Spotlight Series

What made you want to get involved with municipal government?

Stundins: So, this is the seventh city that I've worked for over my career. When I started college, I wanted to be in city government. So, I got an undergraduate degree in public administration, thought about going to law school and decided that it'd be a better fit for me to go to get a master's degree in urban and regional planning, which I did from University of Iowa. After I was working in the field of planning, I thought that I'd rather be in a position where I wouldn’t tell people what not to do but use the financial resources of the city to shape development. And so, I've been doing economic development for probably 25-30 years now in different cities. And it's really what I want, you know, what I wanted to do and with the business background and the planning degree, it fits in really well to influence economic development.

This year, on the marketing committee we're really focusing on the past, present and future of the Dallas region and how GDPC and our members have played a role in the development of the region. Can you explain what you've worked on in the past that you think has made a big impact on our region?

Stundins: So, I think probably the biggest influence when I came down here from the City of Dallas, um… I did not realize the extent of how the development community kind of has misperceptions about the southern part of Dallas County. The cities down here and the others in the best Southwest area are basically suburban communities with good school systems, people that want to work in high paying jobs, people that don't necessarily want to be located next to affordable housing. 90% of the people in Lancaster were working someplace else, most of them in downtown Dallas to work in higher paying jobs.

There was a real mismatch between when I got here and what I saw. What Shane Shepherd, who's the director, saw between what the community wants and what outsiders looking to develop in the community want. Developers would come down and say, “Hey, we can put in some distribution facilities here, you get some great jobs, you could drive a forklift for $15 an hour.” But those jobs did not apply to suburban communities.

We still have issues with housing where we have a lot of starter housing down here. The land is really pretty, we are 15, maybe 20 minutes from downtown Dallas and all the cultural amenities and we need to get an appropriate mix of housing, including higher quality housing. But developers think that we need to put in more affordable housing and really, that hasn't gone over very well in the city. Shane and I both have spent a lot of time going to different professional groups and talking about, you know, kind of misperceptions and trying to provide better information. So I think that that's been really important for us. But the other thing that's happened recently is a young couple from Dallas purchased about a third of the downtown buildings and they've been re-tenanting.

We have the bones of a great downtown square here in Lancaster and the buildings were primarily preserved. There was a tornado about, wow, 30 years ago now, that damaged about a quarter of the square, but the other buildings were restored and tenanted. But the new group brought in the kind of tenants that better fit the neighborhood. So La Calle Doce, if you're familiar with that restaurant is now open at Lancaster, there's a great barbecue place that came out of a food truck, a little winery. They're working on fixing up the old theater, there's a coffee shop featuring Japanese home brewed coffee that's coming in addition to some of the longtime tenants that drew people from all over the region like John's Trikes and Bikes. John is a guy that is a premier bicycle mechanic, and he does primarily recumbent bikes, but he is still known for making specialty bikes. So, people with disabilities will come to him to do special bikes, people with all sorts of special needs, in addition to doing regular bikes. There's an old-style bakery that's still in town which you don't see very much anymore. So, you know, seeing the downtown come along is great.

Part of the third thing is watching the transition in the industrial sector. What Shane and I have tried to do is, take the couple 1000 acres of vacant industrial land that's very close to the large facility. We’re ringed by Interstate 35, 20, and 45 so logistically we are great, but that applies not only to distribution but manufacturing. The largest Niagara bottling plant in the country is just about ready to completely gear up here. They just finished constructing two large Walmart facilities, cold storage, and an Ecommerce facility. And, you know, you think distribution, but these facilities like the cold storage are about 99% automated. So, the jobs are not running the forklift, they're running the computers that sort everything. McKinley Packaging is now under construction as well. American Licorice, which makes sour punch candy is coming in. Fresh Round does pre-prepared meal. In addition to Kodiak Robotics, which is getting ready to have some of the first over the road semi-trucks that are completely driverless starting in the fall. And they have their tech and testing facility here.

The next phase of development is going to be data centers and higher paying jobs. So, we've seen a big transition from distribution jobs to jobs that better fit the community. To me that's kind of if you look at economic development you're trying to get the right information out, you're trying to do things that help the community, and in our case, we're trying to dispel misperceptions about a primarily minority community with the skills, the job set, and the ability to bring in high tech jobs and have them be successful in recruiting talent. We and the companies here have found that this is a great place to be for that.

You listed off an impressive group of businesses and growth that you're seeing in Lancaster. But is there one project that you're working on at present that really makes you excited and will contribute to this growth?

Stundins: No, I mean, honestly, all those projects are additive when you look at economic development. One project does not change a market, you know, it's the combined effect of doing this and this and hopefully things keep coming in that. Number one, create a balanced local economy. So if all we had was water bottling. That wouldn't be good. But having the, the box company, the variety of things that are here make the local economy more resilient to change and economic trends. So I don't think there's really one project. What's exciting to me is to see the growth of data centers. Probably four or five years ago I went to a conference down in Austin, toured some data center facilities and from what I could tell it looked like we'd be a good match. We've been working on trying to bring some in and now it looks like we won’t just get one data center, we're going to get multiple data centers. The way city government works, it's a good thing because we get money from property tax and sales tax and data centers are really large tax generators. So, we're looking forward to that and trying to make the company's journey through the bureaucracy as painless as possible and trying to get them up and running.

You've been in the region for a while, starting in Dallas and moving to Lancaster about five years ago so you've probably seen a lot of change and growth in the region since then. Where do you foresee Lancaster contributing to the Greater Dallas region in the next 5-10 years?

Stundins: I’ll preface it by saying we're actually in the process of selling our house in Dallas and moving to Lancaster because I really believe that this is a great place to be. I guess to a large extent we're working with communities like Wilmer Hutchins, Desoto, Cedar Hill. We're creating a job center down here where it's higher paying jobs. So, if you look at the region as a whole and you have a job center that’s easier to get from where I'm located now in Kessler Park down here than it is to get from Kessler Park to Plano any day. But if you create a job center down here with good jobs, that will start changing the traffic patch, you start changing a lot of things. If your goal is to reduce heavy traffic going north causing congestion and worse air quality, we've had some businesses choose not to be in the that area as the air quality control is affected by high traffic. So, if congestion is caused by people going north to jobs why would you fight the traffic when you have good jobs out here, good housing, good schools and all that?

So, we think that 5 years, 10 years, 15 years down the road, what we're doing changes things that not only make things better for this community, but for the whole region. If you change traffic patterns you're spending less time on the road, reducing congestion, and improving air quality. All, all those things make a lot of sense. Not only for us but for everybody. So that's kind of part of the bigger picture. I think that's part of the reason why the companies down here have had such a good run attracting talent. I didn't think about working down here to interview for the job. I said, hey, that sounds pretty fun and I started commuting and I'm like, hey, this is a breeze. And because, you know, in addition to Dallas, I worked in Grapevine for a while, I worked in Plano for a while and every day I got in my car and I dreaded what traffic was going to offer me up for the day. So anyway, it's good down here.