Faculty Spotlight: Ryan Terry
Ryan’s journey as a developer and IncDev faculty member began on a walk around downtown Bryant, Texas. He reached the edge of the downtown and found a cluster of empty, vacant lots. He was struck with a case of what he calls the “somebody oughta's” and emailed his architect father that “somebody ought to do something with this.”
Together, he and his father (now the team behind R+T Studio) figured out that the city owned the land. They met with city officials and were enjoying a conversation when suddenly a staffer rushed in to cut the meeting short. The city had just put out a Request for Propsals (RFP) for the sites and the only way Ryan and his dad could learn more was by submitting an RFP of their own.
Ryan and his dad walked away from that meeting a bit confused but decided to put their name in the hat. Looking back, Ryan reflects that even though his impromptu decision to try and develop those sites was a bit “half-cocked,” it was also rooted in something deeper: a desire to build beautiful places that contribute to human flourishing.
As a philosophy and classics major in college, Ryan was always interested in the intersection between human flourishing and architecture. Growing up with an architect dad gave him early exposure to building and the basics of construction. And stumbling upon a Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) charter and discovering the principles of New Urbanism gave him a sense of direction.
Around the same time that Ryan decided to submit a bid, the Congress of New Urbanism hosted their gathering in Dallas, Texas. Ryan attended and sat through John Anderson’s session on how to write a pro forma. A one on one conversation afterwards answered many of his lingering questions, giving Ryan more of the education he needed to submit his RFP.
Not long after, he attended one of the first IncDev trainings where he learned the essentials about zoning, building, creating a site plan and raising money, all of it new to him. What stuck with him the most was the uniqueness of the IncDev approach: building in the neighborhood where you actually live, where you have local knowledge and "skin in the game." This was different from Ryan’s association with home development as a more national endeavor with developers building in states all over the country.
From these training sessions, Ryan and his father put together their bid, submitted it and forgot about it. He was surprised when a month later, he received a call congratulating him for “winning.” “Winning what?” he replied. And that’s when he learned he was now responsible for cultivating the sites he had seen on a walk. "I was the dog that caught the school bus," he recalled, laughing.
Relying partly on his military training as an infantryman, a role that requires making decisions despite uncertainty, Ryan dove in, pulling together the pieces to activate the site: navigating the replatting process, raising money (1.62 million), breaking ground and managing the building process. In 2017, their first phase completed and now standing on that vacant site are two fourplexes.
The fourplexes on W. 22nd Street in Bryan, Texas
Ryan and his father had planned more phases for additional lots but paused during COVID-19. In 2023, they were informed that new city officials had decided their original bid had lapsed and that the other lots would be rewarded to a different developer. According to Google Maps, those sites remain vacant to this day.
Looking back, Ryan says this experience taught him the importance of managing the political side to development. “I had let those relationships lapse,” he now recognizes. He sold his portfolio and moved to Fort Worth. He's now brainstorming some townhome projects and potential commercial developments that he hopes provide the kind of everyday neighborhood businesses to neighborhoods near his own.
But Ryan said that, perhaps more meaningful to him than his building projects, is his role as an IncDev faculty member. Looking back on his time in the Marines, he recalled how his best friend died two weeks before returning home to his wife and two children, one of whom he never met. He recalled how proud he was of his hometown of Flint, Michigan, a place many people might “write off or forget about.”
For Ryan, he sees teaching at IncDev as a way to equip ordinary people like his friend to improve the places they love so they can “live good lives,” and – should they find themselves taking on sacrificial public service roles like military service – they don’t make sacrifices in vain.
Anyone considering the training he says should just do it. "It's one day of your life, it's a small investment," he said. For anyone struggling with confidence, they will soon find that it’s not rocket science but very accessible to normal people. “At the very least you will know more and have more confidence than when you started,” he said.