Brian narration: This is Built, a new podcast series where you’ll meet the people behind some of the biggest transactions and investments in commercial real estate, and hear how they got to where they are today.

I’m your host Brian Maughan, chief marketing officer with Fidelity National Financial.

And those of us in this business, well we know the buildings...but how many of us know the stories of the people behind those structures?

Today, we’re talking with Ellen Smith. Ellen is a partner at the law firm Parker Poe in Atlanta. She is a recognized expert on land use and zoning ...you know the local municipality laws that outline what a given piece of land can be used for and what type of activities are permitted on it. This is a big deal. Knowing how to negotiate for variances or defending against them is Ellen’s specialty. She’s also the incoming president of CREW Atlanta.

Brian Maughan: Ellen, thank you so much for joining us today...First off tell us a little bit about growing up. Did you have a particular tie to real estate at all? 

Ellen Smith: You know, certainly with college professors as your parents, you know, we weren't in the commercial real estate realm, right. I'm from Augusta and there isn't necessarily a family tie or a high school job or anything like that, that tied to real estate. We did, however, travel a lot growing up. So I grew up camping. I've been to all of the national parks throughout the United States and Canada. And to the extent that sort of historic or childhood travel influences, subconsciously or not what you do, you certainly pay attention to the fact that there are different ways that property in the United States is developed or not developed and you do sort of pay attention to your surroundings. So I don't know that it consciously influenced anything, but it certainly gave experience to draw on.

Brian Maughan: I think you've described your entrance into commercial real estate as kind of being purely luck. How did that happen? You graduate from law school. And then what? And how did you progress into commercial real estate law?

Ellen Smith: Truly, I think no one who graduates from law school knows what they want to do. They just want to get a job and law school's like a Ph.D. in liberal arts, right? It teaches you nothing about the practice of law in any particular way, except that it teaches you a way of thinking about something and problem solving. So, yes, look, I put my resume in - in the drop boxes, you know, very old school before we emailed our resumes out, interviewed on campus with a number of firms and was hired. Received an offer from a very small, you know, fifteen lawyer or less commercial real estate boutique firm and accepted it with excitement and pleasure because it was going to be a lot of money and pay the bills.

Brian Maughan: Well, it's a good place to start for sure, especially coming right out of the school. So how long did you stay at that first job until you made your move kind of officially into commercial real estate or with your current firm?

Ellen Smith: So I was hired not as a commercial real estate or transactional lawyer. I was hired to be a litigation associate because the nature of the work at the firm was primarily commercial real estate. About four years into practice, we had an associate leave to go in-house and there was an opportunity to move over to the transactional side of the office because there was a need for that work. And one of the things that you learn as a litigator, litigation matters can be years and years and years. And no one is happy, right? It doesn't matter if you win. You know, you still have spent time with folks focused on a dispute as opposed to the transaction side, where you have two sides that are really trying to come together to make a deal happen, it's much more fast paced and much more with my personality. I can still sue people from time to time on the things that I think are important and the clients that I like and the things that I have expertise on. But that's not my jam. My jam is making the deal happen and watching the thing or things get built.

Brian Maughan: Very good. Do you remember at all your first case that you litigated when you first came out of law school? 

Ellen Smith: The one that is most remarkable? Yes, it was Studio X. It was a landlord tenant dispute and it was a live X-rated video store and dance opportunity that was right across the street from The Cheetah in Atlanta, it was there for many years. The tenant failed to pay their rent one month. This was after several years of dispute in the landlord wanting to sell the property. They were in a strip shopping center, no pun intended, with a Domino's Pizza and something else. And then there were Studio X. And I was the attorney in Georgia. You get to demand possession in person for a tenant default matter. I went down on a Tuesday afternoon, circled the block around 10th Street three times before there was a parking space open because business was so good at Studio X to deliver the demand for possession. It went up to the Court of Appeals, I think, two or three times. And ultimately they moved out after the sheriff had given their eviction notice. And when I showed up to watch the eviction happening, you know, all of the employees were dressed in their normal attire for their job, moving videos and all kinds of things out of the building and into a truck to be taken off site. And there's now a multi-story office building there.

Brian Maughan: Wow. That is quite the first big memorable event in your law career. That's great.

Ellen Smith It's never dull.

Brian Maughan: Ellen began developing her zoning expertise about 20 years ago, as a newly minted lawyer. She was at her old firm representing Sprint, and cell phone towers were going up all over Georgia. A lot of counties objected...because a lot of residents objected. Ellen, then a litigator, stepped in...

Ellen Smith: I have sued the majority of Georgia counties and cities very early in my career and successfully. I have great relationships, as surprising as it sounds with most of the politicians that were there at the time, but also their city and county attorneys, because generally speaking, most people aren't really opposed to the provision of wireless service and they're still not today. But they needed political cover, right, because people didn't want a tower in their backyard.

Brian narration: Politicians were hearing from constituents who were not happy about cell towers sprouting in their neighborhoods.

In the years since then, zoning has become a big part of her practice. She loves its complexities and contradictions.

Ellen Smith: Zoning is intended to be a living, breathing document. Right? Zoning regulations are to address and protect the public, but also to allow our property owner to maximize the development of their property and the use of their property to its highest and best use, but within a rubric that matches their neighbor's property and that provides some consistency, but if you think about it, those ideals don't always match up with and sort of rarely match up with a developer's idea or a property owner’s idea of what could go on, on their property. And some of those things are noxious uses. Right? I mean, you don't want typically your single family subdivision up next, you know, against a landfill or next to, you know, a super industrial property. And it it's one of those things where I tell people zoning, I think, is character building because people are really proud of their property and they are super proud of your property and they're going to tell you exactly what to do on it. And some of that's OK. But some of it is just patently wrong. And therein lies the fun and the legal challenge.

Brian narration: Ellen graduated from law school in 2000...and even though her law school class was evenly split between men and women, when she started at her firm, there was just one other woman there. And she wasn’t on the partner track.

Ellen Smith: So there weren't other women in my firm to look up to. They hadn't had an equity partner in many years. The firm opened in 1984 and I think it had one equity female partner that was fairly short lived. And in commercial real estate, well, in litigation, there aren't that many female lawyers, there are more female judges because I think more sort of get off of the partnership track at a private firm and go into public service with respect to the court system. And so from a litigation standpoint, often I'm the only woman in the room, client or attorney, whether we're on the same side or not. And for commercial real estate, still, I'm almost always the only female.

Brian narration: She tells the story of working on a project with another woman called Helen. So there was Ellen and Helen...

Ellen Smith: And we were the only two females out of about a team of 30 working on the project. She was an engineer. So out of the architects, the client representatives, the project managers, all of the construction consultants and other professionals on the team, we often were on weekly calls where they would just say, Ellen, Helen, answer the question. I'm like, well, there's a big difference between a lawyer and an engineer. Right? And it's something that she and I still laugh about today. And that project, just to put it in perspective, kicked off in December of 2014. So fairly recent in the grand scheme of things. Not a bad thing or a good thing. I think it's just there is definitely a perspective that I think being a woman brings. There's also, I will say, in 20 years, I think it has changed for the better. And there's now a little more awareness about having a voice whether it's male or female, whether it's gender based or frankly, age, it's a recognition that every person in the team brings something to the experience and a different perspective.

Brian narration: And that brings me to CREW - Commercial Real Estate Women. The network was founded over 30 years ago to bring women in all different areas of CRE together, to exchange information and help each other succeed. It’s now a global network with around 12 thousand members. Ellen is president elect of the Atlanta chapter of CREW. One thing she loves about the network? It respects women’s time.

Ellen Smith: What I like about CREW at its very base, is things start on time and end on time. I can tell you exactly how many minutes we've been talking. I bill my life in 6 minute increments. When I am involved in CREW or any other organization, I am involved in giving my time. That means I am not billing it to my clients and I'm not working on something that my client needs. So it's truly something that is taking time away from my ability to, you know, do my job. And bill my client. It's a worthwhile investment tenfold because you can start and finish a project with a member of CREW. It's not like the Bar where it's a bunch of lawyers. You can build, redevelop, service, any project that's a commercial real estate project, whether it's a multifamily project or industrial project, I can find a network of people that can help me or help my client and put my client in touch with someone if they need something done. So for that, it's an invaluable investment.

Brian Maughan: Tell me a little bit about...you've been a part of some high profile and large transactions in your career, specifically on the deal side. Which one stands out for you?

Ellen Smith: You know, I will say this, it's always exciting, right, to drive by something. I have two - I have a 15 year old daughter and a 14 year old daughter, and I'm sure they're tired of me driving by somewhere nearby and saying, hey, I worked on that. And do you know why that's like that? Do you know why the building is sitting this direction or why there's a flagpole in the front or in the back versus a dumpster, whatever it is - they're super tired of it. But that's when you geek out, right? And you think, OK, I worked on this and there's a sense of pride for it actually coming out of the ground. And the one that I would say would be the one that is sort of that high profile would be Mercedes-Benz USA. 

Brian narration: Mercedes was moving its headquarters from New Jersey to Sandy Springs, just outside Atlanta. It needed to build an entire corporate campus in its new location.

Ellen Smith: It was super interesting because my job should have been pretty finite. Right. Go get the entitlements for a 200,000 square foot office building, which is certainly not the biggest building, certainly not the biggest square footage. But the history of the property that they ultimately selected was that it was the last 76 acres that was in Sandy Springs that was undeveloped, and was highly visible to the area around and the neighborhoods around. There was a house there that was a location for The Vampire Diaries if you watched that. That historic building was coming down and the family that had owned that property for decades was selling it.

Brian Maughan: The job went on a lot longer than Ellen thought it would...

Ellen Smith: It should have just been like, go get your zoning for an office building, right? No biggie. You deal with the things like traffic, noise, light. There were multiple complications in the zoning, more than 100, I think, property owner and neighbor meetings, just because it was part of a mixed use. So there was a multifamily component. There's a retail component. There were lots of things happening. But also, you know, my job should have ended August of 2015. We got the zoning, everything was approved. They all moved forward to get building permits. And they were, you know, tasked with relocating turtles. And there was a native plant harvest from the local gardening group because this property had not been developed. It truly was, you know, 30 some odd acres of what neighbors thought was sort of parkland.

Brian narration: And there were other complications involving both the natural world and the concrete one. These took a lot of people many months to sort out.

Ellen Smith: And that was a project that, you know, was sort of start to finish Commercial Real Estate Women, CREW Atlanta had involvement on almost all sides of that project. CREW members represented the Fulton County Development Authority with respect to the issuance of bonds, represented the title company issuing owners policies and lease policies, represented brokers on all sides of the transaction, lawyers on all sides of the transaction. So that was also something I think I'm pretty proud of.

Brian Maughan: Slightly different than that phone call you had many years ago where there were 30, and then Helen and Ellen.

Ellen Smith: Indeed. That’s right.

Brian Maughan: I'd like to end by just asking you and having you talk a little bit about advice for the young commercial real estate member of CREW or the young attorney that's coming up in your firm. Advice for them, how to navigate, how to be successful like you?

Ellen Smith: Yeah, you know, first I hope I'm successful. I think I am. So I think there are sort of two things that someone taught me very early on in my career, like the first day I started as a practicing attorney and one of those is I'm in the south, right, your podcast is going to be heard maybe all over. But I grew up using Mr. and Mrs. as just a courtesy, not anything else. And as you grow in your career and start your career, whatever profession you're in, whether law or otherwise, I would say, and someone said this to me, always call people by their first name. You say, hey, I'm Ellen. Right. Because it level-sets. Someone is calling you for professional advice. Doesn't matter if they're 5 years older or 20 years older or 5 years younger. First name, you're on a professional basis, use it. And that sounds silly, but for a woman in commercial real estate, it makes the difference. If I say, mister, you know, before any salutation or greeting, I'm automatically saying you are more important than me. And my advice is not something that you should pay for. And that's a problem.

Brian narration: She says her other advice may sound like basic business etiquette, but it’s important. Number one...

Ellen Smith: Don't be afraid to pick up the phone and do that or meet face to face, because email, text, you know, all of those things are great and efficient. They do not convey tone and they do not help you establish a relationship. So there are clients that text me and I respond to them by text, they are people that I've worked with for 20 years. And if I haven't gotten that basic relationship established, that isn't going to be the most effective way to communicate. And the third that I say to myself all the time still, and I say to young associates is, it has to be done quickly, right. We move in a very fast paced environment and responsiveness to the client is key - but accurate, and correctness is more important. So...do it fast, but do it right.

Brian Maughan: Ellen, thank you so much for your time. I know that it is very valuable. But we appreciate you spending your time with us, sharing with us your history and giving us some time.

Ellen Smith: Thanks so much, I appreciate it.

Brian narration: Thanks for listening to this episode of BUILT, we hope you enjoyed it. We’d love to hear your feedback - email us at built@fnf.com. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with another show.

Built is a co-production of Fidelity National Financial and PRX Productions. From FNF, our project is run by Annie Bardelas. At PRX, our team is producer Ashley Milne-Tyte, Senior Producer Genevieve Sponsler, production assistant Courtney Fleurantin and intern Claire Carlander. Audio mastering by Rebecca Seidel.

The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.

I’m Brian Maughan.

Every story is unique, every property is individual, but we’re all part of this BUILT world.