City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

This is being live streamed, so you have to be close to a microphone.

We appreciate your involvement in being on GMF. I'm the deputy city manager here. I just wanted to thank you all for volunteering your time and helping out in this. This is very important.

The decisions that you guys are making, we appreciate your taking the time and effort and everything you're going to be doing to help us out. With that, I'm going to turn it back over to Nathan.

All right. Then I'm going to immediately turn it over to Zane. If y'all don't know about Zane Urtel, he's... Hello. once we get outside of an official meeting like this?

Yes. So you all should have a document in front of you that has information on Sunshine laws and public records laws. This is super important just because any correspondence you all have with each other cannot be about this parking garage. Everything in the state of Florida is under Sunshine. So everything is exposed, every conversation that is had is subject to scrutiny because Florida has some of the most vast sunshine laws in the country. Additionally, anything you put in writing via text, email, et cetera, in relation to this parking garage is subject to public record. So I always caution, if you don't want it to be seen, don't send it. If there's any more questions, we can go over that. You all have a simple overview of what it is. I imagine most of these things won't be too pertinent, but we don't want anyone getting in trouble. There are monetary fines and potential civil fines for breaking Sunshine Law. So protect yourselves, protect the city, and we appreciate y'all for doing this.

Assuming we're going to be out there. We're going to try to get out there, but weather permitting and other things, we'll see how the meeting goes.

Okay, perfect. If we're all together, we can ask staff a question and I'll hear the answer. Correct. You just can't talk back to each other.

And that's actually a great question. We discussed that option. Our capabilities are not there. And to piggyback off of what Dan said, you also cannot use a third party to circumvent Sunshine Laws. So if you want to deliver information, let's say Jordan wants to deliver information to Anna about the...

design of the parking garage and use a staff member to relay that information you can't do that so be very diligent about that um and just be cautious when you're having communications yeah so if if we're looking for an answer and we maybe there's a subject matter expert so like if we ask a question do we report it here we just don't ask the question

can ask questions to people just not no one else on this board so um like is the expectation we would bring that information and report who we spoke to yes and we have staff that can answer a lot of questions um so anything you all need everyone on staff is accessible so reach out to them no that was kind of my question but also i guess if we have a question individually we can email

But you're free to talk to others. It's not like you're in a kind of silence when you leave the committee and you can't ask somebody who you respect.

Is it appropriate to communicate with a council member?

How about the CRA would the same thing apply? Because the CRA, like obviously some council members are there, but there are other team members. This might go before .

The CRA is not making the decision as far as the council, so the CRA is safe.

Yep. Speaking of the CRA. Speaking of the CRA. OK, any other questions about ? Okay, at this point, I'm going to give an overview, but the first thing I'd like to be able to do is have everybody be able to introduce themselves to the entire committee. So, Todd, if you want to start.

Todd Heller, ex-consultant.

Anna Sinclair, just general troublemaker.

Jordan Graceman, business owner in downtown.

Bill Downs.

And what's your business? Courage Coffee in the West End Plaza.

Bill Downs is our secretary.

Peter Groove, I'm with the Historic Village. I'm actually not on the committee. I'm just a member of the public.

Right. And so the way that that will work is we welcome you to be here, but you won't be speaking at the- No, no.

I'm just here to listen. Okay. Evan? Evan Forcaso, real estate guru.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

I just want to give an overview before we get into appointment of chairman and vice chairman who's going to lead this and remind everybody why we're here and what we're doing. I've got a few notes to share. The first is why are we here? We have essentially a directive, a resolution that's passed by the council that they wanted this body to provide direction and recommendations to them on two things really. One are concept plans and the other is an estimated budget. Okay, on parking garages, that would be on two different locations we've identified. One is 7th and Mineola on the city land there, and the other is behind this building, behind the city hall. So the idea is once again, they've requested plans. That doesn't mean one plan per site. These are plans. We're not limited to one idea or approach. The committee can say, well, we've got an idea for what would be an inexpensive option. We have an idea of what would be an expensive option. We have an idea of what would be well-suited for a partnership with a private entity. We can do anything on this committee. They want ideas. So that's the first thing. Those ideas, once again, are for concepts. It's not for a specific idea. So it's not a specific plan, not just ideas. So they expect visualizations to show those. And they've given us some budget to try to generate those visualizations. So it's really going to be up to us to guide that. And they want estimates. So it's going to be, once again, it's estimates. It's not a precise budget. come before the council, which are very complex. Let's say they're complex in how they have to be figured out. And the challenge is that they don't have a body like this to help sort of go through complex issues ahead of time. to do it just in 30 minutes up on the dives. And so the idea is they really want this committee to give them some good ideas for where they can head, what their options are. So that's our job, not to tell them what to do, it's just to tell them what we think their options are in the best way we can. Like I said, it's largely because Believe it or not, designing a parking garage is a very complex thing. It wouldn't be a complex thing if it were out in the middle of nowhere. But as soon as you stick it in the middle of a town center, it becomes super complex because of its impacts upon everything around it. And we'll talk about that in a little. But that's the number one reason is because there isn't one solution to this issue. There isn't one way to pull this off. There's numerous ways and then there's numerous impacts. And as a group, hopefully, none of us knows at all, so everybody can contribute a little and hopefully get us to where we need to be. The second reason why we have this committee is ultimately bound up in that first thing of say, let's try to save ourselves time and money. There's been a common thing. I've only been in business last October, but people have was one of those ideas that came out of the 2015 plan that the city of Claremont went through. And it hasn't happened yet for a variety of reasons. But the idea is, let's save our time and money by going ahead and coming up with really good concept plans. It's a common problem that a lot of communities make, is that they don't focus enough at the concept stage, at the idea phase. And so everybody gets at odds because is to adequately address. That's our job, to adequately deal with certain objections that some people may have to certain solutions. I already mentioned there's no perfect solution. We're dealing with a parking garage, and the first question that may come up is, do we need a parking garage? That's really not our task, but it's one of the things that we get to deal with is, how much of parking do we need? My background is somewhat been involved with these issues in the past. And I just want to say very briefly that parking is, I believe, is best viewed as a piece of acquired infrastructure for downtown to work well, just like electricity would be or access to water or sewers. It's an infrastructure item. And unlike some of those other utilities, it's something that works best when it's managed. And that's one of our challenges as a city right now. Our management, we really don't manage parking right at this time. And what we've learned over the last few decades is that it's actually of supply and demand, just doing a core economic argument, meaning that if you've got a parking problem, oftentimes that means people say you don't have enough supply. And that oftentimes means because people aren't paying for it. So their behavior gets immediately changed as you toggle back between supply and demand and try to get it done. If you want to read stuff on your own or watch videos on the subject, you're happy to do so. There is someone who just passed away about a year and a half ago that was considered the guru in the United States on the topic. His name is Donald Shoup. s-h-o-u-p so if you want if you're just into this and you're wondering how do we do this stuff do you want to say something yeah i just wanted to add i don't know if this breaks sunshine but i have those books so if anybody wants them Okay. And I've got his books as well, but he was the, you know, he was sitting at the Babe Ruth, although he called him the Shoop Dog of parking. And he had Shoopistas, but he was a hilarious guy, so he's entertaining to watch. But I didn't understand parking until I actually met him and learned about how it works. So that may be something you want to do on your own time before the next meeting. The last thing I'll mention about why the committee, and that is that because it does grant It's how it functions. It's not just how it looks, how a downtown can look does impact the functionality, but that's a thing. Now the downtown, just going on a side tangent for a quick moment, downtown, I think it's we're looking at the parking garage issue. The downtown, whether we like it or not, is similar to how other cities' downtowns impact the overall city, and that is oftentimes it's seen as the identity for the town. It's oftentimes seen as the heart of the town. city and how others beyond our city who may be visiting view us. And that's important. It's also, you have to understand that our downtown serves as an amenity for our residents that don't even live in the downtown. It is the heart in many different ways, but it's people when they they bring people out of town so it's it's not only our identity it's an amenity and the last thing is that we have been going through a comprehensive plan and that comprehensive plan um we reached out to community to ask them what their concerns were and many of you participated in that it was funny because oftentimes it was difficult to people for people to tell us what was on their minds until we said what's the number one problem in our town we said traffic it's almost like a chorus so what's downtown have to do with traffic it's one of them from a comp plan perspective it's really important because you'll note that when you're in a downtown where you have an interconnected network of streets you essentially don't really experience much traffic, real traffic. And so it's an oasis from people who get frustrated being on 27 and 50. So through the comp plan, we're finding we're gonna be looking at ways to build up the Greenways network that we already have, make it easier to get to the downtown. So the whole idea is that we've gotta have parking infrastructure that supports the idea that people can come here and easily enjoy the experience of not having to be in a car The final thing I'll mention are some of the issues that I think that we're going to have to address. And I would hope that this committee can sort of go about this somewhat systematically. But understand that as we go through what we're doing, it's essentially a design process. And for those, some of us are linear thinkers. We think of what's step A. And then you have to go around the circle a couple of times to make sure that you're designing what works. Because as soon as you design something, let's say we're concerned about the height of a parking garage. As soon as you think you've decided what the perfect height is, you're going to have to go around the circle a couple of times to make sure that you're designing what works. Because as soon as you design something, let's say we're concerned about the height of a parking garage. As soon as you think you've decided what the perfect height What's the next thing that happens? OK, well, you might run into a budget issue that says, well, we can't do it at that height for budget reasons or whatever. And so you have to go around the circle a couple of times. So that's essentially what we have to do. Systematically, we can look at different elements that we know will greatly influence the design of a parking garage. okay one is the obvious thing we've already been tasked with which is where's the location and so coming up with one of the pros and cons of one location over another is really important okay then we have the second item which is going to be essentially the amount or the size so well and one of the things we have to worry about there is well what's the demand going to be and uh and we can is we're looking at the demand not just today, but in the future. It's infrastructure. It's like building the water plant before we actually need the water sometimes. We talked about height. Cost is an impact. Then we have to think about the specific impacts the downtown as a whole as well as adjacent properties and on other things like even events you know this isn't all just about physical things that sometimes how does it impact the events that we currently have that we enjoy and things of that nature so when we think about in I think it's important to note that a downtown, unlike most of the suburban areas in Claremont, has certain advantages and certain disadvantages in comparison to a suburban location. An advantage would be that a downtown area tends to be more vibrant. There's more people walking around than you would out in the suburbs. And so how you design a compartment garage or decrease, because if it makes it, as an example, if humans bore really easily, and if they get bored, what happens? They're just going to give up, and they're not even going to walk. We don't want to walk around unless there's something interesting to see. That's why Art Walk is such a great thing, is it adds interest to where you're walking around. That's why between seventh and eighth is the core. Because you have buildings that create the charm of an outdoor room, and then it has narrow building facade widths all up and down it to keep our interest. And so there's all sorts of functional design details associated with how you design the parking garage. that we will be talking about. But it gets back to if we've got to create an interesting place where it can kill things. If you're walking up and down Montrose, if you're walking east, where do people stop walking? Okay, they sort of stop walking right about midway in this building. And part of the reason is because the charm of the outdoor room falls apart when we have two suburban buildings sitting back across the street and we're saying, okay, we're coming to the end of what's interesting. Whereas if we go in the other direction, okay, it's like it's pulling you down the other direction because that's where the action is. So will this parking garage play a role in that? We also have the complexity of, well, I won't get into all the details, but there's also the impact upon funding that we have to, I sort of mentioned it was cost, but it's the impact upon funding. There are certain ways we can design a parking garage that will result in our ability to have a public-private partnership more likely than not. How does the revenue work? And that's going to be an important consideration. So dealing with all those issues is going to be, I think, how we can logically go about dealing with a committee-wide design exercise. Because otherwise it could be really boring and lousy and not be much fun. or anything else that I talked about before we move on.

I have a question on, are you able to, I'm sure you are, but will there be a part in the process where you share what, the lumber yard, how many spots are they adding and also any additional demand? Maybe what's happening at West End or that type of stuff.

Okay. That's an excellent question. The answer is yes. So this inaugural meeting is designed to identify all those things that we have to figure out as an example. I didn't forward to the existing plans we have for both of the sites that we already have. Okay, because I sort of wanted to have everybody have a sort of a fresh start, a fresh look at it and thinking about it. But clearly, everybody needs to digest what's already been recommended on both sites. Because, you know, we haven't gotten, there wasn't overwhelming consensus in the previous councils that considered the one at the City Hall or at this one. So we've got to come understanding what our current capacity is and what future capacities may be. I will say this as it relates to that. I mean, I don't want to cut to the chase too much, but the issue, the primary issue is that can help inform the amount that we could need in the, you know, in a foreseeable future of a certain, you know, till 2035 or whatever it may be. We can sort of go along that. But at the same time, if we look at what we need today, that's not a fair sort of thing because the whole point of it, the reason why there's great interest politically in this is for to get additional development. So that's one of the good things that we can try to figure out, especially right now we've got resources that we've been given where we can start guesstimating what that amount of need will be if we built out a certain amount of the downtown. And so that very much is within our wheelhouse of what we've got to decide. We don't have a long time to figure it all out, but I don't think we have that many questions in the big scheme of things to figure out.

kind of following up on this because my question is also if you watch the city council meeting there was some funding for the designs and I was wondering if we also had funding to gather data because I think that all the decisions that we make should be for the design should be that informed and that would be either a research player or consulting so that was kind of my question right we've been given

I think the important thing is for us to identify the questions that we want answered that our committee can't answer. And then we reach out to our resources about how it can be done. So I'm less worried. They want to make an informed decision. They don't want to wait forever, but they want to make an informed decision. So I don't think asking for certain things, and once again, it's not, we don't need it to the level of precision. We need an overall idea. What do we expect on this question or that question? Is that fair? All right, other questions? We've got, anyone else?

Just a comment. A couple things. Nathan, you mentioned about traffic. That's really a relative issue. I come from Orlando, and trust me, the traffic here is nothing. I mean, it flows. Now, if you're a long-time resident here, and with all the influx of new residents, yeah, you're going to see an increase in traffic. But it still flows. I can get on 27. I'm going, this is nothing. 50 may jam up a little bit during rush hour, going to work, coming home from work. But relatively speaking, the traffic is nothing here. You can still get around. And what's nice about this community, it only takes 5 or 10 minutes to get to anywhere you want to go. As opposed to Orlando, it takes half an hour, 45 minutes to be there. So the quality of life is better because of that. Now, you mentioned something, Nathan, as far as we want to attract businesses downtown. Presently, the parking situation that I see on a day-to-day, coming to work every day, there's sample parking. For example, the parking in front of MySpace at 7th and West Manila Avenue. At times it gets full, there's spillover onto the lot, one block north of that, so I never see it

a problem with parking during a normal business day.

Or even on a weekend. We've got the farmer's market, that gets a little busier. It's when we have major events. But the major events are with anything. When I was in Orlando, if we had a major event, parking is always a hassle with major events. So I think the main issue here is we want to promote businesses coming here. Just like I foresee that plot, one block north of 7th and West Mignola, as an excellent place for restaurants, a little park area. It's a nice plot of land. Granted, I know an individual or a family owns that, but if we can develop that, bring any parking to that. So I think the parking garage primarily is for future business to entice them to relocate or start downtown.

Yeah, I think like to demand how much does Patrick's projected project at West End, how much is that? Is that going to be any additional parking or is it going to be a need for additional parking?

Is it a surface parking? Are they putting a garage there?

No, it's a zero parking requirement because of the way he's got it grandfathered in where he can build zero line of or home street parking or service lots.

So that's a net. But we need more for that.

I agree with what you're saying because of your type of business. Because your customers have appointments and they will find a place to park. If you're a retailer that depends upon walk-in or convenience, I'm a half a block from you. My customers have a parking problem, which means I have a parking problem. When I get to work at 9 o'clock on a Tuesday morning, Montrose is full. The city hall parking lot is full because of the church school. A lot of times, my wife just drops me off. I can't park downtown to work. I have a wine shop right across the street. But my customers want to come in, buy something, and leave. They don't have an appointment. It's a convenience thing. So they need to park close. And we have different customer needs. They'll go to the mall and walk a mile, but they won't walk a block downtown. So we have to be aware of attracting new businesses, but also maintaining I got my mail this morning, and a piece of mail belonged to my neighbor. So I took it next door. It's a salon, and it's less than 1,000 feet. So how many parking spots does code call for?

Three, four? The thing with that, though, is that we changed the code so that they can buy the parking.

Okay, an existing business. who's been there for years, if they have a 750-foot store, what is the city code for parking spaces? I think it depends on the business. Okay, restaurants are double. It's just a regular retail service. It's somewhere around three or four spots.

I don't know what it specifically is. It's a very condensed, because if you go into standard retail, you're way down 50.

what you want. But in a 750 foot space, there were eight women. and the store was only half full. There were chairs that didn't have customers. So that's what existing businesses are putting up with is high density users in buildings that were built with low density codes. So we have a shortage. So not only do we have to build spaces for the businesses that we're trying to attract, but we have to go back and backfill for the businesses who are here.

Plus, you've got to have room for your employees.

Your employees have to party. Yeah. Well, a hair salon, which there are five around my store, you've got a stylist, a customer, and a customer waiting. So it's three spots per chair. And a lot of these salons have five to eight chairs. So that's how you keep such great hair. Yeah.

As far as needed information, I'd just like to get a census of downtown employees.

That's a big issue.

I have 19 total employees. I would say probably five or six are on site at any one time or as much as And I have people, I also have the overlap of shift changes. So at some times I can have, I can have a greater impact downtown. Then, for instance, like a slide instead of 1, 1, 1, even you and then you go right next door.

It's that same continuation of yeah.

And a lot of our, so that's what I put in my application is I. To get the right to decipher what's going on West end and what's going on lumber yard, which I understand is going to have its own. Net parking. As far as to be able to discuss this intelligently, I need to know how many employees we have downtown on any given day. Because like you said, you have appointments. You see the daytime stuff. I see everything. We don't start getting busy until 1 or 2 o'clock. And then during the evenings when all your employees are gone and perhaps yourself is gone, that's when a lot of this stuff comes to a head. Now, eight years ago, Monday through Thursday, nothing. Now, Monday through Thursday at nighttime, it can. The top parking lot is full, 7th and Mideola, and the Hoya property is starting to fill up. It doesn't ever get full generally during the week, but it does start. You can see it building over the years. I would like to know how many of us who are just here, that no customer, not a single customer, how many parking spaces does downtown Claremont need now And with all these attractive, all this intent to attract more business, like you talked about, how many can we project coming forward? Like you said, this new West End thing is gonna have how many apartments? 16, but I think there's also businesses built into it. Yeah, so that right there could equal 50 or 60 parking spots. If you go two cars, two cars for every apartment, possibly three. Downtown retail, if it's a salon in there and they have eight chairs, well, there's another, 16 to 20 20 parking spots with customers and management everything so there could be hundreds of spots that we have you know because the city likes to uh talk about how many we have but we don't talk about how many we use just what our par level is like what what is the par level daily or monday through on a busy Friday night, I contribute to 120 parking spots.

Can I just, you mentioned downtown, and Nathan, do we want to use the CRA as what's considered our downtown area, or do we want to consolidate it to a different area?

Why is it important?

Because there's a number being asked for who is downtown employee-wise.

A couple different answers. the last study was done two years ago. How long was it?

Pretty recent.

Yeah, pretty recent. It will give us a pretty good ballpark

of where we are and it may be something that we can do to ask somebody to well in any survey either recently or in the past no one's ever asked me how many cars like how many employees i have how many you know what's the overlap at 3 p.m when i have a shift change between the two the three restaurants and and the bar and the brew staff when they're going home so there's no real I don't have an idea of an ebb and flow here in town between, I can see it, but I can't put a number on it. I don't know how many people are employed downtown and what the overlap is between the 2 and 4 o'clock hour or the 5 and 7 hour when you have shifts leaving, especially in the retail space and the bar space or the restaurants like Pepe's, their dinner staff comes in probably around 4. And for that period of time, you have almost double the amount of police that they have maybe five to six at one time. Now there's 12 for a short amount of time. And so all this has to be, if you're going to say about where you put this thing and, and how many spots you need, we don't even know what our par level is just the staff downtown. And then, then we can talk about what the, with the natural order of things you're going to be going for, like you said, the 2035 or something like that. If we do add X amount of businesses, well, if we have data on how much, like, I'm sure your wine shop doesn't contribute a lot to employee parking. You have one or two employees. Hello. But I know during a Friday night, I have two during the day, and then I have four at night. So then for a free period of time, there's six people. and then plus customer.

I think this has to be part of the criteria because what I'm hearing is that there's too many moving pieces to accurately tell how much is needed, to accurately forecast how much is needed. I think one of the design criteria for this garage is how it ties into a general transportation strategy because I know the development that is going to Western Plaza. I was there at the planning and zoning commission. Those residents are not going to have two to three parking they're not going to have two to three cars but they're going to have at most one or two how can we exceed encourage them to have zero because people downtown i live downtown like i have i do have a car because i need it for groceries but people who live downtown we are very comfortable living a car life or a car free lifestyle if you give us the option So this has to tie into other transportation strategies to make sure that the parking that is built is for the people who come here to enjoy our downtown, not for us. And right now, one of the issues with that development is that, for example, the downtown, the city council doesn't really have a strategy for things like employee parking or overnight parking. These are things that need to be discussed, but I'm not sure if that is really up to us. It's more like, but we can take into consideration.

Well, the city has a code for how far from your store what counts as employee parking and what counts as customer parking. We should be aware of the code.

I think so. Are we changing the code as well? I'm just saying we need to be aware. I think there's several. Let's bring it back.

You were going to say something.

No, I was going to say I think there's several codes right now. There's like grandfather compared to Kirk.

as far as our employees, where they park. And a parking garage, not only to promote future businesses and have them have a place for all those customers to park, I think a short-term solution so we can give our customers some place to park, like for example, I would have no problem in having my staff and myself park in that lot across, what's it called, on the northwest corner. It's dirt, I don't care. I would direct my staff, and I will also park there to create spaces for customers. And if it's a short-term solution, we can create more spaces, which is require our employees, hey, you guys got to park there. Sure, you may walk a little bit, but it's good exercise.

I guess what I said really too long is we just needed a census downtown.

I think it's a lot more than that.

This committee was given 60 days to come back with a recommendation.

That's why I don't want to get into too much detail.

I want to make sure you keep it at a higher level. And that's how we do it. We do it based on the parking recommendations of ITB. So for instance, a retail might have 250 points based on every 250 square feet in the office, maybe one for every 300. To get a downtown employee parking, we would have to probably use ITB manual based on lane uses because while your business may be open today, tomorrow may be a different business with a whole different parking demand. So it's hard to say could change next week. It fluctuates a lot. So I would recommend using the ITE manual based on land use to give an estimate of what.

So with that guide, say a salon with eight chairs has X amount of stone. In other words, future land use, like you're talking about, it's a salon with a bar the next day?

Correct. And it can turn into a restaurant, which is a much higher part.

Is that something that you would be able to have for us? whatever that code is, would be what the required function would be.

We could probably, we could definitely try to get you that next week. So the concern is that when a development comes in, we approve it,

We need to know where we're going, but we also need to know where we are. And to be, I'll play devil's advocate. The reason it's a salon today and a bar next week, because the salon didn't have enough parking.

Possibly. Okay. Would that count? Yes. Do you want to say something before I interview? Because now I'm going to have to.

Yes. No, I'm sorry. Like, I guess. You've got to go.

Yeah, I've got to go to another meeting. I just wanted to again thank you all for being a part of this. It's a big task, as you guys can tell. You're getting into the weeds, and it's going to be a lot to discuss. It is gay. And if you were able to get that together, would you be able to also give us a current count on our current available surface parking spaces?

I was going to bring up was that June of 2024 study is actually reasonable and it'll answer most of the questions that were being asked here. So if you guys can send that out to everybody, because I'm familiar with it. I mean, I've read it. The big issue, and this comes back to what Bill's talking about, this comes back to what you're talking about, as we start landing on a number Wherever this garage is, it has to be large enough to accept that capacity because we're going to lose some surface. So if there's 100 spots here and 100 spots there, there goes 100 spots. And the crux of the parking study was that if we lost either that dirt lot or that dirt lot, which we were renting, then we would be over capacity during some of our peak hours. and I know this because I've talked to Phil before, and I'm gonna assume the same as for yours, that during those events, during when there's that big influx of people, that's when those dollars come in. Again, yours is, my kid goes to you. Those are the, I have an appointment, I show up at one o'clock on a Thursday afternoon, and that's what we do. But in those biggers, it's gotta just be percentages. And everybody's talking about what Packard's doing with that. Nobody's even talked to him about the hotel that's coming behind that, that takes up the rest of the walk and a half. And so the police department, Dr. , he would like to square that up. They can probably give you the numbers of a rough estimate of how many employees and what that parking would need for that entire I mean, that's a big piece of property. If he redevelops it the way that he wants to, that in and of itself will probably eat up everything we do in the garage. This will not be the last garage. I mean, we've got to land on something and land and be able to build it and do it correctly. But this is not the end of our parking issues because there's a lot of land that way. It's hard to go that way because of the historic. But there's nothing historic that way. I'm being honest. Thank you, everyone.

Good luck. Thank you.

See how big his smile was as he was saying it? He's like, I'm out. Okay. I want to intervene because y'all are getting into things that are important, but then again, they're not the most important thing necessarily. I want to get the context. So you may be wondering, well, how do other cities manage parking effectively? all right and it's and so i'm going to give you the the quick little elements that you're going to see people using successfully okay and the first thing is that you know the the the premier book on it is actually its title is the high cost of free parking and we have free parking everywhere and what that means is that nobody has you know we have plenty of business owners we know who have employees parking right in front of their businesses on occasion. They may not be in a view, but it's happening. Why? Because it's free and they can be there forever. And so the whole parking reform effort happened because Stanford University's economics department was having a parking problem. And they found out that the city or the university wasn't using the law of supply and demand. They said, well, why don't we charge until people aren't willing to park there? That was the basic premise. And so that's when they stumbled upon Donald Shoup, who was a UCLA professor who was from England. He was knee-deep in all this stuff for a long time, but nobody would read anything because it was so boring, what he was talking about. So he came up with essentially three different key elements that you'd have to have. Okay, and the first is that you should only charge for parking if you don't have enough, right? If you don't have enough. And so the question became, well, how much is enough? And the idea is if you're a retailer, let's say you've got the wine shop out here, you want a spot that's close to your business all the time. You don't want it to be where somebody says, well, I'm not going to come by your shop anymore because I had to park three blocks away. So what they had come up with and they determined was what they call the 85% rule. The 85% rule was I could always – there was typically 15% of parking spaces were available within a block of a business. If we can get that, all we've got to make sure is that we're charging enough, and oftentimes it's called variable rate parking. We're capable of doing it because of technology today. But the idea is someone's never going to say, I couldn't find a spot. They may say, I don't want to pay for it. So, well, guess what? For a downtown business owner, that's not exciting to say, my customer has to pay for parking in order to come buy a bottle of wine for me, right? They'd say, I'm not doing that anymore. Well, so how did they deal with that? They came up with a parking benefit district. Okay, because if the city manages parking, for example, and they get all the funds, they generally want to take it and do whatever they want with it, right? But instead, the first time this was really done on a citywide level was in Pasadena, California, in Old Pasadena. And they realized, oh, we have to have a parking benefits district so that all the revenue that gets generated from the parking goes back into the district. If you don't do that, it disfavors the downtown merchants, which isn't fair. So you have the variable rate pricing, you've got that. Then you've got the other issues. We have different types of parkers. We have some people who need to be there all day. Okay, or at night, whenever. And so that's when you get into, you know, you get dedicated parking spaces, you get permitted parking spaces, you have all these different categories. As an example, if you put one of these parking garages here, let's say you take the space that's right behind this building, where do the city hall employees go? So the city all of a sudden would be, if they do a public-private partnership, what happens? They've got to pay monthly parking bill, right? to whoever's managing it, or they pay that amount up front. Whatever it may be, somebody's going to be paying because the parking spaces aren't for free. Todd referenced the $3,000 that people can say, I'll give the city $3,000. Well, it's going to cost more than $3,000 to create a spot in one of these parking garages. It costs tens of thousands of dollars typically per parking spot in a garage. So that's a component of it. That's, in a nutshell, the core sort of management techniques that other cities have used. This isn't controversial. You know how to manage it. It just has to be managed. And that's the pain. Right now, we haven't had to manage anything. We just say, let's build another parking garage. So let's get to the point of we're tasked with figuring out recommendations for building another parking garage. is Dan said, I think it was Dan, our job isn't to figure out parking for the next 50 years in the downtown. It's to look at one location with one parking garage and say, what should that be? That should be influenced by our needs. They didn't ask for us. The council didn't say, tell us what our needs are. They said, show us a design that we can embrace. So I'm not saying it's irrelevant. It's just not the only thing out there that we have to worry about. We have to come up with what is the right solution matched with whatever we come up with as far as what demand is going to be at this point in time or that point in time. As an example, we could say the last proposal over on 7th and Mignola, I think had, and somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they had three different estimated budgets for three different heights of parking garage. if you're the dentist next door is it going to be five stories it's going to be three stories it's going to be once what is it going to be okay those are that's another factor not the only factor to consider but it's an impact upon adjacent property owners and so you got to factor that in so that you know and that would be you know I know just in hearing people speak that having it too tall is a concern by some people in a particular location and it wouldn't be in another location So that's why this is complex. And I just want to make sure that's good. But our job is just to come up with what's the best solution. And it may be different numbers that we're worried about. And that's OK. It's different. We get a different number over on 7th and Mignola than we get on the city hall. They don't need to be the same. We just get to come up with concepts of what we think will work and why and then justify them. So when I talk about the design issues that are perhaps the issues we have to address, there then becomes the opportunity for the committee to sort of prioritize them by stating why. What is the, it's just, and what we would call that in the design exercises, these are the design considerations and this is the priority. The idea is that if you're building a house, Tim, you've got a, you could say it's too small or it's too big. What's the perfect size of a house? There isn't a perfect size, okay? And so you're just saying that was really important that it be small, okay? Great, and what's And on this site, these were the priorities that we think should guide, not control. But this is what's, you know, because you're giving that sort of a gut reaction. Or you can give multiple ones. But we said, you know, it's the same thing. If we think revenue is the number one issue or it's not an issue at all, we just state it. We consider it. Move on. We don't have to be wed to any one thing. So that's why I don't want to get into overall, do we need the parking and... How much matters, but it just doesn't matter because there was you know, we saw today. I don't know. I guess it came out. Yes last night the Winter Park the Orlando Once the Orlando simple I think came out or maybe it was the business room came out with an article about Winter Park is doing another parking girl they talked about the needs and all that sort of stuff and they're just going through the same exercise but it's not the first and it may not be the last it's just where they are today any questions about that could a proper recommendation be we need a public parking garage and then a private

at the same time?

We can make any, we can, yeah, and what I'm saying is that we, I really think it's important, we don't have to have one recommendation. We could say, we think these are the options. Remember, you can get buy-in, politically you get buy-in oftentimes when you give people an opportunity to choose. Like, you can't make a meaningful choice with all you've got is one choice. That's not really a choice. It's either this or nothing. And that's not a very good thing. But what if we come back and say, well, you know, we could see it working this way or this way or this way. We like this way the most because of X. Great. Let's do it. But it's not the only way.

Other questions? In making a recommendation, whatever that is, you had mentioned about whether, is there any slight limitations known now about how high or how many floors we can go on either side?

Theoretically, no.

that on this, okay, on the site next to City Hall, there's underground rain storage tanks that would be expensive to replace if they choose that site. I would be curious if that's true. I've also heard rumors about the Senate in Mideola about underground utilities that would have to be moved or It was called a couple. Part of the sales agreement when they bought the land was it could only be used for parking. So if there are things that have to be addressed that cost money, I think we should be aware of that also.

Right.

I didn't want to ask you out there because it's hot.

It is hot. I'm delaying that. Well, because we're making progress in here. So long as we're making progress in here, we don't immediately have to go out.

I mean, you can't build a skyscraper because it's sand.

I will tell you that I imagine we'll end up someplace around here. But historically, there was a desire that was expressed by the community not to go higher than a certain height in the downtown.

It used to be lower than that. You can go four, so when they did this concept over here, I think their max height, and it was a little bit, it was right at the top of the height, and I think they got 475, don't quote me on that, but I think it was 475 parking spaces on that one over there. It has to do with the reach of the fire truck, doesn't it? It's really the people, because we've got the ladder trucks now that can go. I mean, so it's not an issue. But I know that was an issue on the hospital. That has been resolved with our new fire department.

They've got all the toys now. Think at one time, the mayor didn't want anything taller than a tree.

But he's not here anymore. Don't break Chief Fazell's heart and tell him he can't go buy a 200-foot ladder truck.

So there may be special situations we should be made aware of that would impact it.

Okay. I was going to show you real quick the previous proposals on both sites. Chuck, I'm having a hard time mirroring, and I don't know why.

We have changed the input on the TV.

Oh, it should be. That's the correct answer, I think. Let me make sure it's on the HDMI, too.

Paying for HBO Max.

OK, while he's doing that, so I'll just show you the graphics. Those are the easiest things to read. But as Todd was saying, you could go up to four stories. And then the top story essentially is an additional level. We uncovered parking at the top, if you wish. You'll see how that was handled differently in the time.

And I think that this is going to go way off topic and kind of throw people for a loop here. We almost have to have a futurist discussion because our need for parking and the way we're going to drive because of self-driving and because of the way shared use and all of that is going to impact us is going to change the way this garage gets used probably right when we get paid off. But it will change over the next 20 or 30 years, the way that we use it. So I think we ought to be cognizant of that. Can we make it multifunctional, whether it be for parking of?

Like retrofitable?

How do we repurpose it 30 years from now?

That's more of it. It's like, can we put solar panels on the top to power these chargers for the electric cars on level three?

I mean, there is no supercharger in Claremont. No superchargers whatsoever in Claremont. Is there one now?

Yeah, Tesla. At the dealership.

At the dealership? For the longest time, because my wife's got a Tesla, and she's had to go to... Before the test, the dealership was there. She had to go to a Walmart or something. I don't care. I don't think it's this.

No, it's BP. Oh, well, I do too.

All right. Let me just, for those who haven't seen this, we will ship this out to you along with some other information. But this is the seventh in Mineola site over there. And then this, I'm just going to orient you. Is my head in the way? You're good. All right, good enough. All right, so this is the art block right here. You can see the airstream right here. So this would be where Mineola is here and Seventh is on the other side. And what you're seeing here is...

So that's essentially we're standing in front of... Yeah, if you're standing on my sidewalk, that's pretty much what you would see. Okay, yeah.

Right. Okay. So that's that. I won't go into all the details too much, but this was the one that was conceived of as just being nothing but parking. You can put other things. We'll see other examples, I think, of how it could be treated. This is if you're looking right down to 7. Here's a walkway that was designed there. That's looking, you can see where Airstream is, but that's looking east.

All right.

So that pedestrian walkway that's going to the right, Tim, would be in front of your building. So there's an agreement to have a 10-foot walkway that goes across the front all the way over to 8th.

So between 7th and 8th, there would be a... And you're saying that's 100% parking, no retail along the walkway?

Essentially, that's correct. That is all parking.

But we can recommend something different.

That's right.

Yes. Okay, and...

And yeah, just for terminology purposes, and it's not pejorative, really. This is considered what is mostly a naked parking garage, meaning there's nothing covering it up, except here the idea is to use art to cover it up. We can use art wherever we go. But it doesn't have a liner building of any sort. A lot of times where there's important frontage, as an example, Mineola is a very important street to the downtown. So you don't want a blank facade on there, because a blank facade essentially is boring. To increase the vibrancy, you want to have something going on there. So it could be a business, but it's typically very shallow. businesses that are in small spaces that might occupy it. It can just be the first floor. Some liners go all the way up on a parking garage. That's not really important for the urbanism or for how the functionality of the street is, but those are the different ways. And you'll see the City Hall one had a liner building on one of its sides where that side was important. But we'll see that. So that's that. Now, what's the advantage of a naked parking garage is that it costs less. You get more parking. You're all about the spaces. You get that. The downside is that it's not as interesting to walk by. And that can cause somebody to say, okay, I'm stopping. I'm not going to the next business.

So this is five stories. Is it parking on top as well? Yes.

All of them are going to... It would be hard to find a parking garage that doesn't have parking at the very top.

Nathan, you mentioned earlier that some designs would encourage public-private partnership and others would discourage it. What would this be? What would it span?

There was a determination on that one there.

The public-private partnership, well, There's not a straightforward answer because it depends how much the city wants to put in. The city either has to pay a huge amount up front or a huge amount on a monthly basis, let's say, to do employee parking or something like that, or they're going to bond it. so those well that that's still paying but the other issue is how much are people going to pay for parking as an example if you go to miami and you say okay well how do they manage parking in miami not very well they get like a two dollar fee just they call it a service fee just for Okay, and then how much do you pay per hour to be in the parking garage? And so it becomes a, you know, because anybody who wants to manage it, that's what they're looking for is the long-term revenue. And so we can design it. Now, it may be that the land is so valuable, like it is here on Mineola, for example, that all of a sudden that is very valuable as a liner. If you put a liner right now, as an example, facing DeSoto Street back here, looking yeah that may not be very valuable it might be valuable overlooking the city hall park right here facing your wine shop that would be valuable and so that's where the numbers start changing okay

the Tampa theater in front of it.

That's right. Okay. And so we're just seeing this more daylight. This is on 7th going down to the De Hoyos and the lake going this way. So this is Dr. Tim's spot right here. It just wasn't there.

So you guys are right now You're saying that because right now he's got about a five-foot walkway here, and you're saying there's going to be eight feet here? Ten feet.

From building to building. Building to building, ten feet. So that's your frontage, and so that's where it comes in.

But if it was a liner instead of a stairway, that would give you a reach.

Once again, you're beginning to see how complex this is because as soon as you do that, they talk about the bays of parking. Just think about when you're in a parking garage. It's a bay. You're driving and you typically can go left or right. And then once you cut down a certain amount of footage, that reduces your flexibility to do it. And then it becomes more expensive. And then other people are like, well, no, that's going to look ridiculous at my shop. It's one story on Montrose, and it's going to pop up, and that's what everybody's going to see.

What we're talking about really isn't to figure that out. We're just trying to figure out the proper place for a parking garage and suggestions of what it looks like, not if there's going to be a row of shops there because— that's i i would never put a business in a hallway like that a 10-foot area so that's not really appropriate for us to consider because that's part of the design though so you would you would put the shelves but if you look at these designs you can only empty out on the seventh or onto many old right and if it's actually out on many old i think you go in on many old maybe come out but you can't If you take a right-hand turn or left-hand turn around, you're dumping all that traffic going downtown, not out of town. So to shove the building, essentially shove the ground floor back to accommodate future shops is, I don't think we have 60, there's no way in 60 days we can get all that information to decide whether that kind of structure is viable. because we we would have to have studies done and we'd have to have things redesigned to figure out if retail should go in this facades are one thing but i don't think we should be concerned about a 10 foot walkway between two two buildings not at this point not in 60 days the building wouldn't move back the the shops would be actually incorporated into the building so the first shops but the limited amount i've studied about parking garages is that and i'm not an engineer but those cars have to get up somehow they have to go they have to be out there so if you're a bit i'm sure we've all been in many parking garages and there's long runways to be able to make those turns to keep going all the way up well that's when you do a helix style which is kind of it sits like this like the orlando airport yes so that you're as you park you're actually you're on grade going up the only actual flat areas I mean, I don't have a problem with a Helix, but I know that anybody who lives within two blocks at 10 o'clock at night is just going to hear the squinting of tires going around that thing all the time. Until they get a ticket. No, I mean, just you go on Orlando Airport, you go up the thing there, your tire is just naturally on the, your car is essentially sliding a little bit because it's such a steep turn.

It's such a sharp turn. I think for simplicity's sake, to keep us on track, let's just build a parking garage.

And I would argue that's not your job. Your job isn't to build just a parking garage. It's to build the parking garage that suits the context. That's why I said this is complex because you're balancing different things. One of the things is how it impacts the buildings around you. And if this causes people to stop from walking to somebody else's shop for whatever reason when it could be just the opposite. So Once again, nobody needs to get wed to any one thing, okay? It doesn't have to have all liner, okay? But it could have some, and you may determine that's really important. And we'll show examples of that.

But my point was, Let's just build a parking garage. Let's talk about a parking garage. Let's not worry about having retail on the bottom floor or something like that. Let's maximize. We're going to try to build a parking garage to maximize parking in the downtown area.

So let's do that. No. No. No. Because a badly designed parking garage will break the experience. Like the side, not the side, sorry. But the trails are right there. And that is how big.

This is many old.

Thank you. Like, people don't walk past, I want to say, 60 feet with nothing going on, and a parking garage is just nothing going on. That's why you put shops. It's not just out of whimsy. You need to have something on the first floor in that particular area, because that first floor is way too valuable to just be parking. That is going to pay for the garage. Yeah, right.

That's right.

It's super complex. It's not just about parking.

It's not our job to fix the complexities. That is his job. So we can just tell him we want retail. He has to figure it out.

Are there any things that we might argue about or we might recommend that are never going to happen? So for instance, what if I say, oh, let's do bottom floor, all retail. Let's go eight stories up. And you know that's never going to happen. So those parameters, I don't know about you guys, but would help me. Because my idea thought is, let's keep going. But we know that's not.

I don't think we know. I think we've heard.

Yeah, because I've heard three stories. Oh, no, it can't be more than that. 55 feet is, I can tell you from sitting on council, going past 55 feet becomes serious heartburn for a lot of folks. I bet you. It ended up to be five parking garage stories, four. So Patrick, what Patrick wants to do with the hotel over here, because they want to do an open-air roof, with the gazebo, the gazebo top would actually top out even though it's an open air. So, you know, he was within, I don't know, five feet of the max height. And I told him, I said, this is a fight that you're just gonna have to have, who knows, but that would be, you know, his concept is the tallest building in downtown. because of that. And it's just one of those that you like.

So what is his top height?

I think it was 58 feet.

58 feet.

And that's off top height. Yeah. But it was within three feet.

And he was like, you're going to argue with me over three feet?

Once it becomes three feet, then the parking garage can go up another eight feet.

Yeah, because to your point, our job isn't really to solve the complexity. Our job is to make the best recommendation. And if we think it's eight stories, I think that's fair.

I will remind everybody that there was a building that was approved at 70-something feet and people howled about it. It was as unpopular as the Bumper Yard. Council approved it. I think.

Well, how tall is the lonely yard? It's got to be taller.

It's still within the 55.

Yeah, it's four stories, I think, is what it is. The other thing you have to take into consideration is once you get above, like, five, six stories is the foundation for that to support that load. It becomes a cost per evicative. Right.

We're really looking at, realistically, five or less. Yeah, that helps. Just five is still tall. We're taller than... We could argue with the current council and where their heads are, but this committee doesn't have to agree. We can say, here's the pros and cons of this. Here's the pros and cons of this.

But it doesn't make sense on either lot, whether it's City Hall or 7th and Minneola, to build anything under the maximum we can build from a cost perspective.

Oh, yeah. If all you were concerned about is the most efficient cost per unit of parking, you're correct. But that's not all we're concerned about.

But rather than going eight stories here, I'd rather go four here and four three blocks further. There you go.

But that's, you know, it's just like building a... You're a developer, right? So it doesn't cost... If you have a five-story building and you put a... Four stories, and then you say, well, we want to add the. Is the extra story 20% more or of the entire billing cost? Or is it a lot less loss? That's what I mean. If we're going to build a park garage, it has to be the maximum spot because if you don't, if you don't build it as high as you can go. Then. The second garage that's gonna come down the road is those spots.

Yeah, so, and I have a little bit of extra knowledge just because I've already seen this. Fin prop goes into this, and when you multiply out the cost per space, that second story ends up to be about the same cost Her parking space. So it's a little bit less, but there's not a significant savings. Each one you go up, even though you get significantly more capacity. So I think once we get further along in this presentation, it'll do that. But then from. And I didn't meet with them, I didn't poison the well, I never dealt with any of that, so I just wanna make that clear. But what I did ask was for them to be able to meet with staff and kind of give a concept of how to build it in the most efficient, or in the most cost-effective manner, and they did that. And that's how they came in at, what, 12 million? Where the previous estimate was 16 million. So they came in and they tried to help the city come up with a design That was the most cost effective, I mean.

Because essentially that's a, you said it's a five-story building? This one, yes. With a top deck parking space, right?

Yeah, this is a, well, it looks like a four-story, but it operates as a five-story garage.

But essentially, it's a four-story because we're losing the ground space that's already on there now. Same with City Hall.

We're losing the parking.

We're losing 100 spots. That's right.

That's right.

But to get back to your larger point that you were making, the job isn't to maximize, to get the lowest cost we can, because the options that are actually before the council also includes doing nothing. So if they don't like it at five stories, maximum efficiency, then it's not solving the problem that is causing this to happen. once again, wetting ourselves just to one criteria is the challenge. And that's why this would be so hard to do just politically on a dais where people, imagine we were talking right now, what should it be? So let's just get through these two. And then once again, the idea was to use paint to make it more interesting than you use paint or landscape to make places that otherwise . That is looking toward Timm's 7th. The building is up here on the left. That's the 10-foot walkway. That's right.

You could put some vines up the other side as well of that building.

So this was the presentation that was given. You can see this is behind the City Hall. You see the City Hall Park. Here's DeSoto. Here's Southern. And this was one of the options. And this was, I guess, it was two stories with a third deck open for parking. And what you'll see as you get out here is A larger site, that's the difference. This is what that option looked like at the corner of 7th and DeSoto. Right here, so this is the church is right over on this corner here. This was also the naked version. Then they added, I wasn't here, what was this described as, Tom?

I don't remember what it was, but they put trees and fun stuff on top.

Well, they should at least have shade cloth. I don't know if you've ever been to the Tulsa airport, but the top deck is all covered with shade cloth. And Florida, I think that should be a lot.

But yeah, they were doing an activation, a rooftop activation. So was this roughly the same number of spots? No, it's like 300 and...

You got your solar covered on this one. So that's the solar over on the right up on the top neck. So there's different options. Once again, that's what's going to happen is everybody's going to say, well, what if we do this? We can say, consider this, consider that. This might be the cost.

The conversation on this one was that going too big would overpower City Hall. That was the kind of the crooks of the back and forth was that if you go too big, it just dwarfs City Hall and that's our biggest building. And they were getting it.

It's an office building, not an argument.

I wasn't in on that argument. What was the net amount of spaces after we lose the parking existing there?

I'm not sure. We'll find out, though. All these proposals, but my big point just to the committee to consider is that neither of these proposals was embraced. And so the opportunity is to come up with.

So when you're saying embraced, the council didn't love either one.

I would you know that that's a difficult standard to really answer objectively but I think it's fair to say if they had embraced it we wouldn't be here today yes that's from 2021 ultimately you're hurting cats because yeah the council is you have council members who don't believe we have a parking issue you have council members who want it in certain spaces whether it's there or not and you have council members who are as practical who are just like i don't care where you put it but we need it and so that's i think that's where you ran into council running the gamut everybody having a different point of view i was kind of like look you know land here land there i don't care we need it um you know i had preference but it at the end of the day, it was just to move it forward. And I think that's how this kind of got moved forward, was at some point something's gotta be done. And the problem is it hurts the downtown merchants if we don't get this done sooner rather than later, because we know we're gonna lose 100 spots, and we're gonna lose 100 spots in front of Bill's, and we're gonna lose 100 spots over here during that time. And yeah, we can bring in trolleys or trinkets, or we can do whatever we can to mitigate it, but it's gonna suck for two years. I think trying to get the set over sooner is better.

Now, Todd, on this stuff there, do you recall, did they have any proposals or designs where they turned the corner and maybe actually tied the garage into City Hall itself to make it look like one continuous structure?

I don't think so. And again, this is not an apples to apples comparison. If you went to it, And I don't know that Frenfrock could even, I guess we could ask them to look at it. You can get, because you can build to, there's pre-built sections, which is what Frenfrock does. That's where the savings comes in. And then you can have custom. I think this one was custom. And I think that's where the price tag on this was. And so you... There's just different pieces and parts. So we're not gonna, these are not apples to apples for sure.

Okay. Yeah, if I could just throw my two cents in here. When I was first talking to Nathan about this and some of the retailers in the Claremont downtown area, I'm of the mindset to have this, but higher. Maximize spaces, okay? Having next to the city council building, we can maximize spaces and actually increase the number of spaces and be greater than having a parking garage on 7th. The thing about having it on 7th Street, one, it's going to buy businesses. the business along the building that I'm in. You may say, well, you've got that little walkway. Walkway to where? There's nothing pulling people from the center of your strip, the center of downtown, to 7th Street. The walkway ends up at a residential house. There's nothing pulling people that way. So these businesses are going to be affected. And do you want to have the parking garage be the centerpiece of downtown? To me, that's not what downtown is all about. It's got the charm, you can see out, you can see the lake from where we stand down there. Another thing, too, that was brought into my attention, I was talking to one of the consultants that were advising Nathan as far as where to put this garage, and I didn't think about this. They say, you wanna put a parking garage that it's gonna promote people walking through the business area. And if you've got a parking garage right at 7 and West Mignola, and say they're going to the wall, they're not walking through the retail areas. If you put it right next door here, they've got to walk through all the retail areas on their way to the wall. So that's more exposure to the business.

So I'll introduce this later, but I have a study from, I'm not sure it was done by the gentleman. He might have been credited on it, though. They might have quoted him. about how far people actually will walk. And but so like you're you're a dentist or any kind of professional is a is a time thing. Your people will go there. If they have a dental appointment, they're going to go and they're going to find a spot at, you know, Compeller High Water. They have to. They have their appointment. But on the retail side of restaurants and things like that, there's options for people. If people have to walk, if they know to get to downtown, like Mignola and anything further, because that is the corner of the zone. So now they're going to have to get to my place, and this is where personal interests can cloud this discussion. Are they going to walk, if a family wants to come for pizza and a beer, are they going to walk into the garage like that, go through all that, unload their car, go to the stroller, go down an elevator, then walk two and a half blocks or three blocks to my space? When they can go to another place, then park outside and walk right in. So there's intent.

So look at Winter Garden. Winter Garden is a perfect example.

But Winter Garden also has many, many spots around that garage. And so, yes, Winter Garden is a great example.

Yeah, but they put Winter Garden behind all the retail, so it's out of sight. In fact, I parked in that parking garage many times, you know, in the past, all the kids. And I walked.

But did you try to park closer to, say, Perky Cam before you went to the garage? Absolutely. And that's my point. This is a lot of money. It's a lot of public money. And it has to be in a place, and I wish it was a third option that wasn't near me so I didn't have something that would say, well, this is my option because it's close to me. But it's a lot of money to spend for something that city workers are going to park into in the daytime. And on Monday through Thursday, not many other people are going to park in it. Because all the downtown businesses, especially Montrose, they empty out. And now what's left is MySpace is downtown and beyond, like going down the lumberyard. That's all going to be activated too, with a hotel down there and things like that. So the further you get away from that parking garage, the less impactful that garage is. And so if it's less impactful but costs more money, I think it's not – I would say if That's the only garage we're going to build in the next 10 years? No, we shouldn't build it at all there. We should wait and see what develops. Because in 10 years, we'll know what's going to happen downtown. Maybe it has to go even further past me. Maybe it has to go down near the lumber yard somewhere. But if it's only going to be City Hall or 7th and Mineola, and four of the seven days a week, it's only going to be used by city employees most of the time. That $16 million is wasted money.

This is a parking management discussion, actually. Because again, it doesn't matter how many parking garages we build in downtown. If we don't manage it, we'll always have a parking problem. We need an overnight parking strategy. We need a parking strategy for employees. And that ties into the parking garage.

My conclusion is they will park around. That's just how people are.

If our objective was to build a parking structure that will draw more business, I think Seventh and Mineola will have a more positive impact on the Dohoye property than building behind City Hall.

Let me introduce a concept that isn't intuitive, but it really does come into play here, and that is the difference between, like, if I go to Walmart, okay, I'm usually not trying to park super far away from the front entrance. I'm like everybody else. I'm looking for the closest spot. Why? Because the experience is completely miserable walking through a surface parking lot of a large suburban conventional development. However, And I'll use the opposite craziness is if I'm in Paris and I get to park within two and a half blocks of the restaurant where I want to eat that night, I feel like I hit the jackpot. Why? Because the two and a half block walk is a joy. And that's why when we start talking about how does this parking garage meet the street, how does it fit its context? They usually call it walk appeal, like sex appeal. Oh, does it have walk appeal? Does it have sex appeal? If it has walk appeal, we're not complaining about a block or a two-block or even a three-block walk if it's interesting and beautiful and has the vibrancy where I see other humans wanting to hang out. It's really interesting if you just come downtown and you start, especially when it gets a little more activity of people walking around in the evenings, and just see where people stop walking. They don't want to go by the old police station, what I call the Darth Vader building, where it's coming out at you. And so that's where it stops. Over here on Montrose, it stops right in front of the City Hall. And then you can go on 7th and 8th, and there's similar things. That's one of the advantages of Patrick Bianchi's 821 Mineola project, is it's going to be making the connection from Montrose down to the water feel like that was nothing to go. I get to Mineola, and it's going to feel great, okay, because I'm not complaining about having to walk there. the other issue that we didn't talk about that's probably should be on the issues has to do with shade and to what extent does it provide shade um you can see it right now on montrose i love it this time of year to see the battles of people walking uh against one another and the sidewalk and who's gonna who's gonna stay under the canopy versus go out into the sunshine people are fighting for that and it's raining every day all that other stuff But the point is that it does. If we don't create a cool space to walk, people won't walk a block in some places. Because if you measure a block, our blocks are about the distance of the farthest away Walmart parking space. And so if we don't have that walk-up, whereas if I go down Montrose, no, I'm it's it's pulling me along the way because of the different things I'm saying so I don't want to get all touchy-feely about it but it's a science and that's why if you want to know how to build a downtown all you have to do is look at how you know you can go to the Mall of America in Minneapolis in Minnesota and They knew how to get people to keep walking and walk. Your Chick-fil-A started in the malls. Okay, what do they know? Everything about the design of the inside of the mall was not guessing. All those little bubbles in the ceilings aren't just for security purposes. They're measuring where people stop and turn around and all that stuff. So this walk appeal thing is, I'm serious as a heart attack about it. And that's what has to be done. If we don't make it interesting all the way around, especially in the core blocks. I brought this up just to mention it gets a little depressing. We were talking about the numbers. Everybody's concerned about the numbers. Well, the idea is what could make this block better is if this isn't a surface parking lot, if it's actually buildings and places that you want to go visit for whatever reason. If it's just old buildings, we lose all that parking. How do we make that up so it's within close enough proximity for people to have viable businesses in the lot? But it's undoubtedly better. And what's the most interesting place to walk around in Lake County right now?

I'm going to interrupt you there because I keep hearing people say this. The fact of the matter is that you guys have an agreement with Jason Stringfellow that that's going to be a parking lot. That's all it's ever going to be.

Or else it goes back there.

Right. So he gets that back. He has the option to purchase. Yes. And he gets it back for $1.2 million. Everybody's going to help. Jason's going to be happy. And so we keep having this conversation. Jason doesn't want that land back. He wants it to be a parking garage. So we kind of throw that in. I'm not being mean, but it's a red herring that you keep throwing. Not you, but people keep throwing that in. It's not an option. So we will have a conversation with him. But for him, it's not an option. That's not what he wants to do. That's going to be a parking lot.

Or else it's going to block anything. Okay. 100%.

Let me counter that. I've had plenty of discussions with Jason. He's not here. He's on the committee. But it's my understanding, historically, the city told him no when his first idea was to build buildings. Is that right?

his son was approved as...

I was actually invited to maybe go in there.

I've got the development plan. I've got the development plan. It doesn't matter.

Either place, the walkability of 7th Street is the least walkable. 7th from Montrose to Mineola is the least attractive pedestrian center downtown. So it doesn't matter where you put it. You're going to have to include street improvement.

But once again, our job is to come up with the best parking garage for 7th and Mineola and the best parking garage for . So I don't think there's not an argument about it. I'm just trying to emphasize the importance. The same thing as this mural. Have you all seen the new mural right here? transforms the experiences walking by that area. Okay, and so what else would you do? Well, then all of a sudden it becomes really important. How do you close off the City Hall Park? This City Hall Park is almost never used. Okay, but it depends what we put, you know, how we deal with the parking garage over here and that could influence whether it gets used or not. Well, your council just shut that down.

I said your council just shut that down. So we can just stop right there.

It was used. First Friday, they would have a band out there every Friday. First Friday is in every farmer's market.

Oh, well, no, but like is a park, I mean, it's used for Well, there's no shade. And it's not interesting because if I look toward your block of businesses, I can't see in the buildings. So it's like a blank facade. And then if I looked over on this side, it was a blank facade forever. At least now I've got paint that looks a little interesting. And then if I look toward the south, I see all the power facilities, and it's just not a place where I want to. If I look to the city hall, I've got these nice steps, but it's always all these blinds. I was supposed to pull them up today, actually. Anyhow, these blinds make this like a blank wall. So it's a dead space so we can change what I'm saying is that just through the design elements we can change that There's been several drawings for parks.

Yeah, we did all this We did We just had a beautiful one and there's half a million dollars in the City Council just shut down No, we had a concept for or awnings over it with a stage, so a permanent stage so that you could use it all the time, and for whatever reason.

It's more of a lawn than it is a park. It's just, you know, it's not, a park would be generous right now. It's no wonder it's not used right now.

Right, right, right. That's right, but it's partially because in a downtown, one of the key elements is that feeling of an outdoor room. And it hasn't been defined in a long time.

I remember when City Hall was built, the Jenkins Auditorium is still there.

Right. So we're not fixing that today. I'm just saying that's another element to how do you deal with the parking garage on City Hall. It should enhance the opportunity for this to be a special gathering spot, which I think it will be. Right now, most people say, well, where's City Hall Park? I don't know. Where is it? You know, I guess it's by the city hall. But we don't need to go on. Our job is just to do that.

So, Nathan, if I could comment on something that you said that really makes sense. The Walmart parking lot analogy. That's really true. We're not building a Walmart parking lot. In other words, we're not worried about parking close. If you park far away by the parking lot, it's the latter that you're talking about. That's exactly what most people do when they come down to downtown Clark. Like my wife and I, you know, we go to dinner or whatever, literally, and if I need to come up here real quick, let's say we put the part of the garage here. Let's see. This is the area. We would come in, let's say we're going to, where's your shop at, your restaurant?

8th and Main. 8th and Main.

Right there. You're right here. So like my wife and I, we go with the downtown client for an experience. So we come here, boop, boop, boop. We would come over here, and we'd walk through the walkway here, and we'd be introduced to all these businesses down here. We would have dinner at your place. Then we would go down here, walk along here. So it's more of an experience. It was nice about drawing. If we have it here, people are drawn to all this experience, new businesses. When people come downtown, we're not just going to one place. We're going there for an experience. And I really want to try to keep the charm with it.

Well, I agree with your concept. I think you're correct. But if you came down with your wife and suppose you had a kid and you had a stroller, you would first check to see if that parking lot across the street from you is empty. You would not intentionally park further away on a summer night when it's 97 degrees and then walk three blocks. It would be your second choice.

Correct, but it's still a choice.

I know, but right now we have a parking lot that costs $125,000 to put in that's right across from my business and other businesses. And people will go there first. And then when that's full... Then they will go to the parking garage that cost the city 14 to $16 million to put up. And so if you're gonna spend the money, I think it's highest and best use first. It's just like, you know, it's a job of any HOA to keep property values up.

Crazy thing about that parking lot that you bring up that parking lot will fill up before the on-street parking So the this one here the that main parking lot fills up before the on-street as easy it is to get into those parking spaces That parking is just human nature for whatever reason But I was here when had some son school She's in his place the other day and I laughed because I was like, holy cow that parking lot is full and But their on-street parking, both parallel and the other, was open. Well, parallel is what? People like parallel.

I think it's because most people are probably going to the businesses that are along on the south side.

No, it was just packed up. I don't know what you had going on, but there was a pile of people there.

When I come to work in the morning, sometimes I swing by the post office, and as I drive down Mineola, I'm always amazed at how full that parking lot is at 9 o'clock in the morning.

And it's all employees. I think we keep getting into this adversarial about which spot is better, and that's not really the scope of what this committee is for. It's finding the best solution for both spots and letting council pick.

That's right. Just once again. But I think it's important that everybody have the discussions here. So that's why I didn't want to clamp down.

Essentially, that job is mostly done. We could pull around the edges with what either parking garage would look like, whether it's going to have solar panels or a rooftop area. Because the money's already been spent on, or at least some of the research has already been done on both locations as far as, you know, 7th and Minneapolis is the newest one. but back in 2021 someone put a lot of time into the one behind city hall and so there's none of us are our designers or engineers we can say all right what we want we want more art maybe we want a facade maybe we want a rooftop or respite area for people to go in things like that but what what are we going to do to either location that And that's what I'm trying, when I started out talking earlier, it's like, what are the parameters we have to decide if both locations already have an existing plan in place that needs to be tweaked? Obviously for aesthetics and things like that. But I'm not a road engineer. I don't know if it's better to empty out the 7th and Mineola garage on 7th or whether it should all go out on Mineola. I don't know. It's not my purview and I have no experience in that. So I don't think anyone here does. So aside from recommending, So I'm wondering, maybe by a consensus vote, which one would be the best location? What is our job in 60 days? And I don't want to have study after study done, because that's already been done.

What's our job in 60 days? There's a lot there. First thing is that the job isn't to say necessarily which one's better. It's to come up with plans and estimates You chose the plans you came up with. So that's, it's not, here's one, this is what you got to do. It's no, here are your options.

Well, you've done this a long time, right? Well, if we were to say we don't like any plan on, like, we don't like the existing plan for 7th and Mineola, we want a new plan.

That's right.

How long would that take to develop a new plan, go out, because it wouldn't be Finn Brock, it would be somebody else.

As an example, I was involved in the most recent, in the 821, I was involved in the design process. In that case, those were all concepts. That wasn't like a spit those were architectural drawings for even though it was add precise detail that was a concept that was a very heightened level of concept, we could come up with something less than that. But remember where they're going to see the different concepts and then they're going to have to make a decision about okay. Oh, let me back up you don't know we didn't talk about this before. The intention of the council is to put out an RFP for someone who's going to build a parking garage and potentially do a partnership, whatever. They're going to put out an RFP for somebody to build something.

After us, right? After us.

To see... you know if there is someone going to be able to come in with a real bid just like finfrock came and said we want to be able to do that i expect finfrock and others to be in that rfp thing so they're not going to be involved in our process i know that sounds crazy but that's that's a legal thing that would potentially disqualify them from participating and we want them to be able to participate But we have an RFI out, correct me if I'm wrong, Zane, but we have an RFI out right now for someone who's simply going to be able to provide technical expertise detailing what that RFP is going to say. That's my understanding of how it works. So that's not our job. What we can do, our biggest thing is to raise the issues, okay? And that is, you've already raised a bunch of questions that we don't know answers to today, but we need to get those. We have the flexibility as a committee to spend money to get some answers that are ballpark answers in a relatively short amount of time.

Do you have a concept of what we would spend that money on, like,

We could spend the money on visualizations, so somebody is actually gonna be responsible. It'd be ideal if the same person that's doing the visualization on the seventh and the nil is the same doing it on the seventh and the nil.

And you. Do we have a, so you were saying that the seventh and the nil, they came back at a lower price because some of that can, it was already pre-constructed.

So what Frenfrock specializes in And so instead of trying to design a very custom, here's your ramps, here's your parameters, Renfrock worked with the city and said, hey, if you sketch this out and you do it this way, here's how you maximize this at the least amount of money. And for those who don't know, I'm fairly conservative fiscally when it comes to that stuff. And that was important to me was to get the most garage. For me, I was a maximum garage. Let's see how many parking spaces we can get in here. Let's make sure that we've got plenty of of handicap. We get a lot of complaints of the handicap and where it's at. Being downhill, that's one of the things I love about the Seventh Mineola is that it's right in that park. You can really go over to Sun Creek and not have to go downhill. You can still get to Montrose and not have to go up the hill. and so as a council member i had a lot of complaints about the way our stuff was set up there's things that you don't see on here with walkability having the east west corridor and patrick has agreed to run it up to his property and actually tie back into montrose long term something's going to end up happening with the post office property i mean that's that's already well over its useful age that will be bought way over here um it's possible to bring that east west all the way over to west avenue so you'd be able to go walk from west to seven yeah so patrick's already essentially agreed to bring this all the way across here because the walkway's already here he's going to bring it through here and kind of kitty corner it up to montrose depending on what happens with this big piece of property, you could bring it all the way across and you'd essentially have walkability from one side to the other, along with the art walk. If you get the Navoya property from north to south, there's some really cool concepts, but you can't get there. We have to build a garage. This stuff, city, put in an offer on that property, it's a reasonable offer, it was a fair market value offer, and DeHoyer's just haven't taken it yet. So are we ever gonna get a full north-south art block? We don't know that. Hopefully, sure, but what is the DeHoyer property gonna look like? Certainly, smart money is to wrap it up the art block across West Mineola and have an entrance or have something It's the most valuable piece of property in downtown Claremont.

But is it fair to say that the parking garage behind this building is more expensive for fewer spots?

The way it was designed, yes. Could Fred Frupp do something different? Probably.

Yeah, so that could be modified. Because it sounds like $375, so they're getting 125 spots per floor or So if we could go as high as what was given in 7, we could theoretically get more parking spots right there. It just would have to be redesigned. And then I agree with the walkability.

And then the conversation will be, and we all know this, will be water capacity. So water capacity on this side of Montrose goes to Center Lake. Water capacity on that side of Montrose goes to Victory Point. So, depending on capacity over here, can that affect it as far as the footprint? And it does, and that's something that is beyond, you know, I'm not an engineer, I don't know what that is. Todd, do you remember why the City Council didn't do the parking drive in Mount City Hall? Like, what was the, was it just the money? it was the it was really really expensive and they just never landed on it well i'm sure it's not cheaper now but is it that was it just the money it was the money and the concept of not being able to go all the way they just couldn't get again hurting cats just kept cooking the can down the road nobody wanted to spend the money nobody wanted to be that council member that said i did it so it seems like back then there was a solution and the solution wasn't taken

I heard about the same thing about the vault, the fabled vault. I'd love to know if it's actually there or not.

So there is a water vault over there exactly where it's located. I do not know. The conversation was that it would be adjacent. Exactly where it's at, we don't know. you would have to deal with the water ball but is the water ball big enough to expand that parking area as well because if your previous space grows you have to have capacity so that capacity conversation has not been had that i know of but i mean yeah for the for the city council if they really wanted to if they are going to vote regardless of what we say for it to go behind city hall that's fine but it's going to be more expensive

And I like to know the true reasons and why it wasn't done to begin with, because essentially, if the if it's the if it's the inclination of the current city council to put it behind the city hall to maybe have the least offensive parking garage you can have, right, then this job is already done for us, we can then we can talk about what it's going to look like, and maybe the special features that may have updated to current things. But right now, I don't know. why we don't have a parking garage under construction behind City Hall. That's my... And if there's a real fundamental reason aside from the money, then we as a group should know that. So we don't spend our time and do all this brain damage and arguing back and forth about which location is best. If the true location really should be behind City Hall.

Question for you. And we can just decide what it looks like. The highest City Hall is... How many floors could you build to at least match the height of the city?

Probably, on this one, probably four. And I think that the nice part about... So that one was five, this one would be four. So now three. Well, right now it's three. I think some of this, the interesting part that goes through this is There's a lot of moving pieces and a lot of moving parts. I am of the firm belief, and I'm not opposed to it being back here, but I'm also of the firm belief that Seventh and Mineola is better long-term, knowing where development's going to go. That's my personal belief. I have had arguments with Alison over this. I'm sure I disagree with Nathan on this, but from a future growth standpoint, I think that is a better location. And I think that's the argument that we have to go through. We have four business owners here. So we have four business owners who are all going to bring a unique perspective from a unique business. And I think that's for us to all land on. We're not all going to agree. There's going to be somebody in this committee that's going to be like, ah, they all suck. But ultimately, we just need to be able to strive to move in a direction. And like I said, I'm not opposed to it being back here. I've been through a little bit more time, effort, energy on this one over here. So, I mean, I obviously have my beliefs. But if this one turns out to be the committee, I mean, I'd stand behind it and say, yeah, I was on that committee. This is where the committee went. Had some disagreements, but this ultimately was the best location. And I think we have to move that.

If I may, like, I think we keep getting hung up on why hasn't the garage been built before. And as somebody who watches city council religiously, it is very hard to figure out exactly where they're going. That is current city council. This city council is completely different to the one that took the decisions that they made before. So who knows how they would have voted if they had had this proposal for this particular parking garage behind here. Regardless, our job, again, is not about the placement of a garage or the best spot. It's to think of the best designs that tie best with downtown for that specific spot. And I think we keep getting hung up on that. Cost is important, but it is not the only important factor, I would say. The aesthetics of the place is very important. The reason why Mr. Patrick Bianchi got that development approved in Western Plaza is because it looks beautiful. There is a lot of utility when a building looks beautiful. A building that is ugly can't just break the experience.

I agree with everything you're saying. And I think I came in here... Probably it sounds like you too. I don't have a dog in the fight. I don't care. Like, I want the best. But inherently, I can't see how the city, the parking garage behind this building is inherently better if it's smaller. And I also wasn't impressed with the look of it, to be honest. The 7th Street, the renderings looked better. Like, they're more interesting. They're newer.

I'm not sure anybody's going to say that's a beautiful parking garage. It looks good, but you're not going to say, wow.

But I do think the use of the artwork and then whatever else we come up with. But if they could show me a visualization, which I know we have money for, of the city hall that was bigger and beautiful.

I think I could be pulled there because typically we came down for a food truck. I parked as far away as I could by the church in the church parking lot and walked. I'm okay with that. But I don't think I'm the normal person. I think the normal person is going to circle until they find the closest spot. But what I'm looking for is biggest bang for buck and the beauty element too. Right now it seems obvious that 7th Street has that, has both.

And that's part of the job of this committee is to design them. So create what they are. So whatever they are right now, they can change entirely. And y'all's purpose is to design them.

Yeah, that helps. So I think it's important to make an observation. It's clear, based on what we've heard today, I think, that cost is something that's very important. We knew that coming in, but we also know it's important moving forward. You all don't have to make the decision about whether it's going to be paid for or not. You just have to come up with the best thing. And I would recommend, based upon what I've heard, is that you do give an option, which the amount of parking we can get for the dollar this is what we would do i think you also need to look at it as i'm not going to go into it right now this is objectively like i can come up with objective reasons why this is uglier than what has been done by the thin frock proposed okay there are different elements that make you say oh that doesn't feel good i'm not going to go into that but it's obvious so you had that gut reaction so the gut reaction would be what if we had something that was If I own the land across the street, I'm excited that it's coming in.

Yes. I wouldn't be too excited if this would ride across the street. It looks very utilitarian. 1980s Boca Raton. It's pretty good. Yes.

You're just kind of like, ooh, okay.

All right. So I want to try to...

What are the duties of the chairman and the vice chair?

They will serve as essentially the moderators of the future meetings. I didn't mean to inject myself so much. I just wanted to try to be efficient about raising the different issues. and get us on a good track, which I think we're in a better position than when we started. But regardless, the idea is that, yeah, they would essentially guide the conversation. It may not be any different than what we had today, but we were tasked in the resolution to identify a chairperson and a vice chairperson. So does anybody want to make a...

Since nobody's volunteering, I guess I'll...

We've got to nominate.

I'll defer to Tom.

Yeah, you just have to do a nomination. I'll nominate Rocky to be chairman. I would second that.

I don't know the rules, but I'll do my best.

So you get a nomination, a second, and then take a vote. Oh, so you got a second.

You got a second from him, so we're keeping it.

There's Bill. All in favor? Aye. I'll make a nomination for Keith to be vice

All in favor? Aye. I didn't tell you that we're going to have a dedicated

You know, it's funny, because we've come downtown twice in the last 30 weeks and never been somewhere else. Because we really couldn't find parking. So it's odd, because I think there's several problems.

The sneaky parking spot. I'm going to get away with my sneaky parking spot. That's fine. Most people know about it. So the sneaky parking spot is actually parked in the central So that's my always, if I know it's busy here, if I'm coming down for like food truck or, you know, farmer's market stuff, I'll just park there. I know I don't even have to look. I can pull right in there. Boom, I'm there. I'm here to walk around.

What do you see at your business as far as like, do you get that? Do you feel like you lose customers?

I don't feel like I lose customers. My customers love walking all of downtown here. So we get a lot of foot traffic of people who have been from Costa Nostra or farther down the wine shop. We have people who come all the way over to our side of town after they visited you with their wine, things like that.

It really depends upon what business you're in. We're open eight to four. Because a cup of coffee is... So good. He's open eight to four.

So he's got, it's less of an issue.

A case of wine is 38.

Because I got some drinks, but he's there.

They need to make both. All of the on-street parking, two hours or less, and that will stop employees from parking out there.

Well, you never park in front of your business. You park in front of your neighbor's business.

The C.R.A. into the parking conversation allows them to start making those rules and those recommendations and that's the ideal way to do it. Nathan touched on that earlier, is that somebody has to start managing parking.

Is it the C.R.A. or is it the parking authority?

There has been four-hour parking downtown at least twice in the last 30 years. They put the signs up, it ruined them, they took them down, they put them up. So it's gone back and forth. Why didn't they have done it before? They did it to a two-hour? They may have been too, yeah. Because the sewing store had three-hour classes. And the women, by the time they unloaded their sewing machines and came in and sewed, they had to go move their car. So it was, the sewing store is gone now. So I mean, it's really industry-specific. If you have two hours, pick an hour, two, three, four, that means somebody has to monitor it.

Sure.

So do you have a police officer who can come downtown every three hours and pass out tickets?

I do bicycle ones.

And it's fast.

There's nothing to be made. We used to have loading zones. When and how do we meet?

The intent was to meet weekly at the same time.

to be here at a particular time where it doesn't have a conflict. So if we could have this meeting every week at this set time, that would be ideal.

Is it possible to Zoom in in case we are out of town?

I think it is. Yes, we have that capability. So yes, in fact, next week I'm going to be at a funeral, so I can't be here for it. That's okay. Zane will be here. I'm sure Dan Mathis will probably try to be here as well from a staff perspective. But the idea is every week. And so what we can sort of map out is, and right now, it's up to you all. This is your committee. I originally thought we would go walk out right now. We can do that or, and I can do it informally if you want, but otherwise, that's not going to work well We should either adjourn here or we all go on a walk. I'm hesitant to go on a walk without y'all having the opportunity to have access to the resources that we talked about today so that you can sort of essentially do a little homework, better understand the size of the sites, what people have said in the past. We can give you a little more context. And then what you can do next week is when you meet, is try to identify, confirm as a group all those issues that you think should be resolved. Okay, whether it's questions you have or a category of concern, it's clear we're going to worry about cost we're going to worry about um you know the number the height whatever it may be but come up with your list so that i think that's going to be helpful for the council to see oh okay they looked at this and then and then so the identification of all the questions that have to be answered would be helpful if you can that down by next week because essentially what you want to be in a position of doing is being able to ask for help after next week for consultants or anybody else that needs to be engaged immediately so that we can meet the 60-day deadline. Does that make sense?

If I want to put something out, can I just email everybody?

it's not gonna get a city no address or something there's not really a mechanism to do that it would have to be publicly done here um if there's something information you want to deliver what you can do is you can deliver it to staff and bring it out and deliver that meeting um but it would you'd essentially be very very it's very gray So I would not recommend that.

Can we send an email to people with information, like you or me, send it to them?

You can send it directly to staff. We cannot, no, that's using a third party to distribute information.

Can we distribute information without?

If it's independently sourced.

So like me saying we're going to send you certain things during this meeting, I'm allowed to send them certain things?

We are actually allowed to send that. But he can't send it to you and then you send it to all of us. Yes.

OK, got it.

Although you could present it to us at an open meeting.

My point is that that gives us seven more meetings. That there's seven more meetings to wrap this up.

Less than that, actually. The council meeting that it's supposed to be at will be September 22nd.

So five more meetings. That's not 60 days.

No, not even.

So I'm ready to make requests today as far as like, I want to know what's wrong with that site. I want to know if there's a fault under it. So if we can. And can we recommend, can we suggest now that FinFROC start evaluating the grots or the- They can't be involved. Who's our backup? Nobody.

So who would be the fact finder here?

It's then going to end up being staffed because if you bring in a finfrock and they can't, finfrock poisons the well, they can't fit on it. And you're not going to, and you definitely, finfrock is the biggest garage builder around here and they do the free cash. We do not want that.

City Council leaving it beyond us can't say to finfrock, we want you to do this garage.

We can get the questions you have likely been raised in the past and we'll coordinate with our other staff who are very familiar with what happened then and if we can't find the answers then we can reach out to those who we know are not going to be part of the RFP.

In communicating with staff, what email address?

Okay. And we will get it to the correct party if you want the answer. Okay. We'll get answers for it. And then your response will be to all of us. Get your email address. Yeah, I'll send it all to you. I'm CCing on everything that was sent out.

Okay. Anything you said, don't send it just to Zane and don't send it just to me.

Send it to us both. But this is a fair ask. So like it. Yes. And we would have to make it basically, you have to nominate that question and then be second, right? No.

I'm just saying if we have five meetings rocky to get to come up with even if we even if we all agreed it's going to be one location the other five weeks is a lot is a short amount of time to say all right well we all agree that it's the part it's the city hall site well no I'm saying we're Maybe the best two sites as best as but even if we have to go now we have to address we have to engage Finfrock or any changes we would like to see to make the best suggestion for 7th mini all right So brand new firm yes that has to come into this and evaluate the only thing we have is making the recommendation and they Send it out to a bunch of We did recommend a building that looked like Finfrock

We're just saying we believe the City Hall site is the best site. Here's what we want it to be.

Right, so I think that's what we need to figure out for next meeting is we're going to look at these two sites. We think that the garage should look like this. It should incorporate these key functions on both sides. And then we go back to Zane. Zane gets with our vendors that are on retainer to design.

When we say our job is to recommend changes to both sites or what both sites should look like, not either, not which site is best. Correct. So how do we, without using FinFROC and without using any, without talking to anybody directly, that city staff's job, do we in a paragraph say we would like a parking garage to have these aesthetic features? of what we submit because.

Well, that's our next week. And then staff would then, in the week leading up to our next meeting, we would hopefully have some drawings to us to review and go, this looks good. change this, change that. Yes. But I would think we'd start with Phoenix.

No, these are fresh designs, right?

Yeah, we can't use FinFrox design. No, you could, but you can't talk to FinFrox.

You can go, okay, I like FinFrox design, but... But we have a request for information out, right?

That's right, for somebody else, but... It's not our job to be perfect. It's our job to give concepts of what you would like to see.

Yeah. We should have two or three minimum, two concepts for each location. Right. I think a good exercise. No, no, a picture. Essentially, it's going to look something like this. That's it. That's what the designer is going to do, to conceptual design. I was wondering if that's five weeks.

How do we get our concepts into reality?

So what we can do is if everyone wants to individually send us what your ideas are over the next week,

We were all blind-copy, so we're all good.

Beautiful. Yeah. Sort of how this started, just so y'all know where I came from on this. What? Beautiful.

So this is a, this is done out of laminated wood. Um, so it was a really cool concept. I went super deep into this. This is where started. This is what my concept was to have a seventh street. It was like, This is cool. People are going to drive here to see it. It's the coolest garage I've ever seen. It's never been built, by the way. It was a concept. But anyway, so I think some of what we can do is say, hey, we like these architecture pieces that can go on these. back to what you were talking about is you know do we like it do we like the glass do we you know there are different things and you can think outside of the box how do we put um pieces onto it but like i said this was where i started with a parking garage and um yeah so there's lots of stuff out there but yeah looking at it from a sustainable wood structure. So there was a cool factor to it. Nobody had ever done.

And then one other thing I want to share as well. In my line of work, we do large resort conference style hotels, which include parking structures. Our current price right now is about $20,000 to $25,000 per parking stall for a cast in place. So that's different than FinFrog's precast where they just bring in panels. They get bolted together into the structural steel of that. So when you get into the weeds of like, it looks like this, it's got some weird designs into it, then you're starting to get in a cast in place and then that number gets there. So you said 365 spots, that's seven and a half million dollars at $20,000 to solve.

So just for reference. Yeah. What was that personal 20?

20 to 25,000. 23.5. Yeah. Okay. And that's from Weld Grove Building Company which is one of the largest builders here.

Do we need to add our discussion whether we feel it should be free or fee based?

I don't think so.

That's the City Council will have to worry about that.

Where I landed on that was to send that back over to the they want to make those recommendations, if they want to charge for it, let's just put that in their lap. And that way we don't have to be the bad guys. But there's going to be an argument over whether I think people should pay. There needs to be a level of pay.

No, it should be everywhere. Even at the beach, like when I'm out running in the morning. It is full of people that are there running and biking. And if you look, they're all Orange County tech.

What's Winter Park or Winter Garden do? It's all free.

But it's a totally... You get what you pay for. Well, I think you've, like, what works for a clarinet. You know, I think we kind of have to discount, you know, where to park, where to garden. Can I ask, so, and this is more just personal. So when the hotel gets built, what is their required parking? Are they going to use the parking garage? Can we charge them to use it? Like, it's going to pay us $3,000? So he has no parking.

Per spot. So he has no parking required. Then he'll use up that parking. I mean, it's a great deal for him. So how do we change that?

That's counseling. We need parking management.

So as an example, if that hotel does get built, How many hotel rooms? Anybody know?

It's small. It's a boutique. Like 30 or 40 probably. Under 50.

Yeah, I thought it was 48.

It's one parking spot per room.

Which side is this?

It'll be all of... On top of?

It'll be on top.

On top of where Patrick's existing building is.

So he has no parking requirement because he can buy his way out of it.

You can buy your way out of it and this process will bring realistic value to the cost of parking in the downtown.

Yeah, what I'm saying is that if he's maxed out 3030 boutique hotel rooms staff of four or five one at any one time, that's free. But let's just say it's 40 spots a night. Where are those people going to park? Are they going to park at the parking structure behind City Hall, three and a half blocks away, or are they going to park in the 7th and Mignola flat parking space and take up all the spots for all the customers?

I believe there's a conversation about the community benefit agreement that needs to be fully slashed out where parking is going to be.

We had an agreement with Claremont Brewing Company with the church across the street. That's how they got approved. And then that changed when the church decided to build a school. And they lost a lot of their spots. So now all that got dumped out onto the street or elsewhere. And I assume they would park in the City Hall parking garage where they park there now. That's I mean, these agreements are not static, or they, they, they're not permanent, they're kind of flux, they, they're flexible down the road, when another agreement is made for additional, you know, like said, they had the church and then they didn't.

So just so everybody knows, the parking fee was me. And the reason the parking fee got put in there was to allow businesses to expand. So what we wanted to be able to do was any of these single story buildings be able to go to a second story that easily and not have to deal with parking issues. And some of this comes into the CRA. What's the CRA's rate on taxes?

It's significantly higher, 10%.

I think it's a 10 mil.

It's the same tax bill, just that the CRA gets it.

Yeah, so by increasing that CRA revenue, it helps with that parking garage. And that's why I lean on having the CRA manage it, is because it comes in under them. That way, the people who are the taxing agent and the people who are running the parking are the same people, and they have to balance their budget that way. So there was a method behind that madness to allow management all in one spot and oversee it. And they are responsible. So if they say, we don't want to charge for parking, well, they're going to have to figure out how to come up with that $10,000 amount. some of this is going to get bought. I mean, city council's not going to come off with $12,000. They're just not going to do that. So, you know, maybe they do six and they bond six and they go, you know, but that's not gross.

Was the parking fee conceptualized with the idea that there would be a parking garage one day? Downtown?

Downtown was mine. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And let the CRA, and when the conversations with Frenfrock was that, have it built so that the technology is there, some of what Nathan was getting to, so that you can say as use increases, prices go up, so you have that fluctuating, and you can build that into whatever system you have there.

Is the CRA allowed to run a parking structure? Yeah, it's their money. I mean, in the old days, there were only certain things the CRA could do by statute. And I didn't know running parking structures with one of them.

Can you be insured for that?

I don't know. The CRA, the state may absolve the CRAs.

Either way, it's their dollars.

So it's their dollars. Then it must be true.

Yeah. So it's their dollars. They're the ones who have to control it. So going back to the reason that we set it at 3,000 was to, A, let's get some movement on these other little buildings. 3,000 was an easy number, and the idea was that if we could increase the value of existing buildings by increasing the height, that we could increase the dollars going into the CRA, which could then fund more parking. So there was kind of a longer-term look at it, but I know that 3,000 does sound low.

In the 90s, it was 1,500. And downtown was depressed, so they did away with it to encourage business to come downtown. And then what, 2000-something? You brought back to 2000.

I think you need to write a history book. So it's coming along. We all know what's going on here.

How many current parking spots are at 7th?

That's about 100.

So what about right now currently behind us? About 100. Because we have to factor in... You're losing $100,000. Well, and if we build a city hall and Jason develops it, we lose that too. Maybe not immediately.

But Jason may not want to develop it. And the agreement will end up, it's just going to be a parking lot.

That's the thing too. If the city builds this garage and Jason doesn't want to do it, somebody who can sell. He has an agreement with him. So there is a... Well, that's the thing. If Jason doesn't want to do it, just because you have an agreement doesn't mean agreements can change. He has to agree to make... That's what I'm saying. I mean, that could always happen down the road.

Right. No, I mean, my thought, I guess my thinking is... he would buy it back and then develop it because that would be a bit good.

Remember, if he does that and we lose the Ahoya property to whatever development goes on there, that's almost 200 spots in the heart of where people shop and eat now.

At that point, though, you probably have enough revenue to justify additional parking structures.

Well, if it's taking 10 years for you to get this far, I don't think it would stage a second structure. I might be walking with a cane by the time that happens.

than the old post office.

We have talked to the guy on the post office. Does the post office not own that? No, so it's a guy out of Jersey. It's an old guy out of Jersey who's like, well, you know, why don't you just eminent domain it? I'm like, no, we're not eminent domain in the post office. Are we done?

I think we're done unless you guys want to have a conversation or anything else.

I'd like to add one last thing. I think a good exercise going into the next meeting will be kind of think about it as we're building a garage no matter what on both sides. What features do you want to see in both of those sites to make it the best garage possible? Don't worry about the cost at this point. what is your key features you want on those sites.

And it's funny because that might be the recommendation I would come up with. You need two garages right now. Well, that's fine.

We also believe in unicorns. That's right. I do.

You guys say, like, okay, we're going to get a visualization overnight or something. It takes a while for somebody to come up, a designer to come up with what is a real stuff concept. So once again, it just means that it's, what's the designer law? the designer wants you to tell them what your priorities are. They don't want you to say, I want the best looking garage of all time at the very cheapest cost. Okay, remember, what is it? Good, you know, you can have good, cheap, and fast, and you get two out of the three. So they need good direction. That's why I was trying to focus on just what are those criteria, what do you want to say about each one of them? And so go look at them, think about them. I don't think we have anything else to discuss today, and I don't want to walk the site right now. the parking lot you'll see the other side no it's not just saying it's it's understanding the context of how it impacts um the properties around it just in the same way that if we looked at the uh you know when we look at the visualizations they've already done they're not you know they're not uh you wouldn't want to have your building across the street on some of the sides of those. You'd like the parking, but you may not like the structure and what it does to your business or your home.

Tim, I didn't get clarification. That walkway that would go in front of your building from garage to your five-foot walkway in front of yours is 18 feet.

18 feet.

Yeah, so there'd be a 10-foot dedicated paver with... So it wouldn't be on top of your . I think you guys can just motion to adjourn.

Man, we knew parking would be this much of a problem.