City Council - Regular Meeting

All right. Good morning, everybody. Let's call to order the May meeting of the Binghamton Local Development Corporation. You should have in front of you the minutes from the 23rd of April, 2026 regular meeting. Whenever anyone's ready, I'll take a motion.

Thank you, Frank.

Second. Thank you, Mr. Crone. Good to see you yesterday, by the way. Any changes, corrections? All in favor? Aye. All right, great. Rachel, please. Thanks.

So this is the, this is actually the April director's report, which is actually going to change the news. So we'll start on March 4 with the accepted account. And at the end of April restricted for $55,445.40. And we'll skip over to page six for the UDAG account. UDAG at the end of the month, they're $68,042.48. No new benefits in either of those accounts. Everyone's paying right along. and unrestricted, nothing major going on except for some good expenses to the Thought Scouts project. You can see there. The mudcat grant was received in the mayor's other initiatives account. Great. In the tribal account, no activity. In the grant account, no activity. So at the end of the month, He will see percent image of all loans not designated as not performing this point to buy.

Yeah.

Hey, any questions.

What other would we get rid of the Mr. Roy in the hope of $4,000.

And you get that you're serving with him.

Yeah, very open. That's the only one that's going. That's a great job, guys. As soon as DMR sends us a check, we'll be good.

I wouldn't wait up for that.

Don't go to prep. I know these people. Yeah, they're not having a bad life.

Would you like to go, Dennis?

I think Uncle Sam is in first position, right?

Oh, yeah. Should we bring him in for some conversation?

We've got good coffee. Thank you, Rachel.

I don't see any old business. We have an update on the Boscoff's project.

You want to pass on those right?

So I'm passing around the budget as of yesterday. We had LaChase put this together for us. I will need these back. Some of the numbers that are on here are things that are currently in procurement being competitively bid and negotiated. So I just want to make sure that we are keeping those numbers internal. But basically this shows what we have paid to date and what our budgets are based on. There should be like 14 of them. So don't let it be enough for all the members. Thank you. Biggest thing I'll draw your attention to is on the back at the very bottom there, you have the project cost, BOSGOV's direct cost, as well as the anticipated costs and a contingency, which puts us at about $9.8 million. If you remember, we have about $10 million here. There are $1.5 million that's kind of dedicated to BOSGOV's investment kind of a discretionary way, that's their cash that they're bringing to the table. So they have kind of the most control over what that scope of work is. You'll notice that that is significantly below 1.5. If we were to add that 1.2, it would be significantly over the 10 million. So as we've just discussed, we'll continue deciding what actually needs to be advanced under this $10 million project versus what can wait. Any questions on this? You guys have been seeing the emergency procurements that have come through over the last month. As I mentioned, we'll try to keep those to a minimum when we can.

Do you feel like Chase has done exactly what they said they were going to do?

Yes. Sam Pomerantz from LeChase has been excellent. Really has taken a lot of stress off of our office and just knows way more about structure management than I do. So I'm very, very helpful to have him.

That's a good thing. That's great.

Yeah, he's excellent. And the resolution today is to extend our engagement with LeChase.

Nothing would have been built there without their help.

That's great. They have an office here.

They do. The Chase? Yes. In the Remlin or Kilmer building.

That's wonderful.

They do a lot of municipal work. They do a great job.

All right.

Any questions?

If any come up, obviously, let me know.

You need to pass these back in?

You can keep them at the end of the meeting. Just leave them before you head out the door.

Okay. We have one item under new business. It's resolution 26-17, a resolution of the Binghamton Local Development Corporation authorizing the president to accept a one-year extension to the agreement with LeChase Construction Services, LLC, for consulting services related to the renovation of 11 to 13 Port Street. There's a memo in your packet from Sam Anything else you want to say about this?

No. Essentially, this is just an extension on the time. We still have not gone over the not to exceed that was previously authorized. So the monetary amount's the same. It's just the amount of time on the contract. At some point, we may need to discuss whether we up that not to exceed amount. When we reach that point, I'll be advocating for that, assuming we get there, because they've been really excellent to work with.

Is this a negotiated fee, or is this what they wanted?

um i would have to go back and double check this is what their proposal was based on the scope of work that we discussed with them i think it's mostly based on sam's hourly rate i have a motion motion thank you ron second from the mayor any other comments or questions glad he's doing a good job put that on the record all in favor all right great

Thank you. Thank you. Before the mayor, well, I don't want to steal your thunder, so you go first and then I'll steal your thunder.

Then you'll steal my thunder.

I was going to have Joel steal all our time to provide an update on the BLDC business plan competition, if he would like.

Yeah, well, yesterday we had the award ceremony for the 16th annual business plan competition. Our first place winner was the Paddle House, a team of three students from Binghamton University who are very involved with paddleball. They're involved with Binghamton University teams, and they're interested in starting a facility in Binghamton that will have five pickleball courts plus cornhole, ping pong, and pool, have memberships, leagues, tournaments, coaching, private rentals, a pro shop. Have a, as they pointed out in their, their business plan that they presented to the judges that there's, I think it's 211 cloudy days, cloudy, rainy days in Binghamton, which is tends to be a economic development template. David Miller- tends to be an impediment to people play it out to our courts and, you know, potentially a boon for indoor indoor play. So they were delightful group and had Coaching from Joey Chai from the Binghamton University School of Management, Linda Reynolds. And it was great to see a student team from the university involved in the competition. Our second place winner was Christine McNamee with a business called Thready or Not, which will upcycle used clothing, transform it, thrifted and donated clothing into apparel and accessories. They'll have classes for sewing. teach people how to sew, birthday parties dedicated to sewing and reconfiguring older clothing. I think that's just a really cool business that's coming about. A younger generation, I think, is very interested in thrifted clothing. And our third place winner was Serva, which is a business that's dedicated to its research effort on the part of a professor at the universities in the Watson School of Engineering, who's been involved with detecting AI fakes. You pick up your phone and you see messages. You maybe get messages at home on your answering machine. Are they real? Are they legitimate? This is a burgeoning area. They have an application that will work on a Pixel phone, Android devices at this point. They're working to extend it to Apple devices. As they demonstrated, they can verify whether a voice is real or video is real based on a very interesting technology. Take me a little bit to explain it to you. But it's definitely a product that has a lot of future, potentially a very scalable business. Um, and, um, that could be quite transformative for, for the Binghamton area. So we did have, um, a number of other businesses in the, in the competition. There were five others who, uh, uh, just give you, uh, uh, a taste of them, uh, that the judges had to choose from. Incidentally, we had three judges, um, again, um, 2 of whom 3 actually the same 3 who were there last year. But they were listened to presentations from 3 until. Close to 8 PM and. This they also graded the, the written presentations, the written portion of the was counted for 60% of the score. 40% was the oral presentation. But I just wanted to share some of the other businesses were an independent toy store to specialize in educational interactive toys, an event planning business for weddings, birthday parties, anniversaries, etc. A catering company offering a range of different foods. A lot of Haitian food, actually. Then there was a veterinary ultrasound education, personalized training business that was going to work with veterinarians throughout the state. And then the final one was a dog birthday party planning service. So, we had quite a gamut idea.

Amazing idea.

Yeah. I'm in a businesses to to choose from. So, um, all these other businesses, we're going to work for with them. To to try and help them advance, maybe enter the competition next year. This competition would not be possible without the support of a lot of people. Judges, as I mentioned, this board, of course, I think it's one of the most important things that the BLDC can be doing is to try to spur entrepreneurship in our area. We think about the glory days of IBM and EJ and so forth. I mean, hey, those were small companies at one time that grew to be very big. and change the whole nature of our area. And most important thing I think we can do is to try to encourage entrepreneurship. But what this board has done in association also with we had the Binghamton Oneonta Building Trades Council was one of our sponsors. Thank you, Frank. Also, Saul Stearns was one of our sponsors. And MNT was our presenting sponsor. And they also donated a judge who was judged the finalists as well. But, and again, of course, the staff at City Hall, Mayor, I can't thank you enough for your support of this competition. It's a joy to work with the people in the Economic Development Office, and particularly Sarah. So thank you all.

Thanks, Joel.

Great job, Joel. The Pickleball Boys are planning to lease space where Big Lots used to be in First Chalk. Yeah. And Glenwood Ave. Oh, wow.

Super exciting.

It's a perfect spot.

It's a great location. A lot of parking, a lot of obstructed space.

I personally asked them yesterday, I never saw a demographic of young Pickleball players. It's usually the Q-tips, you know? Right. Mm-hmm.

As they said in their business plan, it was their age range was from like 8 to 80.

Yeah, it's...

So it's across the map.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, and they're just so, they were just so much fun. It's great to see. And just so you know, they won last year too, two of the guys. Serial entrepreneurs. Yeah, so they're just, which is incredible. So...

And I also owe deep thanks to the Kauffman Incubator, to Binghamton University's Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Partnerships, and Bendana Katoch, who has been one of our financial sponsors and the support we got from the incubator in terms of candidates who were interested in the competition and inquired about it. as well as, you know, supportive of Eric, you know, working with many of these candidate companies. So thank you again. Absolutely.

Happy stuff.

Great, Joel. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. That was exciting. And I think, too, one of my early conversations with Andy Laban, the new president of Binghamton University, was how do we get more Binghamton University students interested in starting businesses and how do we leverage all of the the brainpower of one of the best public schools in the world into brick and mortar or businesses here. So I'll be excited to send her a note on this and that this is what this is what we're talking about, both on the AI company with some professors and graduate students and then the students. So we're really excited about that. Other updates, you know, since our last meeting, we hosted the Binghamton Plaza public meeting at Roosevelt Elementary, a fantastic event. It got a lot of coverage, both before and after the fact. It was a packed room. People are very, very excited to share their share their ideas. I think we did a lot of myth busting about Plaza site and the fact that, you know, we're really not encumbered at all on what can be done there. I think that was good. It was good for residents and people that were interested to see, you know, concept plans interact with economic development and planning staff as well as our project consultants. answer questions about what is possible. And I think everyone really walked away from that with a sense of opportunity and optimism for the plaza. So we were really excited about that. I think it was, again, one of the better public meetings that I've been involved in in my career in public service. Nothing will quite top the DRI meetings. Those are still ranked number one. This was great, and I think people are starting to really believe on the north side. We've conducted all of the asbestos surveys that are required. Engineering is working with some outside engineering support to develop the scope for a demolition. And we'll be able to bid that out following a DEC review. So the buildings will be down in several months. We will advance whatever has to happen in terms of site work in coordination with the DEC. But what MKSK is doing, and if you haven't had a chance to look through their materials, please do sign up for the email list. They will do additional public engagement. But it is a statewide economic development project. There's no doubt about it. 24 acres, riverfront. near the intersection of multiple interstate highways, a stone's throw from downtown. I mean, there are not a lot of sites like this in upstate New York. And so we're taking it very seriously and marketing it, marketing it very well, and people are talking about it. And so that was a great event to have and more is coming. My office has been also working with economic development on our World Cup watch parties, which again, are unique to our region. The main one will be in downtown Binghamton on June 12th, shutting down Washington Street, creating a World Cup village to cheer on Team USA as part of, again, a global soccer event. So between that event, the very, very successful downtown rising event that took place a couple weekends ago, there's a lot of great activity in Binghamton. getting a lot of positive feedback from folks, both inside our community and visitors from outside our community that, you know, downtown really downtown Binghamton is really in a good spot, even in comparison to other downtowns across upstate. So those are always really good things to hear.

It's great.

Yeah.

Hey, Alex, Alex did an incredible job.

Yeah.

But that's that next generation. I mean, God bless the energy and the,

Well, attended well, marketed, um, picked a, you know, musical acts that had a following. I think it, although the recipe was there.

Yeah, he did agree. They did a great job wherever else was about.

Yeah, that's the new leadership. We have.

It's wonderful.

Great, that's all I had. Thank you. Mayor.

Um, other than all of the things that the mayor already talked about, and the biggest thing that happened in the last month was the announcement of the DRI awards. Um, so we had. A little under $10 million in grant awards announced on Clinton Street. Just as next steps, basically what happens is we hurry up and wait. We have the announcement now. We have the date after which anyone could start expending funds at their own risk. But the state is currently going through contracting for all of the projects that are in the pipeline. So we're in a holding pattern, but continuing to communicate with all of the applicants Couple folks who were not funded, we knew that was going to happen. We had to submit close to $14 million in projects so that the state could look at them, determine if they were all eligible. So the folks that were not awarded were continuing to work through other opportunities that may be available for them. Yeah, I don't know if there was anything else specific on DRI. We got our Clinton Street funding, so we'll be advancing a streetscape project. We would like to go all the way from Front Street to Glenwood. First phase would be front street to Jarvis, but looking at trying to get the design for the entire street done and then phase the construction. So there's continuity across the entire district.

We don't think there's enough streets under construction right now in the city. We want to add a few more.

Last thing about downtown, if you haven't noticed, and I know the council member has seen this, the new lights are up on Washington Street, the color changing LEDs. They look really good even in the daytime. The new bulbs look really great. Our DPW department is kind of still troubleshooting what the color changing looks like, how we turn these on and off, what we might potentially use the colors for. Anytime you go from a white to a color, it does kind of dim the street a little bit. So trying to figure out the right interplay of colors. um keeping the street bright and also having the um colored lights something we would like to deploy for the world cuff events july 4th homecoming weekend the holiday season um but look great thank you so much for your support and approving the funding for that nice

And regarding the DRI, there have been circumstances in other communities where when they get to this point where the projects are getting approved, they have a hard time getting it on projects to get approved. So this is a really, the projects are amazing. So this is really good stuff.

We've gotten very good feedback on the quality and the range of projects that were awarded.

I was with the mayor last night at an event. What's that place? What's it called? The Canby. The canopy room. The canopy room above 205 Dry. It's an amazing space. We had a great time. We have great speech. Lots of energy around the city. So it's really exciting. And I behaved myself at the press conference yesterday. Anybody have anything else for the group? Anything else? This is a great meeting. All right. Motion for adjournment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Eric. Mr. Kavanaugh, all in favor? We are adjourned.