The Vision: Chris Boleman and Wesley Sinor

Danielle Grossman 0:02
This is Mission Rodeo, a Rodeo Houston podcast where conversations are real, stories are anything but ordinary. From agriculture and education, entertainment, and Western heritage, we’re pulling back the curtain on everything that makes the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo more than a three-week event. Today, we’re sitting down with Chris Bowman, President CEO of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, as well as our Chairman of the Board, Wesley Sinor. The rodeo recently made one of the most significant announcements in its history, and today we’re talking about the vision behind the world-class agricultural complex on Highway 288. All right, we’ve made it. Welcome, gentlemen. How are you?

Wesley Sinor 0:39
Good. Good morning.

Danielle Grossman 0:40
Good morning.

Chris Boleman 0:41
This is great.

Danielle Grossman 0:42
This is great. Finally, we have a podcast. It took 94 years, but we’re here. How do you feel about it?

Chris Boleman 0:48
Well, I, I, I don’t know about 94 years. I thought we should have one. The last couple, that’s for sure.

Danielle Grossman 0:52
I agree, and I’m so glad we’re doing it finally.

Wesley Sinor 0:54
It took me to decide to do this. There you go.

Danielle Grossman 0:57
I know, definitely, definitely took you. Well, let’s introduce you guys. So we have CEO and president of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Dr. Chris Bolman.

Chris Boleman 1:05
Good to be here. Yes, very excited about today. Thank you for hosting.

Danielle Grossman 1:08
Of course, this is wonderful, and of course Wesley Sinor, our new chairman of the board.

Wesley Sinor 1:12
Yes, I’m excited to be here.

Danielle Grossman 1:14
Yeah, we have so much to talk about, guys.

Chris Boleman 1:16
We do have a lot.

Danielle Grossman 1:16
We have a lot of topics, but today we’re going to focus on one thing. But before we dive in, let’s have some fun. You want to have some fun?

Wesley Sinor 1:23
Let’s do it.

Chris Boleman 1:23
We’re here for the fun.

Danielle Grossman 1:24
We’re here for the fun. Yes, and a few laughs. I do have a joke, but I’m going to save it till the end.

Chris Boleman 1:28
Okay.

Danielle Grossman 1:28
Do you want me to tell it now?

Chris Boleman 1:29
It’s up to you. We trust you.

Danielle Grossman 1:31
Deal. I’ll save it till the end because I want us to keep our composure. Okay, got it. We have a rapid fire round to loosen things up for y’all. Okay, number one, how do you take your coffee? As you drink your coffee.

Chris Boleman 1:43
Yeah, two Splendas and one cream.

Danielle Grossman 1:46
I like that. That’s how I take my coffee too. Just drinking a latte. Just black.

Wesley Sinor 1:49
Just black, always. My iced tea too.

Danielle Grossman 1:53
Really, you don’t like any sweetness to your coffee? Have you ever had a latte?

Wesley Sinor 1:56
Oh yeah, love them.

Danielle Grossman 1:58
Oh, but you just don’t drink them often.

Wesley Sinor 1:59
Yeah, it’s hard to drink like you know two full styrofoams a day with all that sugar and everything.

Danielle Grossman 2:04
I guess you’re right. So during show, how many cups of coffee do you have, Chris?

Chris Boleman 2:09
Ooh, I I would say I typically during the normal season, out of show season, I have two cups of coffee. During show season, I have three, and then one Coke Zero in the afternoon.

Danielle Grossman 2:19
Okay, that’s pretty good.

Chris Boleman 2:21
That’s the caffeine. Yeah, three cups of coffee.

Danielle Grossman 2:23
Do you ever drink energy drinks?

Chris Boleman 2:24
No, my wife won’t let me.

Danielle Grossman 2:25
Of course she doesn’t. Not good for you. I’m guilty of it. Do you?

Wesley Sinor 2:30
Yeah, coffee. At least two big styrofoams of coffee in the morning, and then iced tea the rest of the day.

Danielle Grossman 2:36
You don’t drink coffee like later in the day because you have to stay up past midnight.

Wesley Sinor 2:39
No, no, it doesn’t. It doesn’t bother me, but no, I don’t do it.

Chris Boleman 2:42
I can’t drink coffee in the afternoon or evening because then I can’t sleep. So, but a Coke Zero is fine. So it is.

Danielle Grossman 2:47
Yeah, yeah, that’s good. Okay, next question. Now I know y’all don’t have much time outside of rodeo, but what are you listening to or what are you watching right now? I know you told me about a good Netflix documentary, and I did watch it, and I kind of regret watching it. Yeah, slightly terrifying. Anything else you’re watching right now?

Chris Boleman 3:04
We’re rewatching Ted Lasso because you know season four is coming and the World Cup just ended, so we’re on a Ted Lasso kick. So we’re rewatching that.

Danielle Grossman 3:11
Solid show.

Chris Boleman 3:11
Great show.

Danielle Grossman 3:13
What about you?

Wesley Sinor 3:13
I watch a lot of streaming shows when I’m traveling, but I just finished the biography of , which, as we know, Binion certainly is our rodeo producer, and he was named after . So it was a very interesting biography.

Danielle Grossman 3:27
And you’re reading a really good book right now. It’s on my list now.

Chris Boleman 3:29
Yes, you’re correct. Remember the name of it?

Danielle Grossman 3:32
No!

Chris Boleman 3:32
I can’t either.

Danielle Grossman 3:33
We just forget it. It’s okay. We’ll share it.

Chris Boleman 3:36
Theo of Golden.

Danielle Grossman 3:37
Theo of Golden.

Chris Boleman 3:37
It’s a great book. It did get a lot of. I’m going to finish it this weekend.

Danielle Grossman 3:40
Okay, great.When you finish it, can I borrow it?

Chris Boleman 3:42
Of course.

Danielle Grossman 3:42
Okay, deal. All right, last question: If you had to change your first name, what would you change it to? Maybe like a stage name or a name you always admired. What do you think?

Wesley Sinor 3:53
I like my name.

Danielle Grossman 3:54
I like your name too.

Wesley Sinor 3:55
I wouldn’t change it, but the funny thing is, my parents named me Wesley Edward Signer, so my initials are Wes.

Chris Boleman 4:00
That’s interesting.

Danielle Grossman 4:01
Oh, that’s kind of cool.

Wesley Sinor 4:02
Well, can’t really intentionally. I can’t put my you know initials on something, or someone says, “Oh, that’s cute. You have your nickname on there.

Danielle Grossman 4:09
Did they do that intentionally?

Wesley Sinor 4:10
Yes, I’m sure they did.

Danielle Grossman 4:12
Oh wow.

Chris Boleman 4:13
Yeah, because you always yeah always just put W S. Yeah, yeah, because it would be just Wes all cap. That’s interesting.

Danielle Grossman 4:18
That is.

Chris Boleman 4:18
Yeah, I’m just glad it’s Chris because I don’t like Christopher. That’s when my mom is yelling at me. So Chris is good.

Danielle Grossman 4:23
Do people assume that your name is Christopher?

Chris Boleman 4:25
Yes, most people do. Yeah. So and it is.

Danielle Grossman 4:28
You just correct them.

Chris Boleman 4:29
No, I mean it’s it is an official name, but only my mother really calls me that.

Wesley Sinor 4:34
What does Randy call you?

Danielle Grossman 4:35
It’s not important to this podcast.

You know what’s funny?

Chris Boleman 4:40
What does Cassie call you?

Wesley Sinor 4:42
She doesn’t.

Danielle Grossman 4:46
All right, guys, that was awesome. I actually need another cup of coffee. It’s

Chris Boleman 4:50
What would you change your name to?

Danielle Grossman 4:52
Oh, that’s a tough question. You know what’s funny? My daughter’s only here. My husband called me Babe, and so I asked my daughter, “What’s mommy’s name? And she said, “Babe.” Doesn’t know my real name.

Chris Boleman 5:01
like the movie.

Danielle Grossman 5:02
It is like the pig.

Chris Boleman 5:03
Yeah, babe. Yeah, right. Yeah, that’s great.

Danielle Grossman 5:05
I like my name too, though.

Chris Boleman 5:06
Got it.

Danielle Grossman 5:07
All right, guys, ready? Ready for the main topic? Let’s do it. All right, we are going to dive in. So we are building a 1 million square foot agricultural complex at our property in Highway 288. This is incredible.

Chris Boleman 5:19
We agree.

Danielle Grossman 5:20
We agree, right? We all agree. This is an incredible time to be part of this organization. Let’s talk about it. Let’s dive in. Why are we doing this, and why are we doing this now?

Wesley Sinor 5:31
Yeah, I’ll start. The main thing is Reliant Arena. That building’s 50 years old. The rodeo actually built that. We bought the land, built it, deeded it to the county, lien free, no cost to them. It’s 50 years old. It’s way past its useful life, even by the county’s assessment. It’s beyond its useful life. So that was the first thing we needed to find a new arena, and then two other two other things that we looked at. We know from our surveys, parking congestion around the park are an issue, and then we also put on the world’s largest livestock show, and we want that experience of those exhibitors to be world class. So we looked at all three of those, and we decided we could do this on our own property down 288. So that’s that’s why we’re doing this.

Chris Boleman 6:16
Agreed. Everything he said, and I’ll add to it. I think the other big piece to this project is that it does provide us opportunities to program outside of Showtime. Part of our lease agreement here is we have it for a certain amount of days out there. We can do things year-round. I think that was a big key contributor to promoting ag, telling our story, working with kids year-round, all different types of activities that we can include there. I think is a big piece of it too.

Danielle Grossman 6:39
Yeah, there’s going to be so many incredible activations, activities in the off season. We’ll dive into that as well. But you know, for those who missed the initial announcement, right? We are building this amazing facility. It’s going to benefit the community. No taxpayer dollars needed, which I think everyone’s very excited about, and we should all be very proud of. But talk about what this means for long-term rodeo vision, for our future, for future generations, in your own words.

Wesley Sinor 7:03
Yeah, I mean, this we’re this is a mission-driven building, agriculture, Western heritage, education. We’ll be able to program all of that down there, and that will affect generations to come, not just the next next generation or the next graduating seniors. This will affect 2030, years down the road. So we’re very excited about that part.

Danielle Grossman 7:24
And we go ahead, Chris.

Chris Boleman 7:26
Yeah, I think too. As you look at the history of the rodeo, it literally comes with huge, impactful decisions about every 30 years. And we’re kind of there again. We’re 25 years into this lease. Before that, it was moving from downtown to here, and so this is the next chapter of expansion and growth, and so you do it in partnership with wanting to be here. This is important for us to restate here at the park to activate, but that we also activate on our own property. So I think it’s the evolution in the next chapter of the show.

Danielle Grossman 7:54
Yeah, it is, and you know we have a home here at Reliant Park, and people have memories here, and they’ve been coming here for generations, and that’s not going anywhere, right?

Chris Boleman 8:03
That’s correct. Yeah, we’re still going to activate here a big piece. The livestock show is still here. I know we’re going to talk about that on some future podcasts, but it’s a way, as Wesley said, to help us create a better experience for all guests in terms of getting on site and off site and transportation, but also obviously just equally as important for our exhibitors.

Danielle Grossman 8:23
So this facility isn’t just an agricultural complex, and we’re going to move our horse show over there. Some of our livestock competitions. This is a first move, a pivotal move in what we are preparing for our centennial celebration. That’s coming up. It’s going to be here before we know it, right? 2032.

Wesley Sinor 8:40
2032.

Danielle Grossman 8:41
Yeah. So let’s talk about that. What does this facility and this decision and this announcement mean as we lead up into that pivotal year for us here at the rodeo?

Chris Boleman 8:50
To us, it’s about leaning into what we do. You know, one of the pieces of this announcement also included some shifts in our mission statement to change from an annual event to year-round activation because that’s what we see as we move forward. This isn’t just a show that should be celebrated in March. It’s an opportunity for us to promote what we do, support education and the community, obviously year-round. And so, to me, it’s this is the step that leans into that as we continue to make improvements here at the park in hopes that this is where we’ll be long term. How do we invest here? Investing there too separately by creating those two campuses.

Danielle Grossman 9:27
Talk to us about how we are going to control our own destiny. We are owners of this new property, whereas we’re only tenants at Reliant Park, and what that means for what we can do, what we can activate at the new property versus what we could do at Reliant Park.

Wesley Sinor 9:42
Sure, we we started buying that property down there in 1991. It’s always been our back of the house. Most people don’t realize realize that we already have committees working down there, but these buildings, these facilities will be very flexible. We can do anything that is mission related and. And because it’s year-round, we’ll be able to expand our mission, the effect of our mission with these new buildings.

Chris Boleman 10:07
Yeah, just well said. I mean, that’s what we’re what’s what we want to do. It’s what we want to accomplish. This wasn’t decision wasn’t made you know independently. We’ve used these committees that have helped us a lot of our leadership to make sure we’re positioned to do that from a volunteer point of view, and then also from a public point of view. But I think the year-round activation is so critical.

Danielle Grossman 10:26
Yeah. So let’s take a step back. This didn’t happen overnight. We didn’t just say we’re going to build this facility because we need to replace an aging arena, right? There was lots of thought, lots of folks that went into this decision making. I heard there were some visits to other facilities. Talk about your experience in helping this come to life, and how it feels that we’re here in this moment and it’s happening.

Wesley Sinor 10:47
Yeah, well, there was a group that toured all of the best facilities across the U.S. and that’s typical of what the rodeo is. Rodeo does. We want to be the biggest and the best, so we looked at how other people were doing it. We benchmarked those facilities, and then we incorporated all those ideas. We also use Populous Charlie Colerick, who is a world expert at designing livestock and equine facilities. We have Clay Development, that is our builder, that’s expert at building the facility. But we also incorporated, of course, our professional team, and then all of the leaders of the committees that will be working down there-they have all been incorporated and helping design this facility. So we’re just so excited now that we can talk about it and we can brag about it. Yeah, because I’ve been I’ve been wanting to tell. I mean, I go to horse shows. It has been. I go to horse shows and I’m just dying to tell everyone what we can do in this new facility, and now we can. So I’m excited to start bragging about this and start programming it.

Danielle Grossman 11:47
Especially the equine facility. I mean, there’s really nothing like it in the state of Texas. So this is going to be state of the art. People are going to come here, compete here, take part in it. Right?

Wesley Sinor 11:56
It’s it’s it’s state of the art. We’ll we’ll be able to host world shows, world finals. What’s really exciting is hosting more junior rodeos, high school rodeos, collegiate rodeos, things that you know help the kids, help the youth of Texas, and of course support our Western heritage.

Danielle Grossman 12:14
It’s very exciting. Let’s go back to the exhibitors. You know, this facility. There was a lot of reasons why we had to build it, right? But it goes back to the exhibitors, the livestock exhibitors, the kids, the families who are going to really feel the impacts of this logistically, guest experience, ease, those types of things. Chris, talk a little bit about what they’re going to get out of it. Why our vision led to this very moment to help their experience be better.

Chris Boleman 12:41
Yeah, no question. Our exhibitors thankfully get to work with livestock and breeders greeters committees, and they make sure they have the best experience possible. But because the size of our show and the growth we’ve had, it has become very crowded and not as enjoyable as what we want the experience to be. So by creating this experience off-site and building this facility, it will just allow much more flexibility and, frankly, just much more space. I don’t believe there’s anything that families can do together that’s more meaningful than showing livestock as a product of that. Myself, it’s critically important to me. And so, knowing that families can come and enjoy themselves and spend more time as a family instead of moving trailers back to 288 or standing in line for 18 hours to unload, and it’s just it’s great from a size and scope point of view. But we know the experience could be better, and so I think it’s going to create that experience that no other you can’t get anywhere else as a family, and so that’s what I’m most excited about. I think too. As I’ve mentioned, I mean, we have the way that our schedule works. Kids have to come in in different waves with different projects, and so hopefully this will allow us to bring that back together. So they’re not having to go home and then come back. It makes for a smoother, a better experience and a smoother transition. I think all that being said, we are creating something like no other, and that’s the key. We want exhibitors to leave here and say, “Wow, that was an awesome family experience. That’s what we’re after.

Danielle Grossman 14:10
So, when it comes to guests, those folks maybe who are not exhibiting or coming with their animals, and they’re just coming to experience the rodeo, talk to them and what they can experience here why this is for the community as well.

Wesley Sinor 14:23
Yeah, I think I’ll just say a family comes out to see the livestock show, to you know be on the grounds, carnival, the food. That’ll all be exactly the same. It’ll just be a little bit less congestion. There may be more open spaces for families to sit down and enjoy themselves. But you’ll see the same animals, the birthing center, the the petting zoo, the livestock. There’ll still be a livestock show back there, but then we’ll also have the 288 livestock show also. So it’ll be a better experience for everyone, not just the exhibitors, but of course everyone that comes on the grounds.

Danielle Grossman 14:56
Yeah, and just so many opportunities to learn and to you know hear. What we do as an organization and agriculture, education-it’s so important to our mission, right? So I think there’s so many different ways that people will benefit from this, whether they’re showing animals or not, which is so fantastic. This was great to chat about. I think we answered a lot of questions, but of course, this is an evolving topic. There’s a lot happening. Things are changing by the day, so I think we have more opportunities to chat about this in the podcast, specifically the agricultural complex.

Chris Boleman 15:26
Absolutely, and and I would say it is two years away as we look towards 2029, which seems like a long time away, but it’s not. And so we welcome, particularly from our volunteers, questions, ideas, thoughts. This is a blank canvas for us. We know we’re moving a lot of things from the arena out to there, we know that. But there’s so much more opportunity as you started the podcast with 1 million square feet of space, and so we want to be creative and we want to create experience out there that people want to go to, just like they would want to come here.

Danielle Grossman 15:52
Yeah, it’s going to be so awesome. All right, guys, thanks for that. But before we go, we have some more rapid fire questions.

Chris Boleman 15:57
Oh, good.

Wesley Sinor 15:58
Okay.

Danielle Grossman 15:58
And I have my joke. We can’t.

Chris Boleman 15:59
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wesley Sinor 16:00
Save that till the end.

Chris Boleman 16:01
Save it for the end.

Danielle Grossman 16:02
All right, this is for Wesley because Chris has answered this before. But tell us about your pets.

Wesley Sinor 16:08
My pets? We have a dog. His name is Gilly.

Danielle Grossman 16:12
Gilly.

Wesley Sinor 16:12
And there’s a reason behind that. My wife and I both from Pasadena, Texas, and both grew up about a mile from Gillies, which is the honky tonk and the urban cowboys, so it was a natural name for him.

Danielle Grossman 16:23
I love it.

Chris Boleman 16:24
And Gilly, when when Wesley and I are catching up via Zoom or Teams or something, Gilly always makes an appearance.

Danielle Grossman 16:29
Really?

Chris Boleman 16:30
Yeah.

Danielle Grossman 16:30
I haven’t seen Gilly yet.

Wesley Sinor 16:31
He’s a Bernie doodle, and he likes he he hears people talking on the iPad. He wants to see who it is.

Danielle Grossman 16:38
I need apicture. I need to see. I love dogs. I’m not ready for a dog yet. To wait till my kids can actually take it for a walk.

Wesley Sinor 16:44
Oh yeah, that’s a good idea.

Danielle Grossman 16:45
Okay, so if you could learn about something, a subject, if you had the time, what would you want to learn about, or what do you want to learn about?

Chris Boleman 16:53
As I get, I will say, as I get older and travel, there’s the more I can learn about history. I would say, particularly World War II history that that it just intrigues me. I just I soak it up. I read whatever I can, watch whatever movie, you know, every documentary that I’ve found myself over the last few years really focusing in that area. So I guess that’s the way I have it. That’s

Danielle Grossman 17:12
That’s cool. Yeah, that’s great. What about you, Wesley?

Wesley Sinor 17:14
You know, my grandparents had a Santa Catrus Ranch. We kind of grew up there on the weekends, but just scratched the surface of you know the cattle industry, and so of course I’m sitting next to an expert. But I’d love to learn more about it.

Danielle Grossman 17:29
Yeah, there’s so much to learn. I mean, just the rodeo in general. I’ve been here four years now, but I feel like I’m still learning every single day because we do so much. The event itself is so intricate. There’s so much going on. There’s so much to learn. So

Chris Boleman 17:42
I agree. This organization itself is an everyday learning experience because you know, and it even goes to what we talked about earlier with the mission statement changing because we have so many things going on year round, and a lot of people just don’t know all the different things, and so it just it’s continuous for sure.

Wesley Sinor 17:56
I think that’s the same for both of us. I mean, we’re we’re at the top of the rodeo, and we’re always learning something new about it every day. And then that’s what’s great about your podcast is these are the things that we can share behind the scenes look.

Danielle Grossman 18:10
I mean the stories we have, just the volunteers alone, 36,000 folks. Let’s just start talking about that. I mean, you know, you could fill a podcast alone with the stories that our volunteers have. It’s incredible,

Chris Boleman 18:20
amazing.

Wesley Sinor 18:20
You could fill books.

Chris Boleman 18:21
Yeah, it’s truly amazing what we do here, and we never take that for granted. It’s it’s the lifeblood of what we do.

Danielle Grossman 18:27
Exactly, and we are starting to document things a little bit more leading up to our centennial.

Chris Boleman 18:31
Another piece of the centennial for sure.

Danielle Grossman 18:33
So we have all of these stories to share with the public and the community because they’re incredible.

Chris Boleman 18:37
There’s some really. I should have hit that too as we lean in. We talked about 288, but we’ve got some really cool projects going on to celebrate the centennial, and it won’t be just year 100. You’re going to see us leaning into that, particularly after the 95th, as we get ready for our 95th show. We’re going to start being very strategic about telling some stories leading into the 100. It’s going to be going to be really cool.

Danielle Grossman 18:59
It is going to be cool. I’m excited to hear the stories and talk to more people. I feel like I try to talk to new volunteers every time I’m around them, and I just meet someone new, and then someone met their spouse here, or it’s part of a lineage story. And there’s just so many incredible things that come out of this rodeo and the way people connect with each other. It’s awesome. Yeah. Okay, you ready for my joke, guys?

Wesley Sinor 19:20
Let’s do it.

Chris Boleman 19:21
I guess.

Danielle Grossman 19:24
Why do cows have hooves?

Chris Boleman 19:26
Why do cows have hooves? I don’t know.

Danielle Grossman 19:30
Because they lactose. Is that funny? That was Alexa’s joke.

Chris Boleman 19:37
That was not bad. It was not bad.

Danielle Grossman 19:39
I thought it was. It was funny.

Chris Boleman 19:40
It was good.

Danielle Grossman 19:41
Yeah, I didn’t get the laugh I was hoping for. Okay, so next time I’ll come with a better joke. Yeah, I’m waiting for your one-liner. You don’t have a one-liner.

Chris Boleman 19:49
I don’t have a one-liner at the moment. I’m trying to think of one, but it may have to save it for another podcast.

Danielle Grossman 19:52
Okay, simmer on it.

Chris Boleman 19:54
Okay, will do.

Danielle Grossman 19:55
Thanks, guys. That was so awesome. Thank you for answering all those questions. This is going to be fantastic for the community. And of course, for the rodeo community. So, more next week.

Chris Boleman 20:03
Let’s rodeo.

Wesley Sinor 20:03
Do it. Let’s rodeo.

Danielle Grossman 20:05
Thanks guys.

Chris Boleman 20:05
Thank you.