Economic Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Hey.

We'll go ahead and get started. We'll call the Economic Development Committee to order, and we'll start off with our public comment, please.

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call (951) 826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

Okay. We have no request to speak and no request to speak online. So we'll go ahead and move to our first item, which is a discussion calendar, fiscal year twenty six, twenty seven, city sponsorship program. And Marjorie Hopp, deputy director, will be giving us that report. And if you don't mind, Marjorie, we do have a tight time line of 04:30, so if you can keep it short. Thank you.

Yes. Happy to do that for you. Thank you, honorable council members and committee members. I am Margie Heft from Parks Recreation and Community Services here on our twice a year city sponsorship program. We come for local nonprofits, for city funds, and in kind services from the city.

The summer application deadline is July 31, which is coming up for programs for January 1 through June 30. And then the winter application, that deadline was January 31, which is what we're here for, for events produced from July 1 through December 31. Each sponsorship report we come to the city council includes a summary of the previous six months table sponsorships that have been distributed to distributed and generally involved event attendance by department personnel. The requirements that they promote the city as a desirable location, enhance the quality of life for residents and visitors, advance Riverside's multicultural community, encourage neighborhood identity and pride, promote cultural and artistic awareness, and include a significant outreach component. Again, all applicants must be IRS five zero one organizations, and funds cannot be used for operational costs.

Some of our current applicants you can see are the Riverside County Philharmonic, the STEP Conference, Science and Technology, Salute to Veterans Parade and Expo. Some of our applicants are promoting and supporting car shows, pets, animals, mental health awareness, food, food related to food, pride, children's and youth programs, arts and culture. You name it, we have it happening in the next six months. Applicants are invited to attend a sponsorship one zero one workshop where staff work through and talk through the process with them. Applicants are required to submit written reports at the end of the six months.

The evaluation of the criteria that each of the departments will look at in reviewing the applications, the attendance, previous attendance if they've done it before, history of service to the community, their monetary request, their cost per participant, cultural programming, diversity, equity, inclusion. Their council wards, so if they're in a ward that is not necessarily have a lot of events in them, like Wards 56, And 7, and they have a little higher may receive a little bit more money, and the availability of requested resources. There were no table sponsorships reported between July and December 2025, that the economic development committee receive, review, and provide input on staff recommendations, recommend that the city council approve and support pending final budget approval, and authorize the city manager or his designee to make non substantive changes to the recommendations. And that is the report.

Alright. Thank you for that report. And if you have any public comment on this item? Not seeing any public comments. We'll go ahead and move on to Dias here. Do you have any comments?

Just one quick question. When is the last time we've ever increased the funding for city sponsorships?

It's probably

Couple years?

Significant increase? Probably been at least six years. And I'm being safe on that. I can get you an exact number, but I would say probably at least six years.

Okay. Yeah. They're just curious, and, you know, and this is hard work, I feel like, to have to allocate and figure out where funds go because there's so many requests. I guess my thoughts are, happy to support this. I'll make a motion. Just thinking of the future, and I know we're in, of course, budget conversations, and we're always talking we're talking about trimming. But one thing I've heard from nonprofits, of course, the cost to operate events has gone up for everything that we need. And then for this specific place, we haven't seen an increase. And so I almost don't know if we think in the future looking ahead, hopefully to the next cycle, we can and looking at the city's fiscal budget, would love to see how we can maybe look to increase this. Because then, one, it hopefully could expand to support, but I think we actually need to figure out how to provide a little bit more, especially for, I think, some of the really great recurring city events that we tend to sponsor.

But we do have to factor in, I think, inflation, and I don't think that's something we've considered yet. Thank you.

All right. Hearing the motion, and I'll second it, I will go ahead and move for approval. And it is approved. All right, thank you. All right, we'll move on to the next item, which is our presentations. And we'll do, first one is Small Business Development Center Annual Report, Small Business Impact and Growth Outcomes. And we'll have Paula Nolta come up. Sorry, Paul. I don't why said Paula. Paul come up and make that presentation.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation. Happy to report on all the amazing things we've done together. So a little bit about what the SBDC is and who we are. So we are hosted at Cal State San Bernardino at the Center for Entrepreneurship at Cal State San Bernardino. Funded by federal and state funds, leveraged by local dollars. So in simple terms what that means, it's our job to go get that federal state money, bring it back here as much as we possibly can, and put it to work right here in our community. How we do that is really three key items. We support and celebrate entrepreneurship by one, doing training. So we do lots of training throughout the region, both in person, virtual, one on one, round table format in both English and Spanish throughout the region.

We do consulting, which is really the key of what we do. We've created a c suite of experts that are there to engage one on one with these small business owners. So a plethora of expertise such as human resources, commercial real estate, access to capital, growth. So a team of folks that they're to engage one on one. And finally, a link to resources.

So whether that's again, to capital, getting through license permit process, or simply understanding why Google does not like your website. We're there to help them solve that problem. So what does that really look like and what does that mean for the city of Riverside? In numbers, what this means 2025 was over $50,000,000 in economic impact, hitting our city and hitting our communities. What that looks like is $16,000,000 in increase in sales, 4,000,000 in debt capital, 15.4 in equity investment, and 15,000,000 in awards.

The key thing that I want you guys to focus on here is one, the number of businesses we advised, which is two fifty six of those last year. But if you look at that demographics, what do they look like? 56% are five and few employees, and 57 are below a 100,000 in revenue. That's gonna present an opportunity that I want you guys to focus on, and I'll close with that. But what does this really look like? What do these numbers look like? This is what they look like, right? Oops, this is out of out of order. This is what they look like. Alright?

A long, strong, healthy community of folks that are starting and expanding their business operations. This looks like community access, community engagement. We thank you Mr. Robillard for speaking at our AI Google event. We thank you for coming in board for our procurement next month on the eleventh. These are huge community engagement opportunities for us to reach as many folks as we possibly can. So let me probably go back. So what does this do? This aligns us together. And what you really need to do is lean on us as your team to assist the economic development on the ground running.

We're your liaison between the SBA, the state, and your local business owners. So our call to action again, is if you focus on what that numbers look like and what those demographics look like, is we really need to expand and focus on retention. So those folks that are under a 100,000, let's focus in on getting them to a half a million. Those that are in that half 1,000,000, let's focus to getting them to a million dollars. That's gonna take an intentional effort. It's gonna take both of us working together and collaborating. And it's gonna take doing things just a little bit different and a little more hands on. But again, your support and what we do together is amazing. So kudos to you all, and thank you for having us.

All right. Thank you for that report. You know, I think it's very, very important work that the SBDC does. And don't run away. We still got have you. Oh, shoot. I'm sorry? Yeah. No problem. So yeah, the work that you guys are doing, and I think it's very important that we support our small businesses because I think it's like over 80% of our businesses in Riverside are small businesses.

And also, I learned recently that we have the highest concentration of family owned businesses in their whole I think the state or like I forget what the what the the comparison is, all these are family owned businesses, and we're gonna be celebrating some of those family owned businesses a little bit later. But thank you for all the work that you do, and and we're happy to support you. Yeah.

Yes. No. Thank you for sharing those stats, council member. And that for me was, I think, couple years ago when I was learning, as we were getting out of COVID, the number of small businesses we have here. And we were proud, of course, at that time to allocate funding to help our small businesses as they were moving through COVID, but more so trying to recover afterwards so we can keep their doors open and help to keep them here in Riverside. But thank you for the work that you do. This is incredible, and I love to see us continue to uplift the success stories. And hopefully, we can continue to see that number grow. Thank you.

Okay. We'll go ahead and move on to next item, which is National Small Business Week. That was May third through the ninth. And we'll have Desi come up and give us a presentation.

Good afternoon, council.

Alright. My name is Desi Mase, and I'm one of our senior project managers for economic development. Today, I'm pleased to provide a brief overview of National Small Business Week and highlight the city's effort to celebrate, support small businesses that served as the backbone of Riverside. Small business is the heart of our community. It drives local economic jobs, activates community and place making, strengthens our resilience, expands opportunities, and of course, Riverside's economy, as you mentioned council member, is built on the strength of small businesses with the statistics you just shared, and of course, our entrepreneurs.

National Small Business Week was observed May third through ninth and is a nationwide celebration through the SBA, Small Business Association, is a nationwide celebration recognizing the contributions of small businesses and entrepreneurs. The week provides an opportunity to spotlight available resources, connect businesses to support programs, and recognize the many entrepreneurs who help Riverside thrive. Economic Development used this week as an opportunity to elevate awareness of business assistance programs while celebrating local businesses that contribute to our community every day. Supporting small business growth remains a key priority for economic development. During small business week, the city partnered with Orange County Inland Empire SBDC to offer educational workshop opportunities focused on business growth and long term success.

Topics included access to capital, funding readiness, and federal certification pathways through U. S. Small Business Administration. In addition, our April Walk the Talk event featured the Pilates Circle, providing another opportunity to connect local business owners with the community, encourage collaboration, and promote entrepreneurship in Riverside. To further celebrate Small Business Week, Economic Development highlighted a local business through a video campaign that shared their story and why they chose Riverside as a place to invest and grow.

We also encourage residents to support local businesses through Riverside Rewards. During Small Business Week, participating businesses were offered enhanced rewards opportunities, creating additional incentives for residents to shop local while supporting Riverside entrepreneurs and small businesses. In closing, staff recommends that the Economic Development Committee receive and file this presentation recognizing Small Business Week, May 2026, and we'd like to present a certificate of recognition honoring Small Business Week to Paul Molta. Thank you. I'm available for any questions.

I just gave that to him, so you're going to go ahead and And come up, we'll take some photos, if you want join us down there. Yeah.

And I wanna make sure I'm available for any questions if you have any.

I don't have any questions. Do you have any questions? I think we're good. Great.

Thank you.

Alright. We'll go ahead and move right along to our business excellence series, which is gonna feature Ampersand gifts and goods, and we'll have Simone Saunders giving the presentation.

All right. Good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tem and Council members. My name is Simone Saunders, and I am a project manager for Economic Development. Today, I am very excited to introduce our May Business Excellence Series Spotlight featuring Ampersand Gifts and Goods, Denise Weif and Jeff are sitting behind me. They are the proud owners.

As part of our arts and culture areas of excellence and in recognition of Small Business Month, what you just heard about. This month, we are proud to spotlight Ampersand, located at the Riverside Plaza. Ampersand Gifts and Goods is a curated retail shop offering gifts, home goods, and locally inspired products with a strong focus on quality, creativity, and community connection. And that community connection is what I feel every time I visit the store. What makes Ampersand especially meaningful is the story behind it.

The concept was inspired by a visit to Arkansas, if I said that right, where the owner experienced a small shop truly reflected local pride and identity. That experience led to the vision of creating something similar here in Riverside. So if you visit the shop, you'll see a lot of locally curated goods and bringing that same sense of place connection home to the Inland Empire. And at this time not even sorry. I should have changed the slide. At this time, we'll play a short video so you can hear directly from the owner about her story, inspiration, inspiration, and connection to Riverside.

Hi, guys. I'm Denise White. I'm the owner of Ampersand Gifts and Goods here in Riverside, California. I love getting to be a small business anchor here. I get to bring a little bit of personal connection with our customers. My daughter moved to Arkansas, and every time I go visit her, there's a little shop there that represents their town so well. And every time I go, my husband and I say, gosh, Riverside would thrive on a little store like this. So then fast forward, my husband said, go ahead, let's open that store. And it kind of terrified me honestly. But when the opportunity came, I did it.

The things I have in the store are beautiful, fun, unique, but I also have a lot of Riverside things. The Riverside Rewards program encourages people to come in and support the local small businesses. When folks come in, they see the sign, they ask questions about it, and I can tell them what the program actually does and why it impacts both us and them. It's very exciting to be a part of.

Well, thank you. With us today is Denise White, owner of Ampersand Gifts and Goods. Denise, we are, sorry, Denise, we are honored to recognize you today and would love to invite you to share a few words with the committee.

Thank you for having me today. I do want to say thank you so much to everybody who invited me to be here. Thank you city council and leadership for just supporting small business. It's hard, it's fun, it's rewarding, but it's hard. And I do love what I do, not just selling goods, you know, we're three and a half years in, we're thriving, but I think what I really love is being a part of the community.

I'm a tiny part of the 8%, but I stand here for all small businesses saying thank you for your support in so many ways. I think the community aspect is what I love the most. I'm sure you all are familiar with the TV show Cheers, where you walk in and everyone knows your name. I thrive and I pride myself on that and my customers don't expect that but I love it when Steven walks in, I say, hi, how are you doing? Or Simone walks in, how you know, or Desiree, how's your dog, Desiree? Right? We had that great conversation. So it's more than selling goods, and I think that's true of all small businesses. It's not just a restaurant, it's not just a clothing store or whatever services you provide. It's the personal connection that you don't get from the bigger industry stores.

So thank you again so much for just letting me be here and for honoring us in that and letting me speak on behalf of all small businesses. Thank you very much.

Okay. Thank you Denise for sharing your story. We are proud to recognize Ampersand Gifts and Goods for their impact on the local economy, your role in strengthening the arts and culture cluster, and your commitment to community and local pride. And we would now like to present a certificate of recognition.

And I'm not sure if you have any questions. Well, I you've had some comments, and I just wanted to shout out a war three business and right in the middle of Midtown and love supporting Ampersand and they've come through on many occasions where need a gift, where do we go? Go to Ampersand and get something real quick. I know we've your guys' products have been all over the country and all over the world. We've been in Japan and Korea and being with business owners over there.

Hyundai of Korea has a little bit of ampersand at their headquarters. And so it's been very, very critical for us because we were looking for what's going to be a little piece of Riverside that we can give to somebody. Emperor Center is a great place to go. And so thank you so much for doing what you do and seeing that need in our community and filling that need.

Thank you. Well, am excited because sometimes you don't there's business in so many of the wards that I haven't had a chance to come by, so I'm excited because guess what? Have to buy some gifts. So I look forward to coming by, supporting, and, you know, you spoke to, I believe, me is the heart of what I love going into, and I don't expect it, but I have businesses across the city that I walk in and they know me, my daughter, and exactly ask how are things going, and it does make such a difference, and for me, that's where I'm conscious in giving my dollars to our small business community and for those who've invested their dreams into having a storefront, because I cannot fathom how hard it is. I've heard some stories, but never experienced it personally in that capacity. So just want to congratulate you on all of your success, but thank you again for choosing our city and for the relationships and the difference you're making in our community.

Right. Thank you, everyone. Okay. We'll move on to the next item, which is our City Of Riverside Sign Field Guide, and we'll invite Paige Montello up to present that.

Good afternoon, Economic Development Committee and Chair. My name is Paige Montoho, here to give you an update on the City of Riverside signage field guide. So last year, as you may recall, the Planning Division made major strides towards improving signage in the city under the direction of the City Council. We updated our sign code. We worked with code enforcement to address noncompliant signage, and we held public information sessions across the city to educate business owners on temporary sign requirements.

Through these efforts, one consistent comment we heard from the business community was that they wanted to follow the rules, they just didn't know what the rules were. In response to this feedback, the Land Use Committee directed staff to engage professional consulting services to put together a handbook that will help educate applicants and encourage well designed, high quality commercial signage in the city. I am excited to say that today I hold the first proof print copy of the City of Riverside signage field guide.

Yay.

The majority of this guide is organized into 12 different sign typologies or sign types that are regulated by our zoning code and most commonly applied for by commercial uses. So on the screen is just one example of one of the typologies, wall signs. The handbook provides a clear snapshot of what the sign type is, dos and don'ts for good design, as well as clearly presented development standards. Other typologies covered include monument signs, window signs, blade signs, canopy signs, basically any sign you can think of. Beyond the 12 typologies, the handbook distills and demystifies the zoning code requirements, turning technical, unapproachable information into clear and accessible content.

It also provides technical assistance and outlines the basics of sign code comprehension, including how to calculate a sign's area, the sign's relationship to building and street frontages, and the proper way to measure both. In addition, the Guide includes a step by step how to for obtaining a sign permit, the materials that are required for a sign permit application, and the necessary details that must be included in your sign plans. Beyond technical assistance, the Guide is full of design tips and best practices to encourage high quality commercial signage. It covers illumination techniques, appropriate sign placement, sign construction, and provides both illustrated and real life examples to convey these design principles to the reader. While the guide covers a comprehensive amount of information, it has been intentionally designed to be streamlined, easy to navigate, and easy to understand.

So what is next? We will be formally announcing the Guide's availability to the public at the June 9 Council meeting. We plan to have this guide digitally online on our website and also keep physical copies at the one stop shop to provide support and guidance for applicants coming in to obtain their signed permit. And lastly, similar to our zoning code, this book is a living document. It's intended to be updated as needs change and the sign code evolves. And that is all I have for you. City staff's available for questions.

All right, thank you for that presentation, Paige. Do you have any questions? Well, I know this is a work of love and labor for many, including council member Falcone who really wants the signs to be clean and organized in our city. But I I think this would be very, very helpful because I think the feedback I got from business all the time is like, I don't understand how to read this 20 page document. So this will be very helpful to help make it clear what signs are good and also help show that good design actually will help, not just have every single item you sell as as a sign on your front of your business. And so I think this is greatly needed. So thank you for that presentation. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you.

All right. Go ahead and move on to the next section of our agenda, which is our communications. And we'll invite Miranda Evans, our interim community and economic development director, to give us some updates on her team.

Wonderful. Good afternoon, honorable chair and committee member Cervantes. It's a pleasure to be before you today. You hear a lot from us every month about key project updates, all of the amazing things happening in Riverside, but really what was important I wanted to take a moment to do today was to share with you about the team and the people behind those projects and moving that forward. And in the last two quarters, we have made significant strides in growing our team.

And I'm extraordinarily proud of the individuals who I get the opportunity to work with every single day, those we have added to the team, and how we are working together to create a very high performing team, or the dream team, as I like to call it. The slide's not advancing. Could I have a little assistance? The suspense is building. Is it frozen? Yay. Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much. So we have recently done a mini reorg that I wanted to ensure that the committee is aware of, and to really announce and also celebrate.

So we previously had had an approach where individuals were focused on key areas of excellence, and what we found was that was conducive to creating some silos, and we really needed some collaboration across all of our five areas of excellence and adding a sixth, which is workforce development, and that's really at the center of everything we're doing. And also as we're growing a team, I often characterize us as we are a startup supporting the startups of our community. And so we have a lot of internal functions that we need to focus on and support as well. And so with those needs in mind, that really allowed us a collaborative opportunity to do a mini reorg, as I call it, of the economic development division. And so at this time, these are my four direct reports I have the privilege of working closely with every day.

And two core functions. First is really it's similar to planning. We have our current economic development similar to current planning, and we want to ensure we're reinforcing excellence in all we do as we are building this high performing team. So naturally, the team is called BEST. Business expansion, retention, and talent, which is our workforce development effort. And that is led by Desi Mase. We're so excited to have Desi on the team. She's just completed a year with us, so congratulations, Desi. I'm so proud of her. And she's really leading our best team in current economic development.

At the other end of the spectrum, we call it Apex, attraction, promotion, expansion, and capital, and that's the future. And we're really so honored and so excited to have welcomed Jessica Gonzalez, senior project manager, to join us here at the city of Riverside. She's on week three and just freshly back from ICSC and hitting it out of the park, and we are so happy to have Jessica on the team. And then internally, as you'll hear about today, our new brand and our new website that we're rolling out, we really have a need for telling our story and making sure we're doing that really well. So social media, we also launched our LinkedIn, please follow if you already haven't, our updated style guide and our presence online, messaging, and really just ensuring whether we're hosting international delegation or a small business, everybody has an exceptional experience when they come visit with the city of Riverside.

And at the core of everything, I wanna give a special shout out. She's not here because she's working so hard, is Arlene Hernandez, and she's, I would call it, operational operational excellence. That's everything that keeps our team going. Moving our quarterly goals and reports forward with our our implementation plan, you'll hear more about later. Helping us with the the agenda for this very committee meeting we're in today. All things procurement. We need help moving every single thing forward. All of those internal back of house functions. Arlene is really the heartbeat of that, and I'm so grateful for her contributions and the team's contributions. And this is just to put faces to names as we have grown. Desi presented today. Thank you, Desi. Great job. I'd ask let's see if Jessica's here. Yay.

Jessica's here. Wonderful. You've met Jessica at a couple meetings already. She's leading our Apex team. We also, on the same day Jessica joined three weeks ago, welcomed Evan Webb. Evan, if you could please wave. Yes. Great job. And Evan is also just freshly back from ICSC. Yesterday as well, week three absolutely knocked it out of the park with the first time we hosted a booth.

I am so proud of the team and our impact. And last week, two weeks ago, we welcomed Caroline. Caroline, if you could please wave. And she has a very impressive background as a veteran, as an economic development manager, as a small business owner herself, and just a wonderful personality. So we are so proud to have welcomed Caroline to our team, and as you can see, her background and skill set really complements the best team and their efforts there.

And so just wanted to give you a quick overview and some quick updates as you see some new names, as you see some new faces. Thank you to the council for your leadership and support in letting us grow our team. I'm well aware that's not something that happens often, and we're doing our very best to create a high performing team, a high functioning team that we can move these key projects and initiatives forward for Riverside. So thank you so much and happy to answer any questions.

Alright. Thank you for that report. Any questions? Thank you. The team is growing, and I saw on LinkedIn that I haven't seen all the things on LinkedIn, so good job. And at ICSC, and I really like the way our booth looked. And I wish I could have made it, but I was gone, like, on three different trips this month already. So couldn't make it to this one, but I I know actually, was reading an article yesterday about ICSC and how great it is for retail business and everything else. And so, hopefully a lot of good leads came from that and we'll probably get a report on that next month. All right, thank you for that. We'll go ahead and move on to our next item, which is I'm sure is very exciting, Riverside Economic Development website. And we'll go ahead have Miranda go ahead and present that as well.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. So really at the heart of all of this is telling our story. So how do we present ourselves? How do we really show we are business first, business focused? We're rolling out the red carpet and we're cutting the red tape. And a big part of that first was our brand. The second part of that is how do we present the information and tell that story. And so I'm so excited. Today, we have launched our new City Of Riverside website, www.riversidebusiness.org, not.gov,not.com,.org.

We are an organization working with businesses, supporting businesses. And when we travel the globe, when we travel our community, when we travel across all of the wards of Riverside, this is a one stop resource for businesses where we're highlighting partnerships, our value proposition, highlighting all of the great things about Riverside. And really the wonderful component of this website is it's a living value. It's a living asset for us, And so we're able to update it as needed. I'm very proud of the effort that went into creating it.

And even more importantly, this is a website for business designed by a Riverside business. And so it's my pleasure, I'm going to introduce Michael, Michael Berger with Compel, and ask that Michael come share a little bit behind the brand story and about Compel and our partnership. So I'll turn it over to Michael.

Thank you, counsel. I can vouch for a couple of things. This is a high octane team, very good team. I worked with a lot of teams, and this has pleasure. They've not only embraced the website, they're actually working into it, which is always the goal that they can do their own things.

Kind of keep an eye in the background and they're doing a pretty good job with it, so they're not breaking it yet, which is great. I am a Riverside company, small company, and I've been part of a lot of projects, some of them up here. And I just want to bring that up because to put it in context, when you start working with companies, you realize, oh my gosh, this is a great team to work with. So the brand story, when we start to look at Riverside, part of our job is to look at what people do really well and the attractiveness of a So for the brand story, we started looking around and going like, oh my gosh, if you're a small business, large business, coming into Riverside, this team is the key. It shows you the path to success.

It shows you the attributes of Riverside and what makes it successful. So when we build this little mark in a two inch by two inch, we want to bring all these attributes in to act like an advanced identifier of who Riverside is. And from there the brand grows out. So here you see, you know, local architecture. I'm a resident here. I love the Spanish colonial. And, you know, the key, this is the key for a lot of folks. They don't know where to start. So this really starts their journey. It's a pathway.

There's opportunities here that we want to show, and really the guide. For me personally, it's the people we want to call. In the letter form itself, as an advanced identifier, we like the R. It's going to lead to Riverside. The keyhole arch, which we see around the city.

There's always light at the end of the tunnel, right? We move to the light, and then of course the economic development of Riverside is the path forward. I love the park, I love seeing it in the wild. We saw it a lot at the conference this week, and it looked great. What we like to do is we look at all the different cities and their departments, and we wanted something that stands out, and it absolutely does.

And here is the site. What we want to do is we want to make Riverside a great opportunity for business, but people have to live here, too. So we really want to show the personality and the attributes of Riverside as you move through the site. It's got many audiences, small, large, but still the same message. Riverside is a place you can come, raise a family and grow your business.

Very proud of the site. Again, the team did a fantastic job of embracing it and then helped grow it.

And so that was a a sneak peek. We did start earlier this month on May 4 with a soft launch. And since then, we've continued to add content. We will continue to add content. Thank you so much for pulling that up.

It has a lot of fun features and it's very customizable, so we're able to add information. And we are also actively working right now with Michael and our platform is Wix on translation, so we can ensure that it is accessible whether we're in Japan, whether we're in South Korea, or even somebody at home, and language English may not be their first language. We want to make sure our value proposition is accessible to every single person who could possibly need it. And so I really wanna thank Michael so much for his effort in helping us to get this from vision to now reality, and now it is out there as a a living site, which is so exciting. And really also thank our marketing team as well.

And so they were great partners to us. They embraced the need. They understood the need for not only our own brand, but also for us to be much more aggressive in our economic development presence and storytelling. And I'm incredibly grateful to Caitlin, Christina, and their team for all of their support in making this a reality for us. And so with that, we are so pleased to present to you the website as it is today and look forward to continuing to work with you to update it.

Alright. Thank you for that presentation. And look into alright. So one recommendation or one request, I guess, I would ask for is the you know, we have that slide deck that we use when we're presenting to other companies and kinda walks you through all the things because basically took that and turned it into a website. Right?

I think it'd be helpful if there was assets that are available that we knew how to access as employees so that when we're having those meetings, I can just here, let me show you this foot book, and I can just easily share it with you or show it to you. Because sometimes it's easier to present because this is great if you're on your own, visit the website, and you're just gonna kind of poke around and kinda look at things. That's fantastic for that, but sometimes you might catch yourself at lunch with a a CEO and, like, let me just show you something real quick and kind of be able to kind of go through that little presentation on on the fly. That'd be helpful if we can just have those assets available somewhere on the website. But other than that, this is fantastic, and it really does show off inside of Riverside.

I think the public needs to know about this website because I think a lot of people just don't understand what we have here locally. And this is not just a business thing. I think it's a Riverside pride website as well. And so thank you for the hard work. It looks like it really did take a lot of work, so very, very congratulations on that. Alright. We'll go ahead and move on to our item number eight, which is our awards. And so Random, if you wanna go ahead and present some of the awards the team won.

Yes. Thank you so much, Chair Robillard. The theme of the Caled Conference, gosh, and May have been a whirlwind. So I'll just give a quick update. You've heard from us about our IEDC Accredited Economic Development Organization efforts. And actually, at ICSC, this is how how connected the world is. I just love it. One of our accreditors was at an event that I was at, and so she said, this Thursday actually, next Thursday, excuse me, next Thursday, the board will be voting on the outcome of their report. They finalized the report. That is done from their three day whirlwind tour in Riverside.

We hit 18 different key metrics, we needed to meet on their rubric, and we they will be taking their vote next Thursday. So we will keep you updated in a prize. Caled 2026, which is a big part of what we're here today, and we are so incredibly honored to have Gerbeck Sohota, the president and CEO of Caled joining us. In my in my world, she's a celebrity. So I I was explaining it to my husband like, it's like a celebrity's coming, the president's coming.

Like if you're a child it's like Santa's coming. And we have Gerbachs with us and we are so pleased so I'll invite her up at the end. And we had a wonderful time at the Caled Conference attending locally last month. And we're not only attending conferences, we're bringing home awards, which we're celebrating today. One I'm extremely proud of is in economic development programs and promotions for Riverside Realized.

And so that is taking our our economic development strategic plan, creating a really unique tool as an implementation plan. How are we moving the needle and creating real results in a way that we can be accountable and transparent to the public, to our policymakers, to city leadership, and showing the progress that's happening. So I'm very proud of Riverside Realized. Also, we received an award in innovative real estate development and finance for Farmhouse Collective, which and Laura got to see firsthand today and see that project come to life. So I'm very proud of our Real Property Services team and our successor agency team who helped make that project a reality.

And in addition to bringing home awards, we were also presenting. We're on the speaker circuit as we're sharing Riverside's value proposition. And so I'm very thankful for our amazing partners in this region, including Kimberly Wright. She's the economic development manager for the county of Riverside. And also Jennifer Urtaldi. She's the director of outreach and incubation at UCR. And these are partners we're so connected with, we're working with every single day, speaking with them daily, building our partnership. And this focused on our spin off event that we hosted in April. So we mayor pro tem Robillard and I attended SelectUSA as delegates for the state of California, but we brought SelectUSA to Riverside. How amazing is that?

There's just a handful of spin off events across the entire country every single year. We had our first opportunity to have one in Riverside, so that was fantastic. And with that, I'll invite up Gerbex to say a few words and also present the awards.

Good afternoon. I've never been called a celebrity, certainly not compared to Santa Claus, that's awesome. Thank you, thank you for the honor of being able to join you and present today. For those of you that aren't familiar with CalEd, we're the State Professional Association for Economic Development. We represent over 1,100 economic developers in California, over 300 jurisdictions, and these are, as you can imagine, all folks like your amazing team that are working really hard to bring investment to their communities, help businesses thrive and create economic opportunities for Californians every day.

So it's rare that I get the honor of coming to a city or being invited, so thank you for including me in this. It's usually our board members that come out and do this. CALID has been recognizing excellence in economic development for over forty years. I've been part of CALAD now over twenty years, most of them as the CEO. And I'll tell you, as I said, it's rare for me to be in a community, but when Miranda reached out, I knew I wanted to be in Riverside to make this presentation.

When we talk about excellence, the awards of excellence, we're always talking about usually a competitive approach, like is what you did more excellent than what another community did? The reason I'm here is to talk about excellence as a culture and to share just a short, long story with you. I'll try to keep it short. So my first senior position with a nonprofit was executive director of the Downtown Association. Laurie will remember that.

It was a short stint, but we did our annual conference here, And I can tell you, even then, it was apparent that Riverside not only invested in its team, that you guys cared about your community, and that you had a culture of excellence. When I had the chance as CEO of Caled to do a regional event, we had reached out to several communities and said, Look, we want to hold regional events to bring our members together. Riverside was one of the first to respond, and you were the first city that we held a regional economic development event in. When I first became CEO, we celebrated our thirty five year anniversary, and we knew that we wanted to come to Riverside for that as well. More recently, following the pandemic, we launched a finance and real estate division, And once again, we knew that Riverside was the right city to bring our event to.

Now you're hearing this and probably thinking, well, Gerbex probably really likes the Mission Inn and KC's cupcakes. And I do, I do. But that is not why we kept coming back and why we keep coming back and why I'm here today. It's really apparent in the twenty plus years that I've been at CAL Ed that the city of Riverside from the leadership down cultivates an environment and a culture of excellence in economic development, your continued investment in economic development year after year after year. It was great listening to the passion of your team today.

We got to spend a lot of time with your newest members as well as some that have been here a while. I won't lie, I felt old in that conversation. Oscar was talking about your permitting center, how you guys brought everything together and how you can't wait to do something new and innovate it. I remember when it was the innovative thing and I couldn't wait to check it out and the elevator with the special graphic on it so folks knew they were welcome when they were coming here to get their permits. It's really evident that your team, your current version of the team, you've been able to with the talent that you have, continue to keep that desire to make a difference, the desire to tell your story when they talk about the website, the excitement, when they talk about the things that are happening in Riverside from a project perspective, hearing Paige talk about a sign book, a handbook, and be as excited as she was is like, woo, great.

You don't hear that every day, but that's a culture of excellence. It's something that is cultivated over time. You've got a great leader. Jessica, who's on your team now, is a former Caled Chair. I could talk to you about your projects, but you know what the Farmhouse Collaborative is. I suspect all of you have been there. We had a wonderful time there. Hearing the story of the historic preservation and then being able to see it, it was just, it's amazing and it's certainly inspiring and hopefully it's a great transformative project in that part of the community and I know that's how your team sees it. I really love the Riverside realized coffee book.

I don't know why. I thought it

was such an amazing concept, but more importantly, it really shows how transparent you are that you wanna bring the story together, you wanna be clear with the community what you're working on, how you're gonna get there, and what gets measured gets done. And putting it in writing in a way that's not on a website where you're gonna change it in a couple of weeks or something else changes it is a huge commitment. So it's my honor to be here and it's my honor to present you all with these awards, but you've certainly earned them. Your team's amazing, and thank you so much for the opportunity to be here, and congratulations to you all. Do you have any questions? Or is

it picture time? Questions?

We'll do questions first, then we'll do pictures.

All right.

No questions. Just congratulations. Exciting. You covered it beautifully and eloquently. So I'll say what she said, ditto. No, but seriously, thank you for giving us the overview, and congratulations to the team department for all your hard work. We're so proud. Thank you.

Thank you. And I do have to say that it really does, you know, there's a competitiveness among Agon developers. I think it's the most businesslike aspect of hall. And I'll never forget being in Washington DC last year talking to other cities and someone was very excited to host a Caled conference and we're like, oh yeah, we already did that. You know, it was kinda Right.

Was kinda a little flux like, oh yeah, congratulations, we already did that. And so, you know, and also having our leadership team being speakers at events and, you know, sometimes it gets discounted the the importance of participating in industry events, but that's how you attract that talent. And that's how you attract teammate teamwork that wants to exceed expectations and push the envelope. And I think Riverside, as you mentioned, has really shown itself as the city that is ripe for the bold and the people who want to put a name on their city and look around and say, I was part of that. And I think that's what Riverside is creating around here.

And I think for those who want to put the work in and and and make the effort, it's gonna it's gonna you'll be rewarded for that effort here in the city of Riverside. So thank you for the recognition. I know the team worked really hard to make that happen. So thank you.

Thank you. They're working hard to bring us back. Simone reminded me.

I'm responding to the conference.

Alright. Moving right along. We're gonna get done in time for Clarissa. We will now move on to item number nine, which is the Second Annual Aerospace Expo, and we'll have Amaris go ahead and give us an update. Good

afternoon, Chair and members of Economic Development Committee. My name is Amaris Gonzales, and I'm a project manager with the Economic Development team. I'm pleased to provide an update on the second annual Aerospace Community Expo, which was held on April 25 from nine a. To twelve p. M.

Before sharing this year's successes, I'd like to provide some background on why the Expo was created. The Aerospace Community Expo launched in 2025 to highlight Riverside's growing aerospace and defense sector and connect students and community members with career pathways in this industry. Riverside has a strong aerospace history and continues to grow as a hub for companies involved in engineering, precision manufacturing, logistics and technical operations. The region is also home to a strong pipeline of students and emerging talent from local universities, colleges and technical education partners. The Expo creates a space for industry, education, military, and aviation partners to engage directly with attendees through career exploration, training, information, and networking opportunities.

As national demand for aerospace talent continues to rise, the Expo plays a key role in inspiring and preparing the next generation of professionals. In partnership with Councilmember of the Arts Office, the Riverside Airport team, and the Commemorative Air Force, attendees enjoyed a World War II history exhibit, hands on activities, flight simulators, and direct engagement with industry and education partners. We had an incredible turnout with more than 2,200 attendees, doubling more from last year. This year we had 29 organizations that hosted booths at the expo. Participants included military recruiters and units, ROTC programs, local universities, technical colleges, our local school districts, flight and helicopter schools, and lots of aviation related organizations.

Young Eagles also provided free flights for 25 lucky children during the event. These partners fully embraced the mission of the expo and had meaningful conversations that sparked interest and introduced students to aerospace careers. In addition to expanding activities and engagement opportunities, we created an attendee booklet highlighting Riverside's aerospace history and participating organizations. The expo had significant social media exposure with promotional posts generating more than 81,000 views. And we also had support from our local school districts like Alvord Unified School District which bust in several of their middle and high school students to attend the event.

As you can see from these photos, the Expo was designed to be highly interactive and engaging. Rogue Aviation and San Bernardino Valley College provided virtual aviation experiences for students while CBU and Riverside PD Air Support Unit gave attendees the opportunity to explore aircraft first hit. The UCR Highlander Space Program brought a rocket they built and Hoffa Engineering showcased precision metal parts. The Air Force team also brought a game truck that simulated aspects of their work and training. I personally had the opportunity to speak to Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology, and they were so impressed with the number of students that knew and understood the fundamentals of the engine that they had already brought.

Of course, this Expo would not have been possible without the support of our partners and the many city departments and staff who contributed to its success. Thank you to the planning committee, public works, marketing, parks and recs, Riverside Library, everyone who helped to promote and support the expo. This event is more than just a community festival. It's a workforce development initiative supporting the growth of Riverside's aerospace and defense sector, one of the city's areas of excellence. We're excited to return next year for the third annual Aerospace Community Expo on 04/10/2027, and we look forward to making this event even bigger and better. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Amaris, for that presentation. Questions? Yeah. I just sorry I have to talk about all of these. But the Aerospace Expo, something that me and my office, we thought of last year to do all the things that we just talked about promoting the aerospace inner city. And the first first year we did it, having a thousand attendees was I was like, oh, wow. That exceeded expectations. I was blown away that we're to get a thousand people out there. And I think it just really spoke to the relevance of aerospace and the jobs that it provides.

I don't know. Last year, we had people coming up to us who were bringing their kids, and then they're like, so I'm also looking for a career change. And so it's not it's not just for kids. It's for adults too who are looking for jobs in the aerospace industry. And so that was a really cool first year.

This year, we really leaned in, and I think we really kind of got the, hang of it and really were able to connect to the history of the city of air in aerospace, not just what's going in forward, but where we came from. And more than doubling, the attendance this year was incredible. Seeing how you know, my me and my family were out there. I ran into old family friends I haven't seen in, like, fifteen years who are pilots now who are who are there. And it was really cool to see the industry partners too because we always wanna make sure that the industry partners are seeing a value into investing and putting out the materials and and assets to make these things happen.

And they're seeing so much opportunity for them, and they're and they're all excited about coming back next year. And I think it'll really help us sell this to other industry partners in the future to get this to even a bigger thing. So thank you for all the work. I know it wasn't easy, but I think we really, really show that Riverside is the home for aerospace, and so looking forward to next year. Thank you. Okay. And that was our last item, and we'll go ahead and move on to legislative updates, which I don't think we have. Ions for future consideration. We are good. Okay. We'll go ahead and adjourn. Thank you.