Community Economic Development Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Good morning. My name is Sean Burrows. We're going to get started with the City of Northport Community Economic Development Advisory Board. Today is March 17. The time is 10:30. And we're going to call our meeting to order. And we will start with the roll call starting at the end. Tim Drum. Mike Endy. Michael Nerman.

I think

we're just

going to skip.

Jackie Waterhouse.

Sean Burrows.

Hershel Eisenhower. James Jerome. Julie Lacour. Sharon Matthews.

John Perkins.

Okay. And we will do the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic in which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. Do we have any public comment? Okay. Excellent. And the approval of the minutes from 01/20/2026. Any adjustments, corrections, changes? We have a motion to approve.

Yeah. Mike Eddy, motion to approve the minutes.

A second.

James Jerome, second. Excellent.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Excellent. Thank you. And our updates, 2080, Economic Development Division update. Mr. Mehring?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's my honor to be the only one with agenda items today. So I'll try not to bore you but keep you nicely informed. From an economic development standpoint, the team has been extremely busy pursuing all the things that we've talked about heretofore, but more specifically with a grand focus around the semiconductor and aerospace aviation sectors.

Before I get into what we've been doing in those sectors, I wanted to share with you the metrics that Jackie is always so awesome to prepare for us, not just for this group, but that we publicize. And that's the metrics around our business tax receipts. And those business tax receipts, just as a quick refresher, have been required here in the city of Northport. This is an opportunity for businesses to register with the city so that we know who they are, the type of business they're in. Often they provide us with number of employees and other basic data.

And then we put that data into a database. And then we're able to regurgitate that data. And that's the fun part about, as a research group, to be able to keep track of what's going on in the city. Many municipalities don't collect a business tax and therefore don't have the database to go with that. We are one of those that has been collecting it.

But there is legislation that is going to be considered in the early part of the spring and then possibly take effect in the summertime that does away with business tax receipts. And if that passes, we'll no longer have this same type of data. So it's always fun for me to present what has been going on. For the first six months of our fiscal year as a city, right, fiscal year, we've had 102 new businesses, which is awesome. It's terrific.

It trails slightly to prior year and prior years. So if we were to keep the same trend as we have at the current time, we'd see approximately 200 new businesses in the city if the trend holds through the balance of this year. Now I say it's off. Let me tell you, there are a lot of municipalities that would love the kind of growth that we've experienced in terms of new businesses entering the city. So I'm extremely pleased to see that, that is going on here.

And the other interesting metric is that eighty-twenty component has changed slightly. The eighty-twenty being that 80% of the businesses had residential street addresses and 20% had commercial occupancy. We are now at a 70 seven-twenty three split. So 23 are commercial, 77 are residential. And I always want to give the caveat to those that think, and rightly so, COVID and post COVID when you hear, oh, I'm a home based business, you think of crafts or other things that aren't necessarily primary income producing.

And that is not the case here in Northport. We have many home based businesses that are substantive in their trade or in their profession, to name a few that are popular. The insurance trade as an example. It's a very convenient way to operate in that manner. There are health care professionals that are providing various types of health care services in that sector, whether it's medical coding or private duty care.

We have a manufacturer here in the city who operates from a residential location. And by the way, these are all zone approved businesses. These aren't people that are operating in areas of the city doing things they shouldn't be. We've got a manufacturer that operates out of his home. Basically, he outsources parts and pieces from the Pacific Rim. And they do assembly work at various locations around the state. But the business is operated out of his home. And he does well over $1,000,000 a year out of his home as a manufacturer. And so don't think of a residential address as something that isn't primary in terms of income producing because it is. It absolutely is.

And it's a unique component of our city. Jackie, as our research, and business analyst on staff does a beautiful report every month that gives us all the slices and dices of this, but I've given you the highlight. I think one of the more interesting components in her report is the type of businesses by category. And I'll just rattle these off just quickly by way of example. Everything from plumbing, accounting to masseuse, insurance, other services that aren't listed in the database, lawn maintenance, house cleaning, electrical, admin, mechanical, pool, spa, manufacturing, chiropractic, storage, professional services, dental, restaurants and the list just continues on and on.

So we have a nice cross section of businesses here in the community that are well represented in these pie charts, both commercial and residential. Any thoughts or comments about our business community? Well, it's

the largest pie. It

is. Other services not listed. So of the 102 new businesses, year to date new businesses, 28 non residential, other and commercial four and three point seven.

And how are they categorized? Are they using like, what's the government

So I see

labels for categories? Yes,

exactly correct. The database that we use to power all this, is populated with the metric categories that the state uses for tax purposes, which mimics what the federal government uses for industry classification. Why there's Correct.

Lot of other because they don't have a category for every single profession.

I don't know if you ever looked at those tables.

They're They're

really expensive. But the business environment continually is changing. And if you think about all the things in the last five years that have come on stream that we didn't even have words for prior to that, and now there are entire categories of businesses in there. Yes.

Can we go back to the business tax receipts? We've seen how the business tax receipts have were sent back from the county level. From the city level, how much revenue is generated currently from the business

tax receipts? Great question. Somewhere between 100,000 and $125,000 a year.

And then what would the impact be with that going away? Like where are those funds being

Well, I'd say it's a loss of 100,000 to $125,000 in the general revenue fund for the city. Some might say, well, that's barely measurable when you compare it to the total budget of the city. Others might say, well, every dollar counts. And I would agree with the latter. Every dollar counts. So it's 100 ks that is no longer should it pass. Let's not be completely presumptuous, although we believe that it's likely. But should that legislation go through, we would see around $100,000 less in dollars going into the city's general revenue fund.

And who or what is leading with pushing that? What's driving that rescinding

of the Well, I think it's I don't know all the answers, obviously. And I'm not sure how all these legislators think when they bring these things forward. But obviously, they're representing the people. And I would suggest that there's probably a continuum of movement nationally, regionally, statewide, and even locally that supports that kind of activity.

Okay. What

kind of regulation is in place for all these home based businesses? Because it seems to me a lot of them have kind of outgrown just being a home based business. I mean, just in my neighborhood where I live, I've got a roofer that's got like a million vehicles parked in his yard and all over the grass and landscape versus

Yeah, that's unfortunate. There Sorry to hear are, in effect, in the city, all the channels to mitigate that from going on, on a continual basis. Certainly, would encourage you, as a homeowner and as a resident who experiences that, to speak to our code enforcement team. Oh, I've called them.

You have. Tell me to make friends with them. Make friends with my neighbors.

Well, obviously, it is. I've heard Kevin, who is the code enforcement manager, speak to groups. And he does make that recommendation. It is always nice to be friendly, if you can, with neighbors. Obviously, it doesn't always work, especially when you disagree on something as vital as property usage.

But if, in fact, a genuine colloquial conversation between neighbors doesn't get you anywhere, I am certain that code enforcement would be happy to take your information and look into it to see if there are, in fact, violations that are enforceable. Absolutely, he does. I know it for a fact. And sometimes it's education on both parties to understand what is allowed.

I think he's going to the point of like clearing vacant lots near him from the back to park extra vehicles.

So if the zoning is such, right? Let's be fair now. And by the way, I'm economic development. I am not representing I understand. I understand. But I want you to know that there are avenues and methods for resolution. They're provided by the city. They're effective. I've seen them working. And it is not uncommon to have folks say, well, do you know what they're doing over there on that lot behind? And maybe it's the education. Do they own that property? Is that zoned for that type of activity? Are they violating the code, yes or no?

And in my opinion, he's a roofer. He's pulling permits. So he has probably a pretty close relationship with the city where he's pulling permits all the time.

That's not to suggest that he has a close relationship, that he's doing things with the city's permission that he's not allowed Right. I understand. That you're saying that he's knowledgeable enough to know to pull permits and check zoning before he does

anything. Right. Right. And that, you know Then

the assumption has to be if he has that knowledge, then he's going to use it properly to not avoid actions being circumvented.

Mr. Perkins, I genuinely would encourage you and I would be glad to help you reach out and guide you should you not get the right context that you'd like to talk to mean,

just one individual in particular. I know he owns a commercial property on 41 that he's currently renovating. It was a building that was in horrible condition, but he's renovating it. And so he has ample parking over there for all his commercial vehicles rather than his yard.

But That is definitely something that, like I said, that, like you directed.

There's a lot

of things going on in that situation particularly that's outside of our scope. Right. And definitely outside of you can make a lot of assumptions that he may be doing the right thing. You from the outside is not seeing that. Right. And he that individual doesn't necessarily have the doesn't have to explain that unless you ask them directly.

Typically, you have a home based business, municipalities, and what I've seen, is where you're not having a lot of traffic coming to and from the house, a lot of this guy's got deliveries coming and going. Amazon's there every hour on the hour. His employees coming and going.

So But again, he might be taking actions and steps with the exclusion for a period of time, as you stated. We don't know that. You don't know that. There's a lot of assumptions being made. Go to the source. Ask the person. That's the direct way to find out a situation. If you don't like the answer, go to the city. But again, in this meeting, that's sort of outside of our scope of conversation. But thank you for your comments. Is there anything else that needs to be brought up under the

So from an economic development standpoint, I promised you a discussion on aerospace and semiconductor. And I know you've heard me mention these in prior meetings as a industry focus and a potential silo of growth for our community. What I'm passing out right now and that you're having the opportunity to look at is something that we used last week in Miami at a aerospace aviation show that we attended and where we represented the city, we were the only municipality on the Exposition Exposition

Floor for this show, which was quite the privilege. There were 8,000 airline and aviation executives

present municipality at this show. We were, again, the only municipality there attempting to attract the industry to Northport. And you would say, Michael, what the heck are you talking about? Aerospace and aviation in Northport. It just doesn't seem like there is a need for that. We don't have an educational program to support that. We don't have a workforce, in other words, that supports that yet. I know. And that's all true. And we're working on all those things.

And so I'm here today to kind of provide you with the background and education on some of the economic development things. You know, you often talk about what's going on on this property, on that corner, and who's this. And now I'm giving you some more basic economic development activity from a commercial basis. And we're chasing after this silo of aviation and aerospace. Why are we chasing this?

If you turn to the backside of this document, we have cleverly and by the way, this is produced by our staff in house. We have a gentleman on staff, Christian So to, who is our marketing person. And he has created this for us. And he's done a fantastic job. If you look here at the, Florida map on the backside of that, you'll notice that there are seven airplanes.

Those represent the seven airports. And notice where Northport is among those seven airports. So you're looking at Tampa, Clearwater, Right, St. Pete, Sarasota, Punta Gorda, Fort Myers and Naples. Every one of those airports has aircraft of some sort coming to it, whether it's private aviation or commercial aviation.

Those airports all have what's known as MROs, maintenance, repair and overhaul operations. Because just like your automobile, a plane comes in and it blows a tire. It comes in and the air conditioning isn't working in the cabin. Or there's an engine failure or gosh knows it's just a light bulb. And I'm just giving you trite examples because MRO, maintenance repair and overhaul is far more complex.

But in order for them to have all those maintenance and repair facilities at these airports requires them to have parts and labor. And where does all that stuff come? It comes from the East Coast where there's a huge aviation concentration. So all of your major aircraft, your aviation and aerospace companies and by the way, Florida is number one in the country for this are located along the East Coast, basically from Daytona all the way down to Miami. And I didn't bring it.

We had another map just to demonstrate the proliferation of all those businesses along the East Coast. Well, these airports where we are geo centered among all tap into that East Coast activity. And so all of those parts and pieces and labor and specialists that come over and there's a lot of specialty MRO activity. They all come across Alligator Alley and up I-seventy 5 or they come across State Route 70 or 72 or 68 or any of the other East West corridors going across the state. I met a tire manufacturer, not a manufacturer, a wholesaler last week.

He had a great booth. And he had these giant, you know, airline tires in his booth. And of course, I said to him, when somebody over at the Sarasota Airport needs one of those tires, what do they do? He says, well, they call us. I said, and then what? He says, well, we ship it. I said, and that's the answer I was hoping to hear. We ship it. And he says, they usually get it in two to three days. I said to him, wouldn't it be great if you had a warehouse right in Northport, Florida stocked full of all those tires just like a tire kingdom?

And he looked at me and he said, yeah, it'd be great. He says, it's actually a dream of mine.

Ta da.

He said, I'm looking for 40,000 square feet.

Have I got a deal for you?

By going to the show, by connecting the dots, by having random conversations, by the city having a little bit of vision about what this industry could be. No, we don't have a runway. We don't have a hangar. We don't have an airport. We're not looking to do maintenance, repair, and overhaul activity in the city.

We're looking for that secondary level of the aviation market where we're supplying parts, where we're doing and having research and development locations here in the city, where we're having what you might call smart manufacturing or advanced manufacturing going on. Think of glass cockpits and electronics. That's the kind of industry that we're trying to attract to the city. Commercial industry, commercial businesses who hire people with high wage positions, all of that generating tax revenue for the city. And that's why we're chasing this aviation sector.

We had a great week out there. We were able to explore and understand the industry a little bit better. We were able to tell our story. We've got a beautiful trade booth that has a map similar to this. When people came by and saw the fact that we are geo centered among these seven airports along this coast and they connected the dots in their mind, oh, I work for Northrop Grumman or I work for Sikorsky or I work for a given airline or all these other related businesses.

And in order to service everybody over here, we have to make an appointment, we have to drive over, we have to take people away from this. And the idea of coming to our community is a very strong opportunity of doing more full business. And you say, well, Michael, where are you going to put all these people? I recently was out to the Benderson Business Park at Toledo Blade And I-seventy 5. I met with Mr.

Karen out there who explained to me of the 800,000 square feet that they currently have up, half of it is currently available to move in. And if you've never been out there and seen it, it's a fabulous site. I know it looks like just a bunch of rectangular buildings from Toledo Blade. But when you get inside, it will wow you. And he's got 400,000 square feet.

We went ode to this show with literature that we had created showing available space, showing what the inside of these buildings looked like with traffic metrics so people could understand. They could actually set up a distribution center right there and hop on I-seventy 5 and service these airports. They could actually set up smart manufacturing right there at I-seventy 5 and supply not just this sector of the state, but imagine if we had advanced manufacturing going on here that was then in turn supplying the East Coast, where we had the technical expertise on this coast in our community where they were building glass cockpits, where they were working on research and development around new black box technologies. I bring up black box because if you remember, it wasn't too many years ago that the black box was made the one that's so famous in commercial airliners. And when a plane goes down, that's the first thing they look for, right, because it has all the flight recording data.

That typically has been made by a company called L3. And L3 is a huge defense contractor. And they used to be based right here in Sarasota. And then they recently moved across the bridge and now they're up in St. Pete's. So imagine if we were doing those kind of things right here in Northport. What a fantastic industry to attract. So in Benderson Business Park is not the only location. It's just ready, available, move in today. The very last conversation I had at this show last week was a gentleman who does coding, specifically for the aero and aviation industry, where they have specialty coatings that they put on all the parts and pieces.

And he was looking to expand his coating operation to our coast already. And he was thinking Tampa. He was thinking Port Charlotte. And he walked by our booth and he was like, oh, Northport. Northport. So I had a great conversation with him. He was looking for 40,000 square feet. So from an economic development update standpoint, to give you a little bit of background on the aerospace and aviation component, what we've been doing, what we're chasing, how that's evolving. Stay tuned. We'll continue to fill you in.

We've got a lot of leads that we're going to follow-up on. There's a lot of great opportunities here. This is a growing segment here in our country. And I can tell you that the federal government has amped up, ramped up from a defense contracting standpoint. And not based on what I see on the news, but based on what I heard on the show floor from all of these manufacturers and ancillary businesses and what they're doing.

So just great stuff, interesting update, aerospace and aviation. Since we last met, just to continue, got three components here that I want to talk about today around economic development and then the workforce development that you had asked for an update on. The other one since we last met was the semiconductor trade. By way of introduction, semiconductor is one of the most critically in demand products in the world today. And the reason it's I use the word critical.

It's not that there isn't a chain of supply. It's that the chain of supply is potentially in harm's way. Semiconductors are principally produced in the Pacific Rim, more specifically in countries that are abutting up against China. And there is, as you may have seen, political tension over there. China says, we own this island, we own that.

There's always the threat of we're going to take it. And if they do, the semiconductor industry comes under the control of the Chinese. There has been a strong movement globally to develop semiconductors elsewhere in the world. Something on the order of 95 plus percent of all semiconductors are made in the Pacific Rim. Semiconductors go into everything you use every day from your Apple Watch to your telephone to your automobile to your PC to your, you name it.

Some of you got smart refrigerators to you name it. It's got semiconductors in it. And semiconductors are nothing but silicon wafers. They're small. They're silicon wafers and they're made out of silicon to resist heat.

And they sell those wafers to chip companies like Intel. And those companies put their chip on the wafer and then that semiconductor chip combination, that sandwich goes inside of all these devices. Well, these wafers, the semiconductors, are designed to resist heat. But we all know your PC has a little fan in it. Everything that's powered these days by this stuff has some sort of a cooling mechanism right through and including large industrial components that have large cooling towers, right?

So the industry is ramping up to produce these silicone wafers domestically in The United States. And they're looking at advanced technologies so that they can resist the heat, so that they can plant more powerful chips on them and then have advanced manufacturing around the components that they go in. And that's the trend. And I was at a semiconductor trade event the week before last two weeks ago, learning these technologies myself, but also there to attract that industry to Northport. There are a couple of clusters around the state where the semiconductor industry has begun to move into.

And then there are companion businesses, everything from what might be best described as clean rooms, people running around in little bunny suits. I don't mean like Easter bunny. I mean like

Sterile suits.

Sterile suits, thank you. They call them bunny suits in the trade. And these are sterile environments where they're working with semiconductors. It's clean manufacturing, if you will, high paying wage positions. These are not necessarily engineers with advanced degrees.

These are technicians, many of whom have had just online training experiences, many of whom might have gone to a technical program at some technical school, some of which might have some small training at a related company where they had some experiences. And so the idea is to attract these sorts of businesses to the Northport area to support that national trend in America to grow this trade. The government, both at the federal and the state level, is throwing money around to develop that. And we are looking into that as well. I've spoken to Mr.

Endy about the potential to maybe launch programs over at the technical school that support those sort of things. Another one of those programs, by way of example, that people can get a technical or associate's degree in, it's etching. They take these semiconductors. And there's a device, laser based, where they etch into the semiconductors based on the chip manufacturers' needs to accept those chips. And so there's a specialized technical skill that's not advanced degree, yet these people are making $70,000 a year to etch semiconductors, these wafers.

Today, companies buy the wafers from the Pacific Rim countries. They're imported to this country. And then they're processed. And so there's an existing potential for us to attract businesses to do all of these sorts of semiconductor related skills. Now that takes me to the workforce development piece, Mr.

Chairman, that you've asked me to update you on as well. Michael, we don't have a workforce here that does that yet. We don't have an aviation workforce yet, I know. And we are actively working on that as well as, let me start with, a health care. We have a health care coalition that has started here in the community. Ms. Holland isn't with today. I'm sorry. She's not here to hear this. We started a health care coalition through our economic development department led by Mike McClellan from our team.

Mike has put together an audience of people that include These were the people in attendance at our first inaugural get together. The campus director for Southern Technical College, campus outreach coordinator for the same school, HCA Center for Career and Professional Development, USF, and SMH. They were all in the room with us. And we talked about the dire need for health care workforce development and what that really means. We can just continue to use those generic words that I just used, or we can dive deep into it and understand what kind of health care workforce development.

People say, well, nursing. Well, there's all kinds of nursing. But what we learned at that meeting was that the health care providers are looking for technicians as well. And one of the examples that came up was technicians who could work in a sterilization component where they're sterilizing surgical equipment. That's a specialty at the hospital.

And they can't fill the jobs that they have for sterilization technicians. That's just one example. Another example that we learned of was in the cardiovascular component. There are cardiovascular technicians, not nurses, not physicians, that are making more money today than orthopedic surgeons. And so this roundtable brought to light the fact that the health care trade, when we speak of a shortage, isn't just about nursing.

And then within nursing, there are multiple types of nurses out there, multiple types of certifications, degrees, some of which are being addressed by, thank goodness, Suncoast Technical in their programming. But they only have so much bandwidth. So this group has agreed to meet on a regular basis to explore how as a Northport community we address that labor shortage, not just because we know health care shortages exist nationwide. And what you think of first is nursing. But it's far deeper than that in our community.

And with all the health care that we have coming on stream, there is a need for many types of health care professionals. The first major decision that this group made I'm proud to announce to you folks, you're the first to hear about it publicly is that we will be conducting, the city of Northport along with the people I just mentioned who were in attendance, a hiring event for the health care profession in the early summer. But it's not just about a hiring event. It's going to be an exposition run by all these health care providers and trainers so that health care professionals can learn about stepping stones within health care that they can move through and into from what they're currently doing today. So if you're tired of being a CNA and you thought that your only path was the next level of nursing, this event is themed so that you can come and learn how to be a sterilization technician or this, that, and the other.

And these providers are going to set up stations of different types of health care options that health care professionals can step into, can learn how to graduate into, can go to school and learn how to get degrees in, take online programs. Ms. Matthews?

Will that only be for health care professionals, or are you going to open it up to the public?

It will be open to the general public as well. But it is focused on health care. We have a lot of health care people in our town that are going to Venice, to Sarasota, or South to go to work. Some of them are doing it just as a routine because they don't know they have options. Some of them are so stuck in I say stuck in a positive way in the way of their life, I'm stuck too, In the way of my current life, sometimes I don't look outside the box to say, what else could I do professionally that would keep me here?

I'm so used to, let's say, the routine of getting up in the morning, dropping the kids off at the day center, taking this one to school, dropping off the puppy dog, getting on the highway, going to work, and then the reverse at night. But I don't think of, gee, what if I changed my career path a little bit? What if I enrolled at Suncoast Tech? What if I the possibilities. What if? And that's what this event is supposed to be. So our consortium, our alliance has been formed. Very enthusiastic group. They're very excited about it. We have done the same thing for the semiconductor trade.

And we have had our first meeting, week before last. And at that meeting, we also had a very strong and powerful team of people who agreed to participate. And in that group, we had workforce development program specialists from the Semiconductor Institute of Florida. We had the Executive Director for Advanced Technological Education. We had the Sarasota Area Manufacturers Association.

We had a woman who's the director of a company called Plug and Play, very interesting business. She works with over 500 startups in the semiconductor industry around the country. And so she's very interested in workforce development and helping out and getting Northport rooted in that trade. We had, the coordinator of student engagement and experiential learning from USF. We have a scholarship advisor from USF.

And we had an associate dean from engineering workforce development from USF College of Engineering. Really strong showing. So we are pursuing both the technician components of semiconductor, which could be online curriculum, could be technical training at a college, it could be engineering training and development at a bachelor's level, or it could be advanced training at a school like Embry Riddle, where they have an aeronautical program. Now let me tie those together. The aeronautical and aviation industry relies heavily on semiconductor.

So it's no accident that we're pursuing both on a concurrent basis. No accident that we're pursuing workforce development to coincide with the businesses that we're trying to attract here. Right? So when a business says, do you have a pipeline? I'm thinking about relocating to Northport.

I'm going to stand up a building. Can you tell me that you're going to have some young engineering students? And the answer answer is yes. Yes. And of course, we're working with all these educational organizations at the same time so that they can with the ones that already have programming to those where there are articulation agreements with other programs where students can get their basic educational requirements, advanced placement courses, dual enrollment courses, and then accelerate into some of these other programs.

And so we've tied all of that together nicely. And from an economic development standpoint, let's not forget that these are components of economic development, aren't they? And all of this is tying into land usage in our 104 square miles. Where are you going to put them? Well, we've got some space available that you can move in. We've got other places where you can stand up a new building. We've got all of the property out east, right? We're, as a city, working to figure out how to get that fully developed with an infrastructure environment to support that. Mr. Chairman, those are my two reports. I hope that got you what you wanted.

No. Spot on. Great. Thank you. A lot of people don't get to see the fact that in order to get there, you have to start here. And we have all these resources that are available to us, but every nobody wants to use them because we don't have the infrastructure in place. Well, if we start backwards, we can develop into it. So

Yeah. We've reversed that's it's it's kinda what we we've reversed engineered what what seems to be a strong play for our community. By the way, I didn't say I think I've mentioned it to this group in months past. This wasn't just all something that we decided, oh, let's just chase after that. There was extensive research into the potential.

There were financial feasibility components. There was the economic components. There was logistical components, highway systems, and just a lot of things that went into saying, does aviation and aero make sense for Northport, yes or no? We even fed it into AI and said, beat us up and tell us how it won't work. What's wrong with this? Right? We did that, too. And we did the same thing for the semiconductor trade. Tell us why this is a bad idea for Northport. Why would Northport fail if they pursued this?

And while there are always some potential fail points, overwhelmingly, our studies pointed to the fact, oh, this is a great place for those things, right? And so the things that we have pursued are evidence based. They're just not whimsical. So you should know that. Thanks very much.

Agenda item number seven, future agenda items. Is there anything specific topics that you would like staff to come back with as presentations or updates?

I thought we were going to talk about some retail development too along the Toledo Blade Corridor. Okay.

Retail development?

Yes. I can address some of that. Let me start by saying, and I don't mean to sound like a broken record ever, but some amount of retail, in fact, a large portion of retail development is market driven. It's not driven by the economic development efforts of the city, although our planning and zoning practices may or may not encourage certain types of retail. But in terms of economic development, we don't necessarily chase retail except for some of the categories that I've mentioned in the past, one of which would be an example would be lifestyle.

I have chased lifestyle. Lifestyle. And in fact, I'll be going to the, annual, ICSC trade show in Las Vegas in a couple of months where I'll have the opportunity to see and get before just about anything retail that exists in the world as well as hospitality. So from a lifestyle standpoint, I do pursue, our department does pursue, we do have active initiatives around early learning, in other words, day care, hospitality and entertainment. So some of you may say, well, that's retail.

Okay. But those three categories, we do have active levels of engagement because those are voids that go towards lifestyle that serve the citizens and what they have asked for, what they need and what is, quite

get people to keep them from going to Port Charlotte for that service.

We could bring up the topic. We cannot discuss it.

I know. But that's why I was just emphasizing why I thought we talked about it last time to bring it up as a subject.

Yeah. So we have that. Correct. And then with regard to what I might describe as pure retail, right, the next Five Below, the next Ulta makeup, the next national franchise food chain, that is truly organic and truly market driven. If the market says and says, well, we need a new chicken restaurant.

And they find a place along 41 that maybe goes into Cocoa Plum because there's a vacant location. That's a market driven component. It's not something that I'm pursuing necessarily. But if I run into the chicken salad lady, who I ran into last year, can never remember her name. She's real popular up in Tampa. And then their chicken salad is delicious. And I think it would be great to have that it restores it. But it's not like I'm calling her up every week.

They're already doing it. The bigger companies like that are already doing their demographics. Yes.

Right. So it's market driven.

Can only talk about the topic. We cannot discuss the further parts of the topic because that sort of kills the whole point of having an update next time.

Yes.

So bring up the topic that you wanna talk about. Staff will be directed to get that information and bring it back to us in the presentation. So are there any other topics that we want to talk about without other discussion?

I just have a question for the schedule.

Shoot.

So in December, we come up with basically the schedule for the year for the meetings. And then it was changed last time in January. So what are the actual dates? Like, know it's now this one in May. Great. Because I know you were confused last meeting too. And this is the one that was sent out. And then because this was the one that was talked about in December. And then in January, there was some confusion because there was one before that. So if we can just land on which

good

I

and contractor. So we're about to get a budget for this. Is the CDAB an appropriate place when it comes time, depending on what the budget is? Needing less for workforce development. We may I don't know if this committee would be the committee to potentially make a recommendation to the city if the school district and STC needs supportive funding to get the project completely built out. Because I do not know what it's going to cost, and I'll tell you, we have about 23,500,000.0 for the project as it stands.

STC build out Yeah. With support from the city

Yeah.

Financially. Okay. I don't

know where that's gonna land yet, but I should have answers because we're not meeting till May.

Okay.

Is that our next meeting?

Yes, we will. We'll talk

about that.

I know

we're going

get to that. By then, I will hopefully have some form of an idea what that budget is, and I can report to

what we're hoping to build. Excellent. Any other topics?

How about expansion of the library next to school? Is that something that we can talk about? Or is that strictly It's not an economic development topic,

but certainly you can talk about it.

I just wondered if there's a need to do that, since I really don't know, but with the expansion of development near Atwater, that there's going to be to keep people involved in libraries, they're not going to travel all the way to the big library on 41. They're going to want to use the smaller library on Cranberry. I don't know if that's in our purview or not.

Mr. Chairman, I think the question is really directed at you.

Yeah. Yeah. Will get with staff on that and see if that's something because that's that's a county driven thing.

I'm just curious about it because it right now, it services a lot of people, young families.

That's Mike can give a little bit of an update on when we talk about the STC expansion because they are involved in the project. Perfect.

What's the name of the park that we're referring to?

You got us.

What park are we referring

to about this?

Which park? The library. The library. Shannon, Shannon, stop. Yes. Okay. Am I ready? So any other topics? Alright. So one other bit of information, the agenda, the the dates.

The next one is May 19. This is information pulled from our discussion from the county clerk. So May 19, September 15, and November 17. May 19, September 15, November 17. Good?

Alright. One other thing is you have this wonderful little board member confirmation of training form. Please fill that out as the it would be the board name of the community economic development advisory board, also known as CDAB, and make sure that you date that for January 20, and then you can return back back to me before you disappear for the day. We need to make sure that those are filed to the county clerk's office. And are there any public comments, ma'am?

There's none.

Okay. With that being said, I just need a motion to adjourn our meeting in a second.

I'll make a motion to adjourn the meeting. Sharon Matthews.

Second. I'll

second it for slides now.

Okay. All in favor?

Aye.

All righty. Our meeting is adjourned, eleventwenty four.

Thank you.