To have four new board members that were recently appointed
.
The two new council seats are Keely Briggs and
Juara Hudsbeth that are present today.
Bob Eames has come on board as our aviation expert.
And Jill Jester, an attorney in the city of Denton,
is a chamber nominee, so she's not here today.
But she will be joining us on our board as well.
So we want to thank you all and welcome all the new folks.
And with that, we'll get started with our reports.
>> Marty, we have Stoke up first, is that correct?
>> Mm-hm. >> Okay.
>> Hey, good morning, ADP board members.
I am Caroline Booth, Director of Economic Development.
And I'm going to be giving you an update about the
transition of the Stoke
Entrepreneur Center from the management of the Dallas
Entrepreneur Center to
the management of the city.
And for our two new council members of the ADP board, you
've already heard this.
So you can tune out just for a few minutes.
So when we were directed at the end of August to transition
the management
of Stoke from the deck to the city, we determined quickly
that our top priority
during the transition needed to be ensuring continuity of
service for
the existing member businesses, of which there are 38
businesses and
60 employees working in the space.
And so in order to communicate to the current members what
we are doing in order
to ensure a smooth transition, we've held a couple of
member meetings so far and
have another one scheduled for September 22nd.
All the current members of Stoke can remain in the facility
if they choose to.
The pricing structure for membership and the operating
hours are going to stay the same.
We have issued a request for proposals for new options for
management.
And I'll talk more about the RFP in a few minutes.
And as I said, we're going to be holding the next member
meeting, which will be the
final one before the transition occurs on October 1st.
And just a reminder, as always during our meetings, if you
all have questions during
the presentations, please just indicate that and I'll
answer things as we go along.
We've put together a transition team to make sure that we
get all of the details
covered to keep things running smoothly.
I'm serving as the primary coordinator for the transition.
We have Paul Deshardin from tech services with the city.
Jamie Lindsay from customer service and Carrie Montz from
libraries.
They're going to be kind of the primary on the ground team.
Paul will handle technology related issues.
Jamie's going to be handling billing, customer service.
And Carrie will be dealing primarily with programming and
events in the space.
And then we have a number of other folks from the legal
department, the finance department.
And of course from economic development, particularly
Michelle Coughlin,
who's going to be continuing in her role with billing and
coordinating with facilities and the landlord.
And then Julie Glover is going to be taking over the social
media and
website portions of what needs to be done.
So there are legal considerations, fiscal considerations,
and operational considerations.
And I'm not going to delve into a whole lot of this right
now in the interest of time.
But if anybody has any specific questions, do let me know.
But please rest assured that our legal team is covering all
of the things that need to be taken care of.
And we're working closely with finance to ensure good
reporting
about all of the expenditures and revenues that are related
to STOKE.
The operational side is really, we're really having to dig
into that and
make sure that we're not missing anything and these are
just kind of the general areas that we're
covering and making plans for on the operations side.
The RFP was issued yesterday and the way that we've
designed it,
it's going to allow for a wide range of proposals.
Everything from management of a couple of aspects of the
space like programming and
recruiting all the way up to a sublease from the city
taking over the entire operations of the space or
even an assignment of the lease which of course would
require approval of the landlord.
But we're just throwing it out there to see kind of what
the market is going to bring forward on it.
And just because we're asking for RFPs doesn't mean that we
'll necessarily accept any of the proposals.
If nothing is the right fit, we don't have to go forward
with it.
We just want to make sure that we know what options are out
there.
And there was some concern that the proposals would be sort
of a low bid situation,
which is not the case with requests for proposal like this.
Anything that's proposed will be reviewed on the business
model comprehensively and
on the group's financial stability, it's not just going to
be on who offers the lowest price of service.
We've put together an evaluation committee.
You can see the members up there.
This is going to be vetted at the highest levels of the
city organization.
And if we find something that we think would be appropriate
to bring forward to the council,
we will be doing that to let them give their opinions and
thoughts on the proposal.
And then if we find the perfect one and everything goes
like we want it to,
we would hope to have a new manager taking over whatever
aspects of the management they would be doing in December
of this year.
Because we know that we can make a smooth transition in the
interim, but
running a co-working space is not the city's core business.
And so we want to make sure that we're doing it the right
way while we're following all of the council's direction.
So again, we're focusing on continuity of service for our
current members during the transition.
Pulling in folks from a lot of different departments to
make sure that the transition is smooth.
And we have issued an RFP to test the market and see what
might be out there for management options.
And I'm glad to answer any questions that anybody has.
>> Anybody have any questions?
I had one question.
Is there really any discussion on the types of businesses
that we'll contract with or
went to in there, there had been some I guess concerns
about their entrepreneurial businesses or whatnot in the
past.
>> Yeah, there's been a lot of discussion about that.
And clearly the council's direction at this time is to
focus on recruiting technology and
technology enabled businesses into this space.
So that's what we're going to be doing from this point
forward.
And in fact, have been focused on that since March when we
did an update to the council.
So that direction will continue.
However, there was not an appetite for making anybody who's
currently in the space leave the space.
Anything else?
>> All right, thank you.
And we're looking at item 17, 047, which is to discuss the
Denton
economic development contract with the Denton Chamber of
Commerce.
>> Okay.
>> Thank you for reading that because I didn't bring my
agenda up here.
Okay, I know many of you in the room are familiar with the
relationship between the Chamber of Commerce and the City
of Denton.
But just for background, for those of you who are new, 1986
was the first year that the city and
the chamber entered into a partnership regarding economic
development.
And the current structure is that the city provides funds
for administration and operations of the Chamber's Office
of Economic Development.
And those funds go to cover personnel costs, prospect
generation activities and
marketing, and small business development center support.
As you have heard in presentations before today, the
chamber has requested $238,000 in funding for the upcoming
fiscal year.
And as some of you have heard in prior work sessions to the
council,
staff has drafted an agreement for the fiscal year that
includes the following changes.
Adding specific goals, deliverables, and metrics for the
chamber related to developing an annual comprehensive
marketing plan,
recruiting prospective companies in Denton's target
industries, serving as the point of contact and
coordinating responses to leads from brokers and site
selectors and solicitation of private sector funds.
And I do want to point out that those four broad categories
remain the same from this year's contract and
prior year's contracts as the primary functions that the
Chamber's Office of Economic Development serves.
Those haven't changed.
What we've done is based on what their goals were for the
coming year and
the metrics that we can apply to those goals, we've just
outlined those in the agreement.
And there's a copy of the agreement in everybody's backup,
so I'm assuming everyone's had a chance to look at it.
And the other thing that we've done is enhanced the clauses
regarding financial reporting, insurance requirements, and
indemnity.
And those changes were made to bring the agreement in line
with other standard agreements that the city enters into.
The Chamber Board reviewed the draft contract on August 31
st, and
we did get a couple of comments or questions back related
to a couple of things in the contract.
One of them being we had put a metric of a 20% increase in
page views and unique users for dentonadp.com.
And I think the thought was that that was okay for this
contract, but
wouldn't be a sustainable percentage of increase over time,
and I agree with that.
And so we're focusing on what we're working on for this
year, and
then we'll discuss future year metrics at the appropriate
time.
And there was also a question around the disclosure of
leads and
where they come from and the company's names in the case of
an NDA or a non-disclosure agreement needing to be signed.
And we assured everybody that if the Chamber's asked to
sign an NDA to be able to receive information,
that the city will be able to enter into the same NDA so
that we can have free exchange of that information.
The next step for the agreement is that it will go to the
city council for a vote on September 19th, so that's next
Tuesday.
And during the work session that we presented to council
about the contract,
we were directed to evaluate options and costs for the
provision of marketing and prospect generation activities,
including bringing the function into the city or
contracting with other providers.
So we have been tasked to do that and we will be working on
that in the coming months and bringing that information
back to council.
So glad to answer any questions about that if anybody has
them.
>> Carolyn, I think one of the concerns with the contact
information is a lot of these people are looking for
a single point of contact and for their initial entry into
a city.
And I think it can muddy the water or
it can drive somebody away if we've got too many people
trying to make contact with you.
So my thought on that is that this wouldn't be
reporting the contacts to the city so that the city could
contact them.
This would be reporting the contacts so that we're aware of
what's going on.
Yeah, because I completely agree.
We don't want, if there's already been a contact and a
relationship established,
the intention is not to try to shoehorn ourselves in there,
it's just to be aware of the activities.
>> I think we're fine with that.
>> Okay.
>> Anybody else have any other questions?
I think those questions were asked and I guess answered
appropriately.
So if we don't have any other questions,
I guess we'll move forward to the next report on the
downtown turfs.
>> It's not the next one.
>> Okay, Christina, I might get Christina to come up here
and help me with this one.
Okay, so everybody is aware that there has been a lot of
discussion about the downtown TIF over the summer.
And we have been working to gather different kinds of
information to try to address some of the concerns and
questions that have come up from citizens and stakeholders
and council members.
And one of the tracks that we're taking that's been
interesting for
me to find out a little bit more about this is to look at
what capital improvement projects
are planned within the downtown turfs or downtown TIF
district for the next five years.
And these are things that are in various stages of planning
.
Some of them have funding sources identified.
Some of them don't.
But what we wanted to do was reach out to all of the
different departments that might have this type of project
and
kind of bring them all together in one place to say, here's
what's already planned.
And just so we have the information, we know what kind of
projects we can look forward to in the next five years in
that area.
And then we wanted to run this by different stakeholder
groups,
the CDP board, Main Street Association, Downtown Task Force
, the Downtown TIF board.
To kind of get feedback and hopefully do a little bit of
ranking of these projects.
This is the first time that I have made this presentation.
So I'm going to ask for y'all's patience.
And if I have to have Christina come up and help me with
the map, I'm going to get her to do that.
And she looks really excited about it.
So I just gave you the background right there.
So this is what we have come up with for
an overview of the planned CIP projects in the downtown TUR
S.
You can see that the actual district is shaded in blue
there so
we can get oriented about the area that we're talking about
.
And then there's a nice key for all of the little colorful
dots that are there.
And I think everybody, I don't think you guys have a copy
of this in your packet.
But I see Jim looking at this massive PowerPoint
presentation that's a great
history of all of the downtown plans that I'm not going to
subject you all to today.
But you have it there if you want to read through it.
So this presentation is not in your backup.
So if you want to look at it, it's here.
But you do have a spreadsheet in front of you that
has corresponding color coding to the key up here.
And it has a text description of all of the projects.
So you can kind of follow along that way as well.
And we are open to suggestions about how to make this
better.
[LAUGH]
Okay, so we'll start with the northwest section.
Again, the key over there remains the same.
It's the area from Carroll Boulevard in the west,
Parkway on the north, Locust on the east, and Hickory on
the south.
The purple markers identify drainage upgrades to the Hick
ory system and
the Parkway laterals system.
So you can see the purple lines there.
The dark green markers at the top and
in the middle indicate where new sidewalks are planned.
That's Parkway on the south side from Elm to Locust and
next to the City Hall West building on McKinney.
The aqua marker is the parking lot where Old Central Fire
Station was located.
And I think folks are familiar with the fact that the plan
is to
increase parking capacity there, gonna be 86 spaces,
improved safety, landscaping,
and aesthetic enhancements.
Get that paved.
>> When's that happening?
>> I don't know if you guys have any updates on when that
might be happening.
The parking lot behind the Old Central Fire Station.
>> I actually just put in an email and asked for the
timeframe.
It's in the next couple of months and it will be back to
council.
>> Okay, so next couple of months.
>> It's gonna be paved in the next couple of months?
>> Was that- >> It's going to be paved in the next couple
of months?
>> Yes. >> That's awesome.
>> We've got it on the street right now.
>> Okay, so that's moving along.
The yellow marker indicates new street lights and
that will be around that parking lot part of those
improvements.
The blue markers are for new water lines and
the orange markers are for wastewater collection lines.
Okay, it's the northeast section bounded by McKinney to the
north,
Bradshaw to the east, Hickory to the south, and Austin to
the west.
We've got green markers up at the top and down there in the
middle for
new sidewalks that we're gonna provide connectivity between
City Hall parking and
the Oak-Hickory corridor.
The green markers on the left side of the map on Austin
Street.
That's also a new sidewalk adjacent to where the food truck
park is.
Blue marker on the left is to provide a larger water line
along Austin and
McKinney to Mulberry.
Does that work?
Yeah, okay.
Aqua marker is for improvements on the parking lot at McKin
ney, Oakland, and
Oak Street across from Oak Street Draft House and the
Municipal Complex.
So that's the big parking lot right across the street here.
The brown marker indicates upgrades to approximately 1,000
feet of electric line
on McKinney and other electrical upgrades in that area.
And then the purple markers are identifying drainage
upgrades.
Southwest section, border there is Hickory on the north,
Locust on the east,
Prairie, and Sycamore on the south, and Carroll to the west
.
So we have got more drainage upgrades here to alleviate
flooding in the area and
make box culvert improvements.
Dark green, I don't see dark green on there.
Christina?
Okay, well if you all see it, that's good.
>> It's just a lot of-
>> Sidewalk improvements.
Okay, yellow markers indicate new street lights at the
county historical park.
The red marker identifies street reconstruction on Hickory
from Cedar to Elm and Elm to Locust.
And that's going to increase OCI, which I should remember
what OCI stands for.
Overall condition index or how good or bad the road is.
And then I have a note here that the orange markers are
wastewater collection.
That's a repeat from a prior slide.
Okay, we're just seeing them on the map again.
And the brown marker is more underground electric utility
improvements.
It's a lot of work.
Okay, finally, southeast section of the TIF,
which is bordered by Hickory on the north and Prairie on
the south.
This section has the fewest amount of CIP projects planned
in the next five years.
And there's another note here that says areas of the TIRs
that were not shown on
this slide or any of the prior slides do not have any
improvements identified within
the next five years.
So the drainage and water lines in purple and blue have
been shown on prior slides.
Yellow is indicating new extended service
to the industrial street apartments at 404 Industrial, that
's street lighting.
Okay, and then the orange lines is wastewater collection
improvement.
And the light green marker is for a new pocket park on
Industrial Street.
Which is currently, the space is there and
believe it's decorated with wood chips at this point.
So I know that's a very quick overview.
You guys have the small amount of detail that we have about
these projects on
the spreadsheet.
And so basically what I would like to get from the group is
kind of,
are there certain types of projects that you would like to
see prioritized
over others?
What do you think brings the most value?
Just any of your thoughts on this so that we can collect
that information and
give it back to the council when we're gonna be talking
about the downtown TIF
again on October 10th.
Yes, ma'am.
>> So are the projects listed, are any of the projects
identified in other
city departments and are they prioritized in the list?
>> Okay, so I'm gonna repeat your question.
Council member Briggs was asking if any of these projects
are identified on project
lists in other departments and if they're prioritized in
any way.
And the answer to are they identified in other departments
is yes.
Because we reached out to all of the departments that have
capital improvement
type projects to collect this information from them.
Because part of what I was gathering from listening to all
of the discussion is
that the city has planned a lot of investment in the
downtown TIF area already.
But we haven't done a good job of kind of getting all of
that into one spot and
saying here's what's on the books that we've already
planned to do in the area
from a capital standpoint.
So this was the effort to start collecting that.
As far as prioritization within the departments,
I don't have a good answer for that right now.
I don't know if our city management in the back table has
any comments about that.
But I don't know right now what their prioritization is.
>> We're going through that process right now.
We got a committee set up that's basically overlaying all
infrastructure projects,
park projects, that sort of thing.
And then we will be looking for overlap as well.
I think the one project that is probably the most discussed
, I know the mayor and
possibly the council members is that very large drainage
project downtown,
which that's basically pipe.
There's several dozen, a couple hundred home structures
that are taken right out
of floodplains.
So we're working on the finance for that right now.
And we've got a two or three year plan to get that entire
culvert box and
get funding in it together.
>> Okay, so city manager Heilman was saying that there's
been a committee formed to
oversee and coordinate CIP projects across the city,
including the ones in this area.
And they're working on prioritization and funding and
finance and
those kinds of things, so, yes ma'am.
>> So on that, on the other financing part, so on the
projects that have been reviewed,
have they also gone through the process to see if they
qualify for,
like say, call grants and things like that ahead of time or
is that?
>> That would be something that we would have to ask at the
departmental level.
This was really just kind of a high level sweep of
information just on the projects
that are within the area.
That's a great question.
And I'm sure that that's something that the CIP committee
would be factoring in,
if there are grants available and different funding sources
.
>> Yeah, there could be some opportunities for sidewalk
grants in some of these areas
and possibly TechStops wanting to talk just about turning
back in home of Locust.
We've not really engaged in that discussion too far right
now over fixing the underground
infrastructure, but beyond that, there's probably not a lot
of opportunity.
We'll continue to look for any sidewalk opportunities at
all, but other than with
Locust and they all might see a whole lot of opportunity to
get caught in funds right now.
>> Okay, so if it's possible to look for grant funding, we
'll do it.
But there might not be a whole lot of options in that area.
>> And all of these projects that we just went through
would be eligible for funds from the TIF?
>> Yes, sir.
>> Councilman.
>> My question would be, and I solicit everyone's thoughts,
how to reconcile,
when you're talking about prioritizing, it's how to
reconcile those.
So understanding the parking lot, and I don't disagree with
the parking lot, but
how do you reconcile that against incomplete sidewalks
versus the parking lot being paid?
Right, so if you're looking at round numbers, $800,000 for
a parking lot,
I know that's already in the works, but I'm going to use it
as an example.
And there's, for example, I just walked it, so
if you look at Carroll and Sycamore, which runs straight to
UNT,
it's a straight shot all the way to UNT, all the way to
downtown, or to local settlement,
that sort of thing, right at the historic park, just past
the parking lot,
the sidewalk ends, and is incomplete right along there, all
the way to the bank.
And then it picks back up.
And so that segment, where we have, it's highlighted every
weekend,
because we have a community market there.
We're inviting kids and families out to that area every
Saturday.
And as they're going to those, there's stores on the other
side of the street,
and that entire sidewalk on the other side of Sycamore is
in serious disrepair.
So for me, I just want to understand how this body wants to
,
if we have an existing park like Fitzgravel, that's not
great.
But we also have large segments where there's no sidewalk,
or it's segmented.
Do we want to focus on bridging those gaps first to show
some success,
some progress, and then come back and get the larger
projects?
That's just, I have an opinion, but I want to know how
everyone else is doing.
OK, so just for the folks who are maybe streaming or
watching this later,
Councilmember Hudspeth put the question to the group about
prioritization
of one type of project over another.
So I think the question was for the board here.
Well, I guess I would back up.
That's a good point.
If you fixed a parking lot, and the sidewalks aren't walk
able to get from the parking lot
to a business or downtown or whatever, then that doesn't
help very many people.
We have a couple of--
I guess the TIF board can help prioritize that by
recommending projects
to be completed inside the TIF.
That's what the TIF board is there for.
So they would be the board you would go to to decide what
the TIF would consider a priority.
That's a group of elected people.
And then our Economic Development Partnership Board has a
subcommittee called
the Downtown Economic Development Task Force.
And we have already been through this exercise, and we
asked the TIRS,
the TIF board asked that group, what are our priorities?
Because those are homeowners and business owners and people
that are living and walking
and doing that thing.
And parking and sidewalks and lighting are the number one
priorities for that.
So how you pick which one you're doing there.
And I'll point out on Mulberry Street from Industrial to
Belle Avenue,
I wish that was on this list because that's the side of the
Denrykker Chronicle parking
and trash cans over there that we're fixing to have a large
development over there.
And that goes down to that large department complex.
It's on the corner of Mulberry and Belle.
And if you're walking back up towards the courthouse or
west, it's a pretty bad sidewalk.
There's not one on the other side.
So we have some groups in place, I guess I would say that
to ask that other than that,
I guess this is how it gets funded.
So I think I think I said earlier that we're going to be
taking the same information to
the Downtown Task Force.
And we did very much appreciate the feedback that we got in
prior meetings from the task
force but wanted to also share these things that are
already on the on the books.
Councilmember Hadsworth, I believe you are a new member of
the Downtown TIF Board.
Is that right?
That's correct.
Okay, so you're gonna get to hear this a bunch of times.
We're gonna need you to tell us what we need to do because
you're gonna have all of this
information.
Does anybody have any other comments or questions about any
of this?
But I heard parking lighting and sidewalks.
Well, it's all in here.
The utilities and drainage aren't as exciting, but those
are important too for a lot of reasons.
I guess a couple things popped out in the report that we
were presented with the large
building on the corner of Oak and Carroll that's in the
picture that's in here.
That was opened in July of 2004.
Okay.
Just 2005 on there.
I'll change that.
Inside information.
Yeah, you might be familiar with that project.
Thank you, Marty.
Anybody else have any questions or comments on the TIF/TERS
downtown projects?
Yes, ma'am.
So there's been conversations about the Downtown Reinvest
ment Grant and funding mechanisms
for that.
Is this still a possibility?
Yes, the question was about the Downtown Reinvestment Grant
Program and its funding sources.
There was an item on the council's agenda about that last
night and a change was made
to not dedicate $100,000 of mixed beverage taxes to that
fund in the coming fiscal year
and beyond.
That does not mean that the program is gone.
It just means that that revenue source is not going to be
used to fund it anymore.
And what we have been tasked with is to try to identify
some potential alternative sources
of funding because it is a valuable program and a lot of
folks have seen the value in
it and want to see it continue.
We have been talking with our legal department and they
have assured us that we can use TIF
funds to fund the grant program.
The one thing that would change is if we use TIF funds to
fund it, the projects have to
be within the TIF boundary, which makes sense, but the
current boundary is the DTIP area,
which is slightly different than the TIF zone.
So that would be a little bit of a change.
It's smaller.
A little bit.
I wish I had a map.
We've got some that overlay them on each other, but yes,
the TIF is a little bit smaller than
the DTIP area.
But yes, that is an option for funding for the program.
So I'm going to make sure we're clear on this.
The legal counsel is saying that we can use TIF funds for
private projects?
To make grants, yes.
I mean, that's part that's allowed under this statute.
There's an example of one of those grants on page 15 of
this presentation that shows
the old warehouse on the left side and then what was
changed into three different restaurants.
They got a $10,000 grant for utility upgrades so they could
add bathrooms and electricity.
Erica would like to say something.
I was going to say that page 17 has the overlay of the TIF.
Page 17 in your massive slide presentation.
Thank you for the reminder.
So then city staff would go to the TIF board and ask, I
guess recommend that they set aside
funding from that to continue that if they want to.
That's correct.
That would definitely be something that would be run
through the TIF board first and we'd
have to kind of figure out how the existing grant program
process might need to change
in order to make that feasible.
But yes, that would be the first step there would be to go
to the TIF board.
As a reminder that those grant funds, if they were over $10
,000 would come to this board
for approval and then on to city council.
So that would take that out of here.
Caroline, do you have a list of all of the projects that
have benefited from these funds?
From the downtown reinvestment grant funds?
Absolutely.
I don't have it right now, but if that's something that y'
all want me to email to you, we'd be
glad to.
I'd like for the council to see it.
Okay.
Sure.
We can provide that to them.
Okay.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
All right, any more questions or comments?
Move on to the next agenda item, 1749, to discuss the
economic development department's
strategic plan for 2017-18.
Okay.
So a full copy of the plan was included in your backup.
I'm just going to hit the highlights for you to keep us
moving here.
But economic development staff began working on a
department level strategic plan during
the city's 2017 budget and strategic planning process.
And the place where we started was with our department's
core values.
And then we organized the objectives and action steps that
we were going to take during the
year under four overarching goals.
And we feel like this plan aligns with the city's new
emphasis on transparency, accountability
and responsiveness and it spans a period from May 1st of
this year to September 30th
of next year so it's kind of an 18-month strategic plan.
As far as what we've identified as our departmental core
values, we're ethical, we're transparent,
we're responsive, we're collaborative, we're community-
focused and we're creative.
And I think that these align very well with the city's core
values that have been identified
which are transparency, fiscal responsibility and integrity
and customer service.
I need to learn those first.
Write it down.
To walk you quickly through our goals, goal one is business
development which we identify
as expanding Denton's economy through retention and
expansion of current employers and through
the location of new businesses in our target industry
sectors.
Goal two is entrepreneurship in which we foster Denton's
thriving culture of business, technology
and artistic creation and innovation by building on our
higher education and community resources.
Goal three is workforce development in which we want to
develop, attract and keep skilled
and talented workers to support our existing and future
employers.
Goal four is community relations.
We want to build relationships with Denton residents and
businesses through outreach,
education and engagement.
And in the interest of time, I'm not going to go through
each objective and action step
one by one.
You have them in your backup and I'm glad to answer any
questions that you have about
them.
So I just want to point out that each goal that we've
identified has those supporting
objectives, action steps and performance measures and that
each action step in the plan has
an economic development staff member assigned to complete
it and a deadline by which it
must be completed.
We've developed and I say staff, but Christina Davis has
developed an in-house system using
access for logging and reporting on our activities so that
we have a central place to compile
all of the data and generate some reports on that.
And also that our performance measures in this plan are
incorporated into the city's
strategic plan, both for continuity and for ease of
reporting because we need to report
for our own purposes to share with this board and with
other interested parties.
But then the city's strategic plan has certain reporting
requirements as well and so we've
made sure that those are integrated so we're not reporting
on one set for one group and
another set for another group.
And that's it.
So glad to answer any questions about that that you all
have.
A question on the entrepreneurship part of the plan.
On our performance measure, we have a 10% increase in
business participation in small
business programs.
How do you measure that?
So what we're doing there is in the small business programs
that we're talking about
is the overarching one is the shop dentin program.
And then so that's an education and merchant participation
program.
So we know right now how many merchants are participating
in that.
So we have a baseline.
And then as Christina implements her excellent marketing
plan that she's put together for
small business programs, we'll be able to add new
businesses and see where we increase
to over that baseline.
And the same thing with participation in shop small
Saturday and our national small business
week activities.
We've done shop small Saturday for four years.
So we have information about the participation levels
historically there and we can gauge
the increase this year.
And our small business week national small business week
activities, including our TCB
and little d conference that we had the first year of that
last year.
So we know participation there and again can judge our
increase based on what we have this
year.
Anybody else have any questions?
Everybody went through it thoroughly and did such a good
job.
Nobody had any questions about it.
I'm sure that's exactly what happened.
If you have questions later, I'm always glad to answer them
.
So I think that's it for my presentations.
That is all of our work session items and we'll move on to
our regular regular meeting,
which in the first item is to consider approval the minutes
for July 12 2017 meeting and I
would
have a motion to approve.
I hear a second.
Second.
The motion and a second.
Any discussion on the minutes?
All those in favor say aye.
Any opposed?
Naints are approved and we have a staff activity report
item number 1750 from Adam.
Morning board members.
Morning.
On new activity for for the month, new site minutes
conducted a site visit we had to conducted
a site visit for project UTV, which is a manufacturer of
utility vehicles.
They're looking for 25, roughly 25 acres to construct a
minimum of a 300,000 square foot
facility and that will be about 50 new jobs.
We also have a site visit from project partner, who is a
distribution company for riffing
products looking at five to 10 acre sites with two to three
acres used for outside storage
area to construct a 20,000 square foot facility and they
prefer to be located along highway
380, which we did show them a site up in that area.
We had another site visit who's already been here several
times and this this one was mainly
to meet with city officials and Caroline had set up
everybody that they needed to meet
with from the city that one is products railroad.
That is one that we've been working on for several months
now and we're getting very,
very close.
They're looking at purchasing 40 acres out in the West Park
industrial park to construct
a 500,000 square foot cold storage and distribution plant.
It will be about 150 new jobs, minimum of 35 million
capital investments and they will
be the first major user of the Kansas City Southern Rail
line through Denton.
Marketing trips and events conducted a type one marketing
trip, which to refresh your
memory type one marketing trips are where we go to a major
metropolitan area and make
our own appointments with consultants and C level
executives and brokers and site selectors.
This particular trip was to Chicago where we had six
meetings.
The first one was Avenue Advisory Group.
Mike Bennett was the actually the head consultant on the
big Toyota project that landed in Frisco.
He started his own firm now, which is Avenue Advisory Group
and has hired 30 people since
then.
C.B.
Richard Ellis, Chicago, Chris Shostock.
He is the contact who led us to the Sally Beauty expansion
last year.
He was representing that project and represents them in
other locations as well.
Four others, Cresa Partners, Cushman and Wakefield, Kate Mc
Enroe Consulting and Newmark Grubnight
Frank.
Another event we attended the Team Texas VIP membership
event at Global Life Stadium.
Team Texas is a membership driven organization.
There's about 104 communities across the state of Texas.
We are a paying member and we go to their events and broker
consultant forums and things
like that.
This particular one, they did have consultants with Colors
International from downtown Dallas,
which are working a project that we have been involved with
since day one, which started
about six months ago called Project Bulk, which we are in
the final running for.
We attended the Southern Economic Development Council's
annual conference.
Key contacts there include Ernst & Young, Location
Investment Services Group, Mike Barnes
Group who is down in the San Antonio area, and EAIC, which
is European American Investment
Council, in which they facilitate European projects to the
United States.
Also next month, we're sponsoring one of their annual
events that's going to be hosted
in downtown Dallas, where they will have 6 to 12 aerospace
and aviation companies in
attendance from Europe, who all have interest in expansion
into the Texas market.
Social media and our website, we've been, as you all know,
we've been trying to put
a big push on social media and website presence.
With our posts and social media, in particular on LinkedIn
this month, but along with Facebook
and Twitter, we've had just over 10,300 views for the month
.
Upcoming marketing trips, one that we just did last Friday
was Netcar Expo, where we
did have a big debt in booth, and I'll get you a better
report on that one as soon as
we put together all the outcomes from that one.
This coming Friday, the DFW marketing team is having a
local broker day, where five communities
get together and we go visit four local brokerage firms
down in Dallas.
The IEDC annual conference, which is International Economic
Development Council, and the Site
Selectors Guild Fall Forum.
That concludes my report.
Does anybody have any questions?
Thank you.
>> Thank you.
Thanks Adam, appreciate it.
Our last item on the agenda is our August 17th minutes, or
August 16th minutes from
our impromptu meeting last month.
So I need to receive a motion on approval of those minutes.
>> I'll make a motion to approve.
>> A motion and a second.
Any further discussion?
All those in favor say aye.
>> Aye.
>> Any opposed?
The minutes are approved.
And any, I think this is an opportunity for any items that
we need to place on our next
meeting agenda, if anybody has anything we need to do that,
or any comments for the good
of the order.
>> I have one.
We are going to be responding to the request for proposals
for Amazon's second headquarters
location.
And I believe that I sent an email out to the group just
giving everyone a heads up
that we were going to be doing that.
So we will be reaching out to various folks around this
table and in this room if we haven't
already to help put that response together because it's
going to have to be a community
effort.
And it's pretty exciting to think that Denton actually
meets all of the minimum qualifications
that they have.
So we're going to be competing and putting our best face
forward.
So stay tuned for more information on that.
>> Thank you.
Your order.
>> Thank you.
I would like to see a conversation.
So we're probably around numbers four months out from the
embassy opening up.
I'd like to see this body have that conversation on future
conventions, tours that are going
to be coming downtown.
There's buses.
For example, I thought about it specifically.
FEMA had five charter buses that they park at the old movie
theater at Golden Triangle
Mall.
And I just thought about that.
That's FEMA.
I don't know if that's with the Houston thing.
But if that was a group in town, where do we park those
buses?
Where do we kind of get guidance that way to make sure they
have a great experience
first and out?
So I think this body may have some insight into how to --
am I wrong?
>> So that sounds like a report from Kim Phillips from the
CVB.
So maybe we'll get you on the agenda for next month to
address the council member's question
about that?
Okay.
>> And correct me if I'm wrong, the leadership project is
how to get people back and forth
from the convention center to different parts of the city.
So that will be kind of a neat deal.
>> There's a very intense research project underway right
now by the leadership class.
>> Okay, Kim, we'll get you on there.
>> Okay.
Thank you.
>> You'd have to be here next month.
Good idea.
Anybody else?
All right.
I guess we'll call this meeting adjourned at 1158 a.m.
Got it done in under an hour.
>> Good job.
>> Thank you.
Thanks for being here.