April 24, 2025 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[4:39] Shall we? Evening and welcome to tonight's study session of the Boulder City Council. I am Council Member Wallik and I thank you for joining us. We have on tonight's agenda two items, both substantive and complex. First, we will hear information on the quote economic development plan and

[5:01] program enhancements updates and economic vitality strategy review, which is a mouthful. And the second item is the commercial area connections and quality of life improvements, updates, and district analysis results and recommendations. Before we go into our work items, I'd like to outline how the meeting is going to be conducted. We'll review the staff's presentations and then we will out um then we will have a timeout for questions. At the end of the presentation, we will conduct our council discussion with staff. If you have questions, please wait for staff to complete their presentation unless they indicate otherwise. We'll now turn to our city manager, Nuria Rivera Vandermide, to introduce our first topic. Thanks so much, council member. And I'll say today we're talking about two council priorities, two in one, uh

[6:00] tonight, uh that in my mind are closely linked as they support our vital and very critical business community. Our first topic tonight is our economic development plan and program announcements, which I think we can agree is way overdue since the last time we had an update on this plan was 2013, just over a decade ago. Before I turn it over to our assistant city manager, Mark Wolf, to kick us off, I'll say that we want to uh thank some of our partners. We could not do this without our uh tremendous business partners. I say throughout community, but in particular our friends at the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, our downtown Boulder Partnership and Visit Boulder who have uh helped us as we have um been doing some of this work. Um so with that, I will uh kick it on over to Mark. Thank you, Daria. Good, good evening, council. Mark Wolf, assistant city manager. Uh, I too am very excited to talk about uh these topics uh this evening. They are close to my heart. I I

[7:01] don't know uh if everyone knows, but I started at the city uh six and a half years ago in community vitality uh and worked on at least what we called economic vitality at the time. uh times have indeed changed uh since 2018 and I would characterize our our recent uh history of economic vitality and community uh in a few different eras if you will. uh the first in what I would refer to as before times was a period uh where the city did not do let alone say economic development and any general economic support was limited and and provided almost exclusively through our partner organizations. Uh there were a lot of reasons for this in history there but the sentiment was simply that business needed to support its own way and that the city had no role or a very very limited role in broader economic

[8:00] development work. The next era would be COVID right at least recently co changed the way that we uh thought about supporting our business community because of the severe economic disruption and how it impacted community. This challenged us to rethink our role as a city in supporting economic development. Uh this was characterized by direct financial assistance mostly through federal resources and how uh critical our partnerships were in supporting our our economy uh throughout uh to weather the storm. And now we are in this post-pandemic environment where we continue to see economic headwinds. You will hear tonight about the challenges that our business our businesses are facing, our key commercial areas are facing, including a period of economic stagnation in the downtown and immense uncertainty going forward. Uh in recognizing these challenges, city council identified the importance of some type of ongoing economic

[9:00] development support that looks different in this new era, naming economic development as one of those priorities for this council term. Tonight you will hear a strategy that outlines how we might do this in the near term and in the the medium term. And we want to recognize while there is really valuable and important work occurring now, which we'll highlight uh through our partnerships and through the city, it is also important to remember as we look forward, the city has never been structured or resourced to carry out broad economic development work. So we hope that this strategy will serve as the basis for prioritizing our efforts and allow us to have the right conversations in bolstering our capacity and your feedback this evening will be helpful to that end. We're we were also very intentional about the to include a second council priority this evening on the on the same night to talk about uh our broader economic development work related to our commercial areas and the district analysis. We're excited to

[10:00] present some of the very tangible work that we've done uh over the last year and some of the specific tools that we can use to bolster economic development work across the city. We have the opportunity to to match tools and associated funding to better support the many commercial areas in the city. We still have much analysis to do to determine the appropriateness of each tool, but you will hear tonight about the potential exploration of a downtown development authority. We believe that this could be a really interesting tool to address our funding challenges while also providing the necessary support in our in our broader downtown that we simply haven't had um uh in the way we are currently structured with our general improvement districts. And we agree that this work must be aligned with the long-term financial strategy across the city. Uh we're thankful to our consultants from Progressive Urban Management Associates or Puma for for joining us this evening. You'll hear from from them in a bit on our second item. Uh we hope that you will hear this

[11:01] evening a coordinated and concerted effort to rethink how we provide economic development support. We're interested in hearing your thoughts, your feedback, your priorities, and your questions. And we are hopeful that this is a springboard for a ton of important work to meet the moment that we know our businesses are facing. A healthy and vibrant business community is absolutely essential for a healthy and vibrant community as a whole. Before I hand it off to Jennifer Pinino, our economic vitality manager, I also want to acknowledge um another key internal partner, our small business development center, which is now formally housed within the city of Boulder. Our center director, Sarah Wood, couldn't join us this evening. She'll join us soon at a future council meeting to to celebrate Small Business Week. But I did want to recognize her and the small business development center staff as they are crucial partners in carrying out the support of our small business community. You'll see their work lifted up throughout the strategy. Um they do this work on a daily basis. And with that um

[12:02] and plenty of preamble, but it was for two items this evening. Uh I'm excited to hand off to Jennifer to give you an overview of our process in creating this strategy. uh some of the specific strategies that we're proposing um and looking forward to to hearing uh council's feedback on what priorities you see in that work. Jennifer, thanks Mark. Appreciate that. Good evening. My name is Jennifer Pensino. I'm the economic vitality manager with the city of Boulder. Um can somebody put my slides up, please? And I don't know for other people, Jennifer, but you sound a little soft, so maybe turning your volume up a little. I'll get closer to a microphone. Great. And I'm losing my voice, of course. So, um, next slide, please. So, this this evening, I'll be presenting an update on work to support the council priority related to an economic development plan and program enhancements. Next slide, please. We'll be reviewing a draft

[13:02] economic vitality strategy, which is a department strategic plan. And I'll be spending and it's meant to be covering the next two to three years. I'll be spending the next 20 minutes to provide brief background information and highlight the plan and next steps. Next slide. Questions for council tonight are does council have any questions or feedback on the draft strategies or actions in the economic vitality strategy and does council have any guidance on implementation priorities related to planned initiatives. Next slide. The economic vitality strategy is designed to broadly describe projects and programs for creating a stronger, more resilience economy in a post-pandemic environment that builds on existing programs and partnerships to support businesses and economic vitality while addressing lingering challenges

[14:00] and new opportunities. The strategy will be used to inform the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan and more specific actions will be included in department work plans and consultant scopes of work. It is only one component of the city's broader work and is intended to reflect rather than duplicate work related to housing, transportation, and other areas that impact the economy. Next slide, please. The strategy reflects work not only of the city manager's office and other city departments but also the nonprofit organizations that we profit with we partner with to support businesses and economic vitality. Next slide. The strategy is based on information gleaned from economic and market research and has been shaped by what we heard during the city's first community and council forum which brought together community members, business owners, nonprofit leaders, and city council members to discuss what an e

[15:01] economically vital Boulder should look like. The new form of engagement was an opportunity to include community voices earlier in the decision-making process and intentionally hearing underrepresented community perspectives that could more equitably shape projects and outcomes. We also heard directly from micro business owners during a chat with council about their unique challenges. As a result, the strategy expands on support for micro businesses, including access to capital, mentorship, and resources, as well as committing to more proactive engagement with businesses in shaping local economic policy. Next slide. Themes from our engagement with city with the community informed our commitment to balancing innovation with support for small and bipok owned businesses, ensuring affordability for both community members and entrepreneurs, addressing commercial vacancies, and protecting what makes

[16:00] Boulder special, its people, environment, and sense of place. Next slide, please. The racial equity instrument we you was used as a guide in developing specific strategies and actions outlined in the plan. And we will continue to use a racial equity lens to limit burden and maximize benefit for historically excluded businesses and communities as we implement the economic vitality strategy in our program design, resource allocation, use of data for more intentional and equitable decisionmaking and expand efforts to be more inclusive in our outreach and engagement. Next slide, please. The strategy reflects the city's main economic drivers and strengths, including the city's outstanding quality of life that helps attract businesses and talent, worldclass research institutions, and our reputation for

[17:01] innovation and entrepreneurship, a highly skilled workforce, our community values, a very collaborative and resourcerich business environment, strong infrastructure, and a mix of businesses and industries that It helps diversify economic risk. Next slide, please. The strategy also considers trends and challenges that have impacted or have the potential to impact the local economy. Some of these trends or challenges are related to the pandemic and contribute to other challenges. Many are not unique to Boulder. These include high commercial vacancy rates, federal funding and job cuts, inflation and the rising cost of living and doing business, difficulty in finding and retaining workers in many industries, changes in demographics and shopping and work patterns, and more frequent national natural disasters and other disruptions. Local challenges include perceptions

[18:01] about the city's processes and increased competition from other communities for businesses and workers. Next slide, please. At the same time, the strategy looks forward to new opportunities on the horizon, including the Elevate Quantum and Colorado Wyoming climate resilience engine initiatives that promise to bring significant new investment into the region and the expansion of the aerospace, artificial intelligence, cyber security, life sciences, and other advanced industries, as well as the opening of the Limelight Boulder Hotel and Conference Center and the arrival of the Sundance Film Festival. Next slide. Next slide, please. Strategy goals, current programs, and planned initiatives are equity,

[19:00] resilience, vitality, and innovation with some overlap between the areas. Although equity is called out as a separate focus area, inclusion, equity, and accessibility are also reflected in other focus areas. Next slide, please. Enhancing support for more a more equitable and accessible economy is an essential element in the strategy and goals including enhancing financial security, economic opportunity and social mobility through small business and micro business support. Certification, contracting and procurement opportunities and workforce development initiatives. Improving the ease of doing business with a city through enhanced accessibility resources and navigation of city processes and programs to address affordability and providing more options for meeting business and community needs for goods and

[20:00] services. Next slide, please. The city and partner organizations have provided programs and services to support small businesses, including women and minority owned businesses and micro businesses for many years. And we've already started work on increasing that support. Although it is not an exhaustive list, highlights include providing expanded operational support for the Boulder SPDC, enabling them to spend more time providing workshops, one-on-one advising, connections to financing, and other resources. Certification, contracting, and supplier diversity, and other programs to help small businesses grow and thrive. Developing programs through the city's business opportunity program to address disparities in city procurement processes. partnerships with industry and educational institutions to increase job opportunities for individuals, including those from historically exclusive excluded communities and build a talent

[21:00] talent pipeline to meet business needs. We're also exploring ways to make city processes easier to understand and navigate. expanding efforts to increase the awareness of business resources and address commercial affordability through a pilot grant program that helps offset the cost to develop and maintain commercial spaces to increase opportunities for local small businesses including women and bikepock owned businesses to thrive in commercial centers. Next slide please. The strategy also outlines plans for expanding efforts of the city and its partners, including identifying and increasing awareness and accessibility to other business resources such as employee ownership programs, encouraging city staff and others to increase purchases of goods and services from local small businesses. Developing and promoting training opportunities and career

[22:00] pathways for historically excluded communities. exploring programs to help businesses reduce their operating costs and developing strategies to expand the availability of affordable goods and services and culturally relevant goods and services. Next slide, please. The next focus area is resilience and leveraging experience gained in responding to the 2013 flood coid9 pandemic and other events confirm the need for continued co coordination and improvement of disaster preparedness and recovery efforts. Other goals for the strategy include increasing the number of businesses that have adopted environmentally sustainable practices and maintaining Boulder's broad mix of businesses and industries which has helped the city weather past economic downturns. Next slide. Current efforts to increase resilience include research to identify best

[23:00] practices and lessons learned in responding to pre previous disasters and using the that information to create a disaster response playbook. Expanding programs to help businesses prepare for disasters and other disruptions. Encouraging businesses to adopt practices that reduce their carbon footprint. Expanding economic research and reporting. enhancing coordination among the city and its partners who work with businesses and expanding efforts to make it easier to do business with the city. Next slide, please. Planned initiatives include measures to increase the effectiveness of disaster preparation and response, expanding activities to promote and facilitate business sustainability, and enhancing business retention and attraction efforts. Next slide, please. outcomes and strategies to support uh

[24:00] the next the next focus area is vibrancy. And outcomes and strategies to support vibrancy include programs to activate commercial areas, address commercial vacancy rates, and attract more customers and sales for retail shops, restaurants, service providers, and other businesses in the city's improvement districts and other commercial areas. Next slide. Current projects to support vibrancy include the creation and implementation of the lodging business assessment area to provide additional revenue to support tourism and visitor spending, exploring enhancements to infrastructure and amenities in commercial districts, and an improvement districts analysis, which you'll be hearing more about later this evening. Rather than wait for the completion of the updated economic vitality strategy, the city and its partners have been working to address high commercial vacancy rates by working with commercial real estate property

[25:00] owners and brokers to understand changes in the market and identify solutions including increased flexibility and allowed uses and other measures to make it easier for tenants to move into vacant spaces and developing promotional materials and stepping up business attraction activities. activity. As previously mentioned, we have also expanded the city's affordable commercial efforts to provide more below market spaces for small local businesses through grants to develop shared spaces in commercial centers. Next slide, please. Expanding our efforts to support vibrancy will include developing programs to support increased activity such as downtown a downtown development authority, developing a long-term strategy for commercial areas, updating and implementing a citywide retail strategy to reflect changing consumer behavior in retail trends, tailoring business assistance programs for retailers, restaurants, and other small

[26:00] businesses. and working collaboratively to make sure the new conference center and Sundance Film Festival are successful. Next slide, please. Our final our fourth and final focus area is innovation which has been a significant part of the city's economic su success and is supported by the presence of the university federal labs visionary entrepreneurs and community leaders and a collaborative and resourcerich entrepreneurial ecosystem. This work is intended to strengthen the city's position as a center for innovation and startup activity while responding to the growing threat of significant cuts in federal funding for scientific research. In addition to supporting the development and commercialization of new technologies, the strategy aims to increase the number of businesses and employment in advanced technology industries. It also reflects the strong correlation between innovation and the creative sectors of

[27:01] the economy. Next slide, please. In addition to ongoing efforts of the city and its partners to to support innovation, current projects include work to understand and respond to local impacts of federal policy changes, including updating an economic impact study of the federal labs. Exploring the creation of chip zone designation to enable growing semiconductor quantum technology and other related companies to qualify for state and federal incentives. Developing promotional materials and campaigns targeting specific industries, expanding inclusive technical assistance and workforce development efforts to increase racial diversity and technology in other advanced industries. and updating the city's approach for supporting arts and culture in the Boulder Arts Blueprint. Next slide. Planned initiatives include enhancing opportunities for businesses

[28:01] to partner with the city to test new technologies and products. Expand specialized technical assistance such as the TechSource Business Incubator program offered by the Boulder SPDC and programs offered by Inosphere Ventures. working with the regional Colorado Wyoming climate resilience engine and elevate quantum coalitions to support the creation of new businesses and jobs in Boulder, developing targeted campaigns promoting Boulder as an ideal location for advanced industry businesses and implementing strategies that are outlined in the Boulder Arts Blueprint. Next slide, please. Our next steps will be to finalize the strategy based on feedback from council and others. Once it's finalized, the strategy will be shared on the city's website and it'll be used to inform the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan update and incorporated in department work

[29:00] plans, budgeting and agreements with economic vitality partners and other consultants. Current work by city staff and partners will continue and will begin implementing new initiatives outlining outlined in the strategy. We also devel we will also develop benchmarking data to evaluate the success of the strategy and make adjustments as needed. Next slide. And now based on what you've read in the memo and strategy and heard in the tithes presentation, does council have any questions or feedback on the draft strategies or actions in the economic vitality strategy or guidance on priorities related to implementing planned initiatives? Thank you, Jennifer. Um, we will now take some clarifying questions for those who have them. Nobody. Okay, we're obviously very

[30:00] content with the the presentation. Um I have one question then. um the document itself, the the uh that the the staff memo that we read [Music] um did not have a lot of specifics in terms of you know we want to do this, we want to do that, we'll be measured by this, we'll be measured by that. uh it was to some extent a general statement of intent and principle and I'm wondering if we will see more detail in the commercial area blueprint um or uh some other document. So when when will we get those specific programs that we can look at? you you will see more specific detail in the commercial area blueprint and the other other programs. Um a lot of our work is done collaboratively and we will be outlining that in our work plans with ourselves

[31:02] and in our scopes of work with our partners. And as we finalize the plan and know what the council's priorities are, that's where we'll spend time to further develop the specifics of the strategies. Thank you so much. I see Matt's hand up. Thanks, Mark. I had two questions. one was um in what capacity and and because I didn't see it in the memo and so I'm wondering when it comes up next when we can begin really validating what we heard from community at our community conversation um back in September because there were a lot of things that were mentioned a lot of specific ideas some near-term things even some long-term and so much of that conversation is validated largely by our ability to hear it, but then also show

[32:00] implementation of those ideas that their feedback's being heard. And so I'm kind of wondering when can we expect to sort of give community that validation that their input was heard, used, and helped shape um things because I think that kind of connects to Mark's question about specific things and when we can see the rollouts of those. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so I think what we're going to hopefully we see a lot of that feedback reflected back in the plan in the the broad strategies that we're looking at doing. And I think you'll also start to see some things as we as we unveil programs. So for instance, one of the things we want to do we heard is that businesses aren't always aware of the resources that are available to them. We'll be doing more in terms of articles and information on our website and in partner newsletters etc to increase the awareness of those programs. So I think it'll be more in

[33:01] actually seeing the actions versus um sharing specific action plans or does that make sense? A little bit. um a little bit I but I I yeah I mean there's I think there's probably more to discuss there in terms of how we create that portal for community to feel like understand their feedback because obviously when we're doing community partners and all that stuff that's maybe a different uh communication conduit than it is to the broader community. So I respect that there's some differences there. Um my other question had to do with where might there might where where would we start to see or is there a repository or a site where we start to see the learnings and where we're understanding the constraints or the nuanced complexity around certain issues and I'll use office vacancy as a key example. We've been hearing that over and over again and I know many of us know those nuanced complexities but I'm wondering how and where do we start to convey that as a continual learning

[34:01] process as we're hearing from our partners because I think that conveys that we're hearing we're learning and then we're also without maybe getting into specific policy we're realizing where those constraints reside a good example is a lot of people are like well why are rents so high and a simple answer to that is a lot of corporate real estate just corporate financing as you know and their banks require going no no no less than a certain amount on rent and so you're like oh well there's a real mechanism that that's creating a hard ceiling there or a floor but what are the other ways in which we can then have perks and ways is it TI is it you know free rent for a few months so those are the things that we know are going on and I'm just wondering where we have the repository or where we're communicating that to the broader community so that they're learning with us as we go on this journey of developing that plan Well, that's a that's a that's a really good um point. We don't we have not developed that, but we can certainly start working in that direction. Yeah, and I if I could

[35:01] Jennifer just jump in on that. Uh appreciate that thought Matt and I think it's something we can think about a little bit more intentionally. It is something that we've heard in a variety of different areas as we've been working to develop the strategy. Jennifer mentioned one and just many of our small businesses, especially those historically excluded businesses don't know the resources that we have available. We we have a great program through our small business development center that connect those businesses to exactly the resources they need and yet uh many don't know that that resource exists. And so that that's one big piece. I I think to your point on commercial vacancy and some of our other initiatives in our conversations with some of our um commercial property owners, our commercial brokers, um some of the barriers uh were related to um land use uh process that we changed the through council and and some of that is is not um marketed out there in the way

[36:00] that it needs to be so that our business community knows that some of our rules, some of our procedures, some of our processes ities are are simpler and improved since the last time they did business with the city. And so um that has certainly been one of our insights and takeaways um in the work and and something we we we certainly need to acknowledge. We need to accelerate um just to make sure that the resources that that are available and some of the work that we have been uh doing and some of the work that we need to continue to do is is available and accessible and and advertised appropriately to to the broader community. I I appreciate that. And at the end of the day, we want to be able to evangelize the great work we're doing. And sometimes if it's sort of in these different pockets here and there, it's hard for us to synthesize all that. So, wherever there's a central place either for council or staff or just our partners to know where that is, you brought up a great example of the the the uh planning and permitting stuff that we've made a great inroads on. That's a great example of being able to walk and chew gum at the same time as we develop a plan and take care of those things. So anyway, that that's just a

[37:00] bigger piece of just where we reposit where we put all that good info and context for us to to talk through. So thanks. Tara, I think you're up next. I have just a comment to that or a colloqui, but I'm happy to wait till comments if that's what you want. I would urge you to do it now then. Okay. So, Colloquing or Coloqueen, however you pronounce it, is as I'm listening to this, I remember a conversation I had with a consultant, a developer consultant, and she said that we have so many rules and it's hard for small businesses to do business with the city unless they actually hire consultants who understand the rules and the permits, what they are and are not allowed to do. and um the companies that understand how to do business in Boulder are the ones that get chosen which then pushes out some of the smaller

[38:00] businesses that are trying to make it here. So I agree with what you said with what you said Matt and I am wondering if there is even more that we can do. Um it's not often that we talk about the role of the and I like consultants nothing against consultants they're great but um do you think that we've done enough to counteract our reputation how hard of it being hard to do business here. I know that you said we can do more and I'm wondering if we can do a whole lot more and maybe that it's one of the most important things we can do along with continuing to reduce the rules and burdens on our uh small businesses. Yeah, I I'll take a initial shot but I figured we might get this line of questioning. So Brad Mueller is also here this evening. I I do want to just shout out and appreciate the work that

[39:00] Brad and his team have done over the last especially last couple of years in both internal process improvements to make things more efficient. I I think we've received a lot of good positive feedback from the business community that have gone through the permitting process recently and also through many different uh code simplification and some uh changes that have reduced the the time of certain types of concepts going through the process. And so I I think that can be elevated a bit more. I think um you know Jennifer can add to this in some of our conversations with our partners that reputation is still out there similar to to the conversation we were having uh related to Matt's question. Um uh but I know that Brad and his team and he can speak to this if he'd like is is also thinking about continuous improvement to to your point Tara it's a it's a journey. we're never going to say we're done with process improvement. And so I know they're always looking at at things uh that we could do. Um and we'll continue to be

[40:00] seeking feedback from the business community as to where we can continue to make simplifications and improvements uh to to continue to improve on that reputation. Yeah. Uh thank you. I'm happy to speak a little bit more. Brad Mueller, uh director planning and development services. Uh, thank you for from many of you for the positive feedback. That's encouraging. And as Mark alludes to, we never feel like we're done either. We are committed to monitoring and adjusting and recognizing that there's always room for improvement and also um that circumstances change. Um, Jennifer and I and others uh throughout the city have acknowledged and and have a goal to lift up uh the changes that you all have made to the codes that make things simpler. Uh we are finding the most um the way that uh to communicate process in a way that resonates and is accessible to to folks on on a regular basis. Um, but I think we also

[41:02] acknowledge that as the world gets more complex and we address complex issues like wildfires and flooding and uh commercial vacancies and all that, there also are complex rules in many cases. So, it's it is a matter of um helping folks navigate that and um with Jennifer's vision and the SPDC and and others uh our work with the chamber uh we've got a vision for how to how to do more of that. I will say that everywhere I've worked, uh, there al always was a natural advantage to folks who have done work in in the jurisdiction before. That's not unique to Boulder. Uh, that's true of the contractors and architects, um, process assistance and that type of stuff. So, some of that's just natural and somewhat intuitive. Uh, not that we don't want to make it accessible to everybody, but that that's just kind of a natural thing in every jurisdiction as well. But again, appreciate the good works and happy to answer other questions. I just want to add a Brad, I

[42:04] just want to tout your horn a moment because uh there was a article in a paper recently uh and I won't add this the city that was uh mentioned, but somebody was saying how hard it was to do uh business in a different city and uh and how e how much easier by far it was to do business in Boulder and they were talking about permitting specifically. So that is not something we hear every day and so it's a testament to the improvements uh that have been going on uh in your department particularly but I wanted to say as we were hearing this right and and uh Tara thanks for the question because there's not one lever right that makes it easy we're talking today permitting is one and the strategy is another there are other improvements that go into this and I just wanted to lift up too as we think about and we're working towards consolidating a lot of our staff on the western city campus. That is another area that we are thinking as we have staff um working more closely

[43:02] together, there will be improvements there as well. As we're thinking about new technology systems, new CRM systems, that is another place where there are improvements, right? So, as we have a variety of levers, I think all of those will help support better navigation systems, better permitting systems, better opportunities for customer service. All of this, I think, will help navigation in the future and will support our um business and community as we go on. So, no one silver bullet, but I think all of what we're doing will really help um folks navigate our uh systems uh as we go along. And a lot of that groundwork that's been put into place uh with your help with some of the code simpl simplifications as well is setting us in a great course. Okay, Mayor Brockett, you are next. Well, I was actually just going to mention that newspaper article, uh, but

[44:00] thanks for calling that out, I'll quote it, though. It said that processes in Boulder were quote a thousand times better. Um, so huge kudos to Brad and the team. Um, of course, there's always work that continues and more progress to be made, but uh, that's not something I've heard before in the press, so that was really great. So, congrats. Ryan, you have your hand up. Yeah, Mark, I have um a few substantive questions. Is Is this the I wasn't sure if this is the time for that or we were doing specifically questions clarifying for the presentation. More clarifying questions. Uh but it looks like we're going to be getting to substance fairly quickly. Okay. Is that Are you telling me to go ahead then? Um sure, why not? Okay. Um I have thank you thanks Jennifer for um this work and the team. Um I have I think three questions that are just sort of about understanding it

[45:00] a little better. Um so one thing is I'm just thinking about the end outcomes and the relative beneficiaries of this of this work in the future. Clearly it's multifaceted. It's complex. um some um I definitely see some things coming through. I don't know how I can't remember if if this is explicit and I've missed it or it's implied, but clearly business owners and the and the downtown area are, you know, really featured kind of throughout this. And forgive me if I've missed that that was stated explicitly that that's the case or should be the case. But my my question is um I'm just wondering about the the group of folks who are at the lower than average income level and thinking about the idea of maintaining and improving their economic health and their economic choices and is that something that it

[46:00] would be I don't know considered a priority in this work or like or something around that space? How how would you think about that as as a part or potentially a part or not of this body of work? Yes, I think I think that is an important part of this work and we would continue to work with Boulder County and their PI program and we've talked to others who are looking at how they can help lowincome individuals. Um, a lot of the work that the Boulder SPDC does is with aspiring entrepreneurs, people who have business ideas and and not sure quite how to start. So, they really um they they serve a broad spectrum of businesses, including people um with lower incomes or who may not have as many resources. find ways to to get into business. Um, we also have a Boulder microloan program

[47:01] that we we work with Colorado Enterprise Fund to put together and that allows uh individuals that may not have a credit history or the ability to get financing from traditional sources to get small loans to start businesses. They need to have the capacity to repay a loan, but Colorado Enterprise will help them with loan applications. They'll give them business coaching so that they get to a point where they're able to build up equity in a business. So, so yes, we do have those programs and we plan to expand and do more of that. Okay. Thank you. Uh I have two more questions. Um the second one is about worker co-ops and we've had some discussion about this as a um I mean from when we saw the minimum wage proceeding last year. This was sort of

[48:01] one of those things that some of us discussed is hopefully we'll we take a look at. I know there was um Andrea Tuttle was one of the community members who's who provided some feedback on you know the case for this including the so-called silver tsunami with so many older folks that are going to be retiring and really not much of a you know an institutional plan to to do something with those businesses. We're already seeing those businesses therefore get you know sold to out of state investors. Um and not just that but the state has you know a lot of the the like leaders in the country. So anyway the question is how is that a part of this or how to think about the workers co-ops as relevant to this? Yeah, and as we look at expanding and looking at current resources, but also improving um helping amplify and actually I just talked with her this week and I've had earlier conversations about these these types of employee ownership programs and they can be a good solution for some businesses. They

[49:01] don't fit every business's situation, but one of the things we've talked about is how we can help increase the awareness, amplify their messaging, make people aware that this is an option and where they can get resources in some of the incentives and help that's available through the state. So, absolutely that that's a part of this. Okay. Thank you. And I I think that's all I have for questions. I'll save the rest for my my feedback. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. Um, sorry for the kid interruption there. They were excited about bring your kid to work, which is a little awkward for an evening study session virtually. So, my apologies. I I assumed they were candidates for council in about 15 years. I mean, we got to pass it to the next generation, so start them young. All right. Um, would it be possible to put those two questions back up for a moment? We have them in chat as well if it makes it easier to, but we sure could. All right. Um, are there any further

[50:01] clarifying questions on the two questions? Otherwise, I will open it up for comment. Mayor Brockett, questions or comment? Uh, comment. Well, we'll lead off the comments. Okay. Um, and is is it all right if I tackle both of our questions here? Sure. So, uh, Jennifer, thanks so much for the presentation, Mark Wolf and and others, uh, who've been working on this. Uh, so really, um, excited to be taking this step. And Mark, I I really liked your eras. Uh, I felt like it was a Taylor Swift tour, but like the laying out the different sections and I thought that was very well analyzed, very well. But so in terms of like the next steps to getting to the final product, you know, Mark asked my question at the beginning, Council Member Wallik, uh, which was about specifics, uh, because I am looking forward to seeing more specifics in terms of what the actions are and what the next steps are there. The current plan has a lot of kind of more

[51:01] general language about you know how we'll develop, we'll collaborate, we'll promote, explore. Um and so looking forward to seeing um you know some real specifics as we move to that that next phase. Um and in particular like and that to me that blends in some with the prioritization um because I' I'd really like to see us in particular focus on the levers that are really at hand for us as a city. So um you know there there are areas where I think our our partners uh can be very effective. Um like I think there's one about um uh explore programs to help businesses reduce operating costs. Like that sounds like a a something that the Chamber of Commerce is very good at. We have great partners uh in the chamber and in others. Um there's uh promotional materials for the city. Visit Boulder incredibly good at that. So I know we collaborate with our partners, but in but when we develop specifics if if we can really zero in on the things like the code simplification projects that we've we've been touting and I know

[52:00] there's more room um for things like that. So when we talk about improving city processes, um making um city processes either easier to navigate and better publicized um increasing flexibility and allowed uses um is another one there that's really within our control. So if we could go through with the lens to those sorts of things, um I think that could make sense for how we proceed is to focus in on work that where we can really make ordinance changes or city staff can make process changes. uh where we can have the biggest influence. I will say that uh with maybe one exception to that, I think that the challenge of low commercial um occupancy of high vacancy rates is a particularly acute one uh for our community right now. And uh so that that is one that we have less direct control over, but I I'd love to see us really dive into that one because I think it is um really impactful. And you know, part of that is thinking about what the future of work looks like because it has changed um you know, in

[53:03] ways that are not going back from before COVID, right? And so part of that obviously like an economic vitality um doing a conversion to residential doesn't exactly fall into that category, but if our commercial um real estate as a whole could be healthier if maybe there's a little bit less of the older product that could be turned into housing, for example, which of course is also great need of ours. So anyway, I'm looking forward to those those next stages and we do have a lot of exciting opportunities, you know, that you list with the, you know, Sundance Festival and the Quantum Hub and and the Limelight. We got so much good stuff going on for us now. So, I'm glad to see that we're diving into this work and taking it seriously because we do have challenges as well. So, look forward to the next phases. Thank you, Matt. I believe you're up next. Thanks, Mark. Um I I think I think Mayor Brockett started to hit on some some key themes there and um you know I would say you know certainly with regards to the first question um you know I think with

[54:00] regards to the overall plan I think the the strategy for sort of what's beyond the horizon and beyond you know maybe 18 two years and beyond I think that's looking good with regards to how we're looking to build the capacity and bring everybody along. I think my biggest concern is that the current plan perhaps lacks urgency or at least communicating that urgency of what are we doing now and what are we doing over the next 6 to9 months and what are those specific things we're rolling out and how again I look at it like like hiking you're not only looking at the trail in front of you also looking at the map to see to make sure you don't take a wrong turn later and so I think we need to be able to sort of do both a little bit there so that's something I'd love to see us flush out a little bit better and again with with some urgency and I think you know the Boulder Chamber sent a letter that I think reflected the same thing which is our businesses are needing help now actually they needed help yesterday and I know this is a thing we haven't really done before in terms of economic development and in fact it was the the term that shall not be used for for for

[55:02] a few decades um but but we got to just move beyond that and say we're here we're doing this and we need to start building that trust by showing folks we can start to re wheel things out rather quickly um and we kind of know where they Um, in terms of prioritization, I I would sort of pick the I would do these in order. One, I would focus on vibrancy. Um, that's touching as Mayor Rocket said, vacancy, business support, and tourism. Again, with the lens of what's the biggest ROI in terms of generating the revenues for the city that we can then reinvest in our community. To me, the lens of that is probably what is what needs to be prioritized the most. Um and then I would say certainly advanced industries is there and then certainly arts, culture and creative since we know the ROI on investment in arts and culture and creative is a force multiplier. So I I would focus on those and those priorities um as we march forward with an emphasis on some of the urgency and how we're going to frontload things over the next 69 12 months. So those are my

[56:00] thoughts. Appreciate it. Mayor Prom. Thank you. Um, and again, thank you so much for the presentation and all of the opportunities you've presented to us. I really appreciated the current and hopefully continued focus on small local businesses. Um, I will start with a couple of my concerns. Um, you know, I know we don't have a lot of funding for incentivizing business relocation and things like that, but if we did consider any of those kinds of things, I would really want to make sure that anything we do in that arena um would only incentivize businesses that very very closely match our um community values. While I agree that not enough time and effort has been spent on making sure our economy is strong, um especially, you know, with this council

[57:00] in the past or councils before us, um I think it's important to make sure that it's working, as Ryan mentioned, sort of for everyone in our community. Um and I also want to make sure that we're not losing sight of the culture of Boulder. Um, so and I think that mostly means again kind like I that's where I see a lot of hope in the small local business side of things and um although yeah I think we all hope that our current issues with the federal government right now are um more of a short-term problem. I would say that I think that we should be um prepared for that that could that might not be the case. And I think we need to be cognizant also of trying to diversify our economy to more areas that are less

[58:02] susceptible to change in federal funding. Um, so I'm still very interested in the chip zone designation, but I do have some concerns about um, an industry where our competitive advantage is mainly due to federal trade restrictions and, you know, protectionist policies compounding the already volatile nature of new technologies. So, I, you know, I'm excited about all of these things that we're talking about on that kind of front, but also want us to be careful as we move forward. Um, I really appreciate the collaboration and outreach that the city has been doing and is promising to continue. And I look forward about finding out how we can overcome some of those existing challenges, the detailed uh getting into, as Aaron was mentioning,

[59:01] um commercial vacancies and proactively reducing barriers to his historically excluded businesses and communities. Um, I also think that it's important for us to continue to support businesses that contribute culturally to our community. And like Ryan mentioned, um, I think it is a really important time to look at the possibilities of employee ownership. Not only does that give those businesses a chance at future success and make them more likely to stay in our community, um, but I think it's just helpful to uh sort of the overall sustainability of our business uh businesses generally. I hope that we will put at least as much effort into retaining and developing our existing businesses as we do to bringing in new

[60:00] ones. Um yeah, thank you so much for all of this. Great, Council Member Shashard. Okay. Um so comments I uh overall this is very thoughtful and it's very ambitious and I I agree with uh council member Spear in her hotline just expressing um a little bit of a question of of yeah is it like are we taking on too much at least in a you know over the next few years. Um so that's in part an an appreciation of the work you put into this. Um, so with that I have I think I have four comments. I touched on a few of them in the questions, but I'll put them in terms of feedback. Um, so I do I do think that I would like at the at the sort of overall scoping of this and as we think about what we're trying to achieve that um we do make it explicit that maintaining and improving the

[61:00] economic health and choices of people in our the lower half of our income or the lower cortile of income and wealth or some some way to describe that is considered a part of our economic vitality. And not necessarily as it relates to them to those people becoming business owners, but just because so people being paycheck earners and thriving in our town. To me, that is economic vitality. And I would hope and expect that that would be, you know, explicitly made a part of what we we seek to continue to foster. Um, what do we what does that lead to? I don't know. like that would be I think something for further analysis. I do know that the combination of housing and transportation is most households highest budget item and the lower you get on the income scale, the higher ratio of your um income that those areas tend to take. So, um yeah,

[62:01] so I'll leave it at that for the the first one. Um the second one on work worker co-ops, so I'd agree with council member Foggurtz. Um, you know, we just we've got with aging trends and business owners retiring and it becoming harder and harder just across the US to give those to the next generation um without some support and facilitation. I would really like to see us taking a a stand on this and um committing to doing something ideally starting with you knowformational web page that says this, you know, like an educational hub to say here's what we can do. Here's what you can do and why you should do it. Um some facilitation um of the opportunities. So something in there to get things started. It just seems like such a strategically important thing for for us. Um and to in the context of the economic vitality, this is one of those things that will

[63:00] that will support moving from beyond discussion about wages to building wealth. And we don't have a lot of those opportunities. Um just a second. I need to tell my seven-year-old I'll be with her in a minute. I just need about three minutes. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'll be right with you. Um the third thing is that um is conso focus is getting at with respect to industries. Um I I'm not sure that we've done um this but it would be interesting to consider what are the kinds or what are the characteristics of the industries that we want to cultivate that we want to be the ones that are enriching our community in the future. Um Council Member Spear talked about this in her hotline. So maybe there's some space to do that in the future, but to me that seems really important as we think about our strategic economic vitality future. Um and then finally, and this is another these are all kind of high level. Um the some of the the discussion in the memo really points to

[64:00] the value of being ready for anything being ready for different different futures. And um I wonder if there's analysis that could be done with recommendations maybe for the BBCP or maybe that and other things that um consider for example if we're permitting new housing or commercial spaces that we're doing that that we're encou at at least encouraging um designs that will you know can be used for different purposes in the future and and other kinds of I guess planning and engineering that would support you know different options multi- options and thinking about ways to um advance that. Um that's what I got. Thank you very much. All right, Council Member Winer. And then I will add a couple of comments of my own. As always, it's really interesting to hear all the different opinions on our council. I have to say, and really get a lot out of it. am going to say that if

[65:00] I've learned if we've I've learned anything in the past couple years, it's that you cannot really rely on your past like best businesses or your best a city can't rely on what they used to do well or what businesses they used to have because things are always changing. And you know, the pandemic really upended and changed the the way we live and also the way our businesses do business. And we're still not quite over that. And I don't know that it's ever going back. but also with our current administration and the attack on our research and our labs and on intellectualism period. Um it just seems like we need to be nimble and able to like pivot to new and interesting uh types of businesses. For instance, you know, we've been talking a lot about quantum, which I don't know what that

[66:00] is, but it sounds really good. I'm sure it's there's something about saying quantum when you really feel good about yourself, even if you don't know what you're saying or what it means. But um so I am thinking about Dante's letter as well and how important it is to continue. Yes, to keep our build our business retention is super important, but as is bringing in new industries um that because things are always changing and we need to always make sure that we have a good tax base to be able to afford everything that we want to do and because if you're not going forward, you're really just going backwards. I mean, we could look at a lot of towns on the east coast where they just didn't look to the future and maybe they weren't negative enough like I am to say, uhoh, this is not working or, you know, our steel industry is like going downhill or there's imports or whatever it is that's changing the current

[67:00] business's practices. We always have to be nimble and saying how can we continue to um to look to the future and make sure that we um are just conscious and conscientious as far as the changes that are being taking place in our um in in every way in our country right now. Does that even make sense? I don't know if it does. But that being said, I was very happy with the letters from Better Boulder and from the chamber and from a lot of other people that were very forward thinking and because we have such I agree with what was said that we really have to pay attention to all the different pockets of people, all the income levels because when everybody is thriving, when everybody is doing well, it's just better for our entire community. So, I see this as just a very like all-encompassing boulder. Let's go forward and do well and make sure that

[68:02] we're very aware of the future and can be nimble and thoughtful about how to continue to succeed. We done. All right. Um I'm going to take the floor for just a second. My comments are going to be brief um and entirely derivative. Um I support Mayor Brockett's uh suggestion that we require more specifics. Um we we need to understand what concrete actions we're going to be asked to take um so that we can evaluate them and and determine if that's a direction we want to go in. Um, and I I really urge uh staff to come back to us with those kinds of specifics. Um, from Council Member Benjamin, I I support the call for urgency. Um, we're in a climate where almost everything is urgent,

[69:01] unfortunately, and um we need to respond to that climate and and address things. And whether it's um how businesses deal with fire resilience to to any other number of subjects, there are things that can't wait. Um and I I I support that call for urgency and I also support um uh Tara's call for uh nimleness and being able to pivot. We don't know what the businesses of tomorrow are going to be. we have to be ready to uh jump on the opportunities as they arise uh and to um be in a position to shift gears when that's necessary. And so those are three things that um I I think are important. I I will say um and I've made this point over several um a couple of of councils. Um I remain a skeptic

[70:04] concerning um grants to subsidize rents. Um I I just think it's a distortion in the market. We can't help everyone. Um and it's something to me that that that is not an effective program. But other than that, um I think this was a great presentation. Um and I want to thank everyone who participated in it. It was really a nice piece of work. So last opportunity to make a speech. Going going gone. All right. Um we are done with that topic and now we're on to the next. Um Nuria, would you like to uh introduce? Sure. Uh we're going to turn to our next council priority tonight. Thank you, council member. Our commercial area connections and quality of life improvements topic. Uh and while you'll hear from staff and our consultant partner, I'll take a

[71:00] moment to send a shout out to a group of folks in our business community who have been so thoughtful in connecting with and supporting the work staff have been doing to move some of the work forward. You know who you are and we thank you for your insight and your continued partnership. With that, I'll turn it over to Chris Jones, our director of community vitality to get us started. Chris, thank you, Nuria. Good evening, council members. Again, I'm Chris Jones, the director of community vitality. Thank you so much for the opportunity to present this important update that's aligned with uh council's 2024 2025 priority of commercial area connections and quality of life improvements. Over the past year, the community vitality department in close partnership with colleagues across the city has been focused on a coordinated effort to strengthen the vi vibrancy, connectivity, and sustainability of Boulder's commercial areas. Tonight's presentation reflects the results of that work so far, including strategic

[72:00] recommendations from the recent improvement district's analys improvement district analysis project. Um, as and as the board of directors of Boulder's general improvement districts, your feedback and direction will be essential in guiding the city's next steps. We'll walk through key findings and options related to district governance, financial sustainability, and potential new tools such as a downtown development authority to support the long-term economic health across our commercial districts. We're also pleased to share that our district commissions have been actively engaged throughout this process. Just recently at a special joint commission's meeting, they expressed unanimous support for the analysis and its recommendations with a strong emphasis on the opportunity a DDA could bring to the hill and downtown. Ultimately, this work lays the foundation not only for the future of district management, but for the forthcoming commercial areas blueprint, which will help shape how Boulder fosters vibrant, connected, and

[73:01] resilient commercial districts for decades to come. With that, I'll turn it over to Rean Brown to walk us through the details of this work so far, then over to our consultant team to present their findings and recommendations. Rean. Thank you, Chris. Good evening, council. My name is Rean Brown. I'm a senior project manager with the city's community vitality department. Can we get the screens uh the slides up on the screen? Thank you. And we can dive right into the next slide. So, I'll kick things off by running through tonight's agenda. We'll start with a general overview of the work to frame tonight's presentation, moving on to updates on connections projects both completed and underway. I'll then pass it to our consultant team, Puma, to discuss the improvement district analysis work, including results and recommendations. Then I'll outline next steps. We'll give an

[74:00] opportunity for council to ask clarifying questions and then wrap up with our questions for council which are noted here on the slide but are also included in your memo packet. Next slide. So just want to start by providing an overview of how we got here, why we're tackling this work. These efforts are really central to council's priority of commercial area connections and quality of life improvements. we presented to you all in September of last year during a a study session to outline our plans for this work which was wellreceived by council and tonight I will share several updates on projects completed and underway related to this priority since we last met with you all. Included in those updates will be the improvement district analysis. The primary goal of this work is to provide clear guidance on financial and governance tools that support the health and sustainability of Boulder's commercial districts. Our districts have evolved since being

[75:00] established and we really see an opportunity to address some of the challenges today through new or adjusted district tools. A key focus is on the existing general improvement districts also known as our GIDs. So, KID, Central Area General Improvement District, EUGID is the University Hill General Improvement District, and then our overlapping districts in Boulder Junction, Boulder Junction Access District. We'll also be considering broader strategies for other areas such as the Civic area, Western City Campus, um, and 55th and Arapjo, which serves as a large employment center for the city. through an RFP process. We selected Progressive Urban Management Associates, Puma, as the consultant for this work. They're based out of Denver. They have extensive experience in consulting on this type of work, specifically in Boulder. And they were tasked with assessing current district conditions, identifying challenges, and developing strategic recommendations for how our commercial

[76:01] districts should evolve. Next slide. This slide serves as a reminder of where our existing GIS are located and their boundaries since we'll be referring to these areas throughout tonight's presentation. The map on the top represents KID. Eugid is on the bottom left and then our two overlapping districts in Boulder Junction on the bottom right and center. Next slide. So diving into connections projects updates, we can move immediately to the next slide. A major aspect of council's priority is to implement projects related to University Hill, the downtown, and the physical connections between these areas. Since April 2024, several investments have been made in beautifification, quality of life, and connections across these two areas. We provided an update to council during your midterm check-in in February, but

[77:01] wanted to summarize some of the notable completed activities depicted here on the screen. Um, and I do just want to acknowledge and give a shout out to all our cross departmental colleagues who have either spearheaded or have helped move many of these initiatives forward. I won't go through all of these, but to just highlight a few, just this past month, we installed a creative crosswalk designed by a local artist at the intersection of 13th and Pennsylvania. The artwork is shown in the top photo here. We installed temporary wayfinding signage in the spring of last year to improve the pedestrian experience between the hill and downtown. Bottom left photo. And additionally, there have been several safety enhancements between these two districts, including along the arboritum and expanding the ambassador program on the hill, as well as improvements to the to 11th Street sidewalks shown on the bottom right photo. And lastly, several transportation related improvements have

[78:00] been implemented, including the park-to- park shuttle routing expansion and the development of a transportation marketing campaign in coordination with Visit Boulder, which is currently underway. Next slide. In addition to the short-term improvements in the previous slide, there are also several projects underway and in the works. Council approved $1.4 4 million in the 2025 budget to implement Hill Streetscape in uh enhancements. The city since then has contracted with Dig Studio to design the Broadway median improvements which will include repairing the irrigation, installing trees and low shrubs, and exploring art installations as well. Other planned improvements shaped through public engagement later this summer may include enhanced landscaping, improved tree plantings, additional pedestrian scale lighting, um, and other features that really elevate the pedestrian experience. And this is all

[79:00] in addition to other regular maintenance and improvement efforts in both districts and throughout the civic area. Other upcoming projects include civic area enhancements such as arboritum path upgrades and broader improvements in lighting and connectivity throughout the area. And furthermore, safety and activations have been identified as key themes for the civic area. However, it's clear that resources will be necessary to address the overall needed investments and sustained operational support in the years to come. Next slide. Now diving into the improvement district analysis which is a key component of tonight's presentation. Um we can go right into the next slide. I'd like to start by outlining the process for this project and how we arrived at the recommendations that we'll be sharing this evening. A large part of this work included reviewing past plans, studies, data, and

[80:00] engagements that have already been conducted. With that review, Puma created district profiles for each of our GIDs, highlighting existing conditions, and that includes a thorough background on each district's history and structure, key commercial market indicators, and a summary of past planning efforts, upcoming projects, and key partnerships. Although we leveraged existing studies and plans, we also really leaned on stakeholder engagement to gather input on our district's priorities and challenges to help inform recommendations. All of this was also vetted through consultations with our cross-d departmental colleagues to gather their perspective and expertise. And along the way, we've provided our district commissions with several update updates, including gathering their support during the most recent joint commission meeting on April 8th for the recommendations that we'll be presenting to council this evening. And lastly, I do want to note that we will be collaborating with the office of

[81:01] equity and belonging, including applying the racial e equity instrument to specific recommendations once we gather council's direction and feedback this evening. And as part of the process, there will also be further engagement with the business community and other key stakeholders as it relates to next steps in implementing the district analysis recommendations that we'll be presenting. So with that, I am going to turn it over to the team at Puma to present some existing conditions, data, priorities, challenges, and ultimately recommendations on how our districts should evolve. Next slide. Regan and good evening city council, city staff. Thanks for inviting us uh into your world in this project and on the screen tonight. Uh I'm Brad Seagull. I'm the principal of Puma. As Regan mentioned, we're down the road in Denver. Um the firm's been around 32 years. Uh I've also had the pleasure of working on and off in Boulder on these

[82:01] districts for the past 25 years. So strategic planning on the hill and downtown. We helped create the business improvement district back in 1999 in um in downtown. So, um at this point I it's an ongoing relationship and we're thrilled to sort of be back in the mix with you guys. Um this slide is just a summary of of your GIDs and and really it's just the first uh row that I wanted to bring to your attention. uh your general improvement districts in on the hill and downtown go back 55 years. So this is more than a midlife crisis, if you will, or a midlife check. This is uh looking at these districts at maturity um and what's next for them. I would also like to mention that downtown in particular is a national success story in terms of the use of the general improvement district. This was originally created to be a parking management district. um it has excelled

[83:00] at that and in our work which is national we worked in 40 states we often refer to Boulder as a best practice um in in not only parking management but in the employment of this improvement district. So uh it has served Boulder well certainly but our our goal with staff is to look at uh this point moving forward what makes the most sense. Next slide please. So, uh, we're mindful of time. We will zip through some economic information and then get to what we found, um, in our improvement district analysis. Um, we looked at some market indicators and most of this information is using, uh, Co-Star data. Uh, some troubling trends uh, particularly with downtown and the hill. So, this is retail vacancy. Uh, the blue line at the top that is, uh, downtown. So downtown retail vacancies um post pandemic uh continue to increase. This also mirrors sales tax trends. Uh sales tax in downtown it's

[84:01] just back up to uh 2019 levels. It's taken about six years to nearly recover and sales on the hill are below where they were in 2019. Next please. In terms of office market, um the supply of office on the hill and in Boulder Junction is too small for uh to for reliable tracking, but this tracks downtown and what it's showing is stubborn vacancy rates in office. So, we know office uh habits patterns have changed post pandemic. Uh you're experiencing this in downtown with an ongoing vacancy rate of about 20%. Next slide, please. and property value trends. So, we're looking at the aggregate assessed value of property in these commercial districts. Uh this is relevant because this is where property tax revenue comes from. And property tax revenue is um uh

[85:02] a a a big revenue source for not only city services, but also for Boulder Valley schools and uh the library and other districts. uh downtown property values have increased by about 6% overall since uh since 2019. At the same time, inflation has increased uh by three times almost four times that. So what we're seeing is actually in real dollars the erosion of your value base in downtown. Similar trend um on University Hill. University Hills um prop uh property valuation is up a bit. that reflects uh the new hotel, the Moxy, uh but still not keeping up with inflation. Then Boulder Junction uh property values have increased dramatically and that's primarily because of new construction in in that area. So, I'm going to hand it to my colleague Amanda Amanda Canard who's been our project manager. She's going to run through quickly some priorities and

[86:00] challenges that we heard and then we'll wrap it up with recommendations. Uh next slide, please. Awesome. Thank you, Brad. Um, and thank you again, uh, for having us here this evening. Um, so this slide highlights some key community priorities for each district. Um, we compiled these using, um, community engagement themes from previous planning efforts and studies. Um, and these things were really reinforced by the stakeholder engagement that we did as part of this process and our analysis. Um so just a just a quick note that these um are not listed in order of priority. Um but some shared priorities between KID and EUGID are improving connectivity between the two districts. Um there is some needed streetscape, public realm and capital improvement uh projects in in each district and then addressing safety concerns is also um a shared priority. Um but there are some unique prior priorities for each district as well

[87:01] such as um the civic area enhancements and Pearl Street improvements um and the future of office in in the KA district and then um diversifying beyond an undergraduate destination and a potential redevelopment for the 14th street lot for Eugid. Um, some of BJAD's key priorities are ensuring the district is walkable and transit-rich and implementing the vision for Boulder Junction phase 2. Um, and also increasing vibrancy in the district overall. Next slide, please. Uh, in addition to looking at priorities, we also looked at some of the challenges that are facing each district uh, in this analysis. So um for KID some of the key challenges include mission creep beyond parking um the district was originally formed for the purpose of managing parking um and its scope has since um expanded beyond that. Um there's also a lack of clarity between what KID does versus what the

[88:02] downtown bid does. Um and then there are also some unfunded maintenance and capital needs uh within the district. um for EUID while there are clear priorities the GI is currently not generating enough revenue to implement the priorities that stakeholders have expressed and then um in BAD there's actually the opposite problem in that the existing mill levy rates are generating more assessment revenue than is needed for planned improvements um plus the overlapping districts in that area creates some administrative burden. Next slide please. Uh so in summary um one of the key findings in this analysis has been that both downtown and the hill are experiencing economic stagnation as measured by several economic indicators um which have been discussed both in this presentation and in the prior one this evening. Um so property and sales tax growth has plateaued in both districts. Um and growth in property

[89:00] values has been outpaced by inflation which indicates as Brad mentioned an erosion in value. Um, so all of these factors indicate that reinvestment and stimulus in these areas is needed to restore vibrancy in a way that aligns with the community's values and council's priority to strengthen connections and enhance quality of life in these areas. Um, so by revisiting existing and introducing new district tools, um, there is an opportunity to support local recovery and build long-term resilience in all of these commercial areas. Um, so Brad, I'm going to turn it back over to you to go through recommendations. Great. Thanks, Amanda. And again, um, I am mindful of the time clock. I was told we, uh, collectively had a 20 minute limit here. So, I I also don't want to go too fast, so we may we may go into two or three minutes of overtime with the council's pleasure on that. Next slide, please. Uh, next slide. So, we have a series of recommendations and we have

[90:01] recommendations for each individual district. Uh, one large overriding recommendation that relates to both downtown and the hill, which was mentioned in the prior presentation, it's featured uh, strongly in staff's memo to council tonight, is this notion of a downtown development authority. I mentioned in my introduction, I've worked with Boulder for more than 25 years with these districts. I have never in that 25 years uh found a time where both the hill and downtown are sharing a a unified vision for what they both need. Uh they're actually both districts um are are are very supportive of this concept that would actually connect them in a way that would be unprecedented for Boulder. So the DDA, what is it? And again, there's extensive analysis of this in the staff report. Um, but it is a a uh unique uh mechanism created by state statute. There about two dozen DDAs throughout uh the state of Colorado

[91:02] currently. Uh we feel the DDA could address the priorities challenges and this economic stagnation challenge that are revealed in this analysis. Uh it could include not only downtown and the hill, but certainly the Broadway corridor in between and potentially to uh Alpine Balsson and and the new city campus. Uh the DDA, it's unique in that it funds both capital and services. So uh a variety of capital improvements potentially and then also services that enhance these districts. Two primary funding sources for it. Uh the first is tax increment financing which would not be a new tax but it would be an allocation of future revenue from increased property values and sales. So uh if the areas can reverse um this pattern of stagnation if they can prosper in the future uh the incremental increase in both property tax revenue and sales tax revenue could be

[92:01] reinvested in these areas. The DDA also offers an optional mill levy up to five mills which offers an interesting option that could add uh to the investment throughout this area. Does require a vote by affected property owners, commercial tenants within the boundaries. Requires approval by city council and city council has several areas uh to make sure that this is accountable to the community. Council appoints the board. Council appoints any bonds that this entity would uh pursue. Um and council also would have to approve any sort of uh mill levy to be put on a ballot within this area. It does have a 30-year life. Next slide, please. So, the way we've structured the recommendations, we do feel um and I believe staff uh is in uh in is in agreement, at least staff we've been working with, that the DDA is a compelling opportunity that we should look at in the near term because it

[93:00] could address a whole variety of issues related to the hill and downtown. So, the way our recommendations are structured is primarily to look at the feasibility of a DDA. If the DDA is not feasible, then we come up with a variety of alternatives for these districts as well. So you see this in the uh in the downtown recommendations, the KGID recommendations uh explore the DDA. Also this notion of clarifying what KID does versus the bid. This work is actually underway. This is mostly administrative and uh involves collaboration between the city staff and the downtown Boulder staff. alternative strategies if the DDA is not pursued. Uh the mill levy under kid and eug for that matter are currently subject to tabor limitations which means the mill levy has been ratcheting down through the years. So there is an option to increase that mill levy. It would require a vote by affected owners. Pearl street uh public improvement fee. This would be an addition to sales tax and then that

[94:02] additional uh amount of money could be redirected um for improvements in downtown. Uh if a DDA is not pursued, uh consider downtown improvements in city-wide bond issues. So we know that uh there are variety of constraints on Boulder's uh financial uh future and uh citywide bond issues are likely to be more prevalent moving forward. And then urban renewal, you still have urban renewal as as a tool. We feel it doesn't have broad applications but could be used on a siteby-sight basis. Next slide please. Uh recommendations for the hill. Um again look at the DDA in the near term. Uh some potential on the mill levy there too through debruing although the revenue from the uh mill levy is fairly limited. uh analyze uh parking structure there and is there more revenue the structure of parking and is there more revenue that could be achieved there. Similar to our downtown recommendation,

[95:01] any major improvements consider in a citywide bond issue again if the DDA is not considered. Um and urban renewal on a siteby-sight basis. There's also the lodging business assessment area that was recently approved. Um, a lot of the concern between downtown and the hill is uh driven by the visitor experience and the new hotels that are being created in between them. So, we think this funding source could provide an interesting option to improve that visitor experience. Next and last, I believe. So, recommendations for Boulder Junction. Uh, the these these recommendations are not reliant on the DDA. Um there are options we think to simplify and restructure uh the two districts and and look at how they could be uh consolidated in some way. Uh there are expansion options for Boulder Junction phase two. Uh also the mill levy aligning the mill levy more with the budgetary needs uh of today which uh right now the mill levy could be relaxed

[96:01] but make sure we don't lose the ability to increase that later if that situation changes. Uh and then again urban renewal and there's some other district options because there's more um land available uh around Boulder Junction. Some additional district options that could be explored. So I believe with that um it's back to Rean for the close. Thank you Brad. Thank you Amanda. to highlight some next steps here. We will be receiving a final report from Puma um over the next month or so which will outline their recommendations in greater depth and then as a key next step uh we will be moving forward with the commercial areas blueprint. The purpose of this document will be to provide long-term strategic direction on how to support our commercial areas not only within our existing GIDs but commercial areas all across the city. This work builds off the district analysis work and will provide a long-term vision looking at

[97:00] how to create healthy, vibrant, sustainable commercial areas over the next 10 to 20 years. It will closely align with the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan Update, helping develop the policies associated with neighborhood and regional centers. And through this effort, we will engage with key stakeholders, including city departments, business owners, and community partners to ensure that the blueprints recommendations reflect the diverse needs of Boulder's commercial areas. And then lastly, we will also advance the necessary steps to support the short-term recommendations and action items related to the improvement district analysis work. Based on council's feedback this evening, for example, if there is support in exploring the DDA, we will immediately begin financial modeling and stakeholder engagement to support moving this work forward. We anticipate that the creation of a plan of development related to the e the DDA could easily be folded into the commercial area blueprint work

[98:00] through the RFP that we're drafting. And we'll continue to update council as this work progresses, seeking input and direction throughout 2025 and into 2026 to approve any new structures, funding mechanisms, or polish pol policy changes stemming from our analysis. And with that, we can go to the next slide and give council an opportunity to ask any clarifying questions. Thank you. Uh that's a lot to unpack. Um and uh I assume most of us will have some questions. We will start with council member Winer. That will be Tara to you. Excellent. Yeah. Uh Brad Seagull, I have a few questions for you. First of all, I just want to say this was a really great and short and to the point, which is always my favorite um presentation that I appreciated. So my first question is you didn't say much about me met M metropolitan districts and I know that

[99:02] our business and creative arts community in particular very interested in that. So did you want to say something about that or you don't really want to? Um sure I not we're here to discuss and hopefully inform. Uh we do talk about metropolitan districts in uh in our upcoming report. Uh we do think they have limited applications in Boulder. Uh they're best used for creating infrastructure on in new development and green fields. In terms of the districts we looked at Boulder Junction uh the as we get into phase two and and adjacent areas around Boulder Junction, a metropolitan district uh could be a good option. Uh there is a word of caution that uh metropolitan districts um have been in the news in the last several years and not necessarily in a good way. Uh there are some abuses up and down uh the front range. I would argue those abuses have been where municipalities

[100:00] didn't provide sufficient guardrails around how to use them. So I I think it's a good perspective tool for uh new development that requires innovative funding for infrastructure. uh but would also advise that the uh city provide um again some some structure, some expectations so that we don't uh see some of the headlines that we've seen in other front range cities. Well, I'll have to look it up because I don't even know this headline. Now you piqu my interest. Uh my second question is DDAs. You didn't I always like like pros and cons. In other words, I'm very excited about the DDAs. Maybe the most compelling of what you said is that we would for the first time ever be be bringing together the uh commercial district of the hill and also the downtown. That's really exciting. But are there what are the negatives or the unintended consequences or the cons of doing a DDA? Are there any? Because it

[101:02] doesn't seem like there are. Um not many. I I mean again I mentioned there's about two dozen of them up and down the state of Colorado and they've been largely successful. Um and there are several reasons for that. And by the way to to illustrate success and I know there's always some danger in Boulder suggesting that you look at Fort Collins but uh their their downtown um has been steered by that DDA for almost 40 years and and it's been phenomenal. I I mean the whole town square they've got the uh historic preservation work, the retention of small locallyowned independent businesses um has just been fantastic. And there's some other examples. Uh you mentioned pros. I'll get to the cons, but the pros really are the the funding sources, the combination of tax increment and um also the notion of a mill levy. uh the uh governance which um has connections to

[102:01] council a council appointed board but that board is of uh stakeholders within the affected district. So these are uh governed by property owners, business owners, residents of these districts. There's also in the state statute a provision for a council representative on the board of a DDA. Uh for example in Denver uh we just work with them to expand the Union Station DDA and the city council president there has an ongoing seat. Uh another positive is the collaboration with local governments. The the DDAs and cities work very closely together uh to leverage planning investments a whole variety of things. Um on the con side um and and again I I haven't seen much of this in Colorado. However, I've seen in other states, we we've worked in Michigan. We've worked in Florida. Anyone who's worked in Florida, there's the opportunity for shenanigans. So, um the the DDA is is a is a enterprise.

[103:01] It's a new business and it's frankly going to be it's going to run as well as it's managed. So, uh these do require professional management. uh most of them in Colorado across the country um are have have their own staff their own dedicated staff who are professionals and that board when council's appointing a board for uh for a DDA making sure that uh we've got not only passionate folks but we've got expertise on that board uh to manage this in in uh in a very professional way. Um so you know in summary lots of pluses and the minus is um we we better manage this in in the best way possible and and there's some safeguards that can be built into the design of it to do that. Right. Uh Mayor Brockett, you're up next. You can call me Erin as well there. Mark, I'm very formal. Very formal. Um

[104:00] just one question. Well, you mentioned the uh the possible uh scope of the DDA geographically. I wonder if you could just tell us really quickly what uh limitations, if any, there are. I mean, it's called the downtown development authority. Can you do anything contiguous to downtown? How big can they get? Yeah. Chris Rian, should I continue to go here? Okay. All right. Um if you have a cane, you know, you can pull me off at the appropriate time. Um there are limitations. The state statute has a basic limitation that the DDA must uh mirror the essentially the the footprint or the uh traditional central business district definition of a city. So um this can't creep along every commercial district. Um certainly downtown and the hill I I think we could argue there's a historical connection there and their evolution and their relationship in terms of uh boulders downtown. certainly the Broadway

[105:00] connection, but that that's really there's two limitations. There needs to be a relationship to the central business district and how it's defined. And secondly, one downtown per city. You can only do one of these. You can't do several. Thank you. That's all I got. Ryan, I'm going everybody's first name. Great. Mark. Um, picking up on the the the matter of of potential cons. Um, can first of all, can Brad, can you just confirm this is the DDA in order to be established would need to go to the ballot. Is that right? The DDA to be established, uh, there's a couple steps. First, it has to go through you guys. So, first step is city council. Uh, city council then would put it on the ballot. The ballot, be very clear, is not citywide. The ballot would be uh electors within the boundary of the DDA. Okay. But it but my question is it would require a ballot initiative. Is

[106:01] that right? Correct. It would require Taber election essentially. So that's the ballot initiative. Okay. So then um I guess I would just offer uh the question to to our staff um or at least maybe this is a C to think about if you don't have the answer but you know we have other ballot initiatives in which we are seeking voter approval to fund our long-term financial strategies and you know this we've got things potentially happening this year and things next year. So I suppose I do I I would hope that a you know a recommendation for this would include an assessment of the potential opportunity cost of um you know I guess reducing the likelihood of getting wider ballot or those other ballot initiatives and then I guess it sort of gets partly at how much is on the table financially for this versus what we were trying to do otherwise. So, I don't want to I guess I don't want to press anybody for an immediate answer on that, but I I guess

[107:00] I would offer that that's certainly on my mind. And if anybody wants to weigh in, please do. But otherwise, we can take it take it later. I might just chime in there, Ryan. Appreciate that thought. I I think one just we are thinking about the long-term financial strategy, our potential ballot strategy in concert with the DDA. Um there's definitely a relationship there. the types of projects that we might fund uh through our 25 and 26 ballot strategy. It relates directly to how we'd think about the scope of a DDA. Um tonight is is just simply about whether or not there is interest in further exploring and doing some of the deeper analysis that that you and others have certainly pointed out. So I think it is the tool exploration first and it is that deeper analysis and ultimate feasibility that we'll need to bring back at a later date. Okay, sounds good. Then I'll just conclude to say that I'm interested to proceed with the arrangement that the business owners um and the district who

[108:01] um leadership we really benefit from and will need to move this forward uh will be partners with us and thinking about how to you know do do the most that we need to do in the with these financial ballot initiatives for the city. Thanks Lauren. Thanks Mark. Um, sorry for the noisy puppy dog in the background. Um, so you mentioned this being a ballot initiative or particularly a Taber um, initiative given that only people within the boundary vote. Is that pe would that just be people who reside whose residence primary residence is within the boundary? It just it seems like an interesting thing where you businesses might not be able to vote on it. Could you provide a little more information on that? Go ahead, Brad. Okay. Thanks, Mark. Um, the electors, this this is um we've been through this exercise

[109:02] dozens of times actually our our company. It's always a confusing question, you know, who gets to vote in this, but it comes down to really three sets of voters uh within the boundaries of the DDA. One are any residents. So, any resident who's registered to vote uh would vote if if they're in there. Uh businesses who have leases. So, if you have a lease on a commercial property, uh you can become registered to vote or have someone vote on your behalf. It's technically how that happens. and property owners, commercial property owners um can also vote if if not an individual, if it's an LLC or something like that, they can designate someone to vote on their behalf. So, residents can vote, businesses that have leases can vote, commercial properties can vote. Thank you for that clarification. Um, and if we did create a DDA, how does it so with the tax increment

[110:00] financing that only increases the or so the the tax collected that's because of the increase in property value um is what they collect. It wouldn't otherwise impact current municipal funding. And I guess the assumption is that the improvements that it makes are what creates the increase. So that there's kind of that that evens itself out, right? So So it wouldn't affect like the overall mills the city can levy on property taxes. Um that's correct. Um doesn't affect the mills. Now again it it does affect the distribution of property tax in particular and sales tax. So if we are entering a more prosperous cycle values increase and um sales tax increases. So

[111:00] on sales tax the increment is the city's portion of se sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sal sales tax the um the state the regional authorities on sales tax they would be unaffected by this but the city's sales tax would be captured the increase would be captured on property tax and this this requires working with your partners that collect property tax um because a large portion of property tax um goes to schools Boulder Valley schools you have some special districts and um some of their future increase in revenue would be redirected to invest in these commercial areas. The last thing I'll say and hopefully it doesn't confuse things but we've analyzed this and we've also looked we've actually recently did this in Lafayette. So we helped create a DDA in Lafayette. So in Lafayette we worked with Boulder Valley schools. We worked with your county assessor um over the last 25 years. Urban renewal in Lafayette, which is a similar uh

[112:00] mechanism, about of of all the value increase about a third of it was appreciation of existing value. That third continued to go to the taxing authorities. The twothirds that was from new investment, that's what came back into the area. So, it's fairly complicated. I don't know if that helps or or hurts, but but a full analysis of this would be done and um the meetings would uh you know would need to be held with with leadership of these other taxing authorities. I appreciate that and for clarifying that it um kind of all of the different property tax assessment collectoring entities that would be affected by that. It's good to know. Um, do you have, and this is a big question that I know you probably haven't studied yet, but do you want to hazard a guess at why

[113:00] property values have stagnated in our downtown areas and on the hill? Do you have any thoughts on that that you'd be willing to share? Chris, Mark, should I stay on it here? Better you to answer that question than us. Okay. want to get our money's worth uh at a your Yeah, I just, you know, just want to stay within bounds here. So, um yeah, I got lots of thoughts. I I mean, we specialize in downtown revitalization. That's that's what our firm does. And we work all over the country, specifically on downtowns and urban districts, and we also look at different trends that are impacting cities nationally. So um I would say a couple things regard well first of all the hill has struggled for a long time and the hill struggles predate the pandemic and you know going back I mentioned that our firm has worked with the hill on and off going back 25 26 years and and there's there's a variety

[114:00] of reasons why that real estate and those businesses have struggled. Part of it is just the scale. It's a fairly small scale. uh part of it in the past related to property ownership and willingness or unwillingness to improve property and businesses. Uh and then this whole notion and this is we find this in a lot of college towns where um the undergraduate experience does tend to gravitate to one area and historically we feel that happened on the hill. So there are a lot of reasons there. Your your downtown is more indicative of what we've seen um in terms of the pandemic impacting downtowns um across the country. So particularly the office market, the office market has been redefined. Um there have to be new reasons for attracting um people to the office with regularity. Not only do you have a higher vacancy rate, we mentioned the data showing a 20% vacancy rate, but the people who are working are going to the office less. You know, we're still in a at best with hybrid work, three four day

[115:01] work week. Boulder's affected more because your tech heavy and tech heavy industries have been more sluggish in going back to work. So for us um with downtown Boulder, it it really uh the the the most significant impact since uh the pandemic has been in your office submarket, but that does drive a number of other areas. The other thing I would say is um and and this is just anecdotal. This is where I get myself in trouble. Um it's just the evolution of downtown. You know, the the the east and west ends of Pearl Street at this point um in many ways are are have have seen more um more evolution, have seen fresher um business concepts than you will uh than you would uh than you would think. And Pearl Street, which I know this is now in planning, is in need of a of a refresh. Um, so refreshing the the concept and refreshing how Pearl Street relates the core of Pearl Street relates

[116:01] to the real estate around it and I know that's in play. So I I would say those two things together, but the the pandemic impacts particularly on work and then the need every downtown, you're never done with downtown. Downtown's always evolving. So what's what's the next evolution of downtown which hopefully will be um invigorating for for the community to think through. And I might add, you know, just how downtown has evolved over the last 20 25 years. You know, 20 25 years ago, there were a lot of surface lots. There was opportunity for um investment of of brownfield surface lots and that's all been developed over time. Um and so um being largely built out and with our height limits, um the opportunity for investment that's going to dramatically increase the value of properties is limited. um compared to Boulder Junction which again 20 years ago um even 15 years ago was largely um lower intens intensity industrial surface lots that have redeveloped and uh translated to

[117:01] that uh significant increase in value. I appreciate you guys um both taking bites of that answer. I I do really find that helpful insight. Um, in general, I really appreciate both the connections plan. Um, although I I do have a little bit of an issue with it running separately from the civic area plan, but I understand reasons for why we might do that. I just hope that we'll be really thoughtful and making sure that they mesh really well as we move forward with them. Um, I also appreciated the thought put into eliminating the overlap and improving efficiency in um, these different districts and I look forward to getting more information about um, this uh, DDA. I am very interested. Thank you. Right, Matt. And then I will have a

[118:03] couple questions myself. Just to clarify, we're we're still doing clarifying questions or are we wrapping those and comments? Oh, you're muted, Mark. We're doing questions. Gotcha. Um, yeah. So, a question I have centers around um more or less I mean I'm sort of I think you kind of maybe answered it but maybe just for absolute clarity is is is making sure so so what so one thing that has sort of arisen and I think maybe you know I think you think you maybe gave answer but um you did um you know we had some some a little bit of challenges with regards to how to spend money um in terms of Like I think some of folks wanted beautifification, some things people wanted improvements, but then I think you know maybe there was some other longer strategic things that people were thinking about, but there was tension about the money and it kind

[119:00] of boiled over a little bit to what council should do. And so I'm kind of wondering from a governance perspective um are there are there some like best practices or are there ways in which maybe it's you Brad or or others can help us assess our because because you mentioned the municipal districts and needing good guard rails and best practices and I'm just wondering is there a way in which we can get those sorts of assessments on the districts we have so we're setting them up with best practices and making sure we've got all those pieces buttoned up because if we expand and look to do more, I want to make sure we're doing so with all the right guard rails and things lined up and structure so that we're maximizing the benefit and that they're providing the the greatest application of their capacity as possible. So, that's kind of my general question on on how do we do get the best out of these districts um that we have and may develop.

[120:00] One thought maybe Matt and I'll let others kind of chime in here. I I think we're we're looking at the existing general improvement districts and especially related to Hill and the downtown in relationship to exploring a potential DDA. I I don't think that the current iteration of the general improvement districts it exists with just slapping down a DDA on top of Right. And so there to Lauren's point on on efficiency, that's part of what we're we're looking at. I I think it's important to to mention that the the the GI downtown KID has been very successful as Brad talked about in in its mission in providing parking and access, but that mission is very limited, right? And and the types of ways it can support the downtown. You also have an overlapping business improvement district or bid in the downtown that is responsible for other things. For the Hill, it's very different where there has not been the resources to support the broader need. Uh, and so that has had to be subsidized by the general fund over time. And so

[121:02] what we're really looking at, and not to mention, you have the the gap in the in the middle, right? The connections, the civic area, everything in between that that we've had challenges funding over time. Uh, and and so that that's where that conversation about the DDA comes into play. How do the general improvement districts, the parking assets play into that? How does the bid work work into that? that is a part of the the next steps and the conversations that we'll we'll have with partners. But it's a valid point to how do we whatever structure is there whether it's a DDA or an evolution of the GIDs, how do we make sure that is sustained and set up for for the future? Yeah, that's ultimately my question. And is that something we sort of set up and we figure out on ourselves or do we look to folks like Brad or others to kind of help us construct how to be the best version of this thing? I guess that's ultimately my my my point. So it I think you kind of answered it, but that's a piece that I'd love to make sure that we've got dialed in versus leaving it up

[122:01] to us to figure it out and kind of invent the wheel. Um and and because I hope that's not the case. We we will need help in analyzing that that sustainable future for sure. Thank you. Is that it, Matt? Okay, I'll take the floor. Um technical question or or numerical question. Do we know, I'm sure somebody here does, what the charge on a $2 million building would be for a 5 mil tax increase. Who's our human calculator here? Not at at this time of the evening. I I see Brad getting a pencil and paper out. Uh I I don't think we have that off the top of our heads, though. Okay, we can come back to that because I I think that's going to be of some kind. I I I've got your number for you. So if I'm

[123:01] assuming the 2 million is the taxable value. So it's it's because there's a market value and then for commercial buildings 29% of that. For residential buildings 7% but but if 2 million is your taxable value, 5 mills is $10,000 a year. That's pretty that's pretty stout. Okay. Sorry. Can I clarify on that? Sure. But wouldn't it I I think Mark is thinking about a $2 million assessed value, not taxable value. So I think you would need to divide that by almost a fourth. But is that not correct, Brad? Correct. I'll give you the if that's the market. Sorry guys, but if that's the market value, the 2 million, I'm multiplying that by 29% to get the tax value, which is 580,000 and um times our five

[124:02] mills, that's 2,900 a year. Thanks. Okay. Um do we have any sense using sort of the the initial um discussion about what this district might look like? Um, is it correct to suggest that that um it will generate a disproportionate amount of sales tax and property tax uh revenue uh relative to other parts of the city given the the the amount of commercial activity and the and the businesses etc. Would that be a fair statement or or am I missing some factors? So, go ahead. Well, so thanks for the question. I think that this is part of the reason um why we want to be doing this work is downtown used to produce

[125:01] about 12% of our total sales tax revenue for the city and today it's about 8%. And so as we're strategizing ways to imagine how uh downtown um it becomes a bigger driver of sales tax revenue for the entire city. Um we need to be thinking about ways to to to get there and a DDA is is a tool that we're looking at that would help us do that. In terms of the alternatives, how much bonding capacity do we have left? Uh that that's a good question, Mark. I I'd have to consult our finance team. I I think we just have a couple mills left if I'm uh recalling correctly for our citywide capacity. Yeah, I I don't want to I don't want to put something out there in the universe that isn't correct. And so we will get back to you on that. Okay, no problem. And and and I guess my

[126:00] last question is is more um a philosophical question. If if we are taking T if we are using TIFF financing and for the next 30 years um all increases in tax over the the base that we establish are going to be used and dedicated to improvement of the district. Um, how is that not some form of dedicated taxation? And I was under the impression that that we were frowning upon dedicated taxes. Um, is is my last statement not correct? Um, and if so, tell me. And if not, um, is this not a dedicated tax? It it's a it's a fair point, Mark, and and I think what what we're trying to do

[127:00] is kind of look at the the overall circumstances, right? So, currently you have dedicated funding in the forms of general improvement districts on the hill and downtown. You have an overlapping bid in the downtown. And in order to make changes to those uh districts, you would need the acquiescence of voters in that in that district. So, if you wanted to increase the mill levy, for instance, in just the the cage area, voters in the district would have to approve of that. Um, and that would only benefit uh the those in the downtown. You'd have to repetition if you're looking at expanding the the uses of the funding. Uh, and so you're that that is a significant lift and also just kind of supporting that core downtown area, the the civic area. um the connection in between the hill and the downtown not supported currently by a general improvement district. And we already mentioned kind of the the challenges um in the current financial

[128:00] structure in the University Hill general improvement district. And so when when you look at kind of the totality of that and combined with um some of the needs that we know some of the significant capital needs and ongoing operations to support safety and maintenance and and other initiatives within the downtown. Um I you know there's a couple different choices. We certainly could pursu pursue more of a citywide ballot initiative and infold those needs in. Um that that is an approach. Um what what the advantages of a DDA is um you know not only do you get the chance to um to potentially share the the quote skin in the game with that mill levy that could be beyond the walls of the cage area. Um you also have the advantage of of tapping future um uh incremental revenue from the other taxing jurisdictions which the GIS currently um don't do. So there there are some trade-off conversations.

[129:01] There's deeper analysis that are necessary. Um but we certainly think there is a a path there that that supports helps support the broader long-term financial strategy. Um recognizing that there are limitations to how you know the the sources of funds can be used. Don't don't misunderstand me. I I I uh I'm supportive of the concept, but we need to look in the mirror and say this is what we're doing and it's not entirely consistent with what we have been doing or articulating as as goals of our you know financial strategy which has always been no more uh dedicated taxes. This is not that. Um and that's the end of my question. So I'm going to go to Ryan a last minute entrance. Do you mind actually Moran do you mind if Mark could I do a call follow-up question just to the line of inquiry just we'll get right back to you um Mark Wolf just with the in thinking about

[130:01] this my understanding of the the tiff concept is that in part you're anticipating that there would be additional revenues that you would not have had if you had not made the investments from the downtown development authority is that correct that's correct and I I think uh Brad Seagull um a key point that as we're seeing that segnation in in the general downtown area, that reinvestment in some way in the downtown hopefully comes back to us um through that investment. And so you're you're correct, Aaron, that that's a part of the goal of all DDAs is to spur that that increased property value, increase property uh in increased sales tax that could contribute to to other initiatives. I appreciate that. Yeah. So, just it it is a form of dedicated tax, but it's also creating new revenues that would not have been there otherwise. Uh Ryan, you're you're the last man up.

[131:01] Thank you. I just have a couple uh comments. Um Brad talked a little while ago about the value of refreshing or revitalizing the Pearl Street Mall with an observation that there's or the area Pearl Street Mall area I should say with an observation that there are natural cycles and we might be coming upon one. So I I don't want to um put words into the m his mouth but I heard something like that. Um to me that that seems like a very important thing we should think about when we consider the vitalization the revitalization the economic revitalization and um I suppose I'd be interested to know if we can get our hands on it. Are there models or or like design elements or principles that cities that have tried to do this um could you know share with us? um or or is there just any expert thinking about objectively how do how do you go about

[132:00] that um kind of a revitalization? Uh and then so that's obviously not for today but just for future thinking. Um and then the the my second and final thing is it just um and sorry Nia but it makes me think about the connections with other initiatives around the area going on civic area one. There's also um I mean there is a live community discussion about um the possible pedestrianization of West and Pearl Street or at least putting that on the ballot and um I wonder if expert advice could you know play into that if we're talking about the whole um e economic vital re revitalization planned. So um not making any judgment about what that would look like but just that these things seem connected. And then finally of course Sundance. So, um, we've got some engineering to do, I think. So, it might be that it's a bridge too far to try to connect all these things together, but on the other hand, maybe there's moments in some of

[133:01] those other initiatives that, you know, can give some of this a boost. So, um, I trust staff will look at it and, um, think I'll leave it at that. Thanks. I might chime in. I know it wasn't it wasn't there wasn't a question question but I think while we have Brad and Amanda here and we are way ahead of schedule not that everybody doesn't want to go out and spend some dollars to boost the economy if we end early but um Brad I wonder if you could speak to the plan for development requirement of a DDA and the the types of things that communities include in that and we've seen that in Fort Collins Carl Springs has taken different approaches to really affect the the needs of the time that are unique to those areas. Sure. And and while the councilman was just talking about the need to sort of refresh and reinvent every 20, 30, 40 years, whatever, um I was thinking about Fort Collins, you know, they just redid their whole town square and and there's

[134:02] no real formula. Every every city's different. There are some best practices. There are some trends obviously in terms of what people value. Uh also thinking of the next generation of who's going to be using these downtowns, thinking of millennials, thinking of Gen Z, you know what all of that is. So that that all comes together. But to Chris's point and maybe one of the most exciting elements of the DDA, um is that it relies on what's called a plan of development. And the plan of development is is different in every DDA. There's no template for this. The plan of development is tailored to what Boulder would would would need to have that whole mix of vitality. And the plan of development is also very high level. So the plan of development creates four, five, six, seven, eight maybe areas of focus that we want to focus on. and it lists a whole variety

[135:01] of aspirational things that we can work on because we'll be working on this over the next generation. The the DDA is goes for a while. So, for example, um there could be something about um more more residential development and do we want affordability, you know, as part of the residential component of downtown? That could be a focus. Also a focus could be the built environment that we've been talking about and making sure we've got uh more pedestrian friendly. We've got more tree canopy. Uh we're integrating our sustainability. Uh values and practices that have come in in recent years in terms of of designing what we do downtown. Most of these have some sort of mobility section that looks not so much at parking these days, but at at a variety of ways to to get around downtown and and to get in and out of downtown. Um, small business and small business retention. Uh, a lot of these

[136:02] DDAs right now um are concerned about displacement and about uh losing some of the small, local, independent businesses that that make places unique. And just one example, um, Colorado Springs of all places has a new initiative where their DDA provides financing for small businesses to buy their building. And that's that's really the only way in some ways that you're going to keep some of these things that are cherished by the community. So the plan and development would be uh essentially the the not only the vision, but in a way sort of the business plan for the DDA. would set the parameters and um it's an exciting process to go through because the community gets involved um to really think about aspirationally what do we want downtown to be and to do and the plan of development also can break that into short term what's realistic what can we do you know in the

[137:00] near term and then what's a little more aspirational long term so don't mean to ramble but but uh I'm I'm glad Chris you brought that up because the plan of development is unique to ADDA. Um, and it is is an exciting process for a community to go through. I also just with all these great questions, I just want to once again elevate or nod to the commercial areas blueprint as well, which will really serve as that long-term vision for our commercial areas. Really looking at best practices in commercial area vibrancy. um identifying strategies and um yeah strategies that we can implement in all these different areas across our city that require attention and kind of require that future forward thinking. So just wanted to elevate that once more. Thank you. I think with that we can move on to comments. Um and I remind all of my colleagues of the virtues of brevity. So, um, if anyone has a a comment that

[138:03] or at the very least an expression of interest or disinterest in pursuing this, um, uh, please uh, state that preference. Lauren, I already wrapped my comments into my previous statement, but I'll just reiterate that I am interested um in moving forward with this and learning more about it. Thank you. Okay, Aaron. As am I. Yeah, I think it's a really exciting opportunity for the downtown. So, looking forward to learning more um and hopefully moving forward with this. And then uh very supportive also of merging the Bjad districts just to get that comment in there. If we can get that done that would be amazing. Thanks Sarah. Very interested in the DDA and next steps. Also interested in learning more about the metropolitan district um for

[139:03] some of the other areas and very interested in combining what did you call it Erin? The beach out and the beach combining the Bjad districts and and thank you for the metro metro district comment. I'm also interested in that. Yeah, Ryan. So, just to summarize, um I'm I I'm interested but trepidacious about the DDA. Um I'm look forward to learning more about it and seeing how it can hopefully fit with our um our wider priorities. And then for um the wider commercial area connections um quality of life uh yes interested to go forward and to the extent there's time to get any um more thinking either um from our partners here or elsewhere on this question of like what what are the elements of refreshing um something like the Brill Street Mall? What kind of what can we learn from um the best knowledge? You know, if there's time for that. Thanks.

[140:02] Matt Benjamin, you're up. Uh thanks Mark. Uh yeah I I uh I I think it's worthwhile exploring. I I mean we we've we started the previous discussion about where our business community is and I think the presentation here uh keeps using the the sword that we don't want to say. We don't want to jinx things but but it's our golden goose and I think all the investment we can focus in those areas. Again, this is a this is a what you call a positive feedback and a force multiplier. We invest in, we get out, and then we get more back as we continue to invest. So, that kind of positive feedback loop, I think, is essential for us, especially as we're in this sort of flattened state, both ourselves and our businesses. So, I'd love to see us explore that. Um, and I think it's worth pursuing a municipal district. The caution that Brad mentioned is duly noted. So, I think any pursuit of that would need proper guardrails. But I think as it relates to

[141:00] some of the conversations around uh Boulder Junction phase 2, some of that infrastructure that's been discussed, we got front range rail that's going to be coming into that area. So, so this is going to be one of those hubs. And so I think infrastructure is going to be the name of the game. And we can't count on the feds and may not count on the state. So if we can do some of it ourselves, then we have a better chance of making those areas vibrant and and thus feeding back into our community uh appropriately. So I'd love to explore all those things. and thanks for the great work on on this particular part and all the assessment. Really appreciate that. Um Mark, can I just quick colloquy? I forgot to say something that can I do that? Do you mind? Okay. I forgot to say that uh Jonathan Jonathan Singer wrote to me and he said this also in regards to Metropolitan District. He wrote to me during the meeting. You know that does happen sometimes. I know that's not um we have seen a number of bills passed the legislator in the last couple legislature in the last couple of years

[142:00] that have helped provide guard rails around the metropolitan districts. So, I just wanted to make sure I mentioned that. Thanks. Okay, that leaves me. Um I'm in the camp of Ryan. uh I uh uh I support but I have uh trepidations uh relating to this concept. I want to understand more about um the impact of the diversion of increases in these tax funds um dedicating it solely to the downtown district and what that might mean for other areas of the uh city that will not have access to those funds. I want to understand better how this concept uh relates to the anticipated with any luck um CCS funding if we are capable of extending it um or possibly

[143:01] even a public realm tax. Um how is this going to relate to those? Um, and uh, is it going to be its own source of funding and we will not have to use CCRS or public realm for funding of of the downtown or or are they going to be in effect double dipping? Um, and uh, uh, I I'd like to know of what other cities have experienced and how well, you know, what the results have been for those cities. Um, and have any uh cities had a bad experience and why? So, forgive my voice. Um, that's my view. And, uh, I think now we've all expressed ourselves on this. Any any last minute comments or uh um words of wisdom for my

[144:00] colleagues? I'm out of words of wisdom, so it's I'm relying on you guys. Okay. Ah, yes, Aaron. I I just would like to nominate Council Member Wallik as our hero today for getting us ending 40 minutes early. It It's a good thing. Um, and so if there's no further business, um, I want to just compliment the staff for all the hard work and the great results. And with that, I'm going to declare this meeting adjourned at 8:19 p.m. Thank you.