City Council - Special Meeting

Yes, I'm here. All right, we'll go ahead and call this meeting to order. Can we all please stand for the pledge of allegiance? Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Will the clerk please call the role? Mayor Robertson here. Deputy Mayor Gilbert here. Council member Paul here. Council member Urban here. Council member Fletcher here.

All right. And item of discussion today, we've got the RFQ number 2025209, economic development consulting services interviews, shortlisted firms. And uh so Scott, do we want to go ahead and just start calling it up from top to the bottom? Yes, sir. And mayor just wanted to point out uh we had sent out information to all the council members informing them of the three that were not going to be here today. Uh so that was the 9:30 with Business Flare, 10:15 with Inspire Placemaking Collective, Inc. and 12:15 with John Stove and Associates. I mean 11:15,

excuse me, 11:15 with Inspire Placemaker. Thank you, Dan.

Yes, sir. Thank you. All right. Uh, first up we have Air Associates Incorporated. Hello, uh, Mr. Mayor, Council. Uh, I'm Mike Troll with Heirs Associates here to kind of discuss our firm and kind of what we bring to to St. Cloud. I'm also joined by my two colleagues, Jay Mul Mul, sorry, I always pronounce her name wrong, and uh, Bri Bri Jeter. Um so I'm here representing heirs associates. We are uh uh come as a partnership with two other firms metro forecasting and our arnet moldro and I think we bring a pretty dynamic team to help you that can help you. We have experience. We are I'm the national economic development lead for so I work all over the country uh um including Florida right now. Now, we're doing some work over down in Lakeland with the Memorial Boulevard redevelopment with the CRA down there, but we work extensively in many different venues, corridors, downtowns, um, and all types of business attraction, uh, and business retention efforts. Um, Metro Forecasting, I know you're familiar, they do a lot of, uh, projections and they've done some work for St. Cloud. Um, we're working with David Farmer. um he's part of our team and uh Trip Moldro who's part of uh Arnett Moldro one of the principles he's they are a specialist in economic development and retail uh retail analysis and uh retail economic development and we work with them closely in a number of different venues. Um we think we're a good fit for St. Cloud for a few reasons. One is I think we have the experience, the depth of knowledge. We have access to the tools I think that you can that you uh that you need and that developers use including

uh Ezri Business Analyst, Claritoss and uh Co-Star Real Estate. If you're familiar with CoStar, it's a depth of proprietary real estate information. Um and we also have experience. We brought David Farmer on specifically because as a former developer, he has contacts in the development community and and can understand um or has those contacts to help kind of deliver some of those projects that you're looking for. Um so I think with that said, I think we we have the ability to look to do uh redevelopment work and also to kind of link in the with the development community and that retail recruitment. So, uh, with that, I'll I'll pause my presentation and and if you have any questions about our proposal or about our team, be more than happy to answer them.

Yes, sir. Uh, each applicant was, uh, given a list of questions. Can you go ahead and please address those? Um, yes. Let me pull those up. One second. And I'm going to ask for each applicant as they come up to to start with that first as well. Yeah. Brief introduction then kind of roll into that.

Sure. So as far as the project management side, the first question um is our economic development lead. I would be the project manager along with uh my colleague uh or my colleagues Jay and Bri who are located out of our office in Tampa. Um the uh um our professional relationships with our firm. Um the uh we um we have extensive relationships, you know, through trip and through our net mold and through ourselves with developers that we work with. But as far as local developers, uh David Farmer, um he is our our our local expert in terms of the the development community. Um he is a former developer uh and he um uh he is a former developer. He has knowledge and relationships with developers across Florida. I apologize he was not able to attend. He had a funeral today. I was hoping he could come so that he could highlight some of those relationships that he has uh more directly. So I apologize for that. It was difficult with the short notice. Um but um that's what he he will bring to that table and that's why we're excited to be working with him and we work with him in other venues in the state of Florida as well. Um the uh as far as the the personal industry connections can be leveraged what we really believe strongly um before you go out and look for site selectors before you start to talk to those you really have to understand where you want to develop and what you want to develop. Um, I think any firm that comes up and tells you that they've got a rolodex of sight selectors that they can call are not being truthful. Um, in my experience doing this for 30 years, site selectors don't typically talk to communities. They talk to developers. And I think part of the issue is you have to have a good

understanding of the development process in the area that you're looking to develop. When you get a site selector or a retailer or a business that's looking to ret looking to locate into your community, they're looking for land and they're looking for terms and those are provided by developers. And so part of what I think your challenge is is finding those areas that you can develop um that are developable, those areas that that are are available and being able to link them with developers that can kind of help bring those recruit those uh the retailers and those businesses into your community. And I think that's what David uh you know he really helps us bring that in bring that element to the table. Well, I know he studied uh he did some work for you back in August of 2025. Um and we had a long conversation leading up to this where he said, you know, he indicated that, you know, based on your market, you've probably have um opportunity for two large retail centers. Um you know, you're very much underserved and I think there's a pretty pretty high demand for for some of those services. But I think part of that challenge is finding a ground uh that that you could develop and finding locations that fit those needs for for those th those users that you're that I think you're looking for. And and what we do uh and what I do and what our team does on the heirs side is we kind of help with that develop on the development side. Um I work closely with developers across the country. I understand what their needs are, what they're looking for in terms of traffic counts, access points, layouts, pad sites, um, and you know, what's going to make them what's going to make these projects attractive for investment. I think that's really, you know, the most important part of uh of this equation is

um finding those locations that that are attractive and understanding how developers uh view your community and view those opportunities. I do a a workshop um I teach a workshop for communities across the country. Uh it's usually through the Main Street program but through different venues as well called uh how to think like a developer. Um and it really teaches communities to how how to do some of the math. Um so that when you go talk to a developer you can talk talk to them as an equal partner. I think sometimes that that there's a imbalance and I think communities feel like they need to um they they allow themselves or they feel the need to kind of um be bullied a little bit by developers but that's just the way they act. And so I think part of it is understanding your strengths so that you can kind of negotiate as as a as an equal partner. Um and then I think the final question uh specific examples of how these directly contributed um we have some examples I think I would kind of from uh from uh David you know again he's our our mo most local but we're also working directly with um right now we're working with the city of Lakeland I think that's the most recent on the uh Memorial Boulevard. we're looking at three separate sites that they're going to be marketing those for development and providing those um building those opportunities for um you know for investment with property that's owned by the CRA. Um, I've done in my career somewhere going on about $300 million worth of redevelopment in different contexts everywhere from kind of job creation to retail development, mixed use, downtown development um, around the country from and so um, so we have we we've done that before um, and and uh, you know, hopefully we'll get to help you out here in St. Cloud. Thank you,

Council Member.

Thank you for your uh presentation. Um I have met with David Farmer before and he's provided some very helpful data on where St. Cloud is and where we need to be. Uh my question for you is um our biggest struggle I think here in St. cloud is that we're a very bedroomheavy city where um many of our 71,000 residents, a large majority of them are forced to drive an hour or two hours outside of our city to to to have a a job with a live livable wage and um and so why do you think St. cloud is dealing with that um commercial to residential deficiency and what would you see as some solutions to help uh balance that out better?

So, you know, I I think for a community of your size and kind of at the at the where you are or how you've evolved, um it's not unusual. I mean communities that you're started out were smaller bedroom communities to much bigger communities and where the jobs you know the the jobs are and or the you know the uh you know close to those job centers right so you know you end up uh you know evolving into that bedroom community so I think the you know one of the things that the the the challenges that I look at when I look at that is okay what is it that you want to be I mean obviously you're changing you're evolving as a community. Do you want to do you does your economic development plan and focus want to be on job growth or do you want to just provide essential services, medical, retail for those residents? And I think the question is probably some of both um and looking for those opportunities where you can kind of build those in. I'm a proponent of uh the I always say if you control the land, you control your future. Um, and and I think, you know, for any developer, you know, to serve your community, you have to have land. I mean, it's not kind of a it's not a it's not a academic exercise, right? I mean, you have to have a land that has access that to serve the people, to serve the customers. You have the customer base right now. and and kind of talking with David. Now the trick is you you have to find the locations and you have to be able to prepare to develop those and understand where where those opportunities are, who controls the land, how can you kind of leverage that relationship and what do you bring to the table as a community to kind of to to incent that or to to facilitate that growth. Um so you know I I think it's a combination of things but you know as as far as um you know ch changing the

dynamic a little bit and I think it's 71,000 I I I did I did retail recruitment for a community it's about the same size it's about 70 was 71,000 and they put me in charge of retail recruitment and they asked me what are you going to do and I said well I'm going to wait till the population hits 100,000 and then you're going to think I'm brilliant um be just because a lot of retailers I mean there's just different met they're math problems and it's a and they're metrics that communities use. And I think what you have to do is anticipate um where that that growth's going to occur um and how you can best take advantage of it and leverage that for the benefit of your of your your your citizens.

Thank you, Council Member Paul. Um what industries have you successfully attracted to other communities?

Um you know, I've done a little bit of everything. I mean, I've done mixed use. I've done a lot of work in downtown redevelopment. Um I've done like some different entertainment theater venues. Um I've did I've worked uh um to bring in um uh at one uh plastics a medical plastics company employer of 50. It was a really good of 55 thou the average wage of 55,000 um with a high school education. And so it was a really good um you know we work with with uh um with a company to kind of understand what those needs are. In that instance we actually had to extend a sewer line. Um you know it was the biggest challenge to to activate the site that they were most interested in where the depth of where the employment base was. Um and we work with them to kind of to to extend a a sewer line to make that work. And so sometimes that's it's a bit of the hustle of economic development that you have to be prepared for with those opportunities. Um so I think um and I've also done uh mixed use development um you know uh restaurant retail over housing market rate housing. I've done some affordable um you know an artsbased affordable housing project. Um and so I a little bit of everything. But and I'd have to talk to I know David um again I I go back I know he wasn't able to attend but I know as he's a former developer and he has kind of a depth of experience as well as as my colleague Trip Moldro.

Okay. Thank you. Council member Gilbert. Deputy Mayor Gilbert. Sorry. Oh that's okay. Um sorry about yesterday. Oh that was the I know we won't talk about that here. Uh we have the FL L FLU and the MAC our future land uh development and our medical center that we're looking at. Now I know we just got it approved by the state correct for the flu council. Was that approved last week? Uh I don't know if there were changes on that. Were there with the future lane the M? I don't believe so. That was all already the medical arts.

So that's something I look at. That's what we're looking at also. And then I I know we say 71,000. I I I truly believe there's more because double ups and things like that, but we're not going to get into that. But currently we struggle with some infrastructure um and the county does and the state does. If we wait till 100,000 people before we call these um developments in, then we're just doing the same thing we're doing with our infrastructure. We're just pushing it down the road. I'd like to see us working on getting those kind of uh businesses and business and and and salaries here prior to the 100,000 mark which I don't think's too far down the line. I I don't have a crystal ball but uh I'm looking at central Florida and the development of central Florida areas pretty robust and I don't I I can't like say I can't predict the future but uh I appreciate you coming out here today to make this presentation. I I do see that you worked with us on the uh the lakefront. I see that you have some other assistance with our the alleyways. I I know we worked on that in 2025, I think. And then uh you said one thing in here that really struck me I thought was pretty good. And let me go back and pull this. Um it says you've been in business for 66 years. Is that correct?

Yeah. Yeah. And when we say almost 400 employee owners now is you you have an ESOP program. Yeah, we're ESOP company. Okay, that's good. And I see where the offices are in the states. I'm going to yield back to you, mayor. Those are the only questions I had. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you. Um, all right. My comments uh are pretty much going to be for everybody. Um, but then I'll let you address them first. So, obviously we are all term limited. We have a I'm on here for four years, maybe another four years. Um, so we have uh a short timeline to to deliver results to our citizens. Um, what is the first six months? So, say you were selected. What does the first six months look like? in providing results to us.

So, you know, I think that's a great point. I I I I think every good start begins with a vision. If you don't know where you're going, what the the saying is, um, you know, if you don't know which port you sail, no wind is favorable. Um, and I think you need to understand kind of what that vision is as a community, what is it you want to look for and what is it you're willing to kind of spend and and and to do to achieve it? And there's no wrong answers on that either. I mean, some communities want to be more active, others want to be uh more reactive, and that's okay. But I think part of it is is having a clear vision going forward. If I'm a developer and I come to St. Cloud and I say, "I'm interested in this," and you can't have a response, then I think you're you're you're going to struggle with economic development. And I and I think um you know, it's important. I I appreciate mayor you bringing up the fact that you you know you've got terms in your eight years. I did a $75 million downtown redevelopment project in the city I worked in. We acquired 16 properties uh 15 different owners which was a year of my professional career negotiating. Um and it took 10 years from visioning and and I went through three city managers um multiple city councils, two different mayors. Um, but I think part of that, the important part is because I still have very good relationships with all of those elected officials is they really felt that it was part of their legacy and it was part of with their contribution to the community. So I think it's really important to have a very clear vision and work to that vision and and and you know understand what you're doing and I think in the end kind of it will all pay off and benefit everyone in the community.

Okay. Um I I guess I'll frame it the way that that kind of how I wanted to hear. Um what how many proposals of of companies would you be able to provide within the first five or 6 months uh in terms of like the develop the development?

Yeah. Where do do you believe you'd be successful in bringing jobs here within the first six months? At least proposals for jobs, not retail. I don't care about retail. We've got that covered. We have a vision. We've done plenty of I mean David Farmer's been on here I don't know for how long and we've hired so many firms this and that and I mean I've been a part I grew up in this community since 1982 so I've watched it grow. I've seen every consultant in the world come through here and and so we know what direction we want to go. We know we want jobs. We know we lack that. We have an area for medical arts. We have areas for industrial development. Um, I'm from the development world and I've done lots of retail. So, I guess that's where I'm coming from is, you know, I would like to see results within the first six months of, hey, here's this corporation. They definitely want to be here and here's where you are uh suggesting that they go because we that that's why I started off with, hey, we're only here for a short number of years, right? And um after that, we don't know who else sits in these seats and if they would even care about economic development or job creation.

Well, you'd hope they would, right? But I think but you're so I think that's it's a very it's a complicated question and I don't want to give you a simple answer to that to say how many. And I also wanna I I wanna um it puts me in a difficult situation because David Farmer who is our devel our link into the local development community couldn't be here today and I think I spoke with him um and he said look I've got developers I've got a rolodex of of folks that I could bring to the table that that we could tap into locally. Um, so I I think what what we would like to do in terms of the first six months if we were to kind of work with you be selected is find out where those opportunities are. Where's the ground that can be developed and then go to David and start reaching out into his network of

Yeah. Not to cut you up. I I mean I don't think we lack in developers. We have those if we we need corporations. I think that's what we need. We need jobs. I I mean especially local developers. I mean, we know every one of them around here. I mean, that's not anywhere in Florida and and beyond. Well, so I I I I think that's really what we're looking for in this.

No, I think that I think that's helpful and I think it's a it's a little bit of a different focus. Um I think what's important is understanding how you market yourself. You know, part of that first six months is, you know, what does your workforce look like? Because if I'm an employer or corporation coming, the first thing I'm going to look at is what's your unemployment rate? Is it too low? Because if it's too low, that can be a problem as well. What is the what what are what's the skill set? You know, and and who can I hire? And if I move, who can I bring with me? Who am I going to lose? Or who who you know, who can I bring with me? What does your housing situation look like? So, so part of what you know when you're when you're talking about um you know the the job the the business attraction on the on you know the employment side it's really about having a strong understanding of your workforce and then allowing that to inform how you market yourself to to those communities or to the to those th those users. um and and how you then interact with the developers who are going to be the ones that are going to build those facilities potentially or repurpose the existing facilities for those employers. I mean, I think if you do have a medical, you know, if there's a medical, I think that's great. I think those are are, you know, big obviously that the they're they're big employers. Um, but I really think, you know, if the focus, as you say, is is is going to be on the job, I'm going to start looking at kind of workforce issues, kind of trying to build a profile. And one of the things with TRIP, with Arnette Moldro, that they do really well, and the reason why we work with them is that they're they're specialists in marketing and branding. So, they they they look at how do we market St. cloud um for you know for for those businesses that are kind of interested in expansion or growing in in this this region of Florida.

Yes, sir. First up, you're going to get these kind of questions, you know, because then then everybody's going to have to follow. Um it's like going up to bat against a pitcher and at the top of the the beginning of the game, you know, like nobody knows how this pitcher is going to throw. Um not too many off speed pitches. What's that? Not too many off speed pitches in the beginning. Um, you know, I guess the the strong suit here is, you know, David Farmer already has that knowledge of our workforce and our housing situation. We we uh obviously have um enjoyed his services for a number of years. I'm not sure how many years, but um so that should be readily available. So, I mean, essentially, you're saying you've got that information already, right?

So, we can off to the races like throw that out there to corporations, say, "Hey, here's the status of this community." Yeah. And um

I I I think that the benefit, you know, the reason why I think we enjoy working with David is he does bring that and I think what we bring is more the microlevel land side of it. So we can look at, you know, I can look at kind of a development project, understand what the needs are, and David is looking at the forecasting and you understand what the needs are and what's going to drive it. And so I I think it kind of fits very well this the the the information and the skill sets that that that he brings with kind of married with kind of what we do. And then you know with Arnette Moldro which I know you probably you haven't worked with. I'm I'm guessing um you know but they have a lot of the marketing and branding and they they they do some more a little bit more on the retail side. So it seems like they we probably won't need to use them quite as much but uh but but certainly yeah David is a he's a really really smart guy.

Yeah. And the reason I say that the about the retail is, you know, we've got that heritage um what's that? Heritage crossing, I think it's called on the west side of the turnpike getting developed. We've got the east end of town. There's some retail going in. So, that's really going to drive the retail. You know, it's the those are going to be the shot in the arms in those areas and then it'll just take care of itself. You know, we've seen how the loop has grown or or even up there at um uh by UCF, what is that one? my brain's water for lakes, you know, once once it goes in and it's successful, it just expands from there. It kind of takes care of itself. So, um I have no other questions. I appreciate uh you being first up here.

Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yes, sir. Enjoy your day and we appreciate the chance to to come share our experience with you, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Sorry. Uh Sean, Council Member Fletcher, did you have any questions?

Thank you. Um the I I think you've provided um you know good answers to to to a lot of um the questions that have been asked. Um I think it we have a you know two items that we have to focus on here. One is like the mayor was saying um we're looking for short-term results but also a plan I think for longterm economic growth. um because I I you know I you know think that it it will take time um to find um these industries. Um one question that I did have is how would you leverage our um proximity to Neo City the turnpike and then also um on the east side of town um with the new infrastructure improvements um out there. Um,

so you know what I I think that's a good question and I I I want to dive into that a little bit more. Um, I given the access to kind of the transportation networks and the population. You know, one of the fears I have is that you become more of a of a of a a distribution or if that's which I'm not sure if that's kind of an attractive job you or an employer. I mean, they typically don't pay as well. So, I'd want to look at that a little bit more um and understand, you know, to see if that's something that that that you know, you might you might start to see. Um the other thing I I would kind of want to look at is um you know, because obviously economic development doesn't respect municipal boundaries. Um and so what I want to understand is what is that regional context? Are there uh um cor you know corporate offices, headquarters, different uh uses like that that would make sense in in a location like St. Cloud um you know that takes advantage of the fact those those easy access to um you know to two different airports um and to you know the the the Florida market. So, um, so we'd have to dig into that a little bit more, but you know, at first blush, I, you know, I think I, uh, I, I would, you know, I always caution. It seems like this day and age in the world of Amazon, distribution centers seem like they're the distribution centers and data centers, I think, are the two things, but neither of them are from an economic development are terribly attractive. But, um, so I want to understand that context.

All right. Thank you. No further questions. Thank you, ma'am. All right. Thank you, sir. All right. And we said business flare is not today. That's correct. Okay. And who were the other two? I'm sorry. I don't have that list in front of me. Uh 10:00 is GI. No, he's not. But the two the two that will not be. Oh, the other two. So, Business Flare, the 11:15 was Inspire Placemaking, and the 12:15 was John Stove and Associates. Yes, sir. Thank you. All right. Next up, we have GI Consultants. They're at 10. They're at 10.

Okay. So, uh any other uh organization in the Anybody prepared to go or we going to go ahead and take a break? I think now we're going to take a break just because staff did reach out to the other applicants to see if they were willing to move and they were not able to shift. All right. Thank you. All right. We'll go ahead and take a break.

this workshop back to order. All right, next up we have GI Consultants.

Hi there. Good morning. My name is Laura Smith. I'm the urban analytics director with GI Consultants. Um I understand that y'all just want us to do our presentation. I do have printed copies of the presentation. Would that be helpful? Absolutely. Yep. Please give it to the clerk and she can pass it down here for myself. Thank you.

Thank you. So, I would like to first thank you all for the opportunity to interview and present our services related to economic development consulting here for the city of St. Cloud. Um, we thought your RFQ was actually really interesting and provided us an opportunity to really showcase our skills and what we could bring to the city of St. Cloud. Um, first I'd like to start by saying we are Central Florida based. So, GI Consultants, specifically our community solutions group is located here out of our Orlando office. And for these services, we have partnered with Richard Levy with Levy Consulting. Um, we have a very long-standing relationship with Richard and his consulting firm. Um we've done work where we've supported him on efforts that he's engaging in other jurisdictions where same goes um he's supported us on various efforts that we've engaged and that is a very long-standing relationship. So we almost consider Richard as embedded within our team. We have an open door policy. He does feel very comfortable walking right in our offices. So um uh that is a seamless transition for us to work with Richard. Uh we're also very committed to meeting the objectives of this RFQ and as the timeline proceeds, we understand this is going to be a multi-year agreement. We are in a position to continue to adjust staffing and resources to meet those needs as they evolve over time. With me today, I did bring uh two of our task leads. Um Natalie Frasier is here and she'll be acting as task lead for economics, real estate and market analysis as well as Claudia Ray who's our stakehold stakeholder engagement specialist. Um Claudia is also an urban planner, urban designer and trained architect. So she

wears multiple hats but is also very gifted as stakeholder and community engagement. Um we would have liked to have bring brought our other task managers with us today as well. Unfortunately, as a central Florida based firm, this is the first week of spring break and so some folks had travel arrangements that couldn't be changed. Um, but Andrew Macau and Anna Kimmelton are also both very very um specialized in land use planning and urban design with regard to Andrew and with marketing, branding, and uh digital graphics with Anna Kimmelton. So, we first want to make sure that you understand we understand the objectives of this RFQ. And as you'll see there on the third slide shown in green are the objectives that you identified in your RFQ. So, we've also shown in the blue flags over to the right the scope of services that you outlined in the RFQ. So, we're going to show you a couple of projects that we think really kind of highlight the questions you asked in your interview request in a way. So, we're kind of trying to show you a lens. We're looking through the lens of your scope of services to show you these projects to show you how they align with the types of services you've requested through that lens of the questions that you asked which was you know how do we engage with folks what are our relationships with bringing activity with attracting investment and with attracting industry. So the first set of projects I'd like to talk to you about are our market report and opportunity zone perspectus work. We have done market reporting and opportunity zone perspectus type products for jurisdictions throughout Florida and across the country. I'm highlighting three of those experiences specifically because these are ones that we are in a continuing relationship with with city of Tampa, city of Orlando, and the Southland area of Chicago. The Southland area of Chicago is actually our engagement with a development authority. That's because the Southland area represents over a dozen municipalities. So this is an investor lookbook

essentially that we've produced for them in the form of an opportunity zone perspectus and we did that a couple of years ago. The same with Tampa and Orlando. We produced these products for them within the last three or four years. As opportunity zones are going to be changing um this summer. The new 2.0 version of opportunity zones is rolling out. These folks have already engaged us to come through and update their documents because they know how much traction they get out of these products. They use them a lot. It is the way that they communicate directly to the types of industries and the types of investors that they're trying to attract into their markets and they've gotten a lot of traction from these documents. So, they've been very clear with us. We're ready. Opportunity zones 2.0 is coming. We need you guys to come in, look at the new zones we're going to get, and help us remeage those zones to attract folks into those investment areas. And that also gives us an opportunity to layer investment opportunities so that we can really get to the root of gap financing issues where folks are close to being able to get something to happen, but they just need a little bit more. The good thing is it doesn't all have to be the local government that bridges that gap. We can use things like opportunity zone programs, enterprise programs, tiff districts, all of these things that we can look at. But as well in Florida specifically, we can look at the things that are available for the state, the region, and then also partnering in those local incentives or other inducements that may be possible. Um, moving on, I want to talk a little bit about what we've done when we're looking at a specific site or a specific area. So, we've done some work for the city of Charleston, West Virginia. This is essentially the downtown area of Charleston, West Virginia. And if you look on to page three, you'll see the city center business improvement district strategic plan that we did for them just recently. This was actually a very robust effort. It was very comprehensive. It involved marketing and branding of that area, defining it as the city center, creating the graphics

that identify that, making it a very visually functional space, but also understanding there's an old mall here that's empty, hasn't had any real stable vacancy in a long time. Um they've had some pop-up tendency Halloween stores, things like that, you know, seasonal shops, but they really haven't had any stable focus there. So they needed a better understanding of who do we go to? How do we attract a more stable investor or a more stable tenency into this space to act as an anchor that then other tenency can rally around? So that's essentially what we were helping them do here. Also understanding that as part of that, we really needed to show some public investment early on. One of the things we hear a lot when we talk to the private community in terms of investors, um, folks looking to locate a headquarters or a facility within a certain jurisdiction, they'd like to see some public activity ahead of the private activity. So, it can be something small. In this situation, we were looking at some lighting improvements, some streetscaping, some crosswalks, and some branding, some some visuals to really help identify that area and make it a marketable space to now start trying to attract activity into. Similarly, within downtown Jacksonville, we also worked with them on their business investment and development strategy. We updated that for them a few years back. This is in downtown Jacksonville. This is the North Bank and South Bank. This is also their CRA within downtown and they have the downtown investment authority that oversees a large component of the activities within that market space. So we were helping them rightsize their incentives here. They have a lot of incentives that they offer for different types of user groups, but their incentives were a little bit complex and that they were hard to navigate. users of those incentives if they were not as sophisticated in understanding how to utilize them and take advantage of them. They were kind of getting caught up in the language. We also had some issues

with a very narrow focus of what constitutes retail where really they were looking for ground floor activation. So they were looking for the ground floors of some of their highrises to be more vi vibrant and more active. So really kind of opening that perspective of what can we call retail beyond just is it a restaurant, is it a retail boutique, you know, really talking more about ground flooror activation and foot traffic kind of changed the perspective there and we were able to help them use that as a tool going forward to be a little bit more direct in their efforts moving forward. Um, and I think this speaks more specifically to the questions that you raised. If you'll move to the next slide, you'll see our recruitment and deal structuring experience. This is a list of a number of services, sorry, or of a number of structured situations that we've participated in. This is where we've either directly attracted these types of users into a space or these types of investments occurring to create these spaces or situations where we've helped structure the deal. We've helped with the financing, the proforma, bridging that gap, but we've played a significant and notable role in the development of each of these recruitment and deal structuring opportunities. Um, I've also got there a couple of our development and targeted industry selection experience. This or solicitation experience. This is where we've worked with local jurisdictions where they already had a site or a property and they were looking to attract a user group to either develop or just take over that space as a tenant. So in Oldsmar, this is their downtown. They own about 8 acres along Tampa Road, which is a large six-lane divided highway. On the other side of that is historic Oldsmar, which has a whole host of legacy subdivisions and neighborhoods behind it leading down to the waterfront of Tampa Bay. So, this was actually a two-year process. We started from very early on

defining a mission and a vision with the community so that the folks that might possibly come in and bid on this weren't facing an uphill battle of public perception. So, we first started out with this site going through a community workshop where we did a mission and a vision for the site itself. So that then as we were going out and starting to talk to developers and trying to facilitate the type of project that would meet the community's needs, but also bring the type of activity and housing that was necessary to really support this becoming a downtown centerpiece. This would essentially be the catalyst that spurs the remaining activity around. Um so like I said, this was a two-year effort that we led with the city. Um we went through the entire process on their behalf right down to interviewing some of these potential projects. They are now fully in under their developers agreement. They've selected and everything with Stanberry Development who will be building a mixeduse project on that site which involves ground floor anchor retail tenency um office space as well as upper story residential. They included community features within this as well because that was a big component of the outcome of the mission and vision for the residents. They wanted something that would allow them to engage in this space and feel like they weren't, you know, in impeding on other people's area. They wanted the first floor of this to be very open and experiential for the community. So, there's a dog park here. There's a public parking space for general public to park in separate from the upper story tenant spaces. And there's also community spaces that will possibly be used as art galleries that would be hosted through the city and the city would run the program on those spaces. We also did some work with the town of or the city of Inest and this is actually in their depot district. If anyone's ever been there, this is actually a really cool space. Big pavilion. It's on the lake. There's a big walking trail that goes through

it. And the historic downtown is just a couple blocks away. And the downtown is full of shops and restaurants and small businesses. But the depot district was just a little bit removed. They were really looking to bridge that gap and bring some stable commercial into that depot district because the pavilion is used for pop-up events, farmers markets, craft shows, things like that. And it gets a lot of attraction over the weekend, but they were kind of looking to add a commercial anchor there to bring some commercial activity daytoday. So they actually moved a historic structure into the depot district and they wanted to get tenants into it, but they wanted the right tenants. They wanted community oriented, family-friendly tenants. They didn't want a chain. They had a very specific vision for this space. And we went through the letter of interest process with them to help them identify who those potential users might be by bringing in regional businesses as opposed to, you know, reaching really far out and pulling folks in from out of state or really far removed from this area because they wanted that continuation of those business relationships. They wanted to grow an existing regional business by offering them an opportunity to come in here and operate. So that's essentially how we went through that process was going through a letter of interest, identifying the groups, reaching out to them with very targeted messaging, and then fielding those responses and uh facilitating those engagements back and forth with the city. So with that said, we're of course happy to answer any questions that you have. Um, and again, we're always happy to work with St. Cloud. We've done some work with you all over the past several years and we feel like those were always wellreceived and we've enjoyed those experiences. So, an opportunity to work with you on economic development. Seems like a great opportunity for us, but also seems like a lot of fun.

All right. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. All right. Any questions from council? Uh, Council Member Urban.

Thank you. I will um kind of ask the same question I asked the last um uh the last applicant is St. Cloud. Part of our struggle is that we are a very bedroom heavy town. The imbalance between uh commercial and residential is way too imbalanced in my opinion and that's part of the reason why we we put this RFQ out is to try to help uh balance that out better. Uh why do you think we have such a bedroom heavy issue? We're 71,000 residents. Deputy mayor said probably is more than that. We're probably going to be above 100,000 residents uh before we know it. So why do you think that is and what would you propose that our city does to help uh balance out that deficiency?

So I don't know that I can speak to why that is right now. That's part of what we would be doing in these early stages. That's actually probably an early conversation we'd like to have with staff is a factf finding analysis component to really understand what is the market, how is it performing, what are your occupancies, what are your rental rates, what are your leasing operations looking like, how is all of this picture really revealed and I want to see that in context of the location. So what is downtown St. Cloud look like versus your more highway oriented to really understand where maybe some of that is being lost. But that's really the first step for us in any endeavor. I would not venture to say what will or will not work or what is or is not um the issue that is created that is causing that or what the catalyst for that is without doing that level of of really deep dive information. Plus, as we dive into that information, we now know whether or not the things that we may recommend, once those are deployed, we can now track them by looking back against that same data set and benchmarking against ourselves. Are our occupancy rates improving? Are rental rates getting better? Are we seeing more lease opportunities? Are more leases being assigned? So, for us, this is very much lay the foundation first and then let's build off of that foundation. And you may have a few projects or specific sites or areas that you're looking to really activate and we can help you navigate that early through the process, but you know, understanding the bigger picture of the why is something that we'll need to dig into from a market research perspective.

Okay. Thank you. Uh, Deputy Mayor, excuse me. Thank you all for coming. We appreciate it. It is spring spring break. So y'all with little ones, I don't know, we had a few in the first presentation because they were here because they didn't have school. So they got to sit through this uh very exciting process that we're going through. Oh, my kids love sitting through exciting processes like these, but they would much rather be with their dad right now playing. So

I get that. Uh I looked at your um um information and I really was impressed by how your um company does work. I I notice your CRA is a huge portion of that and we we've got a project right now with our CIA that's it's going to be one of the largest projects ever in St. Cloud. So, we're we're excited about that. As as uh Councilman Burton said, there's 71,000 people in here now. There's going to be over 100 I think there's over 71 now because double ups and things like that and sometimes the census don't catch up for a while. But we would like to see stuff happening before we get to that 100,000 plateau because I know how the cities and the grants and all that go. goes 0 to 50, 50 to one, one and over and I think it's 250 on is how those monies are awarded. But we want to get ahead of that. We're we're struggling infrastructure. We got 1.3 billion dollars coming into Oslo County for infrastructure. So I'd like to time that up with the with the economic growth. We have a plan that we put together last year or so. So if if chosen, I would like you all to look at that plan, see if that works for us. So, we're not starting at ground zero because we've already done some of that work in previous years. Uh, one more thing. Yeah, I see you do TIFF and CRA and, uh, things such as that, which is really, really good. We would like a job creation company to come in here and we have everything you need, work, play, uh, we just have it here. Uh, we have the, uh, housing and we have Neo South coming in. That's uh kind of we're going to feed on that and uh council member Fletcher may have more questions on that later because he'd asked that. But we do have some good things going on here. We have a a brown area that's going to be green pretty soon about two blocks away from here would be great for for for those areas. So I would just like to consider working with us with what we already have in and plans and then not starting from ground zero. Besides that, I want to give it to you, mayor, and thank you very much for the time. Thank you all for coming. Actually, I if if it's okay for me to

respond, I actually think that sounds great. Um, we do a lot of CRA work, yes. But we also do a lot of work outside of CRAAS and with cities more broadly. Um, so when I say starting at ground zero, I've seen your website, the information that you already have out there. You've done some foundational work.

So, I completely agree starting there and really absorbing that, understanding where you are, where you've what's been happening over the past couple of years in terms of some of your business activity and some of the trends that we're seeing there. but also we would love to hear if you've had any sort of exit conversations with any of your users as to why they're departing the market. So that's also very useful information for us and it's the type of thing that we would want to reach out to those folks also to say, hey, you know, we we see you were here for 5 years and then you left. What was the impetus for that? Was it a better deal somewhere else? Did you talk to the city before you decided to leave to see if they could help structure a deal similar to whatever you may have received to go somewhere else? So, we also like to do sort of that

decon on that to figure out how it got to be where it was. Well, thank you. That just gives us a jump start on this. Absolutely. Back to you, Mayor. Council member Paul, hi. Um, thank you for coming today. Um, I do have one question. Um, as someone who has experience in the manufacturing industry, um, and always had to travel outside of St. cloud to work. Um, what other specific industries have you um successfully completed in other areas besides retail? Cuz I do agree we have enough retail coming in. Um, so

so retail is just one component. The work that we're doing in the south end of Chicago is actually much more industry- based. Um, so retail is something that retail and office specifically is something we've done a good bit of work with throughout Central Florida. Um, but as we get into some of these more um industryheavy suburban areas that surround these urban cores is where we start getting the opportunity to dive in on that. We've done some work like that up in the Charleston, West Virginia market as well where we're looking beyond just the central downtown hub as specifically as it as it pertains to job creation. But one of the areas that we struggle most with when we're dealing with industry is is this really going to create jobs or is it just going to create tax base? Um I don't know how many of you may be familiar with what has recently occurred with Kroger leaving the market. This did have a lot of employees, but these were not high wage jobs. The jobs that were there were mostly just last mile delivery service for the Kroger grocery operation because the facility itself is entirely automated. That's where we get into this question of tax base versus job creation because the types of manufacturing and the types of research and development and industry of that perspective where you want to bring those jobs in are not always going to be as easy to get as the type that don't bring as many jobs but bring the tax base. especially in a time where our manufacturing is becoming more and more automated and there's less and less jobs per square foot coming out of what they build. So I am very comfortable in that capacity having those conversations but really understanding if we're looking for jobs what types of jobs specifically are we looking for skilled trained jobs or are we just looking for a you know type of lesser skilled job or are we looking for something that's at a specific income level is this to make housing a better condition. Do we have the housing that those folks can live in at the wages they would be getting out of that industry? So, we're looking to

match all of that up and align those things back together. It's actually a reason that we see housing as a big issue in a lot of communities as well is that we bring jobs that do not necessarily support the the pricing of housing in that market. So, we want to make sure that when we're targeting those industries to bring those types of jobs here that we're thinking about it through the lens of the job and the wage as opposed to the tax base and just the number of jobs, but jobs at the wage that's going to make them sustainable in this market. So, yes, I think we're very comfortable thinking outside in that field as well. Um, and I just want to kind of reemphasize this is not an area where we're retail specialists. If anything, we're industry specialists. So we look across the entire section to really think about strategic planning. We've dealt in a lot of corridors and even in airport adjacent situations where we're trying to locate stuff on properties that are near airports. There's kind of a dead zone around airports, but there are some uses that are allowed there and they tend to be more heavily focused towards manufacturing and the distribution type industries. And that's spaces where we've been able to work with jurisdictions to kind of eliminate some of that dead area around airports to bring in some of that industrial activity.

Thank you. All right, Council Member Fletcher, you have anything? Any questions?

Good morning. Thank you um um for presenting this morning and submitting application um and the opportunity to work with the city of St. Cloud. Um like I asked the last um presenter um how would you uh leverage our proximity to to Neo City? Um um you know we we're very close to Neo City that the counties work with both state and and federal partners to to you know receive significant um federal grants um to to help get that that project off the ground um and support the you know American manufacturing of semiconductors. Um, so that's my question.

Right. So, we're we're obviously very familiar with Neo City. We've actually done a handful of different support services into that project um through our various divisions within GI. So, leveraging off of that really will introduce the opportunity for um support related services. So if you think about like an auto manufacturer, you end up with sort of spin-off activity that comes from that act that activity. Um the economic impact of something like Neo City will create other spin-off operations that open up the opportunity for more types of businesses to come and locate here to support the user base there. So you've got employees now being centrally located that are, you know, very skilled wage type employees within Neo City. Those folks have other needs, right? They have families, they need child care, they need health care. And on top of that, you'll have the supply stream that's coming into the manufacturing component within Neo City. All of this presents opportunities to look at surrounding areas as support networks for that to where you can act as an influence or as part of that supply chain into that broader activity that's going on at Neo City. So we feel like we are particularly well suited to highlight that as we are starting our attraction programs for St. Cloud to where we can show here's Neo City, here's all that that offers. here's some things that are going on in St. Cloud. Look at how we can connect these two dots. So sometimes what's going on around you makes you a focal point and brings your name into the conversation and that's where we would be looking to really, you know, continue the momentum off of Neo City as it continues to grow and evolve. Would anybody like to chime in or add? Claudia.

Yeah. Um,

can you come to the microphone? So we also do a lot of work with the city of CMI. I'm actually updating their CRA plan right now. And what the city of CMI has, for example, they have a memory of understanding with the Orlando economics partnership. They're trying to attract life science and a little bit of the the technology and some of the uses in New York City. But one of the things that CMI is lacking in is space. You know, there's not enough room to put one of those facilities. So we can also look at you know what are those spin-off from neo city and some the line available to that but also kind of that relationship with Orlando um partnership will be beneficial for do for you guys and the same for um the chamber to attract some of that and spin off uses

deputy mayor.

Yep. I just had a couple questions because um of the statements you made. One, we have a great education background. If you look at Oyola County and our graduation rate has just risen tremendously. Uh, one that's through Prosper Oyola, which gives scholarships to graduates from Oi County. Great program. We also got TGO. We also the safest city. I I would like to use all those um tools in our toolkit and that's something I I would like whoever we decide to go with gets aligned with us in all the things we do have that are great. Sometimes we don't project that out to to the folks that want to come here cuz like you said, someone's going to have to move. They got a couple kids. Maybe grandma and grandpa are going to stay with them. They need affordable housing. Plus, they need great education in a safe city. So, I would just like you to think of that and look at our statistics are pretty strong when it comes to graduation rates, when it comes to um uh uh college, and then also our specialties, which we have a lot of good u does everything from HVAC to electric and all that kind of stuff. So, that was my Do you work with Blinda Kirkland at all with uh Enterprise Orlando?

Not at the moment. I haven't specifically. Okay. No, Blinda Kirkland. I mean, I've we've worked with them in in the abstract like their organization more so when we've reached out and asked them to help us with something or they've reached out when we're dealing with a project that they're involved in. Right. But not directly. She and I know. Yeah. but she came with some of us and and and that's just another opportunity we can have to utilize their services that they have. I yield back again and thank you very much again. Back to you, Mayor. Thank you. Um so you mentioned Neo City. Uh are y'all currently working for the county and doing projects for Neo City attracting businesses?

Not attracting business. Not in that context. We're not currently doing that for Neo City at the moment. At the moment our work with Neo City is towards the engineering side of things as well as landscape architecture. So these kinds of projects will move in and out of different phases. We come in and and do some work for them at at a stage and then other services we provide. GI is a a very comprehensive services company. We have engineering, landscape architecture, urban planning and design as well as energy and um environmental services as well. So, we kind of move in and out of projects with our various groups, which is great because it means we're usually right there at the forefront of knowing where a project is, what the status is, hurdles they're currently facing. Um, it really kind of gives us some some better knowledge and context of what's going on with these projects as they evolve.

Yeah. You know, and y'all have had a long-standing relationship with the city of St. Cloud. I know um number of projects. I used to be uh as an economic development employee here back in 2017. Uh and I believe that's about the time y'all came on board back when Yeah, we did some work for the um the lakeshore the shorefront area where we were looking at maybe deploying that into a mixed juice concept that would have brought some some um event space that was part of the envision St. Cloud and then the park system strategies. Okay. And the can you talk about the Envision St. Cloud master plan that you all did for us? Anybody want to jump in on Envision St. Cloud?

It's been a little bit. So that's it's uh been a little bit and I was not a project manager. I was actually helping a lot with with the engagement, but I remember doing engagement for you guys on that. We were talking about growth was the word. And I remember one of the presentations we were doing for you guys and we were saying everyone usually is pretty proud when you talk about growth. you know, you see your kids growing and you see that and we hear from the res there's a little bit of push back about that and so when you were asking about industries retail and residential I think it's like the question will be taking that work that we did it's like how we should grow over time but you also kind of need that input from your residents because believe it or not a lot of residential communities like you guys like CMI the people that move here is because they want that. They want that kind of quiet. We want the waterfront. We want our single family one and we don't want a place crowded. So I think our challenge, your challenge and our challenge is to balance that growth. And I think we can take what we did in vision Kimi back in 2017 and maybe what is like a a little bit of a refresh maybe through the lens of economic development. And that's what I remember. But we did a lot of studies about your land uses and what it exists and how can you grow over time

and also as part of envision St. cloud. What's what's interesting here is, you know, that was a moment where we were looking at where you want to go, where you want to get to, right? And that's part of why community engagement is so important. And I think we leave it out of the economic development process a lot because we're so focused on recruitment, deal structuring, trying to get these certain types of industries here. One of the reasons we were as successful as we were in Oldsmar was securing that relationship is after multiple unsolicited proposals had been submitted to the city on that site due and then just overwhelming public backlash for anything on that site because they felt like the community just really did not want anything there. They wanted it to be essentially why don't we just make it a park? Why don't we just make it something where food trucks can park? Let's why are we trying to build? Let's stop all of these things. At the very beginning when they engaged us, we said, "Let's go back to the public and let's get an idea of what they see for that place and make that part of our solicitation process as we're talking to folks because nobody in the private development world wants to get beat up and rigged over the coals and written horribly about in the news and social media as they're trying to bring prosperity to a community. They know what they're trying to do. They're trying to offer jobs. they're trying to establish something and they're going to take a beating in the process. So, if we can get out front of that and really, like Claudia was saying, engage the public and get them part of your championing of these things, then that really lowers and softens that entry for someone coming in because they're not expecting, you know, 10,000 people standing here screaming about no growth, no growth, no growth. Let's start with them. Let's lay that groundwork because it's going to help welcome anything that you're bringing in when they don't have to sit here for two hours and get beat up by the public and you know all kinds of things said about them and it just really helps when we can bring the

public with us and they can become our champion as we grow together.

Okay. Um when it comes to job creation, what does the first six months look like? Let's say y'all were selected. Well, this isn't a we're not real clear what our first task would be, but our suggestion would be an action plan. We need to evaluate what it is that you are looking for early on. This RFQ didn't give us a scope of services in that you want something specific. It gave us some objectives and a list of the types of services that you might be interested in. So, if you know what you want day one, what you're looking for us to hit the ground doing on day one, we are poised and ready to present to you exactly how we would do that. But we first need to understand what day one is. And at the moment, I'm not clear on what day one is for you all. So, you would have to tell us what your day one is. Okay.

All right. Anyone else have any other questions? Thank you very much for your time. Appreciate you. Thank you all. Thank you. enjoyed spring break. Thank you. You too. All right, our next one's at 10:45, so we'll go ahead and take an 8 minute break.

to order. And next up we have Gman in York. Okay. Good morning everyone. Thanks uh for the opportunity to come and speak with you uh this morning. You've got quite a schedule today with the uh interviews. I appreciate all the work that you're doing on this. Um, I uh think everybody got a handout. Uh, I'm just going to go through it briefly within our 10 minutes. Uh, and then we'll get to your, uh, Q&A, the questions. The first, uh, page, of course, the title page, and then the next page is just a little brief bio on me. Uh, I'm not going to go through that. It always makes me feel a little bit like it's my obituary when I when I read through it. But you can read through it when you really get bored, and you're looking for something to put you to sleep. Uh the second page my experience you know it's interesting I spent most of my career and I hate to say it but it's sort of going on 45 years in the in the industry but about 30 of that was as a developer a commercial real estate developer and started out in Canada originally and then came to Texas in 1984 became a citizen in 1990 spent 12 years in Texas and 20 years in in the Northeast and then moved here to Florida to live here permanently. a little over 5 years ago. But as a real estate developer, you know, you can see my list of uh work. I've run both public and private companies uh in the 500 million to billion dollar size. Uh in terms of development experience, I've listed the uh 50 million in square feet of projects and four billion of value. Uh I'm not going to go through that whole list. Uh next to me on my left uh is Ken Pierce. uh who is our senior vice president of managing director for Florida. Both Ken and I live here of course in Florida and Ken has uh substantial experience in economic development uh uh around the US but with a focus here in Florida. Uh the next

page where it says working at the intersection of economic development and commercial real estate just take a minute and explain why I started Gman York. New York started uh we just had our 15y year anniversary uh last week actually. So I started it in 2011 and the uh reason I started it was through the years and de I guess decades of commercial real estate development work I've done uh I kept seeing this need for cities to have a better understanding of what drove uh investment decisions on the part of developers and the part of companies who are selecting sites. Uh that's the world I spent as I said earlier about 30 years living in working with companies helping them find locations and working with uh financial investors both on the uh debt and equity side and uh how they evaluated opportunities and and most importantly how they evaluated markets. Uh so I saw this need for cities to have a better uh understanding of how the industry works and I felt that was something that we as Goldman and York could bring to the table. Uh so I started the company in in 2011 as I mentioned and uh importantly I'll point out that uh we are licensed uh as real estate brokers. You have to be to do this kind of work by law. Uh Florida's law is very clear on that. Uh if you're working for someone else, you're being compensated and you're doing uh you're providing real estate services, you have to be a lency. Uh importantly though, we didn't really want to become brokers. That's not our goal. Our goal isn't to just become brokers. We're we're working for cities, for municipalities, counties, state and quasi state agencies, some of the clients that I've listed here. Uh but the way we work is uh uh what I like to describe as uh clean hands on a clean

hands basis. Uh in other words, we will never have a role in the development as a an owner as a developer. uh we'll we'll always be working as a professional services firm for our client. So that's critical. Uh we're not uh depending on a you know making a deal so we can get a commission. We don't work that way. We don't work as on a commission basis. We work on a fee for service basis just like you'd hire a law firm or an engineering firm or anybody else. Uh we always it setting it up that way to me was the best way for us to have clean hands and and make sure that our goals and interests are aligned very closely uh with those of our clients and it seems to have worked. We've been successful in 15 years of doing this kind of work. So you can see on that page our the list of our current clients, municipalities, counties, government agencies, a lot of institutions. Uh that's a growing part of our business. Uh, interestingly enough, we're seeing a lot of work coming in from large church organizations that are trying to figure out what to do with excess real estate and they need advice. Still doing a lot of work on behalf of lenders and equity investors uh and developers, but that's market feasibility, financial feasibility, that sort of work. We're sort of the third party underwriter, if you will, of a lot of these projects. Uh, moving to the next page, uh, services. What so what do we do? uh this kind of work, planning and economic development support services. Uh we do a lot of regulatory updates. A lot of our client communities haven't updated their regulations to kind of keep up with the way the industry has changed over the years. So we do a lot of that sort of work. We have a very extensive planning organization uh within our group led by a PhD level urban planner. uh regulatory updates, master plans both for communities uh the overall community and also for the town center, the sort of

central business district of the community, if you will. A lot of redevelopment plans. Uh we're seeing a lot of and this isn't going to come as news to anybody uh here today, but a lot of uh enclosed regional malls, a lot of office buildings, a lot of office campuses, you know, built in the 1980s reach the end of their uh economic life. They're suffering from both functional and market obsolescence, and we're helping uh communities work. Uh so we work on behalf of the community but we work with the property owners uh to help them reposition uh those properties. And I mean the the extent of the regional mall the decay in the regional mall business and the extent of the decay in the the obsolescence in the downtown urban office building business is dramatic. I mean it's it's just huge. So it's a big part of our business. And then lastly, uh if what you're looking for or what a client is looking for is a report, a study or a report, uh and that's it. I mean, that's really we're not your guys. Uh we want to be there. We want to do the report. We're very data driven. The lesson I learned repeatedly over the years is to really understand the market at a granular level and make sure you you are positioning whatever you're planning on doing from a an economic development standpoint to address that market. The particularly market demand, you know, what is the market willing to uh support and pay for? Basically, it has to at the end of the day, it has to be financially feasible or it doesn't get built. Uh so you know we work uh not only will we do the datadriven very deep dive into the uh what's going on in the market uh but we expect to be there to help implement it and to be held accountable for it quite frankly. I mean that's sort of a fundamental principle of why GNY go New York uh began. Uh you know we don't want to be a planning firm. We don't want to

just give you a great big report and wish you well. You know, I can't tell you how many city halls and economic development offices I've been in where there's a big report sitting on a shelf and I'll ask them, "So, how did that work out? What' you do with that?" Well, really nothing. Not you know, we have no interest in doing that. And if you're looking for a report, we're not your guys. We want to be there to help you implement it. We want to be held accountable for its implementation success. Uh moving on, the uh one of your focuses in the RFQ were was around personal and and professional relationships. uh both Ken and I and our team at our office and we have offices in Arizona, Texas, uh Florida, the Carolas and uh and our main office is up in Connecticut. Uh but uh across the spectrum of our our professionals, we have extensive relationships uh with the people shown on this page. Uh of course, a lot of it is commercial real estate uh brokers. Uh a lot of it is with consulting firms. They have the consulting firms that I've listed here, KPMG, Deote and so on have big site selection uh groups within them. Uh we're working for one of our clients right now. Uh client municipalities uh municipality that is has a very large defense contractor and they hired the defense contractor hired KPMG to do a site selection review across America for where to build their next engineering center. We got into it with K KPMG. Uh, fortunately, it's uh, we've done a fair bit of work with KPMG on this these kinds of issues. And to make a long story short, looks like we're going to get the engineering center built in our client community. That's a $550 million project and will employ 2,000 people. Uh, average salary in the six figures. So, uh, beyond the the the traditional commercial real estate broker business, these site selection specialist firms are critical. Uh so you can see listed down there industry associations. Uh Ken and I both have a lot of

experience with the economic development associations and of course the providers of capital both de debt and equity are critical. Uh and as I mentioned earlier we do a lot of underwriting of that kind of third party underwriting sort of arms length underwriting for that kind of project. uh leveraging these connections. You know, the points I wanted to make here is how important it is to be data driven. You know, to be talking about the market opportunity. We see a lot of communities that go out into the world and start trying to attract companies and what what do they talk about? They talk about, you know, clean, safe streets and good schools and lots of parks and lots of churches. All of that's important, but it's equally important and maybe more important to be able to make the business case. You're talking to a bunch of people that typically are talking about investing millions of dollars into a very long-term proposition. When they do a project, they expect to be in the community for 30 years and they want to see the business case. So, being able to provide that datadriven uh focus and make that business case for the investment and uh we'll actually use we'll get hold of proformas that they uh client potential client is using to do their analysis and we'll say look we can do that for you. why don't you let us do it? They're very good typically about sharing it. They'll they'll tell us here's how we look at deals. So, we'll take it and we'll do our own internal analysis. Quite often we'll we'll find even with some of the best firms out there that their analytical work isn't that good. Ours is better and we can point out to them why it's better and we'll teach them something and they appreciate that. But it also helps us make the best CL case for our clients. And then lastly, a lot of our work is about following up. You just got to stay on it. you know, you can't just make a call and wait and, you know, hope that someday somebody's going to wake up and decide they want to talk to you. Moving on, leveraging these connections. Uh, again, uh, you know, the, uh, representative projects I've got here, uh, you can read through those. I mentioned the defense contractor. Uh, we

just did on behalf of one of our client communities. I helped them, uh, land a logistics center, 1.2 million square foot logistics center. That's a very long list. everything from bottled water companies to large insurance companies uh and on and on that we've been able to uh to get uh we had one situation with a large insurance company that was looking at alternatives to to where they were. Uh Ken and I both agree that business retention often gets overlooked and having an ongoing close communicative relationship with your existing businesses is just as important as going out after new businesses. And in that case, uh it was an insurance company that was shopping around looking for a new headquarters. Uh our client community was at risk of losing uh about 4,000 jobs. Huge huge number. Uh and we were able to stop that uh initiative and and work out a deal for the insurance company to stay put and in fact invest $100 million in repositioning their property. And then moving down the list, you know, I'll let you read through that. I've mentioned some of these and I want to get to your questions. Uh so you know our focus is really on these large moving to the next page which is page 11. Our focus really on behalf of our client is is on these large complicated uh commercial real estate initiatives and for new investments. Uh one of the things we specialize in is uh very detailed work on actually crafting the development agreement so that the community gets the maximum value out of it. and so that you don't make a big mistake. Sometimes the most important thing we can do on behalf of our clients is make sure that they don't make a big mistake. And we see that all the time. We're working with a community now that wants a convention center. They got a proposal from a regional developer. Uh we did the uh the analysis of their numbers. The numbers didn't make sense. We then as part of our service, we then

vetted the principles behind the proposal and there was all kinds of problems. bank personal bankruptcies. Uh we in fact found a federal tax lean uh against one of the principles for a lot of money and up to that point our client community was all enthusiastic about this new convention center proposal but the people behind it the sponsors were not the right people. So we had to go back to the drawing board and and uh get back out there into the market and find somebody else. Uh we've done a lot of work around stalled or failed projects. uh that's as I said earlier has become a big part of our focus and we're doing surprisingly enough uh we're doing more work today around eminent domain uh work and contentious land use Florida experience moving on to the last page here and we'll get to your questions uh I've been working in the Florida markets uh since I got here to the US in 1984 I've worked up and down the uh primarily the east and central counties uh sort of a triangle if you will from Jacksonville east or west to Orlando and down of Miami and in all the sectors and currently we're doing some work in the communities shown here Eustace Ocala Lauder Hill and Miami Beach we're on an on call contract uh with the city of Miami Beach so thank you for your time I went over my 10 minutes but let's go ahead and get to your questions

yes sir all right council questions deputy mayor again thanks for coming I noticed that you had Cala in there. There's a lot going on in Ocala right now. Also a lot going on.

Uh it's a beautiful city. Not as beautiful as St. Cloud, but very beautiful city. Uh uh blatant obsolete uh uh public purpose. Those areas we have to look at um in St. Cloud and we've done a lot of work. Um and the mayor will ask some more questions, but and so will uh Councilman Fletcher, but we have Neo City, South Neo City coming in. And there's going to be a lot of job creations there. We have west of 192. Uh I mean west of turnpike, there's huge developments there. I even spoke to council on record saying one day that may be uh the city center of St. Cloud and this may be the historic center of St. Cloud. So the growth potential there, you guys know that you can grow better when you have more land. And if you look at the tri county area, we're we're sitting in pretty good shape. Um, but when you go to work each day, do you have offices here in Central Florida?

We do. Yeah. I live in in Eustace and uh Ken lives East Orlando. East Orlando. Okay. Okay. So, we're only an hour away as it turns out. It was a quick trip. Yeah. Yeah. And it's spring break, so traffic's very late this week. So, we talked about that earlier. But I like the ideas for TIFF financing and and u and I I like your presentation and I reports are they're they're just mullet rappers waiting to be used, you know. So, if we can go ahead and get work done, that would be great. And I yield back to you, mayor. All right, Council Member Urban.

Uh, thank you. I I love what you said about you're not just here to give a report or statistics. I mean, we I don't know how many times you you hire a consultant to tell you what you already know. I love what you said about that and we we we want to put this into action. And uh I guess what one of the questions that I've been asking all the applicants is St. Cloud has a a large deficiency. I I think between residential to commercial, it's very imbalanced. We're a very bedroom he heavy city. So my question to you is why do you think that is and what would you recommend our city to do to u help with that deficiency?

You know I think that's sort of a normal evolutionary uh stage that you're in as a market grows and and this market you know being the Orlando uh metropolitan areas has seen unbelievable growth. Uh I've never seen growth like this other than in Texas when I was in Texas. St. cloud has seen tremendous growth from a population standpoint. So I think where you're the stage you're at as the market grows out as a market tends to grow out from the original city center that probably developed let's let's say from the 1960s you know you see those out outer ring communities primarily as bedroom communities for a while and then as time goes by the the balance shifts as you point out and you start seeing companies saying well why are we asking our our people to drive into downtown Orlando to come to work when if we do that analysis we can see from a drive time standpoint that a lot of them live in, you know, for example, the southeast quadrant. Why aren't we looking at an office there? So, I mean, that you're in a normal evolutionary period, I think, and you're sitting in the path of growth. There's no question that St. Cloud sits in the path of growth. The question is, how best do you steer some of that growth, commercial growth, not bedroom growth, you've got that already, but how best do you steer that growth to your advantage, to the advantage of St. Cloud? And I mean that's that's goes back to what I was saying about deep dive into the data drive time analysis employment nodes. You know we we know that uh employment uh drive times tend to be around 22 minutes. If you get over 25 minutes what you see is erosion. It's in our world we call it density decay or gravity analysis and you see erosion in it. So if people find they're driving 35 minutes for example they start to look for jobs that are closer to their home. So our first analysis is sort of what what employers are within 20 to 25 minutes then start talking to them about potential offices in St. cloud and and

we'll literally say to them, look, if you'll share your addresses and we sign NDAs, we do this, we've done this for banks. Uh uh we'll sign NDAs, we'll do the the the uh drive time analysis for all your employees and help you plot where your best option is to go. And a lot of times our client communities are a great option. So it again, you got to you can't just be responsive. You got to be proactive. A lot of the people we're talking to don't understand this stuff. you know, the business people that whether it's a law firm, a bank, or a manufacturer, industrial company, they don't understand what drives their the the decisions their own employees make about why they came applied for work to them. We can help them understand that and help them kind of tailor it. And by doing that, we help our client community. And we know it works. I mean, we've been doing it for a lot of years now. So, I mean, it it's you can't send them a brochure and send them emails and say, "Aren't we a terrific community? He ought to be here.

I mean, that's just not going to get you to the finish line. Kenny, I don't mean to take off all your Well, I got Council Member Paul first. She may have a question for you first and then we'll have Thank you for being here today. Um, my one question is what lessons did you learn from other projects that did not meet expectations?

You know, I think the uh there are a lot of lessons. uh one is uh does the uh project developer or project sponsor do they understand what they're doing from a a market standpoint uh or and from a financial standpoint. So we will do a deep dive into someone's if if a community or if a uh a project sponsor comes to a community and proposes a project we'll do a deep dive into both their market analysis and their financial feasibility analysis and we we'll basically test it and we're doing it on behalf of our client community because we don't want it a we don't want it to fail uh b we want it to be as good an option uh for our client community and for the proposed sponsor as possible and as I said earlier were usually better at that analysis than most of the people who are starting to talk about this stuff. So, you know, a lot of them fail because they didn't do enough detailed homework and they they get to a point and they say, you know, gee, this isn't maybe this isn't the right option. We want to if it's not going to be the right option, we'd rather have a quick no than a long dragged out uh you know, process that ends in a no. So, it's it's better to flush it out. So, market and financial feasibility are key. The other the other reason projects we think projects fail is because there wasn't an adequate vetting done of the sponsor. And I mentioned that a minute ago. You know, we're on this convention center. You need to know who you're doing business with. You you do not need somebody coming in with what looks like a great idea on on paper but makes no sense or has people behind it that are people that your your city shouldn't be doing business with. And there unfortunately in the world that we work in uh there are a lot of them out there and as there is more money available and we're seeing more money available right now it starts to draw in amateur people to it and they're the ones who will make

the highest percentage of mistakes. So we need to flush that out and make sure we know who we're dealing with on behalf of our client. If there's uh problems in their background that may be a deal killer. If on the other hand uh they just didn't get their data right, we might be able to improve the data and and salvage the project and actually guide them. Uh a lot of times when we know we've done it right, the the project sponsor will come to us at some point maybe at the end and say you know without you guys this wouldn't have happened because we had we had made so many mistakes at the beginning and you guys told us where we were going wrong. That's a win. That's a win and that's a win for our community, our client community. Thank you for being honest.

Council member Fletcher is on the phone.

Yes. Thank you uh for for presenting today. I'm impressed by the uh the the presentation and I I think uh you kind of understand where we're coming from. uh you know we have you know every report every study our consent agenda is basically a list of consultants to to you know draft a report like you said you know how many of those projects actually get completed I think we're in a unique position here where you have you know a council that is aligned and is is ready to give all the the the required tools necessary to execute on all of these plans that you know have been done. I mean, we have, you know, data from this agency and that agency. Um, so kind of like the mayor said earlier, um, you know, we're here temporarily. How do we how do we give the tools and and and lock in and really start to execute um um for the area. So, um, with that, I have no further questions. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, I'll go ahead and and jump in. Um, first of all, thanks for being here today. Um, I really appreciate you got the top two guys in the firm here presenting. That does mean a lot. My name's on the door. Yes, sir. You were you were uh sign up to be held accountable for everything you do or don't do. Yeah, I agree.

That's great. Um, obviously your resume speaks for itself. Um, Colonel Pierce, uh, you know, we are a soldier city. We were founded by Civil War veterans of the Union Army. Um the this this council over this past year and a half, we've kind of we we've kind of been focused on really moving in that direction on marketing ourselves as the soldier city once again. That's been kind of forgotten in the past and uh and that's what we really want to continue to push. Um so that really stuck out for me is uh your time and thank you very much for your service to our country. Um, I got a million questions, but you know that that's the thing is you guys checked every box what I was looking for. Um, as you know, I I looked through this and and and it wasn't just one of you. I mean, you obviously bring, you know, a lot to the table and uh, Colonel Pierce, but I mean, just looking through all the rest of them, what I did like is the fact you live in Eustace, so you know that area, but you didn't talk about working there, and that's okay. I didn't hear anything.

We are their their client. Yeah. Okay. But but you didn't push that as as one of your big projects and that's okay. U but I like that you live there. So and I say that because you understand what a lakefront um community looks like and some of the things that we may need and you'll you could bring some of that because you're a citizen there, right?

So the citizen input is big with me because that's who we we represent all the citizens here. So um you can identify w with the the type of living we have here in the the environment. We're not Eustace, but we have we have a potential down there at the lakefront, as you know, we've um as the deputy mayor brought up earlier in the meeting that we just got our future lane use map uh approved, the the re the update

and down there at the lakefront between Massachusetts and 10th Street, seven blocks, we're going to be allowing for restaurant, cafe, bed, and breakfast. Um, and just kind of honing in on that area right there with things that will really truly add value to the community, things that people have been looking for. Um, also there's Florida Avenue kind of connecting our downtown to our lakefront with some some business activity. Uh, I I as the council member Irvin brought up, that's uh I'm glad you spoke up and said here's who we aren't. You know, we're coming to the table saying here's who we are, but here's who we're not. we can be that if that's what you're looking for, but as as you read this RFQ or the RFP, uh you identified that's not what we're looking for because that's what you're you're saying. We're not that guy.

Um you you brought up a a key uh word that or two words that uh we've talked about in the past. Of course, we were um we've kind of uh put it in the back seat for now, but you talked about a convention center and worked on a project. M and and that's something that's going to be coming up down the road, some more conversation possibly next year. I think we kind of put that on the back burner, but um there was a parcel that we had identified and and we've decided not to move forward on it right now, but you guys may identify another location that may be one that we already have uh or you know somewhere else in the city. The um uh the other thing I liked is that you call them project sponsors every time, not developers, not companies, because they it's it's always they're bringing something different to the table every time. And but you're will you can work with either one of them, right? Say you've got a I mean, I'll just say an Amazon or say a um a larger company that wants to put a distribution center or or a manufacturing facility. you have that ability to work with them, but you have the ability to also work with the the Unicor or you know those folks.

That's key. I mean, uh, when we start working with a a potential sponsor on behalf of a client community, the sponsor very quickly figures out that we can be of a lot of help that we know probably know more about this stuff than they do. And that that is a really key uh attribute of our firm. I think you know that that uh by helping them make good decisions around a project, we're helping our client community. So, it works for everyone and you know, quite frankly, it ends up being very satisfying work from my standpoint. Uh, it it's great because you end up with the classic win-win.

Yeah. And that's what I identified in there and and you your presentation of course kind of hit on everything that I liked. Um, half of the job is actually speaking the language of these developers. Absolutely. Sponsors. The sponsors. Yeah. Um, and I know that because I had to learn that language myself. Uh, and it it took years and I had some some great mentors um who had been in business forund and some odd years. So, um, that really uh I got thrown to the wolves on a lot of projects like but they walked me through it but they said, "Hey, go do this, go do that." You know, offer 25 million on this. I'm like, "Hey, you do that." You know, I was in my mid20s. I'm like, "That's

um, so you kind of learn by, you know, getting thrown to the wolves on this." Absolutely. Uh um obviously y'all have uh a lot more boots on the ground experience than I ever did. Uh I was more of the the pre-planning like find the site. You know, here here's this community wants a Walmart. They want a Target. They want these type of activities. And my job is to find the site in that community, get it under contract, put together the team, land planners, attorneys, everybody. Put everybody in and do all the meetings. And uh so um what's the first six months look like? So obviously we don't want to spin our wheels on reports or analyzing things and you know for the whole six months. So what do we think?

I mean we need to get the you know it's a combination of what I call pure research and applied research. Pure re pure research is the data side really doing a deep dive and we we spend about 350,000 a year subscribing to very detailed uh databases not just the average kind of stuff you can find in the world of artificial intelligence now but uh we we start off with that pure research as a way to really deeply understand the community and it helps us uh prepare for the day when we're starting to talk to project sponsors. So that's the pure side. The applied side is putting people in the community and literally street by street, sight by sight, really understanding because at the end of the day, I mean, the data is always lagging, right? I mean, the data is is history. You know, it's something that happened in the past. The only way you're really going to understand the market today is to be there today, to have people in the community today. So typically what we do is we put a team of people, six, seven people on the on the ground in the market and I by the time they go back to the office I want them to really have a deep deep understanding of the market so that and a familiarity and we'll have people revisit that time but in that first six months period it's a combination of real of a very deep dive into the data side and a deep dive into the boots on the ground field research if you will uh side of things and then meeting with you and your staff as we go along talking about what we're finding, doing a lot of listening. You know, what what do you aspire to be? What what do you think you you uh want to have? Where are the where do you see shortcomings? Where does the community see themselves 10 years or 20 years? And and basically processing all of that and everything we've learned and then starting to to pick on specific uh opportunities that we see. you know, if if there's vacant land that's at an intersection at a on a on a close to a highway that we think is a really good opportunity for a convention center, we're going to be the first people to

tell you that. If we think there's an opportunity to build an office park uh and we'll be able to tell you the story why, you know, it won't it won't be speculative. It'll be a story that's very well developed as to why that's the case. So, by the time we're four or five months into it, we'll be having pretty detailed conversations with you about what we see as specific opportunities and and we'll, you know, be listening to you throughout the process. I mean, I was encouraged to hear you talk about the waterfront. Waterfront opportunities are huge. They are they are just magic. They're they're good ones are are very hard to find and we see so many communities that don't uh utilize them as part of their story the way they should be and it takes somebody to with kind of a fresh approach I guess to come in and say hey look it may not be it's may not be a tomorrow project but it's a definitely a 10-year goal or a 20-year goal project and we need to be moving down the road. may require some investment, may require some changes to your land use regs, but we think that's an idea. Uh, you know, equally as much, I think, in the first six months in that listening process, you know, we will hear not so much from staff and and people like council members, but from people in the in the general uh population, and they'll come to meetings and they'll say, "We like to do workshops with them, public workshops, and hear hear from them." uh and you'll you'll have somebody stand up and say, "Well, I don't know what the fuss is all about. All you need to do is get us a Nordstrom store and and we'll have to say, you know, good idea, but it's not going to happen. And here's why." You know, here's a Nordstrom customer. Here's the market customer or customer profile. There's no match. It's not going to happen. So, good idea. Maybe one day we'll get you there, but it's not going to happen soon. and and talking through that with people and being able to back it up with data and explain it is huge. I mean it gets

people aligned with everybody when you do it they'll they'll go yeah okay I get it you know so that's not going to happen now but but there are things we can do today absolutely and we need your support on those things that we can get done today so that's critical so that's you know that's the first six months a lot of listening a lot of research both pure and applied research and a lot of discussion with with you and your staff could I ask a quick question yes sir so I'm assuming you kind of have run Uh I'm assuming you guys have deals in the project, deals in the pipeline, right? So then the question is, do you guys need help managing those projects? Yes, sir.

So I would I would say the most important thing we can do, you know, in addition to the research is also manage, you know, take over and start, you know, managing those projects for you. So just project management. It's pro it's the process. Where are they at? How do we push them over the line? You know, what's the objections? Because you know, one things that I've learned in economic development, I work most of my time doing international business recruitment out of Europe specifically. I work for the state of West Virginia. I work for the state of Florida. You know, it's a team effort. It starts with the state recruiting efforts, the regional recruiting efforts, and then at the local level, you have the the county and then the city. Everyone needs to be integrated. There's deals that are going on right now you guys are probably not involved with because you don't have boots on the ground. You don't have you're not privy to that business intelligence. Um, and I think that's probably one of the most important thing is the project management side of it and the process side of it. You can do multiple things at one time, but you got to first take care of your clients that you have and the deals that you have, get them closed, look at the new problems coming and, you know, continue to do the larger stuff, you know, over the next one or two years, economic development stuff. That would be my my thought

on the existing projects and and on any future projects. I I agree with Kenny. He made a good point that I missed that, you know, one of our skill sets that we bring is we're very good at negotiating development agreements. We work closely with your legal counsel and uh because of our experience, you know, we know where the issues are. We know, you know, uh one of the things that we see in a lot of development agreements that are situations where we walk into them while they're in progress is there isn't enough focus on what happens here if things don't go right. What hap what are what are issue what are the issues of default what types of default could occur and if default occurs what happens next and we don't see in a lot of agreements with uh where you know we walk in and it's already underway we don't see enough focus on that and that's where things can get really embarrassing you know uh we're we're working with a community that was in the process they had a fair bit of land a developer came in and said I've got a great idea we want to build a movie studio And everybody got all excited about it. Uh the municipality transferred ownership of the land to the movie studio developer. The movie studio developer uh mortgaged the land, took the proceeds of the mortgage and disappeared, let the land go into bankruptcy, go back to the lender, and of course it's a mess. Well, that was easily preventable with with the proper development agreement. And there's story after story after story of that kind of thing. You know, you hate to see them, but it happens a lot. So, one of our strengths is working closely with your legal counsel and making sure that you know you know who you're dealing with and you know what how it's going to play out and if things don't start to play out the way they should, what are the what are the options? What are what's how do we get things better back on the rails or get the community out of it without it becoming a disaster?

Okay. Yeah. and and we are uh very close to uh approving an agreement here sometime the next few months I guess with the downtown the the the private public the P3. Yeah, you will see that u by late spring so April May. Okay. Um and and that with that I believe we are way over our time

six million towards a parking garage I think it was through our CRA. Uh y'all are aware we have a CRA here. Um and uh we are five of the the seven uh sitting on this board. So you you'd be working with majority of the the board anyway. Um so that is something that maybe not manage the project but but work o help oversee the the the development of it. Just become part of the team. Be part of the team and that's what we need. We need people who actually have experience in this stuff right

from the private sector. um you know it's and you've got way more experience than I would ever have you know actual you know large large projects what what you've done there but um it it's something we haven't had here in the city of St. cloud is that type of private sector experience where you know and these other consultants I don't want a consultant I want somebody who's actually going to be working as on the team with us we hope that knows how to do things your we're your partner you know we become your in-house but out of house uh development partner and that's the way we work with all our clients

similar to to our city attorney you know we don't have in-house counsel but we have his law firm and uh he does the work for us and does an amazing job thank you sir Um, and you know what's what really it's a project by project basis, right? You guys, hey, here's a project we need help with. We need to supplement the team get, you know, to make sure this thing gets across the line. I think that's, you know, we have a team that we can bring the right people in as well as ourselves. So, okay. Uh, deputy mayor. Yeah, just you're you're right, um, mayor. We have so many projects and I think it's right now over 30. And if you look at cities that I know that when we can't have 30 project managers on a full-time basis, that makes no economical sense.

Uh but as the mayor said so eloquently, and I agree, taking some money from the private sector, bring them into this and acting like it's a private sector, it's a deal deal, then we're good. And uh I I see that being as helpful as all new businesses, existing projects, too. I don't know, council. Uh we can't talk except up here. So, I never asked their input on that, but I agree that uh the mayor says we do have projects that need overseeing. So, I'll yield back to you, mayor. But that was just a point. 30 some projects going on. It's it's amazing. I mean, you go to St. Louis or different cities, they may have one or two. Yeah. You know, we're we're we're we've we're growing so much

sales process, right? Pipeline, got to get new deals in the pipeline, manage the deals you have and get them through the other end and keep you rinse and repeat. Yeah. And like the mayor said, thank you for your service, sir. Thank you. Y back, mayor. And there is a gap that we're missing. U so we talk to a lot of folks of course I I deal a lot with with people in the development world. I still have all my relationships over the past 20 years. Um actually my whole life but um I can bring all the ideas to the table that I want but it's so hard. We don't we can't get involved in day-to-day. We all most of us have jobs this guy over here. Uh he's built a successful operation there. So I'm not he doesn't have to work. No, he still works.

They said they say we're retired, but we put 60 hours a week in here. Yeah, exactly. But but but it takes uh it's a lot of work and a lot of experience that's needed. So, you know, we can have all the great ideas in the world. I could bring some great what I believe are great ideas. You know, as the mayor, I feel all my ideas are great, right? Uh but I could we bring it forward and you guys could say that doesn't look good. that that's not going to work. That's what I want to hear. I love worst case, you know, doomsday way of looking at like, you know, the doom and gloom. Um, but you and your staff, you guys have limited bandwidth, but how do you increase the bandwidth, be more productive? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Council Member Urban.

Yeah. Talking about some prior uh failed projects and some cities who you said have sort of went down the wrong track and things that could have been prevented. Um a a particular project comes to mind which is right here in our downtown uh area which I think was

has been a fa has been a failed uh project. It's a private developer. It's it's been a huge headache on the city since before anybody on this council was there. Is that something you would be interested in in helping the city want to get involved? It's the world we work in and if you're our client, our job is to do everything we can to help you with it. You know, uh it's that simple. And un unfortunately, you know, look, the reality is in in the world that I've worked in all my life, uh you know, if there are 10 projects built, uh two of them are usually failures. uh two of them are you know they broke even did okay uh two of them did a little better than okay and the rest are are successful so I mean the ratio is is you know six out of 10 are positive uh additions to the community two didn't do anything and two were failures I mean that's just a ratio so you know our job is to really drill into that and and assess on your behalf where we think things are going to go and and try to work with the developer and work with the developers the sponsor and the sponsor's partners to sort of push it up a little bit to improve it. And as I said earlier, I mean, in almost every case, we know more about this stuff than the people we're working with, and we can help them. Uh, we have lenders call us and say, "The underwriting we did on behalf of our client community was better than they would have done." So, they're using our underwriting to before they make a a decision to invest. So, that's good. But I mean, that's where we should be.

Thank you. So, you're not afraid to point out your failures. That's good. No, I like that. No, I mean, that's how you learn. But though, that's how you learn. That's it. Those are wins. Yeah. Every time you you you fail, you picked up some knowledge out of that. Don't do that again. We're candid to a fault sometimes. Yeah. And I appreciate that. Um, I like that you're able to identify red flags with uh, say we've got a whether it be a developer, whoever, a company, and you'll kind of look into their background. That's really not something we want to touch.

Yeah. Deep dive. I mean, we have to do it. We use public records. I mean, you know, we're not doing anything we shouldn't do, but you know, we do a deep dive into the history of the principles and, you know, the sponsors that are involved. And, you know, anybody who's on the team, we do a deep dive into it and make sure I mean, in your role, you want to know who you're doing business with. You know, if there's stuff in the background that's a problem, you know, we don't need a Lou Pearlman. We don't need one of those guys coming. We need to know that, you know, uh, you know, and look, in the real estate development world, a bankruptcy at some point in the past is not necessarily a killer,

but we need to know about it. And, and if we see something, we need to drill down into it and understand the circumstances, maybe make some inquiries as to how it happened and when it happened and why it happened, and uh, you know, come back to you and say, "Okay, here's what we found, you know, and here's our recommendation." That we find quite a bit. Uh but that that vetting I'm amazed at how many times we see uh not not client communities because we won't let it happen with a client community but in potential clients how often we see that kind of stuff in the background say well did did you do a a Lexus Nexus run to see what legal action came up on the principles and they look at us go what's that I mean that's not good that is not good

and I'm glad to hear that because I don't want you just throwing every bit of mud that you come across up against the wall to see what sticks with us is you're willing to say, "Hey, listen. Yeah, this these are the ideas, proposals come to the table, but I would not recommend that." Now, it would be in your best interest in yours if a project move forward. I mean, because we're up here for four-year terms, right? So, by the time things actually get built and and we have the ribbon cutting that, you know, we're off council by that point. Um, but you're willing to say that's not good for the city. That is not the best direction.

And sometimes the answer to that is to find a to to not kill the idea and the project and and not necessarily shove the sponsor aside completely. We've had a couple of instances where the sponsor was was inadequate. Let's say it politely, we'll say they were inadequate. The idea was a good idea. They were actually probably the right person from a promoter marketing standpoint because of their their understanding of the local market and so on, but but they were the wrong person financially. They weren't going to be able to get it across the finish line despite everything they said that they could. We had to look at and say, "We don't think so." So what we did was we said to them, look, we're not prepared to recommend that the city move ahead with you on your own, but what we will do is we will find a financial SP sponsor for you to come in and work alongside of you. And the initial reaction was pretty negative. He said, I'm not giving up a piece of the project. And we said, well, that's your call, but that's back to the recommendation that we don't think you'll get it done to our client community. If we on the other hand we bring in the financial partner then we have somebody with that we know has access to the necessary capital we know has the level of experience and underwriting and so on. I mean you're going to give up a piece of the project but you'll get you'll get something done as opposed to nothing. And that worked you know he he later when after things happened you know he came to us and said you know what you saved me from myself you know you you and it turned out to be a great relationship between the the financial sponsor we brought to the table. So it's it's not necessarily do you do you say there are things that concern us so that's not going to work. We might say there are things that concern us. How can we solve for those so that we can still salvage this this idea because it's a good idea.

Good. I like that. No you're willing to put the whole deal together. That's what economic development is. And Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We don't we don't my vision is that we don't need somebody just to go market our city. Like we need somebody hands-on actually doing economic development. That's right. And working in the deals. So playing in mud. So the future. All right. Um that's all the questions I have council. Any other questions for um for this organization for your All right. With that you guys very much for your time. Thank you gentlemen for taking time out. Thank you for Yep.

All right. Our next one is not until 12:45. So, we're going to go ahead and take uh an hour break, hour and 10 minutes. So,