October 28, 2025 — Downtown Management Commission Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:01] We are recording. Welcome to the Downtown Management Commission meeting. This is October 28th, 2025, and I will call roll. Erica Dahl? Here. Justin Calvin? Here. Andy Nathan is not here. Dombo? Here. Stephanie Priest is not here yet? I will turn the meeting over to Chair Poe for procedural items. Thanks for everyone for the extra meetings that we're having. We have the minutes from October 6th, and the, would anyone like to make a motion? Motion to approve those minutes for the DMC meeting. I'll second. And likewise, approval of the minutes from the, All Commission meeting? Do I hear a motion? I'll motion to approve the… I'll see. I'll second. And then we have the schedule that's been proposed for meetings for all of the DMC for 2026.

[1:02] Likewise, we just need to approve those as best as we can at this point. Can I hear a motion? Motion will approve those. Way to go. Good job, Keith. And… do we have any members of the public? There are no members of the public landlord. Great. I didn't foresee any consent agenda items this month. So, none to really discuss. Windows, not… Oh, wait, there were… it's got my pages wrong. Page 42. 4… 41? I have one question about the pilot program as it moves to… permanent? Do we know if there's any… changes as it becomes permanent. Which program? The Outdoor Dining Pilot Program.

[2:01] Yes, there are some changes. I don't… is Regan on the caller? Some other modifications to that providing program? I actually… I'm gonna have to get back to you. Cool. I think the Commission would just… it's been kind of under our purvey. We'd love to just get the two cents. Absolutely. Sure, and I can speak to some of the elements. First of all, there will be a… So, bud. short application period. It'll be a revolving application, so… the pilot… Folks had to apply in January, get approved by spring in hopes of getting outdoor dining infrastructure installed by Sunday. That did not, always work out well. The folks who were ordering the Mod Street. City-supplied, structure, so now the rotating application period, folks can apply early. And if you get accused, you can get, the church rice.

[3:01] Interested. That's funny. There's also a replacement fund. instead of when there's something that needs to be repaired, a major modification or something to the infrastructure, instead of trying to find the money and do it again, we're building the front, so we build that, it has to be passed. Great. Did anyone else have any, topics on the consent agenda? Then, it's not officially on the… agenda, but we do have Austin Redstern here. It is on the… it is on the agenda. It's all the way down under item 8. You're in the chair, you can… Well, since they're here now, maybe I will rearrange the schedule. No offense to Bettina, who was here before. Bettina often sits through the whole meeting. I might just have the… I'll move this up earlier in the agenda, just so we can get you guys back to what you need to do.

[4:12] Great. So, for the… Downtown Area Update. Very good. Hello everybody, Steve Redford, Police Chief, with me is Commander Mike Heath, who runs the downtown area. I'm gonna give just some, some real brief updates on a couple things. Number one. Just wanna say, I think, we're in a pretty good spot. I think we've had a lot of… a lot of, in-progress things that have been going on, but with the partnerships and, a lot of the discussions and emails and things, that have been going on, we've… I think we're… We make some pretty good strides, obviously acknowledging there's still Work to do, and as we've talked about before, the two things we're always balancing is crime, which I'm going to give you some stats in a second, but perception and field of safety, those are always two different things. But, quite frankly, we made it through summer without a huge spike in any sort of crime.

[5:09] And, you know, now that the weather's getting cold, we'll see how things, if we trans… if we have some of the issues come back into town that tend to go away when it comes to some of our unhoused population leaving and going elsewhere during the summer, now that it's getting colder, coming back into the core area for services. So, there's a lot of moving parts as well with trying to get a lot of city services moved away from downtown and everything up. to North Boulder and the shelter, I think we're seeing some of that impact as well. So. I just want to say a few things, Overall, citywide, we are down in every crime category. I asked our Dr. Reinhardt to pull specific stats to District 3, which is down here, which is the mall. Specific to the mall, We are down everything but robbery, year-to-date, and robbery…

[6:00] down here, when I say we're up in robbery, it's because we have one additional case of robbery, and both of those robberies are shoplifts turned bad. It's classified as a robbery if he's a store owner, and I'm stealing something, and as he stands in my way, and I push him out of the way as I'm leaving the store, that changes that to a robbery, technically, in legal terms, so it kind of skews our data. We're not talking, you know, gas station stick-ups and things like traditional robbery-type stuff. But I will share that, we're down citywide 48% in things… in… in robberies, so that's a… a good thing. 24% down in aggravated assault, we were seeing that go way up. We're focusing, heavily on assaults. A lot of it is between our own house, population, some of it's school stuff, late-night bar stuff. What I'm really happy about is double-digit decline 40% down in arson. We were seeing a lot of People setting things on fire. 24% reduction in burglaries down in this area, 35% reduction in theft from cars.

[7:02] Overall, 14% down in property offenses citywide year-to-date compared to last year. What, been interesting to me as well is the second piece of that is Okay, we're down at prime, What is that attributed to? One of the things that also, statistically, I got this morning from Dr. Reinhardt is that we have had 3,000 more proactive police contacts this year than last year, so far. That's traffic stops, that's pedestrian contacts, that's foot patrols, and so, The direction to the officers by all of us has been, get out of the car, get on bikes, get on e-bikes, go out, interact. We've talked about some, historically, some of the inhibitions we have right now with our current jail system. prevention and productivity is really our best, bet right now. Quite frankly, it's easy when somebody commits a major crime, because we have… the traditional mechanisms are still there. What we were seeing is a lot of lower-level things repeatedly happening.

[8:00] And people getting really upset because they're like, I've called… the cops have been out here written this guy 8 tickets, and we're not seeing a difference. Prevention and making it just really uncomfortable for people to be committing crimes and being nuisances, to me is one of our biggest tools right now, until we get other systems to fix some of their issues. So, the up… the up in 3… the 3,000 initial… additional, police contacts, to me, is a good thing. And I will also say that With those additional 3,000 contacts, we're not seeing increases in use of force, we're not seeing a lot of things that might happen when you think about cops going out and stopping more people, we're doing it the right way, so I'm really happy. When you say 3,000 more, what's that? Compared to last year. But how many was last… was, like, last year 10 million, so 3,000 more is, like, a little bit? No, no, no, I hit 1,000 and 3,000 more alone. We're talking… I mean, it's under… we're talking numbers in the thousands. So it's not… So 3,000 words is significant. Right, and part of that is being more staffed. Like, we're better staffed this year than we have been in 2016, so having that initial staffing

[9:04] also allows officers to not just be responding to calls for service and being very, very reactive. It allows us to be more proactive, and part of it is having… this is the… I think last year we became fully staffed on the mall team. This is the first full year, so those things, some personnel shifts, but we're still working through it. So, overall, I'm pretty happy with where we are, crime-wise. still understand some of the quality of life issues that are frustrating for business owners, and folks in the downtown area. Every morning coming to work and somebody in the doorstep, the, you know, person defecating outside. We had a guy run around earlier this week smearing feces all over. cars and things, like, those are things that, quite frankly, I would say even, yeah, that tech constitutes a crime, and we dealt with that guy, are bigger systemic issues than what the police should be dealing with, and that's gonna be just something we continue to deal with until Colorado Steps up a little more with some of the things that we need more of, which is treatment and drug treatment, alcohol treatment, and mental health.

[10:06] stuff. So, I think with what we have right now, we're doing a decent job. We're retaining our staff better, and so part of it is just the continued support from you all as well, and the community is… it, it isn't lost on me when I don't hear from City Council regularly with issues. It seems like, for me, that sends a message that we're doing a relatively good job when the community is letting Council know about any other number of things. We all know public safety keeps continuously being at the top priority when people take surveys and things, but… Overall, when other jurisdictions are seeing big spikes and stuff, I'm pretty happy with where we are. Other than that, no big departmental updates. Mike will talk about some potential… some upcoming changes in personnel down here. We're just getting ready for the holiday season. We're gonna have, increased patrols down here on foot. We're gonna have increased patrols down on the 29th Street Mall area, where we see an increase, as well as down here during the holidays.

[11:03] of crime. It goes hand in hand, and so, we just need people to keep letting us know what you're seeing in your areas, you know, we can't be everywhere, and as I've always said, like, my… My phone is always on, email's always… I'm always responsive, so please let us know what you're seeing. We can… we can help with this well. I know it's Halloween. Yeah, that's exactly what I was saying. Halloween this weekend is an extra hour or two. Yep, I'll let Mike talk about that. I, I will, actually be, in Hawaii this weekend. It just happened to work out so well. The vacation this weekend. I don't matter when it comes to operations on the street, so… Oh. I will be, a little bit far away, so this… it's all Mike. If it goes well, it's… if it's… if it goes well, it's definitely my responsibility. If not, it's Mike, so at least not how that works. Exactly, yes, sir. Yes, sir. I'll let him get in detail. I'm comfortable with the plan that we have. you know, we always run into the risk of over-preparing, and people go, see, you do all this and nothing happens, but we're going to continue to probably prepare more than we think we need. So, with that, we can take a couple more questions at the end if needed, but I'll let Mike talk about… I do have two other questions. Sure.

[12:14] I saw in the Boulder Reporting Lab that Boulder County is a new sentencing facility. How does that interplay with the kind of mental health issues and stuff like that, or just the bigger issues you're facing? It'll be interesting. It's actually going to be potentially a resource drain for us, because It's up by the jail, it's a county facility. We have a, we have a basically halfway house right now here on Canyon and 21st. And then there's one in Longmont. Both of those halfway houses are moving all together over there at the new facility with some alternative sentencing. The judge will now have an ability to say, I'm going to sentence you to work release, I'm going to sentence you to some sort of other sentence other than jail for appropriate things, and then they'll be there in that facility with getting case management and things. It should be a good, hopefully, something that will allow

[13:01] people to stop being recidivists and things like that. For us, it's interesting now, because any new crime that happens in that facility is our responsibility, even though it's a county facility, so we're working through that. That was kind of a surprise to us, but I'm hopeful that it'll be a good thing, and it'll allow One other tool for a judge to… for the appropriate people to… to give them maybe an alternative to Or ease them back into the community. So it doesn't give us more beds or anything like that? It does. It frees up bed space in the jail. So, potentially, you know, it frees more bed space for people who need to be in the jail, and then it allows people who actually have some potential to… maybe go do work release, or go do community corrections, come out and get that reintegration where hopefully they don't just come back into the system. So I think… I think it's a positive thing for sure. We'll have to see how it turns out for us research-wise. And then my second question, with the topics on the ballot for mental health and stuff like that. I don't know if you're allowed… what you're allowed to say, or if they will help

[14:04] in kind of the scheme of what we've always… you've been working with. Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna get political, just like if you ask me to vote for council, I would tell you to just do your homework, and everybody has the issues that are important to them. I personally support Smart legislation that allows other options for people that we don't currently have. I would actually support legislation that, on a personal level, would allow a judge to say, you know what, you've demonstrated that you are you have such mental health issues, or you are… addiction… the traditional stuff's not working, I'm going to mandate that you have some treatment. Other states are looking at that. What I don't support is legislation that allows us to have less resources. Because what happens on some of these pieces of legislation is, yes, there's additional services, but it gives us less options. And so, there's still an effort with some legislation coming through to give… to make it very… even harder to put people in jail. And there are people that need to go to jail. There's people that need disruption behavior. There's people that have demonstrated that they…

[15:06] cannot function, and I'm talking the serious criminals that harm people that we continue to see let out on probation, parole. The majority of the violent crime that happens around Colorado people are out on bond, a low bond, people are out on parole probation. So, I'm all for alternative ways to get people the root cause figured out, the mental health addiction stuff. I just don't want that to come at the cost of us not being able to hold the people who really need to be held accountable, if that answers your question. just do your homework. There's a lot of… I mean, sit down and really go through it. Thanks, Chief. Hi, everybody. So again, Mike Heath, I'm a commander with the police department, and I oversee the mall team and a whole bunch of other stuff. So I don't want to take up too much time. Seems like every time I've been here lately, we've talked about the mall sergeant. We're going to talk about it again. We are now running a process to have the permanent sergeant

[16:07] put in that position, we're gonna run an interview tomorrow. the team is going to help us. Thank you, John with Japano is also going to be involved in that interview process. We've got 3 really qualified candidates. One of them is Sergeant Copobianco, who has been running it as interim, since we lost Sergeant Scable. So, but the other two are very qualified as well. So, I think we'll have something in place that's going to be… well, I know we will… something in place for our shift change in January. And then we'll give back to that permanent sergeant position. So, I'm excited about that. Halloween. So it's coming right up. It is locked up, Dave. Thank you for pointing that out. So, we've got a lot of resources in. We're also bringing in quite a few of our SWAT resources, negotiators to assist, emergency response team, like, we… we're gonna have well over 60 officers working on Halloween. We are probably gonna do a little bit with barricading.

[17:13] Down at the West End, like we did last year, that seemed to be a great deterrent. People came down and were like, oh, everything is shut down. So, it'll just be that, like, the… the tree area, a lot of waterfall area, so much like we did last year. We'll come down, we won't impact Munchkin Masquerade, we're not going to impact any of the businesses, it'll be a little bit later, and then we'll have those out, by the end of the night. Saturday, homecoming, football game, we've got some upstaffing for there as well, so very… I'm very comfortable with what we have prepared for… for this weekend. There's no intelligence, like, over receiving that we'd like to have in the past. There's gonna be a big mall crawl, everybody come down, so I'm feeling pretty comfortable with the resources we have. I'll be here.

[18:03] We'll have two other commanders that'll be working as well. Also, we'll… We'll become. And then, what do you guys have for me? I mean, I think it's, like, pretty cleaned up. Bettina and I were just talking about it walking down here, I just don't… I don't have a lot of complaints. Yeah, good. I don't… It's good to hear. I think our mall officers are doing a great job. We'll have a little bit of turnover with Will's Bretts, and Seidel's been doing the drone stuff, but we've got some really good candidates for that once we get this mall sergeant position filled. Then we'll run that process, but that'll happen, it should change, but again, we've got great candidates to fill those positions. I think we're looking very good. I plan on… I think we're gonna do a mall walk on Friday. I'll be out with the kids, maybe handing out some milk.

[19:00] Do you not like that, Bettina? I can't come and hang out with the kids? You can absolutely come hang out with the kids. He's dressed up! We can talk. So, it's been a little while, I've been out at some training and some other things, so we haven't done that. I'd like to get back to that, and… I mean… What a better day to do it than to hang out with the kids and house the paint, so… What are you gonna hand out? Snickers? Full-size Snickers Parsi? No, probably lose stickers. For sure, for sure. This is more… this kind of connects with maybe Bettina's thing. When it gets dark. every year, lights, and just people around, always create that… Lack of perception of safety that is not relative to crime, it's just… if it's dark, and you're walking alone, and you see someone acting strange, it makes people, like, you know, feel that they're unsafe. So, I guess I wanted to get a sense of

[20:09] maybe to start the conversation sometimes. There's trees that aren't lit up, and then there's just, like, a dead block, or, you know, there's a lack of presence at certain times, and it's super dark, and then that just contributes to this perception, on the… in this strip. So, I don't know if this connects to… the work that your team does to light up the trees and such. I just wanted to bring it up, because it seems to be a topic every year. Sure. It starts to get dark early, and it'll start to get cold. Yeah, and, you know, like the Chief said, with our continued rise in staffing, and reassessing that, and looking at, like, our neighborhood impact team, who, in the past, when that was really fully staffed, had a much larger presence in the downtown area. And, you know, like I said, we pushed those mall positions to a later time as well. I know that doesn't really cover

[21:04] like, you know, bar clothes, or even kind of high time, high dinner time, starts to cover it a little bit, but that's where you know, boosting up our neighborhood impact team, which is what we're looking to do, can certainly help address that. What time does the mall patrol end? So, our late ones end typically at 7. Okay. But that's not to say that, and we have been, and hopefully you guys have been seeing this, we have really been talking to our swing shift and our night shift commanders and sergeants, and making sure that we do have more of a presence, because we always have district officers, right? Yeah. So just because they're not dedicated. on the bricks doesn't mean that we don't have officers down here, and what I'm being told is they're… they're actually getting out on foot quite a bit, and then from talking to some business owners, I've been getting that feedback as well. I can talk to the holiday lighting. Our team has actually already started to install it. They start at the outer, perimeter, and then they work their way in. If you see a dead block, please let us know, because it's certainly our intention to have as many of the blocks lit as we can.

[22:15] We did invest in some more lights this year, and We are gonna be doing, a brighter effort with fun things, on the 13th Street block over by one Boulder Plaza, where the ice rink used to be. And we've also installed some other pieces, and there'll be more on the mall as well, so we recognize that. There's also been some electrical issues with the actual light poles on the mall, on the 1400 block, and we did… we were able to rectify that, and so we just… you know, we can't be everywhere at once, so if you see something that's not working, let us know. Or a file open guard over, though, they're really good about. And do you know when the last ambassador's shift ends at night? They… their shift ends at 8.30. Okay.

[23:05] Yeah. Anything else? Thanks, guys. All right. Thank you, guys. Have a good one. Aloha! Yes! This is a little pixel, it's an AC situation. Thank you. So next, we have Q3 Fund Financials Report and Sales Tax Report, not discussed in those questions. I love looking at financials, and I have a thousand questions, but I can always talk to Elliot offline instead of, like, taking up time here. Does anyone else have… Thousands a lot, is that an exaggeration? Yeah, it is an exaggeration. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Sexy. Let's hear something about it Okay, hero. One thing that does kind of matter to the Commission, specifically, lease rentals and royalties.

[24:02] Is it… has gone down. From previous years, are we just not renting one of our spaces? That's a great question. There's a few nuances with that. I'm not sure Elliott is on, virtually. I'm sure he is ready to answer that question. Yeah, good evening. Great question. It is a timing of revenue processing this whole year has kind of been that. I know we've been saying that on a pretty regular basis. The thing that kind of threw this for a loop a little bit more is that the, transition from property management firm to our new property management firm And the process of standing up Workday has kind of delayed things a little bit for us to get that in. We do have about $200,000 in back revenue that we're in the process of processing, so that will show up, and we anticipate a pretty much fully funded year. Cool. And then, what is other revenue? And it is, like.

[25:04] See, is that the one that's… So small. Is that the one that's, like, 10%? Like, last year was, like, over half a million, and now it's, like, 50 grand. Yep, yeah, that's a great catch on that one. The… traditionally, what that is, it's a… basically a maintenance agreement that we get with St. Julian. So the ongoing maintenance agreement's close to that $50,000, $60K. What was different from or what was different last year is that we were reimbursed for a large capital expense. So for government reporting processes, we can't do an expense reduction, we actually have to show it as revenue. So it shows up in our other revenues, but it was really just a reimbursement of expenses that we covered, for St. Julian, because as we were doing some capital works, there was a couple locations Within those repairs that were technically owned by the garage, but for efficiency's sake, we just managed it, and they reimbursed us for it.

[26:07] That makes sense. Specific ownership and tobacco tax. Is that just tobacco cat? It's actually just specific ownership. I don't know why it gets lumped together like that. It's a, the way we do central financing, we don't have a tobacco tax in, KJID, but the… kind of the two get lumped together, so specific ownership, like personal property, those types of things, falls within that. And then, The next batch, use of funds, community vitality Customer Service. Is at 150% of last year. Yep, yeah, so some changes there as well. The ambassadors, which are actually enforcement positions, live within our customer service kind of funding tree. They… they are showing up in that, in a little bit different way this year. And then the other one, I'm just wanting to pull, make sure I'm gonna speak correctly as I pull up these fund financials for you. The other changes we've had there was the change from

[27:18] T2 over to, Ames, we had some additional expenses there, and the credit card processing fees have changed quite a bit as well. So, bottom line, you're comfortable with all that. I am. Yeah, the fund itself, you can see there's actually… so the projections that you see in that column, that's basically taking what we've spent this year, looking about what's coming up for the remainder of the year, and kind of doing a calculation based on our spending performance. Lack of a better term, it's kind of a straight line projection. There are some nuances in there of things that we do know actually are coming up from an expenses side. And more than likely, we will overspend in a few program areas.

[28:03] But from a funds perspective, we're… we're gonna be within the appropriation, which… technically, at the end of the day, is the most important thing. We don't go over what Council appropriated, either during adoption or the adjustment to bases. But one thing nice about the way we can categorize things is it helps us truly understand the cost of operations. So, I'd rather us go over in some categories for us to be able to look at that and say, okay, these costs For this specific operation's going up, and these are going down, those types of things. So, we try to accurately reflect where the costs are, rather than where the budget is built. And then on sales tax, the next page. Yep. I think it's the Downtown Extension. 2019 had, like, 627, 2020 had 587, and then…

[29:05] We're, like, down at 46,000. What happened? Help us. of alphas. Yes, I'm looking over that as well for the downtown extension, because the downtown extension. So, it does include… I think I'm not closed for that. Yeah. The big one in that area has always been… because it's not… I mean, overall, it's not a huge… portion, you know, total for the downtown extension anyway, and the grocery sales had always quite that big. Boom. Those were my million questions. Great. Happy to entertain any more if there's any others. Big drop, 29th Street, there was text.

[30:02] Yeah, so you'll, you'll kind of see in these reports… Yeah, you kind of… that narrative that's been going around, about budget reductions and sales tax flattening, and you can kind of see how specific areas within the downtown, I guess, kind of geographical boundaries has changed over time, and what that means for some of the the, activities from a retail side are happening, within these. So it's citywide, obviously, we have some impacts, but you can kind of see how that changes from geographical zone to geographical zone. There you go. What street does downtown in? Downtown ends, I want to say, on 19th. I actually… I've included a map in the past on previous, agenda packets. It did not make it into this one, I apologize. On BoulderColorado.gov, there's actually a website that'll show you all the sales tax regions.

[31:00] So yeah, there's actually a nice big map in CV, if you guys wanted to walk over there, I saw it the other day. And what about is… is, like… I see east downtown, but is there no west downtown? That is technically considered, it's… downtown kind of extends much larger than Pearl Street, so it's kind of that whole area, and I'm actually going to pull up the map, I can give you guys some boundaries here, if that's helpful. And I can share my screen, too, to kinda… Grab this… See how many things I can open at once, see if I can actually share the right thing. So here's some of the boundaries, and I'll make this a little bit bigger. As soon as this gets out of the way… Oops.

[32:03] So the, the Pearl Street Mall is just that. You can kind of see there, it's, like, from 11th over to, 15th, right there. And then around the courthouse. The downtown extension is gonna be more north of, I guess, west, if you will, downtown. It includes the Broadway Arapahoe area, the library, those types of things. Downtown itself is basically incorporated all in this light pink color. The blue in the center of that, that's Pearl Street. So downtown is fairly large when looking at the entire area, so it would include the west downtown. East downtown is gonna be anything east of that 18th Street, so it's a very large large area. But from a commercial district perspective, it doesn't incorporate a whole lot of… commercial businesses, there's a lot of residential that's included in it.

[33:04] So when there's, like, a vacancy or two, it has an outsized impact, That area. Say that again, sorry. When there's, like, a… because East Downtown doesn't have that many businesses in it, when there are vacancies, it makes a big difference. Yeah, it certainly can, depending on the business, and… Whether or not they're doing retail sales. Yeah, I, just this week… last weekend, I… this is, like, on the topic of vacancies, which is a bit of a tangent, but… Not hard to… Also, hard to just, like, track… if this is vacancy-related or not. I know we track that stat separately, but it would be kind of helpful to look at those next to each other, if it's relevant. They're just more retail vacancies or not. I know we say there aren't, but then, like, I… happened to be downtown, and there were, like, 3 new vacancies that I noticed this weekend on the mall, so…

[34:03] I know there's always an ebb and flow, but… Yep, yeah, and hopefully with the new… I just like that cruise spot. The curse. It's gonna be a sushi restaurant. Yeah. There's so much… That's gonna be a sushi restaurant. Oh, really? Okay, yeah. Already signed that. Great. Well, thank you, Elliot, for joining in. Yep, absolutely. Thank you all. Placer AI report and visitation reports, does anyone have any questions on those? I had one question. On the first page of them, it said visit frequency 3.78, 3.77. What's the unit? What is 3.78 watts? Average visits per… Personal.

[35:04] So, in the… So each person comes, like, almost 4 times, more or less? Exactly. -Oh. There are many more people in the three-year. What? Like, in the three years, so many more people. So, for instance, yeah, so for… COVID. For the… For this year, there are 1.6 million people who have shown up 4.13 times to total just 6.5 million. Total sense. Then on the next page, with visits trends with the three, line graphs. I assume the units on the x-axis are which week? Because it's going from January 1st to September 30th.

[36:00] Yeah, and they don't let us buoy with the scales, it's just, it's how they give it to us, and we can't really… Modify that. Which makes it hard to digest, for sure. Yeah. But those other links, yes. Interesting. Anything else? Tina, I assume you can get all that data, too. For the… Visitations and stuff. We actually have pedestrian cameras that gather a different kind of data, so one of the challenges we have is trying to overlay those pedestrian counts with the placer data, and sometimes it's a little bit… more data is always better than no data, I say. Yeah, you talked about that before. Anything else? Okay, moving on. Well, Bettina, where's yours? All right, great. Well, I know I just saw you all a couple of weeks ago, so some of this is going to be, a little bit repetitive, but I did have a,

[37:09] Deck up there. share some exciting things with you, and I actually have some things I've added since this went out in your packet, at the very end, based on our prior conversation. Can you go to the next slide. We had a candidate forum for the City Council candidates on October 9th, at U-Town. That was a great event. We had about 65 people in the audience, and we had 9 of the 11 candidates… no, 10 of the 11 candidates come, so, that was… exciting. We did endorse the initiative that you were talking about earlier, the county, mental health sales tax, and we also endorsed the CRS sales tax extension and, the debt cap that the city put forward. So hopefully next week we'll be hearing some good news about those two, political issues.

[38:00] On the next slide… We have some marketing updates, so our campaign for the Heart of Boulder… go to the next slide. Not sure if this will work with the audio, but this is our new, spot that is now going to be running, through the fall, and this is a little challenging because we had a bunch of new images that we shot with, a bunch of different local models, including our own Chris Jones, surveillance models. And we had a lot of really great, sort of, late summer shots, but we also wanted to make sure we're showcasing holidays to see there, so, it's okay if I… I mean, I want to see that. But we played in the package. You're actually in. Discover the heart. I think… Visit downtownboulder.artofboulder. Welcome to the heart of Boulder, where twinkling lights and crisp evenings make every visit magical. Where cozy cafes, festive shops, and local events bring warmth to the season. And where every gift purchased, every meal shared, and every moment enjoyed supports the artists, shopkeepers, and dreamers who make Boulder Boulder. This isn't just any downtown. This is downtown Boulder.

[39:18] Discover the heart of Boulder at VisitDowntownBoulder.com. Didn't make the… sorry, Chris, sorry. There will be other… there will be other campaigns, yes. I might be wearing this jacket. Is that a Pendleton purchase? This is a, bespoke host. Oh, gotcha, gotcha, okay, excellent. Yeah, so… If you can go back to the deck. We're coming ahead on the spot. On the what? On the spot. I know you get the count you get. At the end, we have the blonde people, then we have two blind people, this diversity. I wish there was just more diversity to this. You know, we'll take the best we can to showcase a wide variety of people. We're not hiring professional models, we're hiring people who work back in town.

[40:10] So… We do the best we can. Yeah. So, hurt. If you go to the next slide, these are some of our, Instagram influencer partnerships that we did, and this was a really fun project. We had four influencers that we worked with who were kind of reflective of the downtown vibe, outdoorsy, foodie people. They came down, we had really good engagement, in this program, and we're gonna be… we learned a lot through the process. It was the first time that we've worked with influencers, so… We learned a lot, we're gonna do it again. It was definitely a great way to kind of boost our viewership. Unfortunately, one lesson we learned is that we have to be very, very explicit about where we want people to go.

[41:02] Because some of them kept going to the same places. Some of them are iconic, right? Like the Tea House, they're just… they're gonna go there. But we really wanted them to go and follow our strict itinerary, and some of them like, didn't follow the instructions. So, it's always a little bit of a challenging thing when you want to showcase an entire district and not look like you're playing favorites when you also have, you know, iconic places, like the Boulder Bookstore or Peppercorn, which are also very, tourism. focused businesses. So, anyway, that's been a great campaign. Hopefully you've seen those on our social media. I can go to the next slide. This is just a little bit about our ongoing media campaign. You can see it's pretty tiny here. Hopefully it was a little easier for you to read in the packet. We've got meta ads, we've got our bus backs, we've got cable TV showing the spot that I just showed you. And then we're also doing, pieces on traffic radio, so, we found that's actually a really, really high listenership, as people listen to the traffic report when they're commuting. So, we've got some spots on that. That's been a really good, piece of radio media. I was interested in switching from connected to cable and

[42:12] For… at this time. like, all summer was connected, and then for the… You know, I'd have to talk to our media buyers about that. I don't have that level of granularity. I like the fuss. advertises. Is Connected, like, do you know if Connected is, like, Netflix's and the things that, like, do you pay on streaming? I'm not sure what that is. I don't really… I'm sorry, I don't have that information. I can follow up with what you'd like. Yep. If you go on the next slide… This is some of our, our digital impressions, so you can see in, just that this time period of the, essentially the summertime from May through early October, we have 2 million impressions, and that's… that's just been really great on some of our TV campaigns. Also, our podcast ads are doing well as well.

[43:07] On the next slide… You know how that compares to previous quotes? Sorry, I keep firing questions. How does that compare to past? Like, I think that's really… I'm sorry, Dawn, I don't… I know we always… they're always… because I said that I'm on the marketing committee, and Explore Communications use the form that we use. They're… they always say that we perform above… like, way above average at most, of, like, national averages and everything. They're always really impressed by their quick… their… our click-through rates, so… Don't worry. Nice, Erica. And it's, you know, it's challenging, too, because Meta is changing their reporting constantly, as you know. So, like, we try to go back and look at a performance metric that didn't exist 5 years ago, and then they call it something else, and that's why we rely on the nationals to help us with that.

[44:00] If you go on to the next slide… One thing that we're really excited about this year is we launched a holiday playbook, and I shared with you a little bit about the restaurant playbook that we published, at the… in the springtime to help the restaurant community, but this is specifically a list of marketing tools and resources and different programs and suggested campaigns that any retailer or any restaurant can work on. Some of it is dovetailing with our holiday programming, and some of it is just things that you could do in your own business. So, that was published yesterday, and it's full of really great tips. The goal is that we will be able to update this annually and have new programming inserted. We'll see what worked and what didn't. And on the next slide, we are launching this Downtown DASH program, which I'm very excited about. It's essentially a, a shopping passport where you collect stamps, and then you can enter to win prizes. The person we worked with is a… was a contractor to develop this, launched this program in Fort Collins. It's called the Fort Collins Spree.

[45:05] And they've been doing this for many years, and it has just an incredible economic impact. They're able to track how many dollars are actually spent, because they are collecting these cards that are then turned in for really fun prizes that, either come from the businesses donating different gift cards, and then do a big package giveaway at the end of the time. So, this is super exciting. It's the first year we're doing this, and it will definitely be iterative, so we know of promotions like this, it might take a while to catch on. But we encourage you all as commissioners to please get Adapt guard. We'll be releasing them on November 23rd at our Switch on the Holidays event, and the promotion will run through December 31st. At the marketing committee, which Erica serves on, we also discussed the possibility of, you know, if it is successful, this is something that we might be able to expand, during non-holiday times of the year, maybe when we need to boost, retail shopping. Just kind of gamifying, this, this idea of shopping all across the part in downtown.

[46:07] So the deadline for that is this Wednesday. Right now, we've got about 31 businesses who are participating, so… Is it a digital card or a physical card? It looks like this? Oh. It's a physical stand that you get stamped. Yeah, old school. Old school. Analog, as we call it. Like the national park passport. That's what I call my bike, exactly. My bike without a motor, analog. Yeah. That's right, you can get your analog passport stamped. I'm on an analog bike, I love that. Snap a selfie and share it with us, that's great. On the next slide… Some of our fun holiday events coming up, we've mentioned Munchkin, this Friday from 3 to 6. Just a quick note, we will be closing 13th Street and 14th Street just for the hours. of Munchkin. We're not going to be towing cars or anything like that, but just to mitigate some of the littles who are crossing the street. We don't want to have any.

[47:06] accidents, and sometimes people get accidents, so for safety reasons, we will be closing the street. Our Switch on the Holidays event, we have reimagined. We are going to have some really fun events. The Cookie Crawl is going to be, starting at 11am, and then at 2 p.m, we'll have entertainment start on the 1300 block. We've got Tuba Christmas coming out, so that'll be super fun when they were here last year. This year, we're going to showcase them a little bit more. We've got Boulder Ballet, we've got an aerial dance company, and the Boulder Chorale is gonna help us saying to switch on the lights. Freddy the Yeti Elevations, Car Dayton's mascot will be Flipping the switch along with Santa, so that should be a good time. And then we're going to be alternating St. Nick on the Bricks with the Snowflake Express train. Last year, we realized that having those two things happen simultaneously meant that people waiting in line to see Santa were also, in danger of getting run over by the TiVo train, so we decided to split that up and maybe give people more chances to come downtown, and give them more activities for the family.

[48:12] And then, I mentioned this last time, but another reminder… moved it a week later this year, so we're not in competition with a Denver parade. The older folks who go to that might come to this instead, and maybe some folks in Denver might want to come and see our hometown parade. We have 58 different floats, so it'll be a great time, because who doesn't love a parade? And then… The AR thing isn't this year, right? You know, we just didn't see the perform. It's really expensive. It was… it was expensive, and we didn't see the engagement that we were interested in, so we've restructured this, and we're investing in the Dash, the DASH card, and Yeah, just kind of… we're trying to saturate more weekends rather than do, like, freezing fest events, and give people a longer time to shut up.

[49:05] So this switch on the holidays, like, all the music is between 2 to 7? Yes, and the actual switch-on will happen at 5. Okay. Yeah, the Tuba Christmas, I was just passionate down the mall last year, and I was like, this is so cool, why didn't I know about this before? That was definitely a highlight. It's so cool. You guys been? There was, I think they have, like, 70 or 82 booklet, like, right in front of… That's really cool. animals, and… what do you call that with the map? It was so cool. So they'll be, yeah, they'll be on the 1300 block on the stage. Okay, so it's moving. Tuba tuba, lots and lots of tubas. We can go to the next slide. I did want to share with you, we did a couple of surveys for some of the external event producers, that we had talked about at our last meeting, so just sharing some of the comments we got from our business community. The Roots Music Festival, I don't know if you all went, but it was an absolute smash success. Just really, really, really…

[50:06] overall so well received. The vibe was immaculate, the bands were interesting. Showcased different venues, different retail spaces, restaurants, it was very… very, very successful. So, excited to see that inserted into, the kind of complement of events that were offered downtown. And I know this is really small, but, you know, somebody said we had great business that weekend, one of the top 5 days of the year so far. Good amount of foot traffic, it was a perfect mess, meaning with the festival, the No Kings March, John's Summit, and World Singing Day, the weekend was amazing for business. Yeah, we felt it was a win, high positive impact. It was great. Really, really good. We also got a survey about, we sent a survey out about Boulder Thon, which I know had maybe a little bit less of a positive overall feeling. We are, of course, in favor of that event, but if you go to the next slide,

[51:08] we got, we got mixed… more mixed responses, I would say, about this, primarily about, road closures and some of the timing and communication, but I know the gentleman had sort of asked about whether we were listening to how these events have been received in the community, and we do. So we shared these with Justin Greenstein, the City Events Coordinator, and we've also shared it with the event producers so they can understand. They might be a little more open to share with us on an anonymous level than they would through a a directed feedback from them. So, so that's just a little bit of snippet of information for that. And then finally, if you can go to the next slide, we are super excited that we have officially announced the logo for

[52:01] the Pearl Street Mall 50th Anniversary. So, big thanks to our partners at the City of Boulder. The Parks and Recreation Department took the lead on this and hired Rios Design Firm. who have offices in Boulder and have been doing the work on the civic area engagement. And they were so thoughtful, and I just think this is an absolutely lovely homage to so many years of businesses. Essentially, the typography, each of the letters in the logo represents a different business. And of course, you know, we couldn't include all of businesses, and so some people might have some hurt feelings that they weren't included, but it really was about these kind of iconic fonts. That you might be able to see. And we wanted to honor the oldest business on the mall is hurdles, they're still there. Some of them aren't around anymore, like Tons Tavern, but we know that sign is still up on the side of the building, so it's sort of a visual association with the mall.

[53:01] So, these are the businesses. They have been informed that they are included. They sent a press release just today, as a matter of fact. And this, this formally kicks off the 2027 anniversary campaign. If you go to the next slide, you can see the, the color format, so it's kind of giving those, like, 1970s color vibes with that palette there, and then also just that there's a horizontal and a vertical version there, so… More to come on that, but I thought it would be interesting to see. And that concludes my report. Thank you. A question about Boulder Thon. Why is it on the Mall versus, like, somewhere else? Like, the Civic Center area? The expo you? Yeah. Like, what's the… just because it's always been there. Well, it's a pretty new event, is my understanding, so, they filed a permit with the city to have their event there. Boulder Boulder has their expo on the mall. That's probably part of it as well. Okay.

[54:09] You have to ask them. Okay. They can. What? Because they can. Because they can. Yeah, it's just, it's interesting, because the more of the supporting events where, like, people are clearly not going to shop. Like, it's safe and unusual. I just always say, like… I… I… I feel like, feel like we… people… businesses get really upset over things that aren't directly monetarily benefiting them, but I think it gives people a really good feeling for Boulder, and that's, like, that always benefits. You know, like, there were a lot of people picking up their… because it was Sunday, right? there were, like, Friday and Saturday, there were so many people picking up these… their goodie bags for the… to get their numbers, and I… and I thought that was really nice, because… It's like… They come more than once. Yeah, yeah, and it's a quick, pretty quick errand, but if you're already down there and you've already parked, like, I don't know.

[55:06] Yeah. But I'm on… I'm not in the, like, mess of it, so maybe that's… Oh, actually, I just had one other thing, if I could mention very quickly. You're talking a little bit about, sort of, the vacancy issues and some of the residual impacts that can have. Just a sort of little fun fun thing to know about is there's a new business that's going to be opening. It's a Swedish glove company called Hestra, and they're opening on a 1200 block, 1100 block, and We heard from their CEO today, this is their only North American store, it is their flagship, and they are so totally excited about it. So, it's just really nice to hear from, you know, international brands that they see the value of being here, and… and they're so excited to be a part of this. So, yeah, they're taking the chuckle up space.

[56:02] I know those blogs, yeah. Oh, the job website. Yeah, I think that the, like, balance between the, you know, the big sports businesses wanting to all have stores here, because now this is a place where everyone has a flagship store, versus the small businesses is an interesting dynamic, Seems like it would just become this destination for sports stores, even more so. Rodeo Drive up. Rodeo Drive after a year and a half, but we still maintained a number of our small locally offices. Yes, that still is the majority of the system. Anyway, thanks. Thanks, Patina, for your report, I appreciate it. Matters from Staff Parking Pricing Update. Great, I'll hand it directly over to Sam, and I might suggest that we, put the letter to City Council last on matters, because we've got a couple items folks here to talk about. It's Sam and the lead. So, Sam, over to you.

[57:03] Just, shoot this. Notice. Great. Well, some of this is probably not going to be new to you. Some of it, I believe, Christine presented last week, but I just wanted to give, like, a comprehensive overview on pricing changes that are going to be happening downtown for parking. Starting in 2026, so this is both garage and on-street. These were all in the, budget packet that was approved by Council on October 23rd, so I'll get right into it. Garage pricing, I've got, our hourly pricing on the right. This is what is probably not new to you, because it was in… Christine brought it to you, I think it was actually earlier this month, when I was out.

[58:07] So these are our hourly pricing, and then our monthly permits are going to be $175. They're actually… they're currently $170, so it's just going up $5. we had two different prices this year, it got a little bit funky, but yeah, going up $5 to $175 next year, and then the 99 cent fee is gonna be on top. Of, the transaction, as opposed to kind of baked into it. And those… those rates will be really clear on all the signs that we plan to install. We need to put in new signs to convey the new pricing. In terms of revenue, we're anticipating about a 4% increase in the hourly revenues year over year, which is about $46,000. For next year. It's not a huge amount, but, a lot of our revenues are actually… and our hourly revenues are from the 6-hour-plus category, which is not cheap. It's still gonna be $50 an hour.

[59:13] So that's, the garage pricing, and then for on-street, this map here shows the 2025 rates, and this is helpful context, because all rates across the entire city are going at 50 cents next year per hour. our base rate, which right now is $1.50, is increasing to $2 to reflect that change. This was part of, again, the budget count… the budget packet that went to Council. And they're estimating about $800,000 for that particular change, so every block that you see on this map is just going at 50 cents, so it'll be pretty… Easy change blanket. But it is…

[60:02] Can we go on back? Yeah, I, I'm all supportive of this, because the city needs to fund its operation. I think the… thing that I feel just is, like, a really bad deal is, like, the 99% fee for the mobile app company, right? 99 cent fee? Cent fee? Yeah, that's just a lot for a transaction, and I just… I feel like we're getting swindled by a company making revenue on every single transaction. Like, why can't we negotiate that down? their volume, or change the pricing model, or… We have in the way that we can. So, Metropolis' fee is consistent across every single location that they manage, so they're not willing to change the fee that they charge. Well, we do have a revenue share agreement with them, so… After a certain amount of transactions, it's 250,000 transactions. we split that 99 cents in half, and we get half of that revenue. So, that was the way that we, sort of.

[61:04] negotiated it. not down to the parkers, but trying to recuperate some of that revenue. At 250, how many do we have, like, in a year? No, it's… I think we were, like… I have to go back to, like, the original work that we were doing to kind of, like, budget for this, but I think it's closer to, like, 500,000 transactions a year activity. So, our previous vendor, we had the Gates. Yeah, Gates. We didn't charge necessarily… we had to pay them a significant amount of money, less than what these folks are making off of transaction fee, it just was… It was just embedded in the… in the fees, so you didn't see it. So, there's always going to be a cost with a system operating in our garages. This one, it's just really clear, the amount that is being charged directly to the park. super customer, and Metropolis, at this point, they bought out SP Plus, they're the largest parking operator, in North America. And also, there's no fee to install, too, as you recall, right? Well, yeah, I'd be happy to install. No, I…

[62:13] Obviously, that is different when parking fees… when it appears like it's going very overtly to a mobile app company versus, like, you know, through an app versus, like, two cities funding its operations. The perception of that is just more obvious. The costs, and, like. it isn't $3, it's $4. So, that's the part where I feel like I know it's not false advertising, technically, but it's $3 plus $1, it's $4. It worries me a little bit, like, when you say $3 to park, but it's actually $4. like, when you say the pricing, where will you see the… where will people see the pricing? So, we have signs at the entrances of the garages. We're gonna actually install them at the exits, too, so people can see them before they leave, but it'll show… it'll look pretty similar to what this table shows. The 99 cent fee will be very clearly on the bottom, like, all transactions included 99 cent. I just feel like it should be $4 and not $3, then.

[63:12] If I recall, there was… this was mentioned in a previous meeting. That even if we advertise it as $4, the price breakdown is $3 as one charge, and 99 as another charge, and people were surprised by the additional charge, even though it was baked into the pricing that we advertised. They were Frustrated with the breakdown? They felt like they were paying that dollar, even though they really weren't paying the dollar. Now they are paying the dollar. Not much is changing, except we're letting them know up front it's… But it's… the $3 thing is not… the 3 for 3 for 3 is not. It's 3 to 3 for 4. Well, if we're advertising it on a billboard that says it's $3, and then it's $3 plus the 99 cent transaction fee, that's $4, and I guess I don't…

[64:10] No, I… and thank you, Justin, for pointing that out, because that's exactly what was happening last year. So last year, we… we were charging… we were… our sign said it was $3, but in reality, when they would go into park, and they would get their receipt, it would be $2.01, plus a 99-cent fee, and so all the time, we were getting complaints from folks who felt like there were some hidden fees, because we weren't advertising fees as separate. And so… Yes, we are raising the prices next year, so that's, like, to your point, these prices are going up, but also we're trying to respond to the frustrations that we heard from parkers, that they felt like we weren't giving them this visibility to the fee, and so we're trying to address that. And I will point out, we get… we get monthly reports from Metropolis We have an 8, I think, on the customer satisfaction.

[65:01] scale, which is, like, Disney-level customer satisfaction. So, while we do get complaints, when you look at our pricing compared to garage pricing in Denver. And our operation as far as customer satisfaction, we are doing a fantastic job. So, not that there is always room for improvement, but, what we're hearing from our customers, we're being responsible with that. Our rates are very competitive, still free on weekends and holidays. I think that the changes are intended to make it a little bit more user-friendly. One of the weird things was first hour was one rate, and then we had a different rate for the second through fifth hours, which was confusing for folks. So this will certainly streamline the understanding of the pricing. The 99-cent fee, as long as we want to have this gateless system. Metropolis is the only game in town that operates a post-payment system like this. Yeah. So our, I mean, our CU right now, they have gateless systems, you have to guess how much time you're going to use the garage before you pay. And you have to go to the machine and pay for it, and then if you go over time, you're getting a ticket. So…

[66:11] It's… it's the… Yeah, I'm not complaining. I don't think our pricing is too high. I was just wondering if it appears like false advertising. to market it as $3 and have it to be $4. That just… like, if you're… we'll get feedback on that. I guess if people are like, I'm confused, it says $3, am I paying $4? We'll see. I like it. It's gonna say $3, asterisk, 99 cents. Yeah, and the thing about Phetropolis, agree, it's a better experience. it just also seems like a lot of money for a transaction. It's just, you know… And we will certainly reflect that in the minutes of the feedback. Do you pay the 99-cent fee on the weekends for everybody that… okay, they… We just offer register. Metropolis… but no, but I mean, not me, but do you… does this… do you guys, like, so Metropolis is, like, weekends are free as well?

[67:05] Yeah, it is, that is unique for Metropolis. They're not used to working with municipalities. They work with a lot of for-profit businesses, so there was a lot of work that went into the negotiations, with them, and I think… that we're pretty pleased with the outcome of those negotiations. I think there is opportunity to renegotiate the contract, potentially as soon as next year, given all that's gonna change in Sundance, so we're happy to take feedback and help that. I mean, flight parking on the weekends is, like… That's, like, that's, like, the biggest gift ever. That is beyond generous. No, don't charge. No, I was gonna charge for Sundance. Oh, no. No? I mean… No, during Sundance. This meeting and weekends is the only time I get to park in the garage. Do not take that away.

[68:00] We are anticipating charging for some damn specific property. Okay, that's nice. But it could be private, too, a lot of private lots. I mean, we want to use City Rock. Any other questions on a garage plaison? Any questions on the on-street pricing changes? Alright, my last slide is just… do you have more questions? We'll let you all be easy on that one. I'll be back. This is, like, so mid-$50, but the $15 flat rate after the 6-hour… Do we have the flat rate listed, or is it just $15 after, or 6, or 6 through 12? It says 6 through 12, $15, but every… everything is going to say subject, like, every transaction subject to a 99-cent fee. Right. Like, that'll be sort of separate. I'd more mean, like, people… Won't think that the $15 for the sixth

[69:04] hour, the 7th hour, and the 8th hour. It'll be… the word flat will be next. That's what I was saying. Okay, got it. That's currently how it is. Right, so I just wanted to make sure that I was staying with the new signage, I guess. Yes. Question about… do you know anything about the park mobile app? I know a couple things. Okay, it doesn't work a lot for me. And I'm wondering if that's the case for other people as well. With the update? Sometimes the logins don't work, and they're just like, won't let me log in. I don't know if it's… I just… it could be phone-specific. Well, let's keep this specific to the… I think it could be phone-specific, but I do feel like that that app if it… I know that we don't really, like… we're not involved in it at all, but if all of our payment is like this, there's also just some… Other negative things about that? That I… have just…

[70:02] been taking care of as I try and park downtown that I just think are worth noting. If you can email them to me, like, if you can take a screenshot whenever you have trouble and just send it to me, you know, I'm happy to work with park mobile and try to get any of those issues resolved. They're historically, like, very responsive as a company. Yeah. They provide very good customer service to the city as a customer. Yeah, okay. And so… and we have very good relationships with them, so… please just let me know, and we'll… Yeah, what is, like, the stance if it doesn't work? Because, you know, with a meter, if it doesn't work, you just, like. put a note on your car, like, meter broken. No, I mean, that's what I did, but, like, when it's, like, an app, you're just like… Wait, what? No, so that's the way we have redundancy with the meters at ArtMobile, because if one doesn't work, you can use the other. Oh, okay. I think I just didn't notice the meters around. Yeah, and I'm like, what do I do? Who do I write, God? But I think you pay a fee just to use the app, so it's always cheaper to go to the little kiosk.

[71:07] That's true. Really? Yeah. 45 cents. That's someone who's worried about that 99 cent fee, I think you should know that. I didn't know that. Yeah, because you're, like, the app is a… kind of like a favor they're doing, that you're, like, late, and you're running, or you're sitting… Really? It only works, like, half the time. Yeah, the kiosk works 95%. Yeah. The better thing for the app is that it logs the 15 free minutes, and you don't have that luxury to use the meter. You can… there's a button that says 15 minutes for me. Yeah, I'm not paying the park. Right. But yeah. Anyway. It is cheap right there, it is, yeah. Thank you. Maybe Garage Mobility Hub? Thank you. I think we did a parking podcast. Yes!

[72:04] At the end of my five-year term for my first floor. Because I went to pay for bargain once to go to a meeting, and I was like, nope, I'm brisky. I also have not gotten a lot of tickets. Those are supposed to be really nice notes. You put, you could put, like, a $5 bill. I'm just gonna… Hey, Sam, this is important. Sam said it's okay. The horseman team will be happy to give an extra ticket. Keep moving on. Can we go to garage mobility? Okay, are we going next? Daley, do you want to share your screen? We'll be nice. I'll… and I'll give a brief introduction. So, I know…

[73:00] Some of you hopefully remember when we announced that we were fortunate enough to learn a grant from Dr. Cogg for $250,000 to work on concept plans to convert our downtown garages Into multi-functional mobility hubs that serve more folks than just those who want to come to bring their private vehicle historic properties. And so we've finally picked off the project, just in time for there to be a whole lot of uncertainty about the future of our department and our work, and so I just want to caveat this whole conversation with there is a lot of uncertainty about the future of some of these things. However, we're going to keep falling on ahead because we think this is really important work to do. We're really excited about the possibility, of these concept plans, and so with me today are a couple different folks. from Dr. Cogg, who is the Denver Regional Council of Governments, who's sponsoring the project, and then the consultant that we've ultimately chosen to lead for this work, which is Farron Piers. We've got Kaylee here in person, and then we've got a couple folks,

[74:12] who are calling in. I believe Jason is… he's our other fair and peers representatives, so they're gonna take over, this presentation, but, Yeah, we're really excited about, this collaboration, and we're hoping for the best. Got it. Thank you all so much for having me. I'm excited to introduce the project and talk about where it stands now and the project planning and the scope. Also wanted to leave a couple minutes for discussion with all of you to get your input on what you'd like to see out of the project, any concerns, any things we should be thinking about as we kick things off. And then we'll talk a little bit about next steps. So, I already gave a little introduction, but, this is the project management team, so Sam can send me botherside, staff from Dr. Cogg, and then Jason and I are part of the Fair and Piers Transportation Consulting Team. So we'll be able to design and do community engagement and

[75:11] get these mobility hubs planned. And then we're also going to have help from UPS and MIG, UPS on the financial planning side, and MIG on the more visual design side. So as Sam mentioned, the project goal is to create five, mobility hubs in the five downtown garages, to promote multifunctional mobility, to connect people, places, and travel options. So later, we'll get more into what a mobility hub can look like, but essentially, it's connecting modes of travel, so it would be from Car to a bike, from car to bus, walking to your car. just acknowledging that these garages are the first time that a lot of people experience downtown Boulder. They'll park there and then explore from there, and so making sure that, the mobility hubs there would be a gateway into the downtown area.

[76:03] So these are the five locations, the five garages, really central, to Pearl Street, and then one of them really crucially is, the Downtown Boulder Station garage, so that has those great transit connections. So those will be the locations. These are the community partners who are involved. There's a representative from each of these partners on our steering committee. We want to acknowledge they have a lot of expertise and, are really engaged with the community. And that's really crucial, and they'll also be really helpful with implementation, so helping to spread the word, get community input, and get buy-in, and help to make these, mobility hubs a reality. So we talked a little bit about the shape of the project. There's four main components. Parking utilization is really the data analysis side of things, so we already have amazing data, on how these projects are utilized, when spaces are open, how many spaces are open, when the peak,

[77:02] times are, and so this process will really be identifying what opportunities there are. So, if there's some spaces that aren't being used even at peak times, are there better ways to utilize them, like, potentially for rideshare, drop-off, and pick-up? How special events affect parking? Whether those spaces Should be flex spaces that are parking sometimes, and, rideshare or, multi… multi… multimodal, spaces at other times. And so those really identify where… which garages and at which times there's opportunity, for multivotal connections. The next part is the community needs assessment, so that's really hearing from the community, what their mobility goals are. We know that there's a need for more multi-level actions. And so part of that will be a toolbox of every single thing that could possibly be in a mobility hub, and hearing which of those things the community is most excited about, those they most need. And then also talking about special events. So, like, Sundance, Boldathon, Boulder Boulder,

[78:05] how the garages and the mobility hubs could better serve community at most times. So, whether that's multiple connections, maybe for special events, sponsored parking, and then at other times they're not parking, or vice versa. So we'll have something completely input on those questions. Can I ask a question? Yeah. Is there a… example of somewhere that already does this, and what it looks like? Not in the slide, but I can look it up and send it to you. I guess I've, like, never heard of the concept of, like, using a garage as a potential point. like, versus a transportation hub? Yeah. Yeah. So, like, I'm curious about the precedent. I would say the RTD garage is already a mobility hub, because you've got a bus station with a garage on top, you've got a bicycle right outside, like, it's technically, yeah, it's got, like, simple storage, so that's really already got all of the components.

[79:02] Okay. To a mobility hub, it's just connecting all those things in one place so that like, if someone comes in on the bus, they can easily get a B-Cycle scooter, or if they come and drive, then they can switch to the bus, like… Okay, so it's like looking to see where the bus stops, and the scooter stops, and like… Parking all connects together. You could lock the bike up, maybe. Can you lock your bike, your own bike? At, at RTD? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they… They already approved that. There's a bike cage at RTD that you have to, like, request access to, but then you can store your bike in a secure facility. That's a cool. Sorry. Don't be thinking. So then the next, the next kind of phase is the financial model, which UPS will be helping with, but that's basically understanding what revenue can be generated for these mobility hubs, and then also, thinking about how to fund them. We recognize that these projects are expensive, and we want to be creative about

[80:01] funding them in ways that are outside the already output budget. And so, that'll be a lot about what revenue can be generated, and then we're being creative about funding solutions. And then, lastly, the fun part is the concept plans and implementation, so the design of the mobility hubs, the drawings, the mock-ups, as well as an implementation plan, so that will include costs, both for implementation and for maintenance, and then the phasing and implementation across the five garages. And we'll ask for community input on those plans as well. I don't know, like… I feel stupid asking, but see how… like, the RTD one has the buses there, so it makes sense to put the… and it's got the bike… bike parking thing. It doesn't have a line scooter thing, as far as I know, which… My whip, knowing me, but, like, what is the vision for the other ones? The RTD doesn't necessarily go to those old places, and so it's really, like, just putting a bike rack there at, like, Light Grove, like.

[81:04] Yes, I don't get it either. You know, what makes this hard? Like, if, you know, and I know I'm asking you, but I don't mean to mention in an anonymous type of way. You get your bike in the garage without, like, either your glasses… like, downtown, I don't know. Maybe you take the bus, you bike to the stop, then you put your bike on the bus. and you get off on your bike, and you don't work near 14th Street, you work at 8. But then I bike to where I'm going. Why would I… Because then you want to walk… Well, I see what you mean, but like… Just put the bike box there. Yeah, like… what takes the card where we have to study and do all this? Again, I don't… like, what is the use case for… me, or for anyone else. Yeah, I just… I guess I don't understand it, if you could… some stories of people, like, what they… why they would do this. Yeah, so I hear part of it is the visitor case, so if you drive to Boulder, you might have a day in Boulder, but you don't want to re-park every time, park and get a bicycle, or park in your life scooter, or also pedestrian connections are part of it too, so signs for the, this is Pearl Street Mall, here are some places you might want to check out, like, wayfinding.

[82:13] And please. Face making a part of that, too. And then for people who live here, it is those, like, multimodal connections of, like, oh, maybe, you are meeting friends at the garage, you're taking… you can, like, park your bike, take your car, or park your car, and then I'll bring you there. And, yeah, a lot of it is about the… the gateway to Boulder for people visiting. So, maybe we cut that. So, this… the idea of this work came about Sometime before we got the news about direction, department. Think about the East Boulder Community Center. Is it a swimming pool? Is it a senior center? Is it a rec center? Is it a daycare center?

[83:02] Some people might see it as just a place to go swimming. Boulder has a really uncomfortable relationship with heartbeat. And we have been seen as a department of parking for a long time. And so we were doing work to demonstrate that we are not the department. We are, we do a lot of things, and so this work was really, being framed as a way to demonstrate that the work that we do and the way that we use these assets are a lot more than just storing cars, and we'd already been doing that, but we were still being seen as a drunk apart. So the Mobility Hub conversation was started as a way to help the community see these assets in a different way, so they wouldn't take them for granted. And so we can continue to prioritize our investments for the future, that were multimodal, intended, and, what are some ways that we can help what is perceived to be just places to store your personal vehicle? Like an info hub, too. As a, as a place where you do many things.

[84:07] And that was the… tension of the work initially. We were very fortunate to receive a grant to move this work forward. That need is not going to go away, because this community is going to continue to have an uncomfortable relationship with parking. Sam is going to be in the Transportation Mobility Department, and they're going to be charged with having parking be a piece of their multimodal portfolio of what are we doing, how are we investing our resources in the future to help people get around in different ways? And so. Hopefully, this work can help us to evolve our investments in these Cajun facilities this way that's not just focused on parking. Because if it's… if these are only about parking, then they're not going to get the attention that they need and deserve to stay community assets For the downtown to operate in a way that we think that they should operate.

[85:02] So, anyhow, that's my last DMC meeting preach. Okay, I think we'll just add, too, that, like, I think part of this work is trying to understand, like, what are the needs that aren't being met by people downtown when it comes to getting around downtown? For example, one of the things that we hear frequently is a lack of secure bike parking options for folks. And so, this is an opportunity for us to say, what needs aren't being met? A mobility hub doesn't just have to mean bike parking. A mobility hub can mean, for example, Visit Boulder suggested. We hear a lot from folks that they don't have a place to… a secret place to store their luggage if they're coming in for the bus for a day. Could that be part of a mobility hub? Or, you know, the example of our rideshares, Uber and Lyft. If they're… they need a place to, like. you know, rest between, like, a drop-off and a pickup. They need a place to go. Could that be part of this mobility hub? So, it can be a lot of different things that's not just, like, your standard bus, bike.

[86:04] you know, pedestrian, it's just how do we… how do we, like, fill the need? How do we meet more needs of the folks that are coming to interact? So we do need some creative discovery, because on one hand, it's just like, yeah, put some bike racks up, but… but it is a bigger picture thing, where we do need to dig deeper to see, like, what's the… Yeah, I think the stories of those needs help, because, like, I don't understand why you would just walk after you park. Like, why would you bike after you park? Like, it just feels like I either bike and park right where I need to go, and I'm not afraid to lock my bike in Boulder. Well, my brother drives his car down from Netherland, and then they… then they use other modes once they're here. Downtown, they don't walk. And are you working with… because we've heard about some of these, like, rideshare spots that they can kind of… so that you're not, like, in the middle of Broadway catching an Uber. Is… are you, like, kind of part of that, too? like a separate project, or, like, just… Well, I'm not… So, it's part of the consideration. Okay, because, yeah, you know, like, when you go to the airport now, you go to a specific area, if the airport's smart enough, instead of them everyone being, like, because it would be nice if everybody could kind of say, here's where you catch an Uber or a Lyft, so that you're not trying to be like, here's where we are, and then you're in the middle of Broadway, and everyone's going around this Lyft driver who's just trying to make some money, and these people are just

[87:24] So, yeah, like, because that would be cool, too, to have a designated… Okay, yeah, since the future, Sam's joining the team that does the curbside management, like you're talking about, as well as the hot bus. It's not operated by RTD, it's operated, or… it is, routed by our team. Right, and, like, your stuff we were talking about last time, too, with just having more information and… The garages. Yeah, wayfinding… These are gonna be great garages. If we're able to time things properly, in theory, if it's discovered that we need secure bike parking with some place to plug in your electric bike, blah, blah, blah, we can build some of that into the garages.

[88:10] with the CMGC work that we've… or the garage restoration work that we've been doing, so… Not possible to do it until we have, like, a comprehensive idea of what it would look like. But a large part of it, too, is just, like, that experience, that arrival experience, to be able to celebrate that experience and make it really special, and then connect people, not only with the special places in Boulder and downtown, but, like, with the modes of getting to those places, so… There's definitely going to be an emphasis on, kind of, the… the… the entire experience, and what it looks like, what it feels like. Yeah, I'm not being heard about, like, it's not the primary experience… the primary use case. These are, like. Well, everyone's use case for them, it is their primary, so let's maybe just so we can get out of here in time, let's get back to Kaylee. Okay. Good questions, and I'm glad, yeah, that we got to have this conversation.

[89:07] kind of along the lines of what we were talking about. So what… what does it look like, what they include? A lot of it we talked about, like you said, the primary purpose is parking, but… Bike hubs, and that doesn't have to just be bike parking for also e-bike charging, bike computer share, like we were talking about the rideshare pickup and drop-off zones to have that be a designated spot. Electric vehicle charging, not just for cars, but also for, electric biker mobility. Pedestrian improvements, transit amenities. This could even include, like, private, like, retail? Not retail, but, like, little kiosks, like, there's many different things that are really good. It's the menu. So that's more on the infrastructure side, and then the placemaking is more about that gateway experience. So, wayfinding signage for pedestrians and cyclists, Lighting to help the garages feel safer, and more welcoming, friendly places, whether you're coming in or leaving. Art installations and cultural elements to make them feel more like you're having to sit down and molder experience.

[90:07] similarly, she's making a public space, you know, to make it, like. sit away from your Uber or Lyft, instead of, like, meet people, and have it be kind of a help within college. So this is the original project schedule. As Sam said, there's a lot of uncertainty right now, so this is all subject to change, but you can see how each phase will build on the last month. And culminate in those micro-design projects. And that's, the rest of the introduction. I did want to have some discussion, because I know we've tested already, but, we could just, like, have a discussion about what you see as the most best mobility challenges downtown today, and especially around the garages. Things we should be keeping in mind. I know there's already work being done on this, but, like, if you've never been to Boulder before, and just, orienting yourself with where you are downtown, where you left your stuff as you're going out to experience the town, and I know that there's being work done with art installations and things like that.

[91:17] And I guess as we're moving forward with this and incorporating All those, those projects with… Other ways to differentiate this layer of brick building and this layered brick building here. Making sure people know where they are, or where they left their things. Also, you know, we've always been fighting Getting people to use the garages in the first place, but it's on the street. Yeah, I think that people… Actively avoid parking in the garage. But once they've circled, like, 3 times, they're like, crap, I gotta park in a garage now. I don't mean that, it's just because, like, sometimes it's less convenient, or sometimes it could be dirty, so it's a little bit more of the basic stuff that we've been trying to overcome.

[92:11] And, like, so I think design… Like, the space, how it looks, how clean it is. And the… the… the map of Boulder, and just, like. helping people to find where they're at, and to find where, like, to actually park there, and then to know where to go. I think that's the biggest… needs, from what I've… Just getting people to use it in the first place, and to have a good experience there, like, whatever supports that, that's been a consistent… Thing we've been working on the past 5 years. Yeah. It's interesting when you talk about other things, like. kiosk or something like that, too. You know, we have kind of one bathroom downtown. Correct. It could be really messy and just making it grocer in more places, but that is an issue.

[93:00] Let me read it. Maybe when you pay to park or something, like, you get a code or something, then you could use the buffer, because you're… like, eliminates people that are just up to nugget in the garage, yeah. Just kidding. I guess this kind of goes to the utilization question of getting people in these categories in the first place, but what do you think would make this successful? Project. Perfect. I mean, I never unders… I'm a garage person, because I can never get a parking ticket, but I know I've just heard them… outside sources and in those meetings that I guess people don't figure out is. I don't like them, I always try to, like, kind of feel claustrophobic. I worry about hail, I worry about snow, I worry about… it just seems like in the summer, it's much cooler, in the winter, it's a little bit warmer, and you don't have to worry about, like.

[94:01] Cleaning your windshield off, So I don't… I'm not quite… I like garage. Well, maybe, yeah, maybe those are things that… It's easier… there's only, like, 3 main draws, it's easy for me to remember which one, whereas the streets, like… It's like, did I get whacked? Did I have anything? But, I mean, I do… there is a sense of joy when you're like, is that a spot? Like, you're just like, did I? No way, you know? Especially if you see someone pulling out on your leg, and they just parked there, so you know it's really a spot, like… It… Specifically with this, if there's opportunity to make it seem lively, even if it's stagnant. And I think about… there's a… there's a garage in downtown Denver, I think it's privately owned, it's called the Music Garage. It plays music. when you're in there, every floor is a different color, and it's kind of the only place apart downtown, just,

[95:03] Because I know exactly where it is. I parked there once by accident, I remember it. And But it also had that energy of just, like, it wasn't a silent, who's-lurking around the corner experience, you know, and so… Music was playing, it was enclosed as you're descending. I think you even wonder, like, why is it called the Music Garage? Like, I was like, what? It's just mostly the artwork. No, I know, but it was cool, then it made me curious, like… It's got a brand to it. Making it, like, memorable, and, like, so if there's opportunity for that, paired with, like, the work we've already got going in with the arts, and the improvements, just to, like. make each one a personality. I just… I think that's gonna… Make them distinct, if that makes sense to you. Make it distinctive and make it memorable. Maybe people did it once, and then the next time they come here a year later, they know exactly where 5 garages, five senses? I feel like it's such… I feel like it's a pretty…

[96:10] Easy… hopefully not too expensive thing to be able to, like, incorporate speakers, just so that there's some ambiance into the place, rather than the silence. Silent, yeah. Yeah, I think, like. Maybe I'm speaking for myself, but I believe everyone's favorite garage is Spruce. garage, because it's, like, actually a really pretty building, it's open air, like, it's not… there's no one learning, there's no questionable… yeah, so, like, how do you make the space more dynamic? And then, like, and then they have this, like, joy moment. maybe twice a strong word, where they're like, oh wow, this is here too, that's awesome! Like, I've never seen a garage with this here before. So, like, you, like, some spark of design, but also of novelty.

[97:02] That's really also cheap, because I think the business case for this project, to me, is a question mark, like… like you were saying, like, how do we creatively fund it? But, like, Are there affordable ways to… great novelty, yeah, versus expensive ways. There are plenty of expensive ways, great. When I think of Mobility Hub, you know, we're talking a lot about cars, the human experience, walking, but the I don't want my bike always necessarily going out where the cars are, too. And a lot, you know, so I kind of almost want, like, here's where the bikes go in here, they have their own special entrance, the… Flying scooter is good. thrown in the garbage over here. But so, like, you're not, like, always fighting, like, a pedestrian fighting around a bike, fighting around a car, so they're kind of… the separation. It prioritizes human walking, not the car. But then, like, there's segregation to the parks. We've also done a lot of work without park on the buildings, and so how people know, like.

[98:09] this one's the Uber one, this one's the bike one, this one, because they might not all be the bike one. This one might be the bike one, that might be the other one, this one might specialize in this. So how to, like, make it, like, play that up into the brand and the exterior, so you, like, remember, like. This is that. This is one I'd go to for this crap. It's a giant bike mural. That's where you put the bikes. Yeah, because Spruce Law and… walnut, what, or could donut, you know, they're so close to each other that they could maybe eat up before. Because even, like. you have to actually drive by the walnut entrance after you leave the spruce, so it's kind of like… So you're saying to make them more distinct? Yeah. Or they don't maybe have to both offer the same thing. They could maybe focus better on each doing something better than the other, because they're pretty much on the same… there's no way to, like, avoid… yeah.

[99:07] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, 4 or 5 somewhere on that. Yeah. So, is there… this quick question of the 5, like, doing for 5 is a lot more expensive than doing for 1 or 2. What's the thought there about… Yeah, the plan is to, incorporate this as much as we can with the existing maintenance schedules, and, like, I know those… they prioritize one at a time for investments, and so… Well, we did get a grant, right? The grant is for the concept line, but not actually for the implementation, but part of the, like, the ultimate product of this work is going to be, like, a a series of recommendations that are stepped up, and, like, we'll have, like, here's, like, the low-cost options, here's the big cost options, here's the high-cost options, and it'll also, like, each garage is going to be… have its own individual treatment, because, like you said, it doesn't make sense to have

[100:03] the same thing, copied and pasted in every garage. Every garage has its own strengths. That we can address, which means, like, a different approach to each one. So we need 3 helpful. Celebrity hellhorse. So, community input. Yeah, community input. I think CBE knows that better than us. I don't work. Yeah. I would talk to the businesses immediately surrounding the garages, just because they're probably more… People that receive questions, maybe more than… respond to a survey. I know at our bar, we just have general questions about, like, where to park, or, like. You know, how to park, or where's a cheap place to park, or a safe place to park, or whatever, you know?

[101:03] So I think just… that's… that might be step one to start with. Businesses that either are part of the parking garage itself, or… surrounding intermediate, and… focus on those, like, subsections of the area, rather than the downtown at large. I also, this is… when, allie Rhodes, who's Lead Parks. the way that they got community input in the Civic Center was, like, so cool. Like, they built… Oh, this is the playground? Yeah, I mean, it was, like, one of my favorite events that the city's put on. Like, there's so many kids around, they have, like, an ice cream truck, so kids were, like, obsessed with it, like… it was just a really… they built that whole playground, like, there was something really cool about the pop-up and getting… and then the way that we gave input.

[102:00] on these, like, mock-ups, and you had, you know, you participated, you got some ice cream, like, and the kids did it, like, it was just a really awesome event. So I would… Ask them for some advice, because they did just a great job at that, and people were so excited about the plan, so… Have you… Tina, now you're typing. What was the name of the vision plan for where we're going with Pearl Street? Downtown Vision Plan. And it was done by MIT, right? Yes, yeah. Okay, because… there might be elements of that that we could start to build into this with, like, using the alleyways and stuff like that, because we were gonna, like, kind of… sorry to… you can go back. But, like, at one point, we were activating the alleyways with kind of more secondary street stuff. Maybe there's ways to kind of incorporate that with wayfinding and… And incorporating… trying to make that planning come to life with the sport. Yeah, that's great, yeah. So one of them are right next to the Alley Road. Yeah.

[103:04] And maybe you can make those more thorough repairs for the bikes and get them off the other thing, and it stops. I don't know, I'd be careful about that. There's a whole lot of deliveries that happen in those… in those alleys. I know, I'm sorry, except for that one. I'm kidding, you're right, it is a good idea. I have to run and get my kid, okay, from school. But it was good to see you. Thank you. And then we'll just have to specifically talk about next steps. I think we had a lot of questions. Yeah, all right, we released. Okay, so next steps, we're gonna have the utilization analysis ready by next month, and then pending, finalizing the schedule, we'll roll into community engagement, and then we'll come back, talk to you all again next year, with some ideas.

[104:04] It's really interesting. I could see from the beginning, we were like, what? And now we're like, oh, this is exciting! So, thank you. Thank you. Not just barking. When I'm just parking. All right. Letter to Council. Yes, so, we got your feedback from the Royal Commission Summit. We put a revised draft in the packet. Now is your time to, make any tweaks and hopefully vote on a final letter that we can submit to Council. Data… it's on, say, page 72 of the PDF. And Ellie, are you able to get it up? Yeah, Melissa, thank you. Like, the last pages. If less 3 pages a week.

[105:09] keep people reading. Not so much, Cal, you wrote it. Whoa. So… Yeah, I, I like it a lot. I was just thinking about that third bullet point a lot, actually, in that front section, about The city… what the city has control over is reducing red tape, making it, like, cheaper and faster for businesses. And, we don't have… money, so we can't really… I think, like, giving incentives? isn't… As much of a thing, versus, like, let's just… make it easier and make the process more simpler, so I kind of want to double down on that, like, fees and all that type of stuff, that's what we have control over, versus

[106:05] Additional incentive, you know, like. Where's the incentive part? Oh, on the previous one, in number 2. Under item 1… Yeah. Which bullet? Third bullet? The first bullet has provide incentives for local businesses, first bullet, and I'm like, well. Okay, if that's just this throwaway. But in a… in the scenario where we don't have a lot of money. city doesn't have money, right? I think I just… I like bullet point 3. Which is, I think, the… really what the city can control is just making things faster, and it's having less fees. But that could be the incentive, right? Doesn't have to be financial. I don't know how expensive, but… Do you just want to put one Explore Fast Track Permitting first? I think I would. I mean, I…

[107:04] like, making it cheaper and faster for businesses to, like, get started and to operate, especially small, but the city can control. I feel like that's the highest… They're gonna focus somewhere, I shouldn't be on that. Great. Yeah, because I can see promote affordable and flexible lease terms. The city doesn't have a lot to do with that. There's a lot of recommendations, it sort of gets lost, yeah, so… I don't know that we need, number 3, promote affordable on flexible easterns. I don't know if the city could do much of that. Can we… should we delete that just to be… I… conception. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Consider recent policy mechanisms. Sorry, just to confirm, you wanted to delete that. You did a good job. Yeah. You did everything in there.

[108:05] I don't know anything about that state. We'll put that bullet point. reasonable policy mechanism to discourage property owners from declining offers. Is that a thing people do? I just don't… I think we talked about it, yeah. People will… they don't want to, like, lower the price, even though they're getting market rate. like, people like Tebow can hold out. Or whatever he wants, when it would be beneficial to everybody. But I don't know what… I don't know what can be done. And I know this is… That particularly is, something I've seen over the years at Telluride's Film Festival, like, there are just investors coming in very interesting. Holding things, you know, and it benefits nobody that lives there, works there year-round. What can we… the declining part? That is the…

[109:05] Wondering where that came from. If it doesn't matter. Well, I mean, I guess Timo gets a lot of Benny's. From everything he does, so… maybe if he's the one that's making sure everything remains vacant, maybe he shouldn't go, and then that quits. You know, that… this one all came from me, and so I just wanted to let y'all talk, right? Okay. I don't get many offers on my property. So I don't want to be paid… at one point, it said, like, being penalized for having vacant space. Well, I don't have people who wanted it, so I didn't want to penalize people who there is just, like, too much vacant space, and there's too many options, and you just… I don't… so I don't want a vacant space penalty. But, if you're being engaged, like, as long as it's kind of going to what you two were saying with investors, and people who hold out for, like, just a little bit more, because it's a 5-year lease, and so if they wait one more year, maybe they're going to get a better bid for, like… like, that's where I'm trying to, like… if you get a plausible

[110:13] thing, go for it. Now, what can the city do about that? Probably very little. Yeah. But I just don't want a vacant property tax, but… Because at a certain point, there's just… and that's the working from home issue, you know, so… Yeah, I just… So that's kind of how I tweaked it. That's why I tweaked it the way… it used to be different, and I tweaked it to this. I guess, like. that's a negative policy, like a, let's penalize developers or the owners, like, there aren't that many of the owners of the properties in Boulder, versus let's collaborate with them to, like, recruit businesses and do other things to fill the space. It's just, like, a negative framing, and I… I don't know, I've talked to some developers, and I just feel like. Not gonna go over well, so… Word.

[111:02] That's really what… How do you want to change it, I guess? I could… I would get rid of it. I like the Sundance thing, I think that's a specific, actionable thing, but the rest of it is, like, seems like progressive policy. That's fine by me. Okay? Okay. I mean, so I'm just curious how they do that. That's not for us to figure. These are just things we want them to keep in mind, too. And the more that they're hearing some of these things, maybe not just from citizens at large, but from commissions as well. And, you know, if you hear it a lot, you might… it might be at the front of your brain as you're developing. I think I'd get rid of the second two bullet. points. Not that I don't, like, support downtown Boulder, not that one, yeah, the last two.

[112:03] But, like, I feel like… It's such a big part of the community, like, is that a question? Do you want it there? Yeah. Okay, keep it there. Yeah, I… I wrote a longer one, and I… Anything, like, just support, or is there anything more specific? You have… Things that need support from the city that you're not getting. I don't want to overstep here, but the ambassador funding is still in a pilot mode, and it would be nice to… eventually have that be permanently funded. Yeah. I think that's in the… That's in the second section, because I actually wrote that in here, and then as I read more, that's in the next… it's bullet 3 of the next section. Yes. Oh, great, okay. Yeah. That's more specific than just enthusiastic support. If there's another thing more specific… In a way, I liked it that we're kind of hitting DVP in a couple different ways.

[113:06] Pardon. Maybe the time and effort. Won't get dodged somewhere. Down the line, you know, if everyone has enthusiastic support for that. Yeah, a department. Do we want it? Or, cooperation, or partnership, or… Okay. For bullet 3 under number 2, if you scroll down a little bit. Ellie, ensuring ongoing funding. Maybe do we want to, say, convert from pilot to… Sure. Something… Whatever we, you know, or is that fine as is? Do you want to say convert from pilot? Since there is… there will possibly be new members of the Council who are not familiar, I will recommend that you use the words, make, program, permanent. Yeah.

[114:02] Good. Make the downtown ambassadors permanent, period. Yeah, make the ambassador program permanent, and then ensure, like, funding for things like lighting, like, that are separate, that's separate. Do you want that as a separate bullet point? The ambassador program is not currently funding for maintenance and lighting. They are separate things. Okay, so put that as a separate… This is the next bullet point, fun? make funding for downtown investments. But make permanent. Demand. A downtown ambassador. One thing permanent. Funding. Funding. Funding, perfect.

[115:00] Ensure funding for lighting. This is that improved the sense of that could improve the perception of safety. That, like, a lot of these things… That all works. Yeah, that's good. Wait, can we see, like, the funding for downtown and pass the first? Yeah, make the… on the third bullet, delete, make the funding, add the word funding before downtown. And then delete. Oh, yeah. Make the fun day. Nikka, yeah. Really, drive home the funding you had. Okay. I would put that as number one, by the way. Yeah. Intel. In bold.

[116:01] Okay, that is… But we really support it. Thanks. Okay. Now, happy face announcing. Right. Invest in public development. Okay, can you scroll more? The third bullet point under number 3, Galvanize. Is there… what do we mean by that? Can we be more specific? It's floppy steep. God. You know, who did someone… I don't… I don't know, I don't mind that. This is,

[117:02] that was left in from the blending of our lobty thoughts. I guess that there's, like. The first bullet point feels… Like, are we trying to make it easier for events, or are we trying to actually create more like, guardrails. There's, like, a kind of tension between that a little bit. Like, the last bullet point is, like, let's make it easier, but then let's… make sure that we don't do it the wrong way, is kind of how I'm… Reading it? Between the first and last bullet point? Yeah. Although it might be different things. It's… yeah, we just want to, like. research… yeah, they are separate to me. The last one is, they're separate, but, you know, like. What's just the most impor- like, the ordering of the bullet points?

[118:02] I want to pay some more, though. I feel like that the first one, a second bullet point, seems like the most important thing for us. Oh, I see, like, having two different things about Sundance, you're talking about? Yeah, well, I guess, like, the storyline of this section… 2 and 4 feels like they're kind of… they could be merged. Yeah. And I think this is our most… that we're most interested in, like, it having a positive, impact without… unintended consequences. Right. maybe we just need to add to this… that one that Ellie's got highlighted, like, I like the strong foundation. Including post-event. Recaps, or something like that. Or, we just get rid of the bullet points. Really about… Yeah, I think we can get rid of the fourth one.

[119:00] Yeah, that's fine. I think it's kind of encapsulated in the… Yeah, it is. Predictable. Okay. I don't understand that bullet point. What is that? Galvanized? What is this for? Yeah, that's what I was wondering before. Sounds like testing. Well, I think it's asking the public what they think about like, the Civic Center and these new garage things that… Right. Note that it's under… so Item 3, Invest in Public Events and Culture, so this relates to the Sundance Film Festival, the Pearl Streets 50th anniversary, so this is suggesting that there is community involvement in planning promotion of those. Okay, all of those. Okay. Over… Got it. Speaking of 50th, do we want… and we are the DMC, do we want to have something that we don't talk about the 50th?

[120:00] I guess, can you just get rid of the downtown milestone? Because that made me think it was something else. Oh, it is there. Yeah, just take away… if you just get rid of it in the bullet point, it also is satisfyingly one line. And then it, to me, does the same thing, because I actually thought it was something else. And then it actually connects back to the objective, right? Okay. Okay. I lost him. Fair. Okay, perfect. Yeah, that's good. Nope. Sorry, I do not like to incentivize alternative transportation. I guess you're saying just make it free? Make the bus free. That's not necessarily what incentivize. I know. Just incentivize expended bike paths?

[121:09] I think the incentivize could just give people an easier option. Yeah. So, it… You can say encourage, if you don't want to be, because it is something that's financial. Yeah. Definitely feel… incentivized very finance. Let's put encouraged. Okay. I would take 7 cent halves of that. I.E. I love that it's a crazy idea, but I love that people kind of love. What happened to the… the trolley? Put the one in front of it. It was in the meeting minutes, and then it got sent over to Invisit policies that inhibit seamless movement. Are there specific policies that we're referring to that inhibit seamless movement?

[122:12] What does that mean? The first part of that's weird. We need to encourage… again, encourage seamless movement. Yeah. invest in? I mean, are we wanting money spent there? Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's… I like that. Okay. I don't quite understand both their goals in there, how the two… Yeah, unused office space with mobility outside. What does that have to do with anything else? Yeah, like… Are you gonna park upstairs? I don't know, but I mean, like, the Spruce Garage has… Spaces attached to it. Okay. But I think what we're really trying to say here is we've got unused office space, and the transportation mobility hub has nothing to do with it. The total long-term solutions for underused office space. What is that section about, though? Isn't that transportation? Yeah, transportation, connectivity, and access.

[123:14] Unless we're trying to… That feels like a con sector, though. The office space. They just get rid of the bullpoin. Well, do we want to keep some of us, like, helping… well, we already did with the policies for Rudy. In the other one. It'd be… But it makes sense just to give… We've already covered the office space in a previous one, Explore Fast Track Permitting. Well, we do want to continue Just getting rid of underused office spaces, or integrating underused software skills. Explore long-term solutions. With transportation and mobility hubs? No, we're taking out the, underused office space. We're not sure how to gather.

[124:04] We're taking that part out, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, integrating transportation then. Integrating it with one, though. Well, we don't need integration. It's for long-term solutions for transportation, mobility, we're not integrating now. Okay. Next. This one, I didn't think the clear growth targets didn't touch… this is not what DOC is about, right? I didn't know that we needed this one. I cannot get the sense of it, but I don't think it's under our… And get it onto two pages instead of three. What? I like it. I could go to a size of 10 former. Yeah, we gotta, we gotta get it onto two pages. Yeah, we can delete that. Yes. There we go. There you go.

[125:04] Where are you assigned? Yeah, right? You can't get up to one page instead. We definitely get to it. Okay. So, do I hear a motion to accept this? Okay, the DDA is just in the top section, by the way, that's not even enough. Yeah, there was a need of its own… I just noticed that. Is it under downtown economic vitality? Have you considered that? It's not mental health. It would go in Section 1. Yeah. Yeah. I thought we oughta put that. We could put it in… into the second bullet point. Because… part of the TDA would… Yay. business owners. I get what you're saying. Number 2 is more about talking to business owners.

[126:04] the DDA is separate. I think it needs its own. If we care about it, we focus on them, I think it should be… I guess on one hand, I didn't worry about it, because I think it's already going to happen, but I think it's good for us to say we support… we support found… you know, creation of the DDA. For the, like, to… To fund the ongoing vibrancy of the downtown. 4. Do we want to spell out EDA just because they're new and they may not know what it is? Better knowledge. Maybe we still PDA out from the top, in the top paragraph? -Oh. Let's take that.

[127:01] We're trying to get them onto one line there, so… Holy Hold on, go to the top. We'll cut it down. We can do this. Cut down at… yeah. The EMC is enthusiastic about And our API partnership. And you can get rid of… Yeah. Do we have to say that it's gonna be in one year time frame? Do we have to say that? Let's just get rid of that. I was just trying to cut a line, so we already did that. change our margins. Wait, if you go up to that first paragraph we were working on, if you just cut out the… And… Are… like, if you delete lead, does that leave enough space?

[128:05] Yeah, like, just delete the Wii. To pull them in there. Yeah, look at that! Yes. Are we on, too? Yeah, we're doing good, thanks. Yeah, make sure it's ill. the PDF, also two pages or not. Okay, we're good. Do I hear a motion to accept this as our letter to Council? Yes. I make a motion. I'll set a second. Okay. Yep. Thanks for suffering. Ellie, thank you so much for your help with that. Yeah, thanks, I'll leave early, because you think it's time to sign in. It was, by recap. She moved it, he seconded. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? Oh, I'm gonna skip the public art Sundance. Great, skip.

[129:04] Our next meeting is the 13th, January. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? I'll motion to adjourn. Second. Yeah, Janet. Just thank you for all the help.