Oct 11, 2017 Economic Development Partnership Board on 2017-10-11 11:00 AM

[PAUSE] [PAUSE] As many of you are probably familiar, the city assumed management of the space on October 1st. And just to give you some perspective on where we were on September 1st under the Dallas Entrepreneur Center's management, they were listing 37 members in the space as of September 1 . And as of October 10th, 27 folks have renewed their membership and we've recruited three new members, all of which are technology or technology-enabled businesses. And a breakdown of those memberships is there are 10 co- working members, which means they have access to the space from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and they can sit down in the open desk space for their work and collaboration. Then there are eight people who have dedicated desks, which means they identify where they want to sit and they 're assigned to the same desk, and they can leave some of their stuff there, their computers, they have small file cabinets. Then we have nine folks in offices. There are actually eight separate offices. One of them was being occupied by the deck staffer who was there, but we had a potential member who was interested in the office. And so on October 1st, we went ahead and signed him up for a membership in that office. And then we actually have two people who are sharing one office. So that's how we end up with nine. Then there's also a category of membership that's called virtual, which means that people pay a lower membership rate and they have certain privileges, but they're not as broad as a co-working membership. And as of right now, we're standing at a little over 60% of the businesses in the space that are technology or technology-enabled. To quickly update you on the request for proposals that was put out for the management of the space, that RFP closed on October 3rd, and the evaluation committee has met, and we plan to make a recommendation to council on October 24th regarding RFP. That's all I have for the update, and I'm glad to answer questions if anybody has any. [ Inaudible ] Most of them were not. The majority of the people who didn't renew had -- they had -- I don't know how I want to say -- it's not lower -- they were mentorship members or virtual members is the way I can put that. So they were less engaged, they're not folks that are in the space every day, and a number of them we were not even able to reach in all of our attempts to contact them. So they were not folks that were actively engaged in the space anyway, the majority of them. >> I had a question, please. >> Mr. Baines, I've been instructed to make sure I call out everybody's name for the television. >> All right. I'm John Baines from the Black Chamber of Commerce. My question is this. The Dallas Entrepreneur Center was the entity that was contracted with? >> Yes, sir. >> Are they in the -- in the offering to be renewed or are we going to completely exclude them? >> No, they -- their contract was not renewed. They were eligible to respond to the RFP should they choose to. >> Do we know how many RFPs we received? >> Since we're actively in the RFP process, I can't discuss that since I'm on the review committee. >> Were there some things in particular that we were not happy with or some things that we were looking for? >> I think that there was a feeling that there needed to be a little bit more specificity about what the goals and objectives and measurements were for the entity that was running the space. And so we've learned from that and whether the city continues its management or we contract with someone else, another entity to do the management, those things are going to be very clearly outlined and included in the contract from the beginning. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Anybody else have any questions? >> I had a question. When we contract with somebody to move in there, are we keeping track of where they're coming from? And I guess specifically are they moving from somebody else 's office that they're leasing in downtown or somewhere else in the city and moving into Stoke and creating a vacant space in somebody else's building or are they new to town? >> So there's a mix of all different scenarios that people are coming from and when we do visit with people about their desire to be a member, that's one of the first things that we ask them. And some of the most recent members, the three that have been recruited, one was a company that came from another community outside of Denton. And one of them I know in particular had a home office. So none of the three that we've recruited, and I can't say for sure about the third one, but I do know those two, neither of them moved out of any other commercial space in the community to join Stoke. >> I think that's good information to keep track of and share. Just somebody's going from a home office to that space and they're actually growing or expanding or moving from another community. I think that's what that is there for. >> Okay. Any other comments or questions? All right. I guess we can move on to our next report. >> Okay. I will be giving you all a quick overview of Denton's Amazon headquarters second location response. And I think most of us are aware that Amazon made a big announcement on September 7th that it's going to be searching for a second headquarters location, that they're abbreviating HQ2. And that project is expected to bring more than $5 billion in investment and more than $50,000 -- I'm sorry -- 50,000 high-paying jobs over a 15-year phased rollout. So it's a transformative project, clearly. And the way that they announced the search garnered a lot of attention and a lot of competition all across the U.S. as well as Canada and Mexico. So the company in their RFP, they actually specified that they only wanted to accept one proposal per region. And they said per metropolitan statistical area, which is just a fancy way of saying region. So for us here in the DFW Metroplex, the Dallas Regional Chamber is the entity that's compiling all of the different responses from the municipalities and will be ultimately submitting our regional response to Amazon. And as you guys saw in the backup, I outlined a little bit what our typical thought process is when we get any kind of RFP, not just a significant one like this, but the first thing that we start with is whether the project aligns with Dent on's target industries and recruitment preferences as specified in our 2016 economic development incentive policy that's adopted by the council. And clearly this project was a target industry. It's a corporate headquarters. It's a significant project. So that was obviously met right out of the box. And so then we move on to make sure that we meet the project's minimum requirements for response. And I've listed those here and they're pretty straightforward. And we are obviously well within all of those basic requirements. And so we've moved on then to look at what their key preferences and decision drivers are when they're going to be making their decision. And these are the things that they put forward in the RFP that we had to examine and outline in our response for them . So robust workforce, a big part of that clearly in Denton is our universities that we have here in the community. And a strong university system was specifically stated in the proposal or in their request for proposals as something that was a must for them. Logistics and transportation connectivity. I mean, we all know that we're in a prime strategic spot on 35 and 380. But in Amazon's case, connectivity meant something more to them than that. They're interested in transit options. They're interested in active transportation like bike plans and walk plans and accessibility in different ways outside of car travel. And we have we have a lot to offer in that realm. And then the council has placed a priority on active transportation. So we were able to work with our transportation department and the bike and pedestrian coordinator to pull that information together. We offered them to 100 plus acre essentially greenfield sites, one on the northern side of town and one on the southern side of town. And then because they expressed a preference for creative options and we know that they have done infill redevelop ment projects in Seattle, we put forward a third what we were calling a bonus site in our downtown core area. And it wouldn't stand alone, but it could be paired with either one of the two greenfield sites to make an interesting final option for them. Time to operations obviously includes the readiness of the site, our utilities to the site, is fiber infrastructure there? Are they going to be able to move through the permitting process quickly? And so we address that for them in our response. Low capital and operating costs. Obviously, this is important to any business that's going to be a key driver. And you were competitive with other communities in the region as far as our tax structure. And we do have an advantage in that Denton does not have any special taxing districts like some folks have community college or hospital or water districts that that have another layer of taxation on top of that economic incentives. Clearly, we have programs and options that we can consider for a project of this size. And we were closely in touch with the county. We were in touch with folks at the state level to make sure that we were comprehensively looking at a package that we could offer them as far as incentives. And you all are very familiar with the process of how that would work if it came to the point of actually a negotiation. This board would hear about that first and then make recommendations to the city council. Cultural community fit. We think this is a really strong selling point for Denton in terms of this project. We're a location that can attract and retain tech talent. That's what they need. They're interested in quality of life and quality of place. They specifically reference sustainability efforts and I think we're all familiar with the efforts of Denton municipal electric to provide renewable power. We have phenomenal recycling programs, methane capture programs at the landfill, and our community places a priority on that and that makes us very well aligned with Amazon's corporate values in terms of sustainability. We have a fantastic music and art scene and overall our quality of life is very high with the relatively low cost of living. So given all of those things, we're very competitive and we were excited to pull together a lot of partners. Staff worked very hard on collecting the materials that we needed for the response and we were able to turn those into the Dallas Regional Chamber on September 29th. And we did have a very positive response from the Dallas Regional Chamber about our submission and I'm happy to be able to share that with you. And the regional proposal, the overall proposal is going to be turned into Amazon by October 19th. That's the deadline. In addition to our official response, we wanted to have a little bit more control over what we were sharing with them in addition to just sending it to the Dallas Regional Chamber to submit. So in thinking about how we might be able to correspond a little bit more directly or communicate with Amazon more directly, one of our community business partners, Jasadi, reached out to us to have a conversation about setting up a website that was directed at Amazon and would be able to highlight more about our community from a visual standpoint and provide some more tailored information. So we've been working with them to get that website prepared and it's going to launch either later this week or the early part of next week so that it will be up prior to the official deadline of the 19th. And we've also worked with the CVB and some other folks in the community to start a social media campaign using the hashtag #HQ2DentonTexas in which we've asked members of the community to take pictures about things that they love about Denton, you know, what makes this place home to them and some things that they think folks from Amazon might enjoy about the community too and then hashtag it with that tag as well as tagging Amazon so that they can see that we've got a little bit of a social media campaign going. And I think once the website launches, there's going to be some renewed efforts to get that social media campaign ramp ed up. As far as next steps, the mayors of Dallas and Fort Worth have called a meeting of regional mayors today, and the may ors are going to meet and hear a presentation from the Dallas Regional Chamber about exactly what their pitch is going to look like. They're not going to be disclosing any specific information about responses from the communities, but they'll give them an overview of what the regional data will look like and give them a chance to ask some questions about how the region is going to be pitched. Then subsequently, and there's no date set for this yet, but the Dallas Regional Chamber will do a similar kind of meeting with economic developers from the responding communities so that we have a chance to see how they've assembled our materials. Then there are a whole bunch of steps in between, but we don't have any concrete information aside from Amazon says that they're going to make a decision in 2018. So that's how we got to where we are now, and I'm happy to answer questions that y'all have about the process. What are the odds? They're long, Marty, they're long. I have three questions. Mr. Baines, John Baines, the black chamber. How are we, how are we protecting our competitive privacy. Well, the Dallas Regional Chamber staff I spoke specifically to them about this, and they are a private organization they're not subject to open records requests so anything that is returned to them from us, they're not disclosing they're protecting the information from the communities. And as a city entity we have, there are some exemptions to what we would have to disclose if it 's an economic development project and I'm going to stop right there and if I go any further, I'm sure Jennifer will have words for me so if you want to add Jennifer though that's great. I would just add that any information that would hurt you competitively is going to be withheld from public information. So, will there be subsequent submissions, or is this one time you have to get home run with the first pitch. So these things go through rounds, and if my best guess is that they'll take in the initial submissions, and then the company will narrow it down to a handful of regions that they would like to look at. And then they'll probably cut it down to just a couple of regions and then they'll be looking at communities specifically within the regions. And each time you go through around their further requests for information, and their site visits and there, there's a whole lot of information exchanged but as of right now, we 've, we've put forward what we've been asked for up to this point, but there will definitely if we keep moving through the process will will have to respond to a lot more requests. I had, I didn't want more. But it was actually I was hoping to hear from Peter built TW and you and as to what their general impression. I'll take a quick and then I'll let them speak for themselves but we did get, I believe it ended up being 18 letters of support from folks ranging from our district 64 representative to some of our largest taxpayers in Denton to the leaders of all of our institutions of higher education to our illustrious superintendent of D ISD over here, the chamber board, and a number of our tech companies so we had a broad. The other thing that I thought was interesting too was we had a letter of support from the Cook County judge and a number of communities, north of us in support of our bid, which I think is a great example of the fact that people realize there are going to be a lot of spillover benefits to the surrounding communities wherever this project ends up loc ating. It's not just going to affect or benefit the one community that it's in. So support was broad, I'll say that and then if representatives want to speak on that. We, we did. You did submit a letter of support, it was limited in what we could support we couldn't support any. I mean we couldn't provide any ancillary attachments or appendices so we, but we did submit I thought a significant letter of support. We did as well. By the way, relative to that I don't know if that's okay it wasn't Tom McCoy, Vice President research at university of Texas. And by the, at the same time I think it's fair to disclose that we were asked to provide letters of support for not just them, but other communities in the Dallas Fort Worth area. Jim, do you have any comments? I'm sorry I left off Dr. Wilson. Thank you, Jamie Wilson, Superintendent of Schools, Nipmah ISD. Our letter of support was simply the significance and importance of job creation in our community and creating a workforce for them should they choose to relocate. So it was, we sat and talked to it with our trustees a little bit and then got on the letters as quickly as possible so we'll see what happens. Councilwoman Briggs has a question. It's not, it's going back to the website. Could you give a little bit more details on that is that going to be like a city of Denton website or is it separate from, and is it, can you just go into. Yeah, it's, it's separate from the city of Denton and actually just I is hosting it and designing it with content input from the city's ED department the CVB so it's really a collaborative effort. They just, they felt very strongly about this project. And it's great to have their perspective as a tech company. So we've broken it down into four different categories and I wish it were at a point where I could show it to y'all but I'll make sure to send the link as soon as it's up. So we're talking about our workforce we're talking about our connectivity we're talking there's a section about created and done that features some of our larger businesses some of our tech businesses, just a little bit more of a field and a formal response. And there are a lot of videos and great pictures so it's real visual. And then we're also going to have a password protected part of the site where we can actually upload our official response. That's only going to be available to the company, so that they can see exactly what we submitted to the Dallas regional chamber to so it's public facing and then it will be private for them as well. And the conversation about, you know, we've, we've poured a lot of effort into this website and it's a Squarespace hosted site so you know it's it's very easy to work with very easy to update. We can transition that into a recruitment site for other tech companies at the end of this project. So, all of the effort will be able to be translated into another purpose. When this part of it it's finished. We had some chamber folks that went out actually out to Amazon, Adam was one out there he wasn't here how did that. What was he able to do out there, Chuck. I'm not sure that he changed history or that he was mainly trying to get a logistical view of it. He was out there on a site already. So he took the extra credit chronology with this. Was that a visit to a distribution center or. He went to the headquarters. Okay. He was out there, making his calls and happened to be out there during this time was able to stop by. It was not necessarily directly lined up with this. He was he was not doing anything that was off the record or wasn't with anybody else. He did have some interesting pictures and there's some, there's a pretty massive structure downtown that I'm not sure what it is but he plans on replacing that. That's going to be quite an interesting proposal. Any other questions or comments. Thanks, Caroline. Thank you. Our next agenda item is a discussion on the leadership dent in class tourism dedicated transportation research project. And we have Kim Phillips, who's the vice president of our convention and visitors bureau to give the presentation. Thanks, Kim. Good morning, everyone. I'm going to see if I can do this. There we go. All right. In your last meeting last month, councilmember Hutzpeth asked for a briefing on what's going on as far as conversation regarding tourist dedicated tourist transportation. And so I thought I would just give you it was unknown to this group at the time that the leadership dent in class is actually carrying this particular topic this year. And so I just wanted to give you an update as to where we are. So, how. I think if you're just saying next. Okay, so here's background on how the how this particular project ended up with leadership dent in the first place. The Denton Convention Center is going to be opening as you know, next month. And we're already I mean, we've been marketing Denton specifically to larger convention groups that our new center will be able to accommodate new business that we've never been able to attract to Denton before. And one of the first the primary things that our clients are asking for or they are identifying as a need is getting from the convention center into the heart of Denton, which is primarily perceived to be the downtown area. Most of you have probably attended conferences and you know that you don't just go into the convention center and stay there most of the time. There are activities that happen either after sessions or over a lot of times those are group activities where the entire conference all the delegates will be moved from one point to another in order to participate in an offsite activity. That's very common and in fact it's it's tremendously uncommon for that not to be the case. And so our meeting planners and our clients are asking about how do you intend to move our group from the convention center into other areas within the city offsite locations. So the need was identified pretty quickly as this is something we really need to make a priority of our thought process is how are we going to address this servicing request. And all of you are familiar with the welcome center that's on the downtown square. That is also a project of the CBB but that was given the light of day by a an intensive research project that was conducted during the class of 2012 leadership didn't. Yay, Joe was in that class. And that class did a really really great job of a lot of research and ended up by the conclusion of their class putting together a very well thought out well researched and well prepared proposed business plan to actually start and sustain a visitor information center for Denton. So having that history having that history I approached Chuck and the leadership didn't organization as and pitch the idea that hey would this be a possibility for leadership didn't to take on a similar type of study but focused on tourism a dedicated tourism transportation. And the class after it went through the vetting process with leadership didn't the class opted to use this as their 2018 class project. So this is where we are right now this is where the class is they are researching and doing personal visitor transportation experiences so anywhere they go anywhere any vacations they go on or conferences that they attend they 're making special note of what transportation is available to them. What they experience as far as being convention delegates or just tourists in a destination and they are researching in a similar vein as the class of 2012 did for the visitor centers looking at cities that look like didn't but that have addressed this need in their communities. And so they're looking at the operational structures the financing how they determine routes who all is involved in this is it private is it a collaboration between public private partnership. And if they have this system whoever was involved in setting it up what would they do different what did they learn how can we learn from their mistakes and looking at our project. And at the conclusion of their project this class plans to be able to suggest some recommendations whether it'll look like a business plan or not I don't think they've quite fleshed that out but their idea is to be able to make reservations back to us. This is a picture that just shows you some of the some of the different transportation systems that this class is looking at at this point in time up at the top you see all the trolley from Scottsdale Arizona. The double decker Austin buses that drive around in Austin and then you've got the San Antonio trolley most of you have probably experienced that one. The one in the far right corner is interesting that is Milo and Milo is in Ar lington and is a driverless shuttle. And it drives up and down the sidewalks and moves people. It's a very small one so it's obviously not meant to move a convention of 500 delegates to downtown, but it is an ongoing solution that moves visitors around their entertainment district. And then, just to give you the comparison this is a colleague of Julie sent this to us from Stuart, Florida, and I wanted to include it just to let you know that even little tiny towns of 17,000 people are having to address tourism transportation needs, very very specific versus just the standard public transportation. And then, let's see, and I believe that is it so the class project and leadership didn't class project we are not really moving forward on anything, giving them time to conduct the research but they will make their presentation on April the fifth, the location for that presentation is yet to be determined. But if you'd like to mark your calendars I know that the class will be inviting council members and other leadership in the community to hear their presentation and then that that class will actually graduated the end of April. And what happens with their project presentation after that remains to be seen but we're excited about getting their research. So, that concludes my presentation if anybody has any questions. Questions or comments. Thank you. All right, thanks Kim appreciate it. So, is the convention center opening up in November? Yes, it should be their original target date was mid November like November 16th ish but probably the end of November they actually have business booked in there the first week of December so they've kind of got a goal they got to meet now. So, we're booking business and they're like crazy though it 's selling very very well. Top of mind and meeting planners. So, thank you. All right, as we move on we don't have a need for a closed meeting. This morning, but we need to go ahead and start with our regular meeting. And the first item to address is electing a chair and a vice chair to our board for this next fiscal year. So, with that I guess I'll take nominations. There's been a motion by Mr. Fox on a second by Carolyn Simmons. Is there any discussion. Say, call the question please. All those in favor. Any opposed. All right. We also need to elect a vice chair to serve in my absence I guess I'll take nominations for that as well. For the record, we need to announce that the motion did pass and that Marty Rivers has been selected as the chair. Okay. The motion did pass and Marty Rivers has been selected as chair. We need to elect a vice chair. Entertain nominations. Councilman Briggs. I have a motion and a second to nominate Mr. Baines as vice chair. Any discussion. Chance. The post. All right. We have accepted john Baines as the vice chair of the board. Congratulations. All right. Next up is staff reports. We have those and those have been mailed out earlier in your minutes and you should have had a chance to review those I'm sure everybody's been through those thoroughly. Anybody have any questions for staff or comments or suggestions. In a busy month. If we don't have any things to talk about on that we will move on to the minutes of our last meeting on September 13 th and we need to accept those minutes and I would entertain a motion for that. Motion from Carol Anne. The second from Keely. Any more discussion or questions on the minutes. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed. Looks like the minutes are approved. And we have finished our agenda for the day. There's an option for us to ask for anything to be on our agenda for next month is anybody have any items that need to be added or things we need to talk about. Concluding items correct. I have a question. So we hear about how art and music are really important to make our community unique and I'm just curious if we've ever in this committee done studies or research about how local art and music affect economic development within our community. Do we have any actual numbers or any kind of studies that we have done. I know that there was a report that was compiled by Michael Seaman and part of his PhD work his dissertation that looked into that very thing. And I think that Julie Glover probably has a copy of it that we would be glad to share with the group, because it does speak to that issue. That's the only research that I know that's been done on that specific to dentin. I think it's probably it's two years old. I just got the sign that it's two years old. So relatively recent. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, I'll reach out to them. Okay, great. Thank you. I have signed my form. Is there anything else I need before being sworn in and this being my first. Thanks for good. Good. Thanks for that. All right, I guess we'll conclude the meeting at why everybody's here. And I know everybody's busy and it's hard for me to get here we need to get here about 10 till 11 so we can get situated we have to start this thing on television at 11 o'clock so it's the last couple times I know it's new for everybody so if we can make an extra effort I had to set my reminder earlier to make sure that I get here so be great. And keep that in mind. And I'm sure we have a large viewing audience that is patiently waiting for us. We don't want to let them down so with that we'll call the meeting adjourned I appreciate everybody being here and thanks for your help.