Episode #43 of The Kansas City Market Pulse is here — and it’s a big one. Host Logan Freeman sits down with Brett Johnson, a 25-year real estate development veteran and the CEO/President behind FlexCaves, the new “ready-flex” category taking commercial real estate by storm.

With more than 70 ground-up developments and over $800 million in completed projects across the Midwest and Texas, Brett has seen every angle of the development world — entitlements, rezonings, NIMBY challenges, tax-credit structures, workforce housing, mixed-use, and large-scale multifamily. After selling OPG to a REIT pre-COVID and successfully exiting multiple businesses, Brett noticed a massive gap in the market: no one was serving the small-bay flex user in a modern, scalable way.

That insight sparked FlexCaves, a hybrid concept blending workspace, storage, retail, and lifestyle design — creating a fresh, national-scale category Brett calls “ready-flex.”

In this episode, Brett and Logan dive deep into:
• How FlexCaves was born (yes, it started with selling his own mancave garage)
• Why small-bay flex is one of the most overlooked opportunities in CRE
• What Brett learned from decades of development, entitlements, and affordable housing work
• How ARCO and a world-class team are building the FlexCaves platform
• What makes ready-flex the next scalable niche in the industrial/flex market
• Why this space is still dominated by mom-and-pop operators — and why that’s about to change
• How seasoned developers identify market gaps before the rest of the industry
• What CRE operators, investors, and developers need to know about this category in 2025

Whether you’re a developer, broker, LP, small business owner, or investor looking for the next high-demand asset class, this episode is full of insights you won’t hear anywhere else.

Subscribe, follow, and share Episode #43 if you see the future of CRE shifting — because ready-flex might just be the next national-scale platform.

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