A Time for Growth – Video Transcript

Female Narrator (00:08):
Meanwhile, the rest of the Hall Financial Group team was quite busy out in Frisco.

Brad Watson (00:13):
The work is going on high in the air and on the ground to meet the high demand for office space in the platinum corridor. Eventually, there’ll be almost 20 buildings on this 162 acre side in Frisco.

Kim Butler (00:25):
Hall added a building almost every year after that first building. The low rise and the mid-rise building, sometimes two in any one year.

Mark Depker (00:35):
Sometimes if you build it, they will come and I think he was the build it they will come guy of Frisco.

Craig Hall (00:40):
Our vision was to create a great environment for people to work in a place where when they walk outside at lunch, they can go sit by a lake and look at some art and a place that has got trails. Early on at Hall Park we started buying art and we had one area that we wanted to really celebrate Texas artists.

News Anchor (01:06):
The Hall Office Park unveiled its Texas Sculpture Garden today, the only private art collection of this size in Texas that’s open to the public. It features 100 pieces of art throughout the grounds, including contemporary works by some of Texas most important artists.

Larry Harris (01:29):
It’s like a snowball rolling downhill. The momentum out there, everybody makes the comment of when is it going to stop. I don’t think anyone really knows. It just seems like it just keeps going and going and going.

Female Narrator (01:44):
After four years of foreign service, Craig and Kathryn returned to the States. They built a house in California and embarked on a new business adventure together.

Andrea Immer (01:56):
Welcome back. Now let’s visit a Napa Valley home owned by a couple who’ve conquered both the worlds of politics and business, but found their true calling making wine.

(02:05):
In 1995 financier, Craig Hall and his wife Kathryn, a former ambassador to Austria, purchased their 19 acre Napa Valley vineyard and began producing several excellent wines under the Katherine Hall label.

Mike Reynolds (02:21):
When Craig and Kathy were getting married, Craig actually asked Kathy what she wanted to do with the next phase of their lives. Kathy had grown up in the wine business and she looked at Craig and she said…

Kathryn Hall (02:33):
I just want to make great cabernet. Craig was interested, but it didn’t make his heart sing. What I have since realized is that the reason he didn’t make his heart sing is I don’t think Craig thought it was big enough.

Mike Reynolds (02:46):
When I met Craig, at the time I was running a pretty big wine operation. I had 250 employees and 5,000 acres of vineyards, and part of the motivation to leave there was that I wanted to slow down. At that moment in time, Craig and Kathy were thinking that we would have small winery with five employees. It would be on the hill. We’d make a little bit of expensive wine, and it would be a very nice, easy life, easy job. Craig says that it’s one of the greatest lies he’s ever told because that changed quickly after I arrived at the winery.

Craig Hall (03:30):
We built a small winery in Rutherford. Really had great caves, beautiful winery, but it just felt like we should do more.

Kathryn Hall (03:39):
He started to get interested when we decided to grow, to really grow.

Mike Reynolds (03:47):
One day I was with Craig and he had just gotten a package for a piece of property that was for sale in St. Helena. It was an old winery, the Napa Valley Cooperative Winery, which had existed there ultimately back to 1885.

Mark Blocher (04:03):
Comparable to Lemon Tree, he’s driving by this dilapidated old winery in St. Helena. He thinks, huh, I ought to buy that and turn that into a real winery.

Mike Reynolds (04:13):
It was the first moment where I really understood that maybe this was not going to be the small boutique winery little brand that we were talking about.

Craig Hall (04:24):
We transformed the rundown St. Helena Winery into the very technologically forward wine making facility and created a great guest experience with lots of art, gardens, and just a wonderful overall experience.