Mayor and Council - Regular Meeting

Smart Town Council meeting December 15th. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to [clears throat] the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Please remain standing. And as we have a moment of silence, let us remember those families that were adversely affected by the violence over the weekend from LA to Sydney, Australia, and of course to Providence, Rhode Island. Thank you very much. You may be seated. Roll call, please. Good evening, everyone. Hello. Good evening. Councilman Drew here. Mayor Got here. Councilman Johnson

here. Councilman Miles. Councilman Olsen here. Councilman Pope here. and vice mayor Dr. Upure present. Thank you all. Thank you. All right. Item four, add additions or deletions to the published agenda which is before you. Do we have any additions or deletions? And if not, do we accept the published agenda? Do we have a motion to accept? I make a motion to accept published agenda. Second. All in favor? Opposed?

Motion is carried to accept the agenda. Item five, consent agenda. Letter A, council meeting minutes from December 1st, 2025. Do we have a motion to accept the minutes from December 1st? Make a motion to accept the minutes dece from December 1st. Second. All in favor? I opposed. Motion is carried to accept the minutes from December 1st. Thank you. Item six, non-aggenda items. Mayor and council members, I have fast. Um, I'll go first. I'll make it real quick.

We have Caroling on the Square, which was scheduled for Sunday. We moved it due to the 19° temperatures outside. We moved it to Friday, which was the day of lease contention with other activities and events. Um, we have worked with Just Serve, who is going to donate food for us. Our goal was to reach 1,000 pounds of food to donate to the ministerium for the holidays. It looks like due to the predicted weather, we're going to have to cancel that event. Um, I haven't run this by our illustrious town manager yet

or however, if we are not able to have it on Friday, [clears throat] I was thinking maybe we could move it to March and do a happy birthday USA. same type of concept with the karaoke out there and bring in the coffee truck and some other stuff going on. Um, so we won't lose the activity, we just lose the holiday event. But on the 21st, Christmas caroling is taking place in front of the First Presbyterian Church, between the First Presbyterian Church and um the Fire House that is going on. Um the last few weeks have been a real whirlwind with activities and events and community opportunities. Uh Pearl Harbor Day was a tremendous success. Um you know, and of the pictures that I have, I have Dean up on top of the firetruck raising the American flag up there, which is pretty cool. Um my granddaughter thought that was like the end all that the guy on the firetruck waved to her. Um [laughter] Um, the event went off without a hitch. Um, and Alvin is going to do the national anthem for us next year, December 7th at 11 o'clock in the morning.

Locked loaded in security. Um, and um, the firehouse was kind enough to invite us to or invite me to the annual Christmas party over the weekend and that was that was a very nice event. It was the first time I've ever gone. They only invite a limited number of people and the mayor was one of the ones. That was a true honor. Um I think that is it. I do want to wish everyone a happy holiday and a merry Christmas. Um because this will be the last time that we possibly see each other between now and the holidays. Unless of course you work right here in town hall presents multiple times between now and then or the police stations. Um,

oh, we had the Christmas parade, too. And Tractor Supply was good enough to donate um salt chip bales. They're like hay bales, but they're protected, so they didn't get wet. Um, and we had a windmill that once we got it together, we realized the windmill was probably higher than the electric lines in Clayton. We couldn't use it in the parade, but we did go ahead and use their um six-foot chicken. [clears throat]

And it was really, it was just very simple. It was strung lights on a big trailer that allowed a whole bunch of us to come together as one and just have a nice little country Christmas. So, it was very nice. I think that's it for me.

All right. Good evening, everyone. Um, thank you to our town staff for an amazing year. Thank you very much. Um, I want to talk about the Christmas parade as well. After the Christmas parade, we went over to Smyrna Diner and was able to uh sign some cards for our first responders. Um, take some pictures with Santa Claus. That was really fun. Uh, on Friday, I had an opportunity to be with Delaware Futures at our library. It was their end of year event where all the counties come together with their young people um and just pour into them. It was really a phenomenal event. Um quite a few people that were not from Smyrna, maybe Lewis or what have you were just very pleased with how our downtown looked um and just share some stories of what they knew of Smyrna. Um but again just being able to pour into the young people uh is just a passion of mine. Uh also just want to say that it is a holiday season coming up and that we uh just need to be mindful of those that might not be as fortunate as others and might not celebrate the holidays and that this might not be a joyous season for them. So I encourage um everyone to just check on your neighbors and check on your loved ones. Um, mental health again is something that is a passion of mine.

Uh, and again, thank you to our staff. Thank you to all of our town members that come out our meetings and your voice. We hear you and we see you. Thank you, Council Pope. Well, thank you. Um, I want to first thank the staff for everything that you guys do each and every day as we draw down to the end of the year. hope that you have a wonderful holiday with your families as well as uh our community members and constituents here in town. Um we had the privilege of actually attending an awards lunchon where uh one of our officers from Smyrna PD, I believe it was uh Officer Raleigh, Dr. Raleigh. Yes,

Dr. Raleigh. Thank you. Uh doing fantastic work, received uh an award. He was one of, I believe, five officers that were recognized and the cases that they worked on, um, one of which involved breaking up a potentially bad situation that could have happened on the campus of UD. Um, these officers day in and day out are doing some amazing work. So, I was very honored and privileged to to attend um so that we could be there to support, you know, Officer Raleigh and and SMA PD. So, anytime you see those guys and gals, you know, please, you know, just give them a thank you when you see them. They're doing a great job.

And uh of course, we had our Christmas party at the Firehouse on Saturday, which was well attended. So, um, I just want to wish everyone a very merry Christmas, happy holidays, happy Hanukkah, happy new year, and we will see you in 2026. Councilman Johnson, merry Christmas, happy new year, see you next year. [laughter] Councilman Olsen. Yeah. I just wanted to clarify from our last meeting that at no time did I ever promise to roll back the taxes in Smyrna, that I was going to do it myself or that it would be done, but I said that I would try to roll them back.

Uh good evening everyone. It was awesome to see you guys out here in this weather. It is cold outside so please bundle up. Um happy holidays to everyone as well. Um same sentiments to um vice mayor. Um please check on your loved ones. Uh mental health as well. Um it was awesome to be um in the cold at the Christmas parade. Everybody came out. Um it's amazing to see kids out there waving. So it was cool to see that. Uh but thank you for being here. Thank you to the staff for all you did all this year. You guys mean a lot to us. So thank you. Torque.

Uh, I'm gonna keep this short and sweet, but I'm gonna give a lot of my time to Jeremy um so he can put together this this great presentation. Each of you has a copy of the uh financial statement for the month. So, if there's any questions or anything with that, please feel free to reach out. Um, outside of that, we held our townwide Christmas party for staff. Everybody thank you for coming out. I enjoyed sorry I I can see faces but uh there is a little gift for each app. Thank you.

Happy holidays to everybody and looking forward to seeing everybody in the new year. [clears throat] Happy holidays. Happy new year. [laughter] I would echo that also. Merry Christmas. Happy new year. All right. And and I'll wrap that up with

this doesn't happen without all of you and without the amazing staff and without the council that we have in six years almost seven. This really is the best council that I have had the opportunity to work with. And we all get along. We we all mesh together. We support each other. And just like when you're in a a regular workplace, if you don't have that, this doesn't work. I'm very very thankful for that. Along the journey, I've made some really great friends and we had some little pockets of success. Um, but this really is successful. So, thank you to all of you. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. All righty. Item seven, old business including discussion. Since there's nothing under that one, it takes us down to item eight, new business, including discussion and possible action on the following items. Presentation and discussion of the 2025 retail opportunity gap analysis.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. the um every um five years or so we have um tracked to be able to do what's called a retail opportunity retail gap analysis. Um and what this does is it gets the technology gets better and better all the time. They use not only um it's a tool utilizing both um census level data um but also more importantly um it uses our cell phone data and our credit card data to be able to tell us and be able to provide data to consulting firms in terms of the beha economic behavior of various communities and various demographic groups. Um, and it's very good to be able to explain and to be able to project to you all in terms of what might be a perceived need in the community and an actual demand borne out by the purchasing power of the community. So to be able to lead this, we haven't done this since 2020. Uh, we did this as part of the DDD update. Um, Rick Ferrell has done for this from the past and Rick is for those of you that don't know Rick, some of you may who've been with council, Alvin and Tabby might know Rick. Um Rick is a consultant. He's worked u decades in the retail field managing shopping centers uh in different um retail uh property management firms, you know, up and down the East Coast and Mid-Atlantic area. He he's very um in tune with the with the retail sector. Um, so I will turn it over to him for us to get started and we'll tag team and being able to explain what the analysis says for um what what opportunities exist for our community.

Yeah, great. Thank you. It's really good to see some familiar faces. Uh and let me just walk you through as Jeremy said uh this type of analysis is actually in a in big picture terms referred to as syndicated data because it comes from an amalgam of different uh sources from derived from different places. Some are are actual numbers. Some are derived numbers that are estimated based on trends and other market analyses and al algorithms that go into the programs that come up with these numbers. The other type of uh research that you hear about is is primary research which is different than syndicated in that it's generated by an individual or an entity for a very specific purpose. Think like polls in political uh environments and so forth. But this is uh from a group called Claritas which is a a a partner with Neielson. You may have heard of them as the people that would find out what television ratings were. That's where their their roots were from years ago. But Claritas spins a lot of this data especially on the uh what they call the retail power market. So uh we look at that data specifically for Smyrna. We actually looked at uh drive times because of the ease of access to this geography and a lot of Delaware that runs north south on our major arteries. It's much I think uh more relevant to get a picture of geography relative to drive time because that's our reality as opposed to something like radi where you just take a one or three or five mile swatch and look at the activity within that area. What we looked at were three different drive times from the center of downtown and Smyrna, and we called that

one uh North Main. And so 10-minute drive time, just this is the map shown up here in terms of what what a 10-minute drive time looks like from the four corners here in downtown. And it essentially goes all the way down to um to Garrison Lake on the south almost to Chzwald and to the north goes all the way up to um uh so close to me. Yeah. Eagle that's Black & Station almost to um to Town's End. That's right.

So you're talking about approximately a population of about 30,000. So if the town's population is just under 14,000 about 30,000 people within a drive time. [clears throat] And then when you expand that to uh a 20-minute drive time, uh you hit different geographies. You get to the the uh north, you get to like the CND canal area and to the south do highlands uh uh area. And then when you go out to 30 minutes, you're really going as far north as Glasgow and as far south as uh like Milford Neck. uh uh uh wildlife area uh just to give you a perspective about that and the ease that we travel uh in in that area is what's important because it takes us to other markets and potential markets. So, as Jeremy said, going out 10 minutes, you're capturing about 30,000. Go out about 20 minutes and that number bumps to uh over 120,000. go out even uh further still to uh the 30 minute drive time and you're over a quarter of a million in uh potential customers and population. Smyrna, by the way, after the last census became essentially the state's center uh geographic center of population, meaning essentially there's as many people to the north as there are to the south. Uh so here's what I want to do. I the the the retail market analysis looks at two primary uh uh data sets and then it spits out a number. Um the data sets we look at are the demand for particular goods and services against the supply for particular goods and services. So,

we're looking at demand in the area of a 10-minute drive time from downtown. And that demand is basically based on consumer purchases from this area in those categories of foods and services. And we're looked of those of those 30,000 people of those 30,000

that's how much 30,000 people is purchasing in retail products almost almost $800 million on an annual basis. And then we look at uh that number in relation to the supply [clears throat] the seller of those goods and services in the same geography. And when we see that demand sometimes outpaces the supply, it means that there's a gap, an opportunity gap. And that's what this is referring to. meaning that uh it's it's it's never a given that uh it's this is not a a a guarantee that if you brought those goods and service provisor providers here that they would be successful. But when you're trying to make an intelligent approach to what is underserved in the area, it starts with this data. And then of course a business attraction strategy would be to focus on the goods and services providers that have a solid business plan that uh have experience in the market and so forth. Um but it it provides a really nice starting place to sort of vet your own thinking uh about what's needed and uh I'll show you some other reasons or ways that uh we use the this data uh for existing businesses. Um I want to give you a couple examples of both uh better vehicles

when we find an opportunity gap and when we don't. Uh you want to do automobiles.

Yeah. So um think about what businesses are in town. Okay. Um Smyrna is blessed to have a lot of auto dealerships compared to other communities. Even a community like Middletown, we have a lot of car dealerships, both new car and old uh and new car. So, if you look at there's um for both new and used car dealerships, there's $138 million worth of car sales in new and used cars. Um and we're supplying about 113 million. So, there's only 10 million out ofund almost 140. There's only a $10 million gap between what's being sold and so people are generally shopping for cars here in Smyrna. Okay? Or people from elsewhere are shopping for cars in Smyrna. And if you look at the numbers in red, look at recreational vehicle dealers. So RV dealers. So not surprisingly, those numbers are shown in red, meaning that we're actually selling more RVs than are demanded in our drivetime area. And given what businesses we have in town, like Park View RV, that's not surprising, right?

Yeah. What that means is Park View RV is actually importing a customer from region from elsewhere. So, it's it's an attraction opportunity because it's a uh a destination visit because it supplies that it it actually the data supports their sign at the front of their uh business which says Delaware's number one RV dealer. Um probably very true uh based on the data based [clears throat] on brickandmortar retail stores. Yes. Yes. Uh now there are there are some captured data sets for online and e-commerce activity but that's not reflected here. Yeah. Thank you.

So being in red being in [clears throat] red is a good thing. Being in red means that there's an over supply of that particular item and they use the these are the net codes. Yeah. N North American industrial classification system. Um [clears throat] yeah. So it don't confuse red with uh negative and bad. [laughter]

Uh it means it there's a lot of things that when you start to drill down into this data, it can mean take a take an example that Jeremy and I have talked uh about outside of Smyrna. U everybody familiar with Johnny Janosk in Laurel. If you look at the supply of furniture in Laurel, it so outpaces the demand in the same area for that furniture because they're importing people maybe from North Carolina and coming up the eastern seabboard for big furniture visits. So they pull from a wide wide area. Does that mean that Laurel wouldn't find it useful to do a a business attraction in the area of furniture? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on if it's a replica of Johnny Gazi, maybe that's not such a good idea and they're not going to execute on that even better. But what if it were uh someone that was very narrowly and very specifically focused [clears throat] in recliners and went way deeper in selection than somebody that's going broad in a big format. That might be a very well- hit ball from uh the subtraction standpoint because the market is already responding to that category. Much like in Smyrna, if you were to uh have more RV or more uh auto because there's such an auto and RV presence here and demand for it here that's coming in from other places, it it probably would be very successful. this really support that. So that's that's how to look at this.

So for example, when you mention furniture, I'm thinking of like um Bob's furniture, how it was in there and now it's doing very well in do or Ashley furniture as well was doing very well in there and it's doing very well in do now. Yeah. So in Smyrna for instance, you know, there's a demand of about $12.5 million for furniture on a yearly basis. But think of where can you buy furniture in Smyrna? Roses is probably the only place that you could get furniture you could potentially get furniture. That's the only store that's going to sell.

So there is a secondhand furniture store right there by auto parts. And if you go in there, but does that get included in this if it's not specific? Say it again. Does would those statistics be included in this if it's not specific business license? I should if they have a business license. Again, as Jeremy said, they're they're grabbing this they're grabbing it from credit card data.

Okay. Uh, a lot of the the the retail data, uh, if you have a CVS card or a Walgreens card and you swipe that or they ask you for that at [clears throat] counter, they're basically they know our age, they know uh, our gender, they know what things we're buying and that gets put into this this giant pool of uh, where this data comes from. Out of curiosity, do we own this tool or is this the tool that we we purchase the data? So we contracted with Rick and they he runs the data at a specific set time. Okay? So it's a snapshot in time.

And we're going to show you in a moment that we've looked at this against the 2021 data that we ran a few years ago so that you can see what's changed in the market because you actually have a baseline because you've done this before which is really helpful. Yeah. Thank you for this data. I just have one quick question though if you can help me with this. So looking at this, is this data also readily available? Say if I'm a big retailer and I'm possibly eyeing and coming to the area, is this something that's readily available to to them?

It's Yes. Let's let's take that uh uh in a in a live situation. You Smyrna had a uh a a very strong gap in 10, 20, and 30 minute drive times in the area of grocery. And I've heard over the years many many times how Smyrna would like to see uh a branded groceryer in in the area closer and more convenient than leaving the area. A lot of these numbers um tell the story of many of the Smyrna shoppers leaving the market to [clears throat] get some of the specific things they want. So why is it with a gap or opportunity in that category that we don't have that grosser knocking the door down, you know, to to get in.

But to your to your question, when when somebody like Wawa or somebody a national retailer, they're um or they use they go through a commercial site selector because and most of the time it's not the actual retailer. Sometimes it is. We just had a pre-application meeting with a new retailer called Seven Brew Coffee. they'll be coming to town. It's a new

type of Starbucks perhaps. You know, it's a it's a drive-thru coffee. You know, I dealt directly with that company, but oftentimes I'm dealing with a commercial site selector and those commercial sight selectors are using data like this to narrow down where which markets and which municipalities and communities to target. So to answer your question, not only are they using this data, but they're refining it even more for their very um uh specific and narrow purposes. So in the case of the grocery category,

they will often come into the area and do their own proprietary market analysis beyond whatever we think we we know. um and it will be very specific to their expectations um and minimal expectations for performance and bottom line in in [clears throat] a in a market. So I've like seen for instance to give you a real world example. So there there's another software called Placer. There's a lot of these software companies out there that are offering services. [clears throat]

They work with uh shopping centers um like Simons who has um the Dober Mall for instance. They they've given us demonstrations um at the county on um they can do what's called geo fencing and essentially they just draw an area around the parking lot of the shopping mall. Uh and they set it for a certain time and they collect using your cell phones and your credit cards. They can tell you who who was going in there and how much they're spending in a particular day. you know, and they can do that to be able to say whether or not there's a market for their particular store.

Another example is uh I'd mentioned this in a private conversation with Jeremy. I had a an opportunity to help the city of Wilmington. They were looking for a grosser. We ended up going to Jansen's, which is a a family-owned independent grosser in the Greenville area. Sort of affluent upscale place. The idea wasn't to bring the same grocery store that they ran in Greenville to Wilmington, but rather uh take a section of that grocery store rather than 40,000 square feet, do a 10 to 15,000 square foot smaller version to cater to the burgeoning new population that Wilmington's getting with all of the pollen uh uh uh new downtown uh millennial residents. Uh so the idea was a little bit of convenience, a little bit of fresh grocery product and real heavy on uh prepared foods. A lot of those young people get home after 5, don't want to cook, but they'll get something to go that can be prepared at home. And so they modeled that based on that concept through their own uh uh uh market analysis uh group. I think it was a soft cost that they incurred of about $15,000 just to determine if they should go further with the conversation or not. And just so you know how that one ended, u it broke even and the owners said, "We don't want to work that hard to break even. We needed to do better than that." And so one of the things we tried to do was find additional profit centers that could go into the model to show a different outcome. And uh the one thing that showed the best outcome was

allowing them to sell beer and wine like they do in Phoenix, but [clears throat] we don't do that in Delaware. And that would take a legislative change, which was a heavy lift, and they moved on. Okay.

Um so for grocery stores, I'll allow Rick to kind of go into the actual numbers. So for instance, you know, that's a hot topic. Everybody wants to see a new grocery store. Um there's a demand for, you know, right around $80 million worth of groceries that is purchased every year within a 10-minute drive time SMRA. Um and there's a demand u excuse me, that's the demand and there's only a supply of around 62 million. So that's a that's a gap of around 18 million. So I'll allow you to explain like what is what is a 60,000 foot grocery store? What does that actually mean in terms of demand? Like what are what are they going to look at grocery?

Yeah. Uh so a a 60,000 foot store is basically uh an acme. It could be a a Wegman's uh is is in that size as well. Um those stores don't look at locations that uh and depending on the the the the retailer. Uh there's none that will look at opportunities if they're not going to do four or $500 per square foot. So uh that might be a $25 million unit. So an $18 million gap doesn't get you a $60,000 foot store. Um, it may get you a regional player who doesn't have very the the same strict um dem uh demographic tied to metrics uh performance because they're not as large. They're not as sophisticated in their site selection. Some of these unit these these branded retailers, remember, they have hundreds if not thousands of units.

Oh And so they have a lot of data to examine when they look at areas to say, will that store, if placed here, replicate what this one does that has similar patterns, spending patterns, people, and demographics. And when those answers are not in alignment, they typically pass on those things. And our challenge here is that well the population numbers have grown significantly in this region and as I pointed out earlier there's been a shift in the demographics largely because of some of the stuff that's happening in Sussex with retirement and uh an influx of people to that part of the state has made it more central to the state's population. But when you move to the north and you take the same 20 10 20 and 30 minute drive time data sets, you're you're always in more affluence and and density of population. Um we're not as dense here. So our uh opportunities exist from the standpoint of there's data that shows were underserved clearly because we all go outside of the area for some things. But the business attraction strategy to address that gap needs to be very strategic and focused and you got to be in the market to find out who is uh out there that's looking for markets to behave like this and then show them that the potential for that exists. There are there are uh uh grocerers, branded grocerers, regionally branded grocerers like Weiss Markets that's much more comfortable in a in a rural area that's transitioning. So, I

don't know. I I have a a a camper in uh Lancaster and we go to a vice pretty frequently there and it's really active, really busy. They're not uh uh they they know they know how those markets will behave relative to their business model. So I think it's I think it it it bodess well. It's good uh uh opportunity. Um but the trick of it all is is is courting the right people. And is that based on drive time statistics or is that based on hard statistics from the census for who is here now? It's a combination of both.

It's combination. uh it it it shows market trends because some of this data is mine. In my old life, for instance, uh I managed shopping malls, large shopping malls. So, uh 2 million square foot uh uh buildings with maybe 300 businesses under one roof. because my deal structure with those indiv those businesses reflected a minimum rent and a percentage rent. My percentage rent couldn't be determined unless I knew their sales. So every lease in in those shopping center leases has a sales reporting requirement. So I knew dollar for dollar what they were doing because it was how I determined if I was getting a piece of. So some of the data is actually real data. Others are they'll take a an area and say okay in the category of general merchandise when we get reporting me real data it's coming out to $400 a foot. So we'll impute that $400 to some of the places that are sending general merchandise [clears throat] where we don't know their specific numbers. So it's been massaged and derived based on real data. So it's trending and and what what we think it is based on the best information available.

Thank you.

And take the gas station one. So gas station showing a really huge opportunity. For instance, 64 million dollars worth of demand and only $20 million. We've had quite a few gas. So Wawwa going to be building gas pumps at off Paddock Road. You know, they're they're in the final stages. They submit a construction plan. So hopefully next time, this time next year, we're going to have gas pumps at the North Smawa. Um we've had a couple of other gas station retailers looking at us. Um and they're not just looking at this data and the census data, they're also looking at Delot publishes how many people actually travel the roadway. So they do periodically they do their own surveys which are published online to the public and they let you know how many cars go down a particular roadway on a daily basis. They do a series of surveys every year um which they use that data to say because certain convenience stores, gas stations, they all use that data to say I want a certain number of cars going past me on a daily basis.

And do the beach traffic statistics help us at all? You're uh I don't think so. I don't have the the the very very current numbers but I can give you a sense that uh a lot of that 13 uh traffic is average daily is in the 2930 range thousand thousand which is uh robust but when the summer months hit it it can be 60 uh plus which is why all that gas gets absorbed in the market. Of course, a lot of that is local traffic that doesn't want to travel on route one. So, the locals go on 13 to avoid route one.

But those are those are outstanding numbers in terms of somebody that's trying to play the game of determining how how much of that traffic they'll intercept in their business model. So it's a very robust uh strong um data set for uh vehicular traffic. Now we also use this data not just for new business attraction but just to give you a quick example in the area of home furnishings um window treatments as I recall and other home furnishings uh uh showed an opportunity uh if I were talking to uh uh uh Karen and Wall-E about that data. I might be saying, "Hey, do we want to drill down into what window treatments are and what's really available here? And does that seem like something that isn't a big stretch for you to consider bringing in as part of your existing business?" So sometimes these these uh gaps and this data can be used to bring in just a different level of inventory with it puts different uh spin on a a current business owner's thinking to say am I missing an opportunity? Am I le leaving anything on the table? Am I allocating in my brick and mortar the floor area that's best served for all the categories of merchandise I sell? Shifting on on a strategy might be something that uh is is useful. I remember I had a uh a hardware store go

out in one uh market and [clears throat] a shoe repair guy picked up all the key making that the hardware guy had. [clears throat] So there was so there would have been a hole in the market with the key making from the hardware store going dark but the shoe repair guy picked it up. In fact he bought the hardware store guys equipment

and then grew about 80 or $90,000 [clears throat] in key cutting in the course of a year. So you can follow the data and use it a little creatively as well. some of the some of the categories if you scroll down. We're not going to go through each one. Um but there's some categories where we have actually a lot more um supply than we do demand. Um there are a couple ones and they probably you could recognize them fairly easily. Um the tobacco stores is one. You know, there's a surplus of 11.5 million dollars for tobacco stores. Um there's a similar surplus for liquor stores. One of [clears throat] the things to keep in mind is that these are all independent businesses. Those are independent small businesses. Those business owners or those entrepreneurs are not looking at this data. They're looking at they're going from a feeling like I think there's a market here and there's a space available that I can afford and I'd like to set up my own smoke shop or liquor store or something like that. So, those are some things to keep in mind, but use that to your advantage as well. So if you look at your because a independent [clears throat] business is not going to look at this data somebody think of like a jacks on main or think of a yarn maven sushi mamora or um my grass mucent at the painted state they don't necessarily look at this data they they look at outside things like is this a good community to live in is this a nice place to raise my kids is the quality of life nice is is this a neat building that I could locate my building in, you know, you talk to the owner of Jacks on Main, you know, he talks about, man, this is just an awesome building to be able to, you know, to put a restaurant in. So, those are other things that come into play that we can take advantage of in terms of being able to attract independent entrepreneurs that can we create a sense of place, can we create a really neat

and engaging community that people want to move to? um and you know be able to provide an atmosphere um so that somebody can renovate a business and make it look nice and suit their needs. And and retailers like Sue provide more than just a commodity called yarn. They provide an experience that's unmatched by a larger retail format that could always beat her all day long on price. Michael's on Michael.

Michaels could beat her all day long on price on some things or all things. But what Michaelels can't do is what she does, which is provide a place for people to come from as far as 60 miles away and hang out for half a day and talk yarn, spin yarns. Uh because that's what she does. And and she does classes and all that. But you're not going to get a Michaels.

Yeah. So that that that that layer of experience to the providing of whatever good andor service is it makes such a market distinction that it creates uh a very very stable and interesting business that's part of the fabric of you know the downtown

stage. The one thing I did want to point out which I was actually really surpris um this actually really surprised me. Um so when it comes to

pharmacies and drugstores there's a demand of you know a little over 33 million. We're actually providing 41 a.5 million in existing supply. Now this is before the closure of right aids the two right aids. Now the two right aids in Smyrna did not close because of this you know that was a national bankruptcy and closure but that's just something to keep in mind that even though we're a growing community and it may perceive that we don't really have many options

or to be able to get youries uh prescriptions filled. We're actually showing a pretty decent surplus. So the chances of us, you know, it would kind of be nice to be able to track a CVS or something like that. They're going to look at this and say probably not.

Now what you can do though is look at sometimes those independents who go deep into things that um maybe the the brands don't. Um and the my my my best example of that is in the area of compounding. Um there are some uh drugs that are actually made on site, compounded on site that uh there's a demand for that isn't uh provided for by other uh uh branded parties.

And and if you talk to um Dr. at focus. You know what's what what they're doing to be able to differentiate themselves from the the chains is offering diabetes counseling, yoga services, farm to table so that they can actually survive in this really cutthroat market. So, um, was there was there the only other thing if you want to talk about is we have a lot of demand and opportunities that's not being met in the 10-minute drive time, but if you want to talk about 20 minute drive time, you know, how that's almost inverted.

Does drive time balance us to them and them to us or just us to them or other resources? It's it's all within the same geography 10 20 or 30 and it's the think of demand as what people here are buying and then think of supply as what people here are selling

and also think about it where are people in this community working so we are generally a bedroom community okay more people go out to work than come to Smyrna to work so most people are working either in do or they're working in northern Newcastle County or you're working [clears throat] in in southern Pennsylvania or South Jersey. So that affects just think about your own commute. If you're if you're driving down southside from Wilmington, you might stop somewhere else to shop on your way home, right? So those those things come into play. Are can I ask are we also looking at the time of day as far as driving?

This isn't this is a time of day. That's more of a traffic analysis that that gives you day of week and time of day. And that gets very interesting to look at when you're really looking at like traffic numbers on 13 and really trying to understand are you maximizing the opportunities uh for for that and Delta gives really good live information about that. You can get that pretty. So this this data to answer [clears throat] your question looks at the total demand for an entire year of this trade area which 10-minute drive time which is a little over 30,000 people. This is how much they spend in a year on each one of these items, each one of these categories. Um so it's it's year-long data and some of it is real data, some of it's estimated data because they have hard data and sometimes it's estimated. So,

any other questions? I'm gonna So, what about unique items like a farmers market that we don't have that I know people who will drive all the way to do for Spencers or all the way up to Middletown for

but we don't have that in our quaint little town, which is exactly what you expect in a quaint little town. One thing, I've dealt with this before. I I worked in agricultural marketing before. The um it's it's really it's counterintuitive. [clears throat] Rural communities have a difficult time having successful farmers markets in many cases because the purchasing power of those communities is typically much lower. So, if I am a vegetable grower, you know, outside of Clayton or outside of Smyrna, they're going to want to sell at the farmers market that they can get the most bang for their buck. and they're going to say, "I'm going to I'm going to drive to Annapolis

or even to DC." Um because those people are wealthier and they can afford and I can charge more prices than if I sell in Harrington or Smyrna. Um it's it's it's not necessarily fair sometimes, but that's what that's the algorithm that a lot of farmers do. So unless you're in an affluent community, so a place like Chester Town, for instance, has a very successful farmers market, but they're also a very affluent retirement community, a lot of really wealthy people that own million-dollar homes and um they have the disposable income to be able to purchase those things.

The other thing is with that product, there's a ticking clock on the shelf life. So they've got to sort of make their bones while they can, you know, with the population. But if you have a really um if you have a really dynamic farmers market manager, you know, you can make it work, you know, if they have a good relationship with the growers, but it's a it's an uphill battle in a community like Smyrna, which isn't as affluent, and the farmers aren't going to be able to make as good of a return. And one thing that the state legislature did recently was allowed the craft distillers and brewers and wineries to sell their products at farmers market to add another layer of that experiential thing. So if you were going to execute on something that locally, the more you layer in things other than fresh produce that look like experience, the more attractive that might be because you're going to import a customer and affluence, density of of customers and affluent customers from other areas to do those things. And that's why I'm thinking of Spences or the Middletown Farmers Market because you can't you get other things there. You get

Are you talking about the Amish? Are you talking about the Amish market? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You get you get homemade furniture special food from Amish that you don't get in or Yeah. And that's that really takes a dynamic um uh manager who can has a relationship with the growers and with the retailers to be able to do that. You know, they tried that at the Harris manufacturing site and I don't want to say they failed spectacularly, but it's still empty, right? We we tried to we tried to brick it,

but it's um you know, because there are there are really good locations that have done it really well. If you go to Easton, Eastston has a really good one of those. Middletowns has a really good example. What's the one up in is it Aston or Boothwin? Booth. Boothwin had a really good longing. Um [clears throat] and they're not open every day. So, no. Yeah. Typically Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Saturday. So, with what we've done so far, what we know from what we have in front of us, what are the next steps for us with this?

Well, this is really this is an informative. This is um and I'm going to go through a couple of other things. This is so that you have some realistic expectations in terms of the types of businesses that are likely going to to come here. Um, this is what the demand this is what the data is saying we have an actual demand for. Does this play into the KP site selector information that we No, that's different. So that's for the KP site selector is for industrial properties. Okay. So this is for this is for retail. Okay. As a general rule, K does not get delve into the retail. Okay. Yes, sir. I have a question.

Okay. My question is um what about a large shop right? Because the closest shop right is up in Berry and I will tell you in New Jersey every single town has a shop right. It is mega mega bucks.

Yeah. And if you put in um one that has more than what they used to have, I will tell you um the traffic in this town would be unbelievable. you and I have always said this because we are from New Jersey and we used to shop in a shop right that was about um 40 years old and then the town of Oldbridge decided that um they were going to put in a very large um housing development and in front of that development they were going to have like a shopping mall and in that shopping mall was a mega mega shop right you cannot even imagine the amount of traffic into that store and if you had one here I know that up in there they are so busy up in there it is unbelievable and I'll tell you eventually most likely

if we don't do it first. Well, the town will be They have to want us as much as we want them, though. That's the problem. It It's not a matter of us wanting them or reaching out to them. That's really not how the retail market works for retailers. So, they're going to be looking at this data. So, all the retailers are going to be looking at this data in terms of whether or not to expand. But each retailer has their own market that their corporate leadership sets standards for. they want to expand in a particular market or don't expand or they don't want to expand at all or they may want to contract. Right?

So the um those sort of variables are going to come into play. Shop rate, you know, I know there's there's a very good one on 896 in Newark just south of Newark.

Yeah, that's nothing down there. But the uh a retailer has to be able to you know when I go to what's called an ICC conference which is essentially your your retailers all get in the same room and retailers that show up are the ones that are interested in expanding and um some of them are interested in expanding but may not be wanting to expand in our particular market. They want to be closer to Philadelphia or closer to Wilmington. Um there's a whole list of variables Um along with that, I'm glad you brought up the whole shopping center thing in terms of um some of these, think of all of the specialty type retail stores. Um often times that will come when a developer is able to secure an tenant.

So, so think of everybody's been to Target in Middletown. Okay. So, that field, the Ramunos have owned that property for 25 years. Um and that's laid vacant. It's been till 25 years. Um, they waited until they could secure Target. All of those retailers that are now being built, they they had signed up years ago, but those retailers were not going to be built without an tenant. Well, Shopright is definitely an anchor.

Oh, absolutely. So, typically an a tenant is a grocery store. [clears throat] So, so the other thing just to keep in mind is and it's not about what we'd love to have shop ready come look at this but in New Jersey as an example the average uh uh density of New Jerseys population is is between 1,800 and 2200 people per square mile in not up in Sussex New Jersey but but not up in Sussex what is it there um there is um a Shop right not too big in Hamburg. The next town up is um is um Sussex, right, Larry?

Right. And we're talking This is farmland. Yeah. Yeah.

And they put that in there. That shop right up there is loaded with people because people come from all the way from New York, which is close to Port Jervis and Madam Morris and all. They come over to get their shopping in that shop right now and into New York where Warwick is. High-end living. Yep. I think seven of those shots in that area and they they perform a uh a $60 million story. If it didn't do 60, they thought it was a failure.

Yeah. So, all right. So, they don't So, in interest of moving on because it's almost 8:00 and and our presentation is going longer than expected, can we move forward? Yeah, absolutely. Sure. So, let's go to the um Oh, I'm sorry. Jim had a question. We We have one more question. Question.

I haven't I haven't seen the report, but just from hearing it spoken about seems like an exciting opportunity. It's wonderful to be able to see what you know large businesses can see as opportunities here. And my big question would be is how have towns or other cities used this information to attract components into their community that is under represented or is not represented? How can how could we take an active role to say if we just passively sit back and we let businesses make those decisions on their own without us providing some incentive or guidance,

maybe it's not in the town's best interest to have both right aids and three other businesses become tobacco and vape shops in the town. Maybe it would be better for the town to find ways to explore taking this information to say we've got a gap here. It would strengthen our town and it builds a community and would help build the town that we wanted to develop or grow into with the vision. So the question is what could we do as a town to use this information to kind of shape how the future goes. Yeah. to go to any

um so when a retailer contacts me so whether that's a you know we just got contacted by seven brew um Applebees is going to be applying for site plan approval we're going to get an Applebee's when they contact me they've already they've reviewed all this data they've already made a decision that we fit their criteria um so there really isn't a lot of incentives that we can offer that's going to bring them here it's going to be we either have what they're looking for or they're not. For an independent business, if you're looking at how can I get an independent brewery or distillery, that's when we have to do kind of marketing to individuals [clears throat] that could help get somebody to go into a space.

I guess the question is, are there any opportunities where we could do an outreach where we could advertise out into a certain segment or a certain area to say come to Smyrna, consider coming to Smyrna for A, B, C, or D. So, so we um so for instance, I go to the um what's called the international shopping center council of shopping centers. They have a they have two regional events and I go to at least one of them a year and you know we I take some demographic data and I sit around and I talk to the different retailers. But am I going to change their decision? Nine times out of 10, no. They might say, "Oh, maybe I didn't think about Smyrna." But what I usually find out from that is that another retailer is looking at us and I might get a call in 6 or 12 months. So I knew about Planet Fitness 2 years before they called me. So when I went there, you know, I spoke to them and says, "Oh yeah, we we're going to sign a lease on this. We're just working out the detailers with the with the property owner." So it's really helpful for us to be able to know what's coming down the pike. But there's not a lot I can do or anybody in the town can do to say we're not going to be able to call up Texas Roadhouse and say, "What is it going to take to locate in our town?" You know, there's not a lot we can do.

I do have a question.

When it comes to like businesses that come to you that are looking to come in and say it's a smoke shop, I'm just pulling up because we seem to have a lot of those. Do you show them? Do you relate to them somehow some way that maybe we already have an abundance of this in our town and it may not be something that would be profitable to you? Like do you use that? You know what I'm saying? So when so that's another question in terms of so when when a business comes and wants to locate [clears throat] say in SmartMark shopping center or at a vacant building on 13 or downtown you know they have to get what's called a certificate of zoning compliance and [clears throat] essentially what I have to do actually one of my staff members does is they go down the list of allowable uses in that particular zoning district and if if that particular use is permitted I can't deny them. So, you have the ability to prohibit certain uses in certain zoning districts. So, if if the town wanted to prohibit smoke shops, say in the downtown district, you know, that's something you could do. Um, are you going to prohibit smoke shops townwide? It's just not going to happen. Um, that's a function of the market that I can't handle, unfortunately. So, if it's permitted use in the zoning ordinance, I have to approve it.

Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah. I I guess you don't give them insight like they should be able to do their own research. Yeah, I I I have to play I have to play a fine line in saying I you know I can't tell someone that most businesss savvy people know what they need to do to get themselves somewhere [clears throat] where they're going to be successful. I just was curious how you might use that information to kind of guide potential. You you have the ability to exclude certain uses in certain zoning districts. So if you want to you know and we've done that with massage parlors, right? you know, you you kind of or retana facilities. They're not not permitted downtown, for instance. You know, they're only permitted in certain zoning. You can do that. You can tailor the zoning district, but you know, doing an outright prohibition and saying that you can't

I wouldn't say or All right.

That's I that's something I really can't do. One thing I want to talk about there is the National Main Street Center provided some data part of training that I did last year. They use um a data from a service called EZRI. EZRI is the EZRI is a consulting firm that creates all the maps. Um they go through it says the CTW 2024. If you go down through here, I'm not going to go through everything, but what it does tell you, especially on um sheet three, it goes it outlines annual household spending by category, annual lifestyle spending by category. That's really interesting stuff in terms of how um you know how the residents in this town are spending goods. And then if you go to the second page, they um a a neat analysis that they do um that again some of the consult some of the site uh consultants are looking at is they're looking at what's called tapestry segments. So I have it on the screen. You know, um the Ezie put together and grouped um did what's called segmentation data for they created 60 different options um 60 different types and they classified us as a middle bird. Okay, which if [laughter] you go through you can click on the next page. You know this actually does actually this actually matches our demographic data pretty well. So that looks at, you know, like wealth index compared nationally. How how does a community like Smyrna compare to other communities across the country? Um the density, look at what um when Rick talked about the density of a thousand or 2,000, you know, we're at the lower end in the grand scheme of things. Even though we have a lot of people that's moved to town, in the grand scheme of things, Kent County, Delaware is still a

relatively low density population. Go to the next page. that shows where this demographic group is kind of located nationally. So you see Kent County is located in similar areas to like York County, Pennsylvania or Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Our spending habits are similar to those groups. Um very different from from

No. You can turn that off and then go to the PowerPoint. worksheet and copy of one. Those are the four that you gave. You should have one that I'll open. You talking about this one?

Yeah. So for this one I want to go over this is the um uh an 11 by7 sheet which compares all the you know neighboring municipalities from across the state everywhere from Seafford, Milford, Dover um [clears throat] okay the um I want you to look uh I did this data my my own but so think about where they're building shopping centers in the state. So, uh, there's not they're not building a ton of shopping centers in the state of Delaware anymore or elsewhere. Um, especially big box stores. So, think about Middletown. Middletown has Target and that whole shopping center has Sprouts and it has a whole series of retailers that goes with that. The one Wegman's in the state of Delaware was recently constructed right off Barley Barley Mill Plaza, right off of Route 100. That's in Greenville to the very top end of that spectrum. And um you've may have heard a lot of press about the approximately 1.5 million square feet of retail they're looking to build by the beach.

Okay. So I want you to be able to look at me and I essentially put everyone in order by median household income with another series of economic indicators on this chart. You know we are for the state of Delaware. We're not only the geographic center of the state. We're very we're just slightly below average when it comes to all of the economic indicators. We're significantly better than Dover and even Milford and especially Seafford. Um our median household income is over $20,000 more than uh than SeaR is for instance. But when you compare us to say Middletown, even though they're only 15 minutes up the up the road, it's a difference in median household income of $45,000. It's a 50% increase in the median household income in Middletown than what it is in Smyrna. And that plays a significant part in what retailers are going to look at us because their purchasing power is 50% more for us even if it's the same amount of rooftops. And in their case, they have more rooftops than we do. And if you're looking at Greenville,

oh yeah, looking at Greenville, $139,000, they are twice, their median household income is twice of what we are and 60.

We're about 70, we're 70,000. So if you're looking at are we going to attract a Wegman's Wegman's is looking at a at a very particular market and that market is not for median household income $7,000. [clears throat] So um when I meet with retailers at at say an ICSC so many of the retailers especially you know think of any food retailer they um will not talk to you if you don't make if your median household income isn't $100,000 more a year. are not going to look at you because they have an arbitrary limit that they are only concentrating um in areas with a certain median household income and a certain number of people within a five or a 10-minute drive time. So, I don't want you to have feel bad that Smyrna is not getting the same thing that Middletown isn't. Middletown has more rooftops, but more importantly, the purchasing power that's located in the Middletown area um is just so significantly higher than what we have here in Smyrna. We're much better compared to Dober, but we're not nearly at what Middletown is. And you need to have some expectations that just because they're getting target, you know, we're not doing anything wrong, we are likely we're never going to get target. And and you just need to understand that. And um as much as we may want it, we're just not going to get a target. We're not going to get a Wegman's um or something like that. And what's also lastly important I'll close out with or this SL this part of it is um if you go to some of these conferences and you talk to the retailers, the big box retailers aren't building. So J C Penneyy's, Macy's, all of these larger retailers with unless they have a grocery component like Target are not building at all in any market. Okay? And and in many cases, they're closing stores nationwide. So even though we

have a gap or an opportunity, um it doesn't mean we're actually going to get it because certain retail categories just aren't expanding nationwide. [clears throat] Some the way the way those nationals work is they they have something called opens to buy which is in a budget year for them they forecast how many stores they want to open or they forecast how many they're going to receive if they're closing markets in in some areas of their business. Uh to Jeremy's point, I do know that Costco is building, but Costco is looking for very very very specific uh densities of population. Um if if they did another one it probably in Delaware it would probably be in the north like almost on the PA border u because it could pull from those Pennsylvania demographics before the Costco and Philadelphia near IKEA but it's uh and they [clears throat] are driven by a grocery component

you know uh so that's Jeremy is absolutely right those those large uh box uh formats are really rethinking what they're doing. Uh they're looking at [clears throat] their real real estate as distribution centers almost as much as points of sale um because they feel like that's the way the future's going to

and what happened at Simon's Corner is likely going to continue in other shopping centers here in town. So, in ch in Simon's Corner, when this was approved back in 2006, uh originally there was going to be 176,000 um I believe it was going to be at Bass Pro at one time. It was, you know, they were looking at a Home Depot and then there was going to be a 60,000 foot grocery store in the back kind of like behind where all these is. Um the market crashed. They didn't do anything. And in today's market, they're not building that. But what is making a successful shopping center is introducing residential component to shopping centers. So that is what's something that you're going to see and what we have there. They have approvals to build 270 apartments and um the retailers are understanding that that's a huge win-win for both the residents of that community.

Is that like a village community? Yeah. Yeah. So like when they build that 270 apartments at Simon's Corner, they're going to be able to walk right across the street to Aldi's or to Walgreens. that urgent care. Um, so it's a win-win and that you're going to see more of that. The other thing I'll just mention, I don't I know we we want to respect time, but uh to the gentleman's question earlier about what you could be doing and what other communities do, the

Bass Pro that uh Jeremy is referring to that Whitick was looking at in 2010 um at the uh the shopping center down the road. Bass Pro ultimately went to Hamburg in PA with the the unit that they had an open to buy for. So that's the geographic spread that they look at for attracting and the community there incentivized that deal out of a tool we didn't have available in Delaware which was sales tax. And interestingly, they promised a certain return as an incentive to Bass Pro out of taxes when the taxes hit certain thresholds. They never hit those thresholds and never got the incentive. So, it was an empty prize that they negotiated for that. Uh, you know, I think the lessons learned for some of those big boxes is if it's not cash, okay, [laughter] they're not counting on it because they've had that promise before and the rug get pulled out from them. So, it's it's they they have very, as Jeremy's been underlined, they have very specific criteria and they usually stay with them. The only thing I think Jeremy should sold himself a little short on is in terms of what uh uh Smyrna has been doing for years. I know uh there's finger on the pulse of what developers are doing and that's invaluable. He has a great relationship with uh Ramunos in terms of sharing information about what's on the horizon for those folks. And Rob Whitik is probably one of the most active brokers on the commercial scene right now in the state with DSM. So he's a friend of

Smyrna. He's he's he's got ties here and investment here. And just keeping track and and tabs on those folks and their thinking is really important to hear what they're and and to use them as a sounding board. We're thinking about this. Tell us why we can't have it. Tell us why we could have it. Tell us what we would need to do to get it. They're great pieces of information for that that that's okay.

We're gonna move on to the um so the um if I can get it. It wants to play. There we go. So, uh, Tori also wanted me to talk about this and I believe the mayor was looking at this data in terms of So, we we get a lot of, um, complaints, um, and there's a lot of, you know, both [clears throat] from residents and from, uh, from businesses downtown that there's not enough parking.

So, I was able to go out, um, and do, um, a parking inventory uh, in our, uh, downtown. Now, what I use as a as a benchmark in terms of I I'm not going to do it in the residential neighborhoods. Essentially, the area shown in pink, that's the central commercial zoning district. Um, it's essentially the area from where Delaware Cardiology was on North Main Street down to to the south going all the way to the Smyrna Health and Wellness Center and then essentially from Cobalt Manor in the east to Bryson's funeral home, uh, Bryson's and Matthews. Um, so that's the area and I I broke it up into two different parts looking at both parking lots and on street parking. And I did this at three different days and at three different times of the year. And I printed out all the sheets for you in this thing that you can take home if you have questions. So, so for parking lots, if they're shown in red, that means they're a private parking lot. If they're shown in blue, that is a public parking lot. So, the blue ones, there are four public parking lots. You have where the Duck Creek Regional Library is. Um, you have Town Hall here has public parking spaces right behind us. Um, the L is the Opera House parking lot. And then behind the Delaware Pharmacy Society, um, even though some of it is privately owned, we maintain it. We have an agreement with it. It's public parking in that area. Um there's a number of parking spots there to be able to interpret what in terms of what we did. You have um you'll the total is the number of spaces in that particular parking lot. Okay? And then at different times of the day and a different days. So on October the 23rd, we went out from 9 to 10 to survey every single one of these parking lots. Okay? and it shows the number of occupied

spaces out of a total and then a percent occupied which is shown with the ar the the pie chart symbol the gray and the green pie chart symbol. So that what should kind of jump out at you in terms of [clears throat] um as a general rule in most of downtown we actually don't most of the parking lots are actually half full maybe 60% full but if you look there is one area one part of town where we have uh and you can probably guess where um parking the parking lots are generally full most of the time during business hours. So at the Smyrna Health and Wellness Center, you know, they have they have 150 mark parking spots at that um facility and in we took it at both in the morning and the afternoon and generally they were in the 90% range and generally those those few open parking spots were generally handicapped uh that weren't necessarily occupied. So there were very few in that particular parking lot. And then across the street, especially during school hours, the school district utilizes the opera house parking lot. Um, and customers in the health and wellness center also occupy that parking lot along with But once you do go up into the Duck Creek Regional Library parking lot, um, there is 113 parking spots both in front of the library itself and then closer to Sag Street. There's a huge concentrate. Most of the parking lots are act parking spaces are actually down there. Uh depending on what time of the day, you know, we went again twice during business hours. Um you were at, you know, like the 60% level, 60 to 70%. So there were a fair number of open spots in that parking parking lot. So the Smyrna Health and Wellness Center is obviously the one that is driving a lot of the parking shortage in this area. So that is a cue that we the town needs to be thinking about creative ways in which to be able to provide parking in that

particular area or work with the individual businesses or excuse me the individual service providers in that building that their employees need to park a little further away and allow their customers to and patients to park in behind the building which can be challenging.

Can be challenging at times. So at 2 and 2:30 it's very similar data um that um again the Smyrna Health and Wellness building their parking lot is is the most full. Uh you know behind PNC the old citizens bank parking lot is generally not completely full. There's typically a few open spots but um but that one is generally fairly full. Um the rest of them are you know somewhere in the middle. And then once you once you go to um once we go to 5 to 6 PM once business hours are over you'll notice that the parking parking lots clear out very precipitously. Not surprising. Um so that means that you're not getting a lot of residents that are parking in these parking lots. Now in addition to doing parking lots we also did um on street parking. So what we had to do, this required some estimation and we had to go out there with a a measuring wheel. So we take each segment in the downtown the central commercial zoning district and in some cases they actually had marked spots on the street and that made it really easy to count. In other cases, depending on the block, you didn't have marked spots, but you had signs that said parking was permitted. So I would have to go out and if it was a 200 foot stretch, you know, I would divide it by 20 feet or 22 feet. That's the length of an on street parking space to be able to say that there are 10 available parking spots and then count how many cars were actually in in that area. So we did that for every street segment in the central commercial district. And as you can see, um, South Main Street is the only area where, um, South Main Street and and East Commerce are really your two areas with the most on street parking demand. Uh, and that's kind of two different

reasonings for that. Uh, Sad's main street is you have your retail businesses like SERS um or um and then you have your um the Smyrna Health and Wellness Center where you have patients coming in and parking on street um on East Commerce Street. Most of those are residences especially like the Colonial Hotel. A lot the Colonial Hotel have individuals who don't necessarily work during the day. So they [clears throat] might be 10 cars out on East Commerce Street taking up um parking spots that you know those are people that just don't work during the day for for [clears throat] better for worse. But um compared to I've worked in other municipalities um and been to a lot of other municipalities that have really vibrant downtowns. You know just a few weeks ago I went to Co Pepper Virginia. Um it's it's one of my favorite towns if you go down to the Pedmont of Virginia. It's it has a Amtrak train station. So a lot of very affluent folks from DC live there and work remotely. It's about, you know, uh and go go into DC once a week or something or twice a week or something like that. Um or if you go to a place like Middberg or Warrington in the Pedmont, these are places that have if you think about our downtown, we have a number of um vacant storefronts. Okay? If you go to a place like Co Pepper, they have four or five blocks in a row where every single business storefront is occupied and not only occupied but very vibrant and busy. Uh and you have a number of restaurants in that area. [clears throat] Um they're on street. You could not find on street parking within four or five blocks. Okay. In a place like that, um you would be hardressed to find parking in the parking lot. I mean, you would just have to walk five or six blocks because it's a very it's a destination downtown. [clears throat] Um, if you go to Newark for a slightly different reason, you have the same thing. You know, you will

find out what finding how difficult it is to find a parking spot if you have to go to Main Street in Newark, for instance. But um so in in South Main Street we have a parking challenge and we're working Lori and I and Jason we're working together to try to find a solution to help the Smyrna Health and Wellness building. We have 150 people that work in that building.

Okay. Um it's a great downtown employer. It's actually among any building in town. It's the second largest or second excuse me the second most expensive building in town. Um and there's a it provides a lot of medical services to the community. Um a whole host of outpatient services. So we obviously want to accommodate them and to be able to provide opportunities for them to grow. The third floor is still vacant. They're looking to put a women's health center, comprehensive women's health center up there. Um, but to be able to do that, if you're going to bring in 30 new employees and perhaps guess [clears throat] how many new patients, we are going to have to get strategic and be able to potentially provide some more parking in that part of uh of downtown. So, [clears throat] want to be able to provide that. Um, this is being put together for the DD plan that we're required to do, but um Tori thought it'd be a good idea to to bring this to your attention just so that you um have access to the data. Um, and I printed that out just in case you could take it home and if you have questions, you can give me a call or you'll be able to answer questions from constituents.

So, I'd be able to any questions or discussion. Thank you very much. Excellent presentation. Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you very much. Very good. Item nine, uh, public comments. We have anyone who wish to make make public comments at this time? I just

Vicky Blair I just want to wish you all a happy holiday season. However you celebrate, have a safe New Year. Enjoy the next two weeks with your family. It's important. And thank you for doing what you've done for this town because whether people out there recognize it or not, you guys have worked really hard to get us in a better spot. So I just want to thank you for that.

Thank you. Thank you. just state your name. So, this is our last meeting for the year. So, I'm going to pray you all out. Father God, we come from where we are, Lord, to you. And we ask Lord that as his council and every person in this room and even our whole township Lord, we are all members to come together in unity, which is the slogan that our wonderful mayor has put together in her heart. So I pray, Father God, that you give us wisdom, courage, and strength, Lord, with much discernment with understanding. May your will be done for this town and every person in this town. May we always look for the good, but yet always be mindful that the Holy Spirit that is in us sometimes needs to be recognized and addressed. And we thank you for everyone in this room. Lord, I pray so much good health on them physically, mentally, emotionally, and above all, Lord, for a sound mind and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Amen. Anyone else? Make a motion we journ. Do we have a second to adjurnn the motion? All in favor? I. Motion is carried. Meeting is adjourned. 8:28. Thank you very much for coming out and have a wonderful holiday everyone. Drive safely. Yes indeed. For staff. Thank