Economic Development Authority - Regular Meeting

Okay. Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call the July 28 meeting of the Economic Development Authority to order. And we will begin with a roll call. Mister Bailey.

Member Allen? Here. Member Beeham? Here. Member Beemer? Here. Treasurer Blazes? Here. Peterson White? Here. Member Steger? President Yoder? Here.

Okay. Thank you, mister Bailey. We will move on with approval of agenda. Do we have a motion to approve the agenda this evening?

Moved. Second.

And a second. We have a motion and a second to approve the agenda. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed same sign. Thank you very much. We have a time right now for open public comment, and let me share the the guidelines for that. Persons may take one opportunity to address the board for two minutes on any topic, even if on the agenda, with the condition that they may not speak on the same item later in the meeting. No notification of the chair is required. However, speakers are asked to complete a sign up card.

Persons wanting a response to a question must submit the question in writing to the recording secretary. Questions must include name and information how to contact. You may use the backside of the comment cards available in the meeting room. Are there any public comments at this point? Okay. With that, we will move on. Can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda, please?

So moved. Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed same sign. Okay. Thank you very much. With that we'll move on to just allowing an opportunity for any reports from any member of the board or commissioner. Does anyone have anything to report this evening that they would like to share during the meeting?

Okay. Yes? Guess I'm

sorry I was doing a little mental math to try to figure out if we were gonna meet again before this happens, and we will not. So I'd like to extend an invitation to all of my fellow EVA members to the Friends of Downtown's third Thursday in August, Which is August 21. Thank you very much. I was scrambling to get that date. It is August 21. It's downtown on the three and four hundred blocks of Division Street. It'll be a blast.

Thank you. Any other reports from board members? Commissioners. Okay. Thank you very much. We will move on with the regular agenda. There is another opportunity for public comment on any specific agenda item, and I will read that as well. Persons that wish to speak on a regular agenda item must provide name and address by completing submitting a sign up card. Persons may also contact the staff liaison, on the city's website, which is something to keep in mind, no later than noon before the day of the meeting. The chair will call up individuals to speak based on preregistration and cards submitted after the staff report on an item.

Please be respectful of the public's and commission's time. Members of the public wishing to speak must adhere to the following guidelines. Speak only once for no more than two minutes on the topic unless the speaker is addressed by the commission. Identify your relationship to the topic. Have a spokesperson or two for your group to rep to present your comments. And persons wanting a response to a question must submit the question in writing the recording secretary, including name and how you would like to be contacted. And with that, we will move on to our next agenda item, and I will turn this over to mister Carlson.

Thank you, President Yoder, members of the EDA. Tonight, we have two micro grant applications for your review. And at this time, I would invite for I would invite Ford, the owner of Tinti, to give a brief presentation on her grant application.

Hi, everyone. Can you hear me okay? K. Sounds good. Well, I'm Chow. I'm from Faribault, Minnesota, and I've owned for four years. We're located, on Highway 3 on Jefferson Road. And I opened up Tinti in 2021 when I was a college student at St. Olaf because I'm a little crazy. And I think anything can be done with grit and hard work and lots and lots and lots of caffeine.

And I opened not just for myself, but for my family as well. My dad immigrated here in the '90s from Vietnam. And like any dad would, he worked extremely hard so he could provide for my family. And usually, multiple jobs, long nights, long hours. And like any daddy's girl would, I wanted him to have a better life.

And I wanted to retire him a little bit early to enjoy the country that he worked so hard to come to and be in. And I wanted to step into the provider position for my family. Last four years of TNT have been doing really, really well. We are successful and profitable. I pay myself a yearly salary. We pay our employees fairly and above the industry average in Norfield. And we donate between 5,000 to $10,000 a year to student organizations both at St. Olaf and Carleton. And we also donate to local causes. And we host community giveaways so everyone gets a little bit of a share.

We host a lot of events intentionally for college students and young adults in the community. We know that's something that I want to see more of. And so we try to host as many as we can, such as movie nights, jewelry nights, puppy adoption days. In case anyone wants a puppy, know a couple of contacts. And we help out local rescues in that way.

We hold a steady profit between $45,000 and $70,000 a year. And our products right now include bubble tea, which is our main product, Vietnamese iced coffee, and our current food products are banh mi sandwiches, which is a Vietnamese sandwich really fresh, really yummy and spring rolls. And in our time at TNT, our biggest struggle has been space and the lack of access to a commercial kitchen to cook in. And at the time when we opened Tintea in 2021, we had no idea that we would grow into the level that we have today. And you can see the stress of the growth on our physical space.

And we're absolutely packed like sardines in there, people on people. And then just all of our product is really stacked on top of each other. And we make it work. But it can get hard, it can definitely be a little bit easier. So we've been outsourcing our kitchen for the last four years. We've been using my aunt's kitchen. She owns Pho forty five in Burnsville. It's a great place if you haven't been. So that results in us cooking really late into the night or really early in the morning to get it done and to serve the community. And she open she's forty five minutes away, so, that can get hard and difficult for us.

And so when the prior tenant expressed interest in being done with a business in 420 Division Street, We knew it was now or never was a time for us to move our business on Highway 3 to Main Street in Northfield. And we are super, super excited, And we we knew we knew right away that we had to jump on this opportunity at their pace for 700 more square feet. And in the process of moving our business to Downtown Norfield, we will be installing a commercial hood in that kitchen so that will be a fully accessible kitchen for us to use. And so we get to expand our menu into the potential that we have always dreamed of. And we are offering some new things, a lot of new food, which is really exciting for downtown.

We have fresh spring rolls and rice noodle bowls every single day, and we have fried chicken wings, wontons, egg rolls, which is really exciting. And then we're expanding our coffee menu too. So we'll be open earlier in the day and offering Vietnamese iced coffee the traditional way. We have tons of space for dining. And so we are being very intentional about creating a space for community events that are fun and will connect the college students, the townies, and all walks of life.

And this is all fun and joy and paints, colors, and decorating, and buying plants on Facebook Marketplace. But I'm here to talk about what we are all here for today, which is money. And the installation of the commercial hood will be nearing $41,000, which, believe it or not, is actually very low. It's a low price for what we are trying to do, but I have some really great friends that are willing to do it for us. And so we would be putting all $5,000 of the grant money towards, the investment in the commercial hood.

The rest of the hood will be financed ourselves from Save Capital throughout our four years of operating at Tinti. And we are making an investment that increases our chances at longevity for sure. And the hood that we are installing will not only be used for us for as long as we'll be around, but for generations of tenants to come that will be in four twenty two division. And we are making an investment in ourselves and the current community and the future community and a 5 ks investment on your end for another decade or more of Tinti, hopefully, and for Kitchens of Love for decades to come on Main Street. So our long term commitment to Main Street is hopefully buying out that building, which includes the two residential units upstairs, if the opportunity were to come about and if we feel confident in the next couple of years that Tinti will do well in that space.

Thank you.

Yes. Thank thank you, Jiao, for the wonderful presentation. I will add that the the committee, the loan the loan commute committee has met and reviewed this application has provided a recommendation of approval. So I'll defer to the committee members that are here tonight to speak on that meeting. And I'll stand for questions if there are any. Thank you.

Thank you. Any questions? Anyone from the board at all? Okay. Are we ready for a motion? Yes. Member Peterson White?

I'll move approval. Second.

Moved and seconded twice. It looks like here this evening. Okay. Any further discussion?

I'll just briefly comment. We're so excited to have you downtown. It's going to be so great. And it's just, I think the entrepreneurial energy that I have seen you put into your business since you opened is incredible. And it's really exciting to see this as the next step for you. And it's definitely something that Northfield will be enthusiastic about. So, very exciting.

Thank you. Member Blaises.

Yeah. Just a comment from the loan committee. I mean, it's pretty obvious a successful business for the last four or so years. And what I think what I found personally pretty intriguing was giving back to the community already in a, you know, in this sort of younger state of the business and then also just real true focus on the student population. Everyone's welcome but students, think, you know, that's a great connection between town and gown.

Thank you. Thank you, member Blazes. Other comments from the board? I'll just say that I'm a huge fan, and I spend a lot of time at the coffee shop across the street. I may change my habits. In downtown, it could happen. The other thing is it's really cool to see your family going in and out along with you. Watch I'm watching what's going on over there. So kudos to you. Great presentation. And alright. I think we're yes? Member Bien.

One question just out of my own curiosity. I'm a big fan of Vietnamese food. What percentage of growth in food sales are you hoping to see?

Yeah. When I initially did this meeting with, Nate, my projections were like only an increase of 30%. But I've been known to not give myself the credit that I deserve. And so we're expecting like a 120% increase. Sometimes my math is off.

That would be the right way to be off by the way, if you're gonna be off. Okay. Any other discussion for the board? I think we're ready for the vote. All those in favor of approving this loan as was moved, please say aye.

It's a grant, not a loan. Pardon? It's a grant, not a loan.

Oh, grant. Sorry. Yep. Yes. You're right. Yes. The grant. Thank you for that correction. All those in favor of the grant that was the most related to the motion that was made a few minutes ago, please say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, same sign. Awesome. Motion carried. Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you guys so much for having me.

Awesome. Okay. And we have another similar presentation. So, mister Carlson.

I would invite the owner of Awakened Healing to come forward to the podium, please.

Hello, everybody. I'm Leslie Reynolds, owner of Awakened Healing. Gonna move this over here. A little bit. There we go. So I am what you would call a townie. I grew up in Northfield most of my life other than some years that I spent traveling around and having babies elsewhere. I decided to move back because I recognized Norfield as being a pretty safe, good place to raise kids. We have good school system here. And so I came back, I think that was in 2002.

Growing up here though, I was a key kid and, I'm a big advocate for this organization. I understand what it's like to grow up in poverty in this town and understanding what it's like for people who still struggle with those challenges. Not that that's a defining part of who I am now, it's not a sympathy seek, but it's given me a deep level of compassion and understanding for the struggles many still face today. I've adversity and trauma in my own life, and I believe those experiences have prepared me to hold sacred, safe space for others, not to judge or try to fix them, but to honor where they are in their journey and support from this place. When I was younger, I was actually part of the founding board of the Northfield Union of Youth, and I continue to be a big advocate for them.

And so my hope is to try to weave this work into working with the youth and the staff there to support them more. My professional path has shaped the work I do today. I began as a personal trainer, went on to earn my bachelor's degree in exercise science and kinesiology, and later pursued my doctorate in chiropractic. Although life took me in different directions, I use all of those years of education and training in my work every single day. My understanding of the nervous system, physiology, and stress response is woven into every session I offer, whether it's massage therapy, Reiki, or intuitive energy work.

I also value my relationships I've built with other small businesses in this town. It's been really exciting. And I am also very excited to have Chow and Tinti downtown. So I can just walk over there. I work alongside lot of chiropractors in town, more psychologists and integrative medicine practitioners in the area.

They're sending people my way and recognizing the power and the impact that Reiki and massage can have on people's wellness. So, it's exciting to see the Western and Eastern approaches to healing coming together in my practice. And I'm very committed and excited to continue that integration for the community. I opened Awakened Healing in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic. It was a couple of months after we had got to go back to work because we were shut down for quite a while as people in my service industry.

But I was witnessing so many people under stress, grief, fear, and this disconnection. And I feel that's only increased since since then as the social political climate becomes so much more divisive online. So, my my work helps to find their center, help people find their center when things are like spiraling around them. It helps people go beyond temporary relief to address the root causes of pain and imbalance. For example, I've supported trauma survivors who can finally sleep through the night after years of insomnia and individuals living with chronic pain and sciatica who have only found physical relief but, regained a sense of hope and possibility in their daily living.

I've worked with St. Olaf students. I've been hired by them to come in and do Reiki, which has been a really exciting development, that they see the benefit in that for their student population. That's been really fun. I've done Reiki and SoundBez for them.

I'm just coming off of a community event that I hosted this past Saturday, was incredibly successful and really fun. It was in the park in town, and we had I think we had 10 or 12 vendors there. So there are healers and people who were doing self defense that showed up and spent five hours of their day in the sweltering heat for free. It was open to the public and there was no charge for anybody. So, that's something I would love to continue to do.

So, if awarded this micro grant, I would my plan is to create a self care lounge within my practice. As of July 1, I am the leaseholder for the building that I'm in. So, it's a really exciting development. The space will include things like a vibroacoustic bio mat that's a therapeutic mat that people can lay on, some other red light therapy panels, crystal singing bowls for their own sound healing therapy, other things to make this lounge just a place to come and decompress. It would be used, you know, they can book it online and come in and use it at their will with a little bit of instruction and guidance.

But it's a place to create a deeply restorative, non invasive support system. And it will be accessible and inclusive. So for people who are resistant or afraid of human touch, or people in the LGBTQ plus community, people who just don't want that face to face interaction at this time, that they can have a safe place that they can go to and receive some healing, receive some care, get away from their kids, away from schoolwork, whatever it might be, just a place to go and decompress. Yeah. So, it'll it'll allow me to expand my business and create more income for my business also without more one on one sessions because I can only do so many in a day or in a week.

And, yeah, so that would double my income and, you know, be able to allow me to provide more services like this and more events in the community, which is what I really, really love to do now. So, yeah, I've I really want to build stronger, healthier, more resilient people within the community. And so this grant would allow me to do that.

Mister Carlson. Thank you

for the presentation, Leslie.

You're welcome.

Again, the committee met and reviewed this application and they provided a recommendation of approval. And I'm available for any questions if there are any. And so we're seeking a motion of approval on this micro grant. Thank you.

Okay. Questions? Any questions at all? Okay. If not, do we have a motion to approve the micro grant to Leslie Reynolds Awaken Healing with Leslie as recommended by the loan committee?

So moved.

Motion made by member Allen.

Second.

Second by member Peterson White. Further discussion? Okay. I think we're ready for the vote. All those, in favor of approving this micro grant, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation.

Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. It means a lot. This is something pretty out of the realm of norm, I think. So, deeply grateful. Feels really good. Thank you. Yep.

Let's move on to the next agenda item and mister Carlson, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, President Yoder and members of the board. Tonight, you'll be receiving an update on the fifth in Washington project as it's been delegated by city council to the EDA for review. We have a host of team members here but more importantly, our members from our partner members from StreetFront are here to to present. So I'd invite Charles Burdick and Tom Thomas Herzog to the podium, please. I have the PDF up there. Right?

See it?

Okay. Good.

Do we scroll?

Yeah. You should be able to just pull it up or down.

There we go. Okay. Can everyone see that on their screen?

We're working on this side.

Okay.

It's alright. Sure.

I'll go first. Hey, everyone. I'm Thomas Herzog. I'm with Good Neighbor Homes.

And I'm Charles Burdick with Streetfront Development. Thanks for having us tonight. We're really excited about this fifth in Washington site. A little bit of background. I have been in real estate for twenty years.

I've worked on affordable housing projects. I've worked on townhouses and condominiums. I've worked on, high end housing and some amount of commercial as well. As Streetfront most recently, delivered 24 apartments in Saint Paul in 2023, delivered 72 apartments in Fridley, as part of a low income housing tax credit project. That was, the third phase of three, for, in co in coordination with Sherman Associates as the, lead developer.

And then, in North Minneapolis, 92, low income housing, affordable housing homes, which were a mix of apartments and townhouses. I'll let Thomas talk a little bit about Good Neighborhoods. Sure.

The

goal was to have a few images in front of all of you while we did this. So, maybe we, maybe we'll buy ourselves a little bit of time. But I'm, as I said, Thomas Herzog. Good neighbor homes is a, real estate development and property management company based here in Minnesota. I grew up in a small little town called Winsted.

It's about an hour west of the Twin Cities. It's about 2,000 people, so it's significantly smaller than Northfield. But I do have a great appreciation for our small towns here in Minnesota. And Charles and I are fortunate enough to be looking at doing some projects in Downtown Winstead as well, if you can believe that. There's an old manufacturing plant there that we're trying to redevelop. But anyway, I bring that up to say we're really excited to be working here in Northfield. It's a really great community. Was that it? Yep. Did we get it up?

You got it. Alright. You know, my day job is filled with, building new housing, and then managing the apartments that we build. So you'll see a collection of our buildings here. Some of these are mine. Some are Charles'. But then collectively or together, we are working on a new construction condominium building in Southwest Minneapolis called the Fletcher. I don't wanna do all the talking, so I'll pass it back over to Charles. Oh, no. I was gonna give background on how we got here today.

So in January, the EDA put out an RFP to redevelop the fifth in Washington parking lot. And I think it was March Nate's nodding his head it was March that we were selected to move forward with that. And the concept that we proposed was a mix of retail, parking, and then housing, and specifically for sale housing. And so within the program concepts, you'll probably see on your slides, you'll see for sale condos and senior co ops on there that we're currently studying. So that was March.

As many of you maybe remember, April was a bit of a rocky month in the economy writ large, especially for us who rely a little bit on imported products. So that caused a little bit of a delay for us. But anyway, I'm gonna turn it over to Charles now to let him talk through the program concepts that you see in front of you.

Thank you. So as Thomas mentioned, we're looking at a few different program concepts, really trying to find the best match for the economics and to make sure that we can deliver something successfully on the site. We are evaluating the mixed use with condos concept, a mixed use with a senior co op, and then a commercial only concept. And we're trying to look at each of those to find the right parking count, the right program, the right design, and make sure that we get our sources and uses that make sense for the project and for the city. A few of the things we've worked on the last few months, we did a cost analysis with a general contractor.

We spent about a month and a half on a tariff analysis. We found that on $20,000,000 example project, about 1% of the cost was, labeled as at risk for tariffs, knowing that the tariff rates change, all the time right now. And the more metals or the more electronics that those components had, then the more at risk those those pieces were. Thankfully, lot of the lumber we can still source domestically. Of course, a lot of the labor happens domestically and a lot of the other construction supplies are sourced domestically.

So that was reaffirming, at least to me, know that that was a relatively contained, cost exposure. We've also been interviewing, agents and brokers in the local market to sort of stress test, our assumptions and make sure that we can deliver something that will meet the market correctly in Northfield where people's, housing, desires and the gaps can be fulfilled by something that would that would meet the economics. Let's see. A few challenges and risks that we wanted to bring to your attention as we're going through this evaluation. I think perhaps the biggest one is around focusing on this parking count.

A lot of the analysis that the, that has been prepared to date around the site has really focused on a parking count of 200 stalls or more. And when we start digging into that, to deliver 200 stalls or more, you're really looking at three levels of parking. And you either have to do that going down, or you're doing that going up. My concern with doing three levels of levels of parking is that you're probably doing both down and up. And, of course, the parking that goes down is incredibly expensive, and the parking that goes up, in my opinion, is incredibly ugly.

And I think this site deserves better than that. So what we've been really focusing on is the type of parking and making sure that the features of the parking match the the need on-site. Rather than focusing on the parking count, what can we do to make sure that it is appropriate for the retail use, appropriate for the liquor store? So you see in these program concepts and design considerations, and we're starting to talk with staff, and we'd like to talk with public works. Can we work on the streetscape, especially on the Washington side, perhaps on the 5th Avenue side as well, for some head in parking that would allow for that quick in and out for the liquor store in particular?

We're also looking at what can we do on that alley side to make it not just utilities, trash, you know, the backside of the building. Can we make that more of a an amenity space? Can we make it kind of a retail promenade? Can we have cafe tables and umbrellas and some greenery and make it a little more lively? So those are some program design concepts that we're working on that I think would help enhance the site and and make it even more useful to everybody that would like to use it.

Just to kind of close out our segment here, we're trying to keep it brief for you. We're happy to answer questions, but today, we really just want to give an, kind of a a broad update on some progress over the last few months. We don't have, you know, specific square footages or numbers or units or any of that to talk through tonight. It's just kind of a progress update, and introduce ourselves. So I think that's kind of it for us. Happy to take direction from Nate or any of you. Thanks so much for having us.

Yes. Questions? Yes. Member of Pearson White.

Do you have any I mean, it sounds like some of your possible concepts involve multiple retail or service spaces on the street level. Do you have market research that tells you anything about what the demand is for that kind of space in town?

We don't have market research in terms of a study. What we have is anecdotal hearing that there is demand. Now, have to figure out, okay, what is that demand and where is their price point compared to what we can deliver in new construction and does is there a is there a match? So, obviously, the assumption is that the liquor the municipal liquor store would be kind of an anchor on the site for the retail level. But then that would allow the, you know, the liquor store would likely take about half of the footprint of that area.

So you've got another half that you could use for other complementary retail uses. Maybe there's something food service. Maybe there's something, you know, general retail. And then we've also heard anecdotally that there is some office interest. And so I think there is some opportunity for commercial space generally.

Other questions from the board? Yes. Member Allen.

Just going through your the presentation we had in the packet. It looks like you're suggesting that this the Fletcher project that currently is, waiting for approval from the city, it sounds like, of Minneapolis. That this is kind of a comparable project, at least the the residential portion. Those are pretty big units, it looked like. And is that what you're thinking? They're also very expensive. And I'm just kinda wondering what you think, Northfield can support in that type of housing. I think there was 1.4 to $2,000,000 is what I saw at the Fletcher and it just seems like that's pretty out of the realm of other projects here. So, I'm just curious.

We agree. The Fletcher is a very particular niche product in a very particular niche neighborhood. Those are large units. They're averaging 1,800 square feet, and they go up to 2,400 square feet. And they are targeting a very particular, niche market.

It's only 15 units. What we wanted to look at here was, is there a for sale product that delivers a high level of quality, but meets the market more appropriately for Northfield more generally? So that's what we're continuing to work through. If we tried to bring those 2,000 square foot, kind of top of the market, condos to Northfield, yes, we would be over a million dollars. And, yes, we think that is not an appropriate price point for a for sale product here.

How many how many units do you are you thinking is, like, can be absorbed?

How many can be absorbed? I think there is latent demand for for sale housing of of this type in terms of the program. You know, if we build that out, we're probably looking at twenty, twenty four, somewhere like 16 to 24 units on that site, depending on the size. What we see in the data, and what we hear anecdotally, is that you have plenty of people that are in their family house, and they wanna find the appropriate okay, I don't wanna be in the family house anymore. My kids are gone, and I I need an appropriate product for where I wanna live next for my next chapter in life.

We've found at the Fletcher project in Minneapolis that there is a strong demand for that very convenient, multi family, nice condo, not a tiny little, you know, shoebox, something that feels comfortable and relatable to the home that folks are coming from. With all the convenience of I'm not mowing the lawn, I'm not shoveling the drive, I can lock up and go visit my kids wherever they are or spend time in Florida because it's nice in other you know, in the dead of winter. And, people really enjoy that convenience, as well as just the new construction. I don't have stuff to fix and maintain. Things are under warranty and that really resonates with that with that buyer.

So, it's a matter of finding the right size and price point, construction level, so that that can be delivered at appropriate to the local market.

That makes sense. The I was just, you know, the the Archer project seems to be struggling to get underway and I think the interest rate environment of course is part of that. I guess, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on that, first of all. And then secondly on kind of right sizing for Northfield, because I I'm I'm concerned that projects that are as big as we're looking at here, they're haven't been done here. And because of that interest rate environment, it seems like kind of a risky thing to take these great big projects and and try to hit big home runs.

And I'm kinda wondering if there's a if you've looked at or thought about, maybe some type of a phased or incremental approach to this. Maybe maybe you do the liquor store with the housing project above and then the next phase is the next project as that gets absorbed rather than trying to hit the home run. I'm just I'm curious what you're thinking on that because I think that my personal thoughts on that is that the Archer has kind of fallen into that. They're just it's just way too big a project in the current environment, but just my opinion.

I've got a few thoughts up front and then you might have some sales thoughts. Physically, the the challenge of phasing it is gonna be the parking. You wanna build the parking all at once and you also have to anticipate that elevator core going down. So those are sort of the physical challenges. I guess there you could potentially plan out an elevator core, build out the parking, and then only build half the structure on the site above ground. But then, it's hard to get the economics to pay for the parking if you don't have all of it. Do you wanna hit the sales a little bit?

Yeah. I happy to comment on the incremental approach. I it's a there's always push and pull there. Right? For us, the idea of delivering sorry.

Gonna try not to use such strong developer words. The idea of building 15 or 20 houses for people to live in, is is not a big lift for most new housing projects. It it that doesn't scare us at all, but we are a little bit more prone towards risk than your average person. But I I do hear your point about it being altogether a very large project. I think where we're trying to balance that is in, these are additional considerations as in building height, the amount the actual amount of parking that we build in total, and then trying to right size both the extra retail that we build.

You know, having the appropriate size for the liquor store is one thing, but then, not getting caught with, too much excess retail, at really high costs. So it's it it's always a balance, specifically on the housing side. For us, it's not a it's not a major, a major project.

One other thing I'd say is, you know, at a boutique size like this where it's, you know, 15 to twenty, twenty four units, something like that, it's not 40 or 60. It's not it it it's a more manageable level of inventory. And what we found is, on the Fletcher and some of these other projects, It you get a very clear signal when you hit the right price point and the right product. Like, extremely like a laser. And if you're off, then you get a lot of queasiness and I don't know, hand wringing and I'm not sure.

But when you hit it, and we hit it with the Fletcher, we got an extremely strong response. Yes. This is the product I'm looking for and the place I'm looking for at the price that I can do. I can envision myself being there. And so we would like to do the go through that motion of doing the market research, doing some anecdotal interviews, talking to potential buyers, and make sure that we are hitting that, so that we're hitting that quantity and can be absorbed.

Is it and I'm sorry to just one last question. Is it make any sense to consider the the parking as a standalone? So, you do the retail commercial or the retail and housing and then the parking is a separate structure that can look great and be, you know, screened for from the street. But, feels to me like I understand that the 15 to 20 unit project is probably not a big lift for you, but you start adding in all these different elements and it becomes a big lift kind for everybody. We've already had one developer come to town that wasn't able to complete this.

I I guess I'm concerned that that it's the it's this need to put everything together that really kind of becomes the challenge rather than taking these projects in bite sized chunks that fit our size as a community.

My recommendation would be not to carve up the site. I think you're gonna, you know, the the shorter you make that parking ramp, you're gonna lose a ton to circulation. You're just not gonna get a very good efficient ramp. My recommendation would be to reduce the scope. So would it be more successful commercial only? That's one of the things that we're gonna evaluate. And I think that goes to what you're kinda getting at is, how do we get to an achievable chunk here? Because I think, it's a it's a very nice site. It's in a very prominent, spot in the city. It's got a lot to offer in terms of interconnectedness.

It'd be great to have, something nice, new, and delivering value to the community. And and I agree, we don't wanna be chasing rainbows the whole time. I think we wanna deliver something.

Thank you.

Thank you. Yes. Member BM.

In looking at your preliminary concepts, I see where you would wanna be creative with some of the parking and not necessarily look at just the number of spots, but it's been such a big thing in this town, the downtown parking. What are your concepts showing for a plus minus on current parking compared to what would be there afterwards, especially when we're considering a liquor store that's planning on an increase in volume, more retail spaces, more housing. Are we trying to stay even with parking even though there's more demand? Are we losing spots? Are we gaining spots?

To use that whole area as a parking plate, you're probably gonna you're probably gonna fit 70 to 80 spots per floor. So you do two floors, you're in that kinda 140 to 160 parking spots, which I think is a a good quantity for the uses you know, envisioned in our program around the site. Especially when you're adding some head in parking, some convenience parking on the street level. To me, that feels like a good quantity. I don't given how I mean, we drove by it, you know, twenty minutes ago or whatever, and there were a lot of cars there even, you know, at 06:00 on Monday night.

Given how well used it is, given its proximity and everything, I don't think you wanna go less than two parking levels unless you had a very constrained program. But I also think you don't really wanna go more than two parking levels.

I probably should have just jumped in before, Charles answered. But the I would have said, we're really just not there yet. And we have more work to do to figure that out. But we know parking is a very real thing that we need to build into this project. It's been very clear from day one, and it, it is a part of the plan.

K. Mister Riley.

Thank thank you, chair. I just wanted to answer, one of the, I guess, the the line of questioning that mister Allen and Beam Beam are asking about the market. So I'll just note that, in the last five or six years, several large scale apartment buildings have been built, to great success. So I'm not sure the scale is a concern here. I think what we're talking about are are forces that we can't control, so this update is here to ensure that you have an understanding of where we are on the project, and that we're still costing things out and identifying what's, possible.

That's why there's three different concepts in front of you under the concepts under review. But I also do wanna note, that we have a housing study that notes that we have a incredible need for units that have more than one bedroom. And that is what has been built, and that is a component of the concern. So that's why they're proposing larger units. And then we also have a market study that shows a need for multifamily ownership product.

So for example, the senior co op up in the Cedar Meadows area was, had achieved its goal of sort of promised residents within nine months, and will be breaking ground this fall. So I'm not sure that one project that has yet to go underground in the ground, is a good barometer or bellwether for the market demand or need. So I just wanted to sort of, address that. And, otherwise, I think that Thomas kinda hit the nail on the head. We're working through some of those, concerns altogether, and and wanna make sure that you have the chance to ask some of those questions, but also recognizing that we're still in the draft phases of figuring figuring out how to make this be as successful as possible, and it might mean a commercial only building.

Member of Peterson White.

I have a comment and a question. Is my comment allowed at this time? You want me to wait?

No. Go for it.

Well, I think I guess I would just I want to offer a little bit of context from a council perspective, and then feed that into a question for staff, if I may. Which is that I think you've been really the applicant I'm sorry, you're not the applicant. The developer has been clear that figuring out how to solve all the parking problems for all the people on this site is a real challenge. And I think it's good evidence that parking is really expensive. It only seems cheap when you already have it.

And we already have some parking here, so it seems really cheap. But if we want to really lift this site to its highest and best use, which I think is a shared goal of the community, we're going to have to confront the cost of the existing parking as possibly an opportunity cost or other peripheral costs that the city will need to consider. And I wanted to share that one of the city council's top strategic goals in our new strategic plan is to develop a managed parking solution for the downtown area. In relatively short order, what's our timeline for that in the strategic plan community development staff? Do you remember?

We set a really ambitious goal for the timeline on that. I don't remember exactly what it is, but Jake can tell us.

I think the really ambitious goal is the end of next year.

Yeah, think we said 2026.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that's really possible. And what a managed parking solution for the whole downtown would mean, potentially, if we do it well, I think, is that it would change the dynamics around this site, ideally. So that the city may not need to be dependent on the downtown may not need to be dependent on the same number of spots that are on this site just because that's what we're used to. We might be able to make better use of other parking that is already available in other places that also looks cheap because we already have it, and meanwhile creating more flexibility on this site for bigger and better things to happen.

So I actually have a question for the developer related to the parking, and then I wanted to kick it to staff and see if they have anything to add about sort of thinking about what the options are for peripheral parking, and I'm interested in how much it's been evaluated, like how I'm sure you haven't gotten into how many feet wide is Washington Street and how many spaces can you fit there, though maybe you have. My question for the developer though is, I think I read in here, and forgive me if I misread it, but that you are thinking that two parking spaces per residential unit is the right number. And that's quite a bit more than the zero that our ordinance requires. And so I'm wondering what your your kind of reasoning is behind two spaces per unit. I happen to live kitty corner from here on the 500 block of Washington Street, right across from the Fifth Street Lofts, which is a building that does not have enough parking for the residents.

The result of that is that there is a lot of street parking being used, which to my eye as a resident of the neighborhood actually has a lot of benefits if it's used in an orderly and consistent way. It's really calmed the driving on Washington Street. But it's something that's good to anticipate, right? If we're gonna generate a lot more street parking in the neighborhood, it's good to know that's gonna come. So I'm not against people parking on the street. It's an increasingly urban feeling neighborhood, which I think has a lot of benefits. And I love living there, and I would love to have more neighbors. But the two spaces per unit is definitely more than we have looked at in some other settings. So can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah. Happy to. I think that really is driven by the mixed use condos and retail program concept, thinking about a higher end buyer who will be most likely coming out of a single family house, very likely to be a two vehicle household. And it kinda matches their expectations for what they're used to being able to park both cars. I don't think that requirement flows through all of these different program concepts. And so every concept will require something slightly different. And likely, the others will not be considering two per unit. It'll probably that's probably the the ceiling. Yep.

Okay. Any other questions from the board? Yes. Member Beamer.

Thank you. This this might be more of a question for mister Riley or mister Carlson. I know when we were looking at this with the previous developer, cost estimates for the liquor store were around 6,000,000, and I think the parking ramp was around 10,000,000. With the rate of inflation cost, how costs rise, are we still looking in that ballpark, or do you think we're looking more in that 7,000,000 or 11 or 12,000,000? Just curious if you guys have any input or insight as to where you think the cost might might be as far as the city portion goes, being the liquor store in the parking room.

I I think I have to defer to the liquor store officials on that one. So mister Mardig or,

Brian. Thank you, mister chair. I'm trying to think of referring to you whether you're a council member or you cannot tonight, you're the Economic Development Authority board member, Beamer. I'd probably answer earlier too is that as this due diligence phase is going on, we're not getting caught in doing, like, detailed updated cost estimating right now while they're doing some of that market research. I think that'd be part of their due diligence phase would be probing the market, then kind of fine tuning the cost estimates related to the potential program options.

So I don't think we're at a point yet to evaluate, and we're probably looking at a little bit different programming, at least on the other components of the project, then maybe it won't be apples to apples from the where the last developer was at. So I think, our next agenda item will get into the liquor store, but we won't it'll be focusing more on the existing store and kinda grounding us on that and then coming back in a broader package to talk about how the liquor store might fit in with a pro form a on a new project and how that might make sense. And I don't think for tonight that we're ready to do that, and we haven't really gotten to that point on our due diligence internally. That'd be my answer and we'd be I have my finance people here. We have mister Ann Hudd who helps us.

O'Brien, the liquor store manager, our finance director is here as well. So and then we do have our TSP architects person, Von Peterson, who's been helping us along the way through this project for many years as well that has helped us with cost estimating in the past. So that's how I'd answer that unless anybody would like to add any additional commentary on that.

I would just add that the timeline we had considered is having a more financial feasibility review in the fall. So, October timeframe, we felt comfortable coming back with more detailed information.

Okay. Thank you very much for the update. Appreciate it. Look forward to further information. Yes, mister Mardik.

Mister Anhut, go ahead and make the comment. I'm not I'm not sure that it's completely eye opening but if you'd like to make that comment feel free.

For the benefit of the board I would just say it's a very safe assumption that things have not gotten cheaper in this timeframe but it is highly dependent on the programmed use, right? So that that is why that parking need and fine tuning that amount would be very important to shaping that number.

Thank you for that. So with that, let's move on to the next agenda item, which is an update on the municipal liquor store operations. So

alright. So thank you, Ben Marduk City administrator. I will be doing a tag team presentation with Brian with the liquor store manager here this evening. I would say though that there is a back backside team that's been working on some of the components of the ones that we think are worth exploring right at this time. But it's gonna be, this evening's update for you is gonna be a little bit of a repeat for some of you, who got a little bit of a foundational grounding last year related to some of these issues.

I think we do have some new members and we did have some absences, I believe, last year when this happened. But we thought during this time period where the due diligence is happening why don't we ground ourselves a little bit in the current operations of the liquor store? What are the strengths, challenges, opportunities and financial performance that Mr. Witt will be talking about? I'll be getting into a little bit of the privatization alternatives and discussions about the alternative of the city not being in the business of municipal liquor.

Councils expressed some interest to have some conversations around this as well And so we thought we'd use this time for that. Our finance director has been helping with some of the financial illustrations that we thought might be helpful and it may be in a different format that we've been working with our budget analyst on as well. So that's the goal for this evening. Again, we do have Mr. Anut here with Ellers and Associates who's, you know, we've been working with. I did mention Von Peterson too with TSP so they might be resources that would be available as well if there are questions. So I will turn it over to Brian and you want to advance it yourself or would you like me to advance this? Good

evening board members. Thanks for having us tonight. Like Ben said, this is going to be a review for some of you that were in our meeting last fall. But for those that weren't, we felt it'd be very important to give you an update on where we are and what we've been working on and what we'd like to bring back to you in October. Next slide.

So just a quick recap of the strengths of the current store. It's consistently profitable, been in business since 1948. Every year, we contribute back to the city. I think it's important to note that we don't just contribute back in the form of a transfer to the general fund. There are other transfers, I guess you could call them, that are made throughout the year and Ben will get into that a little bit later.

But in the last twelve years, just to put in perspective, we've had over $3,100,000 in income. That's not sales, that's income. That's either been put back into the enterprise fund or transferred back into the city. So we have a healthy fund balance. We have tight operations.

We're very profitable and we have been saving money for the time when a store relocation would happen. As far as general sales in the store, we are the dream of some other bigger stores in other cities that sell majority of beer. We are very strong in the wine and spirits categories, over 1,200 wines by the bottle. That doesn't include boxes or cans or any other goofy formats like that. So we have just a great customer base, very, very diverse customer base from college students and faculty to tourism to local community members.

It's we're very, very fortunate to have that diversity here in Norfield. People know where we're at. People like to call our location position A in downtown. I mean it's one of the first things you can see when you come across the bridge other than forget me not. So we're in a great location. We just don't have the capacity at this point to be where we could be as far as sales and growth goes. Community pride, our staff are proud to know that every a portion of every sale goes back into the community. We are partnered with many nonprofits here in Northfield on an ongoing basis. A couple of weeks ago,

we did

the Taste of Summerfest with the Rotary Club which we helped create seven years ago. We're very proud of that to be able to help them raise money for their biggest fundraiser of the year. CAC is another one. We're helping them in August for their event. NAFERS, we do fundraisers for them. Believe It Canine Service Partners. If you ask any one of those organizations what it means to be a partner of the Northfield Muni, they would definitely give us a thumbs up. And then just our staff in general. I mean we're very we're a fun but professional operation. It's kind of like a barber shop and there are sometimes they tell people because you come in to purchase something but you get a great conversation.

Our goal is just to make people feel good when they leave the store really because we may sell liquor, beer and wine but we're in the business of repeat business. We want people to come back, we want to build it, we want to turn those first time customers into lifelong customers. So we do have a lot going for us even in the small operation that we do have. Next slide. Some of the challenges we have, it's clear as you can see in one of the picture of the parking lot there of the liquor store.

There's no windows, lack of signage at night if you were looking for it and you weren't a local resident other than using Google, it'd be tough to find. It's just it is in position A across the bridge, but with no windows or natural light to shine through, it's tough. It's just not welcoming at night. Difficult access, the customers, we have six parking spots and then one handicap. So it's always a situation during busy times where an accident could happen.

And then again, too, people may have to park far away when the parking lot's full, which for us is a challenge because we never want someone to second guess visiting us because they're afraid that there's going be no parking there. And then the uninviting store entrance, if there's anyone here that hasn't been in our store, we have a small little vestibule right before you go in. It can comfortably stand about two people in there without feeling claustrophobic and then especially one way in and one way out for people during busy times. It's just it's not an ideal situation, but we make it work. And then probably one of the biggest ones is there's just there's no room for shopping carts.

And from a from an accessibility standpoint, strollers, wheelchairs, walkers, those kind of things, we do our best and we bend over backward for those folks when they do visit our store. But what a change it would be to not have narrow aisles like that or entrance and exits to be able to really service those customers that deserve that level too. I'll go through these ones pretty quick but, lots of little nooks and crannies upstairs. This used to be a restaurant until the late seventies for those that didn't know that. It was built with a kitchen and a bar and then eventually the bar went away and they kind of converted the upstairs into addition of the liquor store.

So there's a lot of things that weren't designed when it was built for off sale retail purposes and it just takes multiple staff to manage those areas to be able to keep an eye on customers and really service them the way that they need to. Poor customer flow, it's just cramped around the checkout counter, especially at busy times. If someone's coming in to purchase something that we sell the most of, which is beer, you know, they have to cut through the line of people who are waiting to check out to really access that area. So we manage it really well, but from a customer perspective, it's just very, very cramped. And then lack of sales floor space.

I mean that's what builds sales is you got to have the product selection, you got to be able to respond to trends as fast as they're happening, Storage space, I mean, these are all things that give us a competitive disadvantage. We don't have a lot of storage space to be able to do some of these larger buys like some bigger stores do, which therefore triggers pricing. You're able to do promotions much more easily and it's much more visually appealing to the customer when they come in your building. And then high overhead. And what I mean by that is especially labor cost.

If you were to come in and buy a case of beer, there's sometimes that eight employees might have touched that case of beer before you pulled it out of the cooler and brought it to the counter to buy it. That's how many times the product has to be moved from when it was delivered to when it was purchased. So, you know, in a newer operation, much more efficient, you might have one person touch it which means you could effectively have those people doing what they should be doing is taking care of the customer and driving sales, right? So you're not drastically increasing your labor costs in a new facility, you're just increasing the level of customer service at that point. Next one, Ben.

And this was just for informational purposes quick about the current store. It's about 5,300 square feet, about half and half is sales floor versus storage which is in a basement so that products need to go on a conveyor belt to go down. There's stairs, so not compliant. But there's a lot of work that goes into just, seeing something on the shelf when you get there. Multiple hands have touched it from when it pulled in the parking light on the truck to when it actually hits the shelf.

And then kind of a mix of percentages there of what we sell THC, we're in our second full year, the edible cannabinoids. That's going great, fantastic. If we had more space, I'd have twice as much as we do because it is a category that's growing and we're probably going to have to look at doing a reset on our floor to allow for that and react to the market. So but like I said, if you see there, wine and liquor are 57% of our sales, which is fantastic. We have a great following for that here in Northfield.

Couple more pictures. These are the stairs that lead from the main level on the liquor store to the upstairs. So not only are people with mobility challenges, that's not the greatest situation for them. We'll go and personal shop for them upstairs. We do it every single day. That's great. But also that whole area right there is costing us just those stairs, 400 or 500 square feet in sales floor space where it could be big holiday displays. It could be a seasonal profit driver there for us. But unfortunately, that's what that splits the two levels between top and bottom. Next slide.

So opportunity for a new liquor store, which is what we've been looking at and we're currently looking at. 12,000 square feet, approximately 7,200 square feet of sales floor. So you're looking at just under three times what the current one is. Just a welcome shopping experience, merchandising, plenty of space like we've talked about before. Nice wide automatic doors at the front, just a good customer flow, a lot more cold storage which, you know, when it's cold, it's sold kind of saying goes.

But, yeah, that would drastically improve what we had to do. Instead of eight people touching something, it just goes right in the cooler right off the truck and what's done is done. So total operational efficiency, the way that it's kind of been drawn up and you'll see that in a second here is a loading dock off of Washington Street, which in the event of other retail and commercial, that could be a shared space as well where we're getting deliveries into those other spaces as well. We kind of slid this slide in here too as far as the council stated goals for a new municipal liquor store. The item E was added late last year which is to provide a convenient and accessible place for all legal customers to purchase alcohol while providing excellent customer service and selection.

So we believe that with a new store of this size, we'll easily meet all of these goals including economic stimulus to the Central Business District. Our store sees 2,000 to 3,000 customers a week right now, which is a lot of foot traffic, but we can easily increase that with the additional draw. I would like to say that as we talk about the privatization and a little bit here too that controlling the sale of alcohol, which is A on there is very important. We talk about it all the time but, you know, according to the CDC, alcohol accounts for more societal problems than all other controlled substances combined. We have two colleges in our town.

We have a lot of tourism in our town. Our municipal liquor store has an unblemished record and we take that very seriously to heart. You know, we're very welcoming and open to all customers, but we also want to keep our community safe too. So I think that's a very important piece of having our municipal liquor store stay here. Okay.

We're going to do a quick update on the Dakota Worldwide Market Study that was conducted as kind of a framework for where we see the sales of a new store getting to. So this study was done in mid to late twenty twenty three. They studied as far north as Lakeville and then east and west and down to Owatonna, really did a deep dive into what the market around us and in just Northfield Dundas looks like. So they projected in year one just around a little over $5,000,000 in sales. Last year, we did 2.84.

So from a high level standpoint, instead of looking at, okay, well how much of a sales increase does that mean? Like how much percent is that? I think we really need to look at too is that it's a fact that the Northfield Dundas market for off sale looker is $10,000,000 So if you built the most beautiful store, biggest store, most welcoming, modern with the biggest product selection, the most cooler doors and most shoppable experience period in the market, I don't see it as a stretch that you could own 50% of that market, which would put us at that target $5,000,000 in sales. But some of the key drivers for that steady result was sales floor area obviously would be the market leader in product selection. Shopping experience or value and what I mean by value is not price, right?

It's the customer experience, right? People equate value to the experience versus the price. So if you're going to pay the same price at either place, if the experience is better here, then that's a better value for the customer. And then parking, obviously, on street parking short term would be ideal along with some access to additional beyond that. And then one of the other key factors was capturing the market float.

Float is really defined by the percentage of sales you're not capturing that's leaving your market to spend money. And that's easily they have ways to find that. I do know when one of our neighboring cities, Lakeville, built their last store when they did their market study, they were shocked to see how many people were coming from Northfield to shop at the Lakeville stores and that was easy to find out because they were all club members at their stores and their address was Northfield. So it wasn't even a guessing game at that point. So we do know that we're losing market share that's leaving here, but I think that's an important thing to look at too.

I think in because of time constraints here, I think I'm going to forego going through each one of these line items here, but you do have it so you can see kind of individually just how much more space and product availability we would create. But just really a predetermined customer flow. Just you walk in, there's way finding. It's much easier to navigate than the situation we have right now, strategically placing promotional items, those kind of things and just a welcoming environment for everybody. So this is not a final drawing.

This is just an example for you to either look now or at a later date of kind of what could be at 5th And Washington with Washington being on the right side, 5th being on the bottom. The green area is would be our cooler space. And if you can kind of think about it in your mind, our current store is about 1.5 times the size of just that cooler. So we're gaining significant value in square footage for sales. And then as you can see the data on the screen, just where the arrows are showing, customer comes in the front doors, proceeds to the right and it's kind of a counterclockwise direction.

They can make their way throughout the whole store and promotional areas and then they hit the checkout counters towards the bottom left and then they go out a separate exit. So very convenient. Like I said, this is just a concept plan, but that is our architects from TSP drew this up and said that that's definitely doable.

One side note too, you might notice that this concept plan doesn't have any public restrooms for the customers and the idea on this site was as we build a bank outside of the interior so that the public could also utilize those outside of our normal operating hours because we've also had discussions about trying to integrate public park or public restrooms within any redevelopment sites that the city's, involved in so that we can help the downtown with that goal.

Next

Okay, this will be the last slide for me here. So basically to kind of wrap up this portion of it, the current liquor store is profitable. You will see that in less than a minute or two here. We know that the new one will be profitable as well, but also way more efficient too. And if we figure if we go through this process and we see that whether it's with rising costs or whatever it may be that it doesn't look like it is going to be profitable, then we're not going to move forward.

We're not going to build it just to build it. We want to have this in place as like a legacy project for generations to come and for an income driver for the city and the taxpayers beyond. So like I said, we're working on estimates for this with our developers and just always try to drive this home is that the way that we will build this liquor store is through cash reserves that we have in the bank and bond debt. No cost to the taxpayers, that's how we will pay for it. So this is not a negative impact to property tax or tax levy.

This is something that we believe can help us contribute more to the city to actually lower the taxes. That's our goal. Thank you.

Alright. Moving on to kind of the last components of this which we do have some new illustrations on there. Just to maybe add a couple of points that Ryan built on too is Dakota Worldwide, the city has had a longer term relationship with them besides 2023. Predates me. I came in 2016. They'd done site analysis across the entire city. They did kind of revenue projections. Then there was another update. We looked at staying at the existing store. They updated some numbers there.

So we've been doing some updates. Side note, they're one of the preeminent firms that are specifically in the liquor sales, off sales industry. Both the last communities that I was in Marshall and Blue Earth, smaller cities. But both of those used Dakota worldwide. Kind of reminded me what Chao said earlier too is even though they have their projections as we get into the details we might be using lower projections as we go in conservatively into that but we'll be working through that on the pro form a if those numbers kind of come together and make sense in this particular site.

But in both of my last experiences just for side note, both projects were done on time on budget and exceeded projections on the revenues and we're really in line with what Dakota Worldwide had projected even though we were more conservative on our projections. So I would say having experience on those, that those sales can be there and that's why we have experts. Brian also comes from the private sector, has experience in hospitality. Brenda, our finance director, I've talked about this in the past too. She's worked for large private companies, the largest nonprofit in Minnesota and now for Northfield.

So we've got a strong team. Ellers is really strong. TSP was an award winning designer on my last project for the Marshall Liquor Store. So I feel like we've a really smart team. And sometimes I would say too on these projects, particularly when you're talking about some of the goals that the city has expressed in the past at least, which has been adopted through these values that have been adopted through multiple councils, even predating me when they've looked at this.

The goal of being in the Central Business District and it being kind of an anchor to drive traffic, I think Brian has said what 2,000 some, you know, two to 3,000 people coming through our doors as real people that can help also bringing value added to downtown. But by having it in more of an urban mixed used environment where you maybe have to have a private with the upper levels and things. It adds to the complexity to pull a project together. Both the last projects I did were standalone stores on kind of more of a highway type of a site which definitely, you know, this is more complex and you got to work through those details but it might bring more value to the community with that as well. But let's hear just at a high level, go through some of these numbers.

And, again, Brenda and our new budget analyst to help with some of these illustrations. Some things to keep in mind on some of the things I've seen out there on independent analysis being done maybe in the community is state state regulations to keep in mind as it relates to the privatization alternative is once you're out of the municipal business, again, we've been in it since the mid nineteen forties, once you're out of it, you can't go back, so you're pretty much done, which probably makes sense if the private sector and market starts to take over and that, control goes away. That's one thing to keep in mind. License licenses, although the city could probably limit the number of off sale liquor licenses, we don't have a limit on the on sale for, like, restaurant licenses and retailing. So I'm under the assumption that we probably have it more open marketed as an alternative.

But the state maximum for off sale license fees that the city could charge for collection is $565 annually. So it's a pretty tight restriction. On sale doesn't have the same restrictions as far as the fees go, but, that would be the maximum by state law that we could charge for that fee. So we could have if we did go through a privatization, you could have multiple liquor stores, I guess, on different corners. You know, you go through Faribault, they've got quite a few, you know, pretty saturated market probably, which maybe shows up in some of the businesses that are there, and talking to some people I know that live down there.

Additionally, you you might have no licenses potentially. We do have down the road a couple of stores that are off sale in Dundas and so you might end up with a market that there is no replacement of the liquor store in Northfield. So there's no guarantees either way and the city can't really sell the blue sky value of our business because it rate basically through privatization the market takes over and we can't make it exclusive for any individual one. So the I would say also as it relates to the community prior goals that were identified from a zoning standpoint, this type of a business that were privatized could be out on the highway. There's nothing that requires it to be into the downtown but we've been trying to find locations in the downtown and working with our our councils that do come and go and have different thoughts on that.

So keep that in mind. This is the only enterprise fund in the city which basically means from an accounting standpoint, it's basically the profits expected to be fully funding itself so there aren't any, you know, tax subsidies with it. We don't have any any other operations of the city that help help help that or that that run, this type of an operation. So it's a a one of the benefits is it's an alternative revenue source basically with that. So on the option to sell the store, to give one scenario to kinda keep it simple.

So if our current fund cash fund balance within the enterprise fund of the liquor store, we have about $1,900,000, based on our 2024 audit. If we close down, we would probably have unemployment benefits to pay out. There might be some things to kind of close-up shop and sell things off. We've been trying to fully depreciate the buildings. We're trying not to invest in it with the plan to redevelop it, tear down some points.

We're trying to limp down limp along the building systems without really putting any money into it if we don't have to. So roughly, you know, might not wouldn't be probably a 100% of that fund balance, but, it'd be a onetime cash that could be used for something like a property tax relief could be used, from that cash reserve. So approximately one you know, just to put it in perspective, the ice arena, which is one thought, is is driving some debt increase next year for the city. That annual payment's about 1,485,000.000. So if you put that in the cash, you're a little over a, you know, almost a year, a little bit more than a year's debt service.

Basically, it's a one time cash transfer you could use to reduce the tax levy, that one time on the debt service to delay that a year. We do have the existing store that presumably if it was shut down, you could sell off the existing store. Everything we've heard from developers though is they think this is a prime site. We have had a lot of interest when we did the RFPs previously and they all said it's already a small site if you combine both the liquor store and the Ameriprise, former Ameriprise building next to it. So they did suggest if you do that to sell them together.

There'd be a couple of options how to do that. We do have an internal loan on the roughly 900,000 that we used to purchase. Might be some incidental costs we've carried on that that we owe to the, to some of our utility funds. But we, presumably sell those together as a package. One option would be to just go to market right away, try and get the highest price and not have any strings attached.

I'm not sure that's a wise move from the community standpoint on a prime site. So you probably still package them together with option b to try and have a specific developer with a commitment behind the sale of the property presumably, but those would be two ways you could approach that. We didn't do an analysis yet on, you know, to show you what that might be able to generate in total but, you know, the there would be the value of both of those sites but we would have to pay off that internal loan as part of that. But if there was cash left over and there was a choice to go to privatization, that could be an alternative as well. This is an illustration going back to 2012 of really trying to simplify how we're expensing some things within the fund to kind of show more of like what our net net profits are before transfers and including some internal charges that we have for the liquor store.

So again on the earlier slides that Brian talked about over the last twelve years we generate about $3,100,000 and I guess total profit if you took away those transfers and internal charges in addition to that and then the retained earnings that we've been building our reserve funds up with. So you're looking at about $240,000 a year over the last twelve years that this has been netting. The purple illustrates those retained earnings that we have in purple. So you can see and then the blue represents the just pure transfers to the general fund and the green relates to internal charge Green and orange relate to internal charges for administration overhead. So a percentage covering human resources cost, information technology in the orange maybe like finance department, you know, charges that right now we've been building into our operating costs that unless you peel the onion you might not see that.

So we wanted to identify those because if this closes down, those are real costs that are reducing the property tax levy in addition to those transfers to the funds that we would have to make up in losses that we have. So in 2024, we transferred in blue the 50,000 that shows up. But in addition to that, the orange and green relate to about 67,000. So the combined of those year over a 100,000 just in those annual costs. And I got a slide coming up that shows that that we would have to make up, in addition if we burn down those reserves to use for the other use, we'd still have that additional ongoing expense that we presumably have to make up either through expense reductions in the general fund or or property tax increases with those.

So that's one thing to keep in mind on, you know, the benefit long term investment of this liquor store. As you can see in the blue trending in 2018, that was a specific internal or intentional shift that the city council approved that basically tried to ramp up the amount that we are retaining with the goal to rebuild to invest in cash to build up for the replacement of the liquor store. So that was an internal decision that was made. That's why we dropped down to the 50,000. But you can see on the purple, we did have increased retained earnings that were benefited to that were basically building up those cash reserves.

So, you know, if the store wasn't planning to do this, it was a newer store that we didn't have to reinvest in, that would be greater profits we'd be benefiting from over time.

Mr. Marty, just want to interrupt. We're getting close to the end of our meeting time. And in order to continue, we'll need a motion to extend the meeting to cover the rest of the agenda. Do we have a motion to do so?

I move that we extend the meeting to cover the agenda.

Motion by mister Blazes. Second.

Second.

Second by Peterson White. Member Peterson White. Okay. All those in favor say

aye. Aye.

Aye. All opposed, same sign. Thank you very much. Mister Marty, you can carry on.

Thank you. I'll keep rolling here. This is just a chart that follows those retained earnings and and fund balance that we've been building. So this is the total fund balances over time, since 2012. A rough idea on the, you know, year end for 2024, we'd probably at this time have over a million dollars we could use towards a new store plus or minus probably could push that up a little bit more.

But generally we're thinking, we don't have an adopted reserve policy for enterprise fund but, you know, three months cash on hand to cover the operating expenses would probably be a conservative approach that we'd be looking at as a kind of a minimum to have to be able to make purchases and, maybe deal with if there are some bumps in the road, I guess, related to sales or something. So, that's something to be aware of. This is an illustration. I'll break this down a little bit in detail too of just showing kind of a one scenario. We could do different assumption concepts.

But, again, the prior slide showed the 2024 total, annual net profit and how we're using that now, in comparison to basically, if we had one if we had a privatization of our store and use that, if it became a taxable building. So comparing property taxes to how much the city generates in a, city owned facility, you're looking at about $8,200 in property taxes that that building would generate plus $560 in license fees in comparison to the city being the owner and operator of that as comparison. Again, we probably could go through some scenarios that assumes some other space, but keep in mind if there's another taxable space in the city and there was just a business that was opening up a small bottle shop or something that might not actually generate new taxes for the city if it's an existing building and they're paying property tax on it. So I think it's a fairly simple illustration. Again, you might end up with no business in the city too through privatization.

It just all depends. You know, maybe some of our competitors down the street in Dundas might ramp up some of their work to try and, you know, cover the market. Who knows, what might happen? But we could probably draw a more optimistic larger store scenario too as an illustration if we wanted to but gives a general idea of that. So again, the this is just another illustration on this left hand bar where I'm noting that that, we're more around 300,000 really if you want to look at our true profitability if you take those transfers and internal charges that we do and those retained earnings that we're identifying.

So you can kind of see annually the net difference that you're looking at on an ongoing basis that we're kind of using with an assumption. And again, earlier as I go back to the council too and talk about budget challenges we're facing with them, I'm not sure particularly those internal charges were completely clear too that those would be that we'd have to deal with that, but that was about a 117,000 if you add those up on kind of an ongoing basis that that we'd have to look at figuring out whether we reduce those expenses. Some of that 50,000 we assume does go directly to things like the, North Hills ASAP groups, the group that does we we fund a organization that works with school kids and things to do education around, you know, the pitfalls of drinking and driving or using controlled substances. We have a contract with HCI who helps facilitate that and then they do education through the school system, things on like anti vaping and the, you know, cannabis challenges and stuff that the liquor store profits do help, with those promotions and education that we do, related to the dangers of, controlled substance use, within our community.

Again, the council did request that we take a look at this discussion in the August work session. Our new council really hasn't talked about the fifth and Washington Street, broader redevelopment at all at this point. So we for sure will talk about the liquor store project. We'll have to see what interest the council might have on the broader discussion. But again, we know the developers looking at a pro form a analysis and testing the market and we're also kind of waiting on some of the internal liquor components too, but we might get some feedback at really more heavily budget work session from the council that might there might be additional feedback to the EDA after that.

So one thing on the next steps in addition to that in addition to the developer doing cost estimating, we'd be looking at again, tonight, we're not going through a pro form a on what the liquor store component would be, but the assumption is is, again, that part of the project would fund itself entirely on its own and that the other private components or if there are public parking components would be assumed to be, you know, funded elsewhere through that. So that recommendation probably would then come with that analysis at another point in time. I would say, you know, if it plays out that now, right now is not the time and there's too many market challenges with construction costs or interest rates or just the current conditions don't make sense. There might be other potential options depending on analysis. Again, since I've been here in 2016, we have looked at other sites in the Central Business District that could be viable too.

So you could choose, you know, the city council could choose to just kind of put it on hold and just continue to operate in the current store. They could look at privatizing, shutting the whole thing down. They could also say we're open to look revisiting some of those other sites that are in the Central Business District that maybe could be viable, maybe things have changed with the owners of those sites that were didn't make sense at the time. So I think there are other options depending on the analysis. And again, it's a little bit unusual when you've kind of got it really an enterprise fund that kind of operates like a business but really being the political realm of the governing body of elected officials who, you know, people come and go, different thoughts might be there related to some of the goals.

Whereas if this was a private business and a, you know, own owned, these conversations might not be as publicly discussed as far as like there in real estate world there are sometimes shifts and things but you don't always see some of those different options being looked at that you might see in a public public kind of setting, makes it extra challenging, I guess. I would say though, obviously that, the fifth in Washington site is is a good site. The city has fixed cost on that and, you know, probably someday would make a great redevelopment. Maybe it's not too far down the road. Maybe it's a long time down the road, but that's a little bit of the grounding on the liquor store site kind of grounding discussion before we come back at a future date.

And so now I think I will turn it back to the chair Yoder to facilitate their questions or discussions that you might have on this. And I would say too, this would be a good time that if there are detailed questions, I might rely on my team members who've done a lot of the behind the scenes work to help answer.

Okay. Questions from the board on our presentation? Yes. Member Peterson White.

Just a quick follow-up. You quoted how many customer visits there are. Can you just state that again? Don't think you have a time period.

Thanks for thanks for the question. Between 2,003 customers per week. And that'll vary based on seasonality. Obviously, we might have 4,000 to 5,000 during the holiday season. We might have average of 1,800 in dry January, things like that. But between 2,003 is a solid number.

Questions from the board? Some of us have heard this presentation on multiple occasions. So most of it anyway. Yes. Member Allen.

It's not really a question. I I think that I really like the level of detail that you're going into now. I think that last year we didn't have all that kind of financial analysis and the impact of not having the liquor store be owned by the city. So, think it's I think it's really helpful. I mean, this might be just crazy, but it seems like there's a lot of discussion of in the community about, you know, tax rates, of course.

And I think, you know, you can talk about a $117,000 or whatever the impact is that we wouldn't be bringing in from the liquor store. I just wonder what that would that would be in terms of percentages on the tax levy. So as you look at increasing the tax levy, it's an every year increase essentially if we get rid of the liquor store. I think that might help people understand it. Am I making sense? Yeah.

I think yeah. And the part of the where it gets a little complicated too is, you you know, this illustration is kind of looking at it right now where we're kind of squirreling money away and the net profits and that it gets a little tricky too that if you when we build a new store that it's gonna shift over to debt service payments for a period of time till the debts paid off. Then once it's paid off, you're gonna have the sweet spot for a number of years where there could be even greater profits that you're reaping during that time period. So that's where it gets a little bit difficult to show those different points in time and how it could be done because there could even be some policy options too that if the council wanted to use some liquor store funds, we could maybe say that they got they're feeling extra sensitive around property taxes right now. We could back off of the amount that we're putting into the retained earnings if that might be also a solution, you know, while we're kind of putting things on hold without shutting it down entirely too.

So I appreciate that thought. Maybe the finance people can help to see if there's ways we can help illustrate that too more on, on that percentage idea that you were talking about

pretty complex when you look at all those different factors but I think the average person on concerned citizens of Northfield, isn't really interested in the complexities and it's more about what's what's the answer back to say, no, it is profitable, number one. It's having a positive impact on or a negative impact on your on your tax rates and this is what it is next year or five years from now or ten years from now in the scenario. I just think that'll be helpful. This is much better than what we've had in the past to kind of respond with, but I'd like to just more simplicity would be helpful and I know that that's very difficult. So thanks.

Member Beamer.

Just a quick comment to member Allen. I asked a similar question in our last council meeting of miss Engelstad and the $50,000 contribution equates to point she said right about point 25% of the levy. So I think it would be fair to say if you're at a 100,000 then we'd be at point five and so on and so forth. Fair I mean, roughly close miss Angle said, I would think. Alright.

Thank you. Member Peterson White.

No. Go ahead. So one thing that I get asked about a lot related to the liquor store is this idea that it's it's good for the city to control the sale of liquor because we're better at it. And I I think people just I mean, it's the only way Northfield's ever done it, so how do we know? And so I'm wondering if there's any industry wide data.

Minnesota has lots of examples of cities that have municipal liquor stores and cities that don't have municipal liquor stores. Is there any information on the number of violations issued to those liquor stores that are not municipally operated versus those that are? Any kind of data there? To me, it seems I just want to say, to me, I think the difference in incentive, as a policy analyst would say, to the workforce in both situations, those incentives are very different for those workers, I think, whether they're public employees versus not. But get I that not everybody would view it that way. So I'm wondering if we have any other data.

Sure. Good question. I don't have any data with me tonight specifically to that question. What I could contribute though is that in cities that have municipal liquor stores, like let's say Northfield just has one liquor store, Lakeville is much bigger than Northfield, they have four and then you could go to Lonsdale, they have one. There is data that shows a correlation between crime rates and the number of liquor outlets in cities.

And so it's as the number of liquor outlets grows, so does the crime, right? So that would be one general just statement around that question that you have. But as far as data, as far as specific, I don't have anything tonight for you. But I will definitely look to see if it is out there.

And I would just add too, I think that one, it might be like, okay, the profit motive in the municipal might be different than, you know, our clerks are told basically zero tolerance. We're not gonna be pressured by profits to, you know, let people get by that. We'll see if there's any data on that. I would say secondarily, there might be data out on accessibility related to it and those that are underage being more likely to be able to get their hands on it. So the more stores that you have that are selling it, the more likely that there might be some ability to get sales. So we can turn our researchers loose to see if they can actually find some data that supports that. I think those are two pieces.

Follow-up. I would just say anyone who's been a college student in Northfield probably has some relevant anecd data, And that would include me. That there are differences in retail outlets. But I think that for the public to really believe that this is a good reason and not a sort of moralistic reason, but a practical, actionable reason to make a policy, I think it would be really helpful to have some kind of analysis to back that up. And I would say analysis more than like correlation, because correlation does not imply causation with the number of liquor stores.

I agree.

It might, but there might be other things going on there too.

True. Yeah, I would just add one last thing that, like you said, college students probably know this too, or ex college students. But there are liquor stores everywhere that are well known to folks that are underage where it's easy to obtain alcohol. I know of several of them that are known like that. The liquor store, the Northfield Municipal Liquor Store has the exact opposite reputation. So I just put that in there too.

Yes. Member Allen.

As a former St. O. Student, I can vouch for that. Yeah. This this is this Exactly. This is this is like left field here, but I think that based on a quick Google research, the Minnesota State Legislature allows for municipal ownership of cannabis dispensaries as well. Where are we at just generally with cannabis dispensaries in Northfield? Has anybody applied for a license to the state? Do we know what's the status of all that? And are we looking at several of those?

Is this something that should be added on to this project potentially to also control the the, use of that drug. So just curious if you've thought about that.

Thank you, chair, commissioner. I think I'll ask a couple of different staff to respond to that. I think I'll ask mister Riley to talk high level on the, licensing in our code and as it relates to what we might know about applications or not. And I think I'll let, mister Witt talk about what some other cities are doing. And, before I do that though, I'll just say at a high level, we had this question come up at our chamber form that we just got done with earlier this afternoon.

My general answer was we're monitoring it. The council has identified, exploring alternative revenue sources through the strategic plan as a goal. So that would be an alternative revenue option. I would just say to this point, staff's been more monitoring some of these other, operations. There are some challenges that Brian can talk about with that.

So we haven't quite been ready to initiate on our end and we haven't had a strong interest or haven't heard from our counselors that they wanted to expedite that conversation. Any two or more council members can ask for items beyond an agenda as well though and I think we're probably waiting for that to play out, at a broader policy lever about what they want to, whether or not there's interest to do that. That could be a potential added retail use even on this site if there was interest has to be in a separate space, legally. But mister Riley, do you wanna start at a high level on the license application question and then maybe turn it over to mister Witt to talk about the municipal side and what he's tracking with other cities? Good luck with figuring out how how broad or not you wanna get with your answer.

I'll I'll try. Thank thank you, mister Marduk, chair Euler, and, commissioner Allen. I think we could start by saying very high level that no licenses yet have yet been issued by the office of cannabis management. And so anybody who is contacting any municipality to locate in their areas where they're allowed to locate is doing so relatively speculatively. The lottery was held at the June, for all of the license types.

But as far as we are aware, no one yet has been issued an actual license. And some of those lottery winners have not yet been notified as to whether they will receive a license. So that's thing one. Thing two is we've been approached, I think, three different inquiries in the last three months. Most of whom are looking to locate downtown, but at this time, the C 1 Commercial District does not allow for cannabis retail, or any other, cannabis use beyond, the existing t, I guess, Farm Biller hemp derived THC products that are available, say, at the liquor store.

Then I think we we have a couple of we have had one of those of those three calls. One of them is interested in a full in a full stack cannabis enterprise, so what's known in the, licensing list as a mezzo business. So that would be, production, processing, etcetera. And so that is something that we're pursuing as far as tax base increase. It'd be an industrial user, essentially.

And then, I suppose as as the conversation gets going on a municipal option, If the municipality were to take that, there's a couple of and maybe mister Witt can talk about this too, but there's a couple different municipalities that have already sort of started assuming that, this is a revenue stream that they want. And there's a couple of market research research products out there showing, tremendous potential revenue, although the legislature in its wisdom keeps changing the calculation of what that revenue and taxes looks like. But it is a factor out there. And then I think high quality buildings generate high quality tech tax taxes. So, hopefully, that's what comes out of it.

As we redo the zoning code, in the next six to twelve months and also entertain a conversation around an additional revenue stream that could be, a municipal cannabis dispensary, that'll determine whether we allow cannabis users or uses, to locate in the C 1 District. But at this time, it's highway commercial and industrial, which is a little more than what you asked, but it helps, I think, with the real estate framework. Yeah.

Great question. It's been going on for quite some time now since the OCM has kind of changed directions. Just from a high level, yes, municipal cannabis dispensaries can exist and they can also circumvent the lottery process. So if a city decides that they want to enter the business, they don't it's not a chance if they will, they will. They still have to follow all the guidelines that a private would complete all the application process, but they are essentially effectively guaranteed a license.

So the last time I checked, it was probably last week, think I there's 14 cities that are going to be opening municipal dispensaries. There's many more than that that are interested but sort of like Northfield, we've been kind of like, let's kind of see how everything plays out first. But two, for sure that Anoka just broke ground and they're building a brand new facility and St. Anthony Village has already signed on to a lease for their dispensary as well. I think it's a short three year lease kind of to minimize risk versus building a new facility.

But a lot of the cities I've talked to, they've just had trouble getting real estate. I know there was one city in particular, they wanted to go into a strip mall but the strip mall was owned by federally backed funds and so they couldn't operate a cannabis business in there because of that. So those are the biggest roadblocks I've been hearing is just where are you going to put it and, you know, especially for a smaller city, where would you come up with the funds to fund it?

Quick follow-up. Is it like a municipal liquor store where you can have a municipal dispensary and then that would eliminate other dispensaries in the community?

No. No. So it's for every whatever 19,500 residents that you have, you have to allow one license and the municipal cannabis license would not count towards that minimum level. There is a there is a minimum level for a county too, but we don't need to get into that tonight. But that's the short answer.

I I would say to a Northfield's licensing side of the code, not in the, I don't believe that's in the zoning section. They currently go to the highest restriction that's allowed by state law. So, I think depending on the interpretation of it, it's one or potential privates. Doesn't guarantee you'd have that many, but that would be the maximum under our current code. And, it would only be in the highway district. Maybe I'm wrong if it's generally the highway district on the retail. There might be some components can be in the industrial. Jake could answer that. But right now, it was kind of intentionally left out of the downtown partly to until that decision was made because that might be where the municipal were to go if there's an interest in the future. So that was part of the couching of that, policy consideration.

Sorry.

Mister Riley.

Yeah. I just wanted to thank you. I just wanted to correct a error that I made earlier. In fact, five licenses have been issued. They have and so, but they're all for, like, large establishments. I think the closest one is in Albert Lee. There's also one up north, and then tribal entities can, open retail establishments off tribal lands. So Morehead had so there's a couple, in Northern Minnesota. I think one not far well, one adjacent to the Prairie Island facility as well. But that's still I mean, of all the licenses have been issued, there's, like, 300 until five people actually hold them.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Okay. If there's not any other questions from the board at this point, let's move on to the next agenda item, which would be an update on the facade and riverfront improvement grants.

Thank you, President Yoder, members of the board. The Community Development Department has been fortunate to have a host of interns this summer. And we've had two EDA interns, Elijah Allen and Mia Anzalone. Mia is not here this evening but one of the projects that Eli and Mia have been working on is a review of our successful facade and riverfront programs. And so tonight, this is Eli's last hurrah for the his internship and he's prepared to present on the Facade and Riverfront program.

You. I just wanted to say thank you for allowing me to

We just have to wait for Matt. Okay. Yeah.

Good? Okay. Sounds good. Alright. Just wanna say thank you for allowing me to speak. I'll keep this very brief because I feel like we're all a little bit tired, we're all ready to get out of here before the bad weather hits. So I'm Eli Allen. I'm one of the EDA interns here at the city hall. Unfortunately, my colleague, Mia, couldn't be here tonight, but I'm very glad to share with you some of what we've done this summer just from an intern standpoint. So this is a compilation of all the data we had from current years and prior years on two specific EDA grants, that being the improvement program and then the riverfront enhancement program.

Sorry. I'm a little bit tech illiterate. Here we go. So program overview, Northfield launched its facade improvement grant in 2020, which was then followed up by the riverfront improvement grant in 2022. The purpose was to support the downtown revitalization, help small business growth, and preserve the historic buildings that are present in the historic district of downtown.

The riverfront program has since been sunset in 2024. It ran from 2022 to 2024. And this past year, we've had two award recipients of the facade grants. Right here, you could see it on your pamphlets too, but this is a map that my colleague made of all the grant recipients. It's important to note that that color and that teal color represents people that receive both riverfront enhancement grants and facade improvement grants, suggesting that people use both these grants in a stacking manner to help tackle some of these larger capital improvement projects that they are doing.

I know a lot of you are probably familiar with some of these projects, so I won't get too into the details of them, but, they were used to help gap the financing for these projects and, really went to the improvement and revitalization of the Downtown Northfield. You could see that all up and down Division Street. Whenever you see a building with new windows or tuck pointing or painting, it probably was a result of one of these grants. Again, don't wanna bog you down with the details, but in total, there was 26 grants, most of those being facade, 18, and then eight of the riverfront grants. In total, this contributed to $278,000 of grant money awarded, a majority of that obviously coming from the facade grants.

In total, this covered a sizable portion of all of the project costs being, that number being over 734,000, And the grants actually covered around 38% of the total projects that were applied for. This is just a graphic going over the details that I've done, sort of showing that we're reinvesting in Northfield's future. Obviously, a very sizable number of money has came through this department and helped local businesses. So just another way to show that we're really taking steps into investing into our future, and you can you could literally walk down Main Street and see it. So and it should be said that the riverfront enhancement programs were not just for capital improvements, but also for, expanding the services for the business.

So you think of, you know, Little Joy Coffee was able to build their behind the deck shop and accommodate more customers. And a later example we'll get to is, Full Potential Therapy used it to get a full service, playground with playground equipment. So So little stuff like that that goes a long way into investing into our local businesses. This page right here is just some pictures of some of the buildings that benefited from this, you know, taking on those large exterior projects, painting, tuck pointing, new windows, and etcetera. Some quotes from grant recipients as well.

And you could see, one of our newest grant recipients of this last year, By All Means Graphic on 17 Bridge Square. It's one of their, renderings for their new storefront. And then to close it off, this is, what I mentioned earlier, the, full potential therapy, new playground that they were able to implement as a result of the Riverfront enhancement. So with that said, I know that it's late, but are there any questions for me? And keep in mind that if I do not know how to answer them, I will defer to Emery and Nate.

Awesome. Any questions from the board? Yes. Member Allen.

Just just quickly, what was the how much have we allocated this year? Any idea what we're planning to allocate next year? And then how much is the actual grant itself per project?

So I know that the grants are up for $10,000. As term in terms of future funds for the grants, I cannot answer that. So I will defer to one of the other two.

We had $20,000 budgeted for this year, and it was a three year program that was reapproved last year. So, 24, 25 and '26 each year has $20,000 for a total of $60,000 over the course of three years.

We like

like fully subscribed

Correct.

Through 2025, so 40 thousand's gone out the door.

Oh, including last year?

Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks.

Awesome. Other questions? Yes.

Thank you, chair. I just wanted to add that the grants imply a 100% match on behalf of the building owner. So, the building owner is contributing that $10 as well. That's how you end up with a much higher total project cost than the amount the city has contributed.

Any other questions? Good review. Thank you. Good job in your report.

Thank you.

Thanks for your help also this summer. Awesome. Okay. Let's move on to our last agenda item, staff updates. So I'll turn it over to you, Mr.

Carls. August will be full of budget discussion, we'll have a presentation from a partner of executive director of the Latino Economic Development Center who we've been in a memorandum of understanding with for the last six months. She'll be presenting that success as well. I'll ask Emory to provide a quick update on the Connecting Business and Community progress, our program.

Thank you. As the EDA knows, we interviewed over 50 businesses using the University of Minnesota's extensions program over the course of the winter. We are now into the phase of analyzing data and moving into task force groups. The city hosted alongside the university a task force retreat last Wednesday that the EDA was invited to and some of you were able to attend. I have more information on that for the EDA.

If you feel like you were left out and want to be on a task force, man do I have good news for you. We could use your help on projects from everything from more industrial sites to transportation to housing to bathroom accessibility in the downtown. We'll be having a public facing event in September to celebrate that commencement of the ongoing progress of the city in our economic future.

Thank you. Any other updates? None at this time. Thank you, President. Okay. Alright. Very good. Looks like that has got us to the end of our agenda this evening And if there's no further business, our meeting is adjourned.