Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thing. Great. Thank you. We're gonna go live. Alright, Jean. Take it away.

Okay. We're gonna call to order the city of Sherwood Planning Commission work session for 12/09/2025. It's a work session. Do you want us

to do a roll call? Sure.

Yes. Oh, the staff.

You're the staff. Commissioner Swanson.

Here, commissioner

Mates. Here. Commissioner Kai. Here. Commissioner Waiola. Ready.

Commissioner Barnes? Here.

Chair Simpson?

Here. Thank you. Staff announcements?

Yeah. Thank you. Unfortunately, we we had resignation on planning commission. Commissioner Wamsley resigned. I don't wanna share kind of on the record the reasoning after the after the meeting. I can share more if you guys would like, but sorry to sad sad to see him, have to resign. And that there will be a, opening. So if you know people who are interested to serve on planning commission, we would accept applications now, but we'll get a formal posting now, put it on social media, all that sort of stuff. So we'll have an opening, and that would be for the remainder of the remainder of, commissioner Wamsley's term. I don't know exactly how long that is, but we'll we'll post all that information.

And other than that, just wish everyone a happy holidays. This will, of course, be the last meeting of the of the year, and I do expect that we will have a meeting in January. And the the topic is going to be this, the old town strategic plan, for a more formal meeting, public hearing, and a recommendation, of the planning commission to.

And you you know if it's first or second meeting? Planning on

the first. Planning on the first. So it'd be the second Tuesday of the month of January, which we are the first meeting.

I'll make sure I don't have any

okay. Would

be the thirteenth, January 13.

Okay. Alright. Counselor update. Counselor jobs?

Yeah. So we had a work session, this last week, and it was the honestly, one of my favorite, meetings of the year is when all of the chairs of the different boards and commissions come and give us the goals that they have for next year so that we can put those all together and make our goals for the year. Our goal setting session is January 24, I wanna say. But, there's a few you know, we we just we heard a lot of very good things, and, it reminded me again of how lucky we are to be in a city with, such engaged citizens. I know that I talked to counselors and leaders from all over the state, and it's not this way in every city where sometimes they they have one or two people that are interested in the city stuff, and they and they've done it for twenty years.

So you're really getting that one person's vision of what they want in the city. And so thank you for all of your service and what you gave to Jean. You know, there was a few things that were brought up, you know, from the traffic safety, board, the the budget. I I budget is always we had another budget meeting as well. Our goal for that is probably to just continue to look for new sources of revenue.

The way that things are funded here in in Oregon, it's difficult to have enough money to pay for the things that we want, and there's never enough. So, and you can't just keep taxing everybody. So we are looking for other ways, to do that. One of the big things that I'm excited for is the, art commission is has found an artist for the medallions, the permanent medallions on the bridge. I've loved the ones that the students put out there, but, those are not a long term solution, and we would love to have medallions that could be, integrated throughout the city, for different interest you know, points of interest.

You know, I don't know how many people know, but the Cannery Square used to be a brick factory, and many of the buildings in Portland were made with bricks from that factory. So we would love to have a little, thing on the the sidewalk to remember that or something along that lines is what the council was thinking. We had our first report from the youth committee, or board. I can't remember what they're they're called, but and they even marched with us in the parade. They are still working on figuring out what their scope and goals are gonna be for this next year because they wanna tackle some real projects, and they wanna get more engagement from the youth.

And great report from the parks department. The thing that we heard loud and clear from some constituents is we want just a tiny part of a park that is accessible. So it doesn't have to be a fully accessible park. Obviously, we'd love that as a cornerstone somewhere, but and by accessible, it's not just for kids with accessibility issues. As we're an age friendly city, we would like to make sure that we make it for people taking their grandkids that maybe have a cane or a walker or something that they would be able to at least engage with some of the activities that are currently accessible except for the fact that there's bark chips down, and they can't walk on the bark chips.

So, anyway, those are just a few of the goals. There were some really, really good discussions, and, look forward to, seeing how that plays out in the the planning for the year. That's all I've got for my announcements. Are there any questions?

Alright. Alright. Moving on to our agenda item, which is the discussion of the draft Old Town strategic action plan. And councilor Giles has to leave, early in our work session. And so I've asked if he could give us a quick, perspective of the council's what the council has met on and what they've directed staff to do so that we're not going counter with what the the council has already set staff to task on. So if you could just Yeah.

So about a year or so ago, well, there's been there's been a broad support in all of council, I think, to shore up our Old Town. So if you look at what Old Town is today, we constantly were hearing what a gem it is. It's a little bit hidden, but people love it. They love the festivals. They love being down there and stuff like that.

However, it's really about in my mind, I was thinking it was nine blocks, and it's really half that. It's four and a half blocks because about half of that is residential or not occupied or something like that. And in the if you draw a diagonal line through Old Town from where, like, the the antique mall is to, like, the vacant lot up on, you know, the big tree stump on it there by the middle school. So everything on the city hall side of that line is kind of what people think of as Old Town. And people always I would say one of the most common questions besides when are we getting food carts is people would say, hey.

How come we don't have a blank in Old Town? Whatever that blank was. And so why don't we have a farm to table store? Why don't we have a a bread bakery? Why don't we have a vegetable stand anymore? You know, all these different things. And in reality, as you guys know, it's illegal for us as a as a city to say, we want this particular business to open up a store here, and we don't want anybody else. We can't do that, but what we can do is we can say something like, well, we will waive a certain percentage of SDCs or you know, for these types of businesses. So if we want a bookstore, if we want a bakery, if we want whatever. The question is, well, what do we need there?

Right? What can it support? And and, you know, do we need a boutique hotel there? We were looking at some of the, you know, the ideas with you know, when we were talking about food carts and more restaurants, people said, well, there's not really enough people that to sustain those. So how do you get more people but not have them in the day with no parking problems?

We got hotel. You know? All over the place. So we brought in this first 40 feet to essentially help us solidify those thoughts into a plan that we can put in place for, you know, for the next decade or so, which would address a lot of these things. One, it would help us know what kinds of businesses we should be looking to attract and potentially how we could attract them.

We don't have a big bucket of millions of dollars, but we might be able to attract them with some SDC waivers or some, you know, grants through you know, for facade improvements or things like that. Right? We we don't know what the other cities have done this. We just wanted them to look at it and and help us out there. The next thing was we wanted to we love that it's a hidden gem, but we don't want it to be quite so hidden.

We want there to be a little bit more wayfinding. And, okay, how do you tell people that are just driving by ninety nine every day, there's something cool to your left? Right? Come out come out here, spend some money on the weekend, come visit our restaurants or whatever it is, or coming down 12th in Sherwood. How how would we get people off of that down Oregon Street?

We have a sure a sign that says Sherwood Old Town, but how could we, you know, do that? And I I know several of you know about the the, Public Works Building being relocated. Well, that opens up a bunch of land potentially that's that parking lot and the the where the field house is, and and we own it we own the lot over by the Cannery Square and the gravel lot over by this art center, and we own the old where the old schoolhouse was across from the middle or the Hawksview School. So we the city owns some of that land, and it's like, well, what do we do with all of this stuff that keeps the coolness of Old Town and doesn't just, put up buildings in a haphazard way that are kind of designed, you know, in a less optimal way. You all know what buildings I'm talking about.

I don't wanna make them feel bad, but we do get a lot of complaints about one of the buildings in Old Town that recently went up, and we wanna. But partial partially, we didn't have anything in place to stop that. So that was me talking a lot. Jean, did I answer all your questions, give you enough direction of why the city hired these people?

Gives me perspectives. Does any of the commissioners have any other questions about goals and objectives that we should be looking at or filtering this process through to meet what the council's trying to, gain out of this process?

Yeah. So, Taylor, you mentioned, lots of wayfinding and people, find their way to Old Town, including on 99. So that just makes me think, is is there kind of a prioritization of drawing peep 99 brings people from all over the place through there. Is there a prioritization of bringing people from outside outside Sherwood more into Old Town, or do you want Old Town to be more vibrant just organically and people within Sherwood being there primarily? Or, like, what's the focus on that?

So the answer is yes. We don't want it to be overrun. Right? We're not gonna do anything like that. However, you know, we want our businesses to thrive down there. We sometimes hear that, well, we close at 03:00 because there's not an evening crowd. Right? And you know? Or there's not you know, there's some businesses that are have very limited opening hours. And so we look at that and we go, okay.

Well, is there a way to change that so that we can say, hey. To get these grants or, you know, facade grants, you have to be open, you know, forty hours a week or something. You know what I mean? Like, to to get some traffic down there versus the people that are like, well, I bought the building. I don't have to pay rent on it, so I don't really need to generate foot traffic or revenue or any of that.

And so it's not just, you know, it's not just a and and, frankly, I don't want businesses and I've heard other counselors say this, but my personal goal is I don't want businesses that are appointment destinations. So I as much as I love them, I don't need any more hair salons. I don't need lawyers, doctors, dentists, stuff like that. I need more that are discoverable, like restaurants that have changing menus. I need a place like Cedar and Stone that has, oh, let's go see what their new stuff is. Right? I mean, I need those so that it's a you know, we can say, hey. Let's go for a walk. We're gonna walk through Old Town and see what's new this month. Right?

You know, see what things have changed. You know? Hungry Hero has a, you know, a cookie of the day or what you know what I mean? That's what I mean by discoverable. Like, those kinds of things are the things that I think would increase foot traffic after school and in, and in the evenings. And especially, actually, that after school question, we have three schools within walking distance of Old Town. So we do want it to still be family friendly, kid safe, you know, all of that stuff. Does that answer your question, commissioner?

I think so. Yes. Thank you. Yep.

And I know this is a multiyear plan, so I don't I'm not expecting it to be solved. I just we wanna have a direction to go. So that's the other thing is that we're hoping by publishing this, it will get some builders excited to help us. Like, one of the one of the things you're gonna hear about is a is a potentially a new entryway off of

Columbia.

Columbia. Yeah. And so that it will, you know, that would that would change what's there now, but only if it got bought to be redeveloped. And so so part of it is is just planning that for the future so we can get to work on it. And as we all know, the railroads are fun to deal with. And if we need crossings or different things although, Eric, Courtney, you're on this one, approached me unsolicited at the tree lighting and said, hey. What are you guys doing with this train track going through here? And I said, well, we'd love to do track to trail. And he goes, well, I know some people that might be able to help. So I was, oh, okay. Give me their info. Wonderful.

That's really good news.

So we'll we'll see if we get some movement on that. We've we've kinda gotten a stiff arm from them previously of getting some, some work done with the railroad, but apparently, she's got some connections. So

Thanks. May I can maybe just build just a little bit and please jump in here.

Go ahead.

Counselor Giles, I'm if I'm off track. I think, one of the ways to describe, I think, the goals is, like and counselor Giles mentioned it. But, like, right now, Old Town is fairly actually fairly busy during the day because we have City Hall as an anchor. We have certain other kind of anchors. And so, you know, it's it's busy at certain times.

What we really love is, like, you know, 7AM, 8AM to eight or 09:00 at night. And, like, we just don't we we we have restaurants that will just open for dinner, for example, on the on the on the week on the weekdays. We have some place kind of all scattered, so I guess we're looking for more consistency, you know, across the board. And then if I'm hearing you right, like, also more more variety as well. Consistency, variety, just, you know, nothing nothing crazy to answer your question.

Nothing crazy of, like, tourists walking in every single Saturday. I don't think we're looking for that. But we're here. I think we see a lot of room and opportunity to just get to get to here, and and I think that's what the the goal of this is in terms of in terms of business health and business activity and that type of thing. And then the other really big component of this is, like, is kind of your the world that you guys live in of urban design architecture.

You know, how do we kind of from a policy and development regulation standpoint, kind of make sure that as we try and hit and get to that point, we do it in a way that Sherwood, you know, likes and respects and all that stuff in terms of development type and form and style and all that sort of stuff. So Yeah. However we can get there, you know, through this plan, I think that's the goal.

Yeah. A 100%. Like, the design elements, you facade improvements, that has been something that frankly, even slapping some full brick on that particular building might make it look more, old American, you know, style, right, or something. And so having some of those design standards in place so that we can be like, oh, you know, this is an old town look. Right? This is how we maintain it. And it might be preserving what we have. It might be doing some additions and stuff like that. But that's perfectly said, Eric.

Yeah. Just turn up the dial. Turning up the dial. A little. The dial.

A little.

Yeah. Because because in reality, when we've got the we've got, like, the morgue that's being used as a warehouse for boxes and stuff. They don't actually use it as a funeral home. And and so we'd like to give them some incentive for moving on to their Newburgh location. We've got, you know, the old gas station that that's there that, you know, we would love to provide them some incentive to develop it and to have it be something fun. And that that the empty lot on the corner, we have a lot of place. In addition to the places the city owns, we've got a lot of places that could have really fun things go into them.

Great. And with that, I will, share my screen here, kick off the presentation. Thank you, counselor Giles. Really, it's great great to have you here and, kinda sharing the council perspective. Minimize all this stuff. Let's

can you guys you guys can see the PowerPoint online?

Counselor Giles, can you see that?

Yeah. We can see

it. Yes.

Sorry. Thank you.

Alright. It's mute.

Perfect. Okay. So I apologize. I'm gonna kinda look this way as I don't have it in front of me here. But here, vision. You know, what what are we getting to? Vibrant, safe, welcoming, of course, respects the community historic character, getting to the architectural design standards, thriving businesses, more housing, diverse housing, high quality public spaces, of course, cultivating sense of community that Sherwood is known for, pedestrian friendly streets, accessible connections by foot, bike, bus, and car. So I think that summarizes it pretty pretty well as well. And there's the vision in in writing. I'm just gonna jump right in, and please do stop me anytime.

Basically, what I what I'm gonna do is go through these these big ideas, then we'll get into the very specific actions. There's kinda three different buckets of actions and specific actions under all of those. So, really, that's kind of the the the key the the heart of this action plan is those actions. And, actually, just to just to back out a second, this is an action plan. So it's not right now, it's it's not intended to be adopted as part of the comprehensive plan.

So it's not a it's not a formal comprehensive planning type document that's gonna be, you know, part of the code, part of the comp plan. This is sort of a a background it's a policy document, but with a little bit less teeth than, say, our transportation system plan. So what it's going to do is set a list of priority actions that the city can take stat led by staff mainly with approval from city council to meet to meet the goals of the plan. These might very well lead to comprehensive plan updates and development code updates. So, like, one of the actions is going to be consider development code updates to strengthen historic character down.

Right? So this is an action that could potentially lead to a a true sort of, legal, you know, policy policy update adopted by the city council. So this is kind of a framework for how to move forward, but it's not a it's not a like, it's not a comprehensive plan update itself. So, yeah, these are these are actions. They're fairly high level at this point.

And so, really, this is just setting the stage for for all the next steps. So I think there's basically, each one of these actions is gonna require a follow-up. So one of the things we want to get feedback from from you on, and one of the things that will actually go to counsel and get developed and go to counsel between now and adoption is a is a clear list of priorities. And so if you guys think, hey. This is low hanging fruit, love to hear that today. Or, like, hey. You don't not in love with this idea. You know, it's it's good to hear that as well. And that'll help us prioritize. Staff is gonna provide input on that as well in terms of what we think is low hanging fruit, you know, cost, staff time, all that sort of stuff.

How can we as quickly as possible and as cheaply as possible? Like, we'll be one thing. But as well, once this gets adopted in February it's on the February council agenda. Once this gets adopted, then the planning team, economic development engineers, etcetera, are going to Sorry.

I didn't mean to interrupt.

I just wanna do a very quick chat.

Library is closing at seven. Do you want us to keep the outer door unlocked for people to come in? Is there gonna be another thing going on out here?

People lock it. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for checking. I will

make sure.

Thank you. So we we developed that that list, and then, again, we will take the steps. Of course, some of the stuff will come to you as well. Planning commission, if it's code update, for example, like, absolutely, that's gonna come to you. So, really, this is the list of actions anywhere between six months to five years, is is kind of what we're looking at. So that's kind of the sort of what what this is as as we as I feel that on this move forward.

Is so just clarification. So I know having been involved with something that wasn't fully adopted as a comprehensive plan, it created challenges in future iterations of pointing to the documents. Will this be formalized enough that we could use it for funding mechanisms, for grants? Yes. Yeah. Good question.

Yep. Yep. It's just But it's

not going to change or a developer. Is the developer going to be able to look at this and say, there's a line on this map that says you want this to be commercial and it's residential, so I'm gonna come in for a zone change based on the old town strategic plan. This would not carry that

weight. However, there in this document, it will say the city should consider a zone change on x y z property, and then we will bring that zone change to you and do it formally. I guess I think the way to look at this is it's so broad. It covers so much, in in kind of a smallish plan document that we really like like, we really don't, you know, we really don't have it doesn't make sense, I guess, to kinda go through DLCD notice, all that sort of stuff. And frankly, we're not we're this document's not really ready for it either.

Need to do a transportation study, specific to that property. We need to do a feasible market analysis specific to that property. So this is kind of listing the the actions, the framework for how we move forward, and then we need to do that more formal plan of work.

And then so I would say that if our community is looking at it that we're doing this, we should have some sort of explanation on the front page that that allows people looking at the document to understand the intent.

Thank you. Not yet. I mean, for the community members, also for, developers and others who are really kinda savvy in this world to understand things about it for, like, the full policy.

Right. And as a commissioner city, we don't wanna be beaten up by it later because it's something here under the thing that is a very high level plan and then help holding our feet to a fire that wasn't ever intended to be set. So yep. Thank you.

So then the the levers for effectuating this plan then, and since you can't hold developers to it, are incentives. Is that kind of the uninterested I mean, a lot of this is city owned properties. Assume we have lots of flexibility with that stuff in the city. Yes. But for the rest of it Yes. Like, counselor Giles is saying, offer incentives.

Yeah. I think it's that's a good point that this, you know, this document, what I just mentioned is very planning focused comp plan, you know, the world that we all live in. But there's there are elements of this plan that will never result in a comp plan update, but there's still an important part of the plan, say, SDC, reductions, that's that wouldn't come to you guys. That's a that's city council thing with developers and and budget and finance director and things like that. So, sure.

Like, we would still have to do a follow-up step there, which is either an ordinance or a resolution reducing SDCs for certain businesses, but that wouldn't be a planning document, for example. So there's a lot of other elements that we're gonna pull on. We just gotta have to we have to take the path, whatever path in our local government world, you know, that that leads to the outcome, we we need to follow-up with that step. Sometimes it's gonna be planning, sometimes it's gonna be finance, sometimes it's gonna be whatever whatever it might be. No matter what this, ends up saying and no matter what incentives we have to offer,

you know, any business is gonna have to say to themselves, it's going to be worth it over the next however many years for me to be in Sherwood. Sure. It's gonna be a better place than some of the competing places. Absolutely. Is there, is there a role in the city that is primarily sales? In other words, reaching out to developers on a regular basis to say

Okay. Yeah. Our I mean, this document like, we have been sharing this document already with, potential investors, general investors, developers, businesses. So and truly, we have been sharing this. And it it to your point, it it demonstrates a clear vision for where we're going, and that's super important. And, you know, people might come and say this is great a great town, but, like, what's the plan? Right? And and there are certain investors that might hear the plan and say, that's not for me. Right? Hopefully, what we've heard is that this plan is it's going in the right direction for investment And, of course, while maintaining sort of the the values, you know, that Shorewood has small town, all that stuff.

So yes. And then, you know, we have an we have an economic development manager at the city. To me, like, I don't know if he'd appreciate me saying this, but he's our salesperson. He's the salesperson. Right? And his job is mainly business liaison, existing businesses, also business recruitment. A lot of the development stuff he and I do together. So I live in more of the development world. He lives more in the business investment world, and so we go into those meetings together. Yeah. So we have a salesperson. He wouldn't like me saying that, I don't think. But

Bruce would Bruce would love this before. Yep.

Yep. Cool. Any other questions? Alright. So the first big idea, if you will, is to extend the Pine Street curbless design. So this is a urban design related, big idea. Sherwood really gets a lot of credit for our curbless, curbless street design. Everyone know what I'm talking about. So you go from the sidewalk into the street. There's no curb there. There's very clear demarcation, between brick and pavers and all that sort of stuff. The idea is to extend that extend that all the way up all the way up Pine Street to 3rd And Sherwood Boulevard and just really kinda complete that vision. And we and that's for festivals. It's just for kind of a good looking streetscape, etcetera. Let's see.

And I I would kind of add on to this. Really, it's full it's full streetscape improvements all the way up Pine Street. Right now, there's power lines. There's other just utilities. There's other stuff in Pine Street. You know, we need to get we need we really need to clean it up and get a nice clean streetscape all the way up and down Pine. That's what that idea is. Yeah. What's that? And the alleys as well.

And and at the appropriate time, I'll have, you know, have the through the chair, have Anne kind of waiting on some of her comments as well. Anne is with, Mosaic Arts Loft, and I was talking with Anne about some of these earlier today. So she might have some comments on that. The second is to pursue a new front door. And let me just say, like, this is a big deal. It's a bold vision. It's a big lift. Five years maybe, probably longer than that. But the the idea here was that the city owns all of these properties here. Basically, everything that's hatched right here, G H 1 H 2, the city owns all of these right now.

And we will be, you know, long term, be putting those up for either, for us to develop, to sell to a developer combination. And the nature of those properties plus the nature of this part of Old Town, the set the south side of the railroad tracks, it really changes if you have another access point here. So it's, again, getting to kinda urban design, a little bit of economic development as well. But, basically, the the concern, if you will, is that if you're coming if you're coming down here, Pine Street, is the main the main thoroughfare, you know, we know Cannery Square. We know the art center, very visible, very accessible off Pine Street.

But as you work your way down Columbia, it becomes much more much more hidden, if you will, much very much harder to sort of access. And so if you think about it, like, your mind, these apartments here these apartments here have a very different kind of feel and accessibility than this stuff here. Like, it's really kind of out of the way. And so the nature of these properties just really changes. If we can get a new a new front door, if you will, coming from you know, this is how most people from Portland are coming in.

They come off I 512 to Sherwood Road, Oregon Street, and then they would come in here. So it would really just open up a whole new, really, retail mixed use opportunity from that side of Main Street. So you'd have one opportunity here coming in, and the second one would be would be here. So that that's sort of the that's the vision. I think, a really it's gonna be an uphill battle.

I don't mind saying that. You got the railroad in there. You got a CVS and our There's just a lot it's an uphill battle. But we and the consultants didn't want to sell ourselves short. I really give the consultants a lot of credit for kind of being bold in sort of what you were thinking really truly long term about about what is the best outcome, you know, in terms of excessive access, transportation, urban sign, and this was put put on plan. The third big idea is to initiate redevelopment of vacant city owned sites. So everything there in yellow, we own. We have heard from city council that they would like us to move first on what is Site D. So it should be adjacent to the art center. There's a little gravel pad there.

So they wanna make they want staff to make that a priority in terms of getting the development on that property. We did hear from council that the priority is for it to be city owned for now, so it wouldn't be a a pure developer offering. City would raise the money, develop property, and then likely do a a ground a lease for it, some type of retail tenant is likely what that would turn out to be. The other priority site is Site A, which is the old school house site. It's about, it's about an acre acre in size right now. And just because of the visibility and location of that one as well, kinda make those two a priority. And then longer term, look at options for these properties here, and then there's one more, in this little corner.

Very much. Regarding that larger section of of property that, is right there along Columbia Street, is there assuming, like, that's a larger space that could be, say, or, you know, a larger housing redevelopment. If something like that were to occur, is there anything in place to ensure that something along the lines of, you know, retail on the ground level and that housing, on on subsequent levels is is insured? Or

Yeah. It's a great question. The nice thing about the city being the property owner is that we have an additional an additional ability, additional layer of guaranteeing what we want. So we don't have to basically, we would sell the property. And in that purchase and sale agreement, we would say, here's what needs to be delivered.

And by the way, there's typically clawback provisions as well. So if you don't deliver, you can't deliver, comes back to the city. So then that's different than just having the zoning authority because, as you know, the state laws keep keep, you know, rolling back our authority. So having the zoning authority plus being the property owner, we're in the driver's seat. I think the question is, to the point I just made about access and visibility and all that stuff, will a developer if we don't if we're not successful in getting this new front door, etcetera, etcetera, will a developer actually bite on that? If we're gonna say, has to be mixed use, will someone actually come to the table and say, yeah. That pencil's for me. I think that's the question that we really need to answer. Yeah.

So I remember about three months ago, we were talking about the the Yellow D property Yep. And how that would affect the Saturday market today. That is Saturday market in the spring, summer, and fall. Yep. And so my memory is we said that it could, in theory, still accommodate or be beneficial to the Saturday market as opposed to taking that away. Yep. Is that

Yeah. I mean, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the the vision is for that to be developed, the site d, like, with a building. So that space is gonna be gone. Right? But, really and this is what I appreciate about city council. Last meeting we had with city council, the direction we got was to look beyond just that site in terms of, like, what basically, the direction we got was look at Site D, of course, but also look how it interacts with the art center And to a certain extent, Cannery Square and the rest of it and make sure that whatever we deliver on-site d kinda is compatible with where this whole thing is going for that whole intersection. And so I think I think the short answer is yes.

I mean, ultimately, that that's gonna be developed. But whether it whether it's Cannery Square plus more space, one of the things we're talking about is expanding Cannery Square, and, like, we own that property as well. And so I think, you know, what I've heard without speaking for council is a strong desire to maintain the the community event the community gatherings, you know, and the viability of those. So I think in the end, it's gonna be good to develop Site D, but it's not gonna come, I guess, at the cost of of Saturday market. Yeah.

Please. Eric, I'll add a little bit too. Commissioner Kai, that's a great point. We've even talked about that being pop up space that would be kind of a more permanent, you know, for smaller, you know, farm to table booths or something that would be more permanent for Saturday market. Or, we even you know, we haven't talked about this.

I mean, again, I'm talking for myself and a few other counselors, but the the the walkway that's next to, library and city hall there, that's where Saturday market used to be, and they put up booze along there. What if we were to extend that all the way through Old Town, right, and make it a linear Saturday market in addition to Canterbury. Like, there's other things that can be done. We love having Saturday market there, but we wanna design it, you know, for flexibility and stuff like that, not, you know, not just for and and, you you know, frankly, we wanna look at what we need to do to the art center so that we can, you know, potentially extend that a little bit or go out the back of it or something so that we can have a little space for smaller conferences and things like that that would bring people in during the day, during the evening. They would have, you know, catering opportunities because they'd have a a full service kitchen and stuff like that.

So we're we're looking at a lot of those things, but, you know, right now, they're all just plans.

I think, you know, the way I think of it is in during the summer, the Saturday market is the does bring a lot of people in, but the Saturday market is it's like 20% as good as Beaverton's. And you don't you know, there's no way it's gonna be as good as Beaverton's because we're just not that big. But if it was any smaller, then it would lose, I think, any attractiveness. So to me, it's really important to make it only grow because it does, I think, to to have the potential to bring certainly people from Sherwood. But if it gets cool enough, then, you know, it just depends on who is there.

Yeah. Like, I drive all the way to Beaverton sometimes, even though it's a hassle because it's extremely crowded on Saturday. But it's good enough, and that's unique enough to where it's worth it.

Yeah. And I think that gets also to this just just this the basic goal here, which is turning up that dial. I think that gets to address here. As soon as we get more housing here with more people, more businesses, etcetera, I think that naturally lends to a to a larger market as well. And I think that's that's kind of the direction we're going. It's just that I call it the critical mass. Right? We need that critical mass. And and I think we're we're either just barely there or just barely getting there, and we just need to get fully there. So yeah.

If I can add to that, with respect to the expansion of the farmer's market or the Saturday market, We we've been up to Olympia a few times, and they have a really nice, like, indoor outdoor building that's pretty much year round with pop ups with some, you know, legacy clients that stay in there and things like that. The portion of the city owned property that's right there adjacent to Canter Square, the long linear parcel, has that been thought of as potentially to be used as a permanent pop up location, but, you know, that goes to commissioner Giles kind of what's happening here this month, what's what's gonna change here, you know, have some some, anchor stores or anchor like, a bakery or something like that that stays in there, then, you know, rotating things and also farmers can actually bring in more stuff.

Yeah. And you're talking site g on this map here?

Correct.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I think, certainly, this plan doesn't preclude that. And I think, basically, what's gonna happen, commissioner Barnes, is we're we're going to continue to talk with city council and potentially planning commission as well on the details of these specific sites, including site g. And, you know, right now, we have kind of a basic understanding.

Like, we have heard that a hotel is is desirable. That's one thing we've heard fairly fairly clear. A boutique hotel would be desirable somewhere around site g, but we still need to get into those details. And so, you know, potentially, the direction we should get is absolutely to do something like that, and then we would do an RFP, either get a developer or have the city raise the money and actually develop that type of facility. But I think it's a great idea. It's kinda what, counselor Giles just mentioned for site d. I think the question is and this you know, we need a we need a a consultant for this. What can this you know, what's the timing based on the market? Right? We don't wanna deliver something too big or too early.

We need to deliver something that actually, you know, works for for where we're at or where we're going. So that'd be my I guess, my only concern was something a little bit bigger. But I I think the demand the the basic demand and desire for something like that is definitely here in the community. I think it's just a matter of landing it in the correct location, the correct size. And, also, frankly, you know, the city is involved. Like, we have very real constraints as well in terms of expertise, you know, maintenance staff, all that sort of stuff. So we we need to be mindful about what we take on and and how it's how it's operationalized as well.

Piggyback on a comment earlier about Cannery Square. I know I've mentioned this before. I think last time we talked about this as well, but I I tend to agree with what's being said here about Site G. That that square is gonna be too small, in my opinion, for this size of development. So I was there for the tree lighting here tonight. It was awesome. Always very fun. Brought all my kids. Totally wall to wall packed people. Yeah. Right?

So I

heard And this this is a which is awesome. But this is a, like was mentioned, a community gathering space. This is where people of Sherwood can come together and do things and celebrate stuff like that. It's where the parade terminated as well. There was a lot of people, and we're adding a whole lot more people with this with this plan.

And it strikes me as they're on the on the map here, there's this kind of this building right next to it. And I'm almost thinking as long as this, especially if it's city owned, if we just don't do that building and extend it. And I think even just that extra space right there, I guess it might be canary rectangle or something at that point. But but that space right there would, I think, allow a little bit more breathing room and provide for a reasonably sized community space to be for these kinds of celebrations, in

my opinion. But Jason's We're

we're looking we're looking at flexibility on all of this stuff. Right? And so some of the examples on g have been to extend Cannery Square a little bit into g to give

it the

rectangle vibe, but maybe another level so that you could you know what I mean? Like, again, this is we're in the early, early stages of all this. We know that we're growing as a city. Part of it is, well, what if, you know, on d, the one of the ideas that's been, spit around is a replica of the old

Train station.

Train station, but, again, with kind of a outdoor indoor vibe to it so that, you could walk through it, you know, kind of a thing. And, you know, same thing with we we've just gotta we we've gotta get all these ideas knowing that we are growing as a city, but we want this to still have its unique vibe. Because even though we were packed last year this year at that Cannery Square, last year, was raining, and there was a third of the people there. I don't wanna build just for it's great weather. Everybody's coming out.

But I also wanna be able to make it flexible so that we can maybe if we had to, we would extend Canary Square a little bit, and we'd maybe have a secondary stage at the Robin Hood Plaza, you know, or something like that. Right. We've gotta we've gotta be smart with the size city we are.

The other thing that they mentioned throughout the process is events are great. Saturday market is great, but we need Monday through Friday, 7AM to 8PM so that businesses are viable all year round Mhmm. And five days or seven days a week, I'm sorry. Yeah. So Yeah. Focusing on on Saturday market doesn't create all the Yeah. The critical mass that's needed to have a viable retail business in that area. Yeah.

But I but I think having the discoverable businesses and if you were to put those businesses in places in Old Town and have the Saturday market be more linear and walk through it Yeah. You know, that might that might because we always go to Saturday Market, and then we walk over to Cedar And Stone. Right? If we had a few other stores to hit, that might produce what you're looking for there.

Right. Castle is a

Great discussion. And I think just to put a cap on sort of the because there's a lot of conversation about city owned and not in the space of what to do and alternatives. Nothing is firm right now. And it you know, this is this is a goal that's probably six months, maybe three three months to, you know, eighteen months of planning over the next in order to get to that RFP. And I have a hunch that some of this is gonna come to you guys as well. So I think just kinda know that it's exciting and and but we need to get into the details, and a big part of that's gonna be market market analysis as well, frankly, because we don't wanna land something that that doesn't doesn't work.

So on e, is there any thought that Cannery Square panics across the area? Totally.

I I mean, we're truly

Well, our black space. Black blank canvas.

So I think with all these, and that's the beauty of the city and owning, you know, these properties. And we we own everything that we don't own f. That's the one you guys just approved, but we do own e, g, d, and a at the top there. But the main drag is g and then all the way up to the to the, field house, public works billing. I wanna move us along. The next big goal is to encourage redevelopment of vacant private sites, and there's a key a few key sites along Pine Street. Site B, of course, is vacant and for sale right now. Let's see. Site C is the current symposium parking lot. Of course, that's underdeveloped.

Across the street is the former gas station, underdeveloped. We just approved this project here. F, in my opinion, great news that, you know, we're getting some new investment, private investment in Old Town. So we really wanna work with developers to get development on their properties in a way that's, of course, compatible with Sherwood. What I'll tell you right now is there are, you know, Site f.

We had a developer come, walked away because it didn't pencil. This developer was able to make it work, you know, not to get into the details, but I think it sat for long enough that then the owner realized, you know, what an appropriate sale price might be. Site b, the the former gas station, those properties are really hard to pencil, and we keep hearing that over and over again. They have power they're 5,000 square feet. It's a typical single family lot. Construction costs are really high right now. There's power lines that they have out of the ground. Like, there's SDCs to pay. A lot of we've gotten a lot of people to poke at these, and it's pretty clear. And it's not Sherwood specific.

This is big picture construction right now. Things really don't pencil right now. So we either need to wait or the city needs to do something different. And that's not for me to decide. That's up to city council to figure out, you know, how much if if we have levers to pull, what to pull.

One of the things we're thinking at, just an example of how to address this, is we could do a local improvement district, and that would be buy in either from the city council or from the city councils and the property owners. That's kinda like a it's called like a self help tax where property owners are taxed a little bit incremental. All that gets pooled, and then, hey. Either the city or another body does all of the undergrounding all at once. And so then you kinda, you know, you pull the money, do a capital project, which you couldn't do on your own, and then everything starts to move.

So we're looking at options like that as well. The next big idea was to pursue a pedestrian rail crossing and trail. So the first one would be just a simple crossing mainly near the art center. So this would be I think someone can correct me. Washington here, or is this main Washington? I think this is Washi. Yep. It's Washington there. So this is Washington. We had a we had a a connection there at one point, went away when we did Pine Street. Art center is right here. Restaurant's here. Right now, people need to walk around one way or the other. It would be great for just for over the overall kind of, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? Just the the Activity?

Yeah. Planner. Let's not come up with that word. I don't know why. The overall connectivity of Old Town. So we would love to punch that through. I think the bank they would be great. Working with the rail is gonna be difficult, but it would be great. One more thought. The other one is a rail to trail, which you guys are familiar with, and that's a little bit bigger picture than this Old Town, of course. So that would be, you know, more Sherwood down to Newburgh type of deal, but this would be an important area. I wanna get to Joe's question first, and I'll get

to you guys. Joe? So I think, like, when we started, we were talking about, getting help from, Courtney and you're on perhaps with the Yep. Question. Yep. It, it surprised me when I was reading the plan that it takes that. Is that purely because of the railroad? Yeah. I mean, it seems like, you know, common sense when you're reading your you just think, what's the big deal?

Just but, apparently, it's a big deal. The the rail trail would actually likely be on we would probably need some type of buy in from the railroad, but it would actually be on private. It would be an easement or a right of way acquisition on private property. So the of course, if we cross the rail, we gotta get a best rail easement. The the the parallel path, though, would likely be typically how they work. Well, I I backtrack. The rail could dedicate their land. Right? But I think that's a that's a pretty big uphill battle. Other option then is to do an adjacent parallel path that would require, you know, us acquiring or so or a nonprofit or something acquiring from many, many owners as you go, which is difficult as well.

So I think those would be the two options. Both difficult.

If it if it could occur, you know, I think, like, a big draw not just to Sherwood, but, like, just the whole, like, Sherwood start starting as, like, either, you know, a starting point for the path, but partnering, connecting to neighborhood city, you know, Newburgh, McMinnville, able to incorporate that and just have that as a draw to to our old town, I think, you know, just just makes that much bigger. Absolutely. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, what I think about is, Banks, Verona Trail. You guys remember on that? Spring Trail. And, you know, something like that, you know, could could it's probably along the lines of not getting completely inundated, you know, like, to our to our concern, I guess, but really kinda bringing people, then they go out to lunch afterwards, things

like that. So yep. Cool. Alright.

And the last one is to extend, what we're calling the promenade. So just this this alley, if you will, right here, is is the start of the promenade. So, starting at the roundabout here, come all the way down, and the the vision would be to continue that all the way down to Veterans Park. There are some are some challenges. There's trash enclosures in there. There's sort of some competing interest for space in these alleyways. Typically, they're used for trash enclosures and, you know, maybe some rear loaded access, things like that. So we would need to address those conflicts for space, but that that would be an idea. And maybe this is a good time. And through the chair, maybe it's a great time to just hear really quickly from from Anne.

And, this is Anne, Anne Brucker. Anne is the owner of Mosaic Arts Lobb. It's, just opened up a really nice, studio, the new, art classes here. We were talking earlier about alleyways. And so I invited Anne to actually give formal testimony on in January, but I guess it'd be great if you can see now. Happy to kinda hear hear you out.

Sure. I

wasn't prepared with any.

But I'm in Brecker,

and I started Mosaic Arts off

in 2006 when we built the land on Park And Road Street with the the Buffalo that's down along the alleyway and added the

cabin building. And so that was my vision in 2006 for an arts center in addition to an art studio. We're gonna have to be in that building. So I guess it's maybe two and a half years that we purchased the property adjacent to a symposium that have been boarded up for the twenty six, twenty seven years we've been here and turned that into for a larger art studio and teaching area. So we serve, right now, we're about 55 families. Last year, up to 70 in the winter, so it kinda fluctuates a little bit. We serve every week. They come in Old Town. They love symposium. They love to go to Clancy's. They're so it's really bringing a lot of of business sense. Sorry. That was supposed to be about that.

Yeah. Sure.

I can be on one stand.

So, yeah, so developing that property has been I was tucked in

a corner for eighteen years and being now in the center of everything and didn't realize how much a change that would be.

But it's been so fun just to be a

part of, like, the city and people coming in. And and really, I've always appreciated Sherwood now even more, but all those festivals because they're right outside my door. And so the community has been they just tell us they thank us every time there's a festival. We're getting thanked for being there. So now we're developing the back. So we had phase one is 2,500 square feet in the front of the building that we've mixed up. We have two more phases. Phase two is the back, 1,600 square feet. Our plan is to be done by January to lease that out. And then phase three will be dealing with that tin wall that everybody loves that runs the length of Symposium's parking lot.

We'll be dealing with that in the the front facade. So with phase two, I had mentioned the chamber breakfast this morning. Just got a converse quick conversation about we're creating I don't know what y'all know, but so we're creating the back to be a storefront. So even though the back of our building faces the alley, it is being designed as a storefront. So we have a 12 foot by six foot inset.

There can be some cafe tables, two large windows, and then the transoms across the top and around the door. So lots of light coming in, and, you know, we're trying to get that finished by January so we can leased out. So part of what my when we were at the meetings for the Old Town strategic plan, I was at the first two meetings of that, and we had brought up the suggestion of could we have the alleyways paved so that it's an easier access off the sidewalk to the back of the building. We met with the owner, you know, who it is, but the the person owns the back and the two lots just right behind us. We met him over the summer, and he had shared how his plan is to develop those properties with retail below and residential above his his plan.

So he shared what we're doing. He was like, oh, he was getting inside. Like, oh, okay. So if something happened, but we didn't know the final decision. But if something didn't get done on the alleyways, we'd have our retail frontage on the alleyway that he could also have one more side for retail frontage.

So so my request was it'd be really very advantageous for us. Like I said, we're bringing a lot of people to Old Town. Our plan is that we'll have more people coming to Old Town as we sell the back. If there was a way to more easily access the back the back of the building with a small asphalt pathway that go from Pines Pines Street up to the the door, the new frontage door in the back of our building. So I don't know how much I'm supposed to share, but that was just what

I was Thank you. I just wanted to give you the the opportunity. And I think there there are some basically, you know, what what I'm what I'm hearing is is pay attention to the alleys, and I think alleys are, certainly an opportunity in Old Town. The the the promenade here is an alley. Right?

That that that's a very clear alley. We turned this this was, you know, an alley more or less as well, and now it's a beautiful kind of walking space, highly used trail, all that sort of stuff. So, the plan does get to this a little bit. There's one action or or is kind of a a subaction, if you will, about and there's a memo in here about traction enclosures. And, basically, right now, if you were to walk all the way down where this promenade is, eventually, you're gonna hit just a whole bunch of, trash cans, basically.

And so we need to address that. And so there are there are some actions in here that would kinda lend itself to them achieving that goal. And I wanna be careful. You know, we have one business owner in front of us now, which is wonderful, and wanna work with with all of them. But we really need to think know, to me, I wanna think a little bit bigger picture of, like, what's the overall plan and not and not necessarily piecemeal it, but make sure that we have a cohesive strategy for the alleys.

So, you know, the things that I think about, the two main are, again, trash cans because that's mainly what the alleys are used for now. There is some rear loaded access and things like that. And then just from a really basic development, standpoint, you know, what, we probably need to do some type of of audit inventory study, which would be probable to look at, like, how are the alleys used now in terms of utilities, access, things like that. And if we do start a sort of a paving program, make sure that we don't hamstring ourselves or really shoot ourselves in the foot for future. So if we pay, if we do really nice, you know, base rock, all everything's gonna be expensive, base rock, asphalt, all that stuff, developer comes in and wants to develop, and they gotta put their utilities under something that we just paved.

So we need to think about some some basic logistics like that as well. But I just wanted to make sure that you had the opportunity to weigh in. It's great to have the businesses here. Sure.

One idea that that we're employing is because we're envisioning storefront on the back, we've actually added a storage room for our garbage cans. So those will be not on the alley Yep. But actually inside our building. Yep. So

And that could be it's a great segue to maybe a code update where, you know, I don't know. It'd be up to you guys and city council, but maybe it's code update to say, hey. New development have to accommodate, you know, your your trash enclosures on on-site. So where right now, everything's getting pushed into the alleyway. It's it's right way, actually. So, you know, is that really what the city wants, or do we want new development to sort of end up their own waste on-site somewhere? And that would then preempt the others. So, anyways, I think, just kinda keep that in mind. And, you know, this thing is not finalized yet. So to the extent we need to add some add some language, clarify something, add a new action, I wanted to make sure that it's not things that are as early as possible.

Alright. Only one hour in. I'm gonna just keep going here. So this is kind of the the a nice visual of the vision. And I I will say that this is probably, like, the most intense that this is that the the outcome is likely to be in terms of, you know, development intensity. You know, we talked about Cannery Square being extended. I think it's very possible that it that it could be extended, but we're showing a building there right now. So I just wanna kinda put that out there that this is a fairly robust kind of, you know, corridor. These two corridors are fairly robust at what we're assuming here. I don't know that it's it's actually gonna play out this way.

But you can see, you know, buildings along the key city owned properties and the key private properties. This is the symposium building here, the gas station here, site d. You know, everything's kinda filled out, and then you can see the new entryway here. And I think this is a great visual of sort of how this new front door could really, you know, transform this area. I think it's a great visual of of sort of, you know, how this could actually turn out.

So let's see. I'm not gonna go over all of that. We've, we've showed these to you before, but just to give you some, some visuals just to run through it really quick. So this would be one city owned property, one private property. The only thing I'll say here is that the the plan and the consensus we've gotten from city council is pretty firm on having a public space somewhere on this property.

We really wanted to have one at Sherwood Boulevard And 3rd. We wanted to have one at Pine Street and Fir and first, which is Festa Robinhood Plaza, which we have now, and then, of course, the third one being Cannery Square. So kind of a a, you know, a row of open spaces as you come down, which I think is a really strong vision. Site d, site e, and site f, this is from what we've been all we've been hearing, single story is is likely maybe two stories, you know, nothing nothing taller than that. You you all approved a residential development here, of course.

Site e, I think a lot of opportunity. Gene mentioned potentially having this be Canner a Cannery Cannery Square extension, so there's some some flexibility there. This is the boutique hotel, I guess, right on Cannery Square. I think that could very well be pushed back. What I really like and, you know, whether it's here or pushed back, retail storefront facing the facing the plaza, ice cream shops, coffee shop, you know, something like that.

And then the last one, really the biggest transformation is where we have the, public work site. So this is city owned. All of this is the city owned property, city public works facility, city owned community garden. All of that would be potentially transformed as well. And so you

can kinda see see the vision there as well. Is there an alternative to the Columbia Street? I mean, we know it's a heavy lift to go roundabout two crossings over the railroad tracks. If if that doesn't happen, is there an alternative that would have Columbia Street going back into, like, Willamette or something like that so that So that instead of having big roundabout wiping out, you know, the fire station, everything like that, that it stays, tied onto the property and has a single crossing or something like that. I'm just wondering, is there a

Yeah.

Alternative that because I don't wanna get so tunnel vision on a giant transformation that we miss the opportunity to do an incremental change. Totally. That's a

good question. The short answer is yes. In the in the planning document, there's but there's three different alternatives that are shown in there. Right. And I would add, like, I talked with the civil engineers today. He marked up something. There's he'd give me three more options. So, yes. And I think, yeah. You know, the the trade off to me is is the difficulty in getting this done, but really then nailing the vision of current new retail commercial corridor. As soon as we start to, say, come down Lincoln, for example, we'd come down Lincoln and then come back over, which is probably much more viable or, you know, sooner

Yeah.

Faster, cheaper, all that stuff Yeah. Then you you lose a bit of this kind of slam dunk, you know, entry way. And so that that's the trade off, but, absolutely, that that's gonna be on the table as well. And we are talking with the fire department right now about options. Right?

Looking. Sorry. Yeah. That would be, you know, an easy the easy button to at least progress Yep. The next step. Yep. That turned the dial up.

Yep. Heard. Eric, on that on that slide,

you

know, looking at this redevelopment, I think the kind of opens area just north of of the new area. What's the potential of of oh, sorry. On the other side of Morgan Street. So

Where the church is.

Where the church is. Yeah. Is there is there a potential for there? Because I know that that's a lot of open open land. Like, is there is there any thought on what that You know, I don't know their plans.

It's owned by so there's two owners. There's one owner here, Small small white church, there's one owner. And then sort of the rest, this building here and the rest of it as it goes back is Saint Francis. Okay. So, you know, I don't know the plans. I think it's all zoned multifamily right now. Okay. Don't quote me on that, but I think that's what it's zoned. It's either zoned for commercial or multifamily.

Yeah.

And, really, it would just be I mean, it's it's up to them if they wanna hold it, what they wanna do. We've talked about options there. Maybe the fire department can go there. You know? Obviously, they need to buy it, but I think it's it's so close and so open flat, all that stuff that I think we're absolutely thinking about the opportunity there. So but at the end of the day, it's gonna come up to a willing seller. Yeah. So Okay. Or developer. Yeah.

Alright. And this really gets to now we're getting into the actual actions. So, you know, the rest of the conversation will really be about the actions. Let's just jump right in, and I'll say yeah. I have so generally speaking, we have three categories, business health and and growth, and then there's six actions, sense of arrival, four actions, and infrastructure and development, three actions. So we're just gonna go through each one and and chat through. And I don't need you guys to necessarily say anything, you know, big on these. Like, if you're just kind of in general agreement, great. And we can just be like, yep. Great. Something really stacks sticks out as a good idea, bad idea, you know, we're happy to take that that input as well, though.

So

Is there any correlation between

the numbering and the priorities?

Okay. There's two number one then a three four.

Thank you, Gina. He's a

Hypo corrections. We're happy to take that as well. Okay.

I was supposed to say that it'd be fun. Oh. Wow.

Everything's on there.

There's two number ones and, like, the other things were, like, whatever.

We're not that intentional. Okay. The one that Alright. So since of arrival, develop a wayfinding and signage plan. So this is getting to counselor Giles' comments that we're kind of off the beat track. Right? We're not right along the highway. We have a little bit of signage that says Old Town here, but a lot of a lot of the comments we get are, I did I have no clue that that Old Town was here, and what a gem. So developing a wayfinding signage plan, be Tolticherwood Road, Highway 99, maybe Sunset, others. And I'd say also within hometown as well, you know, maybe some way fun detour.

Here's these here's Mosaic Arts, like, here's the Arts Walk, you know, that type of thing as well. Number two, improve access and streetscapes. So that kinda gets to those basic improvements. So we already talked about Columbia, rail crossing, the curbless streetscape. Number three is complete neighborhood connections. That really gets to more of not really the invite people from outside Sherwood here, but I was at the, the Halloween, festival. No. There was a there was a old town Halloween in in the main things going on by Main Street. Mhmm. Commissioner Kai showed up, you know, came from his neighborhood into old town, in full in full coffee.

I didn't recognize. I still don't know where you were, but David Full Cost is

Hear it from the Minecraft movie. So,

you know, the the making those connections into the the the neighborhoods that exist right now, trails, bike lanes, that type of thing. And then promote walk, bike, and roll loops, And this would be more of a programming type of thing, not infrastructure specifically, but programming. So, you know, how do we work with whatever organization to help kinda get get, people moving around? So thoughts, comments, feedbacks? Real quick question on on the true number one there. The is there any, sentiment for or against emphasizing Sherwood's identity with Sherwood Forest on the signage? Or It's a loading question. Is it? Yeah. A little bit. You know?

So Go go ahead.

One of the conversations that well, so we have a logo, but one of the things that came up recently was because of the pedestrian bridge incorporating the pedestrian bridge into our existing logo and starting to brand with the existing, 12 and wildlife refuge look to our logo and adding the bridge to it. I mean, that's that's what I've heard the focus.

Mean, I I think it it is common sense to make Old Town more discoverable, and there are a variety of ways you can do it. So to me, that's the most important thing. I've always liked the affiliation we have with Sherwood Forest and the whole the whole story, but

I don't know if other people really should. The reason I say it's a loaded question, I'm joking, obviously. But, I you know, councilor Giles would weigh in here if he he he took off, I'm sure. But, one of the broader city council goals that they're talking about is branding, just very generally as a city. And I think so that that question and project is much deeper than even you're talking about of, like, what do, you know, what do we put on the signs?

But I think there has been you can see it in the architecture here. And, frankly, that's part of the reason why we're embarking on this plan right now and why we might do a code update. But you can see the the different movements, if you will, over the last few decades of, of course, early nineteen hundreds at Ladytown. It was true, like, true brick. Right?

Like, true historic buildings now. In the nineties, there were a few different buildings that did lean into the English Tudor, you know, Robin Hood type style. And then we have kind of some some newer ish buildings. The one most recent one didn't get a lot of, support, but there are some sort of newer modern buildings as well. And I think that's you know, I've heard both. Frankly, I've heard we should absolutely lean into Robinhood English tutor, and that gets it almost into, like, 11 worth of time deal. Right?

And I was only talking about signs,

but Thank you for clarifying. But I then I then I would say it gets back to the city branding more generally. You know, the the school district Bowman. Right? They've kinda leaned into it. But I but I think before we did that, we wouldn't the city council would need to answer how do we wanna identify ourselves. Right now, the the the logo is the home

of

the Tualatin National Wildlife Refuge. Okay. So far, that's what we've gone into. Whether that's right, wrong, whatever, that's our logo. And so I think it's a little bit bigger question. But,

I don't think most people would that would be the first thing they would think of. When I've talked to people, I don't care with Sherwood. Yeah. Like the forest. Oh. Yeah. You can have Robin at festival. I mean Yeah. That's us.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think

you keep Sherwood Sherwood. It seems like that is at least a heritage component.

I think it would be

a distinct change to go to the bridge and the wildlife revenue just branding.

Right. Right. But but the the bridge is gonna be I mean, the pedestrian bridge is now gonna be part of it. They have so what they've talked about is there's some big concrete, forms that they used when they made the ends of the bridge that if they could place those strategically around town, then that would create this continuity of theme. Not that I I I don't know if I agree. I I have no design taste whatsoever, so don't ask me. I'm just saying marketing guy either. Yeah.

I just

I just know most marketing people like to retain at least some of the heritage of what you are even if you're advancing for Yes. An element of it.

You know, just to be kinda clear on where where, I guess, the planning documents are right now, in terms of, urban in terms of architecture, essentially, the code right now for Old Town is early American code as opposed to an English tutor code. That's where the code is right now. Yep. And and the code in this plan kinda doubles down on that. So, basically, what's in this plan just to be clear, what's in this plan is late eighteen hundred, early nineteen hundred art a historic architectural style.

It it really is not it really doesn't lean into Robin Hood English tutor. With that said, I think there's plenty of space for programming every you know, Robin Hood festival, businesses, whatever else to lean into that. And there could be a a point in time where we get the clear direction. Go all in Robin Hood, and then and then we are. Right? But then he's coming to the city council. And then

are we gonna dramatically keep with, you know, light poles, streetscape, furniture, etcetera? Yeah.

Yeah. Yes.

That was quite controversial when Blue came in.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I can't I cannot speak on you.

Eric, so bring up a place, a place

like

Leavenworth. How does a city theme itself so consistently? And, like, what's required in in that process? Is it something that the city at some point, like, okay. This is what we're gonna do, and all property owners need to conform to this now? Like so.

Okay. And I I Like The

river is similar.

Draconian code. It means it's this way or there's no way. Since yours can't beach Yeah. Or all cities are extremely rigid in their Yeah. Deal. Yeah.

And does it don't they go through, like, a design review? I mean, they're not just a planning commission, but they have an architectural design review committee that approves every Yeah. Exterior.

Sandy's starting to

do that too. Okay. Because, you know, I I think we're all familiar with the process where someone comes in and wants wants to create or build something, and then there's something that they have to follow or adhere to. I think it's a whole another process to make properties or owners who aren't going through, you know, trying to revitalize property. You know? You you now need to follow soon and and and

with the new Oregon code, how do you how do you force design standards Yeah. Someone that don't have to

follow it. Fascinating how because Washington is kind of following Oregon. California has always been first on this sort of de interest in deregulation development, and Oregon has followed. And I hear that Washington's next. Washington just didn't clear injunctive standards. Oregon was a few years ago. So I wonder now, is design review also going away in Washington? It very well might. And that's a fascinating question to me of how those jurisdictions that are so branded in in many ways. Like, how do they deal with that? If if, for example, if now someone could go put in a modern thing, I'm not sure how they're gonna deal with it. It's a good question.

I have a something to add to that. I was part of down in Southern California design review board. That was one of my roles down there. And so having an aesthetic kind of framework in the municipal code as something that we could rely on was definitely helpful. And I think it did provide a sense of, context and historical character and maintaining and not necessarily conforming someone or some project to it, but it certainly gave the city, some clarity and also some nothing that would that would be, like, enforceable per se, but it was definitely, in my opinion, something that drove the conversation in the direction that the city wanted to go.

Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that's the gonna be the new approach with this all this deregulation is, like, a little bit of peer pressure, frankly, of, like, here's what and that and and in in any ways, that's what this what this apartment complex that you guys approved. Like, there wasn't a whole lot that we could stand on, but it was a lot of conversations, a lot of setting expectations even outside of code, and that's kinda how we got to that design. So, it's it's harder because we can't just drop the drop the code on it. But

It's okay, Eric, before you leave this page. The only comment I have is on on the develop the wayfinding signage plan. Is there a way to tie that end to the medallions?

I'm sorry. Which one?

On the develop the wayfinding and the finance plan, tie that into

the Sherwood medallions. Medallions in the Like, upstream bridge? Yeah.

So we have consistent look and feel.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I'm to be honest with you, I'm not all that familiar with medallions. I think we're getting permanent medallions Mhmm. In in sometime in the future. Like, yeah. Absolutely. And I think, like, I appreciate you thinking really big picture. Right? Like, not just because, ultimately, the the vision for sure would we wanna lean into bike, all that stuff. And so, like, yeah, can can we have a consistent wayfinding from the new pedestrian bridge all the way into old town?

Well, I'm thinking the medallion theme would be our wayfinders.

Oh, I gotcha. I gotcha. Potentially. Yeah. And so

it's an idea. Just to be clear, like, well,

maybe maybe hire a consultant to sort of develop the, you know, the the template, if you will, if we kind of love it.

But it's more than blue signs on the freeway. Right?

I think so. We gotta get past ODOT. So on on Highway Highway 99, it might be blue signs, but as you kinda get to the assurance, sure it's getting a little different.

So can are we are we making edits to this, or are we gonna do how how would input be?

I think we're really just looking for prioritization, really, unless you like, unless something's glaring. But yeah. Go ahead. Say what you're flagging.

Oh, well, like I said, what's your mind about this idea about doing adding the medallion scene? Is that part of

what I wanna get into that.

That's not what we're we're not suggesting edits to this per se, but just saying if that's the number one one, then when it comes to plan, then we would incorporate the details that we're throwing out.

Okay. Exactly.

So we can move this.

Yeah. And I think what maybe the last thing I'll say on feedback tonight, is there anything missing? Like, is there anything glaringly missing? I don't think it takes a whole lot to add something in here. And, you know, maybe we do it, maybe we don't in the next five years. But if there's something that you're like, this is a great idea, it should be on here. Like, happy to take that feedback. So

Screenscape improvements, I think, should include Mhmm. The the lands, the furniture, the light poles. I mean, if we're gonna be consistent in Old Town and go curveless, and if we're all bought in on Blue, then let's go all in on Blue so everybody knows Yep. You know,

in Old Town. Are we

all in on Blue? I I I don't know if we are, but it could be part of the streetscape. So streetscape's not just curbless. It's it's the furniture and the accents that go along with it. Yes. And we

and we do have an old town streetscape plan, which we do, buy too. And I'll say it's it's more of the the style. We can paint them blue. We can paint them black in the future. But the benches, the the the trash cans, all that would be a certain design, basically, and then we can paint them.

But if they need to be colored and someone puts them in, Now let's not do green and blue and orange and black. Mister Barnes,

I think, had a comment also. Mister Barnes?

That's funny. I I did a street a streetscape program, for another city up

in the Bay Area or down in the

Bay Area and, you know, bollards and street lights and all this and that. And so, yes, I mean, having a set palette that they can choose from, limiting it, that's gonna be one thing. Something else that I wanted to bring up that I thought might have been not actually missed, but, you know, climate change and and whatnot as we as we try to develop our our downtown, our old town, we have tons of water coming in right now with, you know, an atmospheric river. And then when we get into the summer, in the dry months, you know, we're watering those streetscape plants. Right?

We gotta continually dump water in there. Maybe as we do an underground of utilities, as we get redevelopment, some type of cistern or bioswales or something like that that we can have as a landscape streetscape feature, something that we can say, alright. Well, we're not only are we we've got impervious pavers over here that are retaining water that we can use, you know, for in the future or, you know, we're recycling this type of thing more in line with our tree city approach and and really trying to kinda reduce the the heat island effect by keeping our trees and keeping our our landscaping available. So that's something I wanted to see, in addition to, you know, that promoting like, the way I broke it down is the short term, midterm, long term priorities. So, like, one year to three years, three years to five years, and then five years plus.

Yep. And so that is something that I think we can look at first as part of, like, long term development is, you know, like, hey. How can we really get new developers sorry. And so yeah. I'm on the clock.

The understanding financial responsibility, if a new development is coming in, what is their fair share, if that's the case, of, you know, undergrounding new utilities, but also including rainwater catchment and beautification for the city and ensuring that that information is provided in this strategic plan.

Yeah. I think that's great, commissioner Barnes. And I think that's, like someone's gonna come down to code and getting that with new development. Other stuff could be more capital capital led, and I'm thinking the promenade, you know, and, like, the High Line, for example. I know we're not in New York City, but great job, you know, getting vegetation in in that corridor. So Yeah. Maybe with the promenade, there's opportunities for swales, things like that. Because, if it's not all paved right now, we will need to pave it and then manage this water. So

So one and I'm sorry. I'm kinda pirating right here.

But Go ahead.

Some of and I did send this to you, Pedic. So, Eric, we I do have some of the information that I can just gloss over here. But something that I wanted to like, the trash management program, there are ways in which to, you know, screen those things, make sure that the trash cans aren't just, like, littered about. And I think having an aesthetic that, again, ties into a Sherwood, This is what you know, we have these three options for alleyway improvements, for trash cans and and turn it into more of a, you know, a natural flow. Like, they walk through.

Yep. This is where the trash cans are, but it doesn't look like it's just a pile of trash cans, right, or something like that. And then with respect to parking, we have this new development that's going in there. We've got a new building and whatnot. And what I've seen in other cities and and counties is you have to be able to accommodate that parking on-site. So they build below, and I'm not sure where our soils are and and geotech and whatnot. But have we ever considered, you know, like, I saw in the slides a parking structure potentially down by I don't know if it was d or or wherever it was, but an underground parking facility associated with new development.

Yeah. I think we're likely looking more at probably an above ground public facility is probably what that turns out to be. You know, these sites are since they're mostly the remaining sites, 5,010 to 10,000 square feet, they just don't lend themselves to an underground. You basically need to have, like, 10 stories to make that pencil. So I think we're looking at more of a publicly funded shared parking structure somewhere in a strategic location is probably what is what that is what the plan is getting to.

You need a pretty big site because even in Portland, like, you get them on the West Side because they're, you know, a 25 story building. But on the East Side, for example, there's really nothing underground. So that's you know? And, Art, please jump in here. I'm speaking for maybe for the city of Portland here. But, you know, on the East Side, when you don't you can't go above x number of stories, we they really don't see anything below ground. So I don't think the the finances are there for that.

Yeah. I figured as much. I was just trying to think outside the box.

Yep. No. I appreciate it. And, just to to close close put a cap on that, the one of the items here somewhere in here is to do a parking study. And so, you know, we get we do get complaints from businesses. People are parking us at my my business for two weeks, make a move. Right? So part of this is as we grow, making sure that we're getting ahead of that parking conversation and plan and planning appropriately for parking, including potentially a structure.

So to wrap this up, do you need us to rank any of these, or you've got a plan?

Not if you don't want to. Okay. If any it sounds like wayfinding is is is supported. Anything else that really jumps out as a priority? No.

Okay. Well, I'll get

that. Great. Alright. Business health and growth. Old Town branding is the first one. Partner and support Old Town advertising and branding initiatives. This could be in partnership with Main Street. It could be in partnership with, the Chamber of Commerce. Like, you know, we may not may not do branding on our own. We wanna ensure that businesses are on board. Expanding events and programming, getting to your point, commissioner to Watson about Saturday market expansion, like, plan absolutely calls for. I what I'd say the small events and the big events. There are big key marquee events plus all the small stuff we do. Lean into all of those and have the city support those is really what this is saying. We support them already.

Support them in in various ways. Attract targeted businesses, promote and recruit new businesses. There's a lot of detail in there, but it's kinda guess what to counselor Giles mentioned. Can we develop, fast track permitting? So just to give you an idea of what this would be, we we do we know the target businesses.

It's gonna be restaurants, arts, other things that we don't have right now that bring people in that sort of, contribute to that sense of place, that eighteen hour downtown. It could be maybe even nonfinancial incentive. Hugo, Art, myself, fast tracking. If you are this business, you will get fast track service, right, and to really incentivize them getting through the permit system. On the on the far end of that, it would be a financial incentive.

That's gonna come down to budget, city council, finding the money, all that sort of stuff. But the key is to really focus and prioritize, frankly, certain businesses over over certain industries over others. Incentivizing in incentivize investment and business growth, fairly similar to what I just mentioned. So, really, I just kinda covered both of those is target the businesses, but then incentivize them in certain ways is four is three and four. Number five, and this is where your world comes in, actually, initiate regulatory modifications.

So that would basically means develop a code, make a transportation system plan, etcetera, ensure feasible, compatible quality development. It's not gonna be easy as as you all know with the rollback of our rollback of our ability to enforce our code. But it gets to the other conversation. Can we incentivize? Can we put a little just peer pressure on them, you know, and try and get get the outcomes we're looking for and be able to point to the code even if they can get exceptions to it as the standard. And the last one, parking strategy, as I mentioned. So initiate a parking study and management plan.

Now if I ask the priority question because I'd be worried if that was the sixth priority on that.

Thank you. Sounds like it's higher priority in on your list. You Definitely. Yeah. I I think parking is

a Yep. With with this much development

in this small of an area and with where we already have parking known parking issues, I think it's it's it's a big priority. Yeah.

And we need to be able to have that to target businesses and incentivize them to come.

Does the state of Oregon not, have the ability to thwart a you know, let's let's just assume a the parking the general structure parking that you were talking about a bit ago, Eric. Could the state of Oregon thwart that? Okay.

They're mainly, what they're gonna get into is when a developer comes and wants to, build something for housing, mainly, there's limited things that we can do around parking. Yeah. But it would not limit our ability to say, we're putting a, we're doing a study, you know, big picture study. B, we're putting a parking structure there. We

can build our own parking, but we can't ask someone who's putting in

Gotcha.

20 units to put in any parking if they're within a quarter mile. To do that, actually. Right. That's

Cool. Other thoughts on these?

I I would think the feasible, compatible thought about the regulations and the code, it's probably gonna be, like, a short term, midterm, long term, easy Sure. Medium, hard, and then some of it after after we see how some of the code. But it would be nice to see how hard some of them are gonna be. And I would like to see a code enhancement that says easy is the thing we're looking for. If you come in with this exact development criteria and your building looks just like this Mhmm.

Staff level decision in Old Town. Yeah. If it's not exactly this, then you go through the regular process. Then we can then we can get rid of barriers to development by making the right thing the easy thing. Yep.

K. But I don't know

what that you know, what's the right thing? Obviously, it's not tutor. But Not right now. What's the things?

What are your thoughts?

Alright. It's a big load of time.

Yeah. I'm gonna put my timer down for five minutes before my little one goes to a pumpkin. So

Okay. Thanks. Thanks, commissioner Barnes. Alright. And the last one so I think we're we're this is the last slide, by the way. Just Okay. So the last one is infrastructure and development, and the three are identify priority redevelopment sites. We've kind of done that already. City council has already said, d and a, so we've kinda got that already. Prepare and initiate developer offering.

So, this would be site g would be a good example. Site a would be a good example. And, really, we need to understand the vision a little bit more to the point I was just making about, you know, we need to do a little more planning with you guys potentially and then do that develop develop our offering. But, we would do a developer offering for the city owned properties. And then the third one, develop an infrastructure and funding plan, initiate a financing strategy, and consider adoption of a local improvement district.

And this gets to fairly big picture infrastructure planning. So the main issue that we know we have is overhead power lines. We have to address those if we're gonna get a lot of more a lot of new development, especially on smaller properties. And probably a little bit boring for this group, but and it's in the plan. There's an infrastructure memo. We gotta pay attention to things like stormwater. Do we have capacity to commissioner Barnes Point as well? How are we managing storm? There's storm water so, you know, regional storm water swales that all this water is going to. We gotta make sure those are at at half capacity, things like that. So we need to just take a closer look at that. And if there's things slowing in fruit the city can do to sort of make development easier, then we should be doing those things as well.

Yeah. That's on commissioner Barnes' comments is we've got, what, 90%

of these lots are permeable services right now,

and they're gonna be paid. So Yeah.

What do we have at least? Yep. Yep. Manage that. Alright. Yep. And transportation. I've been trying to streetscape, sidewalks, all that infrastructure as well. Any burning thoughts on these ones?

Goes back to make the right thing the easy thing. If they can if they can come in and develop with some of the things that we want, fast track through engineering, staff level decision, go to grading without having to whatever monkey generations you have to go through Yep. For everything else. Yep.

Okay. Great. I think that's it. So just to to recap, we will bring this to you, it looks like, by the second second Tuesday in January. So that'll be a public hearing. We'll accept public testimony, and then you guys will give a recommendation. So to the extent that we're gonna make you know, we'll make the changes based on your feedback, we'll kinda clean up all the typos and everything else. I need to get through this in detail, clean all that stuff up, and it'll bring a really clean version to you guys. You guys would recommend to counsel. Counsel would adopt in February. So what specific

did you see besides GenesOb

is one number one Oh, I gotta I gotta do a full look. You know, I've kind of been tracking this over Not

that but from tonight's conversation, what what did you take from us that's gonna implement a change from the draft that we saw? That anybody else thinks that we need to make sure we incorporate. I just wanna make sure we capture it Yep. So that we have it as an navigator.

Right? So we're not recrafting it. Explanation of, like, how this document's been. Yes. One from from the beginning. Let's see. I heard the so just, I guess, backing out a second. What's not in these in this document right now is actually, like, a table likely that has timelines on it and and priorities. And so I think that this conversation, I'm gonna go back and talk to the consultant and say, highlight parking as an early priority. Highlight wayfinding as an early priority. So it's gonna be put into a table, and you guys can review that. Okay. That's that's kind of the big takeaway. Okay. Perfect.

Plus the plus the early one that I mentioned. And at in the right location, figure out how to incorporate the hourly conversation as well. Okay.

I just wanted to there's a lot of discussion. I just wanted to make sure we're capturing.

I was talking back to you guys. Yeah. Cool.

And so those are those because there were two blank sections. The performance the the priority actions and timelines. So that's what you

were talking about. That that is this is gonna inform those.

And then performance indicators. I've do have we been given or has the consultant mentioned, or are you looking for feedback of how we know we're successful? If you guys

have that feedback now, that's great. I'm not quite sure what they're thinking of. It's probably going to be things like how many new businesses are opened, how much, you know, new sidewalk is added. I would assume those would be the nature of the performance indicators.

One primary thought I have, Eric, which doesn't really really add to what you what we would be looking at in January, but our downtown or our old town, I mean, sorry, is really something that a lot of cities don't have in my opinion. Yeah. And I also love how its size. It cannot get too big.

Yeah. Yeah.

So we have to be very careful with what we do. Yep. But it's very

walkable. Yep.

But I would also say now it's always been very quirky as well. Right? There are a lot of properties as you walk around the alleys. Some are kinda nasty, and some are and some parts of the old town are really, really no. Yeah. And if we were to do the things

It's not in its words here.

If we were to do the things that That was the e b o.

Like like the curbless, all the way up to site a Yeah. Getting rid of the overhead lines, making the alleys more walkable Yeah. Making the street crossing at Washington. You know, we do all those things are gonna be inflection points where developers and a lot of just regular people are gonna say, it is so nice. This is so nice. I wanna be here. Mhmm. Like, not live here, but I wanna come here or I wanna have my business here.

Sure. Sure.

So I think this actually does have a lot of power to it if we really and carries this through the next five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you, Prashant. I think eclectic maybe is a good word as well. It's a little bit it's a little eclectic. Right? It's like it's we've just Well

It's a it's a 100 or

a 150 years of Yeah.

Evolution. So All indicators. I would say we should probably put in here some sort of checkpoint that we revisit this in in one year. And even if we don't have perfect performance indicators now but have a checkpoint one year after implementation so that we can then start making some of

the mark marker improvements. Do we have any metrics at all on on foot traffic? I I mean, I see city of I see in the Oregonian articles about foot traffic now versus, you know, this year, this year, this year. That would be a fascinating way to see

Let's add that as a, you know, a performance indicator. You know, we can

I I would assume there are ways to automate that tracking without facial recognition?

We're gonna get AI right on every corner to acknowledge you every time you walk past that.

And we can gauge how how you are There we go. Based on facial recognition. Are people smiling now in all town, or are they not?

There's a term for that. Black mirror.

Yeah. That's what

it is.

Show about it.

That's what it is.

There's there's a there's a marketing term for that, man, that they used to engage in some ways. Emotional state of mind as they experience something wild. Yeah. So

I think also the performance indicators to my mind would be incorporating a survey with Main Street, you know, having having, them and the chamber have a couple of surveys now and a survey in two years to see have we have we approved and make sure we have similar questions. I I just it's really frustrating sometimes to see some of these plans then just get shelved. And so to have performance indicators that are measurable and timed so that we revisit it would be

Yeah. That's great. I love that idea. Yeah.

How do some of our thoughts slash recommendations get incorporated into next week's hearing? Like, I'm I'm guessing we're not gonna be changing any of these diagrams based on our conversation tonight, but we talked about file swivel stuff. We talked about site g, site e, Canary Square, other things.

Yeah. I mean, how do those make it into ultimately going to counsel in some fashion? Yeah. I think, frankly, there's some stuff that's that's not like, not everything you said here is gonna is gonna be reflected, I guess, in writing this plan. Right? Yeah. The big thing I wanted to get out of you guys was prioritization. A, make sure we didn't miss anything really big. Like, was there anything glaring that you guys wanted added on? Was there anything to take off? And then prioritization. So that's the main thing I wanted to get out of you guys. Really, there's there's quite a few is, though. I haven't read it in a while, but there's quite a bit of context, I guess, in in these chapters. And I think that's how I would envision getting some of the details in here.

So just sort of revise the the paragraphs, if you will, of the form. They kinda said to add the color, if that makes sense. The question.

I I think so. Yeah.

I mean, it seems like this was already kind of pre vetted with counsel, so it's not like we're gonna be making changes and then re recommending it. It was. I think we're

I think you guys are on, like, the document itself, you know, kind of on the margins at this point, making the changes. But if there were something that you guys were like, that's a terrible idea. Like Like, true. We would hear you out on that, and we and we would take and we would take that back to the council. Yeah.

I think I think having more more flexibility in the Cannery Square area Yep. So that it flexes whichever way is more appropriate.

Yeah.

You know, the the building that's right there next to your crown, you can't make it be, like, a light shade of gray instead of the same color or some sort of indication

that it's

concern. Too much development right there where the where the people's face is. K. And it's too Too high or

too tall.

Yeah. Yeah. K.

If we could make those less

Taller.

Less certain, you know, that there there is more understanding that some of this is is still in flux.

Yeah. I mean, significantly. Talking here, but, like, you take away that building that's Exactly. You take that away. I mean, that looks like it about doubles the size of Cannery Square, and your first building is that is that parallel one there. So, yeah, we will make sure to incorporate. And, frankly, commissioner, Vance, I've heard from the mayor and a few others, like, they really wanna expand Cannery Square. And so I don't know for sure if that's gonna happen, but it it it, like, you're on the same you got you're on the same same wavelength with that.

So if CareScape were to expand, like, is the vision for it to expand with more hardscaping or to incorporate more more softscaping, more

It's a good question. Ask I

think know?

TBD. TBD. We will get a we will get a landscape Yeah. A landscape architect for this and and have them help help with and we do alternatives and that type of thing.

Yeah. I think expanding the the the green grass area or having more of it in Canada Square, I think, could be beneficial.

And having it be level. I mean, right now, there's a little mountain.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Personally clearly is not available. Yes. Personally, I love the idea of some some nice or really nice grass, you know, kind of fixed it with pavers or something. Think it's a great idea. Yeah.

Super quick question. There was illusion in here to a worry that maybe signage and wayfinding might bring too many people in. I remember when I read that, my first thought was, it's only so big and there are only so many businesses and there's only so much parking. How could we possibly bring in too many people? But I wondered if that's another question where I thought I wonder if other people would disagree. I don't know how you how you could go, oh, man. We shouldn't have put that signage in. We got too many people.

You're driving around a parking spot.

Yes. The other the other thing they've talked about it was trying to look out because everybody thinks they need to park within a 100 feet of where they're going. If we were to look at some of the other areas that we go to where you park and then you come, you know, could we get partnerships with with middle old middle school or some of those other where you have parking areas and people can't walk or box to town and then create that walking trail so that we're not only focused on having parking in our downtown. Why not have the parking a little bit further out so that people are walking to and from?

I I guess I'm more I've always not minded walking as much as as other people do, so I don't think of having to walk four blocks to be, inhibiting, for some people do.

True. Like I said, last four years I mean, yeah, walking, biking, all that stuff's great. I I like a lot of the Mhmm. I think it's within our goal of this area too. But, you know, when I my kids are a little bit older now, but when they're really little, not bike riding there.

I'm not gonna walk in there. Yeah.

Yeah. If we can't park near it, we're just not gonna go. Right? That's it has to be addressed for the people of Sherwood. And that was kind of the heartbeat on my question originally to the counselor Giles. It's like, who is this for? I see. It's for us. And Yeah. We need to make it for us.

Mhmm. And and I yeah. I think yeah.

I think in in my opinion, it it primarily is, and that's the that's the I'm not sure. The events bring in other people as well. Certain events bring in other people, but the tree light ceremony for that's that's a local local. Right? Those are the and so I think that's primarily the the the main focus.

And, you know, I don't see I don't see us well, let me just say this. I think I don't think we have a problem yet, and I think it's really important. And you guys are saying the right things, and we'll pay attention to it as well. And, frankly, it's a multiyear process, but we're we're not too far too far into development, into growth where, like, we're trying to correct an issue. And that's what I'm very, like, happy about is that, like, we're saying, look.

We need to watch out for this and make sure we get it right. And I think that's a really good place to be, right, as opposed to, I guess, we're, like, overwhelmed and we're getting crapload of complaints and, you know, and we and we gotta try and backtrack or, you know, we're kind of in a good place to be like, let's move forward intentionally and get this thing done right. And I think I'm optimistic because

Great discussion. Thanks all. I need to check out.

Thanks, Commissioner Brothers. You. Anything else? Alright. Thank you for the time tonight, and, see you guys in the New Year. Thank you.