Executive Q&A: Bill Shown | CEO, Pearl Build

Bill Shown, who started his career as a real estate lawyer, recalls telling Christopher “Kit” Goldsbury, the owner of Silver Ventures, that his plan to remake Pearl was a “terrible idea.” He went on to become Pearl’s first employee in 2005.

“I just knew that they needed somebody, and I thought,

‘If somebody screws this up, I want it to be me,’ ” he said.

He is now CEO of Pearl Build. He and his wife of 35 years have a hobby of building and renovating homes.

Q: Silver Ventures still owns a lot of undeveloped land along the river. What might you do there?

Shown: It feels residential to me. I think there’s opportunities for some commercial components, maybe some small restaurants.

Q: What about the site on the river across Grayson from La Gloria? Omar has been quoted as saying it could serve as a corporate headquarters.

Shown: We were looking at that at one point, and it just never felt right. What we’re considering right now — and this is in early, early conversations — is a mixed-use development that has some office, some ground-floor commercial.

Q: What about the property near Hemisfair?

Shown: We love the idea of maybe doing a small boutique hotel that incorporates those two old school buildings.

One of the things that we do, and it’s nonnegotiable for us, is for our projects to reflect the history and heritage of their locations. So whatever happens at Southtown, it’s not going to be Pearl phase two. It’s going to be reflective of Southtown.

Q: Last year, the ExpressNews quoted you as being “really concerned” about your plans to build a sevenstory apartment building on Elmira Street. I’m curious how that turned out.

Shown: Horribly. The cost environment today is just awful. Every time we go to price something, it comes in higher and higher and higher, so we scramble to try to figure out, “OK, how do we react to this?” The commodities prices go through the roof.

We’re going to be able to get (the Elmira project) under control, but my God, it’s been a horrible journey. That’s the wrong word to use — it’s been extremely challenging.

Q: Will you be building affordable housing?

Shown: Yes. We just had a development meeting where we were having this exact discussion, to build some of what we’re calling “Pearl associate housing.” The idea is that we would create some housing the Pearl associates could afford to live in.

Q: How might you achieve that?

Shown: We have a project with some surplus parking, so it’s possible that we can build another housing project and not have any parking costs associated with it. A typical class A apartment has extensive amenities. All those are very expensive, so the idea is, what if we built housing that was just housing, and it was not laden with amenities? With the idea being that the amenity is Pearl.

This is all being challenged by construction costs. And it’s going to be challenged by interest rates. So we’re undertaking this in the face of some pretty stiff headwinds.