Economic Matters Committee - Regular Meeting

First, economic matters meeting. Here in the chamber are myself, Alderman Savage, and Alderwoman Alsup-Johnson. First off, can I get a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved.

Can I get a second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Second. Can I get an approval of the minutes from our May 6th meeting?

Moved.

Can I get a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay, so up first is ID 14826, the Downtown Business Partnership Update. Please join us at the table. So for folks' background, in case you missed the press release, we have ended our contract with the Downtown Business Partnership. They are still a fantastic organization in the city. We just no longer give them direct city funding. Is that correct?

Yeah, yes, sorry, I'm getting used to the new mics here. So I think the way to frame it is that previously, in the past fiscal years, they had the designation as the Main Street program for the City of Annapolis. They're treated as an outside agency. And now the decision was to sort of recalibrate what a Main Street program looks like for Annapolis. So what we're doing right now in the Office of Economic Development is we're bringing it in-house. we're stabilizing the program, and then we're long-term planning, hoping to stand up a new organization with ample community participation to better define this program and ensure that it's meeting the goals of this administration.

Now, meeting the goals, do we have kind of a set idea of what we want to turn our Main Street program into?

We have an idea of how to get there, let's say. So I've submitted an action plan to the city manager's office, and I put together a brief for the mayor. With that action plan, again it would establish a significant amount of community engagement and feedback loops with those stakeholders on main street so um you know it's not just the businesses that are there although they make a big part of the experience that is walking through main street in annapolis and when i say main street i don't just mean main street i mean the entire designated main street community which includes other portions of downtown we also wanted to include feedback from residents from institutions from other business associations that make up our downtown area because it's not just the Downtown Annapolis Partnership, you also have the InterWest Street Association and you also have the Maryland Avenue and State Circle Business Association that make up the entire ecosystem. So we're looking at holistically, we're gathering feedback, we're gonna create those parameters and we're gonna include that. in what will eventually be a solicitation to find a partner to help us stand up this organization long term.

Okay. So you still didn't quite answer my question of what our goal is for, what is our vision for the Main Street area? And when I say that, I mean like the commercial corridors in general. So Main Street, Marketplace, Maryland Avenue, Inner West Street, including all that in like our designated Main Street area.

so there are four pillars to a successful main street program um there's also a fifth pillar that the state incorporates in its in its implementation of the program at its level i guess the reason i didn't provide a very clear answer is because we don't we don't want it to be like a top-down mandate we want the the stakeholders to be able to help us define what those goals should be and how what a successful program looks like we know that a successful program includes yes, programming and events, but also includes significant placemaking. It includes economic vitality is one of the pillars. So we wanna see small business development come out of this program. You see that in a lot of other Main Street programs throughout the state where they take an active role in attracting and placing businesses in vacant storefronts. So we wanna essentially see a partner organization, one that we can work with on a day-to-day basis to meet the needs of our Main Street ecosystem. So again, I'm sorry if it's not, very detailed right now but it's because we're still in a phase where we're gathering information we're going to be reaching out to you know these different stakeholder groups as i mentioned including the business community and having their feedback help guide that you know guide those decisions on what the goals really should be for the program long term

Okay, I think that makes sense, and that's a very good answer for why we should keep it more broad at this point.

Yeah, it's still early stage.

Now, one of the main things that the Downtown Business Partnership took care of was they led the charge on specific events in conversations offline with the mayor's office. I understand that we're still trying to figure out who's going to be taking lead. For me, one of the big ones is the tree lighting every year and the menorah lighting every year. Do we think that the city is going to be taking charge of that? Do we have the capacity to make sure that that's still a successful event around the holidays?

Again, it's too early for me to give specifics because it requires significant coordination with other departments. I would say that based on the resources that we'll have available to us to manage the program, I don't see why that particular event would prove a challenge, a specific challenge. I think that, in fact, those types of placemaking initiatives like the tree lighting, like holiday decorations, or flower baskets along Main Street might be better suited for the city to take on itself regardless because we have the capacity to do so between rec and parks, between public works. Now obviously that all still needs to be defined, but the ability to do so is there. I misspoke. I shouldn't have said capacity. I said the ability to do so. It's just a matter of managing resources and coordinating with those other departments.

And yeah, I appreciate you getting the resources because doing these isn't as simple as having a creative vision. It's staff resources and time and whatnot. Exactly, yeah. Okay, well that's all the questions I have at the top of my head at this time. Do any of my colleagues have questions on this one? Alderman Savage?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, a few questions. Have you looked at other jurisdictions to kind of figure out what kind of models, organizational models might work best?

Yeah, so there's, just in my own experience, I've worked very closely with both Cumberland and Frostburg in my time in Western Maryland, and I'd say both had amazing programs. There are different types of models, Frostburg being more of a, again, a nonprofit-driven with municipal participation. It's a very robust program for how small the jurisdiction it is, 5,000 people, but it's a college town, so they need to have that you know, level of engagement, very high-level engagement, whereas Cumberland, you have a legacy city. It was kept in-house. They had a special taxing district to be able to fund the program, so very creative there in how they're able to apply those resources. Events like Friday After Five, you know, their tree lighting's all done at the municipal level, but significant engagement among all the stakeholders, and again, not just the businesses. You look at very successful programs throughout the state, like, say, for example, Sykesville just won an award. They have another public-private partnership model. City of Berlin, again, that's municipal-led, so it's all in-house. And then Frederick's always held up as a very successful program. They're able to raise, that's the other element, they're able to raise significant funds. So a successful Main Street program, this is something we hope to capture whenever we put out that solicitation, it kind of operate on a rule of threes, right? A rule of thirds, where a third of your funding should come from grants, third of your funding should come from fundraising, and a third should come from the municipality. And as we look, to the future of how we can partner with an organization that we're hoping to stand up, right? We're hoping to stand up a separate organization that's ingrained with the city. That can be both like a carrot and a stick in a way to ensure that they're doing their best to be able to fundraise independently by saying everything that you're tied to with the city is based on what you raise. So there's a lot of models out there, but I think the important, the important through line with all those models is that they own Main Street, right? Not literally, but I mean figuratively. They are the brand for Main Street. They're the ambassador. They can sell themselves, and when I say that, I mean, they can merchandise or they can easily fundraise off of their branding because it's so ubiquitous with Main Street. And I think that's what we need to see because we do have a world-class Main Street and I think it can be marketed very well if the program is managed in such a way.

Yeah, and so would it be just focusing on Main Street or the entirety of downtown?

It was the designated Main Street. So it's Main Street, it's Dock Street, it's the first block of Interwest Street, it's that first block there of, I think it's the first two blocks of Maryland Avenue and State Circle, and then it goes up Prince George Street. So that's sort of the main street district, I guess you can... It's the designated main street area. Okay.

Yeah, because one of the things I have... There seems to be often like a disconnect between the various streets and the kind of programs that they... have done in the past. It sounds like West Street is outside that area, but a lot of inconsistency even between like Maryland Avenue and downtown Main Street. And it'd be nice to have some more coordinated efforts.

I absolutely agree with that. And I think that's where our office taking on this program for the interim, right, can act as that coordinating force. And in fact, The action plan that I drafted that's still awaiting formal approval, that's one of the objectives is to become, how do we map that out? How do we create a document and a process where we become that coordinating force? We have regular check-ins with these different groups. We work with them to ensure that schedule of events don't conflict or that if there's opportunity to collaborate, it's there. I think a great example of this, and this wasn't Main Street, but a great example of this recently was through the Arts District. with their event on, this was June 13th or June 12th, I can't remember, whatever that Saturday was, where there was ample coordination between InterWest Street and Maryland Avenue and State Circle. The arts, I don't think it was Annapolis Live Arts, I can't remember the title of the event, but I know there was significant coordination between those groups and the arts district, and I think that's where the Main Street program can really come in and add to that. They could be more of a coordinating force. They don't have to be the, necessarily the driver of the events, but they can be an enabler.

Okay, because I do think the downtown partnership's done a lot of good work. Yeah, as do I. The reason I'm asking about some of the organizational setup is I think there have been, I guess, some inconsistencies and challenges, tension over the years, which I'm thinking... might be resolved through a different organizational structure and making sure the city is more involved Because we used to get regular updates from DAP, this committee, and that really just petered off to nothing. And I have heard in the community just various frustrations with that organization and structure. So if we're gonna be starting anew, it'd be great to set it up for success for long term.

Yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I think a lot of that can be defined before A lot of that can be defined as we're working on some of these other elements, right? what's the oversight structure look like? What does the collaboration look like? And have it really be ingrained, continue to be an outside agency with city funding, but also have an element where it's sort of attached to either economic development or planning and zoning where we interact more. But all that's to be defined, right? I think the point is that we need to purpose build an organization to house this program. that really encompasses the Main Street program. It's interesting, I don't know how unique this is, but this is the first time I've seen it where you have this very decentralized sort of business network. Everybody kind of has their own areas where they work within, and everybody collaborates, but I think a successful Main Street program in Annapolis, needs to be more of a unifier and work with these disparate organizations, right? And say, hey, I'm sort of the glue that binds everybody together. So I think that's what, and whatever consultant that ends up getting, you know, coming in and helping us build this organization, we'll recognize that, we'll take an inventory of our current ecosystem and really provide some structure to what this organization should be.

and just i don't know what the organizational structure is for these communities but two downtowns i've always been impressed with when i visited was burlington and um boulder yeah yeah i'll take a look at those i mean we're benchmarking right now so any suggestions would definitely be helpful yeah yeah thank you alderman savage alderman johnson um

I just want to talk about who you contact if you have some ideas for new events.

Well, that would probably be the special events coordinator, just to understand. So that's Felicia Nolan. probably just understand if it's even feasible. I mean, she's gonna be the one that's going to coordinate between the different departments. So police, fire, public works. But if it's a matter of just brainstorming and conceptual, our office is always open for that. We've had meetings with organizations, hey, we wanna do this, we're not sure how, we can help guide them through the process.

because these events are for everyone, right? But I don't, you know what I'm trying to say. I don't see everyone attending, you know what I'm saying? And I'm hearing things about the events in the city. So, if we can maybe invite the event person, and maybe I can bring whoever want to talk about some events to a meeting one day.

To one of our meetings. Sure, however you, I'd also be happy to, to make a connection via email and maybe we can set up a meeting outside of just to kind of understand what some of those concerns or requests might be because we might be able to just meet them at the staff level.

That's true. If we could try add some different events Yeah. Also, so do you do the New Year's Eve event? You're in charge of that?

No, well, I'm not really in charge of any events necessarily. What I suppose I'm trying to convey here is that the, the main street program that was with the downtown so the past fiscal year and prior it was held the main street program designation was held by the downtown annapolis partnership now that's coming in back to our office to manage in the interim while we work with other departments to stabilize the program here internally and provide some of those services the best we can and then long-term create a new organization to take that on so that's a great program the new year's eve event sure yeah it's nice it's really nice absolutely all evening you know yeah yes and it might very well be you know again I don't wanna speak out of turn here because DAP is still a great organization and they have great programs. They do a lot of really great events. So it's one of the situations where obviously we're gonna need to coordinate with them very closely and just as we will with Inter-West Street Association for that first block of West Street and Maryland Avenue and State Circle Business Association for when they do their fall festivals.

But that's good to know. As we get closer to some more meetings and more events I'll be thinking of, I'll be contacting you.

Please, yeah, I'd be happy to coordinate.

Okay, I appreciate it. Get you in front of the right people. I love planning events too. Yeah, good.

Yes. What my colleague was trying to delicately put, but I will put more explicitly, there is a lack of There's a bit of vanilla in our events downtown and a lack of color in them, which is true. It's hard to put on an event and the barrier for entry is pretty high and outside the major festivals.

what's it's something we can look in you know again as a main street program that's something we can look into and see you know again we haven't defined what it looks like yet and i think that's something we should take into account we're definitely going to be engaging with stakeholders and we'll probably hear that feedback and we can incorporate that in the future to ensure that there is there is more diversity right in the programming that's offered yeah i do yeah it's like it's not our event what you mean it's not our events you know So it's yeah, it's your point. It's everyone's event. Anybody can come and yeah, right? Yeah, yeah.

So we have to include a little tweak, do a little tweaking in between some of these events.

Yeah, maybe better outreach and some marketing to ensure that it's, you know, all the right communities are within the city, you know, are getting getting notice, right? Everybody's getting noticed. So yeah, yeah.

Now, before we move on to the next item on the agenda, there is something I want to put on your radar, and I've had a very brief conversation with Director Jakubiak about this as well. The state has now authorized local jurisdictions to offer tax credits to designated main streets and designated arts districts. Yes. I'm very interested in us figuring out a way to do this effectively. We don't just want to do tax breaks and credits for the sake of doing it because that just cuts us out on revenues. But I would love to find some time to meet offline for you to start puzzling out and us to think over the summer to really find a way to encourage what do we want to see, what do our businesses want to see in our designated Main Street area, which again doesn't just include Main Street, it's also Maryland Avenue, InterWest Street, and really try to guide a good community feeling in these areas and offer incentives to get there.

Yeah, and he's informed me on your interest of that. I made sure to familiarize myself with the legislation. There's some caveats in there, but I think to your point, if we're very judicious about how these are applied, we can use it as an attraction tool. So I'd be happy to provide you with sort of an early briefing of what I've looked at so far and how we might be able to apply it, and then we can go from there.

We're early in our term, and we got time to figure it out and get it right.

Okay.

Excellent. Well, thank you. Is there anything else on ID 14826 from my colleagues? Excellent. Thank you very much. Up next is ID 7126, the Maritime Apprenticeship Program Update.

All right. Well, my colleague, Hope, was She was able to provide me with a few bullet points here, and I added them to my report that I sent in. So I'm just going to read these off because she's been the main liaison between the program and the city. Great news that Port Annapolis plans to register another apprentice for the program. So it's getting some traction with our marinas. The Maritime Trades Association of Maryland plans to register an apprentice at Full Keel Marine, which is a diesel service company based out of Burt-Javins in July. So again, these apprentices are getting picked up. There's a little bit of traction there. but and they're waiting for their i guess the next payment of the 50 000 grant for the new fiscal year to be able to get more apprentices in their pipeline so um i think this is a great opportunity and that you know something i'm going to work with hope to be able to log when you know how many apprentices come in where they're going how long they're staying you know we get some real data behind this program to determine its efficacy but um Yeah, we'll keep you updated as more information comes in from Maritime Trades Association of Maryland.

Excellent. So during the early stages of the apprenticeship program getting set up, we, Hope and myself, had a very productive meeting with Dr. Vidal and school board member Tobin to see if we can get some buy-in from Anne Arundel Public Schools, Anne Arundel County Public Schools. They were very interested, and now that we are starting to recruit more apprentices, I would love for us to reach back out to uh aacps and try and get more of them involved if that's possible and um i've also reached out to the uh seafarers union and i admit this is me dropping the ball i have done a bad job at trying to coordinate everybody's schedules and get a tour of their facility and see if they could be a potential partner as well uh i apologize june was a heck of a busy month at the day job, but I'm really glad to hear that we're getting more people signed up for this. Do we have a, is our target still six apprentices during the pilot phase of this program?

That's a good question. I don't have confirmation on that. I'll have to go and confirm that with Hope since she's been really running the interactions between the city and MTAM. But yeah, I'll find out and report back. Alderman Savage.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So is Hope handling the outreach to the various marine industries? Or is that handled by the trades?

That's really handled, yeah, it's handled by Marine Trades. Okay. Yeah, since they already have, from what I understand, a list of interested firms that they're working with. I think the issue is that they're limited on the number of apprentices that they can support at any one time.

Yeah, I think we'll need to know before next year's budget if that money needs to get boosted at all, if they do hit their cap of six and think they're more in the... I guess we encourage them to keep a waiting list so we can determine if it's an adequate amount of funding or not.

Yeah, truly understand the demand. Yeah, and that's something I'll work with Hope on, being able to... to capture as much data as possible so that you can make the most informed decision on that for next year's budget. So, yeah.

I don't have anything at this time.

Excellent. Well, thank you for that update. And last on the agenda is ID 826, General Economic Development Update.

Yep. So this month, and first off, I want to thank all of you for your patience for the past few months. While hope filled in for me, my son was in swimming lessons. So I wanted to ensure that we had a full accounting for this year of the new businesses that have entered Annapolis. I just want to be clear that the permit data that we have, so use and occupancy permits, and I think I've mentioned this before, they capture a number of different scenarios. A new business coming in, which is what we have here, but also when there's a new owner that comes into a business or when a business relocates. So while we may have significantly more use and occupancy permits for the first six months of the year, Well, up until Monday. This is, you know, the 29th is when we're kind of at a weird date, right? It's the first, so I couldn't finish the month off. So the city's seen 16 new businesses open their doors, and this has resulted in 96 new full-time positions and 26 part-time positions, which would total 109 businesses. full-time equivalent positions in assuming that the part-time positions are 20 hours a week so that's significant and that's in just in the fact that this is this is happening organically right we don't have any other than the maritime you know the partnership with mtam we don't really have any formal programs in place other than just supporting these businesses once they land and helping them when they through the permitting process which is hopefully going to change here soon. But I think it was interesting to note that April was the busiest month. You saw the most amount of businesses open and the most number of employees. Two major or two notable businesses, Peter Chang's and Senor's Market, made up a bulk of the new employee count. both having an element, so Peter Chang's being a Chinese cuisine, it's a restaurant, full service restaurant, and Senor's Market being grocery store and that element of quick serve Mexican cuisine as well. Or Latin American, I think they do sort of a mix. So again, services, as we know, service industry is very important for the city. It's still a high-growth area. You saw some retail as well receive their use and occupancy permits. But I think another interesting part here, so I included building permits, so you get an idea of total value of construction that's occurring in Annapolis. But if you look at the past six months, you can see the type, and it's essentially, or most of it's alteration. There's only two new ones, like two new building permits there, and they don't have very high, they don't have very high costs associated with them, which is, it's sort of a double-edged sword. You want to see that amount of money being spent on keeping up the properties that are here, because ultimately that's going to help with the accessible base, right? So you see some major, there's a few major a few major projects, but the issue here is that the major projects are tax exempt for the most part, except one, right? So you have the county courthouse, they upgraded their bathrooms. That was a significant project on Church Circle. 150 South Street, another major renovation, and that is a private taxable entity, office space. But then Maryland Hall, again, a tax exempt partner. So part of our office's mandate is to increase the accessible base. And that's actually our main performance measure. That's the reason why I'm including this. because now we're taking a more active role in helping to identify and spur development, mainly teaming with comprehensive planning. The Office of Comprehensive Planning and our office have been working very closely, especially in the large infill areas that have been identified in the comprehensive plan. So that way, however many months, years from now, where you start to see some real development occur, the pipeline's gonna be pretty built out. So... still within the first six months you saw almost 10 million dollars worth of worth of some construction occur in the city so and that's you know not even counting what's going on the city doc it's like without not infrastructure this is like actual buildings so from building permitting um so a couple of other updates that aren't on here that i wanted to um bring to your attention so we've We started a new initiative to create a brand for economic development. So this goes into our business attraction strategy in order to become a leader in attracting the industries that we're targeting, specifically maritime. as well as environmental technology because that's listed in the comprehensive plan, we need to be able to market to those industries directly and explain why Annapolis is the best place to do business because we're competing with jurisdictions not only in the region but across the country. So we're working with a branding firm out of Franklin, Tennessee named Chandler Thinks. They came up about three weeks ago and had a meeting with our stakeholders which includes Visit Annapolis, and includes the Naval Academy, and it includes Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation, and we also included University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science as a future target industry. So that was an informative meeting. It helped guide this, you know, this is being done in conjunction with the city itself, right? The city's developing a new brand and a new website. we're focusing on one for economic development that's going to be again public externally facing so not necessarily for our residents really to help attract those businesses here so we can market you know market ourselves and attract those businesses here to annapolis outside of the maritime industry what are these other target industries that this rebranding is going for. So maritime specifically, I mean, we're looking at, I can give you verticals, for example. I mean, there are two verticals right now that I think could be, that could be, Annapolis could be very attractive for them and that's leveraging all of our anchor institutions and our strengths like access to the water, one being autonomous naval systems. So think like seaborne drones or even sensor arrays and potentially environmental research. So anytime a vessel needs to get out on the water, you're creating the industrial base that will underpin the recreational boating economy that's so strong here in Annapolis. So those are two verticals right now that we've identified that could be very strong. Environmental research could also be like blue tech, right? So water-based technologies. Again, people need access to marinas to be able to go out, prototype whatever their product is, gather data, come back. They're using small craft to do that. They need some sort of base. They might need 5,000 square feet of warehouse space at a marina to be able to you know, manufacture their product to be able to then sell.

So that still kind of comes back down into maritime slash maritime adjacent. Yes. However, when we did our maritime rezoning, did it cover industries like that is by right essentially, or do they still fall in that gray area and need to do a little finagling negotiations, lawyering up?

Well, the, the, I think this is more of a question I think for my director, but I can say that based on the experience that we had with our most recent maritime addition, I think they would fall within that. Because even if you're servicing an aspect of the maritime economy, it's still creating that need for those jobs, that infrastructure, that supply chain, even if it's not just say, for example, I'm servicing the boats themselves. No, you're providing the demand for those companies that service those boats. And in doing so, employing individuals that will then be working on the water.

So when you said that, you meant they fall in the by-right use after our rezoning reforms, not the we got a lawyer up, do a lot of negotiations?

Well, again, I defer to my director because ultimately he's going to be the one making that decision. But based on precedent that he's done in the past, I would argue that, yes, it should not be an issue. Okay. Yeah, but again, I have to defer to him because he's the decision maker on that.

Okay. I really would love, I'm very happy to hear that this is definitely an industry that we're going after. And before I yield the floor to you, Alderman Savage, and I'll also bounce this idea off you because you're the only member here with Waterfront Ward. I think those types of industries are, if not in the letter of the law, and when we did those reforms, very much in the spirit of what we want to try to attract. I mean, autonomous naval craft, That's waterfront maritime research and environmental research for the health of the bay. I consider that maritime. So if anything gets a hitch, please come to us because I'd love to try and streamline that process.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So the other the other. A bit of news that I wanted to share is that a company that I've been working with for several months now has officially signed a lease. They submitted their use and occupancy permit, and this is, I think, a noteworthy firm because they specialize in artificial intelligence, specifically for environmental engineering. So it's an offshoot of an existing firm at State College, Pennsylvania. They've already had formal partnerships with Penn State, and they're establishing partnerships here in Maryland. They're working with Anne Arundel Community College. I've introduced them to UMCES. That was one of the first meetings that we've had. And I think that they have a very robust pipeline of projects just here in Maryland. So the company's name is BAI Group. The name of the lab is BAI Labs. They'll be employing five people, engineers mostly. And they're going to be providing a number of different services, including AI training for environmental engineering firms, developing models, digital twins for wastewater treatment plants. So this is exciting. They're extremely interested in our market. And in my opinion, I think this might be the first domino to fall. in attracting more environmental engineering firms and environmental technology firms. Having UMCES here as an anchor institution is really going to help us be able to capture that industry vertical more easily.

I'm looking at BAI's website. I'm loving a lot of the battery energy storage and the environmental permitting compliance. That's the things I like, the AI.

Yeah, so that's the parent company, which is this legacy engineering firm, and they're making this big investment into artificial intelligence specifically for environmental engineering, and Annapolis is going to be the home to that lab that they're investing in. Great. Yeah.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair. Unlike the Chair, I like AI, and I'm glad to hear that we'll be improving our capacity there as far as economically. He likes drones, but just not autonomous AI drones.

Oh, I see. Yeah.

But yeah, seriously though, there is quite a bit of use, I think, for AI when it comes to environmental engineering and research. I think they're starting to experiment with it as far as water quality testing and monitoring, as well as the water treatment capacities. And did you say where UMCES is looking to locate

Well, their main administrative headquarters is in Annapolis. Oh, did they move into an Eastport? No, they're on West Street. The building across the street from the Graduate where SecU used to be.

Okay, I don't think I realized that. They have the top, the fourth floor, top floor, yeah. For a little while, I think we were trying to get them into the waterworks. parked to get that building and redo improvements on it. But in any case, so glad to hear your goals for increasing the taxable base. And so on that train of thought, would your office be willing, would you support and help, you know, get some annexations through the finish line as far as, because we do have some business corridor, parts of our business corridors that are still within the county, and some of those property needs, properties need significant improvement and revitalization, and they do have some vacancies in those, and I think getting them, if we could lure them with a bit of a carrot, that might be one thing to, to push, if you're interested in pursuing that, please follow up on the offline chat about some of those things.

Yeah, I think I can, maybe I'll give you an idea or maybe a sort of a briefing of what we've been doing so far. A lot of what we've been doing is identifying opportunities and then finding the right partners, playing matchmaker a lot of times, understanding who are the stakeholders that control certain properties, gauging their interest in redevelopment. And this all goes back to the comprehensive plan. I mean, it's mapped out for us, which is great. We have these large infill sites. There's a lot of blacktop there that can be repurposed into something more valuable. So I'd be happy to talk to you about specifics of what we've been doing and then understanding maybe what some of your goals are and how we can apply that methodology to those goals.

Well, especially as we move forward to potentially building out some of our transit options and getting local designation for transit oriented development corridors, I think there'd be quite a bit of you know need for your office to really assist with those efforts and um but you know if we really grow in that direction we might have to beef up your office staff if you determine you'll need more support to we're planning on playing a role in that we are and to the extent we are right as i mentioned i'm i the person in my office who i talk to to most is eric leszczynski because he and i he and i coordinate

daily on a number of initiatives. And I think it's as it should be because really our arm, economic development, our arm of planning and zoning is like the execution side, right? Comprehensive planning gives us a roadmap and then we act as the agent to ensure that those objectives are met. So, yeah.

Exactly. Good. And I'm glad to really excited to see Ward 7 leading the pack on job growth, especially over Ward 5.

We got more food trucks. It's going to say rising tides raise all boats, right? Isn't that all ships?

But I did notice something. So that was good to see as far as. general in the city not just ward seven but the job growth but the permitting pace is not keeping up uh and so i think that's something mr chair i would love to revisit in the future i know it's already on our minds but just making the permanent process a lot easier because we did here a couple months ago from some recent applicants who did encounter quite a bit of difficulty and i know that it's on the director's mind too but um you know at some point maybe we after the break we figure out how to move that forward a bit more

And I think for me, we have process issues and code issues. And the director has done a great job over the past year ironing out a lot of the internal process issues, but the city is notorious for a lot of the code issues. Part of those we're fixing through our comprehensive rezoning process, but there are parts that I think we should take a look at that aren't in that process that we can start really chipping away at a little bit quicker than that massive comprehensive plan. I got four years of fun ahead of us.

That's absolutely and it's I think in my experience it's one of those situations where when everything goes right you don't really hear it right it's like hey this is great I got my permit but when everything goes wrong you're going to hear about those cases and as as you should because that's you know when I say you I mean the collect everybody right everybody who works within city government we should hear about those cases and we should try to understand where the bottleneck was and how can we improve that but Alderman, to your point, do you think a lot of it comes back to the code and that can create bottlenecks? I work more with the zoning side. I work with the permitting side quite a bit when things get hung up, but I can tell you that a lot of the people I work with try to find creative ways to make projects happen, to interpret it in a way where we can, yeah, this is how we can interpret it and justify it because otherwise, if you don't have that level of creative thinking and you just adhere to a very strict interpretation of what the code says, then you can make things very difficult for a lot of people.

Yeah, and to that end, for your knowledge as well as the committee, because I'm not sure who all was copied on this off the top of my head, but we did hear from a business entity that's taking advantage of the outdoor dining code. But what's interesting is that they're claiming that it has not been as successful as it was basically the preceding years after COVID when we were just, when we didn't really have regulations codified, we were just giving them blanket approval. So my point is, it seems like the code is potentially And some of the arcane requirements in there for outdoor dining sounds like it may be negatively impacting some of the businesses who are trying to continue in that tradition. So if you haven't seen that, I can certainly try to pass along the general, keep their confidence, but pass along some of the general conclusions. But I think that's something that may be coming back to this committee in the next few months as we look at that issue again.

Yeah, there was, I worked with a number, I'm not at liberty to say which because we have to keep competence and we work with our business partners, but yeah, I had a number of applicants who, I think the issue was that this year was a learning year because the process had changed and I don't think that there had been adequate notice of the new even even within city you know inter interdepartmentally within the city and you had you know there wasn't an application ready it had to be drafted um yeah so there was and i'm not i would just interrupt because i just i'm not pointing fingers at the department at all no no no i'm sorry i didn't mean to come off as defensive in any way i'm yeah yeah i'm just relaying that i think I think this year might have been a one-off. I think maybe if we see how it goes next year and a lot of those applicants who are the same as this year go through the process again, I think it might be a lot smoother because it... beginning of the season the outdoor dining season it wasn't really even established so i think now that there's been so it might be more of a systemic like a systemic approach of like how can when these laws do get passed how do they get implemented but that's a question that's not for me to answer because that's well and i think it'll be interesting to see if this pan if this continues on into future years as far as the negative impact yeah but

Anecdotally, I guess I would say, for the time being, it looks like we kind of over-regulated all these restrictions, you know the ban on standing while drinking or eating oh sure the prohibition on like music and dancing which i mean we worked some of that out of the code but the point is you contrast that to where they were when we gave them blanket approval on the resolution without all the red tape without all the regulation now that we have all the red tape it seems like it may be a negative impact to the businesses and so i guess my point is if you do hear Any other, I guess, feedback from businesses who are doing outdoor dining, it'd be good to, if you could pass along as we work on this effort so we can figure out which direction we need to go.

Something I'll follow up with before the beginning of next season. So after this season starts to wind down, especially those businesses I work very closely with, I'll follow up with them, understand, hey, how did it go? How was your, even with all the hiccups, how's your season going? And get some feedback and I'd be happy to share it. Thank you very much.

I'm just listening at this time, but some of my questions were answered.

All right. Well, that is everything on ID 826. That is everything on the stated agenda. Now, sir, you've been in the audience for a while. Do you have anything you'd like to testify on in front of the committee today? Sure. All right. Do you want to mind introducing yourself and name for the record?

My name is Steven Marciniak. I'm a resident with my wife in Ward 2.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all the women. Thank you all the men for having me here today.

And if you wouldn't also mind providing your address just for the record.

1204 Maple Avenue. Annapolis, Maryland, 21401. And Marciniak, did I get that right? That's right.

Excellent. Well, thank you for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. So as it relates to economic development, I've been an entrepreneur for over 14 years now in the policy space. So we help organizations, communities advocate for their causes, contact their alderman, contact their state legislators, their federal legislators. That's a software company I started right out of college at the University of Illinois and have run it ever since. And in fact, my wife and I moved from D.C., so we are located there, to here in Annapolis. It's fantastic because we can still be very connected to the legislature and her job in government and so forth. And so it's been perfect. And we've been here for almost two years now. Since founding the company and all these years later, I've thought about starting another company. and that company would be a distillery, and rather we would have a distilled spirit, whiskey, and this is something that we've been working with a local Maryland distiller on, so not so much the production part of it, but very involved in the process of the R&D development. this is a the the the part of it that is different than any other whiskey that you've ever had before is that it is a half alcohol content so what that means is instead of it being a 40% bourbon which is pretty typical sometimes higher than that this would be a 20% so more akin to maybe a any other liqueur that you may enjoy with a full whiskey flavor to it. In fact, we distill the whiskey down to the 20% and then we build it back up with natural flavors, okay? The reason why I'm here in front of you today is because as my wife and I, who's an attorney, have reviewed the code, it's our understanding that a tasting room would not be allowed in the city of Annapolis. And so I was looking to come here in front of you today to see if there's a way to explore being able to do something of that nature.

Yeah, I've actually had that come up in casual conversations with different folks. Have you looked at where you want to set this up?

That's a great question, preferably on Main Street. It doesn't look like there's too many real estate availabilities at the moment, but that would be where we'd like to locate. And it would be a pretty small establishment too. We're looking for just a few seats at a bar, nothing extravagant to serve our 20% alcohol.

So you'd be doing, I'm sorry, I'm drilling into your business plan here. I feel like Shark Tank, Shark Tank government edition. So you'd be doing your distillation and the tasting room in a main street location?

So currently we're working with a contract distiller. located in Maryland. I believe on that liberty to say it's McClintock Distilling, which is located in Frederick, and they've been doing really big things for the Frederick community. It's my understanding that there's a a kind of a market house uh location that i believe that the city is coming together on to where they're going to offer different food options and then mcclintock is going to be the um the provider of different uh their distilled spirits and so uh it's it's a it's a model uh that i think uh at least from a tasting room perspective generally speaking um the city of frederick has done has done very well with they also have another distillery 10th ward those are both operations that have the distilling in-house we would mainly be working with this contract distiller at least as it stands now or any future plans so if you're not doing the production on site would a typical um

I'm looking at a zoning map of the city right now. Main Street's C2, which is conservation district business, which already has like a bar. as a permitted use, bars and restaurants, how would a tasting room not be covered underneath that? What differentiates your business model from that other use that Reopens up the zoning code like I want to make this work. I'm just trying to figure out like why what we got in the codes not Sure.

Yes, so great question. So there's there's a couple things there number one as As far as the production goes, I think we would still require an m1 license because we would still have some operations as far as the bottling would be done and we'd be bringing it in uh but it sounds like there's have to be food involved with that or something of that nature and so this would only be related to alcohol and and uh and because those food operations would just increase just so many different variables of it and we're looking to keep it as simple as possible

Okay, so it's the food requirements. That's right. So all those bars are technically restaurants.

Yes, that's correct.

With alcohol service. Would your tasting room, I guess what makes it a tasting room and not a bar is you are producing and selling your own product? That's correct. Okay. I mean, I really like this idea and I want to try and make it work. Devil is always in the details. Have you connected with Adam here and tried to? So Adam here is our economic development director and I am a big fan of him because he is a say yes, let's figure it out type of guy. So please get connected with him and we can try and figure out a way forward on this. I can't help you find real estate, but I think we can try to figure out a way to at least make the code work. Do any of my colleagues have questions? Yeah, Alderman Savage.

yeah thanks for taking the time to come talk to us today i i love the idea you know a lot of the towns i go to you know killington um they're smaller towns even on the eastern shore have their own distillery of one kind or another um it is kind of odd that we don't have anything like that and so you know i mean as they say we're a drinking town with a sailing problem i I don't think it's gonna be, I don't see why anybody would object to it. I've always thought the city's law as far as requiring food with booze is kind of an odd thing, but I don't know if it comes from Maryland state law or what, but in any case, rather than digging into it too much here, like the chair said, I encourage you to get with Adam, and Adam, if you could let us know what the exact barrier is so we can figure out if we wanted to try to change it, I think that'd be a good place to start.

Perfect. Yes. Excellent. Thank you so much, Adam. I appreciate that.

Thank you. So for folks at home, because Adam didn't say that into a microphone, is I guess the main issue is we don't have a definition of tasting room. I gave you my card. Let's connect and talk about it. I'm a great chairman. Other than what I'll suggest, do you have any questions?

This sounds really great to have here in Annapolis, but I'm in favor of it be something different, something new. So we can always try new ideas and new businesses. So it sounds great to me. So we're going to do what we have to do, knowing my colleagues over here. So we'll see. We'll keep in touch.

Thank you, other woman. Well, thank you again for waiting this entire meeting to just share your business idea and kind of share what you'd want to do. I think entrepreneurs like you bring a lot of innovation and cool ideas to the city and we'll try to find a path forward for you, man. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Do you have anything else you'd like to share with us? That would be all today. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Do we have anything else for the good of the order today? All right, well, I have one. Now that my day job is hopefully calming down a little bit, I am going to try and wrangle folks either the end of this month or in August for a tour of the Seafarers Union. When I get those dates set, I will let you all know. And that way we can try to get a group with us Our economic development team, Anne Arundel Workforce Development, and the Marine Trades Association of Maryland down toward their school in St. Mary's County. Carpooling would be awesome if we are able to do so. I think this is a really good potential partnership. And, you know, worst case scenario, at least we can go down to St. Mary's County and see where I went to school and maybe stop by my favorite roadhouse bar. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today. Can I get a motion to adjourn? So moved. Can I get a second?

I'll second.

All those in favor of adjournment say aye. Aye.