In this episode, Tesho Akindele — former MLS forward turned developer and community-builder at Camp North End in Charlotte, NC — joins us to share how reading Walkable City inspired his mission to design neighborhoods where people can truly live, work, and connect on foot. That vision led him to help transform a fenced-off industrial site into a thriving, mixed-use community. Along the way, he unpacks zoning, NIMBY challenges, and how technology helps deliver hospitality at Camp North End. 

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0:00 Tesho Akindele — The art of building better neighborhoods

Alex Howe: Welcome back to our final episode of Season 4.

We’re going to start today’s episode with a Tyler’s Take, our CEO shares a quick perspective on agentic AI workflows, a topic that keeps coming up in conversations across the industry.

Before we jump in, our annual conference Forum is coming up March 24th in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Forum is the best conference in multifamily and brings together 100’s of top leaders who believe there’s a better operating model for multifamily. This is not just for current Funnel customers. It’s a small, executive-level room where honest conversations about AI, centralization, and the human experience are candid, practical, and very real.

This year, Forum takes place at the 5 star Camelback Inn in Paradise Valley, just outside Scottsdale. If these are the kinds of conversations you want to be part of, you can register now at funnelleasing.com/forum.

Alright. Let’s turn it over to Tyler.

Tyler Christiansen: Before we dive into our final episode of season 4, I want to start with a take topic that keeps coming up in conversations with operators across the industry. 

The future of automation is agentic workflows. If you have embraced automated conversations and you’ve embraced centralization, the changes to date are going to pale in comparison to what agentic workflows can do. 

Let’s go through the mid-lease change example. 60,000 units, 300 communities, 25,000 times a year, there is a mid-lease change. If you haven’t centralized that’s only 80 times a year roughly 1.5x per week at an individual community is there a mid-lease change. So if you automate that away with an agentic workflow, it’s probably not even worth the effort, right? That’s like 15 minutes. But if you take those 25,000 tasks and you centralize them and say nobody on site is responsible for those anymore, and because we’ve taken all that work off the sites and we’ve centralized—and this is happening at Cortland and Camden and elsewhere—that’s a lot of work that’s probably 5-15 people that are working on all of those midlease changes. And if you can automate those away, then those rules could again go back to the higher value closer renewal specialist, fraud specialist, rather than the administrative, ‘let me make you an addendum to add a pet to your policy.’

So the agentic future is coming. And the agentic future will only benefit those who have embraced the new operating model, especially centralization.

2:18 Introduction

Tyler Christiansen: Welcome back to Multifamily Unpacked. Today’s guest is Tesho Akindele. Tesho played nine seasons in MLS with FC Dallas and Orlando City, he’s now a Charlotte-based developer and self-described athlete-urbanist.

We talk about how reading Walkable City sparked Tesho’s passion for designing neighborhoods where people can live, work, and connect on foot. That vision ultimately led him to Camp North End, where he helped transform a fenced-off industrial site into a thriving community. Along the way, we dig into zoning, NIMBY challenges, and how technology is a part of how they deliver hospitality at Camp NorthEnd. Let’s kick it off. 

3:05 From MLS to real estate, introducing Tesho Akindele

Tyler Christiansen: Tesho, welcome into Multifamily Impact, and thank you for joining us.

Tesho Akindele: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Tyler Christiansen: Excellent. To get started, we talked a little bit about it in the intro, but we’d love for you to unpack a little bit of your background and how, as a real estate developer, you might have a unique perspective given that background.

Tesho Akindele: Yeah. I guess I’ll go back to when my first job happened to be professional soccer, which is a pretty unique first job. I played for nine years in MLS. I played five years at FC Dallas, and then four years in Orlando before retiring.

In that middle point when I was like, “Man, I’m starting to get a little bit slower than these young guys,” I needed to look around at what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I started having conversations with people. I started posting more on social media, trying to put my thoughts out there. One thing led to another and I found the idea of walkable neighborhoods, the idea of real estate development and building those places, and I fell in love with it.

My perspective is someone who didn’t grow up in the real estate industry at all, had no real training in it, but fell in love with it from core principles. I also traveled all over the country playing soccer, so I got to see lots of cities all over the world. I was in Central America, so seeing so many different cities—who’s doing it right, who’s doing it wrong—and then also being an outsider to the real estate world, that’s a perspective not many people have.

I like to describe myself as an athlete-urbanist. I’m much more urban or urbanist now than athlete. I had a little more athlete before, but there aren’t too many athletes talking about this stuff either, and I’m trying to encourage more people to raise their voices.

4:39 Walkable Cities and what sparked Tesho’s urban interests

Tyler Christiansen: Amazing. Thank you for that intro. If you’re alright, I’m going to go a little off script because you hit on some points that I think are really interesting.

The years that you were playing in the MLS—I think that when folks look back over the last decade, I had a good friend who was from Brooklyn and he described it that there was the kind of “ification” of the nation. He now lives in Austin.

You described these walkable neighborhoods and you live in Charlotte today. We’re going to talk a lot about the development that you have in Charlotte. What was it—just to unpack that a little bit—you’re a soccer player, you’re single, you’re moving from college into adulthood. What were some of the attributes that you saw in walkable neighborhoods and the hybrid of living and working that stood out to you, or perhaps even certain cities that stood out to you as you think back to what really appealed to you with the concept of walkable neighborhoods?

Tesho Akindele: I think my first experience—and I didn’t even know I was having the experience—was when I went to Amsterdam with my wife in the off season. We went to Amsterdam, my first time over there, and it was full of life. People everywhere—biking, walking, sitting out on the—even though it was cold—people were sitting out having a coffee by the canals. Beautiful.

I had this experience of, “I love this, but I don’t know why I love this.” Later, when I ended up reading a book called Walkable City later on in my soccer career, that was the moment that, “This is why.” That book really breaks down vibrant neighborhoods when people are out and about. You’re making connections with people you already know or with strangers. Life is pushed into the streets instead of stuck in cars or stuck in homes. Or pushed into public is a better way to say it. Life is pushed into public, and I loved it.

Looking back, I was like, “That’s what it was in Amsterdam.” People have these experiences all the time in their life. Anybody who went to college—what about your college campus? Life was pushed into the campus. You can see people out on the quad or walking to classes. Or when you go to Disney World—that’s a big one—Disney World is a great walkable neighborhood, Main Street. Anywhere you go in Europe and people have these experiences of, “Man, I love this,” but they don’t really know why they love it.

Since I learned why I love it, I’ve been trying to put words to it, because I think a lot of people do have that same feeling of loving it, enjoying it, and not knowing what it is.

6:49 Lessons learned from living the professional soccer dream

Tyler Christiansen: One of the things I appreciate in that is that I fell into the housing industry and didn’t think that I would love housing. I lived overseas for a little while and there’s something that every human being on this planet needs a home. The experiences are so vastly different. When you start to see those differences, there’s a cool opportunity to put your stamp on it.

To your point of bringing perhaps an Amsterdam-style living to a place like Charlotte—where did you grow up prior to being a professional soccer player in Dallas and in Orlando?

Tesho Akindele: I grew up just in the suburbs of Colorado—just a very “everywhere” kind of place. The town I grew up in looks like every other town in Utah or Oregon or wherever, across—even Charlotte. Just a very traditional suburb. Walkability wasn’t something that was on my mind. We had to drive to get anywhere, and that was just what I accepted.

Tyler Christiansen: I am curious, you lived the dream. We were talking about how the European housing situation maybe was some stuff for us to learn, but you lived the American dream of, kid from Colorado, grew up, became a professional soccer player.

Tesho Akindele: One thing is just knowing that life is going to go on. I got cut from teams and it felt like my world was over. Now you have this opportunity as a real estate developer. I’m curious, specifically looking at the highs and lows of being an athlete—being a professional athlete—the wins, the losses, making teams, getting cut from teams. Are there any lessons now that you take from those wins and losses as a developer, as a leader, as a business leader, that you still lean back on?

Tesho Akindele: One thing is just knowing that life is going to go on. I got cut from teams and it felt like my world was over.

I remember one game specifically against Inter Miami. We were playing—I was in Orlando. I stepped up to take a PK and I had made every single PK in my career up to that point, and I missed. I shot it terribly and I missed, and I had this overwhelming sense of dread come over me.

The next day I woke up and it was fine. I had the chance to go again. That mental toughness and resiliency is something that I built as an athlete and can carry into development, which can be a lot of banging your head against the wall over and over. That was a skill that I was able to take with me.

9:06 What are the barriers to walkable living in the US?

Tyler Christiansen: Yeah. So I think that, I’m curious maybe if I turn the page more towards today and that, bringing that resiliency and now looking at the concept of walkable neighborhoods and livable neighborhoods—you see it afar and it feels somewhat distant from the normal suburban experience.

When you started to unpack how you could make your impact, what were the barriers that you saw towards walkable living? In the US we are so car-centric. Why is it so difficult? If I want to go find a coffee shop, it’s a 10-minute drive. 

What were the impediments that stood out to you? Because I think a lot of folks—if they have a goal to be a professional athlete like yourself—there are very clear rungs in the ladder. You have to be the best club player, the best college player, earn an opportunity, maybe in USL, and work your way up.

I’m curious for you, as you started to think about this shift and you described this experience you had, what were some of the first areas you latched onto in your career where you thought, “Okay, maybe this is how I actually make that impact”?

Tesho Akindele: Zoning is a big one. If you’re in Dallas and you want to go to the coffee shop, you’ve got to drive 10 minutes because it’s illegal to build a coffee shop in a neighborhood in Dallas. You can only build them in certain pockets, whereas in Amsterdam you can put coffee shops on the corner. It’s fine.

Zoning is a big one with where you can put a mix of uses. If you want a walkable neighborhood, you need to be able to walk or get to the office, for example, or schools, or you need to be able to get to restaurants or grocery stores. In America we have separate zones: we live in this zone, we work in another zone, and then we do everything else in a third zone, and they’re all separated by highways. Driving everywhere is built into it.

Allowing more flexible zoning and then also more dense zoning too, especially close to the city. Most cities—people are starting to realize this now—but most cities are 75 to 90% zoned for only single-family housing. Every other type of housing is illegal. That’s pretty wild to think.

It’d be like saying in 90% of the city, the only car you’re allowed to drive is a Mercedes-Benz. People love Mercedes, but not everyone can afford a Mercedes, so why make that the only car you can drive? That’s what we do with housing. We say only single-family housing can be built in 90% of the city, but most people can’t afford a single-family house. We wonder why housing is unaffordable. Instead of only Mercedes-Benz, we need to allow people to drive a Toyota or a motorcycle if they want—just give people different options of housing. That goes back to zoning as well.

11:40 Zoning for Camp North End + community support

Tyler Christiansen: One of the things I’ve heard you describe yourself as before is a passionate urbanist, and you’ve referenced the idea of being an athlete urbanist. I think that really comes through in the way you talk about this.

I’ve also seen you post about this idea of what we sometimes describe as NIMBYism. A lot of folks want to be compassionate. They want housing to be more affordable. I don’t think anyone would disagree with the concept that we need all types of housing. But in reality when it comes time for my neighborhood, that’s where you see the pushback.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s how I perceive we’ve ended up with a lot of the zoning laws we have today. There’s this protectionist mindset of, “I’ve earned my way into this nicer neighborhood, and I don’t want apartments near me because I’m paying top dollar.”

I’m curious, at Camp North End, was that a similar challenge? Or had the zoning issues already been tackled there?

Tesho Akindele: Camp North End’s a great example of how you can get amazing things when the zoning is right.

That was an industrial site when my company bought it in 2017. If you came to Charlotte one mile north of downtown, you would find this big 76-acre industrial site. It was surrounded by barbed wire fence. Nobody was really going there.

Our company bought it and was able to rezone it to the most flexible zoning that the city has, which is like mixed urban district zoning. That allowed us to turn that industrial wasteland into a neighborhood. We’re allowed in Camp North End to build housing, which we’ve done. We’ve built apartments. We’ll build more. We’ve built office space. We’ll build more. Restaurants, small shops, small businesses, artist studios—we’re allowed to put all the components into one place. The zoning is what unlocked that.

When it came to the NIMBYs, Camp North End is a little bit unique because we were taking away something that people didn’t like. We literally took down a barbed wire fence and allowed people to come in. It’s not like we displaced anybody to build what we’ve built. We were completely a value-add to the neighborhood. All the surrounding neighborhoods in the north end of Charlotte have really rallied behind us as something that’s a good sign of investment in their community.

13:57 Other projects like Camp North End

Tyler Christiansen: I think there’s something repeatable there. To your point, every city—and we’ve referenced Europe and other countries—you travel and you see these relics of the past. The way the world worked, especially in America, used to be that you lived outside the city and you commuted in every day for work. Bedroom communities were designed for that.

One of the things you posted about that really stuck with me was working through the intersection of your workday, your personal day, meals, and being able to do all of that without ever getting in a car.

I think there’s a huge demand for that in this country, but we also have a glut of real estate that probably isn’t appropriately designed for the next era. There’s a lot of unoccupied office space. There are a lot of assets that don’t work the way they used to.

Within your company, are you looking for those kinds of reuse opportunities? Because I would imagine NIMBYism is hard to tackle, but there are blights in different cities. There are places people already look at and say, “If we could turn that into housing, now I’m on board,” because otherwise it attracts the wrong type of behavior.

So I’m curious if that’s something you all have looked at—how do we repeat the success of Camp North End by taking things that are negatives or eyesores and turning them into something positive?

Tesho Akindele: Camp North End—we have 76 acres and all of our pipeline is on that same site basically, but we are reusing what was there.

Especially in Charlotte, that matters and it helps stem the anger of NIMBYs because Charlotte is a really beautiful city, but it’s also a really new city. The banks came in and built some beautiful buildings in downtown. It’s nice, it’s clean, but there aren’t too many old buildings here.

The buildings we are repurposing into office space and small businesses are built in the forties and the 1920s. Doing something like that to hold onto the character matters. At the end of the day, it’s about telling a good story too. We’ve been able to tell a good story of keeping this old place that’s important to Charlotte and turning it into something new. There are other projects around Charlotte doing that, and you do see them get a lot of support.

Another thing is expanding places that people already like. I live in this neighborhood called NoDa in Charlotte. It’s walkable. It has a traditional Main Street downtown with shops and some houses. One way to get more walkability is to take those walkable pockets and expand on them.

NoDa right now has a few shops—can we expand the business and office district, make it a little bit bigger? Those are already places where people have accepted and opted into a walkable lifestyle. Instead of trying to build walkability in the middle of nowhere, where people are choosing against it, how can we expand areas like NoDa? Or even smaller places where there’s a little bit of an ash burning—can you kindle up some walkability in pockets around the city?

16:51 Community engagement at Camp North End’s 1,000 yearly events

Tyler Christiansen: I can tell you, living in a place like Tampa that is not walkable at all, there is massive desire for that. Even traditional retail developments are moving more and more toward no-driving zones and concert areas.

I’m curious—you mentioned some of the elements of walkability, really that intersection of live, work, and play. What kind of community engagement are you doing at Camp North End to bring folks out more so than just the restaurant, or the office, or a bedroom?

Are there other kinds of community engagement levers that you guys are pulling to really build that sense of community?

Tesho Akindele: We have a whole team called the community team, and they do all of our marketing and all of our events. At Camp North End we have over a thousand events a year.

You can come to Camp North End and have an experience at any price point. If you want a free experience, on Thursday nights we have a big turf area, we put up a giant TV screen, and people come watch a movie for free. That happens every Thursday. On Friday nights, we have live music for free under the water tower.

If you want to come and grab a coffee, five, ten dollars, you can do that. At the high end, we have an events company who does weddings and corporate fundraisers.

One thing we’ve done to involve the community is bring in different types of people from the community—people looking for a free experience with their children, or people wanting a very high-end corporate experience.

The types of businesses we curate helps build the community too. We’ve thought about who are the tastemakers in Charlotte and how do we get them to come here. They bring their people with them. We’ve done a good job at that—from one tenant called Thrift Pony who has brought in her type of people, to streetwear, skateboards, plant people. A mix of businesses helps, and you end up interacting with people you might not usually on a different day.

18:42 Taking a hospitality mindset with AI and technology in real estate

Tyler Christiansen: By the way, I’ve noticed—as a former soccer player—you put some turf out there and all of a sudden people are happy. I was in Orlando this weekend for a soccer tournament, and the hotel had a big turf courtyard. There were dozens of kids and families just throwing balls around. So that’s a go-to move.

You mentioned there’s housing in the community and you’re developing more. One of the things—I’ve followed you for a long time on LinkedIn—but one of the things that really perked my attention was that you have a community, Kinship, at Camp North End that’s managed by Greystar and happens to use Funnel for its CRM and its AI.

In this new world where people want walkability, but we’re also sometimes very disconnected—and we’re leveraging technology, people are working from home—I’m curious how you all are thinking about leveraging technology.

You mentioned bringing in core tenants, and Charlotte’s always been a great place for banking and financial technology and startups. But how are you thinking about the way technology intersects with the brick and mortar of real estate?

Because at the end of the day, you’re in the business now of physical assets, but technology clearly plays a role in that. So I’m curious any thoughts on how that plays a role as you continue to develop the rest of Camp North End.

Tesho Akindele: What comes to mind for me is, people are on their devices all day. How can you integrate that into the system?

One thing is having Wi-Fi across the whole campus. If you leave Kinship and you’re working and taking a meeting, you can just walk around the campus and you’ll still be on the Wi-Fi.

Another thing is the process of somebody deciding where they want to live and evaluating Kinship. I think of what we’re doing as hospitality. You need to take care of people and give people a luxury experience.

Hospitality comes from the first time they walk in your building. What does it look like? What does it smell like? How are they greeted?

Then there’s a suite of technology. If somebody is going to apply to be a resident there, what is that process like? Is it clunky and you’re printing out papers, or is it seamless and tied into their devices and the way people like to operate these days.

Meeting people where they’re at, making things seamless, and having a hospitality mindset from the first interaction—and then the follow-ups too. You want to make sure you’re following up with leasing prospects, but you don’t want to bug them. How often are you following up? Does it make sense? Are you following up accidentally twice and not knowing about it? Having a really good hospitality mindset and integrating that technology into the way people already operate.

21:11 Designing around modern renter preferences

Tyler Christiansen: For what it’s worth, we just put a new AI chatbot on Kinship at North End, so check it out. It speaks unlimited languages. I think it’s a good example of how technology meets consumers where they are.

As you guys are designing living spaces in the community for renters—you mentioned that, in many ways, the world was designed around single-family home sales—we’re now seeing higher and higher demand across different generations for people who choose to rent. You’ve got people downsizing, people who lived in the suburbs and now want a more walkable lifestyle, and they’re moving into Camp North End, into Kinship.

I’m curious, what are some of the intentional decisions you’ve made? You mentioned meeting people where they are from a technology standpoint, but I’m also curious if there are any design trends you’ve leaned into—things like the number of studios versus one-bedrooms, two-bedrooms, or just broader decisions as you look at other housing units across the 76 acres.

Are there amenities or design choices that really appeal to the renters who choose to live there? Because to your point, apartments were often viewed as just a box, and they were all the same. But as we’ve embraced more of this hospitality mindset that you referenced, amenities and experience show up in different ways.

So when you think about the renters who choose to live in the developments you’re part of, are there any factors that really stand out to you in that decision-making process?

Tesho Akindele: When you’re looking at urban areas where people are having tight living quarters, an important amenity that gets value-engineered out of projects is big windows. We have big windows on all of our units, and we have balconies on most of our units as well.

Giving people that connection to outdoors, to fresh air, to natural light—it’s easy to value-engineer out, but if you think of quality of life as a renter, you’ve got to think of the whole life cycle. When people have access to fresh air and more light, I think they’re more likely to enjoy that place and stay there and sign an extension when their lease comes up, instead of feeling like they’re in a box and need to get out.

External to the units, the number one amenity is a walkable community. That’s the huge advantage we have at Kinship. Everyone can walk from their apartment two minutes to get to the outdoor movie, three minutes to get to live music on Friday nights. They can walk one minute to get to the coffee shop, four minutes to get to the best burger in Charlotte—shout out Surefire Burgers. It’s all right there. That means a lot to the quality of life for a person. 

If I’m on this podcast right now and I have 10 minutes before a meeting and I live at Kinship, I can walk out and get a burger in 10 minutes and come back to my next meeting. You can’t do that if you live out in the middle of nowhere. That’s a huge community amenity.

23:55 What’s next for expanding Camp North End

Tyler Christiansen: And I think right now, in this environment, apartment operators by and large are struggling with a lot of factors. There’s been a lot of apartments built in this country, which is a wonderful thing, but standing out and being differentiated is challenging.

Being intentional about building somewhere that has a true sense of community, paired with walkability, is a big differentiator. And I definitely wrote down Surefire Burgers—next time I’m in Charlotte, I’ve got to check that out.

Tesho Akindele: You will not be disappointed I promise you.

Tyler Christiansen: So you’ve talked about—and I’ve referenced it a little bit—you guys aren’t done with this project, with Camp North End. You’ve got, I think, somewhere north of a thousand homes that you’re still looking to build.

What needs to happen next? Because right now, developers have been challenged. We’ve seen new home starts come down significantly over the last couple of years, and a lot of that is just the interest rate environment.

What kind of things do you guys, as a company, think about as next steps? How do you really continue to build momentum? Because I would imagine there’s a bit of a flywheel here. If I come visit, I’m going to check out Surefire Burgers. Then I bring one of my teammates who’s from Charlotte, and they’re going to want to get in.

But you guys are probably something like 96% leased up already. So what needs to happen for you to unlock additional housing units on the property you have today and really unlock that next level of scale?

Tesho Akindele: Yeah, so we’re 96% leased up on our retail at Camp North End. And as soon as something comes open, like as soon as something becomes available, it gets swooped up on the retail side.

What we really need to do to keep that flywheel moving forward is lease up the other parts of the project. We’ve got office space that’s about two-thirds leased, but there’s still some office space available, and we need to fill that up.

And then we need to get Kinship delivered in December. We’re only, you know, nine or ten months into that lease-up process. So making sure that lease-up is strong, and then when renewals come around, that we’re able to keep those renewals too.

We don’t want people just coming here because they’re getting concessions and then they’re going to concession-hop to the next project as soon as they can. We want to make sure that when people come here, they get that hospitality experience and they know they can’t find it anywhere else. So they want to stay here next year as well.

25:51 Cities weigh local vocal minority over broader community benefit

Tyler Christiansen: Props to our partners at Greystar. You guys hired them as your management company, and that’s a big challenge in this environment, but I’m sure they’re excited to work with you on it.

Zooming out of Charlotte a little bit, real estate is local at the end of the day. You mentioned earlier that you’ve had a lot of support in the community because this was a location where you were adding a lot of value.

You hear different politicians at the federal level talking about, on one end, potentially we need more housing pricing controls, and on the other end, we need to unblock all this development.

As you think about your hometown in Colorado or when you lived in Dallas, are there any learnings you’ve seen in Charlotte—things that are working—that you might recommend to the housing industry more broadly?

Tesho Akindele: In Charlotte we built a Blue Line light rail that runs north to south through the city. If you go anywhere along that light rail, you see walkable neighborhoods, a lot of density, a lot of energy and excitement. That’s where the cranes are—up and down those corridors. Transit-oriented development is huge. 

Any cities who can get the funding and support to build more and better public transportation, you’ll see a residential development boom. Also office—offices want their employees to have options for how to get to the office. People are tired of paying $200 a month to park in the parking garage. If I could get here without doing that, a lot of people will take it. Giving people the option to get to their house or to work without driving is a big one.

Going back to NIMBYs, cities need to take the power out of just the people who live right there. All the power can’t be there.

A good example is in Charlotte, there’s a neighborhood called Elizabeth. There’s a community college and a park and hospitals. It’s right on our streetcar line. Amazing amenities. There’s already density there. They were proposing to build a multifamily building, and some of the neighbors came in and objected.

Let’s say there were 30 people objecting to a 300-unit multifamily building. Cities end up listening to the people who are in the room, but they forget about the voices that want to be there. If one day that project gets built, that’s 300 people who would be there advocating for that project, and we overweight the 30 or even 10 voices who come out against projects.

We forget about the people who don’t have the opportunity yet to be there and speak up for themselves. Cities need to think about that when they’re setting zoning and when they’re doing rezoning meetings. You’re listening to the community, but what about the broader community—the people who want to be there, but they can’t because we haven’t given them the opportunity.

28:42 How public transportation helps expand walkable community hubs

Tyler Christiansen: Oh man, Tesho, that was so well said. And I think that the transit-oriented development piece is so insightful. I also think there’s maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy where sometimes we look at ourselves as these American suburban cities and think, “Oh, nobody’s going to get on a train here.”

I live in Florida, like I’ve mentioned, and I was in Orlando last week with a business partner. I had to go back to Tampa, he was going back to Miami, and he was ecstatic for his ride because there’s now a really good train system between Miami and Orlando that everyone uses. It’s pleasant. It’s on time.

And I had a two-hour drive on I-4 that was miserable. I couldn’t work because I’m sitting there driving the car. I’m hurting the environment.

And I think when that line shows up between Tampa and Orlando, I can imagine exactly what you described, which is every stop is going to be a beacon of development. Everyone’s going to want to put their multifamily there, their retail there, their office spaces there.

And then I also really appreciate what you’re saying about the voices that are in the communities and this idea of pulling up the ladder behind me. I got here.

You mentioned Jay Parsons — he was on our last podcast. The data doesn’t support that mindset. It doesn’t hurt home values to add more housing. If anything, having those people in apartments, working from home jobs, spending money in the community, it actually increases the value of the neighborhood.

And you look at Austin as a place where this has happened.

Tesho Akindele: And for me I have more sensitivity to the NIMBY mindset, the further away from the city you get. But when you’re in the city, you’re selecting the most amenitized place around so I think there should be less restrictions when you’re in the city. If you’re two hours away from the city. I think it’s right for them to say there shouldn’t be apartments here because I drove two hours away to get away from other people and I think that’s fine, but you can’t be one mile away from the best job center in the entire state of North Carolina and complaining about new housing. 

I think that we need to be more contextual about like, when does it make sense to block new housing and when it doesn’t. And to me, when it doesn’t is when it’s right close to all the infrastructure and the investment that the cities have already built billions of dollars in the city, we need to give people access to that.

30:39 Bringing the athletic mindset to real estate development 

Tyler Christiansen: Tesho, I think one of the things that I really appreciate about the content that you’ve produced is that it’s very clear that athletic mindset you had of always trying to envision success.

As athletes, you’re always trying to envision success. You’re thinking about the game, you’re thinking about what comes next. I’m sure you envisioned yourself as a professional soccer player.

And I think what I’ve seen really clearly in a lot of your content is that you’ve envisioned—and your company has envisioned—what Camp North End could look like.

Now you get to have those little moments where you’re walking through the development and you’ve got Surefire Burgers there, and you’ve got people living at Kinship.

I’m curious, as you look ahead five or ten years—and you still have a lot of land to develop, you still have a lot of homes you want to build—is there an element where, if this is true, you’d say, “Okay, we’ve done our job right”?

What does success actually look like for you as you envision finishing out this community?

Tesho Akindele: Success for Camp North End would be for people to say that Camp North End is a neighborhood. Right now people go there and it’s, “Is it an outdoor mall or is it a campus?” People don’t really know how to label it.

I want it to stitch into the fabric of north Charlotte and feel like a neighborhood. People just say, “Oh yeah, there’s the NoDa neighborhood where I live, and then Camp North End’s another neighborhood.” Making it feel and come off as a neighborhood would be success to me.

Neighborhoods are durable, whereas a mall might come and go or a retail strip center might come and go, but a neighborhood is durable. It’s forever. If we’re able to cement ourselves as a great neighborhood on the north side of Charlotte, that would be success.

32:02 The idea of a neighborhood is powerful

Tyler Christiansen: To that point, I’ve recently gotten into—so I grew up as an MLS fan. I went to Galaxy games, Real Salt Lake games. Now we don’t have a team here in Tampa, and we can’t cheer for anybody in Orlando or Miami because those are rival cities.

So my son and I started following the EPL. And I think something I didn’t really appreciate until recently is that the teams that we know—the Chelseas, the Evertons, the Crystal Palaces—those are neighborhood names. Those aren’t necessarily the city.

There’s no London soccer team, at least not in the EPL. And so the idea of a neighborhood is really powerful.

I appreciate that distinction you made, because Camp North End today is a development. But if you’re successful, it becomes a neighborhood.

And I’ll also say, Tesho, one of the things that you’re doing that I really appreciate—and part of why I appreciate you coming on the podcast—is that you’re inspiring other people.

There’s not one person or one policy that’s going to fix housing affordability or walkability in this country. But I feel more inspired, if I’m ever fortunate enough to be in a position to invest in real estate, to say, “I want to make Odessa, Florida a walkable neighborhood.”

I want to make it a place that has offices and retail and residential the way that you guys are building.

So I think you’re doing really great work, and I appreciate you telling your story with us.

Tesho Akindele: I appreciate that. For me I’m obviously here in Charlotte working on Camp North End, which is one project, one neighborhood, but I wanna see Charlotte become a more walkable city, more broadly, and across the country. But I’ll start with Charlotte. 

You know right now in Charlotte we have 10 of those walkable pockets I was talking about where you can get around without a car if you want. And I want to see that grow to 30. I’m not going to build 30 walkable neighborhoods in Charlotte, but I hope to be part of a wave of people who are doing so, and there’s other developers here working on it. I hope to get my voice out there, encourage more developers to get in on that and encourage the people of Charlotte to just think this is something we can do and should allow to happen. 

The demand is there. Like you said, Charlotte is probably 90% suburban feeling, and the demand for more urban feeling city is at lease 50% even say it’s 30 or 40%, there’s a huge delta between the urban experience people want and what they can have.  

There will always be suburbs, especially in a city like Charlotte. But there’s way more demand for people to have urban experiences that they’re not provided with. And so I think meeting that unmet demand is a huge opportunity in Charlotte. And Tampa all the way across the country. 

Tyler Christiansen: I agree. I think that as the interest rates come down and we see the next wave of housing development, that unmet demand needs more supply. So I’m hopeful we see more projects. That’s why it’s so important to tell the success story that you guys are having.

Tesho, we like to end, just to make sure our listeners get to know our guests a little bit better. So I’m going to ask you a couple of questions, and just feel free to tell us the first thing that comes to mind.

Here at our office in Tampa—because it is—we’ve got a billboard right along the highway going past our office. So if we were to say, “Tesho, it’s your billboard, it’s your turn this month to put a slogan up there,” what’s an opinion that you’d put up on that billboard?

Tesho Akindele: I would say build better neighborhoods.

Tyler Christiansen: This is a funny one, because usually when we ask this question, people haven’t actually retired. Only professional athletes really get to retire.

But let’s say you were retiring—not from soccer, but retiring out of being a developer. Is there a philanthropic cause that you’re passionate about that you would dedicate yourself full-time to?

Tesho Akindele: I’m going to sound like a broken record and self-serving, but I would fund beautiful buildings in my city.

Here in Charlotte, for example, Hugh McColl—he’s a longtime banker—really put the city on his back and invested a lot of his money into it. It wasn’t always a financial return, but he built beautiful buildings and funded the arts and stuff like that. It’s hard for me to imagine a better legacy than to do something like that.

The world has a long history of wealthy people funding the arts or beauty in their own city. I think funding more—like, I’d bury the street lines outside of these houses—but investing in beauty in the city and bringing more beauty to our public space.

Tyler Christiansen: We have a tagline here at Funnel, which is renter-centric®. When you hear that phrase, what does renter-centric mean to you?

Tesho Akindele: Renter-centric® means hospitality—making people feel like they’re not just living here, but they’re being taken care of. I want to give people that five-star experience from the moment they move in until the moment they move out and go to the next part of their life.

Tyler Christiansen: And then if you were to finish this sentence for me—the future of multifamily is… how would you finish that?

Tesho Akindele: Smaller. There’s a huge gap between townhomes and 300-unit apartment buildings because that’s where the financing makes sense. We might be able to unlock smaller projects. It helps build community.

At Camp North End at Kinship, our project is 300 units, but it’s split across two buildings and it feels more intimate. I think the future of multifamily housing is smaller—those 10, 12, 20-unit buildings. You get to know your neighbors. People walking in and out. I think that’s the future.

Tyler Christiansen: I love that, because to your point about the main amenity of Kinship being the walkable neighborhood, I lived in New York for a little while, and I’ve also been to Tokyo.

Those are places where you have very small housing units, but the amenities are incredible. Everything you need is right outside your door. And because of that, the community is always together. People are out. People are walking. People are engaging.

So it really reinforces that idea that the size of the unit isn’t always the thing that matters most. It’s what’s happening outside your front door. It’s the neighborhood. It’s the experience. And when you get that right, it changes how people live day to day.

What’s a value that you refuse to compromise on?

Tesho Akindele: Being a good person.

When I played my soccer career, my mom was like, “I don’t care if people remember you as a good soccer player. I want them to remember you as a good person.” I carried that with me every day when I was on the field competing.

I try to show respect to my teammates, to my opponents, to the ref. When I’m back at the facility, I’m trying to show respect to the front office people, to the kitman who are cleaning our jerseys. Being a good person to everybody I meet is something I don’t compromise on.

Tyler Christiansen: Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the show. How can people follow along on the journey with Camp North End?

Tesho Akindele: Follow the Instagram page—type in Camp North End. You’ll find them there.

Me personally, I’m on LinkedIn—Tesho Akindele. I think I’m the only one that would pop up with that name. Same thing on X or Instagram. I’m all over the place. Follow along. Or if you’re in Charlotte, you’ll find me at Surefire.

Tyler Christiansen: Awesome. We’ll have to hit you up for some burgers, Tesho. Thank you so much for your time.

Tesho Akindele: Thanks for having me.

Tyler Christiansen: Awesome. Thank you.