Planning Board - Regular Meeting

[Music] To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. So, I'll take roll call. Lisa Ko. Um Warren Ber here. John Buda, not here. Alexandra Bobo here. Okay. Margaret Schneider here. And Ly McKinley. Yeah. Okay. Next would be the approval of the minutes.

The approval of the agenda that you want to make. We need to make a change. Agenda. Yeah. But we do have to make a spelling change on it. Well, you may have minutes. Yep. The agenda I think we want to change. [Music] stuck, right? Yep. [Music] All right. [Music]

This is my phone. Yep. [Music] Okay. [Music]

Well, if we approve it with the change. Yeah. [Music] I know it's on my [Music] correct Mr. Zack,

thank you for coming.

Thank you. Thank you for saying my last name correctly. No one ever does. Um, well, thank you so much for having me. My name is Zach Iikols. I'm the chief resilience manager and emergency operations coordinator for the city of Cape Canaveral, just to your north. It's good to be in Cocoa Beach. Come to Cocoa Beach all the time. very fun place. Um Dave Dicki asked me to come and give a a brief presentation tonight about some of the projects that we have going on in Cape Canaveral that might be applicable to Cocoa Beach as well. Um I have known Dave now for six years and worked directly underneath him in the city of Cape Canaveral for four of those years. Um and he was saying earlier somehow I'm still here and have managed to do good things. So uh thank you Dave though. Dave was actually a big part of that. I really did appreciate him as my boss. Um, if you have any questions, please just let me know and we feel free to uh stop me whenever. Is this thing on good? Nope.

Might need to do the space bar. [Music] No. [Music] No. I just hit the space button. Oh, you got to turn on the side. Is it on? It was on. Yeah. It just vibrated. I just hit the space bar. Yeah. [Music]

I was told to take as long as possible for the other gentleman to get here. So um uh so the city of Cape Canaveral obviously has a lot of the same vulnerabilities that the city of Cocoa Beach does. We we share a coastline and one of the big things that um I helped to oversee is the implementation of flood mitigation and adaptation projects. Uh you can see on the screen there that's a hurricane Nicole image from 2022 with a storm surge covering the beach. Um and basically the city itself uh has many flood vulnerabilities from multiple different locations uh that affect multiple different populations. Um and a lot of that is from issues revolving around the amount of impervious surface cover that the city has. There are some blocks that are paved upwards of 80% which is pretty bad in terms of trying to get groundwater or rain water to infiltrate back into the ground. Um, we have obviously issues from tropical cyclones that come along and produce hurricane storm surge both on the Atlantic side and the lagoon side. And I'll show you a project that we did to mitigate that. But, um, yeah, a lot of what I do has to make sure that we can keep rain water from getting into people's homes. Um, and next slide, please. Uh, I help to oversee the city's resilience division, which is situated within its community economic development department. Um, it was formalized under Dave, actually. Thanks, Dave. And um the branding of the program is called the Cape Canaveral 2063 program. 2063 being the year the city of Cape Canaveral would be 100 years old. So the city of Cape Canaveral unlike the city of Cocoa Beach doesn't have its own fire department or police department. Those are outsourced entities to the county fire rescue and BVA county sheriff's office. And there had to be a coordinator in between those entities and the city staff to make sure that things were being implemented both at the acute scale when things are happening immediately. there's a hurricane coming, what is staff doing, what is BCSO doing, what is Canaveral Fire Rescue doing, and both in the long-term perspective of planning. And that is where the resilience planner and

emergency management kind of come together to form this nexus where we can talk to other departments, facilitate grants and whatnot and kind of be that bridge between all these entities to put in these long-term planning initiatives. Next, please. Those boil down to basically reducing single points of failure, enhancing continuity of operations, restoring natural ecosystem services, and of course empowering residents. Next, please. So, I'll just take you through some projects. Again, if you have any questions, just let me know. One of the first things that we implemented was a system of remote sensor sites that can help us determine what's going on at the hyper local level, street by street. There's a lot of modeling out there that shows what things are what things are happening across broad macro scale across counties across cities across entire countries uh the world. But what happens on that street level with these sensor sites of which we have seven now we can automatically see what's going on in real time and relay this information to our emergency responders so they can get an understanding of what's going on on the ground as well as for city staff. So we've used a lot of data from these sensor sites. That one is on top of city hall right off A1A. Um to inform engineering projects and one of those actually was uh the presidential streets master plan which is being implemented right now that will see a systematic redevelopment of the presidential streets on a street by street basis to be able to better handle flood uh flood impacts. And the first one of those will be breaking ground as Filillmore Avenue which is a chronic flood issue for the city. Next please. So this is the city of Cape Gral community center also known as the C5. This is what we've dubbed our resilience hub. This is basically a site that we could turn into a logistical staging hub for residents after a hazard situation. It's not a shelter. It wouldn't be used as a shelter on the island. That would be too dangerous given that we are a bearer island, but this can be turned afterwards into a place where people could come and get food, water provisions, be used by local EMS, uh even perhaps if the National Guard had to get staged. Next, please. There's an interior gymnasium that could be converted to an area where this type

of material could be handed out during set hours of operation. Uh, and the building could be utilized off-grid. Next slide, please. With a battery energy storage system, which you could see here that we procured last year. This system is mobile and not affixed to the building. So, we could take it out of the city if we had to if a really bad storm was coming and then bring it back so that it would not get flooded out. Next, please. We've also been trying to move away from sandbags. Sandbags are very difficult to make, especially in a pinch when there's a storm coming. Uh they're very wasteful in terms of how much resources are required. So, we've been utilizing things like flood barriers, which you see here at the back of the community center. These can be implemented by as little as two to three people. That's a bigger version for a double door. The single doors can be done by one person, and you just latch it on. Takes about 30 seconds to do. Um, next, please. It looks like that when it's all said and done. And then we for the front of the building and we want to expand this to other facilities. We're also implementing systems like tiger damps. This is a water- fil levy system that we could put in relatively short amount of time to uh deal with a larger flood situation. Something like a wind-driven storm surge coming from the ocean that could be battering the building with wave action. This is something that was deployed to great effect by the state of Florida uh through the Florida Division of Emergency Management for Hurricane Milton, especially on the west coast. Next slide, please. We also have a Starlink unit. This is a satellite based internet system. If the city's hardline goes down, uh Starlink can kick in um and communicate to orbiting satellites to receive internet communications to keep us going. We use this in action for the first time after hurricane Milton last year when the hardline went down and it ran the city for about 7 days. That is the commercial variant. Uh so there's a residential variant but residential or the commercial variant has done very well for us. So, in terms of green storm water infrastructure, really trying to implement nature-based solutions to mitigate flooding and whatnot, as well as improve the conditions in the lagoon, right? Because we have a lot of storm water runoff that's polluted, gets into the lagoon,

causes algae blooms, and this and that. One of our cornerstone projects has been the Veterans Memorial Park Smart Rain Garden. That's a rendering of it before it was built. This is a a garden that was built with the procurement of a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The actual garden itself cost about $400,000 of that $1 million. The rest was put into research that done with by local universities like the Florida Institute of Technology, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and um Stson University up into land. Next, please. This was opened last July. Next, please. And um this is what it looks like now. Um it's a rain garden that basically takes on water from the two adjacent streets and allows it to get into this area where it's filtered by the plants. This used to be just a grass swale filled with St. Augustine grass. Really no biodiversity to speak of. Uh we added about 950 Florida native plants and pollinator uh that now uh we do citizen science in this rain garden. We have a lot of pollinator surveys that are conducted through UFIUS. Um and we've seen a marked uptick in the amount of biodiversity that is occurring in this site and it's also in a local park which saw an upgrade as well with new trails and things like that. So it's really become a a very nice cornerstone and education tool for this community to see how green storm infrastructure can work. And now we have started to implement smaller rain gardens uh on different areas of the presidential streets which in which this is located which is which do chronically flood. Next please.

So is this sorry if I interrupt. So is this really have you seen that result for those two streets that this is really managing it? Yes. So we heard from the residents actually they were the ones that confirmed to us. They said hey because we had some pretty major rain events and we they actually went out and got pictures of it filled and we said hey don't go after it. That's dangerous. but they wanted to run out. They were very excited about it, but they did see an increase in or a decrease in flooding along these two adjacent streets. Certainly not going to do a multi-block improvement in terms of flood mitigation, but at least for these adjacent streets, which is Taylor and Orange Avenue, there was a big increase because what also came about were curb cuts that went under the road or excuse me, under the sidewalk to allow water to get into it directly.

Yes, ma'am. This was formerly just a swale that had grass. Correct. around also around the edges.

Correct. So the swale ran this shot is looking south. I'm standing on a sidewalk. The Cape Canaveral Public Library is just to the right. This would have been a swale extending down to the other street and then curving to the east in an L-shape to an emergency overflow valve that we found was actually not in practicality anymore being used as emergency overflow. the system was actually overflowing out of the drain back into the soil because the system would usually be flooded with storm water. It's supposed to go the other way around. But yes, it had no plants, just grass. And the uh slope of the swale was that of it was really just a small depression rather than an actual holding basin. So we increased the capacity by about 30% and now it holds upwards of 150,000 gallons of storm water at maximum capacity. There's sensors throughout it which is why it has the nomenclature of a smart rain garden that are telling scientists how much water is coming in and also the evapo transpiration of the surrounding trees. And they were actually able to see the park quote unquote breathing in the uptick of the trees taking storm water out of the ground which was very interesting. Those legacy oaks are doing a good job, too. So, alto together, it's really created this nice system that can help mitigate flooding in this immediate area.

Would you say this is what? Excuse me, Margaret. Your microphones are all muted. You got to turn it to green. Thank you. Tried to do that. Yeah, I I tried to do it earlier. It's working now. There we go. I got control back at this. Ah, something happened here. Look at would uh is this representative of of one of your larger

Good question. This is the largest rain garden that we currently have. The ones that would come after this will be actually significantly smaller but just more numerous on a street by street basis. So, Filillmore Avenue that I spoke about earlier to get redone in the presidential streets th that the concept plans for that do call for multiple linear rain gardens somewhat similar to the ones that you have along this adjacent area here um that can take in storm water at the corners of uh intersections. And then there'll also be uh an additional capacity added in the terms of underground chamber systems that can take storm water in, hold it there instead of letting it run off to the lagoon and percolate it immediately back into the ground where it could be naturally filtered. Um this is doing it as well just with an open scenario with plants. So does that answer your question?

Yes. Thank you. I have a follow-up question. Yes. Uh besides uh people's pictures and um anecdotal like stories, what type of measurement are you using to see what the difference is versus before versus now?

It's mostly been through pictures. So we have pictures of the entire area completely flooded and we've been able to equate that with rain events that we've captured on a local weather station. So we can see, hey, that had the same amount of rain as this time, but this picture to this picture was the marked difference in in um in flooding and also the rate at which the water can disappear. So the given that there's now now over a thousand plants, we've actually added more. They're wicking away water faster as well than just the St. Augustine grass. So the time in which water stays here is actually shorter than it was too from where it was just the grassy swale. So are we keeping track of that? Like if do you guys

We do have data for that. Yeah. Yeah. A big re a big component of this grant was the research component to actually see does does green storm water infrastructure actually do something that can be scientifically proven as opposed to just saying because a lot of people do say it looks nice okay but then what there's maintenance there's this there's that you know what I mean there's there's a component that has to be considered as well as much as I would love to do this everywhere it might not be suitable for everywhere that's why we're kind of taking an all hands-on deck kind of approach to these integrating these It's really a brilliant concept. Thank you. Another question. Yes.

This was available kind of open land before just conveniently it lined up with where the streets were a little bit that made I mean it wasn't like it was sort of an afterthought, right? I mean, it wasn't if I don't know if you picked this land because it was available and just try it out or you knew that it was adjacent to the flooded areas and then you made made it happen here.

That's a good question. So, the park was always supposed to have an upgrade, but it was never to touch the grass swale. The trails was to be redone. A small amphitheater type area was supposed to be redone. The area commemorating veterans and the various branches of the military was to be upgraded. larger flag pole. The only reason that this got done was because we got that grant. And the reason that this site was chosen, there was an extensive community engagement component to this that was actually funded through a $50,000 phase one grant from the National Science Foundation. This is phase two that got the million dollars. And through that community outreach, we said to people, hey, these are what green store water infrastructure projects look like. They're bioailes. They're rain gardens. They're living shorelines. nature-based solutions. What do you think is best for the community? What could Cape Canaveral do? And where would you think it would be best to be put? And a lot of people chose this site because of its central location within the city and because the surrounding area had genuine flood concerns. So that's how we kind of landed on a well there's already a project going on here. The community seems to want it here. Let's put it here.

Thanks. And then use it as a teaching tool. Yes, sir. Just a question. Um, do you are you aware of this happening in private sector projects? For instance, buildings that are looking at green space as part of their building project. Some are and some aren't. I would say that most aren't at this point.

Um, I think a lot of it depends on the scale. Um, but I think a lot of, for example, some of the newer hotels in the city of Cape Canaveral, and Dave could probably speak to this too, a lot of them are implementing the underground storm water chamber systems as opposed to letting the runoff just go into the street and out the storm drain. Um, those are allowing for a lot of storm water uptake on the immediate site and to get it percolating back into the ground, which is good. Uh, I think what we've kind of adopted is trying to let the rain stay where it falls. That's kind of our our thing. If we can hold it where we want it, then we don't allow it to get into people's homes. We don't allow it to get into the lagoon. Um, which water is a tricky thing. It likes to go where it wants to go. It's hard to fight nature, but um, this has been very helpful in doing that. And we do hope it's a showcase for others to do it because part of the grant stipulations was it's a project has to be transferable and scalable. And I think that's this could be done. And I would also encourage if anyone wants to do this that they do have to go through proper engineering. This was not just drawn to say this looks nice and we chose you know the plants were selected through UFIUS and an engineer a landscape architect through Kimley Horn and Associates. There was an actual engineering plan done. I've been on bioil projects where someone really did just scoop the ground up and threw some plants in. That did not work out well in the long run. It is a piece of infrastructure. It just happens to be green. And what we say is with stuff like this, instead of with concrete and steel that depreciates from the second you build it, this appreciates over time because nature continues to do its thing so long as you take care of it. Same with a living shoreline.

Thank you. So part of the thing I said earlier, there is a huge citizen science component to this. This is most of the research team as well as volunteers that help to actually weed the rain garden, do the pollinator surveys, um, and conduct general maintenance. They do sign waiverss to do that. Um but they do help us a lot in terms of uh the maintenance and some knock-on effects to this project because it did have a research component was uh embryonautical university did drone uh surveys of the construction to monitor the progress but they were also able to do a LAR scan of about 75% of the city. So, we got up-to-date elevations of the of 75% of the city as opposed to using FEMA's maps, which are honestly quite outdated and old and not really conducive to what's actually going on. Their flood planes do not match what we see in reality. Um, this information also went into the Presidential Streets master plan and Kimley Horn is doing Filillmore Avenue as we speak. They were able to get updated elevations with this type of information. So you saw some drone flights using this type of drone that would go off and uh that data has been really helpful and we'll probably continue to use it for a number of years to come. So we're currently undergoing a vulnerability assessment. I believe the city of Cocoa Beach is as well. This is a statemandated document now um that allows you access to resilient Florida grant funding which is a a pot of money worth millions. This is uh a new graphic that we'll have at our disposal which I think is really exciting that will be publicly accessible. Basically what you're seeing every building that's colored is in the city of Cape Canaveral proper and the color denotes it's flood hazard. So people could go before they buy a property or rent a property they could click on it and see just how vulnerable it is. The redder the worst uh the green is the best and yellow and orange is somewhere in between. It would go red worst orange yellow green. Um, so

you can see some structures along A1A immediately are are green but very few. And a lot of structures are red and orange uh along some of those areas that might be prone to either uh urban flooding from rainfall or from storm surge from the lagoon or from the Atlantic Ocean where you see some of those orange structures along the coast.

So yeah, you could they were managed to get every single structure. Uh some funky shapes, but it generally gets the the point across about what's going on. And then you can uh you can see our our water treatment plant there on the far right corner um very dangerously out and we'll we'll touch on that problem later. But um another big thing that we've now had to explore coming to more of the gray infrastructure side of things. Um this is the city's first permanent pump station. Uh this is called the Center Street Pump Station. This can pump 6,000 gallons of water per minute out of the city's storm water system, specifically in the center street basin, which is at the south end of the city covering a lot of the presidential streets. Um, this is also a fix to a tidal valve. So, what we are seeing is the lagoon has risen so much that the city's storm water system is almost permanently flooded. And when it's already filled with water, there's no additional space for rain to go. And especially in a hurricane situation where water is being driven into the system from wind, literally pushing it upstream. Again, no place to go. So the tidal valve is actually a dam that blocks the pipe and this pumps water around the title valve. So water can't get in, it can only get out. So we've seen this be pretty effective after Hurricane Milton. It drained the streets dry in the presidential or in the center street basin about 10 minutes. Um, which is really good. And we also have a weather station affixed to this to tell us real-time weather data uh in relation to this pump. And it can also be viewed online by city staff so we can turn it on remotely if we need to. But there's floats inside the system that will automatically turn it on if it gets to a bad enough situation. But this pump won't be enough in the long run, which is why we're trying to accentuate it with those chamber systems, rain gardens, and whatnot. Um this we're probably looking at a second one going in sometime in the next five years along the Canaveral Ditch which is another very floodprone area.

Yes. Um so when water is pumped out where would it be pumped to? Good point. I should have said that it goes into the Banana River Lagoon where it would normally go out of the storm water system. Every single outfall that the city of Cape Canaveral has goes to the lagoon. None of them go to the ocean. Isn't that kind of like a vicious circle? The water's coming up from the Banana River Lagoon into the storm based.

That's a good point. So, I should clarify. If there's ever a storm surge where the water physically gets pushed into the city from the lagoon, this would not help because it would create the vicious cycle. This is for urban street flooding from rain where the lagoon has not risen to the height of the houses. If it does, that that's a bad day. But we're not talking about 100year storms or 500. It's just rain.

Correct. Yes. And this has turned on for afternoon thunderstorms, but that was the point that we were at. We also see it turn on when there's no thunderstorms. And we said, "Well, why is that?" That's probably because of cracks in the storm water system that ground water is infiltrating into all the time because the groundwater table is so high. So, it turns itself on every once in a while to drain the system just of groundwater infiltrating and pumps it around that tidal valve. So, yes. Did you locate this in the red zone, I guess, from the LAR system data that you got or was that all before?

This was pre-engineered before that. Uh, a company called Meet and Hunt did this. They did a study, gave the city several options that were expensive to very expensive. This was one of the expensive options. And fortunately, uh, this was covered by a resilient Florida grant as well as money from the American Rescues Act. So, that was good. But the second pump system I spoke about that we're looking at doing is probably going to be about $3 million. Just to give you an idea, that would also come with a title valve system or a floodgate that would be affixed to an actual ditch, an above ground ditch. So again, kind of like if you've ever seen what the city of Venice did. The gates close, water gets pumped around the gates, water can't come back in. Kind of like that, just at a very tiny tiny scale compared to

Is there is there a generator associated with this? It it is its own generator. It's off-grid. It has a 500galon diesel tank that we can fill up as we need. Um, yeah, it's not in case the grid goes down, this should keep going by itself. And it's in a sound attenuated housing. I've stood right next to it when it's on, and you actually can barely hear it. It's not bad. I don't know if you can tell in this image, but there's foam padding on the inside that's is absorbing the sound. [Music] We have our annual seaote planting. I know Cocoa Beach does this as well. Last year we planted about 18,000 sea oats across 2 miles of beach in about 3 hours. Um we have done this every year since at least 2005 after much of the beach was wiped out from the '04 hurricane season. This is what the beach looked like in in roughly 2005. And we've geoloccated this to the exact position 20 years about 20 years later. This is what it looks like. So we've created this huge vegetated buffer um that really helps absorb storm surge impacts. Uh there's at least two dune lines. There's one at the at the eastern end and then there's a secondary one a little bit further west that captures or deflects uh incoming wave energy. And the plants also of course add a huge biodiversity increase for the beach where there's a lot of habitat that's needed for things like sea turtles, beach mice, uh pollinators and things like that, gopher tortoises. So exact same location and those are silences. So those will basically catch windborne sand. Residents installed those. There was big initiative apparently back in the day which is good. But you can see there's really no vegetation present at all and now we have that. So this is something we'll continue to do as well. Also a great community outreach program in terms of what people uh education and figuring out what they can do and what really the power of plants can do for the community.

Do resident are residents allowed to do that like just put them up if they're on the beach side or they have to get permit like permits or something so put them in the right place?

They're actually still there. They're just buried. So, okay, final project. This is the big one. This one kept me up at night. So, that's our water reclamation facility. You guys have one, too. It's very nice. Uh, is dealing with coastal erosion issues. Um, that is the oxidation ditch. That's the only oxidation ditch we have. This is a essential part of the treatment train. All those bubbles that you see on the surface of the sewage there, that's a good thing. The microbes inside that basin are being are being fed and they're very happy. Um, but that's 1.38 million gallons of sewage only about 12 feet from the lagoon with an eroding shoreline with no liner and only concrete sidewalk chunks half-hazardly placed with a few Brazilian peppers. Clearly not an ideal situation. So, we're currently working with the Army Corps of Engineers to redo this shoreline. Um, but we uh being that they're a federal entity, we are a little bit of a limbo right now about what they are going to do in the long term. So we went ahead and did a project where we implemented a new rip wrap where we brought in 100 tons of granite boulders, put in a liner and then added these. So we were the first city to add a product called reef arches exactly as the name suggests. They are pre-cast marine grade concrete arches with hexagonal connectors um that get placed uh in sections. They can be in single rows or in sections you see like that broken up. These uh are really great because they can act like a living shoreline in the long term as they acrue uh biodiversity in the marine ecosystem and those hexagonal u shapes actually put tiles inside that are designed to hold things like oyster spat um to accruit over time. They unlike a seaw wall uh can allow for water flow through them being that they're open uh but mitigate wave energy. The big thing we wanted to stop the waves from hitting the shoreline itself. You can see the

new granite uh up on the shoreline there on the right. But what this is looking south, the Cape Canaveral Hospital is that building in the far distance. And the other great thing is too in terms of rapid mitigation, you know, seaw wall and all that can take years to put into place, months to build, to engineer and whatnot. And they don't last all that long, um, unfortunately. But these these were done in one day and we protected one of the city's most critical pieces of infrastructure that we have. And the reason we chose these is because the Marine Resources Council Lagoon House implemented several dozen of these along their shoreline in the Indian River Lagoon in Palm Bay and they saw massive sediment recruitment behind them to the point where they were installed in open water. Now you can walk up to them on a beach that was formed because they were capturing sediment behind them and building back that shoreline that they then planted mangroves on to build an even more hardened hardened shore. We hope that happens here one day. Um but between the granite boulders and the reef arches, we think it's pretty well protected. Um they can also be put into uh stacks. So you could have one row behind another and then put another one on top for a pyramid type design. They just installed several more at the Max Brewer causeway in Titusville. It's part of a shoreline mitigation project there. So, we hope that these work out. Yes.

Do you know if they're planning to put any in Cocoa Beach? Do we know of any? That was probably I know. Um like along the 520 520. Yeah. I just drove over 520 yesterday. That always looks like a perfect thing to put there.

There was some water. Yeah. And something to note about the location of the water treatment plant. Um, it was built on reclaimed land. It never used to exist. So, the sediment that was built on was dredged from Port Canaveral or what became Port Canaveral. So, the soil conditions are very bad. Poor drainage. It silts out into the lagoon. Um, so we hoping that these make a difference in the long term at least until that Army Corps project can take hold. Yes. If I recall correctly, uh it's my understanding like at the golf course if if the shoreline erodess it's like we're not allowed to build it back out. So are you constrained with those measures? I mean with your projects and all that you you

I understand what you're sayingally not adding new land back into the lagoon. That's something that we also would not do. Um, but basically what the point of this is because we we had wash outs that occurred in areas that fortunately didn't have infrastructure in 2017. Irma came through. Not even sustained category 1 hurricane force winds. Huge sections. The fence that the chain link fence was free hanging that was filled back in to original space, but it was not built back out. But if sediment can recruit here naturally, so to speak, that that then that's something that just happens with the project. Um, and that's something that we would love to happen because once it does, we will put mangroves back on that and hopefully let because mangroves just take a very long time to grow. So,

are they intended to be like permanent to some degree once it's We'll keep them there as long as they can be there, but if they need to be moved, they're very easily transportable.

Very easily. Um, and uh, they are designed to have mangroves grow through them if you want. Um, and we got the permit for these done in six days. We put it in as a living shoreline project and got an emergency exemption done. So, it was about $20,000 to procure these 10 units, 1,200 lb each. So, we figured that or millions of dollars to repair that. And that also we would never the city the city's image would forever be ruined if that broke quite frankly and it should be that would be a horrible environmental disaster.

And that's all I have. Thank you for your time. Does anyone have any other questions? Great. If you know if you want to reach me just uh you're part time Zach. Part time. What do you do? What do you do in your office? Uh, I read. I I build little models and Okay. I watch hockey or I play tennis, too. Would it be would it be at all possible for us to get a copy of those slides? Oh, yeah. That would be helpful. Thank you. Sure. I'll send them to Dave. Yeah, that was great. Thank you so much. Yeah, that was really helpful. Very interesting. Nice job.

I guess like I'm just thinking for like Cocoa Beach or for maybe even the plane board. I know we have I was just I don't know if it translates to changing something in the LDC to I know we have the impervious percentages that um you know a new new building or new development can is supposed to adhere to and all. I don't know if they've learned a lot from all that they've done in Cape Canaveral that would influence our LBC a little differently because it sounds like we should take advantage of like maybe some of the things they

I 100% agree with you. I mean Zach and his team down there are are have set a created a template that if not wholly transferable in large part could be transferable and it's scalable. Um, we are in the process, as Zach mentioned, the city of Cocoa Beach is in the process of working on our vulnerability assessment and that's essentially, if you look at it as a pyramid. That's where all the data is being gathered. We're in that process right now. Morgan Zulki out in our public works department is um heading that up. And that's that's where Zach started in in Cape Canaveral is with a vulnerability assessment to give you that data to know what you're working with and and and what needs to be done. So we are taking that first step. Um and frankly uh the city of Cape Canaveral has spent put a lot of resources into this effort.

Um they've hired I think there's three people on the in the sustainability resiliency section of the city staff. Um and it's a uh it was politically very important there to start taking those steps. Um you see that the the uh the um the um the sanitary tank was a major issue and I'm sure that that kept that kind of motivated things quite a bit um um expedited things quite a bit. But uh but yeah, we we certainly uh we certainly have a lot of resources just to the just to the north of us uh with with Zach and his team and and I'd like to I I know our city manager. This is very important to AJ who's here this evening. I'm not sure if you all know our our new newish city manager. Um he's been around for quite a while. He took a little bit of a leave of absence, but now he's back um as the city manager. Um, and I I know that the uh AJ just hired a full-time PE, an engineer, um, for city staff, and that's going to make a huge difference um, for issues and and and projects like this, like what we're talking about. That'll be great to have somebody in house to to help us work on things. Just a question. Would would these items or you know any of these items that we just looked at be part potentially of the reassessment of the master plan in Cocoa Beach and possibly be recommended changes that would that would go on? Okay.

Yeah. Um as as I was saying, we're working on our vulnerability assessment right now. The next step potentially could be putting together a vulnerability plan. So, it takes that data that you've gathered during the assessment phase and you start actually working with that data and you allow that data to inform decision- making essentially and that works its way into the city's capital improvement plan. Um and so it kind of it just builds it builds and that would be something that um you know AJ and the city commission would have to deal wrestle with and and make make decisions on on budgetary um items but uh but we're taking that first step which is the important thing and um you know what the next steps are and how quickly they happen um is yet to be determined. Um but uh but yeah, I would ultimately I would like to see the vulnerability assessment turn into a vulner vulnerability plan and the plan will actually identify goals and objectives over the next 20 10 20 30 years and that's what we would use to start helping fund these things and actually taking policies and putting them into our comprehensive plan. They would come from the vulnerability plan. So they would start in working their way into our policy documents. When is the assessment supposed to be complete?

I don't know. I mean, is it something ongoing? When is vulnerability assessment going to be complete? I think in December. Oh. Oh. Right around the corner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then do we have someone that there was a lot of uh grants that were that were part of this as well. Do we have someone that is actively writing these grants right now?

Yeah. AJ um hired a full-time grants writer uh who is based in the city manager's office. Um she has a great background, a very strong background. So she has actually appi made an application for a number of grants. I don't believe she's applied for any sustainability based grants, some of the ones that Zach is talking about. But I guarantee you after tonight, I'm sure I'm sure AJ, if AJ beats me to her, uh, he'll have to be pretty quick. But there there are um there are, as you can, as you can hear, there's some very substant grants out there that we are in the same situation that co that Cape Canaveral is in. So, I think we would I think we would I think we would do well with with with our applications. So, yeah. All right. Well, I guess I guess if that's it, I I'm going to introduce Tim. Uh Tim, we we're very fortunate to have Tim here. Both of our speakers are fantastic. I mean, I'm very

Thank you for bringing them in.

Yeah, this is great. That was really It's It's been great. We're very fortunate. And Tim Tim and I have known each other for a long time. I think it was in the mid 90s. I'm going to guess that uh uh Tim came to a little community over in Central Florida called Lake Wales um and uh put in a affordable housing project and we worked very closely with him and a few of the communities I've worked in since then. I've tried I've always tried to get Tim to come in and do projects uh because he he knows his stuff and he's very good at what he does. His voice is listened to and heard by people in local government, state government. uh he's he's uh um he's been doing it for a long time and he knows he knows his stuff and so we're very fortunate to have Tim here this evening and uh I look forward to what he has to say as well. [Music]

Good evening everyone. Um as Dave mentioned, my name is Tim Wheat. I'm with a company called Pinnacle and we specialize in affordable housing. I appreciate the gracious introduction. That's a very very great guy by the way. we've known, like he said, we go back a ways and another person that really does know his stuff. So, you're very fortunate to have him here in Cocoa Beach. Um, I'm here to talk about sort of like what the modern approach and face of affordable housing is from developers perspective to try to give you some perspective. Should you, you know, look at regulatory changes to try to incentivize affordable housing or if somebody like me shows up at your podium trying to get a development approved, you kind of will know what to expect. And so my goal is not to sell you on anything here tonight. Uh uh other than establish my I guess my qualifications for t taking up your time, but just want to give you a basic a rundown of what our industry does and how we do things and what the how developments are structured financially and try to give you know our perspective on the live local act and what it means to us in our industry. So, I'll try to do that. Answer as many questions as you ask. Don't don't feel bad about interrupting me at any time. Just stop, man. Be happy to stop. So, I have a short PowerPoint presentation. Also, in my spare time, I like hockey, too. So, go Panthers. And yes, so uh it's an all hockey speakers thing tonight, right? So, um our company Pinnacle, we were founded in 97. We've built or owned or developed 11,000 units of affordable housing. We predominantly focus on uh multifamily rental housing and we've done things in all classifications. What we call affordable, which would be for

households earning less than 80% of the area median income, what was also classified as workforce housing, which would be between 80 and 120% of the area median income. and then market rate housing which isn't restricted by income or is simply market driven. So we've worked in all three spaces but our primary area is is affordable housing. And what we did when we started as a company and I joined the company in 2002 and I'm one of five partners. I'm the guy in the middle. um is uh I've focused on all of our work outside of Miami Dade County where we're based. So I've worked in developments in central Florida, uh in the panhandle area, in Tallahassee, all throughout the state. Um and I've been involved in about almost 4,000 of the 11,000 units that we've developed at Pinnacle. So you know our approach is to we were an industry leader in sort of changing the paradigm of what people thought affordable housing was and we did that through two ways. One is that we tried to really capture people's imagination and design to make development seem, you know, if you drove by one of our communities, as one of our founding partners said, if it looks like affordable housing, Pinnacle didn't develop it. We wanted to create a design paradigm and a focus on um, you know, quality and aesthetics that we think didn't really exist in the industry. and maybe all in all multif family, particularly in the affordable space. And then the other thing we wanted to do is is is create something whimsical about our developments that our residents could identify with. And we so

we started doing art in public places in all of our developments long before you know uh jurisdictions mandated it. And now some do because they were so happy what we did and that's caused some consternation among our industry brethren. But it's for the best really. And we love doing different types of art in public places. Um, and some of its murals and some of its sculpture and and some of it sculpture gardens. And we've had a variety of different approaches, but just to give you some highlights. Um, I think probably I'll give you two that I think are relevant. This one we de developed and finished last year in Palm Beach County and it was selected as the outstanding uh housing development uh by the Florida Redevelopment Association in 2024. So it's called Berkeley Landing. We focused on a very modern design. It sits along US1 in Palm Beach County in a city called Riviera Beach. uh with the blade sign, the balconies, movement in the buildings, the fact that the building's lit up. We dedicated a civic open space on two sides of the property. Uh the one side facing US1 you see lit up with that sculpture is another sculpture upper left that was done by this acclaimed Brazilian artist Romero Breurto which is from our collection. Um we actually yeah have a collection one of our partners collects some of these things and we kind of move them around properties and try to rotate them. So um that development had 112 affordable units, two of which actually were not affordable market rate units that we created live workspaces where a um b a small business person has a retail small retail space. One is like 600 square feet, the other is 900. Uh, and it faces US1 and they have signage and then they have a private stairwell with a fire

rated door that goes up to their residence above. So, they have the shortest commute to work of anybody in Palm Beach County. So, and those have proven to be really successful. One is uh economic development business collaborative that promotes business growth in the city and the other one is a barber. So, uh, it's kind of a neat blend. We started that with a development we did in Tallahassee, uh, called Casanis Village at Frenchtown Square, where we did a series of live workspaces, and we've been able to successfully rent those as well to local businesses. So, merging affordable housing with economic development in a mixed use is one of the things that really works well for what we do. this other development, a little bigger scale, a little larger two-phaseed development called Pinnacle 441. Um, it combined 213 affordable units, some market a smattering of market rate units. It's on a major state road, uh, State Road 7 in Broward County, and it also has 6,780 square feet of retail. For example, we have Cricut Wireless, a State Farm insurance agency, a um uh a Spanish restaurant. We have two other bays that we're negotiating leases on as we speak. But this was this pro uh development uh was financed through a multiple means because it had two phases, one of 113 units and one of a 100. I'll talk about how we finance our developments in a minute, but it won the uh South Florida Business Journal Structures Award for the top affordable community in South Florida in 2024. [Music] As I mentioned, Art and Public Plac

there's this as it converted to from a PowerPoint to PDF. It cut off a little bit of narrative, but we install and maintain these as a non-development expense. So, we don't we don't cause the development or the public private resources we leverage to pay for the art. We donate it to the development as a company. So, and again, it gives our residents a real sense of pride. So, a conversation piece for the local community. Okay. So, let's talk about financing what we do and how we do it. Excuse me. Before we get into that, can I just ask you a question? Yeah. Are the bulk of the units that the Pinnacle develops rentals? Yes. Not ownership? That's correct.

Okay. Thank you. No problem.

So, uh, in the development of rental affordable housing, one of the methods we use is this what's called the 9% low-income housing tax credit or just housing credits for short. Uh in 1985, the tax reform act created a program where states were allocated a certain amount of tax credits that they in turn then can issue for worthwhile projects that agree to keep their rent affordable for a period of time. So, uh how that works in reality is that we apply to the state housing finance corporation in Tallahassee. We say we've been talking to Dave Dicki and we have this 100 unit development in Cocoa Beach and we apply and compete for those credits and it is very competitive. Those credits if awarded to us allow us to raise equity rather than debt. We sell those tax credits to corporations who use them as a dollar for-dollar write off on their corporate tax rates or their corporate tax payments. And typically the users uh the primary users of uh the tax credit now have been it's the industry's evolved. It used to be just large corporations, but now more banks because banks kind of pair the tax credits up with um their own loan products for both construction and permanent financing and also they gain community reinvestment act benefit by investing in lo you know affordable housing. It helps them and mergers, acquisitions and things of that nature when the federal regulators look at them for such things. So, it's a great strategy. The housing tax credit when deployed this way covers roughly about

60 to 80% of our development costs. The rest will raise through uh private debt or low interest loans from local government when there's a gap that might be fil need to be filled. So, uh the bargain is we have less income as a result of keeping rents affordable. So the tax credits and that equity makes up that difference. So um and that earn the the the party that purchases those tax credits use them in their tax return over a 10-year period. So we get all that money up front, but they just earn it and they calculate their own internal rates of return on. [Laughter] So um so in in Florida gets allocated 67.8 8 million of these tax credits this year. So if you were to monetize that over 10 years as the tax credit program allows and then you know they don't buy you know a bank or a person of the tax credit doesn't buy them at 100 cents on the dollar. Let's say they buy them at roughly 90 cents on the dollar or 80 to 90 is generally the current rate. Um that means we're raising you know 500 to 550 million each year in equity in our industry to build thousands of units and um Florida housing since its inception has allocated tax credits that have built 162,000 units throughout the state of Florida. Um the it used to be that the um that the the the highest median income in a tax credit community was 60% of the area median income. That changed with the tax cut and jobs act of 2017. It allowed us to just do an average of 60% of median income, but we can go as

high as 80 for certain units as long as we average 60 for the entire development. Why is that important? It that 80% in median income, we touch a lot more workers at a lot of income levels aren't really low. you know, like entry- levelvel teachers and firefighters and policemen and government workers and and people in in entry level industry and trades that might not in certain markets because of what they're paid relative to that published median income for and here we would use the published median income that comes out each year from Bvard County. So that was a a real positive change for our industry to get us a little bit more of a band of uh folks who need quality affordable housing that otherwise we're getting shut out of uh these developments until you know 2017. So that was Go ahead. Um I tax uh depreciation they changed the tax law so that depreciation could be taken all upfront like in one year but I guess that that change to the taxes does not

this still is depre. Is that the way you do tax credit? It does not. No.

Okay. But there are some there's some depreciation rules that the investor takes into account when they calculate their rate of return because they're getting they're buying 99.99% of of a partnership. So let's say I'm Pinnacle is going to do a development in Cocoa Beach and we'll call it Pinnacle at Cocoa Beach and we'll form a singlepurpose entity called Pinnacle at Cocoa Beach LLC. This investor that buys the tax credits, if they're awarded to us, buys 99.99% of the partnership interest. We own 01%, but we run the development as a managing member on a day-to-day basis. They get all of the tax benefits including all the rights to depreciating the buildings and all that stuff. We're simply as the 01% owner. We're able to make a developer fee upfront if it we can earn it. Sometimes we can't and then we get the limited cash flow that comes over a period of time. So the depreciate what the the investor I don't see that side of things too much as a developer but that's a calculating and figuring out depreciation. That's the investor part of the investor's calculus and determining, okay, uh, for a pinnacle at Cocoa Beach, we're going to pay you 88 cents on the dollar. So, they take all of that into account before they make us an offer to provide equity.

Yes. Have you found that there's a minimum number of units necessary in order to make it financially feasible for the development partner? That is an excellent question. Uh yes, scale is important and scaling up is to a a minimum number of units is really important. And what is that number? Well, um you know, let me say answer it two ways. One is that for certain of Florida housing's applications to receive these tax credits, they all require a minimum number of units.

Yeah, I think typically in a county the size of Bard, it's 30 units. a private developer would have a very hard time making 30 units work because what'll happen is that you get the the curve of rents only going up about 2 or 3% a year with average income expenses doing this and then by year 10 we're in trouble, right? So typically the sweet spot is about 75 units for me.

Okay? where if expenses are income's trending at annualized 2% expenses trend at 3% those trend lines are okay so I would tell you that 75% or 75 units rather is your is your is your nominal economy of scale in some situations 70 works or even the upper 60s in a particularly high income county where maybe costs are lower for some other reason like you got the land for free because you did a public private partnership with local government. There are certain variables, but in most instances 75.

And have you found that um your average sizes are like 750 square feet for a onebedroom and 1,200 or,00 for a two-bedroom? Roughly about 700 for a one. And it depends on market, too. You know, in South Florida now, we're seeing smaller units in in in Central Florida, larger than South Florida. But I would tell you if I were doing a development here right now, the square footage would be about 700 for a one, probably between 975 to a,000 for a two and about 1150 for a three. Okay. Now, the next Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

And all all of yours are new from the ground buildings. They're not like renovations or anything. There are there are programs and there are application processes for housing tax credits that involve preservation of existing but it's a very small part of the overall program. um except I'm going to talk about the use of tax exempt bonds now combined with a 4% housing tax credit which is often a tool in refinancing previously affordable housing developments and then also it has a different economy is scale because the cost of issuing bonds because the only people that make money on bond deals are lawyers

and bond underwriters right and so the scale you have to scale up a little bit more. And the sweet spot there is about 90 units. And you're using a 4% housing tax credit, which can also be used on the acquisition cost when you're using it for preservation or refinancing or purchasing a project. But the 4% credit is also powerful because it's automatic when it you uh receive tax exempt bonds. It's not subject to a cap under the federal tax code. Like Florida gets 67 million in 9% housing credits. The reason they get that is it's based on a per capita calculation on population. Okay. Or Yes.

So you don't think it's less attractive to the investing to the investing developer partner? The 4% correct? Yeah. In some ways it's more attractive because there's more losses. Okay. Okay, but not you know this is not my super area of expertise but uh but there are greater losses. So they claim greater losses on paper and consequently they're they're writing off certain losses and they're paying better in some instances paying better yields on the 4% credit. So are you go ahead and is the per capita is it is it by what like region is it state by state? Yeah. State state by state.

It doesn't drill down to No, it does not. And yeah,

they now they're required to come up on the 9% credit. The Florida Housing Finance Corporation is required to have what's called a qualified allocation plan, which determines how much of the credits they're going to allocate and for what uses that fit the public interest and tax code. In Florida, they make a determination both with Florida Housing's 9% housing tax credit and also what's called the a loan program that Florida Housing has had since the early 90s called the state apartment incentive loan program. And that is allocated percentagewise based on what are called large counties, medium counties, and small counties. And every three years they have a study updated by the Schindberg Center for Affordable Housing Studies at the University of Florida to determine what percentage of the uh need exists in larger counties which are Miami Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Orange, Hillsboro, Panelis, Duval, and now they've added this year Pulk and Lee. So they'll get a percentage of the pie depending on what the Schindberg study says on need. And then all the medium-sized counties which are including Bvard and most of the ones that are exurban counties and then small counties I think the population minimum population level to be classified as a medium county is I think 300,000. So uh so anyway it's typically like it's typically divided around 55% of the resources are supposed to be allocated to large county about 30 some odd percent to medium and 10% to small. So with the the the but the key with the tax exempt bonds is those can be allocated by the state

housing finance corporation also by individual housing finance authorities and there's a series of regional ones and then also county housing finance authorities and I do not recall if Bvard has its own or whether it's part of a region of other counties collaboratively working together. I don't remember that and I apologize for not knowing that tonight. Um I this slide I created was actually for a presentation in Palm Beach County trying to educate some folks there locally because I'm on the housing leadership council in Palm Beach County. So just bonds issued by Palm Beach County has created 7,000 youth of affordable housing alone. So um but that the the use of those bonds with the 4% credit sometimes there is another subsidy layer needed and maybe a lowinterest loan and that's why I was emphasizing here the effective layering of public and private resources. There may need to be a third leg of the stool that will help the deal work. So, because the difference between the 9% 4% in equity isn't made up by how much more favorable the bonds are. If you're doing new construction, you may still need another source. That's why Florida housing has this sale program and a lot of other counties now are instituting their own form of gap loan financing. Broward County, Palm County passed a $200 million bond initiative to finance affordable housing. and some of the other counties are are instituting similar programs. Miami Dade has been able to collect their own documentary SER tax for affordable housing. They got a carve out in the early 80s that no other count's been able to match. So that helps considerably there. But so this structure might have, like I said, more legs on a stool if you're going

that route, but not so much for if you're buying a property, claiming tax credit for acquisition costs, doing just some modest renovations. A lot of times those developments work without any additional subsidy. So what innovations make affordable housing successful? Um uh I I would tell you one is I I we always like to see a little bit of income mixing. Um doing some even market rate and unrestricted units. It adds for a healthy environment for development and I think helps promote the development along with quality of design in local communities to say we're going to be mixed income. Also being mixed use is good, especially if we're on a corridor where mixed use is supported. And we went over some examples, some of our history with either using live workspaces, which doesn't tax the the overall structure of the deal financially because always the risk is am I going to be able to lease these spaces? Is there going to be an economic downturn? How much am I going to have to pay upfront? you with this rather unique structure of tax credits and other some other financing. Um sometimes you're taking a risk unless you're in a real home run area for large scale commercial or you're doing a large like if I'm doing a development I I get Aldi to move into the ground floor and they sign a letter of intent before closing then yeah I feel really good about that. But a lot of times we're dealing with smaller scale commercial uses so we have to be careful there. We love public private partnerships and a lot of times we'll pursue developments on publicly owned land whether it be with a public housing authority or on land that might be owned by a city or county. And we'll talk about this in a minute uh in connection with the Live Local Act. But

Florida statutes does allow us to make unsolicited proposals. If we see a piece of surplus property, we can go to the local government, make an unsolicited proposal and under the Florida statutes, they can consider our proposal, advertise it to uh ask for competition or based on some recent amendments, opt to just accept it if it's they think it's in the public's best interest and it serves the public purpose of providing affordable housing. And then we can have a negotiated public private partnership transaction with local government where we might lease the land or say it's affordable for 99 years and we come up with a whole structure that ultimately would get approved by the um governmental body. So I'm a big fan I think the live local act is great but I'm also a big fan of formbbased zoning. you know, like we're not everything is prescriptive that we can work together with a planning board and staff and uh you know, we might be in an overlay district or a special district that that encourages certain types of forms of development rather than saying the setback's 25 ft from the road and if you don't meet that you have to get a variance and you have to prove hardship and all that. We like in our industry, we like to have and some of our most successful developments like in in particularly downtown cores have been, you know, form-based zoning and tremendously positive outcomes. I think both a win-win for both the community and for the development itself. So, a couple of specific incentives I think that are impactful for affordable housing. Um, I'm not going to talk about density bonuses because the live local act kind of does that work for us to some extent, but parking reductions, particularly for senior housing. We do a

lot of affordable senior housing for folks 62 plus and our parking requirements. Sometimes what residents actually need versus what the code requires is a wide gap. And there's just a lot of potential cost savings lowering the need for subsidy and adding more green space in public areas just not paving over where cars aren't needed because a some a good amount of our residents won't use cars in our particularly our senior communities. And if we're more transit oriented, even in our family developments and a streamlined approval process is great. And in affordable housing, the counties and cities that really do a great job of working with us are ones that maybe have an ombbudsman or somebody who's sort of a point person to help us navigate through the process. Because with these tax credits comes some pretty rigorous closing and completion time frames where our tax credits are or our financing is at risk and we need to sometimes get expedited treatment. Some of the money you may receive from Tallahassee for affordable housing like the SHIP program sort of requires that the local government have a policy for expediting affordable housing approvals. But the best situations are ones where we have an effective point person that can help us navigate through the system. Especially if it's a city we've never done business in and we're trying to learn that can sort of be like I said an affordable housing ombbudzman.

Yes. So what would be like uh uh minimum residence requirements in affordable housing and a max? You mean in terms of income? No, I'm talking about um you know um length of tenency. Oh. Uh that's all leases have to be at least one year. Okay.

Yes. And an interesting part of the federal tax code is that when you come up for renewal and we reertify your income after a year, your income can have gone above the original income level all the way up to 140% of the area median income. So it we don't punish you and say, "Ah, bad you. you went and like, you know, got a really good job, you know, and and you you can stay and get renewed for one year at this higher income level. But yeah, all leases have to be for a year. Yes. First of all, I love this Yiggby instead of Nimbi. I think it's brilliant. But um

I wish I thought of it. Have you ever done have you ever done a development anywhere where instead of being one specific site that you hit your sweet spot, it was an assemblage in different sort of, you know, not far but not quite adjacent in different parts of the community that you were in? Yes. Okay. It's fun. Uh did a development in Hollywood and in Broward County that was what we call scattered site, right?

Development. was a P3 project too, but it wasn't all clustered together and it was senior housing. That's what the city wanted. And so what we did is we did three developments that operate are under unified management but can operate independently like the residents have their own fitness facility and they have their own common area meeting space and they have their own cyber lounge and and that way they have a self-contained living environment and they had you know uh gated well not gated entry but uh uh you know controlled access entry into the building and patio area and outdoor spaces. So, yes, we've done that before and um that's one that comes to mind, but I know we've done at least a couple down in Miami where we're working on a scattered site basis.

Good. Thank you. No problem. How long How long does it take for you to get like a 100% occupancy? That's an excellent question. Um, usually in most markets once we open a development, we will typically lease at a minimum 20 to 30 units a month. Demand has been so great in South Florida. Let me take you back a couple of slides. Can I go backwards? No, I can't. Oh, I guess I'm stuck right now. Unstuck me.

That's okay. Uh the development I showed you earlier called Pinnacle 441. [Music] Um because it was on this really intense corridor, we had such tremendous demand, we decided to use a lottery to lease units. The first phase of 113 units, we had 22,000 lottery registrants.

The second phase, 11,000. And that's when we imposed a local residency preference because there's been some evolution under fair housing law about using local residency preferences. So we did like a 50% preference for Broward County residents and I think that called the herd of people who from because we're very close to the border with Miami Dade County there. So that I think that's like a really true representative uh amount but uh 11,000 for 100 units in the second phase. And then we decided to do a lottery for our recently completed development of senior housing in another development in Myiramar in southern Broward. And we did a lottery there because the city had some leftover recovery act funds and they wanted to give every resident down payment assistance. We said, well, with senior housing, we probably won't need a lottery, but the only fair way when we're handing out free rent along with, you know, the opportunity to rent is by lottery because that that's an unquestionable method of leasing units. We still had 2,200 residents register for 110 units. So, the demand is off the charts and it just depends on where you are. We just finished leasing a development in CMI, okay? 96 units, leased it in two months. So, that's sort of we're just seeing unprecedented levels of demand. We're building a lot of affordable housing, but we're not keeping up with population growth. So, uh I'm sure I don't have to talk forever about the Live Local Act. I have a feeling that's probably come up once or twice in your meetings. So, um, but the the zoning preeemptions in our view, you know, that expands opportunities. We can now build on commercial and industrial properties without having to do a zoning

change or land use change. Um, I think that's great, but there's still a lot of regulatory things that you as a planning board and and staff would enforce. you know the live local act doesn't you you control your rights to code provisions we have to follow all of them and again as you know a working relationship on an affordable housing development might be is that me I apologize um no it wasn't that's me no that's the ringtone for my significant other so I was like oh Laura's text

uh so um um you know developing ing those uh collaborations on, you know, code provisions that might be a detriment like parking. You still can enforce parking under live local except you you're required to give some kind of a reduction if we're near transit a transit oriented type use or a transit use. Um live local wasn't just about those zoning preeemptions. It was also about tax abatements. Some of that still needs refinement and it's some lenders are struggling to underwrite it. Live local also involved money and um uh funds for mixed use mixed income developments, hund00 million for that, $40 million for military housing. Uh another large sum of money for developments of significant regional impact like mega projects that have an affordable housing component. Um and um then also the hometown heroes program which is a home buyer program which is really fabulous and Florida housing's run that with great success where um you essential workers can through their lender get down payment assistance through the hometown uh the hometown heroes program for firsttime home purchase. We as developers at Pinnacle also provide a home buyer incentive program as part of the the range of the menu of opportunities that Florida Housing asks us to do. Not everyone picks it. We do. And we provide 5% rebate on your rent in down payment assistance for a first-time home. So if you move out, you come to us with evidence you're in a first-time home buyer program. when you close, we write a check to the title company for 5% of whatever rent

you paid. So, if you paid $1,000 a year for two years, you know, that's not nothing, you know, and it helps towards down payment assistance. The in I'm sorry, go ahead. Um, do you know if the state has I mean in in looking at this shortage of affordable housing if the state has possibly looked at their policies about uh vacation rentals to sort of curb back, you know, they curb it back a little bit and incentivize people to instead do longer term rentals. You are very much in my way of thinking that one of the key problems we have in affordable housing in this country and frankly in the Western Hemisphere is the peripheration of short-term rentals. It's a real problem. I mean, you know, and not just in the US. You read about people in Barcelona like protesting, marching through the streets and squirting tourists with squirt guns because everything is a verbbo or an Airbnb in the city and people can't find affordable housing. Um, and that is an issue in our major cities and it's a huge issue in Florida. Is that going to get taken up by the legislature? I don't I hear that talk that it might, but I'm not sure what the policy prescription is going to be. Whether there's going to be a limitation or that there's going to be a certain amount of licenses that you would have to get for short-term rentals. I do not know, but I I think personally that it needs to be addressed. So, um I mean to me the two biggest things I think about as someone in this business is there has to be a rational approach to short-term rentals that protects people's property rights but yet doesn't deprive the marketplace of

essential housing. And there has to be just a streamlining of regulatory hurdles. I think Florida is good at that. I don't know that some other states are as good at that. Um I think that Florida's got a fairly streamlined approach, but there's more work that could be done. We need to just we need to flood the market with supply. You know, we need to be conscious of the environment. We need to be conscious of overdevelopment, traffic, and all those growth patterns. But our biggest affordable housing problem in the c and as a country and as a state is not just these tax credits. It's we need more supply. More supply is the solution to our problem. So you thanks for letting me get on my soap box about that because I feel strongly about that. Um the uh the amendment to the live local act as you pointed out now it doesn't it's not a preeemption but you have the ability to approve if you choose developments without a zoning or a land use change on property that's owned by religious institutions. So that has spurred the Yiggby movement and the biggest challenge with that is educating churches. Churches inherently don't you know the ley in churches that know and understand business have to be involved in that process. And there is an educational process going on in jurisdictions all over the state for churches and and church ministers and their ley to understand like that how this works and why this is a good thing and why that big giant parking lot you never use in the back. It could really be something special. There's a certain mistrust of business people and I get that. But we're hopeful as an industry and certain advocates like the Florida Housing Coalition and this Housing

Leadership Council I'm on in Palm Beach County is helping take the lead and some local governments too to try to sort of better educate people on the benefits of Yigby. So, it's a fun pro, you know, I think it's going to be an evol an evolving process to for people to learn more. So, and lastly, um, employer sponsored housing. That's great. That's a a component of the Live Local Act. And there's been some one of the things in the the 2025 version of the live local act is we're now a little bit more freed up because federal policy with the use of these tax credits says the state has to have its own policy to have residency preferences for essential workers otherwise you can't do it. So Florida finally got around to passing that this year. So, in addition to the live local act and the hometown heroes and all that, we're now got another tool in the toolbox where I if I want to do a 100 unit tax credit development and I want to limit it to you know workers at uh you know uh you know one of your major uh you know local governments or firefighters, teachers, police, I can do that now without worrying about a a fair housing act challenge. So, I provided a link. I think that's pretty good. And Epstein, even though it's dated 2024, I'm starting to see some of the 2025 changes to the Live Local Act populate in there. So, I'm not going to take up a lot more of your time. I think um I kind of touched on all of these things. Uh, I think the one thing that we're seeing as an industry and in Florida, this is very true and in our urban areas is that we're starting to take the focus back away from just taking virgin land plowing over trees. We're saying, well, you know, does that

that old Walgreens that used to be there and now it's closed? Maybe we can redevelop that site and maybe like you combine it with the Pinnacle 441 project that I talked about earlier. it was a closed Walgreens and next to it was like a couple of little cottages and then next to it was like a company that sold sheds. So we combined all three uses and created that and then the second phase was a crimeridden trailer park. So bringing different even though those are all contiguous and not scattered uh you know and separated you know bringing those uses those sort of obsolete uses together sort of the trend line we're seeing in a lot of communities in what we do in what we're doing and build I'm sorry

no just a question uh do you run into resistance on the community level in any of these communities that you're trying to go into and do these projects yes on occasion and what what will that look like? What would what kind of what kind of arguments against? Do you do you run into arguments against um you know uh your standard NIMBI arguments are not in my backyard? Well, I'm I'm all very supportive of affordable housing, but it's just that's just not the right place for it. And then you have to educate why it's the right place for it.

You have to because it's near transit, because it's near jobs, because the design will be consistent with your where you live. and um you know and then will it hurt my property values? My property values go down. Well, there's about a compendium of 30 some odd studies which suggest that's not the case. And in fact, a lot of times affordable housing gets built in areas where there's been disinvestment and that affordable housing sort of spurs new investment. So I find that some of the most powerful nimi opposition, you would think it'd be in, you know, more affluent neighborhoods. No, it's often in in more blueco collar neighborhoods that people feel like h I don't you know I want to see my neighborhood lifted up. This is going to just bring it down and there's data and history to prove that that's the exact opposite that if done right it lifts up the community. So that's the things we we kind of have a playbook and we'll work through those and you have to be patient and have community meetings and engage and not run from those things or run to the fire not away from it. That's been my experience.

Makes sense. Yes. And you you said all of your units are rentals and minimum of one year. Do you know how long like a normal tenant would stay in a That's an interesting question. Um curious in our senior developments there's very little turnover until you know they're

activities of daily living change and they maybe can't live independently anymore. In some aces they might get AIDS but you know um in family or non-aggerrestricted developments it varies on the marketplace. I I don't have any hard data on that, but I know of residents who have lived in our I'll go back to a community I was involved in developing 10 years ago and there's still some of the same residents and then we'll get probably in the neighborhood of 20% turnover annually typically in our non-agger restricted developments.

Very low. Yes, very low. Are there are there generational considerations when it comes to leasing or the person that's on the lease, they're the ones and then if they're off the lease, it starts over or families

the the uh income level is dependent on number of members in the household. So um your income limit would change if you're say start out as a four person household and there's two members of the household because their children depart you know you might have a lower income limit you know so there are some but your rent would not change but you still have to be reertified. Um but in terms like gener like people don't hand off their lease to a family member. And when uh you know a new primary lease holder has to get approved each time from scratch. Yes.

We have a very very special problem here in Cocoa Beach and that is we're a very thin barrier island and the a very significant percentage of our residential area is either a block from the beach or a block from the river. And from a developer standpoint that's primo land, right? Um I'm a tremendous advocate and been pushing for years for affordable housing and I do believe and that was what the basis of my question about uh bringing some partials not necessarily together but identifying right um I strongly believe that we we need to do this and I think we probably can find a few pieces. I really do I really believe that

that's great. The question is, you know, the cost, cost of the land, cost of the improvements. Are they going to be atypical for us? True. But I mean, you depends from market to market. You brought up some very valid locations that have excess land. Mhm. And I maybe that's something that any municipality has to start looking at, right, to to serve to serve the our our our first responders. I mean, you either want them here or you don't. I mean, if you want them here, you got to do something about it.

Agreed. And like I said in my little slide, more P3s, please. I'd love public private partnerships. When we can find surplus land that's governmentowned and we can make an unsolicited proposal where the government advertises it. We want to be a player in that, you know. I mean, everyone in our industry wants to do that. I'm currently working on a couple of those type development opportunities with county one with a county and city working together. St. Lucy County owns one piece. The city of Fort Pierce owns another piece. the Fort Pierce redevelopment agency owns the other piece and they're all kind of clustered together and we're doing a two-phase development plan on that on the property.

Yeah. Being that I don't know how long these grants have been in place and all that. So after the 10-year period, what what's expected that they would typically do with the units? Oh, the 10-year period is just the period of time that t the the beneficiary of the tax credits, the person that bought the credits is earning tax credits. The property has to stay affordable for 50 years at least. Oh, okay. The live local, is that 30 years? It has to be

uh 30 years for live local, right? For the tax credits, Florida housing generally mandates 50 years. And then live local has a new provision that says if you for certain types of Florida housing loan programs, you can opt into 99 years of affordability and you can then be considered for a property tax exemption in exchange for that. So that's relatively new, but 50 years is the gold standard in Florida for affordability. And there's a declaration of restrictive covenants that gets recorded when the property is developed and completed.

And you may not want to say this, but how much of your projects are unsolicited proposals versus I mean just general uh you know common or uncommon? It's common but it's not it's a small percentage. I mean I would say that doing project uh developments through unsolicited proposals or requests for proposals probably about 20 to 25% of our portfolio. I have a question. Sure. I know that you mentioned that you knew Dave. So did he ask you to come here and propose this or have you identified like certain things here in Coco Beach that just give a general talk.

So no I haven't identified a site here. Well, I've looked around a little, but you know, but it's a good question. It's in your blood. Yeah, I can't help myself. Uh, so, um, I, you know, I'm really kind of done. I want to say thank you for the really Thank you very much. Very informative. I love the insightful questions, too. It makes it fun for me. So, I really am grateful for your time. We really appreciate it. Thank you. No, thank you. And I hope you have a wonderful evening. Thank you. You have a question behind you. Yeah. Um, hi, I'm Julie Everly, and I 25 year resident. Yes. Um I liked your presentation. I did have quite a few questions. I think I'll ask um

find out what the board knows versus just being a Now my one question is uh you're proposing this and I love that somebody said, you know, there are quite a few properties that are vacant and could possibly be purchased and turned into something to this effect. Um but we can't create any more land. We can't take from anything. you know, we have a three three nine hole golf courses. You know, it' be nice if we could pick it two, but you know, that would be that would be some property right there. But, um, with the affordable housing, um, do you have any of these units that you have either sold off or somebody else has taken over so that we can see one of your units that's 10 or 15 years old?

Oh, sure. The the upkeep, um, the percentage of success versus um we're we're very close to we in this in this community and because we have the space center we have so many restaurants and hotels we have a lot of people that can't afford to even live here that work here that live out or live out in areas that they can't afford to live any closer um

would this allow them to, you know, if you put one, say there was one right in downtown Beach, you know, right across from where the Starlight is, you know, if one of those were there, would people be able to be part of that lottery? I mean, would we be able to hire people that have to live over in West Melbourne or Coco or to live to work right across the street? I mean, is that something that if in the next two years we had a couple structures that were affordable housing, would people in this area, would they be able to rent them? I mean, are we looking at maybe I'm rambling, but my question is, we've got so many people that have to come here to work a second or even third job,

right? That's the story of what we do as a business. We see that all the time. So to answer your question the first the last question first the last question first the most important is as I was mentioning earlier there's been an evolution in thought about residency preferences and also set you know preferences for the type of work people do. Um that allows us if we were hypothetically because I I'm here tonight as an educational exercise. I'm not here to propose a project in Cocoa Beach, although someday I might. It would be fun. But, um, if I were to do a development here, let's say I did one across the street and I was going to target essential service workers in Cocoa Beach, I could set a residency preference uh, and and be insulated under the fair housing laws, but I probably couldn't do it for 100% of the units. I could probably do it for like 50%, 75%. For the greater Cocoa Beach area and I might be able to do it for essential service workers and also be protected. I don't know if I could do it for specifically for restaurant employees or hotel employees, but the residency preference might capture that. The other thing I would do regardless is if I let's say project X across the street's getting built, I'm going to target my mark initial marketing efforts to local employers and local businesses. Make sure they get the word out first so their people come in to apply first. And if our demand is so overwhelming that we had to do a lottery, which I don't know that we would or wouldn't, we would probably um, you know, want to make sure they got advanced notice and they registered their employees as quickly as possible. Okay. So, so the answer is yes. It wouldn't you know in a few years back we all felt where our hands were

tied about residency preferences and there's been an evolution in thinking on that that I believe is works to the favor of a local community that wanted to see their workers stay here. The the other question you asked is that you know how does our product or everyone in our business that does what we do withstand the test of time for us. We have an entire list of every property we developed on our website. You can download it. It's a PDF tells you where every property is. We don't own anything in Bvard. We do in Orange and Oyola counties and we um and we have developed along the Treasure Coast. So, you know, we we're only as good as the product and how we maintain it. We take a lot of pride in that and I think other people in our industry do too. So that's one of the big evolutions of affordable housing is that it's the private sector has partnered with the public sector. The private sector's brought its innovation. The p the public sector has brought its regulatory control. And it's been a nice marriage because our investors are invested in high quality housing. We don't get compliance revisits just from the state agency or local governments. We get them from our investor and lenders too. So,

one last thing that I can say and I think all of you would know this is um Patrick Air Force Base Space Force um used to have base housing. Yes. And they sold out. It was all greed. They It was greed. They They sold out. They tore them down. And it's great. They You know, I lived in them as a child and now they're selling them as half a million million dollar homes. Um there's some serious environmental issues in the area that they may have to stop. But and this house housing right here in Cocoa Beach was part of base housing right

at when it was Banana River Naval Station. And unfortunately greed is what turned, you know, small little duplexes into Yep. and vacation rentals and homes and Well, thank you. I'm glad I came. And thank you. Thanks for listening to my

So, I think one of the things that drove this is a lot of what you were saying has been coming up over the last couple of years about affordable housing and I know Margie always brings it up and um we we started talking about is there something we can do in the comp plan or the LDC to incentivize to make that easier and that's when Dave invited Mr. So that we and luckily we do have a few things multi-uses in our le our LDC we have a lot of areas and yeah we have we have a big section of the city that's um form based housing we have we do have some things going for it but we

we certainly can do a little more yeah and and like what are the real incentives like what really is going to make it happen you know I mean we can write it in there but if nobody bites then you know But I think as was pointed out quite correctly, a very major factor in any kind of this development is the approval process. There's a big difference in an approval process lasting three months and one lasting four years or five years. Yeah. Streamlining it, you know, costs a lot of money, right? Well, thank you. That that was really really informative. So Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. By the way, the last picture is our first ever pickle ball court in an affordable housing community.

Any any complaints on the noise on that or No, apparently the residents don't mind and they have tournaments on weekends and stuff, but we we've never done that before and this property just opened a couple months ago and nice. We wound up the I'll just tell you a quick story. The codes changed for the number of fixtures in the clubhouse and for servicing the pool and we weren't grandfathered in. we were going to do a pool there and we couldn't change the clubhouse footprint at that point without slowing the development down and costing us a lot of money. So, we came up with, oh, let's do a pickle ball court and it's turned out to be a huge hit. So, food for thought. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,

Tim and Zach. Thank you so much for coming and spending your time with us tonight. It was very informative. Very appreciative. [Music] Okay. Do we have any um staff reports? Nope. None tonight. Any other public comments to do with parking? You guys discuss parking or is that a city issue? Because how about if you talk about parking? Yeah,

we have talked about parking. Yeah, it's coming. We've got the art show coming up. Okay. Um Okay. Thank you. And any board members reports or announcements? I don't have any either. And so I think that we adjourn. Make a motion to adjurnn. Second. All in favor? I I approve. Thank you. I'm sorry.