Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

Alright. I'm now gonna call to order the Land Use and Economic Development Committee meeting here Wednesday, March 18, the City Hall chambers at 03:30. We're gonna start with roll call.

Councilman Budre?

Here.

Councilman Councilman Councilman Rodriguez? Here. Councilwoman Ibarra

is going to be asked.

We'll start off first with the approve of the minutes. I'd like to make a motion to approve

the minutes as I have read.

Second that motion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. So move.

Next, we

got citizens to be heard on agenda items. Is there any citizens here that would like to speak on an agenda item? Seeing none, we will move on to the next agenda item, TMP nine six twenty four, a presentation by the City Center Partnership and the twenty twenty five year review.

Hello. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Emmanuel Lopez. I'm the executive director for

Does that work? All Here

we go. My name is Emmanuel Lopez. I'm the executive director for the Joliet City Center Partnership. Today, we're going go over a review of twenty twenty five initiatives, programs, and things that the organization has been able to do within the special service area. All right.

So let's kick it off. So just starting off, we're gonna talk a little bit more about,

you know,

the city center partnership as a whole, the activations, the activities, the connectivity with the businesses, our grant initiatives, as well as beautification programs we have gone through in 2025. Just a little recap, our mission and our purpose. The Joliet City Center partnership was established in 1992. It's an organization focusing on economic development and dedicated to revitalizing the strength of Downtown Joliet and the surrounding areas like Collins, Cass, and South Chicago Streets. And just a little quick video for you guys to see as far as talking a little bit more about the Joliet City Center partnership.

Have you ever walked through Downtown Joliet and wondered who's behind the improvements, community projects, and events?

Well, that's where the Joliet City Center partnership comes in. We're an organization focused on supporting and advocating for the business and property owners in Joliet's special service area that covers the downtown core, plus the Collins Street, Cass Street, and South Chicago Street corridors. We have a board comprised of business owners, managers, and stakeholders.

Our goal is simple, to make Downtown Joliet vibrant, welcoming, and thriving. We do this through programs, events, and resources that bring people together and support the local business community.

Exactly. Think of the CCP as the downtown connector between businesses, city officials, landlords, and the community. Whether it's helping a business getting started, improving storefronts, beautification projects, or hosting events that bring people downtown.

Speaking of events, you might know us from events like Kids Fest, Restaurant Week, and Light Up the Holidays Parade, just to

name a few.

Beyond events, we also manage grant programs and improvement initiatives like helping with signage, facade upgrades or even alleyway enhancements to make the district more beautiful and functional.

Here's the most important part. The City Center partnership is powered by the business community for the community. Your ideas, your feedback, and participation shape the future of Downtown Joliet.

So whether you're a business owner, landlord, resident, or a visitor, there is a place for you to get involved.

Wanna learn more or share your ideas?

Absolutely. Visit jolliettccp.com or connect with us on social media. We'd love to hear from you and work together to keep Joliet's downtown thriving. Let's build the future of downtown Thank Joliet

you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. I'd like to take our ward chair also who was a movie star who's joining us today.

You brought the star with you.

I did.

I did. Again, in 2025, you know, my name is Manuel Lopez. I'm the new executive director here for the organization. I would like to recognize Vicky Sanchez, who's with the organization for many years and who also took on the interim role from January to August as executive director. Event and activities.

Those are one of the things that you guys did notice in the videos that were shared. Throughout last year, we had over about 25,000 attendees that attended our events that came through our downtown area to be able to visit through our programming and our holiday parades and things of that nature. We had about 10 signature events focusing on culinary, family friendly, and the public spaces area. During that, we had engaged with our businesses. We had about 135 participants in the local business area that were engaged from our restaurants, retailers, from our scrolls to our restaurant week, to just, you know, participating in our parade.

So as you can see, the CCP is here to be able to connect and be that one on one support for the business community, as well as showcasing what we have to offer in the downtown area to those that are visiting the community. Any questions so far on our recap? Is the

video on the website? Website?

Yes. The video is on the website. So as soon as you type in the exam time, first thing that pops up is the video. So it gives you a quick explanation to be able to understand the orientation as well. Thank you.

Now the CCP went through in 2025 a little strategic growth. The CCP was bringing on board new leadership, myself as a new executive director. One thing that we also did focus on implemented a new CRM system to help modernize our data and our reporting. That way we can have more of an understanding of the business community, our outreaches, our touches to the businesses, as well as our marketing initiatives to help bring our software and data reporting to times like these. And as far as enhancements go, we're collaborating a lot with the city of Joliet.

We collaborate with community for the Mexican Independence Day, as well as different initiatives and banners on Collins Street. As you can see in the picture here, we have a nice photo opportunity that was also posted on Collins Street to be able to help our families to take pictures during the holidays there as well. So just some type of ways that the CCP has been done to be able to bring the communities together and continue on our overall agenda for the year.

Again, focusing

a lot on the business community. Because at the end the day, we are here for the business community, and we're supported by the business community. Business seminars are something that we do focus on to be able to help the business community. Two of the business seminars that we focused on that we collaborated with JJC on was QuickBooks, training on QuickBooks. At the end of the year, a lot of small businesses focus on reporting finances and things of that nature. So having an opportunity to help train them

a little bit more on

QuickBooks and new features was presented for this business seminar, as well as legal red flags for small businesses. As you can see, a very well attended event. It's something we'll be continuing on, as well as focusing on the growth of these business seminars in collaboration with City Center partner, Joliet Junior College with these seminars.

Yes? Question? So are business seminars for anybody or just those that would fit into the CCP District,

so to speak? So ideally, our program is for businesses that are in the special service area. But when it does come to marketing, I know that businesses are not in the area you tend to attend at the end of the day. So I'm not going to stop a business from attending and learning more on that process. But again, we do tend to target the special service area.

Thank you. Business

support.

I came across this idea of business and brews to give myself the opportunity to really sit down with the business owners, to get to know them a little bit more, to get to know their struggles, to get to know just things that they've done in the past. So what we did was these business brews that posted up in two local businesses in the special service area. It has special time slots allotted for businesses to be able to set a a one on one appointment with me in in these businesses to help understand what they were doing. So as you can see it was very it was very popular and we will continue doing these maybe twice or three times a year. Being the voice of the business community, we really focus on our owners and managers meeting.

We these events these meetings every other month, where we invite our business owners and managers within the special service area to be able to hear any of their issues, their successes, as well as letting them stay informed. We invite the city to come and speak with the fire department, police department, and other other organizations to help keep the business community alert as well as being able to hear ways that we can help them out. We conducted 12 biz 12 owner manager meetings in 2025. We hosted six in Spanish as well as

six in Spanish.

Now from the business and brews as well as just a little bit more of an initiative to be able to connect, we conducted over 51 on one sit down meetings from September to December with nonprofit organizations, businesses, properties owners to help identify barriers, assistance needed, and just resources and ways to see if we could be able to help the business community out. And hopefully, this upcoming year, we'll be able to increase that hopefully to 110% from last year's growth. That's the overall goal. Our grant program is something that we really are here to be able to do. We're able to help focus the beautification and the business development and the economic development at the end of the day within the special service area.

We offer small business assistance, building improvement assistance, and exterior improvement assistance. So companies that are on the 1st Floor or visited on the 1st Floor in the special service area are able to apply for some of these resources. As well as community events. We partner with a lot of organizations that tend to host free events for the community. There is a community event grant that we offer to organizations that do projects like this.

Last year, we supported about 12 different businesses and awarded $8,250 to these businesses to be able to put on family free events. As far as the Business Impact Grant, due to a lot of the construction work, we're able to award five businesses in the special service area with $13,299 in grant assistance. And our catalytic program the catalytic programs are here for support for projects as base towers orbital that drive economic growth within the area. And we're able to award about $175 in revenue and grant funds to be able to support these initiatives.

Can ask you one more question?

You mentioned grant funds. So you have a grant writer, or you're a grant writer? Or where do you get the grants from?

So the grants come from the special service tax. So that's where the funding comes from. The events that we do put on, none of that gets really it's all sponsorship, those events. So the grant funding goes specifically to help fund these initiatives. A third initiative that we focus on as well is beautification.

Driving downtown, you can see the flowers in the spring. We were able to contribute 152 planters and fill them over for the spring and summer season, as well as 48 new planters that we filled within the city center, the new square. The winter season, we were able to focus on 108 planters during that winter season, and adding more opportunity for individuals to connect with the downtown area and connecting social media to Downtown Joliet and the Square. So we were able to put a photo opportunity, be able to get mailbox for kids to be able to mail their letters to Santa, and be able to just draw more of an engaging environment within the city square during the holiday area. So those are little things that we will be focusing on and continue to focus on the beautification aspect of our mission here at the CCP.

Again,

would go remiss without recognizing our board members and our board chairs in 2025 that are able to and partners at Pacific Joliet, Will Kodiak Center for Economic Development. As you can see by the list, it's a very engaged board of directors and business owners and voices of our communities. We're proud to be able to call these our board of directors in 2025 who help navigate our organization. Now looking forward to 2026, we have Mike Peyon as our new board chair and Tim Parofia as our new vice chair. We also brought on two new board members.

Knight Trane from the Julie Anzheimers and Pepe Sanchez from Puerto Escondido, where we have a more diverse board and be able to continue that growth and hear people's voices, really business owner voices. As well as CCP events in 2026, we just wrapped up our Shamrock stroll on Friday, which I think was a great success. We brought in a band that was able to play some Irish music as well as able to give giveaways to the participants. All that was done to be able to get data, right? What some of the questions that we asked the individuals to participate to receive, the free gift was, what zip code are you coming from?

Is this your first time Downtown Joliet? Do you plan on visiting other businesses after or before the show? Ways to give us an opportunity to understand as we continue programming, who are we targeting programming and the success rates to have some measurables on how we go about doing what we have

to do.

We yeah. This will be posted on our website with more ways for individuals to get involved for sponsorships and just for more opportunity to help drive traffic to the downtown special service area. And that was our 2025 recap. Any questions? Hopefully,

next year or this year, I should say, with the city square being a bigger opportunity for you, we'll be able to continue the success that appeared that you had this past year. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. I would just kinda I'd like to if we go back to that list of events, just to see, like, a good list of events, especially when our new city square come in, that, you know, there's gonna be a great partnership between the the city and the city center partnership to be able to work and have these events happening. Obviously, a lot of the holidays have been one of the big ones, but now we're adding a bunch of other ones that are complement that one as well throughout the year. So it's cool. So thank you. Thank you. Next, we will move on to agenda item TMP nine six three eight, resolution authorizing a property tax abatement at 118 East Jackson Street with El Nuevo for tax year 2025.

Good afternoon, members of the committee. Just an excellent transition because actually El Guido was one of the recipients of one of the CCP's grants, the catalytic grant at $100,000 So thanks to that grant, it

was part of

the incentive package that they received. And today, we are here to just authorize the execution of the property tax abatement for tax year 2025. This agreement was actually approved on February 1939 by the city council, and it was amended on 05/02/2023, just an extension of time. That was what the amendment was. It would have opened up operations in November 2024.

So tax year 2025 was the first year that they could have asked for a property tax abatement. And for the county's request, we are submitting a resolution for your recommendation of approval and approval of the city councils just so that they can verify that did all the work that they said they did as it was outlined in the incentives agreement, which included renovating 55,000 square feet of the plaza that they bought, which they did opening up the grocery store, which they did as well and hiring 75% of local labor at prevailing wage for construction from beginning to completion, which they did. Staff did work with them to collect all that information and verify that it was true. So they were just requesting that you make a recommendation for the execution of the property tax abatement for tax year 2025.

So this needs a motion to go to

the full Household Circuit to rest

of it. And you mentioned everything they needed to do from staff, yourself, whoever has verified that all the requirements for this have been completed.

Yes, sir. Yeah, we ask for receipts of construction that took place as well as contracts that they had with their construction companies. And we have Mr. Andres Garcia, who's a representative from El Guido, to answer any questions that you might have about their current operations.

I'd like to make a motion for item nine thousand six thirty eight to be moved to the full council with our recommendation of approval.

I second that motion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion moved. We'll move it to the full council. And I just want to say thank you for that investment in Joliet. And the the store looks great. So deposit looks great. You. Awesome. Thank you.

I hope it's going as expected, and hope it goes better in the future.

Yes. It will. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Are we we're ready? Alright. Next, we're going to move on to the resolution. TMP nine four nine six, resolution approving a property tax abatement at 3835 Youngs Road.

Yes. So this is the former Lyon Electric site at 300835 Youngs Road in Joliet. Hyundai TransLead is planning to do an expansion of their manufacturing plants in The United States. This would be taking over 9,000 square feet of that building. And they are asking for a five year property tax abatement at 50%, which would represent $65,000 that the city would be foregoing if approved.

So that's 50%. In the five years, it would represent an investment from the city of $327,000 And in exchange, the project would be bringing capital investment of $143,000,000 and twelve ninety one jobs at full capacity. We also have Doug Prior from the Will County Center for Economic Development with more information and if you have additional questions.

Good afternoon. And I do want to say we do have members of their team en route. But if you followed flights this week, everything's been delayed. They were a little delayed, but I expect them here in the next few minutes as well. But this is a project that has been three years in

the making.

And in total, the project represents between two sites, the former Lion Electric facility and the Caterpillar facility, an investment on the order of $350,000,000 and 2,500 jobs in total, which would make this one of the largest manufacturing attraction projects in Illinois' history. This is incredibly exciting to see manufacturing coming back to these two buildings in particular, where we have all of this heritage and history. And the former Lyon Building, 3835 Youngs Road, is actually within the city of Joliet. And I do want to clarify that the ask with respect to this abatement, this abatement is accretive. In other words, it generates more revenue than Joliet's receiving from day one, even during the abatement period.

So even with an abatement, because of the capital expenditure taking place at the building, Joliet would receive more tax revenue from this building than they are today. This team, this project, does represent a capacity expansion for Hyundai TransLink. It's good to be able to say the name. It's been a long time. We've been unable to say that.

This is a capacity expansion for them in their trailer manufacturing, both dry and refrigerated trailers out of this facility. And for years, this region, Joliet specifically, and Will County and Chicagoland to a larger level, has been the transportation hub of The United States in a lot of ways. And one of our targets has always been to pick up some of the value add from all of this. This kind of manufacturing that serves customers both in this region and throughout The United States is one of those really important steps to get the next level of jobs related to this industry. And so this has been, like I said, a long term project that has evolved and grown.

I've got to say that the team from Hyundai have been fantastic partners for us from the beginning. This is an ask that is also being made of other partners. Willow County will be voting on this tomorrow, actually. In addition to that, Joliet Township High School, Troy 30C, and Minooka and JJC are all being asked to consider this as well. I do want to clarify the Caterpillar Building is unincorporated, so there's not an additional municipality.

It's just Joliet as a leading municipality on this project. But yeah, long time coming, exciting, and happy to answer any questions. I could monologue about this one for a while, but I will pause

and stop here. So Doug, with the split location, this actually works okay for them? Are they comfortable with this?

It does. So this is a multiple production line project. And we do have a lot of other manufacturers around the region that have similar saps. Sizes sort of reach physical limits to a large extent at some point. And this in total this in total represents about 2,400,000 square feet of space, which is nearly impossible to accomplish under a single roof. That Caterpillar building is one of our largest in the community. So it does work.

They are quite proximate

to one another, a little more than a mile down Route 6. But ultimately, yes, that works. Some other examples Candlewood's a good example. They've got their big facility in Tinley on the Will County side, but production facilities all around there. And it it's not an unusual model for us to see.

So I didn't catch this square footage.

Mean So in Joliet's in the Lyon Building, it it's right at about 900,000. I wanna say that's 906,000 square foot building. And then the cap is about 1,400,000 square feet, so about 2.4

in total. And are you in the atopo of both of those buildings?

Correct. It's they'll be taking the entirety of both facilities, which, yeah, that is an incredibly significant investment.

So with the Kent Building being empty

for so long, it's usable immediately? There will be some significant investment that takes place to get that to their spec. I will say the CAT Building hasn't been entirely empty. The current building owners have done some leasing of portions of the building. And since Caterpillar left in, I guess it was 2019, they've done some pretty significant building improvements of their own, the building owners, just to sort of do some modernization. But the reality is you know, portions of that building were 70 years old.

And so

whoever came in were were going to make significant investment to get it particularly to spec for a property up to

this magnitude. So Okay. So the tax abatement is for the Lions Electric So building?

For City Of Joliet, it's for the Lions Electric.

Okay.

The the Caterpillar Building, there there is not a municipal overlay for that building. Too. Okay.

So that will go through

the county. But the county will be asked to abate their portion on both buildings. Just the Lyon Building is in the City Of Joliet. And I should also clarify here, because I think it's important to call this out. The Lyon Electric Building, when Lyon came to town, the city partnered with them on an abatement agreement. However, no local public dollars were ever abated on that project. They never hit the thresholds required to actually execute the abatement. So this isn't a, you know, a double dip situation. The city of Georgia never actually abated any taxes on that building.

Do we know, like, a timeline of, like, obviously when this is going to or once it gets approved or whatnot, it does throughout everything else, what their timeline is to get started with manufacturing, hopefully?

So I will say 2027, but I'm happy to say I have Hyundai Translate's CEO in the room, Sean Kenny, Senior Director of Enterprise Strategy and Marketing. Tim Park in the room as well. And you have to forgive me. I don't know your title off the top of my head.

We do have

some on

the team here that I think might be better suited to answer those questions. But I think operationally The COVID will start soon. Actually get it stood up. 2027, from where we're standing today, is actually an incredibly strong timeline for a project of this complexity. And I think this is a company that absolutely has the capability to pull that off. But

2027

would be the production timing.

Okay. No. I think I'm I'm excited. Thank you guys for investing in Jolene and believing in in the area, and we're excited for these type of projects to continue to come, especially in the manufacturing side. Absolutely. Anything you want

to add to Doug's movie? Excited to hear?

Yeah, if you would like to add anything, please.

Sure. Sure.

Good afternoon. My name is Sean Kenny. I'm the CEO of Hyundai Trans League. Been CEO for about two and a half years. And actually grew up here, believe it or not, a long, long time ago. We were just talking about that.

Not that long ago.

I know. Thirty five years.

But no, it's great to be back. Of course, the area has changed a lot, but some of it hasn't. Right? The people are the same. I think the work ethic's the same. And certainly, we've made some new friends over the course of this whole project. Relative to your question about start of production, so there are going be a total of three different lines there. Two of them will be dry van manufacturing lines, and then one will be refrigerated van manufacturing lines. Additionally, there's two other products that will be built there. Truck bodies for dry and refrigerated built off the same line though.

So fundamental manufacturing lines, there will be three. There will be two that will be installed in Young's Road. And then one, the refrigerated line will be at Shanahan. The fabrication sub assembly and warehousing will actually be in Shanahan. And we'll actually have some transportation of sub assemblies and things back and forth.

The plant for the Youngs Road facility start of production right now is early Q2. So call it April 27, that will be followed by refrigerated production in about September on Shanahan Road. The warehousing, the fabrication and sub assembly operations in Shanahan will actually start slightly prior, probably about the same time as the dry van production. So we'll be working at both facilities simultaneously. So

I know this is new, obviously, to Joe yet, not new to you. But is this plant replacing one that you had someplace else? Or is this an additional operation for you? It's additional.

So today, 100% of our production is done in Mexico across three different plants, at least in this context. So we have two different assembly plants, and then we have a sub assembly plant and fabrication operation. Those reside in Tijuana, just across the border from California. So the company is actually based in San Diego headquarters. And then so the first assembly plant is Tijuana, that's our oldest one. And then Rosarito, which is turning 10 years old, just about 25 miles to the Southwest of Tijuana is Rosarito, right on the coast on a 400 acre development.

Since we've been involved in this other little issue that has a lot to do with electricity and ComEd and them, is that something that needs to be added here? Or have you had that conversation already that all the power that's needed, they can provide for you?

So that's a great question. Shanahan Road has sufficient power. Lyon, the Youngs Road facility. At current, we're trying to get a final tally on megawatts. It's a little light, but not for the initial start. I think we'll be Okay.

Thank you.

Eventually, eighteen months out, we're probably going to need a little bit more, but we're not talking I would say max we will ever need is six megawatts from where we are today, which is about three. So about double the power from where it is. Actually less than what I believe was told Lion Electric had forecasted in their utilization.

The type of job that I said, it's actually 2,500 job, I believe, I can speak of, are they like specialty jobs? Or is it kind of more like just high school degrees? It varies from different education levels, I guess?

Good question. The answer is yes. So it's anywhere from general assembly to start and all the way through maintenance, engineering. We will have HR, the whole gamut there. Supervision, leadership, quality roles, and production engineering, all of the above. And at this point, the next question is probably, well, how many are we going

to source

here? Very good question. I think if you just look at it, I think it was 2,475. So 2,455 will be sourced here. So I can say that because I just met with our HR team and we're looking at about 20

You said 12 what?

We were looking at about 20 relocations of existing leaders coming from either plant side or headquarters side that would move and reside here.

Some of the new operations, not similar to yours because there's nothing here similar to yours, and thank you for coming, have some coordination with junior college. Doug, is that something that they would be looking

at? Certifications or?

That is a key part of this, actually. So there's a number of things that brought us here. Number one, we wanted to do we looked at a greenfield facility. And the timeline for a greenfield construction is just with the market that we participate in, specifically the drive in market, it is a cyclic market. And right now it's actually in a downturn.

Most people would think we were crazy, but it's the timing is perfect. If we went Greenfield, it was going to miss the upturn of the market. And so it was just poorly timed. So facility, finding a specific facility that met with our requirements was absolutely pertinent to this. So things like power, which you asked about, electricity was key. The length

of the building was key.

Column spacing was key. Very specific because most of these things are about 53 feet long and the associated parts are 53 feet long. So when you get into a 40 foot column spacing, it just kind of doesn't work. That was all key. But that only gets you a facility. So then it was really looking at workforce availability and, of course, being familiar with the work ethic of the people of Joliet and Will County having grown up here, salt of the earth, hard work ethic, perfect. Next piece is education. And very early on we were introduced to Joliet Junior College. And of course, I knew it from growing up. Didn't actually go there, but knew of it.

And they shared with us their vision, what it could look like, and they are fully engaged. So very big factor.

So as a to add a bit of humor to this, we have a mayor who is involved in a business that has a similar partial name to your operation with Anna.

I've heard that.

And that dealership. And he was giving Cesar and I a hard time that you're only here because of him. When he got quizzed a little higher, he's

just got nothing to do with But

more than happy to have you, and he couldn't be here today.

But Very good. Very

good. Thank thank you again for for coming to Joe Ned. And we get a motion to move this on to the full council?

Sure. Yeah. You make a motion for item ninety four ninety six to move on to the vote council with our recommendation of approval.

I second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. So move. Thank you. All right. Thank you. So next, we're going move to new or rural business, not for final action. Anything anything you wanna add?

Well, I'd like to invite everybody to come to

a meeting tomorrow,

but No. I

have nothing to add.

You came in with some humor today.

Alright. Any public comment? Seeing none. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Lead adjourned. Thank you.

Thank you.