City Council - Regular Meeting

on the uh Evans Redevelopment Agency meeting for Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026. My name is Mark Clark. I'm the chair. Call the meeting to order. Can we get uh roll call, please? Chairman Clark here. Vice Chair Pleka here. Commissioner Johnson present. Commissioner Neil present. Commissioner Crabtree here. Commissioner Delaney here. Commissioner Fair here. All right. Next item on the agenda, approval of the agenda. Madam clerk, any changes to the agenda? No, chair.

All right. and entertain a motion. A motion second to approve the agenda as presented and give it a second here. Okay, no problem. still loading. All right. All right. Still. All right. And that motion carries. All right. Next item, a consent agenda. Any changes to the consent agenda? Anything anybody want to discuss on it? If not, I'd entertain a motion. I have a motion, a second to approve the consent agenda. That motion carries. All right. Next item on our agenda is new business. Item number 5A, consideration of a letter of interest with Arbor Capital Partners for the Junction at Evans Property. And we'll turn it over to staff.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor. Uh, Chairman Clark and members of the board, uh, Brian Stone, economic development director. I'm here this evening for the consideration of the letter of interest uh, for the remaining parcels located at Highway 85 and 30 Street 31st Street u, known as the junction. Joining us this evening is Jim Righeimimer with Arbor Capital. Um, I'll provide kind of just go kind of go through the highlights of the the LOI and then I'll have Jim join me up here so he can kind of share his vision. um on this project. So, as you're aware, um we received this letter of interest back in I guess in December for the 8.97 acres of retail property on the on the 85 and 31st Street um corner there. Um the LOI is really a framework of what we're trying to do for the overall agreement with this development and with Arbor Capital. Um and this allows that the the properties can be purchased in phases and that will all be outlined in future but this really is the first step for the framework um of that process. So as you remember we met on January 6th um in executive sessions and had you guys provided some direction uh for staff to to move forward with. At that time, we met with our legal counsel, Corey Hoffman, um, and he was in favor of this, but also looked at when he revised it, added the direction from from the board, as well as added some additional safeguards that we'll you'll see this evening that just helps protect the ERRA and ensure that development goes um with the urban renewal authority as well as the the ERRA's um main focus. So, these have pres been presented to Arbor Capital and they're in agreement with with the changes and and ready to move forward if you guys are this evening. So, as you recall, um it really is options to purchase. So, um with that,

they have outlined some purchase pricing for the different lots. As you can see, where the lots are and the size kind of dictates where uh the value of that is. And as you if you remember um previously we had an appraisal done and these these numbers really do align with what was was shared within the appraisal for the the ERRA. So as I mentioned this is an option for him to have exclusive right or AR arbor capital and his team to have exclusive rights to develop on this parcel. So they will do the marketing they will do the development they will to to find that. So, with that, there's a $50,000 non-refundable um option that they'll have to put down. If we're moving forward in a positive way and they need some additional time, there is an option of 25 for the fourth year um at additional $25,000 that they would put down. Really shows their skin in the game of of what they are and the interest of of really making this development happen. So, as we discussed um the option fee credit initially, we saw that the first one would take down that 50,000 um with the changes in the LOI that we've all agreed upon um with Arbor Capital is that the $10,000 will be on a PR rata basis. So, each time a lot is taken down, $10,000 will be credited towards the purchase of of that. Another development milestone um that again recommended from legal counsel just so we make sure that we keep things moving forward. Um, we added that they must submit construction plans, not finalized, not anything, but that the city is reviewing plans within 24 months. This is going to show that we have redevelopment happening and that that is active and we're we're taking a look at that. So, as you see as we go to the next slide, you you'll understand even further of how why that's so important. Um, as mentioned, these lots can be purchased individually, so he doesn't have to take down the whole thing at once. And then

with the LOI, it's 36 months that he must have one of the lots acquired. So when we talked about this and and from previous ones, I look at this is really an er partnership. It's something where they came to us. We didn't have to send out an RFQ or an RFP trying to to find somebody come in and help develop this or market this like we we initially discussed. They came to us. So, I look at this as as something of of an opportunity as well as a partnership. We've gone for a couple years and we've made some great progress. The infrastructure that we put in is amazing. Um, and it probably was one of the reasons that attracted them to this to this location. Uh, but with that being said, we need a further reach. We've done what we can. We have some contacts, but a lot of retailers are going to want somebody that wants to come in, develop it, lease it to them, and then kind of take that. So with this partnership um and within the LOI it's it's requirement for development to happen. So they don't just get to purchase it and sit on it. So they'll they'll purchase it with activation of of development. The construction drawings are a big part of that. So we know that things are going to move forward. The other one that we talked about was the quarterly meetings. Um I've spent a lot of time and energy and built some relationships that I think will be valuable to this. So I think sitting down with them and having these quarterly meetings and letting us provide some input of that is going to be big. As well as ICSC we were just talking about in May um is another opportunity where we can sit down together um in a space where it's it's directed specifically toward this where I think we can make some some major headway. Um and then the big one that I like is the city review process, right? So if they have a tenant, we have 10 days to kind of vet that out, make sure that that stays within our vision and I appreciate them adding that within that.

So uh the property would be conveyed as is. Um there is an environmental assessments and everything that have been done, but if that would be the only stipulation that they could kind of come back, um no reasonzoning, no water rights, and then uh no water w no raw water is included. So, um, board member Crabtree mentioned to to look at what the appraisal was. The water was not included in that and so we pulled that out and so that'll be something that we can negotiate further on, but there are is a little bit of water on that that site. U probably not for the whole development. So, I appreciate you bringing that up and um, we've we've stripped that from from the LOI. So, what are the next steps? Like I said, this is really just the framework for the the additional agreements that we will come forward, the purchase and sale agreement as well as the master development agreement that we have um that we'll work with them um as we move forward. And we anticipate that within the LOI it's mentioned that we'll have this back to you guys um within 60 days. So really this is just again the framework you guys we won't do anything moving forward. you guys will see everything that comes in front of you for this development of this this process. So now I'm going to introduce Mr. Riggenheimimer here um with Arbor Arbor Capital um and let him kind of share his vision. But as you you look at his kind of bio here um he has over 30 years of of real estate, has worked with some some quick service restaurants and things like that which I think are are very valuable to to what that is. But what's not mentioned in here is um he was also a mayor of Costa Mesa and so he understands kind of both sides of the development um understands both sides of the development process of this in order to to get through the entitlements and all that but also attract and and uh bring businesses into Evans. So with that I'm going to turn it over and let um Mr.

Righeimer um explain a little bit more about him and his vision of this project. Okay, no politics. Okay. Um, it is interesting. I've got um I got into real estate literally going to college at at 19 years of age. I ran out of money going to school. My mom was a real estate broker and she said, "Get your real estate license and sell houses um you know in the summer and go to school during the year." And so I did that and 11 years later I said, "Damn it, I got to go back and finish that degree." And um and I did. and got that all done at nights. But uh I've been involved in the real estate business since I've been was 19 years old. And what does happen if you're in the real estate business is you actually get in front of city councils at a very young age and you start to learn all the different processes out there. So before you know it, someone says you want to run for whatever and here. Thank you all for your time. I know I really know what you're putting up but then it's you get nothing for this job. But so we the company has two operations. We have California where we started and we have Colorado up in Timmouth. We for we did always housing in Colorado. We've done a little over 2,000 lots. Um our biggest projects right now are in Berid and then in um Timmouth. Uh we got like 500 homes there. We're down to the last like 200 lots I think over there to get done. Uh but we really want to shift more to commercial which is all we do in California because there's no place to put houses. um in there and we have all these relationships with all these different tenants and so I about two years ago we just said we've got to find some stuff here in Colorado and you got to learn Colorado too. You guys like your your property taxes. Whoa. I mean there, you know, and and a tenant can only sell a burger for so much money and there's got to be a margin and if your rent's too high, your land costs are too

high, things don't work. But we basically started looking around Ford and we came into your project, your property here and we could see what the issues were. So the bottom line is there's no magic to this. I'm not going to go lease a space tomorrow. I'm not the tenant. But there are tenants out there that'll want that location. I kind of know who some of them probably would be, but they could be a quick no right away. It doesn't matter. But I will be able to bring in if there are people that want to be there, I can do that. and it'll be done. But what I needed to do and what I've done before is I said city councils and when I was on a council, you'd have a situation where it's like, well, what what what skin do they have in the game? Now, I can tell you it's going to cost me $7500,000 of drawings every time I keep on doing to get tenants in here. But cities and like sellers want to hear something. So, I'm like, we'll give you $50,000 right up front. That's your money. You can spend it tomorrow. That's how confident I am that we can go ahead and make this thing happen. But I did say it's going to take several years. Um I don't I have one project in Stockton, California that um my youngest is 19. She was four when we started it. So that's not a good example. But in the last several years, we put in a McDonald's, a Chipotle. We just finished up a Starbucks drive-thru, a 7-Eleven gas. That all happened in the last few years. Um, so it kind of picked up, but these things take time. And so what you don't want to do is set up expectations to say, "Oh, I can get somebody in and get it done." Now, I'm not saying anything about city staff about how they approve plans and get things done. But sometimes it's a slower process, sometimes it's a faster process. And so what what we came up with instead of just saying because I say it's going to take three years, you know, get it up, get it built, get it closed, um on on a on a property, staff and their attorney came back said, "We we want to have something done." And

all I said was, "Okay, I'll have the plans in within uh 24 months, meaning we've got something. If we don't have something in 24 months, then we don't have anything." And I risked the money and it's gone. And you know, that's that's the way it is. But I feel very confident it's a good location. It's got good car count. And I got to tell you being a a city council person and a mayor, I I can guarantee you guys had issues about moving forward with that project there. I guarantee there was back pressure. That was the smartest thing you guys ever did was keep that deal together because without it, everybody goes, "Well, what's over here?" There's a McDonald's on this corner. Okay. And now McDonald's is like the only company out there that'll buy the land and build their own building, too. I mean, if you know that everybody else that you see out there doesn't own the building. They're in the the burrito business or this, you know, whatever business. They need someone to just say, "How much a month?" And we build the building. We finish it all. We get it done. So, you guys did a great job on keeping that together. And I can really appreciate probably some of the pressures you had to get that done. But uh without any much more, I'm very confident, highly confident we can do it. I haven't talked to any tenants or anybody or anything because that just jinxes deals. Um but we're ready to get get running here as soon as we can to move this thing forward.

Perfect. Yeah. Um so with that, like I said, I really do think this is going to be a great partnership. it's going to allow us to have that further reach and really get that development um at least the marketing and see if this is a viable thing and I really think it is um with them. So staff would recommend that we um approval of the the letter of interest this evening. And with that that's all we have. I'd be happy to answer any questions you guys may have.

Great. Thank you Brian. Appreciate it. All right. So I I I have the list here. So um first of all thank you very much for being here. really really appreciate it. We thank you for wanting to invest in Evans and we're glad that you see that there's a lot of potential in that area. I know for some of us that have been on council for quite a few years. We've had people come in before and overpromised on that saying, "Hey, we're going to build a a Murdoch. We're going to build a grocery store. We're going to build X, Y, and Z." And none of that has come to fruition. we finally got a McDonald's after gosh knows how many years of trying to market and get that place together, but I also like the fact that you came in and said, "I can't promise anything, but you're willing to invest and put money forward to say, I know there's potential here, and I'm going to take that gamble." And I I like that confidence because, you know, you've been in the business for a while. You've had plenty of success. So, you know, I I really appreciate you wanting to invest in our community. So, I I'm looking forward to having this partnership with you and uh hopefully we can make that grow a lot bigger and attract a lot more businesses out there. So, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Hi. Uh thank you for being here. So, my question for you is, so we have McDonald's there, which is advantageous because typically McDonald's acts like an anchor tenant to the area, which is a great thing. Um sometimes especially when you have uh like fast food they come in pairs like they have like a neighbor you know like a strategic partner kind of that complements it not competes with it. So I'm curious to know and granted I know you haven't like you said spoken to anyone but what do you what do you envision would pair appropriately with the McDonald's in that area especially because there's you know vacant plats. Well, so in a in a I don't want to say a normal setting, but what you'll have is you'll have exclusivities for certain kinds of food, right? So, um, like In-N-Out, we've done stuff with In-N-Out, and now, in fact, you know, I think the first Starbucks I did was over 20 some years ago. I did one of the first drive-throughs in the country. And my um the person who handled that project for Starbucks is now the uh president of real estate for In-N-Out. Well, there's already a burger place there and that's just exclusive and and that's what you do. So, there's the burger, there's the chicken, there's the taco, those kind of things that happen in there. When you go to the gas or the fast food, so there's exclusivity languages that you have to work with. But usually when someone's coming for food, people would rather say like couple you're at work, you just head that direction because there's three places there. It helps everybody else out and that's where you they complement. They're not taking each other's business away. I don't want to eat, you know, chicken every single day, but you know, so it's just different. Coffee is very interesting. And when Schultz did the whole concept of Starbucks, think about it. You go to a restaurant, you get chicken once or twice a week, maybe, but you'll get coffee every day,

right? I mean, this guy's a genius. He figured this out. Starbucks was more of a development company and a real estate company than it was coffee. They happened to serve coffee. Um, and that's how they grew it so fast and it's a multi-billion dollar company. But from a real estate standpoint, they can get the same customer every single day where you might go to a burger place once a week or whatever, you know, something like that. But you're hitting it right on the head. There's certain things that complement it. There's other stuff out there and until we get farther down, I don't want to go public with anything because there's just I I've got some really good ideas. Um, I want to, you know, ping them out, see if they work. And also another thing I just wanted to mention because typically like you mentioned coffee is one. Say that one more time. Um typically coffee is one that's complimentary to like a McDonald's.

Oh absolutely. The um considering the the state that we're in as far as like people in their spending has kind of shifted. I can tell you that people have shifted more to like convenience stores especially since there is one there. Um you can get coffee for a dollar. So considering that um is that also part of the equation for you considering right now where we're at and really strategically placing um sustainable businesses in that area?

Yeah. So we're seeing um actually McDonald's has shifted into the coffee big time at a lower price point than say Starbucks has had. Um you know I've got three daughters and and two one out of college, two in college and you know six bucks six bucks six bucks. I mean it's you know I say Daddy doesn't buy Starbucks anymore. Get a pot, you know, and you pay for yourself. You're in college now. But, um, there definitely is a difference in what they're doing. Um, I can tell you, but like the Dutch Brothers thing has gone like crazy, uh, across the country. It's a, you know, multi-billion dollar company kind of out of nothing over there. Um, there's several other new concepts that are coming in because the margins in coffee were high. Um, but they're really real estate plays. And so my first Starbucks that I did uh years ago, it was the right corner that they wanted to be there. Everything was fine. And I said, you know, we're going to do I'm going to do a lot more with you. I always treat my tenants as whatever they need. If you treat people that way, your business does better. How can I help you? I'm not going to try to gr grind the next 20 cents out of your foot. I'm trying to make it work for your coffee. And with with Starbucks, they had all sorts of issues and we had to change the agreement four times. And every time they changed the agreement, I'd say, "Well, I'll tell you what. I'll do that, but we're going to build 20 stores." And when we started the first construction, my real estate guy said from Starbucks said, "Let's meet with my boss. Let's talk about those 20 stores." Now, I thought I could just, you know, I literally showed them 50 locations. They said no to every single one. I can smell a coffee spot now. I mean, I know exactly what they need the certain side of the street that because I've just done it so many times and there are certain ones that do it. But there has been a change. You know what's happened with the coffee is these sugar drinks. I got to tell you, they're just

Yeah. It's, you know, there's just it's like there's some coffee involved. Um, but it's a lot of sugar that's in there and these these these young kids are, you know, big on it in there. So, awesome. I appreciate you. Thank you for your call. Hi, Commissioner. Hi. Uh thanks for um coming. Uh just two real quick clarifying questions. So we are talking about you will always you will have a tenant before you build. Absolutely. Okay. Um

yeah the world does not need another strip center. It doesn't need one. It only needs ones that has tenants that are strong. Um most of the stuff that we build in the last 10 years we've kept now. So in the beginning I kept. Then when the when the interest rates went down, the prices that they were selling these stores for was so high and I had girls in college, I sold the different ones, but now we're keeping them again and I don't need to own a vacant piece of property. Perfect. Um, and then you've mentioned exclusivity. I do know that there was some exclusivity written into the McDonald's.

Yeah, they have they have a burger exclusivity. That's yeah it every way you can describe a burger they they put it in there so you can't get around it and we don't look to get around it. They're they're customers of ours. They have a business model. Perfect. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Mr. Chair, um again, thank you for traveling to come see us. Even if it's a short quick meeting, we appreciate you being here because I believe you came from California for this meeting. I'm I'm literally out here right now. Um every week. Wow. And I and I snuck in some skiing with the family in Grand this last week. They all flew home. I said, "I got to go to work." So,

we have a house in Tmouth. I mean, we're I'm trying to get us out here full-time. The deal was when the last one was in college, we'd move. Honey, the last one's in college. I Daddy over here proud plays basketball at Northwestern. Nice. My wife is tall. Um, so, um, I'll be leaving here actually to go to Chicago to see him play USC. Oh, wow. I went to USC. USC. All right. I want Northwestern. I like this guy even better now.

Um, the other thing I wanted to say is um, the staff here was a very big help with being able to keep the McDonald's uh, plan that had gone through. So that definitely you know I understand you mentioning us but we we just give the direction it's the staff that carries it out and so far even with this I'm very happy with what they have done the research they've done um taking what little input we can offer on these things and applying it so they understand that we do want the growth we do want this opportunity and Again, I was on council, most of us were when we had the previous I didn't feel as confident with them as I do now hearing this. So, again, thank you for your presentation and I look forward to what you bring to our city. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Pertim. All right. Uh, Commissioner Neil.

Yes. Um, I really appreciate you uh being willing to uh not have to answer a RFP on this because the last guy that did that um after well we're coming up on a 30-year mark of this property not being developed in in the way that it was originally envisioned. And I when I first got on council, I was the one who pushed to get the buildings demolished because uh to me an open field looks a lot better than boarded up buildings to develop. And uh fortunately uh former commissioner Spear and the former mayor were finally convinced that yes, this is the direction we need to go. And the first thing they did was find two buildings with asbestous in it. So we had to get that abated and that would have delayed any project maybe even uh put off the potential buyer and developer because of the additional waiting period to get that elevated. Uh, so I'm looking forward to this. Uh, it's been a long time coming and I I'm hoping that uh that you can find some tenants and we can get this developed finally. It'd be real nice to get it done before the end of my term here, but I don't think so. As you said, it takes a while sometimes to get it going. So, thank you very much for your interest and your expertise.

Thank you, Councilman. All right. I don't see any more other questions or comments there for anybody to speak. So, with that being said, um, this looks good to me. I'd entertain a motion. I have a motion, a second to approve the letter of interest between the Evans Redevelopment Redevelopment Agency and Arbor Capital Partners and authorize the chairman to execute the agreement votes and that motion carries. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much again for being here. Thank you so much and uh we're going to make it happen.

All right. Sounds good. Look forward to hearing back from you at a later date. All right, since there's nothing else on our on our agenda for this evening, I will call the meeting to journ. Thank you everybody.