So it's 1102, Brian's going to be a little bit late, can you ask me to go ahead and start if that's okay.
It is welcome, Economic Development Partnership Board, it's Wednesday, January 14th.
We do have Saturday which is the forum, so we'll call it 1102.
Do we have any members of the public that wish to speak?
Seeing none, we'll proceed to first item consideration will be item A, EVP 25-038.
Consider approval of the meeting minutes for November 25th, 2025.
Hopefully everybody's had a chance to review those. Any questions?
We have a motion from Rick and a second from Amy. All in favor say aye.
Aye. Opposed? Same sign. Motion carries.
All right now to item B is EVP 25-039. Consider approval of the 2026 meeting scheduled for Economic Development Partnership Board.
Brittany is going to discuss that.
For sure. So this is a similar schedule from last year. The only thing that we did add is we will cancel the meetings if there are no voting items.
We know that forum is difficult to obtain sometimes and we're very busy, but we'll try to host meetings as best as possible. Any concerns?
Okay, so having given that we've seen a motion to approve those meeting schedules. Rick, second by Leo. All in favor say aye. Motion carries.
All in opposed? Motion passes. All right moving to the work session we'll call item A, EVP 25-042.
Receive a report and hold a discussion regarding the Denton Enterprise Airport Master Plan update.
And the chair recognizes, or last year, Ryan Adams to present.
Ryan Adams, Airport Director for Denton Enterprise Airport and I'm glad to be back here talking about this subject. I think I was here maybe a year ago.
Perhaps longer giving this body just kind of a preview of what we were going to do with the airport master plan. And as of last night, our plan has been approved by the city council.
So we are pretty much substantially complete with this project. But what I'd like to do today is kind of give you an overview what the project shows, what it says, and what it means for the future of the airport.
And then if you have any questions, I'll stand for those for as long as you'd like.
A couple quick notes about the master plan. It was performed by our planning consultant, Kauffman Associates. It was an 18 month long project.
And the goal of this plan really, more than anything, it's not a strategic plan. It is more of a facilities plan.
What infrastructure and facilities our airport will need to meet future demand over the next 20 years.
And the FAA actually requires us to do this plan every, to renew it, to update it every 10 years to make sure that we're keeping it up to date.
If we don't, they won't give us money. So that's a pretty strong incentive to do that.
And at the end of this presentation, you will see some very big financial numbers. Don't have a heart attack.
Those numbers are the totality of all the possible projects over the next 20 years.
However, no airport will ever do all the projects in the master plan.
The projects listed in the plan are meant to be thought of as a menu so that as the market demand shifts,
we have different responses in terms of what facilities we provide.
The main rule is that if it is in the plan, it is eligible for FAA funding.
So we wanted to make sure that we took a broad approach to include everything we might possibly want to do over the next 20 years in this plan.
It's a pretty simple process when you lay it out. Really, it's three phases.
We take stock of what we have at the airport right now. We do an inventory.
And then our consultants do a forecast of what the aviation demand will be across the next 20 years.
Looking at that demand, we say, all right, where are we deficient in our facilities? Where will we not meet that demand?
So we determine what our requirements will be over the next 20 years.
And then we come up with different alternatives. What might that look like from a development standpoint?
And then the third phase, we boil that down to a recommended development concept.
We develop airport layout plan drawings that are filed with the FAA, and we bring it to council for their approval.
And then after that, it will go to the FAA for their final approval.
Throughout each of these phases, we have tried to engage the public. We've held public workshops four different times.
We've held planning advisory committee sessions four different times.
And that advisory committee was fairly large, but it was meant to kind of have a good cross-section of stakeholders in the airport.
Therefore, everything from staff to the advisory board to economic development.
Oh, yeah, go ahead. Is Vicki leaving?
Vicki.
She's leaving for an event.
Right, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
We still have quorum.
We do?
Well, you're...
Is this Aaron's quorum?
No.
We want a quorum.
We can say a little bit longer.
Hold on.
I'll go right to the last slide. Here it is.
How many commas is it?
It's a lot of digits, right?
She's just tricking you. She just...
That's a power room. She just got up and walked out right as I started.
I've already heard this from Ryan.
Did you close your teeth today?
I did not, no.
We'll be sitting a lot closer to me here in a couple of hours.
I know.
Rick's heard this one before, but he's here.
And the verdict is?
I'm sorry?
And the verdict is?
I think she's going back.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
If she can't stay, then we would have to make her leave.
Who would get here at like 11?
Ryan.
Ryan will be here shortly, but we need her to stay until he gets here.
Or we can recess. We'll have to recess.
I'm sorry?
We'll have to recess until...
It doesn't count as a quorum as she voted for it last night.
So I'll let her be up here.
We have to say that she wasn't going to leave early for a little bit.
She's going to stay until after the airport plants that are going to listen to it, and then potentially UNTs.
And then Brian, does anyone want to talk to him to see if he's going to arrive?
He told me at 1130 in that text that he thought he'd be here by then.
I'm sorry?
If she stays for the airport, we're going to finish the airport one, then recess until Brian gets here.
That may be the best compromise.
What if she could just stay here until Brian gets here?
That would be best.
If she could stay the whole meeting, that would be best.
That's the goal, right, it's about the whole meeting.
I didn't want to ask about your presentation when you told them to show stop.
Okay.
Well, let me tell you what happened.
I have a friend who I hung out with my birthday for this weekend in Galveston.
She left some things in my car and she's driven up from this soda.
She told me to leave them on my porch.
I thought I would have to leave them on the porch.
So I was trying to hurry up and get home because she's at my house.
Anyway, I told her to come here.
So my car is there on the floor.
I'm sorry.
You were really early.
Yeah, I was running, I was running.
So we were talking about our Planning Advisory Committee that helped us out with the process.
A lot of folks on the committee, a lot of community stakeholders, a lot of airport stakeholders,
trying to get a lot of our larger tenants on that committee as well as some of our educational partners,
one of those being Dr. Coleman with North Texas, University of North Texas.
So I'm going to give you a stepping right into the process of what we found with the master plan in terms of our forecast.
There's a lot of stuff going on in this slide.
I'm going to zero in on those two graphs to the right.
But in a nutshell, we are anticipated to grow.
Our total annual operations over the next 20 years will grow by about 1.9% per year.
Our base aircraft, that's the aircraft that called City of Denton Enterprise Airport home,
that will grow by about 2.8% per year over the next 20 years.
And the biggest finding with our base aircraft particularly is that that will be in larger aircraft.
We'll see the most growth in larger aircraft, twin engine aircraft, jet engines.
And so we want to make sure that we accommodate that growth as much as we can over the next two decades.
Here's a good graph of where our operations are expected to go.
As you can see, we have grown considerably since 2004, from 2004 to 2024.
Anyone at the airport operating at the airport right now will say it's a busy airport, and it is.
It is quite congested at times, so the demand is only going to go up.
So we are going to look for ways where we can accommodate that demand however we can in terms of operations.
And I'll share operations or takeoffs and landings.
So we have a little over 200,000 takeoffs and landings in our last full calendar year.
So we'll go from about 212 give or take in 2024, and we're expecting a demand for about 323.
So a little over 100,000 more takeoffs and landings over the next 20 years.
Base aircraft, we've been somewhat, I don't want to say steady, but consistent over the last 10 years
in terms of the amount of aircraft that are currently based at the airport.
Our base aircraft won't really go up unless we have places to park those aircraft, hangars, ramps.
So that will kind of come in fits and sports as we develop.
The demand will be upwards of 700 base aircraft.
We're currently sitting at about 400 in 2024.
That will come primarily, our expectations, through the development of the west side of the airport,
the area on the west side of the runways.
When that begins to develop, we'll see a lot more space for those base aircraft to call it home.
Now I'll say we had a little over 400, 2023, 2024.
We just did our base aircraft count, and we are at, I wrote down the number, 492 aircraft based at the city of Denver.
So we're already starting to grow, and we are trying to maximize every piece of pavement and hangar we have right now.
So this is probably the key part of our demand analysis is our critical aircraft summary.
So we determine what aircraft, the largest aircraft that we will have at least 500 takeoffs and landings a year.
So what size aircraft do we need to build our facilities for?
So we have a 737 that comes in every now and then.
We don't need to build our facilities, build our runway for that type of aircraft.
We can accommodate it in other ways.
If we're going to get regular traffic from larger aircraft, we do need to update how we design our facilities.
And our existing critical aircraft is what you see here on the left, the Challenger 600.
Because we're going to see more and larger aircraft over the next 20 years,
we are stepping up in our critical aircraft type toward what you can see more in a Gulfstream 650.
So wider, heavier, and that's what we'll start to develop our facilities with that in mind
because we expect over the next 20 years to be seeing those heavier, wider, longer aircraft at our airport.
So we didn't mention this in our council presentation.
We get the question all the time about cargo, we get the question all the time about commercial service.
In a nutshell, there are a lot of ways for our airport to be successful.
Commercial service is not the only one.
Right now you have two commercial service airports in the North Texas region.
DFW, Love Field. You can buy a ticket for any one of those airports, fly to wherever you want to go.
There is a third one coming online. That's McKinney. You've probably heard of that.
They are investing significant capital into bringing commercial service to their airport.
Based on the growth projections for DFW, there is probably enough people, enough what we call "implements,"
so potential passengers, to require or necessitate a third commercial airport.
It will probably be more regional in nature.
Over the next 20 years, there's not enough "implements" or potential passengers to have a fourth commercial airport.
So unless McKinney just decides to do it about face, I don't think they will,
and no other airport is interested in our region, it does not make financial sense,
it does not make planning sense for us to go down the direction of the commercial service airport.
It just doesn't pencil out in terms of the financials.
We also looked at, and we actually had a third-party consultant do a cargo study,
and while we do have small cargo at the airport, machine parts, we have medical cargo,
we're not likely over the next 20 years to be a significant hub for larger cargo operations.
The reason being is you have a line that's right down the road to handle those larger operations,
and then you also have DFW, which still does a significant amount of cargo operations.
Now, I'll say that with two caveats.
That can change over the next 20 years, and so it's something we will keep an eye on,
and in fact, in our plan, we have some dedicated space for a cargo hub.
The other thing is UAS-related cargo,
which I would say there's probably more questions than answers in that space right now,
but we could become a hub for that autonomous advanced air mobility carrying aircraft,
yeah, cargo carrying aircraft.
So that remains to be seen, so we've not heavily invested in a lot of cargo facilities,
but we know that can change, and it could be different than what we view cargo as today.
So we're keeping our eyes open and our minds open for that.
So this right here is a lot.
This is our airport as it is now.
I'll point out a couple things.
So you can see this is our west side right here.
It is not developed at all.
It's just pasture.
We use it for hay.
This is our east side.
So Airport Road comes and terminates right here.
So north is this direction.
We have a main runway.
We have a parallel runway built in 2019, and we are almost built out on the east side.
You see a few patches of grass that can still be developed,
but we will soon be entering kind of a primarily redevelopment mentality with the east side.
These areas right here are runway protection zones,
so we cannot have any development there because they need to be kept clear in case an aircraft undershoots or overshoots the runway.
And then the next slide is what I'll be showing you are the concept plans for our development.
So I'll walk through a little slow, just kind of get some highlights.
But what this is going to be is it's a concept plan.
It is really how we could probably develop, but it's not an exact way we're going to develop.
So hangar sizes and positions and locations will change,
but it is a good approximation of how we plan to develop both the east side, the west side, and the runways.
So I'll go there next.
Before I do that, are there any questions on what I've talked about so far?
So this is our recommended development concept for pretty much the air operations area of the Air Force.
So we are not going to be extending our main runway in length at all.
Big reason, you have a significant barrier there in the creek, and a significant barrier there in the creek.
We will probably stay at 7,002 feet on our main runway.
The great thing is that to handle our critical aircraft and even larger aircraft, we don't need more length.
What we would need is strengthening.
So we can always add deeper, stronger pavement to that runway to handle heavier and larger aircraft.
We are proposing potentially in our 20-year plan to extend our west parallel runway by about 1,000 feet.
Now, what we do that in the next 20 years, it depends on if we need to, if the demand is there,
but it's in our plan so that we can do that if we want to.
And what that will do, that will allow us to have larger aircraft that need an extra 1,000 feet.
If they can't land on a 5,000 foot runway, it will allow them to use that runway.
That would actually come into really good use of what we found two summers ago
when we completely rehabilitated and reconstructed our main runway.
There were airplanes, there were aircraft that could not come here
because they could not, for those 40 days we had it shut down, they could not land on this runway.
So having a larger secondary runway just allows us to be able to continue our operations
if the main runway is ever down or if we just want to have more operations at the airport.
If we extend it, we will have larger spaces on either side of that runway that we will need,
but we just go and get that land that's actually already city-owned, so that won't be a very big problem.
A couple things that we'll also need is a taxi lane on this side of the parallel runway
so that we can start building over here.
Right now, anyone who wants to build on the west side of the airport can, they can build,
but they can't connect to the one runway right now because there's no concrete there to connect them to the runway.
So that will be a big priority for us, especially as we start to see development on the west side
when the Loop 288 connects right across this area right here.
And we're looking to add more pavement just so the aircraft can get on and off the runway a lot faster
if you have more outlets between the runway and other pavement.
Did you have a question, Councilmember?
I do have a question.
Yes, ma'am.
Is this something that we're looking to do earlier rather than later,
and what's the determination of when you're going to think that it's time?
That's more of a mid- to long-term project.
Right now, we have, and I'll show you kind of the project prioritization here in a couple slides,
but that one, I would say, is probably maybe a 10- to 15-year project, not anything in the short term.
It depends on how bad somebody wants to bring money to town.
Also that.
If you know any billionaires that want to come operate out of here, we can make it a lot faster.
So that was our air side, and then our land side.
What we expect to do, as I mentioned, we are going to have kind of hitting a redevelopment phase.
So we have several patches of vacant property here, there, right there that are still vacant,
and they will develop when they do.
We have several areas that are currently developed here, there, that we are going to have to redevelop over the next 20 years.
Very uncommon knowledge, but the airport, the city then owns all the land on the airport.
We get development by leasing that land for a long time, 30 or 40 years, at a very, I'll say, cut rate, pennies on the dollar.
And the promise is that, hey, we will give you this land for a long time at a low rate if you build a hangar and operate there and breathe life into this airport.
But as those leases terminate, we start thinking about, all right, how can we redevelop this land to get better use out of it?
This airport really hasn't done that that much, but now that we are running out of land on the east side, we will do a lot more of that.
And our goal is really to accommodate larger hangars for those larger aircraft where we can and more ramp space,
because, again, we anticipate our base aircraft and our operations to go up over the next 20 years.
So you see a lot more ramp space and a lot larger hangars than we currently see across the airport.
We have some large hangars. They are not everywhere.
We are mostly smaller hangars, and you will see that mix start to change a little bit as we get demand for larger hangars.
And on the west side, this is probably our area of greatest opportunity. It is a blank slate right now.
Our goal is to create a little bit of separation as we develop.
You would like to see over the next 30 years, this will take a long time, more of our smaller aircraft on the west side,
because that smaller runway is right there. They don't have to cross the main runway to get to that small runway
and house more of our larger aircraft on the east side, right next to that larger main runway.
We have a lot of plans. It may turn out like this. It may not. We'll see.
But I will note that because Loop 288 is coming in, should I be pointing at this one?
Because Loop 288 is coming in, we have reserved a land along the highway for non-aeronautical purpose.
You are probably better off putting a Wendy's here than a hangar to take advantage of that proximity to the highway.
We have other areas where we have non-aeronautical land.
This is that truck loading staging area that I mentioned in case cargo picks up.
And then we have a big plot of, could be anything, across from the highway.
So we won't be able to put aircraft here. They won't be able to cross the highway.
But one thing that you could put there, vertical operations.
We have plugged in the potential for a vertiport to house any type of drones, UAS, advanced air mobility.
They can operate on this side of the highway because they do not need to connect to a runway.
So that's one potential option for where we could put it.
But we wanted to make sure it was in the plan so it's easier for us to get these projects approved if it's in the plan.
And so, Council Member, you were talking about the project priorities.
If you can see, the green items are short-term, hopefully in the next five, six, seven years.
The blue items, or purple, kind of color white, blue items are mid-term, maybe 2020, 2030 to 2035.
So about 10 to 15 years out. And the red items are right now long-term projects.
Now, again, if someone walks through the door and wants to develop the entirety of the West Side, we are likely not going to say no.
So these projects will shift. The priorities will change. We will look at this every single year, if not more often.
But what this gives us is just a menu of all the things we can do to this airport that are going to allow us to be able to meet that demand that I showed you earlier.
And because they are in the plan, we are funding-eligible for the FAA. The FAA will fund projects that they approve at 90%.
So if you have a $20 million project, the city, the airport, only has to kick in $2 million.
FAA takes care of that, which is a huge benefit, but those projects have to be in the plan.
So again, a big price tag for all those projects, and these are all $20, $25.
However, FAA kicks in 90% for any approved projects, and a lot of these projects will also be potentially funded by private sector.
If someone wants to come in and build a ramp so they can park their aircraft on it, they'll fund it. So that's what the city does not have to pay for.
So this is just a number to kind of give the scale between the different sections, short-term, intermediate-term, and long-term.
Again, it's non-binding. This is just our menu of options. They are subject to change.
But whenever we evaluate developments, we will evaluate them against whether or not they substantially conform to this master plan.
So our next step, the council has already approved our master plan. Thank you, councilmember.
We will submit everything to the FAA. They run a little slow, so we'll probably get final approval from them in six months.
And that is our growth plan, essentially, for the next 10 years until we update this plan again.
There is a website if you want to see these photos, but larger, or you want to read the actual plan.
It is dto.airportstudy.net. I wish I could have changed that. It does not roll off the tongue.
But it has all the documents. It has everything about the plan there, and especially the documents.
That's where you can go and you can get the large versions of the graphics I just showed you.
And you can take a look at where we see in concept the airport going over the next 20 years.
So that's a lot of words for me. I'm happy to answer any questions that you guys have.
One additional comment. This is the fourth or fifth plan that Kauffman and Associates has done over the last 40 years.
So it's an engineering firm that is familiar. They've done a really good job in the past.
We've grown a lot with them, so I have great confidence that they've continued to do the really good work they've done for a long time.
And I think the community can have confidence in this plan, too.
We basically kind of in the past followed that plan pretty closely.
Quick question. So we're working on a few projects out at the airport.
We're fairly involved out there as far as using the airport and those things.
And so Ryan and I were working on a project, and we were talking about budgets and those kind of things.
So you guys know me well. I showed up to his budget meeting at the end of the year, and I wish Vicki hadn't left yet.
But the budget we give our airport is wildly underfunded in my personal opinion.
When I attended their budget meeting and then reviewed it all afterwards, I understand it's not a cash flow for the airport, right?
It brings a lot of regional value that's hard to put a value on, right, for what we do because we're competing against the lines, right?
These guys, any time they're trying to get anybody here, I have a business we're trying to put on the airport right now,
which is probably going to come, about 85, 90 percent sure, which is what we want.
We want aviation businesses on the airport, ultimately, that have flights and their businesses serving on the airport.
How we're funding the airport right now is counterintuitive to what some of our goals are.
And so I would just like this committee to think about, maybe we make one of our action items for this year, is how do we focus some EDC incentives?
Because it's the redheaded stepchild right now in a lot of ways.
So how? No, it's true. I mean, I look at your budget, all the numbers, right?
The numbers tell the story. We put our money where it's important.
And I understand there's lots of incentives and things.
But I think it would be important to us as a board to look at how do we incentivize good aviation businesses at the airport right now?
We just have our normal incentives that are offered there.
But if we want the bigger jets and we want the businesses there, we have to give these guys some tools to market that.
I sat down with these guys at a great business that an aviation company needs to put on an airport.
And he put on any airport. Just his proximity where he lives didn't work.
And kind of like we are in a lot of other incentives, we're a little handcuffed on what we can do to bring funds there.
And I would encourage us for 2026 to take a look and say, is there any special incentives?
If we like, we have requirements for overall incentives for the city.
Could we put together some special incentives now that we have a clear master plan to say we want these kind of businesses, these kind of jets?
You know, U.S. aviation just I saw sign a huge contract for a training school.
The student pilot is great out there, but you look at these landings, it's kind of BS because of how many students.
They're real landings, but they're students, you know, doing work in the pattern, a lot of them.
So I think that which is great for the airport, we're selling fuel, we're doing all the things we need to do out there.
But I think as this board, we could really look at it.
And now that we have a clear master plan, how do we give these guys some tools to recruit exactly the bigger jets, the businesses to the airport?
So I would recommend and propose we make that a priority to help figure that out.
When we had that group in here about six months ago that showed some plans, I didn't know whether at that point in time they'd ever talked to the airport before.
But the truth is, you're absolutely right.
The city council gives the airport no credit for the businesses that come in here and the jobs that come in here and all the cash flow that comes in here that wouldn't be here without that airport.
And so you're right on the budget, the airport cannot sustain all by itself what we need to do to continue to raise prices and do some of those things.
Yeah, we need to stay competitive, but we don't need to be having a game.
But they need the people right now.
So I think you're right.
I think that the budgeting process for this entity is pretty screwed up.
The only thing I would say to you that I disagree with is that we're pennies on the dollar on our rent rates.
Because if you go look at a performer, not you, when we go put a performer together to say, hey, we want to put a business here and it's the performer because you pay taxes and insurance on top of that lease rate, it's not cheap.
Which I understand we're trying, what his job is, is to get the most income we can for the airport and their biggest thing is fuel and lease rates.
That's their two levers, or two of the bigger levels of leverage.
So I would say as this board, we meet with you on a separate meeting, a work session, and say what kind of incentives do we need to put together to be able to bring those businesses.
So I propose that.
At one time, and I don't know if it's still in policy anymore, there was a policy for a business personal property rebate on jets being phased in.
And we also look at how can we market ourselves as a benefit to Alliance rather than a competitor to Alliance to get some of their tier two and tier three vendors and suppliers or support system for businesses that are facing around Alliance.
I think those are a couple of good ways to take a look at it.
Maybe you could prepare something for us to say, hey, these are my biggest restraints of getting businesses, like the one we're working with, right?
Ryan and I have had some heated conversations over this issue with his hands tied, right?
And so I would say if you could put together something to say, hey, here's my restraints of what's holding us back from an economic development standpoint to kind of give us a start to come up with some ideas to say how can we help, right?
Because that's part of our job on this board.
I think it's a great idea, and Ryan and I have been discussing what types of recruitment shows we want to attend. We're going to exponential in May, which is the UAS scrum show. I think we're sort of debating who's attending, but we're talking to them.
We talked to a business on the airport last week to learn more about their challenges.
So we're getting there, and I agree with you. I think there needs to be more of a focus on recruiting aviation to the airport. And I think now that the master plan is completed, and Ryan, our team, and whoever else should be involved, we're going to work strongly together to recruit businesses.
But I think for our board retreat, which we're hosting pretty soon, that would be a good topic of discussion.
And for my part, I appreciate y'all's comments. The airport, we are a city enterprise, but we do compete. So we have to be responsive to the market. We cannot just set a rate and walk away.
And I think that Brittany and I have worked very well together, but I think she would agree that we probably just really not hit more than the tip of the iceberg in all the ways that the airport can benefit from an extra emphasis on economic development.
And I look forward to going and doing a deep dive and going far down that road.
I'll make one other comment that I'll be done about the airport is the way we host businesses coming into the town for non-airport, we do a pretty good job of when we bring businesses in.
I think we could put together a little better plan to say, this is when we have a new business that wants to come to the airport, of how we present to them. I think there could be some work done there.
And because we have a great facility there, we have a great runway, and a lot of things to offer. I think when we have a real business, we can probably...
The study, sorry. The study, obviously, is based on projection of 20 years of what we know and what we see. But you mentioned briefly a little bit of the unmanned aircraft, which is a new territory, is developing as we speak.
So I think that's what I understood, right? There's an aspect of it that you're considering.
Yeah, and so when you look at that, it's not really a market yet, but is it something that we can get a competitive advantage on? There's a saturation for cargo, for people, for all these other things that we're trying to compete for a second or third tier.
Can we, at the same time, try to pursue something that we may strategically place ourselves better in that area? Because you said this is a la carte. We've got the next 20 years a la carte. And they do, too.
But they have only so much space that they haven't developed. I just went to the airport this morning to drop my wife, and I realized how many overpasses they've taken off, and you're going this way and that way.
And I'm like, holy crap. They're now having to build on top of themselves. Again, going back to, I guess, with the competitive advantage, to talk to some of those firms that do the unmanned aircraft in development.
When you think about surrounding areas, it's a little bit of that. Yes, you want to get the hangars. You want to get the hangars. That's part of your money.
But I can deploy a thousand more unmanned aircraft that I can, people, in some aspects, depending on how far AI can go in that process.
So it's worth considering as a pillar that may become a pillar. Does that make sense? It's not really something you can build on yet, but don't underestimate it.
The AI is moving way too fast for us to underestimate. It really snaps in a really good corner of the market.
Well, a couple of things on that. That's a great question. So AAM, AI, and just advanced air mobility, that was not really a part of the master plan.
And that's only because the FAA says, hey, if we're going to fund this plan, you need to do these things and nothing more.
However, a couple of things that are in the mix. In addition to Brittany, she mentioned earlier, we're going out to these drone specific conventions and meetups to try to engage with these original equipment manufacturers who create this stuff.
We are also part of the North Central Texas Council of Governments proposal for, I'm going to say EIPP, and I cannot remember exactly what it stands for,
but essentially a government program to test all of that technology here in DFW.
And we'll be one of the first airports that are part of those notes if it gets approved.
So what the COG wants to do is take a number of airports across DFW, including the big ones, and start doing operations between them.
It'll start out unmanned, and then it'll go to piloted and then potentially piloted with passengers. So we will create those notes, see what issues come up with trying to coordinate all this.
And the great thing is, is as part of this program, FAA will give exemptions. They will give a regulatory breathing room for us to test those out with the hope that we get some good data and say, FAA, when you deploy this nationwide, here's what you might do.
And we're also finishing up a project with UNT, that's more of an economic study, kind of saying, the question was, hey, if we were to put a vertiport indent, would it be profitable, and where should we put it?
And so they're finishing that study up right now, and when that's done, I can provide that to this group. They'll probably have a report or something that we can add it to.
So I think about is, do we want that at the airport, right? My opinion is that maybe something the airport manages and runs, but as a pilot, one of my big fears is without ABSB on all these drones coming in on final approach, somebody's out jacking around, you know, even today, it's a huge concern of mine.
So it may be something just to challenge our thinking, it may be another part of town that the airport manages and runs as a profit center, but maybe it's not on the airport, because that's a huge concern when I'm coming in on approach on any airport, not just some kid out flying a drone around that I don't see.
And so that may be just something to think a little, because the city owns property in other areas that may have maybe a better location for that than on the airport. It will probably be just projecting ahead and just what I know of the topic, it will probably be both.
However, if we have land where we can determine whether this is a benefit, if it's not a benefit, it goes off the airport. But if it is a significant benefit, even a significant economic benefit, I think it'd be in our best interest to test drive to see how it goes.
When that happens, to your point exactly, it would be start very, very slow. FAA, air traffic control, everybody's in agreement on how we're going to do this, because safety is the number one thing.
And the second it's not safe, we shut it down. So you're absolutely right. There'd be a lot of concern before you even bring anything into the air.
I'm going to close this out as the last comment question just for a second. You have a consultant who's looking at that very topic, is that not correct?
Then the city have a consultant looking to study that topic. That's the UNT study I was mentioning, yes.
Perhaps more in the future. Yeah. Great. Thank you, Ryan, for your time. Thank you so much.
We're going to call on item B, EDP 25-043. Receive a report and hold discussion regarding the upcoming Mobility Summit that you recognize as Dr. Terry Pollan to present on this item. Welcome, Dr. Pollan.
Well, good morning, everybody. I wanted to give you an update on where we stand with our Denton Mobility Innovation Summit.
It's coming up on March 26th. It's going to be at the Monroe Pearson building. Now, you might be going, why didn't we hold it at UNT?
I really wanted the focus to be on forming an innovation ecosystem in the Denton area.
And I thought we could do a better job of drawing entrepreneurs in, venture capital, into a more Denton-centric area than UNT.
Also, I didn't want this to be viewed as a UNT event. And so that's why we're doing it there.
And we've put together quite a bit of program. It's still being developed a little bit. I'll just give you a couple updates on it.
First of all, we're going to have the mayor give an opening to the session.
Then we're going to have Allison Malek. She's going to be our keynote speaker. Allison was a co-founder of Maine Mobility.
And so she's got lots of insights into what it takes for autonomous vehicles, rideshare services done with autonomous vehicles.
She also worked with General Motors in their electric vehicle program.
Then we're going to have several panels. One of them is going to be on urban freight mobility. We'll have Peterbilt, Kepsico.
Just got notice this week that Senator Hagen, who would like to participate. So as the owner of Titus Transport, he'll be on that panel.
Then we're going to have another panel focused on innovations and logistics. That'll be moderated by John McCarey, who's our director of the Murphy Center at UNT.
Speakers on that are going to be largely venture capital. What are they looking for? What innovations do they see coming down the road, especially in the area of urban mobility?
The other key thing I want to emphasize while you're hearing me talk about venture capital, companies, entrepreneurs, is that we want to bring together everybody that's part of an innovation ecosystem.
So we need, of course, the academics. We need government. We need entrepreneurs. We need the venture capital and then largely those companies that are the customers of those innovations.
Then we're going to have another panel focused on aerospace, aerospace workforce. Ryan, who is just up here, he'll be moderating that panel.
We're also doing one of what we call spatial intelligence. And the person that I've invited to give a presentation, many of you may know him, Dave Cox. He is a UNT alum.
He's one of the most successful entrepreneurs I know. He's the CEO owner of Rural. When you hear this guy speak, he talks about combining artificial intelligence with digital twins.
And the things that it really opens up your view of what is possible in terms of driving innovations and improvements in a logistic setting.
Then we'll have a fireside chat with a team of defenders and Stultz. They'll be talking about some of the innovations they're doing, also why they picked Denny as the location.
And then we're going to have an evening reception pitch session over at Stoke. It's a way of also promoting the entrepreneurs and small businesses that are located there.
So again, we're doing this on March 26th at the Monroe Pearson building. I would really appreciate your circulating this, save the date out to everybody.
We really would like to have a great attendance. That's another reason I wanted the Monroe Pearson building in that we have a large room to hold the event in.
We're going to have another room where we're going to have entrepreneurs and small businesses setting up tables so they can promote their innovations.
And also I want to emphasize this is part of a National Science Foundation grant that we received. So we're doing this in conjunction with the University of Texas, Arlington, Dallas College, Southeastern Oklahoma State, SMU, and of course, UNT.
Also, if you're interested, we're doing another one of these summits up in Oklahoma City on January 29th.
Just today confirmed that the Lieutenant Governor of Oklahoma is going to be our opening speaker. We've got a great program, much more focused on aviation and defense logistics because we're right outside Tinker Air Force Base at Rose State College.
But if you'd be interested in going to that, you know, be, you know, again, it's open to the public. We'd enjoy having you there.
Any questions? What time? This one here? It's going to start at about eight thirty, probably eight thirty to nine, have kind of just like a meet and greet, shake hands, that type of thing. Nine o'clock will be our kickoff.
And we'll probably end right about four o'clock and then we'll invite everybody to go over to Stokes for a little session. Thanks.
We're excited for their event. We're very, very thankful that Dr. Pollan has chosen to host us and to work with us.
Okay. Well, if you do have any questions, you can reach me at my email. It's just simply Pollan, P-O-H-L-E-N at UNT dot E-D-U.
And then let's see, I think the registration is on the state of the date, isn't it, at the very bottom?
I'm not seeing it, but we can. What we'll do is we'll send a note out to all of you with the information.
Okay, great. Well, thank you very much. I told you to keep it short.
All right. Now to item EDP 25-044, receive various staff reports. We'll start with the record report from Rippey.
Happy New Year, Board of Directors. We see your faces today. I'm going to run through this for the sake of time. We had a very productive Q4 last year.
As you may recall, we had a few of our projects that were featured in the regional news outlets and local news outlets.
Hill would announce their groundbreaking for the landmark development. City Council approved their nevartis incentives for their expansion.
So congratulations, Board of Directors. They are still finalizing details of their site, but hopefully we can hear an announcement soon.
But it was featured in the Dallas News and a lot of the major news outlets cooked it up. They also feature in the Fine Arts Theater and Locate Logistics.
So Locate Logistics is one of the largest South Korean logistics firm and they opened up a warehouse here in Denton and they're operating it for iHerb,
which is one of the largest retailers, online retailers of vitamins, more health and wellness products.
And so they have implemented over 200 robots to move their products. So anytime that someone orders, I can go order online, it will automatically be processed and packaged, which is pretty cool.
I will know that there are several employees that work there. I think there's probably close to 100 in the warehouse.
We just posted this on Facebook. If you're curious to see what folks have to say, go on there, read the comments.
But there were plenty of dogs that were created with this investment. Partner events. We attended a variety of UNT events, including the UNT Research Day.
We also attended the UT Texas Talent Accelerator Regional Meeting and UNT Save the University Breakfast.
I served as a judge on the Murphy Center's business competition.
There were three companies of students that submitted proposals and this is the winner in the top right, Neoflex.
I was very outstanding by the four students there. They're all biomedical engineering degree students.
Most of the stuff they talk about is over my head, but they invented a catheter for women,
which is something that I didn't know didn't exist. So I'm very excited for them. I hope that they can really grow their business.
Partner events. We had a variety of events that we led, including a downtown Halloween tour for the Denton County economic developers.
So this started as a small group of local economic developers that would get together to hang out.
And once we told them we would host it in the month of October, several other cities reached out to attend because they wanted to learn more about how Denton created 31 days of Halloween.
And so Kristen led that tour as long as our other team members we helped coordinate it.
That picture on the right, we had the city of Sanger, Little Elm, a few other local cities, Aubrey as well.
And then Kristen also had a follow up tour for the city of Garland team to tour 31 days of Halloween activities.
Our group hosted the economic development fund wellness workshop. This was a first part series prior to the board retreat.
Thank you to those board members that were able to attend. And for those that we missed, you'll get a recap during our board retreat.
But we had quite a few folks attended. We invited all of our boards, economic development boards, and our city council members and other stakeholders that were involved.
So thank you again. That was a really great event. They covered beginner basics to advance and I think everyone was able to take away something from that event.
Kristen also hosted a downtown city services meeting with our community services, police and parks department. This was a follow up to several other safety meetings for downtown with the ambassador program ending at the end of the year.
Many residents concerns that their safety and cleanliness may change. And so that was a meeting to address how the city will move forward.
Kristen and Matilda also hosted their own training session for AMX small business grant opportunity. This is something that they host every year. The AMX provides every year.
But Kristen and Matilda took it upon themselves to host training sessions for those downtown businesses.
Also, most notably, we partnered with the state governor's office, the economic development division to host a governor's summit.
Their division host these summits across the state of Texas and we applied. I think Jamie applied as well for the summit and Tracy Irby with Texas Women's University's Entrepreneurship Center.
They decided to host to have this summit as the all women's focus event.
Marilee Kick was the main keynote and she's the owner of Buzzballs. So she's a model entrepreneur story. She started making her own Buzzballs in their backyard and then she grew to a big manufacturing facility.
It's in every convenience store across the United States. It's pretty cool. So I want to show you this two minute video. It's really quick.
I'm happy to welcome you to the governor's business summit here in Denton. Women focused. What a great crowd we have and we're sold out. We just love that.
The governor's business summits are very important because it brings the access to all the tools and resources that you need as a small business owner to different communities throughout Texas.
This event is really important for women business owners. It brings women together. They can network with each other as well as get resources to take back to their communities.
Small businesses are the backbone of every single community in the state of Texas and it is so important that we help make sure that small businesses get off the ground and thrive.
Oh, there have been some great panels today. We also had Marilee Kick here as the keynote speaker who did such a great job telling us how you have that simple dream and how it can grow into a billion dollar business.
Well, it isn't a straight path. You go left. If it doesn't work, then you go right and you go up and you go down and you're an entrepreneur. You jump through things to make things happen. So that's just part of the journey.
If you want to tell people about your business or grow your business, scale your business, they have to know about your business showing up consistently and you have to continuously show up and be there.
All of the state resources and the tips that were provided from the Texas Workforce Commission and all the different forms that we need to know and even some of the free grants and funding that's out there available for our businesses that we don't know about because we're in our business.
And it's really just one, women supporting women and two, gaining knowledge and information about resources to further thrive in our business.
It's definitely encouraging to see other powerful women and share their experience and kind of motivate us to continue moving forward. So that was a very extremely educational and I was very glad that I came and I learned a lot.
Regardless of what state you're in, in terms of your stage of business ownership, I think it is so important to attend a summit like this.
Welcome to training that we attended. Clay Parker, our business improvement specialist, attended the OU Economic Development Institute. It's a second phase above the basic economic development course to start obtaining certifications for economic development.
So I'm really proud of him for attending that. Erica also attended a few webinars for finance, CDFA development finance broadcasts, and CDFA webinar series development for financing tools.
And Kristen attended the Texas Main Street Reinvestment Numbers workshop in Mesquite, Texas.
And then we also attended the Texas Downtown Association Conference, which I will have Kristen come up here and talk about how the event went.
Thank you. So yes, I had the opportunity to attend the Texas Downtown Association Conference, which we as economic development are members of, and we actually received the 2025 President's Award for best promotion for 31 days of Halloween.
So what that award is based on is economic vitality throughout your community, as well as just community involvement. So we were really excited to attend that and receive that award.
And then part of that is you have the brothers and economic development director in there and then all of our, our whole community that it took to put this 31 days of Halloween initiative together.
So a couple of stats that I wanted to share with you today. So we reached out to all the downtown businesses to kind of get an impact, economic impact survey back to see how 31 days of Halloween impacted their business.
So out of our businesses, 54 businesses participated, and 56% of those businesses saw a huge increase in their business from 2024.
This Saturday was the busiest day of the week for everyone. One of the key things that we wanted to find out this year was what our peak hours were for our businesses.
We've already started those conversations with our businesses for this year, believe it or not.
But five to nine p.m. was the busiest time for our businesses. So what that means is our staff, can they stay open later to accommodate the extra traffic that's coming downtown.
And then, of course, our businesses reported higher weekly revenues throughout October compared to 2024 foot traffic obviously was very high 84% of participants that they saw more visitors.
And one of the key things to is, I think sometimes we think about downtown is kind of just, just the square, but I met with several businesses that are off this where and they saw huge increases to their foot traffic as well.
And some of these people, you know, went into their business for the first time, so it might not be a sale today that they had in October, but they saw what was available online purchase, they'll come back and see that business.
And then out of our businesses, 78% of them participated in a promotion event or offered a seasonal menu item. So we hope to increase that this year, but there were over 300 events related to 31 days of Halloween. So we've already started planning for this year. So we hope to have an even bigger 31 days of Halloween.
This year. Thank you. There's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. I know Kristen worked really hard to coordinate what the businesses are common and parts of this effort for sure. As well as the local vendors that have been doing this for quite some time.
Our current stats for Q4, we at the end of December, we had 25 active projects with a pipeline of 3800 potential jobs and 5.9 potential capital investment. We had six new leads. The sources were from one local partner, three from a broker, one from the website and one that was direct.
We had three incentive applications for our city incentives, but then we also had three additional state incentives that are applications that we help businesses apply for.
Going to recruitment visits, we had three that we posted and we also had to reclassify quite a few leads because sometimes they don't ever, sometimes they're not expanding. Sometimes they just need general business support and so we want to count those.
And so we moved for those leads to cold to transfer business support to that. We lost 1 that we moved back to active and 1 that we won without incentives and clay reached out to 281 businesses for recruitment outreach attempts and that's via email.
And for our downtown stats, we had 6 VRE visits. We had 5 leads lost 1 that's now moving forward with the project 3 moved to cold and 1, 1 without incentives and then we had 6 new downtown leads. That's for the downtown reinvestment grant and then we also had 10 recruitment outreach attempts.
For the RFI stats, we received 24 from the state governor's office in the Dallas regional chamber. We submitted 13. We did not submit on 10. We had 0 lead conversions. Out of the ones that we submitted, the potential capital investment in that pipeline is 1.1 billion dollars and 9600 potential jobs.
So for a total for FY25, we submitted 64 RFIs for the year.
Some music and film. I'll hand this off to Matilda Wieden, economic development specialist.
You may have noticed we had a busy quarter last quarter. You can see in this photo that some of us got to visit a film set that was downtown, but we issued 1 commercial permit in November and 3 student permits and then 1 commercial permit in December.
When I say commercial, I don't mean like television commercial. I just mean basically not student. So it could be a movie. It could be TV. It could be a commercial.
If you're wanting to see things that have been filmed in Denton, Wan Man season 2 episode 3 has a little snapshot of Denton and then a movie that was filmed in 2024 finally came out called Ruthless Atonement. It's available for free on Tubi or you can pay for it on Amazon Prime and support the local filmmakers.
Looking ahead, back when I made this, I was looking ahead and I already made adjustments to our permit application to add some more automation and clean some things up where there was some loose ends and just things that I've learned throughout the process and cleaned it up a bit.
In a couple weeks, we have the Dent Black Film Festival. They're premiering a movie documentary style film about Quaker Town on Thursday, the 28th, I believe, that Thursday and that should be really interesting if anyone wants to go.
It's about Quaker Town, Denton history, and then they're going to have like a big red carpet celebration as well, I believe. And then music, every year the Grammy nominations come out and there's always UND alums, so we're very proud that there's three UND alums in the Grammy nomination.
I'm really proud of Matilda because she's working hard on ensuring that Denton is a great place to film their commercial videos or just movies in general. So when Landman came to shoot this, that was my first time on a set and they brought on several semi trucks and trailers to prepare for a two minute scene, which is crazy.
We got to see Billy Bob drive by and with the other actors, I don't know her name, unfortunately, but still Billy Bob. So he was able to wave at us, but it's important because when Matilda is coordinating that, she's coordinating with all the other departments, with police, with fire, to ensure that they're aware of what's going on.
And so overall, I think the Taylor Sheridan group is satisfied with us because they did come back and shoot the Madison up here. Hopefully that wasn't announced already, but we have an upcoming event.
We have a No More, Grow More market research for your business workshop. Matilda is hosting that one. It's talking about reference solutions with the free library tool for lead generation. So any business that registers in the state or several other platforms, if they have a NAICS code, you can go on their search by NAICS code and get their information, which is good for lead generation, not so much if you're on the other side being contacted.
On February 3rd, the American Cancer Society will host a Bright Edge Texas Innovation Summit. And so we met them through UNT. And so there will be several Ventricopolis firms there and healthcare firms.
On February 10th, there's a Small Business Connections with Denton Public Library that we're hosting with them, I believe. And on March 26th, as Dr. Terry Pollan said, we have a mobility summit. So that is it. And I'll hand this off to Matilda.
Oh, I'm so sorry. One more. We have a board retreat coming out. We did finalize two dates.
So put this on your calendars. Well, we need to confirm. We did finalize two different sets of dates. So February 3rd and February 4th, we will post those back to back, either from 8 to noon or 1 to 5.
Most people, we have a quorum for those dates and then March 23rd and March 24th. March 23rd would be from 1 to 5 PM and March 24th would be anytime throughout the day.
So if any of those dates do not work for you, please let us know so that we can confirm and send those meeting invitations out.
Okay, I promised to go fast. This report is going to cover July, August, September of 2025.
I changed up the way the residential permit value looks. It's not a big messy chart anymore, but we just have a comparison of Q3 from this year and Q3 from last year and then the year to date.
So $239 million residential permit value and I looked up why it's such a big difference and it looks like there was less stuff permitted last year at this time, including apartments.
There was five this year, one last year during that time period. And then the year to date for last year, they did not include that, was $292 million, so roughly half.
Commercial permit values. It's the same setup. And then I did the year to date as well for last year. So this up here is 2025, 2024 was $243 million.
And then when I looked up why last year, the new target on university was permanent during this quarter and then about three big industrial projects, building projects were permitted within that quarter. So that's the reason for the big difference there.
Sales tax, I apologize. It's kind of confusing. It's still the same month period. It's just sales tax is recorded in a fiscal year, so that's why I put that note up there, but it's still July, August, September.
And then I did make a mistake that three should be a five, but this year we were up a little bit, pretty much the same, just 20,000, maybe 40,000 difference. I can't read. It didn't go down, so it's fine.
And then the year to date for 2024, just like the commercial permits, I didn't think too much of it, but year to date for 2024 was 57. So that should be a 558 in the last year.
Unemployment rate. This one's very interesting. As you can tell, there was a huge spike in August. When I did my research to find out why it looks like a lot of that is attributed to increase in claims, which the Texas Workforce Commission recorded a 92% increase in claims, which is unusual.
And that was a huge fraud case of unemployment claims, but also hiring growth slowed. So between those two things, the rates in Texas jumped up a lot, but they went back down after they kind of settled out the employment fraud situation.
Also, just to know if you remember last quarter when I reported this, the new administration was saying that they were going to change how they report some of this, so that also is kind of attributable to some of the changes.
Next I have the cost of living. Same as always, the first slide is Texas, and then the next slide will be nationwide. It's pretty much the same. Cities are the lowest and highest, but Denton has gone down to 95.2 compared to 95.8 last quarter, and 97 in the first quarter.
As a reminder, 100 would be average, so we are still below average in affordability. Something that is keeping us a bit higher is utilities, and then our goods and services are just kind of on par right now.
The goods and services are things kind of like dry cleaning, or I'm trying to think of, I'm sorry, I forgot.
Next slide is the US. So again, like always, these two usually fluctuate for the lowest, and then there's the Manhattan, which is always the highest cost of living.
This time I put, there's a calculator that comes with the data set, and this time I put in like an estimated salary, so I said if an individual makes $65,000 in Denton, Texas, how much would things change if they moved to Manhattan?
Your cost of housing would increase 464%, and your groceries would be 20% more. On the flip side, if you moved from Denton, Texas with a $65,000 salary to Decatur, Illinois, your housing would be 45% less, and your groceries would be about the same.
Your salary would need to be about 144,000 in Manhattan to have the same take-home pay as Denton, and your salary, if you lived in Decatur, Illinois, would need to be about 50,000 to be the same purchasing power and things like that for $65,000 here in Denton.
Which I thought that was fun. I like playing around with that calculator sometimes. Next we have the median home price. Housing prices have dropped. This is due to higher inventory and less sales over this quarter.
I changed up some of the commercial real estate with Clayton Health. Here's the industrial citywide. These statistics in the middle are combined for lease and for sale.
Same for the retail. Combined stats for lease and for sale.
In downtown, we did split it up, but the middle section is combined, so we have five lots, 16 buildings for sale, $133,000 per feet available for lease during that time period of July, August, September.
And that's it. Does anybody have any questions?
I don't believe we have anything at this moment. We do have, we may potentially have a project to bring before you, but if not, we'll let you know, and I'll contact you Brian to see if you want to hold a meeting or not.
If anyone got any future agenda items that we need to discuss or proposals for future agenda items, that's pretty clear.
I think the airport conversation needs to be echoed. There's a lot of opportunity there.
If not, with the board retreat, I think that would be a good session to host so that we can have some of those conversations. We had a council in December because we weren't going to be before, and we had to come in early.
Those are the type of conversations that I'd like to have, especially with our incentive policies. We have to update our incentive policy this year, and so we want to throw everything in that ordinance in one round.
So with that, we want to highly encourage the February 4th, 3rd and 4th, if available, just because it's going to drive the timeline for the year.
I don't know if I'm available for this. Are you available on the 3rd and 4th? Yeah.
Alright, we'll surf back on that.
Alright, does the board have any other business to discuss or suggestions on what they wish to discuss in the next meeting?
Hearing nothing, our next EDP board meeting is scheduled to be on Wednesday, February 11th at 11. Please let staff know you're able to attend. It's a bit your notification of absence online.
If you have any other business, I'll adjourn this meeting at 12/18. Thank you. Happy New Year.