Council Economic Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Perfect.

Okay. Good afternoon. Today is Monday, 03/03/2025. It is 05:01PM. This is the council economic development committee. I'd like to call the meeting to order. And, mister Castro, if you can please take roll.

Council member Gonia. How's that? Council member Anderson? Present. And mayor Slims? Present.

Thank you. I think just a just a little editorial comment. Over the year, I have seen mister Castro become more and more confident sitting in that chair. I remember the first time you sat there, it did look like nothing what you just did

right now.

Good job, Anyways, okay. Next is public comment. Public comment is reserved for anybody in the public that'd like to make a a comment on something that is on the agenda or not on the agenda. Is there anybody online? Nobody online and seeing none in here. I would like to close public comment, move on to, approval of minute minutes, and council member Andrews would like to pull minutes, make a comment.

Yep. Just comment. I wanna give kudos whoever transcribed me. So it's. You did an excellent job. Very thorough. And I know I had a lot to say and captioned it. Thank you.

Thank He's becoming a pro right in front of us.

Thank you.

Missed it. Mean, customer, missed that meeting, but the minutes were really detailed.

Yes.

Yeah. It was

a good recap. Thank you.

Even though I wasn't here for it, I apologize for being absent. I'll remove the minutes because I thought they were very informative.

Yep. Second.

Moved by council member Ray Bonilla junior. Second is by council member Andrews. And if there are no objections, they will unanimously pass. Moving on to item number two, which is the upward Hayward upward economic recovery program update, higher Hayward. Those are by oral report. And I think I saw the report. Yeah. I just wanted to before I turn it over to our economic development officer, I took a peek at the slides at the slideshow before I walked in right now. Really cool.

Actually

I'm gonna Listen. Really,

really cool. The whole from from the front to the end, the amount of people you're serving to the the the job placement to anyways. Spoilers. America's spoilers. Yeah. I'm just I'm just saying it it's making me rethink. It it has made me rethink what I say at the state of the city next Tuesday.

Thank

you. So, anyways, it you know what? Right? Because I had I did write a little something, but it wasn't about I mean, it had not I mean, it was like, I read this, and then I went back, and I said, I gotta go back and redo it. So, anyways, take it away, sir.

Just to break an introduction, if I could, then I'll get set up. So just a reminder in the Hayward Upper Hayward Upper Hayward upward economic recovery program is a series of updates that we continue to bring to, CDC to provide updates and data reporting on our impact of our COVID nineteen economic recovery programs. Higher Sheaward and tuition assistance are two workforce related programs. Very innovative and new for us as a city given our focus on typically business traction, retention, expansion, But we felt that it was important to provide extra emphasis and and resources toward partnering, in the spirit of Education City partnering with our, educational organizations and businesses in the area to meet both needs of residents who live here, but also the the need of businesses in the city. So, without spoiling anything, I'll turn it over to Daniel Mount who's, done an amazing job leading these two initiatives, and, this will be one of several updates we'll provide as data becomes more.

Daniel?

Thank you, chief. Good evening, mayor, council members. So as mentioned, I will be briefly giving an update on, the learn to earn and hire at Hayward programs. It is what we're calling a comprehensive workforce development solution. As we kind of alluded to a little bit already, I'm really proud of these programs because not only have we created strong partnerships with a lot of entities across the city, but we've made a tremendous impact growing educational pathways and workforce pipelines for residents of all backgrounds. So it also aligns with the strategic road map, specifically, the objective to help people, specifically call out three oh, sorry.

I lost

my place a little bit. So one of the strategic road map objectives, which is, to grow the economy, specifically to create the pipeline for our residents. I really want to call out specifically three people that we partnered with, at these organizations. So Edgar Chavez at Hayward Pumps Neighborhood, Yvonne Wu Craig at Friends at Chabot, and John Seltzang at, Chabot College have been tremendous partners for us to not only work on the, learn to earn tuition assistance program as well as Hire Hayward, but also helping us bridge those two programs together by hosting some of the job fairs, which will I'll be going over some of the details of those. So Hayward is uniquely positioned, specifically because we are one of the few cities, like, as the mayor has mentioned several times, that we have both a four year institution, community college.

But on top of that, what makes us really different is that we also have a huge industrial sector that has potential to create so many highly paid, well, benefited jobs. And that's what when we were developing this program, that's what we really wanna tap into and create something that can be comprehensive in our approach. So I believe this is one of the programs that best exemplifies our potential as an education setting. So just to give you a brief, background on this, I know many of you are already, familiar with, tuition assistance and learn to earn, but how it fits in with Howard Hayward is kind of where we've developed this comprehensive approach. So Learn to Earn and Howard Hayward, is comprehensive because it's really addressing the workforce development issue on both ends of it, on the supply side and demand side.

So on the supply side, we are working with our educational institutions to really develop a workforce that is ready for these technical positions and ready to be hired. And then for Hire at Hayward, we work with our businesses and provide us in grants directly to hire Hayward residents into these positions. So we're really addressing both ends of the the spectrum here. And the way we've been able to tie that together is creating these very tailored and focused job fairs where we're bringing in these our local industry, industrial employers and connected them to qualified payroll residents that are ready to work, which is something that we've heard over and over throughout even before the pandemic that that's what they've been struggling with. And so far, I'll go over some of the data for these job fairs, but it has been tremendously successful and really popular.

One of the things what we've seen is or one of the things we've heard from employers, especially from the private sector, they don't typically like going to job fairs. So for us, to post these job fairs that we've communicated to them that they're very focused, and we want to invite not only recipients of our grants that have pursued technical certifications, education, what you, but we've also opened it up to the larger Hayward community, and we've been able to get a huge turnout out of the last two fairs. So this slide is extremely exciting. It shows a few things I really wanna highlight for you. One, every single resident has been placed in through our Hire Hayward program is a personal color.

And the 20 positions that we created or helped place, has an average salary or wage of $30 per hour, and all of them are fully benefited, generating over $1,200,000 in salary for Hayward residents. And this program has only been allocated $300,000, so our return on investment is four times. And if you're actually putting into consideration the the cost of the benefits beyond just the wages, that's actually closer to five times the return on investment creating these jobs for our communities. And that's also not putting into consideration the spending that they're also utilizing once they get these wages. Yeah.

So this is tremendous. So it's actually close to 1.5, if you put that in consideration. And for the local business that we've been a partner with, I really wanted to thank all of them. We had an application period that started in May 2024, and it stayed open until we were able to help keep all the funding. I just wanted to I think many of you are familiar with making these businesses already. Costa Sanchez is stable of our community. Bee, I know you're familiar. We've we've brought it here a few times, but, one of the things I really want to highlight is that they're planning on expanding their workforce. So right now, they're around 300. They're actually planning on going up to, you know, 600, which will potentially make them one of our largest employers in the city.

And one of the cool things about their technology is they can create a house in four weeks. It's mind blowing. So that's one of the things that we're, able to address the housing project in the larger vicarious community and, you know, across the world. Pentagon, Plaston, and Thermex are three highly technical, businesses that have been staples of, Hayward for a long time as well and have been able to hire, a lot of Hayward residents into these roles. So shout out to all five of these, businesses that we've been working with.

But one of things I really wanna highlight is if you look at these from a high level, they they are incredibly diverse, but they all offer very technical positions, well paid, and we're making sure that those jobs stay here in Hayward for Hayward residents. On this slide, we're just providing a few updates, for some of the I know I forgot for about update recently on tuition assistance already. So it is ongoing disbursements, and we are actually up to over 300,000 of the $400,000 that we've allocated for learn to earn. And I wanna make sure that it's clear that we are prioritizing funding the certification, the training education that go towards these positions or these type of technical roles, but we've opened it up to Hayward residents to make sure that we can, you know, reduce these obstacles to education as much as possible. So right now, have 75% of the total budget budget already out or spent, and, we're projecting that we'll be able to, continue these grant funding for another two semesters.

And, yeah, to the next slide. I've mentioned a few times how we prioritize the different, educational goals and training. This is this slide just kinda gives you a brief overview of what that means exactly. So for high priority, it's, fields that directly related to biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, and industrial sectors. They're critical to the economy the economic health of the city.

In these these industries typically create high skilled, well paid positions and generate significant tax revenue and are rapidly expanding. And that's one of the main criteria we looked at when we're selecting the business we're working with, making sure that they had these type of positions available. That's how those two programs work together currently. But this is kind of the high level breakdown of how we funded some of the tuition assistance grants to our residents. And this is, just a brief overview of the demographics of, who received the, grants through our learning learn learn to earn.

And as you can see, it's we've been able to help, primarily communities of color, and it is one of the things I'm most proud of, I think, of how we've been able to make an impact on Hayward community. Hayward is a very diverse community, so we want to ensure that these are the people that we're, directly impacting. Okay. So for the learn to earn and hire Hayward, job fair, this is the linchpin of how we've been able to tie these two programs together. These job fairs, like I said, are very different from your technical job fairs because we are making sure that we have payment employers there that are rated high.

So one of the highlights from the first job fair that we had in September 2024, one of our employers actually had testimony of taking back to their business over 60 applications just from that day. And they had incredible confidence that they were gonna hire at least 10 of them. So right now, we're still waiting for, the confirmation of the numbers of how many were hired. But even this last one we had on last week on the February 27, same thing. I've heard the exact same thing that they were incredibly impressed by the people that were attending these events, the qualifications that they're bringing.

There were several people at these job fairs that are legitimate engineers ready to be hired. So we hope that we can build this momentum up, keep getting confidence from our employers that these job fairs are different, and we want to make sure that we're inviting all of these employers that are ready to hire people in residence. And another thing is we actually went the first job fair was about 350 attendees, and we actually have a 100 over now, so 450. And a quarter of them were actually public attendees, not students. So that really shows that the award is getting out, and they people understand that this is where they can get connected, to Heyward employers that are ready to hire for good positions.

And so we've been able to allocate some funding for these job fairs to go through 2026. And I wanna really reiterate that these job fairs are the the bridge between our learn to earn and hire Hayward, and they really it's gonna be the way we create a sustainable workforce development pipeline. So we're able to create we're able to connect Hayward residents to Hayward jobs in Hayward businesses. And it honestly, it's it's amazing the numbers that we've been able to gather so far. But, that's what I have right now. Do you have any questions?

Yeah. Just so quickly. Yeah. This I can't understand how different this is on on two levels. One, for a city to actually do workforce development is very rare. Right? So economic development teams in most cities, especially the a team of our side, the budget that we have, being able to leverage these federal funds to do workforce development in this very innovative way is very rare. Up and down the East Bank Corridor, no one does it like this. That's one of the two. I wanna commend Daniel significantly on working with our educational partners to really tailor that job fair.

I mean, he kinda downplays it. This is a very focused job fair. It is completely different. These are job fairs that are aligning actual qualified job seekers to employers in the sectors that are hiring now. It isn't a job fair where you walk in and you see 50% of the tables be resource people or, non skilled labor jobs or nonprofits and things.

I mean, you there no. There there are time and place for those, but the marriage of, tuition assistance programs and higher Hayward really ups the game. It is inherently focused on matching the right Hayward resident to the right Hayward job. And it pulls together everything that this team has been doing since I got here in 2015. If you remember, mayor and councilor managers, I mean, you're a little late to the party, but we launched this whole initiative to answer the question of what does economic development do to attract businesses and what kind of businesses do we want in Hayward.

Right? And so in 2015, I wrote a study that outlined this plan that the city should focus on advanced industries. And advanced industries is not just one particular sector. It's over 50 different industry sectors, all unified by a number of common themes. One of those is that they hire at every level of education, offer on the job training and related wages to allow those people to get entry level jobs, applying and matriculate within those organizations to get more skills and more pay.

And that's what that's the new that's how we make our industrial district is. We have very specialized companies, but all these companies have a common theme, though. They will hire an entry level person with a trade certificate, some background, some certification, start them off as an entry level coming out of the junior college or, you know, four year college, and then invest in that person to climb that, you know, what Obama used to call socioeconomic ladder. So this is kind of like the edification of all that. Like, we wrote the plan, wrote a marketing plan around it. We've landed biotech companies. We're running the manufacturers, and now we're addressing that both side both equations of the of the cycles, the supply side, labor, the demand side, which is the need for chop. So kudos to Daniel. You know, this is very cutting edge stuff. Thank you.

Well

okay.

Great job. I have been wanting something like this for a long time. I've been talking about a job clearinghouse for a very long time, and, that was how I got my first job was through the city. It was not me necessarily walking to a store and, you know, can I work at the store because it has fun things there for me to buy and and hang out? It was actually through the city.

And so to see this reiteration of it is just very powerful. And so my questions are, you have created this blueprint for a job fair, and I've seen in other cities a career center. And I don't wanna add on anything else to your plate, but I'm wondering what is the in between of us having something like this that can continue because I'm nervous about losing this after 2026. Mhmm. And and having that permanent fixture for folks to know that they they have these really great job fairs.

They're very targeted. It's ongoing. This is where we wanna, you know, go if we wanna find a job that's for this particular industry, but also for businesses to know when's the next time you're gonna have a biotech career fair because I don't know who else is is doing it this way. So what's the plan after '20 2026?

Well, we so we partnered with CSU East Bay as well as Chabotto coordinate these plans or these job fairs, But they've already been doing before we still work with them. So the hope is we're actually elevating to the next level

Okay.

And they can continue that forward.

Okay.

Learning from the model. Yeah.

Okay. So the educational institutions will pick up the mantle on how this is done. Okay. Great. That was what I wanted to add.

I do wanna add that we are specifically holding the match bow because we did hear from employers as well as grant recipients that that is the best location

Okay.

For them to meet with each other. Although we're partnering with CSU East Bay as well as other institutions, that was the location that fit what people wanted the most. Okay. And that's why I think it also helps with building consistency. Mhmm. That momentum, consistency is all really important for not just the residents, but also the business to know this is where they can go if they want to.

And then recently, BOSS had a job fair here at City Hall. Would you think about having BOSS work with these educational institutions to have them meshed well so they can kinda capture that same audience that comes in regularly versus having it at city hall?

Yeah. I think, they're all part of the ecosystem. Like I said, like, we also you know, not only have we developed this model that's kind of, that that will be hoped to be continued by our educational partners, but Alameda County, you know, we are the home in Alameda County offices. We are home to Alameda County One Stop America's job center. And so, yeah, we the idea is to connect all these different resource providers and hopefully shepherd them into either participating in the brand that we have, and then this program that we've established with Chimel, where they'll they list the location, or to tell them that that the model exists and they can tailor the way they do job fairs differently to have this side of impact.

So it isn't a job fair where you walk in and it's very different. They're more resource providers and, you know, a bookmobile or something that's more community focused than job focused.

Okay.

That that's what we'd like to do.

Well, that's good to hear about Chabot being identified as the best location. I was wondering, though, for people like Hard, would they would have we talked to Hard about having their their jobs focusing on teams? How do you get to the teams? And then also jobs at Southland Mall. Do you do it at Southland Mall, or do you do it at Fashion Bot? Because those are two, like, major locations for jobs for you. So so those are two very or three very different groups

Okay. To provide services to. So the the purpose and the objective of the higher human tuition assistance was post pandemic relief, because people were displaced from jobs, interested labor jobs. And so our focus was more adults 18 and over going to school. Should we have should council ask me to focus on youth and other population segments? It's a whole different game Okay. And engaging hard than having the resources that's it was it's that's a completely different lift. Okay. And it's something that we have to really study to see the propensity of our our partner agencies to take on that work and also whether we would have the staff resources to to allocate to to kinda lift lift those off the ground.

Okay. Okay. And that's all for now. Thank you. Good job.

Thank you. Thank you for this presentation. Very good and very impactful. Just a couple of questions. So so the grants that were given to these five businesses, what did the businesses use the grants for?

So it's primarily used for offsetting and, some of the onboarding costs associated with hiring as well as covering some of the costs for training. So we really had a big focus on making sure that these positions were highly technical. And although many of the people that were being hired, had some experience, they still need to be trained more. So some of the requirements for the grant were that the they had

to be hired for at least six months and receive training. Got it. And then how is this program promoted? Because, I mean, on both ends, like, think the scholarship opportunities for the learn to earn and then the opportunities to be hired at some of these, you know, these good companies. You know, how how did we promote that? So for the learn

to earn portion, we've relied heavily on our education partners. So they each have their own grants of disbursement platforms. So CC East Bay, we went through HPN. And for Chabot, we went through Friends of Chabot. And so they're the ones that are actually dispersing the grants directly to the students, and they're also doing a lot of promotion and marketing for them. For the higher Hayward side of things, we did a press release as well as the direct engagement to our business community to make sure we get applications and eligible applicants to come in. And then we went through our own process of selecting the business that had the eligible businesses as well as meeting all the other criteria we needed.

Excellent. Were was there any on-site hiring that was done at the job fairs, or did all of it happen later?

Not that I know. It's kinda hard to hire someone on the spot.

Well, I mean, I didn't have job fairs who do, especially when you have these kind of highly technical matches, right, where you say come with your resume, come with these things, your employer is ready to hire. So, I mean, that's why Yeah. So, you know, and I've seen it for technical roles and especially at health care. So just wondering here if they did anything.

I think probably also worth that from what I've seen from the employers we had present was mostly just because there were so many people. They actually were answering a lot of questions, connecting a lot of the guests. So I think it was kinda difficult to hire on the spot, but there were definitely a lot of applications that went in and resumes selected and the testimonies the data we've collected so far shows that they led to a lot of decision.

Just continue to like data and feedback from their employers to get that data, and we'll bring it back to the screwed as all that data comes in. Because it is a long cohorts to follow.

Yeah. Well, yeah, like like council member Andrews was saying, like, this is such a great and impactful program. So, like, looking at what kind of sustainability plan we can put behind it. And then if you kind of think about how much money some of these companies are putting into recruitment for these highly technical jobs, and then when they have this pipeline of candidates that's directly there, I'm almost wondering how we can partner with these companies to create some sort of economic sustainability plan to where maybe they give grants to this program so that it can continue to be expanded. Because with the impact that it's made so far, I would love to see how we creatively expand the program, but how we do so by leveraging some of these partnerships that are mutually beneficial.

So just wondering what your thoughts were on something like that.

That's a that would be the dream, honestly, and that's that's it's an iterative process. So, you know, in in economic development, before we ever ask our businesses for anything, we demonstrate how the city or the company can add value to the organization to do them, you know, as solid. So the idea of this program is just that, demonstrate that, one, it is actually work their time to become the job leaders. Like Daniel said, these businesses, they most of them just hire recruiters. Right? They go they have head honors. They have, internship programs or apprenticeship programs, and that's how they develop their own pipeline. So to to for them to allocate staff to resource to come in table and talk, it was a major ask in and of itself. I mean, it is very difficult to get businesses to and it took them a while to understand, like, this is this is a different kind of job fair. This is the job fair you wanna come to.

Yep. It's not a resource fair. And I think, you know, down the line, that would be our hope to be able to come back to these wells and say, hey. If this worked out with you so well, we have the data that shows that you attended these. You've hired these. There's some cost savings since you didn't have to, you know, hire blindly, so to speak, and maybe you you can kick in.

There's, like, some community There's, like, you know, the community benefit that might

you know? And then percentage of your angle, you know, everything you could do. So that that would be the hope.

I And I'm thinking about, like, a workforce development specialist sitting in your office that kind of focuses on this thing and finds ways of, you know, a a self funded position through these partnerships, adding to any of the general fund or anything, but be these businesses in the community recognize the partnership and maybe even some of these academic institutions because these colleges do have career centers. So how we look at partnering with those career centers and creatively continuing to make sure that they're providing this pipeline too to make these wonderful connections that are really life changing for people who get these jobs.

Absolutely. We can start looking into it. It's it's it's it's very difficult, the fundings the funding side, particularly in workforce workforce development. The majority of funding for workforce development comes to the federal government. Yeah. And so that's why every major, every county in America has what it was called the one stop America's job center. That's funded by the workforce investment and opportunity act from the federal government. So a massive amount of, funds come from the federal government into these workforce groups. So they really aren't we the cities don't receive an allegation from that. So so that's a whole segment of trying people doing what we've done, but less of a focus on matching skill direct skills to the direct hiring folks.

Does seem more of, like, resource centers kind of, you know, like, you just anyways. But great work. And then, you know, to council member Andrew's point too, when she brought it apart, I was thinking about the city. You know, the city might have some really technical jobs that can benefit from going to one of these job fairs and, you know, looking to see if we might be able to be one of those people who can hire from there too. But just a really great work, and thanks so much for for sharing this and very creative and very impactful. So anything we can do to support the expansion and the sustainability of it, I'm all in.

Thank you. Just a a couple of observations. First of this was a great presentation, and and I thought, you know, this would've been a great presentation to also have, at least here in the room, you know, neighborhood, Chabot, Cal State. I mean, you know, so when we when we put when we when we do this again, it'd be nice to have them here because, you know, I think as, you know, as a partner, you know, they should sort of, you know, participate in this process. But just, you know, just a note.

I was thinking about sustainability, and, you know, I just wanted to just reinforce this idea that, you know, Chabot and Cal State, they do have career centers. And and, you know, we don't I mean, while we certainly don't want to create more job or create more positions, the career centers at both these campuses, you know, here's here's our opportunity to sort of push them to do more. I mean, this is I mean, if we're funding this and or participating or as partners in the funding, you know, push them more. You know? So I I think this would be a great sort of catalyst to sort of start that create

Actually, something I forgot to mention is since we've been partnering with Chipotto and hosting these job fairs, they actually just hired a new business engagement specialist. So that's gonna be our main point of contact. We're looking forward to continue to build these, these relationships with our employers and higher education. So There you go. Yeah. I think that

kinda That it's great. The other, the other one was oh, wanted to ask, some of

the

participants, are you still, in contact with them? Are you are you talking to them?

Or The participants as far as

the students. Students. The the ones that have been placed.

Yep, so that's a part of the data data gathering that we're doing. It's a little harder once they retrieve it out of the system. Mhmm. But that's one of the things that we've included in our contracts with CCUSB as well as Chubot to make sure that we collect that data at work.

The reason why I asked is because, if you can, it'd be nice to maybe have, you know, a couple of them at the state of the city, on, on Tuesday on next Tuesday, that'd be great. Also, if you can, you know, here at Promise Neighborhood would be there. Shabove would certainly be there. Cal State would be there. But if, you know but if some of the key people involved in this, if they could be there, that that would be great.

The other let's see. The, you know, adult and youth employment strategies, you know, outreach and employment, I think you're right. I mean, you know, there are different strategies, of course. Also, you know, you know, last year, Hard, you know, Hard was, I would say, pretty successful in hiring, a a lot of students from Hayward Unified. You know, they, at at the last well, at, were you part of the HLOC when they did the report about the youth employment?

Anyways, they they did a report. The last report I we had, there was something like and I don't wanna sound like I'm exaggerating, but it was I I I the number of 80% stands out, but, I mean, it was high. It was, like, 70% or plus or minus in there of the 70% of the youth rec leaders came from Hayward schools, and they were all juniors, seniors, and they were mostly from Hayward. So, you know, hard when it comes to, like, youth stuff, you know, I certainly don't wanna reproduce efforts. You know, hard, specialized in youth, you know, let them you know, we can certainly support them.

But, you know, adults, from what I'm seeing right here, I mean, we're getting more bang at the, you know, the rate of return on adults getting jobs and you know? But, anyways, that's but, no, I I just wanted to say this this was this was outstanding, and I'm going to for two not this Tuesday, but next Tuesday, I will be rewriting a large portion of the state of the city because this is what I'm gonna include right here. So Yeah.

For that HVAC, meaning, did they talk about, students who don't go to Hayward Unified?

Well, they hire students, Har hires students from Hayward, Castro Valley. You know? But, yes, they do hire

They keep the info out

to them, I guess.

It's was it, like because I don't

Social media, the booklet, and stuff like that. I would assume, but I don't I don't know.

I worked for her. Yeah. Yeah. I worked for your sister, Harry.

It was one of my summer jobs.

Yeah. So, great. Okay. Thank you. If there are no other questions, I will do you have any questions?

No. At least I'm just learning this, but I don't have any questions. I just wanna say thank you so much. This is very impressive. Very exciting.

Do we do we I forget. Do we open it for public comment? Is there any public comment? No public comment? Close public comment? Move on to the next one. Next item is Hayward Hayward Restaurant month twenty twenty five.

Thank you very much. Just do a brief introduction before I turn it over to new product specialist, Javier Castro, who's led this initiative. You may recall in January 2024, we kicked off the first ever Hayward restaurant month promotion to great fanfare and media coverage. I was on the news live on Fox two. Got a lot of a lot of promotion and own right. I think the city did that initiative. So we picked it up and did a little earlier work. The the last the twenty twenty four restaurant month was a and a half week, three week sprint for my team. I guess we had heard from the business community, like, you know, January is a hard month, so we spun up this initiative to to help them out. And then so we spent a little more time and resources, and luckily, we had more staff this year, and Javier did a great job.

So with that, I'll turn it over to mister Castro to give a deep introduction to the program and then a little color on on its impact. Javier? Thank

you, Paul. Hello, mayor and council.

As Paul said,

Javier Cashel, community program specialist for economic development. And January remains the slow month for restaurants due to post holiday spending cutbacks, new health plans, and general fatigue from the holiday season. And since 2010, visit california.org's California restaurant month has aimed to boost boost the dining activity statewide. Last year, the city of Hayward launched the inaugural Hayward Restaurant Month by the state, and this is a report back from this year's Hayward Restaurant Month. And this year, we built upon the framework that from last year and added more engagement with the restaurant community.

You know, we had growth in participation, and as you guys may know, that economic development really focuses on equity and inclusion of all of our programs, and this was no different. You know, staff had physically walked down major corridors, like Downtown Hennesson, Jackson, 8th Street, Barion, Harter, Mission, and Hayward Boulevard to meet the restaurants face to face and inquiring them to join Hayward Restaurant. We also sent out email flyers and

our

newsletter as well went out. And with this, we had 21 restaurants sign up. That was up from 18 from last year. And then we also Stack Out also assisted with menu creations and specials creations, and that was with special menu items such as tender chicken from Almost Kitchen, prefix menus at from available at Golden Safari and Los Dos Hermanos, and discounts and free item per with purchases like Acqua Frina, where you got a free dessert with the purchase of a daily special. And I wanna highlight the labor it took to visit these businesses, sometimes multiple times to come up with a new idea other than just a 10% discount.

You know, we noticed on the first restaurant month that the businesses that had a new fun idea were most likely to have new customers. And this year's staff pushed the participants to create something new and fun, and some of these specials were actually direct recommend recommendations from staff.

And

as you see on the screen right now, there's some of the fun flyers that have been created, and many restaurants are not as savvy with creating, you know, social media posts. So we staff took it upon ourselves to, create these social media ready flyers to assist them in, you know, providing technical assistance in creating their own social media buzz. You know, in creating those flyers, we went down to these businesses and took pictures and videos of the new menu items and provided them with a, you know, physical copy of these flyers they can post on their business as well. Like I like I said, on the screen now, you see those many different graphics displayed. And some businesses had multiple specials, so we gotta make a few of them for them.

And staff also created a a reel, an Instagram reel. I believe you guys have seen it. And it was posted across city socials to explain restaurant month promotion, and it displayed many of the restaurant special as well.

For morning breakfast till dessert, keep it local during the month of January for Hayward Restaurant Month twenty twenty five to make it even easier to explore and enjoy the culinary offerings. This year, the city of Hayward has done a development. Was that a pizza, I guess, at the end?

It was a double decker pizza. So Susie Hughes did a a base layer pizza when it had, like, some Or this, you know Buffalo chicken and on top of a regular cheese It was a lot. It was very good.

January 1. And this

deal got over 1,500 views on our Instagram account as well.

Read lucky letters. We'll receive a $100 bonus card.

This is fun making it. I'm not gonna lie.

Nice.

And to also maximize awareness, we expanded our marketing efforts from last year through multiple channels. We had billboards advertised on I 880 and State Route 92 with the help of our community and media relations division. And, also, a huge thank you from Todd from Southend Mall, where he featured on their digital billboard and mall posters our restaurant and specials as well. And then we had went out with our newfound drone to take some pictures of the billboards. Hope you guys like that one.

And the Mercury News also published a story highlighting the event. And on our city social media, we posted over 36 times on across all platforms, and we received 27,000 impressions and over 5,000 LinkedIn impressions from our economic development post from mainly from all. And following last year's footsteps, we also continued our incentive of purchasing a $100 gift card together for Hayward gift card, which will entry you into a raffle to win another $100 gift card, awarding up to 12 winners throughout the month of January. This year, we had something new. We have partnered with Yelp to create an interactive map showcasing, participating restaurants and their specials.

This map was available to view on your computer and on your mobile phone, which made it real easy for the community to see what they wanna try next. Yelp also shared this information with the Yelp Elites, a network of highly engaged food reviewers. This year, while we couldn't track the exact site traffic, wanna fix that for next year, we do know that 78 people follow the Yelp page and creating a buzz. And staffing that did a post action survey of restaurant month, and restaurants stated they saw at least a 10% increase in food traffic and sales compared to a typical January. And several businesses also stated they saw new customers and even excitement for their featured menu items.

Some saying they ran the flyer coming in because they were so happy with, special. And participating restaurants said they will participate again next year with one writing. We appreciate the economic development department support of local restaurants and other small businesses. And that was from Staffy's, WG, you guys may know here as well. It is staff's intent to continue and improve and expand this promotion for 2026 with our newfound knowledge and our partnership with the restaurant community. That concludes that presentation, and we are open to questions or comments.

Thank you.

Good job. I did see all the graphics. I shared out as much as I could for this. And if we're on the economic development committee, we all should be sharing that. We still LinkedIn or something. I think that would be good because just send us our charge as committee member. But I was interested in knowing more about the Yelp Elite Club and if we can get something like that in Tabor where if residents kinda go to fifteen, twenty restaurants, is that something we can do for maybe next restaurant kind of a charge? And then they kinda get this label on their social media or the Hayward Elite Club or something like that. I don't know how they identify y'all members as elite members.

Did have So we did explore doing, like, support passport

Yeah.

Program. So I think that's kinda like what it sounds like you're referring to.

For the passport for the holidays. I don't Little different from that. Mhmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is different. We have had discussions about it, like, Javier mentioned during his presentation. I think this is a very iterative process, so we will if that's something you're interested in, we can explore to see how it will be beneficial for.

Yeah. Because I know you all have, like, lunchtime. Maybe it's, a supper club Interesting. Update. Yeah. So okay. And then did you see any restaurants that were like, any particular style of food that you see the most up, or did you all kinda balance out the different types of restaurants that were on there? Did you see more coffee shops? Did you

Well, actually, was a really wide range of stuff. We had Max's Cupcakes, and then we had Mexican and Golden Safari. Even Cold Stone as well. So it was a

So I was just if you, like, targeted a certain amount for me to kinda category.

We cast a pretty wide net. Okay. I mean, our our goal overall was to get as many restaurants to participate to kind of capitalize on that Yelp platform. And people a lot of people a lot of customers still use Yelp, and so we didn't wanna we didn't limit it all. So if you wanted to participate and you met with our staff and you came up with a great special more than just, a 5% discount or get a free soda with a burger thing, you are about to participate. So we didn't we didn't gatekeep at all.

Okay. And then I've I've heard two different things about the diff our surrounding cities of being the most I I don't know, having the most food or most cultural like, how are they getting these labels? Because I first, I heard it was San Francisco, then I heard it was Oakland. Did how are they getting these titles, and what title could we go after in Hayward?

Yeah. I'll I'll say it's very those are very, very arbitrary.

Coffee coffee. Yeah. Yeah. There

there's several monikers that Hayward has. Like, we were the I think it did on the Wikipedia page. Hayward's the low Hayward is historically known for the longest battle of bands America. Yeah. But as long as I lived worked here for ten years, I've never had an experience at a battle of band. Yeah. It it really is just a matter of how you slice and dice the data. Okay. You know, they kinda leaned into that. And so, generally, I try not to because,

you know That's true.

Yeah. It could be not Except

So yeah. Good to know. Thank you.

But if if there's a newspaper, like NerdWallet or Chronicle or Nosh from the East Bay Times or whoever gives us the moniker as, like, Hayward Hayward is the next foodie hotspot with the highest density of, what, Nigerian food Yeah. Yes. We will lean and we will lean hard and to to make that flag.

Alright. Thank you.

A little factoid, since, councilmember Mia, brought her up. Battle of the bands. You know when battle of the bands stopped? When my sister passed away.

Oh.

Roxanna was one of the main organizers of Battle of the Bands and that's the bar. So, anyways

My summer internship working for her was to find a way to raise $10,000 for a battle.

There you go. Yeah. So, anyways, just just channeling the excitement. But you. Go ahead.

I I love this program. This is such a great, you know, program that I think we cannot be very proud of. Is Restaurant Week Always in January? So California restaurant month is in January. Oh, restaurant month. Yeah. Because I was like, wow. This has such a great impact. Like, it'd be cool to kinda do something, like, you know, this summer if there's, like, you know, outdoor places to, like, eat out at or, like, do cool things at. Because it's it seems like such an impactful program. And I also love the theme, keeping it local. Like, I just whoever thought of that, I was like, wow. Super creative. And then I was thinking, Paul, wow. Like, what what a benefit of having a young team.

I mean, look at how creative they are. Like, with this Yelp stuff, I was like, wow. The real I was like, that's, like, amazing. I don't see other many other departments doing these kind of, like, frills and stuff. So I was like I mean, you guys are, like, really social media savvy, and that's where, you know, apparently, the people are these days. So your team is very much in alignment with, you know, the people. So great job there. And then, how did you select the businesses to participate? Because, like, it seems like such a beneficial program for the businesses too to get your guys', like, marketing advice, to then get your guys' social media slick, to get your guys', like, photos and I'm like, people would pay for that kind of service. So, like, how did you choose who to who to go with?

And I think Paul stated earlier, we really didn't choose is whoever, you know, wanted to join. So if anyone said, like, they wanna do a special, we, staff went, took pictures, or, you know, flushed out the idea, And then we put a little JPEG for them and then did more, you know, more assistance, technical assistance.

He he had a selling a little bit. What I I wanna emphasize, this is a very labor intensive I hear so. When we walk the corridors, I mean, we're spending hours and hours walking the corridors, and we spend our own money to go eat of these businesses, like, personal money to eat of these businesses to build the trust and relationship with the businesses. Most businesses, like I said, I say this all the time. They they most people do not interact with government. Mhmm. Right? And if you do, it's when your house is burned down or you did something wrong. And so a lot of what we do, especially in communities of color, we spend a lot of time and build that trust. We we're eating burritos.

We're eating those things all the time on our own dime, often our own time on nights and weekends, off peak. We don't go to on our lunch hour to do the stuff. We do it in the evenings, 04:00, after the rush, so they see who we are. They know our names as customers and as allies, and it takes a lot of work to shepherd them into it. So, well, yes, we did catch up. Anybody and everybody in the city who owns a restaurant could participate, but there are a number that we built relationship with and we shepherded the the participation so that so that they trusted us enough to listen to the staff that says, you know, do you have some your pizza's awesome, but maybe we do something cool with the pizza, not just your buy one slice, get one for you. Maybe you do a double stack pizza that's much easier.

A lot

of these businesses, they have the idea, but as us pushing them and saying, if you offer this, people will look. And we will give you the social media graphics to push it, and you're gonna push on billboards, and we deliver kinda like what I said in the previous presentation, we deliver our value to them, and then that shepherds their investment in us. Right? Because a lot of businesses are like, yeah, I sell burgers. I'm doing fine. Or maybe I'm not doing fine, but I sell burgers, and I don't know what you guys are telling. And, you know, I'm just focusing quickly through this. This is a lot of for us to do to participate in a restaurant promotion. One thing that we selected in particular, lots of cities do restaurant week. Like, there's Tri Valley restaurant week.

That seems to me, like, under use of resources. You put all this hustle into it, get all these specials, get the restaurants to spin up all these activities and promotion, and it it takes more than a week to get a social media splash. Right? So to to extend it is is a great feature of this. But, yeah, Javier's underselling labor. Like, the labor is intensive. We are out on the block a lot.

I bet. Yeah. That that was gonna be my next question, but I think you just answered it. It was gonna be, you know, would it make sense to do something? Like, is there, like, a burrito week where we but you're like, hey. The

week is like gonna that. Work. Yeah. It makes something we can we could look into that. That's something I'd like to do. I mean You don't worry. You know, normally, these these these type of promotions are handled by us. We're city cities don't rarely do this stuff. They're more like visitors bureaus and Yeah. Different organizations. But we thought, given the success from last year and how much will the city the city got, then we want to carry on.

Yeah. And, you know, I'm I'm all for expanding this any way that we could as well. I think, you know, the '18 to '21 is really good. Is it the same 18? So did we add a couple more, or is it kind of just like some of those are net new in addition to or is it pretty much all the same 18 returning?

It was actually probably five or the same from last year. So Oh, majority were all new.

That's even better news. Great. Excellent. Thank you so much for this report. Keep up the great work and great job.

Yeah. All of this is great. I just wanted to just tell you one little story. I was at the mayor's conference last month, and we're I was sitting next to at our table was the mayor of Pleasanton, Jack Bal Balch. And he was talking about he may he was talking about Pleasanton having their it was restaurant week or what know, he called it restaurant week.

And

he was talking about how it was labor intensive that you know? And I forget who he was sitting next to. Oh, Raj Sawant from Fremont. He was sitting next to Raj. And so they were talking, and and then but one of the things he did say, he goes, interestingly enough, though, one of the restaurants that was you know, they had very low, you know, participation rate, That was the highest grossing restaurant of the month because of this program.

He goes, it was just he goes, we have all these great restaurants in Downtown Pleasanton. He goes, but everyone just, like, fix it. He goes, because they curated a menu. They had he goes he goes, it was incredible. He goes, they're they're he goes he goes, it was a phenomenon that, you know, the the Pleasanton Economic Department the economic development department we're talking about. But, anyway, yeah.

Yeah. I think a a really cool feature, we didn't really touch upon it, but this is it's labor intensive, but it's not cost intensive. So a lot of lot of economic development groups, even this group into the city in the past, you know, a lot of our business assistance comes to the form of grants. Right? And then as we enter financial challenges within shrinking budgets post ARPA, federal fund recovery world, we're looking for opportunities to add value to to put our businesses on path success, but without necessarily giving them free money. Resources

are are limited. Limited. So I I've heard, I've heard from some downtown restaurant owners. You know, of course, January was a tough month for them, but they were they were talking about, you know, what could we do to sort of increase, of course, increase traffic. But I guess my question is is how do we track that? I mean, how do we track you know, how do we enumerate or quantify, you know, the increase of traffic into restaurants? How do we how do we can we track that?

Or The rest of themselves. Right? They have have the tilt. So if you you go in and out the luncheon, but during your ticket, it tells you what customer number you are. So every tilt has a customer count. And And so the business themselves that's why it's so important that we do after action surveys to collect the data. Some of the questions are, did you see a noticeable increase year to year from January 2024 to '25 in customer? Did you did your till see a percent increase in revenue? We collect that feedback. The restaurants themselves are the folks who have that data.

The other thing is just my last point is went to illegal burger. Mhmm. That burger

the Hobby

Lobby. That burger's cribbing.

It's inside itself.

It's Adjacent to Hobby Lobby.

Hobby Lobby, it's right to the left. That burger's delicious.

Is it illegal burger next to our police station?

It's across from it. Yeah.

Yeah. And delicious absolutely delicious burger. Great burger. Great fries.

I like to try.

Yeah. But it was go ahead.

Oh, yeah. I just had a couple questions. Is it normal for cities to run restaurant week, or is it the

It it goes back and forth. I think the the the along if you're along the theme of of expanding this program and having things like taco trail or, like, the sweet art of hate the sweet dessert of Hayward

or whatever they call it. I mean Sweetheart of the Bay.

Sweetheart of Bay. This is something we're working on. We're we're very particular.

Like, I gotta go back on.

Yeah. Yeah. These are these are the most Right.

That you've thrown around. You've thrown around and see how best to shop. It it it comes in different forms. But Okay. Normally, I would say industry wide, it is normal. It is more often than not held, you know, the responsibility of the chamber of commerce Yeah. Downtown association or visitors bureau to do this kind of work. Right? Because they have deeper membership lot more resources, and their job is also to add value to the members.

Yeah. Because we on the previous item, I was talking about the blueprint of letting this

Yeah.

Span through other channels where we're not taking it on as a city. But if we're doing it well, do we wanna retain it? So I I think I would love to see some kind of analysis of if this should be if we're gonna make this a more sustainable program within the city versus it farming it out, I would love to figure out what that balance is, but also don't wanna burden staff. Right? So but I don't wanna lose the success of this if we were to let it go.

So if we could figure that out, I don't know if that's something that we can think about during strategic road map or whatever it is. But for both of those items, I would say, these are the ones that I think are really exciting, the the committee. So we would we would hate to lose both of them. And then the last thing was how does the DHIA involved how are they involved in this? Because that was another entity. When you said chamber of commerce, I was also thinking of DHIA. I know it's focused on downtown. Yeah.

But for all of our programs, from TA, tuition assistance, hiring, any promotion or programs that we're launching, we are sending and keeping the price to our partners at the DHA and the Chamber of Commerce, all the materials. So when when, council asked questions like, how do you guys promote this? Well, yes. We promote it through our partners at Chabot or. We also send it to the downtown Hayward Improvement Association. They have the media. We send it to the chamber of commerce who also have maintains their own social. So when we when we say we cast the wide net and we're walking the block, we're also trying to use our partners force multiplier to shepherd them into the. So they're well aware.

They often do the process. A task to take a larger role of this possibly?

We could have those conversations.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Councilmember Bonita. Sorry. Just two more quick questions. Who who is the community media relations division? Is that, like, what's in this city, or is that

just finished. Oh, that's Chuck. Oh, wow.

He's his own division, I guess. That's cool. And then the two digital billboards, did we have to pay for those, or did they, like, donate them?

So we the city has Yeah. A slot that we basically use our slot for the month.

Oh, cool. Because, like, I saw those digital billboard people coming into some events recently, you know, and, like, I'm wondering if we can just be like, hey. Donate this. Because they were like, I'm always looking for opportunities to give free billboard time to nonprofits, and this might be a great opportunity to say, hey. Alright. Cool. Thanks. Great work again.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to the last item on the agenda, which is future meeting topics.

Who's leaving it?

Oh, did you I

can go. Go. Can can Okay. Here's the chart. I have questions for the chart.

Go. I'm sorry. Go ahead, ma'am.

Go

ahead. Okay. Great. Just so you so I wanted to ask for the future meeting topics. We already talked about tuition tuition assistance. Did we talk about higher return investment or the learn to earn return investment?

It was Hire Hayward.

It was Hire Hayward. When do we get an update on learn to earn?

So

I think Did you say this

all up? So the the data that for the students that matriculate out of the program is a little bit of a longer, slower burn. Yeah. So as we get data from our partners, we'll report back.

Okay. So but, like, what's like, is there a year that a target year you would like to bring it back to us? It's like, oh, we wanna update by 2027 because that's when they are done with college or something like that.

So we plan on having all the funds completed by 2026.

Okay.

At least that's the projection, so it'll probably be the end of.

Okay. Great. And then wanted a movie theater update as well as the downtown action plan, a hundred day update. And, also, I don't know if we could talk about surplus properties at some point. I don't know if it comes here or if it goes somewhere else, but maybe we can get an update on what properties that Hayward owns in terms of economic development. I'll be interested in talking.

So

As you were talking, I I was thinking, you know, I was I know in the past, we've always talked about, you know, the corridors, you know, like, Tennyson and, you know, H Street and Jackson and so forth. I you know, could it'd be nice to have a report on sort of, like, a corridor report. And then and as we talk about those those corridors, it would if if they're available. Know sometimes it's hard to get, you know, some of the small business, you know, owners into a meeting. But as we talk about those corridors, it'd be nice to invite them to city hall into a meeting where we can hear the report, get their public comment, have them you know, we can talk to them.

That would be kinda interesting. And or perhaps we take a council economic development meeting, and we actually hold it in one of the corridors. That's better.

Mhmm.

You know? That way, they'll go to at site in the corridor. Yep. But, anyway, I guess so it's two things. A report on the the report a report on the economic activity of the corridor, and then and then invite the business owners to the meeting so we can have a conversation.

And then the third thing would be try to host the meeting in the quarter.

Host the meeting in the quarter. Yeah. Yeah.

I have a question about that, Patricia. I did make a note of who are the the groups. Like, we know we have Chamber of Commerce, CHIA, but we also have heard of a group called South Hayward, Iowa. Is that an act is so I know they advocate regarding street vendors.

Yeah.

Are they group?

Yeah. I I I don't know how how how organized they are, but yes. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Put them in there.

Yeah. But no. But I was trying to see, do we have a list of Yes. Groups? Because we don't have we don't have bids. Right? So who are they? Who are is there a group on Tenison that they kinda get together just to talk about Tenison so they don't or Hispian or Jackson. They don't okay. Yeah. Okay. I was just curious.

That's part of our outreach too. That's why Yeah. Allocate staff to go walk the blogs and spend time there. We're trying to because they don't to help organize them a little bit. Okay. If we meet say, we meet three or four owners of, hey. Well, this guy down the street, he also had the same problem if you talk to him on Facebook. So we're trying to organically create some connections among business owners. The challenge with bringing a small particularly small business owners to meetings like this. You know? I hear we can go to their their place of business, but that's the big challenge. Right? They they they make the taco, they make the bourbon, they make the Yeah. Humble say, whatever it is, it's hard for them to to have any time to come to places, to to meetings, do this. And I'm also very they're very shy about. Mhmm.

If I may. I Paul just recently conducted a site tour on Friday with me within two hours, understanding the Tennyson Corridor, the from the business perspective. And it and I actually said we should be bringing those items forward to inform the council on the level of activity, the economic activity that's taking place there. It's that that blows you away.

I know. I mean, the Tennyson Corridor is a hustle and bustle.

You know, we took counsel for the downtown walk with the Yeah. We could That's exactly what I was trying to Yeah. We could pick that. Yeah, pick a block and walk and talk. Bucks and eat that. That's a

great idea.

And then maybe we pop into the businesses and then do some ad hoc.

That with council members in the in the downtown areas. I love a lot, but, a little walkie is.

We, you know, we pick up an ice cream at at Cecil's And that's cheeseburger. Cheeseburger. Or a cheeseburger. No, A bacon cheese. Know? Yep. Yeah. Or cenadas. You know?

Yeah. And let's let's invite

Start at some of I

think we should also invite some of our development services folks to join us on these walk and talks. Mhmm.

So let's do that in the spring.

Yeah. Yeah.

Let's let's do a let's do a Tennyson Corridor Walk.

What that is?

We'll call it an economic stroll.

Mhmm.

The Tennyson economic stroll. Bring cash.

Love it.

Because we're gonna go to we'll go to in fact, if I'm not mistaken, isn't there before the before the pandemic, wasn't there a restaurant on the tennis it was a Chinese restaurant on the on the Tennyson Corridor where they were, like, a finalist in I don't know what the exact name of it. I don't know what the exact name of the competition, but it's kinda like the the Super Bowl of Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area in San Jose, where all these Chinese chefs, they go and they, you know, they cook. And, one of the the one of the Chinese restaurants on the Tennyson quarter were, like, finalists, and they sort of made it all the way up. This was a while ago. I wanna say it's, like, spring something, the name of the restaurant, spring something something spring or something.

Anyways, that was, like, they were that was, like, a talked about thing. We talked about it. I remember that. But, anyways

And we did one at South And Long.

We did do one at Southland Mall.

And so I didn't wanna bring that back because there's a lot of movement happening at the mall. Right?

You should have wedded Southland Mall.

We we did an economic development committee meeting there. And years ago, yeah. Years. I wasn't even on the committee. I just, like, I was just gonna keep her reappointing green. I was like, what do wanna do to go

home Yeah.

For a meeting? I think that would be helpful to see what's going on in Southland.

Okay.

Maybe we could do a meeting actual meeting in Southland in the food

court. Mhmm. Okay.

Yep. Thank you.

Cool. Any staff, or, council or staff announcements? I know staff announcements. Is it okay. Go ahead. Roll.

They have made out of hurry, but the last major big box store has opened at the Hayward Retail Center, formerly known as the Kmart Center.

Last for now.

Big box. Last for now. Big box. So there's It's coming. All leased except for one twelve hundred square foot tenant space facing Mission. So HomeGoods is the last major retailer or major ink included in, like, an ink or retailer. Is it true

Chipotle is going in there?

Yes. It is. Yeah.

Yeah.

So they cut the ribbon last week. Thanks to the mayor and council member Andrews and other folks who came out. They the store represents a hundred and thirty hundred and thirty new jobs to the city, and we're expecting some good sales tax numbers, as sales, you know, amp up as the word gets out, and then we'll normalize. We're expecting them to be a a pretty significant or the whole center to be a pretty significant contributor to the city's sales tax base. They also donated $10,000 to the Alameda County Food Bank.

HomeGoods is owned by t j x TJ Maxx corporate, which owns HomeGoods, Marshalls, and TJ Maxx. And so this is a huge, huge achievement for the city. The store the store focuses on what we often talk about as experiential retail. So as you know, people can buy things online. You can buy your stuff online. Can buy your house stuff online. But what what the model here is, how do you dress how do you make retail a big box retail cool again? Right? How do you, you know, meet the customers? Right? How do you make furniture, bar stools, and little outfits for your dog, cool to go shop in a store waiting? I don't like well, that's what he bought.

First day, bought.

And so the the cool model about HomeGoods that a lot of people don't know is that their motto is, go finding at HomeGoods, and it is that is the experience. They know their customer once the experience of walking through a store and looking and touching and browsing. Right? That's what you can do in these stores versus just going on a big, you know, e commerce store that shop many and buying Yeah. And so the model is that they rotate consistently different inventory and name brand inventory, designer fashions, designer homewares through the store. So when you go this week, two weeks from now when you go in, you might not find the same pop and bands.

Yeah.

And that that deal hunting mentality is like the ethos of HomeGoods. So that's pretty cool.

Kind of?

Yeah. Ross, different yeah. A little different. HomeGoods has a higher end brand. Like, they're they're all Oh, yeah. In the space. Oh, yeah. And HomeGoods doesn't sell clothes. Right? It's it's just for home, you know, home fashion. That's one to know. And then two

sorry. Think I just lost my chewed up to serve you with food. What's that dinner thing?

Oh, yeah. We just met with the May the manager after I went in and out. I talked to the manager after lunch, and he he said, he was so excited that they're doing putting up some pretty significant numbers, and he's noticing a cadence in the center of, people coming. And he's seeing people or Hayward residents come and eat at the eateries and then go into the store and walk in all. Right? And so on Friday, around 08:30, they closed at 09:00. They had 200 people in the store at 08:30 at night in Hayward. Oh, 200 people. Including our including our own city manager. He was pretty shopping.

No. It was amazing. I was sharing with Paul, and I was very excited to hear the feedback from the general manager today and my meeting with Paul because it it was evident. You can feel the excitement it was happening placed on Hayward on Friday night. And I was one of those people just so that I understand the dynamic. It was amazing between In N Out, Sprouts, Yes. And Yeah.

Lazy Kansas.

Lazy Kings. Yep. It was a great Friday night to be in Hayward. Yeah. Yeah.

It's good. Well, remember the last point. So on the sales tax side. So in the past, we've run a the city sales tax consultant that she has shared the report called our sales tax leakage. Sales tax leakage, if you don't know, is a report that analyzes consumer demand in Hayward. So so every resident in Hayward has consumer demand, and it tracks or estimates where they spend their money. So when you swipe your credit card and you're putting your ZIP code in, it isn't necessarily because of a security thing. It's Visa and the credit cards wanting to know where you live so they could track sales. So there is data out there that our sales tax consultant has that that shows that people from Hayward go buy x y z outside of Hayward. That is called the leakage.

We're leaking that sales tax when you buy something. Home furnishings has been a long time sales tax gap in Hayward. And so for us to be able to attract a home goods sell it like a home furnishings, big box store shrinks that gap. So it'll be interesting in a year's time as sales normalize to see the difference that having a store like this has captured our local, sales tax.

Home goods is a thing. Mhmm. I mean, it's like a it's like a movement. I mean, I did not know I needed a porcelain deviled egg No.

Platter. You do. Mhmm. Mhmm.

I don't even like deviled eggs. I bought it. I mean, it was that it was Easter. I'm gonna have deviled eggs for Easter

Yeah.

To put on the table.

That's very nice.

On my plat on my platter.

It's and it is about the hunt because I went to our Ross, and I bought two bunny pillows because when you have a kid, they start buying these things. If and I wanted them to face another direction, so I took one back. And then the next day, I found the other one, the other direction, and all goods. It's all for the hunt.

It's a big deal in

the past.

Gotta Gotta hunt for the bargain. It's very cool.

Yeah.

It's a thing.

It's a thing.

Did you guys use your drone when you were there? Yes. Oh, that's very cool.

Oh, gosh. What's the other sales leakage? It's not very true. Eating and drinking places. Okay. And entertainment. Entertainment. So Everyone. Entertainment. And it's a little it's

a little so so there's there's that report. And we I I can bring the sales tax back. We we usually bring that guy back, and, know, once a year, comes in. But it's important to know that every city inherently has leakage, and you will never necessarily capture all that leakage. It's just it's just a way to look at it to kinda help us prioritize, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee that we show this data and be like, hey. XYZ retailer, we have this massive leakage. Can you should come here because we'll be successful. There are many different factors in that. So I just don't wanna mislead counsel to say that it is our goal to to capture as much sales tax as possible, but it is a lot of it's it is aspirational because, you know, we won't it may take us decade or two to get a Tiffany's or something. You know what mean?

If we see a leakage in jewelry, then you know? So it's just an a one data point that helps us understand what our market is, but it isn't necessarily reflective, like, we'll be able to land everyone in those sites. Okay. Just to be the market reality of it. Then you wanna announce this?

So Atlas, Cafe has actually, sold to Trem Cream Coffee, which is a very successful, it's not Is it? It's a franchise from San Jose. They have five other locations. They're gonna be opening their sixth one here, and it is a Vietnamese egg coffee. They also will be selling banh mi. And I've had a brief conversation with the new owners, and it sounds like a very amazing concept. I think it's gonna be really successful here. So we're really excited to announce Tram Green coffee coming.

Awesome. Interesting.

Great. You may have seen this in the news. Icon Therapeutics, Mary, you may remember them in 2023 '22. We cut the ribbon on their second or third facility here in Hayward on Clawitzer. They made a massive national news last week, with a funding venture capital funding raise of $350,000,000.

They are headquartered here in Hayward. They're a long time concierge client of mine. I always don't do justice describing what these biotech companies do. But, essentially, they're using Nobel Prize winning technology in microscopy, like in digital imaging, microscope imaging to watch cells, human cells in real time react to drugs and treatments. And that technology enables them to more rapidly bring forward drugs or pharmaceuticals to attack some of the most grievous or serious health diseases.

And so, it's it's actually really notable in the post COVID world. We've seen investment in biotech dive off a cliff. Like, so when when the pandemic was on, everybody was investing. Google Ventures, all the big venture capital, only they were investing into biotech because they thought they're gonna invent the cure to COVID or whatever drugs. There's a lot of movement.

Post pandemic, we've seen investment in the biotech set sector kind of slow down quite a bit. And so the to for them to raise $350,000,000 in this environment is is massive. Since 2019, that puts them at a full capital raise of over $1,000,000,000, which puts them in what is called a unicorn status. Unicorn status is a a tech startup, usually a tech startup, that has evaluation of over $1,000,000,000. And to the to the right here is a picture from the New York sales New York Stock Exchange floor. They're not even publicly traded, but they got recognition of the New York Stock Exchange floor when the news went out. And that's that's the floor trading floor before the bell ring.

When when we were at the that was the one that it was raining and we were in ten okay. So we were there, and when the when the owner or the owner entered introduced before he introduced me, he had made a comment. He goes, he was it was his goal to make ICON and make the industrial area the industrial neighborhood, the industrial Hayward area, the center of the universe in in in STEM in STEM and technology. I forget how he put it, but he goes, it is my goal to make the city of Hayward the center of the universe. He called it the center of the universe.

And and and so here it is. It's where I mean, that's what he said. In fact, we should we should take that clip. He because they video in fact, in the when I when I went up to the mic, I said, did you get that on video? Because you know? But, anyways, anyways, that's that's that's exactly what he said. Most of them have Interesting.

So what are what are they doing in New York? Is it, like, r and d? Is it

R and d. Sure. They're doing r and d, and they have on call with the facility may help put the ribbon on with it's basically like a testing a proving ground. So they where they have their technology featured and they invite other pharmaceutical companies to come in and use their technology to test their drugs. So, like, you know, doing a clinical trials or something

like that. But that's pretty cool.

Everybody has a PhD or a master's degree. And the only person who did not have a master's or a master's degree or a PhD or an MD was the HR director. I was the only one. So

and are they headquartered in Hayward? Just that Yeah.

Yeah.

So they have three facilities, on Hidden Landing and then the the I don't I call them the proving ground or the center of excellence is on call.

So are is it pretty much their entire operation in here?

They're they're in New York. They have

Oh.

Spaces in New York. They've leased some space in Milpitas in South San Francisco. They're they're they're big.

I see. Excellent. Thanks so much.

Last but not least, if you haven't heard, this is the this is the project for 2025. Yeah. Yeah. We've been talking the economic development team has been talking, and using a code word for this group for the last year. We've been chasing this for a very long time.

So happy to publicly announce that Urban Air Adventure Park will be coming to Hayward in South Hayward at the former food source that's been vacant, for over two, three years now, you know, which is a significant loss to to the city to lose a grocery store, but to replace it with the with the first indoor amusement park in the city, the fifth in the chain, of Urban Air. This is a this is this is gonna be the place. If you thought to what we did at Kmart Center for the for the residents, is where the youth of Hayward will be hanging out. This is where you'll have your parties and gatherings. It will feature wall climbing walls, trampolines, zip lines that attach to the ceiling of this 50,000 square foot building.

They'll have an on-site cafe, rooms for parties like kids and errands and birthday parties, which is what we hear a lot from the community that there's not a lot of places to do these kind of, you know, small party and gathering events. So this is this is a significant significant win for the city. They've submitted officially. So this is public news. They submitted officially to planning for some entitlements associated with the administrative use permit that, that are our pay our partners in development services have prioritized and are working closely with us.

Daniel Mau from my team is taking the lead for the concierge case, but I'm certainly heavily involved given given its visibility and its impact to the city. But not necessarily major revenue share, but certainly, this little bit is on the map. The closest urban area in the Bay Area was one that opened in Comfort that was under development for over three years during COVID. I live I've gone to there a couple times with my kids. It is jam packed with families. We're talking about hundreds and hundreds of kids. It's very loud and a lot lot of fun. It's it's gonna be a great amenity for South Newport.

Just before I call you, over in Castro Valley, right next to Lucas Deli Lucas Deli

Mhmm.

There's, like, this indoor I never been inside, but is it, like would that be is and what is that? Is it like Those are more like indoor display brands.

It's the display.

Oh, okay. They have a little bit of

obstacle course. I mean, it's not a very big building. I mean

Jump and play.

Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. But but I'm I'm looking at this right here.

But yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

This place will have trampolines, obstacle courses, like a ninja warrior course, rock climbing walls, zipline, VR, interactive gaming, soft play areas for toddlers, so they have even small areas jumping in ball pits for littles a little bit of something for everyone, on-site event space and food on-site food and beverage. And I'll also read it in so it's but what it really means for that that center, right, where the back of the basil oven is, sip and saver, the Edibles. The yeah. Edible arrangements in the Indian place. I forget the name of I Shahadar. That whole center, those people are struggling. Yeah.

And so what about the other thing too is, you know, I know there's that plasma. Is that

plasma There's still

plasma next door.

So I'm I'm I'm assuming they're gonna stay and all that. Now are they gonna do enhancements to the to the front of that building? Or I mean They they just kinda looks like one big block.

I don't think we will see a complete facelift of

the Okay.

Of it. I mean, it's a multimillion dollar investment on the interior. And so the nature of the of the Rodeo, it is a regional destination. This is the fifth in California. They don't they'll they'll make some improvements, and they'll have signage and things like that. But I I don't anticipate a full facelift to the center because they don't need it. The it'll the one in Concord that opened, like, two months ago had just the sign of the bill.

Well, they're not buying the whole

They're not buying the center.

Centers, but but the landlord I would I would think the landlord I guess that's what drives me nuts. I I and that's this is much part of a much larger conversation. But, you know, is these landlords, these building owners, and, you know, these property owners, they do very, very, very little. They do the minimum at at best in building in in their buildings. And, you know, and it's, you know, it's frustrating because we, you know, we I mean, for a long time, I mean, look how long it took for, you know, the the building owner.

I'll never forget that. I remember you I don't know if you were here here then, but the the owner of the building where, you know you know, the the round table and, you know, the the Ramos furniture. That the owner of that building came here one day and yelled at us. You know? And and we pushed back. You know? It was a I don't think he anticipated us to talk back. And I was in here where it was me. I think it was Mike's it was me, Mike Sweeney, and forget it. My mind had been built quirked in here.

But, anyways, we we jammed him on on, you know, how he did hasn't taken care of his building in in years. And so shortly thereafter, I know don't if that had anything to do with it, but, you know, he did paint it, and he did do a lot of facade improvement. But does it look better? You know, I don't know. But, but, anyways, that's it's always been a frustration of mine. But, you know, we put these big investments in these centers. We do our part, but the building owner, the property owner, you know, has a very difficult time coming along. But

Yeah. I was just gonna say I'm happy you're working with our partners in other divisions because this is a major catalyst site. When we hear there's not enough things for kids to do, this is an exact age range that will take care of that criticism. And I'm hoping that'll be a catalyst site for that Bank of America that's next to it if they can see that this is getting this much activity. But I know that Sucking Saver is very excited about this coming online, and I'm happy that we're we're we were able to attract this. So good job.

Yep. I'm also very excited that you're bringing this here. I have five monthly Sky Zone passes. Like, every Friday when my nephew does go to school, I take him to Dublin to Sky Zone. And, basically, to your point, Paul, the the Sky Zone in Dublin, it's, like, in some, like, corporate building right behind that rock. So, I mean, they don't even you don't even care what it looks like. I was like, Sky Zone, there it is. And then you go inside, and it's, like, literally jump in because it's trampoline park. So and then I just, like, sit there on my computer for two hours and do my work or whatever, and then they go and jump. So I'm so happy to see this here in Hayward.

And then to see it in the location that it's gonna be at, it's like, know, then you can go right down the street to In N Out, which everyone wants to go eat at, or you can go to Raising Cane's because that's what all the kids love these days. I mean, this is a real game changer. So I'm just so excited to see that we're doing this here in Hayward and that it's walking distance from my house. So I need to get in the car to take my kids there, my nieces and nephews. But when will it open?

I'm always hesitant to give estimates on that. But right now, what I wanna say is they're they're in the entitlement phase to get their AUP.

This year.

This year, that'll that should happen this year for sure. And then we'll touch base with them on on their construction schedule. It's it's not something like this is a significant investment, and so there'll be a significant amount of design. Just for context, it took Urban Air conquered, like, three years.

I know. Okay. Who was gonna say

three years? We we I'm I'm anticipating learning from the that city, because those plans are identical, essentially. So, you know, we'll we'll working as hard as we can. We'll we'll push it as hard as we can. That's that's my commitment.

Yeah. That's great. This is great. Yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. Even looks modern. Mhmm. It's all That's great.

And it's got a food court is that a food court?

On-site cat diary.

So And then Food Source is the perfect size for it too because the one in Concord is, like, massive. Because like he was saying, you know, you can go, like, around this, you know, the whole building on, like, you know Yeah. The zip line. So you can do the same thing at Food Source, and it's so huge. It's perfect for that. And then it's like, and what were we gonna do with that big old building anyways? It's like, this couldn't have been a better match.

Like, city.

Maybe we can try to get a second one or something like that at the CVS Building right here that closed down or something cool like that.

All set up. Thank you. Alright.

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