City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, I called the April 6, 2026 city council work session to order at 601. So on the agenda today, we have a grant program. So I'm going to turn this over to Roland.

Thank you, mayor, and good evening, counselors. We'll take a moment to get the presentation up on screen here for everyone to see. Um, and then we will start off with a discussion about our URA grant program possibilities for downtown North Plains. Bill, whenever you're ready, we can go to the next slide. Okay. Starting off with a bit of framing for our discussion, I want to go over a few key boundaries that we have when we're talking about future programs, grants, and funding opportunities. Um first is how funding is outlined in our urban renewal plan. Uh we have four different mechanisms that are specifically called out in the plan. Those being rehabilitation and re development grants or loans. Uh new development grants or loans. Uh funding in the form of technical assistance and commercial facade improvement loans. Uh and bit of a caveat here. When we say grants, that can look like um outright grants or grants in with a match. When we say loans, that can look like low interest loans, no interest loans, partial forgiveness loans, full forgiveness loans. So those terms are not specifically defined within our urban renewal plan. So we have some breadth there to work with. Slide please. Okay. And here's our downtown focus area. I've called out some of our opportunities and constraints to narrow down our focus to um a few key areas. Opportunities working in downtown are, of course, our historic resources, the fact that we have a really established business community down there. It's a compact footprint. We aren't dealing with a sprawling district, and we have an adopted downtown improvement plan as

of 2023. So that is a nice modern document that you all can work off of when developing programs. Some of the constraints uh we have some poorly maintained buildings that comes in handinand with that historic character. Uh small parcels. It's easy to develop a big green field parcel with no existing complications on it. Working with these small parcels can sometimes mean that our business owners and property owners need to be creative. And then there's the high risk perception by investors. small downtowns in small cities, you know, they don't have a huge market. We don't have, you know, 10,000 rooftops that we're working with when people are looking at investing in our community. Um, so we have to be thoughtful about how we fund and support our businesses. Last slide, please. And lastly, um, something I really want to highlight throughout this discussion, a really important bound is our program targets. Um, and the two that we talk about a lot as staff is catalytic or transformative. Um, and when we're looking at what we fund, we want something to be catalytic. So, bringing in new business, something that we don't have or a new type of development that we don't have, um, new uses that we don't have. Um, and at a different scale, uh, larger scale than what we currently have. And then transformative. So taking an existing business that hasn't been able to expand um for a very long time and giving them that leg up to expand their business or to um evolve their business into something that it better suits um the current time and place. And then program goals. Uh we have three goals here listed out from the urban renewal plan. Um those being promoting a mix of uses oriented to pedestrians, uh providing broader and more diverse goods and services and increasing employment business

activities and those are directly from our URA plan um and should be at the core of any programs that you as a board develop. Uh Bill, please. Okay. Now into some concepts that we have started developing uh within the office. Pre-development grants are pretty common uh in the urban renewal and granting space. Uh this aligns with our urban renewal plan project F3. Um and it is a smaller grant usually around $1 to $5,000 um and on a short timeline 1 to 3 months. So these are under the catalytic um category of grants. We're going to assess project feasib feasibility and then generate plans to improve property. So, we're going from something or from nothing to something with these grants. Um, some example programs, Beaverton has a very robust pre-development grant program with multiple different steps. Lincoln City has a more streamlined program, pre-development assistance, and Milwaukee has a pre-development assistance grant uh program as well. That's Milwaukee and Oregon, not Wisconsin. Um, these are grants that are really useful for property owners who have properties that maybe are small or oddly shaped. Um, properties with existing buildings on them that don't maybe make sense for an immediate use to go into. So, anyone who has a lot of questions about what do I do with my property, this is going to be a great resource for them. Slide please. Facade improvement loans. Uh, this aligns with project F4 in the urban renewal plan and this is the next step up in funding. Uh, anywhere between about 2500 to $20,000 is the range we're

looking at. um with a caveat that with larger cities, if you go looking um at something like Portland or Eugene or Bend, they might have programs that go much higher for improvements um because they are so much uh larger. It's a midterm uh timeline. 3 to 6 months is about what you would expect for one of these projects. Um and the goal is what it what it says on the label there. uh improving facade aesthetics and uh unifying that downtown environment, increasing window area, which is great for pedestrian engagement and advertising. Um installing awnings, once again, we're really hitting that pedestrian friendliness, keeping people in downtown for longer. Um some example programs, Forest Grove has a storefront improvement grant program um that we are really looking at as a neighbor. Um, Redmond has a very strong uh and longunning PADA rehabilitation grant program. And then Lincoln City, once again, another program that's well established. Um, and this is going to be uh really helpful especially for our established businesses who maybe have been operating here a long time, have a lot of connections with the community, but haven't been able to take that next step um to improving their business. Bill slide, please. And then our last category, building improvement grants and loans. Uh this aligns with project F1. And the funding amount is the highest of the three options here. Uh 10,000 to 50,000 once again in those larger cities. You can see these projects balloon up into the hundreds of thousands. This is going to be longer. I've thrown up the timeline 3 to nine months, but because these can be sometimes comprehensive or phased projects that we have uh property and business owners working on that can extend further. Uh and the goal here is

really to assist property and business owners and bringing buildings up to code safety, fire and life safety, building codes, health codes for especially our food service businesses. Um and then improving functionality of the space. Um, so if a business has currently capacity to have 25 patrons in their space, but they know they can renovate to accommodate 50, that's transformative. That's great. um if they are currently able to do bakery offerings by um purchasing from another bakery and just having them for sale in their shop, but they want to come in and maybe do some of the baking themselves um or add coffee to their offerings and they need to do some major renovations, that's a great thing for this building improvements. Um some example programs, Beaverton has a very robust program um and Forest Grove does as well. A little bit further down the valley, downtown Corvalis has a unique approach. It's a revolving loan bunt. Um, not the most common, but seems to be very effective for them down there. Uh, Bill, if you want. So, targets. Um, as we went through those three programs, I focused uh on tailoring them to three subtargets of our urban renewal plan goals. Historic preservation. Um all three of those programs can be used uh in accompanyment with historic preservation funds from other programs um state programs or even national um facade improvement being the standout there um for unifying downtown character or restoring historic facades. Um business retention um pre-development can be used also for business expansion. Um, so if somebody has a site that has uh a building on it, but they've got an extra 2500 ft of area that's not being used, uh, pre-development could help

them figure out how to, uh, utilize that space better. Um, and then building improvement obviously can help a lot of our businesses who maybe haven't been able to take that next step. And then visitor friendliness. This is uh, probably topic number one when we talk about downtown function um, and supporting downtown business. how to keep those people walking downtown, staying downtown, dining, um, and really keeping that foot traffic up. So, facade improvement is going to be key here at building improvement, making sure that those businesses are attractive to people who are walking, cycling, driving downtown. Bill target please. And then, uh, a little bit of housekeeping here on program implementation. your role as you are a board will be to provide direction to staff um as to which programs you're interested in pursuing um what implementation uh would look like for those programs, which goals or targets you want to focus on primarily. Um and then what metrics of success you want to measure um how do you want us to focus these programs? Uh staff will take your direction. um develop a program, develop uh selection criteria and the uh refine the funding mechanism and then we can also bring in st uh consultant experts to take this base level program perform economic feasibility analysis and um really take those programs to the next level, provide us some extra information on that front. And then once we have a program developed um administration is relatively simple and straightforward. will advertise the program, accept applications, um and then we send it to economic development commission to review applications, interview the applicants, and ultimately make those to recommendations to staff um on whether

to fund or if they have recommendations about um less or more funding for a particular project. Uh and then staff will carry out the grant and uh monitor progress, collect data and report back to the URA board on how those programs are operating. Bill, if you would. Uh and that will conclude my part of the presentation tonight. I'm open for questions.

We councelor Weber. Uh excellent uh information. Am I correct? There's no reason why we can't use this for the whole uh URA boundary. It doesn't have to be confined just to downtown. We can expand this to the whole Glenco area. Correct. That is correct. Um we can target this to specific areas. We can also do a whole plan area program. Yeah. My only thought would be we don't have a huge number of businesses so it might make sense because this is so well defined but we could talk about it. Okay.

Other questions, comments? Do you mind um flipping back to you had a slide with all the goals uh or Yes, thank you. I think we stop. Thank you.

Um I I personally love this because it's gives a really good strategic roadmap in my opinion. Um, I think that if I were to prioritize the three, I would choose the second pillar or buck or stream. Um, in particular as a way to focus. Um, and maybe if I were to order this personally in priority, I would go one I would go business retention, visitor friendliness, and then of course historic preservation maybe. Although I could it would be hard to pick, but I think number one would be business retention. if we had a fund that we needed to allocate money towards, that's what I would personally do, but um there's many ways that we could prioritize. Thank you for the feedback,

Council Warington.

Yes, thank you. Um can we just step back for one moment? Um I really would like to know what the core reason for this deck is. Is this a presentation forformational purposes? So nothing really has been started. you're just sharing so we have an understanding of what can happen in the future or is this an educational deck that's telling us what you're spending money money on currently um and you're just informing us on your budgetary uh spending. So, councelor um the URA board last year um requested staff put this together um to expand the programs from because right now we have food and beverage only. Uh what we asked for was a larger scope and staff recommendations um and potentially a consultant to help form what new types of programs. So, what staff is doing here is coming back to us with the work that they've done and saying this is what we have. You know, what do you like? What do you not like? What else do you want? and then so they can go and finish the work and come back to us with a finalized work product. The intent at the time and and theoretically going forward is to um attract additional businesses to the downtown and opportunity areas which are our current URA boundaries um through grants and other programs. So we're just trying to expand the scope of what the URA is current the programs currently available to it to allow staff to uh attract more businesses. Does that make sense? Yes. So on slide nine, um, our takeaway from this is we're trying to prioritize this in this meeting now to determine what our next steps are. Is that what they're you're asking of us?

You take that. Yes. So, uh, if the URA board can provide feedback on which programs they find most promising and which targets or goals they want to pursue most strongly, that is valuable information for staff. Thank you.

Council reading here, um, I love what you've come up with, bro. I think it's great. Um my biggest questions are you know ensuring these programs are accessible and applied consistently across all businesses and that there's um you know elig eligibility standards scoring criteria and prior prioritization and making sure like is that to come if we decide to go with these sorry could you repeat the last part of your question will we come up with eligibility standards scoring criteria and prioritization if we move forward and then like how are we going to make sure that that's fairly.

Yes. So that would be part of the program programmatic formation. Um so once we decide sort of the umbrella of what the program is going to look like the broad goals and uh target area such as facade restoration or business improvement. Then staff will prepare preliminarily what criteria um and the eligibility um which would then be reviewed for conformance with the board's expectations for the program. Um and then as applications are accepted, there'll be a standardized application form um with uh demographic information, business information, and then options for uh long form response as we have for the current tenant improvement program. Um and then that will be reviewed both by staff and by the economic development commission for uh com conformance with the program goals, targets, criteria. Um so you'll have multiple reviewing bodies there. Um and we will ultimately be tracking which uh projects are funded, which projects aren't funded and the results.

Thank you. Comments. Sorry, what's your new name? Thank you. Uh council. I would just echo um I am aligned with councelor Hagenor's thoughts of really prioritizing um business retention. My only question for you Rowan is um you know once we've come to a consensus and a direction what's the timeline to implement this?

Um I actually might defer to Bill on timeline as going to probably on a couple of other projects that are in the air as well. Thank you, Rowan. Um I Rowan was very um deliberate in sharing examples of programs elsewhere. Um so for a lot of what we're talking about here, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. We that's how the tenant improvement the new food service tenant improvement program works is we looked at girls and beans and then adapted it based on being a smaller community with you know different issues in north plains um versus bigger cities. So we adapted. So it be it'd be the same approach based on what we hear from you is we would go out and identify best class examples of what we hear you would like to accomplish and then we would adapt for North Plains. So that wouldn't be a terribly um you know two or three months at most. Um basically it wouldn't in terms of city work time it's not that long. Councelor Um would we be able to once we package up the program and overall we promote the um programs externally or would we I mean how would we

Yeah. How would we market it? Would this be a push? Um I Well, I mean I think you I guess what I would say is we promote it however we can. um you know, we would promote it ourselves. We would have the BBC work on it. We would, you know, the chamber would, I'm sure, be interested in um in promoting that for local businesses. So, we would just use whatever channels we could and be as comprehensive about it. That would be great. And something to plan for as a requirement. I mean, this is clearly a lot of thought has been put into this and be great if we could somehow do a campaign through the EDC or something.

I I don't see any channels I would say no to. I guess it's the bottom. Awesome.

Yeah, I I like the um Sorry, it's Mayor. Um I like the prioritization uh that was stated. Um I like marketing this. Um, I also appreciate that you kept it as broad as possible to allow you staff and the EDC to kind of have a little bit of flexibility within the program to go and look at what makes sense. So, I I'm interested when we get to that point. I don't know that I have any input for a while, but I'm curious to see what the scoring criteria looks like. I think that'll be important. Um although we don't exactly have businesses like you know beating down our door at the level we would like yet. So I'm I think that will come with time. But I I like the idea as we start to move forward that we we make sure that we look at the um once we get to that point where we need to start looking at the opportunities and saying okay this is this is a better for the city than this one. and then making objective decisions that way. Clear objective by see.

Oh, sorry. Hold up. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Go. My my thought when I kind of tour the city a lot is perhaps the priority should be the current businesses because that's one thing I've noticed is I think they felt a little forgotten where the initial grants we gave went to the brand new businesses which was fine but we haven't had a pattern of giving the old businesses as far as I know significant number of grants and to me that would kind of be the warm fuzzy if we could say we're going to prioritize giving grants because we don't it's not like we have dozens and dozens of businesses and perhaps we could have a proactive system where you or I don't think it's bad at all to let Tiberius help more because you have a lot of things you're doing too and network and actually go to the businesses and rather than I think sometimes we don't want them feeling they've just been told what they can't do. Let's go to the business and say here would be three grants that you would potentially be eligible for. Right? So a proactive approach to especially the old the old business the current businesses I guess is a better word right and and just try to I think for me the goal would be to get out a significant number of grants fairly quickly because I think that just creates this real warm fuzzy forward momentum. So that would be something I think but again we'll talk about that at the uh the UR. Yes. So, actually, I think now that I hear you say that out loud, um I think that's actually something, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's something we want to send to EDC and let them run with because there's seven of them in one of you.

The um the marketing like the going after the businesses. Yes. Yes. It was expressed at EDC. Um I haven't had the pleasure of attending in the last two months. Um, so I'm not the most upto-date on their conversation, but they did discuss um the importance of doing some outreach to the current businesses and getting um proactive with our programs uh and responding to their needs.

Right. And my continuation with what I was saying though would be to consider uh maybe we'd use Tiberius a little bit more or something in conjunction with these other groups just to keep it moving. Go ahead. Sorry. So, one thing I don't want to one thing I want to remind council of is you all approved staff to go out and um a bid process to find a UR economic consultant that would more directly um visit with businesses, figure out new programs in addition to this. Like I think what we're what we're proposing to you all are short-term lowhanging fruit opportunities, but the economic consultants that we will ultimately hire um to help with kind of the real business, you know, how to grow the the the economy in the urban renewal district. They're they're the ones that are really going to put the hard effort into, as you remember, last month, we kind of walked through what a scope of work might look like and what what budget by task might look like. And that was a big part of what the consultant that gets hired does. So, I just want to keep it out there that that's coming as well.

This is more of a phase one as well, you know, that's correct. Very good. Please ready. Council ready here. How this is to go along into the future, not right now, but is to how will we measure success of these grants and what happens if a funded project fails or doesn't deliver expected outcomes. And I know we probably have some of that with the food one, but you know, we we've had one not go so great. And so it's, you know, are we are we measuring that? Are we keeping track of that? and how can we help these businesses succeed in the future?

Thank you for the question, Councelor Reading. It's an important matter. Uh, I want to start off with an emphasis that all of these grants, including the current tenant improvement grant, are designed to put physical improvements in place that don't leave the city. um as unfortunate as it is and we never want to see a business fail, but these grants are designed so that if a business does fail, the improvement stays here in North Plains and the hope is that another business can take advantage of that improvement um and get an easier start. Um like I said, we never want to see a business go out of North Plains. We want to have as many healthy businesses here as we can. Um but we do try to do some some proofing to avoid losing our investment in the city. Uh that said, we haven't had proactive data tracking um systematically with our tenant improvement grant. We've connected with the businesses. We stay in touch with them. um we have a great feel for for those businesses but we have not been keeping hard data to my knowledge on those programs at the moment.

No, that's correct. we you know we don't no we don't have like policy criteria where we we measure um in a specific way but you know in followup what I will say is that with the loss of Nelly's the urban renewal grant that helped put the kitchen improvements in place um the property owner was able to release that space to a a Chinese dumpling restaurant

and so that that happened extremely quickly because brand new kitchen improvements were there so That kind of speaks to the point Rowan made. Um, the other thing I will say is that we've really only had this first urban renewal grant program so far. And in working with the property owner um on two of the businesses in the first building by getting the two grants for the two businesses in in the first building, he was able to get his second building financed um because he proved that a small commercial multi-tenant commercial brand new building in North Plains can work. And that kind of speaks to in the private part presentation ran it's in a small community still growing but in a small community lack of familiarity or perceived small size as a market is a is a lending risk. It's a business risk and so he was able to um we helped him get over the hump in getting the second build building financed. So um that was a positive as well but we haven't kind of you know tracked a very specific like set of you know numbers or oh sorry

councelor Higen here I think an opportunity as we're we're evolving this conversation of a program is um gosh I just lost my train of thought here. Well, how do we engage with other cities and how they to learn about how they're measuring the um success criteria for their programs? I mean, Forest Grove has a pretty robust system here. And then then another kind of vector of consideration here would be overall um subsection of the experience of participating program. um you sometimes the uh climate the business climate es and flows you know with cycles and so sometimes I think that would be important to understand how they're feeling and as well the effectiveness of these programs at their fingertips are they aware of them etc etc things to consider

thank you for the comment oh do you have an answer or did you want to answer I have a question after or a comment afterwards so no I think it no contributed okay

okay I just wasn't sure if he um so I think the other thing I'd be curious and again I'm not sure this is how we would track this yet but I'm just thinking for a minute um the it would be nice to get demographic data more not so much on what we normally think of demographics but like what types of businesses will be bringing in um because we're doing tax increment finance what is the raise in in tax rates because with TVF&R um and other taxing districts we're going to have So every often have a conversation about why we're going to need to reup the URA. Um so are we actually increasing the tax base? Um obviously there's the obvious one of are we bringing in more business, but then are we bringing business that brings money in the city? I don't know how to word that, but you know what I mean, right?

An an improvement property value. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that would be it. Well, but also what ancillary benefits do we get? like are they if they come in and let's just I'm just going to throw out the road because she's here. Um if they go to the road then do they go next door to pilgrims or you know like are we getting um uh ancillary benefits that's strong track. So where people come and spend in more than one business if if we could I know this is hard to track. I'm just trying to think about these are the things I would love to be able to see if if I had a wish list. Could we track the ancillary benefits from the program? If we give one business, does it impact multiple businesses with one grant? And I don't know if that's possible.

The answer is yes, it is possible. This becomes a resource availability and capacity problem. A as is with all small cities um and small programs, uh there are cities out there using to great effect data tracking and AI um and advanced spatial data. Um the the things that you see at conferences nowadays um for for data and tracking um and program analysis are incredible. um right sizing that for our city and our URRA and our plan goals is going to be um the balance that staff will will have to analyze and figure out what we can reasonably accomplish. Um and that might involve also working with other community organizations like the chamber to add that capacity um in the future or utilizing our EDC to add that capacity as well. um when staff is uh crunching the numbers in a spreadsheet, those folks can be going out and doing the the connecting with the community and business owners. Um that's definitely something that will be top of mind as we form these programs. Um I think it's an invaluable resource for us to have as much data as we can feasibly uh collect. So, we will be thinking about that um in many ways. And as councelor Hagedan mentioned, we'll be wanting to go to other cities and looking at their programs and asking their staff um what criteria did you use? How did you track this? Um what worked for you? And then being able to come back and rightsize that for our clients. Council. Oh, sorry.

Councelor Weber, another thought would be to see if we could network a little better with some developers. You know, in my walks around town, I've met a few. I don't know if you ever met the guy that redid that old building behind the post office that was in shambles. Uh, wonderful guy. And network with them and find out what brought you here. What can we do to help you develop something else? What would it take? What about if we had a grant for you? I I think that networking thing I've met a few developers. Maybe there could be a subcommittee we would meet with. I don't know if anybody's met with Berton that's trying to lease out his building, right? How do we help you do that? What are our options? Bring in somebody else. You know, I think just find the energy we already have in our city. See if we can build on it. Uh I I think Tiberius could be a big help too because there's so many, you know, we have a small staff. you have limitations on your time. Uh we just have to figure out a way. Anyway, I think there is some real smart uh folks out there. How do we bring them on board? Like this whole creativity for downtown, who's going to get that moving?

I'll I'll echo what Bill said. We're this is this is phase one stage one and um things like reaching out to developers um and and coordinating uh different focus groups is something that uh as we bring on a consultant and go into sort of phase two three uh will be really informative to us honing these these programs. So, just one real quick reminder to council. Um, we can't make any decisions at this meeting. So, nobody's done that. I'm just giving us a heads up, but if there's stuff you want to refer to the board meeting this evening, that is also that is that is the appropriate way to make decisions. Just reminding everyone, including myself, so we don't accidentally say the wrong thing. Anybody else?

Comments, thoughts? Council reb the the other thing that's very confusing that you brought up which is very helpful is we're a board when we make decisions on the UA now we're gathering kind of as a council or a work session so it just further brings up the reason why we don't do anything here because it otherwise it's it's confusing

okay so what is the council's oh sorry please council war oh I'm so sorry thank you councelor Thank you. Um I know a vote is coming or something it seems like or maybe not a vote but thoughts. Uh but before we do that I would just like to ask um can we obtain these kind of decks within the agenda so that we can have a chance to review it and provide thoughtful questions. Not that they weren't but not everybody has enough time to read through and gather and listen at the same time. So, it'd be nice if this kind of stuff was actually in the agenda or emailed to us if it isn't an agenda item. Can we do that?

I'm going to defer to the report because I don't have the rules here. It's a great question. Thank you. Honestly, it it varies on what the topic is. Um, this one we probably could have gotten to you before um because we've done well, Rowan has done a lot of heavy lifting when we added some things between now and the day. Um but it when we're able to we will last. Thank you. Good question council. Fair enough. Thank you. Okay. So what would council like to direct staff to do next? We're not making a decision. We're just direct instead. Run fast. This is good work. This is really good work.

That kind of consensus. Everybody's wants to see more of this. I think we'd somehow counselor Weber, we'd have maybe the URRA board take this up, but I think it's obviously wonderful and then the URA a board can formally say go with it and then it's done in that official format. Obviously, we don't do that now, but that would Yes, that's what I'm getting. That would formalize it at the board view. Yes, you're saying send it to the board. Yeah. Yeah. It's very well done. that. Okay. Councelor Warington, you can go with sending it to the board.

Agree. Okay. I think that's consensus one. Great. Great work, Bill. Appreciate this. Very helpful. Um I particularly like the flexibility that it gives us and the multiple programs. I'd like to see all of the above, but I know we are constrained, so we'll figure out what makes sense in what order. But I anything that brings in more business is awesome. So that I just messed up my watch. We are adjourned at 6:39.