City Council - Regular Meeting

that we hold in the Bend Central District for future redevelopment. And then, of course, we're very excited about Juniper Ridge. We've got NOCO over here, which we're about halfway through, about 112,000 square feet. Hopefully we'll have a food cart there within the next couple of years for this area, and we think that'll bring some more activity.

Broader understanding of costs that are associated with it, right? So we're really excited to support the city's market analysis and are willing to share whatever we have now, but just knowing that for a project specific analysis that would add additional costs.

I think Gary was first.

Oh, Gary, go ahead.

So I was just honest talking about roundabouts and street infrastructure, just reminding me that when I was talking to folks before we came here, parking was another challenge that I heard about in neighborhood commercial. So I just want to tee that up for if anyone wants to take that.

Is that where we're at or is that up here?

Let's get through Steve. So hold your time. Let's get through Steve and Jay and then we'll come back to you.

One of the things that I think is going to be helpful for me is you're all aware that we're starting this growth plan project, right? And feelings were hurt in Petrosa and elsewhere because a plan was conveyed to the public and people bought with an expectation associated to that. And I understand there's market realities that are impacting that now. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to look at the growth plan that we are starting right now and getting in and that's gonna lay out the next 20 years. That's gonna define how we are gonna grow and where we're gonna try to cite these kinds of things. And so what I need from you, what we need from you is maybe we got around, sounds like we got it wrong. Some of these planned communities coming up to this point, let's help not get it wrong over the next 20 years. And that's, so I need, we need constructive inputs on that. So what I'd love to hear is what do we do for the next five, 10 years right now so the next one doesn't happen like this?

And I think even beyond just the neighborhood commercial, and Jade, I'll let you go in a minute, but it's, I just think too, I think the emphasis on employment lands and the incentives that we're outlining for that is really important too, because there's been a huge emphasis on affordable housing, which is great. And that was needed. And it was a big, you know, need for the city. But we're seeing people, you know, in migration is slowing and we need people to continue to have reasons to move to open businesses, to be motivated to come. And so we can continue to sell homes that justify these large developments. And so I think, and all the infrastructure that is put into place for that. And so I think it's much larger than just housing and master plan development. It's investing in employment lands to get companies to continue to come here so that we can have more people move here.

Two thoughts. At Northwest Crossing, we tried for a long time to get a grocery store where Grove is. And we talked to, like Kevin, we talked to several grocers, and it just wouldn't work. It was just too close to the edge of town. So that's just for your information. Gina, specifically your comment, you know, when we expanded the UGB and we were able to bring all the Discovery West land in, that came with some mixed employment, some CL requirements. And it ended up, you know, in our master plan, it ended up on Skyliners Road. And we had to do it because we were required to. I can't create a study that's going to show you that that doesn't make sense. But if you think about where Skyliners Road is and having ME and CL out there on your way to turn into Philz, it's hard to make a pencil on that location. I don't have a great answer on analysis, but some of it just feels like it's common sense not to put large commercial areas on the edge of town like that. You also built a grocery store. Yeah, I don't want to talk about that, Tom. I'm hearing it's hard. Yeah, I mean, we built Newport Market on Aubrey Butte and Rudy was able to keep the store open for about nine months before he came to us and said, this isn't working. So never build a grocery store on top of a hill.

Rudy's the one that told me 22,000 square foot won't work. It'll never work. He says our market is no longer good.

Can I get a temperature check? Because we're talking about sort of these large areas. If we were talking about trying to find a way to incentivize through this SEC relief, Smaller little like kind of a bodega or smaller things in the city. Do you think that would be more impactful if the SEC relief was targeted at smaller types of stores that had food or groceries or is it just always going to run into those same challenges.

I think of Rudy's. I mean, first of all, Rudy's wants to build an 8000 square foot, you know, Oliver Lemon was about 8,000 square foot. Any SDC relief is something, but I just don't know how the city's position ever is, where somebody actually wants to come build 55,000 square foot, and you guys say, well, if you're little, then nothing big. I don't know how that fits in your political portions of it, but If I was coming to build a Rosar store and I found out you're giving all these low boutique, I don't know how that works.

Yeah, I know.

I'm just trying to say that I think that any decision would have that. But we don't think it's an advantage to Petrosa to build at $8. We just don't see them in all the inventory. Not to dwell on the grocery store because I feel like we're doing that.

That's the topic, so go ahead.

I know. But you know that Chad and I have gone – We've flown places. We've spent a lot of time and energy trying to find out how to make a grocery store work in Pedro's. It wasn't like a weekend party. We've done everything we know to do that. What we found out is that we found out that larger $55,000 and 50,000 square foot need an occupancy of about 22,000 people. And so, you know, that leads down to rooftops, we don't have the way we want.

So thank you. I think 22,000 people. Okay, just writing that down. I think it's hard to compete, Melanie.

Yeah. Kevin and Todd and some of the builders could probably speak to it more so, but you get the economies of scale with a larger footprint of a grocer. Lovejoys is a perfect example. You live in Southwest Bend. You probably went to Lovejoys when you needed milk because your kids are out of it, but you probably don't go to Lovejoys to buy all of your groceries for the next two weeks. Right. You know, so I think it's just hard to make that kind of that footprint pencil. You know, I think it takes a unique recipe, like what Newport Market has, where you have kind of a commitment from the community, you know, and you're well established and people are ingrained in going there versus entering the market with an 8000 square foot footprint. I think that's a really difficult ask.

Yeah. And we're going to get Trader Joe's reputation because people are very excited.

about it we can tell you right now can't we chad it's the most profitable grocery store in the united states and it's absolutely a win and that's it i mean we can tell you that because we have lots of analysis done and i'm going to send them to you please do you can do that you're welcome but Not one, not all three told us that we can lure Trader Joe's in, we'd be successful. We would have given them the land for free, let alone the SDC fees. And the end of the day, we couldn't even lure. We tried everything to get Trader Joe's and we couldn't pull it off.

Well, I appreciate that.

I think to Gina's point, I think in terms of just what we look at when we're looking at future expansion into a boy with this in the future. future is, I think it would be useful to get some grocery representatives at the table and to really understand what they need. What are they going to need in a master plan? Or are they going to be focused in the core area? And how do we respond to them in a more appropriate way?

Yeah. And Councilor Platt, I mean, the city's obligated to provide a 20-year supply of commercial land, just like residential and everything else. And I think it's really, as the city goes through this process, looking at what are the assumptions, how are you calculating that need? Because that's going to get you this total number of acres. And then the city's trying to figure out where that acreage goes. And it's going to go in some big chunks, whether that's realistic or not. So I think kind of looking through that growth planning process that the city's

I think I agree. We're obligated, but we also advocate to our elected representatives in the Central Oregon group that has been very, very effective. So we are capable of also moving the needle as far as that kind of state level goes.

I'm hearing, though, and especially what you said about people stopping seeing, turning in. What has happened over the years is master plans with a lot of commercial in them and maybe not an idea about corridors or lining things up together. Is that maybe something we could think about in the group? That's really good feedback.

It is really good about. And you brought this up, Steve, is timing. You think about, we were fortunate to do all the work with Brooks on the civil piece in Northwest Crossing. that sat for a long, long, long time before those buildings were full. And I can't speak to the financials of it, but it didn't happen overnight. So the first buildings were built there. How long ago?

Oh, 2000. It was definitely, to your point, Todd, it was an amenity that we put in with patient money until we could get those rooftops around it. And even then, it took time.

Let's just say until 2020. COVID was obviously an effective part of that. But today, I mean, it's... It's vibrant. But it took a long time. I think that's when you're requiring this commercial. It could take time. At some point it'll play. They all do. But it may sit, you know, as long as the residents know it's going to be a while before something goes in.

It's similar to the other uses in a master plan. It has a school site that has no plans to move forward. It was sold to the school district and one day it will be an elementary school, but we can't control that. I think it's important to know that these things take a lot of time. They take rooftops, they take future growth. If we want growth at Petrosa, we're going to need to see growth in the Northeast part of town. Just in general.

Yeah. What Steve's position is, is that I'm not doing a lot of master plans. Some people come in and they do huge master plans. I always appreciate their energy to do that as come with a master plan, You have to make some assumptions in 20 years that you don't know are going to be a reality. I think the position that I've always taken is that why is the city so standardly solid and something they made into a particular zone 20 years ago and it's not working. Now we built the first Brooks and Scanlon building and that was industrial and now it's all office buildings. It was industrial when we got there and now it's all office buildings. I don't think that there is a magic wall for us to be able to create any kind of a perfect scenario that we know that might happen in 20 years. I think the most important part we have to wrap around is that we might have to change with the times. So no matter how much energy we put into these master plans that these guys are spending a lot of time and energy and dollars trying to prove, it's just the fact that I don't think anybody's ever going to have a perfect scenario. Grocery stores, how many people order their grocery stores and have them delivered to the front door? That doesn't stop you from going into ProSource. They call Walmart or Costco and that grocery gets delivered to the door. I don't think we're going to have grocery stores in a long-term period of time. I think they're going to be completely out and gone. That's why I was interested in why I thought that the SDCs, and I'm sorry about that. I thought you thought you were going to defer them for two to five years because I figured I'd end up owning a building. I have to do something with that. I still owe the SDC credits.

Yeah. Well, I think the point about flexibility and adaptability is very well taken. So I think, thank you for bringing that up.

TAB, Okay, sorry one quick clarification, I think the kind of gist that I heard around the bcb stc. TAB, option was leaning closer to that five years, but I think it would be helpful to get a little more clarity as the as the longer term duration. TAB, In agreement for the development folks that are around the room of what you feel like would be the most effective approach for a program like that.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- sounds like it would need to be much longer than that.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- yeah I would be great to hear. HAB-Masyn Moyer- More color about that, before the work session.

HAB-Terry Palmos- yeah but you're talking about the duration of the project and that's the reason why I was confused. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Because.

HAB-Terry Palmos- You could get these waivers right.

HAB-Terry Palmos- Right yeah.

HAB-Terry Palmos- When a year, I mean. HAB-Terry Palmos- That own. property down there. I think it would be great to hear a little bit about what might be feasible and thinking about the Hawthorne Bridge construction like you referred to. Where is that tipping point that you would anticipate seeing these properties fully redeveloped that wouldn't necessarily be eligible for something like this and might not make the most sense?

I think it's safe to say in that area in particular on First Street and where Hawthorne's going through, we're going to be under construction down there for quite some time. And not only with the bridge, but depending on what happens with, you know, the rest of the streets and so forth. So I wouldn't say less than five. I think five years is a good place to start. And it allows most of the leases you have to remember are that period too. So yeah. I think five years is better than three.

Sure. And there is options. The way that we write the code is that we could change that sunset day. So say we get closer to that five years and say we haven't quite seen as much activity as we wanted to. So we could make an amendment and change it in the future. So there is some flexibility that I think we could work with. But we'd like to give our best guess.

Okay, so I had a couple more slides on neighborhood serving commercial. We've kind of led into this topic a little bit, so let's see if there's anything else we want to talk about.

Yeah, we've touched on a lot of this, but I think just for group awareness, there's multiple efforts underway when it comes to this neighborhood commercial topic. Earlier this year, there was kind of council work session discussion, and we outlined some short and long-term strategies, kind of how the city is thinking about it, or just these efforts underway. So kind of in that short-term bucket, we prioritize legislative advocacy in this last short session. It resulted in the passage of House Bill 4037, and that was kind of to address some Senate Bill 8, kind of protection of commercial land and master plan areas. In June, we held a round table with the planning commission and neighborhood districts, really looking at neighborhood commercial code amendments. So when you're thinking about uses like Bruno's or active culture, those types of kind of neighborhood commercial uses, kind of looking at are there development code fixes that we could make or things that we could address that just make those hard or reasons why folks aren't utilizing that option. So that was a really good discussion where we got feedback from the neighborhood districts about kind of what they'd like to see or just kind of seeing what would be possible there. So that works moving forward. As we talked about briefly, there's been a market analysis to really understand kind of what types of retail would be feasible in the city and trying to use that to inform our work. This is part of the economic development work plan. So more of those results will be coming out. We just got kind of a draft report. So that will be shared more broadly. In the medium term, in June, we just had a work session on development infrastructure requirements for infill development. So really looking at kind of what kind of administrative or policy or funding options we could look at and looking at barriers to infill. And that was a productive conversation that will really kind of feed into the next council goal setting process. But some of the things that kind of turned up from that conversation were looking into a discretionary path exploring if there's a way that developers could work more closely with city staff to kind of figure out how to make kind of more difficult infill parcels work, you know, what could, you know, kind of more brainstorming together at the front end and also like a sidewalk fee in lieu program. So there's more kind of coming from that conversation. And then we're also rolling out phased incentive options through grants and loans, specifically in urban renewal areas. Kind of a recent Boley decision kind of added some questions to that process. So the timeline is kind of in the next year or so, but we're kind of looking more into that. And then long-term, as we've kind of already discussed at the table, the growth plan will really contemplate a lot of these kind of issues in a more comprehensive way. In terms of preliminary findings from the market analysis, so just like a few tidbits, but of course there's more coming, it showed that we have a strong retail market. There really are just a few retail gaps. Some of the preliminary results showed that shoe stores, interestingly enough, are maybe one of the bigger gaps, but ultimately the bend is well served by the retail that's available. Another finding is that a lot of the available commercial is really kind of largely single loaded on an arterial rather than being kind of on both sides of the corridor. So when we're thinking about these walkable nodes, that kind of availability is limited in the city, but the core area presents a notable opportunity for more of that walkability. that space availability and affordability are bigger challenges than demand. So, you know, cost is kind of the big barrier there, not for lack of folks wanting to fill those spaces.

And I need more commercial space is what you're saying to be built in town.

Well, I almost want to heard Jonathan, but I think it's a matter of thinking about the cost of space and things like that. So.

Right, when we're talking about the reuse, part of that is the cost of a space that might be available, but it's not affordable because of the reuse, you know, SEC costs or whatever.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then as we talked about briefly, that proximity alone doesn't drive traffic to grocery stores. So it's not just a matter of the grocery store being right down the block, you know, other decision-making factors around kind of affordability of goods or what other things that you're doing in that shopping trip can make a difference. Yeah, so. just some highlights there, more to come.

Yeah, so we're a little behind schedule. So if there's anything in particular, anyone wanted to highlight here, we've sort of discussed this a little bit in that last discussion. So, but if there's any other things anyone wants to highlight around the sort of neighborhood commercial level, where we can move into our final topic, where I'm fine doing.

What could be, you know, it could be a full discussion elimination of the fee up to five years. And then you can do a set down process after that. So let's say it's a 10 year process, but at your six year, you're not going to get the full discount, but you're encouraging some type of development. What's the carrot out there to get people to develop? And I think there's going to be some development that the SDC is not going to move the needle, whether you pay it or you don't, it works or it doesn't. But if the city is interested in getting these pods, then putting an incentive out there where your SDCs are, maybe it's stepped to the first five years, it starts at 100. And then after that fifth year, once you start to get the building taking place, you lose some of those discounts. For the people taking the risk upfront, it's kind of like the central district, right? There's going to be some people, gutsy ones are going there right now. So what's the incentive for that?

Are there any other kind of incentives in our, you know, Code or other things, allowing you know what coverage or other things, or I mean in some of its technical so we can always gather these. ideas later, but just beyond just the monetary what other kind of and use incentives that might for commercial.

Some of the feedback that we got when we were working in eastern and Petrosa especially eastern because of the way the site is configured. Is the CG zone requires that the buildings be pushed up towards on the street side so. kind of make it to be more walkable, but then you want to, you know, someone wants to put a drive-through in there, a drive-through coffee shop that needs to be situated in the middle of the site with full traffic around the building. That's actually not prohibited by code. So, or it's not allowed by code. So I think that's, HAB-Masyn Moyer- Challenging I think Kevin can buy space this more of a parking having the parking maximums on these sites are. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Extremely you know limiting, especially when you have multiple uses that need their own parking to support their use, I think, especially when they're retailers or users coming from out of bend. They see that as extremely restrictive. We don't have a good public, a strong public transportation system. We don't have a light rail or anything like that. These people are accessing, most people are driving to these locations. So we need the parking and we need to be able to, even if it's showing it and showing that a retailer needs that parking to get those variances.

Currently today, currently today, SDC is based on what they call trips, right? For SDC, these are trips, or square footage, however you want to put it. Or SDCs don't even support our parking code. So our parking code in the old days used to be you submitted a parking code and you didn't necessarily have a maximum. You had a minimum. Currently today, you don't have to have any parking on site. So to me, if it is, I'm at Reed South, right? You put yourself there and you go right now and want to have a beer and you're not parking anywhere because there is no parking on Reed or 27th. But we fought one year. with the city to get 47 extra spots, but yet the SDCs I'm paying are for trips that I can't park. So the city, I think, needs to just sit back and decide what difference does it make if my land at my cost and my parking structure makes a difference for me to successfully succeed in a business venture you're asking me to do. You're asking me to go put commercial, convenience commercial in on a quarter pod, but you're not giving me enough traffic to actually park and support the people. Currently today, Chad, how many years? Four years I've had some of those buildings up. I can't rent them today because I can't consciously look at a person to say that I'm going to put you in, but you're not going to have any parking. But we fought with the city for 47 spots for almost one calendar year. And you want what I built. You want me to go to Petrosa, but what you see at Petrosa isn't gonna be that. I'm not doing that again. So if the city says, hey, guess what? We're not gonna give you expanded parking, but we want you to build a commercial pod for the local people, but we're gonna charge you STCs for trips. I can't park. I think that's a conflict of interest. And so this is a biggie. We can't go to Petrosa again and successfully build a foot pod that we believe that needs to be supported by parking And knowing that I've already been there with REIT South and I can show you in a car drive that will not work. So if you guys want commercial activity on corners of subdivisions and I want to build them, please figure out a path to give me more parking. Because currently right now you're charging me for the SDCs to have the parking and the uses, but I can't even park the cars. You're telling me that I can do it. It's really important, Melanie, because it's going to kill my, it's going to kill Petrosa.

I got you. Yeah. And we're also being told by the state that we have to have parking maximums and that we need to be moving people away from making every trip in their car. So there's an inherent tension here, I think, with what the market is asking for and then what our regulatory system is telling us what to do. But it's good to hear from the perspective of folks who are talking to people that are building.

Well, absolutely, 100%. We are not bikers yet. We're not there yet. There is some people there. but I'm letting you know we're still a community that drives their cars. You want to go have a pizza and you drive by, you want to have a beer, you can't park. You're not stopping, and those people need all the business they can in a short amount of time. I'm just letting you know when I'm submitting that application, you guys need to know that it's coming, but if I can't support the parking, we can't go there. Because I will not build another Reed South and fail over the parking.

Commercial is a very important part of master plan communities. It just has to be the right size to work.

Yeah. Okay. Any other thoughts? Okay.

I'm trying to have time for our last topic here.

Okay, great. So Russ, you're going to get us into this one. Yeah. And let's get to the feedback as quick as we can.

Yeah, so I'm just going to see this up.

So basically, this is just some exercise, some slides that we gave to council just recently. We've just given them an update on what's going on with permitting. Paul and his team have worked really hard to get some predictability into the permitting system. But what this is really highlighting, this has been the focus over the past year of what they're doing. What this demonstrates is going to what everyone's saying here. It's complex. It's hard. The ground is always moving underneath you. We are getting new requirements every year. And every time you come in, you're experiencing something different. So we understand there's complexity. And we're also getting a lot of state initiatives that we have to figure out how to comply with, which is causing it hard, especially, I know this team does it all the time, but we have a lot of smaller builders that struggle with this. But as you can see, there's just a lot going on all the time, which explains why there's confusion. going on. But I do want to recommend calling on his team for getting these things through, working on getting the permit review times out there. We know if we say we can do it in 30 days, you're going to immediately say you want 20, but we are trying to get to consistency around what we're doing. We're actually now becoming more proactive, if you go to the next slide, of what we're starting to see, because we view permitting as a two-way street, a two-way conversation, and we're a team and trying to get this done. So the better information we get on the review, the quicker we can get things out. So now we're doing things of just putting out like on some residential building permits, what are our top 10 reviews that we're seeing? Because we're now focused on review cycles. How do we cut down the review cycles and the number of times you need to go through the system? Don't have all the answers to that yet, but we've got kind of the standard review process figured out now. So now we're going to the next level of how do we work better together? And really where we're focused moving forward is kind of on three main areas. Funding, we are always advocating for infrastructure funding because we know that is the biggest barrier that everybody has, whether you're doing a small infill project or you're doing a large scale master plan, it's infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. We're turning every rock trying to find funding for that. We're also, we're looking at new, you know, the tools that we have, which are kind of limited in the market regarding LIDs, supplemental SDCs, reimbursement districts. Those tools are starting to come to life now around the different areas of the city. We're working on process. And I think that's one of the things we want to talk about here is what do you need, what can we do at the city to help you get through the process? We now have a developer navigator. Her name's Erica. She's working on these larger scale projects. Some of you have seen her. That's just to help move these things, these large projects through and have a consistent point of contact. We're also trying to figure out how do we work, what's needed in the development community to get through the smaller projects. Because some of them go completely smooth and some of them don't, but we know there's a high level of complexity. So is there anything out there that we can help you with? We are getting studies from the State Housing Production Office, the Housing Accountability Production Office that is saying similar themes. We are actually getting feedback now from a study we did on engineering reviews through pro housing grant that we received through HUD. So they're all kind of similar of like, how do we help the community, the development community get through the system better. And at the same time, complexity is not going to stop. We have all these things coming and there's going to be, we know in the long session, there's probably going to be another set of rules. We're not quite sure yet what we need to do. And we need to create clear and objective standards for residential, which sounds good on the surface, but when you get into the complexity of that, it causes more issues. and related, I'm gonna say complexity again for how developers navigate the system. I don't want to spend too much time on it because I know I'm kind of preaching to the choir here a little bit.

So we can let folks give us their thoughts.

So you can go to the next slide and happy to answer any questions, but I just wanted to set that up really fast.

Yeah. One of the kind of newer concepts here for folks that hopefully you saw before this presentation was just the idea of this ombudsman that's sort of a problem solver. So would love to hear what people think about that, but any feedback that you have on what we've been doing, what Collin's team has been doing, and just, especially if there's repeated points where something is, HAB-Masyn Moyer- A repeated point that comes up that you want to help have us address so we're open for to all that feedback.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Are you talking residential mostly.

HAB-Terry Palmos- Well, i'm talking i'm talking everything I think we've got systems in place for large scale developments big projects that come in, I think we can work through the system now it's like let's go drop in the next.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- yeah why don't we start with maybe residential side and then move to commercial industrial so like I don't know Joey or Jen or here, if you all have feedback.

So I just start out and just recognize city has some very good staff, right? So I started the first half of my career. I worked in the public sector. I worked in many different jurisdictions across all parts of the state and city of Bend has among the best staff working on these issues that I've encountered. I think the challenge is that there is this increasing complexity and a lot of that does come from the state and the city's kind of having to react to legislation and Councilor Platt, I mean, I think I don't know what the city's doing to say, hey, can we make this less complex? Can we make this easier? Can we have some more control over this? But things are getting more complex and at the risk of taking away business from what I do because it is becoming so complex that you need very experienced consultants to put these projects together through land use and engineering and permitting, but just looking for opportunities to reduce that complexity. And I think it's really hard But I think that's really got to be a priority if we want to make this faster and easier and cheaper, because I think we can talk about, I think the city can rationalize that in a vacuum, a tree code or a defensible space code, those things can make sense. But when you add them up over time, over many years, the number of regulations, the number of requirements really contributes to that, the cost and the timing.

And the complexity.

And the complexity.

Yeah. Um, I just want to give Erica a shout out your developer navigator Erica and I have spent a lot of time together. But just in general staff have been really exceptional about spending time, whether we're going through and flat review tutorial or troubleshooting on a permit. It's just been the answer to our question is, can we have an hour of your time is always yes. And that's exceptional. And Erica does so much of that scheduling and answer finding. So thank you. And then as for the ombudsman, I don't know, Garrett, if you had feedback from smaller members or smaller project developers.

Yeah, I definitely have heard that smaller developers, they run in, especially when things change, they catch up a little bit quicker. If you're doing fewer units, you're not seeing the change happen in real time. So you may come in four months later and it's entirely different. So I think one way, what I wanted to say before, going off of what Russ and Joey have said, if COBA could play a role in helping keep people up to date so when things change, if we could have Permit 101 as something we offer members in their portal so that we'd have to refresh it annually, I understand it'd be a lot of work on your staff, but I think we could help keep people up to date as things change. Also make sure plans that are going to your staff or maybe a little bit more refined, having less kickbacks and corrections. I think that's something that I'm more than willing to help with and would love to partner with you on. Another concern I hear from members sometimes will be that they submit plans, they get the first set of corrections, they submit it again, and then they find new things. And so that's where multiple review cycles come in. So just maybe being consistent from the start would definitely help some of the smaller folks for sure.

On the commercial side, I mean, I think the city is asking us to build commercial spec buildings for the future abandonment and people grow. So we go out and we don't always get our renters. In fact, the process of you guys all, I don't even know how you keep up with the new codes and regulations. So that's incredible. But for our side, if we have a building up like Green South and we do finally get, and it takes a long time to get a permit, Besides that, it would be really nice to have a tenant improvement department that doesn't take us six months for a bathroom. So even though it sounds really simple, you have people building facilities all over town because they can't wait for a bathroom. But in our case, if it is, and you say, well, it takes the same exact process and you submit for bathroom, one person clicks the button, but engineering is on it. So engineering has to go back there and click the button on engineering. There isn't any engineering on the project, right? So it would be really nice to see if we're sitting here talking about it, is that we are spending a ton of money trying to provide buildings to Ben. It would be nice to have a process that's segregated for TIs that could possibly speed that process. One bathroom, it reads out five and a half months. One bathroom. That doesn't make much monetary sense. And those people could have made it. And so that would be really, really appreciated. One more thing timing wise, you guys do have a lot of energy and great people. So it's not like I don't appreciate everybody that's here. We don't, I think we're getting a little bit, I feel like I'm controlled a little bit about the water sewer and traffic analysis because there's no real timeline associated with those. So if the city feels like they're overworked or overburdened because there's no timeline, the second they approve that, then we can submit a sign. And then all of a sudden we have a hundred and three window. So if for some reason, and maybe it doesn't occur, everybody that's listening, maybe it doesn't occur. On our side, it feels like they control our, sometimes it takes 120 days to get a water and sewer and traffic analysis done, which completely controls our project. meaning that adds 120 extra days that we don't get an opportunity to submit our site plan until those obligations are done. So if it takes a year to get those done when you have a tough traffic analysis done, our project sits idly aside with absolutely nothing going on until that happens. If I was to request one more thing, And that would be where you guys at least take a look at that window and say, why is the water and sewer analysis in a subdivision that just got plotted need a brand new water and sewer analysis? And that takes 50 to 60 or 70 days when we just got a final on a subdivision.

That doesn't make any sense to me.

We're going through it right now. We just plotted that. It's done. And all of a sudden now to get a water and sewer analysis on lot seven, it's 60, 90 days and traffic is added to it. So for us, that adds, when you have a customer sitting at my desk and they say, when can we move into our buildings? And we're not going to have a perfect scenario because you guys get new rules every day and we don't know what they are and you don't know what they are. All we have to do is negotiate with you through this process, which we try and ask a thousand times and everybody gets lame. What can we do to help you? And we're not sure because you've got permits coming out, trash and cover trash. And we've got so many new permits that we have to purchase. that we don't even know what those are until the time it takes to buy that fair rust. So we don't even know. It's not like we've submitted our application wrong. It's just that that happened during the period of time that we submitted our application. So we don't know how to do that. But what would really, really be great is if it didn't take 100 days. Originally, we're talking 30, 40 days. We're into 120, 120, 30 days to get our traffic and water and sewer analysis done, which completely stalls our project. Okay. We lose customers. We lose customers.

The TI and the water, sewer, traffic analysis.

OK. And for context, other jurisdictions do review those kind of concurrently. That's what I was thinking. So they're not necessarily stacked in that they're kind of running parallel. And there's pluses and minuses for the ways of doing that, to be fair. That is a potential time saving.

That's fair enough. Everybody does it a little bit different. It's the time clock of the Oregon land use system, the 120-day clock. That's what drives those pre-approvals.

But there's no time clock at all. I understand what you're saying on that. But that's the tough part for me is I can't even contemplate the 120 days because you have a free time. That's something we can look at.

Okay. Other thoughts from anyone who hasn't given feedback yet on this?

I think that timing is always of essence and it doesn't really matter what part of the permit. It just seems like, you know, and the city's busy and we've been fortunate to have a great market. I would maybe turn it to request Colin and Russ and his team to come back to the council and say, here's some areas that we can change to expedite this process. You know, you're hearing it day in and day out. And, you know, I think to the point where we add complexity, it does take time. I think the tree code is a good example of that. There's a lot of time that goes into, you know, you've got to go through and verify all the trees that have been pinned. Do they really meet the diameters? I mean, there's, so their group could come back and say, here's some things I think we could do to make the development community get our process is down a little bit and maybe eliminate a few or sub some of them out. You know, there's other groups that do it and you're going to use outside services. Absolutely. So I,

they're doing a great job to just come back and say they make their life easier yeah and we do differently and I think maybe that's a good segue to talk about when we're because we had this pro-housing grant to have a third party actually look at a lot of our processes so I'm I'm thinking that is the moment, of course, to come back and say, here's some things you could change, or here's, I think it's going to reflect a lot of the same feedback.

The themes we're hearing are, you know, how do we multiple, you know, kind of concurrent reviews, assistance of getting through the process, understanding the process is a big part of it too, because of the shifting landscape all the time. Because every time you, even the people at the stable that come through all the time, it seems like every time you submit a permit, there's something new that you have to adapt to.

Right. And I honestly believe that The city, along with the developers want the best thing for Ben. I really believe that, you know, I think you can look across the city and just see, I mean, there's time and effort that your staff and the people that are spending the money to do it. It's good development. So it doesn't just come easy, but you can come up with some great ideas.

And Russ, is that the Kevin Gardner thing that you, that you're talking about that evaluation? Yeah, I think I know that. that we felt like at COBA, there was good participation. And so when you're ready to share that, we're excited.

There's anything kind of, you know, yes, that's what I was looking for, but there are definitely things in it that we're aware of. And again, I feel like we're at a point where we want to work with you to figure out the best way to get through this. Like we've got everything's, the system is stabilized, but how do we now be more efficient and more effective with the development team? Because we don't want to hold onto your permits either. We want to get them out the door as quickly as we can. Sure.

Okay, so we were hoping to do some closing reflections. We are a little shorter on time. So Sarah, we'll come back to this. Let's move to sort of make sure we get everyone to know what the next steps are that are coming up, important dates, so.

Okay, yeah. So after this, we'll send out a survey, very brief, but just wanna hear about folks' experience attending this round table, especially as we wanna have this as an ongoing touch point moving forward and future topics for consideration as well. So we'll send that out with some themes, a summary of today's discussion and for that feedback and then some upcoming council touch points. So next week work session, there'll be a tree code follow-up on kind of the annual review and kind of talking about different changes that might take place. And then really a recap of this discussion and how it might influence some policy decisions around employment site readiness. And then that SDC relief for that, for the core area of the adaptive reuse. So that will be a chance for council to provide direction on kind of next steps. And at this point there's at the September 16th business meeting would be prepared to bring forward a resolution for SDC relief specific to the core area pending that council direction. So some immediate next steps. And then anything else you want to say about employment site readiness timing? I think you talked about it.

Yeah, I think September 9th, it would be good to just have the feedback we received today and then get some clear direction from council so we can anticipate what code amendments need to occur and when we would be able to bring a package before council to make those changes.

Great. Okay. So I want to offer our guests here who are sitting at table any chance for any final reflections or just final thoughts. We really appreciate you being with us. Really appreciate the partnership of COBA in our development community. There's been, Russ had that one slide, there's been a lot of work, feedback cycles, and we want it to continue. And we want to keep hearing from you about how we can do better. and how we can create the kind of community development that we want to have, as Todd said, and react to our constituents' needs about what they want to have in their neighborhoods and how they want to live here in Bend. So just really want to thank everyone for being here and give everyone a last chance if there's anything else anyone wants to add, reflection-wise or just, you know, encouraging us to focus on certain areas. We've heard a lot of really good ideas today. So, Gary.

I just want to thank you for all for hosting this. And also on the flip side of this, thank you for looking at internal processes for reviews and whatnot. If there's ever things that COVA can help with there, if you identify, we get this question a lot, or we see this issue all the time, please let me know. I'm happy to help educate our members that we can get on the same page and things out the door quicker.

Yeah, I really like the idea of sort of permitting 101. But I also want to say, I want to reflect the theme I heard today that I will tell you as a board member of the League of Cities, that is not just our city, it's many cities, is the complexity, the changing of policy, the changing of rules, the stuff coming from the state level. And also, I think cities like ours being very motivated to make lots of code changes to get housing built. It is adding a layer of, you know, just it's adding a layer to the whole process. And that's something that we have to keep thinking about. We can advocate up for that and we can think about it on our end as well.

So, yeah. I just leave you with, I just did a presentation for leadership then and I went back to 1962, which is the year I was born and looked at, I was born here in Bend and looked at the price of a home in 1962. And then every 10 years thereafter and looked at the scale of what housing is in Bend today. and also looked at the wages where they were in 62 to where they are. And the housing prices far outpace our wage increases, right? So everybody sees that. But we can't lose sight of how important it is for the economic development as well. And making sure that we're bringing good companies here that can provide good jobs, that can afford to buy the houses that are being built. So I just think that it's, you know, we've spent a lot of time in housing and it's wonderful. We have great builders here. We need to continue to put some energy towards some land that's available for these companies to not just come here, that are already here that need to grow. And thank you very much. Cyrus has been a huge contributor to come out and meet with us. Jonathan as well, Katie Brooks, everybody here. So thank you for allowing us to participate.

I have a quick question regarding STCs. You know, I fully appreciate that you can't, you know, develop a code that outlines every single type of use, you know, so there has to be some interpretation. But like for fitness, for example, you know, an orange theory drives a lot more traffic than a personal trainer who's seeing one client at a time. Is there a mechanism to kind of Work through that with the city where maybe the, the fees get massaged because not everything fits into, you know, a particular box.

There's some questions came up around this to see for rec centers. We just issued a memo to council going through the methodology, but really there's a, there's in our methodology, there's minor categories that we can use within that, but we are opening up. There's an appeal process. If you don't fit in the category to submit additional information that, that would better classify that, whatever that development is. And we will look at it.

And you just submit that to the individual that like, through the SDC process.

I can tell you how to do that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I think a couple things. So these were like slightly touched on, but I think obviously Russ alluded to infrastructure. I mean, we didn't, we just blushed on the surface of infrastructure and it's, the most limiting factor to development today and the cost of infrastructure and the amount of infrastructure that's required to bring, especially master plans. And even for infill, it's becoming hugely restrictive. I think that emphasis on figuring how we're going to scale that is really important to us. I think too, with that, the way that we get reimbursed for putting in infrastructure is solely through SDC credits and that money gets tied up and waits for every single house to be a permit to be pulled on a house or commercial use. And that takes time and that's money that's held up that we can't reinvest into the community. So if there's mechanisms that allow us to get repaid for our SD, the infrastructure we're putting in faster and earlier, it would be hugely beneficial to us and allow us to reinvest it in the community and into other projects.

Would that be something like being able to sell your credits to other people?

Yeah, it would be a mixture of being reimbursed. We used to be able to get reimbursed in larger sums rather than per permit. And then in addition to that, being able to transfer our credits. I mean, that would be a relief to others who are looking for some sort of SDC relief in Petrosa. We have $2.5 million of credits that are won't be returned to us as of today, that we need to find a place for them. And so allowing that mechanism to occur would help not just us. Great.

So currently, Melanie, the way it works as far as I'm concerned is that you negotiate on your area when you go. So Petrosa goes in and they say, well, we're going to spend this much money and here's an area. And then pretty soon, that's not what happens in that area. But yet, the traffic report for Petrosa is analyzed all the way to the Honolulu Road intersection. So you don't get to stop your traffic reports at your boundaries of your property. They force you to do a traffic report as far out as on the road for Petros. It makes more sense maybe that the city staff to look at that and say, maybe expand in those areas when that much money is being spent. So the recovery areas can be a little bit more broad, but they're not, they're not, only designated the land at the period of time you've negotiated, but there's actually a negotiation past that. But let me talk about SDCs for one second. So my position of it is that somebody comes into my rental and he wants the building, okay? And they say, well, what's my SDC gonna be? And so currently today, I have to go online and put my building, their building that they want in a box and I have to send it over and they get an SDC cost. So I don't have the luxury of negotiating an SDCP, but I was told not very long ago That the way I don't get to negotiate that until a building permits ready to pull. So at that point, my customer is out, they don't see the advantage of negotiating an SDC fee. If I have to have it permitted before I get it, then the process is really, I have to appeal the process and rush you tell me if there's a different vehicle because I'd love to hear that then I have to appeal the process which they have another 120 days so the currently now we're adding another 120 days to a customer that wants to buy a building that has less of a implication as one building even though it's in the same category but we don't know what that negotiation number is well into the building and so why would somebody gamble on that you see what I mean Is there a vehicle for that today?

Let me talk to you offline because there's layers to that.

Yeah, but I hear what you're saying about the timing.

Yeah, I totally understand the problem statement that you have there.

Yeah. Jade or Joey, anything else you guys want to add?

Greatly appreciate you setting this up and giving us the opportunity to participate. It's very much appreciated.

Yeah, I think the intention is to continue the conversation. This is not a one and done. Jen, anything else from you?

I want to say that we could have another one of these on infrastructure in case. Yeah, we could do a whole other roundtable on it. And then I think Joey put it really well, the complexity and the ways in which all of these well-intentioned policies in a silo work really well, but when they start to collide, that's where we get some problems. So I would say that with the work session coming up and this tree code follow-up, I also know that defensible space is on your radar. And so I would just ask council to really think about the ways in which defensible space and the current residential tree code are in direct conflict with one another. And I'm happy to provide more context, but just please don't resolve anything in that work session until you're able to also look at the tree code in relation to defensible space for residential. Yeah. Thank you for that. Okay. Okay.

Well, we're just a little over time. Good job, everybody.