Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody. If I can get your attention. Thank you. I'm Ken Moore, the mayor of Franklin. And I'm supposed to call a roll for our group since this was an announced meeting for them. So I'm going to do that first and then make some comments. Alderman Barnhill. Here. Alderman Blanton. Here. Alderman Caesar. Here. Alderman Peterson. Here. Alderman Berger. Here. Alderman Brown. Here. Alderman Potts is absent, and Vice Mayor Baggett, and the mayor is here. This is an informational meeting tonight, but before we start the informational meeting, I do have a public announcement that the city of Franklin was a finalist in the All-American City Competition in Denver, Colorado. We competed against 20 other finalists, and I'm glad to say that we brought home the all-American recognition for our community. Tonight we have the County Commission, we have the Sports Authority here, and the Board of Mayor and Aldermen for this informational session. And the purpose of this informational session is to review a proposal that you'll hear tonight as far as an ice rink, two sheets of ice. The person has not submitted an application yet as far as the property and all the appropriate studies have not been done but will be done in the future if they continue to move forward with it. So with that said, I'm going to ask Mayor Rogers-Anderson to come up and make a few comments, followed by Eric Stuckey.

Thank you, Mayor. We have the County Commission, Supports Authority. So as the process goes, Today, tonight, you'll hear more about it here in just a few moments, but if there's a synergy to go forth of this, Ken, Eric, and myself have been having discussions with the banks at Brownland. And over the last several months, and we're really encouraged by what we see, but it requires the vote of both of these boards along with the sports authority. So you'll have an opportunity from the two, three boards to ask questions. And then there's a sign-up sheet here that's on the corner of the table that several people have. Okay. Okay. So we do have that. The time's over for sign-up, but we have a few that have already wanted to sign up. Correct?

We have people sign up to speak, and my plan would be to offer them two minutes each. All right.

Two minutes to speak when they call your name. So thank you for being here tonight. We really appreciate you guys coming out and letting us look and review this development, particularly in the ice arena world with the predators. Thank you.

Good evening. Thank you all for coming out. And I'll just give a little bit of context in terms of, from the city perspective, what I think we're looking for tonight. And as both Mayor Moore and Mayor Anderson referenced, it's really informational tonight. This is the first time publicly to hear about a specific proposal and to hear the details and to get at least an initial sense of what has been proposed. From the city standpoint, there's two things happening. that can happen in parallel. There's the normal development process that this group could be part of as an applicant that looks at the appropriate zoning, development plan, all those elements, and that can work through in its own normal process. But there's a specific proposal that gets at a potential partnership between the city, the county, and the sports authority. that will be a different type of consideration that likely has specific components to it as well, such as an interlocal agreement, a financial arrangement, an operating agreement, all those elements. I think the one takeaway that I would ask for from a staff standpoint, probably on both behalf of city staff and county staff, is an understanding of if there is at least enough interest for staff to do some legwork on those specific elements around an agreement to finance, an agreement to operate. It's not acceptance of that. It's working out the details of what that might look like if we went down that path. But we don't want to go spend staff time and effort if there's not an interest to at least explore that opportunity. So if we could get a sense of, well, let's at least develop some details and some options, then that would give us some charge to work on it over the next whatever period of time is necessary and then bring it back to our respective elected leadership for additional guidance and decisions down the line. So that's what I would frame as the context tonight. Again, thank you all for coming out. Thank you to our elected leadership for making the time for this to happen tonight, and I look forward to learning more. Thank you very much.

So I've been told we want to go ahead with public comment, and I'll call out the names, and I'll allow you two minutes each. Patricia Cooper, then Diane Bridges, then Alicia Bell, Randy Loveless, Terrell O'Connor, and Greg Robinson. So please go ahead and come forward and state your name.

Mayor, I'm Jim Clark.

Good to have you.

And James Barkley? Barkley.

Good evening. My name is Patricia Cooper. Thank you for granting me the opportunity to speak to you today in favor of building this new sports complex. The potential brings sports back to Williamson County in a way that can directly benefit our local youth and families. I am a mother of a figure skater who has driven her daughter to skating for the past nine years, many times in early mornings or late evenings. All of the rinks are in Davidson County or beyond with little to no options other than making the drive or moving out of state. That may seem like a minor issue, but this is a sport that she has chosen and we support her 100%. So much so that my husband, upon retiring from the U.S. Navy after 24 years, opened a figure skating pro shop to support the community. I decided to speak in support of the project because I wanted to lend a voice to my daughter. While this project would be tremendous for the community, providing opportunities in soccer, football, baseball, hockey, and figure skating, I'm deeply concerned with the running of the facilities once they come to fruition. I read in the Tennessean that the Titans and the Nashville Soccer Club intend to run the youth sports programming. However, the Predators were silent. I'm not certain if that silence is due to the fact that they now have a monopoly over all the rinks in Davidson County and sold the youth programming to a for-profit entity, Total Package Hockey, or a private equity company that is nationwide, and this will simply be an extension of that deal, or if they have other plans. My daughter's programming, which used to be at the Fort Ice Centers in Bellevue, was ousted when the Predators sold the youth sports program to Total Package Hockey. The relationship between the Predators and Total Package Hockey and the sub-relationship with the Nashville Skating Academy has created a monopoly on the ice. the programming, the ability to develop alternative programs and limit who can coach and skate on the ice unless you join their program, even going so far as penalizing independent contractors if they do not fall in line. This same monopoly hinders independent hockey programs from establishing and thriving, very similar to the situation happening in Dallas where the Attorney General of Texas is investigating. As a Williamson County resident, I ask for one important thing from my elected officials. Allow this project to continue, but with some meaningful guardrails against creating an antitrust situation that only benefits the few rather than benefiting the youth that this project claims to be all about. To truly advocate for youth sports programming, we must ensure that the complex promotes open competition, supports independent operators and local businesses such as pro shops, and provides fair access. Thank you.

Diane Bridges.

Hello, my name is Diane Burgess. I am a resident of Williamson County. I live here in Franklin. I'm also an equestrian. I have never shown at Bromland. I do have horses. I grew up with horses. One of the draw in this area was the horse communities around this area. They are disappearing rapidly. Rezoning this to commercial property is going to make the equestrian group move further out. So that is my concern. Equestrians deliver a lot of mental health benefits to humans of all neurodiverse groups. So normal kids and also neurodivergent individuals. Horses are becoming extinct. They are reducing in populations as cities grow. One of the things that we care about here in Williamson County is our horses. We name places after them. We have Thoroughbred Shopping Center. We also have Maryland Farms, which is a business community. And so the echoes of the horses are here, but they're going to be gone. And one of the areas that human development grows significantly is with the horses. They have a metabolic system. that you can feel their heartbeat 15 feet away. They calm people when they're around them. They are majestical, wonderful creatures. And the fact that our children are growing up with cell phones and iPads and they're inside is ruining our mental health. And for us to just make votes on our pocketbooks and put huge buildings into floodplains and take our equestrian riding facilities away is monstrous. And I would like that to stop. We have had ice skating rinks in Franklin before. They were zoned in commercial property, and they have failed, and they were at a prime location for everybody to reach in Cool Springs, Gothic Court. I have skated there myself. I do ice skate also. My horses are currently in Kentucky because they do not have room here.

Alicia Bell.

Hi, I'm Alicia Bell. I am the CEO of GraceWorks Ministries. I'm also a born and raised Franklinite, and my husband, Robert Dale, and I are choosing to raise our three children here as well. And so we absolutely love this community, and I'd love to start my comments by saying that I first and foremost respect your honorable responsibility to vote for the voices that you represent in this community. Today, I just want to give a short comment about how incredible this is for GraceWorks. Also as a born and raised Franklinite, GraceWorks is an intense piece of the fabric of this community's success and heart. We have been feeding, sheltering, and supporting neighbors who are in vulnerable situations and living in poverty in our community for over 30 years. What you're about to hear tonight has a lot of direct connection to Grace Works' future as well, because Boulevard Capital and Christ Community Church have come together to truly open up a miraculous opportunity for Grace Works to stay in the community where it was born and raised itself. 30 years ago, GraceWorks was founded by over seven different churches that came together and said, we can do better when we unite, and we can do better to serve our neighbors in need when we come to serve and pool our resources together. And that's what's happening today, but in a cross-platform way. We are having a private developer join with one of our founding churches, Christ Community Church, to provide an opportunity for GraceWorks to not purchase land, which would be a wonderful opportunity in itself to purchase land of six acres for us to build our forever home, but to donate land for us to get a head start in building our future. And this means the world not just to an entity called GraceWorks. This means the world to 15,000 neighbors that we serve on an annual basis, most of which call Williamson County home. And it means the world to me as well, as I hope to raise my children in a wonderful community that continues to integrate the heart of our neighbors in their most vulnerable moments in opportunities like this. And I truly do want to vouch for the integrity of Boulevard Capital and the church that we have seen thus far in this partnership. Thank you for your attention tonight and for coming together for this.

Randy Loveless.

Good evening. I'm Randy Lovelace. I'm lead pastor of Christ Community Church, and it is with profound humility that we present to you tonight. The job of a pastor is difficult, but I'm glad I don't have your jobs. But we are grateful that you're here, and we're incredibly grateful that this is a unique opportunity for both the city and the county to be together in public to consider this project. I've been the pastor at Christ Community for five years. Shortly after arriving there, I got an opportunity to tour Grace Works. It was a profound partnership at the beginning of our relationship 30 years ago, and we believe it is a profound partnership now. We celebrate 40 years in Franklin this year, but our job is not to focus on what has been our past, but for the next generation. It has been a prayer since January 2022. Lord, what would a partnership for providing a forever home opportunity for GraceWorks look like for our church and for this community? And it is only through the leadership of Boulevard Capital and Brownland Farm and this opportunity that has been presented before us. Our congregation was 98% in approval of this action. Our neighbors in Fieldstone Farms as well as Cottonwood matter to us. Our neighborhood matters to us. I drive through this neighborhood every day and I am incredibly excited about this opportunity. I ask for you and encourage you and I pray for you as you consider these things, that we do so with an open hand, because we fully believe that a flourishing Franklin means that we flourish, and that is our belief in this project. Thank you.

Terrell O'Connor.

Hello. My name is Terrell. I have to say that I'm not really In agreement a lot of development that goes on in Williamson County But I do have to say that I'm a hundred percent spot-on with this one This project is long overdue Franklin has grown by leaps and bounds over the years and we all have felt the impact of that growth One of the biggest challenges has been this significant shortage of practice fields. We've had conversations about this for a few years as our population continues to increase so does the demand of recreational space and Many families who currently live in Franklin have shared their frustration with the lack of available practice fields. With so many new families moving to the area, many of whom have children who participate or would like to participate in a sport or other activities, that demand will continue to grow. A development like this would provide opportunities for both new and long-term residents. It helps our children discover a sport, make friends, learn teamwork, and develop a sense of belonging. While there are understandable concerns about flooding and traffic, I'm pretty sure that extensive studies will be conducted and experienced engineers will be involved to address these issues and ensure the project is developed responsibly. Investors are not going to want to do anything that could jeopardize their investment, so these concerns will undoubtedly be taken seriously. The early plans describe a mixed recreation, wellness, gathering space, which is exactly the type of community-focused development that our area needs. While neighborhood retail and services would be a welcome addition, I do hope the developers keep families in mind. Parents often spend hours at practices games frequently with other siblings in tow. Please don't make this another collective upscale restaurants. Instead, let's be family-friendly, grab-go options where parents can quickly grab something and go on to their next school or practice. There is tremendous potential to create amenities to add real value to the everyday family. This project provides much-needed recreational opportunities and community. A wise man stated last night, engage, listen, serve,

and activate yes and i believe this is a good project robinson well i'm greg robinson i am a uh... wilmington county resident for last twenty eight years and i'm here to speak on behalf of the banks at roundabout the golf complex uh... as a parent of three i can definitely uh... really feel the need for this complex for public golf access for children and also beginners women and men in williamson county and i think this will be a huge benefit to the area as there is a need we do have a couple public golf courses uh... franklin bridge and also the little course but with the growth the game of golf in the united states and also in williamson county This could be a huge asset to all the community and give kids, juniors especially, the opportunity to have access to a driving range, a practice facility that a lot of players don't have access to right now. And we need to bring more public golf to this community And with the short course in other areas like Dallas, you see at the PGA of America, these things have grown the gamble golf in their area. And it is one of the things that we right now, I believe if you look at all Williamson County, this is something that could benefit a lot of juniors. And that's why I'm here speak on behalf of the junior golfers. Unfortunately, my kids are older now. So I didn't get the benefit of this, but I think if we brought this to this community, you would see a huge amount of golf grow and then also go to other golf courses as well in the other areas. But hopefully you will vote in favor of this golf complex and the Bangs subpar album. So thank you for your time.

And then James Bartlett.

Mayor Alderman, thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak for you. My name is James Bardsley. I am from the Liberty Heights community. Some of you may have talked to me online. Others may not know who I am. But looking at this project, I'm not here to play for or against, but I do have some questions that raise some concerns that I do think need to be addressed and paid close attention to through this process. First, we know this property was previously the subject of residential proposal that was ultimately denied after concerns regarding flooding and public safety. One question to you guys, what has changed about this property over the past four years that made it not good for residential, but now is good for building this big project. You've already stated there's been no testing or anything done to the property yet. When that testing is performed, it would be nice to see that the results are posted to the Franklin website or the Williamson County website so we can all see what the results to this were and where we're going to move forward from here. Next question I'd like to understand is, how long has this project been under consideration since the denial of the residential project? Another big aspect to this project that I'm sure are on a lot of people's minds is turning to the financial structure of the project. because we the people will be involved and it's important to know exactly what our money is going to. Excuse me. Who are all the public and private entities participating in this project? What ownership interest will each entity have in the completed project? What percentage of the initial project cost will be funded by us, the taxpayers? Who will be responsible for future maintenance, operations, capital improvements, and long-term liabilities? Who will be responsible for any required infrastructure improvements, including roads, utilities, traffic management, and public safety? If taxpayers are expected to invest in this project, what guaranteed public benefits will the community receive in return for the investment? And I'll go ahead and I'll email a copy of these questions to you. If you can address them here, great. If you can, I certainly expect an answer to what I present to you. Thank you.

And we'll now go to the presentation, Jim.

Well, thank you, Mayor Moore. Appreciate that. And thanks to everybody who's in attendance tonight. Appreciate your time. I think Eric did a great job of sort of framing what the purpose for the conversation tonight would be. And so I'm going to spend some time Just giving you a little bit of background and quick backstory on myself as well as on the project and sort of what got us to this point. Greg, I'm noticing the clicker for the slideshow, so would you mind doing that for me? Thank you. Yeah. Oh, here. Perfect. Greg, you can back me up. There we go. So I'll spend a quick second just introducing myself. So as Mayor Moore mentioned, my name is Jim Darter. I work with a local company here in town called Boulevard Capital with my brother-in-law, Jonathan. I've been in Middle Tennessee coming up on 18 years now. Moved to Nashville to go to Belmont. I've got two kids, Eleanor and Owen, and my wife, Rachel. We got introduced to this project, I guess, coming up on two years ago now. I was introduced to Robin Anderton through Brooks West who runs Franklin Bridge Golf Course here in town. We met, I guess, originally back in the summer of 2024 when the Anderton family had been working with another developer to consider a project for this site. A few months later, Robin reached out to me and asked if I would sit down and talk to him about us potentially pursuing the project. with the anderton family we spent the next six months or so just having conversations in the community we had had a lot of conversations with christ community church with grace works with some of the neighbors and other folks just trying to understand the history and sort of what had happened here previously and what we might be able to do going forward we also spent some time in those conversations considering what what the right team would be for that and so in addition to Us at Boulevard Capital, one of our partners, Landon Gibbs, who runs Altitude Real Estate, has been helping us on the development side. And then this is a quick outline of the other folks on the project team. Pfeffer Turot is helping us with architecture. Kimley Horn and Greg Gamble's team. have been helping us with land planning and civil engineering. The Riverstone Group and David Acheson, who's here tonight, has been helping us on the development side and also thinking about the retail. Brooks, who's been mentioned, is going to be the one to come in and operate the golf component. So that's a little bit of background on the project team. At a high level, I'll just frame from a 30,000 foot view what the project is and what we've been considering to orient everyone geographically for those who may not know. Brownland Farm is the property that we're talking about tonight. Brownland is at the corner, or just kind of northwest of the corner of Mack Hatcher and Hillsborough Road. the property that we will be acquiring from the church is kind of immediately behind the church. And what's on the screen right here is a rough outline of what the site plan we've been considering for the project is, which I'll talk about some elements of that site plan here in just a second. But from a big picture perspective, as we started talking to The church in particular, and you all heard this in the public comment, one of the things we heard loud and clear from the Christ Community Church family was that GraceWorks was a really important thing for them as we considered how to utilize the property going forward. So as we were talking with them, it seemed like a really obvious partnership for us to step in and consider how we might help make that a reality. GraceWorks, I'll see if I can show you by way of the laser pointer here. This isn't working exactly, but Greg, you can give it a shot. But the church is oriented just north of that traffic circle. You got it? Perfect. Thanks, Greg. So this right here is the site that we're proposing for GraceWorks. It's immediately behind the church. But we're proposing acquiring 18 acres from the church and then giving six of those acres to GraceWorks. And then kind of around the horn on the rest of the uses is The ice hockey that we're considering is down here in the kind of southern portion of the retail core. And then we've got golf in the northwest corner and 11 multipurpose athletic fields on the west side of the property. And then inside the retail, we're considering a mix of commercial uses around things like lifestyle retail, fitness, and medical office, medical uses that would have adjacency to athletic use. as well as grocery and dining options. But at a 30,000 foot view, I think what's important to note about sort of the spirit of what we've been planning here and what we've been hoping for is really to have a development that is focused on families and focused on the community. The framework for that started really around thinking about what families might need or want to have when they were here on a weeknight or on a weekend. for a tournament or for practice. So when mom or dad bring kids to practice on a weeknight, how are we making sure that the commercial uses that are a component of this project really serve the needs of those families? So thinking about certainly food and beverage and them having a place to have dinner, but also is there a place where mom or dad could shop for groceries or do some other shopping while they're on site? And so we really tried to take all those things into consideration when we were contemplating a plan for this project, really with the thought that These families, when they come, they have to come and stay for a while. And so how do we create a space where they can do that comfortably, where families can come and stay? A couple other things to note just generally about what we contemplated for the project. We've contemplated a greenway that would wrap around the horseshoe. of the Harpeth River that we hope will tie into the existing greenway system in this part of town. We've also been in conversations about creating a new kayak and canoe launch on the property, which hopefully, again, will just activate the green space. Big picture, we really tried to think about orienting the commercial uses for the project around the existing area of the site that's not in the floodplain. And so a big part of the inspiration for these athletic and community uses in the adjacent land area was really built around the idea that for those areas of land that aren't developable where athletic and those community uses are a viable option, we really wanted to think about how we could introduce those uses here and create hopefully an amenity for the community over the long term. So at a high level, that's kind of big picture on the project and the composition of the project. This is just a high level conceptual rendering that we did to give you a sense for the aesthetic of the project. We talked a little bit about the partnership with GraceWorks. I'll just touch on this again briefly. Our agreement with the church was predicated on us stepping in to do this for GraceWorks. We've been working on a contribution agreement to give them the land. To build their campus and in addition to donating the land we intend on doing all the site prep and giving them a pad ready site Which we're really excited to do I would just say on a personal note for me with respect to this project It's not every day for us that we get to work on projects where we can Partner with organizations like grace works who we know have done a lot of really amazing things through the years here in Franklin and for Williamson County And so for us, it's really been an honor to play a small part in helping them envision their future here on this site in Franklin. With that, I'm gonna turn it over briefly to Greg Gamble with Kimley Horn, who's helped us study this site and do some due diligence. I would say just broadly, we've been working on diligence on this project for the better part of the last year with the Kimley Horn team and with the rest of our consultants. While we've not yet submitted a development plan to the city, we have done a tremendous amount of diligence, both on the flood and the other elements of the project and continue to work on that. But I'll let Greg speak to a little bit of where we've been and where we're headed.

Thank you, Jim. As Jim noted, I'm with Kimley Horne. I'm a landscape architect and land planner. And in 2023, the City of Franklin Planning Commission amended their Envision Franklin Plan document to change the land use policy on this property from single-family residential to commercial recreation. That created the path forward for this property to be considered for sports fields, including a hockey facility and pickleball and many of the other activities that are being brought to in this master plan. What you're looking at on the screen here is the existing flood map. that is on Brownland today. The total property is 238 acres in size. This does not include the area that's labeled here as Christ Community Church. So that's not included in that 238 acre number. Of the 238 acres, 200 acres are currently flood point. The dark blue that you're seeing on this map is the floodway. It's where the water's moving through the Harpeth River. The light blue is where the 100-year floodplain limits would be on the property. The green area that you're seeing here is currently not in the floodplain. It's above that elevation. And that totals to 38 acres in size. A couple of things about this I want to point out. First is that the intersection of Mack Hatcher and Hillsboro Road, it is below the floodplain. In a 100-year flood event, there is water at that intersection. You'll also notice here that the floodway crosses over Hillsborough Road in this location as it enters back into the river system. There is a channel for this floodway on what we call the eastern side and on the western side there is no channel for that floodway. It only exists once there's enough water to create movement in that location. So as a part of the proposal with the Banks of Roundland Master Plan. We'll go to the next slide here. Jim, how'd you do that? No, it's on the wrong thing. It's on this one. Got it. So with the proposal of the Brownland Master Plan, you can see that those two splits are now combined into one on the eastern side. And we're going to create a new set of culverts here under Hillsborough Road where the floodway and the floodplain no longer pass over Hillsborough Road so that It wouldn't be encumbered. You could still drive that even during a 100-year storm event. This allows us to get a channelized area here for the floodway and the floodplain, and it actually even reduces and pulls some of the 100-year flood off of our neighbor's property in a good way. This changes the area not in the floodplain to 57.2. 49 or 42 acres which is a difference of 19 just about just over 19 acres in total now the city of Franklin does not have a FEMA floodplain review process the county does not have a FEMA floodplain review process only FEMA has the authority to review and approve a Clomar which is a conditional letter of map revision and a Lomar which is a letter of map revision so if and when FEMA approves the conditional letter of map revision. That's the grading plan. And then the site has to be surveyed after all of the work is done. And FEMA wants us to prove that we did what we said we were going to do. And so it's not until after FEMA's letter of map revision that we could start construction of the building. So I just want to be clear on that. There is a very formal FEMA process that has to be done. before we get started. Also want to point out that the city of Franklin has a regulation that states that all commercial buildings must be, their finished floor elevation must be one foot above the floodplain. So there won't be any commercial buildings or any buildings that are in the 100-year floodplain as a part of this master plan. As Jim stated, we've not filed a submittal to the city of Franklin for this. The Envision Franklin process was completed in 2023, and our team has been working on a master plan and working on the program elements. Before the traffic study can start, we've got to have our program elements nailed down. And we're getting close to doing that now, which means that the traffic engineers would start their study. In this map that you're seeing here, these are the 15 intersections identified by the City of Franklin that are going to be included in the traffic study. As we evaluate traffic impacts in this area, you can see that it is regional consideration. It's not just the intersections that are right around the proposed Brownland development. The city of Franklin requires that a licensed traffic engineer prepare a study that it is then provided to the city of Franklin who hands it to a third party reviewer. The third party reviewer will determine what road improvements are required, provide those to the city of Franklin engineers, and those are the improvements that we have to do. We don't get to pick and choose offsite road improvements in the city of Franklin. Those are not determined by us. They're determined by the third party engineer after the study is done. So we'll be working with the City of Franklin through this process. The property is currently not zoned for this use. It must be rezoned to a planned district, which means that the plan that the City of Franklin aldermen approve is the plan. It's actually putting handcuffs on the developer and the development team saying you must develop what you showed us you were going to develop So it's very important to understand that this is a long process. It's Requires multiple meetings and requires multiple neighborhood meetings. There will be neighborhood meetings for just residents that are within 500 feet because they're going to be impacted in a way that's different than if somebody who's living across town would be impacted. But we will have localized neighborhood meetings. We will have public meetings through planning commission, workshops, board and mayor and aldermen where there are ample opportunities to get engaged. and to speak as well. We're also working on some public outreach through a website platform that will allow us to share information to you and you to share information with your neighbors as well. So Jim, I'll hand it back to you.

Yeah, so I would just ever so briefly kind of re-emphasize in line with what Greg was saying. A big part of why it's taken us a little over 18 months to get to this point is that we did want to spend a lot of time really closely evaluating the issues that Greg was just outlining. And we do feel like, based on the work that Kimley Horne and the rest of the design team has helped us do, that we've got a path forward on those things. We look forward to talking more about that as we go. Next, I would like to bring up Sean Henry from the Predators to just quickly introduce their role in the project.

I'm not limited to two minutes, man. Don't say quickly. Jim, Greg, thank you so much for the presentation. Mayor's Anderson, Moore, thanks for bringing us all together. For our commissioners, our aldermen, our board members, sports authority, thanks for coming out. I know you don't get together very often, so the fact that you're all here together to learn more about this exciting project, it excites us. And for everyone that came from the audience, I appreciate your passion, concerns, criticisms. That's what today's for, that's the next few weeks too. We're building something really special. And over the past, I don't even know, Roger's 15 years or so, we've been working on how to bring more programming to Williamson County and Franklin. And the fact that we're sitting here today is just a lot of efforts, a lot of conversations, a lot of failed ideas as well. But that's what normally creates something really, really good. So we're excited about being here together right now. What we were able to create in Bellevue and Antioch and Clarksville and most recently in Centennial is partnering with cities and counties to provide programming for kids, for adults, everyone in between, and at the same time capture some economic benefit that's thrown off for people traveling into those rinks and and those cities, and what can happen from there. So this is just a wonderful result of the past 15 years or so of good meetings and ideas. And over those past 15 years, for 10 years, we've been operating three different rinks, and we've learned a lot. You know, things that we can do slightly better, things to alter from an architecture standpoint, you know, how do we best work with every high school in the community, adult centers, and everything in between. The thing that Danny will talk about in a few minutes are the programs that we touch and how we grow them and how we want kids working with other sports as they're participating in hockey or figure skating, or really just getting out for a fun open skate on a Friday night, awkwardly asking some boy or girl to hold your hand for a couple skate. It's the things that will drive the community that are fun, and then we get a chance to populate this wonderful development. So again, on behalf of the Predators, thank you all for coming out and making this a priority. We look forward to answering any questions you have tonight or beyond. Our role is somewhat limited in what we're doing, but we're really excited about it. And what Jim's put together is really, really incredible. So thank you for letting us be a part of it. I'll bring Danny Butler up. Danny has been the driving force behind all of our rinks to date. He oversell the construction and then helped design what happens within them. And this is just one more that he gets to do in both of our home cities. Thanks, Dan.

Thank you. Thank you. Lots of thank yous already, so thank you again for everyone coming out. Really appreciate taking the time. Again, like Sean said, everybody said, my name is Danny Butler. I've lived in Williamson County and I've been an employee of the National Predators for the last 15 years. Over these 15 years, I've had the opportunity to watch our organization grow, not just as a professional sports franchise, but as a true community partner throughout Middle Tennessee. I'd like to spend a few minutes sharing how we've partnered with local governments to build and operate community ice facilities, how those partnerships have benefited each of those communities, and why we believe Williamson County represents the next great opportunity. Community is one of the core pillars of the National Predators organization. We invest in our communities through thousands of volunteer hours from our staff, million dollars of grants through our foundation. Sorry, I need to click. Well, I'm not ready yet, but that's fine. free youth programming and equipment initiatives, and building and operating and maintaining public ice facilities that become year-round community assets. So you see on the screen here, and Sean mentioned, we currently operate Bridgestone Arena and F&M Bank Arena in Clarksville. We opened Fordyce Center Antioch in 2014. We opened Fordyce Center Bellevue in 2019. Ford Ice Center Clarksville in 2023, and as of May 1st, we took over operations of Centennial Sportsplex. We've also partnered with local communities to build outdoor street hockey rinks, which has allowed us to expand the sport beyond just ice facilities. It's important that every new facility creates new participants. We aren't just simply moving skaters from one building to another to make it look like there's demand. We're introducing thousands of new families to hockey and skating each year. To put some demand in perspective that we've talked about, Tennessee has just 10 sheets of ice throughout the state. Eight of those sheets of ice are in Middle Tennessee, not including Bridgestone Arena and F&M Bank Arena, which we try to make that ice available as much as we possibly can as well. Just a little comparison. So there's 10 sheets of ice in the state. Williamson County has over 70 baseball fields. So the demand is really there. Even the fact that right here we're able to build 11 sports facilities or 11 rectangular fields It'll still be more than 10 sheets of ice in the state So it's exciting to keep growing But we often joke that if we built another ice rink across the street from one of our current facilities We just have two very busy ice rinks. Our ice rinks currently operate from about six o'clock in the morning until one o'clock in the morning 360 days a year The reason we've been successful isn't simply because we've built facilities, it's because we've built successful public partnerships. Sorry. Every facility we operate is different ownership structure, but operating model remains relatively the same. Whether it's Antioch, Bellevue, Clarksville, or Centennial, each partnership has been customized to meet the needs of that individual community. Some things that we handle as an organization are just daily operations, maintenance, staffing, all the programming we oversee, marketing, community engagement, capital projects, and this allows local governments to maintain ownership of the facility and the asset that that creates, but it significantly reduces the operational burden and financial risk associated with operating a year-round recreation facility. It's a model we refined over more than a decade and one that continues to evolve with every successful partnership. Ultimately, these buildings aren't successful because of who owns them. They're successful because of what happens inside of them. Our facilities are much more than hockey rinks, they're community recreation centers that operate nearly every hour of every single day. Every week we host Learn to Skate, Little Preds, Learn to Play Hockey, Youth Hockey, Adult Hockey, Bigger Skating, Public Skating, the Junior Preds, GNASH High School Hockey, tournaments, camps, school field trips, birthday parties, community events, Flyers Hockey, Warriors Hockey, City Skate, Skate Nashville, NYHL, and so many other programs. Individually, our facilities welcome more than 1 million visitors annually. We host more than 30 tournaments at camp a year, and we support the largest adult hockey league in the South. The Predators also invest more than $700,000 annually in free programming and equipment to remove financial barriers for our families. One of my favorite parts about my job is watching kids begin skating at five or six years old and to grow through our complete development pathway. Today we're seeing many of those same children playing college hockey because they were introduced to the sport at one of our community facilities. This past weekend we drafted Wyatt Cullen as the 10th overall pick in the NHL draft. So first-round draft pick, Wyatt's hockey career began right here in Williamson County. He skated at the old A-game Sportsplex before moving on to the Junior Preds and then into the Fordyce Center and then moving on eventually. Timmy McAllister's not here, but one of his first coaches was Timmy McAllister. If you've played hockey in Williamson County, you've played for Timmy McAllister, and he's just been a great asset to the hockey community from right here in Williamson County. Williamson County is also home to several outstanding GNASH high school hockey programs. Brentwood High School, Franklin High School, Ravenwood High School, Page High School, Centennial High School, Nolensville High School, and Brentwood Academy all have hockey programs. Each one of those student athletes currently leaves Williamson County multiple times each week to practice and compete because there isn't a rink in Williamson County for them. So Williamson County is already producing NHL draft picks, state championship high school teams, college players, and thousands of youth athletes. Imagine what those programs become with a home rink right here in their community. These facilities don't simply create hockey players. They create healthier kids, lifelong friendships, stronger families, and community gathering spaces. Which brings us wide and we're excited about Williamson County. Today thousands of Williamson County families already participate in ice programming. They simply have to leave the county to do it though. Each year more than 1.1 million dollars is spent outside of Williamson County for ice sports. More than 60,000 participants leave Williamson County to participate in ice sports in other counties. Fordyce Center generates over $3.5 million in economic activity while welcoming over 1.5 million visitors a year. A facility in Williams County and Franklin will keep local families closer to home, attract visitors throughout the country, support year-round recreation, generate new economic activity, and provide another community asset that families can enjoy for generations. We aren't just simply looking to manage another ice rink. We're looking to become a long-term community partner, investing in Williamson County, operating this facility at the highest level, and helping grow youth sports and recreation for decades to come. Thank you for the time, Jim. Appreciate it.

Um, so thanks to Danny and Sean for just, uh, giving some more context, uh, on the predators involvement and, uh, what they're doing, uh, in their current facilities around middle Tennessee. Um, so as I mentioned before, you know, we started really just by wanting to give some context on the development, uh, not because it was the topic of conversation, uh, tonight directly, but just to give you all a frame of reference. Uh, now we're going to transition to just talking briefly about, um, Some more specifics as it relates to the hockey facility itself and the potential partnership between city and county for that. In our conversations with Mayor Moore, Mayor Anderson and Eric Stuckey as we were starting to have some preliminary conversations about the project. They encouraged us to pursue having a third-party economic impact analysis done just to evaluate sort of what the overall economic impact of both the development at large as well as the hockey components of the project would be. And in doing that, this is a quick summary of what Younger and Associates, the firm we engaged, to help with that work, pulled together. For those of you that have a booklet on the presentation, at the orange tab in your booklet, you'll find a one-page high-level summary of these numbers, as well as the full economic impact report appended to that. That report, in my experience, is fantastic. There's a lot of detail in there, but this hits the high spots at a high level. There's some one-time impact that's summarized at the top, which is really just referencing the investment and construction of the total project. The annual impact numbers, And visitor spending impact numbers are what I'll focus on for purposes of this conversation just briefly. Inside the annual impact numbers, these are overall for the project. So overall spending impact of $555 million, but local taxes of $18.9 million. That does include direct and indirect. And you can see a breakout there adjacent to direct and attributable sales tax and property tax. At the bottom, the visitor spending impact. I'll spend a quick second talking about this. Danny and his presentation touched on what their experience has been in operating other ice facilities here in Middle Tennessee, in Davidson County, and elsewhere. These visitor spending numbers only include assumptions around the hockey. So these are ice hockey-only numbers. We didn't make any assumptions in these revenue numbers on the visitor spend for the other athletic components of the project. While we expect that there would be some other visitor spending impact for both football, soccer, and lacrosse on the other mixed-use fields, as well as the other athletic components, for the sake of making it clear to y'all specific to... potential investment in the hockey. We wanted to break that out individually. So you can see here what we've highlighted. These projected visitor days are associated directly with visits from other counties to play hockey and also tournaments that the Preds would operate in the facility, hotel nights, and then impact spending of a little over $300 million on an annual basis associated with that visitor traffic. You can see 1,400 jobs supported from that spend. But down at the end, you'll see 5.8 million in attributable sales tax related to that visitor traffic and $1.7 million of hotel tax as attributable specific to the hockey. This is a just quick summary chart that sort of walks through the specific breakdown of that 18.9 million. So if you look over in the bottom right, you'll see the 18.9 million number. There's a breakout across the varying uses and the potential revenue that would be generated. You'll see the mix of retail uses as well as the athletic uses. I think a couple of points I would emphasize just briefly here. You'll see the visitor spending line. Again, this visitor spend line shows $11.2 million in revenue associated with that. just for hockey and the traffic the hockey would drive. So I wanted to flag that. The full detail on each of these development type uses and the economic impact numbers that roll up to this is in the full report that you have in your packet. Younger used Bureau of Economic Analysis data and their economic impact multipliers to do these calculations. So beyond the economic impact, which we think is an important part of the overall framework, I'll spend a minute just talking briefly about an overview for the potential structure of an opportunity to pursue an ice facility here. So first, as developer, our role in the project would just be to contribute the land. So we would be donating the land to the sports authority to be used to develop the facility. The structure we're contemplating here would be one whereby the sports authority would own the facility. We anticipate the cost would be approximately 45 million. We've done some diligence. We have a couple of bids from contractors based off of prior plans that the predators have used in other sites. I'll say we've got more work to do to get there, but we believe that's a pretty conservative number based on our understanding and the diligence we've done so far. The idea would be that the project would be, bonds would be issued by the sports authority to fund the project, and we anticipate an annual debt service of somewhere between $2.5 and $3.5 million per year, depending on the interest rate and the exact total project cost. At the end, the repayment source would be an intergovernmental agreement between the city of Franklin, Williamson County, and the sports authority. From an operations of the facility perspective, I'll talk just briefly about the structure that's been contemplated here. I'll mention as well here that on the green tab in your packet, you'll see a more detailed sort of outline of what the potential structure with the PREDS could look like. But this is a brief summary of what you'll find in the green tab of the presentation. What we're contemplating here is that the predators would enter into a long-term lease with the sports authority for the property for up to 30 years. Throughout the term of that lease, the predators would be responsible for ongoing operations in the facility and take all operational risk as it relates to operating the ice. The preds would also be responsible for routine maintenance. In addition to taking on that operational risk, the press would be making a lease payment that would go into a long term reserve account to fund any deferred maintenance and long term maintenance of the project over the term of the lease. And you can see the rough outline of of those lease payments over the 20-year term. We've also contemplated here that any profits generated from the facility would get split 75% to the city and county and 25% to the pred. So if the project were to generate a profit at any point in time, 75% of those profits would go to the city and county. the sports authority would be responsible for major capital items in replacement, but that reserve account would be funded in order to help cover those costs on an ongoing basis. So this is a high-level summary of those responsibilities we just talked through. I guess the one thing to flag here that wasn't touched on briefly is that in addition to us as developer contributing land, that we would also enter into a development agreement to construct the project and would likely engage a third party to oversee that construction as part of the process. So at a high level, that's the 30,000 foot view that I wanted to walk you all through. And I'm happy to turn it back over to either Ken or Eric or whomever from the city that would like to step in from there.

I think we'd be looking for comments from the County Commission members and the Board of Mayor and Alderman of the Sports Authority, so I'd open the floor up for those type of comments. Alderman Brown.

Well, I figure I might as well step up here since this lives in my area and I also acknowledge that I was a strong driving force in the denial of the first Brownland proposal. I've been very involved with the team here for the last year. One of the things I do want to address, while tonight's really about this ice and about that, I do want to address the development itself very briefly here, just because of the comments and the concerns that were mentioned. You know, one of the things that really has been on my mind and my heart as I've been working with these folks over the last year or so has been the comments that have been made in the last round, and that was residential use, flooding, traffic, those concerns. My comments to the team have been not just simply do no harm, but rather bring benefit. And I think when you look at, first of all, the floodplain concerns, not only are the buildings out of the floodplain, but we're actually removing, they're actually removing buildings out of the floodplain, existing buildings out of the floodplain. They're actually opening green space in those areas with the fields and the golf use. Secondarily, with working with TDOT and opening, we are actually undersized culverts in Hillsboro, opening that up, allowing new channels, new flow to go through Hillsboro, actually improving floodway within that area. So there's great improvement happening there. Secondarily, with Planning Commission changing the land use, removing residential use, we made it very clear to this team, we don't want to see any residential use on this property. I think what they're also bringing here is a very family-oriented use and an amenity to our community. One of the things I said in that first round is I didn't see any benefit to Franklin in that first version. I wish this would have came in the first round, quite honestly. I think this would have been great for Franklin to consider in the first round. So I appreciate that this is on the table. We have a reality in front of us. We can't force the Andertons to keep running a horse show. We can't force the Andertons to keep owning property they don't want to own. They've done a lot in this community and there's a legacy here. But I do want to say to the horse community that there's an active effort. In fact, I was in a meeting today, as recent as today, to find a home for these horse shows here in Franklin. And I will be bringing something to BOMA in the near future here as proposals to keep these horse shows in Franklin. So don't think for a second we're going to erase this heritage. We will try to find a place to keep it right here. But we've got a reality that it won't be on Brownland property. And so if Brownland's going to sell, let's make it something that we can all enjoy, families can enjoy, and that will be the best possible solution that we can get on this property. And I believe that we're there. In terms of the ICE, it's really hard to deny this math. While I know it's an ask of taxpayers to be a part of this, it's really hard to deny the multiple that is sitting in front of us here. And tied to the great benefit that's there, I certainly am in favor of further exploration for sure. Look, there's a long process on the development plan and certainly a process towards the financial math here, but it is certainly worth, in my opinion, further exploration. Thank you, Mayor.

You want me to see if there are commissioners that have questions or comments at this point?

Any commissioners have questions or comments at this point? Commissioner Sturgeon, do we have a mic over here or do we want to? Oh, here we go. Yes, I can. Let's go to. The mic's headed your way. Let's go ahead and go to Commissioner Hayes. And we'll go to Commissioner Sturgeon. I'm assuming the mic's working.

Hi there. Oh, it works. Hi, Lisa Hayes, County Commissioner, District 1. A couple of concerns, and I know a lot of my residents, we are far west and kind of dogtail around to Thompson Station, Spring Hill, but a lot of my residents in Fernvale that live on the Harpeth River are just hearing about this, and they have great concerns with flooding because of the floodplains. When there is development on the river, it affects people not just in the immediate area, but when you change those riverbanks, and I'm not sure that you're doing this, but it does affect miles each direction. And when that's happened in the past in Fernvale, there has been flooding. And as you can understand, you build this beautiful dream home, and all of a sudden, you're flooded. And that creates nightmares. So they are extremely concerned. And so I would appreciate whatever light you can shed on some of the efforts that you've made, not just for the 500 feet area or whatever you said, the general area, but farther down river to consider how that's going to be not impacted.

I appreciate that question. And I will tell you that the flood study is in process. It's not finished yet. We're very, very early in the very beginning. It needs to be proven, though, that the math makes sense and the math works. One of the ways that the City of Franklin reinforces that is by requiring that if you're going to fill any area in the floodplain or remove an area from the floodplain, you have to provide 150% volume to replace it. So it's not a one-to-one. It's actually increasing the amount of volume that would be at Brownland to store water. We're actually going to be lowering the floodplain for a lot of our neighbors.

And the culvert, too. I was hearing, I guess, someone talk about the culvert. And so tell me a little bit about, that concerns me, without knowing what I don't know.

Sure, sure. There are two box culverts right now that are under Hillsborough Road.

Yeah.

And it's, they're not big enough to allow the water to pass into the Harpeth river. So it actually forms a dam and the water actually overtops the floodway overtops and goes into, um, the river across Hillsborough road. So by going in and putting, um, three or four much bigger culverts, we can almost create somewhat of a span event. And then the water can go underneath the road and into the river at that point.

Okay.

So Hillsboro is currently stopping a lot of the water.

Do you think that will increase water flow? It can.

FEMA requires that it be the exact same amount of water.

And thank you for that. Sure. But that is a huge issue for my residents in Fernvale. Another question, we've gotten a lot of emails. I'm sure everyone at these tables can confirm. Our horse people are very curious. They've asked, hey, why can't you just add a horse venue here? Very important part of our culture and our heritage and would definitely love, I don't know if you have the property left to do anything, But it's such a beautiful place for horses. And, you know, I have to admit, I cross over the Mack Hatcher Bridge and I look over and the beautiful horses and, you know, I mean, there is something to be said for being able to look over there and it's our heritage. That's who we are as a county. We have a lot of horse loving people and a lot of equestrian events. So curious if that could be incorporated or,

know i know there was a mention that we can maybe do something somewhere else in the county but yeah yeah i'll speak to both those questions ever so briefly so uh i would just to add briefly to what uh greg was sharing on the flood issues you know one of the things that we heard loud and clear From the community and one of the reasons we've invested some time to really dig into The flood model and do some preliminary modeling to try to understand what our options on getting to something that was tenable here one of the reasons that we went the direction we did with this conceptual design is that I We heard from a lot of folks concerns about life safety issues on Hillsborough Road. The fact that Hillsborough Road historically has flooded significantly and there's been a lot of flood water on the road is a big part of why we moved this direction with what we refer to as the eastern split to take that water down the east side of Hillsborough Road, which is a piece of property we also control across the street from Brownland. With respect to the horse operation, while We don't have plans to keep the horse operation on site here. We do have plans to keep, the Andertons would like to continue doing horse shows in Franklin, and we're actively working on finding a permanent home for that. We're not at a place yet where we can talk specifics about that, but we do have an intention of preserving that. would also say just generally a lot of our our hope and frankly the Andertons hope for this property has been that we could also again preserve some of the beauty of this property it's a it's a beautiful place there's lots of open green space and a big part of the intention in this design was to try to minimize the commercial components and really maximize the green space and the view sheds from the central commercial area around the rest of the property. And we felt like the Greenway and trying to preserve the green space and then these athletic uses, which are hopefully going to be inviting the community in to these components. One thing I didn't mention earlier that I'll just flag briefly, you know, each of the other athletic components beyond the hockey would be privately owned and developed, but our goal is with each of those athletic components is to keep those as open and accessible to the community as possible. A big part of the reason for our partnerships with the Tennessee Titans and Nashville Soccer Club on the football and soccer is that they care very much about open architecture youth programming and making this stuff accessible while there's a lot of demand from private clubs and other private groups to want to be be in control of these athletic facilities. We feel like it's really important that these athletic fields be open to lots of different organizations in the community because we think it's a real need. But our hope has been to try to preserve as much of the heritage as we can, both with the architecture, but also with thinking about how do we preserve as much of this bucolic green space, which is, again, one of those things that we know everybody loves about Franklin and one of the things that's so beautiful about this property. But our hope is to kind of preserve some of that and also really honor where the river's at as well and let it be something that amenitizes the property as opposed to being something we're in conflict with in the way we design the property and the project.

I know taxpayers probably like hearing that. I mean, if we're going to pay for it, we like to be able to utilize it Especially for children's programs, I like hearing that. I think it's, you know, everything you put together is impressive. It seems like it'll be an exciting venue. Again, it just goes back to the concerns of how does it impact the residents on the river and things like that. But thank you very much for the very detailed proposal, and I wish you all the best.

Thank you.

Yeah, really good, illustrative.

I think we can hear you.

You can hear me now?

Yeah, we got you.

OK. So yeah, I think this is a really well put together presentation to help us understand what's going on. And I just really have one question. We used to have ice, we used to have a game and it had ball fields and it was a private entity that ran it and they struggled to make it financially viable. They weren't able to pay their property taxes and in the end they couldn't maintain it. So what's gonna be different about this? I mean I don't wanna commit the county taxpayers to something that might not be financially viable.

Danny and Sean, I feel like that might be a good question for one of y'all.

I think so far our success at the three rinks that we built and the fourth one that we're fixing now with the city is the public-private partnership. If any individual were to take this on themselves, they'd be in the same situation as A-game. And really with A-game, you have the hard courts, volleyball, basketball, and the two rinks, and then some soft fields down below in, I think, the flood area. Once their kids stop playing, That losing of that $50,000, $75,000, $100,000, $150,000 a year, I think wore on them, and that's when they started looking at some different options. The difference with this partnership is we're covering the operating expenses. We don't have the building expenses. It's really a partnership between us, the sports authority, which in the end is the county. and the city, and that's why we've been successful in Antioch, in Clarksville, and then in Bellevue. We put in there a profit share that if we were to make money, the money goes for the most part to the public entities. Open book on our audits, we don't make money at the Fordyce Centers. We, the Preds, Blues, anywhere from $250,000 to $500,000 a year on them, but we wanted to make sure we put something in there that if anyone wanted to say, well, you're a private entity, if you make money, what are you going to do with it? Well, that goes right back out the door. So again, there's a tolerable loss for us because of what we do. We want more kids touching the ice, having positive experiences. It's well known what we do from a charity standpoint. We donate about $4 million a year throughout the communities. We live here. We love the community. We think these help enhance it. So there's a tolerable loss for us. At the same time, things can start changing a little bit. And if we ever make money, that turns back the other way.

If you don't make money, then how does the county and the city Make revenue to pay for the debt service.

Well, I think in the slide that's in there, from a taxing standpoint, between the sales tax, the economic impact, and Jim can speak to this a little better than I can.

So you're saying the city and the county are getting all the financial benefits?

Correct. All the revenue that we're referring to here. So the Preds aren't making any money on the operation of the ice facility is what Sean was just sharing. And then in addition, we as a developer are not making any money insofar as the ice facility is concerned. To be clear, as a developer, we're going to give the land to the sports authority. And then the city and county would enter into a joint funding agreement. Preds would operate it. We wouldn't have a financial interest there. the city and the county would pay for it and make money by way of the revenue that's generated from the hockey piece. And again, just to flag briefly, the revenue components that we're talking about that are hockey only. So the numbers on this slide are the whole project on the top half. but the visitor spending impact down here at the bottom, these numbers are hockey only. So for example, there's approximately $1.7 million of hotel motel tax that are contemplated in our economic impact study, 5.8 million of attributable sales tax, REVENUE THAT WOULD BE GENERATED BY THE HOCKEY PIECE. IN ADDITION TO THAT, THE TOTAL NEW REVENUE IF THE PROJECT GOES FORWARD AS CONTEMPLATED WOULD BE 18.9 MILLION PER YEAR. SO TO GET MORE SPECIFIC ON THE NUMBERS THERE, WE'RE CONTEMPLATING A COST ANNUALLY TO BE SPLIT EQUALLY BETWEEN CITY AND COUNTY OF LET'S SAY APPROXIMATELY 3 MILLION, SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 2.5 AND 3.5 MILLION. Um, but so on that, on that 3 million of annual debt service that would be split evenly between city and county, there would be 18.9 million of new revenue that's generated for, for both sides.

I guess I have one more question.

Please go ahead.

How the sports authority is a new entity for us and it's going to be the owner that is different than the county or the city owning it, correct? Uh, I mean, what if they have to sell it? What,

So we would have to flesh out what would happen in the event of a sale, for example. But I believe that the events like a sale in the future, for example, of that facility would probably be governed by an intergovernmental agreement between the city and county as those who are funding the debt service. Because obviously the sports authority today does not have any revenue. um to to fund the debt service so the city and county would be funding the debt service jointly via that intergovernmental agreement and i believe the specifics for situations like that would get fleshed out in that agreement you're welcome i have one more question

It may be for Sean. Just curious, have you guys looked at the demographics of the youth in this county? Because I know from a county commission standpoint, we've looked at it from a school perspective on why would we build a lot more elementary schools when we have mainly a certain age group and above that's moving here. Have you looked at that by any chance?

We look at demographics all day, every day, basically more so for the Preds' main business, our concert business. But I just show you my emails every day for the sheer volume of hockey moms and dads that tell us how dumb we are for not building in Williamson County or putting something forward. But as you know, with your school demands... This demand aligns right on with it the great thing about the ring So it isn't just for the youth and that's the driving force of it both the figure skating General use and hockey the adult hockey programming is pretty dynamic as well. It's a lot of fun sled hockey as well That's growing by leaps and bounds in a really positive way but like Danny said You can build a rink across the street from a rink and still have two of the busiest rinks in the country. Fort Ice Center Antioch and Bellevue are two of the busiest rinks in the country right now. A lot of that is because the lack of ice in the area, but then also the number of kids that are coming up from Williamson County.

Thank you very much. Vice Mayor? Commissioner Petty? I'm sorry. Go ahead. Let the commission go first and then go back and forth. My spare bag is willing to wait.

I can do it.

Commissioner Petty, go ahead.

Can you hear me? Okay.

I'm Bill Petty. This is my district, District 10, and Alderman Brown, I appreciate what you had to say, and I appreciate the amount of work and time you put into this. I think it's very important, and I thank you for that. My concern is with the traffic. Obviously, we know in our county that traffic has become a problem in the last few years. It's accelerated in the last two or three years. I've heard from people that are in my district when I walk and I talk to them, They say, you know, traffic. I've heard people saying, well, I'm going to move out of the county because there's too much traffic. What used to take me 15 minutes takes me 40 minutes now. Okay. So this is going to add to it. Let's be honest. Okay. And I guess I'm looking at the traffic study here and I'm wondering why, you know, 96 and West Haven, Mack Hatcher, 96 is not on there. I see some other places. I think because people are going to be coming from all over the county and they'll be coming from out of the county I presume right is that correct? How many cars do you think is going to or are going to be coming in and out of that each day? I Don't have any of the traffic numbers today in this meeting yeah We're gonna be working on that, but you know it seems to me that Franklin and Matt catcher is going to be affected and Mack Hatcher in 96 downtown, you know, Murfreesboro Road is going to be affected. I think these are great.

I'm adding them to the list as you're saying them. Okay, all right.

That's my only concern. I mean, there's things about the project I think are great, but there's also things I think we have to deal with. I know there's a project in place and planned to expand that intersection now. It's like a $4 million project. I don't know how soon it's going to happen. But is that going to be enough? How is that going to handle everything? I mean, I don't know how many people have tried to drive up to Nashville at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on Hillsboro or coming back down. So those are the things that concern me. I'm not against it. So I think this is a project just out of hand, but those are things that I think we really need to take a look at and deal with.

That's great. I will say this development will be responsible for roadway impact fees. The City of Franklin has both an arterial road impact fee and a collector road impact fee. Those dollars can be used by the developer to do road improvements, and I would anticipate that we'll have road improvements that will be a part of this to mitigate any impacts that we have. I wrote your roadway intersections down, and we'll have a conversation about those too. Thank you.

Dan or Will? Will. Yeah, we will. Go ahead. Let's go to the vice mayor, then we'll go back over here.

Quick question. How many do you anticipate Williamson County residents using, or how many do you think go to Nashville now to use hockey facilities? Just real quick answer. Like number of kids from Williamson County, roughly...

Yeah, it's about 60,000 is the math, 60,000 participants per year.

So Commissioner Petty, I'd say 60,000 people will be off of Hillsboro Road driving into Nashville to use hockey instead of staying here in Williamson County. First, I think a couple things. We get the pleasure of digging into these traffic studies on a regular basis. We get the, and you've seen it, we've been involved together on this and discussed and collaborated, and we get off-site traffic. I bet there is millions of off-site traffic improvements that will come because of this. That's how the city of Franklin funds road infrastructure to a large degree, is making these improvements. You are correct, Commissioner Petty, that there is the project on Mack Hatcher and Hillsborough Road that is in design now. I think it might be going to bid this week or next week. So it's very, and that's supposed to take that intersection. That will all be a part of this conversation when it comes through. One thing that, you know, I've been involved with the GraceWorks discussion as well since I was elected and trying to find them a home. When you look at the public benefit of this in a lot of ways, there is a lot of meat on the Grace Works bone, as well as the economic impact of this hockey facility, which we're here to discuss. Inherently, I'm funding public dollars for various things, like places have public golf courses. Well, we've never done that ourselves. Y'all have never done that. We don't. But this is an opportunity where we can actually knock out a few things, golf and the hockey, and then the Grace Works. One other item I'd bring up is that we said no to over 400 houses at this location. Do we know how many buildings are going to be present outside of the floodplain? Rough, less than 20 structures

Yes.

Less than 20 structures. And if it's 22 or whatever, you come back through. I'm not going to hold that against you. But 20 structures. And so I think what you heard it from Alderman Brown and you'll hear it from me now is that this isn't just willy-nilly. This is just popping up. We really thought about we don't want 500-plus houses here and manipulating tons of acreage of floodplain here. And so I think it's important that the County Commission hears and the public hears how many structures are there. It's limited in its scope compared to what was there. We made changes. And so, but yes. And then finally, I would compare this to a more profitable, more benefits conference center. It's kind of how I'm seeing this. Now, one thing I am, we had to make a big capital outlay on the conference center. This last year, maybe, it was a chiller or something. And I want to make sure, though, whatever agreement, if we move forward, I want staff to make sure that we don't have surprise major capital expenditures that come up like the conference center did. I know that was anticipated and planned for, and we saved, and we did good. We still, I think, both had to come out of pocket for some of that. So I really want to make this agreement if we move forward and staff looks at it. Look at that capital outlay, and if that's enough, great. If it's not enough, I mean, because we don't want those big pops. Thank you.

Yes, Greg Lawrence, County Commissioner of the Forest District. I have one major question, and kind of following up on Alderman Baggett's point, is you're saying that we're going to be responsible for the major capital improvements but i don't see any projections in here about what those are going to be am i missing something or what are you projecting the capital improvements will be over time i know you're going to put some money in but you said it might be a portion and as we we've experienced owning buildings there's surprises i'm assuming hockey rinks are very expensive when it comes to capital improvements

Yeah, so on page 16 of the presentation at the front of your book, bullet point three is the outline of the initially proposed lease payments. And those are broken out in five-year increments. So what we've initially contemplated here in conversations with the WITH OUR GROUP HAS BEEN BASICALLY RENT INCREASES EVERY FIVE YEARS ON THAT SCHEDULE. SO THAT RENT IS THE RENT THAT I WAS REFERRING TO EARLIER THAT WOULD GET PAID INTO A CAPITAL FUND TO CARRY THE COST OF OPERATIONS OF THE FACILITY, SPECIFICALLY TO THINK ABOUT DEFERRED MAINTENANCE AND OTHER THINGS. To my knowledge, right now, we do not have a study. There's not been a study done on long-term maintenance and those costs. What we do have is operating data by the predators at their other facilities. Do you guys want to speak to that just briefly on kind of your operating experience on that piece?

Yeah, and Sean and I were just discussing, we can easily get a long-term capital plan on what the facilities would be. We've done it for our other facilities in Sorry. And have an idea. They are expensive. They are expensive to maintain. But having an organization like we have and having years of experience, we have kind of expertise in maintaining them and partnerships with a lot of different organizations that have come in and maintained our facilities. Might be speaking out of turn a little bit, but we're 12 years into Antioch, and we've not come to – had to pull any capital dollars from the city we have the capital funds for Bellevue and it's something we protect and we want to make sure that these assets are protected from the counties and the cities that we operate in and it's important for us to kind of maintain that so in in Davidson County we have operational plans that we submit or can be reviewed by Davidson County at any time to make sure that we're protecting the asset that the county and city put forward so Again, hopefully our expertise in operating them kind of eases some of that thought. But, you know, as you were saying on the Convention Center, our hope is to kind of get ahead of those in a long-term plan. We have long-term plans in all three of our, you know, in Antioch, Bellevue, and then we just did one for Centennial just recently. So we have an idea of what the spend will be for the next 20 or 30 years. And it's easily doable on a brand-new facility, too. If that answers, I hope so.

Matt Williams on the County Commission. Certainly appreciate the creativity and bringing the proposal forward and the work y'all have done. I would say this is a better option than what we saw a few years ago, even though it's got a long ways to go. A couple questions on the pro forma. I just call out, because I know it says draft and it's from March 10th, take a look at the sales tax distributions. It's currently split 50-50 at about $79 million over 20 years, but because it resides in the city limits, that will all go to the city of Franklin. So just to call everybody's attention, if you look at the economic impact analysis summary, it's the very first page when it gets into the pro formals. Page 20 on our packet But down at the bottom is what talks about total direct sales tax It's a 20-year accumulation of it has a 50-50 split of sales tax. That's not actually how it sells tax would be split and

Well, to be clear, not all that spending is associated with this site. So there are some assumptions that are made around the sales tax revenue on broadly the impact spend. And there's certainly assumptions around where the visitor spend would occur, but not 100% of the spending would occur on this site. And so when we're talking about impact spend and taxable sales spending, people spending at gas stations, for hotels, eating, whatever else they're consuming when they come in for visitor spend, for example, and then just other ancillary impact spend is not all occurring at this site. So that's part of the assumptions that are underlined there.

I understand completely. That's still the preponderance. All that is still within the city limits. So the county is not a recipient of any significant amount of sales tax, just to call it out. Additionally, One question, when you get into like on page 23, it starts breaking down some of the individual operations of it. There's a percentage at the top that says 25, 57. Is that operating capacity?

I'm sorry, on which page?

If you go to like page 23, it starts breaking down individual service lines like retail, pickleball.

No, that's a phase-in.

Explain that.

It's assuming that, so the total 20-year calculation is assuming that for the first four years, the tax revenues are phasing in. So when we give you an annual calculation, those revenues are phasing in over four years. So in the first year, we're assuming that we're only operating at 25% of capacity. We don't expect that to be the case. This project isn't going to be phased. We'll deliver 100% at one time. But for purposes of conservatism in the model, we showed a phase-in of the revenue.

I understand within starting at year four through year 20, the assumption is it's operating at 100% capacity.

We're assuming we're operating at 100% of our assumptions. But one thing to note about these numbers, they're untrended. So there's no trending in these numbers for inflation or anything else to show growth on the revenue side. And we've also got, for example, on the retail, a vacancy factor and some other things to discount the top line revenue. So we've assumed some vacancy on the retail side as part of this.

So that vacancy is only on the retail side. What about the existing facilities that operate today? What capacity are they generally operating at? Do we know?

Are you talking about on ice?

Yeah, on ice.

We probably operate at about 110% capacity. There's just a demand for it, right? Our facilities are open 362-ish days a year. We open at 6, we close at 1. for the primetime hours of 3 to 11 p.m., we're at way over capacity. Weekends, we're over capacity. I mean, there's a demand for ice in the market. As I mentioned, USA Hockey numbers show an increase of USA Hockey just registrations of 25% year over year, so there's a huge demand. Every feasibility study that's been done with everybody we've ever talked to says there's just a huge demand for ice across the state.

Thank you.

I've got one.

Jim, it was a pleasure to speak with you earlier. Thanks for answering some of my questions. I'll echo Matt Brown and Patrick. I understand also the concerns from our neighbors, so I'm also District 10, have a lot of neighbors that have reached out, very excited. I live in Fieldstone Farms, so you can imagine there's a lot of young families that are thrilled at hearing this. I also have a lot of friends in Monticello and Cottonwood and other neighborhoods that are concerned about the flooding. So I appreciate some of the answers that we've already received. I also have heard previously, in previous iterations, from our friend Dori Bowles with Harpeth Conservancy. And you had mentioned when we spoke that you've been in communication with them. Could you just speak to that quickly? Because I know many of my fellow commissioners and the aldermen have heard from her quite often.

Yeah. We have met on a couple of occasions and spoken on the phone a couple of times and have had great, what I felt like were very positive conversations. I'm not going to speak on Dory's behalf about what her opinion of the project would be. I would encourage anyone who is curious about what Harpeth Conservancy's perspective on the project would be to reach out to Dory directly. And I'm glad to help facilitate a connection there if that's helpful. I appreciate it. Yeah, no problem.

And I might point out that the City of Franklin's conservation partner is Cumberland River Compact.

Let me just give one point of clarification on the sales tax discussion. For every dollar of local option sales tax that's generated in the city, that goes half to the city where it's generated, and the other half goes to public education. So there is a contribution that goes directly to public schools for local sales tax, however it's generated within Franklin. So every dollar we get, you get a dollar on the school side.

Real quick, I have to say I'm really concerned about the traffic. And where District 8 and Hillsboro has been a problem for years of overcrowding. And I don't know how you could add one more car to Hillsboro Road and it absorb it right now. So I'm just curious, wouldn't it make, this would be, this is a great facility, but it would be so much better if it was like right next to 65. or 840, but the way it's going now, I just see all this traffic getting pulled down roads that aren't built to handle it. And you gotta go way further north than this. I wouldn't go all the way up to Old Hickory and Hillsboro, honestly. So that's my concern.

appreciate the comment we have a long process we're about to enter into with the city of franklin and i hope you're all able to pay attention and look to see what some of our results are going to be as far as off-site road improvements that are going to be proposed i don't have any answer today i mean how did you pick this property versus one closer to the highway it's kind of like a regional you're going to have people coming all from all over nashville trying to get to this thing it is it's it's on At the intersection, more or less, of McHatcher Parkway, which is going to be, it's not today, but it's going to be a four-lane median divided road. Hillsborough Road is a five-lane arterial road that has great access to Forest Hills, Brentwood, West Haven, downtown Franklin, many of the neighbors that are kind of on that side. It's in a residential area because that's who's going to be using it.

So you don't see people coming down Hillsborough to get to it?

coming down hillsborough road yeah from the north i would think so yeah i would think there'd be people coming down from hillsborough okay so that's my concern right and there are also people that are driving from west haven up hillsborough road to get to ice facilities today so we have that cross traffic we're trying to capture some of that traffic in williamson county and city of franklin and i want to remind all three bodies that what we're trying to determine

if there's an interest in asking staff to pursue evaluation of the proposal on the ice facility not the entire property but i appreciate that you're talking about the entire property and the opportunities are there but what we're trying to consider tonight is is there an interest in the three bodies and moving forward giving staff some instructions as far as trying to develop further numbers and considerations to move forward.

Thank you, Mr. Baggett. I'm Larry Westbrook. I'm chairman of the Sports Authority. I think I can pretty much speak for the Sports Authority that we are very interested in having this matter pursued at this time and see where it goes because it looks, I mean, a lot of people have said it, it looks like a great project. It's got some issues that are going to have to be dealt with. Every project that happens in Franklin and Williamson County has issues that have to be dealt with. But I think we at least need to get to those issues and see how they can be dealt with.

I have another question. And this is for Sean. Do you know if your other arenas host tournaments? Because I would guess you're probably attracting people from other states for tournaments. Can you give me one?

Daniel's facts. Most rinks around the country host tournaments anywhere from 25% to 50% of the year. We're similar. When A-Game was operating and we had Antioch open and Centennial, the three of us worked together for larger tournaments, but then each rink alone would do their own. We're anticipating this, I think, 30 weekend or 26 weekends. Yeah, roughly about half the weekends. And you try to balance that per rink to make sure that it's open for people who live here as well. But where the economic impact comes in are the people that are coming in from outside of the state and then outside of the county.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm grateful for this group coming together to talk about this. It seems like there's interest in this, and to your point, Larry, it seems like the Sports Authority, which is a new body to me, I think there's interest in pursuing it, Mayor, to answer your question directly. As I look at the project as a whole, I start to think about infrastructure. I think you've addressed some of the water and some of the flooding infrastructure, but for the audience, be assured that we aren't going to move forward immediately with this project. There will be continued vetting throughout the process. Not only will it be water and infrastructure, we'll look at roadways, we'll look at the traffic impact, and those are some things that I think these two bodies can assure the public that will be reviewed very closely as this continues to move forward. I also look at the environmental impact, not just in regards to the water and the dirt. I look at the environment that we've created here in Williamson County and Franklin and how it's going to enhance many of our young people and older people's lives by having an outdoor facility of this nature in our backyards. As the father of a Centennial High School hockey player, I've spent many, many hours on Hillsborough Road going north to go to hockey games that start at 9.30 or 10 o'clock at night only to eat dinner in Nashville and then drive home at 11 or 11.30. And so I'm optimistic that if this rink were to come to fruition and we decide through the vetting process that the infrastructure offset agreements, offset the negative impacts that potentially could come from this, and that we reroute the river accordingly and improve the culvert under Hillsborough Road, reducing the flooding there, that we could see an enhancement to our community because of this project. And while I recognize Mayor Moore has asked us just to focus on whether we want to move forward with the ice, I can't overlook the fact that in a community like Williamson County, how many soccer fields we have and how much limited availability those who are playing on flat fields have to proper resources like that. I drive up to Downs every night of the week and they continue to play soccer until the lights go off. I go down to Bethesda, the brand new facility that the county has built down there. It's beautiful. It's occupied by soccer players, occupied by lacrosse players. And the question maybe I would have, and this may be a sports authority field, a sports authority question is, While the pro forma put before us looks specifically at the ice revenue, I do wonder about what the economic requirement from the community will be to support the other fields in that area. Who will be responsible for programming those? Who will be responsible for maintenance of those? Who will be responsible for upkeep of those?

So on the other fields, all that would be done privately. And today we would be assuming the responsibility for that as developer of the project. We intend to continue to own those fields. Again, we sought partnership with Tennessee Titans and National Soccer Club because we felt like they were great partners for us. maintaining open access to those fields and limiting the use of any one club or group on a weekly basis to those fields. And we intend that's how we intend to approach operating that. We we've got a couple of partners that we've been talking to about bringing folks in for specific field operations and booking and management. But the goal with both of those partners, as well as for us, is really to create as much access as possible. But we intend to bear all the costs of that and maintain those fields long-term. And from our perspective, we want those fields to be accessible to the community. So that's the core focus for us. In the same way that's been the focus with the ice, that's the intention on the sports fields. It's worth noting as well for pickleball, and golf, which are also contemplated here, the approach is for that to be public access. So those will be things that will be available to the community and not just to any one club or group.

Thanks, Jim.

I'm sorry, Alderman Bird.

Hello? Great. Thank you so much for all this great information. I think it's been extremely helpful. Matt, thank you for all your work on this too. I know it's long haul. Bottom line, our kids deserve this. Our children in this community, our parents in this community deserve this. I lived in Huntsville, Alabama for about almost 14 years. We struggled and we struggled and we struggled with fields and activities, but yet our kids, they just hung in there, we played, we did everything we could. I remember years ago, Mayor Anderson and a lot of trouble sergeant, a lot of people got out with their shovels, and you dug and made those fields. You made those fields happen. Huntsville, Alabama made those fields happen. And then one day they elected a mayor called Tommy Battle. And he saw the need and he rallied the community around that need. And over 25, 30 years they have built an amazing place. to serve their children, their parents, give every kid in that area, regardless of income, opportunities to participate in sports, possibly go on for college, possibly go on to bigger things after that. And I look at that and I've just recently visited down there again and I've seen everything and I had a grandson who played in all those fields and we were able to sit there and I thought, wow, we didn't have all this with our kids. But our kids, our son sat there and watched his son play on fields and activities that they lacked. But they got that vision. We need to get that vision. It's a hard, hard road ahead, I know. It's not an easy thing to do. But then our companies come here, and the companies that come here, and they bring their people, and their people move here, and our other people work here. And they've come from communities, and they go, where are your fields? Where are your sports facilities? They've come from a lot of different places like that. Look at this ice facility. And we've struggled for years to have this ice facility. And Barb, you brought up a great point. What happened to A-Game? Well, it's a whole different model, totally different model than what they're presenting here. So with the public-private partnerships, we should be able to move this ahead and we should be able to elevate this to a whole new level. So I look at this and I think we have got to work to make this happen. And Greg Gamble, you mentioned something, not just to mitigate things, but to benefit, to bring the benefit. We have to have the benefit for that road. We have to get rid of the water on that road. Those things, and thank you for addressing that, because without that, no. You've got to be able to do those things. And there are things that we need as a body, both of our bodies do need to demand that those things happen for, number one, safety. And number two, for the safety of our residents, Lisa, you brought that up too, the other people that live around there. So when I look at this, I think, yes, let's move this ahead. Let's go study it. Let's get to work. Thank you.

So are there any other questions from the County Commission, Sports Authority, or the Board of Mayor and Alderman, or Mayor Anderson, or Mr. Stuckey? If not, thanks for the presentation. Appreciate your taking time to come down. Everybody have a good evening.