Town Center Economic Development Commission - Regular Meeting

good evening let the records reflect that um this meeting was called the meeting of the town center economic development commission was called to order at 602 on tuesday august 18th um please let's have the roll call commissioner michelle chair Present.

Commissioner Carrasquillo?

Absent.

Commissioner Ghouli? Absent. Commissioner Hudgin?

Present.

Commissioner Riley? Present. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Having established a quorum, let's move on to item three. I got a motion to approve the minutes of April 21st, 2026. So moved. It's been moved by Commissioner Hudgin. Second. Second. Are there any changes? The minutes were sent out with the agenda and it was sent out last week. Are there any changes to the minutes as presented? Seeing none, hearing none. All those in favor of the minutes as presented, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye. Chair votes aye, motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Moving on to item four, public comments. Were there any, anyone present for public comments? Okay. All right, so thank you very much. We're going to move on to item five, new business. Can we get an update on procurement? Thank you very much. Mr. Coleman.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of the Commission. The procurement is underway. We're going to have basically an informational meeting with any potential interested parties this Thursday, where we will give general answers to questions and describe the town and build up some more interest, we hope. I don't know how many will be there, but I will be there. Representative Gohmann in York will be there. and some other town representatives. The August 25th is the deadline for interested parties to submit questions to Joe Marocca, the procurement officer, who is the only individual that interested parties can interact with. They cannot interact with me or any member of the staff or any member of the town council or with any member of the commission. through the entire procurement process. And September 25, I believe, is the date that procurement will close and we will begin the review process where a member of your commission, we have a standard process for reviewing procurements where there are some standing members of the staff the town manager and the town attorney uh the department that's involved usually one other staff member and in this case we will add a member from this committee to sit on that review body thank you uh just i want to confirm the date the the uh response to the rfp is due on 9 25 yes thank you

Okay, any any questions from any of my colleagues in the committee. Thank you very much, Mr Coleman appreciate the update. The new business item a new business item be updated on grant application with the state of Connecticut, can you give us some context about. The grant. Yes. And what and who we apply to and what the status is at this point.

Sure. Good evening, everyone. The status for the CIF grant, we went in with an ask of about $12 million to DECD for the CIF, the Community Investment Fund grant. Right now, they are in the review process. So this is an important time for us. um, as a town for our town officials, um, and for our state reps and our, um, Senator to start pushing support to the governors, the Lieutenant governor and to the CIF board to support our ask for this. Um, we expect in mid September that they will be really hard pressed in making their decisions. So now through September is a critical point for us right now.

Thank you. Before I ask my question, if any of my colleagues on the committee has any questions.

Yes, I have a question. I reviewed the last minutes. I think it's in April. We were denied some funds. I haven't been around much. So how did that happen? Or was it just timing with the application to receive money back in April?

we did not receive the funding we pushed hard we went we had one-on-one meetings with the and the deputy director of decd he was pushing hard for us there were other projects and other circumstances that i think were um where we didn't get funded for that. Um, we also came down on our ask a lot, um, in that one, we went in about 19 million, uh, maybe more. And, um, I think a lot of it was political tension, things like that, that came into view on that. This one, we went, came back, um, stronger, um, being able to look at where we could cut, where we could add, um, So I think it's important that we did that and that what we were told, and I spoke specifically to the governor, he said, get your reps out there, get your town officials, your mayor, everybody calling and support. So what we have given them is a document that India distributed to them with like an elevator speech for support and the key speaking points of our grant task.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right. Any questions? None. I guess, so we reduced it from about 20 million, so down 12 million. So what did we give up?

Most of what we, the largest portion that we gave up, we took the town's portion of the parking garage that borders in the drawings where the railroad tracks are. We took that and put that over to the developer's cost instead. So that was about, I believe it was $7 million, John. Yeah. Yep. okay so that took a significant lowering of that we also had um appraisals that came in that we didn't have on the previous one our appraisals for the buildings and the parcels involved in the town center design came in lower than we expected so we were able to cut there so we did increase i believe the demolition costs for some of the parcels that we had to based on, there might be some brownfields issues.

The town has a four million dollar dedicated fund. Is that part of this project cost as well?

Yes, that's additional. That's the town's buy-in to it. The bulk of the whole process will fall on to the developer, though. The developer's costs are about $86 million to $100 million.

It sounds like to give this $12 million application a chance of being funded, we have to get our political... folks engage yes um have we done that and who have we spoken with we have our mayor we have our mayor could you you want to come up and address that please okay and also other elected officials at least at the capitol have we spoken with bobby gibbs and uh yes and uh we have a new senator representing us have we reached out to me to miss khan yes um

I have been in contact with Ms. Khan, and I've continued to have conversations with Representative Bobby Gibson, as well as our State Senator Derek Slatt. and i've also been in contact with current state senator doug mccorry i have talked to our lieutenant governor who stressed the importance to bring our state representatives on board with one a resounding pitch in favor of the project. I've also had conversations with the governor during several campaign stops and his statement to me has been, a continuation of contacting our state and local officials to move forward with it. So I have also talked to Matt Ritter, who had given the advice of making contact with as many legislators as we could to support this. And I believe we also have had conversations with local stakeholders here in Bloomfield to support the project as well. So we are definitely reaching out to them to try to implore them to make contact with those individuals as well as Is it Matt Pugliese? Yes. Yes, yes. So we I had a conversation with him at a conference. And those were the things that he also indicated that we needed to do. And he had suggested possibly a meeting at some point that has not been determined as yet. But obviously, it needs to be soon.

Yes. So can I assume that when you've connected with our elected officials, they were positive? Very favorable. Very supportive? Yes. That they're going to do what they have to do? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions, my comments, my colleagues? Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I guess I have one other question. I mean, is there... How big is this kitty? I mean, the DEC has, you know, I mean, how big is their reserve to hand out these type of grants and stuff to towns and cities in Connecticut? I mean, what's their kitty? Is it $200 million, $300 million to give away? Or is it for some reason that...

yeah it was maybe more than 90 million um in the last round um also so you want to know they have actually they're the next round is supposed to be the last one i believe 10 but they have extended they haven't set the funds the number for the funds but we're we want this one and we need the support right now for this so there has to be a strong push from the council not only the mayor, but the deputy mayor and all our council members to support this for the good of Bloomfield.

All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. There are no other questions. Thank you. Thank you much. We're going to move on to item six. I would entertain a motion to go into executive session to discuss pending claims and litigation. all right thank you it was a move by uh morrow uh i need a second second thank you um lenny uh all those in favor i'm going to the executive session signify by saying hi yeah oh on the record okay so now i'm gonna need um uh mr coleman do we need anybody else denise And that is it. Yep. And the three commissioners present. And that's it. All right. So if you are online, Justin, my apologies. You have to. No worries. Thank you very much. Okay. Mr. Mayor, thank you much. All right.