City Council - workshop

Something I think now in town.

Have the most.

Thank you. Hi there, folks. This is Naomi just testing my audio. Can you hear me?

Here getting settled in so we can go ahead and start. Our work session, and all of us are present, so I think we'll just go ahead and start with our city hall chicken.

Good afternoon, Marion Council. Matt Stewart with Real Estate Security and Housing. Tonight, we're going to discuss the future City Hall development and the highest and best use analysis that you asked us to do when we met back in November of last year. I'm joined tonight by Katie Brooks, our Accounts Development Officer, and in person, I have Garrett Graf Silber and Colin, I'm sorry, Will Quinn with Cone Resnick and H&R Day. And then online, we have Lester Kao, Benjamin Cole, and Noemi Plaza with our other consulting groups. So they'll be chiming in if there's any questions that come up. So just be on the lookout for them chiming in as well. Purpose of tonight is really to review the findings of the highest and best use analysis, kind of narrow down the list of properties we'd like to evaluate as a feature city hall site, and then identify kind of next steps. So we've sort of proposed kind of a five-year work plan, and we'd like to work through those steps and kind of get direction from council tonight to what to proceed. So I'll give a brief history and background of our facilities to date and where we work with the process. I'll talk about the space needs and how we sort of set the parameters for how we wanted to model this. I'll hand it over to Katie to kind of walk through some of our economic prosperity goals and the takeaways that we're hoping to achieve with this process. And then I'll hand it over to Garrett to talk through the highest and best use analysis. And then staff will bring it back to kind of overlay our recommendation and walk through those next steps before handing it over for some future discussion. I'll pause at kind of each rate for each of these. So if there's discussion related or questions related to what we just reviewed, we can take it a few minutes to kind of walk through that. So as part of our history and background, So the building we're in today was constructed in 1990. At the time, we had just over 25,000 people. I'm sorry, the building's just over 25,000. Our population was just under 30,000. Over the years, we've acquired the rest of the buildings on the block, except for the dry cleaner at the very corner. So those buildings have all totaled about 18,000 feet as part of our annexes here on this block. We've also been leasing the building across the street, the Wall Street annex, since 2014. That's about 15,000 square feet. So in total, our assets here downtown that we use as part of our operational administration role is just about 60,000 feet. Usable for office space is about 50,000. So that's where we're at today. Kyle Bruursema, MnDOT Consultant, Kind of pre-COVID, about 10 years ago, we started doing a lot of our space programming, so that included both our public works, our city hall, and our police. Kyle Bruursema, MnDOT Consultant, So in 2015 we updated our downtown program report for city hall. At the time we had 185 employees and we looked at what a build out of a new facility would look like in 2050. Kyle Bruursema, MnDOT Consultant, At that time, it recommended evaluating something around the 85,000 square feet mark. A few years later, based on us relocating transportation, our other public works, from utility department to public works campus, we did a master plan for PD, which looked at them expanding into 15th Street and the transportation building there as well. And that looked at a build out for 2040. And at the time, we had about 135 officers on staff. In 2020, 2021, we began the city hall search site for this location. This was at the direction of council and we went ahead and moved forward with a proposal for advisory services with Cushman and Wakefield. We evaluated a variety of sites in around Bend that was based on that 2015 program report. We really sort of narrowed it down and focused on the core area and then central district. As part of that, what came out of that is focusing on the properties in and around the, former Rainbow Motel there on Franklin Greeley, 1st, 2nd Street was sort of the focus. And it also kind of evaluated what a joint venture of P3 would look like. So introducing that kind of topic as part of our development scheme. In 24 and 25, we completed acquisition based on those recommendations. So to date, we've acquired about 3.2 acres on two pieces of property, two acres continuous around the former Rainbow Motel, which is now the Franklin Shelter that we currently are in partnership with. And then we have a one, roughly one acre, 1.2 acre site that is the former gas depot there on First Street and Hawthorne. At the same time, in that timeframe, we went ahead and updated our program report to kind of adjust because with COVID, we started experiencing different growth than we'd originally anticipated on that 2015 report. That looked like a build out for 2016. And at that time, it was recommending a much larger facility at 134,000 square feet. as we met with council we moved forward with brianna and the consultant team to kind of evaluate how do we move forward with potentially building that city hall and what that would cost in november we came with you with those kind of results what kind of came out of that was the very the cost which was a little bit out of our range to go ahead and move forward with 134 000 square foot site based on council's direction we really we asked to kind of expand our evaluation of properties and look at what we owned in general here within the city limits that included downtown The properties we own in the Benton Central District and at 15th Street. And as part of that, Council asked that we sort of evaluate all those properties around this highest best use analysis. So looking at what the opportunity cost is, development potential of each site, and then what is the public benefit that each site could offer with or without a city hall in it. We also asked us to kind of look at what the impact would be if development occurred beyond our limits here in downtown. So we also looked at the downtown extended version, which looks at kind of the surface parking lots in and around here. So the service parking lot with schools, as well as kind of Troy Field and the service parking lot there. So what could happen in downtown if those properties were also able to redevelop and what would kind of that impact be? And so I showed this graph last November, but this kind of tracks where we're at in terms of our space and our employee population. It assumes a 2% growth. I can say right now, like, as we go in these next few years, that might be down a little bit, but using that kind of metric of a 2% growth, the key thing that we're looking at is wanting to secure a building sometime around 2038 to 2040. We definitely need a new space that is about 85,000 square feet in size. So that is kind of where we focus this highest and best use analysis and study is we use that as our kind of barometer for where we needed to reach and study and analyze and what would actually be built in 10 plus years. That will narrow Katie. Okay, any question on history?

Sorry the background just to say if I could so. Just trying to get a sense of like, this building is built in 1990. yes. 25,700 square feet population is under 30,000 people. That's 856 square feet per 1000 population. If 85,000 in 2040, we're looking at 145,000 people or something like that? Yeah, about that. The ratio, that building is actually a smaller building than this one per capita. Correct.

Okay. The general rule of thumb is six to seven employees for every 100 or 1,000 people per capita. um so that's kind of how we base how the program reports based and then we look at square footage is how much space do i and every staffer can occupy we want to be somewhere between 275 square feet to 300 square feet for an individual person and just to make the point we did not have the public works campus separate right back in the 90s now we have that separate space so this is going to be not for every employee of the city right i should highlight pd was here uh back in 1990 so we had a lot of other users in this yeah he was here Thank you.

I was going to ask kind of a related question. Um, so engineering was here too, and now they're out of the public works campus and water services had space across the street and now they're out of public works. So it will be helpful for me to see, I've asked for a facility plan, like kind of a long range facility plan for all. You know of the departments. I didn't see that as part of this, but it would be nice to see like what staff are out of public works. How is that going to accommodate growth? What staff are anticipated for City Hall? And that you know that I have questions and disagreements with how the space planning report with the future City Hall.

When we get to the next step, you'll see that's part of our recommendation is doing that again and updating that. I will say a few things. as we moved to Public Works campus, they gave us an opportunity to reevaluate our sites down here as well and reshuffle. And I think it's part of that process because we actually have adequate space among our existing campus today to facilitate a generous amount of growth, which is why we're saying, I don't need anything in the next five years. We're probably really looking at more 10. So we can accommodate a decent amount of growth in the next few years just because we've been able to open up the space here and kind of spread people out. I will say that doesn't solve this round. Correct. Doesn't solve this round. And again, I think that's a consideration. But also remember, we've moved from kind of a hybrid office to a full time. And this is now I think this last six months is the first time we've had everybody. in an office with her own desk, not hoteling. And that's that's been a big change for us operationally. And then we still have room that we can grow into. So I think you're on the right. Yeah, I'm not. Yes, I think we need to look at it again because the models have changed and our trajectory has changed.

I mean, I kind of want to look at it from both like the space needs, but also the cost, because there's like we've we've we've got now this public works campus and we've got the debt service that we're paying on that. we're going to have debt service on a city hall, police facility, they're going to grow out of that. If they haven't already, I've heard they have. So it would be nice to see the full financial picture, even if they're looking 30 to 50 years into the future, because decisions we make today are going to really impact that. Decisions made about the public works campus are limiting what we can do right now. So I just want to make sure that we're really kind of thinking about that in the big

Yeah, is it all right? I think we'll get the next steps. I think I'll tap into that, and then I think we can talk about it more when I get through this. I think we're on the same wavelength a little bit.

Caroline Miller, provide some context and how this intersects with our economic prosperity your economic prosperity goal. Caroline Miller, We thought we just take a couple of minutes to really talk about the bigger picture of how we're using city properties, how do we get the highest best use out of the city properties separate from just asking where's the best place and how do we pay for city. Caroline Miller, call so a few takeaways is. includes ensuring that the city is leveraging city-owned properties located within urban areas to achieve council goals of creating great places to gather, to live, to work. We know this is one of our major pieces of work as we move forward with our economic development strategies. Identifying a future location for City Hall administrative facility that is accessible and a benefit to the community and that also means a city council facility that's accessible and a benefit to the community those may be the same thing they may be separate integrate the learnings and the results of the analysis into the development and prosper property disposition strategies for downtown the central district for 15th street and how do we look at these more holistically as assets that generate revenue, that generate place, that generate jobs and places to live. So there are lots of moving pieces outside and within this study that really will affect one another. We thought we'd call some of these out. With the highest and best use analysis, we also are going through a Bend Central District transportation and block study right now that's taking a look at the long-term effects of putting Hawthorne Overcrossing in, how do we get north-south as well as east-west movement for bikes, pedestrians, vehicles, and delivery vehicles as well. We're also looking at a potential public assembly venue. We presented that a few months ago. The next steps for that are coming at a later date, but it's still out there. It's still one of those questions that fits into this puzzle. We're conducting a retail study that you folks asked us to do several months ago that starts with the urban renewal areas, but really is citywide that will tell us a lot about where the best places to site retail is, and what the dynamics are around whether or not they're successful and how they enhance the community around them. Then the Bend Central District in downtown vision and identity development, that's something we'll be working with CAB on for the urban renewal area, and also downtown in the future. what are the themes what is the long-term plan as far as not just what types of development will go in there what kinds of spaces do we want to encourage how do we create connectivity with the new hawthorne river crossing and a master plan eventually for the bend central district property disposition strategy that will accumulate all of this information and bring it to bear on all right what are we going to do with our properties and how do we use them best to leverage the goals that we're looking for and then public private investment and vertical development we know we're driving in that direction when we do the property disposition we'll know which ones we want to hold on to potentially for city hall we already have a good idea of which ones are pivotal for example in event central district and how do we spur economic development and actual vertical development by leveraging that asset So that gives you a little bit of context of all the other things that are swimming around this highest and best use study that's going to inform the decisions that you folks will make in the near and midterm.

All right, any questions on this? Andrew with Garrett. All right. Thanks, Matt. Hi, everyone. Again, my name is Garrett Rapsilver with HR&A Advisors. And our firm was tasked with leading the highest and best use analysis. And I think as you heard previously, the highest and best use analysis came about as a means to look holistically at each of the three sites, four scenarios that there's both the core footprint in downtown as well as that downtown extended and really exploring the development income potential for each and ultimately helping to provide information for you all about what strategies or paths forward can help optimize the monetization of city-owned sites Again, as revenue that could be helpful to fund new future public facilities while also advancing the city's broader economic and civic goals. And so the only thing I wanted to point out on this slide here, we've already covered them. I just wanted to point out here just the range of acreage. of each of the sites which will come into play as we go about discussing our results again the the smallest site here that we were evaluating is the current footprint in downtown about 1.8 acres franklin about 3.2 and then you'll see the downtown extended in 15th or much larger about 7 and 10 acres respectively And so for the highest and best use analysis, we really had three questions that we were seeking to answer. So first, we wanted to understand what realistically could be developed at each of the sites. So if the site had City Hall there or if it did not have City Hall there, what else could go at the site that would be developed by a private third party? um then we also asked ourselves then what was that what would be the potential um financial and economic impacts of that development and then finally we asked what does the city forego by using a portion of one of those sites for a city hall or administrative facility And to answer those three questions, we followed the six step process that you see below. We began by first developing a realistic vision of what a development capacity and program could look at each site with and without the inclusion of City Hall. We then used a cash flow financial model to understand the feasibility of each of those development scenarios, to understand whether or not those developments could happen today, or if there's some timing mismatch issues given current real estate economic conditions. And then from there, we evaluated each of these ancillary developments across three different parameters. We looked at their ability to generate financial and fiscal value to the city, ability to advance economic development within the city, and then an ability to align with city's priorities across several goals, whether it be housing, land use, diversity or increasing connectivity across the city. So we'll walk through those first five and then we will present with you a summarized set of results across each of those three evaluation criteria and ultimately provide you with some thoughts for consideration in presenting from our highest and best use perspective on what that analysis suggests should be the recommended site for City Hall's location. And so now I'll walk you through each of those components. And so first I'll start with just the ancillary development process. How did we come about what would be a development program potentially at each of these sites? And so there's really four main inputs to that process. We considered the site area and its existing conditions. So the amount of acreage you have, the zoning, your density, your height limits, setback requirements. Importantly, we took into consideration where the current real estate market is. So we looked at real estate trends when it comes to rents and construction costs. We looked at precedent projects that have been built recently in Bend. And very valuably, we also had an opportunity to have several broker conversations with people that are intimately familiar with Bend. And then finally, we had the consideration of the City Hall's own requirements. So that 85,000 square feet, as well as parking that would be needed for that facility. So about 300 parking spaces in any scenario. And so when we tested the financial feasibility through this cash flow analysis, some things became immediately apparent. So first was that 15th Street was feasible. And so this development, the ancillary development for that was different than the Downtown and Franklin site. Downtown and Franklin the ancillary development, mostly apartment and mixed use. 15th is retail and townhome development. So slightly lower density reflecting the characteristic of 15th Street. And so what that means is essentially that today the city could go out and find a development partner for this development and through land disposition or ground lease, have revenues that could immediately help fund a portion of City Hall or other city priorities. Downtown and Franklin, on the other hand, are not feasible today. And so the cash flows were negative and is really a reflection of the challenging real estate environment, particularly with high construction costs and interest rates. Just to put that a little bit in perspective, since 2020, rents across the city on average have increased about 16 percent whereas construction costs have increased uh 36 percent and so we're in this in a period of uh disequilibrium But we also realized that the investment in City Hall is a long-term investment and not something that is likely to happen immediately today, as Matt had mentioned. And so we conducted some sensitivity tests. So we looked at rent appreciation. We looked at changes in interest rates. what those changes, how that could change the development environment moving forward. And so ultimately what we found is that by the mid 2030s, call it eight to 10 years, that all of the sites produced positive cash flows. meaning that all the sites have development potential and possibility, at least in this medium-longer term time horizon. You can see on the table to the right, there are some large values, ranges, and what this really is, is this is the raw land value that came out of our our financial modeling so this is without consideration of you know improvements that might drive a purchase price higher what a developer would likely pay for the raw land either through land disposition or ground lease so these represent values theoretically that a developer might pay the city to develop an ancillary development and the ranges are pretty large here and really represents, you know, 10 years out, there's a lot of uncertainty and that slight movements in rents and interest rates can drastically change the development conditions.

You just clarify that. So ancillary development, we're looking at housing, retail,

and hotel we're not talking about like office space yeah we're not talking about office space so when we went and developed these um ancillary developments um so part of it was looking at the market conditions and um In talking, especially as also talking to brokers, apartment and hotel was what there's most demand for. And so to give you a perspective, it's like downtown extended. So the additional parcels, we modeled about 900 apartment units and about like a 300 unit hotel. You have less at Franklin, just given a smaller size. And then each of those has about 10,000 square feet of more like ground floor retail. And then for the townhomes, there's about 400 townhomes at 15th Street. And again, the goal here was not to create exactly what will happen in the future here, but it was to present realistic development frameworks. that could allow comparison across the sites. And so what I would say is that ultimately when we get to the summary matrix, I think most important here is the relative difference in comparison between them. Yeah. And so I'll quickly go through the next few slides. Economic development potential. I just wanted to give you a little bit additional information about what we looked at. What did that mean? And so we looked at both the ability for the sites and the development that could happen there to stimulate new business activity. Again, primarily through new residents spending at existing businesses. And then we also looked at the real estate potential. And so the ability for these sites to catalyze additional development around them on underutilized parcels. And so the way that we defined it for this analysis was site was underutilized if the improved value was 50% or less than the land value. And finally, we also looked at a series of city goals, which you can see here, there were five of them. This came through looking at various city plans as well, conversations with city staff, and really focused on the ability for each of the sites to deliver housing, importantly, ability to deliver affordable housing, um to diversify land uses um increased connectivity through the built form also connection to transit and also also this concept of future centrality as the city centroid of development really shifts eastward as development heads there and so wanted to take into consideration the accessibility of city hall to the majority of bend residents and so um So we compared each of the sites across each of those three evaluation criteria. And here's a summary table. And we applied a high, medium, low scoring to each of these. And so I'll go through each of them one by one. So first, starting with the with a loss of financial gain or the opportunity cost. And so essentially what this measured was the disposition value that the city could either sell or ground lease these sites for with and without city hall. And so if you build city hall, there's obviously less land for a private developer to come in and build upon and also subsequently less revenue in property taxes. And so here low is good. Downtown and Franklin are high here primarily because of just the size of the sites. And so as you saw at the beginning, those sites are quite small. And so by placing City Hall at these locations, you lose about half of the revenue generating potential at those sites. And then downtown extended 15th larger sites with and without City Hall. there's a minor impact in revenue generation. On the economic development and growth potential, so this again is the ability for the sites to encourage that economic activity. Downtown scored highest really because of the presence of all of the wonderful businesses here in downtown Bend as well in the Mill District. And the ability is particularly in the Mill District of some redevelopment infill potential. Franklin was medium here. There's a lot of redevelopment potential, probably the highest of all of the sites, but there's fewer existing businesses right in the core, directly next to the site. And then 15th, beyond the site itself, there's not as many more opportunities for infill. then finally just in terms of public benefit contribution downtown and franklin really scored high across the board for those three five different categories um the downtown The downtown current footprint was medium, really reflecting the smaller size, its lower ability to build housing there, as well as its lack of centrality. And then 15th Street, again, medium, mostly because of its ability, lower ability to produce affordable housing. There's a possibility, but just generally private for sale townhomes are less likely to produce affordable housing than, say, an apartment project. And then wrapping up for the last two slides here, we wanted to just provide some other considerations just beyond that summary matrix and so really around timing and complexity. And so in terms of timing, again, 15th Street, there's immediately, there's actionable potential there for the city to seek out a development partner. Other sites are going to take a little bit longer until the real estate market improves. And again, the city could accelerate development timeline at Franklin or downtown through some form of subsidy, but that again will come at the expense of future revenues. And then on a complexity note, 15th Street is the most straightforward here. And really on a spectrum, the downtown extended with the need to negotiate with other jurisdictions obviously is the most complicated. And so ultimately, if we go to the last slide, No worries.

Listening.

Yeah, no. Ultimately, if we go to the last slide. So where the highest and best use ended up for the preferred option was 15th Street for really all of the reasons stated above. There's in particular the lowest having that really low opportunity cost that doesn't forego the revenue generating potential at both the downtown and Franklin sites to help fund future public facilities.

Great. So We're going to get into staff recommendation next, right, Matt? Yeah. Okay. So that was from the report what the recommendation was, and then we have some staff ideas on next steps. Yes.

And so recognizing the findings from the report staff is requesting and recommending that we kind of narrow down the list of possible sites for city hall. Our recommendation is to exclude downtown and downtown extended from the conversation of city hall and focus on 15th street as well as the property in the more particularly the 1 along 1st street. So the 1 acre along 1st street. And that's mostly because we're not in any rush to make any decisions today. So we can keep our options open as we go through the next steps. And then really in five years, that is when we can kind of reevaluate and actually come with these two options, say, okay, which one is best and make the decision then in order for us to make kind of the 2038 timeline for a new development. We're ready to kind of dive into the next steps. So really, the first thing we want to do is, as I highlight in the graph, and we talked about before in November, our lease across the street that we're currently seeing, that expires in June 2029. Knowing that we are not in need of a new city hall facility for 10 plus years, I'd like to pursue securing that for much longer than 2029. And that could look like the form of us pursuing a purchase or asking for a lease extension. um kind of touching into we've done some work and we'd like to continue work evaluating how do we use our existing facilities so valuing some remodel options we're currently working through some safety and security exercises and the results of that could sort of push us towards wanting to look at council chambers in a different light so we'd like to look at how do we could be more efficient with the spaces we have perhaps even look at expanding the council chamber to accommodate additional people during our public hearings And then the final question, and if you have a question, Katie could probably help with this, but I think we want to take the two acres there at Franklin where the Franklin shelter is and sort of ask Borough if they have the capacity and the ability to fund this to go ahead and start initiating that visioning. What do we want to see there? What should that look like? What are ultimately the uses we desire there? What kind of elements do we want to develop and work through that process here in the near term? And then we can kind of discuss how do we move to that next step from there? So that's sort of helping. with the desire of the BCD and us moving forward with the central area, sort of putting our foot down and saying, we're not gonna hold up any further discussions of what we're doing here because of City Hall. We're gonna move forward with a visioning exercise for what we would like to see there and then come back and then we can discuss at a future meeting, how do we go about disposing that? How do we go about establishing a request for proposal or a request for qualifications and identify a development partner that can be a part of that? And kind of the midterm, so this is really the next biennium budget. We would like to update our space programming. That's really looking at both PD and City Hall primarily, but we can expand it to our other departments as well. But that's really going to look at how do we efficiently use our spaces so we can both evaluate City Hall and administrative functions along with PD, Muni Court at 15th Street and see how much kind of efficiency of space we can incorporate there through a new facility. And then obviously we'd look at it between both PD expanding at 15th and City Hall going at the piece on First Street. And then from there, we would sort of do a similar sort of visioning exercise here with the downtown facilities. So putting together a group to sort of imagine what is it we'd like to see if when we leave, sorry, when we move out of downtown to one of those other locations, what is it we'd like to see this project develop as? And then we would be in coordination with our growth management team as they're working through the comp plan. We'd want to evaluate 15th Street Potentially changing the comp plan designation to something more dense and intense today. It's. Public facilities and our zone, so the lowest residential zone, we probably want to evaluate that and also look at us from a climate friendly area. This could be a potential area that we would want to extend for 1 of those rules too. So we would work with them to sort of identify the site and then look to sort of master planning, developing that out. and then lastly and this can happen doesn't have time then it could happen sooner but reviewing those concepts and figuring out a disposition strategy for the franklin piece of property with bura and then long term wise in the next kind of five years reevaluating our financial and development performance uh doing an exercise like in the back of the executive summary which is called value for money that really looks at the various delivery methods that we can partner and pursue a P3 partnership and how we develop City Hall. And then we'd look at how do we sort of take those master plan findings and create a disposition strategy or a development partnership opportunity for the 8 to 10 acres we'd have at 15th Street that we'd possibly bring to market. And then, of course, really by 2032 is when we'd kind of, if we were to make the 2038 deadline, that is sort of the last chance where I need to sort of make the final decision on where we're going and kick off the City Hall process. So, from there are kind of as tonight is now the directive or council support of stats recommendation to sort of shift our focus where city hall goes to just the 1st street property in the and 15th street. And then are you support of our next steps? Crucially the ones we want to do in the near term here in the next few months.

Okay, thanks, Matt. So council now is a good time to have a discussion on your reactions to this report and information and what you think about the recommendation to focus particularly the city hall development in those 2. Areas and noting this staff also has those next step recommendations that we can look at as well, but. Who would like to start.

question yeah go ahead just to on that last week the recommendation for 15th street the in the summary findings it says 15th street has no financial opportunity cost but that's because we're only looking at public potential uses right

So 15th Street, we kind of divided in half. So they were focusing on the lower half, the half, the northern half. So in and around where the fire station is, police, and then where the transportation building is, that's probably always going to be some form of public facility. And that's probably the area we would look at redeveloping in and around the former transportation building and the adjacent lot next to it that was used as staging and storage for our vehicles, for our fleet vehicles and our street vehicles. That's probably the area we would focus on as a city hall. And that eight to 10 acres on the south side, that's where we're really talking about the ancillary development that he was going into that could be markets. So they don't negatively affect one another because we have enough land there to address all of those.

So assuming we set aside something to address fleet needs, future needs, why wouldn't we also consider the potential scenario of surplusing that land and doing something else with it? Completely.

Yeah, we could. I mean, I think... As we grow, I would always be remiss if I wasn't advocating for keeping assets in place. I mean, we're continuing to use that facility now just from a streets operational standpoint because it is the center of town. And it's easy for when we have to do work on the south end of town that we can have a gravel pit there. So when they're coming around laying down any of the cinder when we're doing snow that they don't have to drive all the way to public works campus to refill a truck so i think we'll always kind of have we'll always want a presence there i don't think we want to give that up completely i think it's just the scale of what then we want to redevelop is would be the discussion yeah

Steve matter, Katie, if you're a if you're a central district business owner and sort of this visioning exercise for us right here, when do you think you'll have some some clarity on on disposition of the two acres?

I think that starts. We're actually going to be starting a dramatic development of what we want to happen in the BCD this year and next year. it morphs into just a master plan that that dovetails with this effort so by this time next year we should have a pretty good idea of what the potential is of the site what the master plan is and be well into the disposition strategy and and next steps and start to look at who would be a partner what kind of development do we want so the way I look at this it finally gives us a chance to move forward on making something happen at that property I've just said that there is a use on it right now that's extremely important to this community there are families that live in that shelter and we're not ignoring that at all we're we're looking for and actively working on how do we make sure we take care of those folks not just for the space but the services and look at that property as an asset that it is in spurring other development in the central district. So this gives us permission to move forward on it because the city hall isn't going to happen for a number of years. With this decision, we can move forward.

Thank you for explaining that.

Thank you.

Have we thought of inviting the core area advisory board to be a part of this Franklin Yes, absolutely. Yeah, because I don't see that here, but to me, that's like a really key part of this. Yes, absolutely.

I think my intent is Borough gives the Corps Airborne the direct writing, so that's great. And I think we should introduce the topic at their meeting next week. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I support the 1st question, but I think we need to keep 1st street on the table as part of the and I know that's essentially what you're proposing. I'm just trying to emphasize that as part of the discussion for the location for city hall. I think the final decision about location is to be made. But I do think it's important for us to consider for street because it still could have some real benefit as an anchor tenants and our anchor presence. I guess a tenant in the central district and really support that. The overall redevelopment and potential for that area.

okay i agree mike i'm really interested in the first street i think there's yeah there's a lot that could happen there with it just i think it's hawthorne bridge is that completed we see that direction yeah i think that area and what the value of that property could also change and we may we want to keep that door open for how we want to incorporate the use from that site to the bridge itself and how is that just bigger fit in the area sure okay counselor um

I have a couple of different questions. First though, a comment. So we've not received, some of us have requested, but we haven't received the full ICE and Best Use report. So I just want to say, I don't feel comfortable giving direction on either of these two questions tonight until that report is circulated and the community gets to see it and we get to see it. And then we get to kind of get some feedback from the community. Makaela Niles- also kind of concerned about making decisions and giving directions in a work session because we're not supposed to be doing that. Makaela Niles- In our Council rules. So, but with that said, I'm happy to be having this discussion. Makaela Niles- So two questions. There wasn't really any discussion about what moving City Hall would do to the existing downtown businesses. And I'm really concerned that, you know, moving a couple hundred employees out of this area where they have all these services that they use every day. I mean, I see y'all walking on the streets every day. Um, so I'm really, really concerned about that. And then when I think about 15th street, it's like, geez, if we move this facility to 15th street, there's nothing there, you know? So that's really doesn't comport with our goals of, you know, trying to improve walkability and bikeability. Um, so I'm curious if you thought about that and then and then 2nd question, why. Did you look at the 1st street property in the central district and not the Franklin property? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what this like, this is 1st street, but it doesn't it doesn't mention the Franklin. Is it is that just not on this?

It's what we identify for city hall. So don't put city hall where the rainbow Franklin shelter is on that 2 acre block. Look at it. Allow that to be vision and potentially redeveloped and then consider a city hall on the 1st street portion that we on the 1 acre side. That's what we're proposing. It's just. Set aside that and there's a few reasons why 1, the construction makes, and we're also decommissioning the site this summer. So we still have findings around the environmental we have to discuss. So. I would say we don't need to make a commitment on that site either right now today, but we should hold it and consider it for the longer term of what the use is. That was why the Franklin was more like push that out to the market and the cab or advisory board, let them discuss what can go on that two acres. And they may want to expand that visioning effort to be the whole block and kind of focus that way.

About downtown.

impact on downtown by moving city hall uh if you want to try me you can't do but i i think the first thing is was looking at what then would replace us the factor is so if we leave and we move 250 employees out but we bring in 250 units of apartments or we add more retail or we add a hotel is that enough i don't know if you guys actually looked at what that difference is between us as office and i think that i think um that provides a little more 24 7 activity than we necessarily do So I would argue a little bit that if we are able to replace it successfully, and I think that really goes into when we go to the next step of visioning for the site, what is it? I think we should take that into account as what is our current economic impact and then making sure whatever goes here is either generating a greater one or at least replacing it, if not adding that value.

um yeah i mean we we didn't look into that but i would say at least from other like fiscal analyses that we've you know done for other communities where we've we've actually looked at that um is that generally residents tend to spend more money than employees a lot of times people will bring their own lunch to work um and and and so you Generally, you're more likely to spend spend money if you're a resident living. And so it should on that be positive from the substitution between the two. I just don't have the actual like number for.

Back porch coffee would not survive.

By keeping the first street on the table. Yes, there is a direct connectivity to the Hawthorne pedestrian over crossing and it becomes one. ecosystem that's finally joined.

Just to say my view of taking all this, and I really do want to see the full report, but if you want to narrow down the options so that we don't have too many options that we're evaluating, what makes sense to me actually is keeping downtown and BCD on the table, not 15th Street. I just have a hard time, from an urban planning perspective, I have a hard time kind of putting a building that really brings a lot of like, serves a lot of public needs in what is mostly a residential neighborhood. I feel more comfortable putting that in a commercial area, an existing commercial area. And so that's kind of why, I mean, as someone who comes to this building regularly, not as a city councilor, but like for work and things like that, like I just don't see that as an ideal scenario.

i give some feedback as our east side denison um i think i think that would be um i'm going to say i really want to keep first street on the table and i'm really still committed to really thinking about city hall and the bcd but i'm also really excited about getting franklin going on that corner going faster and getting some redevelopment there um 15th street i think has a lot of potential and actually if you look at that area you are right next to a school you are right next to a corridor of commercial that goes all the way down to where we have some of the densest housing in our city. You have access to grocery stores and all the things down that corridor. You are right next to the Larkspur Trail. There's parks around that area, and it is near the areas that we were looking at for CFEC. So I don't agree that there's no walkability and bikeability there. There very much is. I live there and bike there, do those things. So I think, and in the financial analysis, makes sense why that has the least potential and also sort of the most potential because it's 10 acres and as ariel was alluding to like there's a what can we do there what could go there there's a lot of potential that could even if we have a city hall there could still be more things um including creating a commercial hub on the east side which is what people are asking for us to do um so that's a lot of potential i see there though as i'm saying i really want to hold on to first street as well So I'm supportive of the recommendation at this point, and we can get into the next steps on what we think about those. But, Ariel, you had your hand up as well.

Yeah, so I think this is really hard because there's so many cross-cutting issues. If I had to let go of one in order to narrow it down, I think I actually... I mean, I feel like I still want to sit with this. It's really hard to have these conversations and absorb everybody's input and then give direction PB, John Gerstle:" In the work session, I would say i'm really sympathetic to saying I would still want to prioritize Franklin and downtown either, and especially actually in the extended form and my my reasoning for that is, I think this, the idea of future centrality is maybe. Well, there wasn't a whole lot of discussion of it, but hearing you discuss it today, it sounds like it was sort of a geographic concept. And I think that that's in my view, I think that's a little bit misconstrued because there's a risk of saying, well, if we make it sort of geographically central, it's sort of, it, it potentially could be either equally convenient or equally inconvenient. And in my mind, we know downtown has a lot of activity. It, it, I don't know what the analysis is about who has barriers for getting downtown. That wasn't part of this. But I think of centrality as more than just geographic. And so there's lots of other factors that go into that. As far as the 15th Street location goes, I mean, I feel like I want to look at the opportunity cost in terms of something not public. And that wasn't part of this. John Potter, Because I agree that hearing from some of the residents in that neighborhood I don't know that this would be something that they would be super excited about. John Potter, So it's lots of yeah conflicting tensions here that I like the highest potential for things like housing and I mean extended downtown really hard to contemplate because it's so so big and so different and yeah very complex but. I mean, I don't know. So I don't know. I feel like I can't give really clear direction right now yet.

And I'm just going to clarify, our rules allow us to give direction to staff during work sessions. But I hope that doesn't hold anybody up. Mike and then Steve.

I think my trying to look at this with the burra hat and the cab hat and sort of how all these things interact and even You know, from the stuff that comes up is related to the houselessness and the plan for that. I think if basically what we're saying is that it's 10 to 12 years before we're making a real decision and being able to say, go forward on a city hall. Right? We have time to make a final. Location decision, but what's important to me is if we're not doing that quickly and we have, I think so far made a commitment, we're going to do that in the central district that we're essentially pivoting to what what is the other catalytic thing we're doing in the central district. And I think it's the Franklin property that we need to focus on and we need to do that in an assertive timeframe that really gets this thing rolling and doesn't take. You know, 3 to 5 years. I mean, I really like to see us making a commitment. that the construction of a project is going to begin down there within three years. And how do we get there and work backwards from that goal and really being assertive about that on the Franklin property, right? And keeping First Street to be considered for a future city hall. I hear what you're saying about different concerns about downtown and versus 15th. I also think downtown is very thriving and if we can come up with a good plan that replaces the existing um inputs that come from all the staff and the other people that come to city hall with other attractors and other activity in a particular housing um that that should be a pretty good substitute what's what's here already so i really think that that pivot is important and i think i mean whether it's tonight or very soon we give that direction like we want this to start um within three years or no later than the first quarter of two thousand and thirty, which is still a ways out. I think that everything that comes up for me is the two related pieces that have already been talked about a little bit. But one is that the infrastructure plan for that central part of the district. I don't see that in your next steps explicitly, and I think that needs to be in there that we're going to work our way through that. And we're going to come up with not only the plan, but also a clear implementation schedule on and prioritization. This is the 1st thing we're going to do 2nd thing. And here's the schedule and that's the roads right for that core area really early discussion. But it's in my mind at a minimum also the crossing of 2nd street across Greenwood so that we're connecting the whole. I think that needs to be in that infrastructure plan. So I'd like to see that padded into the near term. list of things. And then we need to really work on this plan for houselessness, right? Katie already alluded to, it's really important community priority. Where are we going to house these folks? Shelters are not going away. We also know it's going to be really difficult to do all this stuff together at the same time, and we need to meet those needs. But what is the kind of phase two of our houselessness work? And I know there is an emerging plan for that, that we're going to hear more about as a council next month. So for people that are here tonight, we're going to be talking more about that. And I think we should line up the goal for moving that shelter to its new location to that three-year timeline for getting a project out of the ground at the Franklin property. Those things should be working in parallel.

So downtown extended with City Mall has 950 units of housing under the ancillary program. So if you really cared about housing,

wouldn't you want downtown extended to be i think that i love the downtown extended project idea i just it's so complicated and i'm i'm just not sure how effectively our school district's going to be able to engage on the project in the short term i mean maybe they are and that's something that needs to be explored somewhere i mean how how much capacity do they have to really talk about it it's pretty complicated i love the heritage square idea of all those sorts of things so But even without it, we can still, there's still potential for housing and downtown, even with outside access.

Yeah, I think the conversation is, should we consider it for a city hall or not? If not, it doesn't stop us from wanting to pursue what does that look like as part of the redevelopment footprint?

Steve? When I first read this analysis from the hall, I really felt as though it was looking at a very city government focus. And I felt as though it was sort of leaving out some of the core district concerns in the business standpoint. That said, through our discussion and through some other reading that have been done and meetings, I am really actually a very strong proponent of the staff's recommendation for this. And I'll tell you why. Because your analysis, I think, is talking about generating dollars. for us to leverage and activate this central district. And I think the way to do that is to move out of here and to put a higher and a bester use here, I feel like. And with 24-7 players who are going to live here and who are going to really enrich this area. TAB, Mark McIntyre, fully supported by the city yeah so i'm very ready to move forward with with what's proposed by the staff on this one, for those very reasons, because of the assets that we generate and what we can do to activate the core district from that so great yeah comes up against um yeah I mean the first thing that.

I think about is, you know, City Hall isn't what makes downtown thrive, right? And we'll hear more about what makes downtown thrive later on today. So taking City Hall out of the equation, I don't think it's going to change in any way. And it could only help, I think, the character of this area, especially if we're building housing here. Just to go back to, again, the co-senior person on council, you know, Melanie and I were on council, Mary and I were on council when we purchased that Franklin property. And what we told the people of the Central District was there is a short-term use for this and then there is a long-term picture here. And we did the short-term use because we had to do that short-term use, but now it is time to start talking about how we can shift over into the longer use of that property. and the real use of that area, which was to catalyze the Central District and particularly catalyze that area of Franklin. And so you know that I care so much about the fact that we have to make sure that we have places for our houseless to be and that are safe, but I do feel confident that there is a plan that is emerging that could actually solve both of these problems, right? And have somewhat a safe place for people to go and really urgently start to develop this area of town because it is a commitment that we did make. Yeah.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Yep. I think I am supportive. I mean, if I had to pick between the two, I do like the idea of the first in Franklin property. I do believe strongly, like others have said about, you know, using, we've talked a lot about using all the tools we can to get the BCD going. and activate it, and I think that is a key way to do it. You know, with Councillor Franzosa's point about, you know, urban planning, I think that that first in Franklin property for City Hall was, it feels nice, it feels right when I think about other kind of, you know, I know that we're bend, but when I think about other iconic cities in the City Halls that are a part of them, that's kind of what I vision. I also think it would be nice for staff not to say that 15th Street couldn't have some of these amenities that we're talking about. And I'd love to see what's some plans for that, but it'd be nice for staff to be able to access, they're activating, they're going to the farmer's market, they're going to the restaurants, it's great for them as well. So I'm supportive of this, but I think that priority for me right now at least would be keeping it close to the DCD.

Okay, so it sounds like we have a majority that are supportive of the staff recommendation at this point, just to clarify and adding the infrastructure plan for that. Let's go to that next step slide for the next steps. Yeah. And talk about this. So, just to start with. Is everyone okay with Matt pursuing that wall street annex for some longer term time now that we're going to be in this. Area, since we're not moving, we're not doing city halls as soon as we thought and we still need that space.

What is the impact of that?

So right now, I mean, it's about 25% of our operational space. So if we lose that building, we've got a place of 15,000 feet somewhere. So we'll either have to find another spot to lease or create new space for people to go.

And what's the 2nd bullet you're talking about?

That was just kind of reevaluating. We're going through some safety and security analysis right now just for our facilities for this building base. And also after completing public works campus, how can we make our campuses safer? But it also looks like if there's a desire of council to want to expand council chambers, we can look at how do we function. how do we make that functional within our footprint there are we have evaluated some options of making this area larger uh and also doing some other reshuffling so we would constantly look at how do we create efficiency of space spaces we have it can be interesting i was i mean something i've always wondered about is like why don't we hold meetings in uni court when we know they're going to be kind of hot topic meetings and get a lot of folks from the public um

HAB-Juliette Boone, Yes, that facility has done that before. HAB-Juliette Boone, The safety of the safety.

HAB-Juliette Boone, Yes, so well yeah.

HAB-Juliette Boone, I guess, my question is like what's the what's the public works building that was vacated being used for right now and. HAB-Juliette Boone, Like we need i'm just trying to like. Really promote school responsibility, you know, so we sold the boyd acres.

So we're just down to the transportation and fleet building. That's at 15. 3. yeah, that has about it's, it's outdated. So it doesn't meet all of our. It does have about 10,000 feet. We can use on the on the ground floor currently right now. We've allowed PD to use the fleet warehousing space, and they're using some of the outbuildings as part of their kind of overflow. So there is an option where we can look at if we need to expand. putting some staff out there. It's just based on 10,000 feet, we kind of have to pick and choose who's going out there. So I would like to keep that 10,000 as sort of my buffer in case we do see growth within the next two years and I need to spill over out of this facility.

But- I mean, it's an interesting thought because there's a lot of parking there. So like for plan review and things, or not plan review, but like- There's a lot of parking where? I'm sorry. At Bible Transportation and Fleet Transportation and Fleet Buildings.

to think well we don't we don't think yes well the parking in the front of the building is not being used by anyone today yeah there's probably like 50 spaces there yeah yes yes um thank you for agreeing with me correct and it's having trouble picturing that yeah i think where you're going is those who are mostly in the field is that a better spot for them to be located yeah um Yes, and we have employees who obviously we have who take their vehicles home because they're out in the field all the time. It wouldn't do too much space. We could look at that as well. Again, it opens up a few more things. So going back to what you're saying, to me, that's my buffer of 10% of our square footage in case we do have to adapt to growth. But I think if you'd want to do any sort of significant remodeling out there where you could add space. You're looking at six plus million dollars of work to actually rehabilitate that space to make it a functioning spot for what we could lose if we lose that lease. So that's part of the discussion weight is if we don't choose to do anything at the Wall Street, I have to do something somewhere.

I think Wall Street makes a lot of sense for the proximity, location, continue to be part of the downtown, whether we're long-term lease and or purchase. Sure. And gives us some remodel potential.

Run across the street for a meeting.

Right.

Okay. All right. I think we have a majority for you to go forth on the Wall Street annex and also review the remodel options. And I think we have a majority on the looking at getting Franklin Corner going and involving Cab in that.

And then what was the explicitly adding the infrastructure plan to this, this near term work? And when you say, well, yeah, what do you mean by that? Well, specifically the roads, right? But I think part of that road discussion should also be at least the crossing of 2nd, 2nd street across Greenwood. Better connect. No, I haven't heard and I asked and I think agenda review, or maybe with you, Eric, where that stood and I really haven't heard anything about the planning on that. My recollection or her direction with the related to Greenwood was let's move forward with the planning. on that so i'd like to see that get done as part of this because i do i think there's a bit of a problem between and this gets into central district stuff right but we're so focused on this one little area the rest of the folks in that in that district need to feel benefit from the investments that are happening and it all feels very isolated to the south of greenwood at this point and this could help at least it's one first step to get some of that connectivity happening

Our plan is to come back and talk about Greenwood. I was going to have that be incorporated into that. That's in August or September.

Okay, so that sounds like that is in your term. So let's make sure we do that. Okay. All right. That was all you needed, Matt, on those two questions.

Unless there is consensus on the first bullet point. If not, we... No, we have a majority on that.

Yeah. I think we have a majority. We're giving staff direction to focus the future efforts on those two properties. Yes. Yes, we're not, we're not putting a contract together. We're not. Signing anything or saying, focus our efforts on those 2 areas.

This is really for us when I bring budget next year is allocating the necessary dollars to actually do the programming study. And if I can focus that on locations, that's ideal. So, um, there's debate that expand that we can talk about that as dollars.

And just to be clear that the complexity of downtown extended. Is comprised mostly of, well.

One, it's not just us, so we need partners. So it's taxing district partners. And that's really the main complexity. The other complexities of doing development downtown is obviously we have to go somewhere in the meantime so there's a cost for us to move out of the facility to find another space for us to go on a temporary basis or we look at basically doing things in very um element phases of developing structures at a time so it just adds another sort of component to how we sort of stage out the full development picture detail in the final report that we haven't received yet the uh i don't i don't know if we talked about the complexity if if we have to move out i don't think we've i don't think i didn't ask them to address that that's more of our staff of what it take to move but the extended downtown we're not ruling that out i think if other taxing districts are interested, we are willing to have that conversation 100%.

Well, I mean, we have to get those conversations started, right? So, I mean, I would be supportive of talking to the school district, talking to the library district. You know, I don't know what their plans for their future office space there is or half a block that they have. But I feel like it was worth inquiring, and maybe that's our job too.

I think as we progress with that, as we do the visioning and we start analyzing those numbers more, it opens up those conversations like, hey, here's your financial economic development of benefit potential that could be on your side. This is the starting block to go like, how do we want downtown to look, and what does that potentially look like, and then what is the essential service?

Yeah, and I think it's a sequencing thing, right? So what I'm hearing from what's an important value from council is really activating the BCD. We need some direction, because I think if we have all these sites in play, it sort of dilutes that. What we are wanting to do is have some permission to release a property into private hands, albeit with some planning that has to happen to relocate uses. Um, but the downtown is still going to require a lot of coordination and planning. And that's, that's all, I mean, whether it's a city hall here or not, it is going to require a lot of work. It's important work. What we're saying from a sequencing is that work is going to come a little bit after we're going to put more focus on the BCD first, before we would spend a lot of time and effort on master planning the site. That's kind of the value that we're asking for from, and master planning the city hall.

Exactly. Right. So the focus is on the visioning and concept planning for Franklin, so we can get that moving and catalyze the VCD. Exactly. And the planning for City Hall can still move forward, but it's a little bit more focused. I think there's potentially still room for that Heritage Square idea, and it could even be without a City Hall. There could be stuff.

Well, yeah, we're not going to engage in that. Just that we're saying the priority for the actual public use City Hall is in these two spots. We'll continue to engage on this downtown area because we're going to be out of here at some point, probably. Or at least we're going to be a smaller footprint. And so how do we reactivate what's here? And how many people do we bring along with us in that work?

I think the missing piece of the equation, I think several of you hit upon it, is we have to be thinking about from a revenue perspective. Because we really are... of plan to pay for a new city hall is really based on our partnership of activating sites and leveraging our assets. And I think it was said activating this site will yield a lot more revenue. So from that revenue perspective, but this is your job really as policymakers is to balance The need for revenue with other things that are important to you and the community as goals. And so that's what we're asking you to wrestle with. And you might have different sort of lenses that you're looking at it through. We just, at some point, we need to kind of have some momentum to narrow this down. Because keeping this so broad is, one, it's just giving stat. We're just diluting kind of the resources that we have to put towards planning.

So do we know what the value of surplusing a portion of 15th Street is?

You guys had a list.

Also, just want to chime in. I realize this is a work session with regards to the highest misuse analysis, but you'll notice at the tail end of the executive summary, we did put together our value for money assessment. So if anyone does have any questions about that, more than happy to dive in.

we've estimated usually like based on what you guys came up square footage, typically we're seeing somewhere around $20 a square foot for raw land is sort of what we're using some there. Again, The value today of it being an RS zone compared to it being a mixed use zone in the future, there's a gap, there's a delta between the rep, because what you can build on RS compared to what you could build with a mixed use zone is significant.

And I think it's important to think that revenue doesn't necessarily just need to be selling the land or selling the structure. There's a lot of ways to do a partnership or a lease or something that gets ongoing revenue coming in. So that's important, I think, to think about too. And lease, things like that. Yep.

The comment that you just made about value for money, are you talking about the comparison between the cost of the City building, City Hall versus the P3 partnership?

Correct. So it's more in the implementation phase. So since affordability has been an issue and concern, it's looking at whether there is cost savings available if you utilize the P3. So right now the baseline is the PDB, so the Progressive Design Build, because I believe that's what you guys use for the public works campus, which you've had great experience with. But it was more so looking, is there potential to cut costs and is there value to the city if you do use the P3? And you'll notice in the considerations we did talk about, we only were modeling the baseline scenario, which is just an 85,000 square foot City Hall standalone. But if you do incorporate, say, a broader swath of land and it is mixed use, you maybe incorporate a master developer, there are ways to make the P3 more viable. Because it looks more expensive in all cases relative to the P3. Right, just with the standalone $85,000.

Those other models also incorporate Full operation maintenance, so the 30 year operation made it's baked in that cost to a certainty.

I mean, more more certainty about the cost, right? Which is the very built the variable that could come into and you have to realize we are looking.

It's a 34 year period and that's starting in 12 years.

So the is discounting it back and in those scenarios where you're in a partnership. Is there a tax liability for who owns it? Is ownership transfer to a private entity and therefore there's tax revenue generated?

It would not be transferred, but it would be the responsibility of that private owner to finance it, operate it, maintain it, which would be a positive because that way, if there is something drastic that happens, it's already guaranteed in the contract of this is how much the city will pay for it versus then they have the onus of operating it. But in either scenario, there's no tax value.

The property tax is established by the use on the site. So as long as we're using it for the public, then there's no property tax. But if we're in a mixed-use building and there's an element of private, that's how that would be. So that's what we work through with the assessor when we evaluate that.

It kind of sounds to me like the majority just wants to look at First Street, not even really. Keep 15 on the table. I don't know.

I mean, that's what everyone said.

I'm just thinking. Streamline the process.

Is that what people meant when saying they support the staff recommendation?

That's not what I meant. Yeah. I'd like to keep both on the table.

Okay.

Yeah. I mean, I keep in both. I think there is value in continuing to look at. 15th Street, but it may be that for all the other values that kind of come associated with the ancillary development and making sure that the BCD really pops, that it makes sense to stick with the BCD. So I sort of tend to lean that more a little bit more and wanting to surplus.

It seemed like there was a priority.

property of that as a fallback is the 15th. For these other values, right? I mean, if we just look strictly at this financial kind of analysis, then maybe you come to a different conclusion. But I think if we're looking at some of this other stuff broadly,

John Potter, I feel like i'm okay letting 15 street go because of the comments about the centrality, the way that's construed, I think, is maybe what is worth looking at again. John Potter, And I would like to see what the number of actual of saying like well let's have a different vision for 15th street, you know we do that for some of these other properties, we look at the. you know, economic development potential that isn't so present for 15th Street. So I feel like I agree, but probably stronger for the Central District than for 15th Street.

Yeah. I mean, thinking like the development community comes to the city probably more than any other group of, you know, members of our community. And so many of them have offices downtown or would put offices in the Central District once the Central District starts to get developed.

So

Yeah, and many of them also go to the county building to get work done, things like that. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's really important that we keep City Hall centrally located if it's in the core area or down here. Okay.

So higher likelihood.

Sure, but I still think it's important to recognize when we're talking about revenue generation and all those things and hopefully what we're hoping to see in the BCDE. take off, that that might change the analysis on when we get to, because City Hall is a little bit further away. It's important to, I think it's important to have the other one available because we may say when we get there, what first street really should be something else. Maybe it should be a hotel or part of that performing arts center or whatever it is. So I'm going to just keeping with what the staff's recommended here, understanding there's a strong interest in the first street. Head nods.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for all the detailed work. Sure, yeah, go ahead. You can take off. I have middle school graduation, so it's graduation season.

I hear the speeches at middle school graduation. Really? I'm really hoping they call every name. I think it's really awesome.

My friend's kid just graduated and I'm like, now the person who spoke, I was like, do you hear the sounds of Starbucks if you do this? Life advice, you know? That's what I did. Yep, right. Let's see, Steve's is next.

All right, so we are moving on to talk about Southeast Area Transportation SDCs. Councilor Norris.

Yes, I need to declare an actual conflict. My employer is Hayden Homes, and this item won't have a financial impact on them. So I will be leaving during this discussion. Thanks.

Still got four of you, right?

Mike's coming back in a minute. So we can... we can do you want us to wait let's wait just a couple minutes because we're a little ahead of schedule now so we're okay schedule i guess it's good for us wait we have four

And it's a public, we can talk about all kinds of things. I defer to you, but I don't even want to talk about that.

Tell me the show we saw last.

Oh, did you guys go to the cafe? We decided it was TMAC. It was really good.

Yeah, TMAC, we officially run it at TMAC.

That was good. What about the, what was your suggestion for the growth plan?

Oh, it was like.

Bend GPT.

Bend GPT, but that's not, that was immediately vetoed, so no. Okay. Or not to. The Growth Plan team.

Is Jim Gaffigan tomorrow, too? Is he two nights?

It was just one, I think.

I thought it was one, yeah, last night.

It was good, though.

It was good. Yeah, I think we had six or seven city staff all down the avenue.

Okay.

All right, thank you, Council, for your time this evening. For the record, Ryan Ostrom, the Director of the Engineering Department, and with me... Elizabeth Osholt from the City Attorney's Office. And so tonight is a discussion about a supplemental transportation SDC charge for the southeast area. So we're going to go through a background of the southeast area here a little bit, talk through the project list and how we developed the cost for that, and then finish this off with kind of the notification process and how this works. This should be pretty familiar because we just did a supplemental sewer SDC in the same geographic area not very long ago. so keep that in mind is this will only apply to the southeast area that geographic master planned area that's adopted in our code now so as you're aware we adopted a master plan council directed master plan in 2021 you can read the numbers there in terms of residential mixed use and employment and commercial at the time we said we think about about 60 million dollars worth of needs on the sewer and transportation sides water is supplied through avion so that's that's not in our purview here But just to make sure everybody's tracking and it's kind of neat to see what's happened in the last five years as we, you know, take a little walk around the horn here. A lot of this is already built. The 15th and Ferguson roundabout is going to go into construction here in a couple weeks. Sorry, I know that's going to mess with our traffic. Everything else here on 15th has been built. This left-hand lane, some of this is a part of Easton's been built. So the remaining work I'll highlight in more detail, but it's really what's identified in this geographic area. So the sewer, pump station that we built down there had about a $25 million price tag. You elected to recover half of that. And so over the next X number of years of development comes in, the sewer fund will pay itself back for about half of that. Transportation is a little bit different because we don't have the ability to necessarily go build $25 million worth of work. We are going to have to wait for some of this SDC revenue to come in till we have enough so that we can bond for these improvements. So background is we've been in conversations with owners and development for years, even going back to when we were developing the master plan. So we've been in constant outreach and contact with them through the master plan, through the supplemental sewer SDC charge. And in January of this year, They basically went to the Central Oregon Builders Association and said, could you help us go have a conversation with the city and consider the idea of a supplemental transportation SDC. So we've been working with them for roughly five or six months to get to the point where we are today. So just to dive a little bit deeper in SDC. So we're tracking We do already have a transportation SDC fee that applies not only to this area, but citywide. And there are projects on that list. And some of the projects, such as 15th and Ferguson, is already being funded through the existing list. What we're considering as a part of the supplemental list is things that are separate. We can't double dip, right? We can't charge them twice for this project. So I'll get into a good example of that in the next slide or two as we look at a specific map. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" And, but wanted to highlight this does not overlap with the existing stc the whole city would not be paying this fee only those in this geographic area. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" And to highlight that this work would ultimately have passed need to be folded into our larger transportation construction fund. Normally, all these developers would get tagged with a land use requirement in their permits. In land use decisions, it says, congratulations, on rooftop 274, you trigger the need to build a roundabout. And then the next developer next to them gets something similar. And so now they're playing kind of this game of chicken of who's going to get there first and who's going to pay for it so I don't have to. So this really does allow us to kind of help navigate that. and make it a more predictable route not only for us as staff to deliver it but for them as owners and developers to do their pro formas to plan on not having a massive three million dollar investment hit in a couple years so what projects are we talking about so the three main projects on here the first one is over here on the right side and this is a future roundabout at what's known as diamondback way now which is the entrance in the high desert middle school that will eventually turn into caldera drive caldera drive is the main east-west collector that goes all the way to the roundabout that exists over here near caldera high school and continues down to broster house so that will all be known as caldera drive And there is a requirement for a kind of standard roundabout there right in front of the county offices. And so, this one they asked us to do because multiple developers were getting tagged with doing this. And this one's going to be pretty complex. There's a lot of existing utilities out there, franchise utilities. There's going to be some right-of-way issues and some coordination with some owners on the other side of 27th, mainly the county. we program three and a half million dollars which is generally our cost estimate for roundabouts nowadays the second project is this internal roundabout so whenever we have these higher order streets of collectors and arterials in this case it's a collector collector This north-south collector is going to be known as Journey Way. We have a key intersection here in the middle. This one should be a lot cleaner and easier to do. All the right-of-way we would need for this will be dedicated to us by the developers. It's part of their requirement. Won't have any right-of-way costs. We're exploring different concepts of roundabouts here just because, yes, it will get used a lot, but it's not on 27th. So we might even explore kind of an urban compact roundabout or something smaller that is safer, but still allows for the proper amount of capacity to go through that intersection. So we budgeted about $2 million for that. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" Third project and I broke this off into pieces, just to highlight the main reason why they asked us to participate in this is. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" In our tsp it's projects and 22 through them 26 and it's the modernization and urbanization of not road and 27th basically all the way around the horn here, so a portion of that has been an elbow I think absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Drive around the horn to get to your neighborhood. That's how you get on the horn.

So a portion of this has been built. If you go out there now, you can see Polish has already done a piece of this as a part of Easton. So we basically calculated what's the remaining cost for the rest of this. This is a good example, though, of we're already collecting 64% of the costs in our existing SDC project list. So I can only go get the other 36%. So the estimated cost for this full build out is about $15 million. So 36% of that. So we're not double dipping is 500. So those are the three main projects they asked us to consider as staff.

and i'll hand it over to elizabeth for a minute to just talk through the methodology yeah so the methodology would take those project costs and then allocate them on a per trip basis and ryan on the next couple of slides we'll talk about the trip generation in the southeast area but just wanted to highlight that this methodology would be consistent with our citywide methodology and the some of the direction you gave us on the sewer supplemental methodology, we would match the land use assumptions, the use categories, and the trip counts of those various development types that we have already established in the citywide and sewer SDC methodologies So the tiering of residential uses, same on the square footage, we would just plug in another column on our existing SDC fee schedule. We would include a compliance charge to pay for making sure, you know, doing the accounting and use of this SDC consistent with the statutes. We would include affordable housing and childcare exemptions, again, consistent with the other two methodologies. And then we would allow for the increase of costs to keep up with inflation so that when we do get to build up the projects, we are collecting enough money for future construction costs. So just highlighting that those would be the same in this methodology as well.

So down to the nitty gritty here, we're estimating about 4,000 trips being generated from the Southeast area. If you add up those three projects, it's an $11 million price tag. So you can see the math there that equates to about $2,800 per trip, not including the compliance fee and the administrative costs that Elizabeth just mentioned. And what is that percent? I'm trying to remember what it was on the sewer side.

I have the sewer cost for the... Oh, the administrators?

Yeah.

For the sewer, it's hard to do apples to apples. I think it was 77 cents per gallon per day was how we calculated it. Because you do it by gallon and not on the sewer side. So it wouldn't add more than, I think it's...

It's going to be the same fee as we have in the current.

It'll be a similar fee. It'll be scaled down because this is a smaller fee and a smaller administrative burden than the citywide SECs. I think we haven't done that math yet, but it was probably not more than five or $10. Yeah.

So what does this mean overall? Here's the tiered categories that Elizabeth described. You can pick one. Let's say you're doing a 2,000 square foot single family unit, or it could be a duplex or something of that sort. But the current transportation SDC is $10,230. That's what they pay today, anybody in the city. this area would get an additional charge of 2660 bringing their total fee up to 12 890 on the transportation side keeping in mind this doesn't account for their sewer and their supplemental sewer and as i said water is not administered by the city through this area so that just gives you a kind of a sneak peek there on you know an approximation of where each of these would land with respect to what the existing charges today

So next steps, so the SEC statutes require you know if you are supportive of the direction of this math problem and the SEC has proposed. The SEC statutes require a 90 day advance notice before the public hearing for adoption, we would issue that notice and provide notice to folks who specifically have requested notice about SEC issues and everyone in the southeast area. we have to post the final methodology report for public review 60 days before that hearing. So we would kick both of those off in the next 90 and 60 days after today. And then in September, we would have the public hearing on the methodology and adopting the fee schedule. And then Ryan would wait for development for building permits to come in and start planning for when these improvements would actually be needed and get those planned into the CIPs.

So the direct question to Council is, do you support this project list? Are you supportive of the cost framework and the overall approach? And would you like us to proceed with the notification process?

All right, questions, Council.

Question about, so the projects listed there, if I pull up the Park District Trail Plan, there's the High Desert, what is it called? The High Desert Trail goes through there, and then there's a High Desert Trail high desert park trail crossing. Would those be, I don't know if those have been, if those funding has been identified to complete those, would those be eligible projects to be included here?

not within what we're showing here. Those would still be all covered by the developers. So all of the collector roads, the dashed lines in here, they're going to have to still work it out between themselves how to get those built based on their land use requirements. So the things you identified, the shared use paths and other things. One of the things I know on the north side of Knott Road, there is a wide shared use path that I think is a part of that. So

So why wouldn't we want to include them? And then it would just be a more cost sharing.

Well, so the 64% that we're already collecting in the existing SDCs is meant to cover their frontage. So that would include that path and basically two-thirds of Knott Road or 27th. We're collecting the other third. that would help us to build the whole thing out so we'll probably wind up building it on that road but it's not part of this it's part of the existing sdc project list but would be constructed together we combine those sdcs and we build it so okay so then funding is identified for them yeah in between the existing yeah in the existing sdc project list that that's accounted for thank you yeah all right other questions go ahead

First of all, just in terms of categorizing this, is this a way for the developers to amortize their costs for this over time? Is that a way to characterize it? Absolutely.

Instead of any one developer having to find the funding or the financing to build a single one of these, or they decide and figure out how they're going to split the costs among themselves, They know if I build this size house, it's this cost per house. And that's my portion of these improvements. And so it's more certainty and probably less overall costs for any particular developer.

Yeah, and this is really being driven by the developers.

This is at their request. Yeah, and another case study is, to build this extension off of the existing roundabout, but there's a world in which, you know, then we go a quarter mile and somebody else builds another thousand feet, then another quarter mile, and it's just piecemealed. And we don't want it to be built that way ourselves. We would like it to be a consistent project.

And when do these start hitting? If we all go, everything goes to plan, when do we start collecting?

So as soon as the resolution would be effective upon adoption, and then it would be charged to building permits in the area.

So September. Yep. Okay. So before the next legislative session. Okay.

And if you got money if any of these projects, but the SEC statutes require that we take into account additional money received. As Ryan said, we can't double dip from any source, and so we would come back and we could revise the list and take projects off if external funding is attained or anything.

Thank you.

I didn't catch, did you say like when you would get started on the first project? Would you have to collect a certain amount?

Yeah, we haven't identified. It's not in our current five-year CIP anywhere at this point. So yeah, I'd need to sit down with the private development team and say, when in your view is, say, the project at 27th and Caldera Drive triggered by development if they were to do it on their own. And if they're saying we anticipate it's in 2029, I generally try to hit that same date because the need will be there. But it really just does depend on development, how fast it comes. And again, we don't have the flexibility in our transportation fund today to just say, let's add another three and a half million. So we would need to make sure we've collected enough to at least bond for that.

Yeah. And why can you remind me why? Cause another tool to do the same thing as forming an, a local improvement district. Um, and the cool thing about an LID is that it you're not waiting on, if I remember correctly from the last presentation we had, right. You're not waiting on a building permit application to collect the additional SDC it's levied across all the property owners, no matter what the parcel size.

So that is true.

As soon as it's established.

If they're in the city. We can't do an LID until they're annexed into the city. And most of this area is not in the city yet. I thought that was a Broadman bill. We addressed that. We would need to work with the county to do a sort of a co, to work together to get an LID in this area. Correct. If we wanted to act on our own, it has to be annexed. If we want to partner with the county and do an LID, that's an option. Yeah.

I'm just thinking like all the roads in the dashed line are not They're going to have to be built by the developer and that's a pretty big cost for the developers. They're sort of used to it. But, you know, is it in the community's best interest for us to be taking a little bit more control over that and not leaving it to the developers, you know, decisions to move ahead?

Good question. And in these six months of conversations, I asked multiple times, like, what would you like us to include? Because we could do the collectors as well. Like, so, because right now, you know, if they build Journeyway and Caldera Drive, they're probably going to build it to like a four-way stop controlled intersection until we come in and do the urban compact or the roundabout. And so, yeah, there is a sense there that says we could go as big as we want, but this is specifically what they asked us to consider. So that's all operating on the assumption that they have a plan internally Or maybe they don't, and they're just going to let each development go. You know, the next one to go builds their stretch and their stretch, and it's really up to them.

On those collectors, would they be built piecemeal also? Like, they're only going to be responsible for certain parts of them?

They would have to build their frontage, yeah.

Right, so those roads could also get built in this kind of weird piecemeal fashion.

They would, yeah.

I mean, I agree. I was asking about this in the gender review. Like, why don't we do all of these? It just seems strange to me that... If we're going to do this, let's actually do it and get it done. My understanding from that conversation is that if they came back and said, actually, we do want to put those roads in, they could be added in through an adjustment to the supplemental as opposed to in the future.

Generally speaking, though, these collectors are in bare dirt. They can do what's cheaper than we can.

I was going to ask is that private development will be more cost-effective to build those roads than if we're building them. So we have to factor that into...

They're probably saving money compared to some of the complexities of doing this other stuff.

Instead of them paying us to do the roads, which they probably feel like they can do those versus the roundabout being more expensive and complex, especially the one in Diamondback with the right-of-way issue and the utilities. That's the big one.

The North Point, or North Peak, I can't remember. They're already building a portion of Journeyway through their development now. So when you drive past that, they've got it all carved out. As soon as they're done on Ferguson, they're going to move down there, and they're going to start paving out their frontage portion of Journeyway. And then whoever comes next after them would do their portion. We do have the developed cross section. It's in the master plan. They know exactly what they're required to build. And so there's a lot of there's a lot more certainty from their standpoint, from a cost perspective, if they do it.

I mean, I was just going to finish my thought on the LID, which is the other advantage to establishing an LID versus an SDC is that the fee gets assessed on all the landowners. And, you know, not having a land value tax in Oregon means that developers can kind of sit on land for a really long time until all the infrastructure gets built and then their cost of development is, and their process of development is a lot simpler. By creating an LAD for an area that we have identified that's been in our comp plan and, you know, it kind of brings everyone know it ropes everyone into the um the cost as well as the benefit you know of funding funding all that infrastructure and it allows it to be built in a little bit more orderly of a way so i mean you know we've talked about other parts of town so i i really would like us to look at you know taking advantage of what senator broadman did for our community because we're one of the rare communities that has this like urban area reserve that is annexable and we just are waiting for developers to come along and annex it. So we now can do that. So I just think it's something really important for us to look at.

If the property owners disagree with an LID, how does that change the process? Because my understanding is they'd have to agree to tax themselves.

I haven't looked at that code section closely lately, but I believe there is somewhat similar to the EID process or remonstrance process.

And they've come to us with this solution. Yes, right.

So when we explored both Hillsborough and Beaverton, and they had similar issues where they had a parcelized area that was added to the metro UGB. They used area plans, LIDs. um supplemental sdcs all of that and that was sort of that funding strategy that we talked about with and lids was part of the mix we don't have a lot of folks that have used them here so i think we're planning to have a round table with developers i think it's a conversation that we need to start socializing a little bit more with developers because i think it's just not something we've used a lot for greenfield development but it's possible for sure it's just it's not it does need their support though to do it you we couldn't just impose it it would have to there's a whole process to get

the behind can we do supplemental i'm so sorry can we do supplemental sdcs without their approval they they can't object to this is that what you're saying this is a city council decision that's how we did the sewer one really we decided that one yeah i mean i just think other city fees yeah i would point out that supplemental sdcs were a big part of the funding work for discussion during the c-tech process and there was broad agreement that that would this would be I think this one was a higher priority choice, even over the LIDs, perhaps for the reasons Eric's saying, but I mean, it's just, it's been part of the discussion for a long time. It was actually Karna. She was the COBA government affairs person at the time, was really advocating that that needed to be on the list and that we should look hard at using this tool for these parts, these expansion areas to help facilitate them and get them to, you know, be successful more quickly. So I'm pleased to see that Kobo is actually following through on that.

And they, they help lead the charge with all these owners and developers out here.

Okay. So comfortable with staff going forward with the next steps in the process to bring this to a decision to us. Okay. Great.

Perfect. Thank you. Thanks.

All right. We'll invite, um, our friends from the downtown business association to come on up.

me i'm not sure how to share my slides last time cyrus did all that yeah do you want to just email and i can i can do it yeah eric email the slides yeah yeah oh yeah they're on the agenda yeah do you want to just use that whatever it's gonna be quicker for you to do it than me joining itself so yeah we'll do that

Bye.

Thank you, Mayor and Councillors, for the opportunity to provide an update on the Downtown Bend Business Association. Over the past year, our focus has been on strengthening the organization and enhancing the downtown experience, supporting business and property owners' experience. And I'm going to provide a brief overview of our progress through our three-year strategic plan today. And then I'm going to spend a little time discussing a topic that's not new to downtown, and that's parking. As many of you know, our work is guided by the Main Street America's Four Pillars. This is promotion, design, organization, and economic vitality. And rather than going through each of these in depth, I just want to highlight that these areas work together to support a vibrant, economically healthy downtown. And I'm going to go through what we have done within each of these pillars over the last year and the progress that we've made. Next slide. Promotion is about creating reasons for people to visit downtown, how they spend time here, and how they support local businesses. This year, we've strengthened downtown storytelling. We've expanded our social media efforts. We've launched our new Downtown Bend gift card program, and we've increased promotion of businesses and events. As we move into the next phase of our strategic plan, we're going to continue building that momentum through expanded campaigns and storytelling efforts that elevate Downtown Bend both locally and regionally. Of course, bringing people downtown is just the beginning of the story. Their experience once they get here matters just as much. And then we'll move into design. Design focuses on creating places that people want to spend time in. This year we continued our beautification programs, like our flower baskets, while laying the groundwork for larger placemaking initiatives. This includes mural opportunities, utility box art discussions, planter concepts, and advocacy around tree well improvements. One really exciting example is we had a huge response to our call for artists for a mural spot, which is on the side of Live Fitness Studios. We had over 250 artists who were interested in putting some art there. We're just working on the funding for that at the moment. These efforts have strengthened downtown's identity to contribute to the experience that residents and visitors associate with Bend. Much of this visible work is supported by a tremendous amount of organizational work that happens behind the scenes. Next slide. Organization might be the least visible pillar, but it's one of the most important. Over the past year, we've strengthened our committees, we've implemented new systems such as our CRM system, we've improved collaboration with our community partners develop a board governance handbook and created our three-year strategic roadmap that guides all of our work these systems create continuity and position the organization for long-term success strong organizations are better equipped to respond to challenges seize opportunities and serve our stakeholders efficiently and that brings us to economic vitality and this is again some of the least visible work but this is arguably the most important This work focuses on identifying barriers, creating opportunities, building partnerships, and helping downtown businesses succeed. This year we've strengthened our sponsorship programs, we've expanded our partnerships, we've pursued funding opportunities, and we've increased our stakeholder engagement. One thing I'm particularly excited about is our gift card program. Since launching this six months ago, we've already generated almost $60,000 in gift card sales that go directly back into supporting downtown businesses. This is roughly four times what the previous program did in an entire year. Our focus moving forward is continuing to create programs that strengthen downtown's economic ecosystem. As part of our economic vitality work, we don't just celebrate what's working, we also pay attention to the recurring challenges that businesses, property owners, employees, and customers tell us may be impacting downtown success. One topic that has surfaced consistently over the years is parking. I'd like to spend the next few minutes providing some context around this conversation, why the DBBA chose to engage in it, what our role has been and where we are in the process, and of course, what happens next. After hearing concerns repeatedly through surveys and conversations, board discussions, working within the Downtown Parking Advisory Committee, The board authorized the development of a draft progressive paid parking concept to help facilitate more meaningful community conversations around potential parking management. I also want to clarify that this draft parking plan, what it was intended to be, and maybe more importantly, what it's not intended to be. um the dbba does not establish parking policy and this document was never meant to serve as a final recommendation as a techno technical parking study or an implementation plan if the city were ever to formally pursue changes to downtown parking i would fully expect that process involve extensive utilization data technical expertise professional analysis and a robust public process rather we develop this draft as a conversation starter Parking is consistently emerged as one of the most frequently discussed challenges affecting downtown's economic vitality. This challenge we faced was that parking management means very different things to different people. So without a tangible example, it was difficult to give stakeholders and the community to react meaningfully or to provide constructive feedback. So we created this draft, not because we're recommending its adoption, but because we want something concrete that stakeholders and community members can respond to. And the feedback itself is really the outcome that we're seeking. Parking. So the next slide. Yep. Parking isn't a new conversation to downtown Ben. There's stakeholders, conversations, surveys, committee discussions, and everyday interactions. We've heard some similar themes. It's difficult to find convenient parking. There's frustration with the two-hour limit, concerns about tickets, uncertainty on whether the current system is working as intended, whether people are favorite change or they prefer the status quo parking has continued to emerge as a recurring topic affecting everybody downtown and I want to emphasize that it's not our role obviously to implement policy it's your guys's role to do that we're just um gathering information facilitating conversation and bringing perspectives forward for consideration and the process that we're in today is exactly the process this draft was designed to support We drafted, you can continue on here, we created a draft, we shared it publicly, we're gathering stakeholder and community input, and we're intentionally waiting until meaningful participation thresholds have reached before we start evaluating what we've heard. The feedback itself, again, is the outcome that we're seeking here. Once complete, the board is going to determine whether there are any themes worth sharing with the city or whether no more action is warranted. So regardless of what any final solution may or may not look like, we felt it was important to define. You can go to the next slide. We felt it was important to define the problems that we're trying to solve. And these are the objectives behind our guiding principles. How do we increase turnover in high demand spaces? How do we allow visitors to stay longer and spend more time downtown? How do we provide affordable options for employees and residents? How do we reduce congestion and the frustration of circling for parking? And how do we ensure that if revenue is ever generated, it is reinvested transparently into downtown improvements? And people may disagree on the solution, and that's okay. These are just the outcomes that we've heard consistently that people care about. So the next slide, the concept that we included formally in this draft is a progressive paid parking model for high demand curbside spaces. The idea behind progressive parking is pretty straightforward. Shorter visits remain really affordable while longer visits become incrementally more expensive. The goal is never to force people out of downtown. The goal is to help ensure that our highest demand spaces remain available for customers who need quick and convenient accesses to shops, restaurants and services. Visitors that plan on spending more time downtown can either choose the convenience of on street parking or they can opt for the lower cost alternatives like our lots in our garage. This specific concept was included because it gives people something specific to give feedback on. Some people may support aspects of it. They might impose it entirely. We've gotten suggestions for modifications, which have been great. And we're just hoping to gather as much feedback as possible. Next slide. Just highlighting this quickly one more time. The reason we chose the progressive model is because it really helps solve these main problems that we're looking to. The purpose of this draft was not to really advocate for the approach, but to help understand what aspects of it resonated with stakeholders in the community, what concerns it raised, and what people would like to change. Next slide. If the city were ever to consider a parking benefit district model, many stakeholders and community members have shared that they would like to see a clear and transparent connection between any revenue generated downtown and the improvements made within downtown. So potential examples could include beautification projects, more maintenance and cleanliness, public amenities such as restrooms, which we all know is huge, and future infrastructure improvements. So the conversation is more than just paid parking. People want to see how this could potentially affect, a future system could affect the benefits in the community that they live in, they work and that they own properties in. So where we're at today, next slide. We're just listening. We're in the listening phase. We're actively collecting feedback. from stakeholders in the community. And then we've committed to making sure those surveys reach meaningful participation goals. We have not analyzed results yet. We're not making a formal recommendation at this moment. We have not brought any policy proposals forward to you guys. The feedback itself is really the outcome we're looking for right now. And then once the process is complete, we're going to review it, identify common themes, share our findings transparently with everybody, and determine if future conversations are warranted. And then the next slide is just a couple of QR codes if anybody would like to chime in on their opinion on these are the two surveys that we have.

I think we have opinions. Oh, I took the survey. Take the survey.

Take the survey. We appreciate emails and calls and things like that. But ultimately, we need to have all this information collected into one spot. That's why these surveys are important. Parking is rarely simple. It's usually very emotional because people use it. Nearly everyone spends time downtown. And so I understand that there's a lot of emotions tied to it. We believe it's better to have these conversations openly rather than just say, yeah, parking is hard. Every perspective helps us better downtown and we all really care about downtown. And so we just want to just keep the conversation going on, on potential ways of improving or making changes or not making changes. Um, so thank you for letting us share in your continued partnership, um, means a lot to us and your support of downtown Ben, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thanks, Rachel. And I'll say, I appreciate the update with sort of the main street areas. I think that's been a really good structure that the DBBA has adopted. And it was part of our ask of the EID renewal was that we adopt these main street principles and have DBBA be a member because that really gives some structure to your subcommittees and some of the strategic planning that you're doing. And as the liaison, I've seen that really working out as far as having a good list of things to try to accomplish and keeping you on task for how you want to invest in the district going forward so i appreciate that i know we've got a board member um liz is here and ryan is here who does the maintenance downtown and you may see him going around putting up flower baskets pretty soon with the crew and watering them and tears so um just appreciate you all and all you do for downtown Any other questions?

Yeah, I had a question. Thank you for doing the survey. I think it's great. I'm really glad that you're gathering this information. I'll be intrigued to see what the results show. I just had a question. The one piece of feedback that I heard from people is that it's a lot of employees and owners of businesses that are taking up spaces on the street, which I find kind of confusing because I think it's time limited to two hours downtown. But I was curious if you knew, or maybe there's someone in the room that knows, what thought there was like a discounted permit for employees and business owners and where can they use where can they what parking lots or garage or whatever can they use yeah so there's different areas that you can use the the main garage but there's also these sections that surround downtown really anywhere there's three hour parking there's usually a

a permit zone and they are really affordable um i know there's conversations that the business owners some business owners pay for parking permits and sometimes that can add up if they have a lot of employees to thousands of dollars per year so i think they're looking for ways to make it even better but even if i'm an employee um if i were to have a parking permit for the garage i think it's forty dollars a month yeah which is pretty affordable And that's one of the questions we did ask in our surveys is if you're an employee, where are you parking? And it's been eye-opening so far on where people are parking. No, I think there's also an educational campaign that can go along with that and making sure employers are letting their staff know where they should be parking and what's not allowed.

Yeah, I've definitely had the feedback. There are employees that go move their car every two hours. So it's happening. Yes. Any other questions?

First, I just want to acknowledge your work because I think that the Downtown Bend Business Association plays a really valuable role in keeping our downtown bend really pleasant and nice. It's really attractive and pretty special. I think you deserve some recognition for that. My question is about, in terms of needs, I don't know that a lot of business owners would think about underutilized parking garage as a problem. I think it's kind of a problem. I think that it's appropriate to have a price on the parking garage. And so part of the dynamic then is if curb spaces are not priced, well, if you're a customer, why would you want to park in the garage? And so the result is that we often have a lot of space in the garage. Has that come up as a consideration in terms of, you know, if there was a conversation around putting a price on curb parking that we might see more use of the garage. Maybe the garage costs less. There's certain things that we might want to consider there to try to get more use out of the garage. Has that come up at all?

Yeah. I think that's part of the progressive model. If somebody is coming downtown and they know they're going to be spending a little bit of time doing just math, looking at what it would cost to spend five hours paying on the streets will definitely be more expensive than going to the garage where it's a dollar an hour, $10 max a day. It's pretty affordable. It's creating incentive to use the garage.

A high value or high turnover. I guess you said the... high demand parking spaces downtown and restaurant spaces? Like, how are you defining where those are? Is that in the survey? Is it made clear in the survey?

Yeah, it's just street parking that's right in front of the businesses. So what we call our downtown core.

So it's basically all that on street parking.

Yeah. It's all on there. Anything that's not the lot and then not in the garages that is surrounding downtown core. Yeah.

Can you remind me of any, can you validate at downtown businesses? Has there been any study?

Not through us.

That came up at the annual meeting this Monday. And I think it's like, yeah, if we get a scheme going, that can be part of how we talk about it and how we encourage people to go into businesses.

And that's some of the feedback that I think there's been some early results of the survey is people asking about validation. It's definitely worth looking into.

I know as a customer, the box factory, I think, does that. Businesses around there. And I kind of appreciate that. Yeah, it's definitely an option.

Okay, any other questions for Rachel? Thank you. Thanks for presenting on that.

All the hard work you guys have put into the Downtown Association in the last year and a half or so.

Appreciate it. Okay, we have enough time left to preview upcoming work sessions.

Yes, our next meeting is a regular business meeting. A big item on the agenda is budget. We also have a few contracts, construction contracts, and then some cleanup with our permit expediting program.

Expedition. Yeah, yeah.

And then the work session on the 24th will be discussing our utility rates. We'll also be discussing infrastructure requirements for development, particularly infill development, how to incentivize more infill development by looking at those infrastructure requirements. Utility rates includes water. So our utility rate is stormwater, water, and sewer. And so we're looking at that big picture of the main drivers with those. And we have some master plans that are in process, some that have recently been completed. So we know some of the drivers of the capital projects. And then we'll just talk about how we manage that rate model, what are important values to council as we look ahead. We don't have hard numbers yet. We are staying consistent with the biennial budget. So the rates that you're approving are consistent with what we proposed in the budget for this biennium. What we're talking about on the 24th is more long-term, more long-term kind of rate planning and incorporating council interests into those rate models. I think that's it. I don't have it in front of me. Is there one more on the 24th? It was just those two. Yeah.

Okay, great. And we have a master plan next week.

Oh, I'm sorry. The master plan for two master, well, a master plan and annexation. So we have the CABI, which is the formerly the union master plan off of 15th and Murphy and an annexation in actually in the Southeast area.

Yeah. The next chunk. Okay. I think that's it for the work session. Thanks everybody.