Economic Development Commission - Regular Meeting

commission slash DA. It is 837, 836, 837. We do not have a quorum at present, but we are going to start just reviewing old business. The approval of the minutes of May 12th will hold off on that until the next meeting. And any old business? Okay. Any new business? It would be a quick meeting. Okay. Commission member update. We miss Bob. We miss Bob. We miss Bob.

Bonnie, if we can just have a moment of silence for Bob.

Okay. Thanks, Denise. There will be some type of a celebration of life, I think, in September. So we'll keep everyone informed.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Consultants report. Anything that is not in the reports, Denise, that you want to mention?

No, we're busy moving along with things. I do want to mention that, and Dave, you can speak to at the meeting with Cigna that you've set up.

The mayor, town manager, John and I will be meeting with the new CEO of Cigna, Brian Banco. And to tell you the truth, I don't recall the last time that Bloomfield officials were able to meet with the CEO of Cigna. But John, you might have a better institutional memory than I, but in the 10 to 12 years I've been involved with Bloomfield, we never could get Cordani. And it's nice that the new CEO is, you know, willing to spend about a half hour with Bloomfield folks.

Yeah, I would agree. I mean, I think when it went from CG to Cigna, the whole ball game changed. Oh, yeah. You know, and they moved the headquarters to Philadelphia for a number of years. You know, the only reason Cordani moved it back was he didn't want to leave Sinsbury. So, you know, I agree. It would be nice to reestablish a working relationship with them. And this is a good start with the CEO willing to spend a half hour with us.

And John and Dave, what is this gentleman's background? Where is he from? And is he a longtime Cigna person?

Well, he is a longtime Cigna person. And so he just moved up the ladder.

Mm-hmm. Is he from this area or from somewhere else or?

I can't remember. Denise, we saw.

I don't, but Bonnie, what I will do is I will send you, HBJ just did a brief overview on him. He was named one of the top influencers in healthcare in the area. So I'll send you his overview. That was attached to the invite. And I don't have it right up in front of me, but he gives a brief background of them. And I think Hartford Current may have done an article on him. I'll search for that and see if I can find it too.

Why don't you send this to Rebecca and she can share it with the whole committee. Sure. Okay, thank you. That would be great. Well, that is very encouraging. And I'm so glad that the town is trying to go out and talk to the major players in town.

Yeah, I think they booked it last month, set up the meeting, and it doesn't occur until August. One good thing is that Brian Cuddleback will be a part of the meeting and he's very active. He's almost like a Bloomfield public relations person for Cigna, and he's very active in the Bloomfield Chamber. Dave and I know him from there. Justin and John, I know you've met him before. So he's helpful when we have to get numbers and stuff on employees and stuff there. So he's a good in and he'll be attending the meeting also.

So when we go forward with the 1% for the Arts Commission that we're talking about doing, he would probably be a good person just to discuss that with before we put the results together, yes?

Probably. either him or, um, I know when I worked for the nonprofit, um, they had Bloomfield has a specific, um, foundation that they fund different things through too. So they were a funder in, in a couple of the Bloomfield playgrounds that I did through boundless playgrounds.

Hopefully we'll get something. I mean, that, that is a, a, a 1% or so to the arts is a pretty common, request, I think, from communities. So hopefully we'll be able to get that in place. And just while we're talking about that, am I correct that it is appropriate for the EDCDA to come before TPZ with these zoning proposals or should it be done some other way?

No, you can. It's the council that can't. Any elected body should not. But you and your position is promoting economic development. Uh, I think it's perfectly right. I don't know if Justin disagrees or disagrees, but it's the council. It really, there's no flat out legal prohibition, but it's, um, it's, it's, um, the way it, it should be properly done. And, um, you know, councilmen are not supposed to, to influence a decision directly of the, of the TPZ or wetlands. Um, and pretty much they've stayed out of it. Um,

I agree with you, John, and I think this group can certainly, you know, you're an advisory group, so you can sort of come up with recommendations, and especially if you think there's a zoning change or something that should be enacted to help with economic development in town, then yeah, absolutely, you can do that.

I mean, this is one, and then when we get into the DA portion, I'll refer to another one that Linda and I are talking about.

Yeah.

Any other questions for anyone of the Going to New York? No? Okay. Town planner report. John, thank you very much for the year-end report. Those are always great to have, as well are the monthlies.

Yeah, I have nothing really to add to that. I think it's been distributed to everybody. You know, we had a busy 26. Yeah. And I think we're going to have a busy 27. So, you know, it speaks to know that the number i liked most was that um we had budgeted 1.2 million for fees and we took in 1.547 so we basically did 50 better than we had projected yeah it's a great job and um hopefully the council understands that at some point um any thoughts john about apartment uh

development, the pace at which it's occurring in the region and when we're going to see when the last one should be built.

My sense is, you know, I'd love to hear from Dave and Justin on this. My gut tells me that the next flurry will be, after that, it's going to slow down. I mean, we've got a big proposal at 800 Cottage Grove. We've got Paul Butler's one. Something's going to be done in the town center at some point. We're looking at 250 units there. The one up on Woodland Ave, which is about 150, just sort of hangs out there. And then we have the first cathedral. Other than those, one, unless they're going to redevelop, there isn't a hell of a lot of land left. I think we'll see a smattering here and there. There's a fair amount of interest in doing some

smaller affordable unit projects um but i think the the big push will be in the next you know in the next um 10 to 14 months and these are all apartments not condos correct that is correct okay that's probably a good thing in some ways um going back to the affordable housing um is there any way of doing something for current homeowners who are having issues affording to, being able to afford to stay in their home and maintain their homes?

Not directly. I mean, other than, you know, we've seen a fair amount of, you know, empty nesters and downsizing going into the apartment. So that provides relief. Yeah. You know, from the, on the affordable housing trust, on the housing trust fund, which we still have to develop the policies and procedures who are a year late on that. There's, I think, two schools of thought in terms of how it wants to be used. So I think it'll probably be divvied up. One is to work with larger developers in terms of providing incentive funding. But there's a strong interest in helping small homeowners in terms of loans and grants. Issue of that is not the money, it's the administrative side. That's a big administrative burden in terms of tracking and following all of those, whether they're a grant or whether they're a loan. The town has not had a good experience with that. We had a rehabilitation grant that was using federal money passed through the state. And a year ago, year and a half ago, When the new finance team came in, the auditors asked for, you know, where we stood on that, and none of us have been able to find a complete data set that tells us the status of those properties, whether there's liens on them, whether they were paid back, whether they were lien or they're a grant. So there's a concern in terms of staff capacity. at this point to properly administer. We're certainly going to have plenty of money in it. A couple of developers looking at doing a payment in lieu of actually providing units. If one of them did it over the life of 10 years, they'd put in three and a half million bucks. So it could become a pretty robust fund.

Can that fund be used to staff fees? affordable housing proposal? Say again? Can that fund, can the money from that fund be used to provide staff that would specifically administer something for the small homeowners?

Potentially. Potentially. I mean, it's a pretty broad policy statement in the ordinance and there's, you know, the council can amend that ordinance anytime it so chooses. So I, you know, that's certainly a possibility.

Because maybe that's something we should discuss further in this commission too. That certainly seems to me a proposal that would have a lot of support in the community and might calm down some of the feelings people have about other things that are going on, the development that are going on.

For the next two years, we're finding reval. Yeah.

John and Donnie, I want to bring up that we did that program that we tried to get a CIF Grant Ford a long time ago, but it was when Justin was in John's position. We had worked with one of the banks where the bank was going to do all the administering and everything. And it would be a revolving loan, wasn't it, Justin? So as the loans got paid back, they could be reissued again to different people. We can dust off those and bring them up if you want to see those.

I think with the situation that people have now that even though they've got that their homes may not have a lot of value, they may or may not be able to afford going somewhere else. you know, in the community and a lot of people that have, I mean, I know how I feel. I've been here almost my entire life. I would be very unhappy if I had to actually leave.

Yeah. And there were stipulations in it where, you know, 50% of it had to go to certain areas of town, like the Blue Hills area. But I think it was a good program. It's just at that time, CIF wasn't funding programs like that. But I think we can dust it off and take a look at it again.

Good. I think that would be great.

And I think it'd be of interest to the commission to- And where it really wasn't taking staff time because the bank was going to administer- Right.

The bank is very much on board too. I think they still would be.

I think, well, I talked to David about it. David Iannucci was with the bank, Windsor Federal, and they were very interested in doing it still. And he also sits on the EDC for East Granby. So he gets where we're coming from.

Okay. That's great. Okay. That's very encouraging. Good. Thank you. Thank you both. Okay. Plan of Conservation and Development.

We've decided to throw it out and use a 2012 one.

That's about right, John. But it saved a lot of money. Go ahead.

We already spent the money, but it saved a lot of time. Should have been me adopted. And get rid of a bunch of frustrations.

Yeah, I know. When is holding it up at this point?

Us, me. Just time. We need, you know, it... A document like that needs blocks of time to work on. We optimistically thought we could find those blocks and we have not been successful. We've been partially successful, but staff owes Goldman and York one final chapter for chapters of the introduction and the summary. And so I made last week, I said, enough is enough. And so we've assigned staff basically full time to finish it up and our goal is to um is to get it to goldman and york by the end of this month okay and then what happens no actually by the end of next this week next week then they have they're going to produce a draft book uh which we hope um and i may be optimistic but we're hoping to have that done maybe you know early august depending on their schedule and then ship that to the commission at that point. So the commission can potentially take a preliminary action on it at their August 20th meeting. And at that point do a statutory referral to the town council and set a public hearing. Is that the commission you're referring to? Okay. And then with a fairly optimistic and hopeful goal that the TPZ would adopt it at their September meeting and we'll be done with it.

Okay. That would be wonderful.

All of the changes have been made to the document that needed to be done for the chapters. So when John says it's just the executive summary and the introduction, that's it. As soon as we have that, Georgie Driver, who works with us, is going to be putting it into the illustrator format.

Great, okay. I think the other challenge we had, Denise, was we were striving for perfection over completion. Yeah.

Yeah, 90% is good enough sometimes.

Yeah.

Okay, any questions from the commissioners about this? Is there anyone here from the public?

uh yes you have andrew and steve are on and gail reilly okay certainly anyone who wants to ask a question please feel free i can't see it but someone else can i can't see the hands being raised i just i just want to for the record vivian um joined us um at eight great at 8 44 p.m i just want the uh thank you for some reason well we have three present we still don't have sadiq okay yeah

sadiq had an emergency i just um he just called back um he had an emergency and apologizes for not being able to properly uh you know give us notice okay i hope everything is okay there all right thank you very much for that um town development is that what is the town development versus the town center what is town development

I have no idea.

I think it's just talking about what John was talking about, the apartment. Okay. Okay.

How about town center?

Yeah. Where is that? Town center, we have the CIF. We are waiting. We will not hear until September, but the month of August will be a push to get support from our state rep and state senators to go further with that. The mayor has that. I developed speaking points and an overview of the grant that India has that she is going to be giving out. It kind of has like the elevator pitch on why we should get the cif grant this round how much money are we at we are asking for just about 12 million dollars okay and that would give us enough to get to what point with the town center um that will give us enough support to do um acquisition demolition um environmental testing it has to be done um and i'm assuming that's a couple of years down the road if and when we get the grant Um, it's a very tight timeline that we're working on. So within a year and a half, you would definitely see dirt moving.

That would be that would be very encouraging. Good. Okay.

I think the other thing the other thing, Bonnie, that's happening is that we are we will be going out for a new RFQ RFP for a developer partner and that that should hit the streets.

Okay.

I would think within the next two to three weeks. Yeah. With a return probably late September.

Okay. We should get that word out to the community when it starts to move if you think it's going to help. I mean, there's so much frustration in general being voiced.

Right now it's in the state's hands, so anything we can do to push it. Okay.

Well, on that note, all righty then. Any questions for anything on the EDC part of the agenda before we move forward? Thank you, Michelle. Okay. Now we're on to the Development Agency. Continued discussion on the Granby-Tobie-Tipps District. I have my good piece of news that I have shared with a couple of people. But a week or so ago, the town council, with a lot of help from our town manager, approved the funding for the artifacts proposal. This is a purely a branding proposal. I would just review for everybody. I think I sent it out to everyone. It was a $5,000 approval that involves two stages. The first stage is to work with artifacts to come up with a branding concept. And my thought is after that, we should go to the Design Review Commission and then after that go to council. And I'm open to suggestions that that's the way to handle that. Okay. The second part would be actually schematics for the two existing signs. Lauren Rosen, the owner of Artifex, was actually able to find his drawings for the Granby Cottage Grove Road sign, which he tells me was never done according to what they had I don't want to tell you what he said about how it was done. Anyway, he said it was not done to his specifications, but they do know both of those signs intimately. They worked on both of them. So they will be able to hopefully move this along. And they told me in two to three weeks, they should start having some ideas of what they want to do about branding. And they have also put someone, one of their design artists specifically is going to be dedicated to this project. And they were both very, very enthused about what we're proposing to do. Bonnie, will they be doing a presentation to EDC? I'm sure they will if we ask them to. Okay. Yeah. As I said, I just had my first meeting with them Thursday, but it was great because we were pretty much on the same page. They loved the idea, Andrew's idea of BAD, of Bad Significant Arts District. We're talking about an arch, and I know that there's a potential design down in DC we could look at, but we may do something different. But it's going to be a fun project. I'm very enthused about it. That's about it. I mean, the other thing is that I keep on calling this the TIF district, and it would seem to me that it would behoove us to come up with a TIF commission so that if and when we actually get some kind of development there, we will see it. uh there is still one piece of a large piece of property owned by my family that still has not finalized its development so if for some reason that project doesn't go forward that's 33 acres that could be something hopefully okay any other comments about this any thoughts about this you know that the caplans are working on 31 toby road are working towards two new plans. And I think that will one of those I think is going to be hopefully on the agenda for the August TPZ meeting. Any comments? Questions? Thoughts? No, any? Okay. Any public comment? Again, I can't see hands.

Nope, don't see anyone.

Okay. Any other, I don't know what updates are, but I'm assuming there aren't any updates. Um, this was a very, very quick meeting. Okay. Uh, the next meeting is Tuesday, August 11th at eight 30. Again, John, if you can please try to move along, uh, help me move along the, uh, approval of another commissioner. That would be fantastic. Uh, and I think we should probably put a call out again because we did have some application. only there were three that were supposed to come to the committee on committees and only uh mr bryce showed up so that was a little disappointing but that's how it goes um motion to adjourn i guess we can't do that well we can adjourn right we just can't you can adjourn it as chair as chairperson okay i'm going to adjourn the meeting then everybody be well stay cool and uh see you all next month all right Okay, thank you.

Thank you, everyone. Have a good day.