In this episode of Peachtree Corners Life, host Rico Figliolini covers a range of topics for the new year with City Manager Brian Johnson. They address misinformation circulating on the Nextdoor app, discuss updates and future plans for Simpsonwood Park and provide details on upcoming city infrastructure improvements, including gateway signage and parks.

Additionally, the episode announces new features in Peachtree Corners, such as a trail hub, an electric vehicle mobility hub, concert additions and potential park development.

Timestamp

00:00 Introduction and New Year Greetings
00:35 Sponsor Acknowledgements
01:48 Addressing Inaccuracies about The Forum Parking
12:57 Simpsonwood Park Master Plan Update
27:51 City Gateway Signage and Trail Hub Plans
36:11 Upcoming Events and Community Activities

A discussion on the new small area plan, seven sub-areas for guiding growth, and the city’s proactive vision for balancing residential and commercial development.

In this episode of Peachtree Corners Life, host Rico Figliolini discusses the recently concluded moratorium on residential mixed-use development in Peachtree Corners’ Central Business District with Shaun Adams, the city’s Community Development Director. They explore the creation of a small area plan, which subdivides the district into seven distinct zones, enabling tailored development strategies for each. Shaun highlights the goals of this plan: better aligning future projects with the city’s vision, enhancing placemaking, and ensuring balanced growth. They also discuss updates to the city’s 2045 Comprehensive Plan, public engagement efforts, and upcoming steps, including the December 17th City Council vote. Listen to learn how Peachtree Corners is shaping its future while preserving its unique community character.

Resources:
Peachtree Corners Website
Community Development
Upcoming City Council Meeting Tuesday, December 17

Timestamp:
00:00:00 – Residential Mixed-Use Moratorium and Central Business District Revamp
00:04:40 – Comprehensive Plan Guiding City’s 10-20 Year Vision
00:06:50 – Distinguishing Institutional and Commercial Areas in the Central Business District
00:10:17 – Differentiating Commercial and Residential Zones in City Planning
00:15:56 – Planned Roundabout and Redevelopment Opportunities
00:17:40 – Balancing Town Center Development and Traffic Concerns
00:20:30 – Flexible Zoning for Diverse Housing Options
00:25:06 – Suburban Condo Financing Challenges
00:27:22 – Suburban Density and Apartment Conversions
00:28:49 – Targeted Infill Development to Support Existing Office
00:35:42 – Envisioning Flex Office Redevelopment in Chamblee
00:38:37 – Envisioning a Balanced Suburban Density
00:40:50 – Zoning Changes Headed to City Council

Podcast Transcript

Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life. We have a great guest today. We’re going to be discussing a lot of things here regarding residential, mixed use, the moratorium that recently ended on that development. Shaun Adams is with me today. Hey, Shaun. Thanks for being with me.

00:00:48 – Shaun Adams

Hey, how are you?

00:00:49 – Rico Figliolini

Good, good. So we’re going to talk, let’s set the stage a little bit about why, if you could give me a two-minute brief about why the moratorium was put in place and then what you were doing during that moratorium to start developing the ideas that we’re going to be visually showing our guests?

00:01:11 – Shaun Adams

Sure thing. So back in May, we put the moratorium in place on May 3rd. And one of the reasons that led to that is we were starting to see from the marketplace, a lot of properties in our central business district come online for sale. Office was not in great shape. They’re looking to redevelop sites in a way that didn’t necessarily align with what we felt our long-term vision of the central business district was. And when you look at the central business district, it’s a big piece of all of our office parks, including Tech Park and some of our retail nodes. And having one policy, if you will, that covered that whole area, you know, seemed to be a little broader than what we were ultimately looking for. And so we pressed pause, moratorium, and started working on a small area plan, which has now gotten to the point where we heard in planning commission a couple weeks ago, November 12th. And it’s set to go before council on December 17th. And through that process, we’ve held a couple of focus groups with brokers and owners, office owners in the central business district. We had a public engagement meeting. I’ve had some one-on-one conversations with members of the public who have reached out to me as well and provided feedback. And so we’ve taken all of that. And we actually, as a byproduct of that, we had a couple of themes that came out of those engagement sessions that spoke to more placemaking opportunities or amenitizing the Tech Park Central Business District area, taking it from an eight-hour day to a sixteen-hour day type of thought process, more gathering space where we could, a better mix of housing stock within the area. And so we also turned around and did an asset inventory, as I call it, where we put eyes on every commercial building in the Central Business District. We did a market analysis as well to determine how they were from a condition standpoint, what their occupancy rates were, what’s on the market, what’s not, what properties have kind of more underutilized space or parking than others. And as a byproduct of that, we’ve kind of set out these seven sub areas, which is probably the biggest change in the small area plan within the sub-district that allows us to get a little more granular and look at each of these areas and say, okay, what may make sense from a redevelopment standpoint or development standpoint in one area may not make sense in another. So how can we take all this information that the public and the experts have given us and, you know, mix it around and come out with all of that. So I have seven sub areas within the central business district that will be presenting to council.

00:03:50 – Rico Figliolini

And the moratorium was placed on the central business district area. So no one could apply for rezoning within that six month period that ended November 3rd, right? So during that time, you guys did what you needed to do as far as research and the inventory assets and developing these ideas. Because like you said before, from someone walking in that doesn’t know anything about this, the central business district area was governed by or ruled by one broad regulation, if you will. And now by subdividing these into seven districts, each of them will be uniquely managed, if you will, right? About what can go there or how it can be developed. So now that it ended November 3rd and city council is going to be seeing this December 17th as the last public hearing, if you will, before it’s voted on. When would it take effect?

00:04:46 – Shaun Adams

So and remember, this small area plan is essentially going to be an addendum to the 2045 comp plan. So it’ll be baked up under that. And, you know, once they vote on it in December, it’s being voted on to be adopted as a part of our comp plan. So it’ll essentially take effect right away. It is a policy document. It’s not a law document. And so it’s one of the things that we try to help people know is that the comprehensive plan is meant to guide our 10 to 20 year vision of how we see the city progressing. And, you know, some of that is, you know, proactive in nature and some of it is obviously defensive in nature. But this will plug right into that and allow us as staff when projects come through right away, we’ll be able to point to this. If it’s a project that comes in a central business district, we will immediately be able to point to this once council votes on it and says, hey, you know, this is kind of how we view this area in this property.

00:05:48 – Rico Figliolini

Right. And the comp plan gets reviewed every, was it every five years, I guess?

00:05:53 – Shaun Adams

It’s every five years from that day. The reality of the process for us is it feels like every three to four we get started on it.

00:05:59 – Rico Figliolini

Right, right. That’s true. Because by the time you finish public hearings and all that, I mean, it takes a while. So like you said, I mean, this is a guide, right? So what may be on there at least allows the city and developers to know exactly what’s expected, what’s going on. But it does give you that leeway to be able to adjust as you go. City council votes on it, planning commission votes on it. So it’s a process, right? Public hearings are done. So it’s not like all of a sudden something shows up that might be different from what would be on there all of a sudden, because it has to still go through the process of public hearings and all that. We were talking before we started this. I mean, it was interesting to me that a certain, maybe you want to pull up the map and we can start with that. Because one of the sections that is in the Central Business District, I didn’t even realize, was the G section that we talked about, the intersection of Peachtree Corner Circle and West Jones Bridge Road and Crooked Creek, where the elementary school is as well. I didn’t even realize that was in the Central Business District area. But you all have been proactive when you went through this process to make sure about a few things. So let’s start there a little bit. So what we’re seeing on here is the seven subdivided areas to our central business district. And the G, which is the green area, so the top one is the intersection of where the YMCA is, Peachtree Corners Baptist Church, and Cornerstone Christian Academy. And the one on the left side on this top map is the Crooked Creek and Peachtree Elementary School area. Correct? Yeah. So explain to us why that was pulled out separate.

00:07:56 – Shaun Adams

So, you know, as you kind of look at that area, you see they kind of stick out anyway from the core central business district. I think the reason why they are probably originally included in is because they are mostly institutional uses, which tend to lean on the commercial side versus everything around it being residential. But when, when you have a broad policy guide or policy statements like we have in the central business district before this, where, you know, the central business district in most places is where your highest intensity of development shall occur both mix of uses you know things like you see at town center and the forum you know that’s also common central business district. And so when you just say that broadly across the whole character area well that means everywhere that you see on this map right now, which includes those two sections. But we identified and understood that what may be appropriate along 141 and sub-area A probably isn’t appropriate in G. And so we wanted to try to carve that out for a couple reasons. And one is for the community to understand that we recognize there’s a difference in what might be able to go there, but also for developers to know that while it’s in the central business district, the athletic fields and parking lot of PCVC probably isn’t the place for an intense development. And so what this is called the suburban transition sub area is what G is. And the way we articulate it is that it’s the idea is that it will maintain its existing institutional character with the schools and the churches and the YMCA there. To the extent that if it were to be redeveloped in the future, it needs to take on the low intensity residential character of all the residential around it. And so if anything, it should act more like the Amberfield and Peachtree Station and everything that’s right by it and less like Central Business District. And so it kind of gives us that buffer and then now gives staff the ability if somebody were to come in and try to buy one of those pieces, we would be looking at this and saying, your development is inconsistent with our small area plan and surrounding uses. And that would give us some of the ammunition we need to be able to make a recommendation of denial in that case.

00:10:14 – Rico Figliolini

Which wasn’t in the original plan. I mean, anyone could have probably come in and bought that parking lot, if you will, across from PCBA and decided, or the YMCA, if that was ever to be sold or whatever, that someone could come in and say, well, you know, it’s a transition point. We could put townhouses there, which, you know, in a reasonable way, you might say that that could be like type of thing, type of development. But this eliminates sort of that.

00:10:58 – Shaun Adams

And townhomes are lower to medium intensity but the bigger thing is you can take that YMCA property and it’s big enough that could try and come in with a mix of uses, and even more intense. And while we can certainly from a staff standpoint leverage the fact that all the surrounding uses are lower intensity and try to use that to drive a staff report of denial, it will be harder for us to say it’s inconsistent with the comp plan when the comp plan is calling for the higher intensity use in that character area. But now this sub-area allows us to be able to point to both and say, no, that type of intense use in that area would not be appropriate.

00:11:23 – Rico Figliolini

And was this, I don’t remember now, but obviously the city’s thirteen years old. And we adopted Gwinnett County’s plans, right? I mean, when we became a city, essentially. And now that’s slowly been amended and changed over time. But would that have been allowed? I wonder if that would have been allowed during that time before we became a city.

00:11:50 – Shaun Adams

I’m not, well, I mean Gwinnett County would have had larger character areas since it was county-wide they would have certainly looked at this area along 141 and had more of a commercial node for it would be my guess. So we would have done our own comp plan before this to kind of have character specific to the city but a lot of times what happens as you see here is this is the core of our commercial and retail district and so that and then everything above it is residential and but now as we start to grow and develop you know and you start to see some of these properties in the market kind of change from what it was in the 80s and 90s, then, you know, now that becomes more at risk today than 20 years ago and mixed use wasn’t really a thing.

00:12:36 – Rico Figliolini

So city’s being proactive by doing this, obviously, and subdividing this makes sense to me too as well, as we were discussing before we started. Tell everyone what the darkened areas are. They should know from map but like the Forum, Town Center, I guess Dick’s Sporting Goods is on the south end, along with where the Chick-fil-A is, those areas. And they’re darkened because why?

00:13:04 – Shaun Adams

So they’re darkened for a couple of reasons. One, that’s really our retail entertainment sections right there, which, you know, from my perspective, really isn’t the same as the rest of the central business district, which is office focused. But also, you know, as we kind of talked before, the comp plan gets updated about every, you know, four to five years. These two areas here, our town center and the forum, they’re pretty much, from a redevelopment standpoint, they are what they are. They’re either in process or already built out. There’s not a lot of potential for change. Really, I’d say the only property grayed out would be the Ingles. But whether that’s something that would ever change in five years or not we don’t know I mean it’s a stable shopping center that’s leased up right now and so you know there hasn’t been anything of a recent note to indicate that it would be different but it is probably the only property in that area that doesn’t have that post 2000 design to it and the same thing at the bottom with Target, Dick’s Sporting Goods, LA Fitness Plaza, that’s a retail node that’s not likely to change in the next five years. And so what I would posit to you is that the next comp plan update, if anything, I could see those becoming a different character area potentially in the central business district. But in order to kind of fully flesh that out now, it would have taken another full-blown update. And so we wanted to focus on the areas that were ripe for potential redevelopment within the next four to five years, like what’s likely to change. And so that’s why you’ll notice the E section as well, where even though a lot of times that area around Peachtree Corner Circle with the Lidl DaVinci Court hexagon is often part of that downtown focus, that is an area that one has attempted redevelopment recently and probably has the potential for redevelopment in the next five years at some point in time. And so we included that and made it its own sub-area as a town center gateway because we wanted feedback from the community on that since we felt like it would likely be sought for some sort of transition over the next five years.

00:15:20 – Rico Figliolini

In that area, I know that, for example, the E part, the west side of 141 there, that’s where the day building is. I know that they applied for rezoning there. They’d like to put mixed use, a residential, I think. And then you have the E. Let’s start there. Let’s talk about that.

00:15:40 – Shaun Adams

Actually, so yeah, the west side here, my cursor is the curve that you see is the Cowart Parcel that’s not developed yet, but that’s where he has the entitlements for the 56 condos. The day building is actually over here in our commercial 4. So since it’s a little further down Peachtree Corner Circle, it kind of fell out of the gateway. Based off of our review.

00:16:05 – Rico Figliolini

So is the 50-unit condo still, that’s the one that I think butts up to the intuitive properties maybe or neither?

00:16:16 – Shaun Adams

It does. So it’s kind of the one that’s tucked in behind the QT and the creme de la creme. And then part of the intuitive campus is on the other side of it.

00:16:25 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. By the way, is that, I think the roundabout that was being planned has that been approved and going into that part with the creme de la creme and the exit from the forum is, is that, has that been approved?

00:16:40 – Shaun Adams

I believe that kind of falls more on my public work side. I believe it’s in design, but I’m going to leave that for Brian and Greg to speak more clearly to it. I believe it is still in play, but it would be aligned with the creme access where that has been discussed to be slated.

00:17:01 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. Do you foresee, I know in the E part on the south, on the east side or south side, there’s a couple of other buildings there that are being looked at, right? Is Regis one of those buildings?

00:17:14 – Shaun Adams

Regis Hexagon is one where I think half of it’s vacant right now. The Hexagon has moved out. Regis still has their side. So, you know, that’s a building, again, 50% or less occupancy, a lot of parking. So, you know, in my mind, that’s one where you could see somebody coming in and kicking tires at any point. And so it was important to make sure that was included as a part of this conversation.

00:17:44 – Rico Figliolini

Sure. Why don’t we, why don’t you start, I guess from there, I mean, that’s the town center gateway it’s called, right? And let’s work our way around to tell us a little bit about why each of these have been adjusted the way they are.

00:17:58 – Shaun Adams

Certainly. So, I mean, I guess the town center gateway, you know, what we point out here is that it is kind of a wrapping around as a part of that downtown and, you know, could provide opportunity to connect directly into the town center area to amenitize. And, you know, not only those office buildings there, but there is enough excess parking there to provide some additional body heat and residential units to further support town center and the forum. And so that’s kind of been looked at as an area, you know, for meeting the high bill for equity product. There was discussion at planning commission, you know, that I’d say the one, one concern that some of the community has expressed is with regards to our recommendation of medium to high density in the E area, largely over traffic concerns in terms of, you know, if you put a few more hundred units in that area, what will that do from a traffic standpoint? We are, you know, continuing to work to look at that and provide, you know, analysis for it in advance of council. But, you know, what I have kind of spoken to is the reason again this being a guide right, is the importance of having somewhat of a range and saying medium to high intensity is you know I’ll use da vinci as an example just because they kind of made this reference in their public hearing but they talked about the fact that they currently of the twelve plus acres they have about nine acres of it is asphalt. Four acres of I believe it, is what they said in a public is hearing, is excess. So they can maintain their four to one parking ratio that they need for their tenants and get rid of four acres. And so if they were to come back in with a proposal with residential units so that, you know, were what city and the community wanted. People generally were like, that’s a good proposal. And we’ll just, you know, for the sake of easy math, you know, it’s four acres that they came in with, you know, eighty units of townhomes and, but they did it as a whole twelve acre property. That’s less than eight units an acre, right? That’s like low end of medium, if anything, you know, in terms of density. So everybody be like, that’s great. That’s awesome. Great job. You know, it looks good. Everybody’s happy. Well, if they sold off the four acres of parking and a different, whoever bought the four acres or was contracted to buy the four acres comes in to zone eighty townhomes. Now that density is being accounted for off of four acres, not twelve. And so what was a less than seven acre, seven unit per acre project now looks like a twenty unit per acre project. And now it sounds like high density. And so the reason for having the range is saying, look, all of these properties within that gateway, in order to put one residential unit on it, they’d have to come to us for a rezoning. So we get to look at it on a case-by-case basis and say, you know what? If it’s eighty townhomes there on four acres, whether it’s all twelve acres is zoned as a mud or four acres of it is zoned, you know, residential infill or some other zoning opportunity there. The idea is that it’s eighty units for the core of that site that’s meant to serve the property. So we might look at that differently okay more supportive than 350 units on say the hexagon building or the synergy building or something right? You know so that’s still high but it’s a lot more units and so by baking in a range it allows us to contemplate those scenarios where you might have parcel carve-outs and that person comes in because maybe the office owner doesn’t want to wrap everything into a mixed use for whatever reason, but he’s okay giving a piece of the parking to add something to it. And so from a planning standpoint, we have to look at what’s the total number of units going on the ground in an area. And that’s really what’s going to come down from a traffic standpoint anyway from support. But if we just said medium and that same project came in, I mean, technically, council could look at it case by case and still say, I understand based off of the four acres, it looks like higher intensity. But, you know, totality of the circumstances, if you will, it really is more like medium and therefore we would support it they still have that ability to do it but I think it’s from a legal standpoint from a policy standpoint to have the range in there it’s easier for us to kind of defend and support on a case-by-case basis. And so that’s something that we’re looking at and trying to help articulate why the importance of the range is there.

00:22:51 – Rico Figliolini

So when equity is talked about, I mean, the only equity that I hear all the time is either homes or townhomes. I don’t hear anything about condos. So it transitions right to apartments. Like if someone came in and decided they wanted to apply for, I don’t know 180, 200 units, it’s always looked at as multifamily apartments versus an equity property like condos would be. Is that even in the plans? Does that allow for that? Or is that one of those expanded uses that could be but it’s not explicit in there?

00:23:32 – Shaun Adams

So one of the changes we made as well is instead of trying to speak to known housing product types, we spoke to intensity of the residential use. So low to medium, medium to high density. And the reason why is, we are, I think we are at a point where the residential housing community is trying to shift to find more creative housing product types to help address, you know, the fact that we have less land to develop on, the need for more attainable price points for housing. People, not everybody wants five, four in a door and there’s not opportunity to build it. And in most places anymore. And so where do our empty nesters want to go if they want to own, but downsize. And so, you know, we’re starting to see stack townhome options where it looks like a townhome, but it’s two units stacked on top of each other. They each have a garage. They still have that indoor parking, but they have flat level living once they get there. We’re seeing courtyard style homes are coming out, smaller cottages, kind of going back to that 900 to 1500 square foot single family detached on small lots. And so, you know, as what I don’t know 10 years from now, if I did, you know, I’d probably be in the construction side is what are those types of uses? You know, what does that mix a housing product type? And so what we want to be able to do is say, look, it really matters the intensity of the use. And then we’ll know when we see it, what comes in, if it’s the type of housing product type that makes sense in the area and kind of assimilates into the surrounding environment. So rather than boxing us in and saying no single family detached or no townhome, let’s do it that way. But to your point on the condo front, most people forget that a mid-rise stacked flat building can be equity or rental, right? Condos and ownership type, not a structure. But we are, I think suburban condos, if you will. Like a mid-rise condominium project doesn’t finance or pay for it in suburbia right now. And that’s why you don’t see it like you see inside the perimeter. But what does are we’re starting to see kind of like what you know waterside they have that condo component where there’s three levels with the parking deck you know that type of product works and the reason why is because if you know for condos you have to pre-sell 50 percent before you can get the financing you need to go vertical on the building. So if you take a 50 unit mid-rise, you got to sell 25 units before you start going unless you’re self-funding. And the problem with that is you’re asking people to put money down where they won’t be able to benefit from it for potentially two to three years. But if you have an eight unit kind of stacked townhome building or something like that, one, that building is a lot cheaper to build than a mid-rise. But two, you have to pre-sell four units and then you get the aggregate of the pre-sales moving forward. So once you get four units sold, you build one, you put a couple models in there. And as you sell that out, you can now build the next one. And so that tends to work better in suburbia. And we’re starting to see some of those products come in and kick around.

00:26:50 – Rico Figliolini

Right. And I can appreciate that and understand that. And they look nicer that way, too. There’s better quality of living, maybe. But I’ve also seen, and maybe this is more urban, I guess, where apartments come in, let’s say, multi-unit apartments, but they’re pre-wired, they’re set. They could be condo products. And eventually some of them do turn into that, right? Seven years later, they become condo equity property. That’s actually an easy way of doing it, right? Build the apartment, finance it that way, and then the conversion can happen later. So that’s been done before. But you’re right. Maybe the suburban area we live in right now doesn’t need to be quite that dense with those types of developments.

00:27:41 – Shaun Adams

Well, I will say on that end though, the apartment projects that are coming in, even the ones, I know a couple of them have been denied, but the proposals and Tucson Court as well, Broadstone, they are sub-metered, they are pre-wired in a way to where they could be converted. And I know that’s the difficulty. The irony is like, well, then why can’t it finance as a rental product but not an ownership product? And we can go into the legal weeds on that one. But they are being built now to have that conversion. If we ever find that people are going back towards wanting to buy like that, I could see that happening.

00:28:18 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah. And it’s mainly a financial issue, right? It’s mainly the banks and what they’re willing to finance. And I’m glad that actually the city, I think it was a few years ago, started doing that, conditioning developments to be sub-wide and all that. Because that made sense. I mean, to be able to look to the future and all that. Plus, energy-wise and everything else, it just makes sense to have it done that way. Alright, let’s go into the Ds and the C area. Let’s go into the C area and why is that? And describe what business is actually there at that point.

00:28:56 – Shaun Adams

Certainly. So the C is what we’re calling targeted infill. These are typically slightly smaller lots in general, but you still have businesses and buildings where there’s some underutilized space, maybe over development, or in some cases you might have a smaller office building on a smaller site that isn’t doing so great, but you have better office around it. And so there’s the potential for maybe one property might change so that it betters the ones around it. And so with the targeted infill, you know, what we’re really looking at here is some of that medium. In some cases, you might say higher density, but again, because it’s a smaller lot. So we’re not talking a lot of units, but it might be, you know, more in that ten to fifteen unit range or, you know, fifteen to twenty unit per acre range, but still maybe only 80 to 100, 150 units, something like that. But the idea behind it is it needs to be something that’s meant to kind of help stand up and support existing and surrounding office. So we’re still focusing on that goal. Some of the areas you see here, down here at the bottom, is 20 and 22 Tech Park South. It’s already zoned as a mixed use. And then that spur right across from it is the Isaacson one that just came through, which is the office to condo conversion for 13 units. So again, this right here is an example of where this office was sacrificed, but around it these office buildings here are much better performing, a better condition, doing well. And so by adding some residential here, right on PIB, kind of in the gateway in, it’s gonna now help support some of what is around this. And so that’s kind of the idea. This section back here is research court. You’ve got Peachtree Farms down here, which already kind of has that little bit more of a residential type of character to it. But a couple of these buildings here are either fully vacant or, you know, in need of quiet repair. So there’s the opportunity to do some stuff around here that can maybe stand up some of the office within here, but also help further support, what we have at D. And then this is Spalding 141. So Goodwill Plaza here, Hapag-Lloyd, 5550 Triangle, and that’s this whole section here. And then on the other side, you have the Summit Building, Bank of America, and it’s kind of the space in front of it and the hotel. So that’s kind of a corridor area of some smaller lots where you could probably see some redevelopment occur at some point in time, which that kind of gives us the idea. D is our, we’re calling it commercial core. D is really the area where we don’t expect to see a lot of change away from office. A lot of the office and flex space or what have you in that area is doing well or conditioned well. So we don’t see substantive change. Obviously, most of this area up here is intuitive. The flex office space here, 5250 and 5390 is leasing up well. It’s performing. And so, you know, here what we say is any redevelopment here is going to be accessory in nature to the existing and surrounding office. So much lower intensity if it’s residential, odds are because it’s off the major corridors, it’s probably not going to support retail anyway. And so this is where you can amenitize it, you know, the trail heads can come through in certain places, that type of thing. And so that’s that to me is kind of like our stable base of office. And so not a lot of change.

00:32:32 – Rico Figliolini

Right.

00:32:33 – Shaun Adams

A, as you see here, we’re calling it the district hub, but it’s pretty center or central to the central business district, if you will. It’s right along 141. For context, this is engineering drive comes through right here so this kind of southeastern side of 141 is rod stone the liquor store the racetrack so that’s already is what it is. That’s built out and developed. The other side you have DR Horton back here and then this is the CarMax Plaza. There’s a little kind of right angle building tucked away that you don’t really see from the road, but overlooks the lake. So CarMax, parking right on 141, full signalized intersection, really underutilized space. And part of what we heard when people talked about amenitizing Tech Park beyond gathering spaces and trails was creating opportunities for entertainment, placemaking uses that wouldn’t pluck from town center and the Forum. Don’t want to start to compete fully with that. If there is a place to do it, it should be on a major thoroughfare. And so this is probably where your highest intensity of redevelopment would occur as it relates to additional commercial uses and residential because of its proximity and full access. And so it’s kind of the idea is that hopefully this kind of becomes your entertainment placemaking hub for the central business district.

00:34:05 – Rico Figliolini

I think part of that, wasn’t there at one point about adjusting some of the regulations for allowing recreational uses inside certain buildings that don’t exist actually at this point as far as an allowed use. Is that amended, I think, already?

00:34:16 – Shaun Adams

Yes, back in March. I think March, April timeframe, we did the social recreation facility and social hobbyist tax amendments that kind of address some of those smaller scale uses that didn’t, we didn’t really have a clean and tidy place for. But yeah, I mean, this could be the kind of thing where, you know, your fairway and socials or brewery, things like that. We’d love to see that type of anchor use come in here, something that could hopefully stabilize and make the CarMax building more, more valuable. Because it’s a pretty good shape building. If you put some stuff around it, you could foresee a situation. You’ve got 295 multifamily, 26 towns on this side, 75 towns coming on DR Horton. So you’re kind of in that 380, just shy of 400 range if out of all this you know in this area if you had a little more residential along with some entertainment uses you really have a core that can support that additional retail or entertainment use coming in so it brings a product to the city we don’t have hopefully that all of our residents up here in the shaded out area can easily pop down into and out but most anybody else coming to it is going to leverage you know the main thoroughfare 141 in the city to do it and so you know that’s we felt like if there was a place to have it that’s it okay and then I’ll hit F real quick because it should be real quick. This is really our saturn court down here. This is off of PIB. We call it flex office, but this is where most of our true kind of industrial one-story bay door flex office buildings are. Anything here is going to be more to enhance that. It shouldn’t see much in the way of true redevelopment there. It’s a pretty stable spot. And so we kind of drew those out on their own. And then the last one is B, we’re calling it district infill. Perspective wise, I mean, this is Jaybird Alley right here. So down here, you have the Comcast building down here below. This is Mary Our Queen up here. These two buildings right here are one property my understanding is this building is fully vacant most people are in this back building as you can see you look around you have a ton of underutilized parking and space an office park. And even the public engagement sector, our public engagement meeting this is where most people said hey the intensity of residential and everything if anywhere, that’s where it should be. It’s further away from town center where a lot of people feel like we already have a lot of growth going on. It’s adjacent to Holcomb Bridge Road corridor. We’re trying to do a lot to redevelop that corridor. And so this is where it makes the most sense. And so here is where we’re kind of proposing that medium to high opportunity as well for residential mix of uses. Still with a preference for built for equity products, I think there’s some opportunity because unlike C, these properties are larger. So you can take one property and do more. Where C, you might have some three to four acre sites. Here, you’ve got a lot of 12, 15 acre sites. So there could be some opportunity to do more with a mix of product types. You could potentially stabilize the office building with it, or you may have to take one to support others.

00:37:40 – Rico Figliolini

So let’s, I mean, medium to high density. So when, for example, I drove through, I think it was, what was it, Beaufort Highway? No, Peachtree Industrial Boulevard going south into the city. It was actually Chamblee I was driving through. And I hadn’t been through that part in quite a while, apparently, because all of a sudden I noticed all these buildings. Beautiful architecture, actually. Well-designed apartment buildings. Prettier looking, I’ve got to say, than Broadstone. But that’s just my take on it. Better architectural planning on that. Do we foresee that type of local development, too, maybe in that B area? Because, I mean, does that. Just so that people can sort of envision what is going to go where maybe as far as that goes.

00:38:31 – Shaun Adams

I consider that to be more of an urban higher density than a suburban higher density you know my vision for down here is there certainly may be a couple of sites where, you know, multifamily might be needed or might make some sense to be able to support the retail that’s right here. But really, when I look at this, doing some of that residential infill, you know, like a couple of zoning districts are talking about, I could see an opportunity for a mix of product types, whether it’s attached and detached townhomes with some stacked townhomes or smaller cottage homes, you know, where we can find an opportunity to do that, to bring in some more of that equity product, but it can be smaller footprints. And so it may be 15 to 20 units an acre. And, you know, in my mind, anything less than 20, you’re still kind of in that medium range. You get over 20 is when there’s a two in front of it and it starts to feel like, okay, for suburban areas, that’s probably, that’s the low end of high. You know, when you get like the Chamblee area, they’re probably 40, 50, 60 units an acre is what you’re probably seeing there. I don’t foresee that, you know, even our current regional or I say regional, but our current mixed use ordinance that we have, even with all the bonus density, you can get caps at 45. And 32 is the base. And so I don’t foresee it being Chamblee-esque, if you will. I want it to be a more efficient use of the space supporting the office. But I think my mind, when you say medium to high, I’m thinking this area is probably likely to be more in that 15 to 25 type of range and hopefully supporting as many of those office buildings as we can.

00:40:16 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. Sounds good. So this is going to be presented to the city council again on December 17th. Public comments, public hearing. People can come to that meeting and make their public comments about that plan. It’s been out there already. There’s been public focus groups, a public meeting. So it’s been out there. Just for those people that might look at this, listen to this and say, I didn’t know about it, but it’s been out there. It’s been advertised. God, it’s been ad nauseum with being out there. So finally, it’s coming to city council, and it’ll be voted on at that meeting, because it’s gone past the first reading on it. Do you foresee any additional, is there any additional things that you should share, that you want to share right now that we haven’t covered, Shaun?

00:41:07 – Shaun Adams

As far as the plan, no. I mean, I think it’s pretty well out there. I mean, this is, to me, the biggest change is what the sub-areas are allowing us to do. I mean, other than stating that we’ve got a couple of zoning districts in the works as a byproduct of this so that we can fully implement the plan. But outside of that, we do have two applications in for December Planning Commission, but they’re not really specific to these changes. So we haven’t had that rush, even thought the moratorium ended on November 3rd, of people coming in. So it’ll be interesting as people maybe flip their heads out of the sand after the holidays in January and start to kick tires again to kind of see the reaction of the development community. The first couple of times they come in on some of these properties and talk with us about it.

00:42:00 – Rico Figliolini

Sounds good. Great. So again, for those, it’s December 17th, the city council meeting. If you have any questions, what I’m going to do is in the show notes for this, I’ll have a link to the meeting. I’ll have a link. I think we could get a link to this plan as well.

00:42:18 – Shaun Adams

It’ll be in the packet.

00:42:22 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. Is there a separate PDF available on this that we can link to?

00:42:27 – Shaun Adams

I can get one set up for the full plan that’ll be shown. This was a specific presentation that doesn’t have the full plan in it that I’m sharing right now. But I can get the full plan maybe with a draft watermark on it or something and then have that so it can be shared.

00:42:45 – Rico Figliolini

Alright, that’d be great if you could do that. If anyone has comments certainly leave it in the comments email, myself or actually Shaun Adams at the city if you have any questions and sorry my cats are going crazy so just you know put your comments and we’ll see about getting answers to you before the meeting or certainly bring them to that meeting and you’ll know a little bit more about what’s going on. So Shaun, thank you. Appreciate you being with me. Hang in there for a minute while we say goodbye. In fact, if you want to take the map off, you’re fine to do that. Everyone else, thank you again. This is Peachtree Corners Life. My name is Rico Figliolini, host of this, and publisher of Peachtree Corners Magazine and Southwest Gwinnett Magazine, and Shaun Adams here. Give me your title again, Shaun, because I should remember that.

00:43:39 – Shaun Adams

Community Development Director.

00:43:41 – Rico Figliolini

There you go. So tell us all what you think. Give us some feedback in the comments. We’ll look forward to the next episode of this podcast when we talk to Shaun again, likely Brian Johnson, the City Manager, and we’ll get more information about what’s going on. There’s going to be a lot going on in 2025, that’s for sure. So thanks again. Hang in there.

In this episode of UrbanEBB, host Rico Figliolini sits down with Mike Logan, Chief Commercial Officer of AVID Products, to explore the world of esports, gaming headsets, and innovation in audio technology. Mike shares how AVID’s employee-owned ethos drives its mission to create affordable, durable, and communication-focused products like the AVIGA gaming headset. They discuss AVID’s presence at DreamHack, the transformative power of audio, and the growing gaming accessibility for diverse communities. With insights into market trends and the role of AI in audio, Mike offers a compelling look at how AVID fosters connection and creativity through sound.

Resources:
Avid’s Website: https://shop.avidproducts.com/
Aviga Headset

Timestamp:
00:00:00 – From Athlete to Esports Advocate
00:01:49 – Esports Offers Valuable Life Skills for All Students
00:05:22 – The Transformative Power of Audio
00:07:42 – Affordable, Communication-Focused Gaming Headset
00:12:36 – Expanding Aviga Headsets Beyond Gaming
00:15:15 – A Gamer-Centric Festival at Dreamhack 
00:17:48 – Leveraging Niche Markets and Affordable Solutions
00:20:31 – The Importance of Quality Products and Authentic Marketing
00:23:10 – Accessibility in Gaming and Lowering Barriers to Entry
00:28:06 – The Rise of AI-Generated Content and Audio Importance
00:30:54 – The Vibrant Gaming Community

Podcast transcript

00:00:00 – Rico Figliolini

Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of UrbanEBB here based in Atlanta, Georgia. Hope you’re all doing well. I have a great guest today. I missed meeting him recently at DreamHack Atlanta, but Mike Logan, Chief Commercial Officer of Avid. Hey, Mike. Thank you for joining me.

00:00:17 – Mike Logan

Thank you, Rico. It’s great to be here.

00:00:19 – Rico Figliolini

You know what? We had a conversation before we started this and it’s good to get to know you a little bit more before we dive into this because it’s an interesting industry, and you have an interesting background. In fact, let’s start off with that. There’s a passion for esports that you have, I believe. something that you got, sort of turned on to with a high school coach. Was that what you said?

00:00:45 – Mike Logan

It was. I was at an event one time, a conference, our company that was there was sponsoring one of the speakers. And the speaker was an esports coach out of Alabama. And of course, we’re the sponsor. So he comes up to me and says, oh, you’re a big fan of esports. And maybe honesty, maybe I was too honest with him because I said, not really. And he said, why not? I said, well, I was a real athlete in school and, you know, in high school and in college and just don’t understand how video games can be considered a sport. He says, well, he goes, what if I told you that I gave my first varsity letter to a child in a wheelchair because esports? And I was like, well, that’s compelling. And he told me, he said, Mike, he goes, let me ask you. He goes, when you played sports, soccer and football were my two sports of choice. He goes, what did you learn? I said, teamwork and, you know, how to depend on people and how to be reliable and how to take accountability and be responsible for showing up to practice and doing your job. And he goes, but do you still have the physical cardiovascular benefits that you gained in high school today? And I said, well, no, they’re long since gone. And he goes, do you still have the teamwork skills and the benefits that you learned from being part of a team and working together? I said, absolutely. That carried with me through my career. And he says, those are the skills that we’re going to use and we’re going to develop when we do esports in high school. He says, I understand the argument that it’s not a cardiovascular pull like it is when you’re out on the field and you’re sweating in the hot sun. He said, but the life skills that sports teach kids are the same life skills that esports teaches kids. How to rely on somebody, how to be dependable, the accountability, how to lose and win humbly. All the different benefits that you learned on the field that you carried with you are the same benefits that we can offer kids that may not have a body type that allows them to take the field and represent their school. But now we do. And so now we have this outlet, the available option to offer kids the ability to say, hey, I might not have a body type. I might not be physically fit. I might not be athletic per se, but I can still represent my school and have school spirit and bring home a trophy. And so we’re seeing that. We’re seeing people groups, very diverse people groups start to come together under the umbrella of esports. So it’s opening up an entire cultural mix that we never had the opportunity to see before. And I’ll be honest with you, that was the moment when I realized the power of esports and was just sold on it.

00:03:13 – Rico Figliolini

It’s amazing. And you’re right. I mean, just knowing the kids that I know in the school here in Atlanta and Gwinnett County and stuff, these kids are learning a lot from that. And you’re right, team building. I mean, you don’t lose that. You have to be able to learn how to take defeat and how to work with other people that you normally may not be able to work with and appreciate people around you. So yeah, I can see that happening. So did you end up, you weren’t a game player before that, I’m assuming.

00:03:45 – Mike Logan

I’ve always been a video gamer. You know, I was right at that cusp of the generation that came up playing the old original Nintendo, maybe even a little Atari built into the early days, but never really viewed it as a sport until that time. Until I talked to that coach.

00:04:00 – Rico Figliolini

Interesting. Yeah, I had, you know, not for anything, I had the same feeling when I started seeing esports, which is big in the state of Georgia, actually. Very big here, and it’s getting bigger. But I felt the same way you did, Mike. Like, this is a sport? Yes, you have teams competing. But it’s interesting to see. And especially when I’ve played games like Fortnite with my kids and just the teamwork in getting through a game where you’re ranked going from 100 to 1 you really have to work as a team. And my kids would be like dad, just like you know we’re gonna leave you behind and stuff. I had to get better at what I was doing. I at least used the skills that I could use. So then I wasn’t weighing them down. So I can appreciate that. But yeah, and you’ve been in the audio education technology industry for like 25 years. E-Gaming hasn’t really been part of that. But Avid is a company on a mission, right? So tell us a little bit of what that core mission is and how that relates to what you all started doing this past summer, late May, when you introduced your gaming.

00:05:17 – Mike Logan

Sure. Avid really believes in the power of audio. And when you start looking at the science behind what audio can do for somebody, it has a visceral transformative impact on people. And what’s interesting is, you don’t even need a research study to know that because everybody knows that maybe you drove a little faster on the interstate when your favorite song came on, or, you know, there’s maybe a reason why they play Black Sabbath at the beginning of every stadium, right? Because it gets people’s adrenaline fired up and ready to go. So people know that music has an impact on them, but it doesn’t just have to be to get someone pumped up for a sport. They can actually be used for calming effects. And so Avid got into the audio industry by being the first company to ever put a headset on a commercial airliner. And we did that because we wanted to reduce that anxiety that people had of flying by playing music and relaxing them a little bit and just offering a better experience. So we’ve been doing this for 60 plus years with airlines. We got into the medical industry about 20 years later. And so we’re, a lot of people, I say some people say, I have never heard of Avid. I said, well, you probably have used this, though, because if you flew on an airplane and you had a headset on, there was a chance that was us. If you went to a hotel and they gave you a headset to work out with, that was probably us. If you went to a hospital for dialysis and they gave you a headset, that was likely us as well. So we’re very purposeful in what we do. And it’s all about using audio to transform some type of an experience. So that drove us to education where, you know, we see this influx of devices and the individualized learning. And so for the bulk of the, after the turn of the century, our focus has really been on schools and classrooms. And so that, obviously you can imagine that transition from just a learning headset and then using everything we’ve learned from that to go into the esports market where we see this other emerging technology or need for technology.

00:07:09 – Rico Figliolini

So what actually drove that idea of getting into that space? Because it’s a competitive space. A lot of products out there, a lot of companies doing this. It’s like pickleball almost in a way. They’re going to have a shakeout at some point because there’s hundreds of companies selling pickleball products. And just to differentiate yourself within that market space is a difficult chore. So, you know, with the new product you have, Aviga, the gaming headset that was introduced this past May at DreamHack Dallas, what got you guys started? How long did it take you? What, you know, did you look at technology to make this intentionally affordable headset for gamers?

00:07:56 – Mike Logan

So we were able to leverage some of our strength areas, similar to what you said when you play Fortnite with your kids. You know, you find your strength areas and you leverage those. And we did the same thing when we created this headset. What we knew is that we knew how to make an affordable headset because of the education market. It demands affordability. We knew we could make a durable headset. And we knew we had the ability to create a headset that had a really good microphone on it so that you could hear really well because we’ve made creator headsets before, budget-friendly creator headsets. But what ended up happening is some gamers picked up that creator headset and said, I really like using this for gaming. We said, well, why? They said, we can hear each other really good on this headset. So we started looking at it and we realized that most of the gaming headsets out there do a really good job of boosting the sound effects because that’s what we all like to hear, right? We, you know, we’re of the age where we can appreciate the old car stereos with the three knobs and we got in and what did we do? We turned the bass up, we turned the treble up, we turned the mid-range down. We basically made a smiley face with the EQ because that’s what we wanted to hear. Headset manufacturers aren’t that far off of doing the same thing. They boost that bass up. So the explosions and the gunshots sound really good. The big thuds come through. But you might be inadvertently drowning out a little bit of that vocal frequency range. And so what we’ve done is we said, let’s not overly boost those sound effects, focus on the vocal range and give people a really good communication-focused centric headset that they can afford. And so between the affordability of knowing the education space, the durability of making sure it lasts, and then this communication-centric mentality when we created it, we’ve created something that the industry is responding really well to.

00:09:32 – Rico Figliolini

Did you find, Mike, anything surprising as you guys went through this development of doing this, of creating it?

00:09:39 – Mike Logan

I think the surprise was how quick people fell in love with it. The headset was intended to be a K-12-focused esports-centric headset. It was going to be something that a high school esports team, a middle school esports team could pick up, purchase very affordably, outfit their whole team and have a really good communication experience. But what we have found is that all of a sudden within a year of releasing the product, we’re all of a sudden the headset for the U.S. national team. The Oklahoma City Chargers pro esports team uses our headset. Atlanta Detonate right in your backyard uses our headset. So we just signed the Carolina Reapers, not what, I think it was last week or two weeks ago, which is that’s the team that has the cat on it, which is just signed to the U.S. Olympic team so we have, we’re getting an awkward amount of attention because people just really like this approach that we’ve taken and they say we can just hear each other better and that’s what esports is all about is the communication.

00:10:36 – Rico Figliolini

Right. I was, prior to us getting on today, I was doing some research and stuff, going through some reviews, and the clarity was the biggest part of some of these reviews. The simplicity of the headset. I mean, there’s only one knob on the headset. But the simplicity of it, the ability to mute the mic, as most headsets do nowadays, but the clarity of the sound between players was the biggest thing that I saw in reviews that they were really happy about. So I could see that and that feedback probably. So as you do this, as you’ve rolled this out to gamers and stuff, do you look at that feedback? Is there ways to address anything? Is there wheels turning of what else you can do in the coming year of developing other headsets for this space? Are you going to work with that?

00:11:33 – Mike Logan

So one of the things I think makes our company different is we’re a small company. We’re not one of these behemoth companies out there that just can’t turn their ship very quickly. So VOC, or voice of customer is one of the primary driving factors that we use when we design a product. So upon release of the Aviga, we started asking customers, what could we do different? What do you love about this? What would you change about this? And so out of the gate, we’ve already started with our product definitions, getting ready for the next version of the product and we’ll continue to make it better just like we do with all of our products.

00:12:08 – Rico Figliolini

You’re an employee owned company, I think.

00:12:12 – Mike Logan

That’s right. So the entire company is owned by the employees. So everyone that you call, if you picked up the phone and called anyone at my company, they’re an employee owner. And based on how long they’ve been there, it determines their level of ownership.

00:12:26 – Rico Figliolini

You know, that’s impressive actually to me to have a company like that because that means you’re all vested in the success of the company, the products. And I’m sure that the feedback you all get at every level probably is really looked at and fed back to the team, I would imagine. So your primary audience at this point for Aviga headsets, we’re just talking gamers? Or you said before this, I think this is finding its way certainly in the high school level. What other areas is this beyond where you’ve mentioned? I mean, there’s a lot of places obviously that are using this, a lot of industries and market areas. How do you work with that? How do you find,  it can’t be everywhere you could be but you know how do you market that?

00:13:14 – Mike Logan

We have different divisions within our organization and you’re right, it was originally created as this gaming centric headset with the volume control to flip to mute and then this communication centric first type of a build. And so what we have found because of that, we’re seeing even K-12 schools, they’ll use it for STEM or STEAM labs instead of just e-sports because it gives that isolated experience and kind of allows a child to immerse themselves into the audio. But we’re also seeing it in telemedicine. So just about everybody has been exposed to an online or virtual doctor’s appointment at this point. That requires clear communication and isolated experience, private audio. So we’re seeing that pick up in healthcare as well. But then in the gaming space, the real target audience for the gaming space is not necessarily the pro gamer. It’s not going to be the next Counter-Strike champion out there. What we’re targeting is the everyday gamer, someone who wants to sit down, play games casually, and just enjoy the gaming experience and communicate with their friends.

00:14:17 – Rico Figliolini

So you all were at DreamHack Dallas, then you were at DreamHack Atlanta during Georgia’s Game Week, which was an expanded week of gaming and stuff. And I mean, they’re going crazy with the expansion of how they’re doing these things now. So not just, you know, gaming, what was it? The LAN games? Or bring your own computers also? I mean, there’s so many things going on at DreamHack. Dungeons and Dragons, board games. How do you market to that? You guys had a booth and stuff, giveaways. I think you were using even some influencers or gamers. How did that work? How did you get into that? Was that successful for what you wanted to do?

00:15:03 – Mike Logan

I’ll give a big shout out to DreamHack. Just to anybody that hasn’t been, you should absolutely put that on your to-do list. DreamHack is an incredible conference, and it’s not your typical trade show of sorts. They limit the number of vendors. It’s really a festival. And so it’s more gamer-centric and not necessarily vendor-centric. Even though we’re a vendor, we have a booth there. You have to keep in mind how you want to market to people. And so what we do is we do very, very hands on demonstrations. So we have people come up. We want them to experience it so they can put the headset on. They can talk to their friend over top of the sound effects of a game and they can hear it and really appreciate that. So that’s how we chose to approach DreamHack, is really try to make it more of a user-centric experience. And it was really successful.

00:15:51 – Rico Figliolini

You’ve had e-players, e-sports players, anyone that people could recognize or content creators?

00:16:00 – Mike Logan

So I think the funniest one was we talked about the Atlanta Detonate. They signed Fatality. And Detonate had a booth at the DreamHack event as well. And we decided to have some fun. We said anybody that was able to beat Fatality in a match of Street Fighter would get a free Aviga headset. And after three days, we ended up giving out none. So that was probably one of the most fun elements of DreamHack is that nobody could beat Fatality so obviously that’s one of the names people might recognize.

00:16:37 – Rico Figliolini

That’s amazing to do a giveaway and not be able to give it away.

00:16:40 – Mike Logan

No one could beat him, so.

00:16:42 – Rico Figliolini

That’s funny. And there were a lot of people. I remember the year, even though I missed this year, the year before that, I met several people, several, I mean, such an age group, such an age range of people that have come to DreamHack from, you know, 13-year-olds to 75-year-olds that I met. I met a 75-year-old who was there with his son. So you can imagine how young was that. And he was just hanging out while his son was playing one of the games. And, you know, so you have families coming there. I met another family from Minnesota. I met the mom who was there with her 13-year-old son who was competing in Fortnite, brought his own computer, but his father had to drive the computer from Minneapolis to Atlanta that day because they didn’t want to put it on the plane because, God forbid, something happened and it broke. It was one of those bring your own computer setups. So you have a variety of people, families. I think once you start selling, quite frankly, people are funny the way they are. They’re creatures of habits to some degree, right? If they start out with certain brands when they’re younger and stuff, they tend to want to live and keep with those brands a little bit. Loyalty to that. And I know you’re in a space, education also and stuff, where it’s a competitive space too, right? So you always have to look at new technology, advancing what you have maybe you’re working with the things that are coming up like vr and stuff right? Augmented reality. I mean all this stuff is coming to play. Does any of that fit into how you guys look at the future of what you’re doing?

00:18:26 – Mike Logan

It does. You know, it’s interesting you talk about those big companies that are out there and they’re basically everybody’s trying to go for that space. Audio specifically, individual audio, is a rapidly growing market in spaces where we don’t play. Typically we don’t play in the fitness industry for example, as heavily as we do in other markets. But fitness, the individual wireless earbuds in the fitness industry, it’s a booming market. But it’s interesting that we’re not a small player in that the number of headsets we sell every year is grossly inadequate to these other companies. We’re putting out just over 14 million headsets a year or headphones a year. And when people realize that, they’re like, wait a minute, how come I haven’t heard of you? And it’s just because we don’t invest as heavily in the marketing. We’ve really just invest in keeping our costs down and then going directly after a market that we know we can make a difference in, such as, you know, I mentioned earlier dialysis. It’s a great example of somewhere that just people weren’t focusing on that, but it really was a need to say people want a headset while they’re sitting there for, you know, possibly up to an hour and, you know, there’s just nothing to do. So it’s a great example where we could offer that experience to somebody. In education, it’s similar. That we were able to offer a low cost, very durable headset. The needs of an education headset aren’t what the big guys are looking at right now. They’re looking at something that looks cool and has the flashy stuff on it. Education, if you sell to educators, they want something that’s going to last them a couple of years, give them a great experience and be affordable. I think that finding a niche and finding an area where other companies don’t play and they just don’t have the expertise, I think that’s been the key for us and it will continue to be. We’ll find opportunities. We have meetings every month, every quarter to say, what else should we be doing?

00:20:13 – Rico Figliolini

It’s amazing. I mean, you’re right about the education system. I’m so involved a bit in Gwinnett County with different things. And I can see everything gets banged around. I mean, my high school, one of my kids went to a STEM high school. And things have to be made to last a while in these school systems because they will be banged on. They will be used quite a bit. Different people will be using that headset and stuff. It’s not one person, one kid that’s using it. So I can, you know, and I’ll share something. My background is publishing and marketing, right? And I checked out and I’m looking and I’m searching and I’m checking your website and I’m checking, you guys don’t do Google AdWords really that I’ve seen. You guys are not out there. You know, there are brands out there that might have 100,000 followers, but when you zone down to who they are and the amount of engagement, you could tell that sometimes these are bought or these are not real engaged audiences and stuff. So for you to be selling 14 million products, it’s just amazing to me, considering what I see. And I’m like, they’re not really marketing they don’t, you know, I don’t see that on the web if you will. So I can tell then that it’s really a relationship thing that you guys are building. And I mean it’s just, I’m impressed that you all are doing as well as you’re doing selling a product that’s a good product then without having to do what the big boys, they’re all playing Google AdWords, they’re all doing that stuff. You apparently don’t need that.

00:21:53 – Mike Logan

It’s about authenticity and creating an experience for someone that says, let’s first solve a problem. Let’s not just create a product to see if we can sell it. And that’s oftentimes what happens, right? And it’s sad, but people create a product, they put enough money into marketing. And I used to work for an amazing CEO that told me, he used to use this saying all the time. He said, every successful company has a genius. They’re either in engineering or marketing. And it’s interesting. So many people have their genius in marketing. They have a product and they just market it really well. We try to make sure our products themselves are exceptionally well-designed. They solve a problem better than anybody else. And because of that, we don’t have to spend as much money trying to market it. We just solve a problem, present it, and people appreciate it. And that’s really what’s happened with this Aviga, right? I mean, we’re still not the biggest booth at DreamHack. You know, we’re small players off to the side, but people seem to really resonate. You get people bringing their friends back over to the booth, affiliates, pro esports teams saying, I’ve got to see this. I have to see this one more time. And we’re continuing to get this churn and this buzz around the experience.

00:23:03 – Rico Figliolini

And that’s great because people sometimes they don’t respect the price, right? They look at something and say, well, is that really good? Look at the price on it. And it’s like, well, damn, if you read the reviews, they’re very good, you know? And it’s just like, you don’t have to be a $120 headset to be good. You know, that a lot of that goes is paying for marketing. A lot of that higher, higher in money. So I can see, yeah. Do you see trends in gaming, or audio gaming changing? What emerging trends are you seeing out there? Where do you all see things going over the next five years?

00:23:44 – Mike Logan

I think that one of the issues that the gaming industry in general has faced is this economic barrier to entry that continues to exist where if you want to be a pro gamer, you need a $3,000 or $4,000 PC, a couple hundred dollars worth of monitors, an expensive headset. You need expensive gear. One of the things that I’ve seen emerging, and again, hats off to DreamHack. I think they’ve done a great job of this, is all of a sudden you’re seeing Switch tournaments and you’re seeing just mobile tournaments, which of course are out there. But you’re even seeing PlayStation 2 tournaments come back up where the economic barrier to entry is very, very low. People can afford it. And the gamers that are emerging out of the areas that are you know maybe less economically advantaged than they have been, the gamers that are emerging from these other areas are exceptional and so we’re seeing a whole nother generation of gamers a whole nother people group of gamers come up because they can now afford to compete in these other types of tournaments. And so I think that’s one of the coolest things right now that we’re seeing in the gaming industry. Of course, I’d be remiss if I said I wasn’t excited about that because we have a very budget-friendly, high-quality headset. So it fits into that same market. But I think the thing that I like is that you don’t have to have a fortune and capital to get into gaming anymore.

00:25:09 – Rico Figliolini

That almost felt like the second I was thinking of street basketball pickup games. I mean, you just need the basketball and the net. You don’t even need the net. You just need the hoop.

00:25:15 – Mike Logan

That’s right.

00:25:20 – Rico Figliolini

So, yeah, I can see that. And even the nostalgia of playing games. I think my oldest has a PS5 and he’s just like he misses some of the old games because they were immersive. I think when you get to a certain age also, you sort of find that some of the stuff that’s going on now is just too much. You almost want to get back to the basics of gaming versus being immersed sometimes in these things. They’re getting so real. Like, in fact, Unreal Engine or the software that’s out there, you could literally walk into a war game, shooting game, for a shooter that you almost, if you didn’t know, you were like right in there, in real, like, texture and everything. Yeah. Be immersed and go to heaven. So do you, as far as the company, I mean, you’ve been there a year and a half. And the team, is the team like all in-person, hybrid, remote? Are you finding the industry like that too?

00:26:35 – Mike Logan

We have a combination. We are. I think most companies have figured out that when you use remote opportunities, when you’re willing to hire a remote employee, of course, there’s always challenges that that presents. But you open yourself up to a much larger pool of talent than when you are restricted to a certain number of zip codes so people can drive in. Our company is based in Providence, Rhode Island. We’ve been very blessed to have a very good talent pool in Providence. And that’s where most of our company is still based. But our sales staff, the regional account managers, they’re remote throughout the country.

00:27:08 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. Which is good because you don’t necessarily want them in the office, right? They should be out meeting people and doing things and marketing and selling. I guess the last question I have is, you know, with the personal experiences that you all have, you know, the shaping of leadership innovation, you know, what’s happening in gaming now, the way things are changing, AI, how AI would figure into audio. Does that even come to play in audio?

00:27:42 – Mike Logan

It does. So AI has already reached audio. There’s video generation engines that allow you to take you know two or three minutes of you giving a speech and then I can generate an ai video of you saying anything that I want you to say. So there’s that technology’s already out there and of course you know I always, we’re seeing this even in, you know, I hate to go back to schools, but we’re seeing it really heavy in schools because schools are using AI in some software to do grading and students speak into their headset and how they speak, how they pronounce words is being graded by an AI engine. This is the same thing that’s going on with these AI video.But it really boils down to the quality of input from the headset or from the microphone is going to drive the efficacy of the AI engine. So audio is becoming very important. As AI continues to emerge, the engines aren’t quite sophisticated enough to recognize nuances, accents, deviations, and voice patterns. And so it becomes inherently important for the accuracy of the pickup of the microphone to input into the system.

00:28:50 – Rico Figliolini

Interesting. I didn’t even think about that aspect of it. And you’re right. I mean, every time I think about Siri getting something wrong, it’s not listening to exactly what I’m saying. And I have a bad accent, maybe. Mine’s from original Brooklyn, New York. So every once in a while it comes out and it’s like I have to recorrect stuff. So I get what you’re saying as far as that being clear, I guess. Do you have any closing thoughts of what you want to share that maybe we haven’t covered during this podcast?

00:29:24 – Mike Logan

I think the only thing that we haven’t talked about, you kind of hinted at it a little bit with DreamHack, and maybe a commercial for DreamHack is if people haven’t gone, it’s an environment. And what’s interesting about DreamHack, and I think even the industry in general, is we grew up in an era where a video gamer was almost taboo. It was a black mark. You didn’t tell people that you were a gamer because they would think less of you. That guy’s just a nerd. I mean, I was a nerd in high school because I was a gamer and it was just known, but it’s so acceptable now. And when you go to a DreamHack and you’re surrounded by 55,000 people or 40,000 people that are all okay with you being exactly who you are. And it’s such a judgment-free zone. I think the industry and DreamHack is just a representation, a manifestation of that, that fact that you can exist in a world where you are who you are and there’s no judgment. And I think that’s what’s interesting about this next generation of gamers coming up is that they don’t have to hide from it.

00:30:25 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, I like that. You’re right. I mean, and they’re welcoming. I don’t even think it matters the age level you are. We see a variety of people doing. And it just becomes a whole community. I mean, my 27-year-old, she’s playing on Fortnite and some other games as well. And she’s on Discord and she’s communicating with her friends from across the country. Such a time zone difference that sometimes I’ll find her gaming at like two in the morning. I’m like, what are you doing? You got work tomorrow. She’s like, they’re in California. It’s only 11 o’clock there. You know, it’s just like, but it is such a community of people. And they talk to each other and they share everything. I mean, you’ve got Reddit. I mean, my youngest goes to Reddit for everything. He’s like, if he needs to find out about a headset or something, he’s on Reddit and he’s checking it. He’s putting out the question. He’s looking up what everyone is saying. So, yeah. So it’s a great community. I can see that. This has been a good conversation, Mike. I enjoyed learning a bit more about Avid and your products and stuff and how you guys look at things.

00:31:36 – Mike Logan

I appreciate you having us. It was pleasant. And, you know, you’re a heck of a conversationalist. So I appreciate the format and just the casual nature of the conversation. So thank you.

00:31:46 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, thank you. And everyone else that’s listening, UrbanEBB is one of these podcasts that I do, one of several, that really talks about culture, business, politics sometimes and stuff. So I’m glad that’s over with. But it’s enjoyable talking about gaming and talking about this stuff. And it’s just, Mike, I appreciate you making time for me. Thank you again. Yeah, hang on for a second. Thank you everyone. If you like this podcast, definitely like it, subscribe to us, the subscribe button down there somewhere. Or if you’re listening to it on Spotify or iHeart or anywhere on YouTube or Facebook, wherever you’re listening to the video or the audio podcast, leave a review, leave a comment. Appreciate you all. Thank you.