Friday morning, the Regional Innovation Center was a hub of activity. Students passed between classes, including two who brought their pet dogs to a handling demonstration in a lesson taught by Emily Kruse-Cain. Buses parked out front, acting as a shuttle between the RIC and the high school. In the commons area, staff were working to set up for a pair of events, the annual FFA banquet and the National Honor Society induction. And in one of the conference rooms, FFA members huddled, working to choose officers for the next school year.
It was the kind of day RIC organizers anticipated as they planned for the facility.
While students have been utilizing the RIC since January, members of the public are invited to attend a ribbon cutting ceremony for the facility on Friday, May 9, at 2 p.m. Guest speakers will include Gov. Kim Reynolds. Tours of the 84,000 square foot facility will be given, and there will be treats made by North Scott culinary students.
The RIC is located at 2205 S. 1st St. in Eldridge.
“It’s a great opportunity to come out and see the vision that we have here, not only at North Scott, but in eastern Iowa, about giving our kids a step towards their career,” said superintendent Joe Stutting.
The ribbon cutting ceremony is the culmination of a nearly eight-year process that began shortly after Vo-Ag teacher Jacob Hunter was hired in 2016. The DeWitt native, who taught in Chicago and Des Moines, also previously served as Iowa education director for the World Food Prize in Des Moines, encouraging students to take on careers that met the challenge of feeding the world.
Hunter said he didn’t make the decision to leave his job at the WFP and come to North Scott lightly. He received a lot of encouragement from North Scott administration, which, at the time included Frank Wood.
“Frank asked me several times to come interview, and I said no several times, because I really enjoyed my job at the World Food Prize and I felt like I was making a great impact there,” said Hunter. “But I truly did miss the classroom. And then I did a walkthrough of the school on Father’s Day in 2016. Frank and others just really spun a great story of what could be. I was like, wow, there really is just a lot of untapped potential. So, that was the first recognition of, we could do something really special here, if we can just move in the right direction together.”
Hunter’s 2016 hiring drew immediate praise from then-school board members, and farmers both, John Maxwell and the late Glen Keppy.
“One of our goals is to have one of the top Vo-Ag and FFA programs in not only the state, but the nation,” said Maxwell in July of 2016. “When you do that, you need someone who has a fire in the belly for everything. He needs to be someone who is very open to all there is about FFA, and how it aligns in the modern world.
“It needs to go way, way, way beyond livestock and grain farming. The program needs to encompass inner city gardening and food and nutrition. It needs to be all of that, and more.”
“We live in the breadbasket of the world,” added Keppy. “And we have a golden opportunity to expand our FFA and Vo-Ag program. Agriculture involves so many different areas, and we have to make sure our youth are exposed to some of the best opportunities available, from around the world.”
Today, Maxwell looks at Hunter’s hiring as a turning point for the North Scott ag program. Prior to Hunter, the ag teacher was a three-quarter FTE position, and there were only a few dozen students in the FFA program. “I think all of us thought, we can do better.”
Now, there are three full-time teachers, including Courtney Wiedenmann at the junior high, a junior high FFA chapter and about 100 students involved in FFA, including students who have open enrolled specifically to take ag classes.
In Hunter’s first year, he divided his time between the high school and the junior high, which started to make him believe there needed to be a spot where all the department’s stakeholders could coalesce. He identified another challenge in 2017, when he decided to bring in some livestock to give students a hands-on experience.
“After my first year here, I realized that there was a large group of students that loves animals but doesn’t have the opportunity to work with them on a regular basis. And they were making decisions to go into the veterinary field or go into animal science without actually having handled animals. And I saw that as kind of a difficult situation for them, because I don’t want them to make a decision to go to Iowa State or Western Illinois or Platteville and never have worked with a cow or worked with a dog in a more structured way than like, I have a puppy.”
The district soon made the decision to purchase a parcel of land on South 1st Street. Hunter worked with Keppy and Maxwell on ideas for the plot. The farmland also contained a barn, and the initial thought was to keep livestock there for students to work with. In talking with the school board, Hunter identified several drawbacks to that plan, including a lack of running water and electricity in the barn.
“And so, I kept listing things out and they’re like, ‘Well, if we’re just going to be investing in all of this, why don’t we just build a facility that’s actually going to work?’” said Hunter. “And then, Joe challenged me to come up with an idea of, where are we going to go and what are we going to look at?”
Stutting said all the initial ideas were about how to increase space and opportunities for the ag program, and a committee was formed to start thinking about a facility. “So, a large number of people from eastern Iowa, from the school district, community members, board members – and we went to Chicago, Muscatine, just a variety of places to look at facilities and started generating that idea,” said Stutting.
In addition to the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences and the Muscatine Ag Center, which was established in 2009, “We visited several schools in Linn County to see how a smaller setup might look versus a larger setup,” said Hunter. “Even in an urban setting, because Linn-Mar had a more research and science-focused facility. And then we went to Vinton-Shellsburg, which was medium-sized, and then North Linn had a very small one. And so, it allowed us to see what different spectrum we wanted to land on.”
As the committee did more research, members started to see Hunter’s vision of an agricultural center that was more than just animal care and other traditional ag careers. Culinary arts could be brought in and students could learn about food science, for instance.
“And I think that allowed us to say, ‘Wow, we’re dreaming too small when we have all of this potential,” said Hunter.
School board member Joni Dittmer said every meeting, as more ideas came forward, the project became more exciting.
In 2018, Legat Architects was hired to start putting ideas on paper. Legat initiated a collaborative discussion process, and school board members again told Hunter he was thinking too small. So, he and members of the committee began examining reports by the U.S. Department of Labor to start thinking about potential job growth in eastern Iowa. “How are we going to help kids have really great training in these careers that are coming up, but also keep them in our community? We want to keep our communities thriving and doing awesome things,” said Hunter.
“I do really think that was the moment where the school board was like, we like what you’re headed towards. We just need to think more deeply about the larger impact.”
Wood said that, although the final facility ended up being much larger than originally anticipated, “We felt that we needed to be progressive and seek those programs that will give our students a great start in building a career.”
The COVID-19 pandemic brought much of the forward movement on the center to a halt. But Hunter said that period also gave the committee time to start refining ideas, including bringing more classes to help prepare students for career pathways.
“Starting with the idea of handling livestock animals was the first seed that made it grow, so it got the definition of being an ag building,” said Hunter. “But there was child development, construction, diesel, advanced health programs of anatomy and physiology, CNA. So, it really gave us a chance to refine and see what’s going to best serve North Scott students and also fulfil the gaps that aren’t being filled currently in our communities as a whole county.”
Former high school principal Shane Knoche, who left North Scott at the end of the 2023-24 school year to be superintendent for the Calamus-Wheatland and Bennett school districts, said finding pathways to students’ future careers is crucial.
“There was, about 20 years ago, a real push of everybody towards four-year universities, at the detriment of certification, such as welding, vet tech, that sort of thing. So, we knew that there was a need from an occupational standpoint, and we knew that we needed to do a better job of creating pathways to certification, not just the universities.”
In September of 2022, North Scott area voters overwhelmingly approved the Vision 2025 plan, which authorized that district to borrow up to $25 million against future property tax revenue. The district also made plans to borrow up to $20 million against future sales tax revenue, which did not require authorization from voters. Of that $45 million, $12.5 million was eventually earmarked for the agricultural and vocational center.
Dittmer said once the referendum passed, it was important for district officials to ensure that the facilities met the expectations of the voters. “People are voting you in to be progressive. Otherwise, you get stagnant, and we don’t want to be like that. We want to be proactive.”
Stutting said Vision 2025 came in part out of a desire to impact building spaces that needed improvement within the district. But the district also benefitted from a 2021 referendum that voters also overwhelmingly approved. Eastern Iowa Community Colleges were allowed to borrow $40 million to improve and expand career training facilities at each of its campuses, as well as new facilities in DeWitt and at Maquoketa High School. North Scott’s proposed learning center was also looped into this, and the referendum allowed EICC to give the district $4 million.
Knoche said that partnership also allowed the district to create a memorandum of understanding with EICC to ensure that any college-level course offered at the center would not be cost-detrimental to students. “We really worked hard in developing an agreement that would be beneficial to the school districts, and it would be a positive to send a kid there, not a negative financially.”
A fundraising committee was formed to raise additional funds for the building, which earned grants from the Scott County Regional Authority and the Regional Development Authority. Additionally, the district also received $1 million in state funding and $2 million from a federal appropriations bill. The total cost of the project was approximately $18.7 million.
Hunter, Stutting and Maxwell also worked to get donations from private donors, including reaching out to local ag businesses, including River Valley Cooperative, the Meier family with the Iowa 80 Truckstop, and Tom and Joni Dittmer’s Grandview Farms.
Hunter said something that made the center attractive to local businesses was learning more about ways it would help young people develop career pathways.
“When we look at River Valley Co-op, we think of farming, but they support so many other careers,” said Hunter. “My dad works for them, and he drives truck and hauls LP. And so, you need people that can drive trucks, you need people that can work in mechanics and all those things. And they’re like, ‘Wow, you’re going to help supply this for us.’”
While Hunter said he was a little nervous about some of the grant writing aspects, because he’d never written grants that large before, the fundraising experience also gave him the opportunity to strengthen relationships with ag boosters. “They had always been awesome FFA supporters, but then for them to be a part of the larger picture of education in our county was really, really cool as well, because I think it just refined our relationships with each other. It wasn’t just, oh, you’re helping with FFA all the time. Now it was like, how can we help all students in our school district, in our county? Not just my FFA members.”
Brea Harms and her husband Ryan chose North Scott when their family moved to the area from Ankeny in 2017. The district being the only one locally to have an FFA program was an important consideration for them, and both of their children, Carter and Addison, started taking ag classes so they could participate in FFA.
Brea, who works for John Deere, was a state FFA officer when she was a high school student in Illinois and was familiar with the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences. She became involved in the planning committee for the RIC and was involved in many of the brainstorming sessions, discussing the potential classes that could be offered and how the district could staff the building. Ryan, who works as a major gift fundraiser for Iowa State University, also came on board with the fundraising aspect of the RIC.
Brea said she was attracted to the project in part because she wanted students in the district to start to discover their passions. While her children found opportunities through FFA to explore farm business management (Carter) and science topics (Addison), Brea said she also knew that it was important for other students to find “their thing.”
“Whatever makes them feel like they rocked it. For some kids, that’s Lancer Productions or sports or the student-built home or something like that. And then there’s this subset of kids that walks into an ag program and they start to learn about the variety of things that are available and it’s not just farming. If a kid takes an ag class and decides that they love dairy production or soil judging. Or maybe they want to do public speaking. There are so many things, and that’s what I love.”
The building comes together
Working as Iowa education director for the World Food Prize gave Hunter the opportunity to visit approximately one-third of school districts in the state, of all sizes. He’d also worked closely with several community college districts, as well as his alma mater, Iowa State University. “That just allowed me to see what could be a space for us.
“One of the biggest things that we wanted to keep in mind when developing this was the flexibility of all the spaces. We don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves into the agriculture or industrial technology or diesel technology or CNA or health of 2025. We need to be able to pivot when there’s new changes in the world. And we’ve seen so much of that since 2020, even when we first thought of the building. There’s already so many changes in agriculture.”
Stutting said as plans for the building continued to develop, organizers started thinking about what other classes to offer. While Vision 2025 provided funding to allow the district to increase the size of the welding lab at the high school and add in CNC machines, mills and lathes, there were other career pathways to consider.
“Construction was an easy one, because we just didn’t have space in our shop here at the high school, so we really needed to expand that space,” said Stutting. “And then we looked at, how could we increase career pathways to students, both in ag, and then diesel was the other one.”
Brea Harms said that as work on the project had to slow down due to COVID, the committee started to review priorities for the building. “I remember having a meeting at the admin center and going, ‘Oh, gosh, this building is really big and it’s really expensive. What can we get rid of? What’s a must have and what’s a nice to have?’”
But the more the committee examined each program, they realized the number of students that could potentially be impacted. “And we ended up in a position where we said everything was a must have, which didn’t feel awesome. But it was like, we need all of that.”
As construction began on the building, Stutting said he enjoyed seeing the vision come to life.
“I’ve had the pleasure and been lucky to obviously build a lot of things and see construction, either brand new like that or even remodels, and it’s always neat to see that process. I’ve always had awe for our skilled labor who are able to take plans and put them into place. I think, when you first see a building going in, it’s hard to envision it. Where you really start seeing it is when the walls start going up and things start clicking. In this facility, you get that sense, and then when you start putting furniture in and it takes it to a whole new level. And so, it’s just a really neat process to go from groundbreaking to using a facility. I’ve always enjoyed that part of the process.”
The name of the center opened up for discussion, too. Hunter said the conversation started with school board members and eventually came into other meetings.
“I really think that we chose to stick with innovation at one of our finance meetings, because we felt that it was really important to truly showcase that we’re not going to be OK with just staying static and staying at square one. That we’re going to continually grow and do better, that we’re not going to be complacent.”
Putting “regional” in the name was also a conscious decision, instead of making it the North Scott Innovation Center. Hunter said that the Waukee Community School District has a career learning center called the APEX Center, but it is very much a product of that school district. North Scott leaders wanted to encourage more partnerships with the RIC.
“We really wanted it to be something that, if a school wasn’t able to support a program, or they wanted to collaborate on a program, they could just come in with us. We didn’t want people to shy away from here because it’s here at North Scott. We wanted it to be for everyone.”
Stutting said he has already been working with superintendents from neighboring school districts to create new opportunities for other students to take classes at the RIC.
“It’s working with then to make sure they have the feeder programs for their districts in order for kids to have access to a number of these programs. The difference of our regional center and other regional centers – ours are really advanced courses for juniors and seniors. It’s that certificate-level moving forward. A number of regional centers in the state are also for freshmen and sophomores, for the entry-level courses. For some districts, that’s the only way they can offer career and technical education at any level. It’s because they’re just not big enough to do it, so they need those regional centers. And that’s different than what we’re going here.”
Speaking as someone who served a smaller district, current high school principal Andrew Lehn confirmed these opportunities are often not available. Lehn previously served as principal of Cardinal High School in Eldon. “For students to have opportunities like the Regional Innovation Center was going to offer, they would have to travel.”
Lehn was hired last April and said during the interview process, he was able to get a tour of the RIC under construction. “I was in awe of the building and the potential opportunities it could provide for students.”
Lehn said he was deeply attracted to the idea of coming to North Scott after learning more about the RIC and its potential.
“I was extremely excited to be a part of meeting the unique needs of students in these sought-out career fields. One of the main goals of any high school principal is to prepare students for life after they walk across that stage on graduation day.
“I obviously want students to have great characteristics, such as a great work ethic and kindness, to name a couple, but I also want them to find career paths that they are passionate about. The Regional Innovation Center provides expanded opportunities for students to gain knowledge, skills and experience in the agriculture, animal science, construction, culinary, diesel, horticulture, medical and veterinarian fields. Having a building that provides this will greatly increase the chances of that students will find motivation in a career field of their interest.”
His predecessor, Knoche, said the goal had been for 100 percent of students to not only have a career pathway, but a start on that pathway prior to graduating high school, including possibly having certification in a field.
Moving into the RIC
Harms said the long and winding road to building the RIC has truly been worth it upon seeing the final product.
“When you see a blueprint or the renderings, you don’t actually get perspective of like, the brightness level, right? You walk in here, and it’s so welcoming and bright.”
She said, in addition to the ag spaces, she’s excited about the building trades classroom, which allows students to work on plumbing and electric in a two-story build station.
“They’re learning it like in the house. Those are the little touches that end up being the big touches that have a huge impact on the student learner experience. So, it’s been awesome to see it.”
Hunter said that one of the spaces in the building he’s most passionate about is the culinary labs.
“I just think it bridges the gap between the 90 percent of our students that didn’t grow up on a farm with agriculturalists. Because it’s a really hard sell sometimes telling kids that they should care about cows and pigs when they just look at them as smelly things on the side of the road. And so, it just really helps us tell the story of what agriculture does for us on a daily basis that’s non-smelly.”
In Hunter’s culinary meats class, for instance, conversations start with the basics, including meat quality. “What does it mean to be a prime steak? What does it mean to be a choice steak? And what does that mean for costs and things. And then we talk about animal welfare – how are the animals cared for so that we get this quality of meat? And then it opens a bigger conversation of, how do we ethically choose to harvest animals and how does that work?”
The class will soon be paying a visit to Baetke’s Custom Cuts, a meat processing facility in Long Grove. Hunter said he’s not sure if the students would necessarily have been open to that experience if they hadn’t been able to have conversations about the values of food production.
Maxwell said Hunter excels at getting students to connect the dots between their lives, such as the food they eat, and opportunities in ag.
Hunter said he also looks for gateways to get students interested in careers in agriculture, including his meats class and other culinary courses, as well as providing opportunities for students to work in the greenhouses. In his food product development course, students are creating their own ice cream flavors, and they are also learning about marketing techniques as well as requirements for labeling.
Hunter said that many of these classes may also lead students to entrepreneurial opportunities, some of which will be available when the school shop opens. There have already been discussions about merchandising opportunities for the store, including selling food products like sweet corn and baked goods, trailer hitch covers made by the welding classes, and the sheds constructed by the building trades courses.
“We know that when we empower young people to be entrepreneurs, that helps grow small communities, because people get invested in the community,” said Hunter. “Not that our larger supporters don’t care about us, but entrepreneurship is such an amazing part of the American dream.
“And not all of our students are meant to be going on to post-secondary education or work in a trade. So, it’s really important that we recognize that some of our kids are incredibly creative and are already entrepreneurs, so we need to help them make that next step.”
Hunter said it’s also a good opportunity for students to take classes at the RIC to gain work-based experience. They can also learn that perhaps they are not interested in a particular career.
“I think it’s really cool that we’re looking at, how can we help a student grow holistically. That we’re not just looking at them like, you’re going to track through here and you’re going to figure it out when you get to college. We’re finding that’s too late for them to kind of explore the world. Because, by the time you get somewhere, you’ve almost been tracked and then you’re two years into a major and you’re like, ‘Can I really change at this point?’ You’ve already invested so much money.”
Maxwell agreed.
“As a freshman, if you take some of the diesel mechanics classes and realize, ‘I don’t like having my hands get greasy.’” Realizing that early can help prevent a student from going down a college path to a career they end up not enjoying, he said.
“I think this building is going to be instrumental in developing a talent pipeline for this community,” said North Scott school-to-work coordinator April Keating. She recently attended a Build My Future event in Cedar Rapids and heard about the gap for skilled trades in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City corridor. “By kids getting to experience it here and talk to people who are actually working in the industry – knowing what they can expect, what kind of pay they can get, what that career trajectory could look like – I think this is really huge for the community, Not just the Quad Cities area, but the State of Iowa and the State of Illinois as well. I think it’s really great for the community at-large.”
But students are also learning life skills at the RIC.
“My hope would be that the students would be able to see the yesses and noes for their career path in the future,” said Hunter. “I’m not going to lie to you – some of my kids take an ag class and say, you know what? This isn’t for me. I really thought I was going to be a veterinarian, or I was going to work in animal care. But the likelihood is that three-quarters of Americans own a pet.
“So, not only are they looking at their career potentials. They’re also looking at, what are these life skills? You know, I look at some of our construction kids and it’s amazing what they can accomplish. I could never do that at my own house. And so, I really think that we’re setting them up for success long-term to help us build a thriving community.”
Joni Dittmer agreed.
“What I love about it is, it helps people have lifelong skills. Even if they don’t choose to have it as a career, they’re learning how to live every day in their home. A little plumbing, a little painting, whatever it is.”
She said it’s also helping to establish values, such as work ethic and team building.
Maxwell said it’s also important to consider that the RIC and careers in agriculture aren’t just for rural communities and students at North Scott – they can affect everyone. That includes people who live in the more urban parts of Davenport with students that go to Davenport Central.
Maxwell said his main hope is that students are able to find a career pathway that they love, so their future job doesn’t seem like work. “And furthermore, they find that career early in life, when they’re still in high school.” He said it was a game changer being able to move trades training into the high school level, rather that students not being able to take classes until they went to trades school. Now, students can have a few more years added on to their earning potential. “That is a big difference, especially if they found the job they love. There’s no better thing in life than, every day, loving what you do.”
While agriculture is still a very large part of the RIC, Hunter said the building is about more than just how students can work with the land.
“Ultimately, we just have so many opportunities for our students and there’s so many chances for our kids to do amazing things that it would be a shame to just sit on the sidelines. If your kid, or a student, isn’t considering talking a class out here, I would challenge them to think deeply about, what is their career path and how can they be involved? Because I think that any of the classes out where could be relevant to a student in the future, whether it’s a career skill or a life skill or career exploration that’s occurring. So, I really think that we have something very special.
“As I’ve traveled the world, and even through my grad school and visiting different land grant universities across the nation, we have facilities that rival universities and colleges, and … it could be tempting for you kid wanting to have a lot of open (class) blocks or something, but it’s good for them to learn and explore opportunities for them in the future.”
Lehn said, so far, reaction from students who have taken classes at the RIC has been overwhelmingly positive, and staff have been very happy as well.
“The size and space of the Regional Innovation Center allows for flexibility of instruction for unique skills and content. I think one of the most important aspects of the building is the ability for our instructors to enhance specific skills in certain career areas. For example, our vet tech students have had a variety of live animals, including dogs and alpacas, to work on. Another example is in our construction room, which allows students to work on electrical and plumbing on two floors. These enhanced real-life opportunities area what makes this building and its space special.”
Keating agreed that having hands-on opportunities can change a student’s point of view.
“I think it’s super exciting because, it’s one thing to watch videos about what a career is like. It’s great for them to be able to go on a field trip or a workplace tour and see people working in their field. But, depending on what kind of a learner they area, if they can actually get their hands in there and experience what it’s like to actually work in that field, I think that just gives them a lot more perspective that they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise.”
Keating said having the RIC will also allow the district to bring guest speakers and employers into the building. “Now we have a place where we can bring employers in to work alongside the students and mentor them in an environment where … we don’t have to schedule a bus. We don’t have to take them out of school for as long. They can actually do these things while they’re in a class and not have to disturb their schedule for the rest of the day and miss tests and other things that are important as well.”
Students in Hunter’s Food Product Development class said they’re thrilled for the opportunities they’ve already received.
“It’s pretty awesome,” said Evan Keppy as he worked on the label for his team’s ice cream creation, Pink Skies. The flavor palate is strawberry mint. He and his teammates took a vanilla ice cream base and mixed it with a strawberry syrup similar to grenadine and crushed mint leaves.
Isabella Carlson and her team were working on their Cake Batter Explosion flavor. It’s a vanilla base with chunks of cake and sprinkles, and extra cake batter flavoring.
“I really like it out here,” said Carlson. “All of my classes are very different.”
Carlson also takes Emily Kruse-Cain’s Animal Care and Handling class. “It’s about animals and safety and practicing with them. And today, we’re doing a hands-on. People are bringing in their dogs. I really like the diversity of the classes out here. It’s new stuff I’ve never done before, and it’s always nice to try new things.”
Hallie Coppess said she also enjoys having room to work in the RIC, because space was limited at the high school. “We have a lot more space and there’s more opportunities to do things her than we had at the high school, because we only had one classroom and the shop.”
Kayla Hutter-Miller is a Bettendorf High School student who is taking classes at the RIC that Bettendorf does not offer. She said she’s pleased to be able to get classroom experience before she heads off to Iowa State University to major in an ag-related field. “It’s been so amazing. I love ag. Having been in it before I’m going to college has been amazing.”
Keppy and his teammate Owen Klinkenberg said they are also learning life skills, such as taking care of a kitchen and how to prepare cost-effective meals when they are “broke college students.”
Klinkenberg offered a thank you to everyone who worked on the RIC, including FFA officer teams that contributed ideas.
“I would definitely tell each and every one of them thank you. Thank you for coming up with the ideas. Just a massive thank you to all of them. I’m sure everybody that has a class in this building – not even the ag students, the CNA people and everybody – they would definitely say thank you for this. It’s pretty awesome and a great opportunity we have.”
“The real winners in this are the youth coming up,” said Maxwell. “Even the babies born today are the winners.”
“It’s all about our kids,” agreed Dittmer. She praised the supportive North Scott community, especially everyone who voted to support the Vision 2025 referendum.
“This is truly community,” said Maxwell.
“It’s just exciting to know that these kids are coming into this with the potential of career growth,” said Dittmer, “It’s something they can do – even if they don’t want to go to college, but they have these skills. They get a passion for learning some of these classes in high school. That’s what’s cool about this. You’re getting it early on before you make that decision.”
“It’s like Walt Disney – if you can dream it, it can be a reality,” Maxwell said.
He said that it’s “awe-inspiring” being in the RIC, knowing where the process started.
“This was, obviously a dream, and it was a long shot. There were a lot of ups and downs with it. It’s like your dream house, but you don’t even have the furniture yet,” he chuckled. “But what really makes it special so many good people were involved to make it happen.”