Video Description:
LDDA Board Meeting – November 2021
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a video recording. Although the transcription, which was done with software, is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or [software] transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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Unknown Speaker 0:00
All right, everyone. Well, then we’re gonna do a board meeting technical November
Unknown Speaker 0:06
17 at 415. Let’s start with a silent roll call of our board. Alright, so before we begin, we are recording this event. So I just want to let everyone know there’s a reason why we’re not wearing our face masks. This is a fully vaccinated facility, everyone has shown proof that they have been fully vaccinated if they’re not wearing a mask. Alright, so, board and ex officio member comments. Is there any comments? Okay. Next, we have approval of our agenda. motion made by Wes, seconded by Kirsten, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Right. agenda is approved to our minutes from October 22. Have you all had an opportunity to review those minutes? Joe? Right. So motion made by Joe, do you have a second? Second, second by Kirsten? My Tell me. All in favor say aye. Aye. Pose. Next, we have public invited to be heard. Is there anybody here from the public that would like to speak? Okay, seeing none. Next, we have incentives. It looks like we have someone here with landline donuts that like to address, you know,
Unknown Speaker 1:43
God is here, if you all remember, God came to public money to be heard a while back, I did look at purchasing a building, which she has since purchased right across the street. And I want to take a look. And I’m going to go ahead and have bill rates. And then we’ll turn it over to Jerry. All right, real quick. She’s
Unknown Speaker 2:02
submitted applications for three different grants, the the facade It grounds, the retail conversion brands and the residential brands. And she’s asking for the maximum for each. So photography 10,000 Until conversion would be 15,000 for the Ltda portion, and LDP is already approved, they’re 7500 match, and then the residential would be 5000. And I’ll let her go over the cost associated with each of those in general, the asked I’ll bind to $30,000 for all three.
Unknown Speaker 2:37
And I just want to follow up with the cost of the reimbursable expenses is 209 that the cost currently higher price project. Sorry. A little bit about your project.
Unknown Speaker 2:50
That’s great. So as most of you probably know, where we bought the oldest brick building in downtown Longmont, and we’re really excited about it. Um, it’s it’s a beautiful space, the shallots who were there before, were very gracious and helped us a lot and have kind of taught us the history. And we’re very into the history of the building. So we’ve embraced that we have no desire to like go in and make it look like a disco or something strange. We want to keep as much raw the way it is as we can. We’re kind of relying on the folder health department to allow us to not cover everything, because we are putting in a commercial kitchen. And we’re going to serve potato donuts. We make them from scratch by hands. They’re a very labor intensive product. And we’ve been selling for three years at farmer’s markets and pop ups. we’ve mostly been like Broomfield down to Denver. So we have a pretty big following. And we’re hoping they’ll come here. So so we’re really excited about being part of the community and bringing people up here we’re going to have Ozo coffee and soft serve which will be really different and like you’ve never seen before. So we’re excited about it. We wanted to open January and we’ve got pushed to march for now. Our timeline keeps changing, you know just depends on builders and suppliers and
Unknown Speaker 4:31
all that right now. So but just a few things to explain as well. Much of what we would be funding is all of the fire suppression water line. Good when this was originally built out as residential, for the top as the final Hour, it was realized that it didn’t need a sprinkler system when they thought. So to be able to change it to residential, it’s going to be able to work correct. But they did need to add that sprinkler system for that building. So that’s why you’re seeing that. And then the fire suppression, and that’s just a
Unknown Speaker 5:21
lot. It’s a big expense, it was a big factor in whether we moved ahead with the project at all there. But we decided that it would be worth it, it’s just going to cost a lot and, and it’s going to be tricky. Getting our sprinkler system in such an old building.
Unknown Speaker 5:42
And I will say I will add it. I’ve never seen a pop up that you’ve had yet that hasn’t sold out quickly. So that’s a really good sign. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 5:52
You guys sell out Sunday. We left at 130 People came after and they’re like, Wow. Yeah, so we’ll be here. Next one will be for small business Small Business Saturday.
Unknown Speaker 6:11
All right. Do we have any questions from the board comments?
Unknown Speaker 6:15
Um, you decided against the disco?
Unknown Speaker 6:21
Maybe maybe a disco ball? Show up somewhere? Thank you so much.
Unknown Speaker 6:30
The obvious question is, can you maybe expand on the impact that your business will provide to our downtown or in regards to revenue and job creation.
Unknown Speaker 6:44
Um, we, this is our first business. So we’re like, um, and the feeling that I’m getting, and this is just is I’m not, I’m not afraid of failing, I’m not afraid, no one’s gonna come, I’m actually a little bit afraid that it’s going to be so popular that we won’t be able to keep up. So you know, we’re like, six people are we gonna hire six, six to 10 is what we’re guessing. But demand, it just kind of depends on demand. And what we see happening, we are going to be open times that other things are not. So that would either be come on open with us, like come on, let’s be open together. Or, you know, we’re just will benefit from being open when other things are. Like, I think amaze is closed Sunday, Monday, we’re going to be open both those days. So our days off, we’re planning on during the week, like to say Tuesday, Wednesday, because weekends are big for donuts. And you know, people just want to get the kids and go out and do that on a Saturday or Sunday morning. So we so we just hope to bring a lot of people here. And and we’re hoping that other businesses too, we know a lot because we’ve been in markets, we know a lot of entrepreneurs have taken a lot of classes with 3d SPDC just like look, their space, this, this is where you could come and you know, be a part of what’s happening. Whenever we tell people that were opening in Longmeadow, like, Oh, love what’s happening there, you know, they like the restaurants that are opening. And just different things that are happening up here. We love the community, we love all the praise, and just the art festivals, things that get people out. And it feels like a community that really wants to participate in all those things. And we just hope to be a part of it. And kind of be a place where people can build memories, where they can celebrate milestones with their family. And so and just kind of like become, we want to we want to be a place where it feels like we’ve always been here. And you know what, it wouldn’t be the same.
Unknown Speaker 9:16
Awesome. One of the things that you didn’t mention was that you’ll be able to watch them. Oh, yeah. I don’t know, though. Apparently. Another cool, I think experiential aspect. So I think that’ll be yes, but it sounds like you essentially have a draw from other communities because you have a following. Yeah, down south. So
Unknown Speaker 9:36
yeah, we have a loyal following that will definitely come up here. And you know, how often would that be? I don’t know, maybe once a month or two you know, they might work but we have a way you know, we have we have those contacts reach out to him and oh, hey, just create a pyramid or whatever. There’s happening here that people might think oh, okay, I’ll go for that events. And there are a lot of people that consider themselves.com a source. I mean, a lot of people think they know a lot about and so they want to come try us, you know. So we’re excited about
Unknown Speaker 10:11
that. Awesome. So Jody is seeking three separate grants for a total of 30,000 5000, residential 10,000 to 15,000. Retail. Any further comments, questions for Jodi? We have a motion. So moved by John, do we have a second? Second, second by Joe? To approve 30,000, Max and grant? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.
Unknown Speaker 10:46
Thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 10:48
Thank you. Yeah. My kids are gonna be excited in Greece.
Unknown Speaker 11:00
Oh, boy. God, you are more than welcome. Okay, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 11:08
All right, on to the business. So we have the tactical management assessment report presentation. It sounds tough. Oh
Unknown Speaker 11:23
yeah, you want to put that later? Yeah, just as you all know, we invest in just open the.
Unknown Speaker 11:56
As you know, we invested with the LEDC justice here as well, in this technical management assessment to really look at things in the development pipeline to look at projects that have been abandoned and figure out why, and come up with some solutions that we can or some recommendations gave it also looked at other communities and see their best practices as well. So I will turn it over to him. Open the front just leave it like that, isn’t it not? Very good.
Unknown Speaker 12:57
But great. Good afternoon, everyone. David Stern. So as Kimberly mentioned, really the goal is for four major tasks and one was do a deeper dive, you really kind of get a better idea of why projects fail and projects have been abandoned in online the past couple years. Really try to quantify how much the city may have lost in revenue investment, in terms of jobs, and housing units, and then really try to understand their there any issues, what’s going on to help inform, you know, opportunities to make it better and to improve the process. The other part was to tackle a comparative analysis of Walmart’s entitlement process. And I see entitlement basically, it’s if you’re a developer, or property owner or a business, you want to build something, you have to go to the city to get approvals. And so the process of receiving that approval, which permits you to build is what he called the entitlement process for a downtown multifamily project, which reuses cocoa coffin compared to another downtown multifamily project, which we use patina flats in Loveland. And then also to compare a commercial project and this was an industrial Flex Project Dalmations, project 6060 6060 for them in Southwest and we compare that to a industrial project of flexspaces under construction at CTC and really to identify what are the similarities? What are differences? What how does Longmont do it compared to someplace else to see if there’s opportunities, again for online to strengthen the process
Unknown Speaker 14:37
in partnership between the public and private sector.
Unknown Speaker 14:40
We also can be to strategy sessions. One was with the development community. And this is a virtual session. And the second one was with professional consultants and other service industries that basically process site plan applications on behalf of developer because they’re the ones in the weeds doing the process application. Working in collaboration with the city in terms of the comments. And then the last piece was really stick those three tasks and put together some actionable strategies that we think are we hope that Walmart can look at in terms of potential changes or ways to enhance the process, again, to really strengthen the partnership between public and private, because to build anything, whether it’s in Longmont, or in Loveland, or in Denver, or anywhere, really need to have a strong sense of collaboration with the Municipality. So for the abandoned projects assessment, so if you’re, again, if you’re developer, you want to build anything, the first step, you have to do what’s called a free application. So basically, you said it was kind of a sketch plan and description of what you want to do to the city. And this is a free application, and then the city will, through the plan, Development Services Department will get all the public works department fire police and other you know, agents departments within the city to kind of review your application to kind of give you some great luminary high level kinds of comments about, hey, this works well, you should think of this in some issues, you need to be aware of this. And so a lot of times, if you’re a developer or property visitor, you’ll submit that application. And then you’ll go back and decide, okay, that I want to submit something, you know, do I not want to submit it? Or what is it this is the metric that we use to kind of figure out who submitted applications and are they being abandoned. So basically, since 2019, through July of this year, there’s 271 applications that were submitted to the city. Of that, we had to go through the process and figure out which ones are active applications, which ones were, you know, were completed since then, or maybe under construction or unknown. And so the city has what’s called an active development law, basically, once you submit a formal application, after the free AP data goes through the development review process, and that’s what we considered active applications, meaning is currently the review by the city. It’s obviously been completed or on construction, that means that received to receive this approval. And so what we focus on, there’s a lot of different sign up, there’s a lot of different applications that have pre apps, it can be a site plan, it can be a plat can be a change in use, it can be a temporary use, it can be a public improvement plan. So we really focus on site plans, site plans are one that actually no leachability, something of that we are able to identify 33 33% of applications were considered active. And then through this, we identified about 80% of the projects were abandoned. And so to find out whether they’ve been really involved calling and talking to the applicants, whether it’s the developer or the site plan, consultant to find out why they abandoned through that we, we identified, there’s a lot of reasons why projects were abandoned. If you own the property, what we found is it’s, you’re not going to really abandon a project, it may languish or sit there for years until you can kind of figure out what you want to do. But if you’re a developer, and you have a property under contract, and you go through a site modification, and you figure that you can’t build what you want to build, then that that property developer may abandon the project. And so what we found out is about half the applications that were submitted were abandoned, that were abandoned, were adapted for entitlement related issues, financial issues, were playing percent site issues, the site was too small, the site didn’t have the bin permit the right density was another reason, market issues was also there, and then other. So kind of key takeaways of this, you know, why were these projects abandoned? So there’s a lot of interesting information. I mean, there’s a lot of different reasons why projects were abandoned. When you look at entitlement issues. Some of the things that popped up, were off site infrastructure requirements lifetime to your developer, and you need to build like, say, a multifamily development, you’re going to have to pay for all sudden infrastructure to service that development, that cost can be very significant. Depending on where you’re building your property is located relative to existing water and sewer mains, for example, rising construction costs, it really came out as another big issue that into the why projects were abandoned. Now, obviously, as a COVID, you’ve probably heard supply chain issues are just wreaking havoc on the construction industry in terms of getting rising cost of lumber, steel, copper, all those materials that go into buildings. Another issue that was identified is the length of time in the review process. And I’ll get to this a little later. That the time it takes from when you submit applications, when you receive approval can really vary. It can be yours to some extent, depending on the number of comments you receive from
Unknown Speaker 19:37
local federal regulations. Sometimes if you’re looking at a floodplain, you have to get the federal government involved through a FEMA process which can really add cost and time to a project. In terms of market issues, you know, one of the things that we found it you know, industrial multifamily are very much kind of plowed through the pandemic. It’s really kind of a favorite asset class into the desert today into the building things Obviously, office and retail is more dramatically impacted. One project that was abandoned was a potential downtown office project, because of the uncertainty of how the COVID pandemic would impact office in the long run in terms of leasing in terms of rents in terms of the ability to lease absorb this face. The next task is we looked at this, what we call the comparative entitlement process. So as I mentioned, we looked at the spoken coffin, which is, you know, under construction right now by border county housing authorities 73 units of affordable rental housing, with the parking garage and about 10,000 square feet of commercial space. The other project if you’ve been down or up there is called patina flats at the foundry. And this is a big redevelopment project in downtown Loveland depth of public private partnership as well. That was completed by Brinkman development recently. And this one actually is 155 units of market rehousing with a ground floor commercial space and a larger parking garage as part of the bigger founding development because it also includes a new hotel, civic space and a movie theater. So it’s a larger one of the biggest Well, it is the biggest redevelopment in downtown Loveland since a long time. So in terms of key takeaways from the multifamily, the comparison, the spoken coffin, and the patina flats, both are public private partnerships for this, the patina flats, that one received about 28 million in public financing in terms of infrastructure investment, the parking garage and some development fee waivers. Similarly, obviously with the spoken coffin, it’s a public private partnership, in the sense of you have guest speaker cabinet spoken coffins capital stack is about this long, we turned over why tech, low income housing tax credits, you have some state tax credits, you had the DDA participated for the parking garage. And so both projects were really public private partnerships. One thing that was interesting with the, the foundry project was identified as a high priority project in the city. And so the city city manager through their planning department had a dedicated planning staff to shepherd that project through from beginning to end. And once brakeman was selected as the developer, it took eight months, I just come up with eight months from when they were selected to when they broke ground, which is an incredibly fast process when you given the complexity of this 100 million dollar development that involved multifamily commercial parking garage, the hotel, so I was pretty impressive to the how that project work and how they got the testing through to approval. They did you know, let me say in terms of this process, I interviewed both the developer and also the municipal staff from both the city of Loveland, the city of Longmont and then Brickman developer, and then actually Boulder County Housing Authority to kind of get both sides of the fence because I think it’s important in terms of, you know, practically to prove that you have an understanding of what the city may be thinking from the developer, but also what the government is thinking from the municipality. And so in the report that he was attached to, you might have read some more detailed comments about that I think one thing was in, in a kind of budget is more is one of the things that really lengthens the entitlement process is a number of reviews that your application has to go through. Once you submit that initial submittal. The city will review it provide comments sent back to the developer applicant, you make changes and you resubmit. Well, it’s not just two times, it can be six times or seven times. And so for the school compartment, it was six, five reviews, six events, that took 15 months, then what else submitted was approved. By comparison. The love and project only had three reviews. And it took I don’t think took eight months where they actually do sucky jobs. But when it’s receive approval, it was probably like four months or so. And that one also required Planning Commission which is another step in the process, whereas long month project was a site was an administrative process meaning didn’t have to go to Planning Commission didn’t have to go to city council. So even with the extra step at Loveland of going through planning commission, it was still an expert process.
Unknown Speaker 24:18
So four weeks versus 34 months
Unknown Speaker 24:21
for say the guys yeah, he didn’t he didn’t remember exactly. But when you card, because after you get your site plan submitted and approved, next step is to get the building permit. So a lot of times developers if you’re wanting to risk you’ll tell attracted and do construction plans. building permits the much easier process at the end, because you just have to follow what the what the International Building Code has for long mine is 2018 IBC code, pretty standard. It’s just the site plan process is what’s the longest. Can you highlight
Unknown Speaker 24:50
or expand on what would cause multiple reviews.
Unknown Speaker 24:54
So yes, I can get that into the kind of recommendations do you Don’t mind but then a lot of times it’s it can be conflicting comments. It can be repeated comments, and it could be new comments that were introduced with the initial obligation. And so one thing that’s really critical, I think, in terms of these discussions, is really having standards that if you’re an applicant, you know how to review something and you can design to a standard, you know, if you design into a recommendation or a best practice, it makes it really hard to versus a design to assume we know exactly what you need to build. The other project we looked at was this industrial flex space. And so, a domestic product project over 66 1660 South forum is under construction, it’s about a 97,000 square foot flex space. The other one is 1875 South Taylor Avenue down CTC and Lewisville about 83,000 square feet by silverpoint development Interestingly, both projects are very similar in terms of the type of construction with a 24 foot clear height, which is really kind of modern flexpays that can be adaptable on the inside they really addressable become considered that last mile in terms of warehouse distribution and you know, ecommerce, the impact of E commerce ecommerce, which has really driven the demand for industrial space in Denver and in the nation. So with this project, you know, both I interviewed both the municipal staff and the the developers and their consultants, it was pretty straightforward process. You know, in terms of getting approvals. The Longmont project was an administrative level similar to this broken off and it was no planning commission or city council approval. The Lewisville one actually had to go to Planning Commission and city council, because they had to rezone the property was really kind of strange because it was already an industrial park. But because it was located along Highway 42, it had more commercial design standard versus industrial. So they had to rezone it to make it more industrial in terms of the type of construction they wanted to build. And the key to success similar to this, the multifamily was really having a lead staff planner, who provided clear direction in coordinated the municipal run municipal response. In terms of the comments, I think one of the things that we learned is, through this is having a lead staff from a city planning that would coordinate any type of internal conflicts in terms of sometimes you’ll you’ll have public work, they’ll have one comment and plan you’ll have another and they conflict with each other. So if you’re the advocate, you don’t know how to respond. And so having that internal coordination where the applicant can see where the city can have one person who kind of coordinated response back to the applicant to they know how to respond really helps make it clear and transparent. So I guess, overall, this kind of chart on the side here kind of shows the steps and development process, you know, real estate development is very complex, and expensive process involves a lot of significant risk. You know, even before you decide to build something, you have to control the land, you have to do your due diligence to see if there’s a market for a office building or retail space or industrial project. Once you’ve decided that there’s a market for that, you have to do your application process you had to get your approvals from from the city, you had to go find the money, do the financing underwriting you had to do your final design, you have to do your pre construction planning and land purchases once. Once that is all done, you move on to actual construction, which involves putting in the site and infrastructure improvements, building the ability, managing risk, because the biggest thing about doing these things is you have a performer that has certain rents or certain costs per square foot of what you forecast, but you don’t know until he is actually built into performing. And so there’s a lot of risk up front for developers that it doesn’t perform as well you expect it, it can be a challenge in terms of you know, the return on your investment, which gets back to your equity partners. So, I guess what I would say is, having more uncertainty in the process really increases our risk, which really increases the chance of a project not moving forward. So to the extent that public and private partners can be transparent, and have a predictable process really cuts down on the time and makes it a lot easier for things to be built. And this is not just a Longmont profit and profit issue. It’s throughout the nation. One thing we’ve been hearing just how challenging it is today to get things untitled and approved, particularly for residential and for commercial and obviously for commercial. So the last piece was identifying kinds of tactical strategies for the various parties to consider this question on
Unknown Speaker 29:53
the last project of the industrial flex. What was what was the timing about the same Was it different between the two? Yeah, it’s actually
Unknown Speaker 30:03
pretty similar. I think I had to get back it’s in the report, I think it was seven months for the 1660s out boredom. The actual now just administrative don’t want a CTC is a two separate. So it took five months to get a planning commission and city council approval, and then it took another six months to get the thing. So if you carve it out, it’s very similar distance from the site plan. So again, these are ideas that, you know, we think can be helpful in terms of kind of improving the partnership between the public and private sector. I think, you know, what I think we talked about, you know, is really looking at ensuring there’s adequate Development Review staffing capacity, which really shorten timelines, you know, staff is great, you know, we, you know, that was one of the comments that from the interviews with various people, staff is great. It’s just a process that’s challenging. So to the extent we can make the process easier, more flexible, and more predictable, really can can can help, I think staff, you know, move through the process easier. That there’s some issue some opportunities to update the land development code to the federal line with Envision Longmont one of the things that came out is what people have commented is our code is very suburban in nature. So Longmont is in a suburban community in the extent of we look at what’s left and land instead be mostly in the form of infill and redevelopment opportunities. So aligning the land development code to provide for more urban infill development is wasn’t enough. For example, if you want to build in terms of easements for utilities, I think LPC has their own separate easement. So typically, if you want to put a water line in the sewer line with it with a electrical line, you can’t do it. So because of that, you have to have a 40 foot or 50 foot easement with which makes it more suburban and solid versus if you can consolidate and have all utilities in one easement. Because these easements are usually where the roads are underneath, that really makes it a more urban fill form. Another one is just came out too. And I did talk to staff, I think they’re going to try to introduce that early next year is for the city’s public improvement design standards, go back to 2007. And so one of the things is really update down to 2021, to be compliant with state statute, and also to address water quality. And so more detention a big thing that came out in conversations is water quality stormwater, basically, before you discharge into the into the the city’s water system, you have to clean it up. And so there’s no design standard to that in the current design standards. And so by bringing it by adopting a 2021 design standard that addresses water quality and stormwater detention, it makes it so much more predictable for an applicant. So they know how to design it, versus a best practice where you’re kind of like well do I design if I spend time in my zine this way to come and maybe come back to all you need to do it this way. And this is back and forth, that really increased costs and time. Other things to consider that, that you know came up again, these are things that can save time, it can save money, and it can do it both from the municipal side, and also from the applicant side is really kind of combined, because public improvement plans and site plan construction set into one plan set. Right now if you submit you have to do two, but it’s the same document, but you have to you have to produce them twice, so cost twice as much. Really, again, we can increase opportunities for the LDA Nelly VP to be more integrated into the development process, particularly for high priority projects are identified. So the city to your groups have a chance to comment on the process and help make it more efficient. No one that popped up and I think the city is looking at this is what we call it a high level conceptual review process. And so this is what the city of Loveland does. And so basically before you submit your full application, I mean it costs hundreds of 1000s of dollars to submit a cycling application. Because you have to do construction plans, you have to do stormwater plans, you have to do phase one environmental you have to do public improvement plans, you have to do site plans, photometric plans lighting plan, I mean, it just it adds up as a tremendous costs, even before a new projects approved, to the extent that you can meet with the city, come up with some ideas about where the city can provide initial feedback, in terms of what they like about what you don’t like about it. Before you vote before you go the process of polling so many can help cut down on costs.
Unknown Speaker 34:45
Other ideas is really kind of exploring what we call it the formalization of a priority priority review process for identify high priority projects in a public private partnership, for example, with a what I call a project development administrator with decision making authority and that that last piece is really critical. And so this person will be part of using SAP, but they would have the ability to kind of coordinate any internal conflict to say, between public works and planning to kind of get a application or comments back to the applicant to move the process along in extra day in expeditious manner. Other one, again, I mentioned kind of ensure quality control measures. And this is both sides of the fence. I mean, we recognize that if you’re an applicant, and you get comments back, and you’re complaining, that takes too long, well, you need to turn your comments back to the city in a timely manner as well. And so one of the things in talking with Miss WhatsApp, they were very helpful and and identify things that popped up from there and that they wanted the applicant to know about to make it easier for them to review. Other ideas, consider setting up a separate development review process for smaller projects. This is something I mean, right now, you just if you submit for like a site plan waiver, you get in the same queue as someone who’s doing this logo bluffing. And so because of that staff has to allocate the same time in terms of getting an accuser to accent that maybe SAP can be focused on maybe small, dedicated staff focus on smaller projects, get them out of the ways that permits other staff to work on these bigger projects is one idea that was brought up. And the last one I would have mentioned, so this is a good thing, you know, Sydney several years ago, move to this E, electronic documents middle process, you know, back in the day, you had to submit hard copies of everything, which again, is a big cost through the city’s excel program in the city is really identified. These Woodcock II submittals. But one of these we heard both of you, you know, this was happening from the applicants it can be, it can be challenging to navigate, if you’ve ever gone through it, it can, you know, you have to put things in PDF and compress it. And you know, and all the comments come back and forth on this, you know, back and forth this East Middle. So providing additional user guides, or this more clarity on how to use the Sella electronic electronic documents to process to be more user friendly, intuitive and streamline was one thing that was identified, that could be an opportunity. So this is my last slide, it’s going to highlight something here. So every year urban entity, which is one of the preeminent real estate, think tanks and groups in the country put together their importance of issues in real estate for 2020 2022. In their emerging trend reports, you kind of see here, the top is what’s most important, and the bottom is what’s least important. And this is an interview about 2000 real estate developers, municipalities, bankers, consultants, lenders, and so forth involved in development process. As you can see here, obviously, construction seems to be the top three terms, the material costs, labor cost and availability. We’re looking to refine state and local regulations. And this is the entitlement process. To the certain extent that municipalities and developers can work in a more collaborative manner, I think it would benefit everyone in the sense of I mean, the ultimate goal is to meet demand, whether it’s demand for new housing, it could be affordable housing, and it could be attainable housing, and it could be Marguerite housing. Now, one thing that we’ve heard is there’s this a chronic shortage of housing nationwide, and you can’t build housing fast enough, because of that this is incredible increases in prices. Aside from the rising construction costs, we just don’t have enough housing here in America, in particular, in Boulder County, just how difficult it would land to find the right sites and to make it work. So just wanted to kind of highlight that as an issue kind of moving forward. So with that, I’d be happy to answer.
Unknown Speaker 38:56
Yes.
Unknown Speaker 38:59
Just one thing that flows. That’s the one thing that I just wanted to point out, because I think it has a lot of relevance to us is that last bullet on there about potential uninformed technical development review teams, and we talked about trying to identify within city staff who really does understand redevelopment or the challenges of infill development and having a group that could be convened when we have some these became very different, right. So I did want to point that out, because I think that’s pretty important.
Unknown Speaker 39:38
So how are these municipalities going about staffing appropriately? During for the review process?
Unknown Speaker 39:44
Yeah, good question. I didn’t. That’d be ah, it will be interesting to see like, I didn’t do this, but like, we take a city in, you know, city apartments in St. Louis, Ohio, those 20,000 they have three review plans. Well, a lovely city of 75,000. They’ve got eight planners. And so it’s almost like a planner. So it was a good development review planner per capita ideal. So I don’t know. I mean, it depends on funding, you know, opportunities. I mean, how does long launch planning staff stack up relative to the population to go to other cities?
Unknown Speaker 40:21
Will the fact that they, you know, Loveland was able to get that review done within eight months? Yeah, that size project? Yeah. How many people were on there? I think
Unknown Speaker 40:31
I can tell you what I think, I think loved ones got more development review staff versus City of less population. I don’t know what the pipeline development pipeline is like. And, you know, if you look at the city’s active development log, it’s like 20 pages here in Longmont. I mean, there’s just a ton of projects that are going through the process. And so that’s why one of the recommendation is, and this is, you know, coming from cities out there was like, hey, no, need some help here? Because I think by increasing that capacity will really address a lot of these things. Because, again, it’s the people are great. It’s just the process and the bottlenecks and the challenges it can be really make it extended.
Unknown Speaker 41:14
Staffing, did you notice the impact of having to use consultants? Review consultants?
Unknown Speaker 41:21
Good question. Yes, a city a, they’ve since switched it. So when one of the things that city did do is they would outsource certain parts of the review process? Landscape, for example. And so one of the recommendations was to bring landscape in house and actually hire a virtual landscape architect. Because you have, right, yeah, virtual landscape architects that are preparing and designing applications. But there’s no virtual landscape architect on the city staff to review though, and so they had to outsource it to a third party. But I think this is one that in house in order to go with read that in house to do, because that can extend timeline to eight, you can be more expensive, you know, in terms of the consulting costs that the city has to pay. For like a structural engineer, a third party, structural engineer, or third party landscape architect can be very expensive versus you can have that staff in house to do
Unknown Speaker 42:07
that will be much better. But you also want people that are familiar with the environment. Yeah. That’s
Unknown Speaker 42:15
Amina Santiago, and our experience was the outside consultant didn’t read the city steps guidance. No, sure. And just went straight to the code. And so we had to submit the previously written city staffs guidance memo, which
Unknown Speaker 42:32
one the nuances are the key submittal. And I’ve heard this several times, they make a comment in the PDF. And they make because some of these repeat on pages go either same common, repeated 100 times. And so as part of the applicant, you have to respond to every comment. So think about that really outgoing, you know, you’re paying a consultant, you have to respond back, a dress, a dress, a dress, a dress. So there’s yeah, there’s ways I think, to improve that process to like, not make every single comment if it’s a repeated compliment, to make it more efficient, because it costs money on both sides, costs money from useless it to having a staff person have to review it, and they’re not there and turned out we’re doing something else with it, maybe we won’t move on to another project.
Unknown Speaker 43:14
So this assessment, what are your thoughts around the visionary zoning ordinance? And? Because I mean, it doesn’t matter of size. So what percent of 8% or smaller developments that were held up? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 43:33
I didn’t. There’s only one project where I guess there was abandoned because city change, or suddenly that AMI level changed, which was that? Oh, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 43:46
why not? So there was a project that had started the process. And then midway through I was told that they so there’s that mid tier exception within the housing ordinance. Midway through, they were told that it was impending, that the mid tier affordability price points were gonna be changing, and actually we made lower than what they weren’t 2018, which we all know that didn’t happen. And so but that hasn’t happened yet. But just the potential and the risk that that presented to the project is why they chose to abandon the project entirely. It will say we, there’s another group that’s convened, specifically around advocating for policies and processes that make feasible the development of attainable housing called prosper long on demand. One of the things that they’ll be advocating for is a policy or program for the city to create a policy or program that is focuses on workforce attainable, healthy, above and beyond and outside of the inclusionary housing ordinance. So that the two aren’t mix, we’re just finding that there are a lot of rules that apply to affordable housing that don’t necessarily apply to attainable housing. And so there are people that are looking at that, I’d be happy to share that information with you, if you’re interested.
Unknown Speaker 45:30
I just have a couple things. You know, you talk about the lead staff and in the budget for next year, if not less than position to the city that hopefully will do this. I think the thing that is really important, and you mentioned a few times is not only does that person shuffle people through, but they have decision making, or that someone has decision. I am often in a meeting where they’re talking about the options. And at the end, I am not clear that there’s a solution. Or sometimes they have to go back and get more information, but then you’re just never clear about what the actual solution is. And some of us have visited. So I think that has been something that’s been so frustrating. And I know just we get phone calls, and it’s always an act, but there’s just, I just can’t figure out. And sometimes, you know, I’ve been in meetings where they say, yeah, we’ll just go back and show it to us. And it’s kind of like, we’ll know it when we see it, which is a hard was hard. So I think that clarity of certainly is is really important if you talk about adopting that 2021 standard, because especially for the info has happened at the scope, right? It wasn’t adopted, so there wasn’t anything you could point to the infill the storm drainage, there’s, it’s not easy, you can’t have a big retention pond in the middle of downtime. hassle. Yeah. I think that’s a, that’s a really good recommendation in there. And you talked a little bit about the smaller projects. And as you all know, we deal with big projects and small projects down here. The time it takes some times to get a free app is really long when you integrate that from folks when we were in David sessions. And so if you have something under contract, you kind of need to have that free app for these small folks before they buy it. If you know the timing might be too hard, and I know Brian Schumacher Ian’s are people when they’re in that, but
Unknown Speaker 47:31
this is definition video, I do a two, two a week, that’s only eight a month. And for a city of 100,000. And you may have I don’t have any projects that are trying to do that interview. Yet, if you want to do a free app in your two months out, two and a half months out. I mean that could impact applicant or potential buyers ability to say hey, I want to reward that I can get in and figure out this is going to be something supported by the city or something like that. So we get back to this tapping thing. And, you know, I mean, this report, I mean can be shared with the planning director and did some of our CNN Herald seen it you know, so you know, hopefully it leaves some conversations and ideas about improving collaboration
Unknown Speaker 48:19
Any other questions from the board for David? So what we’re asking is for the board to accept this report and and consider the recommendations and tactics moving forward
Unknown Speaker 48:36
in every meeting with the staff and getting the ball rolling on so
Unknown Speaker 48:47
so little guard motion move by jovia Second certainly progress all favor say aye. Post right,
Unknown Speaker 48:56
thank you very much Yeah, I think we all knew or experienced in some way but it was it was a big learning experience to be talking to both sides in Longmont, but also. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 49:30
Next business developmental project update.
Unknown Speaker 49:35
Okay, just wanted to update you on that three things that we talked about before the annexation. I know he talks about the two properties I have since has two other properties reached out north of last week, and so both of them we had great conversations and see surely interested one of them had to go back and talk to their partners. The other one was going back talking to their tenant. However, their tenant called me excited to be involved in the DBA. And the GTA. So I’m thinking that those two will come. When they do come through, I’d like to get a motion with the addresses to add them in. But I don’t want to do it yet to have gotten the final Absolutely. But it seems that we’ll be moving forward forward, which I think is fantastic. I did talk to Don Burchette, who’s going to be the planner that helps Usher this through has to go to both plane commission and city council members. We have all the documentation, the resolution and the ordinances from the first station, which Jim called, by the way, I was told was done entirely by you and Jim. The first annexation was done by you and one of the attorneys, probably because you’re going right? Back, but I’m going to grade all those documents, I’m also going to reach out to our attorney just to make sure that he is looking through the statute of steps. Moving forward. In all reality that will probably go to council sometime in January is what we’re thinking will take from February for that to go through these processes. So that’s the annexation. The lighting, thank you all on coffee Street for saying you didn’t want to pay for it because it went over well. I said, you know, we’re not quite sure that we’re going to be able to add that lighting. If we add lighting, we just turn it over to you anyway. So they’re looking to do a double Cobra light possibly on the streetlights and then look to do some personal waiting. So we’ll let you keep you updated on that. And then the deacons patio we did meet on site with the property owner who would like to keep the work on the top we did let him know that if he keeps the burden on the top is because responsibility to maintain and service and do all of that. In the future. We are taking out a strip of the grip to see if the concrete is compromised. Do your back. Okay, do they say? Okay, so yesterday the contractor went and started to look at it. We will just continue to follow that and
Unknown Speaker 52:34
follow up on
Unknown Speaker 52:36
correct questions. For Kimberly, see. All right. Next we have financial update.
Unknown Speaker 52:44
Yeah, since we’re a week early, we don’t have the actual financials from Jim but not Delray was able to go in and run them on our system. And
Unknown Speaker 52:58
you’ll see a lot of money coming out of the a&p for the next two months, which is all of our holiday events, all of our holiday supportive businesses. I will say the staff these guys have been crushing it. Fantastic job, we’ve done some great things. We have some goodie bags over there, if you haven’t seen them that will be giving out. And it’s really cute sticker giant donated some really cute keep it local labels that people can put on gifts to support local business. And we work with a marketing company that’s down here called Brandon feet who just did fantastic work kind of upgrading all of our materials. So
Unknown Speaker 53:43
one more creative district update.
Unknown Speaker 53:46
Yeah, so as we talked about the Creative District is moving forward. And then there are pieces of it that we needed to kind of shore up able to get our scft funding. And one of that is to adopt a non discrimination statement. The non discrimination statement had to be less than what scfvs own statement is, and I put that statement in your board packet. I also put in alternative statements that gave it context it felt like it just does not discriminate against anyone but then it doesn’t say why or how or anything. So the other statement I thought really helped. We did get this through our Creative District for this morning and we made two changes. We added the word ethnicity in there as well. And then at the end of the second statement, we added the word community so I will read this very long statement just to make sure we’re all on the same page. But one of my thoughts on Development Authority does not discriminate against a person or organization based on age race, ethnicity, sex color, creed, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender transgender status. gender identity, gender expression, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, military status, political service, affiliation, or disability. These activities include, but are not limited to hiring and firing of staff, selection of volunteers, artists, vendors, and provision of services. We’re committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of our staff, stakeholders, volunteers, subcontractors, vendors, clients, and so that is the statement and if anyone has any comments, concerns, changes.
Unknown Speaker 55:42
No comments. Alright,
Unknown Speaker 55:43
so we’re looking for an adoption, we
Unknown Speaker 55:45
adopt the statements as read by.
Unknown Speaker 55:52
Joe, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, right. See what
Unknown Speaker 55:57
the Creative District updates. We are partnering with art in public places to do window murals again, and, and private businesses are funding them. We are funding a few on kind of abandoned buildings. But other than that, we’ll have a 10 week mural down here and one on the museum. collected it was a fantastic copier entries. So we’re super excited. And it’ll be something nice to do around here. And then artists Sunday, we added that into our small business weekend. So beat a tree lighting, Small Business Saturday, or Sunday where we encourage people to buy local art and do pop ups inside of existing businesses. So I think there’ll be about 15 to 30 artists that are going to be popping up. And then bricks, retail just had their marathon fourth, which was so great. It was hot. It was hot. And I was down here like not long after it started up, like maybe
Unknown Speaker 57:03
1112 or so many people
Unknown Speaker 57:07
and if he appeared to be moving to the other businesses that were open, like snorting things got really busy with the nursing stuff. So it was awesome. Yeah, that’s great. So thanks, Colin, as well for helping them get their their start never closure. She said she’d love to do it. Like three or four times a year. It’d be good.
Unknown Speaker 57:33
Yeah, right. Yeah. Sure.
Unknown Speaker 57:35
I think it’s good for all the other businesses downtown because it makes awareness of like the donut shop. Was there. The other businesses? Sporting Goods, like you are getting to see a little bit. Yeah, so it’s good to promote your business.
Unknown Speaker 57:53
Okay, on to executive director report.
Unknown Speaker 57:56
Okay, a couple things I did outline in the for communication, our holiday office schedule. We’re close to Christmas Eve, because that’s the day and then we close the 27th. Take that day, tree lighting. So 24th of December will be closed, closed again the 31st of December because he observed New Year’s Day. I will say it’s a very slow week, so that’s fine. And then on Wednesday, the 24th. Close the office knew lots of people are impatient. I just wanted to make sure. The comments, concerns. Parking. So parking, parking parking. I met with Glenn, the planning director and Joanie and still Greenwald, Phil and I would like to pull out all of the little pieces of parking there. And all of these plans and really outline here is the city’s philosophy on this is what the campaign said, This is what we’re doing. And hopefully take that to council that council say yes, absolutely. That is our philosophy. It feels like we have something that says this is what we’ve decided to do with parking and the power to do it and we’re hearing your concerns. We’re gonna do everything. But surely this is our guiding philosophy would help on a lot of different projects. So that’s one thing that we’ll be working on in, hopefully near term future. The other thing is our license plate reader software that the parking enforcement use is has been broken for quite a while and doesn’t seem like it’s an easy fix example. They’ve done all these things and they need to invest into it. The system that the system would likely be funded out of the park will be managed. So we are starting a conversation with everyone on Monday to really talk about what does that look like to make sure any investments not only in the hardware, but in the software side will be compatible with what Emily permits and that it’s a little bit more seamless than it was it was kind of a cobbled together type system from the get go. And so how do we prepare really investment, really investment and make sure, so I just wanted to let you know that that would be coming back to you as well, like when an expense that would have to come out of the parking. So there’s that shared the shared space arrangement, if you remember, we signed a shared space licensing agreement that our attorney pulled up with visit Longmont, it’s time to update that in December. And I talked to Chris and I talked to Joe and I kind of figured out measured all of this shared space and space and that type of thing. Right now they’re paying 1500. To get closer with that. And with some of the supplies that we share, we’ll be looking at moving that number up to about $1,700 a month. A couple other things we want to add into the shared space agreement is that will be billing other expenses as needed right now, because they are on the city system when they need a computer or something we buy that but then just fill them back. That’s the city one. So we’ll build them back. So I just want to put something in there. So Jarrod goes away, people understand there’s other billable expenses that will be coming back. And then Joe was saying it’d be great to put in a 90 days if you terminate clause. So 90 days, they want to terminate, hopefully, that they’ll be adding an executive director next year. But I still think with hybrid work schedules, and with all that type of thing, we’d have more than enough space to accommodate. So whether it’s kind of sharing some offices or having that kind of thing as they grow. I think that we work together, it’s in JIRA. And I talked about also amending the shared licensing agreement to say that we will work together to try to make you know the organization’s continues to fit together. So what I’m hoping is that I can get a motion to say, you know, not to exceed $1,700 for the shared space in the agreement, but possibly Joe and I can just nail out the details and then get that all right.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:06
Any discussion?
Unknown Speaker 1:03:10
All in favor say aye.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:13
All right. Thank you, Joe.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:15
Yeah, absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:17
Thank you for handling it.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:20
And then the very last thing that I just wanted to add in is we’re selling lots of gift cards and right now on our website, if you want a gift card it’s $1 fee for the postage and that type of thing. We’d like to raise that to 50 for postage and processing. Just to make it you know a little bit more to cover the cost I know sometimes we are having trouble with mailing and that kind of stuff but it takes a lot to process it so just wanted to see if you all are comfortable for us increasing that fee from $1. comfortable chair
Unknown Speaker 1:04:01
okay emotion
Unknown Speaker 1:04:07
unless you have any questions for me from the report questions the beginning of doughnuts last night, I was wondering
Unknown Speaker 1:04:30
from staff on the Windwalker had a really good conversation with vocabulary help. As a refresher, the indoor masking order stays in place. Let her have it says that performers can remove their masks or must be filthy from both the audience and other non household band member. And so I just talked to them to see about options. The only option I could read was for The entire identity vaccine verified including all South volunteers, attendees, artists, etc. And so do that, especially since you know, you could you could have it be where the artists are vaccine verified they could all be on stage on national problem as long as there’s total separation, the audience the audience is masked and further to that, in a certain menu wanted to be fully vaccine verified venues we have a couple of branches in our vaccine. So he’s going to be vaccine verified facilities and that’s how we’re gonna move forward
Unknown Speaker 1:05:39
hopefully but how can I ask for clarification so all the menus gonna be vaccine verified or all venues going to be masked? I wasn’t sure
Unknown Speaker 1:05:55
quite so it’d be a mix it’d be all the venues would be all the artists would be vaccine. They all the moment. Yeah, that was good. Yeah, some venues would be not fully vaccine verified, the artists will be a master there’ll be 12 feet away from a fully masked audience. And then some venues could be fully vaccine verified, where both audience and performers everyone in the building is vaccine verified.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:21
So the definition of vaccine verified Is that like the symphony orchestra is doing it where you have to show your card on the way in
Unknown Speaker 1:06:28
every time so check out the door or give them a risk
Unknown Speaker 1:06:36
and we would just make it very clear on the schedule any music in this venue requires a vaccine let’s call it
Unknown Speaker 1:06:48
and then I’m just gonna say that all of the parking lights have been installed. So go drive around the parking lot We did have one little snafu on the 280 slot they put them in the wrong lock so Safety and Justice just you know you there right so the electrician is like we missed out we locate
Unknown Speaker 1:07:16
those will come so that’s the 200
Unknown Speaker 1:07:19
that lighting in there compared to the notice that we improved
Unknown Speaker 1:07:27
with the time change really
Unknown Speaker 1:07:35
yeah that’s our new Molly lighter elevations so we got them to get every trunk wrapped so they either strong power from above to connect other power, which we’ve never done before. They’re used to doing an industry Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:52
Yeah
Unknown Speaker 1:08:01
so sounds good. Thank you. Yeah.