Remarks by Lorin Palmer
56 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 2 of 3
Right. Harriman's First Hotel. First Hotel, exciting stuff, right? I know, um, we've wanted this for a while. It's good to be, people are visiting or the, we have a lot of economic development and tourism stuff happening in the city. So this just gives people a place to stay. And so we're, we're excited to break, you know, cut that ribbon today with them.
One is, I think what people don't realize about having a hotel is the Salt Lake Academy, the Real Salt Lake Academy that's here, the Zions Bank Academy, I think they call it, has more room nights out of that facility than even the Maverick Center right now in West Valley. So we've seen those numbers at our tourism meetings. So there's a lot of people that come visit our city, and they're already here. So if we can get them in a hotel, then they'll spend money at restaurants, which helps drive more, sit-down restaurants, which drive more. So really, having this hotel really changes a lot of…
Trader Joe's. It's a long-awaited. So we get to pop over here this afternoon and see a quick tour, because... I'm not going tomorrow. I love that they're here, but I'm not, I'm not going tomorrow. So maybe, maybe next week, maybe next week, I'll spend a lot of money there, but not tomorrow.
Those will be the first major tenant in that area, right, with Target coming later, but a lot of fun stuff planned in that area right now.
It was fun. We did a first council theme that I've ever... We've never done a council theme as a whole council, so we were Tic Tacs. Various flavors of Tic Tacs. Homemade costumes, by the way. I was impressed. They were homemade.
We had fun a lot. I had more pictures taken with me because of the costume than ever before. It was a lot of fun.
So hard to pick a two or three to win. That is so much fun. Amazing. Love that participation.
Right. We've heard a lot of pushback on the stoplight, but this is such a major connection for so many reasons, for residents up there. I dropped my son off at school up in that area, and the traffic is already different. Like, it's... we're getting people to Mountain View faster and what's just helping it is a benefit to this community.
Well, you and I have talked a little bit about this before. We could hire 30 more people, right? And still probably not have enough people to do. But we, in government, we have to balance that, the need to do everything, versus tax. Like, you guys are paid. That's what's unique about... Being a city employee or government employee, you're paid with taxpayer money. We have to be careful with that. We will. So we try to thread the needle on providing a good level of service with keeping taxes relative. We don't want to raise taxes just to add more employees. We've got amazing employees doing…
Right. Which we have to do. Just a reality. Yeah.
Yep, and it looks good. It's looking good. It'll be a good change.
We appreciate our planning commission, what they do in our city. They're very underappreciated. They do so much good. It was good to all of us, get all of us in a room, talk about, because we've updated our strategic plan and our goals in the last couple of years and really haven't sat down and made sure that they understand where we're coming from on stuff and made sure, you know, some of their processes align with where we're headed and fantastic discussion, quick. More of that's probably coming, I would think.
It's normally not October this early. But it hit that resume. Sorry.
There is a change coming, but we'll get all the details to everybody.
You were there. I was there. How was it? That was amazing. Just, these are the things, I mean, we get excited about the, you know, the restaurants that open the store, you know, but this is a unique, this is on, I guess I refer to South Harriman, I guess. So this is out in our industrial park out by Porter Rockwell between Mountain View corridor and Redwood road. manufacturing, shipping, and they've got a small retail. So it's a high end cosmetics. I guess if you, a lot of people know Dime. So it's really cool. They were in Draper. Now this is their worldwide headquarters. They do have…
You've got Main Street Meats coming in. I mean, they're announced. Colonial Flag is moving their headquarters out. That's public. We can talk about that. We haven't talked a lot, but they're moving their headquarters out there, several employees. So good stuff is happening out in that area.
Yep. It's fantastic. We appreciate our planning commission, what they do in our city. They're very underappreciated. They get paid very little money, a hundred bucks a meeting. I think they're paid right now. They do so much good, but it was good to get all of us in a room, talk about, because we've updated our strategic plan and our goals in the last couple of years and really haven't sat down and made sure that they understand where we're coming from on stuff and made sure, you know, some of their processes align with where we're headed. And it sounded like we were actually on the same page…
Yep. Just gets us all on the same page. The more we're all on the same page working together, we get more done.
On Friday, a week from today. It will be open in seven days. So yes, Friday the 9th at 9 o'clock.
It's weird to see the signs go up. When the signs went up, you drive by. That's, I don't know, it's a community pride thing, you know, to think that, you know, Trader Joe's is investing in our community. And I'm just, I never thought it would happen, right? That was just a joke. If you would have asked me four years ago, if we would have a Trader Joe's, I wouldn't have believed it, honestly. So it's just kind of unreal and surreal and, but so exciting. I cannot wait. Yeah.
just signing letters left and right ready to to open their doors there i wish we could announce more what's coming i hate to tease that i don't like but they're just this week we had quite a few more you know contacts reach out about what's coming so it's there's gonna be some fun announcements coming in they're very unique truly very unique to the area what'll be good
Well, we've talked and we'll get into this. I know we'll get into this in a minute too, but you look at, you know, you're the next two weeks in the city, right? We're going to open Trader Joe's. We're going to open Juniper Crest. How long have we been wanting Juniper Crest open? This community, the city been wanting Juniper Crest open. That's going to open Tuesday, right? We'll talk about that. But just the things that are going to happen in the next couple of weeks are just, it is exciting. There's been challenges getting here and it's not, like you said, the construction is always…
Anyway, I'm excited. It's going to be an exciting couple of weeks.
So it was a stripe last night when I drove by, but that was earlier in the day, but.
Oh, it's such a relief. I've been thinking about the words I might say Tuesday. It will be a relief to have this open. I don't think people, there's stress on us, you know, to get this stuff done, right? We know the needs and we know the desires of so many people in our community. And we really do. Like I promise we do. So when stuff like this is finally done, it is just a relief. Like the weight that's going to lift off all of our shoulders on council and staff is, it's going to be big for this one.