Community Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Well, welcome to the Appleton Redevelopment Authority meeting. We, for a roll call, have Anne Higgins is excused and Josh Lambert should be here somewhere, but he's excused for right now. We will move for approval of the minutes from the last meeting. I motion to approve.

Second? All those in favor? Aye. And those are passed. We do not have any public hearings or appearances, so we'll move to the information items and go to twenty fivefifteeneighteen, the financial report on our accounts. And who's going to be doing that? District two. Got it? Oh, you're right. I went to direct there we go.

There we go. Thank you. Okay. So we worked with our finance director to determine, you know, a past running balance. And so in that last paragraph, it shows that we have a balance of $207,000.129 and 33¢. She did that opinion on her own. She did she has access to files that we don't, and so she went back to look for that. But that is in addition to the $150,000 that we had in sales for the property of 222 North Oneida Street. It's not addition.

Oh. Oh,

yeah. Sorry. That's included. That's included, and then $207,000. I did just approve a business enhancement grant, so it would be less 7,000 for that.

Okay. So that leaves us with when you guys did the math, there was 170 some thousand available

for that program?

Yes. That would be correct.

One question.

Okay. Excuse Your clerk? There you go.

So in the thank you for providing these, first of all. This is really helpful. So in the audited statement, the land held for resale, was that the 222 Building? That was the value of it, the 420? Or is that that plus something else?

And you're looking at one of the attachments?

Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. It's under the audited statement or the unaudited, sorry. They're unaudited financial statements from '24.

Oh, from '24.

It just says under current ancest land held for resale. I'm thinking that was 02/22, but just that. Okay. So just trying to track this. So we have the 71, then we added the 150, then we took out the expenses, and that's the 175. Well, and the other one you did. Yes. Okay. Perfect. Thank you.

Anything else, Han, on that?

Unless you have other questions.

Does anybody have any questions on that other than that? Okay, then we will move on to 25, $15.17, the role in the sub area plans. And I believe Lindsay's doing that.

I'm going to kick it off and then turn it to Lindsay to help facilitate it.

What number are you? Oh, just grabbed her.

I grabbed it. So first of all, I wanted to thank you all for your patience as well as active participation in the subarea planning for Richmond and Northland, Wisconsin, and South Oneida. Sub area plans as well as the full city comprehensive plan was approved by the Common Council in late November. So as promised, we wanted to bring back to this group and have a conversation about what sorts of things might be short term priorities, as well as once we get through that conversation, what are some of the long term things. Want to make sure we frame the conversation if we want to do things in fiscal year twenty twenty six that we're cognizant of the resources that we have, both financially as well as the personnel time that it takes to do them.

So we know we have 170,000 unrestricted funds. So Lindsay is going to kind of take you through the analysis she did of the sub area plan recommendations, and then we can have a conversation.

We're passing the mic.

Yes. All right. Thank you. So within the staff memo, outlined my analysis and what I did. And then within the agenda item, then there was three separate attachments with the different spreadsheets.

So the spreadsheets look very similar to the recommendations that were in the sub area plans, but what I did go through and evaluate is what recommendations would be relevant to the ARA. And so some of them are very specific to, City of Appleton only has that authority to do something like zoning code. You don't have the authority to change the City of Appleton zoning code, that's something that would go through city staff to draft, bring before our plan commission, and then being adopted by our common council. So there's some actions and recommendations that were very outside the scope, I would say, of the ARA's responsibility. So the spreadsheets in front of you were really specific on items that I felt the ARA could be involved in.

They may not you may not be just the standalone lead, it would be involvement with the ARA, could be City of Appleton staff, it could be other organizations such as the North Side Business Association. So there could be various stakeholders that could be involved in facilitating some of these recommendations. And one thing I wanted to also pull out is that some of these recommendations really require to have a full redevelopment plan. This isn't something that you can just do a standalone, oh let's make this one improvement, we need to have a larger redevelopment plan that could help facilitate some of the recommendations within the sub area plans. And then there's other ones that you can see that doesn't have a yes behind a redevelopment plan, and those I think could be standalone projects that we could work on without that redevelopment plan put together.

And so, as Kara mentioned, I know we've talked about this quite a bit, you know, want, the ARA wants to be active and start doing things to implement some of these recommendations in the plans. And so really looking at, I would initially think is let's look at some of these standalone things we can prioritize first, just based on the available resources from a funding perspective and just staff capacity. I think as we work through some of these redevelopment plan recommendations, that's really going to require us to dig into some of the sub areas a little bit further and say where do we want those redevelopment plans? Do we have a project that can help facilitate and kick off that redevelopment plan effort? So very specific, I guess, just because we have the Northland Richmond one on the screen, thinking of Northland Mall.

You know, that area, that redevelopment, would have to be a larger site redevelopment. The ARA isn't going to be able to just do some standalone little landscaping and make a large improvement, so it's something that's a larger project and really would need to have a project in front of us to make that go forward. But some of these other ones are smaller and I think could be achieved by the ARA. I know previous discussions we talked about the Business Enhancement Grant and talking about are there ways we can incentivize property owners in these sub areas to utilize the Business Enhancement Grant to further some of the goals and recommendations and strategies in the plans. So I'm not going to dive through each sub area spreadsheet, I'm hoping that all of you have kind of taken a look at it.

Some of them are similar in all three sub areas. And I guess the other thought I even have is like, is there even a do we want to prioritize one sub area over another? Do we want to just prioritize all three of the sub areas right now? And I think some of that's gonna depend on what scope of project you want to start with on implementation. So I'll kind of put it back into your hands, you know, we're here for a discussion, that's really the purpose of this item today. So feel free, ask us questions. We're all here to answer if you have anything specific or ideas you want to share.

Is it possible to do a redevelopment plan as big as the sub area? Like, could you or is that too big?

I think anything's possible. I would suggest we first find a catalyst project and then craft the redevelopment plan and likely TID plan Okay. With that in mind.

Because I'm just thinking that it's, like, one of those you know, we need to start somewhere, and it feels, like, so big. And I feel like the $1.70 would be, in my opinion, best used to buy some land to try to do a project as opposed to, like, some little drips and drabs everywhere and not really what I think is something that we could really be key in doing. So I think sort of one of those things. We know we've identified some sites in the past. You know, what what do we do next? Because, like, the Northland Mall, I mean, that's all privately owned. It's not on the market. You know, mean, how do we start to look at what what's possible? And I guess maybe that's a question back to how do we start that? And that's that's one question.

And then my other question is, so I know we have the 33,000 in the business enhancement grants, and we kind of talked about it, but could we do something where we take I mean, of I don't even know if it can be done, could we take that 33,000 and put it towards one of these vegetation projects? Because you could probably get some decent impact with that money in one of these sub areas if you said we're going to do planters or whatever. But I don't know if we can redirect those funds to do something like that. Those are my questions.

Are you talking about just the $33,000 or

Yeah, because that's already business enhancement grant designated. And so could it I mean, just trying to see how we could make an impact. I feel like it's nice when you have a sub area plan that you spent so much time on to, like, see wins, like, actually do some of the things that you want to do. Yeah.

It's my understanding the city allocated the business enhancement funding, which was at $150,000 to begin with for a citywide business enhancement program. I would be hesitant to answer that with certainty without. So is it something that

we could say go back to counsel and say, we're curious if we can do this with this money? Or is that once it's designated, it's sort of that's the purpose and you can't really go back? The inner workings of government, I don't really know.

I I think if there was a desire to are you saying funding planters, like, along streets or to provide grants to businesses that need? No. More like do the planter. Like, do what we had sort

of talked about at least when I was on the Wisconsin Avenue one. You know, it was like, the bid, it's hard, those business owners to create a bid and then that they're spending, you know, their money and to do that. And is there a way that we can kinda kick start some of that, like, excitement about their district by doing some of that work? And we have some money that I mean, because it has been spent over time, but it's take you know, mean, it's not it didn't all go in the first pot. You know? So could we take this last bit? Because, also, I mean, you know, it's a lot of work to do these grants, and they're small. And could we do something that's a little more impactful with the 33?

I would actually recommend leaving the 33 for grants and using the balance of ARA funds for. I wouldn't really be in support of that because I think we have to keep our money to purchase property.

And I think that once that starts to lessen that money, I mean, 170 is hard enough. So, okay, just a thought.

Other thoughts?

So a lot of the now that we have the sub ANAEs approved through the city, I see that South Oneida Street and also Wisconsin Avenue have high priorities for creating a TID for those areas. I guess since those are high designations, what are the stages or next steps for those creations of those tax increment districts?

Yeah. So typically when we create a TID, there's an initial kickoff project that serves as the impetus. So think about the work we're doing on the North Side with Thrivan. We know there's a developer working to bring to market a development that would create increment. So that's when we start working on the planning that goes into a TID.

We would need to have a property owner and a developer approach the city. And while we're waiting for that, as we go through our marketing and developer engagement activities, we certainly let them know of the opportunity. Hey. We have this corridor plan. We're open to entertaining, creating a TID.

But we don't necessarily want to create a TID until we know we have that project that's going to create increment. We've made what I would call mistakes in the past where we've created TIDs that didn't have projects come to fruition, and then they just kind of sit there and do nothing. So I it kinda goes to Marissa's question about chicken and egg. I I would say we need to do a better job of practically marketing. This is the vision of the city to the development community and pointing out where those opportunities are so that they know that they're gonna get a strong policy support from the council and where needed redevelopment authority to bring that to reality.

Sure.

So I think the next step is really marketing to the business community. City council endorses these plans. You should expect support for TID creation and development incentive when you find that parcel to make that project go.

So are you looking at a RA to start that process anyways of acquiring that property to to, I guess, start kick off that redevelopment?

That could be an option. I do know a 170,000 is not a ton.

Why do you ask for that?

It's not. They're asking a quarter million.

And

without getting into the weeds, there's the purchase price and then there's the carrying cost. So if we were to purchase, say, an empty parking lot, stormwater ERUs are annual and very expensive. So even if we're tax exempt, we're still going to have to plow sidewalks and pay for stormwater mitigation. So we'd have to figure out how do we fund that too.

That isn't just something the city would assume for us at no cost.

No. The city charges itself for stormwater ERU. So the parks department and all of the various departments pay into that utility.

No. So right now, is there anything that your department knows of that's out there, somebody looking for creating a district to do some enhancement or do some work? I mean, is there any irons in the fire, so to speak?

Yeah. We've had some inquiries along Wisconsin Avenue. I believe one of the more recent ones is actually in the Eastern TID District already. But if we had an inquiry that created enough potential increment west of the existing TID, that would be the opportunity to start moving on that. But we haven't had that as of yet. But we also haven't gone out and marketed the new sub area plans.

To piggyback on the question there, is that going out and marketed is something you guys will be doing over the next period of time? We're early in the process. That's good. But we're in the process. That's a good point. Okay. Anything else on that? Okay. Let's move on to twenty fivefifteennineteen, and we have a report on the Exhibition Center Advisory Committee. I'm assuming this can be Kara.

So I included a memo in your packet, really just summarizing where we're at and providing a link to the exhibition center advisory committee meeting that we had with our community partners made up of representatives that primarily pay into the room tax commission that funds the bonds that ARA funded the exhibition center with. Keep in mind the negotiations and the actual management agreement don't rest with ARA. They rest with the city. I'm not going to make any comments related to what was discussed at the advisory committee meeting, but I do have one update that I'm just want to put out there. I want to let this group and the general public know the city and Hilton have since expressed interest in an extension of the existing agreement.

But the details of that have not yet been finalized. But we're making progress towards that.

Does anybody have any questions on that?

I have one. Yes, sir.

I'll

get used to this sooner or later. Back in 2016, 2017, we were in the middle of putting this product together. And the question came up of, will this be a burden on Apple and taxpayers? And the person leading that project, Ben LaFromboise, said no. There will be no burden on Appleton.

It's heads in beds. And his finance plan was banks and credit unions. And at the last minute in 2018, two of the 10 districts or 10 units that have hotels said, we're going to change we're going to ask you to change that.

And

we had the finance committee here. We had the visitors bureau sitting here at almost all of these. And now I see well, I think Todd, maybe just Todd and I. I know I was the one who said no to that bonding issue for various reasons. I suggested then that it how did anybody know if you invested in a big box shopping area that Amazon would come along and make you a trouble cost you a troublesome finance?

Or how did you know if you owned a cab company that Uber would come along and make your business very difficult if you were in the cab business? Never even thought of a COVID epidemic, which did come along and put this thing in a bad start. Now I'm seeing that it's there's hinting here that the Appleton's gonna pick up some of this, the city of Appleton, I just told I totally disagree with that. The formula has got to go back to heads in beds and the other municipalities. I realized the building is here and the hotel attached to it is here.

But that's not how this started. Thank

you. So I would encourage you to watch the video from last week's meeting. The mayor made it abundantly clear that the city's general taxpayers our position is will not be responsible in subsidizing the facility. I need to kind of limit my comments to that but I'd be happy to after the meeting show you how to watch that video because it'll give you a lot more clarity.

I will do it. And thanks, I'll go see the mayor personally. Thank you.

Okay. Anything else on that? Well, not, that brings us to an end. And I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So next we would move to future agenda items. Does anybody have anything they want to offer to put on the future agendas?

Department would come. So I don't know if it's that or I don't know how to start to look at what there might be out there.

Can we potentially ask you, Kara, to put together a list for the future agenda of anything that might be out there? Or is that possible? Or is there so little really percolating under the surface that it's not worth asking at this point?

I would be cautious to do that in open session. The minute that's out there, prices go up. But I can definitely give it some thought on what that strategy would be for how do we identify and then strategically bring forward opportunities.

Because I certainly understand Marissa's point of saying that we've got the availability of some money and the ability and time to do some things. We should be moving on something. And I can understand that as well. So why don't you think about that and we can look at the next agenda and see what's out there?

I just know, I just, for some context, you know, I go to a lot of conferences for development and really every developer is saying, you know, the city can't do something for me. And TIFF sometimes is helpful and sometimes not. You know, donating land or a discounted price can be one of those things. So how do we help to facilitate getting that, you know, because it'll take a while, as we know.

Other thoughts? Okay. There's nothing else there. I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

Move to adjourn.

And a second? Second. We are adjourned.

I love that. All right.