Urban Renewal Authority - Regular Meeting

Urban Renewal Authority meeting on 06/10/2025. And with that, roll call, please.

Absolutely. I'm so glad. Commissioner Pesamorelli. Commissioner Orr. Commissioner O'Connor.

Here.

Commissioner Sheikh? Here. Vice chair Bell?

Here.

Chair Moore?

Here.

Commissioner Baer? Present. Commissioner Peppler? Present. Commissioner Mortolero?

Here.

Commissioner Bat? Present. Commissioner Hoback?

Here.

Chair, we have a quorum.

Alright. Great. I'll see if we have a motion to approve the agenda tonight.

So moved.

Second. We have a motion and a second.

All in favor, aye.

Aye.

All opposed, say no. Motion carries. We'll go into our first item, which is one item on the consent agenda, and that's item twenty five three seven six, approval of the

05/13/2025 urban renewal authority meeting minutes. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

So moved.

Second. I think we have a

motion from commissioner Baer and a second from vice chair Bell. All in favor, say aye.

Aye. All opposed, say no. Alright. We've got the approval of our minutes from last meeting, and we'll move on to public comment. Is there anybody who has signed up for public comment to the urban renewal authority tonight?

I don't see that anybody has signed up, and there's nobody online.

Alright. Then let's move on to the first of two items on general business. The first is item 25,342,

a resolution of the Board of Commissioners to the Town of Erie Urban Renewal Authority approving the amended Town of Erie revitalization incentive grant program. Program. Welcome. And tonight, we have Stephanie Pitts Nagas, our economic development manager.

Hello, commissioners. I apologize apologize for for my my hat. Hat. I I am am a a new new mom, mom, and and I I manager. Do do not not have time to shower. So I

love the honesty. That's great.

Sorry. The mouse is a little funny. Oh, I'm not even controlling it, that's why. Okay, my bad. All right.

Good evening, commissioners. And today I'm going to be talking to you all a little bit about the revitalization incentive grant program. We're going to talk a little bit about the history of the program, how it currently functions, some of the proposed updates that I'm bringing to you this evening in an effort to make the program a little more meaningful for our downtown businesses. And then there'll be some time for questions and discussion. I will probably refer to this grant, despite the title, as the Downtown Revitalization Grant, just because that's colloquially what we call it, just to make it very, very clear that this is for downtown businesses.

The original purpose of the revitalization grant was to be somewhat flexible for other URA areas, but the Old Town area is where this grant is currently functioning. So just be aware that I may call it that. So in June 2020, Touro adopted its incentive policy. And the primary goal of this policy was to reduce blight within the town's urban renewal areas. And we're going to hear a lot about reducing blight, and there's several mentions of it within this grant document as well.

In October 2020, this board approved the revitalization grant program with grants available in two categories, historic building improvements and business siting and expansion grants. And we will be discussing each of those. So if you're not quite sure what those are yet, I will explain. The most recent change to this program was an update that I brought to the board in October 2023. And most of these updates were what I would call quality of life updates, things that would make scoring a little bit easier for me as the administrator.

I obviously was not at the town when this was originally created. So some of the scoring I felt was a little murky, and I just wanted to clarify it. And I did make one significant change to one of the programs as well, which we will talk about. As of right now, today, we have completed seven rounds of grant funding. So we've opened up the grants for applications seven times.

12 grants have been completed so far, so as in fully brought forward to completion with reimbursements distributed. And we still have two projects that are ongoing. So let's by talking a little bit about the historic building improvements grant. So this is the one that I had made the more significant changes to back in October 2023. So this is a two to one matching grant for exterior improvements visible from a public right of way or a publicly owned piece of land.

The reimbursement cap is $15,000 which means that in order to receive $15,000 a private business will have to invest $30,000 So you get half back of everything you invest up to that $30,000 So if I did $70,000 doesn't matter. I'm still going to get $15,000 at that point. The change that was made at the time in October 2023 was an increase from $10,000 to $15,000 And this increase was I brought it to the URA board with the goal of making this program more meaningful for businesses. Because in the last several years since this grant came online, things are much more expensive than they used to be. And frankly, you can basically pay $20,000 for a roof.

And that's not really the goal of what we are trying to accomplish here. We want to make meaningful investment stimulate meaningful investment in downtown that has a significant visual community impact. And $20,000 just really doesn't get you there very much anymore. So the eligibility for this grant, you have to be either a business owner so you could be a tenant who rents or a property owner or both. Some people get to be both.

If you are a business owner, you have to have permission of the property owner. You can't just do whatever you want to the building that you don't own. The property has to be located within the boundaries of the old town URA. You have to have a business license and be in good standing with the town in all other respects. And there are a few other small eligibility things, but these are the this is the broad strokes.

So the business citing and expansion grant, which I want to spend a little more time on because because this is the one that I've recommended the larger number of changes to. At the moment, it is a 10 to one matching grant for eligible interior and exterior improvements, also rent and utilities, meaning you will get 10% back of any investment you make, including a period of up to, say, six months of your rent and utilities. Now, way it's worded in the grant document is that you get 20% of 50%, which I think is a bit misleading. And that's wording that optimally we would change anyway because it just is very confusing for business owners who are trying to 20% of 50%, what does that mean? So I say it's 10%.

So currently, the reimbursement cap is $50,000 However, there is language that says that the committee can decide to go beyond that. So if we have a grant round, round, we have x number of dollars set aside to fund this particular program, and we have one applicant with a fabulous, amazing idea, and they're going to put a lot of money into updating their property, we can decide as a committee to go above that $50,000 cap. Now, there have been a few times where we have decided this, but those projects have never gone to completion. So we've never actually surpassed that $50,000 cap. So that means that you have to spend you know, $500,000 in order to get that $50,000 So the eligibility is the same as the previous grant.

Everything that I said about the previous one holds true here. However, you need to have been in business for over a year. You need to have fewer than 10 full time employees. You need to have received no previous financial support from Torah, which includes not having received the facade grant, the historic building improvement grant. And you must be expanding, not just changing locations.

So those are some stipulations I want you to keep in mind. So the goals of the update here are to make that business citing an expansion grant work with the mid sized projects that are already being undertaken by business owners in Old Town. So we did one recently that really was we had a business owner make a pretty significant contribution of her own money into a property that she didn't even own but rented in an effort to really turn the property around and make it look beautiful. And at the end of the day, because she had to do so much interior work, the amount that we were able to reimburse her was actually significantly less than if she had just done exterior work. So it was really unfortunate that we were only really encouraging her to do exterior work at the end of the day instead of doing a combination of interior and exterior.

Because if you're doing interior work that totals, let's say, you're doing a fresh coat of paint on the outside of the building, and then on the the inside of the building you're doing $70,000 worth of paint, and let's say the fresh coat of paint costs $1,000 you're really only getting just over $7,000 in reimbursement. However, for that same investment on the exterior of the building only, you would be getting that $15,000. So it was really unfortunate that we couldn't do a little bit more for her. And there are lots of business owners in downtown who wanna do significant things to the interior of their building to either increase the square footage, increase the number of items they have on offer. They might want to be moving to a larger space.

And they're just not applying for this grant because 10% just isn't really incentive enough for them. I hear great things about the historic building improvement grant, doing the exterior work. 50% is wonderful. They can make that investment, they get that money back. And then for those bigger projects, they have TIF agreements where they can be reimbursed for portions of their sales tax and property tax.

So big projects have their great program that they can take advantage of. Smaller exterior investment, they have great opportunity as well. But that middle range there where people might just be moving to a slightly larger space, doing some decently significant work on the interior of their home or interior of their business, maybe spending up to $100,000 just not really seeing a lot of people take advantage of that. The eligibility requirements are also quite restrictive. And we've found ourselves having to of twist ourselves into a pretzel to try to make this work for people.

Remembering that the goal here is to eliminate light and really wanting to improve the visual impact of downtown. The idea that a business needs to have been in operation for over a year, in my mind, that doesn't really make a lot of sense. Because let's say, unfortunately, a business starts, folds in a year, but they've made a $100,000 investment in their building while economic development would do everything in our power to make sure that they did not go out of business. If that were to happen for some unforeseen reason, we would be left with a beautiful building that would actually be much easier for us to then find a new tenant to fill as opposed to if they didn't make any investment at all because we require that they have to have been in business for over a year. So that one, to me, does feel a little restrictive because there are a lot of people who really want to start businesses in Erie.

I'm sure you've all spoken to individuals who are really excited about starting businesses in our community. But this grant then wouldn't be applicable to them until they've already been up and running for a year. So that's another thing that I thought was very important to make a change. Some of the scoring and administration for the grant was a little complicated. And we wanted to make some changes to the scoring so that it just made a lot more sense to not just myself, but I score these with a committee.

And the committee includes representatives of what would have formerly been DEBA, the Downtown Erie Business Association, that is now part of the EEDC, the Erie Economic Development Council, and finally, the chamber. So we have representatives of all those bodies who get together and work with me to help score and award the appropriate projects. So anyone who is successful, we do that together. And ultimately, we really want to increase the number of applications and completed projects. So one of the things that does take up quite a bit of staff time is someone might suggest a project.

It sounds great, but they have not gone through a pre application meeting, and therefore they're not actually able to do their project project because because what what they they want to do is not actually feasible within the confines of the UDC or what have you. And so these projects are a significant amount of staff time for scoring and maybe entering into an agreement, even only to find out that we can't do the project. So one of the things that I've also added in here is the requirement to, if applicable, have a pre application meeting prior to having submitted your application or at least have one scheduled. And we just really want more completed projects. Having people propose projects that never happen, we don't want that.

We want to make sure we have as many people successful in their projects as possible. And a lot of the things I just said are on this slide, but I will just go over them one more time. So having worked with that same committee and having spoken to a lot of Downtown Erie businesses over the past year and a half since we last updated this grant, these are the recommendations. Increasing the business citing and expansion grant to a four to one match, but with the same reimbursement cap of $50,000 However, rent and utilities would no longer be reimbursable because it just doesn't really make sense that they ever were to me personally. But we would just be reimbursing the actual work that was being done.

The updates to eligibility, no requirements for the length of time in business. Pre application meetings are either you have to have had one or have signed up for one and have it scheduled prior to applying. Recipients of TIP agreements are not eligible. However, you would be eligible if you had received the historic building improvement grant. You would still be eligible for this.

And another wording in the grant language says, you have to be expanding and not simply moving business locations. I also find that a little bit silly. I think that someone moving from Lafayette or Lewisville to Erie, for example, I think we should be incentivizing that. And I think this update could prove to be a very significant incentive tool to some businesses who might want to be relocating to Erie. Now is the time for questions and discussion. And I am more than happy to hear what everyone has to say.

All right. Thank you. And I'll bring it back to the commission.

I may have missed this because I'm absorbing a lot here. But I was just was wanting a little more of an explanation as to why you are requesting a pre

app meeting. So the reason that we want to make sure that people are doing the pre app meeting is because what we do not want to see is someone someone applies with a fantastic idea. We love it. They've got drawings. They've gone through all this trouble. They apply. We score it. We get the committee together. We go through it. We go through it and put an agreement together.

And so that's a significant amount of time and effort and staff time and whatnot, only to find out that then they are really not serious about the project, and they're not going to go through the appropriate steps with the planning department and with the building department to do the permits and whatnot, for example. Or they've got a great idea, but it's not actually feasible because what they want to do not in accordance with the Unified Development Code or something like that. So making sure that they have a nice, realistic project in mind that will will meet the needs of both the business and the

town. Thank you. Go ahead. So in line with what you just said, making sure that what they have is realistic, it concerns me then that as one of the eligibility requirements that you don't want them to have, like, at least a year being in business. To me, that says that you have some stability, you have some foundation, and again, based on what you just said that it's a project that has legs then I would want to know that the business has legs as well and I understand that you want the building to look a certain way to reduce the blight that's there but we also want the business because the building can be there, but if there's no business, there's no tax dollars.

So I I think I have I think I hear that there's a little bit of the two things don't match, if you will, for lack of better words. They they don't come together in the way that I think I hear you explaining it. I think I know what you're trying to say and what you what your thoughts are, but I don't think that they match when you say we want they shouldn't have a timeline to be in business, yet we want to make sure in that meeting that they the purpose that they're trying to apply for the grant actually matches what we want to see. So I just think that those two things don't align very well.

Yeah, hear what you're saying. I think from my perspective, I'm focused really, like, mostly outcome of this whole reduction of blight. How can we make sure that this building goes from being maybe not such a nice building, old, rundown, or whatever, to something that's really beautiful and nice? And so I do totally hear what you're saying. And yes, I can see how there does seem to be a disconnect between, we want really strong projects, but, oh, a year in business is too much to ask.

So I hear that. But what I'm trying to focus on is really, how can we make sure that this construction happens and we have this building actually get to completion. There was an example of somebody who they applied jointly with the owner of the property. So the owner property had owned the property under an LLC and had been in business for a long time. But the tenant had not been in business for a year.

But we still funded that project because it was a joint effort effort between the business owner and the property owner for making the investment, doing the making the investment in the property or what have you. So that specific occurrence is sort of what inspired me to bring this to you all and recommending that we take away that stipulation. But more than happy to hear if other people have the same thought on that as well. Thank you.

On the historic building improvement grant, the applicant must have a business license. Did Sarah that mean their tenant has to have a business license?

Yes. But they already already have to have that anyway. Like, tenants

are Just as a business just as a property owner?

The tenant has to have a business license. Okay. And so if they're if they're doing a we haven't had it we haven't had it happen where the tenant and the property owner weren't together on it. Usually, a property owner is making those improvements for the tenant. So that's kind of how we make that happen. There have been a few cases, though, where we've had property owners get a business license. Because they're not usually private individuals who own it in their own name. They own it as an LLC. The LLC is collecting money. So one could argue they are a business, and therefore, they need a business license.

Okay. I'm just

wondering if you're missing a few that might if I own a building and I'm gonna lease it out or I am leasing it out, but maybe the tenant doesn't have a business license, can I not I can't qualify for the grant?

No. We are not supposed to have people or business buildings with business owners that do not have business licenses. So, like, if you were to, say, replace a screen door as a business owner and you don't have like, if you go through the permitting process and you don't have a business license, that usually gets flagged for our department. And we want people to be in, like, compliance with that. That's, like, a big push that our department is making, the business license thing.

Okay. So the applicant for in the case of warfare, the tenant must have business license. Okay.

I just wanna Yeah.

Cover that.

Alright. Coming back to commissioner Babbs.

So to that point, I again, I think there's some misalignment in the criteria. It I hear there is room for it can be, but it can't be. And we're making it very we're making it very lenient because, again, to your point, if the business I mean, if the the property owner and maybe they do have a business, maybe they don't. Maybe they just own the property. If they don't have a license and they do the joint thing that you talked about, right, then theoretically they're not eligible for that grant because they may not have a business license, right?

Let's just assume that they do not. Let's just assume they own a property but they don't have a business license. And that leaves room for discretion in who can and who can't. And so my point to the earlier comment that I made is there's discretion in there and we I don't think that we want discretion. I think we need to be clear cut so that everybody has the same rule and the same eligibility criteria and not one has this and then one can do that. So I think it needs to be a little bit more clear cut, either you do have a license or you do not.

So to be clear, you do need a license whether you're the property owner or not. So we did go through this recently with so CYC LLC owns seven zero five Carbon Court, and that is where Solace Counseling is now located. Both CYC LLC and Solace Counseling require were required to have business licenses in order to get this grant. And they did do that, and they successfully got the grant. So just to be clear, we did require everybody to have the business license in order to do that.

Okay. That's not what I heard in that discussion, but okay.

Alright. Let me go back to Commissioner Peppler.

I'm just curious because I've not part of been part of the process. What type of cost does a business license entail?

It's a $50 fee annually. Okay.

Let me look to my right. I seem to be focused over here to see if any commissioners over here have any questions. Okay. Vice Chair Bill.

Thank you.

Well, it's not.

I do like the that we're not doing the rent and utilities reimbursement. I I think that might, to some degree, you know, concerns about if somebody's been there a year or not. If they're think probably one of the things that I would wanna see is that just ensuring there's some sort of stability there. So if if we're not worried that they're yeah, they're not able to make the rent payments or what whatnot with this, then then they're not using that money for that. So but I guess in addition to that, in lieu of.

The one year requirement, are there any other. Financial statements or anything like that that we that we look at for the?

No, we don't look at financial statements. What we look at is rather we wanna see that people are serious about doing the process. If don't spend the money, they don't get any money. So they have to spend the money first before we to be clear, reimbursement part,

it should be,

like, bold, underlying italics and all that. So if they hopefully, they are able to like, so one of the things that is written in here is if that is a tenant, the owner of the property is responsible as they would be in any situation to be clear. The owner of the property is responsible for doing all the financial vetting and whatnot of their tenant prior to them coming in, which again, very standard practice in the business community. But we don't vet their finances. That would require, I think, a lot of additional like, I'm not a finance expert.

We would have to bring someone from the finance team probably on to help it do it just would involve a lot more overhead in terms of staff time and whatnot. What we do ask for, however, is that they have a very clear breakdown of their costs. So that, again, shows us that they're serious about the project. They've to somebody. They've gotten estimates.

They're able to submit, you know, estimate sheets, like in PDFs of estimates they've received from people. And we really wanna see those costs broken down. And if if we see stuff that sounds really not appropriate or just like so, again, the other people who are on the committee are also also business owners so they're usually pretty good at flagging like well that that doesn't cost that or something like that if there's a discrepancy in the cost for the project so we're really really focused in vetting applicants for this grant on project costs. We do have them submit some outlines of, like, this is what this is gonna cost. And they can't just say materials, a thousand dollars, and then leave it at that.

We wanna see really broken down into, like, the different aspects. We're gonna do landscaping for this. New lights are gonna cost that. A new door is gonna cost that. Paint will be this. We wanna see that all broken down.

Okay. And then I I guess I didn't understand this last point under recipients maybe moving business locations and meeting

So there was something that was originally written Yeah. Prior to the red line that said the business must be expanding, not simply moving moving locations. Okay.

Okay.

Therefore, disqualified those businesses who might have been from another city or town surrounding Erie who were looking to relocate. So they were staying the same size, same number of because, you know, expanding what does that mean? More square footage or more employees. But if they weren't gonna hire more employees and they weren't actually increasing the square footage of their space, then this wasn't really functioning as, a good attraction tool to bring new businesses downtown. And that just seemed like a missed opportunity.

So that's the reason why I I'm advocating for us removing that specific stipulation. I mean, I'm all for our business expanding, and we're still asking questions about how much will your square foot footage increase, how many more jobs will you create, and those things are still gonna be taken into consideration. We do wanna see that. But if we're attracting a new business and maybe a highly desired business from another surrounding town or city, then I think this is a really wonderful tool to help incentivize them to come locate in Erie.

Okay. Okay. So I guess as a follow-up to that, because I was thinking along the lines if a current business in the URA area, if they are moving to another location inside the URA area and expanding. Is that We

would still we would that that would still be something that we would take into consideration if you like. That's awesome.

Yeah. Okay.

Because the job creation

Yeah.

Aspect is still part of the scoring. So if you're creating new jobs, so we're moving spaces and we're gonna have two new employees, we're still taking that into consideration, and that's still going to be something that helps you score more highly.

Okay. Yep. Thanks. Alright.

Commissioner O'Brien or Connor. There.

I did it again.

I'm dangerous. I've I've been calling him Brian all day today.

So Why

the cap of 10 full time employees?

I think that is that that predates me, and I didn't get rid of it simply because I couldn't think of any business in downtown currently that has more than 10 full time employees off the top of my head. I could be wrong, but I think that was used as a way to understand that this is a small business. So I can't really speak for my predecessor, but my guess is that this 10 full time employee cap was we don't wanna be using this tool for, you know, a larger size business that really doesn't need it. We wanna be really incentivizing these smaller businesses, I think.

Would that apply to something that had, like, multiple locations and this was just one of them and the entire business had more than 10?

And that that one would be, like, if I wasn't super familiar with the business and they said, oh, we don't like, I have to go on the word of what people submit. So I'm hopeful that people wouldn't do that. But usually, the businesses that are attracted to our downtown are one off businesses anyway in most cases. So I would hope that that wouldn't come up as an issue. But, yeah, that 10 the 10 full time employees was really just to keep it as a this is a small biz this is for small business to encourage small business to locate an area.

What about restaurants? I'm familiar with how many

I'm I'm not sure how many full time employees restaurants would necessarily have, but it hasn't hasn't been an issue with anybody who's applied so far. And we've had Old Minds successfully get the grant. We've had Echo. So it's been it's not been an issue yet.

Okay. Thanks.

But maybe I'll be back here in

a year

and say, we need to get rid of that 10 full time employee thing. But I just don't wanna make any changes if I haven't personally encountered it as an issue. So that's the other thing I wanna be clear about is that all the things I'm recommending are things that myself and the committee have personally experienced as we've been trying to make this grant happen. So that 10 I did I gotta be honest. I was like, should we change that? But I don't have a personal experience with that, so I hate to start pulling threads on the sweater that I don't know where they lead. So that one is is in place still at this point for that reason.

Makes sense. Okay. Commissioner O'Connor, good. Commissioner Shaikh, any

Yeah. I guess just to kind of point out that I saw that from the scoring that you still are incentivizing businesses that have been in business longer. Right? Yes. And you're increasing the scoring weight for businesses that have been in business longer.

Yes. Okay. So they're still considered like, a lot of the spirit of the old verbiage is still there in the scoring, I think, a good way for me to Okay. Say that.

Okay. Commissioner Mortolero?

I'm sorry. Can I ask one thing?

Yes.

It looks like we've crossed out. It used to be no business that was owned by a past or present elected official. Now it's just present?

Yes. There's a lot of, like, past elected officials or appointed officials potentially within the downtown. That was having, like, a limiting effect on things that we could do, and we didn't see that it was having a material impact. So, like, Lucille's, for example. I

just wanna point that out because that that's a pretty huge change.

Yep. Thank you for that.

Commissioner Mortolero. First, I want to thank you for getting the input from so many community businesses and whatnot. I think that's really important and that got help guide you to to the changes that that you're making. So I just have a question on on clarification. So, you you know, for, you know, four to one match at 50,000. So the the business would have to put in 200,000. Right. And then after they did that, they would get reimbursed for 50,000.

Correct.

Right? And so we would do everything in our power to to do you keep them business, whatnot. But if they did go out of business, we still got a $200,000 improvement on a building for $50,000.

Yes.

Right? So okay. Yeah.

That's the goal. That's currently the goal. And that that 10% match that is currently in existence is just not really moving the needle for most people in the current climate where building things is so expensive. So, like, $200,000 for a lot of businesses to put that much into a building is a huge amount of money for them to put their own personal or, you know, the business' money to reinvest that in. That's a very significant amount of money at this exact moment in this exact economy and this climate.

And 50,000 is a lot, but they we're getting a lot for that, and we're incentivizing people to actually push the button, jump off the cliff, whatever you want, whatever metaphor you want to actually do the project. Because if I've got a lot of business owners who are just poised, ready, and waiting, but that 10% just does not move the needle for them. Because right now, that would only be $20,000.

Right. Right. So k. Thanks.

Alright. I

had a

I had a

question for Kendra then for bringing that that change about the elected official. Have you seen similar language in other similar grants? Or is it usually restricting even all past?

It's usually restricted. We're going to have to talk about that internally because there is a waiting period, I believe, for that. So yeah, I wasn't aware of until right now. So I'm happy to chat about that with staff. But it's going to have to change a little bit.

Okay.

All right. Other questions, comments before I take the floor back and ask a couple? All right. Here I go. First, thank you. I think your explanations were clear and gave a good overview for folks like myself that are new back up here. And I love this program, a $100,000 from the URA to help jump start or to help encourage businesses to expand, I think, a good thing. How much of the budget has been used? We're almost six months into the year halfway through. Have we committed any of the 100,000 at this point?

Not yet. We had no takers when we opened. Now that was a truncated season, I will admit, because I was on a maternity leave, but we did not get anyone applying. However, we do have a couple people who are, like, right at the gate ready to submit their application tomorrow if you guys are, like

They're watching this meeting right

now. Exactly. Exactly. And there have been updates made to the application form that are just ready to go live if if you all say yes. If you say no, I'm still gonna make some of the changes to the application form, but the other things will change. So, you know, no pressure

or anything.

Yeah.

But yeah. So we have we have people ready and waiting to apply for these grants that are very excited to be located in Erie or whatnot.

Alright. Cool. And as far as the elected officials, I get it. Any of us that are elected and we're in front of you, I think that's an obvious conflict of interest if we're coming to the town saying, hey, can you help me with my business? Right? I get that. But if you've been out of office, and maybe there is a waiting period, I get that. You shouldn't be penalized actually volunteering and

your time come serve the

then you've got a business and the town is saying, yeah, thanks for volunteering your time, and yeah, you don't qualify.

Oh, I agree.

I I need a little more time to look into the Yeah. Effect of

So we just have to follow

the law.

Exactly. That's it.

And I'm okay with the change in that regard. All right. I'm going see if there's a motion to approve and a second, and then we'll continue the conversation if we have both. Oh, let me get the resolution number so we know what we're doing. So do we have a motion to approve URA Resolution 25,033?

So move. Second.

Alright we have a motion and a second. Further discussion, any other clarifying questions?

So that

the change to the waiting period that we can go ahead and approve this and that change can be made.

We'll have to reapprove it, probably.

Well, if you approve it subject to my review, think we're fine. I just haven't seen this, so I'm gonna have to look at it a little bit more.

And if you have to make a change to implement that waiting period, would

that I would add that waiting period. If anything, it would be six months.

Okay.

So yes.

So, Commissioner O'Connor, you could make a friendly amendment to the motion to ensure our lawyer has reviewed and made any appropriate changes to follow the law.

One second. Since I second, well you can't technically oh, I didn't want to say this, but you can't reopen the discussion, but we can reopen the motion again. So we have to make sure we reopen it as a motion because I had already seconded it. That means all discussion would have stopped. Okay.

So I'm looking to our attorney.

This is a new onset Robert's rules. I have not watched her in all the years.

I was trying to be quiet,

but Yes.

You can withdraw your second

and allow an amendment of the motion. That might be the easiest thing to do. Mhmm. Do you wanna withdraw your

I'll withdraw the second. Okay. Okay.

Now the motion can be amended.

Now you can make a friendly amendment to allow our attorney to do the appropriate reviews and make changes.

That sounds fine.

You accept that from the amendment, commissioner Mortolero? Yes. Alright. Now do we have a second

to Well, make now now we have a motion

We have a motion.

On the table. Yeah. And now you can second it.

Yes. Okay. So I second the motion to amend the the time period for elected officials.

Alright. Any further discussion? All in favor, say aye.

Aye. All

opposed, say no. Alright. Motion carries. I think we have a direction forward. Thank you.

Thank you everybody. I appreciate that. Alright. And so do Erie's businesses.

Alright. We're gonna move on to our second and last agenda item tonight for the URA, and that's item twenty five one ninety one, the resolution of the board of commissioners of the Town of Erie Urban Renewal Authority approving intergovernmental agreements for tax increment revenue sharing between the Town of Erie Urban Renewal Authority and various taxing jurisdictions. And with that, I'll turn it over to Julian.

Thank you, mister chair. Good evening, commissioners. Appreciate your time tonight. I like that you're all in a talkative mood. Makes this a lot more fun. I'm Julian Jackman. I'm the town's director of economic development urban renewal. We also have Malcolm here tonight on behalf of URA since we both get to help run the URA. We'll be at the dog and pony show tonight. I'm not sure which one of us is which. Use your imagination. So this is fifteen minutes. It should be pretty brief. We've done this a few times before already, so I think it's pretty familiar. Hopefully, there's pretty quick remarks and not too many questions this evening.

We'll briefly remind everybody where the proposed town center plan area boundary is located. The basics of TIF revenue sharing, but also the detail of the agreements that have been provided by the seven taxing districts to date for the proposed URA, and then the next steps that follow. We're almost the finish line. We've got about a month left to go. This is the second to last step. So it's been a nice long six months to date, and we're almost there. So we'll detail those next steps that follow and then take any questions. Again, very quickly, we've gone through this before. This is the outline of the property in question. It's 20 acres.

It's a single property owned by the town of Erie at the Northwest corner of Erie Parkway and County Line Road. It's right in the smack dab middle of the town center PD and plan area that was created back in 2020. The town purchased this property from Regency Realty Centers back in 2022 and have been working with Evergreen as our preferred developer now for about two and a half years. This is from the plan documents that shows the location of that property adjacent to the rec center, the 4 Corners Property, Ranchwood immediately surrounding ours just for reference. This is the latest concept drawing that shows the Envision development program for the site.

It's about, again, about 20 acres. The retail component, which is the lower right corner, is really what we're focused on today. The retail component is a first phase of about seven and a half, eight acres representing about a 100,000 square feet of commercial retail space, a 20 23,000 square foot anchor specialty grocer, two two proposed in the first phase retail shops buildings, each of about 10 or 11,000 square feet with a third envisioned in future phase. And then two pad sites for freestanding restaurant buildings out along Erie Parkway Road or Erie Parkway. There are future phases envisioned both at the north at the upper right northeast corner with the future civic use, potentially envisioned to be a performing arts center, a hotel, and a structured parking garage in that future phase mixed use in the upper right of about four acres.

Then the on the left side, on the west side of Pinnacle Boulevard is the multifamily. That's envisioned to be a combination of market rate and some type of affordable or attainable yet to be determined. This highlights what I kinda just went through the total amount of commercial square footage at a 100,000 square feet with the retail, the grocery, the hotel, and how that impacts the overall property value and taxable value for the site. As it is currently today town owned, it is tax exempt, so the base base value is zero, and this shows how the valuation could increase over twenty five years based off that development envisioned by Evergreen and the town. So for our purpose tonight, the most important part, per the Colorado urban renewal law, when we are proposing to create a new plan area, part of the state statute requirements is to negotiate and execute revenue sharing agreements with every one of the underlying taxing districts.

Those agreements really outline how much of each taxing districts, mill levy, property sales tax, each district is willing to share back with the URA, to help remediate blight, to help support the development program in this area. That's important piece number one, and we had a hundred and twenty days to complete that negotiation. And then the second piece that's relevant for us on this property is that if the property has been assessed by the county assessor as agricultural, doesn't mean it's been used for ag, zoned for ag, or anything, just if the county's assessed it as ag in the last five years, every single tax and district that imposes a mill levy, it doesn't matter if they're sharing revenue, but every single tax and district that imposes a mill levy must approve the inclusion of that ag land within the plan area boundary. The 20 acre town on-site is undeveloped. I would say it is not ag land, but it does meet the state statute definition of agricultural land per the urban renewal law.

When regency owned the property intentionally to keep their taxes low, it was assessed as farm land, and that met the state statute requirement to be considered ag land. So those are the two pieces that are important for our sake tonight for those TIF agreements. We have signed agreements for all seventy's districts. So back in December December of of twenty twenty twenty twenty four, four, the town sent out mailed notice to every one of these seven districts. It's the town, the county, the school, the fire, the library, Northern Water, and Mile High Flood requesting to start the hundred and twenty day negotiation period to negotiate terms of these agreements.

Over that period, we interacted with all their different staffs, drafted agreements with the help of our URA council, attended every one of their governing board meetings to present and request approval of revenue sharing agreements for each one of these districts. The left column on the right shows the total estimated increment that could be generated by the all in 100% mill levy sales tax property tax if every district gave us a 100% what the total bucket looks like. And then the right reflects how much has been approved by each of those districts in the agreements that are in front of you tonight, exhibits a one through seven in the resolution. Some of them are pretty straightforward. The Mountain View basically district give us a 100% of their total mill levy up to a $3,500,000 cap.

High Plains Library, same thing. Mile High Flood District, same thing. Town of Erie, we have a unrestricted general operations mill levy for the town, kinda which patent that we're in today. The standard practice is the town pledges back the unrestricted general operations mill levy, but retains the bond and mill levies, the TNAC, the rec center to help pay off those bonds. We also threw the town at the time, threw the IGA pledged to share 50% of the town's three and a half percent sales tax rate back to the URA to support those costs.

The two that we, that ran into that were a little bit different, Northern Water per their practice and their policies, do not share in TIF. They need those revenues to manage their operations for Northern Water. That's consistent with every URA they do across the state. They do not share, so that's a pass through returning theirs back. Same thing goes for Boulder County.

In drafting the agreement with Boulder County and meeting with their staff and presenting at their board, per the county administrator, they have a what they call a long standing practice to not support inclusion of ag land and TIF agreements. We encountered that pretty strongly. Boulder County was very involved in writing the statute to make it difficult to offer TIF for projects like this. So they were holding their they were holding all the cards. They had the ability to kill the entire project, not allow us to create the TIF in the first place.

So our work with them to at least get them to a point where they would allow us to create the TIF was a huge win. So the agreement you have in front of you is essentially an ag land inclusion agreement without any revenue sharing. That agreement was also approved by their county last month. So in total, based off the seven agreements we have in front of you tonight, the total potential increment to be retained by the URA over twenty five years as the agreements are approved in front of you tonight is about $22,900,000 over twenty five years. The time value money, scale that back net present value, that represents about $9.08 or $9,000,000 that we have to play with towards supporting the development program with Evergreen at Town Center today.

And I'm talking a lot. Next steps. We've got the seven agreements in front of you tonight. Our request of you tonight is approving those seven agreements, fully executing them. Each of them are signed by the other entity. It's all on you tonight to approve all seven, sign them, and return them back to each district for their records. That step will allow us to move on. We originally now, for a couple months ago, per state statute requirements, the Erie Planning Commission did review and approve the plan document to confirm that it conforms to the Townscop plan that happened back in April. Last week, we did publish notice of a public hearing, notified the impacted property owner, ourselves, submitted formal notice to the county. That happened last week on June 4.

And then the next step is moving forward to that public hearing date on July 8, almost a month away from now, which has already been noticed and mailed to formally request the town council approve the URA, creating a new plan area, which will then allow us to move forward and use the tool to help support Evergreen's work at Town Center. I think that's about it. Our request to you this evening after questions and discussion is approving twenty five zero two seven, and I'm happy to take any questions.

Alright. Thank you. I have one for our attorney to start things off. Sure. We were going to go into executive session as a counsel on this particular property. I can't go into the the details of that. But do you believe in any way that would impact our decision from a URA board to approve anything until we have clarity on the open topics of which still need to be discussed with the council?

I'll say no because I don't know that these need to be signed until that is done. So your approval does not mean they're gonna be executed. So that will be up to staff to determine whether or not we execute them based on the information we have that we can't disclose about something else that we can't discuss tonight. But, yes, we can still execute these agreements, and they may never come to fruition.

Put it

that way. If the property doesn't develop, then no harm, no foul. Maybe that's a simple way to

put it. Can I provide a response too?

Yes, please.

I I think as the town, and again, which hat are we wearing, that's a town owned property, it's in our best interest to put all the best tools in place to support the town owned property. To make this property available and suitable for the right type of development, having a URA in place is the best case scenario for the town owned property. So having the URA does not impact or change future conversations around the development of said property.

If we approve this tonight, does it start the ticker ticking on the number of years that the URA is, by law, able to be in effect?

That ticker starts when the town council approves the plan area. Okay. So not tonight. But if the council approves it in July, it would start then. Got it. Okay.

So you still have another crack at

it. Yeah.

Thank you. Alright. I'll bring it back to the commissioners to see if there's any clarifying questions or comments. Alright. Seeing that there are none, I will see if there is a motion to approve. Sorry. Let me get back to resolution. Is this URA resolution? It must be URA resolution twenty five zero twenty seven.

So moved. Second.

Alright. We have a motion and a second by commissioner Hoback. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Alright, motion carries.

Thank you.

Alright, with that the URA meeting on June 10 is now adjourned. Thank you.