 10 o'clock at night doing stuff.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  It's a good, it's a good problem to have.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  It is.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  It's a marathon.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  It, it is a marathon, not a sprint.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  But the weather is beautiful. We're going into the weekend.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Might get a little rain this weekend, which is going to be kind of nice.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  I think I saw a funny joke on Instagram. It was like, Apple weather is just looking out the window like the rest of us.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Pretty much.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Doesn't know what's going on.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  No clue what's going on. It's funny. I was driving home last night after the event we were just at. We were, we, Debbie and I went to the Arts Council of Kern Gala last night. And as I was driving home, it was dark out. I saw lightning strikes up towards like

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Visalia, you know, north of, of Bakersfield. It was actually pretty, pretty, uh, seeing some, some flashes of light out there. So.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  It's a beautiful day today.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  It is great. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Um, it's not such a beautiful day on the market. It's a mixed market today. We have the Dow is down, the NASDAQ is up. Um, the S and P is slightly down. We're going into the last hour of trading, so we, we may, you know, finish kind of where we're at right now, or you know, something might happen between now and the time that we get off the air. But right now, markets are kind of mixed. Dow is down about a half a percent. S and P is relatively flat. And the NASDAQ is up about four tenths of a percent. So pretty much a mixed market across the board. We did have a question that popped in, Debbie. Which one did you want to hit first? We had two of them.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  We sure did. Um, okay. So where do things stand in Iran? Hoping for some relief like we really needed to be in a war these days. People, people are barely getting by financially and now we want to get into a deeper hole. More of a comment than a question.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  I, um, I feel where you're coming from. I absolutely do. And there's some data that came out today that can speak specifically to kind of the aftermath of that question. First part of that question is relatively easy to answer. We have a tenuous like two week ceasefire reprieve at this point in time. Markets really haven't really reacted to that news. Maybe a little bit yesterday they reacted to it in positive territory. But today, the bigger news was a couple of things that came out. Consumer sentiment is at an all time low.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Okay. Inflation is starting to peak and rear its ugly head again. Now, the numbers came out this morning, and I was not shocked at all. I think most, most people that pay attention and are watching this stuff on a regular basis, were expecting the inflation rate to jump, and the annual rate to jump above 3%. We were expecting a three handle. And it came in at 3.3, right where we really expected it to be. And that is a couple of different reasons for that, that inflation rate, the consumer price index jump, really

• 5:44Speaker 01

  comes down to what's going on in Iran. Right? When energy prices, gasoline, right now, gasoline, all types, year over year, just a year over year increase of 19% nationwide. That's unsustainable. Right? Now, most of that has happened in the last five weeks, six weeks?

• 6:11Speaker 02

  What, what I, it's been a couple of days since I put gas in my tank. What, what are we at right now? Over five?

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Uh, it's over six.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Is it, it's over six?

• 6:22Speaker 01

  It's over six. So yeah, like the last time I put gas in my tank, which was, I think Monday, I think it was like 6:39.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Was what I paid. Of course, you could probably get it cheaper at other gas stations than where I went. But um yeah, we're we're teetering with six, $6.50 a gallon.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  How long has it been since we've been up this much with with our gas prices? Do you remember offhand?

• 6:52Speaker 01

  I I remember during the the, you know, during the Iran war or the Iraq war. Um, you know, we spiked at one point near, you know, $5 a gallon or a little bit above $5 a gallon. You know, 2008 was a was an issue.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  That's when I'm thinking of 2008.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, there were other moments in time where we would have a spike like this that would happen. The issue is this, in this particular sense, uh, it can be argued that this is self inflicted. Right? It's not something else that's external to us that's happening, that's causing this. It's it's relatively self inflicted um in that the Straits of Hormuz are shut down. And it's, you know, gas, you know, oil prices right now are, I think, are hovering around $140 a barrel. Right? So gas prices right now are up about 18%, 19% year over year. Uh, recently, most of that has been in the last in the last six weeks.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  So when you take into account energy prices being elevated, um, all other things kind of flow from that. Right? If it costs more to transport your cereal from the General Mills plant to the grocery store. You know, the the product itself is more expensive because of the gasoline and everything, the energy it takes to produce that. Then it takes more to actually transport that to the the supermarket that you're using. And so cereals and bakery products are up by 2.1%. Fruits and vegetables up 4%.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  You know, regular beverages like soda and things like that up almost 5%. So you start, start looking at all of these different things. This one I felt just in the last couple of weeks, airline fares.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Just getting on a plane and going to Phoenix or wherever. It's like, it's an additional 15% from what it was just last year.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Not to mention baggage fees.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Right. This is why you pay for points. I get my bag for free. No, but it's, yeah, everything is more expensive. So to, to answer the question of the individual who, who asked the question, you're right. Everybody's feeling the pinch. Everybody is feeling that it's, it's, it's difficult to get by. And now we're just adding to the fire.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's tough out there for folks and I understand that. I feel you. We're going to get to the second question, I think in the final, uh, segment. It's a great question and it kind of goes into a little bit about what we're talking about. But it kind of, how, how can you? How can you combat these things, right? How, how can you combat those things? So what we're going to do now though, we're going to take a quick break. We have a great guest today. Nick Ortiz, uh, from Tahoma Ranch will be joining us. We'll be talking all things about what's going on just south of, uh, Bakersfield out there in good old Tahoma Ranch and, uh, we'll do that when we come back. Stay tuned.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Welcome back to the Money Wise Show. There's a little bit of Lady Gaga for you.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Thank you, Stephen.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  If you can see the dance party going on in here right now.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  I was making Desi listen to this in the car on the way.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  To do our volunteer work this morning.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  And she was.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  There was one bad, one bad word in the song.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  One bad word. I don't think she was too happy about that.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  I don't think she noticed. I just kept singing.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  On her birthday at two.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Happy birthday, Desi.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, everybody loves Desi. Happy birthday. Hey, we are joined today, great guest, uh, Nick Ortiz from Tahoma Ranch, joining us today.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Good afternoon.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Afternoon. Um, so for the folks that have like lived under a rock their entire lives, where is the Tohone Ranch and what does it do?

• 11:02Speaker 03

  What is Tohone Ranch?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  What is?

• 11:04Speaker 02

  What is Tohone?

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  It's more than a state of mind, I can tell you that for sure. Um, no, I think that's an interesting question because a lot of times people don't really understand, you know, what is, what the ranch is, what it does, or you know, what its future is.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  They just see the signs out there and they're like, okay, cool.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  I pass by as I'm on my way to LA or on my way back home.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's the outlets over there.

• 11:25Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Right, okay.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  So, um, the ranch is actually, um, a really interesting company and piece of land. Um, the ranch is 270,000 acres and so that makes it California's largest private contiguous property.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  It's larger than the state of Rhode Island, correct?

• 11:45Speaker 03

  It is, indeed, yes. And so, I mean, it's, it's a pretty big piece of property.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  Um, and it has been, uh, basically whole since before statehood. So our, the ranch was founded in 1843 and the state of California was founded in 1850.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  So, um, since that time, you know, it has done a lot and it's a interesting situated piece of property because it sits kind of like right in the middle, uh, right in between kind of the, the gateway to Los Angeles and Southern California and Northern Cali, and you know, Central Valley and then upwards to Northern California. So it's always been kind of like a strategic land holding.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  It's that intersection right there.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  And so, you know, throughout the years, the, the company's done, you know, the things that you see, you know, we, we farm, we ranch, we produce oil and gas through royalties. We have, you know, um, mining and aggregate royalties and contracts. We do ground leases. Um, but, you know, in the late 90s, the, the company made the, um, the bet on the fact that there is a significant amount of that 270,000 acres that fronts up to Interstate 5.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  And so the company began to think about its land. differently, not just extracting value through, you know, farming and

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Agriculture, yeah.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  But also, how could we add value to the land by, you know, producing real estate? I say at the start of this that the company is really interesting because we're a publicly traded company. And we have one asset, which is

• 13:24Speaker 01

  The land.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  Land.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  And so that's it. And so unlike, you know, other types of companies that your listeners may be familiar with, like Realty Investment Trust or REITs or like a big conglomerate like a Howard Hughes that owns pieces like all over the country and develops, you know, in Texas and Florida, you know, in Arizona. Or even, you know, to take it close to home, like a company that's kind of gone in and out of being private and public, Castle and Cook, that, you know, develops in multi, multi-states. That's just not us. We only have one thing, and that is the ranch. And so our, our job as the management team on behalf of our shareholders is how do we extract

• 14:07Speaker 03

  and add as much value to that land holding as possible?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  So, you know, what people generally see as they are driving by the grapevine is the outlets.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Or the outlets at Tohone. And the outlets are part of a development that we actually call Tohone Ranch Commerce Center, or TRCC. And TRCC was founded in 99, and it's actually like grown to be a small city. There's about 5,000 people who work there any day of the week. And it's got now about, gosh, over 2 million square feet of industrial capacity with like marquee names.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, like all of the, the distribution centers that are there that

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Now, does Tahone Ranch build those on spec? For, for those people that are coming in? Or is that like specifically generated for, let's say, Famous Footwear? Like, they had a very specific need and this is what we want. You guys build it. Or are you building a lot of these warehouses and distribution centers on spec? That it's like, we're gonna build it and they'll come?

• 15:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, I mean, that's the great thing, I think, about our model and about the flexibility that we have built in and the business friendliness of this region is that we actually have and do both.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  So, if you look at like the, you know, the first thing that started out there, which is, you know, the IKEA build.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  So, that is, you know, that was, that was for that user, you know?

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Specifically for IKEA. This is their spec.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  And all of the Swedish meatballs.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  Exactly. Unfortunately, it's just boxes. There is not a cafeteria.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  I thought they were making the meatballs there.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  Right there on site. We can keep that, we'll keep that rumor alive. But, when you look, you know, on what's, what we call TRCC East on the outlet side.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 16:02Speaker 03

  And you look over there, what we did is we partnered with a, a company called Majestic Realty, the Rossky Company, that's very well-known throughout California, especially in Southern California. And we built a series of joint ventures warehouses on spec. And every single one of those warehouses was leased up before it was completed.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Before they were even done being built.

• 16:27Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so, that's the, that's the great thing about TRCC and the wonderful thing about, you know, the infrastructure that we've built. And really, the ecosystem here in Kern County for logistics. I mean, it's that there's clearly demand. They know that we can serve it. They know that we're, you know, proximate to the markets. And so, when there is capacity that comes on at like strategic locations like TRCC or, you know, our friends to the north, you know, our friendly competitors to the north at Wonderful Industrial Park.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  You know, there's a reason why it gets taken down very quickly.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. And I think that, you know, having been, lived, living in Southern California for my, basically, my entire life, you know, I, I look at what, let's say, like the inland empire.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Like, you know, I-10, I-15. You look at what happened in the inland empire and all of those distribution centers that were built out in that area.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  What Tawone Ranch and even the wonderful, those two locations remind me of what was going on in like the inland empire of Ontario, say 30 years ago.

• 17:34Speaker 03

  Yep. And I think to your point, the, the great thing I think about what our plans are, not just for TRCC, but for the future, is that we want to be really intentional about that growth. So, you know.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  You don't want it to look like the inland empire.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  No, no, you want it to look like, you know, a real jobs corridor. So, you know, again, just to get back to a couple of things that we're doing at TRCC, you know, in addition to all of that industrial space, we have the retail that's been built out there, but we're also getting into advanced manufacturing. Like we have this amazing tenant out there called Plant Prefab.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  Who is doing modular homes. They're doing, they're doing affordable housing for Santa Monica. They're doing rebuilds of modular homes for fire areas for the Eaton and Palisades fires. They're doing low, low cost modular medical clinics for deployment out in East Kern. Like really cool things beyond logistics that are happening there.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  That is amazing. I mean, that's just like, you know, being that's just right there at the base. And again, this is just a very small portion of the Rhode Island sized piece of land. We're talking about a, how much of the land actually constitutes that portion of TRCC, like of, of the total ranch? Like, 3%?

• 19:02Speaker 03

  I, so my.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Acreage wise?

• 19:05Speaker 03

  It's like about 1,400 acres, 1,400 acres. So somebody would have to do the math. I am a politics major.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Not a math guy?

• 19:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. I was not a math.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  I'm an art major, so this is all on you.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  So I'm just trying to. Exactly. I joke that they didn't even call it political science. They didn't even pretend that there was science involved.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Right. No, I'm just saying like as far as the size of the ranch.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  It is a miniscule.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  It is a miniscule percentage of the overall.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  You're talking about really less than 1%.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  Now that I can do some quick math in my head really quickly.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  It is smaller than 1%. So even all of that land that you see as you're driving south of Bakersfield and on the grapevine and you see all the outlets and all of the, the, you know, the logistics and distribution centers, that's less than 1% of the total landmass.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's crazy.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  For Tohone Ranch.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I mean, as we're looking down the future and we're thinking about how do we, you know, utilize that land, a couple of things. One is we have entered into agreement with a range of environmental groups back in 2008 to conserve 90% of it, to keep it as basically open space.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  As untouched as possible.

• 20:16Speaker 03

  Yes. I mean, the one thing that you get an appreciation for when you work up on the ranch is what a special place it is. And everyone at Ivan County who is a stakeholder or is a longtime employee, you know, their number one goal is how do they protect this special piece of land?

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, yeah, that's an amazing piece. You just mentioned though, a little bit ago, you said something between five, about 5,000 employees?

• 20:42Speaker 03

  5,000 employees at TRCC.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Okay. So what I'd like to talk about, we're going to go to a quick break here in just a moment. I want to talk about how do you house 5,000 people? Because right now, those people are commuting from either Bakersfield or, you know, points, points north, points south to get to those jobs. There's things that are going on right now at the, building some apartments and some other, you know, logistics areas. How do you house those people? When we come back, we're going to talk about that when we come back.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Joined by Nick Ortiz from the Tahone Ranch Company. We've been talking about logistics, distribution centers, the outlets. We've been talking about the ranch. The one thing we haven't talked about is the casino.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  So we had a question pop in. Debbie, you got that?

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Is the Hard Rock Casino a part of Tahone? And are there plans of more businesses being built up there? It's so beautiful and we take trips out there all of the time. Sonia.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  Wow, thank you Sonia. I 100% agree that Southern Kern is really beautiful. Actually, that is one of the highlights of my day is my drive both to work and home. Because it is quite special.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Are you seeing some wildflowers on the vine right now?

• 22:23Speaker 03

  You know, we got that bit of heat.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  And it fried them. But you know, there were a couple, there were about a two and a half week period where it was just gorgeous. Really, I mean, in every color. But back to the, back to the question at hand. So the Tahone Indian Tribe and Hard Rock are the ones that own the Tahone, the Hard Rock Tahone Casino. It's just about five miles north of TRCC. And I think what the, the, the great thing about it, and especially for Southern Kern County, and what I think is going to be like the next big growth corridor for our region, is like how we're working together. You know, so I mean, the, the, as the casino was being built, you know,

• 23:07Speaker 03

  the, the Hard Rock had leased out space at the outlet center so that they could have the job center and do it right there. And, you know, again, so that's proximate right there to restaurants as they're training and everything. As, you know, we have been getting into lease up of our latest project, which is our, our new Terra Vista at Tahone Apartment Community.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  That's what I was wanting to get at was where, so you're. You're building these apartments, you're building these homes, you need to house people because not everybody can come from Metler or Lebec or, you know, Bakersfield.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  Bakersfield, Santa Clarita, I mean, and so, I mean, so what we, what we have seen is, you know, a demand both from logistics employees, employees in the warehouses, but also from the staffing up of the Hard Rock.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  So, I mean, we are, we're definitely excited by the activity out there. We're, you know, huge boosters of them. I think as, you know, the, the property matures and we figure out ways to, to more formally partner together to bring, you know, more businesses, more eyeballs to Southern Kern County. It's just gonna be, it's just gonna be great. And to the point of like, do we expect more businesses? Absolutely. I mean, we expect there to be a significant amount of, of growth, both on our property, um, adjacent to the Hard Rock and then on properties just in that corridor. I mean, just up the road from us, you'll see, you

• 24:38Speaker 03

  know, um, a, a, a local gentleman just opened up an RV park and seems to be doing pretty good business so far. Um, so no, I think that there's, there's definitely, definitely um, a lot of opportunity for Southern Kern and, um,

• 24:57Speaker 01

  And for it to be all symbiotic as well.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and, and really like, like done with, with the plan. And so as we're thinking, you know, you kind of mentioned at the, at the top of our discussion, you know, how the Inland Empire grew and how logistics corridors, warehousing corridors have grown in other parts of the state.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  That was grown without intention. It became ugly very fast.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so what you see on what we try to do, I mean, one, just the frontage of just trying to have landscaping, trying to create some visual separation between the retail areas and the warehousing areas. But also, you know, our plan for the long term isn't just to build out TRCC, but our plan is to build 35,000 homes over three new communities, um, two in Kern County, one in Los Angeles County. So Grapevine.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Let me take a guess, the ones in Kern County will be built first.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  That generally is probably the case.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Right, I'm gonna just go on a limb here and say with the permitting issues, we're probably gonna be more business savvy and be able to get it done quicker.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  Well, that's, that's, that's true. I mean, that is true. So.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  That checks out.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  At least in terms of the permitting thus far. But Grapevine is envisioned to be about 12,000 homes. It's envisioned to be right proximate to TRCC and blend right into the foothills of the Grapevine region. It will also have additional commercial and industrial space, but it'll be another community in the southern San Joaquin Valley. Mountain Village will be up at the top and kind of of our landholding. That'll be a resort community. It's envisioned as about 3,500 homes, about 750 hotel rooms. Think a significant amount of open space.

• 26:47Speaker 03

  It is meant to be more of a second home community and meant to be more of a resort type community. And then on Los Angeles, on the Los Angeles County side of our, of our property, we have proposed a 19,000 home community called Centennial. And we, we believe, you know, we can have all of these, all of these communities, you know, going at the same time. But what they're really going to be bringing is a really intentional growth plan, a way of thinking about how does that region grow in a way that isn't overtax it or overtax the infrastructure? How do we build on opportunities like the Hard Rock?

• 27:32Speaker 03

  But also, you know, how do we make sure that as we are thinking about putting a massive amount of homes? To your initial, original point, like, how do we make sure there are jobs there first?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Right. And so, I mean, we got another question that popped in, but like the follow-up question I have for you is this, is that these communities.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Are they master planned or like there's, there's gonna be a school there I heard. There's gonna be parks, there's gonna be other things that are amenities that are being built in because you don't just wanna plop down a bunch of houses and be like, hey, if we build it, they'll come.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Well, you gotta have some services for these people that are living. You know, you're thinking about a, a community of 40,000 people potentially. You know, that's, that's a lot of folks that need to have water and, you know, infrastructure and schools and parks and all the other things.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  Things to do.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Things to do, right. Exactly. Well, there's a lot of things to do at the casino.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  And also outdoors.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Outdoors and the walking and the hiking and the, yeah, camping and, you know, that stuff. So, so how is that being done?

• 28:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I think that's a really good point and, and I, that is, I, it's hard to get a sense of like what you're talking about. You're talking about a master planned community, but it is, you know, um, the, the closest model that I think probably people are familiar with is the city of Irvine. And how, how Irvine Ranch turned into the city of Irvine.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Which is gorgeous.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so what you are, what you are thinking about is that type of, that level of intention, that level of specificity and granularity in terms of how a community is going to develop. Like where, where we're going to put the commercial and industrial. How is that going to be, you know, segmented away from homes? Where are we gonna put different types of housing stock? Where are we gonna put community parks? Where are we gonna put schools? Where are we gonna make sure that there are recreational amenities that are built in from day one? How are we gonna ensure that there are public services, libraries, parks? And then the public safety side, police and fire. And then the most important healthcare, all of that has to be part of it.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  So when we're thinking about what we wanna do in, um, Grapevine or in Mountain Village or in Centennial, we're not thinking about like, we're just gonna build this subdivision of X number of houses.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  It is, how do we build in every single piece? And how do we entice and attract or cajole every single piece to make a community and to make that fabric? Of that community and that's the that's the important part. I think that people might not quite understand about what is going to happen in Southern Kern.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. And so we did have a good question came in since I'm sure it's good for property value there too. Any clue how much home prices have gone up since the outlets in the casino have opened? I don't know if there's any data that says though house prices have gone up since the casino opened. But I do know that from, you know,

• 30:34Speaker 01

  from a from a planning standpoint, I'm happy to see that there's real intention going into not just life, but quality of life.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, we can build it like, you know, feel the dream style. Like, if you build it, they'll come. But if there's not the amenities there to keep people happy, healthy and productive, what's the point?

• 30:57Speaker 03

  And I think the other thing that you can really take from what we've built so far, because our model is slightly field of dreams.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  It is, but there's, but like you said,

• 31:09Speaker 03

  There is a business case behind it.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  And, and, you know, I mean, just to get into that a little bit, you know, it wasn't just, I mean, so 100,000 cars pass by our property every single day. We capture about 20,000 of those cars.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  We have

• 31:24Speaker 01

  One in five are getting off the highway and in and out burger.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  19,000 of them are going to In-N-Out.

• 31:29Speaker 03

  100%. That's why the line is so long there. There or we have one of the highest grossing, highest trafficked Starbucks in these United States.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  And so when, you know, when I talk to people throughout the state, especially, you know, given, you know, my background and what I've done, you know, working in the business community, and I tell people where I where I work, I I'm most pleased by when people talk about that is my favorite place to stop. I mean, I do not take it as an insult.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  Because it what we do at TRCC is it is our learning laboratory. It is our our our proof case. It is where we not only get to showcase our capabilities, but also where we get to figure out how we're going to build these incredible master planned communities. And if you think that some that I mean, if you take the amount of intention and the amount of detail that we put into an outlet mall or a travel plaza and extrapolate that into what we plan to put into a master planned community, I think people will be very, very pleased.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Now, are all of these, the three communities they've already got, are they mostly through their environmental thing? Or like, most of them done? Or are we, are we still waiting on a couple?

• 32:50Speaker 03

  So you know, the California entitlement process, what you call the approval process for, for getting land approved for, for development is not for the faint of heart.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  So in Kern County, Great Mine and Mountain Village have both been approved by the Kern County Board of Supervisors and have, we have been sued by environmentalists.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  And then we have defended those plans and we have our entitlements. In Los Angeles County, we have been through a significant process and unfortunately, we did not prevail in the litigation after our, our initial environmental review was approved by the Board of Supervisors in 2019. So our goal is to be back in front of the board in short order on Centennial and to keep moving.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  The bottom line is, I mean, you know, beyond what the plans are for the company, beyond what the import and the impact could be for Southern Kern, this state has a two and a half million home need.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Shortage, yeah.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  And we are nowhere near close to building that. And the only way, the only way that you'll get there is through greenfield, master planned communities like the ones that we're proposing at Tohone Ranch.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  So you're saying you're going to build the two and a half million homes on Tohone Ranch, is what you're saying?

• 34:18Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Nope, incorrect.

• 34:20Speaker 03

  Nope, nope. That, that would, that would cause another round, I think, of environmental litigation if we. We're going to make that commitment.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Not happening. Nick, thank you so much for joining us today.

• 34:31Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's Tohone Ranch, the entire area up there is absolutely gorgeous. It's beautiful. And what we see from the highway is a minuscule fraction of what is actually going on out there.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Which I do have a quick question for those out there listening that maybe want to engage with the land. How can they get connected to public access, private access and all those wonderful things?

• 34:56Speaker 03

  Definitely, definitely. So one, we have a wonderful hunting program. So if you are so inclined, you can go to tohone ranch.com or you can go to tohonehunts.com and take a look at our options there. And then we also have a great partner in the Tohone Ranch Conservancy. They're an independent nonprofit that was set up when we did the Ranch Wide Agreement. And they do a range of access and public workshops.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Guided tours inside.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  And nature walks.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  Exactly. And you know what? We do farmers markets at the outlets. So you know, check out Jackie Allen and the Hens Roost socials to see when they come out to the outlets. Please come down to the outlets and spend some money. And I'm sure our friends down at Hard Rock wouldn't mind if you stopped there too.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  And then lost some money in the slot machines.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  Won some money, won some money. Everyone's a winner.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Nick, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been great talking to you about Tohone Ranch and what's going on out there. We're going to make sure all that information is on our podcast notes. So please go ahead and check that out whenever you get your podcasts at Spotify or Apple Pods or anything else. But thank you very much. We'll take a quick break and we'll be right back.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Welcome back to the final segment before the weekend.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Who is this song?

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Corn?

• 36:30Speaker 01

  No. This is the Deftones.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  I've heard of the Deftones, but obviously I'm deaf, tone deaf. I don't know what their music sounds like.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Now you do.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  They've been around for a long time.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Forever.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Been a minute. Well, thank you again to Nick Ortiz from the Tahone Ranch Company coming out and discussing what's going on with TRCC.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  You're down with TRCC, yeah, you know me.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Steven just died in there, I think.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Uh, but yeah, great to, great to get to talk to Nick about what's going on out there

• 37:20Speaker 01

  at the ranch and all along the grapevine and the, the living conditions and everything else. So it's, it was great, great segment to talk to him about that. Now, we had one question that popped into our, you know, chat before we got on the show and we talked a little bit about inflation and such, but we wanted to push off this one question until the segment. So let's see here, what do we got?

• 37:45Speaker 02

  No, I got it up.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Okay. I've heard the name Money Wise, listening to the radio, but actually got to hear your show for the first time and was wondering if you can let your new listeners know why it's important to have a financial advisor during these difficult times. Why does it seem that tax returns are much lower this year versus last year? I made the same amount of money, same deductions, and my return this year was about $1,500 less. Thanks.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's an interesting, the tax question is probably a little bit more nuanced than, than what we could probably get to on, on, in the last like five minutes of the show. But I will say that with times like this, with inflation, with.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  How times are just genuinely rough, right? Financially speaking. It's good to have the second set of eyeballs kind of helping you go, guide you through this. And using a professional, somebody who's trained to do these types of things is vitally important. You know, not going to the water cooler and hearing it from your buddy. You know, which might be great. You know, your buddy might be extraordinarily intelligent and good to, good to listen to. But he's speaking from his own experience and his own biases. Whereas when you're working with a financial advisor, you're working with somebody who's been doing it for a long time and has seen a lot of different scenarios and can take.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  It's not our first rodeo, so to speak. And everybody's situation is unique. And so, building a plan for an individual like yourself, knowing your variables, knowing what's going on in your life, what your situation is, what your goals are, what you want to do, what you want to accomplish. We can build a plan for you to actually help you, guide you through these type, these tough times.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  But it's also if you are, you are already working with an advisor. It's an ongoing, it should be an ongoing relationship and that advisor is helping you recalibrate your plan.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  And adjusting to life, life and life cycles and events that pop up in personal lives and things that are out of our control. So that it's the trusted guidance based on experience and knowledge.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Right. And I think one of the more, the more important tenants of, of working with a financial advisor is the, the emotional calibration. You were talking about kind of calibrating towards the goals and things like that. When people get emotional, they tend to make bad decisions. And if you're working with a financial advisor, that advisor can help guide you through that emotional process and be like, hey, it's not as bad as you think. Let's talk you off of the ledge. Things are going to be fine. This is what happened in a similar situation just last year, or last decade, or whatever the case may be. And it helps to calibrate your emotions to be, you know, rather than trying to time the market and figure out the best way to do

• 40:55Speaker 01

  this or that, let's, let's take a little more studious and academic approach to how we invest and how we utilize our finances. Now, wanted to get briefly into what I'm seeing here with 401ks. More and more people are having their 401ks really grow because markets have actually done very, very well over the last three years. Let's take the last five weeks kind of out of the equation. But for the most part, 401ks are at or near all time highs for most people, right? If you're continuing to invest and continuing to put money in there, you're doing fairly well. Now, here's where a financial advisor

• 41:38Speaker 01

  really helps. What happens as you're, as you're, you know, maxing out your 401k and you're, you're growing the 401k. One of the concerns that we as financial advisors have is what happens if you have an account with $2 million in your 401k, but you have no other savings external to that when you're getting ready to retire? Well, there's a tax issue with that because all of the money you have is tied up in your 401k, and that is taxable income to you when you take that money out. So let's say that you needed $100,000 for renovating your kitchen or something like that. Well, to create that $100,000 distribution from your 401k, we might have to take out $140,000 just to make

• 42:20Speaker 01

  that happen because of state and, you know, state and federal income taxes. This is what we mean when we talk about somebody who's retirement rich but cash poor. Okay. So if you're in this position, the idea is not everything has to go into your 401k. There are other ways to save as well. And so by taking money and putting it into, say, a brokerage account or something like that, that is still invested, still growing, but has a different tax treatment in retirement is also a very frugal and prudent thing to do. So wanted to make sure that we talk about that before we go off the air. So not everything has to go in the 401k. There are other ways to invest.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  We could do a whole other show about this topic.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly. So, thank you so much to Rich, to Nick for joining us today. Thank you to Tahone Ranch. Thank you Debbie for being on the show today.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Thank you, Justin.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Thank you, Stephen, for the great music.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  The best in the west.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Taking you into the week and be smart, be safe, be money wise. See you Monday.

• 43:27Speaker 04

  Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through LPL Financial. LPL Financial and Money Wise Wealth Management are independently owned and operated.