[PAUSE]
Good morning. I'm Marty Rivers, Chairman of the Economic
Development Partnership Board.
We do have a quorum. I will now call the work session to
order at 11.03 a.m.
Our first order of business is work session item EDP 18-017
,
a mid-year update on economic development activities.
Good morning. I'm Michelle Cunningham. I'm the Business
Development Officer in the Economic Development Office for
the city.
And I will be giving the presentation for Caroline today
who is regretfully under the weather.
As you know, the 2017-18 strategic plan for economic
development was put together
and structurally composed to align with the City of Denton
strategic plan.
It's focused on accountability, transparency, and respons
iveness,
and reflects best practices for comprehensive ED program.
And with that in mind, there were four goals that were
identified,
and there were objectives and actions identified for each
of those areas with specific people
who are responsible for conducting those activities within
the timeframe and by the deadlines stated.
And those four goal areas are business development,
entrepreneurship, workforce development, and community
relations.
Let me be right-handed here.
The City Economic Development Department spends the lion's
share of its time accomplishing these things.
We respond to RFPs both from the state governor's office as
well as direct inquiries.
We have analysis, negotiation, and administering the
incentives.
We do business retention, assistance, expansions, and
workforce development activities.
The Main Street program, downtown events, Shop Denton,
other small business programs.
A lot of time on this next one, technical advisory and
customer service support to local businesses,
and other city departments, and then to the Chamber as well
.
We're also liaison to the Economic Development Partnership
Board, the Downtown Task Force Tutors Board,
and the Public Arts Committee, and that's a recent addition
.
There's a little more information later.
To just bring you up to date on where we are per the
strategic plan initiatives, we've implemented Total Impact.
In July, that is our incentive analysis or impact analysis
software that's been utilized as we have requests to do
incentives.
It gives us a more comprehensive picture of what impact
providing those incentives have to various different other
revenue streams and other facets of the city.
We've revised the 2016 City of Denton policy for tax abat
ement, and actually that got passed Tuesday night, so we're
glad that that's in place.
The finalization of the contract templates, we're working
on legal with that, and so that is still in process.
We think that having those be consistent is of benefit to
both our incentive partners as well as to just administer
ing them.
Caroline has worked with the Public Communications Office
to develop a series called Denton Developments.
Thus far, they've produced and aired six of those. She's
also been writing a monthly column for the Denton Business
Chronicle.
Five of those have been provided or have been published.
And we've also instituted new performance measures related
to recruitment, business retention and expansion, and I'll
give that report subsequent to this and go into more detail
on that.
Workforce development, small business, downtown customer
service, and incentives.
And that's ongoing because we strive to have best practices
, so that's something that we were always going to be
looking at.
What else can we be doing? How can we be working more
collaboratively? How can we truly exhibit best practices?
Sorry, I'm a lefty and I want to keep it right for Adam.
Don't want to mess you up, Adam.
Thus far, small business is a target of ours. I know that,
you know, Christina Davis, our staff member, began working
with the Fry Street Merchants to implement a business
support program.
And thus far, she's had about almost a 30% increase in the
participation of small businesses in her program.
She does the shop small Saturday program and is getting
ready actually to have another initiative at the beginning
of the month of May that has to do with the National Small
Business Week,
where there will be a number of different resources for
small business that are speaking on different topics to
help those and entrepreneurs.
Downtown, Julie Glovers completed six downtown redevelop
ment.
There have been two properties that have been redeveloped
downtown. One of them, the Monroe Pearson Building,
actually has weddings booked for all of April already.
It's now a wedding venue. And Armadillo Ale is down on Bell
Street. They have their CO. We're waiting for them to go
ahead and get open.
For customer service, business assistance provided. I will
tell you that Christina put this number in here at the
beginning of March. We're well over 170.
Now, we really do spend a lion's share of our time helping
businesses with issues or questions that they have.
And so, again, a great amount of time spending that kind of
support.
The standard report is a report that a lot of developers
ask us for. It has a lot of data in it and helps to give a
really good overview of what's happening in Denton.
And again, five working days, a receipt of all data. So,
Christina's ahead of schedule on that.
On the incentives, the ROI incentives that have been
awarded, this is just to let you know that the ROI is three
to one.
So, when we're giving incentives, our return on that
investment is three to one. So, we are making money and we
are creating an improved economy by providing those.
The total net sales collections related to our incentives,
you can read 51.4 million. Property tax collections, 1.8
million. So, blowing and going.
We continue to have monthly meetings with the legal and
finance departments.
We've had a lot of staff changes and so some of the things
that we are looking at for process improvements have to do
directly with those departments.
And so, those meetings happen on a monthly or more frequent
basis. We work pretty closely with them.
Cross-training between economic development and finance,
same thing.
Internal cross-training, I think everybody in our
department does a little bit of what everybody else does so
that that way we can pick up when other folks are out.
And some of the additional responsibilities that have come
our way recently.
The Public Arts Committee, we absorbed, I'd say, in
February of this year. So, we're the staff liaisons to the
Citizen Committee that makes recommendations regarding
public art.
Music-friendly community was certified in February of 2018
as it says.
Julie Glover is updating the list of musician-related
businesses. It's a database.
What you want to do is to create an environment that
encourages and that provides additional cross-business
opportunities for folks that are involved in that field.
I know that they did get together and the Musicians, the
Dent Music and Arts Collaborative, actually had an event
where they helped musicians get insured with the Affordable
Care Act.
Just fill out paperwork and know it was there.
One of the biggest complaints or challenges, not so much
complaints, of artists is that because they are self-employ
ed, maybe they don't have some of the same benefits a lot of
other folks have.
So, just helping them be successful entrepreneurs, even in
that standpoint, is of benefit to them.
Film-friendly community, I know that staffs completed
training and is working with the governor's office to do a
photo address directory of possible film locations, and
they're tracking those.
To date, there have been several site requests. This could
be anything from, "I need a background that has a river
with trees," and these sorts of other aspects in the
background.
I know many years ago, and I'm dating myself, I remember
getting called for houses to blow up for Walker, Texas
Ranger.
We actually had some houses out in a field, and they would
come and get them.
We've got some recommendations.
Denton is going to be officially a film-friendly community
in April. I believe Julie got the email yesterday that we
actually are certified now, but the celebration is going to
happen during the Thin Line Film Festival.
That partnership with Texas Highways has been great because
they have provided innumerable sites or add opportunities
for the Thin Line Festival. So that collaborative
partnership is working well.
The Cultural District, staff presented a work session to
City Council in late February on the Texas Commission of
the Arts Cultural District Program, and was directed to
move forward with that.
That is ongoing, and activity is happening toward creating
a cultural district in Denton.
I'm guessing that that would be hand-in-hand, probably with
the Public Art Committee as well. That could be a
collaborative opportunity for those two as well.
So that was what we had for mid-year. Were there any
questions regarding that? I know Caroline would be a lot
better answering those than I am.
I've got a handful of things on slide two, the performance
measures. This may not be fair to bombard you with all
these, but I wanted some clarification.
Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Let me go back. I'm looking at mine
and forgetting the other. This one, Marty?
Yep.
Okay. Oh, wait. No. That one or the small business one?
That's the slide I want.
Okay.
On the number of RFPs returned, how many did we have
submitted?
Okay. Well, for recruitment, there were six that were
received from the state and from the Dallas Regional
Chamber.
Those are ones that came from that department, and those
were turned in about, as it says, two days. I know that we
didn't have a lot of turnaround time on many of them.
So far, none of those have been converted into prospects.
However, there is one that just recently has come back from
not this fiscal year, but previously, and is working now
with the Department on utilities and some property areas.
In addition, there have been 15 direct inquiries where RFPs
have been requested from us directly that we have handled
since October 1st. From those, two have come back and are
in the pre-development area in planning.
So this six doesn't reflect truly the number of RFPs that
are being turned, and these are the ones that are in our
target industries. So out of those six, three in advanced
manufacturing, one information technology, one aerospace
and aviation, another one supply chain logistics.
So we're focused on our target areas, and those, that's the
gamut for that group. Did that answer one of the questions?
On the business retention.
And business retention visits. I'm sorry, did I skip the
slide?
No, I'm just kidding.
Remember, downtown visits, again, there are, and I'll go
into this more in the BRE business retention expansion
overview, but there are five or 24 per year, five, these
are where you have formally set up and you're bringing with
you resources and you were talking to the leaders of that
particular business.
I would think that during the fire that was downtown, I
know that there was at least a week working with multiple
people on relocating stalls and all sorts of additional
things, but we consider that assistance, even though there
was a meeting, those were not pre scheduled meetings where
you worked with folks to bring resources to them.
So it's more of a definition of vernacular. Business
retention visits outside of the downtown, 17, actually it's
18 now.
Again, this was at the beginning of the month and Julie's
got another one this afternoon actually so that will be six
. But again, with these visits you you're taking additional
resources with you if they need utility assistance or you
've been there before you know that they're high utility
users you might be bringing somebody with municipal
electric
with solid waste for the recycling with City Council if
that's their district and they, they wish to come.
Workforce solutions also always always always not just also
I'm sorry.
It's on every business visit now because the number one
thing that prospects prospects seem to ask for, and that
existing businesses express concern about. It's a relev
antly trained available workforce and workforce solutions
has incredible grants, North Central Texas College has
great training
programs and are working hand in hand with dent and ISD has
fabulous career prep tech prep programs so that partnership
you know Carla Ruge from dent and ISD might come on those
visits.
Eric shanks, who provides small business grants for
workforce solutions has been accompanying Julie on
virtually every one of her businesses because there are
grants for for small business. If you're paying anybody and
you're paying taxes.
There are grants available to help you.
Or, or to offset internships. So the majority of the
conversations that are happening, interestingly enough,
have to do with, how do we get the workforce to expand the
number of workforce development activities or grants facil
itated one you heard about Justin's had has just come
through it took
it we thought it would but Justin's has close to $600,000
grant for workforce development.
Employers that have 100 or more employees can use the state
skills development grant fund, and they do customized
training grants so often these companies are able to get
grants far in excess of what their existing training
budgets may be.
And influx of ability of up training your employees of
having them be resilient. If for some reason that
particular company has to lay off goes out of business.
Those employees now have other work skills that can apply
to other businesses as well.
So we're doing that we're having meetings with the
workforce training providers to look at how we more closely
align the stackable credits or the certifications that you
can get in high school and bring it on through the four
year college degree.
At every visit. Again, since we're bringing workforce
solutions people with us, we're talking about training
grants, be they the small business training grants or the
larger ones, or their participation in tech hire, or
whether they would write debt and ISD a letter when
they go for a jet grant, or they look at heating
ventilation and cooling grants.
And you need that collaboration and those business partners
to assist you in doing that sort of thing as well so that's
part of it.
Next slide.
Okay, the ROI on incentives awarded.
Three one. Sorry.
Right handed.
Yeah, I don't have that data that would be Caroline could
probably have told you more about it but I know that Erica
Sullivan who does our incentive she's our incentive
administrator works with finance and with Caroline and so
what they would have looked at is the
increase in property valuation and the increase in taxes.
Is that for all the incentive projects we have out there
the ones we did this year.
That's my question is what you know what, I don't know. And
we can come back to that and that may be good information
to have for.
I can't tell you. Yeah, I can't tell you ranch and
everybody and.
Right. I don't know if it's cumulative or not we'll find
that out.
Same thing with the other two.
I think that's I think that's what that is it doesn't say
that.
Keely has a question on the business retention visits. What
percentage of those are locally owned small business versus
larger
companies.
It's, it's a gamut of that and I'll go into that on the
next presentation is about the business retention and
expansion program, we've tried to do small entrepreneurial
businesses.
And for from my stand right down in the next small medium
and large yes.
Okay.
I have just a couple of questions and they're really just
informational. The Public Art Committee liaison you said
that was absorbed into this committee what or this
department what department was it in initially.
Well, it started out in the parks department initially and
that was because the parks department was the department
that, you know, if you're citing a piece of public art, it
was going in the public parks, initially, and so for
whatever reason that's where it started and it grew.
But at this point, it could be anywhere. And I think that,
you know, their staff change there as well, and our deputy
city manager has both economic development and the parks
department reporting to him.
So I think he felt that maybe changing that to our
department, because of the staff changes currently in this,
and you know the parks has a new director is interviewing
for new director so that that would make sense, I don't
know if we'll have it permanently
or not but right now it's situated with us we've had one
meeting, we're getting ready to have another one there's,
there is money there, and it to be spent with some
transportation related projects.
Currently so, in fact that group will meet next week, and
you know is proceeding with their agenda and rock and roll.
And then about eight to 10 years ago the council decided
that when we do a bond election that 2% of the amount of
the ball to go into public art, and so that we've had some
street improvements and capital projects.
Right. That amount of money is grown. And so it's a bigger,
bigger than this parks kind of deal now.
Exactly. And then, you know, I kind of, it's somewhat self
explanatory but can you tell me a little more technically,
what is a cultural district, what, what is, what is the
definition that we're kind of working from.
I apologize again I'm filling in the Julie Glover could
probably tell you that I know that she's the staff member
that's assigned to it but I don't know what the criteria is
to be to be called a cultural district, there's a process
that has to be gone through,
I think that it allows you to advertise and promote at a
different level. The, the importance and impact of art in
your community. I know that I believe it's plain or Frisco
that has a cultural district that actually includes all
forms of performing art.
When they talk about that, instead of just, you know,
public art is one facet of art but you have performance art
you have, you know, dense richly blessed in all forms of
art in art expression.
And so it makes sense that that would be something that we
would be interested in doing and I think combining those
efforts to further elevate and promote that aspect of our
community that that may or may not be evident to others.
Well, then, Miss Glover is back maybe we can find out more
about. Yeah, if there's certain what the requirements are.
I know she has them and I know that she's working on them I
don't know what they are.
Got it.
Yes, is there a way for us for you and team we would like
to be able to help with that because the amount of art
performance that we have on campus. If that could help the
city.
We would love to, we would love to take part in that. Okay.
I'm not sure if you're on your line.
Do you all solicit or that's not a good word I guess art
from UNT for public display to help those kids are you are
you mainly just entrepreneurial artists.
We are, we are, again, this has come to us at the last week
of February, so we're getting our feet under ourselves and
I, there is some review of policies and other aspects that
need developed by the public art committee.
I would imagine that the answer to that would be yes, in
some aspect or another but again that's not in our, I know
they do.
And check out it like forest.
That they installed out there. Very nice.
Well, and I would think even the cultural arts district
with UNT downtown.
What was incentives, is it possible for those to be made
public.
I haven't seen anywhere where.
And I get asked a lot.
Why are we giving cities to some of these companies that
have all this money, and we're giving away our money.
And so I just thought some of these people might be
interested to know that what we get back. Right, there is a
report that has been presented, I believe, previously to
counsel that was pretty comprehensive and it showed the.
Impact of the city of Denton, Denton County and Denton ISD
and the incentives that the three had participated in.
And right, but it's been a while.
Maybe sometimes.
Okay.
People can.
I think probably more importantly and we get that
information in here periodically but if we gave razor ranch
X amount of dollars and they're bringing in X amount of
sales tax receipts.
Some of that's going back but what's the increase to the
city to see the net return we have the net up there but
that's, I'm going to assume that's all everything it'd be
nice to have some detail on that so we can explain we
talked about that.
Last year sometime when the city manager was in here and
talked about doing a better job of reporting after the fact
and telling the story because people, you know, my big
story is razor ranch they put in, they widened University.
I mean that that happened faster because of the incentive
they put the cash in to do that and a lot of people don't
see those they don't see the public improvements that are
happening.
Basically it's a way for us to finance it so that's a good
point.
I don't recognize that's where it came from.
So we need to tell our story better in that respect.
Okay.
Anybody else have anything? That mean we're ready for Adam
to give the chambers mid-year report. Thank you so much for
filling in by the way.
We appreciate you. Good job.
Her line would be much more airy by.
I think this is you Adam. Hang on just a second. Let me see
if I can get your.
Okay.
Morning board members.
Morning.
Still this double check.
Still morning.
You are accurate and you're greedy.
Well as you all know the chambers office of economic
development handles all outbound marketing target
recruitment for all prospect activity aside from the RFP
from the governor's office in the Dallas regional chamber
which the city's economic development department handles.
What I'm going to go over today is our mid-year update
based on the last five months up through February 31.
Print and digital ad buys project activities and updates
website social media updates marketing trips that have been
conducted up to this point and the financial reports are
included in your backup materials as well.
Timeline for print and digital advice this one we actually
just placed and came out last week in the Dallas regional
chambers economic development 2018 guide.
Last year we did a quarter page ad this year we upgraded to
a half page. This is the new ad that we had that we had
their their firm design for us showing the map of didn't
key points and contact information.
This particular issue goes out across the country but their
main focus is getting this in the hands of every single
broker site location consultant and real estate person and
the entire DFW Metroplex.
The other ad that we ran this year is in site selection
magazines Texas wide open for business guide site selection
magazine has a distribution of about 48,000 it goes it's a
global magazine with having focus on site selectors and
consultants and brokers across the country and also
C level executives is the target audience here they're
trying to get this in the hands of this particular issue,
which will which will run in April.
And this is a poly bag with a Texas edition so it's
basically all Texas economic development communities like
our hours in a separate Texas guy that will be poly bagged
with those with those magazines as well so our ad will be
in that.
And this is that that we ran in that magazine.
And this is the ad that we're doing. We did an ED directory
listing I'm sorry this one was actually in print as well.
This is in the site selection magazine. Also, this will go
into the month after the ad that we ran this is in their
May guide their May issue and the
reason we did this small listing in there is because it's
their annual directory of economic developers.
So it's important that it comes out once a year that we
have a listing in there with contact information for these
people to be able to reach us is a state or national this
publication national.
Global for that matter, but I mean they sent out all across
the all across the world. It's got a huge focus nationally,
but it goes out to site selectors and consultants and
brokers all across the country, and C level executives so
CEOs and CFOs are receiving this publication.
And with with this directory listing we have that, that'll
be online, along with that, with the May issue as well.
Another small directory listing that we did was in the
business expansion journal and this one's a national
publication.
And we just we did the small directory listing and their
annual guide as well. This one we also have with the small
package that we bought with the listing in the magazine for
for one month we also have a six month online directory as
well that will run from September 2017 to August
2018. And that's it. You can find that at bj x mag.com. The
one that you see on your right is that is a marketing firm
that we use out of the Dallas area called site location
partnership this is actually an online web banner that they
're running for especially in exchange for being a good
reference for them but we do use that utilize them for a
few different trade shows throughout the year and in
marketing and things like that. But that's a that one in
particular is a web banner ad so when clicked on from their
homepage it runs back to our website and we can capture
those
those that web traffic and clicks. Maintenance and updates
to didn't need he.com. We do monthly and annual updates to
pages and links we have a whole two page checklist and
spread spreadsheet that we go through and make sure that
everything is up to date so all of our utility pages.
Water rates everything is always updated and we get
compliments all the time on how updated our information is
and site selectors are constantly calling us telling us
that you know it's great that we keep everything up today
so if you haven't looked at that I urge you to go through
and look at the different tabs.
And you'll see this other note here says current website
update and facelift which we've been working on we are a
month and after two months behind schedule part of that was
due to the holidays, and a few weeks of that was due to you
can blame me for that for trying to gather high res photos
crop and things like that. We are going to do a soft launch
on this today so that it runs over the weekend. There's
some kinks that work out when you launch a website. Keep in
mind it's not a it's not a brand new website we have a
website that is up and running so this that's
running currently so this new beta link will replace the
old one. And as it replaces it, it'll work out the kinks
throughout the weekend, we'll go through the final
checklist on Monday and it will be launched in life.
Yeah, so we're not far behind us it's pretty normal to run,
you know, run a month or two behind schedule on a website
when you run into problems like not having the high res
photos that you need and you know go through that checklist
.
Yeah. You'll see since October 1 of 2017. We have had an
increase on LinkedIn 11.6 users, Facebook, an increase of 5
% of believe they call those followers there's users
followers and subscribers and all that good stuff that they
use for each different channel
Twitter is an increase of 3.4%. So was that that was that
October 17 is how many is that that month. This is an
increase from then until now. So it's over a five month
period.
Over the last year so snapshot for these social media
channels and have another slide that shows the increase in
website hits and so the 1288.
Okay, we started there.
Correct to this other 1438 goes through February.
Marketing trips and activities that have been conducted
during the five month period from October 1 2017 until
actually February 31, Texas Economic Development Council's
annual and winter conference that's our state, our state
conference for state economic
developers and Texas Economic Development Council out of
Austin kind of spearheads that whole thing and we meet at
three different locations annually, the advanced
manufacturing expo, which I did a few weeks back.
It was in Anaheim, California is targeting advanced
manufacturing companies. We walk the floor on our own we
also shared his booth space with site location partnership
who has a booth and they market themselves as a free site
location consulting company that helps them get leads,
you know looking across the country and then we, we target
all the ones that are looking at Texas or anywhere in our
South Central region for that matter.
The Industrial Asset Management Council, which we do twice
a year. That one is typically for larger firms that have
their own in house site selection staff so once that wouldn
't hire a CB Richard Ellis or a Newmark Knight Frank, a
global site selection firm to conduct their, their searches
for them.
These are more like like Pepsi co and Frito Lay who have
their own in house site selection teams.
And keep in mind that is where we did recruit Penske trucks
from from that conference as well. Consultant Connect
Economics Forum is one where they have typically 15 to 25
ish site location consultants from across the country that
they bring in.
And we network with network with them over a two day period
and also hear their best practices and things like that and
they have several networking opportunities throughout that
two day period.
Dallas Fort Worth Industrial and Logistics Summit.
I just went to last two weeks ago I'm sorry it was down and
down in Dallas, all those Dallas site location consultants
and brokers that that deal with logistics and industrial
projects were in attendance so it was, it was great I, you
know, I typically know about half those guys so it's good
to just go and network
and meet and greet and, and keep in touch with all of them.
The European American Investment Council and German
delegation of aviation companies that was something that
was spearheaded by Team Texas Team Texas is our statewide
marketing organization there are about 104 communities that
participated that it's kind of pay to play.
This particular event they held in downtown Fort Worth.
There's a group called the European American Investment
Council who facilitates companies from Europe, locating new
facilities in the United States. Their team was there along
with a German delegation of six aviation companies that
they brought who were in attendance.
And I believe there were, there were somewhere between 15
and 18 communities who we had the ability to go and we had
a PowerPoint presentation and they give us each five
minutes to present our communities to these companies so we
're still after that we're still keeping in touch with all
the companies and the European American Investment Council
and
going from there and working those those prospects.
Then the Dallas Fort Worth marketing team fam tour.
The Dallas Fort Worth marketing team is a regional group,
they cover about 13 counties are on the Dallas Fort Worth
Metroplex we do a lot of marketing with them and outbound
trade marketing trips to other major metros across the
country this particular fan tour that they did.
They also listed this one in downtown Fort Worth, and
brought in five site location consultants from different
areas there was there was one from LA one from Atlanta one
from Chicago and so on and so forth, they brought them in
and then we go and we network with them over a couple
of weeks and then we had a chance to present our
information to them on PowerPoint and things like that.
What is fam set for family. Yeah, they just call that's the
economic development term they call it a fam tour anytime a
community brings in, you know, five site location
consultants or five companies they call it a fam tour.
So, we weren't invited on that on the whole thing for we
had the ability to go to Fort Worth and present our
information to these five consultants but then the Dallas
regional team chamber took this team on a national fan tour
of the communities and I think they loaded up a van and
took them to different communities and show them, you know
our highway access and airports and all that good stuff.
Thank you. Sure.
Project activity overview from October 2017 to February
2018.
The city chamber contract goals specify that we need to hit
a number of 42 at the end of the year. Keep in mind we're
five months into this year we were asked to do this report
about a month early so we're at 40% of that goal we're at
17 prospects for this
year site visits contractual goals we're at we're supposed
to hit six for the year. We are currently at three at 50%
of the goal five months into it.
Thank you.
Website and social media overview.
We're going to take individual users, each by 20%. You'll
see there on the right column that the page views. We have
increased by 9.1% once again five months into the, to the
contract here so we are definitely on track to hit that 20%
mark and then you'll see
we're at 30 users we're at 39.8% so we have quadrupled that
that mark already, and we're hoping that launching this new
website and doing promotions that way through LinkedIn and
Facebook and in Twitter, getting the word out that we
launched the new website will
increase more traffic as well so we are, we are on top of
those, those goals and benchmarks as well. Social media.
In terms of the city's chamber annual contracts. The goal
for that was, or there was not necessarily a goal for that
one it was really to collect baseline data on those on the
social media channels to I guess set goals for the for
future years going
forward.
You'll see here though on LinkedIn once again those numbers
the percent increase was 11.6% increase on LinkedIn,
Facebook 5% and Twitter at 3.4%.
That concludes my presentation. I'll take any questions,
comments or concerns, were you going to go over the project
updates and lead activity that we've got in there.
Oh yes sure I can do that.
We're going to do a lot of things but that doesn't tell us
the meat and potatoes of what's really happening on the
ground. Absolutely. In your package he's got a list of.
Yeah, we made a list of the seven projects, the 17
prospects that were that were generated from these
different different marketing channels and inquiries and
things like that.
We typically count these you know if they're well some
sometimes we get on they're not always a target industry,
so we work everything but obviously we're targeting our
target marketing is going after those that are in the
target industries that the city of
New York City has outlined, but then sometimes we'll get a
call from, you know, brokers and consultants that may have
a project that aren't necessarily within the within those
targets but it looks mostly like all of these are within
our within our target industry reach project Brent
would manufacturing company, looking for 100,000 square
feet or 20 to 35 acres this was one that actually did one
of the three site visit that we had in town.
They are still looking. They're looking at a site over it
so it's a razor property.
Actually, just on the other side of the rail line from
where we just located the United States cold storage plant,
and if you guys are familiar with where that's at it's at
Jim Crystal Road and Western Boulevard there's a rail line
so they're going right on the east side of that
rail line in between Western Boulevard and the rail line
there's another 40 acre site right there that they are that
they've been looking at product Dorothy is a company
looking to build a 400,000 square foot building on 20 to 25
to 40 acres.
57 to 63 million a capital investment that's a
manufacturing project product nickels another manufacturing
project.
They were looking for an existing 750,000 square foot
facility which we all know that we do not have here and
didn't, or a greenfield site for build a suit so we did
submit information on that one as well.
Project Kansas is another one 50 to 100 acres that they're
looking at.
They prefer a rail serve site which we did show them that
same site that I just mentioned that's a 40 acre site there
's a smaller site right below that that makes that and turns
that into a 65 acre site so we did show them that side
along with another site on the south side of Winko,
which has about 93 acres currently left.
And that company did come in for visit as well.
Project Golden looking for 60 to 100 acres. Once again we
showed them the side on the south side of Winko. It's a 93
acre side there's a lot of interest in that in the sites
around Winko right now as you can imagine, along with the
sites around us cold storage we've got three or four good
size sites still available.
Project Conrad. This is one that I've been working for a
few months actually.
There is a broker in Dallas I called on him and made a trip
down to visit with him I had visited with him since I
believe my in my San Antonio days four years ago so
reconnected with him.
He told me about a product that he's working on that'll be
about 20,000 square feet. And they have, they have just
recently came to Denton, and they are working with Philip
Baker on a very small product site right there.
They decide to Anderson merchandising plant. So about seven
acres to build a 20,000 square foot facility. I give that
one about a 90% probability of happening.
And if it will it'll be very soon.
So it's, that was a small retailer looking to go on the
didn't square.
They've located a site just down the road, currently they
're at the right there at the highway 35 east and west split
in 80,000 square feet, they are looking at the side about
two acres to the west down highway 380 at a 50 acre site to
close on that and they will double the footprint
of that 20,000 square feet up to, I believe, 220,000 square
feet and new jobs will be added with that as well.
So in the industry we're seeing a lot of we're seeing a lot
of activity right now in food manufacturing, especially
with the new location of United States cold storage Winko
foods target Aldi Tetra Pak, you know it's there.
You know I'm seeing a good following there and a lot of
them have been contacting us even new developers are
contacting us want to buy up these sites and then put up
these big industrial speculative building so we actually
have three of those looking right now and a fourth one that
's probably
coming visit in the next week or two. I have not counted
those as site visits yet. I in my opinion they are site
visits but we'll leave that up to all of you to decide but
we have one looking.
I'm getting a little bit off track here but just to let you
know what's happening with those if it's okay there's one
developer looking at our two developers looking at the site
south of Winko.
One of them wants to buy that 93 acres from a development
standpoint and put three large industrial spec buildings on
that on that property, which is good for us but then we
have to we'd have to go out and in turn market those
buildings to end users as well but it would be great to
have some inventory
on the ground as well that's eyes. One of those buildings
would be 600,000 square feet, one about 400 one about 300,
000. The other developer is looking at kind of doing the
same thing but it would be to two other buildings running
perpendicular down.
Or I'm sorry parallel to Western Boulevard. So if you're
looking at the Winko site one would be basically on the
road one would be would have some dirt lanes going to the
behind that and there would be another one parallel to that
as well.
We have another developer looking at this 40 acre site
north of Winko, which there's about 35 usable acres there,
you lose about five to the floodplain.
They're looking at putting about 400,000 square foot
building on that property as well.
Then we have another one that's looking at the site, just
to the east of the new United States cold storage project,
and they're looking to buy that additional 40 acres there
to put another one as well so we've got we have a lot of
activity on on those few large sites
that are still left so you know what's those are gone those
are the shovel ready sites once those are gone we'll need
to start looking towards the north side of created some of
those larger sites, especially on the rail line that are
that are developable.
I said you're looking at the manufacturing foods industry
if you looked at the sports nutrition industry that's a sub
sector of that with UNT and our nutrition programs, we
would be a really good partner so if you're going after
some of those industries some of those companies
we would love to partner with you on going after bringing
you some of them, getting relocate here. Good. That's great
. I'll touch base with you on that afterwards.
Sorry to get sidetracked there. Project movement is a
distribution and like light assembly plant looking at
building a 20,000 square foot building expandable to 60,000
square feet project project Saatchi is that's a company
actually out of Taylor Texas that has contacted us that
they need a presence in North Texas,
building a 20,000 square foot facility with 16 foot ceiling
heights. We did present them a few existing facility
options as well we do have some existing facilities here in
Denton just nothing really over the size of really 100,000
square feet, aside from the new and that the
Westgate business park which we do have a new one at 169,
000 square feet that's going up.
The project at the second half and another smaller
companies take utilizing a portion of that building number
two we do not have any users that are currently going to
take that facility that I know of but we will be marketing
that plan.
Building number three once they're done with building this
number two is going to be 73,000 square feet I am pretty
confident that we have an end user for that one already.
It's a company that we've been working on now for eight
months close to a year, and they have been here twice, and
they manufacture forklifts and construction equipment but
mainly forklifts so they have another facility and in the
Fort Worth area to, it's a very nice
concrete tilt wall construction so it would look, I think
it would look great in that in that spot.
Great for silent auction items forklifts.
Project cell is a local business that I believe Michelle
and them had are had met with as well.
Their folks had contacted me on the side also about doing a
$12 million expansion so we'll, we'll coordinate on that
one, we still need more information is coming on that one
project pack that we have listed here is a distribution
company it's literally going to do
10,000 square feet expandable to 20,000 square feet that
would be available within 30 to 60 days they want to start
with 10,000 with the ability to upgrade within 60 days I've
talked to the guys Lee Ramsey and Brandon Martino at West
gate about putting them in a smaller facility and
another company, I actually met them, I started doing that
that trade show in Anaheim, California, about nine years
ago, and I met them at that time, and go by their booth
every single year and hit them up and finally they said hey
we've got something for Texas
this year and so they said that they're considering us in W
aco. So, anyway, so just shows it's good to stay in front of
these, these people year after year.
So, project and Gandhi one and Gandhi to that you'll see on
this spreadsheet.
Believe it or not, the president for the Frisco Economic
Development Corporation retired, and has started his own
small scale consulting firm and contacted us with these two
new projects that he's working on.
I mean he retired, 30 days ago and has immediately taken
over some new prospects that's quick timeframe but good for
us. One of them is 50 to 100,000 square feet for purchase
and other one is 50,000 square feet as well.
Project PO PMB is a company looking for a land site we've
submitted information with different options for them as
well. And then project Mueller, that's listed there that's
that is one of those that I mentioned previously to
developer looking to purchase
a 40 acre site to build a 400,000 square foot industrial
spec building.
Keep in mind these industrial spec buildings they will be
exactly that a speculative building so the show will be up,
we still go mark the space and the construction firms can
do the finish out based on the company's individual needs
from that point on.
But it'd be great it's great to have those those large
scale facilities to be able to market.
Take two companies and say we have we have this exact size
that you need and things like that is, would you say, lack
of space is one of the number one reasons we can't reply to
some of these prospects, like of existing.
Do you have any vacant. Yes, okay, with the Westgate has
has given us a good advantage on that but we, there are a
lot of times where people are looking for 200,000 square
foot building that we can't submit on even though that the
city handles most of our piece these days but,
you know, a lot of times we even when we get an inquiry for
200,000 square foot building we can't compete. And you know
, several years ago I would have said that was a big issue,
not, you know, not having those big buildings but I mean I
think it's, it's actually been great
because having all these developed land sites I mean look
at Winko and us cold storage so I mean, you can go either
way I guess next year's probably good. Yeah, having the
landsites is, I have, I think it's a it's a good thing.
Yeah, if we have a few more of those, especially the large
scale plants like some of these guys are looking at doing
like the 600,000 square foot building 400,000 300,000 if
they'll subdivide those I mean it's, it'd be hard to find a
company to come in and take all 600,000 feet.
Obviously would have to be a big user target is around 600,
000 square feet so that's how big of a user you would need.
So if they'll subdivide it then it's, it's a little easier.
Chambers mid year update. Mr Carpenter.
With, with your permission, did you give a 26 second
overview of the cold storage in its grand form from your
understanding with the product with the consultant.
What he told you when you went back and spoke with him
about what had been applied for last month.
The US cold storage. Yes. Okay, yeah, the only issue there
is I just think it's gonna be a, I think it's gonna be a
fairly sizable project. I know they had gone to counsel
with incentive requests based on about 200,000 square feet
and 67 new jobs.
So it's just 40 acres, their, their site in South Dallas is
on a 30 acre site it's about 600,000 square feet so I think
we're going to see this plant. It's gonna be quite a bit
larger than I think that they're anticipating or that they
've said but basically
they go into a, they go into a location they build they
start small and then as they need it they they add on and
add on which is what they did in Dallas in Fort Worth.
And the consultant is was Marty Neal and was CBRE.
I've kept in contact with several of the CBRE folks, but
once I had heard that Marty Neal and when I started here
four years ago he had just started as their industrial land
specialty type person.
And so I found him on the website, made a call and went to
visit him and started just networking with him and that's
gone from there.
It's great asset to know their team.
Good.
Anybody else.
All right, thanks. Thank you.
All right, we've got item, EDP 18-018 to get an update on
our business retention and expansion program and Michelle
will pick that up for us.
We touched on this a little bit previously but business
retention and expansion is a core program for all economic
development departments.
You want to nurture and take care of what's already in your
community, because that is how you get expansion to occur
that's how you keep your workforce trained relevantly that
's how you become aware if there are circumstances that are
going to lead to job losses.
The features are some of the aspects of the BRE program,
enabling the prevention and reduction of job losses, not
job losses necessarily within the company but maybe within
your community.
If you know that somebody is having an industry change that
might lead to the sale of the company or another use of
that property, or a downscaling of projects, then you can
look ahead and understand who might be on that job market
talk with workforce solutions and develop kind of a game
plan ahead of time.
There are a couple of them that we've been on business
visits and heard about the margins that they were working
on and been able to forecast and understand that about when
they might be flipping those properties etc.
So that's always an aspect and in the content of the
discussion.
When it identifies business concerns and opportunities to
address, we always ask them, at least from the city
standpoint, what are we doing well for you what are we
doing poorly from you what could we be doing better, and a
number of the processes and policy changes that
have occurred based on a lot of that feedback I know we've
had changes in our development process etc. So, it allows
you to continually talk to the other city departments about
where businesses may be needing additional services or what
opportunities there might be
prevention and duplication of resource partner efforts, I
mentioned before that we don't ever go on a visit that we
don't have the ISD with us.
We have to look for workforce solutions sometimes both of
them. And, of course, city department resources if we're,
if we visited before we we anticipate that there may be
questions about energy usage etc.
We certainly do involve solid waste recycling and debt
municipal electric if they're available if possible in the
business visits as well because typically there's something
that they can be doing to address how the company's using
its power and when etc.
And just to praise them up for the city's headed in that
area. It develops a recruitment partners. When companies
come here they want to talk to other companies that are
already there, they want to know, is the city just
attracting us and they're going to, you know, that's we're
not going to see them when we need help.
The economic development department are ombudsman for
businesses that are needing assistance with other
departments. And one of the areas that I mentioned was that
we do a lot more follow up to those visits than the number
of visits that are there.
That's why the assistance is are so much higher.
You may find out about something that may spawn two or
three more meetings with several other staff or other
organizations involved and multiple follow ups, even with
their vendors to to help those processes happen.
So, for them to be able to know that they've got somebody
to call if there's an emergency or if there's anything else
they need or just to network them with the other resources
helps them to feel the love.
Again, the whole focus for us is to remove or mitigate
obstacles that increases their competitiveness and maxim
izes their growth potential. And again, kudos to Denton ISD
who's sitting here.
I cannot tell you how wonderful it is that we have the
workforce training resources here and University of North
Texas.
Who's not not here today and neither is NCTC. They're not
participants.
But that continuum of training is like none other in a lot
of other communities. We had visited Toyota in San Antonio
a couple of years ago and determined what was their
training curriculum.
How could we replicate that and lo and behold, all those
partnerships are here.
Relevantly trained workforce again is a pinnacle or a
premier aspect of being able to deliver what most of the
businesses are asking for.
At this point, I will tell you that when we do talk to them
, most of them are asking about workforce related issues.
Again, there's a change in the demography of the workforce
as far as age, what they're looking for out of jobs, their
training backgrounds.
And that's a challenge for employers across the United
States. So our challenge is again to make sure that we are
providing what it is they need and that we're thinking
ahead four or five years at least of where's that industry
headed, what kinds of training skills are those individuals
going to need so that we can address that.
And again, our ethical and maintain confidentiality. I will
say that in the majority of my visits thus far have been
with businesses over 100 and some of them well over 100
employees and four of those are planning expansions and are
talking about expansions.
And that is in tandem with discussions about workforce. And
so employers, you know, Forbes magazine, I believe it was
Forbes, it was Forbes of Fortune recently stated that new
jobs are not necessarily coming from small business, they
're coming from new business.
And that's a little bit of a shift. It used to be the, the
statement was that 80% of all new jobs came from small
business. What's interesting to me is that in Denton, our
job growth is still not necessarily and new business is
part of it, but we've got pretty strong job growth coming
from our existing businesses.
So we are not necessarily in keeping with what the rest of
the nation's saying so I think that folks are finding there
to be the supports that they need here to make them
successful expanding.
So Jamie has a question.
Just, you know, we write the grant for the Workforce
Commission for the state of Texas with our with our grant
writing team.
And we can offer the training that our business some of our
businesses need that they may be allocating financial
resources to now that they wouldn't have to allocate
financial resources to because we've, we've received the
grant from the state to do that.
The issue is if we get awarded that grant for that training
, and we don't utilize all those dollars associated with
that grant. The state will not does not want to send that
back to the federal government, because they just will
reduce your allocation the next time.
So, we really might want to consider having a really
strategic focus on what continuing education to our
businesses need. What kinds of things can we offer through
that grant for adult education and worker education that we
can utilize those financial resources, maybe to offset some
of the expenses of our smaller of our businesses in our
community to help with that.
Exactly, and it, and actually we've been working with your
director and your assistant director. Yes, and Octaviano on
exactly that grant because there had been one focus for it
earlier.
And, in fact, just an example of one of the assistances we
put together. We've got a software that allows us to take a
look at wages and just have available workforce etc and and
have companies and the company sizes etc.
I pulled your district of everybody who had large
employment, because I think that's where they were focused
initially and they have been meeting with some of these
larger companies as well.
And for targeted industries for them to speak with and
providing them the context to do that. They haven't been on
exactly the same business visits yet because that started
with them in the last couple of months that that focus, but
Carla is conveying that so there is a collaboration that's
happening with that and we are aware of it.
One of the things that we're doing is we have a workforce
and then workforce development consortium that consists of
representatives from that and ISD from the universities
from the community college.
And I'd say the workforce solutions is the whole gamut. It
's not just the grant folks. It's the folks that do the, you
know, job placement and unemployment. So there are various
different offices and we are meeting to determine where are
we replicating our efforts, because in a lot of instances
if you're an employer and you have six different people
coming with you talking to you about projects.
It's very difficult for those HR directors to understand
where one leaves off and the other one picks up and that's
a lot of information, especially if they're trying to have
the younger workforce engaged in, you know, entry level
jobs and are finding that to be a challenge as it is
nationwide.
And so one of the ways we do that is by partnering and
cross cross training and in fact I met with a business
yesterday that is planning to expand that is competing
against national companies that have an ability to get
different financing maybe than they do to get, you know,
the, the additional things that you have available
resources when you're a larger company.
And both the grant that Dr. Wilson mentioned and the
workforce solutions grants were discussed with this
individual.
Again, the training grants, they can qualify for every year
, and the guesstimate for them was possibly as much as $300,
000 to $500,000. If you're able to provide that each and
every year to somebody who's training, that's money out of
their operations and out of their bottom line, and that's
available to companies over $100,000 in that, that meshing.
But then again, there are things that can happen for
smaller companies. And when we're out meeting with folks,
we're talking to them about the programs that are going on
here because you have to see that opportunity for when the
ISD comes or the community college or others come and they
want to write a grant.
They need a partner, they need the city as a partner, they
need the chambers a partner, I know Chuck's written letters
, we write letters, and the grant entities want to see that
community collaboration and typically businesses that are
willing to write those letters.
Well, if it's not somebody that you're visiting and it's an
industry that there's not some depth in, then folks that
don't understand those grant things are a little bit appreh
ensive about saying that they're going to support anything
because they don't really know what they're signing off on
necessarily.
So having those relationships develop is extremely
important and when we're in visits, we tell them about that
. Would you participate? We are having industry forums.
You know, we want to make sure that we're able to get
grants here available to you.
And CTC has a 4.1 million dollar training grant that they
got that way and they're the only community college in the
state that got that Department of Labor training grant for
technical hires, for IT, industrial technology, and for
information technology, and there are several businesses
that are participating in that as well.
So, you know, there's a lot of discussion that happens in
these meetings. So let's see. Let's move along here.
I'm sorry, I keep trying to be right handed.
There we go. These were the metrics that were really the
update of the more formalized business retention and
expansion program. Again, the businesses that are in the
downtown area really often are very different than they are
here.
You see that there's 24 that are associated with that.
I split up the visits that are outside of Denton into 12
large and again I've done more than that right now with
those folks because these grants are available and because
there is a significant amount of money through the grant
that Dr. Wilson talked about and through Texas Workforce
Commission.
We want that money spent in Denton, in the city of Denton,
not just Denton County. So we're going after it.
Medium sized businesses, 30 to 99. I actually haven't, I'm
trying to think, I haven't met with any of those yet. I've
met with smaller business. One was a two person
entrepreneurial venture.
The other one was a bit larger than that, 15. So we wanted
to make sure, because their issues are different, and the
types of collaborations that they need are a little bit
different.
And often with these smaller ones, you can market them to
the larger businesses. In fact, there's a medium business
yesterday that I made the larger business aware of.
As they were discussing their business, I asked, are you
using X? Well, they're right here and, you know, can I get
you all together?
Typically what happens is, at these businesses, whether
they're downtown or outside of downtown, we are networking
them with our resources. And I mean, universally, there are
follow on meetings that are happening.
They're either getting interns, they're getting grants,
they're talking about financing, they're doing a number of
different things. So there's, we're not just dropping off
business cards.
And I'd be happy to answer.
In your memo, it mentions that the mayor and city council
staff are invited.
We invite in their district, I know Gerard Hetspeth-Scott
on so many visits thus far, because actually he went to,
there were a couple that we did with one of the large
companies that was on the outskirts of, but still downtown.
We know that he's been going to the downtown Denton ones as
well because, so he's probably gotten hit up more than the
others.
There are, they're invited.
There are a couple that I have not invited additional folks
to because it has been a new management.
Companies that have been newly acquired by others and folks
that we have no history with. And when you try to set up a
visit, and it's 10 people coming in the door at once, once
you've got your partners.
And one is, you know, city and they feel like they, I mean,
city council members are important. They feel like that's a
much more formal thing. Maybe you're going to want to tour,
etc.
That kind of company, what we'll do is we'll get in the
door, we will establish a relationship with them so that
they see a value added that we're there to help them, we're
not there asking for anything other than their time to
provide resources to them, and then talk to them about
additional where it would be more appropriate to ask a
council member or mayor to.
So we're, we're adhering to it fairly closely.
Questions.
All right, thanks, Michelle.
If there are those of you that are here if there's, if you
're working with folks or there's anybody that you know that
needs networked or assistance, please. I mean, that's what
we do so please let us know.
All right, we need to move on into our regular meeting and
start with consider the minutes from our February 14 2018
meeting.
Action item, Edd P 18 dash 022.
Except a motion for minutes or any questions.
I move we approve the minutes of the February 14 2018
meeting as previously distributed.
We have a motion and a second.
Second, or a mic.
Always in favor say aye.
Any opposed.
All right, our minutes are approved.
We have some staff reports in the background, they given
that some of our staff are not here I'm gonna suggest that
maybe we review those if you have any questions you can get
back.
I mean we've all had a chance to look at it or can look at
it.
Unless somebody wants to go over these and have a
presentation I'm gonna move on down the road.
Okay.
All right, anything else for the good of the order.
We'll call this meeting adjourned.
Thank you.