Good afternoon. My name is Marty Rivers, chair of the Economic Development Partnership Board.
And I'd like to welcome everybody to the meeting.
Today is January 15th and we'll go ahead and get this meeting started at 12.08.
We have one agenda item today.
EDP 20-001, receive a report, hold a discussion,
and give staff direction regarding the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategic Plan
being completed by TIPS Strategies.
And with that I'll want to turn it over to, actually I want to turn it over to Erica first.
Would you mind introducing Charlie?
I would love to. Good afternoon. I'd like to introduce Charlie Drombo.
He is our interim economic development director.
I'll let him tell you a little bit about himself.
I would preface that by saying he's been doing economic development in Texas longer than probably anyone else in Texas.
I started when I was three.
It's good to be with you.
I've had a 44-year career in the Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development.
I started in Jasper and came through a number of places.
I've owned Sherman nine years, Abilene 14, Round Rock 9, or 8.
So I've spent a fair amount of time all around the state
and just finished the interim job as the interim director
of the development corporation at Abilene for seven months while they did their search.
So it's good to be with you and I look forward to working with you
and anything I can do to be a resource for you during my time here.
I look forward to it. Thank you very much for having me. Welcome.
Thank you, Charlie. I'm glad you're here.
Alright, let's kick off our planning session.
Alright, well then I'm going to turn it over to Tom Stelman and Jacqueline Lee
who will lead us in our discussion.
Thank you guys. It's amazing to be back in Denton.
For those of you who may not know, we actually did some work in Denton.
We did the action plan from 2003, I believe. Worked with the partnership at that time
helping make some decisions about where the emphasis in this community
ought to be from an economic development standpoint.
And this is my first trip back as a consultant.
I have been back to Denton before, but I was able to come in yesterday a little bit early.
The first thing we did was drive into the downtown
and to see the amazing transformation that's occurred there.
It was sleepy at the time when we were there.
When we were here, we actually also participated,
because one of the big recommendations was the downtown strategy.
And we participated with Reagan City, California to fund that team
to lay out one of the first downtown strategies for the community.
So, super excited to be back.
So thank you very much for the invitation.
And Charlie and I ran into each other this morning at breakfast at the Embassy Suites.
And I'm excited to see that Charlie's working on this,
because we have actually worked on a number of projects in the past.
So, awesome.
And I'm going to introduce Jacqueline Lee, our lead consultant on this project.
And I'll say a little bit more about her here in a moment.
But before we go too far down this path,
I would like you guys to introduce yourselves.
Quickly, we'll go around the room again.
Charlie, you had a chance.
And just, if you don't mind, so we know what hat you wear.
I know you guys all wear multiple hats.
So if you don't mind, tell me your main hat.
And if there's another hat you want to say, "Hey, I'm also on the school floor,"
or "I'm also here," it would be good for us to know.
Nice to meet you, Tom. I'm Erica Pankburn, president of the Denton Chamber of Commerce.
We started here April 1st of last year.
I'm Steve Edgar. I'm the CEO of Medical City Denton Hospital.
I'm Keely Briggs, city council here in Denton.
I'm John Baines, CPA and consultant.
I've been in business since '86, and I represent the Denton Black Chamber of Commerce,
for which I've been in Memphis since 1995.
Right, so you know our new president pretty well, then.
I'm Marty Rivers. I'm the market president for American National Bank.
And I was involved as a committee member in the initial discussion that you guys did in 2002-2003.
We formed this partnership, and I'm on my second stint on the board.
So this is my 12th year to be on the economic development board.
I think I've chaired it for eight of those years.
And I'm in the last nine months.
Until we make some changes.
All that means is I'm old.
You also started when you were three.
You guys know me. Tom knows me. He has spent a lot of money.
My name is Jill Jester, and I'm a shareholder at Miner and Jester, which is a law firm here in town, our oldest law firm.
And I'm currently serving as the chair of the board of directors at the Chamber of Commerce.
I'm a chamber representative here.
And just as a side note, I'm also chair of the board of regents at Texas Women's University currently.
So I kind of have a couple of perspectives.
This is a side note.
Sidebar, yeah.
Hi, my name is Tony Clark. I'm regional CEO for Independent Bank, headquartered on McKinney out here.
And I was also on the board, chamber board, back in 2003 when you guys were doing all that.
So remember that as well.
Yeah, I know you guys didn't recognize me because I had hair back then.
Chris Davis. I work at Peterbilt Motors here in Denton.
And a side note, I sit on the MBA advisory board at Texas Christian University as well.
I'm Pamela Padilla. I'm the associate vice president of research at University of North Texas.
And I've been a professor there for 17 years.
I'm Bob Ames. I've been a lawyer here since how long?
A long time.
I practice law against Jill's daddy, so that gives you some idea how long I've been here.
And still kicking.
That's our aviation representation on the board.
Right, I was the chair of the airport board for several years in addition to practicing law.
The airport board is more fun.
Hello, I'm Michael Stan. I'm the vice president of Discover Denton.
That's our local destination marketing organization for the Denton Commission of Business and the Bureau.
And we're a division of the Chamber of Commerce.
Jimmy.
Hi, I'm Jimmy McGee. I'm with the ownership group Elastega Me Market here in Denton.
And it's a family business, so I guess I've been, you know, for the last 15 years, 20 years now,
working with the family and watching it grow and expand.
And we're happy to be here in Denton.
You said fleet market?
Elastega Me Market. It has two locations here in Denton.
We started with a little location, about 35, and then continuing to grow and expand and serve in the community.
Awesome. Awesome. I'll come see you later.
So in terms of our agenda, I'm going to talk a little bit about the project that we've been tasked with helping you with.
And then I want to talk about just a couple of national trends that we follow that impact economic development.
We've done a little research, really just getting started with the input process.
And so we've tried to prepare ourselves for that, and I'll share a little bit with you.
And we have some data, but this isn't about a data presentation after that lasagna I just ate.
You know, we don't really want to spend a lot of time with data right now.
And mostly we want to get some feedback from you guys.
So did you guys receive the invitation letter that had some of the questions?
So hopefully you've come prepared to talk about some of those questions.
But I'll bring them back up here in a minute, so you'll have a chance to see that.
And then we'll talk about what's next up for us.
But I will step back, just for those of you who didn't work with us in the past, TIP stands for theory into practice.
We really see ourselves, the majority of our firm are practitioners.
We've worked in the shoes of economic developers, and been on boards, and run organizations.
And so we feel like this isn't just another study.
And I remember, Marty, when we did the first workshop, this group couldn't say the word strategic plan,
because they had an experience where strategic plans had been done in the past and sat on shelves.
And they really wanted an action plan, and so that's what we called it.
And we identified the major opportunities here, and we built out action plans for that.
That's the way we developed that project.
So that was very much on the implementation side.
We have expanded our business since we were working here in 2003.
I now have a partner that's based out of Seattle.
Our research director is based out of Boston.
Jacqueline is here in Dallas.
I have one of our consultants based out of Portland, Oregon.
So we really had to embrace the idea that not everybody has to be in my office in Austin.
And a number of organizations right now, that's what they're working with.
What does it mean to have a remote workforce?
What does it mean to have representation, people that aren't necessarily coming into your office,
and how do you maintain that culture and that quality of product that you deliver?
We have done quite a bit of work in the DFW area since we worked in Denton last.
I was listing it off a year and a half ago.
We did the city of Fort Worth economic development strategy for the city.
We've done Irving, Arlington.
We just finished a project to help profile the opportunity zones for the city of Dallas.
And I'd be happy to share that with you guys.
Actually, Tracy just led that project.
And we are now under contract with the city of Dallas to get additional input.
They had another group do a strategic plan,
and it felt like they didn't really embrace a lot of the community there.
And so we're going back into the city of Dallas.
And over the next 60 days, Jacqueline is responsible for setting up meetings
with all the city council members there to get their input on the city of Dallas's economic development strategic plan.
So we are heavily embedded in the region.
But I'm going to be the first to say I don't pretend to know the latest and greatest of what every community has done.
You guys are probably going to know what they're up to more than I am right now.
And so we're going to rely on you guys to help educate us.
Even though we're here, we know every community is different.
So this is our current team, and John had asked me earlier if Tracy was here.
Tracy is our new president for the company.
I am the CEO and founder of the firm, but we felt it was important to bring a national level person in.
Tracy has led the black chamber for the city of Austin in a previous life.
She was the director of tourism for the State Department of Commerce at that time for several years.
She then ran our state's economic development division.
Then went down to Houston and was the CEO for the Great Houston Partnership.
And then kind of lost herself and went up to the state of New Jersey at Chris Christie's behest
and ran the state of New Jersey's Choose New Jersey.
This was before scandal, which I read in the paper this morning.
He's still dealing with Bridgegate.
And then she came back and ran Texas, and then she joined our firm this last year.
So we're really excited to have her on board.
No need to go through a commercial for TIP, but just some of the places that we're working right now,
we are leading a plan for Harris County, finishing up with the city of Waxahachie.
I just finished a project for the city of Midland and have now been asked to do more for Odessa.
And as I mentioned, Dallas, Fort Worth, a number of other places across the country.
So our process is a three-phase process.
We get on the ground, try to understand what's going on.
We get input from you guys.
We go back, we digest that.
We come back to you and say, hey, this is what we heard from you.
This is what we're seeing other groups do.
And get that to you guys, and we go through a process of getting your input, saying, okay,
where Denton is right now and where you see Denton going,
what are the things that we need to pay attention to from an economic development perspective?
So I'm not telling you guys anything new here.
I just want you guys to know that we have a process that we're going to take you through over the next four months.
Our framework, I think, is important.
You need to know as we're thinking about economic development, and we're seeing this across the country,
there have been some very high-profile projects out there that everybody's talked about for the last two years,
Amazon HQ2 being one of them, and very incentive-driven, but behind the scenes,
a big part of their decision had nothing to do with incentives.
It had everything to do with can we find access to the market that we want to penetrate,
and can we track the talent that we need, because we are a technology business.
If you look at Amazon's business and you try to understand where they're profitable,
it's in the data services component.
They still barely make money off of selling you the stuff that you buy off of Amazon.
The margins on that have been so thin for so long, and they remain competitive.
The biggest growth part of their company is international, and it's on the data side.
Their business is a technology business, and that's what's driven it.
But what that means is it's less about they love the incentives from wherever they go,
but a big part of it is are we going to be able to keep that talent pipeline?
That's really what's driving economic development right now.
With greater use and partnership, those guys did not make the top 20,
and they went back to Amazon and they said, "Hey, what's up?"
They said, "You stats don't have the tech talent to support us.
You've got medical, you've got Rice University, you've got a lot going on here,
but when we look at the skill sets that we need, and the degrees that we need,
and the pipeline that we need, you don't have it. It's just not there."
Dallas has it, but it's not DC, it's not New York, it's not Boston.
How does Denton think of itself in the context of this new data-driven,
IT-driven, talent-driven model?
I want to get off my soapbox for a moment because really our model,
we're looking at talent as being the way you think about economic development.
What does it mean for you? What does it mean for the companies that are here?
If you're running a hospital, what are your biggest challenges?
Probably in doctors, nurses, skill sets.
Your relationship with the city is very important, the infrastructure is very important.
Depending on whether you're a non-profit or a for-profit, your tax rates are very important,
but a big part of your success is being able to deliver that service
and compete with Dallas and the medical center there, and compete with Fort Worth,
and keeping people here, and on the north side of the DFW area,
wanting to get their services here and not go somewhere else.
And so the talent is driving, and so I want you guys, as you think about going forward here,
and your vision for Denton, what does it mean for us to be able to keep and attract
and grow a talent base here?
And we've got assets that are amazing, UNT, Community College,
Texas Women's University, and you've got assets here that are enviable
throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area. So you've got a lot of assets going on.
Like I said when we came in yesterday, went to the downtown,
I was like, okay, you guys have something that you've turned into a huge asset
that's authentic, that every developer out there wants to replicate.
I mean, if you look at the, I did work for Southlake, you look at their town center,
what were they trying to replicate? They're trying to replicate what you guys have
in your downtown, you know, that center, you feel like you're in town.
So I'm getting ahead of myself, talent, innovation, place,
really the way we think about economic development.
Let's go to this project. Six different components that we've been asked to look at.
Number one, just a SWOT analysis, giving you guys an idea of what are your strengths and weaknesses.
Number two, develop a vision and the goals for economic development.
Identifying the targets and the subsectors and doing targeting right now has changed completely.
The old model for economic development was you looked at what cluster do we have.
We have Peterbilt, we have suppliers, you know, that could potentially come in for Peterbilt.
Do we stop doing that? No. Every economic developer is still trying to support key employers.
But as you start thinking about the new types of businesses that are growing in the DFW area,
a lot of them just don't fit neatly into an old economic development model.
You've got to think more creatively.
Reviewing incentives and economic development tools, and you had mentioned, Jessica,
that you guys have gone ahead and made the decision about enacting what's the word I'm looking for?
Our policy expires in two months. We have to re-adopt it before Tom has the ability to make any recommendations.
So we're required by statute to adopt it every two years. We'll be doing that discussion next meeting.
We'll also be looking at your incentives policy and does that match with the direction that you're going?
Are you incentivizing the right types of projects and measuring the right types of outputs?
And then we'll also look at, you know, are there opportunities for development or redevelopment?
And you guys still have a lot of product. We spent an hour and a half touring the community, went around the loop.
You have a lot of real estate that's still available versus some of the closer in, some of the building out,
which I think you're next in line. You're not next in line.
You're already part of that process in terms of the development that's occurring here.
But you still have something to offer, which for larger projects you could be highly competitive for.
And then, so these first five, you know, your input is going to be critical.
We'll put all that in. We'll look at what other communities are doing.
We'll make recommendations about the staffing for the city and how this should be structured as part of that.
So these are the major project goals. What are we going to ask you to do?
We're going to ask you to come to these meetings. We're going to ask you to provide input during this process,
giving us guidance, facilitate information sharing, especially the Chamber, the city.
You know, we need a lot of information right now.
And then I think you will help us engage other stakeholders and help build buy-in as we go along.
You'll be a voice because people will ask, "What are you guys up to?"
And you are the champions for what comes out of this. You'll be the ones who help communicate that.
I think I've already really talked about our process.
I don't think I need to go into too much detail there other than to say we are at sort of project launch.
And what we are doing today and tomorrow, we met this morning and did a windshield tour,
went out to the industrial park, went up 380 over to 288, did the loop back around, went to the downtown.
So that's as far as we've gotten.
We have a roundtable after this with the invitees from the Chamber of Commerce.
We've got a tech roundtable, an industry roundtable.
Are you coming back?
All right, we're going to get some of you guys busy.
I know some of you guys are probably sticking around for the next chamber.
So we appreciate you taking the time up front.
And then tomorrow morning, education and workforce will bring the universities and school district in.
Development and infrastructure roundtable, and that will be primarily city department heads
and then economic development staff, and then the city executive leadership is city manager.
So you guys know what we're up to.
And if you need a copy of who is going to those meetings, we're happy to share that with you.
But what are we, 50 or 60?
We'll be participating over the next 24 hours in the meetings that we'll have, so we'll be drinking from the fire.
And then the project timeline, our goal is to have the final plan in May.
We've been asked to have some of our recommendations done a little bit earlier, and so we'll be working on that.
Let's see.
I think I have, is it the end of the presentation, Jacqueline, where I have the calendar of the next meetings?
Okay, okay.
So before you leave today, you'll get to see when the next meetings are going to be held.
And then we'll also send out a calendar so that you guys can go ahead and mark your calendars for the next meetings,
because I know your schedules are busy.
Any questions so far?
We're going to have questions here in a minute, but I just want to make sure we're all trying.
What is your preference, Tom?
Do you want to finish your presentation and then ask questions, or do you want to take them as we go along?
Well, if there are questions about the process, I'm okay taking one now.
If you want to give input on sort of the community itself or the challenges, I'm going to ask those questions in a few minutes.
Can I ask who's involved in those groups who just showed up, like the land development?
Yeah.
Was that staff or was that people in the community?
Development and infrastructure?
That's staff.
Yeah, typically what we'll do, Marty, is we'll meet with staff first, kind of talk about their programs.
And then when we come back, we like to bring in the development community or builders or others
to kind of help understand what is their relationship and how they perceive those services and the delivery of those services,
if that's where you're headed with that question.
Question, Tom?
Yes, ma'am.
Yeah, and so I guess my question would be, so does that include all the stakeholders?
And is the community in itself part of that stakeholder group?
Or are we just kind of focusing on city staff at this point, and then the developers,
and then just trying to see who all you're looking to speak with, who are the stakeholders?
Yeah, so we will, in this meeting, we ask that certain groups be brought together.
Normally we would do that in our next meeting, but we're trying to get ahead of it.
And so the next time we come out, we'll be meeting with council members,
and then we're also going to hold additional ground tables.
And we're contemplating a broader survey right now.
We wanted to see kind of what feedback we got right here about whether there needed to be a broader questionnaire that goes out.
But the idea is to get as many people as we can to really understand what the community's interested in.
But we're going to rely on the council to really also tell us about your districts.
Sorry, you guys, single member districts.
Both.
It's to understand your constituents and make sure that we get to hear what those issues are in the particular areas of the community.
So national trends, do I just escape here?
Take this.
So, don't push play yet, but does this, can you shrink it just a little bit?
Yeah, right there.
That's probably good.
That way all of that gets on there.
Okay, I'll take it from there.
Well, I'm only going to talk about three trends.
One is just the overall common.
One is technology, and then the other is demographics.
And so I have three or four slides here.
But I think it's important as we go into this to remind ourselves that we're not just Denton, we're not just Denton County, but we're operating in a national context and a global context.
And what I'm going to do here is I've got a little graphic that we created that shows job loss and job gain by metro area across the country.
If it is a blue bubble, it is a metro area that has gained jobs over the last 12 months.
If it's a red bubble, it has lost jobs over the last 12 months.
And when I first hit play, you're going to see it starts in January of 1999.
And you guys later today, if you want to go back to your office or at home, you can go to the website and you can actually see this yourself.
But I'm going to hit pause here for a moment and just say that this was essentially representing the dot com bust.
It didn't hit the country evenly because some areas weren't really driven by technology.
Austin was, so we got hit pretty hard in Austin.
And when you go to the web, you can actually take your cursor and put it over each of the different metros that are there.
And so I'm going to push play again.
We're in July of 2001. Things get a little bit worse after that.
September 11th, George Bush says go out and spend money for those of us that were working at that time.
You're going to notice something happens in Louisiana here in the middle of 2005.
Katrina. Yeah, it's really fascinating because you had New Orleans get hit and then Baton Rouge.
Everybody moved up to Baton Rouge and Houston and these other cities.
And they actually showed this job gain over that same period of time.
I'm going to hit play again.
And so really in 2006, recession hasn't started, but what's the signal here? Automotive industry.
Detroit starts getting hit and it's really not until the end of 2007 that the recession officially starts.
Housing bubble starts to pop December 2007 and then it's really the market doesn't fall until the fall.
And if you're squeamish, you can close your eyes now.
I'm actually going to fast forward here and I would encourage you guys, if this is something of interest to you,
just kind of seeing where we are. We keep this up on a quarterly basis.
We do it monthly, but it's a quarter lag time.
But we're always paying attention to what's happening in Minneapolis right now, what's going on there.
And you expect it in some areas.
Jacqueline is a consultant for a project right now for a group of leading automotive companies in Detroit,
helping them understand because they're trying to look at where can we fill our vacancies right now
with people that are local as opposed to having to attract help from the outside.
It's a fascinating project. And once again, the overall national economy, we have to pay attention to it
because there's been a lot of talk over the last 12 months of when is that next recession going to come?
And what's that going to mean for development patterns? What's that going to mean for the DFW?
What's that going to mean for dental? So you have to constantly be thinking about the economy.
So the, do I just hit escape or just go here? Here. Here.
So really, the other interesting factor overall for those of us in economic development,
those of us who have defined economic development as attracting manufacturing jobs over the years
to see what percentage manufacturing jobs have actually taken up as part of the overall economy.
And what's very encouraging since 2010 is that line has kind of flattened,
which means that we're holding our own as a country from the manufacturing standpoint.
Peter built a testament to that, having strong manufacturers in this country.
It doesn't mean that manufacturing isn't a good target for you.
It doesn't mean that manufacturing is not going to grow in the DFW area.
It just means that most of the job creation has occurred in other sectors, professional business services,
education, healthcare, IT, there are a number of financial services in other areas that have grown faster.
So if you're in the economic development business and you're all about chasing jobs,
where are those jobs going to be? It's a big question. Big question.
The other issue that remains with us is we baby boomers are finally starting to reach retirement age.
And as a consequence, as we start leaving the workforce, many of us unwillingly leaving the workforce,
there is still a demographic issue where we're creating jobs and we have people who are retiring at a rate that we're not able to fill a lot of those jobs,
especially the jobs that are technical skill jobs.
So I don't know if in your businesses you're experiencing that, but across the country right now, that's been the biggest issue.
The last issue for us is just what is technology doing across all the different sectors?
Everything has gone to being based on technology, based on information technology, especially in the area of things.
A lot of our diagnosis, a lot of the things that we wear on our wrists now that are monitoring our health,
there's so many different things going on it's hard to keep up with,
but it is impacting businesses and business location decisions that are being made.
So the local context for us, you're in the DFW area and I don't have to tell you guys about what's going on in Dallas Fort Worth.
Fastest growing metro region in the country, fourth best economy, 32% workers have cars.
In other words, Dallas Fort Worth is still on the radar screen for every single major business location in the country.
Dallas Fort Worth is at the top of the list for consideration.
So you guys get to benefit from all the assets at our DFW in your location.
This is more of a teaser because we haven't done our homework yet,
but one of the things that we're going to come back and do is look at what are the current development projects that are underway
and where are the next planned developments and what does that mean for the community.
Right now, one that kind of hit us between the -- this was vacant when we were here last.
And now we are staying at the embassy suite, so we're right in the middle of all that. That's awesome.
Your industrial park with the expansions from Peterbilt and all the other logistics companies and cold storage
and everything else that's happened out there, phenomenal.
I think the pressure is going to continue on that area to grow.
And I know there are multiple development projects in the area,
but one that stood out to us that Jessica shared with us was the Coal and Hunter piece that essentially controls --
how many miles of that? 35, what is it?
Six miles of that.
35 fromage.
And I don't have to tell you guys this, but I'll just -- it bears repeating.
It's like the number of residents that are going to go into that area and what that's going to mean for this community,
from healthcare, ISD, retail, what that's going to do.
But also the competitiveness nature.
They're probably going to build their own retail along that strip.
So what does that mean for Razor Ranch? What does that mean for the downtown?
What does it mean for the other things that you have to offer?
So we are going to be looking at this.
I didn't come prepared today to talk about all of the development developments.
I just wanted you guys to know that this is what we're looking at right now.
We are going to look at data.
Like I said, I didn't want to make this a data presentation in the middle of the afternoon.
But this is your population growth trend, educational attainment.
You know, with the universities here, you guys are kind of off the charts there in terms of education.
Tom, could you go back to the one on population growth?
Thank you.
Is that good?
Yes.
Thank you.
All right.
And we will work very closely with the city to make sure that any numbers that we share with you officially
know that we're kind of in the same ballpark because there are a number of different population estimates
and sources that are used out there.
Some are counting the city, some are counting the county or draw a ring around the city.
We just want to make sure that we're not presenting information that we share with you.
You feel like, okay.
But any time that we do share something and you say, man, it just doesn't smell right, you know, don't stop us.
I mean, do stop us, sorry.
We know better than we're just going to say what it all looks like.
So, but yeah, but we will, you know, we'll look at the city of Denton.
We will look at Denton County.
We'll compare you guys to others within the region.
You know, if you want to compare yourselves to Frisco or Plano or Power Mound, you know, whatever you guys want to do.
We'll get some feedback from you, kind of take some, you know, snapshot benchmark of what others are up to.
This is part of our analysis and employment by sector, education, health care and manufacturing.
So you guys are somewhat unique on the manufacturing space, especially in the DFW area
because you have such large, great manufacturing employers that are here.
Where have you gained?
Transportation warehousing and manufacturing, right at the top.
So there you go, Tom, that's counter to your national trend right there.
Commuting, we will probably dig into this quite a bit
because for us, understanding what your relationship is to the surrounding communities,
who's coming into this community, who's leaving this community.
But as anticipated, you know, the number of people that are commuting into the city of Denton has remained relatively flat.
But this is not picking up 2018 or 2019.
And I'm guessing that your numbers with some of your job growth have probably increased.
But the number of people that are, you know, because you're experiencing population growth,
people are moving in to this area but then commuting back to Dallas or commuting back to DFW Airport
or commuting back to wherever they live.
And we'll actually look at the numbers of where are those concentrations.
And I don't expect you to understand this right now, but we'll look at, you know, where do workers in Denton live?
The majority still live in Denton, but you break people in from Fort Worth, Dallas, Florida, Louisville.
And then we'll do the opposite, where do people in Denton work?
And we can, we have a tool that we'll be able to drill in here,
so you'll be able to see the exact numbers that are coming from particular districts.
And we can actually know what occupations, we can know income levels.
So we'll have a lot of information that we'll bring to bear here to help make decisions.
I'm going to turn the tables here and come back to you guys.
These were the questions that we sent out to you.
You know, where do you see challenges for the community?
Where do you see opportunities?
What are the largest successes that you've seen?
What have been some of the losses or setbacks?
Is there something you feel could be a transformative project for the community?
Who do you compete with right now as you think about, you know, either in your business,
if you're the hospital, who do you compete with?
If you're an employer here, who are you competing with for employees?
If you're the city and somebody's locating, you know, who comes to the list?
Where are they deciding about where they're going to go?
What other communities could we learn from?
In other words, is there somebody else out there in the DFW area or somewhere else
that you feel like we ought to become more like these guys,
or we ought to learn from that particular project?
And then who else?
And this goes back to your question, Council Member, like who else needs to be involved?
Who else do we need to talk to to make sure that we get this right?
So are you guys -- do you have your mobile phones with you by chance?
Can we use you as a game page real quick, if you don't mind?
And this is more of a test to see how much of this we can include going forward.
But if you can open up your browser and go to minty.com --
how many of you have done this one before?
Anybody?
Okay.
And then you don't put any spaces in for that code number, you just type 64130.
And let me know if you're having any trouble getting this open.
We'll be happy to help.
Cool.
Wow, no cap.
I can't tell my cat what I'm putting.
Anybody of you guys have been able to input it yet?
That's right, we're going to know what you got put in.
Yeah, so I think most of you guys are liars.
So there we go.
No, I looked up the national statistics recently,
and there actually are more cats as pets than there are dogs.
But I think that's because my wife is a cat lady and has thrown all the numbers out,
so we have a lot of cats.
All right, yeah, let's go to the next one.
And we actually have a couple of serious questions coming up here.
You have to choose one.
Just letting you guys know that you're matching our trends in the vacations.
Usually evenly split on the vacation,
unless we're in the desert, people tend to like going to the beach.
The beach.
Awesome.
Well, let's go ahead and go to the next one.
So rate each one of these just based on what you think.
This is not scientific, this is just more of your gut reaction.
Does it happen to kids?
Does this surprise anybody?
No.
What is the 3.1 percent?
Is that three votes?
That's the average.
That does surprise me.
Positive or negative?
I thought it would be higher.
An attractive place for young professionals to live and work,
and then has the capacity and resources necessary for economic development.
So these are all above average.
How did you factor in the retirement population?
We probably need to add another question.
The number of questions you can ask is a good place for retirees.
That's exactly right.
We did a lot of research on demographics
and who was choosing the types of cities that they were going to.
And there was this really interesting sort of mix over the last few years
where you have this young college-educated choosing a college town
that has the amenities that they're interested in and a certain vibe about it.
And then you have this baby boomer, what we call a zoomer,
an educated baby boomer who's looking for a place to retire.
They want the same things.
They want to be in that university town
because they want to have access to the restaurant they want to have.
They want to go back to the university, maybe take a couple of classes,
maybe teach at the university, you know, part-time.
So it's really interesting that.
And you guys have that vibe with that type of community.
So that's a great point there, Joe.
So what communities do you feel like Denton competes with for investment and for talent?
I think on this one you have to actually type in the name of the community.
Type in more than one.
Is it up to three or zero point three?
It looks like there's three.
Yeah, you can choose up to three.
I don't think you have to choose three.
[ Background noise ]
Oh, yeah.
[ Background noise ]
So I assume at Lyatt you feel like you're competing for investment.
Dallas is probably, you know, both.
It's funny that Frisco just passed Dallas.
[ Background noise ]
Although it looks like someone typed in Frisco, Plano, and Fort Worth in one line.
And so you can distribute that on those others.
I've not seen any surprises about you guys.
We need to ask better questions so there can be surprises.
All right.
Let's go to the last one here.
So what do you feel like would be a sign of success for this process?
[ Background noise ]
All right.
So yeah, this is a tweet.
Hashtag.
[ Background noise ]
Someone's reading my answers.
[ Background noise ]
Well, it looks to me like a lot of consensus in terms of what you're going to get here.
Clear vision, action-oriented plan, getting everybody on the same page,
having enough detail to where it's not just, you know, do something without the details of how you get it done
and how you structure yourself, you know, the best way to have that happen.
Greater understanding of planning for Newton, unified direction, measurable, aligned, stability.
Anything stick out to you guys?
All right.
Let's move on.
We have a feel for some of the big assets in the community.
But if you guys don't mind, I know you've done this before.
If we can just get kind of a quick rundown of what you think your biggest assets are from an economic development standpoint.
And we're just going to capture them here in a free form.
What was the code again I lost on my page?
Oh, for this one?
6413-0. Okay.
And what we will do for you guys, just FYI, is after we're done, we're going to give you a copy of the presentation.
And in that presentation, there will actually be a PDF slides of your answers to each one of these.
So you don't have to remember all the things that you put in there.
That's the cool thing about the particular program, it lets us keep everything and we can share it back with you.
So if you want to share it beyond this, you can.
So Jacqueline is just going to capture, I'll start it off, universities.
And there's probably specific programs within the universities that are assets.
So feel free to throw something out if you think it's worth drawing attention to.
What else?
So, and forgive me if I'm splitting hairs, but Denton's greatest economic assets as far as something like, what is a location?
Would location be one, or are we talking an actual, okay.
What is currently making an economic development?
If you think of it being an asset or a strength, you can fit both of those in that category.
Thank you.
So location.
Transportation.
Viable workforce.
Downtown.
Our music and arts culture.
Somebody asked you what's going on in Denton, what are you selling?
What are you talking about?
It's growing.
Airport.
Available land.
Available.
I would say investment capital.
The money's out there, our project is there.
You know, safety's good.
There's problems everywhere, but.
So you feel like it's mostly a safe, safe community?
I like the diversity of things.
And when you say diversity, do you mean?
Yes, I mean that.
Racial diversity?
Okay.
But our universities add to diversity.
We bring people in from all over the world.
They really do.
What else?
One of our health care systems.
So I'm going to bring on UNT, I mean, we've reached and have been Carnegie One status for several years now.
We have big PhD programs that are going out and nationally recognized.
We are the largest institution in the nation for, primarily for women, but not.
Not, no, that's awesome.
My mother-in-law was a graduate.
Back when it was called, teachers.
Yeah, it was like CIA, and then it was, yeah, it's had a couple of different names.
And the new Jane Nelson Institute, I think it's going to get some kind of publicity here as well for women.
Yeah, well, things like that would be good for us to hear about it because.
It may not be the greatest economic asset.
We have community colleges that feed into many places also.
I think those are really important programs.
I think we also, one big thing that I've noticed in this community is how much businesses are involved in community.
Sort of business engagement.
Yeah, the corporate citizenship, the corporate involvement.
They're in the United Ways, they're in the benefit leaves and rotaries, and they're very represented in the community.
Awesome Chamber?
Oh.
Awesome City.
That's right.
What else?
Unique culture.
I would say that we are different than what people predominantly.
I think you can kind of imagine Dallas culture, Fort Worth culture, and Denton is, we're teased for that,
but I actually like that we're a little different.
It's a little different vibe here, I think.
Well, there's a little different.
Where are many Austin?
That's what I was going to say, there's a city in central Texas that has figured out how to leverage that.
They need to go out and look for gains anywhere and get away with it.
There's no way you can't.
Right?
Whatever you want to call it.
Right.
We are somewhat green.
I don't know how green we are, but we're greenish.
We are pretty sustainable.
We're working on, we're a pretty big sustainable community compared to a lot of others.
I think, you know, you are what you think you are or what you say you are.
You have to be careful about your words.
If I say I'm a loser, then eventually I become a loser.
If I say I'm a winner, you know, then at least it gives me the possibility for going up.
So with this community, I would say that, you know, we have a lot of potential when it comes to high tech.
I wouldn't say we're there, but I see some tech potential.
I think that's the word I was looking for.
I think we have really good close proximity access to a lot of good state parks.
We have Lake Texonley and Ray Roberts within 25 miles of us.
We have hiking and biking trails.
So this isn't something that is, I don't know, it's not very well-known, but the horse country has $156 million in a year's economic impact.
Horse country?
Yeah.
It's not something that we.
The county.
Right.
This is part of the county.
I think that they're here.
What else on the visitor side?
You know, I think the athletics facilities, it's kind of a good bullet, but with the university
and the athletes there, it's a new practice facility in the fall stadium.
There's potential to use that.
Awesome.
And then that's power generation.
Yeah.
And also I have plenty of water for industrial use.
Yeah, so I was in Desi Land on Monday.
That's so much water.
At the top of their challenge list.
Right.
As opposed to the top of their assets list.
Water.
Yeah.
I don't have kids in high school, primary school, but we have a strong and growing public
school system as well, right?
I would say so.
I think our superintendent speaks on the cutting edge of technology in schools, and so I think
we have good confidence in our schools and the planning that's going on in anticipation
of the time.
I would say that Denton ISD feeds into that viable workforce comment over there, too,
because of the technology, advanced technology center.
They're actually training students to be in the workforce.
I'm going to say the ISD is one of our assets.
I'm not sure that that's thought of that way outside of it.
But as far as from an asset standpoint, if you're having a conversation with folks to
move a business or to move themselves, and they're in those years, that's one of the
top three.
Thank you.
After Howell Village.
Yeah.
The commencement ceremony.
Howell Village.
Yeah.
Before your doctors lived and your kids go to school.
Yeah.
And Chris, later this afternoon, we're going to probably drill down a little bit on the
workforce question.
I have some questions before that.
All right.
Well, this is just a warm-up, because we're going to be doing a lot of roundtables and
asking questions about what do you perceive from a particular sector?
What do you perceive as the challenges for this area?
And where do you see opportunities, and what do you think are the strengths?
So we'll be going through this throughout the process.
But this is a good warm-up for us, because sometimes things will come out here that we
had no idea, or maybe it's something that Jessica isn't going to mention to us, because
it's just off the radar screen.
But we'll go off and do the research around it, and then come back to you and say, yeah,
you said that was an asset.
I just want to let you know, you know, you may perceive it as an asset, but relative
to the other things that are going on, it's probably not as big of a deal to be talking
about.
Or, this is a really big deal.
I've had that happen, like, in the entrepreneurship community.
It's an asset.
But that's just those, you know, guys over there in that little co-working space, and
we don't really know what they're doing.
It's probably not a big deal.
And then we'll go in and do interviews, and we'll find out, wow, this company is a supplier
to Microsoft, and they're about to go big.
You had no idea in your community, because they hadn't talked to you yet.
So that's the kind of thing that will come out of these little discussions.
And we appreciate it.
It may be stuff that you do all the time, but we appreciate you willing to be patient
with us and us knowing about the community.
So the next question.
So as you think about going forward, what can we do that will take us to the next level?
In other words, where should we allocate our resources to move this community to the next
level?
Tech sector.
Tech sector?
When you think of tech sector, what do you?
Development, programmers, all of the support services for Amazon and Microsoft and Google.
Gotcha.
Thank you.
Make us a cultural center.
Cultural center.
Let me elaborate.
As an inner-city kid growing up in Houston, we were exposed to languages, Japanese, Spanish,
Latin, German, of which I regret that I didn't take advantage of all of them.
I'm fluent in Spanish.
I read, write, speak Spanish.
Many of my clients are Spanish-speaking.
And then we got exposed to the symphony, the ballet, the high science areas.
So for a poor kid to be in that environment, I was enriched.
So I would like to see a lot of the children here exposed to the languages and culture,
you know, where they can raise their level.
We don't have to go to Plano or to Dallas to become --
John, is there a specific, like, amenity or thing that would represent that for you?
That if two years from now or five years from now or ten years from now, you're able to pull it off?
I think if we could get something to enrich the masses, that's what I'm looking for.
We've got the resources and the vision to enrich our community so that they become different.
So I will challenge you, John, to be thinking as we go forward.
Is that in the form of a new museum?
Is that in the form of a -- you know, what does that look like?
Is it a new program within the school district that's going to reach out to particular communities?
So be thinking about that.
Okay.
All right.
I got you.
So you can model something like what we have at a common university, which is called Elm Fork.
And so we have about 15,000 kids, K through 8th grade, go through our one building per year.
Fifteen to 20,000 kids.
I don't know if any of your kids or grandkids have went through this science program.
And so all of the students in surrounding areas have field trips there.
It's a way to engage them in science.
You can do the same sort of thing, but in other culture sort of topics.
What was it called?
It was called Elm Fork.
Elm Fork, yeah.
It's just a way to do a mass amount of learning.
I'm going to throw out the airport again.
Just out of our second runway, I think there's a lot of opportunity.
Loop 288 has been planned for 30 years to go around there.
And that may be seen alive at the end of the tunnel.
There's a lot of opportunity for investment.
In light of what you were saying, what's driving a lot of the locations now is workforce.
Capturing the workforce that's coming out of the local universities is huge.
Just capturing your graduates, containing your graduates.
I think there's a lot of people who would like to graduate and stay here, but finding the jobs.
I don't know if we have the jobs for those folks.
It's a cool enough place to stay and affordable,
going to be speaking to the other parts of the metro class.
I'm going to throw out partnerships.
I think that we have a lot of really great stakeholders,
but if we work together, we can accomplish a little bit more.
I've heard talks of UNT doing a ton of stuff in Frisco
when we talk about tech sectors and hiring students and things out there,
but there's not a lot that we do here within Perseo and certain things.
I think there's more.
There's opportunities to do with other partners within our community, DMSD, UNT, TWA.
An economic development fund that's at the ready if incentives are necessary
to get the targeted employer here and a willingness to welcome them.
Discovery Park is the UNT engineering and research park.
I think there will be a lot of opportunities there.
They're doing well right now.
They started an engineering program from scratch out there.
It's big now, so we have lots of engineering faculty and students.
It's one of the fastest growing programs.
We started new programs in Biomedical Engineering College of Information out there also.
We just got a $10 million grant for additive manufacturing,
and that has a workforce component in it.
So that's a heavy investment in terms of the university really going forward.
We talked earlier in the year about with a firm that wanted to bring a medical campus to Denton,
and they were looking for a place to get them.
This is what you might think of as Las Galinas type stuff.
Being located around Discovery Park is an ideal place just from thinking out loud,
but a lot of that is zoned for single family.
When you see what's going on out there,
it's going to take some thought if we want to bring that kind of growth here.
They can't go out by the distribution centers.
Where would that go?
That would be a natural place, but we need to make sure that we can put them out there.
Right now, you've got the area that is Peter Belt and the other industry that's out there
that's appropriate for a certain type of user,
but that more tech, science-driven user, is there a place for them to go right now?
Discovery Park campus would be the perfect place to put a tech growth for large buildings or downtown,
and there's land around there that's right on the loop.
Some of that land is currently zoned residential,
so do you want to build a bunch of houses around that,
or do you want to save that space for tech space to let that thing grow up and around there?
It requires planning.
What else do you feel like?
Because now's the time.
You've got that crazy idea of something that could happen in this community.
You already laid it out.
Hunter and Cone Ranch is going to transform the southwestern side of Denton significantly.
I have another thought, Tom.
When it comes to how we communicate to others about ourselves,
I think we could possibly do a better job.
Not that I'm criticizing what we've done,
but I feel like we have to be a little more proactive in pushing Denton.
For example, if I tell you this bread is good for you, that's one presentation.
Another presentation says it has niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, all these different minerals and additives,
and it will make you, if you're 68 like me, it will make you feel like you're 40.
You can do this kind of advertising.
To me, it's a little different than to say you're a Denton.
So I think in the presentation, have you thought about Denton because of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?
Yeah, I think that's a great opportunity to tell the Denton story better.
I'll use this as an opportunity.
How do you feel like Denton is perceived right now by the greater Dallas-Fort Worth region?
Obviously, it depends on who you talk to.
Generally, is the business community thinking of Denton as they are,
or what do they think about it right now?
It's our way.
Are those impressions based on the current reality,
or is it based on something they experienced 10 or 15 years ago?
What's your general impression?
But a lot of what you hear is, and we've all heard this a million times,
and I hear it from people outside that believe it's difficult doing business here.
Difficult doing business, that's what you hear.
Don't make them bother, it's difficult to get through the processes.
Okay, I mean that's a permanent process.
And again, that's not, I'm saying this is a holdover.
We have a lot of new,
but I think that that's something that we have fought, at least in the past,
is that perception that we are a difficult place to do business.
I mean, yeah, this is not news to anyone here.
But it's out there.
Yeah, well, I will say that I have worked in communities,
but the Frisco's of the world have basically had how many acres that started from scratch,
and they were in a growth mode.
So anybody who approached them, yeah, we got the land, here's the incentives,
here's the package, here's the process, here we go.
Cities that have been around for a while, it's always more difficult.
You know, it's always more difficult because you're dealing with a legacy,
and you're dealing with a state that's having a redevelopment.
So it's not atypical for there to be a recession.
I would say something that we could do a better job of selling that aspect,
versus just come here to visit, eat at the restaurants, or see a concert.
I don't know that we do as good of a job of selling.
We're open for business, we're open for business.
Yeah.
We'd like to know more business and reputation.
Gotcha.
I want to throw out a weird one.
Oh, gosh.
More weird than Jill's.
I know.
You set the bar pretty high there.
[Laughter]
I'm going to say the Golden Triangle Mall.
Oh, that's a good one.
As retail and all those kind of things change,
that is a very valuable, very high-profile tract of land in the city,
and that could be a tech sector or something.
That could be transitioned into something easy for me to say,
oh, how to do something with somebody else's land or buildings or whatever,
but that may be ripe for redevelopment at some point in time.
Well, I do think you guys are at a point now where you have a lot of really good things happening.
And as a consequence, it's not that you can rest.
The pressure on infrastructure and everything else, you're overtaxed in a lot of different areas.
But this isn't just about the next two years or the next three years.
We really need to be thinking five, 10 years.
And so that mall is an opportunity over the next 10 years.
What could it be transformed into?
And if we're thinking now about it,
we could take actions that permit it from becoming something we don't want it to become.
But it's kind of like a point already about the discovery of the University of North Texas.
It's like, how is it summed around it?
Is it all going to become single-family or multi-family?
And before you know it, we don't have a spot to put the next kept project that might come here.
So now is the time to have those discussions so that you can make those decisions.
It's not weird.
Yeah, just on that note, though, following through for thinking down,
because right now that's the only place for retail, I mean for shopping.
And so if we're talking about getting rid of that, then we need to talk about another,
making sure another place to shop, you know, Macy's, Dillard's, to have a place to go shop for clothes.
So it's just kind of an all-in.
That area over there in the mall and the Dent Crossing is on my list to talk about.
The south side is my concern.
Now, I really like that Razor Ranch is there, but it's doing a lot of cannibalization,
and not just that there's also some retail issues out right now.
We've lost Motherhood Maternity Dress Barn, Famous Footwear, Golden Corral, and Fudd Ruckers,
all in Dent Crossing, and that's the one that the incentive just expired on.
So that's a concern on the south side that we're losing a lot of restaurants and shopping.
So we're talking about redevelopment, and we need to think about all of it.
We got excited at one time when the Razor Ranch development was going in
because it was supposed to be a mix, and that word really, you know, having lived in other places,
you know, when you have a place where you can get a nice meal, you can watch a show, you can shop,
and you can live in that community, that mix sounds very, very attractive.
So when I heard it, it really appealed to me, but it's taken us a long time to get there.
I don't know how many bankruptcies have we had out there at Razor Ranch, you know?
I mean, and the developers trying to develop that project.
I think there's been at least two or three, you know, and so we've not gotten there.
So I'd like to see a similar type of excitement over the transformation from a town
that used to be known as the sidewalks roll up at 6 o'clock, and we moved here in '83.
That's what we were told.
There was no McDonald's, and basically the city shuts down at 5 or 6.
So dealing with that kind of history, which a lot of people still hold on to, you know,
we've got to come up with a different moniker when people think of it.
I do know when I landed at DFW Airport yesterday, and I just pulled out the dent,
and I thought, well, we're going to eat tonight.
Of course, I went to the downtown, and I was like, what?
There's like a dozen places, and they don't close at 6.
And you're out there staying up until 10, 11 o'clock.
There's a couple of bars, and you're staying up until 2 a.m.
I was like, okay, things have changed.
Let's get the word out.
But I do think your point, going back to Razor Ranch and the history of that type of project
and what was promised in the beginning, and then there's the recession,
and there's the bankruptcies.
I mean, you've got to take that into consideration as you think about the next 20 years
and the kinds of projects you're going to support and the reality of what might happen
and the way it might happen.
What else? Anything else?
Yeah.
We're going to close up here over the next five minutes,
and so if you're not telling me things right now...
The North Texas Fair and Rodeo, the new plant facility.
I had no idea.
Good point.
That would be, I mean, to me, a huge expo center in North Arena or Rodeo.
Is it in Denton?
Yeah.
Okay, I thought it was in...
I looked 28.
It's close to signing in between Denton and signing your archipelago office.
It might not be Denton.
It'll bring visitors in.
It'll bring events, expos, you'll meet conventioneers.
The people who utilize it will stay in Denton and spend their time in Denton.
And then, I think it's something cute.
I know I said athletic facilities on the university, something like that,
but there's an opportunity for an athletic complex for basketball, volleyball,
indoor courts, again, to help attract some groups, national, regional groups.
It'll help improve the quality of our athletes, the students here.
We're at really, you talked about it, we're at a competitive disadvantage.
Right.
Kids growing up here.
We don't have a lot of practice facilities for our youth.
Well, anything else, Jimmy, anybody that hasn't spoken up?
So, I will let you know that this is the beginning.
And so, when we come back out next time, we're going to have another opportunity to hear from you.
We're also going to send this presentation out with the questions.
And if you've got additional things that come to you,
you'll be able to send that back to us and say, "Hey, I forgot to talk about this."
But we've got a series of roundtables scheduled for the rest of today and tomorrow,
so I'm sure we'll hear a whole lot more.
And then when we come back together with you guys next month,
we'll share everything that we've heard, you know, all the different concerns,
what they think the opportunities are, each of the different roundtables.
And then we'll be calling back from you guys for some individual interviews.
If there's somebody that wants to have a phone call with us,
we're happy to schedule that. If there's something else on your mind,
something you want to share, a project, anything else.
We really, like I said, we're drinking from a fire hose right now,
and that's the way we like it, because this is the discovery of the period.
This is when we really want to hear from you.
So, can I ask one, actually more so for the group,
as someone that's been here three years, what I see is a number of,
and if we look at this in the five-year window, not the next year,
but in the five-year window, a number of our professionals,
physicians, CPAs, attorneys, I look at it from the healthcare side.
It is designed several years back where those practices are single practice groups.
And as we look at going from an 80,000 to 140,000 population,
the ability to recruit into those is difficult,
and I don't know about the other professionals as well,
but also the ability over the next five years to backfill at the accurate pace,
I think is something that the city can look at and engage in as well.
And then, secondarily to that, where do these folks live
in the type of houses and communities that they want to live in as well?
Anything on that?
I haven't heard housing from up yet, but that's critical.
Housing is an issue.
We've heard that from one of the other medical facilities as well,
is we can attract the top talent physicians and medical professionals,
but they don't live here.
We want to live in a tiny, good, good area.
Yeah, and the number of communities right now
that are addressing what's called workforce housing,
you know, having a spot for teachers and for emergency responders and others,
that gap in the middle.
Low income got covered, some of the high-end income they have covered,
but there's a big gap in the middle.
And I haven't looked at the numbers here and whether that's an issue for you guys or not.
Interesting further conversation would be the slide that you showed
where it showed workforce living and working and didn't.
It hadn't changed.
It didn't seem like the middle column.
It didn't change.
It hadn't changed hardly any.
I think that's what we talked about, being able to keep our talent here
and providing the proper, you know, homes and residences
so people can buy and live here and work here.
No, that's great, and that's the stuff we'll keep digging into.
And, you know, thankfully the city has shared with us all the other documents,
comp plan, other studies that have been done,
so we have a lot of homework to go through that and make sure that, you know,
we understand everything else that's going on.
But it's moving fast right now.
I mean, I get to work in a lot of cities across the state, across the country,
and you guys really, there's that sense when you come to this community right now
and I'm being told about new high school being built,
I'm told about, you know, extension of the runway, I'm told about, you know,
of course I'm getting the economic development.
Okay, it's part of it.
You know, expansion of 288 coming around, the coal and hunter.
I mean, how many units?
Seven thousand?
Seven thousand units, what that's going to do to that corridor.
I mean, you just got six miles closer to Fort Worth, you know,
with that one development.
And you, development is going to happen here.
We are in the state of Texas and it is going to happen
because we don't necessarily have the same tools that,
we don't want the same tools that California or the Pacific Northwest has.
So the development is going to happen and it's really about directing it
and doing it in a smart way.
And that's been our experience and you guys are in that path of growth
on this side of town and you've got something that nobody else really has in the DFW area.
You've got that authentic sort of downtown and university, college town,
quirkiness, weirdness, inclusivity, diversity.
You've got some things that people across the country right now
are making decisions about where they live based on those factors.
And they haven't done that in the past.
It was all about where can I get a job and where can I, you know, make the most money.
Now it's, you know, I can live in the DFW area and work for a company out of Chicago.
You know, all I need is access to that.
And if I, do I want to live in, you know, a recently manufactured community?
Do I want to go to a place that feels like they're paying attention to redevelopment
and they're paying attention to the music scene and the other things?
So you guys got it going on and I think that there's a unique point in history right now
for you guys to make sure you maintain that sort of sense, place that you have
while at the same time taking advantage of a lot of the growth that's going to happen.
Tom, I have a question.
When Austin makes its pitch to potential companies,
do they employ Flugerville and Round Lock and the surrounding areas
to help them with their draw?
Yeah, because a lot of times for Austin, and Charlie knows this since he was in Round Lock,
the best location may not be in the city of Austin.
Yeah.
[inaudible]
Austin's really good about realizing this is not going to fit here,
but make sure it stays in the market and not go to school.
[inaudible]
Are we tapping our neighbors to make sure we have as much leverage as possible?
Yeah, he's talking about the expo center.
That's a huge influx for them, but you're not having to play for it.
I mean, it's going to be covered.
Yeah, and I can't remember if it was a commissioner or if it was you, Erica,
that talked about the opportunity for collaboration.
Or is this getting?
[inaudible]
Yeah, just knowing what your neighbors are up to.
And a lot of times you're going to continue to compete,
but just knowing what they're up to and being able to share a little bit of information
and saying, "Hey, you guys are further ahead than we are on developing your convention,"
or whatever it is, like, "Wow, we need to give that up.
Let you guys take that, and we'll take this other asset."
So this is a perfect start for us.
I know you've got other issues that are probably burning,
and we're going to have opportunities to hear everything throughout this process.
But I will let you know that this is where I have some of the dates.
We are going to be back the 11th through the 13th.
And remind me, Jessica, is there a date in there?
The 12th is the date.
Is that our normal meeting?
That's the second Wednesday.
Yeah, so we'll send a notice back out to you guys just so that you have this calendar
and you can make sure that you've got it.
But over that period of time, we're going to do additional focus group meetings and interviews.
We'll bring you guys back together, and then we're going to share with you
some of the things that we've heard.
And we'll do some additional research on some of the projects.
And then we'll be back for what we call an opportunity workshop in March.
That's what we're saying.
Okay, here are the things that make the most sense for you to apply resources to going forward.
Let's start thinking about what does that really mean for you to commit to that.
And we'll have sort of a prioritization workshop in April and then a final there in May.
That's where we are.
Thank you guys very much.
And we do have another meeting here in about 15 minutes with the Chamber.
But we're going to stick around for a few minutes.
So if there's something else you wanted to say, feel free to come catch us.
We'll send all of this back out to you along with the questions again.
Tell us what you're thinking.
If you want to get on phone with us at any point, just let Jessica know and we'll arrange that.
We'll be back here in about a month.
And I will reiterate that when we say we want your honest feedback,
we mean it in whatever capacity you want to give it in.
If you feel more comfortable providing it in writing or if you want to talk to Tom on the phone,
certainly reach out to me.
This board is meant to help us guide this plan forward.
And so you're serving as the steering committee.
So if you are hearing things or you hear from your colleagues or coworkers or fellow professionals in your industries,
if you're hearing things, we want to know what they have to say.
This is meant to be an open process, a transparent one.
This is about this community having a plan to move forward for.
So if you have information, please share it.
And I sincerely mean that in whatever capacity that you want to share that information.
Thank you guys very much.
Thank you.