Good morning. Welcome to the meeting of the Economic Development Partnership Board.
It's Wednesday, August 13th, 2025. We have a forum, so I call the meeting to order at 1122.
First off, help us welcome our newest member, Council Member Jill Desker.
She is taking over Paul Meltzer's City Council seat.
Call for presentation.
Okay, we need to do the approval of minutes.
So you're going to call for presentation from Paul, if there's anyone here.
We'll now begin the presentations for members of the public.
Do we have any?
No.
We do.
Now begin items of consideration.
Item EDP 25-021, consider approval of Economic Development Partnership Board special call meeting minutes for June 25th, 2025.
Are there any questions?
No approval.
At this time, I will entertain a motion to approve.
Move approval.
Approval from Mr. Wolfe.
I'll second.
I'll second from Lee Ramsey.
We have another new member, Mr. Crockett, right?
No, I've been here before.
I'm sorry?
I've been here before.
Oh, okay.
Sorry.
Last.
Sorry.
Well, welcome, Ron.
So I got a motion.
I got a second.
I'll say I'll approve.
Say aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
All right.
I'd like to abstain since I was not present at that meeting.
Of course.
You have one abstention.
The motion passes.
So now we're going to move on to working session call item EDP 25-014.
Receive a report, hold discussion regarding the request for information process and receive feedback from the board.
Chair recognizes staff to present this item.
We're just going to take it.
Good afternoon, board directors.
I hope you have a great summer with your friends and family.
The purpose of this presentation is to review our request for information process.
So we are seeking board input on our RFI process response challenges for several key areas.
These decisions will shape future RFI evaluation and determine which opportunities align with economic development goals while maintaining community standards.
So our program background as of January 2024, our department assumed responsibility for recruitment.
So that was a change in the work plan between the chamber and our office.
Since then, we've made incremental improvements to our marketing materials and we built a formal site database.
As of this year, January 2025, we initiated RFI tracking via KPIs into our new CRM database.
So we got the new CRM database installed in August of last year.
And so we think that was fully capable of January this year.
And since then, we've continued to streamline our RFI process and we've had enhanced site coordination, site visit coordination.
So how do we get these leads?
When a company is looking to expand to Texas, typically they'll reach out to the state governor's office, office of economic development or the Dallas regional chamber.
From there, those organizations, they will send emails to each city listing site specification of what the company is looking for.
And then it's our turn to respond.
Our current RFI process is once we receive a lead from the Texas office of economic development or DRC, we enter into the site database.
We identify type criteria and match with city assets to determine eligibility to respond.
So first, we look at the site requirements and we determine if there's actually a site available.
We then reach out to our utility partners at the city to ensure that there is capacity.
And Christina will reach out to the landowners and brokers to ensure it's still available.
And then Christina will then submit a customized response package back to those entities.
Based on their deadlines, typically those deadlines to return those documentation can take, they will request it from two days to up to a month.
So it really just depends on when we need to get those back to them.
And it can also take an hour to eight hours to complete those responses based on the documentation that comes from those organizations.
So in twenty twenty four, we received a total of seventy five RFI.
We submitted forty four and we had two RFI conversions.
So what we call RFI conversions is when there's actually the company reaches back out to us after we submit the documentation.
We don't call the RFI's lead.
Sometimes you'll hear us say that, but we actually don't count those in our KPI reports as leads until they actually reach back out to us.
And so last year, we had Project Vultverse and Project Saturn Rings that were an RFI conversion.
And so Vultverse was a battery manufacturer that needed excessive wastewater capacity in the site that we're looking at.
We didn't have it. And so they had to go to another city.
And Saturn Rings was a semiconductor manufacturer.
They created a lot of jobs. Unfortunately, they needed ten megawatts of power within three years, and that's something that we couldn't produce, unfortunately. So that would require them to build a substation.
And so they ended up going to another city or state.
So in twenty twenty five, we received eighty RFI's.
We've submitted forty one, which is the same amount as we submitted for the whole year last year.
Our average investment for these RFI's is over four hundred eighty million, with the average number of jobs created for six hundred seventeen.
We had six RFI conversions. So that doesn't seem like a lot, but it actually is. Most cities would probably really love to have that conversion.
And so those site visits, the RFI conversions included Project Pumpkin Pie, Verdant, Got Milk, Opus, and Green Cove.
We did have one win, which was Project Jumper Compound Handleray.
So Christina Davis, she's the Business Development Program Administrator.
She's known the city for over fifteen years, and so her primary responsibility is to respond to the RFI's.
And so she's going to present the rest of the presentations and there'll be a quick survey to get your engagement.
So you'll use your mobile phones.
So whenever we're looking at the RFI's to respond, we do, thanks to the new software we have,
it's helped us to analyze the data and look at the reasons why we're not able to respond to some of the RFI's.
So on those, we have undesirable industries. So chemical manufacturers are things that are outside of our environmental control.
Limited flood size. So things that are less than five acres or more than 150 acres outside of those ranges are difficult for us to locate and produce for these RFI's.
We do have a shortage of heavy industrial zone property.
So there is some green space in our heavy industrial zone area, but they're owned by developers who plan to do spec development at this time.
So that's another short term issue that we're trying to work through. And then utility infrastructure.
So if we have these larger companies that are looking for 10 megawatts or 20 megawatts or 100 megawatts of power, those are things that we can't, we can't respond to right now.
But if it's less than five megawatts, we can with the dedicated substation. And then water and wastewater capacity, not looking at companies.
So one of the companies that we weren't able to assist is a company that creates milk and milk products.
So like soy and almond milk and things like that, things where they're taking our water, they're putting it in their product and they're shipping it out.
But we do have a high water capacity where they're using it for cleaning or chilling or things like that that puts it back through our water system. Those are projects that we can support.
And additionally, wastewater capacity in our industrial area is limited right now. While there is a plan, it's not going to be ready for about five to seven years.
So we're going a little bit deeper into those RFI concerns. We're looking at environmental concerns as Brian brought up in a recent meeting about high pollution users versus lower pollution users.
High utility usage, which again is a water consumption, wastewater impacts and electricity usage.
Low capital investment. So one of our guidelines for tax abatements is a five million dollar investment minimum.
So we kind of use that as a gauge to help us determine the investment into our properties as well as low paying jobs.
So we're looking at jobs that are paying less than forty five thousand dollars as a concern, right? So we want to provide jobs that are higher paying.
And then the questionable energies, questionable industries, battery manufacturers, chemical manufacturers.
So sometimes I like to take a look and say, well, I want someone that I know working in this facility, right? So we're going to look at, is that going to be a good fit for our community?
And then, of course, any country, state, federal limitations with foreign countries. So that's always changing.
So what we'd like to do is to put our eyes with these type of concerns at a lower priority of response versus ones that are that don't have any of these concerns.
Yes, ma'am. Is this an appropriate time to ask questions or would you like for us to wait until the end of the presentation?
Whenever you're ready. Other than those that are delineated specifically, if there is any gray area, who is making the call as to what is a questionable industry and therefore in the proposal today would go to a lower.
So if I have a question. Yeah, I totally I totally understand. And that has come up before.
And so I get with Brittany, and we talked through it and apologize if this has been discussed. No, not in this group. It hasn't.
So we went into multiple departments as well, including to see if it's the best fit.
But we also there's multiple RFIs that will come into the league. So there's other ones that we can prioritize over the other ones, maybe more controversial.
What's the guidance criteria, I think, is what you're asking. So I believe it's a strategic plan like you've got criteria that you're looking at.
That's what I believe you're asking. What are the criteria in which we're determining priority? Yeah, I mean, this is just it's so broad.
You know, is it someone deciding, I don't like that company anyway, so I'm going to lower, you know, I mean, I'm just asking.
Well, the good news is, is that normally we don't know who the company is because they usually have a project name, but definitely following the strategic plan and other guidelines that we use and talking with our other departments about our ability to serve them.
To provide utilities, water, wastewater, electric. And this is the purpose of the presentation is to get your feedback. So we know what to prioritize.
I mean, you all know what the modern battery manufacturer looks like and what they're the reason I'm asking that is I don't expect you all to know that.
But as we're making these decisions, some of those things may have like a battery manufacturer in the 1950s, which might be what you have in your head is not what your manufacturing is now.
And I'm just using that as an example because I see it there, but that might be something where you can.
I don't know how detailed our advice you can get. It's like some of these things are extremely high tech, extremely clean, very safe that traditionally may have not been thought that way.
So I think we just need to be a little bit careful about that too.
And then we get responded to, right? It's just prioritizing, is that what we're discussing? Yes, because of the timelines, because to put this package, I've been a part of putting this together over here.
Some of them get really detailed. It's like, well, they want it back in five days.
And then about a meeting, you have to have to get it. It's unrealistic of what they're asking for.
So I would say some of those probably, probably don't get responded to just because of sheer the information they want back in five days.
Having our database and what sites have what power and what wastewater.
And I think that's where we're talking about the database. Stop me if I'm getting out of line here.
Right. Because if you got to like we have a 300 acre site, so we do have 150 acre site. But, you know, I think having that database, we can pre-do the work.
OK, we know power. This is what power this site has. This is what sewer this site has, you know, those kind of things.
Having that already put together, which takes a lot of time, which I think you've been working on over the last year, makes those come together fast.
So I think it's getting better. You know, how we're moving through that, on track or off track.
I think the guiding principles, too, I would say are from the strategic plan. Are these any of our focus areas?
Those are the ones we definitely want to respond to. And then they're focused on if one comes in as a two day turnaround, are we able to meet that?
But the goal is to try to respond to all of them because that way we're just casting a wide net and you still have time to move on.
Getting that opportunity to move on to the second round if we have enough qualifications.
And to follow up on Brian's comment, he's completely correct as these companies we're meeting with.
I think if there is questionable companies that we have, I think it would be worth finding somebody to come in and teach a class on those things.
Say, hey, in our mind these, because in my mind, too, I was with you guys, I was thinking batteries.
You guys look at batteries at the highest level in money and then with electric, you know, there may be some things that we come in and counsel may go, oh, gosh, we don't want this.
But if we're trained on some of these industries we think we may not want, if we have good information, if we can find somebody to come into a training on that.
So, OK, maybe these are companies we look at, but these are the criteria we need to know that these companies, types of companies are meeting.
That may be an option. That's really your permit stuff, too. It's not more that you don't disqualify it, it's more actually them knowing that if you have a certain amount of NOCs or other things, you need to have that.
So that can impact their timeline. So it's more being transparent up front.
So far most of the battery, like the EV batteries, they're running sites of like 2,000 acres, 1,000 acres, they're using enormous amounts of water and utilities.
So those would probably eliminate, that might be the discussion is more at what would you do this flow chart, how do you ping them out first, right?
Because they're going to, you're not even going to get to a questionable industry, you're going to hit them right off the, we just don't have the infrastructure.
That's right.
So, next we're going to do a really quick, fun little Slido.
So if you have your cell phone with you, if you wouldn't mind, three quick questions for you.
So the first of three questions is, please rate your level of agreement with not pursuing projects that require a minor environmental permit.
So that's the TCEQ permit by rule. So it's going to be your low, lower level, low air quality permit.
If you have a threshold, as long as you're below the threshold, they can get a quick permit that takes 45 days, but if they're over, they'll need a major permit.
Do you know what type of industries or that that would be?
It varies. So, as an example, Ray came through and they do gypsum processing. So we're thinking high dust.
So they were able to go through their process, the 45 day process, and they were able to get a permit by rule. So they're below that quantitative number.
So quick 45 day permit. I'm sorry. I apologize in advance since I haven't been part of this for a while.
I may be asking questions that you've already discussed and for your patience. So I guess I'm not getting why wouldn't we want to consider groups that would need a permit?
Just to clarify, we had some questions in one of our previous meetings about air quality and because we're in a non-attainment zone, that puts us at a higher deficit.
So we want to look at those types of industries.
Yeah, the concern wasn't the concern wasn't that we shouldn't attract them. The concern was letting people letting them know. Hopefully, if they're big enough, they should know this that in order to be here, you have to do emissions stuff that other places might not have.
Well, and we're, you know, we're working on that on the Regional Transportation Council and we can talk about that. Maybe another time might be a whole session on that.
We're working on that.
So we'll go to the next question.
Please read your level of agreement to not pursue projects that require a major permit. So the TCEQ standard permit for air quality for our county because we're not attainment is 365 days.
And so that's anyone who's over the permit by rule thresholds.
So there's going to be companies that are higher with the air quality.
Does everyone get an opportunity to participate in the last question?
And the last question is just, this will be a word clouds. It'll be fun to see how this pops up. So you have it's an open ended question where you can type in a response.
And it says, what is your feedback? What additional feedback would you like to provide regarding the RFI process? So is there something that we haven't discussed yet or you didn't see in the presentation that you'd like to see?
Thank you.
I should have pressed the very bottom.
All right, so we're going to call on a few of you reporting for the selection of why didn't side wasn't selected.
So who wrote that? Anyone want to share?
I didn't write it, but I will say that's something I've always been interested in. I think that's a good one because if we don't know why we weren't selected, then we can't either change our strategies or advocate on what we're going to focus on.
You might expand on this because one of the things I got was that sometimes you may not hear anything back from them once you respond. So trying to just consistently can we find out why we weren't selected? Was it our site constraints? Was it our utilities? Was it we just weren't a good fit? But I agree. That's a very important one.
Good job. It's easy for us to report on. We can collaborate on that. For sure. Just so everyone's aware, it could take months because these companies take months to decide where they're locating. We've had a few that Christina has responded to and they followed up months later. We thought maybe you lost the lead and then they come back online a few months later too. So it's a very interesting process. Six months, a year later they come back and they want to talk to us.
That's really no different than the other customer feedback. Again, you've got to cast out that wide net and you might get one or two percent response.
What's been really good about having the changes that have been made is that I've been doing this off and on for a while and I was celebrating when we put this together that 2025 was the first year we've ever had for RFI responses from the state or the DRC as far as getting questions back or line site visits.
That's exciting for us as far as seeing results. Finally, we're seeing results and so that's really exciting.
Who put benefits? Anyone want to elaborate on that one?
I put benefit but in a different way. What I put was looking at do we need to have alignment with our education partners. We probably saw a university up there too from Maine and making sure that we are the people that we're training are staying here so that we keep that benefit.
Are we are we attracting companies that we have education programs for to fill so that we keep those people here?
That's probably that but I said come to the long-term benefit.
Sometimes we don't think of them.
What level of information you get at first when they're asking for the RFI like do we know it sounds like you know what capital investment they're going to make you know the industry do you know what type of jobs or what level how much details do we get at first.
I think it varies and Christina's got a few examples.
So this is a sample email that we received from the Texas governor's office.
This is actually for because when we see them they're confidential right and so this is actually the one we received for Jupiter compound which ended up being power ready and so we get the timeline where they're looking to do site visits where they estimate that they'll start production which so far has not been clear to anyone.
You know capital investment their jobs the site they're looking for the type of facility utility requirements and then down this section is the key criteria so these are what they're going to be using to make their decisions with and then just additional benefits that they're looking for whenever they be looking.
Is it possible to have kind of that type of jobs. That's really more job information than we usually receive. Generally it's they'll say, we're going to do 20 jobs in year one, and then by build out in years three to five will add another 50 jobs or what they're going to do.
Some will just give an average of jobs, salaries, some will break it out in categories. They were really great percentages of which type of worker they wanted, but that's not normal.
Sometimes, sometimes we don't get any information in one or two of the categories.
Our marketing materials. So we always submit our university information and our incentive information.
And anytime we have a site visit we always discuss our relationships with the universities and with the ISD and talk about future workforce. We try to encourage anyone who indicates to participate with the schools, looking at one of the labs at the ATC or working with graduates from one of the universities.
And that might be just outside of this, but when you get to that point where they're starting to do site visit, that means they're pretty serious. It's like at that point, you need to have the tiger team that comes in.
Hey, these are the, these are the type of jobs you have this type of education we have here. This is, you know, is that bigger up maybe a bigger opportunity.
That is something that we do. So we have our, we have our team, we include the Texas workforce staff people, we have our utilities, we have someone for development services to talk about if they're looking at any kind of improvements to their buildings.
We have a full team to give a tour. We've included UNT, the universities in the past. So that's actually kind of our biggest selling point right now during these site visits. That's how we stand out from the other cities. So I would say that's our biggest asset right now, just getting those partners in the room.
Did the universities have a set person that they set?
I think they're kind of cleaning it up right now. So UNT, there's multiple departments. So if it's engineering, there's one person that we reach out to, but I think they're wanting us to reach out to Washington over the title.
She brought her to the president's office first and then she will call on the president.
She's right there.
[inaudible]
Yes.
We, I guess last year, the year before we had 80 or so RFIs that were submitted from either governor's office or another means is, I think we had six of them that we pursued or closed or whatever, maybe pursued more. Is that, the bulk of that a result of the type of industries and the quality of the businesses? Is that the issue?
Or is it that we don't have the incentives to support them?
It varies. I think it depends if we have the infrastructure. Number one, it also depends on, they don't learn about our incentives until they actually have a site visit. That's when they're asking, but I don't think that's been an interweaving factor yet. I think it's, it's been mostly about the site and the affordability of the site.
Okay. So I guess what my thoughts and then what I put in the, and maybe I did it wrong, but it asked for, I guess your thoughts. So I just put a sentence or two, but I just thought maybe we could provide a better incentive for a business that is more desirable.
Is there a way to add that to criteria, the matrix to where that we can incent a business that we desire more than another? Like, but via metrics or matrix? Is that?
I think we have that flexibility in our policy to look at up to what level we want to incentivize. And certainly those targeted industries from the strategic plan, that flexibility to me already exists and can be utilized for sure.
I would probably, I mean, just my personal opinion, I would look at everything and you know, if, if there are requirements that TCEQ would impose on that, and I think Brian's made it clear in the past that some of those processes are very lengthy.
If there's someone that's willing to do that and build the businesses within the parameters that we require as a state, then we should entertain that. However, we might just have a, you know, 40% incentive for that category as opposed to 100%. Does that make sense?
I would not consider that. If I was y'all, I mean, it's not made for me to consider, but I would use that.
Can we go back to the slides? Jobs, rights, benefits. Anything else you'd like to add? It's a good list. Can we go back to the slide where you kind of outlined what the major barriers are to, to responses?
I guess you went there for me.
This one.
So,
I'm a little, I, I'm curious what the, what the issue is with electricity usage since DME is city owned and had,
historically I thought they've been pretty aggressive about wanting high energy users. Is there capacity issues or what's happening there?
Sure. It's a great question. I think they have a lot of projects in the works that are using a high amount of electricity.
And so what happens when you have new leads coming in and they're having to kind of plan for those new electricity users. And if it's a heavy industrial user, then they may not have electricity to serve them in the next 34 years. And so having to coordinate with ERCOT, it could take a year or two to even be on their list.
And I think that's probably the biggest challenge.
And so Christina, do you want to add on to that? I think it's not just Denton, but it's all of Texas as well. So it's not just specific to us and DME.
Because anything over seven, seven megawatts has to go to ERCOT for approval for reliability as far as what they're going to pull off the grid.
And so I know we did talk with Tony one day and they are DME's in the process of going through with ERCOT to expand our capabilities.
And so we're planning on having a solution in four to five years, which any new construction that comes through by the time they get ready to start production, it would be about the same timing.
So it sounds like it's really far away, but it's actually closer. I would say in my conversations with Tony, they have several of their substations planned out and they have the timing of those.
So he will first say, here's when we'll have this many megawatts available, this is on the planned infrastructure plan.
But we have had conversations where a developer may be interested in building the substation and he's open to the in favor of those two.
It's just that second piece of them going to ERCOT, but it's not a, we can't do it. So we're not going to respond. I think they've done a really good job of saying, here's what we have planned.
Here's a project certain queue. Here's when we can, because we have one come to us and say we need this much by this in years.
And they were able to respond and say, we'll have this substation online and can provide this amount of power.
But sometimes what I've seen is they just don't line up with when they need them, but then that option is available if they're interested in constructing the infrastructure, which is a lot higher cost.
And yet I'm always kind of confused on that because like in everything that we do, we tell people, hey, turn off lights, we're not in room and we try to conserve electricity for everything. And then whenever like core scientific comes in, that's a selling point that we're going to use a bunch of electricity to try to, you know, reimburse or get money back or whatever.
I just never understood where the city stands on that is. I know that's probably a very basic explanation, but it's always kind of confused me as a normal citizen.
And it is confusing because I think the idea is we have an electric company, we make electricity that we use here, but that's not how it works.
We're like a separate vendor for the state. So everything that we make goes into the grid. And so we sell it and make money, but that we're not necessarily using the electricity that we generate.
So if the market is continually fluctuating, so we turn everything off and we're not powering our electric station if we can buy it a lot cheaper from the grid, but when it gets more expensive, we turn it on. So it's not just this direct purchase like you would at a 7-Eleven, you get a Coke. It's different than that.
I don't understand that promoting a business that is going to be a big train of electricity would be counterintuitive on everything.
It gives you a stable demand that you can plan. That's the big one. Just being a high energy user. But that's why.
You get a certain amount of stable demand, right? And then you have fluctuations. So if you can always predict, I'm going to have this much stable demand, it helps everyone plan and do everything.
Just from covering all your overhead, covering all the things. That's why they want big users, but then you run into capacity constraints right along the way.
I think that's where we're at is just growing up the infrastructure. But I guess just to put a bow on this, because I know this can kind of go everywhere. Do you feel like you have what you need guidance from us for this particular topic?
Or do we need to continue? Because this was a 15, I'm just trying to get mindful for time. This is a 15-minute discussion on the agenda. So we're way past that. Is there any other big key insights anyone would like to maybe bring ahead and then we can maybe wrap this one up? This is all information only.
I think what I'm hearing is as they continue to grow, the board is interested in responding to as many as possible. Responding to all if possible. But prioritizing based off the strategic plan and then continuing to report back to the board on when we find out why we may have not met.
Looking at what packages are we putting forward as far as our incentive proposal and how to grow on that. So just continuous feedback on here's what we're responding to, here's the type of industries, and here's what we're losing. Potentially not moving forward to that next step.
What we can build, do we need to bring in, do we need to focus on infrastructure needs or obtaining more certified sites ready to go.
Thank y'all. That will move on to the next item. I'll call item B, EDP 25-022. There's been various staff reports. Chair recognizes staff.
Thank you. This is my monthly director's report since we did not meet in June. We did meet in June. We covered May so this is the past two months summary. We had a very productive summer. We had a really good dint in the news for the past two months.
Dallas Business Journal picked up our recently incentivized projects for Mayday Media Factory, U.S. Cold Storage, and Panel Ray. It was a really nice article. They were able to feature a few quotes from the company representatives. If you haven't checked that out, go over to Lincoln Page and read the article.
If you haven't heard, we're getting a second HEB off the corner of Bonnie Braid University. Very exciting. Forward to the city.
Well, this is an exciting news announcement, too. We are Main Street accredited again. Dint Main Street has been awarded an accredited status by Main Street America, the organization's highest recognition.
Smaller places sit among the top downtown programs in the country with only 872 of the nation's over a thousand designated Main Street programs reaching this level of achievement.
And so if you're not familiar with the Main Street program, this was Dint has been a member of the Main Street program, which is a vision of the Texas Historic Commission since the early 90s.
They were officially accredited in 1999 and we lost our status in 2023-24 because their industry standards changed. So in November of 2023, the city took on a Main Street manager, which was previously contracted through the Dint Main Street Association.
And so you may know Kristin Toledo, our Main Street program manager. She is not here today, unfortunately, but I did want to ring her up and recognize her for all of her hard work, but she's the driving force behind this accreditation and giving us where we need to be because we had lost that credit.
So she started really from scratch back in 2023 and she's working on building the program. And so we look forward to implementing new, innovative ideas in the future.
We also have a strong partnership with the Dint Main Street Association still. So Kristin Bigley, she's the chair of the board, and Molly Carter, she's on the team over there. She's instrumental in this accreditation as well. So very proud of her.
Partner visits, a collaboration for the past month. So we went to the NCT Cobb UAS Mobility Committee meeting with regional partners at NASA Fort Worth. And so the large players in UAS, which is third-round focus, all the large players were there.
And so Mike Sanders, he's executive director at the loan source center down in focus Christie. They have one of seven FAA test sites in the United States. And so they are opening a satellite location in Fort Worth.
We try to convince them to come to Denton, but he already decided on Fort Worth. But with our connection to him, there will be more FAA grants for drone pilots and testing.
And so the Denton Airport will be included in those efforts in the future. So we're excited that we have that partnership. We will keep you in tune with any updates.
We're working with the airport to complete a feasibility study with UNT. UNT is actually doing the report for us, but this is to see if we have the capacity to build a bird airport.
So they're on their final leg. They're looking for stakeholders to complete the survey. We posted on our LinkedIn. So if anyone has anyone that they know in the industry, feel free to tell them to go to our LinkedIn and complete the survey.
I'm going to skip through this because I know we're limited on time. We had a meeting with Hillwood and some of our Denton business leaders in partnership with Jamie Adams with the EDP.
So we invited key stakeholders who we thought would be best to meet with Hillwood as they complete some of the design standards of their new development at Landmark.
So we thought that was a good meeting to hear what Denton residents want to see. And so I did see there was a recent RFI proposal from Hillwood asking for an art sculpture for their development.
So they're working with Chrissy Oden with the Arts Foundation. So we're really excited about that. And then Clay Parker attended a basic economic development course in B cave.
So all of our team is now taking our basic course. So we're good to go. And then Erica attended a few webinars. She attended tax trends by Baker and Chile and some of the legislative updates from the state.
Clay attended the convention in sports and entertainment facilities conference in Arlington a few weeks ago. So we have a small committee that we put together to discuss the feasibility of a sports tourism in the city.
We should have more updates in the future, but just want to let you know we're trying to get ahead of the game because that's been a common topic in our office.
So in June July, these are our recruitment stats. We have 25 active projects.
We have a little over 3400 potential dogs in the pipeline and $6.3 billion in capital investment. So if you move over to the chart to the right, we have 20 in the late stage, 3 in the awaiting applications or they've stated that they will submit an incentive.
And then 1 under qualification and 1 under incentive negotiation. So, in your board packets, as a reminder, there is a list of the pipeline. If you want to see all the percentages, so, you know, where they're at.
We had 12 new leads come in the door for the past 2 months. We have 4 that were direct outreach, 2 from brokers, 3 from the Dallas freedom chamber and 3 from other sources.
We have 2 incentive applications coming through the door. 1 was a recruitment project. That's a company that's looking to move to the city and 1 has business support. That's a project that's looking for infrastructure assistance.
We had 3 recruitment visits and 2 leads lost and 1 did not qualify for incentives. They already had filed for a building permit and that makes them eligible in our chapter 380 policy.
And the other 1 did not have a building. We cannot find a building that fits our criteria. And so 1 new measure that we added this time around was our recruitment outreach.
And so Clay Parker, he's our business recruitment specialist. He reaches out to companies via email every month. And so he reached out to 170 over the summer.
So he's doing a great job in that. We've already had a few people reach out to us in response to those emails. Just real quick, you said something about a policy.
So is that policy hurting us or helping us? The policy, that's maybe some of that feedback that goes into that is we have a policy that this person didn't qualify for incentives, whatever that policy is.
Is that a barrier to our business growth? Or is that a good policy for a good legal reason? And that's, I think, some of the, as we get this feedback, that's some of the stuff, I think.
Because ultimately you've got to impact policy, right? Or things that's what we can do as a board. So I think we'd like to maybe dig into those things as we get more of that type of feedback.
When a couple of applications come up where they're really close on the timeline, I think the goal of the incentives is to be competitive and attract them here.
So the policy, I think, is addressing if you're already planning on coming and have that building permit, you're here. I know that we've gone back and forth in a couple of times where they've been close.
Like I said, we are going to come here, but they haven't offered the CEO process or any of that yet. We've let them move forward with their incentive application.
But typically, the policy speaks to holding those incentives to be competitive and attract them here.
But open to that, I don't know what level that needs to rise for if that's a standard or one we can't estimate.
I just think we need to understand the impact of the policies. So as we see that feedback as a reason for a loss, I'm not saying it's good or bad. We just understand it.
That's something you've got to use the feedback.
Student Delight Downtown Statistics. We have seven VRE visits. Two leads were lost. Those two, the products didn't qualify for incentives. This is specifically for our Downtown Bereinvestment Grant program through the TERS.
We had 10 new grant leads and 13 recruitment outreach emails.
So this month we had a really cool recruitment initiative where we posted on our social media page the Nome Combs location and we asked the public, what would you like to see in this location?
Because it's currently for lease. It may not be for lease now since we posted, but we asked the public's feedback and there was close to 200 comments of what they wanted to see in Downtown.
And so from their comments, Chris has been reaching out to some of those businesses proposed and we already had one that reached back out to us.
So we're very excited to share it. One of the common trends in those comments was residents were seeking family-friendly venues in our Downtown.
So one of them suggested like a cafe with a playground inside. So will that come to fruition? I don't know, but we can at least focus on family-friendly venues in Downtown.
So that was a really cool post. On the TERS economic downtown, are those included in the sixth that we did last year?
They're excluded. We typically separate the Downtown from the bigger industrials.
If they're going to go down the line of a Downtown reinvestment ground, we'll put them in this the pipeline, this Downtown pipeline.
If they're going to seek potentially bigger incentives, then we'll put them in the other pipeline. I just want to make sure they work combined.
All right. For our RFI statistics, we received 21 from the state and DRC. We submitted six. We did not submit on 12, but we had one lead conversion. So within the pipeline are those that were submitted.
We have 3.5 billion in capital investment and a little over 3,500 potential jobs that could be created. As Christina said earlier, she's responded to 41 this year with the majority of the RFIs coming from the governor's office.
And Matilda Whedon, I'd like for her to cover music and film. This is the program she manages.
We had seven film permits in June and July. And then we had one more request that they went somewhere else.
Then I put this on here. The Natural Independent Venue Association came out with their first, hopefully, annual report of an economic research study of independent venues. So not your big one, but your local small, mid-sized venues.
And this is not state or Denton specific. It's across the country, but it's really interesting, a little bit sad. 64% of independent venues in 2024 were unprofitable.
So when you think of Denton being known for music and our culture, it's kind of a reminder to support our small venues and our independent venues that we have here.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I think the takeaway is they're not making money. Yeah, but it's sad. It's so sad because it's also what we're known for. So they do contribute a lot to our economy, though. 12 billion was paid in federal taxes from venues.
51.7 billion in wages and benefits. Almost a million jobs. And those are just independent ones. That's not including the big, massive venues you would be thinking of as well.
And then kind of the state's response to that was previously we had the Texas Music Incubator Rebate Program the last two years from the last session, and they removed that again for another two years.
The state of Texas already without this report kind of knew that's what the industry is like, and so they created this alcohol sales tax rebate program for music venues in Texas.
And I think this report kind of helped them get it approved again for another two years. And our last year, four menus were approved in for that. This year, one of those venues closed, so three applied. They're still waiting on their response, but hopefully all will be getting approved again this year for every day.
That's all I have for music.
All right, past upcoming events. So Chris and Matilda put on a retail roundtable for the city. So that's the picture on the right. It was a pretty productive conversation up here.
Matilda attended the infrastructure summit in Irving, Texas last week, and Clay attended the data center investment conference in Expo in Dallas. On August 14, we will attend the Taiwan Expo USA 2025.
On August 26, our table put on a fire suppression workshop and discuss some of the resources because that's a common question that we get asked from small businesses.
On September 13, we will attend a national security cyber land air, sea, and space summit. And a few days later, we'll attend IC3 live science and healthcare innovation summit.
And on September 24, we will host a second Denton Jog Fair. So since the first one earlier this year was such a success, Christina on our team and the chamber will put on the second event because the first one was such well received.
And that is it. Any questions? Awesome. All right. Thank you so much.
James Adams, economic development partnerships. I'm going to give a report on our business retention expansion efforts over here around town and share some numbers and everything going on. Just a reminder, the EDP is a public-private partnership with the city of Denton and the chamber of commerce.
And one of our focus areas is business retention expansion, site business tours, meeting with our business leaders. Just a intro to BRE, economic development strategy of connecting with existing businesses.
We want to go out and talk to existing businesses and have them grow here in Denton because the stat at the bottom, we always reference 80% of regions growth comes from expansion of existing businesses.
That's from the international economic development council. So EDP is tasked with that, so we're active in the BRE world.
So for 2025, we're asked to do all these 50 visits. Right now is August 1, we've done 32, 28 new visits, about four to five a month. You can see from the codes on the right, the different types of companies we're going out to visit, trying to hit as many different scopes of work as we can.
At the bottom is kind of the three main feedbacks we're hearing, and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in some stats later in the presentation.
But raising rent concerns from a lot of our big business to smaller businesses, road work, and then workforce development always seems to come up.
Some additional feedback we hear from our BRE visits, employee satisfaction on lunch in a timely manner. That's primarily for our West Park area.
A lot of our industrial industries over there, guys want to leave the warehouse for an hour and go eat, and that's really difficult with traffic and road construction to get that done.
Market competition, that's essentially, I get asked a lot, you know, I'm paying X dollars an hour, the guy down the street is paying 25 cents more, we're just eating each other, taking employees all the time.
So we try to play an intermediary for that one. Infrastructure limitations, that's been brought up, Christina talked about that a little bit. Companies that may want to expand but don't have the sites in town ready for them to expand in a timely manner.
Access to resources, financial incentives, Brene gets that a lot, I know I get that a lot about what money can the city provide to help me. And then more networking events for peer-to-peer groups is asked a lot.
A lot of events we put on are kind of broader and bring everybody together. Some industries have said, hey, we want to just have manufacturing together, we just want to have educational partners just in the room and talk about the issues at hand.
A couple of things that come up a lot, road work mentioned, and connections to city leadership. We always try on our VRE visits to build relationships with businesses, community, address infrastructure concerns, and obviously workforce connections.
First, yes. Sorry, is it okay to interrupt or should I wait until the end, which is fine? The connections to city leadership, can you tell us a little bit about that?
We've actually got one this week where we've had a company that's like, I want to sit down with the mayor, I want to sit down with somebody from city council and we facilitate those as they come up and we feel they're needed.
Sometimes they just want to visit. I'm a nice face to talk to, but they'd rather hear from you sometimes.
Well, is that they ask and then they're told no? No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Whenever they ask, we facilitate it and go out and visit. But it is asked.
Okay. I think I'm not the only one that would be happy to be available if that's needed. We don't want that to be something that they see is not happening or a barrier to their business.
So not that I alone can do anything, of course, as just a member, but yeah, please, please let us know. Can you express that for me? And I know you're on our list.
Yeah, or even as a group, having a group of people with a couple of city council members or if there's something they feel like, hey, we as a group in this specific industry would like to express some concerns or a specific geographical area, just don't want to be a barrier.
Thank you. Perfect. When we sit down with businesses, we want to make sure that they feel wanted and they want to be here in Denton, so we always ask what companies can be recruited in Denton to help support your business.
Palette companies come up a few times. Some industries say they have to get palettes from all over the Metroplex to help. Steel manufacturers, those can be specific steels. We've got a company in town that's buying a lot of steel from out of town.
Medical manufacturing, precision components manufacturing. Palette seems to be the big one that comes up here in town.
So the three things I mentioned earlier, I want to touch on addressing workforce development concerns. So when we hear there's an issue with workforce, we try to help them put something together.
We were able in June to host a discussion with our educational partners from Denton ISD, NCTC, TWU, and UNT to speak on what's going on from a college preparedness leading into the workforce.
We had 15 of the top 20 largest employers public and private or attendance that day. Great group, great discussion, and we hear that a lot where companies say, "Hey, I want interns from UNT. Hey, I want to know how they're preparing the next wave of workforce from CTC."
So that was a great discussion that they can help build some connections. But part of our area efforts is to put some things like this in place. Transportation concerns, one gets asked a lot. We share information. Matilda led the charge on sharing a lot of the airport road closures that affected West Park.
I did a lot of hand delivery when I said, "Hey, it's going to be June 1st. Hey, it's going to be June 10th. Hey, it's going to be June 24th." The third or fourth time they said, "Don't come back." No, it was fine.
But we wanted to make sure they knew what was going on, and hopefully they knew that when all this gets finished it's for the greater good. We distributed via email through our distributions and also handed out some maps when we had some EDP to pass.
The third thing is addressing rent concerns. Some companies have brought up, "Hey, I signed a lease X amount of years ago, and now my lease is coming due. Rent's going up." I just wanted to share some stats and figures of what's going on, debt and DFW in Texas.
Rental rates for industrial and dental market asking rent is around $10.30. In 2024 it was $9.93, about a 3.7% increase. Put that in perspective, in 2015 it was $5.19 in asking rate, and it grew 5% year after year. In 2024 it didn't grow as big as it's previously grown over the course of 10 years.
We did have in '21 and '22, we had about a 11%, 10% growth after COVID, which has become an anomaly there, but consistently from 2015. So in 2015, the rent was $5.19.
Have you asked the question why? I can answer that. History is growing. It's not, it's not. If you look at what it cost us to build a tilt-wall building, we built them in '14 and '15, we were paying $45 to $55 a square foot, building a 73-footer right now under construction, and it's in a $90 square foot range.
And impact fees, you look at the stuff we're passing right now on impact fees, that's going to drive that number even higher. So it's a huge problem, and you know, sheer development costs offsite, because we're getting further out in greenfield development, you know, so there's more offsite infrastructure costs.
So, if you just go back and look at concrete and steel, what those prices were, and we look at this every day. Well, it's going with the market. So what I'm trying to tell people is where we were is pretty consistent, we're not touching an anomaly here.
It's real consistent. Yeah, it's real consistent. Would you look at, we're renewing leases right now from guys who signed, you know, five-year leases, seven-year leases, and you know, the market says what that drives, right? You look at what taxes have gone up on an industrial tilt-wall building from '15, if you go back and just pull any of them, look from '15 to today, and look at the tax, and that's all straight triple net, straight back through the triple nets.
So, that's not even being talked about at a high level, but that's a big number. So, it's a problem, but if you had told me at '16, '17, we were going to be getting $9 a foot for 150,000 feet, I'd have said no way, you know.
And that is the point, you bring up a lot of people I talk to who signed leases in 2016, 2017, they're coming to you after 10 years, and they say, "Why is it going up?" And so I try to share with them, we're in line with...
My question is, we seem to be about a dollar higher than DFW area, is that just because of our lack of space and our location?
Is that so either this is thrown in million square footers with 100,000 footers that made, so that's just blended at all? If you're leasing a million square feet, that's going to be lower.
We only have one million square footer, so that's an average. We have more smaller buildings.
And we have more, we have a lot of new inventory as well, which is going to be at a higher rate than something that's been sitting on the ground for 20 years.
That's right.
Thank you.
And then the other one is availability that comes up a lot.
We do look back and we say we have a lot of availability right now, that's pretty consistent with growth over the last handful of years, especially after coverage.
About 4.2 million industrial square feet.
DFW is about 90, Texas 232 million.
Our vacancy rate is, you know, dropping a little bit. It was 18.6.
As of July of 16.6 percent.
Showing properties, you know, as Brittany and Christina mentioned, companies are looking at properties and hopefully leases will be dropping down.
Available square footers will continue to drop.
The other point I want to make, in 2015, 10 years ago, we had 222,000 square feet of industrial space, so it's part of our growth and everything that's going on here.
It is asked a lot about why do we have some available space?
And we talk a lot about, I think, Christina, you told me we're a golden penny.
Is that the term you use?
We're a great location, a great space, and we're going to continue to fill those spaces.
Yes, we share this information when people ask, our developers ask a lot, you know, why do you have so much space?
Because we're growing really, really fast and we're going to fill those spaces.
Looking at the reports, they say equilibrium will be back.
It should be back to equilibrium in 18 to 24 months.
With what's in new construction and what's currently on the ground, probably 24 months will be back to hopefully like an 8 percent vacancy rate, which would be really good.
Yeah.
I'll do the average for everybody.
If we can get back there, that's good.
Thank you, Jay.
Thank you for the questions, thanks.
All right, I'll try to go fast.
This is the economic trends report from April, May, June.
I tried to make it a little less charty this time, so hopefully it's a little less overwhelming.
In terms of firmament values in 2025 for this quarter, we're 64 million compared to 167 last year.
Like I said a few times, it's just really kind of random with the firmament value that just depends when permits are submitted versus approved and what value is submitted at and sometimes that value changes.
And then year to date, we're at 256 million.
Commercial permit, same setup, 127 million for this quarter of this year versus 45 last year.
And I did look at like how many permits were issued.
It's actually about the same.
So the projects this year are just higher value.
Is there a big anomaly in there, one this one, that number?
Was there an anomaly in there?
Was there one big project?
Yeah, and I want to say, because I get the monthly, so then I have to add it up.
I want to say it was in one of the months there was a really big like storage unit or something with a high value that pushed it up.
And then we have sales tax, but this was in fiscal year and the last two slides were calendar year.
We have 9 million this past quarter, but not including June and then 14 last year with 38 year to date.
Our unemployment rate in April, May, June dropped to 3.4 up to 3.8 and then stayed at 3.8.
In June, I think the jobs report showed higher jobs, so that's probably what kept it the same.
I'm interested to see July, which is because I think the numbers reported weren't as high as people were hoping.
I think they might be changing the way they do some data reporting at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
So I'll be curious to see what information we'll have for the next quarter.
They said they might be moving it to quarterly information instead of monthly, so we'll see.
And then I have my favorite slides and I love to talk about every quarter, the cost of living research.
McAllen and Harlingen are always fighting for the lowest cost of living in Texas, but this quarter,
Harlingen beat McAllen out and they're at 79.2 and then Plano is the highest cost of living at 110.
A reminder, it's an index, so 100 is average, but Denton is still lower cost of living than average at 97.
As always, the housing that usually skews these numbers, and I didn't make a mistake, the calendar should be 69.2, not 592.
Then on a national level, the highest cost of living is Manhattan and the lowest is Harlingen.
Manhattan's housing index is 504 and Denton's is 93.4.
One thing I did want to point out that I think I pointed out before, but I've noticed that in the years that I've been presenting this,
we're always very comparable with Nashville, Tennessee, so that's kind of an interesting fact that I've noticed.
I took all the real estate section because Jamie presented on that today. Any questions?
Thank you. Thank you for giving us back on budget for time. We've got future agenda items.
All right. In September, currently, we have a commercial utility deposits update from D&E. We have our regular items. We're hoping to have a few projects on the queue for voting, but we're working through those right now.
So that's what we have. If you have any other suggestions, if you want to add to the agenda, you're more than welcome to.
Any other suggestions for future topics?
We are putting together board retreats still, so I'm working with the consultant right now. But all the good feedback that we received today, I think we can really dive in during the board retreat.
I have one quick thing. Could we see an example of like what you guys have in your database on sites?
Like if you say, I won't be here for the September 10th meeting.
Like, what do we have that we keep? Do we have what gas availability is there? Because that's outside of our control, right? We got to use it to deal with Atmos.
You know, what do we have that we know a new site has potential? What do we keep? And what voids do we need to fill in on those things to help respond to those quicker?
I think that's interesting to see. Sure, we can do that. A lot of information is private, like Atmos Energy. They will not give us a map, right? Because of safety concerns and DMV. But we will put together an overview for sure.
But if we have a specific site, that's one we could go ahead and go to them and say, okay, what kind of volume, potential volume could we have at this site to be ahead of the curve on some of those things?
I think I maybe could bring some value on what we put together. Like, I could bring one of our due diligence packages and kind of show you what we already have, you know, that we keep just on file.
And then where we fill in those voids. If it's a city, then we can get those things quickly. But if it's outside, like Atmos or somebody else, it's a little bit out of our control.
Timing to get that so we may get ahead of that curve. So I can maybe bring some value to help the railroad and the other things.
That sounds good. So we'll put it together, but I'm going to contact you while we're putting it together. That'd be great. Thank you.
Do we have any other concluding items or special announcements? Happy birthday, Jeremy.
I have October 7th through 10th at Texas Economic Development Council, basic economic development course in Frisco. Is that something that you want us to try to go to?
Yes, we were. And we'll have to look at our budget again, because I think when I talked to you, we weren't having financial.
Well, that's fine. I mean, just let me know the way if I need to delete it. But I still have the placeholder and I just want to figure out if it needs to be there or not. And I'm finding a way.
I've got other stuff that I can fill it with. Okay. Thank you.
For those of you that don't know, my company 97 Land Company is acquired by McAdams, which is a large national engineering and planning firm, effective August 1st. We are keeping our Denton office, so you'll see McAdams signage go up there.
And they have a large Louisville office 30 square feet there. We're excited and definitely going to stay right here in Denton and continue to be involved. But when you start to see emails from me, they're not going to be.
That's does the board have any other business to discuss or suggestions on what they wish to discuss in next meeting.
Our next EDP board meeting is scheduled to be on September 10 2025 at 11. Please let staff know if you're not able to attend and submit your notification online.
There's no other business. I will turn the meeting at 1234. Anything else.