City Center Redevelopment Authority

0:00 (upbeat music) - Okay. Echo. You have the Sharash.

0:30 Or is it me? - Or is it me? - Oh, how about now? There, yeah. You've been muted. All right, welcome to the City Center Redevelopment Authority Board Meeting for July 16th, 2026. So let's begin with roll call. Callie. - Thank you. President Fazio. - Here. - Board Member Curpain. - Here. - Board Member Copenhaver. - Here. - Board Member Slick. - Here. - Board Member Anderton. He's online, he just said he's unable to hear us now. - Thumbs up.

1:28 - We'll move on to Heather Friend. - Here. - And Alyssa Piska, let us know that she would not be here today. - Thank you, so can we do an excused absence for Alyssa? Do I have a motion? - So moved. - Second? Or I can't second. - Second. - Okay, all in favor say aye. - Aye. - All right, thank you. And we can move straight to the, Patrick. - Can we just pause for a second? - Sure. - Can you hear us? - You can't hear us, nobody can hear us, right? - Oh. We have to do this all over again. (somber music)

2:24 - All right, thank you for the wait. And we're back to our next agenda item, is the approval of the May 21st minutes. Do I have a motion? - I'll make a motion to approve. - Second. - Second, any discussion? Okay, all those in favor say aye. - Aye. All right, minutes approved. All right, so our next item is Patrick with the Executive Director Report. - Thank you, President Fazio, and appreciate the patience as we work through these issues, but I think somebody mentioned we do have a light agenda, so we should be fine in working through everything. I am, I guess we'll just go through the subcommittee report, the development report, and then I have a number of other project updates. So on the subcommittee front,

3:24 subcommittee did actually meet this month and got a preview of the presentation you're gonna see on the active ground floor study. So we'll let the subcommittee weigh in at that time. There were actually two members there. So that's really the subcommittee report. On the development activity report, you have that, obviously it's been two months, so I would hope it would be a little bit fuller than others, and it is. So that's actually a positive sign. So I'll quickly run through a couple of the projects on here as you can see in the pre-development phase. A couple smaller projects, the one on Northeast 62nd and the one on, the first one on Mill Plain. I just wanna say what we're seeing,

4:22 we're slowly seeing more permit activity, but a lot of what's penciling is lower density, and that's a relative term, but it's more if it's some smaller projects, but also more walk-up projects, surface park projects. So you can see those first two projects are smaller. And then even the last one, the Mill Plain Mixed-Use Project that's being led by Romano, that's a kind of relatively lower density project, and it has a number of different uses in there. But those are all the pre-app, meaning those in the past two months, those actually came into the system for the first time. Moving down, there's a couple of, or three commercial projects, including the collective, right? Isn't that, that's on the Killian property. So excited to see that moving forward.

5:21 But the one at the top, this Park Crest Enclave, it's interesting that it's not a very big project, but it's, as you can see in the notes there, it's being developed according to a new state statute that allows for co-living, which like, so single room, basically what used to be single room occupancy, so it allows for shared living spaces. So it's interesting to see that project coming forward and taking advantage of that new allowance in the code. There's also, you can see townhouses associated with that. And then the last one in this section in land use is the project called Grant Street Apartments. It's actually the, I think this is, yeah, this is the one on the Columbian property. So this is on the Columbian parking lot property, so next to the ARIA.

6:19 So we've had some early conversations with them, but this is, they're moving through that process right now. A building plan review. Once again, there's a industrial building in Fruit Valley that we're seeing in there. Kind of medium density, multi-family project there. And then another one of the projects in the Palisades and in East Vancouver. And then building inspection. These are projects that are actually under construction or moved into construction during this timeline. And so once again, you can see a number of smaller commercial projects. And then this project, the Mill Plain Commons project, which is 143 units.

7:19 So it's nice to see that one being built with, it's obviously a mixed use building. And then you have two relatively large C-TRAN maintenance projects that are on the list. So nice to see more activity than we have. Like I said, this is two months worth of activity, but it does feel like we're seeing more projects that are moving through it in the pipeline. And if you look at the map, it's actually nice to see projects throughout the city happening as well. So that's the development pipeline report. As a reminder, the pipeline is bigger than this. This is projects that move from one stage to the other during this timeline. So there are more projects under construction. And you now get the development activity report that we all see. So you can see where we're at, particularly on the housing side, we're over 600 units completed so far this year,

8:17 which exceeds last year. It's really lumpy. So we have one, a couple of months that are zero, but then you've got a big project. So, but still we can see that we're on the upswing. So that's a good sign. So just some other project updates and other updates for you. So I sent an email to you, I was just looking this up, I think probably a month ago on our wayfinding survey. The way you received a presentation on the wayfinding study and plan that we're developing downtown. And then we're sending out a survey to a variety of stakeholders. So hopefully you've had a chance to fill that out. If you haven't, please do. Or if you need me to resend it, let me know. But we'll be reporting back to you later in the year on what we're learning from stakeholders. And then there'll be an early kind of look

9:14 at what things might be proposed as part of that plan. The next update is that I think since the last time we met, city council adopted the new comprehensive plan. So it's massive achievement. Really it's a kind of a massive overhaul of our entire zoning kind of land use system and the city's policies around growth. I'll be sending you an email later today with links to the different documents if you want to dig in further. That, just the way that we do things administratively, council adopted it June one. It becomes effective August one. So any development applications that come in starting August one will be subject to the new code.

10:13 And we've begun a lot of communication efforts to try and make sure everybody in the development community knows that this is an effect and trying to promote the opportunities under the most significant, in addition to us updating and we think simplifying the zoning for a lot of areas that already were zoned for multifamily, we are, we obviously have upzoned nearly all single family zoning throughout the city. So that provides the opportunity for lower scale multifamily development in huge swaths of the city. And so what people generally refer to as middle housing. So we are beginning a very targeted communication effort to really reach out to existing and potential developers of mental housing to let them know about the new opportunities and really try and create

11:10 a simplified way of them interacting with the city. These are likely to be smaller scale developers, maybe developers who are new to Vancouver. And so we'd like to be able to do a little hand holding and help them work through some of these issues. We're also, we have in some internal teams that we've convened to work through some of the questions that pop up, that will pop up as a result of this, which relate to shared sewer connections or shared garbage service or things like that, which middle housing creates those. 'Cause traditionally we've had a single family way and then a multifamily way. And this is kind of in between the two. And so we're, we need to work through those issues and be able to present a fairly predictable path for middle housing developers. And we also wanna make sure that we're not unwittingly kind of undermining the aims of the comprehensive plan

12:07 by making middle housing development more expensive per unit or, you know, in terms of the different fees and whatnot, but also creating disincentives for that kind of development. So we'll be, you know, probably have an opportunity to present some of the implementation steps that we're taking at a later meeting. But we're working on all that right now and are trying to be ready when August rolls around so that we can, you know, communicate to potential developers, like I said, in a predictable way. Also, the news, since you last met, the city did adopt, and the, technically speaking, adopted an alternative path for constructing multifamily buildings that are six-story entirely wood frame. So it's the new six-story wood frame code. It basically offers developers the opportunity

13:05 to use either the existing Seattle code or the existing Tacoma code. Those are two different ways of addressing some of the risks that, you know, the inherent risks in building that way. So the, you know, fire risk and things like that. And we're giving developers the option of taking either path or they have different mitigations. And so they might, different developers, it might work differently for different projects. So that's now in effect, and we're trying to get that word out to developers that we know are working on projects. It's obviously a very important code update for Lincoln, our partner with Waterfront Gateway. And so Lincoln is now, it's, I guess it rolls into my next update that Lincoln is now beginning the design work based on the new code.

14:01 And we're talking with them around what their timeline will be for the updated design and then getting into our permitting process. Right now we are, and we'll bring them in in the fall sometime when we get, when they have the ability to share more with you, both in terms of timeline and design. But at this point, I think we're looking at a year from now breaking ground would be a rough way to think about it. So we have a lot of city hall employees who are anxious to know when the parking lot is going away. And so that's what we're telling them is you're not gonna be able to park here at this time next year. So I've been saying that for actually a long time. So I really am kind of chicken little, but I really hope that we're right this time. So, but we've removed all the roadblocks and so it is, I feel fairly confident,

14:59 but we'll bring the team back in in the fall and they can give you a full update on that project. And I do think you should be able to weigh in on the new design when it's ready. With regard to the rest of the property, there is, and President Fazio, you probably heard some of this in your previous meeting this morning, the, with the Downtown Redevelopment Authority. We are, we now have the site behind city hall back under city control. And the Downtown Redevelopment Authority, which owns the Hilton Hotel and the Convention Center, and then has control over the property immediately south of the Convention Center where what's called the Weber Building is they're planning an expansion of the Convention Center. And so that's a project that I think

15:56 is of significant interest to CCRA and to what we do with the site behind city hall. There's also been talk floating around about some property behind city hall being a potential home for a performing arts center, that there's a site analysis that is underway with outside consultants to look more closely at sites behind city hall in addition to other sites around downtown. And so we are kind of watching that process and are anxious to hear if any of the sites behind city hall including the sites that are up against Columbia or the site right behind city hall so that we can know what the next steps are for planning for behind city hall. So we would expect sometime in the fall to have some more clarity on that.

16:56 Assuming a site decision gets made, there's a site decision on the performing arts center, there's a go, no go decision, whatever. Whenever we get more clarity on that, we'll either have the opportunity to go back and plan for the full site behind city hall including the city properties that were formerly known as block Z for those of you who've been on the board with or without a performing arts center. But either way, we're gonna return to site planning for the properties behind city hall and we plan to do it in collaboration with DRA because not only should that happen but I think it gives all the projects more opportunities. The property lines are kind of artificial in this sense so we can think more creatively about

17:55 maybe the convention center should expand somewhat to the west and maybe we should be redeveloping some of those properties that are south of the convention center for other purposes or maybe not but at least gives us a better way to integrate the planning. So I would, right now as I sit here, I would guess that we could initiate full site planning for all the properties behind city hall and sometime in early '27 and we need budget to do that as well and so we've made a budget ask within the city to do that work as well. So there was kind of convoluted explanation. Happy to answer questions about that now but the short answer is we will get back to planning the full site in collaboration with DRA and I think it'll begin in '27.

18:49 A couple other updates outside of downtown. We are still working on the different properties in the Heights and we're bringing a development agreement to city council for the second half of the site that's at the south east corner of Mill Plain and Divine. That's a project led by Related Northwest and the VHA. We also continue to negotiate with Palish on the home ownership sites that are basically where the Vanco driving range used to be east of Divine and we've kicked off reconstruct reconstruction of the Mill Plain MacArthur intersection. So that's in the northwest corner of the Heights site. That's the first infrastructure project

19:44 to begin in the Heights and then we will expect to put out requests for bids for the Grand Loop which is the main internal infrastructure project for the Heights. We will put that out in the fall and we would expect to be under construction on the Grand Loop in probably second quarter of '27 and that's fully funded. Our federal grant money came through for that and then we are also contemplating filling the funding gap for what's called Civic Plaza which is the main open space in the middle of the Heights and try to put that out for bid in early '27 so that we can hopefully sync up the development of that with the development of the Grand Loop which is circling around it. So we can't put it out together. They're kind of different funding sources

20:42 but we wouldn't mind having construction happening together so that we can, they can go through all that once. So we're finally, the development projects may still need some additional funding to close gaps but we're pretty confident that we can move the infrastructure projects forward starting next year. So that'll be a great milestone for us. Then another update, the subcommittee heard a little bit about this but we have an RFP out right now for a site that we purchased on Fourth Plain and Falk Road. It's a site that is right next to what's now, what used to be the Bi-Mart, the Bi-Mart has closed and we purchased an adjacent site, about a three-acre site and we have that out for proposals to develop affordable housing there but it's intended to be workforce housing and so the way we've structured the RFP

21:38 is we've made the main kind of criterion cost per square foot 'cause we're trying to get more cost-efficient projects and so we're asking developers to propose in a way that can lower the cost of construction and we've indicated that we're not providing any direct subsidy into that and we don't want this project to compete for subsidy from the state 'cause we have a big kind of pipeline backlog of those projects and so we don't wanna add more and more competition to those projects. So that RFP is open until early September. We had our information session, we had about 45 people in that session so there seems to be a lot of interest but it will generate, we think, some interesting proposals and it could be another project like some of these low, you know, medium density projects that are more of kind of walk-up style

22:38 and we're fine with that, we're trying to figure out how to unlock more housing development in this time period and particularly ones that don't rely on subsidy.

22:52 So that's that, we kicked off our biannual budget process. The city does, you know, has two-year budgets so our next biannual budget starts January 1 of 2027 so we're in the middle of the budget process now. We are putting in requests to continue to work on all the redevelopment projects that you're aware of including Waterfront Gateway, the Heights. We also are planning to kick off the kind of site plan planning and community engagement for the city's existing operations center on Fourth Plain which will be vacated in a couple of years when we finish the new operations center and so that becomes a redevelopment site so we'll kick off that and some of the other work that we're doing as well so I can give you more detail on our budget, kind of what comes out of the budget process that relates to redevelopment

23:49 when we get later in the year. And then the last thing is I, and I, board member Anderton doesn't have a copy of this and I'll send this out to you, Ken, after the meeting but we have the updated work plan for CCRA for the remainder this year and next year. As always, it is kind of a guess as to what updates and projects will be ready for your review right now. We're hoping to have an update on our parking activities. There's a lot going on there and it relates to a lot of the downtown work as well as this Waterfront Gateway update that I mentioned and we'll talk with Lincoln and see if September is a good timeframe for them to come back. We will ask you to formally endorse the active ground floor study

24:49 that you're gonna be hearing about today which is in draft form. We'll get you the full copy of the report in electronic version after today and then give you a chance, a couple months, to take a look at it and then we'll just, it may not take a lot of time in the September meeting but ask you to just take a vote on that just to adopt that and provide direction to staff to work on that. And then you can see we'd like to come back later in the year with some updates on our economic development strategy. Hopefully we'll know more about IBR at that time and then we get back into the next year, 27 of some of the things that we typically do at the beginning of the year. So I'll send this out electronic form as well later today and just let me know if you have any questions about the agenda or if you have items that you'd like us to bring to you and we can add those to the calendar.

25:48 That's all I have. Because the agenda was light, I thought I could take a little longer today so hopefully you don't mind. - Any questions for Patrick?

26:06 (muffled speaking) All right, with that, can we go to community communications? Is there anyone here or online? - Nobody in person or online. - Great, thank you. So we're set for the active ground floor study with Chim. - Does this work? All right, cool. Thank you. So I'm Chim Ching Ko, Real Estate Project Manager with Economic Prosperity in Housing here with Matt Ferris, Vice President with BAE Urban Economics

27:06 and we're here to talk about the Vancouver ground floor active use study. So this study is a follow up to our downtown redevelopment study that was completed last year and it really, the intent of this is to help provide the city kind of information and tools to identify what we should be focusing on in terms of non-residential uses for downtown given the city's priorities and provide a toolbox for how we, or a toolkit for how we could impact those uses and further progress the city's initiatives. So we'll be kind of providing a brief overview of the project scope, kind of looking at some key high level findings and initial findings, go a little bit into how the industry targets

28:03 were identified and then review the recommended city actions and strategies before diving into the, in more detail, the near term recommendations and proposed next steps. So to provide some context for this, as envisioned through the recent comprehension, let me restart. As envisioned in the recent comprehensive plan adoption and the economic redevelopment strategy, downtown plays a critical role in absorbing the projected growth both in terms of housing and jobs. So this growth creates a lot of opportunity but also a lot of change from kind of our existing form to a higher density environment. So with that, I think there's a lot of intentionality that needs to be brought to ensure

29:03 that the ground floor continues to provide essential needs and services, as well as employment opportunities for residents of downtown and Vancouver as a whole. So that is really, we also understand that kind of nationally and regionally, trends are changing. So how do we fit into this evolving environment and while still achieving the desired outcomes? So as such, the scope of this study is to review kind of current market conditions, identify national best practices, as well as case studies that we can pull from to kind of guide our approach, and then identify which of these learnings can best be applied in Vancouver and are most relevant to our local context,

30:01 and then identify a list of recommendations and near-term actions that we can take to further the comprehensive plan and economic development goals. So from kind of an initial study, which we kind of reviewed a bit last time we came to you, kind of the initial ground floor trends really are that we found, or that ground floor space needs and kind of demand is shifting. So it's an evolving market. They're kind of the historic approach is not always the best approach or having the same outcomes that it has historically. Additionally, the city really has an emphasis on living wage jobs, which is I think a shift from

30:58 kind of how economic development has been looked at previously of we're just increasing wages. Like yes, that's important, but we really need to look at kind of what do people need to make to afford to live here and making sure that the wages and the cost of living are aligned. And then as well as creating kind of identifying support or which key industries we are looking to grow and supporting the local small business environment. And then finally, the city is already regulating ground floor uses in various ways through the downtown design guidelines and certain overlays in the comprehensive plan. So kind of reviewing those to make sure that they are aligned with our economic goals.

31:57 With that, I'll hand it off to Matt. - Good to see you all. It's a great background from Jim Choon and I think really talks about why we're doing this work. From my perspective, this work is sort of culminating in two really interesting and important findings. One is what we're calling the target industries. What kind of industries in addition to the retail and the restaurants that shape downtown, what other industries exist? What industries are growing that meet some of those other economic development goals? So I'm gonna go through at a high level that the target industries we've created this really sort of extensive matrix with ourselves, a small business consultant who sort of helps businesses locate where they locate and an architect who's helping understand what are the needs of those different businesses as they grow and what can attract them to downtown. So with that, we showed this graphic last time we were here. It was really this, how can we identify industries

32:54 and sectors and jobs that meet three different core goals? One is strengthening those existing nodes, creating a unique identity in downtown, sort of a sector of downtown. But as Jim Choon laid out, how can we also think about downtown as a way to meet our economic development goals and also capture in that emerging industry and the growth of emerging industries and identify the industries that also are in those categories that have living wages that are growing but also fit into downtown. And then lastly, how can downtown continue but also expand the inventory of essential services, needs, you think day cares, places like that that also support a growing population and a more sort of economically diverse downtown. So with that, when you all get the report in the coming days, weeks, you'll see a much more detailed target industry matrix, but this is just kind of a high level of the information that's included in there. I think it ends up being 30, 40 rows of information

33:53 on key industries that are growing, where they're growing, what kind of businesses they are. And then we go into what kind of needs, what kind of space needs, what kind of utilities do those different companies need? I think when you look at downtown and sort of traditional new development, they may not have certain utilities that say light manufacturing might need, and yet that's an industry that's growing, pays living wages, and certainly can fit into a kind of growing urban area. So just at a really sort of high level, some of the industries and groupings of industries that we've highlighted, retail restaurants, that's obviously a critical part of downtown. And I think as Chim Choon alluded to, sort of align with some of the ground floor requirements that the city has laid out in the comprehensive plan, primarily along Main Street around Esther Short Park, where you want that sort of sense of vibrancy. Outside of that, we've identified arts, entertainment, and recreation as concentrated in downtown, but also areas for continued growth. Patrick mentioned some of the performing arts centers

34:52 and some of the growth and sort of goals for downtown in that sector. I think there's an opportunity for offices and sort of advanced manufacturing to be in the ground floor of some of these buildings. We also found sort of that national trends, and certainly you see that locally here in the Portland Metro, of a very robust, small-scale advanced manufacturing, small-scale food beverage manufacturing, and how can those industries fit into downtown, but also what kind of needs do those companies require? Lastly, we see, again, sort of using the case studies and some of the other work background research that we've done, you see other specialty civic uses. You're starting to see public-private partnerships where cities are getting involved in maybe occupying the ground floor. So again, I'm really excited to sort of you all to gain access to this industry matrix. There's so much more information included in it, but we wanted to talk about what's so powerful about it

35:51 and the intended use for the city. This is meant to be a toolkit. It's meant to be a tool for the city to use in a variety of ways. One, of course, activate ground floor spaces. As space becomes vacant, now the city can say, oh, this is a 4,000-square-foot space, and it's got these utilities. Let's go back to the matrix and see what kind of industries might fit here, and can we go do some targeted outreach to businesses that meet those criteria or looking to grow in downtown or grow in the city, and can we attract them to downtown? As new development hopefully continues to ramp up in downtown, how can the city use this matrix to find sites that can support some of these more innovative or new industries that help us meet a variety of goals in downtown? It also identifies public-private partnership opportunities. You think about Waterfront Gateway or other city-owned property, well, maybe the city can use those to support some of these other economic development goals, and you can use this matrix to understand what uses might want to go on what site.

36:48 And then lastly, of course, using it to increase jobs and amenities to residents in downtown. That's sort of the use, obviously actions, somewhat I've already touched on, but I think the city can really use this toolkit and this industry matrix to begin doing proactive outreach. We've identified target industries. We looked through the city's business license data and found industries that maybe weren't in downtown that fit some of these criterias. We could be doing some outreach to them. The city could be looking at infrastructure upgrades, either building-specific or sort of holistically in downtown to support some of these industries that maybe need bigger water, sewer, utility capacity, but the sites themselves don't have that. The city could be looking at investing in that infrastructure. Certainly coordinating with existing landowners, building owners, as a building becomes vacant, using that industry matrix to think creatively about who might want to go here, and same story with prospective developers. We've already mentioned strategically leveraging

37:47 publicly-owned land, identifying other investments or incentives, thinking about putting manufacturing, and we've done this in an advisory for San Francisco. It's expensive to put a ground floor manufacturing space in a residential building, but it's been done, and it's actually co-located with office as well, but it took some incentives from the city, and so the city needed to step up in that case to incentivize the delivery of that space. This doesn't just happen by land use or necessarily by land use and sort of advocating for these uses. Are there properties or moves the city can make to incentivize that kind of delivery of space? And then lastly, identifying partnership opportunities. Some of the industries we highlight are in the healthcare profession or daycare providers. Can we be thinking about opportunities to partner with those entities, bring them downtown, and think about how they incorporate and sort of meet some of the growing needs of downtown?

38:45 So that's this industry matrix that really talks about individual industries that are growing, how they meet economic development goals. Then we talk about, well, how can the city be supporting those industries? And so then we have this list similar to what we did for the downtown redevelopment assessment where, what can the city be doing in different categories to help meet these goals? To begin, I wanna note that we did a tremendous amount of case study research and no city has cracked this code. No city has said, oh, we made this one little thing, and now we have a thriving urban growing environment that's maintained vibrancy, but yet has living wages. Like a lot of cities, we thought we'd dig in and say, oh, you know, so-and-so is doing it, let's model it after that. In reality, everybody's kind of grappling with this and figuring out multiple approaches. What I think it had us come back and realize is, well, you need to leverage what's going on locally and regionally.

39:44 What are the strengths locally? We looked at, you know, in Omaha, Nebraska, they're partnering with the university who's trying to grow, but in certain areas. In other areas, you've got, you know, advanced manufacturing or the tech sector is growing, but you really need to look locally and say, what's working here and what's growing? Every city I think that we look at still does recognize that you need to strengthen your existing retail and restaurant nodes. It's what makes downtown interesting and what brings people here and by concentrating and strengthening, you're building a more robust environment. With all of that research, grounded locally, understanding what's going on locally, we came up with various recommendations in five different categories. One is sort of, what can the city be doing from a land use perspective to support these industries? Two, what can the city be doing from a process perspective? Can the city be streamlining, permitting for specific projects that maybe meet these goals? And we'll go through quickly some of the sub ideas within these categories. Similar to that prior comment or their financial incentives,

40:44 the city can be thinking about either, you know, under Washington code that allows certain fee waivers or property tax exemptions for specific projects. And then are there investments the city needs to be making to kind of, again, support these industries? And then lastly, we know a lot of these ideas take capital. And so what can the city be doing? Are there ways where the city can be raising funding to then go back and be meeting some of these investment and economic development goals? So way too many different ideas and strategies. They're again gonna be wrapped up into the report and even in the report, we take each strategy, we summarize it and we give it, we sort of score it on is it a near term, medium term, long term? Does it have a high, medium, low impact on existing businesses? Does it help meet economic development goals? So there's a lot more in the matrix. But you know, the first idea around land use, things like allowing flexibility, potentially exempting target industries that we find that don't necessarily meet into the comp plan requirements.

41:42 So I'll continue through these 'cause at the end, we'll talk about the ones that we think present near term opportunities. City processes, of course, what can the city again be doing? Permit streamlining, conducting outreach, aligning public management of ground floor spaces, et cetera, increasing pop ups. Then we look at financial incentives, that's leveraging city owned land, coordinating with other public and nonprofit landowners. We certainly learned as part of the downtown redevelopment assessment, there's a lot of publicly owned land, not necessarily city, but county feds, et cetera, in downtown. Then we look at direct and indirect investments. So is that purchasing, leveraging city owned sites, doing different programs, facade improvements, grants, et cetera, to help attract businesses to downtown that align with these goals. And then lastly, we identify a series of potential mechanisms for raising city funding. We know the city's been looking at some of these already.

42:39 We know, for example, TIF in Washington is sort of challenging to raise funds, but there may be reform needed, and I know that conversation is being had at the state. So I just wanna end with talking about what we think are the sort of near term recommendation you're thinking about. How do you use these 40 different strategies and potential actions for the city? So the first one is really thinking, and part of this is what's being done across the country is allowing flexibility in the ground floor. And I think you've heard from Chim Choon, the comp plan, Patrick, the comp plan was doing this, and we actually had the ability to provide some feedback, certainly from the architectural perspective on transparency requirements and specific requirements that made their way into the comp plan. So the city's doing a lot of this already. In our report, we do talk about what industries align with the new comp plan requirements. So does this industry, would this industry wanna locate in an area that now meets the comp plan's ground floor

43:39 required or ground floor ready, or does it wanna be somewhere else? So now we're sort of tying in how these industries align with the new requirements from the city and thinking about how the city can support those industries. I think there's a tremendous opportunity to be just sort of playing deal maker, talking to businesses, talking to landowners about what their visions for their properties are, or if they're businesses who are intending to grow and need space in the near future, could we attract them to downtown? Same story on the industry representatives, being in contact with CREDC who are talking to businesses, that's certainly the large scale businesses coming to Vancouver, but also working with other industry representatives. And then as I alluded to, talking to the industries themselves, what kind of businesses exist here that fit into these categories that are growing, and are there ways where they fit into the urban fabric in downtown? Thinking about opportunities with local organizations to fill vacant storefronts as they pop up in downtown, primarily with local small businesses.

44:38 I think the city's done a tremendous job of this already, but leveraging publicly owned sites for development and thinking about how can those sites not just maybe meet housing demand, but also meet some of these economic development goals. We've talked a lot about acquiring other property, that was one of the main recommendations in the downtown redevelopment assessment, but how can those privately owned sites or buildings that maybe are under public ownership that can meet some of these economic development goals and meet some of the industries that we've identified. And then lastly, it seems really important to start studying in more depth the potential revenue generation mechanisms that we've highlighted. So for now, those are sort of the near term recommendations that we've made. From a next step perspective, I think Patrick and Jim Choon both alluded to it, hoping to get you a complete draft that goes through this in a little bit more detail, has a lot of background that Jim Choon went over around market conditions here, what's going on nationally, and then ultimately provides a lot more detail on both the industries that we've identified and the recommendations.

45:38 So with that, I will pause and see if anybody has questions, comments. Certainly willing to incorporate feedback into the report before it gets to you in the coming days, weeks. - Anyone? David Smiley, go ahead. - I was curious, how are you guys running this program? Is it one person who's kind of the centralized point of contact or are you, I'm assuming you're not running it, so what else is going to be around? Or kind of like coordinating all of these efforts within downtown? 'Cause it's a lot of different pieces. - Yeah. So I think for this particular study, I think Matt's team, and Matt is the lead for the sub-consultants and running this work. I think in terms of all the other stuff happening downtown,

46:38 it is a bit of a mix. The comprehensive plan obviously had its own process that encompassed a lot of the downtown activities. But for our department's focus, I've been kind of lead on the redevelopment pieces and then we have obviously Main Street Promise, which is kind of its own projects. And the economic development work is primarily Chris's team. But we're coordinating, but I don't know if we have one point. - Yeah, I think so. So that's to come. So some of the things that, what this whole study highlights is in a positive way, I think is it brings together the work that we're doing on the economic development side, which is led by Chris in the back of the room there and the team on the economic development side

47:37 and the redevelopment work we do, which has been primarily kind of site focused. But once we did the downtown redevelopment study, we began to think of all of downtown and what the redevelopment opportunities are. So this is really the first opportunity for us to kind of knit together the two different efforts. And so from an implementation perspective, it is this kind of different teams coordinating, but it'll like, the redevelopment work will continue to happen. But I think the priorities for this work will come out of what the work that Chris is doing on the economic development strategy, meaning what types of economic activity are we trying to promote, to try and encourage here to grow? That's the focus of the economic development strategy and one pillar of the economic development strategy was this site-based aspect, like can we help find homes for different industries that we wanna grow?

48:35 And so I think that's ultimately where this will go, but it's kind of right now, we're at the early stages of having this integrated strategy and so that'll be part of the implementation of this study once you sign off on it is how do we then make it real with the different teams that we have working on these different issue areas. - I'll throw out a comment, another two. I just like that you guys are really digging into all these things, 'cause you're throwing out a huge broad net to try and figure out all these things that interact. I really, I like that you're being so thorough with all this and then looking at the what can we do as a city thought process. What do we do to hinder development? What do we do to help development? And that you're considering all those and then the winding into the code, all the flexibility.

49:34 All those things are gonna kind of stir up and I think hopefully it'll really start producing some results. - I'll echo that sentiment. When it came to the presentation, you actually answered my questions as you went along. I appreciate the thought that went into outreach to businesses that we would be interested bringing them in because I think that will be important organically. They may not come to downtown. And then also looking at what are the incentives for those businesses to move here. So great job putting it together and thank you for the insight.

50:14 - Well, it's a great report. I mean, you guys really dug into a lot of aspects and I know it's a very complicated issue. One question I did have is, is this map centric? I mean, is there like identified corridors that you're addressing? 'Cause within the downtown, which is broad, right? You have the government district, you have Main Street, you have the waterfront, you have all these different things uptown, different needs and obviously you're setting up a program for longterm. So you have to be open to maybe districts moving. But like some jurisdictions unnamed have in the past made errors in like forcing retail in certain locations. And that was disastrous. Not only because was it not necessarily a retail destination, but a lot of the people that were developing didn't understand the needs of retail. And so you were providing this space that one, didn't get the visibility or the pedestrian attraction, but then it didn't work for anybody. So I think you guys are working at it really good 'cause you're looking at a macro, not a micro.

51:14 And the micro comes in different forms like through design guidelines and stuff like that. But what may be good in the government district may not be good for Main Street or other different areas. And then also, I mean, I'm obviously a big advocate of let things flow. It's like a bowling alley, right? You put these bumpers up for kids to keep them from going into the gutter, but you're not like rolling the ball for them. And so I think there's that flexibility is let the market be the market because we don't really truly know where this town is going. It's going somewhere evidently. But like for example, the Pearl district, that started out as an artists haven really, and just kind of became a cool place to be. And then it kind of grew from that. So letting it kind of take an organic approach rather than trying to force something. And also I think for me, it's really about activation at the ground street, whatever that is. Because there are some places

52:14 like where we've done development downtown here is that it wasn't a retail. So we didn't put retail in, but we put in residential 'cause some jurisdictions will say no residential. And I think that's a big mistake because if you go to like Back Bay in Boston, it is such an absolutely cool place because you have 10 blocks that are residential, but then you have one has residential above, but it's retail. Let it grow according to what the market demands. So yeah, but no, I think you're tackling a very difficult subject. I think you've done a great job. - Yeah, if I could just quickly respond, I think this study is more focused on the macro as you mentioned. I think our intent was to work within the structure that was provided by the comprehensive plan of having active ground floor required section, which is for downtown, really just an overlay of existing commercial. So Main Street kind of a loop around Esther Short

53:13 and then the waterfront. So really where existing commercial already exists. And then they have active ground floor ready, which allows residential, but kind of looks to, has some requirements that would allow conversion at some point in the future to something. So I think this studies, the intent is to really identify what we should be doing as a city beyond that to incentivize. So not require, but more incentivize or look to offer additional flexibility within those areas to get the desired outcomes that we're looking for. - Yeah, they're kind of, I guess, follow up question on that. When you're looking at this, again, macro, not macro, but you're looking at public private partnerships or incentives and so forth. And the unfortunate thing that we have here

54:12 is we all acknowledge we don't have a lot of the tools other states have, right? We've already determined that the lift doesn't do much for us. New market tax credits, I know the city looked at it years and years ago, kind of abandoned that 'cause it didn't really work. So we don't really have a lot of tools. The MFT has been a great program, I think, for promoting not only affordable housing, but just development. So I don't know, I'd be interested in hearing as we progress, are there other things you've discovered that do work in other jurisdictions that maybe we can adopt here in terms of that incentive? 'Cause like for example, if someone comes back and says, well, it's too costly to approve my storefront. It's like, as a developer, we kind of look at that and think, okay, you got three sides of a building and you only have to dole up one side. So I think being selective about who gets what, so to speak, yeah.

55:06 - And also, let the developers come up with the ideas. If you don't constrain them so much, but you tell them the objective and make that the requirement, I think that's where the creativity's gonna come in. Somebody's gonna have a deal that doesn't quite fit in the square peg in a round hole thing. Well, let's square up the hole so the thing can fit and work. So I think that, and you guys have indicated a lot of willingness to move in that direction. I think the comp plan's allowing more flexible zoning and letting more uses that you may not have allowed before to be in a certain area, for instance. And so the market and the response to the market by the developers and the city are gonna be what makes this succeed.

56:00 - I have one question. Just recently, I think two new retailers have moved downtown and I'm kinda curious if the city did anything to help with it. One is the former Sedwick that's now a bar that I have not gone to, but on Main Street, there's a ramen place that I have been and it's really good. It's a tea house. And I was curious, did the city do anything to help? Looks like Chris Harder's coming here to speak. - Yes, but mostly through our partnership and investment in the Vancouver Downtown Association. So one of our staff members is our point person

56:59 on Main Street, the Main Street Promise Project. She also does broader work downtown. So between her and the VDA, there's kind of a coordinated effort to attract or facilitate those types of tenants downtown. We've actually had one other data point. I think it's up to pushing 20, I'll just say 15 plus businesses, restaurants, retail, kind of a little bit more civic use move downtown while Main Street Promise has been going on. And I think we have two or three that have permanently left so you can see what that investment is doing as businesses are looking to relocate. - Yeah, I think that would be a good thing to go talk with the retailer and the landlord on both

57:55 and see what would have made it easier. I mean, what the city could have done that we didn't do or hoping for, or maybe not, maybe it's all organic. - That's a great idea, yeah. - I guess tagging onto that, it's always cheaper and easier if the economics work for the retailer or whoever's occupying than if you have to subsidize and try to make the round peg fit in the square hole. I guess to that sense, it feels like there's retail moving here into Ridgefield from other areas, including Portland Metro, other areas of Portland Metro. So I think the story here is naturally already inclined to support that migration, but I guess, and I'm sure you guys are already thinking about doing this, but I really encourage you to advertise the benefits that the city's willing to offer a potential retailer or other business that's looking to move

58:54 to the ground floor to facilitate that relocation, especially to the brokers who typically have relationships with those companies or organizations, whether it's childcare or a restaurant or a bar, 'cause it'll really help them sell downtown Vancouver options to their clients, 'cause I don't know if everyone's paying that close of attention, even though they should be, to Vancouver. So I would really encourage you to do a tour of the brokerage houses to advertise that or maybe have a one-pager that's really easy for people to understand these are the benefits the city can help facilitate. - Another great idea, appreciate it. - And a lot of that can come down to processing time. A lot of the retailers, everything about retail is delivery of the space at the time they need it. And a lot of people will turn away because they just can't get in when they need to.

59:52 And that is a play that the Vancouver can do that doesn't really cost, it's just prioritizing the needs of those people that wanna be here. - I will say, relative to some of our other communities in the market, we have a favorable reputation on that end. But I think there's also room for improvement on that end as well. - One more thing, this is totally unreal estate related, but, and David probably knows this already, there's a remarkable number of families in southwest Washington. I've been touring apartments and in Portland, we really don't get that many families. And so I would really lean into that. I feel like it was already on the list of things,

1:00:52 but there's so many options that ragged parents who were willing to fork over $30 to keep their kid occupied for three hours. I just feel like that is a world that Vancouver could really lean really heavily into and draw customers and clients from all over Clark County and also Portland, 'cause I'm driving to Hillsborough right now to do that stuff. So that'd be really great. - Yeah, I just wanna add one more thing. I think one headwind that downtown Vancouver has is because it's in the lower extreme southwest corner of the city. So there's so much of the city, to Michi's point, that is car driven as far as, it's just not on people's agenda or thought to come down. And to really promote that, I don't know in what capacity, but we're doing, in the Quinn building,

1:01:50 we're actually doing a 10,000 square foot, if you're familiar with helium, so we're doing a comedy club like that that's in the basement. And I'm excited for them and nervous at the same time. So, but trying to drive more people down because we are seeing some growth here, but as you know, the multifamily basically hit a saturation point. And so we have a few projects that we're gonna absorb and I think things will pick up in the next three or four years, but I don't think we're gonna have a lot of new residents moving here. We need some new jobs, that's a big thing to create jobs, but we're not gonna survive on just the people living down here. So we really need to drive other people from Clark County. And Clark County, which you're probably familiar with, or maybe not, I'm not necessarily hampered by this, but a lot of people don't wanna go into Portland. It's like, it's the geographical barrier, this river, it's just like, no, I never go into Portland. And it's not because of homelessness or crime or anything like that.

1:02:49 It's just, no, that's the other side of the river. And so if you can make this a viable option, and I think the city does that with a lot of the festivals and programming with the Esther Short Park. Matter of fact, there's one happening this weekend. But I guess it's just drive people down here. And if you can drive people down here, people are gonna wanna open businesses here. And as far as going back to what Dick said about creativity, I've done a lot of retail. And the problem is it's really the business owner, right? I'm tired of getting on Pinterest and typing in storefront and seeing all these great, and just like, why don't we have that year? And that's because there's a lot of people that don't have that creative spirit like he refers to. So the city can, and the PDA can kind of push people towards something a little bit more creative. That would be helpful. - I'll just add, Mark, this is great stuff. I think you guys have done a remarkable job

1:03:48 of trying to turn over every stone and try to support business and think into the future. I'd actually support both Mark or David and Meechi on the family. I just got back from, I'm a native saltlaker and just seeing all the family related catering to a lot of businesses do for families. And I think Vancouver has a big family base. And then the other question, and David mentioned a little bit about it, is one thing I didn't notice really is talking about events or attracting entertainment venues downtown. And I know that there's a lot of competition, both downtown Portland, but also on Ridgefield, et cetera. But that's one area maybe to consider is how can you add additional entertainment venues or entertainment options for downtown or surrounding Vancouver area.

1:04:52 - Oh, and lastly, I was, last year I was in Greenville and Charleston, and one thing I did notice a lot of street entertainment, buskers, other avenues that actually made the city feel alive. And maybe some sort of something around arts and performing arts might be helpful.

1:05:22 - Things keep popping up that are raising questions, but this is totally beside the point, but it does help because parks have been known in urban settings to facilitate growth. People congregate and it spills over into the joint ones. So I didn't know, this is more of a Patrick question, is like, does the city have any, I mean, I know we've got the reserve, right? We've got hundreds upon hundreds of acres over on the other side of the freeway, and that's great. But do we have any ideas for another like underdeveloped block in downtown that we can do a park that maybe would instigate residential around it or businesses? - So the downtown redevelopment study that preceded this actually did, I mean, Matt and his team, they actually looked at a number of parcels and they zeroed in on some of the parcels right around the new seasons and said they thought

1:06:18 that putting in some kind of park or open space, urban plaza kind of space would drive additional development or could spur that next wave of investment in that part of town. I think we agree with that philosophy in general that the site-specific stuff is yet to be determined and we've shared it with our parks colleagues and we all agree. So there's an execution part of it, like how do we do that? But I think we're in agreement that downtown needs more active spaces and we know not just as a public good, but we know what that does to drive investment and make it attractive places for people to live and work and businesses to locate. So we're absolutely in agreement on that. I really, I just want to emphasize we bring you these things

1:07:15 and these components and there isn't a perfect kind of grand plan, but it is intentional that these are all interlocking things. So we, and part of the, I'm in year five of this department that we've created, it's meant to be this integrated thing. So we are, this is trying to integrate the redevelopment objectives with the economic development strategy objectives and I think we're beginning to see it and this has been intentional, the downtown redevelopment study gave us the kind of lay of the land and now, which will inform future redevelopment that could be primarily residentially driven, but then there's also part of it that is driven by commercial needs and then both sites that are used for commercial purposes and one thing, mixed use and how we drive active ground floors is part of both strategies and then the work that we're doing

1:08:14 to promote local businesses in downtown and elsewhere, this is all meant to be integrated. It's all meant to be integrated and thankfully we have a team that is all in the same place and we get to begin to think about how to make all this work together. - Yeah, I think in closing, I'd just like to say, I think it's progressive, it's strategic. I think what you're doing here is really insightful. I think it's gonna bear fruit, I really do. (silence) Go ahead. Well, thank you for this and any other questions though? So we're going to have an adoption, we're gonna have a vote and-- - Yeah, so thank you all for the feedback.

1:09:11 We have a draft currently of the full study so we'll work on incorporating some of these comments into that draft and then we'll distribute it out to the CCRA board and come back at a later date to look for adoption. - All right, yeah, I'll talk to you afterwards.

1:09:42 Okay, with that, is there any other items that we have? I guess we're good to, we're adjourned. Thank you. - Thank you. - Thank you all.