Planning & Infrastructure/GIS Committee - workshop

Thank you for coming. If you haven't gotten lunch, please grab one. We've got lots. And I want to thank you for being here and showing a lot of interest in downtown. The city is pleased to be partnering with the Downtown Development Authority on this effort to develop a five-year plan for downtown Shreveport. And when we say a five-year strategy, that doesn't mean we start five years from now. We start almost immediately. And that was one of the big advantages of working with retail strategies. Okay, I've got to tell you this. It happens every time I talk. My wife is calling me. I have hearing aids. And for those of you who have hearing aids, you need to understand that it rings in your ear. So about when I first got them, about a year ago, a year and a half, I was talking to about 160 people, and my phone was over there. And it was ringing in here. And you have a little button. So I pressed the button. I thought it would disconnect it. It answers it. So I'm talking to 160 people. And my wife is saying, I can hear you. Can you hear me? I can hear you. I'm trying to keep my poise. And it ended with, well, if you can hear me, pick up a half gallon of milk on your way home. So without fail, she called. When we say five years, this process will have a lot of small wins. Almost immediately, we can start implementing some of those small wins. The biggest thing I think is different about Downtown Strategies is most consultants come in, they do a report, they hand it to you, and they say, be free. Knock yourself out. Find the money. We work with them hand in hand, one on one, for the next three years. There's a high accountability. Have you done this? Have you thought of this? And it's fluid. This isn't a one and done. This will constantly change as things change in our environment downtown. But more important, I would say, than downtown strategies, sorry, is you guys, the business owners, the residents, and the tenants. Your experience, ideas, and perspective will be important in helping us craft the priorities and the strategies that are to come with this plan. We all know there's no single plan or project or organization that is going to change every challenge we have downtown. What we can do is develop a cleaner sense of where we want to go, identify the real differences and what will make the difference, and establish priorities that will help us make better decisions about where we put our effort and our resources. That's why we brought in Downtown Strategies. They've done this work in communities across the United States. And over the next several months, they're gonna be here calling, asking questions, digging into reports, and helping us turn what they learn into what I think the key word is actionable strategy. So with that, I'd like to invite Jeremy up to give us, uh, and to listen to us on what we need to do. Thank you. Awesome.

All right. Thanks Bill. Did a great job of setting the stage. My name is Jeremy Murdock. I'm the community development specialist with Downtown Strategies, which is a division or team of our larger company called Retail Strategies. I have my colleague Lacey Backus here as well. So we're excited to be with you this afternoon. We've had a great day, great visit. I got in town yesterday, spent a lot of time yesterday afternoon exploring downtown, had dinner at the Blind Tiger, did all the things, and then we've had a busy day today with various meetings and bus tour and everything else. Just give me a lay of the land of people in the room. How many of you are property owners? All right, great. How many of you are business owners? How many of you are downtown residents? Awesome. You're part of like a key organization, DDA, tourism, chamber, that type of group. All right. Elected official. All right. Anything I missed? All right. That's good. That's a good lay of the land. It's a great mix. This is exactly what we want out of this session. I'm going to start off just giving you a little bit of background so you understand why we're here, what we're trying to accomplish. our approach to this type of work. Bill did a good job of setting that up and explaining that, but I think our approach and process is a little different than some of the other planning processes you've been a part of in the past. How many of you have been a part of a master plan, strategic plan, something like that? All right, a lot of you have already. So ours is a little bit different, so I wanted to explain all that so you understand what we're trying to accomplish. And then the rest of the session will be about listening to you all, getting input from you. I have a series of questions to ask you and all that. So this is my hometown of Starkville, Mississippi. Anybody know what's special about Starkville? Cowbells, yeah, Stark Vegas. Home of Mississippi State University. We're a small college town. But Starkville has a special place in my heart and in my career. I went to Mississippi State, so that's where I learned my professional background. My background's in landscape architecture and urban design, so that's where I learned how cities grow, how they evolve over time, how design can be used to create a space for people and the importance of that. I actually spent almost 15 years working for the university before I came to downtown strategies, and that's where I learned the community development field of working with communities around Mississippi, and then we expanded to the neighboring states as well, and working with communities and with people that are trying to make their place better. And so that's where I learned how to work with different groups and organizations and municipal government and how all that works and how to foster collaboration, how to take action and how to facilitate groups like that. So a lot of my work with the university was spent working with groups and people like yourselves that are interested and passionate about their community and want to see it become a better place. And how do you get there? And so that's where I learned that. Startville is also my training ground just as a volunteer for like 20 years now, which is hard to believe. I've just been an active volunteer. I started out with just grassroots kind of groups. Then I started volunteering at the farmer's market and eventually started getting involved in other boards, committees, and commissions and things like that. And I've been doing that for 20 years just as a volunteer. And that practical experience of sitting in a boardroom talking about parking and street closures and all these things and learning how all those different decisions impact people like you that own property or that own a business. It's easy to make those decisions in a vacuum or make them on paper. It's different to understand how each decision impacts all of you. I've also been the recipient of consultant work. So how many of you have consultant fatigue? Yeah, a lot of you have consultant fatigue. fatigue, and I get that. I've been in these sessions in my own community, and I know how you can be defensive when somebody from the outside comes in asking about your community and starts meddling around. So I understand all that, and that practical experience really has influenced the work that we do at Downtown Strategies, because it's not just me, it's the whole team has that practical experience. And the things I've learned throughout the years of working with hundreds and hundreds of communities around the country, the ones that have been successful at making some sort of progress of making that change happen that they want to see in their community, whether that's downtown or education or health or whatever it might be, there was one key factor in all the ones that have been able to make progress, and it was that they relentlessly focused on doing the doable. Not sure if that's grammatically correct or not, but that's the term I use a lot. Doing the doable, what do you think I mean by that? What do you think I mean by doing the doable? Oh, come on now. Y'all don't want to just listen to me talk for two hours. Short term, yeah. Realistically attainable goals, perfect. So it's working within what you have and what's within your reach at this moment. It's one thing to just have this wish list of if we get a grant or if this happens or if that happens, that's great and that's good for long-term visions. But the analogy I use, obviously I like food, I like to eat, I like to cook. we look at the ingredients that are in our pantry right now, what can we do with these ingredients that we have right now? Not if all these other things happen. So the groups in the communities that have been successful, they were just focused on things that they had control of and things that they could do, and they just continued to chip away at these things. And the interesting thing is some of the communities we work with are very small, they have very limited capacity, very limited resources, So their doable is very small. Can we pick up the litter, sweep the debris, and maybe pressure wash the sidewalks? I mean, that's their doable. Other communities we work with, their doables are much bigger. It's can we form this public-private partnership to leverage this redevelopment project? Or we work a lot with Collegetown, so can we get the university to the table to partner with the city and the downtown development group to do something? Their doable's bigger, but it's still relative to their Does that make sense? And relentless, I use that word very intentionally, too, because those of you that are involved in this type of work recognize that a lot of work goes into a single project. And guess what? When you get through with that one, there's another one on the list. You have to be relentless with this stuff and consistently chip away at that. And so that approach is what our team takes to this type of work, this downtown revitalization work. And I think, well, I mentioned my practical experience in Starkville and just my work over the years. And that's true with our whole team. We all live this life in downtown and that practical experience influences everything that we do. Uh, Jim Gregory is a former main street director, tourism director ended up working her way up all the way to be the CEO of the community development organization. So she has experience more from the practical or staff side of things. Uh, I'm more from the volunteer side. Laura lives in downtown Birmingham, which is very similar to downtown Shreveport, by the way. And so she lives that life of what it's like being involved in the neighborhood and revitalizing downtown Birmingham. Taylor's from a very small town, so she has a lot of influence and feedback on our smaller communities that we work with. But we all bring that practical experience and real-life experience to the table as we do this work. So our professional experience is one thing, but I think that practical experience really influences everything that we do. And so in a nutshell, and I'm going to talk more about this, but in a nutshell, the work that we do is to work with communities around the country to develop short-term strategic action plans for their downtown. And when we say short-term, how many years are we talking about? Who was listening to Bill? Anybody remember what he said? What's our scope? Five. There we go. Five years. How many years? Five. So if we're talking about what's realistic, in a five year time frame, the types of strategies that we're gonna be recommending are gonna be very practical and very tactical type things, right? It's not gonna be these pie in the sky, long term visions, right? And I think that's what's different than maybe a typical traditional planning process, is usually you're looking long term. Big picture, long term in the future, which is super important, but I think that's where our work layers in, because you have some of those processes underway right now, you have some long term plans already in place, and our work layers in underneath that to figure out, okay, what are some tactical, practical things we can do while we're getting the resources and getting the ball rolling on these bigger picture projects and plans, okay? The other thing that makes us unique, and Bill did a good job on that, setting that up as well, is our focus on action. We call it a strategic action plan for a reason, because we put all of our emphasis on the action. The plan is the starting point, we don't want Does this be a list of ideas that we give you and walk away? You already have the ideas. You have the things that you want to see. The question is how do you get these things done and all that. So a big portion of the partnership is focused on that implementation support of how can we hold your hand as a community as we try to jumpstart action from this plan and other projects that are on the list. So our approach is small scale. It's practical, tactical. We believe in incremental change. We don't think that there's just this one silver bullet project that can solve all your problems. We think it's these layers of small-scale projects coupled with some larger-scale catalyst things that come into play, and incrementally that change happens. So I wanted to illustrate that, and I've been using this transition for years, because I think it just shows and illustrates the impact of that incremental change. Is this a vibrant downtown, a vibrant streetscape? No, is this what we're trying to go for? This isn't the after photo we're going for. What are some things that we can do to this little sleepy side street to make it a more vibrant place? What is it? Okay, landscaping. So this is a very harsh environment, right? So a lot of concrete, asphalt, brick, soften it up with some landscaping, some plants, perfect. Amira, that big blank wall's just screaming for something, right? What was it? Yeah, paint some paint. Yeah, we need to fix some of the infrastructure here, add some more definition, things like that. Do we know if there's anything going on in these storefronts? Some signage, things like that, show what's going on there. So yeah, you guys get it. So I'm gonna show you how this can, I think we have the after photo of what this could be, but how can we chip away at this incrementally over time? So maybe the first year or so, a group can add some benches, maybe that's some sort of civic group or fundraising campaign, add that and some oversized planters. You're already doing some of this in downtown right now. So now we've started to soften this. We've shown some signs that people care about this place. I think that's important too because before, it was just this neglected, side street by doing little things like this at least shows that okay, there's somebody that cares about this place and there's something going on. Maybe the next year we partner with the arts organization or the local school or whoever it might be and we turn that big blank wall into now it's something that's gonna get people's attention, maybe cause you to go explore that side street instead of just bypassing it and it's turned that more into a destination or something that's gonna get your attention. Now maybe we're getting the private sector involved to add some awnings, which gives you an opportunity to add some color, add some signage. Even these sandwich board signs on the sidewalk, those potted plants, merchandise displays, all those types of things, I call them signs of life. We need signs of life to let you know that something's going on in that downtown. I can't tell you how many communities I've been to that when you drive in and drive around downtown, it's like a ghost town. Like you don't think anything's going on. But once you park and explore, you might find out that inside the buildings, there's things going on. There's boutiques, salons, whatever it might be. It's just not obvious from the outside. And that's super important. So how do we show those signs of life? And up until this one, back up one, up until this point, it's been maybe civic groups, public sector investment, private sector investment, right? Now that we've shown some momentum on this street that justifies the bigger expense of the infrastructure work. Or it makes a more compelling grant application if you're going for bigger funding to fund the infrastructure projects. So instead of starting with that, we started with the small scale things, create some sparks, build some momentum, and then we use that momentum to tackle the bigger ticket items, right? So now maybe we've justified the bigger expense, which that's a big jump, but redoing the sidewalks, street trees, street lights, things like that, but we didn't start with that. And I feel like a lot of communities try to start with the big thing instead of starting with, okay, here's some things we can do right now to increase vibrancy on the street. Vibrancy is the word I use a lot. I think that's what we're trying to achieve. And nobody's saying anything about the power lines. Maybe we can win the lottery and bury the utility lines there. So from before and after, that's a big jump, but we can chip away at that. And for some communities, that may take a decade to work through those transitions. Others may be able to do it quicker, but it's the point of let's go do something. Let's start chipping away at this stuff now instead of just waiting. And it's important to point out, it's not just on the public sector to do everything. I think this is an attractive streetscape. They've got the brick sidewalks, decorative benches and trash cans, decorative street lights, street trees. I mean, from the city standpoint, and probably the downtown development group, they've done everything right. They've created this interesting, beautiful streetscape, but is this a vibrant, does this give you the impression of a vibrant street? No, because we have no idea what's going on over here. What do you notice about this image? What stands out to you here on the right? Signs of life. I've taught you something, that's good. People, what was it? Yeah, you're spilling activity out to the street with merchandise and things like that. Outdoor seating you can go see down here. So it takes the public sector investment in the streetscape and the beautification, the public art, things like that, but it also takes the private sector to do their part in activating their storefronts. And if everybody could do their little 25-foot of street frontage, add two-potted plants, add a merchandise display, add a sandwich board sign, if each little storefront could do their part, all of a sudden, man, you're creating some vibrancy downtown, right? Or even if you can only get a couple of buildings per block to do something like that, it makes a big impact. And we have examples of that from other communities. So it's not the ideas that you need. You already know what a good downtown looks like. That's not rocket science by any means. I shouldn't say that as a consultant that does this work, but it's not. You know what a good downtown looks like, but how do we get there and where do we start? And that's where this work comes into play. and what we're trying to do. So backing up a little bit, I'm with Retail Strategies. We're based in Birmingham, Alabama. We also have an office in Fort Worth, Texas. Then we have staff scattered across Atlanta, Denver, Sacramento, and I'm in Starkville, Mississippi. And usually I'm having to go do this work all over. I was excited to be able to drive to Shreveport. I actually got to drive instead of fly. So it was good to be in a neighboring state and be in the south. We have two different companies that work side by side. We have retail specialists that does more traditional commercial real estate, tenant representation, property management, that type of stuff. And then we have retail strategies that has a variety of teams. A large majority of the team works in the retail recruitment side, so they're working more on traditional commercial corridors and highway corridors for national and regional retail recruitment. So we represent cities around the country and actually go recruit those businesses to fill vacant properties or shopping centers, things like that. We work a lot with real estate agents and property owners and things in that. We have a team that does small business support, which is something that grew out of COVID to support locally owned mom and pop shops, to try to give them resources and training modules. It's an online training and video education platform that tries to help mom and pop locally owned businesses adapt to the current climate. I mean, again, I grew out of COVID when things were happening quickly, but it's evolved from that. We have a downtown retail recruitment because it's a little bit different. I mean, the retail recruitment on a commercial corridor is different from downtown. So we have a platform that does that. And then as far as this partnership goes, you have the downtown strategies team that works in the downtown revitalization space. So this partnership is with the downtown team doing downtown revitalization work. And when we say retail, a lot of people perk up with that, because I think everybody wants more diverse retail and businesses and things like that throughout downtown. Every client we work with does. But what does that mean? What does it mean to be retail ready? I think what we typically see is downtowns go through a variety of stages as they evolve into becoming retail ready, because you can't just jump to, hey, we want you to open a business, because you may not have, the space may not be ready. What does a business need most of all to succeed? customers. You have to have a consistent and predictable customer base, which is foot traffic, things like that. So we have to have all that in place before a business owner can take that risk and invest in your community. And so what we typically see communities go through is phase one is that public investment, vibrancy initiative, public art, Instagrammable moments, trying to be Instagrammable so you're getting other people to talk about your downtown through different installations there. So how do we create that vibrancy, maybe in a temporary way, so you can generate some excitement. Then we move into programmed activity. If you don't have that consistent foot traffic and customer base already, you have to create it. So through events, different activities, things like that, how can we increase the foot traffic downtown, artificially for now, by just bringing people downtown, then hopefully it grows into more of a consistent thing. And more importantly, do we connect the dots between that traffic and our existing businesses? It's one thing to bring a few dozen, a few hundred, a few thousand people downtown. But if they're not spending money in the stores, what good does that do? And that was something that we went through in Starkville. We're blessed to have the university. We have 50, 60,000 people show up for football game weekends that we don't have to work for. But we recognized back in 2011 that we weren't connecting the dots between all the people that were coming. and our downtown. So we put a very intentional focus on creating opportunities to connect the dots there. Once you have more vibrancy, you're getting more attention, you have that more consistent foot traffic, then you're gonna instill more confidence in investors and property owners to invest in those properties. You're limiting the risk a little bit and showing that this is a place worth investing in so you start to see that type of activity then you see the business growth. Now, there's some hopping around in this, it's not just a one to two to three to four, but you kind of see how a downtown can go through that transition, and you definitely see signs of this in downtown Shreveport, and I think some blocks are further away, or some corridors, I should say, are further along in this process than others, but do you kind of see evidence of this in downtown Shreveport, especially those of you that have been around for a while? So, where do you think you are in this as a whole downtown, Where do you feel like you are in this one, two, three, four? Oh, y'all are going to have fun when I start asking other questions. Where do you think you are? Hold up fingers if you don't want to talk. One, two, three, four. Where do you think you are in downtown just overall? At best, one. Okay.

That's my opinion.

Yeah, no, everybody's entitled to their opinion for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think, you know, you definitely have a lot of things going on here. You have the oversized planters, you have public art, you have a lot of things going on from that, from a beautification standpoint. You have programmed activity, a lot of things that the DDA is doing and tourism's doing from events and activities and things, and you're starting to see some signs of this, just not on a large scale just yet, right? I think you have a lot of things that are kind of in a holding pattern and probably waiting on that confidence to grow a little bit, but I think you're on the verge of this. I mean, I see a lot of signs in phase one and two, a lot of evidence there, and I think you're getting close to that three or four, and again, little pockets of downtown are probably already here, but just as a whole district, I think we're probably between two and three in my opinion, but you have a lot of things, you are correctly progressing through these stages. I see signs in these categories as I walked around yesterday and drove around today, you see signs of these different phases going on. I think we just need a few catalytic, catalyst projects and layer in some of these smaller scale things in these categories to just maybe spark some more activity over here. But you're on the right track, and downtown's definitely progressing through these stages as I would expect. And so I think you may be further along than you might give yourself credit for, but that's pretty common. So the outcome of this partnership will be that five-year strategic action plan. We call it a bite-sized plan. We're not throwing everything you could ever do in downtown. We're gonna narrow it down 20 or 30 very specific project-based strategies that we think you should focus on over the next five years, and then we layer in that implementation support. I should say I use the design example in that rendering just because it's easy to see, but in addition to the physical, visual things, we're looking at policy administration, incentives, policies, things like that. We're looking at Tourism and promotion, not big festivals and events, but ways to generate foot traffic. I think narrative is a big part of that for you guys of how do we change the perception and narrative about downtown. There's a lot of great things going on here. I don't know if the general public sees it or understands it. So how do we do a better job of telling the story of all these things that have happened and are happening? And then economic vitality is that private sector. How do we help spark activity with property owners, business owners, and things like that. So we're looking at those four focus areas, not just design. I just use those because they're easier examples in a setting like this. I did want to hone in on the implementation support component because I think that is different. I think it's important for you guys to understand what we're going to be doing in that realm. So that support, quote unquote, comes in a lot of different ways. A lot of it is working with our internal team, just trying to figure out What direction do they want to go? Where do they want to start? So that's where we start with that. But then as we progress through the partnership, a big part of this is engaging you all as the stakeholders of downtown. You need to be actively engaged and involved in this as well. It can't just be happening in a vacuum with a few groups. We need everybody involved. And so we launched what we call action teams. Cheesy, I know, but I think there's power in words. So we choose those very carefully. It's not a committee, because what do you do when you get on a committee? You just talk and meet, don't really get a lot of traction. Action teams get stuff done. So these action teams are formed around a particular project. They come together, do that project, which is typically a six to eight month short-term project, and then they disband. They go do something else, right? So that's support. Templates and training, if there's a policy or a facade grant or some sort of policy that you wanna do, we may have templates already together for that, or some program that you want to launch. We have templates and examples that we can share. We have examples from other communities. We link partners together sometimes, like we're working with Bloomington, Indiana and Oxnard, California, two completely different cities, but they're both facing a challenge with the unhoused population in downtown. And so we have a call later this month putting them together for some peer-to-peer learning of what has Bloomington done that's worked, what are their outstanding challenges, And then the same for Oxnard. What can they learn from each other? Because they're the ones doing it. It's one thing for me to be the expert with a briefcase, but it's better for them to hear from each other. So we try to do that a lot as well. If it's something that's beyond our expertise, like branding or something like that, we can connect you with a trusted partner that we've worked with for a long time. And then that ongoing support. So we're talking to the internal team and those action teams every 30 days. That's how we break this down into bite-sized pieces. Every 30 days, what can we be doing to move this project forward? And so we break it down into those pieces. So there's a lot of communication, a lot of support, a lot of accountability is the word Bill used along the way to help you see action from this work. So that's what support looks like. So I gave you a background of who we are, why we're here, what we're trying to accomplish, and our approach. Any questions or feedback on that before I start asking you questions? All good? Okay. All right. A little bit different than that retail ready question, but you think about a bell curve. My academics don't like a bell curve. I have a graph in there. You think about a cycle that things go through, from beginning to peak to decline, and things go through those cycles, right? In downtowns, the cities go through this cycle as well, where you had maybe the early stages of something, you peaked where you got vibrant peak activity, Then there may be a time of decline, and then you're kind of, you know, number five is way down there. Then maybe you go through that wave again. So some of you, depending on how long you've been here, you may have seen downtown go through some of those. Where do you feel like downtown is right now? Number one is early stage of revitalization. Two is that you have some sparks and momentum is building. Three is peak. Four is decline. Five is obviously very, is struggling, all right? All right, anybody else on the other end of the spectrum? Because my ones and fives are just pessimists and optimists. There's not a lot of difference in a one and a five. Realists, all right.

Let me clarify something. We're saying five, but those that are all in the know, the biggest problem downtown is that downtown office occupancy is dismal at best.

It's dismal. I hate to say it, I'm concerned more buildings will close.

Residential has been, as all my other thing I'm hearing and seeing, it has been more successful and it's been on the upswing. Different pieces are at different parts.

I would love to know if you have any quick comments on how vital the office piece is, because it is going to take a lot more than strategy. It's going to take a definitive action plan and some real, real incentives to turn the office piece around. And I think this incentives dollar out.

But I'd be real curious what your thoughts are on the residential versus office component.

And I'm convinced we have far more supply than we ever will ever need in a long time.

And buildings, how do you make the decision to start taking money and tearing buildings down? It's a real problem, and there's no way to bring tenants in here, in my opinion, without some real incentives to make it happen. And they do dollar out, but we've got to figure out. That's a different piece. I'm trying to tie it back into the residential that's working, I guess, and understand y'all's thoughts on that. We've gone down so low on the occupancy, it's going to be a challenge for all of us.

Yeah, I think with any downtown, you're looking for that mix. That's how downtowns have worked for thousands of years. You had people working, people living, people shopping, people dining. It was this mix of uses. So you need this balance of those uses. I think you do, and I don't know the numbers. I think there's a more detailed plan coming that's going to dive deeper into your stock of buildings and real estate. So I don't know the numbers. But it sounds like you have an overabundance of office space and the types of uses that probably, I mean, that's changed since COVID, especially, of how office buildings and the office space needs. So some of those buildings, the purpose that they were built for, they're gonna have to adapt, right? Because things have changed. And so I think there's definitely a challenge related to office spaces in that occupancy. That's a challenge that we know about. But the opportunity there is that residential growth is strong. And I don't know if you all realize how many residential units are downtown. I was shocked when we started going around downtown. They're pointing out all these buildings that have been converted into condos or apartments or some type of residential use, and that's bodies, that's customers, that's people that these other uses can build off of. It's just how do we connect those dots? So I think that's definitely a challenge that we're aware of. I should have said this at the beginning. We are in our discovery phase right now, so we're learning about what the challenges are and what the current conditions are, then we're going to shift into what do we do about it. Right now I'm learning, so I learned a lot on this trip related to that. But you are strong in that residential growth, which is interesting. And we think it has to be just a matter of time before uses and businesses pop up to support those residents. Because they need gyms, they need salons, they need retail, they need groceries. I know it's a need that's been around for a long time. They need things. So eventually, you should start to see that growth in the retail sector to support the residents that are here, which is exciting.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of product. Yeah. You have so many buildings that just aren't viable at all to move into. To me, that's like a DDA probably has that information. That's kind of where we're starting. I know you drove around and you saw some things, but walking into the doors, understanding the Department of Maintenance, understanding that the buildings that are set up for residential may not even be full. and that what our occupancy is for even the buildings that are viable.

Yeah, and there's work going on currently to catalog that in a more detailed manner.

I think you can make a case that we're somewhere between one and two. We're in early stages of mobilization and momentum in this building. I think we, I believe Curtis Jackson and Gene Studios is real. I may be naive, but if he is real, then that's definitely a game changer for downtown. He's bought the most buildings downtown anybody's done in 30 years. Now, these are old buildings. He's starting to put roofs on them. We hear other things about that. I haven't built another contract with some of the people. They're still buying buildings downtown. It's continuing, and they've gotten... Right. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Rick, rolling out here not too long, is going to talk about doing something about that. And that's going to be a game changer as well. So I think we've got a lot of momentum. We've got some good building owners, some of them are in the room, that have taken old buildings, using tax credits, converted them into loss, and see a very positive cap flow. And continue to invest. And they continue to invest. You can certainly talk to that. He's been very good about that. Others as well.

Look, I've done this in hundreds of communities all around the country, and I know I don't live here, I know I'm not a resident, but my outside observation is you're in that one to two range. There are things going on. There's initiatives in place for the vibrancy and the beautification and art. There's things going on from an entrepreneurship standpoint to spark activity there. The city's engaged in this, which a lot of times we don't see. That's not a given that the city government is locked in to downtown like they are. You have a DDA that's super active and has been for a long time. The other partnering organizations with Tourism and Chamber. I mean, that's not a given that you have all those groups actively working together for your downtown. So I think you have a lot of things building. You just haven't had that big spark that I think a lot of you locals want to see. But I think a lot of stuff's on the verge of happening. It's how do we get those, nudge them over the edge. And so I do feel like you're there. Yes, ma'am. Do you think that

I think we're trying to get... Yeah, you've got a lot of opportunities there.

Yeah, that's what really stood out to us. that's what really stood out to us driving around is if you have all these full-time residents downtown, they need stuff and services. And so I feel like if we had some, and that gets back to, do you have retail ready space? Do you have properties that if I want to open up a gym or some sort of boutique store, is there somewhere I can reasonably move into that's in a move in ready condition in a storefront? And that's something I think we're going to explore a little further to figure out, okay, where are, are moving ready spaces that if we do have an entrepreneur that sees the potential to capitalize on these residents and visitors where can they go and how can we connect that dots. That's something that we've made a note of today to explore a little further. You have a lot of building stock. How much of it is ready to move into in the next 90 days or whatever it is because that's probably a hold up there because to have that big of a residential population is huge. Usually we're trying to create that in communities. So you already have that residential base, how do we encourage the private sector to capitalize on it? And so that's a big opportunity.

We have the boats, and they're the largest private lawyer as a whole, and one of the largest in the area, and they're right there on the Red River, living downtown next to it. The medical school definitely needs housing, and our law school is very close. Right. Right.

I used that pantry example earlier, what ingredients you have in the pantry. You have a lot of ingredients. You have a riverfront. You have the gaming industry. You have the medical students and things. You have the residential base. You have a lot of ingredients. It's just what's the most doable thing in the short term, because some of those big office buildings, I mean, those are some of those large-scale projects. What are some more small-scale doable things, which you have evidence of that. You have some buildings that have been renovated, some of the smaller-scale ones. You have stuff going on on the west end that I think is exciting that might be replicated here to get some of those shorter-term activations going. You have a lot of different ingredients. It's just trying to figure out, okay, over the short term, where do we start? What are some of those early catalyst projects from the private sector side that can be done? So I think that's what we're trying to explore. I'm gonna skip that one because I think we have a good idea of that.

I was going to suggest it'd be very interesting to find out early in your process how successful the businesses that are here now are doing. What's the health of them? Do they have sales to survive? I'm focused on the office environment mainly because we need foot traffic, and I'm concerned that we could lose a few retailers or services downtown that will be a further spiral. Yeah. Okay, so unless something's done to them, I see it as foot traffic. Right. I mean, maybe the residential can do it, but I hear at least three retailers that I know of, and they are not doing well. And that has been brought on predominantly because of the office occupancy. I just don't know if residential can come back fast enough to help that. So I'm concerned. You know, a long-term plan, but we've got to do something to both sides. And, you know, quite frankly, I think a lot of the office buildings are not going to be feasibly suitable for residential. And that's a concern of mine. I think there was a CBRE national article that they were estimating at least 75% to 80% of all vacant office buildings were not suitable for any type of redevelopment into residential.

Yeah, it's an issue nationwide. It's not just here.

That's a whole separate plan and issue, but it all has to do with the vibrancy of downtown. To me, you've got to have that for these retailers to survive.

Yeah, and that's where I was talking about earlier about, okay, it's one thing to bring people downtown because that's foot traffic and we've got to do that in the short term to support who we already have, our existing businesses, but are we being very intentional with connecting those dots to where we're getting people within the district, are they going in the storefronts? And are we working with business owners to figure out how they can get the people in their door and make sales from it? Because that's really why we're doing a lot of the tourism type things is as an economic development tool. So how are we connecting those dots? So talking about the positive side of things, because I've seen a lot while I'm here, where do you feel like some of the current momentum is downtown? Is there a particular block or corridor or district that you feel like has some momentum building? Who's doing, this is my kind of technical way, what do you want to show off to visitors? So if you were entertaining me for the day as a visitor, or if you have a friend come in from college, you know, come in town, what are you going to show them in downtown? I show them our very cool historic buildings and I show them our art.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm supposed to be repeating. Yeah.

I'm supposed to be repeating this for the recording. So one of the things is the art, which you have a very strong foundation in the arts, which is very impressive. You can tell that's been a decades-long thing, not a recent thing. Your historic architecture, that was something I was not expecting. You have some beautiful historic architecture, and you have examples of redevelopments and restorations in place. So repeating that for the recording. The what? Festival Plaza, yeah. Yes.

I actually had a friend visit here last year, and his favorite thing was the aquarium.

The aquarium, yeah. I mean, you have these big assets that a lot of communities do not have, and so you have a lot of things going for you. What else do you want to show off In downtown, show people downtown. The bridge of lights, yeah. Great, great asset there. Yeah, the film center, another great asset right downtown. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, I don't understand. Yeah.

So that's like the 600 and 700 block of Texas, right, that we were talking about? So you're talking about the 600 and 700 block of Texas, where that is your example of how this can work and what can happen over time, because I think from a street skate standpoint, it's a beautiful scene from a public infrastructure standpoint, and the uses you have there. You have a mix of office, residential, coffee shop, restaurant, all these things, arts-based facility, all these things there. And I think you're right, and that's something that of notice is there are these pockets of activity throughout downtown, but there are these gaps. And so how do you start to stitch downtown back together? How can you start to pull some of the things that we're seeing in these hot zones to where we're making these connections between these different pockets of activity? And so that's where a big focus of our plan will be of what are some short-term things we can do to connect those dots while we're starting to set the stage for some of these larger scale things that you're mentioning. and seeing what we can do to incentivize them to remain in downtown. And then going out and trying to find other people to come in and incentivize people for coming in. How can we incentivize people who have already invested in downtown to stay and to grow? Yeah, so she's saying how do we invest in people that have already, or how do we support people that have already invested in downtown instead of just focusing on new, new, new, which is a typical problem. We get excited about the new shiny of somebody coming, but how do we support people that are already invested and have already bought in to what we're trying to do downtown? So I think that's a great point. That's right. That's exactly right. Any other little pockets of activity? We had, you know, part around Texas.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so the recent announcement of some expansions and things from Bally's down at the riverfront. What a beautiful facility, my gracious. The Strand Theater is what he mentioned, absolutely. Anything else? Are there any entrepreneurs or business owners that are doing, my technical term again, doing cool stuff, like is there some entrepreneur that's just doing something that's a little bit different, a little bit unique. Anything come to mind there?

I think Rigo's Coffee, those guys took a risk, and they stuck it out downtown to the good and the bad. Hopefully they're making money, but it's been an entrepreneurial load for them. Young guys in Shreveport that do that kind of stuff, they'll stick it out down here. So I take my hat off to people like that, and there are other examples. We have a pharmacy, too, which is very new to our downtown area.

We're trying to build up a rapport and let people know downtown that she exists. Yeah.

So there is, yes, the perception is there, but the reality is there as well. Yeah, we're trying to balance that and make sure we mitigate the perception, but also address the real issue with crime, for sure.

I think there is a perception that Shreveport is not a walkable downtown, which it is. You don't have a massive footprint. Yes, you're right. This is sort of a car park. I mean, I say this as someone who moved here, so. I've had to walk bigger cities in America, but I've been here long enough where if I have to walk more than three blocks, I've had to go down this street. I didn't want to show up first. But dealing with that perception of walkability I think will help quite a bit because then it creates the destination where you can come park your car, and instead of just doing one thing downtown, you can do four things downtown. A lot of people come downtown just to do a single thing, and then they leave. But I don't want people to come to RFC, then go get coffee, then go over to HireSpace, then walk down to the aquarium, because then you have families coming in from within that 50 to 60 mile radius to do a day trip to Shreveport. And we still haven't gotten that locked in,

It gives me some of the perception of it being a walkable downtown. And I think why, I think you're hitting it on the head of why some people don't think it's walkable is because they're just coming to do one thing. Where in what you mentioned earlier about the gaps that you have these pockets of activities or these destination businesses or attractions, but there's gaps in between them. So people aren't going to walk past a block that's mainly vacant to get to that next pocket. So that's why that's important. to stitch these things together so people will explore the Brewer District. When I was doing my desktop research before this trip, it did seem like, I mean, you do have a big footprint, but it seemed very spread out, like from the riverfront to the Methodist Church, seemed like a pretty good distance. But when I was here walking around the district, it's super long. You can cover a lot of ground really quickly, but how do we improve that experience for people while they're doing that. You know, they have a perception of crime.

Yeah, so those are some things we have to deal with there for that experience.

I think too that tenants and the business owners that are downtown now, I think this room needs to be filled with them as well. And we hear from them what their issues are, what they think that needs to be done to help bring in more businesses, to have, build their business, to have, you know, fill their apartment complexes. You know, what do they need?

Yeah, we have some questions in a minute, specifically for property owners and specifically for business owners about what they need. So we're going to get there in just a second. Yes.

So this is a real basic thing. You made reference several times to the fact that people don't know about what's going on in downtown. They don't know the successes. And I can tell you that the PDA tries really hard to push that information out there. Push, push, push. People don't see it.

Tell us how to make people see it.

I mean, I think anybody who has a business or an organization would appreciate knowing the magic to getting eyeballs on your message.

Yeah, and that's something we're trying to learn about what's going on now, like how are things distributed, how is that communication going out, and then we're going to come up with some strategies for how you tie this together. And I know, I can tell you, people that do this every day feel like they're beating their head against the wall because they're like, this information's out there, why are people not getting it?

The point you're saying in other cities that have solved some of these problems, like what Mark talked about, the office market, I don't see it ever coming back. You know, one thing, we have all these 1980s buildings that were designed a certain way, the way people worked back then, when everybody wanted to be downtown. And it's not feasible, even if you had a good prospect to go in and redo that space. You'd need $35 a square foot of rent, and we're at $12 or $14 like we were in 1985.

Yeah, the office space thing is expensive. That's a nationwide thing that people are trying to figure out how to adapt because the reason that those buildings were built, they're not used the same way anymore. So how have they got to adapt? There's a lot of people trying to figure that out across the country. I would encourage you, I know that's a big, real issue. Those are big challenges and big dollar projects. What I'm trying to encourage you to do is let's look at things that we have control over right now that we can make some headway on in the short term so we can start to create. You're definitely not getting, well, not exactly. You gotta create this type of place that people want to be, want to come, want to visit, want to spend money, want to invest. So what are some small scale things we can do to really build that reputation for Shreveport and combat some of these perception issues while we're working toward those bigger, larger scale projects.

One of the problems we need to look at is we're about to have 700 people come downtown into one building in one area, and they're gonna have to leave their office at 11, 30, 12, go to lunch for an hour. They've got to figure out where they're gonna go and get back to their building. We have a downtown circular transport . We need to make sure they have access to that and understand where everything is so they'll spread out. They won't all go to the Beckville, they don't mean Chinese, but they'll go other places. And I think that's going to be a struggle because these people are coming from another part of town. They probably don't know downtown that well. And we need to get in front of them to make sure they understand.

We have a daytime customer base. We're about to boost that from all the governmental uses. Do you have the residency?

I think parking, visibility of parking, knowing what garages are available for visitors, what's strictly for tenant parking, wayfinding signage, which is coming, I think will be a big help to help people circulate better.

I'm probably the laziest person in this room, but I've always said downtown parking keeps people away. and particularly for the retailers people i'm i've got support on this forever we just don't want to walk too long you know that's that's just a mindset everywhere with parking but if you create the type of place that people meet people figure it out you go to popular downtown popular districts it's not like there's just parking everywhere you have to figure it out but it's worth walking three four five blocks because of what you're going to and so that's my answer that there's not one thing you can do to solve the parking problem. It's just a mentality thing. But if you create the type of destination that people want to go, they figure it.

But it's also the paying to park where you don't have to pay to park in the suburban market. You also have one-way streets. One-way.

I did go down the one-way street one last time.

With people who aren't used to one-way streets, because this is the only on-way where we have them, then it scares them and they don't want to come down.

Some people are just intimidated by downtown. They're not used to street parking and one-way streets and all that. But this is where with wayfinding, things like that, we can make it easier on that experience and make it the type of place that people want to come. All right. All right, we talked a lot about the challenges. We know kind of what the things you're facing are. We've got a five-year time frame. What's doable in that five-year span? What's one small thing we could do? There's a lot of things that we can't do, a lot of things we would like to see. What's something that you have in your mind that's like, okay, we could do that? Anything you've seen in other places that you think could be replicated here? What's something we can do?

Well, we have a lot of history here. So I think about when you talk to South Carolina, and they have these historic tours. They're driving things like that to show about the history. I mean, what can we do? Maybe it's not horse riding. What can we do that would be, you know, tours? Tours to show the history.

capitalize on the history, like Charleston and other places have walking tours, walking tours, things like that, to capitalize on the history.

And then they do the bike rides over in East Bank, and then there are other areas where we've seen success where they're trying to do, I guess it's like once a week, some of us have seen a few bike rides before, but again, something like that, we're going to have to get a whole new, you know, crime and make people safe to do that. Right. That's the starting point of my opinion. You've got to stop people from wanting to leave before you worry about getting people down here.

Yeah. And there's some things that are in the works for that. It's going to be coming up pretty soon. They'll start to chip away at that. I think Marshall Street two-way again. Marshall Street two-way again?

That's the main drag into town.

Activate more storefronts just with posters or art or colorful windows and things like that. The EDA has done some of that which is great.

And that's something that's going to be a big part of our plan. In the meantime, how do we distract people from the vacancies and the additions of the properties? And I think what DBA has done in the war, filming with the sword photographs and the banners, and there's some that have that's been painted as a mural. But I'll say that's not solving the root problem. But it distracts me as a customer, as an outsider, from that condition of the building and those gaps. So I think those types of treatments are high return investment there for those types of treatments.

Yes. Use more of what's existing and what comes to mind for me is we've got this whatever you want to call it, tent and theater thing on the riverfront, which I think is very, very cool. I mean, we've got the multi-level where people can bring a lawn chair and sit. And, you know, I haven't been there in years. I mean, they used to do a live after five or whatever it was downtown and have some musicians out there on a Friday at five o'clock. It's used sparsely every now and then, but that is, you know, right there on our Red River, you know, which is a focal point of our community. since they're empty for the most part.

Yeah, so you use what you have better, especially on the riverfront and things like that. Perfect. Anything else? Okay. All right, so this is for my building and property owners. Do you receive interest from prospective tenants? Are you getting calls from people interested? If so, what are the hesitations that they have? I think we've quite covered some of this already. Anything new that comes to light? And is that something that's changed for better or worse in recent years?

I'm getting fewer tenants.

Fewer interest in tenants, okay.

Okay, so I've been leasing for buildings downtown for 20 years.

Okay.

And I'm getting fewer tenants. Interest is declining.

They're going to the suburban market.

Okay. Okay. will help us and its interest is declining. Anybody else have a different experience?

I have the same experience.

The interest has declined in the past.

Well, we just have 400,000 square feet of buildings that donors bailing out of.

I mean, when you look at what's for sale downtown or the occupancy of just buildings that you can't occupy. Granted, there are buildings out there that... that we can't go into without massive amounts of work. But even the buildings that are ready to go, to plug in, there's a lot of things. It continues to be.

Anybody else want to add to this?

Just in terms of working with them, the one thing that probably best describes their situation and circumstances, and probably how they perceive what we're doing right now, they see themselves as the Titanic that's sinking. And anything else beyond focusing on the sinking is like rearranging the deck.

Yeah. Which I get that, but I think to solve some of those root problems, which are big, messy challenges, There's other things that have to happen. To expect somebody to come and renovate one of these major office buildings, multi-story office buildings, It's finally a pencil out right now with the existing foot traffic and the existing condition of the downtown.

See?

So you've got to fix some of these other things first to make it a more attractive investment for those types of things.

Yeah, even if somebody gave me a building for free, the amount of money that it would take to bring that building back up and be viable, I'd have to charge $35 for a footprint, and I can't get that.

I totally get that, but we've got to change some of these other things that are more foundational to make it more attractive for those investments to make it a reality. And to make that pencil out a little bit better. And we'll also be looking at incentive programs and things like that, if I can help fill that gap for certain projects. So there's a lot of different things that have to be happening simultaneously. But, you know, all this is related. I don't think you can just jump to, hey, we've got to put all of our focus on renovating these big office buildings. I don't think that's realistic to be your sole focus right now. You're going to continue to work on that, but we have to do these other things to make it a more attractive investment. What's the biggest obstacle you've faced in building vacant spaces, maintaining your apartment, or developing your apartment? Is there anything you want to say to that?

Can I ask a question that some of these properties, realtor property managers, what would it take incentives to get more people in these buildings? We've talked a lot about retail. Retail is sexy. Everybody wants it. You can't just sell each other hammers. We have got to have some really viable companies in downtown in order for it to change. We have to have stuff outside of retail. We don't have enough residents in downtown to support a grocery store. I mean we just don't. And so retail will always follow. And so we've got to have true economic development and grow the companies that are currently in downtown and invested in downtown through whatever incentives would make a difference to them and help them grow their business as well as bringing in companies.

Yeah, let's get specific. If the city could do one thing, or the community as a whole could be not just city government, but If they could do one thing that would help you as a property owner, what would that be?

I think it's different for each company. I mean, I think it takes knocking on the door of a company that is downtown and saying, what can I do to help you grow your business? Because that may be different for each company. I can't answer for everybody.

So I work for existing businesses downtown.

What we have downtown as far as office and retail is very inexpensive pricing right now. It's the best deal in town to come downtown. The problem is we have people moving out of downtown who are paying those low rents going to pay higher rents because they've done well downtown and now they can afford to live closer to home. We have a lot of movement, South Shreveport, North Bossier, so they don't have to fight the traffic to get down there. It's not as attractive. But, you know, they started their business here. The rents are right for them. It's helped them grow. And now they've done well. They want to leave. You know, we're seeing a lot of that. What can we do about it?

That's what I'm trying to shift to. What can we do about it? We get what the challenges are. What's something we can do?

The only thing that you can do is to address... the reality of what will take you, and quality of life, so that you can shift the perception. So you can shift the perception until you actually change the reality.

Yeah, you good? Enforce minimum property status.

No, that's good. So we can set the bar, and I talk about this in almost every client I work with, you have to figure out as a community what's your low bar that you're okay with, with how people are allowed to maintain their properties. What is that low bar? Are we okay with broken glass, and all this stuff. Are we okay with that or not? If not, we gotta raise that bar through policies, ordinances, code enforcement, things like that, which, not super fun, not super sexy, that's what it takes. Excellent. Excellent idea.

I asked to enforce an anti-camping ordinance. People aren't coming in here from South Street Court if they're sleeping on sidewalks, if they're stepping over somebody. Some people think that's a perception issue, some people think it's a reality issue, but those people, they just aren't going to come. They'll drive down one of those little areas between two areas that are more vibrant, and they'll turn around and leave. They're not comfortable. Okay, good.

Okay. This is what I'm trying to get to. What are some specific things that we can do to start chipping away at this?

I have to leave because I've got to go feed the meal. All right. Anybody else have specific things that we can do?

I think part of it is we have to look at downtown differently because as you mentioned the office space downtown is never going to be like it was before. I was just in Portland a couple of weeks ago and their downtown is vacant. So it's not just an issue here. And so, yes, we're always going to have some office space downtown, but some of our office space is going to have to change into something else. Because we're never going to have the occupancy like it was before.

The world has changed. The world has changed. Look at all those rear-view mirror stories. We keep talking about looking in the rear-view mirror and talking about how things used to be. We've got to start looking out the windshield and figure out where are we going, what's this next phase that we're going into, and how do we get there? And some of these are difficult jobs, especially those big, big properties, but we've got to start looking, okay, what's the future and where are we going? So we're good. Okay. Business owners, on the other side of your existing business owner, do the businesses downtown collaborate and work together on certain things, like do the restaurants plan a little commercial on their own, or are any businesses meeting together as a merchant's association type group? Are they getting together, you know, like the Texas Street Services are getting together on a regular basis, anything like that?

They might go to DDA to do it.

Okay.

Generally. Go DDA.

What's the biggest obstacle you face as a business owner? We've covered a lot of this, but anything new specifically for you as a business owner?

Well, the feedback I get is poor retention. I can't hire anybody who wants to come down here and work. You know, they live in Benton or they live in Stonewall or somewhere, and it's just too far away, and, you know, they want to live more closer to home.

So try to work for us.

And then in addition to, you know, rental rights, they have to factor in parking for them and their employees.

So in addition to rent, business owners have to factor in parking costs and things for employees and staff. Perceptionless ID. Perceptionless ID, yeah. There.

I think part of it's getting people who have now grown up in the urban areas.

They never came down to the downtown core. They used to be here, and so they've never grown up doing that. And so I have a lot of friends that never come downtown. And they're like, oh, it's not safe. There's no parking. There's no this, there's no that. I go down here every day and love it downtown. And changing that perception through some micro events. You know, a lot of them will come to the big things at Festival Plaza, but not get into other areas of downtown. So doing those things to get even our local residents, not just visitors, to come downtown.

That's something that came up in conversations earlier, that you kind of issue a challenge to where you have generations that didn't realize the future to downtown. So that's not part of their history or memory or habits of coming downtown, even in days past. So you have a lot of things you have to change, perceptions about downtown, not just from safety and those types of things, but making downtown top of mind that, hey, that's somewhere I can go eat or shop or whatever. So you've got a habit you're trying to break. which is another unique channel.

We have a festival coming up called the Red River Rebel that's going to bring people downtown. And not just downtown people staying here, but people will drive in to see the arts, the entertainment, it's world class. And you can't get it really anywhere else in this kind of way we have it here. And so I think that those kind of things we can build on. We can do more of, we can learn from those. And this auditorium brings people all at the socioeconomic levels into the down to here concerts. straight concerts and small, off-Broadway shows, and they come in, they park, and they leave, and they go back home. They don't eat, they don't hang out, they don't stay. We have this auditorium where he's in world-class music entertainment. Same thing. They come in, they go there, and at least they stay. And so those are things we know we can work on. Those are challenges that the DDA works on a lot.

It's a shame that Riverfront developed so late. and so poorly, really, but we should have an event every weekend, mass fishing, boat races. There should be something on that river for every weekend.

Yeah.

I mean, it's been acknowledged. They're trying to build that up. That is a unique asset that you have. A lot of communities with kill forms have a river right there. So how do you use that more, both from the shoreline and the riverfront, but also the water itself? Yeah. Activity like you're on the water.

Water skiing, you know, exhibitions, just something, everything. Yeah.

All right, what does... No, we have an answer. All right, from a business owner standpoint, what's one thing that the city or community could do that would help you? Some specific things.

Bill answers his phone 24 hours a day. Call Bill. Bill will fix everything.

You got that?

Yes.

I think that in this day and age where our media is so targeted, it's very hard to share a message about all the things. There's so many things that we have here, great places to eat, great things to do, great places to live, but we can't, we don't, we're not consistently providing our information in a way that everybody can get to it. And so, you know, there's too many different options. You can't hit every, you know, satellite TV station to get your message or your radio. People listen to, podcasts and I mean there's so many different ways I don't think there's one go to that, like there used to be the newspaper or whatever, you can see what's going on this weekend or what's, you know, I think that's a challenge. I don't know if the city could do something. I know that there's a Shreveport Bojo fun guide. I don't know if it also, you know, talks about places to live or I don't know, or submits to it like we should, you know, but there is no one, communication vehicle where we can share all the great things that we have and consistently.

Yeah, that's a challenge in every community. How do you get that information out? Because we all get information differently. Some of us rely on social media. Some of us are more traditional media like news makers and news networks and things like that. But how do we get that information out across a very broad audience?

A couple of years ago, Chamber put together a website called cheesereport.com. I encourage you to take a look at it. It includes neighborhoods, it includes events. It's got links out to the fun guide. It tries to catalog a lot of the good stuff here. It's got information about the capital parks, We'd love your feedback on it. You know, hope we try to build it as it's not branded by the chamber. It really is just to try to, a way to try and create a front door. It's choosetreeport.com. We'd love to get your thoughts on it and take a look.

Choosetreeport.com, that's a lot of information.

So something like that is great, right? but people have to know to go to it, right? So we have to, maybe there's a campaign around that, that the city can support somehow, or some organization can support, so people know that that's where they go to get the information.

I think money is probably a big thing. I mean, if you went and used money, it's always going to be, you know, the best that you can walk into the front door with and offer a business owner. And what that looks like for that business owner, I can't say. Because one business owner may really need help in this particular arena. where another one may be helping a completely different effect. It may be taxes for one person or improvements for another. So it really takes going door to door and saying, what can I do? What would make the biggest impact for you, Mr. Business Owner? for this particular building that you're in or this particular business that you're in, what can we do to help you grow and stay? Whether that's a tax thing or not, it's really independent on what matters to that business owner.

So incentives for business owners, that's definitely something we're looking into. There's a lot of different examples. What is the feedback from some of you that are in the room? What type of incentive would help you? If you just have big money, What is your biggest need? Try to get down to a little bit more specific.

That may be a private conversation. That may be a one-on-one conversation, is what a specific need would be.

All right, so we've all been to vibrant downtowns on vacation or others in the region or whatever. What are the specific things that you've seen in other places that you think we could copy and potentially copy and paste in downtown Shreveport? Let me be specific.

Yes. One thing that I've experienced in going to a city for a specific event is where business owners came together and knew that this event was happening in their downtown area and they would come together and incentivize visitors to come to their different restaurants, coffee shops, or whatever. We can take that a bit further in our triple closure area and maybe have Southern Choice Family Day in downtown where all the businesses come together and offer family discounts for different things that are happening in downtown. And we can do it . But the businesses working together with DBA and with the downtown residents to come up with incentives to bring people downtown. We also, I didn't hear anybody mention that we have a student population downtown. We have the Southern University Metro Center right in that 600 block of Texas Street. Maybe, you know, offering student discounts or student day at Rhino Coffee or whatever. But that will take the businesses getting together, maybe some of the different municipalities offering incentives to those businesses to offer discounts for those special days and events.

Yes, being more intentional for businesses to collaborate and work together. to capitalize on traffic.

And not just drawing them to one business, but drawing them to downtown to stay around and to visit different places. After you have your dinner and coffee, you are invited at a discounted rate to attend a movie, a family-friendly movie at Robinson or whatever it looks like.

Anybody else have any examples that we've seen elsewhere?

cool let me give you two more i think we need to really know the importance of who we are what's downtown we need to be the historians on what places are there so we can educate our visitors obviously in the tourism industry and we know but not many people who live downtown really don't know about the other existing businesses i think that's very important Really? There's artists? Absolutely, there is. We have art students that live in these lofts. So we really need to collectively understand who we are so we can make sure that we attract the visitor but also build the knowledge of our history. That's good. Very good.

Density leads to serendipity. So if you have density, you stumble across a shopping mall over there or a restaurant or a bar, and somebody's really important, you don't have density universe where you have pockets of it, but they're disconnected. So if you could find a way to fill in those, to graft onto the existing density to expand that density, then you have the opportunity to walk for a block or two and maybe come across the experience you didn't expect.

Yeah, bridge the gaps and things like that in the short term. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. All right, so next steps, just going to give you an idea of where we're going in the time frame. So I mentioned that we're in a discovery phase. This workshop, this site visit, is really the last big moment of our discovery phase where we're learning about Shreveport. Now we're going to take everything back, our observations, your input, all the things we've gathered, and our team will start formulating that Strategic Action Plan. So we start with brainstorming all the things you could do, and then we whittle that down to what we think you should focus on over the next five years. And so we look to present that draft plan to our internal point of contact in October. We'll revise that, finalize it, then figure out the best way to roll that out. Then we pretty much immediately shift into implementation support. So where do we want to start? What are some things we can do to help jumpstart that action like I mentioned earlier? And we have two more years of that support and accountability after that. So that's the immediate timeframe of where we're going. We do have a survey, which are widespread timing surveys, but if you have additional things you want to share, or if there's people who couldn't be here, there's a survey. It's rather lengthy. It's just a standard survey that we use all over, but it is a tool. that you can share with other people so they have opportunity to provide input. So that goes into everything that we do and analyze to figure out, okay, what are the strategies that you need to focus on over the next five years? Appreciate your time today. Appreciate the city and this partnership. Looking forward to working with all of you.