Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

At the end of the project, if you have some money, we could do something.

Stream test for June 8th.

to special call meeting of June 8th, 2026. I called a special call meeting to order. Excuse me. And for today's meeting, we have two important items to cover. One, the Nomeco Park improvement updates, and two, Athens Drive library site options. At this time, Ben, I think you had some comments you want to make before we get started.

Thank you, Chairman. Yeah, just a few notes for today. First of all, thanks everybody for coming. We really appreciate everybody's interest in today's topics. We're going to start with a briefing on Nemeco Park. I just want to acknowledge that none of you are here to hear about Nemeco Park. But we're about to get underway with some really cool improvements out at what used to be called Five County Stadium. And we wanted the commissioners to know that. It was already on the agenda for today's work session. So we're going to take 30 minutes on that. Staff have been told we're going to move quickly, and the commissioners have talked about that. So as soon as that wraps up, we'll turn to the Athens Drive discussion. Before we start Part 2 at 2.30, we'll take a break. And then we'll come back at 2.30 and we'll start the Wake Med topic. A few ground rules that the commissioners always follow for work sessions. At work sessions, there is no public comment period. You are welcome to come next Monday at the regular meeting and sign up for public comment. We do have a ground rule that if you're going to be in the room, you need to have a seat. We're all good to go there. And as we have more people come, we'll send them to overflow in the overflow room. The audience can hear everything and can see the slide deck. So with that, that's all I had. If you need to step out and use the restroom, go back toward the elevators, but hang a right and go down the hall and you'll see them. And with that chair, I'll turn it back over to you.

Thank you so much, Ben. So with that being said, I think we got Eric and Ryan. If you guys are ready to go forward, then begin.

We are ready. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Miles, Commissioners. Thank you for your time today. We're very excited to be here today to discuss with you the planned improvements at the upcoming projects at Nemeco Park, which, of course, as you know, is the old five-county stadium. My name is Eric Staley. I'm a senior project manager with Facilities Design and Construction, helping lead this effort with our team. With me today is also Ryan McCray, who's the lead architect with LS3P Architects, and Caleb Whitmore, who's the general manager of the Devildogs. So today we're gonna provide a beef background review, walk through some of the completed and planned projects that we have, and then we'll wrap it up with some next steps and a timeline. So just to give you a little bit of a background, as you can see, this stadium had a long history, and a lot has happened over the years, and especially in the last year. This started back with the Mudcats back in 1991. And then after over 30 years in 2024, the Mudcats announced that they were moving to Wilson. Emily helped lead the effort of getting a new sports team operator for the stadium, which was memorialized in a lease with Capital Broadcasting Company just last fall. and then subsequently assigned to Zebulon Stadium, LLC. Since the lease started, the team has moved very quickly in preparation of the 2026 season. In February, the new team name was revealed, the Zebulon Devil Dogs. Moving into this timeline, we also went through an RFQ process to hire a design team to work with us on these improvements, and that's LS3P. Just a few weeks ago, there was a ribbon-cutting ceremony for reopening the stadium to the community and introducing the new stadium name, Nomeco Park. I know some of you participated in that event to help celebrate the new beginning for that stadium. And following on the next day, the team had a successful opening day to start their season. As part of the lease, there were key capital improvement projects identified, some of which would be managed by CBC and some of which would be managed by the county and town team. While CBC had a lot of work to set up their own operations, they've worked at lightning speed on completing some of these projects and getting ready for the season. They removed the old grass field and installed a new synthetic turf field. This will make the field usable year round with minimal maintenance. This project also included some grading and storm drainage improvements. uh they also upfitted and improved a few of the concession areas as well as improving some signage throughout the stadium next on their list is to work on the stadium lighting improvements and a bleacher seating removal the bleacher removals in preparation for the other improvement projects that the county and town are managing which you see here listed on the right side of this slide We're gonna get into some details about these projects, and Ryan's gonna go ahead and do that, but I do wanna highlight a couple of big points that I'd like to make. First, the designs for these projects were developed collaboratively with our whole team. That included CBC, the Devil Dogs team, the Town of Zebulon, Wake County, and the LS3P team. And second, while some improvements are required for team support and operations, we have taken an approach on each of these elements that included a focused effort on some specific priorities. How do we continue to think through these projects to improve the fan experience at the stadium? What was the benefit to the community? And what additional events can be accommodated at the stadium? So at this time, I'm gonna turn it over to Ryan, who's gonna get into some of the details about the projects.

Thanks, Eric. This is really just a visual representation of what Eric just went over. This is the existing stadium. This is some of the work that CBC has completed and will continue to complete, which is the new field, which is out there today, as well as you can see the kind of blank areas on either side of first and third base. Those are existing bleachers. We don't need that capacity anymore. We're going to remove those to make room for some new fan experience program elements. So this gives a little bit better of a breakdown of the work that we're performing in this design phase. So the highlighted areas are really where we're focusing our effort. Because we have a finite amount of money, we want to make sure that we're focusing all of our time and effort on improving the fan experience. With the exception of the team spaces, which are kind of almost there. Turquoise on my screen, but maybe a little darker up here. Just along the outfield wall there. Those are the existing team locker rooms and away locker rooms. And we're doing some light touch improvement in there to make it usable both for Zebulon Devil Dogs, but also Wake Tech's baseball and softball teams. But again, we'll go into each of these areas in more depth, but just an overview of what work is happening. The one thing that's not shown on here is some of the work that we're going to be doing throughout the stadium and in the concourse with some graphic elements that'll help to enliven the general identity of the stadium. We'll look at that in a moment. Starting with the entry plaza, again, two things that we want to do here is reposition the entry, the main entry, I should say, to the stadium on the third base side. Currently, the way that the facility was designed in 1991, the home base entry, like most stadiums are, was designed to be the main entrance. We're going to now renegotiate that to the third base. create a more grand plaza space that will allow for Zebulon or the county to have community events, could be markets or different events out there as well. So multi-purpose space as well as enlivening that entry experience. the other side of that as you enter you'll see there's we're designing a lawn space where the original bleachers were so that's going to be fan space to watch the game just a new amenity for the park that doesn't exist today as well as you can see on on the right side here a new play space for um for obviously children, families to use during the games, but also will be secured in off hours so that folks can use this space when there aren't events at the stadium. So it's a civic element that we're offering back to the town in general community. On first base, again, that space that was taken by the bleachers, we're recapturing as potential picnic area with some shading so that that can be usable for more fan spaces as well. The Sky Lounge, for those of you who are familiar, used to be called Cat Tales. It had a restaurant upstairs. This is the larger space on the first base side. We're going to be renovating the entire space. It's pretty dated for those who have been up there recently. And removing the commercial kitchen that's there and just limiting it to a small bar area and opening this up for more flexible seating for games, outside of game events. It could be used for... different community events as well. And just a quick, some sketch views of what that will look like. We're obviously still in design, but making sure that we're updating finishes to something from this decade and finishes that are low maintenance and durable. Excuse me. Signage wayfinding, something I mentioned previously, but this is really spread throughout the park, along the concourse as well. We have, you know, we all know as folks who go to these events that the experience of going to a game doesn't start when you get to the stadium, it starts when you get in your car. And so some of the signage and wayfinding as you find yourself around the site and the way you get to the park is an important aspect of this project. So including some of that to help create a unified identity for the park and the general area. Along with that, like I mentioned, are some of the branding and graphic elements that we're going to include in this project. Excuse the color for the moment. That's just a placeholder. We're not sure yet what the color will be. But targeting specific areas of the existing building to highlight, to give it a pop of color. We really want to make sure that once this work is completed, folks don't come here and go, oh, this is the old Mudcat Stadium. No, this is a brand new space, has a completely different identity and a refreshed feeling when you walk in.

Thank you.

Again, I'll run through these quickly. These are very, very light touch areas for the team spaces. But one thing I'll mention here for the front offices, this is the building that you see in that front plaza space when you walk in. Because we're repositioning that to the new main entrance, we're also going to reposition the ticket booth to this space. So there's an existing open office area. There's the plan south here where we're going to inject some more program and namely the ticket booth. So that's more co-located with this new entry. And then the locker room space is again, very, very light touch. We're just doing some quick renovation to make it work better for the teams that are gonna be there today. Talking quickly about budget. So the projects that Eric mentioned between CBC and Wake County, the top number there is really the scope that we just went through, which is about $4.6 million is what the budget is for the moment. Is the budget, sorry, I should say. CBC projects have budgeted about $4 million. So all together with the new field, the light improvements, the demolition, and the work that we just reviewed, that total budget is about $8.6 million. And just an important point, for this scope, all of our priority is around fan amenity areas. That's always going to be the case regardless of where we end up with how the design budgets out. And then just a quick look at schedule. So we are in design currently. The plan is to bid this out this fall and begin construction into the winter at the end of the year. Just with how Wake Tech is now going to be occupying the stadium this fall into next spring. And so the goal is to have the majority of this work done before the Zebulon Devil Dogs 27 season starts in May of 27. However, there's probably going to be a few things that we'll be doing along the way just to phase it out. But by and large, we'll be complete with this work ahead of May 2027. I think that's it, Caleb. I'll turn it over to you just to .

Hi everyone. I've met a few of you, but just want to introduce myself. I'm Caleb Whittemore. I'm the general manager of the new team. We are absolutely thrilled to be here. It's been a pretty incredible first few months, mostly due to y'all's support. So really appreciate that. And just kind of as an open invitation, if any of you guys want to come out and check out the stadium and kind of see what we're doing, please feel free to reach out. I'd love to give you a tour and show you what's going on over there. So thank you guys. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Yeah, happy to take any questions at this point. Okay, thank you. Commissioners, are there any questions? Commissioner Stallings.

Really just a comment. I have not had a chance to get out yet, so I'm definitely looking forward to that. Just thank you for being so thoughtful, and thank you for thinking about the fans. Obviously the fan experience is so important in this work, so I really appreciate all the thoughtfulness that you're putting into this. I was curious about accessibility issues and maybe adults and children with special needs, if you could speak to maybe the fan experience for those populations.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. uh... always something we include in any design we do but uh... namely all mentioned that playground from the jump back to that this is kind of a rough sketch of where we are today so it's a little outdated but for example one thing we're including is rather than having a your typical eighty ramp uh... off to the side that nobody wants to have to design in there we're including in this kind of landscape element a natural ramp uh... that will feel integrated with the design it won't feel like it's off to the side or has railing on it it's it's more um embedded into the design to make sure that those that the kids with special needs or accommodations that need that ramp will will not feel like they're you know separate from the rest of the kids yes uh commissioner addison

First, I want to thank you for coming in with this. This is very exciting. And I did have an opportunity to come out for the ribbon cutting. I haven't been out for a game yet, but I'm coming. And the stadium already looks like a new place. It didn't look... like what we saw before and the field looks fabulous. And I'm getting really good reports of the fan experience out there. So thank you for all you're doing. And it's nice to have that amenity in the East.

Thank you. Yes, Vice Chair.

Thank you for presenting this. This is exciting. I was able to be there with fellow commissioners for the kickoff. It was really fun to walk the fresh turf and I look forward to these future enhancements. Particularly the playground. I really appreciate that particular fan experience for the the real little littles And thank you for inviting us to get a tour as these things are going on just for those that are listening today Can you just remind them about how to find? What the cost is and and how that's accessible and how to find you all in the series? I know you all are playing the salamanders this week. So I

I will be there. Local matchup for sure coming up. Yes. ZebulonDevilDogs.com is the easiest place to start. That's dogs spelled with a Z. We're also there Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, and it's got all of our contact information on there, so pricing and everything listed there. Love to welcome some more folks from around the county.

Yes. Thank you so much for what you all are doing. Appreciate it.

Any other comments or questions? Not seeing any, I'll just go ahead and close out then. I, along with Commissioner Adamson and Jackson, I think all three was there for the ribbon cutting, and it was awesome. I think the main thing that I got out of everything, even though the stadium is beautiful, I love the impact that you guys have with the kids out there. I mean, that was just awesome in terms of their involvement, and I mean, you could tell that they're ready for this. So thank you guys so much. Okay, that concludes the presentation. Again, thank you, Eric and Ryan, for your presentation and commissioning the floor we've discussed. So now there's no need to vote on this item, so we will transition to our second presentation. We will proceed to the second and final agenda item, Athens Drive Library site options. At this time, I'd like to welcome Ashley Jacobs to the podium for this presentation. She just stepped away. Okay. Went by a lot quicker than she anticipated. Well, we'll start as soon as Ashley comes back in. I know we went a little quick on that first item, so we'll give her a few minutes to come back. Okay, thank you, Ashley. The floor is yours.

Good afternoon commissioners at your March 9th work session. You heard a lot of information about potential sites for the new Athens drive library. You learned about the site selection process that staff went through, uh, to evaluate around 115 sites and how that list was narrowed down to two sites, welfare garden and try on road at the yeah. How's that? That better? Okay, thank you. At the conclusion of that presentation, the board directed staff to proceed with engaging the property owners for well-fed garden and negotiating a purchase price. Staff proceeded as directed, and so in today's presentation, we have an update for you on that negotiation, as well as some new information about public transit serving the Tryon Roadside. I will briefly refresh your memory on our site selection criteria, share the new information, and at the end, I will ask the board to provide staff with direction on how you would like to proceed and what you would like to have on the June 15th agenda. So you may remember that our goal is to have everyone in Wake County live within a 10 minute drive time of a library. So the blue area you see is a 10 minute drive time around the Tryon Road site. The purple outlined area is a 10 minute drive time around the Wellfed Garden site. Anytime we look for our library site, we like to look for 45 acres. That's typical for a community branch. We prefer seven to eight acres for future expansion. We look for appropriate zoning, good transportation access, good visibility from the road, and we prefer to own the land and the building. Some of the other criteria we look at are safe accessibility to the site, neighborhood walkability, access to marginalized populations, zoning compatibility, adequate acreage, site character, utility infrastructure access, acquisition cost, development cost, and availability. So these were the two best options. Again, Well-Fed Garden, which is represented by E, and the Tryon Road site, which is represented by the G on this map. You will remember that Well-Fed Garden is across the street from the current library location. It is a very tight site. It is only 2.6 acres, which will be very difficult and expensive to develop. We will likely need to build a two-story library, and it is not expandable in the future. We also must maintain driveway access to the rear adjacent property, which is not for sale. At the time when we considered the site, the asking price was 1.8 million. Some new information for you. The owner and the county conducted appraisals and came to an agreement about the purchase price, which is 1.586 million. Both the property owner and the county have signed a letter of intent. As a refresher on Tryon Road, this is 12 acres. It is surplus school system property. It can easily accommodate future expansion for other uses such as affordable housing. It's close to Swift Creek Elementary School, and it is within the town of Cary's jurisdiction. In terms of acquisition, that has not been determined, but it is probably a land swap with the school system. Some new information for you. The GO Triangle Board has recently approved a realignment of bus route 305 that will be effective August 2nd. That's a route that will run hourly from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sundays. Now, that does not create a new bus stop at the Triangle Road site. The nearest bus stop to that site is on Go Carry Route 1. It's about a third of a mile away. And the nearest stop on the Go Triangle Route 305 is about two thirds of a mile away. And I'm going to show you some maps that will give you a better idea of where 305 route, the bus route 305 will go. So this black line shows you the current route 305, and then the green line is the proposed route. You see an inset map there. Here is a larger version of that. Each white circle or nodule you see on the green line, that is a bus stop. So you can see that there are some bus stops along Avent Ferry Road in the close to the Athens Drive community. But again, there is not a bus stop at the Triumph Road site. This is a different look at the bus stops. You'll see that blue line. That is the Go Carry 1 crossroads route. And then the red line is the Go Triangle 305 route. And again, the white circles or nodules you'll see, those are the bus stops. We do have communication from GoTriangle that they would consider a bus stop at this site if a library were placed there. We also have communication last fall from GoRaleigh that they would also consider a bus stop at that site. Both organizations are in the process of updating their plans, which my understanding is would be sometime in 2027. Of course, you don't need a bus stop right now because it will take us two, two and a half years to complete the construction of a library there. But at this moment, there are no plans for a bus stop there at the Triumvirate site. Some additional information about the Tryon Road site. The school system purchased the site in 2019. They conducted due diligence studies, including preliminary geotech and phase one environmental, and they did not uncover anything that would prohibit construction at the site. Also, the town of Keary annexed the site and approved rezoning in 2022. As a reminder, these are our demographics. This is for the 10-minute drive time around the two sites. And then that middle column, of course, shows Wake County as a whole. And then you see the Tryon Road and Wellfed Garden numbers. The two are pretty similar in terms of median household income, socioeconomic status, diversity index. and a little bit of a difference with total population enrolled in college and grad school. This was in your previous presentation, but just as a refresher, this is information about active cardholders within the Athens Drive Library within a 10 minute drive time of that region. You'll see that 34% of the cardholders use Cary as their primary library. This is based on library card activity. 29% use Oberlin, 12% go to another library, 11% go through Athens Drive, 4% to Eva Perry, and then you'll see a number of other libraries that they use as a primary library. In the March presentation, we heard a question about Title I schools and their proximity to the sites. This is information that came from the school system. So you'll see on the left, Welford Garden, the distance to Title I schools, and the same on the right with Tryon Road. And you can see there's not a lot of difference there. There's a map here to show you, give you kind of a visual. The Title I schools are highlighted in yellow. And if you can see the red squares, those are the two library sites. Any question about that? Yes. Yes.

Where is Athens drop high school on that map?

You can see the, there's a yellow square kind of behind the red square. Do you see that?

Yeah, that's where it is. Okay. Thank you.

Are there any other questions?

Okay, so at this time, we'll have discussion, and again, our staff is looking for direction from the board on how you would like to proceed and what you would like to have on the June 15th agenda.

Thank you, Ashley. Okay, open for discussion, Commissioner Anderson.

Yes, I feel like this is a topic that we've thoroughly discussed several times. And it's a tough decision. There's a lot of issues to look at. But I think for me, it comes down to two main things. criteria one work county system we're not a city system we have to look at the county as a whole and over the last few years we've had some libraries that have just been too small for our usage You know, we had the Green Road Library, which predominantly supports an immigrant community, come to us that their library was too small. It just didn't meet their needs any longer. And had the property not been large enough to expand it, we would have not been able to meet that need. And also with the Southeast Raleigh Library, it had been there for years and been too small for a really long time. But because it was the least space and there was nowhere to expand it, we weren't able to meet that need. Now we have two buildings where we should be able to meet that need for the foreseeable future. So I am going to support the Tryon Road site because I feel like it's expandable, and when it no longer meets the need, whatever commission is in power at that point will have the ability to expand it to meet the needs of the community. And I really like the fact that it's close to so many elementary schools that... that it will help with early literacy. And I know when I visit our libraries, there's always a bunch of kids there and that's really good to see. So I like the fact that that site is so close to so many elementary schools. And I know this year, The school system had to cut, as part of their cost-saving measures, they had to cut early literacy coaches for elementary schools. So I think this library will provide the support for those Title I elementary schools for early literacy, and I'm excited about that.

Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Hasson. Commissioner Waters?

Thank you, Ashley, for bringing some additional information. I wonder if you could go to the slide that outlines the bus service. I still don't know if I understand that one or the previous. If someone were at the current location for the Athens Drive Library on the campus or at the well-fed garden proposed location, how would they take a bus from that site to try on and how many routes would be involved and how close would they ultimately get based upon what is currently

in place thank you that's a great question so i'll start with this map that shows the updated revised route 305 so you'll see those bus stops along avent ferry road those would be the closest to the athens drive community they would take 305 down to to the tryon road to down Trailwood Drive to Tryon Road. And then you'll have to look at this map. Do you see where Tryon Road and Dillard Drive come together? You'll see that nodule there kind of between where it says Tryon Road and Avent Ferry Road. That would be the closest stop from that bus route.

And just for clarification, how close is that? It's two-thirds of a mile. Two-thirds of a mile where they would get off? Yes. And would have to then walk two-thirds of a mile to get there. Okay, that's helpful to know. But is, and again, seeking clarity on this map. So on the Avent Ferry portion of the route, is there... Are those stops along the current perimeter or approximate to the library itself? So where it currently, where it currently is there.

Well, as you see, they're along Avent Ferry road. So they, they are not along the roads where, where the library is currently. So you'd have to walk to Avent Ferry road to take the bus.

Okay. Okay. So, so none. Okay. Um, and then I wondered if you could, um, go back to, um, the slide that, um, lists out the demographics, um, And yes, and I know one of the major metrics that you have looked at when trying to determine the location is the 10 minute drive time. And based on, this chart, moving the library would reduce the number of residents within that 10 mile drive time by about 25,000. Am I reading that correctly?

Yes.

So it would be moving to a larger location but serving fewer within that 10 minute drive time. There would be fewer within the 10 minute drive time. Which is the main metric that you look at in terms of identifying where to place a library. That for me is a big... concern and I have spent a good portion of my tenure on this board with libraries being at the top of the space of advocacy and I love that people feel so passionate about the library system and I appreciate Commissioner Adamson lifting up Green Road and the Southgate Library. But I just remember just how much advocacy went into getting those libraries on the list. They were probably the last two on the list, even though those space issues were indicated as a real place of advocacy for our neighbors who wanted to see expansion there. So I just, seeing a loss of 25,000 people in the 10 minute drive time is huge for me. And just having gone into both neighborhoods multiple times just to kind of get a feel in a sense for who lives in those neighborhoods. I just see a real difference in access and resources in those communities. So for me, it's about access and resources. And so that's why I feel strongly about the well-fed garden and looking at that number of individuals that would be ultimately served. still processing information, but I certainly wouldn't want to see fewer people served.

Thank you, Commissioner Waters. And before we move on, I think Mayor Janet Cowell was here. Is she sitting right here? I'm here. Okay. I want to make sure we acknowledge you there. Thank you for being here with us today. And next up, then we have Commissioner Evans and then Commissioner Jackson.

Okay. I'm going to try to share a lot of different thoughts that have been swimming around in my head over the last few weeks. And I hope that there'll be clarity around this. But first of all, I want to acknowledge that we've been looking at potential sites for this library really for the better part of three years. Even before we passed the bond, we had to make decisions about, along with the school district, that the library would not be feasible to any longer stay in the high school itself as they're facing a renovation with all of that. So that's really when the conversations began. And I know that our staff put forth a lot of due diligence in trying to find an appropriate site that was within the same vicinity of the existing library. And we certainly appreciate all the advocacy that we've received from that community that lives close to the current library. And I don't want anybody to think anything that I'm going to say is dismissive of that. It is not. I just feel like we looked at a lot of sites. I would have loved to have been able to find a large appropriate site in that area. And I know we looked at the Jaguar Park Drive piece of property that the city owns. We even met with Congressman Deborah Ross and her staff to try to understand what would have to take place to release the conservation easements that are attached to that property. was going to be pretty insurmountable, certainly in the amount of time that we would need. work together with the school system staff to find out if there were any adjacent pieces of properties combined with any spare property on the high school site that we could put together that would work. And we got the report out at the March 9th work session that none of those seemed to work. And so now we're back to these two sites that we've been considering off and on for a while. And I think there's pros and cons to both of them. You know, I think for me, I wanna say that both of these sites are in my district and I am focused on how we serve the entire region that is Southwest Raleigh, Swift Creek, unincorporated area going down towards Lake Wheeler, all of that needs to be served by this library as effectively as possible. And we've got to plan for the years to come And while, yes, it is a replacement for the Athens Drive Library, for me it has to be decided upon what is gonna best serve that whole area. And so, you know, obviously the pros for the well-fed garden site is that it is in the existing community, it has walkability, it's close to the high school. but it's not optimum size for what we'd like to see and it doesn't allow us any ability for future expansion of the library, as Commissioner Adamson has already highlighted, and that causes me some concern. It hadn't been talked about today, but in other conversations we've had with staff, my understanding is that building a two-story library square foot per square foot is more expensive. There's more steel involved. There's more support involved. So we would get less space for more money. I have some concerns about, I know there's a lot of attractiveness to a neighborhood library in terms of the walkability and bikeability and that type of thing, but it's, I'm a little concerned about a library sitting in and amongst several houses. I think that's a bit odd. I would hope that we're gonna have a lot more traffic around this new library. I know that circulation has been more limited when the library was in the high school, partly because it had reduced hours. But I've had people tell me they didn't feel comfortable going to the high school for a library. So I'm hoping we're going to see a lot more people using this library when it opens, regardless of where it's located. And so I have to think about what a lot of traffic coming in and out, you know, seven days a week is going to mean for those residents that live all around the library. I don't think that's a perfect situation. But I do understand that the existing community feels very strongly about warning this there. But as far as the other site that we're considering, I do want to say that I think that it has a lot to offer. It is a larger site, it is a flat site, it's easy to develop, we can do a single story library, we have room to expand. It's a highly visible site. Now, granted, maybe it's not as walkable or bikeable, but it's a highly visible site and I imagine would get quite a lot of use. I do want to speak a little more extensively to the public transportation piece because that has always been extremely important to me. If we were going to consider this Yates Mill Tryon Road site, I would not consider it unless I was pretty confident we'd be able to get public transportation to that site from neighborhoods close to the existing library. As the person who works in transit and transportation for this board, I've been asking these questions of our partners for quite some time and as recently as last August, I began a conversation with folks with the city of Raleigh, basically just starting with, Is it conceivable that the City of Raleigh would ever run one of their buses into the edge of Cary or is that a definite look? They said absolutely not, that is not a definite no. And in fact, we cross over municipal boundaries at various places and was told and I shared some emails with Ashley this morning that summarize this, that they are already themselves looking at, there's a lot of interest from that Southwest Raleigh community between Western Boulevard and Tryon Road in getting to the Crossroads shopping area. So on a Raleigh, go Raleigh route, they're considering that and then whether or not they could come right over and loop this site in, they would consider that a high priority if we ended up locating a library there. similarly with the go triangle route i just wanted to say i asked ashley to put that on the meeting today because when i was in a meeting in april with the go triangle board and found out that they were looking at completely realigning this route which had previously not run along that area at all it is a route that goes from holly springs to apex to carry and then to downtown Raleigh, but it previously traveled along Jones, Franklin, and Western Boulevard to downtown. Based on requests from NC State to have that route serve the Centennial Campus, and they looked at the various routes and the ridership they were getting, they have made the decision, and they proposed to the Go Triangle Board, and we approved it in April. that starting in August there would be that different alignment which has it coming from downtown Raleigh into Centennial Campus along Avent Ferry Road for a time and then back out to Gorman and then to Tryon and it travels on down to Cary. Now the way they have it positioned at the moment is that it will turn off of Tryon as Ashley said and go down Dillard Drive, pass the two Dillard Drive schools across in front of the school districts administration building And they're at Walnut Street to get people to the Crossroads area. And then it just comes back out on the other side, which is Piney Plains as an extension of Dillard. But... As has been mentioned, the GoTriangle folks told me the same thing that if we, they would very much agree that having public transportation to a new library site would be a very high priority and they are willing to look at that if and when we were to choose this site. So one of the things that's getting ready to happen in the upcoming year is a bus, review bus plan review and that will be done as part of the wake transit plan and that includes all all the providers in the wake transit area the go raleigh route to go carry routes and the go triangle regional routes they'll be looking at ridership they'll be looking at new building density and all those things and making decisions about where future bus service expansion needs to happen. And we have members of our staff that sit on the Transit Planning Advisory Committee, otherwise known as TPAC. And if we make them aware that this would be a high priority site, you know there would be a lot of synergy around that so i just wanted to add that i would never support a site for a library that i didn't think could have public transit and public transit that served the southwest raleigh areas that are currently served so i feel confident that that is something that we can make happen if we were to choose this site so i wanted to have a chance to explain that. Also, certainly understand your points that Commissioner Waters made about the amount of population in the different areas. But I would say even in the areas that are a little more towards this western edge, there's a lot of building going on. There's a lot of town homes and apartments being built on Dillard Drive and Piney Plains. There's a bunch that are planned on Macedonia Road, which is right there. So there will be more density in this area that's closer to the Yates Mill site as well. So I think that is relevant. I just want to say that I know we've gotten a lot of pushback. We get a lot of emails from people saying this library needs to stay in Raleigh and not go to Cary. I just want to say, first of all, I'm not looking for a site to try to get Cary another library. This Yates Mill site is in the Swift Creek area. It was an unincorporated area for many years. Cary has just recently extended its boundaries so it could serve this site and the newly renovated Swift Creek Elementary School. But if I'm not mistaken, even right across the street on the other side of Tryon Road is either in Raleigh's jurisdiction or unincorporated area. It's so barely on the edge of Cary, that's just where it happens to be, but I want to be clear that I am not trying to find Cary another library. I'm trying to find a usable space that will serve the region that we're looking at. If I could pick this piece of property up and move it a mile to the east so that it was in Raleigh, I'd be delighted to do so, but I don't have that option. I also want to say that we've begun in the last couple of months since the March 9th work session to hear from a number of residents in the other parts of the community in the Swift Creek areas and so there are other people that are identifying that the Yates Mill site is a very attractive site for the library. Now we've heard a lot from the folks that live right around Athens Drive and I absolutely understand their passion but there are other people that feel similarly passionate about the Yates Mill site, so that has been something I've been considering as well. I do feel like in the long run, it's very important for us to plan in a way that allows for growth and allows for us to reach as many of our residents as possible with access to a library. I don't think either of these sites is perfect and I certainly acknowledge the messiness with having instructed the staff to negotiate with the Gordons and the fact that we have a letter of intent with them and I think that that is messy to say the least but in the end you know direction given at a work session was not a vote so we had not taken a vote on where we wanted to land on these properties but we were trying to figure it out and i have just been soul searching over the last two months really since that last work session and i i am uh leaning more towards the pragmatic reasons for the try on Yates Mill site, but those are just all of my thoughts at the moment.

Thank you, Commissioner Evans. Commissioner Jackson?

Yes. Thank you. I just have a few questions at this point. Certainly have thoughts and appreciate fellow commissioners sharing their thoughts and where they're leaning. At this point, I just have a couple questions based on what I'm hearing today. Can you go to the slide with the Title I schools proximity? Okay. What do we know about... the amount of students that use libraries? Like, do we have a metric on that? I don't have that information. Okay, so we, maybe rightly or so, we look at these proximities with the assumption that students are gonna go to their closest library, but we don't have any metrics to indicate that. Okay, can you go, thank you, go back one slide. looking at these numbers can you give me a sense of let's say well first I want to acknowledge Athens for it to have limited hours and constricted you know constraints being in a high school that it is still drawing a high number of folks relative to other libraries there such that they're bolded next to Oberlin and Cary regional but can you give me a sense of capacity So like those 2,900 at Oberlin or 3,500 at Cary, those aren't, like what's the capacity, if you will, or do we feel like those are libraries that can't sustain growth and more patrons?

so i think that both both oberlin and curie can are they're they're perfectly capable of serving this population there's no con there's no concern about that but i agree with you that i think athens drive when the new library is built i think that this number will increase because i think it will be more appealing it will be just a better facility and so i think that it will be you'll see a higher percentage of activity there. But in terms of, I'm not totally sure that I understand your question, but as I'm understanding it, Oberlin and Cary can serve this population. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. So we're not at threat of like us growing so large that, you know, these libraries are over overrun or full up. But I got that. Thank you. Before we leave this slide, I just want to point out that I think it's really cool that a community library, an intimate library, is drawing numbers that is that large because spectrum is important and small community intimate libraries, quaint ones, are just as important as regional ones. So that's good to see. Can you go to... It's like the second one. Well, yes, after the cover slide. Showing the 10 minute drive. Yes, this one 10 minute drive time. Thank you. So when I look at this, I see around pretty much the blue or the purple. There's Eva Perry regional to the left going up around clockwise is Carrie regional going around is Oberlin regional. Coming on down, you know a little bit further out as southeast regional And I know we there's you know regional down south below the blue. That's not represented here. I Guess I just want to point out that there is something to be said about a community library sitting in the middle of the regional libraries and presenting all of those residents with the option of having a quaint community library experience as well as the choice of a regional library I Think I asked my question on the last one and because the growth in that area is mean because I want to acknowledge that we should be thinking about growth in this county I mean it's here it's growing it is just so but I don't get the sense and Ashley tell me if this is you know I don't get the sense that the growth in this area is putting pressure on these other libraries such that this one has to be regional to account for that much more growth

So again, we always aim for expandability when we build new libraries because Wake County is growing so fast in all areas. So Commissioner Evans is correct that there's a lot of growth happening in that Tryon Road site area. So I would anticipate in the future that we would need or would like to have the ability to expand if it were located at that site. If it were located at that site. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's just the challenge of it all and the balance of it all because if we have regional libraries that we know at this point can sustain additional growth, to build now with the intention of growing means that we're really giving up a commitment to having a small intimate community library, which I think is very valuable. I mean, we have them across the county. But in these areas, I don't see many community libraries in the center there. So I think this just highlights the challenge of there being pros and cons at each site and really us giving direction based on not only what we're hearing from community or what we know about growth, but also where our values sit. I know other commissioners have an opportunity, may want to add, but I'd like an opportunity to share a little bit more later as well.

Thank you, Commissioner Jackson. Commissioner Stallings?

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all to my colleagues for your very thoughtful comments and agreed this is a really difficult decision. There are a lot of pros and cons for each site, and thank you, Ashley, for all the work that you and staff have done. And I want to thank the community, those of you all are here and in the overflow room, those who couldn't be here today but have sent many emails to me. advocating for the community library to stay in the athens drive community a couple of questions ashley you mentioned in the slides that if the welfare garden site is chosen it would be expensive to build would it be beyond the budget that's allocated for the library bond no we can accommodate whatever's needed okay that site yes and tell me more about what a land swap might look like

I'll speak to that. Deputy County Manager Emily Lucas will address that.

Thank you, Commissioner Stallings. Thank you for your question. So last, I think it was last fall when we had a joint Board of Education, Board of Commissioners meeting, we both identified that we have pieces of property that are not necessarily suitable for either for us, for future government purposes, including affordable housing, and they have sites that they do not foresee needing to use for educational purposes. So we are doing an evaluation of some sites that we have that may be suitable to give them for future school purposes in exchange for some properties that they may have, including Tryon Road that could be used for government sites. We have the Tryon Road site, in addition to a potential library, could also be suitable for a county office space. It could be suitable for affordable housing. It could be suitable for a combination of a library and affordable housing. So those are some things. And we have some other properties on the list that our affordable housing department is looking at as well. We expect to have a proposed list to you early this fall.

And tell me more, Ashley, or others on staff, what do we know about Title I schools, how they're defined, and tell me about the student population that we know in terms of those students who may live close geographically versus maybe being transported to and from these schools.

I apologize, Commissioner Stallings, I do not have that information.

Is there anyone on staff that would have that information?

If you could, can you tell me again what you're looking for and we can get you that information?

Right, I'm just trying to understand more about Title I schools and the students who go to Title I schools and what do we know about the number of students who live close to these Title I schools versus those who are transported to and from Title I schools? And so, yeah, getting some information about that would be helpful. And I don't think, maybe Ashley, you spoke as much about the environmental considerations on the Tryon Road site. I know I've heard it sounds like it's very possible to put a library there. There's been some discussion about possibly affordable housing. It backs up to the Swift Creek Watershed, as I understand. What kind of environmental impacts do we need to be considered for that site?

I'll try to answer that. We have requested the phase one studies that the school system had. We have not received those yet. From what I observed in the evaluation of the site, the agenda item that requested consideration by the board to allow the school system to purchase that property in 2019, the indication was that there was not anything There were no factors on that study that limited the ability to put a school there. Certainly, if it's not limited to put a school there, there shouldn't be any limits to put a library there. The site is relatively level. Some infrastructure has already been put in to widen Yates Mill Pond Road. I can't think of anything else that would preclude the ability to put a library there. But as I said, we're still awaiting the information from the school system so that we can review it ourselves.

And there would also not be any information that you had that would preclude putting affordable housing on the property as well?

Correct. Thank you. You're right, though. It is in a watershed, and so there are some considerations for that, but there are also some factors that were evaluated in the rezoning of the property that looked at what threshold in terms of what they call impervious surface area as a percentage of that versus the whole site, and what was allowed for that did not seem to be anything that would limit us from putting a library there and the required parking.

Do you have any other question, Commissioner Stone?

So I'm gonna try to answer your question as best as I can, and thanks to the World Wide Web. So Title I is a federally funded program that is one component of Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. The Wake County Public School System Title I Department provides financial assistance and program support.

Oh.

How's this? All right, Title I is a federally funded program that is one component of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. The Wake County Public School System Title I Department provides financial assistance and program support to schools with high numbers of children from low-income families. All Title I eligible schools in Wake County Public School System operate under a school-wide model. Title I funds may be used along with other school funding sources to provide resources and instructional support to help all children meet challenging academic standards.

Yeah, thank you for that and World Wide Web. What I'm trying to get at is how many students are in the community, in the Athens Drive community, that would go to a Title I school versus those who might be transported from a further out distance. That's what I'm trying to ascertain.

Something like a Board of Ed, probably have the statistics. Okay, great, thank you. Commissioner Adamson.

How big is the Tryon Road site? How many acres is that? It's 12 acres. It's 12 acres. Okay. Thank you. And could you go back to the 10-minute drive slide? I think this makes sense why we're seeing so many folks kind of all over the place because the purple line is the well-fed garden 10-minute drop, correct? Because it goes all the way to Crabtree. And right on the other side of Crabtree is North Regional. And there's Oberlin there. right to the right. So I can see where those people sort of between the well-fed site and Crabtree, it would probably almost as easy to go to Oberlin as it would the well-fed site. And with the Cary Regional, which is to the left, is in the purple line of 10 minutes from Wellfed. So it would, those folks would have both choices. And if you look at the Tryon Road site, the people in the bottom on the right don't have any other option except Tryon Road. There's Eva Perry, but it's just, it's for the left side, but those folks down there don't have a specific library. just an observation and wondered how large that site was. Thank you. Thank you.

Commissioner Waters.

Thank you, I wanted to speak anecdotally to Commissioner Stallings question. I don't have, of course, data on the specific schools that you're speaking of, but it is as a member of, former member of the school board representing neighborhoods in Southeast Raleigh, it is not uncommon for students from neighborhoods that are vulnerable to be assigned to schools that are not proximate to their homes. And one thing that I've often heard from families who are assigned to schools that are not proximate to their home is they don't feel connected to those communities. They go there for school and then they go back to their neighborhoods. And so while I don't have any direct data, I just wanted to speak to that anecdotally. And I wanted to ask a question just thinking about the slide that shows a well fed garden and the mapping there. I wondered if you could tell or share how much evaluation you have done in assessing what could be built there in terms of two story versus a one story. And I lift that up because I've had a number of people and I think this came up in our last work session, that have had ongoing questions about the amount of land that is actually needed for a library and lift up, which I know is a unique situation, the amount of space on the existing property and existing buildings that were purchased for the Southgate Library, which is less than three acres. But can you just speak to what, the actual evaluation processes look like to determine that it does need a two-story, or if there can be a one-story, or is this just a real preliminary look at the land?

Okay, I'll go from what you said last to what I, and kind of go backwards. Yes, it's a very preliminary look at the property. You asked about Southgate versus this. On Southgate, for one thing, we're not having to develop anything on that property. So there's site work that we're not going to have to do. There are very little if we do. The advantage of that, yes, that property is 2.4 acres, I think, as I recall. There's already parking there, and there's an opportunity for shared parking there, not just within the site, but also connected to it from the retail area. The big thing there is that... Properties in the city of Raleigh have to have stormwater management. That is, there's various ways to do that. Sometimes it's a stormwater pond, sometimes it's a dry basin, but you have to designate, you have to have a certain area that's taken up for that. And that's the challenge over here. If you see that blue area, that was the roughly estimated stormwater pond area just on a very broad introductory basis of the size that was required. For Southgate, that was already taken care of off the property because it was a shared stormwater pond. So that means that we didn't have to do that within the acreage that was designated for the purchase of the property. The property also has a total of 19,000 square feet of property 15,000 that's a that would be available to us right now Which is already more than we would be able to get over here so Those are some of the reasons why the Southgate property was advantageous to us as far as this know again we're our goal is 90 parking spaces we probably won't get 90 parking spaces maybe it'll be 75 but the point is is that that adds to the impervious surface area and so the more impervious surface area you add the more you've got to be able to manage that from a stormwater perspective the other thing um that we didn't mention is that property that's to the upper right there um that is a landlocked property so we have to maintain an easement driveway to get to that property that is somebody that was not a willing seller at the time so we have to maintain access to that property and right now it's just a gravel road but somehow we've got to be able to maintain that onto that property so as far as And that's 2.6 acres. It's also fairly steeply sloping off to the east side of the property where that pond is. So now, if you take the pond out of that, now you're limited even further to the amount of area you have to be able to develop the building. Would it go exactly where we're putting it? Not necessarily, because we haven't gotten any further than that. This was just a simple analysis of if you take an area designated, you make assumptions. So you make an assumption for a certain amount of parking, make an assumption for a footprint of a building, that's actually showing a 12,000 square foot footprint, and you can see most of it is taking up the property. Could we put a one-story building on there? I don't know. But more than likely, it's gonna be a two-story building, and again, it's not gonna be expandable to a regional.

And this image, is this depicting a two-story or one-story?

I believe it's depicting a one-story building. I can't see it from here, it's two stories.

Okay, but all of the assessments that you're speaking of have just been preliminary based upon what you typically see when you're doing a project, but no assessments. That's right.

I will also note that of all the libraries that we have in the system, there is only one library Two libraries that have less than three acres. That's Wendell, which we're relocating from, and that's Harrison Library. And Harrison Library only has 30 parking spaces, and we have no opportunity to be able to expand that in the future, nor do we have much of an opportunity to be able to expand that building in the future.

Thank you for that information, that overview. And I wanted to revisit the conversation on the bus routes. And I wondered, Ashley, did you have any information about the existing transportation that currently serves the well-fed garden site and how frequently those bus routes will run in comparison to how frequently the proposed bus changes on Route 305 look in comparison.

I'm not sure how they compare, but again, the realigned bus route 305 will run hourly from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sundays. And then you can see the site, the bus stops, again, those white circles on the green line.

I just wondered if you had any information about the route that would serve well-fed. I see all the try-on and proposed site, but I just wondered if you did any look at what bus routes serve the well-fed garden and how frequently those run and what impact or what comparison the two have to each other in terms of bringing in people from different parts of the community into the well-fed site, because I see what is proposed for the Tryon site, but just wondering if you had any information about the well-fed garden transportation site.

You're requesting information about bus routes that currently bring people from other areas around the county too? I don't have any information other than what is represented here.

Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Thomas.

Thank you. There's been lots of discussion about the future expansion and the opportunity to expand on one side. And we just heard about the limitations on the other side. And so I'm just wondering, what are the options for future expansion on the Tryon Road? I know I've heard some affordable housing. What are the other opportunities if we were expanding the library, but there's also an option for affordable housing? Are there any other options or opportunities?

I am not familiar with other projects that have been discussed for that site.

We haven't really discussed anything else for that at this point. We just know that if it's 12 acres that there's definitely an opportunity to be able to expand the library to a regional on a site like that.

And if that is the site that's chosen for the library, is there an opportunity to do both and? Is there an opportunity for a library and affordable housing, or must it be one or the other?

I would say that potentially it can be both, but we haven't studied it in detail and evaluated it versus what the the town of Cary's zoning codes allows us to do.

Thank you.

Commissioner Jackson.

Yes, just a follow-up question. Did you say a moment ago that if we were to go with a well-fed garden site that would leave three community libraries that weren't able to expand? Did I hear that right? In the future?

I need to think about that for a second. Well, we know we can't expand Harrison. Wendell is being relocated. Southgate's already going to be as large as a regional or nearly as large as a regional when its potential is fully capable of being implemented in the future. Some of the other ones, like Middle Creek Library, for example, that Middle Creek is somewhat landlocked down there, so that's probably not expandable. Wake Forest has been expanded. So Wake Forest was expanded from 5,000 to 11,000, I think, 10 or 11,000. It wouldn't be expandable to a regional. So that's another question. If you're talking about expanding, jumping up to a regional... that's a little bit more limiting. Fuquay-Varina is probably the smallest site that we would be able to expand to a regional on, but we have been able to organize that from the beginning so that we had the potential to be able to do that.

Okay. So maybe not a specific number, but what I'm hearing is that there would be a handful of community libraries that currently exist that we can account on them being community libraries in the future simply by default of being landlocked, a handful of them. Yes. Okay, and this being one of the handful. Okay, thank you. Oh, I'm sorry, I have a follow-up question. Regarding the land swap, to build on Commissioner Thomas' question, if we were to go with the well-fed site, does that preclude us from continuing to engage with the school board on the land swap to build affordable housing and other things that may be beneficial on that high-traffic corner?

I'll answer that for Emily, because I know the answer, too. It would not preclude that, and in fact, we are pursuing the Tryon Roadside anyway.

Oh, okay. Yes, because it has value and, okay, great.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Vice Chair. Any other discussion, any other comments, any other questions at this time? Okay, this is one, did you have some of this, Commissioner Waters, before?

Yes, and I just wondered if there was any information regarding the seller of Welfare Garden. I know there was some conversation about whether he was still interested in selling that property and the offer letter. Is there anything that you can speak to? Because I think part of that was revisiting that conversation and an appraisal going forward. I just wanted to acknowledge that part of the process.

to my knowledge the seller is still interested in selling property they're present here yes any uh any other comments or questions uh emily

Thank you. I can't remember who asked the question about the bus route that runs by Athens Drive or close to Athens Drive currently. That's Route 11L. And it looks like it currently runs about every 40 to 45 minutes. So just in comparison to the bus routes you were looking at. And they start at 7 a.m. on weekdays and run until about 10 p.m. And then on Saturdays, they run from 7.45 to about 10 p.m. Sundays are about the same.

Okay, Commissioner Edmonds.

Yes, I'm going to follow up on that comment and that is accurate and say that that is actually one of the routes that I was told by the City of Raleigh folks that they may consider moving in a stop into that crossroads area and so it's possible that that would be the route that could serve this library. So I don't want people to get locked in that this go triangle route was the only option. It was just something new that happened to just sort of fall in our laps. The city of Raleigh has interest in getting service to this general area, and all of that will be reviewed in terms of the bus plan. I'm not saying what will or will not definitively happen, but I just wanted to be clear that some of what will be looked at is what routes that currently serve this southwest Raleigh area might possibly come over and serve this site as well.

Thank you, Commissioner Evans. Commissioner Stallings?

Just one final comment is, and I think it's been alluded to, but from the last work session, we did direct staff to get an appraisal, encourage the owner to get an appraisal. Both of those things happened. The price has been negotiated down, and we do have a letter of intent. So I just think it's important just to acknowledge that in the thoughtfulness as we try to make this decision. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments? Not seeing any. Okay, we've come to that point, colleagues, wherein that we need to be able to give us a thumbs up, a thumbs down on the different sites. That way we can give our staff a direction in terms of which way they need to go in order to provide and bring this forth on our June 15th agenda. So I'm gonna go around the board and give me a thumbs up, a thumbs down. Commissioner Adamson on welfare.

Thumbs down on Welfed and thumbs up on Tryon Road.

Okay. Commissioner Waters?

Welfed.

Commissioner Evans? No, I'm coming back.

I'm a thumbs up on Tryon Road.

Okay.

Commissioner Stallings? I'm a thumbs up on Welfed and would like to see us advocate for affordable housing on the other property.

Commissioner Thomas.

I support welfare.

Commissioner Jackson.

I support welfare.

I also will agree that I think it's important, having talked with many people in the community and visited both sites, also is in agreement to go with welfare. So the direction for staff, that would be the item that we'd be looking to bring forward for our June 15th meeting is the welfare item. Manager, did you need anything else from us at this time?

I do not, thank you.

I have one question, go ahead.

I just want to acknowledge that in going in this direction that I believe that what we're doing is building a walkable accessible library for the residents of that community which we see there are quite a few that are using it now but I also want to highlight that we don't have to turn away from the possibility of try on road and what it can bring for broader strategic goals around affordable housing. So I was happy to hear that negotiations will continue to explore land swap options. And I look forward to what comes of that. And I do, excuse me, y'all. I do believe that this direction allows us to maximize the benefits of both A and B and a lot of what we've shared because Tryon Road still does hold possibility for other broader strategic plans. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Vice. Commissioner Anderson?

Yes, I just have a question. Will this be on the consent agenda or the regular agenda?

That's a decision that we can make now, which way I need to go.

I noticed it was on the regular agenda, but I don't know if it will stay there or you're planning to move it to consent.

Well, for me, I don't have a problem leaving it on regular.

Yes, because I'd like to vote no. So I prefer general. Okay.

Thank you. Yeah, everybody, we in agreement then be on a regular agenda and that be the item that we vote on it. That's fine. Okay, well, I think with that kind of sums it up. So commission, this concludes our discussion of items for today, the special call meeting. So thank you for your participation. There are no additional comments. I hereby declare this special call meeting adjourned. Thank you.