that meeting an order for city of North St Paul for October 4th uh Jenny if you take the role councilmember Thorson here council member Peterson here council member Wong here council member Cole here mayor Furlong here Quorum is present this time motion to adopt the agenda so moved your honor by councilmember Peterson second second by councilmember Wong any discussion if not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye oppose motion carries uh we have two topics and I'll turn it over to city manager frandel thank you mayor um yeah so we have two types two topics tonight the first one up is the housing study presented by Mary bejold with uh Maxfield research so I'll just turn that over to you right away welcome Mary thank you very much mayor Furlong and council members it's my pleasure to be here with you actually in person so it's been it's been a while with a lot of Zoom meetings and zoom presentations two years yeah so um tonight I'm going to be presenting a very kind of high level summary of the housing assessment and there's a rather lengthy document that goes along with this so and after my presentation I'm going to just open it up for questions so I'll take any questions that you have okay so this is just a little bit about Maxfield research and Consulting um it seems like the years that we've been in business continue to increase we do all different types of real estate feasibility studies so the project scope was objective to provide a housing needs assessment with a focus on the downtown district to identify current and future housing needs for North St Paul and identify housing gaps uh the project deliverables include short and long-term housing needs so out to 2030 recommendations to guide future development and suggested strategies to implement the plan so we collected most of the data in second quarter of 2022 a draft was provided in August the final report in September and now the presentation so a little bit of the background so new for sale and Rental housing production has occurred primarily in and near the downtown district new high density housing has been well received overall residential development though has not kept pace with demand City and Metro I just want to say though I think that North St Paul is not unique in that regard I think we've been seeing significant housing demand throughout the Twin Cities and even in areas that we were initially over supplied or overbuilt such as in the downtowns St Paul and Minneapolis we're continuing to see you know those units absorb and most of our Suburban developments that are occurring are absorbing quite rapidly North St Paul has been proactive in encouraging new residential development on infill sites the 2020 census so this study does incorporate 2020 population and household counts the full release of the 2020 census data is anticipated in 2023. they've kind of continued to push it back we are relying to a certain degree on the American Community survey data and looking at that carefully as we look at data that is going to be released from the Census I think a couple of questions will recent interest rate hike stifle new Housing Development and then we'll what will be the impact on affordable housing and preservation of affordable units so when we looked at the primary market area for North St Paul we aggregated a number of census tracts in adjacent communities which include Vadnais Heights Little Canada Maplewood the east side of Saint Paul but I just want to mention that this primary area is not exclusive to these communities largely because of regional Mobility so we know that we will always have people coming from outside of this area to come to North St Paul and we do account for that in our demand calculations historic and projected population so population decreased during the 2000s we also saw this and many other first-tier Suburban communities but what happened is after the recession then we saw an housing really recover and we saw a lot of development in addition to that we also saw young people moving out of their parents homes and so there was a significant amount of demand for housing and that was essentially started to have started to be met by the market and so we saw a surge in growth post-recession the rate of household growth outpaced population growth again in the 2000s as over the overall population aged and household sizes tend to tended to decrease so what we saw is more people living alone at least initially were starting to see some transitions in that and I'll get into that a little later so the past decade saw transition as young people formed households of their own and there was a modest increase in household size as a number of those younger households started to have families of Their Own the largest age group is estimated at this time to be those 25 to 34. and Then followed by 35 to 44 in North St Paul but the highest growth rate is for those 65 and older again that is we're seeing that all over but I will say it's it's somewhat unique to North St Paul that it tends to have a little bit younger population than some of the other suburbs which tend to be weighted a little more heavily towards that 55 and over group so I think that's North Saint Paul is different in that regard from other communities that we've looked at so the median income is highest in that 35 to 44 group in North St Paul as compared to 45 to 54 in the metro area so over time median household incomes of the eight those two age groups have started to converge over time so we're gradually seeing those people in the kind of younger middle age group starting to have higher median household incomes I think largely that is because of where they're coming into the job market the job Market's been really tight so we're seeing those groups be able to earn more as they move into that job market in North St Paul the median household income for households under age 25 is actually higher than the metro area and I think this is this is something that we don't usually see it also median household incomes for the age 25 to 34 and 35 to 44 cohort are nearly equal to those of the metro area so a significant increase or was a significant increase in the percent of people living alone between 2010 and 2022. so that increased from 26 percent in 2010 to 30 percent in 2022. other family households increased modestly 21 to 24 percent and married couples showed the biggest decrease from 31 percent down to only 23 percent foreign so there's an increased proportion of households now that rent who earn incomes of 50 000 annually or above so since 2010 the number of households with incomes of 50k or higher that rent has increased modestly against ownership rates also the proportion of households with incomes less than 15K has increased so I think we're seeing we're seeing again that dichotomy so we have more households in that upper income that are renting for lifestyle reasons but we also have an increase in that kind of low income very low income group of people who really need that affordable housing so a higher proportion of middle-income households also actually shifted over to ownership and that's what we really want to see we want to see that happen and that actually did occur in throughout the primary market area so North St Paul is both a job exporter and importer so there were about 4 154 jobs that doesn't include self-employed people in 2021 in the key industry sectors are education and Health Services which accounted for 69 percent of that construction was 12 and Manufacturing was 4.4 percent the average weekly wage for jobs that are physically located in North St Paul was forty five thousand five fifty two annually compared to seventy thousand six one six in Ramsey County strong job recovery there has been strong job recovery post pandemic there was an increase of 1029 jobs year over year as workers returned and that's in specifically in North St Paul more than 50 percent of workers commute less than 10 miles to work in North St Paul so again as I mentioned the largest employment sector it's education and Health Services followed by construction and Manufacturing North St Paul has a relatively relatively diverse mix of employment and has experienced strong job recovery since 2020. so there's very low rental housing vacancy rates in North St Paul even despite the fact that the community has added new rental housing so the most recent was 1.9 percent which is uh the market equilibrium rate is five percent so it's well below the market equilibrium rate and Twin Cities metro was 3.6 percent at that same time average monthly rents so the average monthly rents for North St Paul on the left side are a little bit lower on average than those for the metro area so one bedrooms two bedrooms and three bedrooms although those rates are going going up especially when new housing has been added to the community so new construction has experienced strong absorption so we looked we in the overall market area we looked at a number of new properties that have been added in that primary market area so we specifically did a little bit closer dive on seven new new properties they had a stabilized vacancy rate of 2.6 percent which again is still low the average monthly rental you can see how much higher that average monthly rent is among new properties so 1 697 which is quite High but it's in keeping with what we're seeing in the market affordable and subsidized properties so there were 312 units in two properties those were specifically in North St Paul and they had a zero percent vacancy rate okay foreign sorry hmm so this shows a senior housing continuum so when we look at senior housing Maxfield separates that out into different service levels and we analyze each service level differently so the senior housing inventory we looked at 340 units um actually it wasn't over 13 properties it's actually over three properties sorry three point six percent overall vacancy rate so we had active adult um we had active adult for sale so that was 77 units there was a zero percent vacancy rate for those subsidized units had also had a zero percent vacancy rate and independent living had zero percent vacancy rate and this just is not North St Paul this is this is North St Paul just North yeah this is only North St Paul and then as Villas of Oak Park yes that's part of North St Paul uh I believe so or oh it's not Villas of Oak Park I think it's uh sorry it's it was Oak Hill it's not Villas of Oak Park so it's a condominium property that has 70s a picture I don't think no no that picture no sorry that picture doesn't okay so the assisted living is 72 had 72 units of total and they had a 4.2 percent vacancy rate and then Memory Care had a 5.7 vacancy rate and I would just say that this is um not terribly unusual I mean we are seeing this across the Twin Cities metro area where we're having some trouble with vacancy rates in assisted living and Memory Care primarily of course due to the pandemic so we are seeing more demand for both assisted living and memory care but we are still having a significant amount of difficulty with labor shortages among care workers there is very strong demand for independent living pretty much across the board so both for for sale age-restricted housing as well as rental age-restricted housing so sales activity dropped a little between 2016 and 2019 but increased dramatically in 2020 largely due to new construction there's been a steady rise in the median sold price it escalated hot it escalated more rapidly over the past two years and we've seen this across the metro area where the average annual appreciation in home prices just ballooned up over the past two years there's historically been a low inventory both in North St Paul and in the metro area pretty much since over the past almost four years we've just really seen inventories continue to drop as prices has have escalated so in 2021 um record kind of a record high of 291 000 for the median again the months of Supply as you can see typically before we entered into the post-recession our average months of Supply was somewhere between five and six we have been down at this kind of two two one month of supply for probably about the past three to four years foreign so this is just a little bit about how we look at demand and we look at household growth and tenure turnover we look at income qualified households Demand by products um look at assumptions and methodology for household growth and then adjust for local factors senior demand estimates apply capture and penetration rates and are presented as point in time versus cumulative so there's uh demand for a total of 953 housing units to 2030 so the highest number of units would be for market rate rental and then demand for owned attached units was second highest but as likely to be constrained to some degree by interest rates and continued High construction costs also there's demand for affordable rentals I would say that construction costs for those also remain very high and unfortunately we are continuing to see per unit construction costs for affordable housing at times even exceed those for market rate it's um it's a significant problem and there's a number of reasons for that we we have certain parameters there are certain financing parameters that go along with trying to um reduce that Gap and um they oftentimes have to have multiple layers of funding there's the syndicators also sometimes dictate that as well in terms of how the project needs to be designed and the quality and unit finishing details um we are seeing some developers try and make strides to do what we call market rate affordable units there have been a couple of projects and we are seeing some of that too in terms of modular construction so trying to get more moderate rents by using different types of modular Construction so we identified demand for 424 units of senior by 2030 the highest demand is for active adult rental with no Services we're seeing this component more private developers are now starting to look again at this segment and starting to develop more properties in this category we went through a very long period of time where we had quite a bit of this type of development back in the 80s and 90s and then there just was almost nothing during the 2000s and now we're seeing them come back and start to look at at this type of product again so all the independent living segments both owned and rented market rate or income restricted exhibit very strong demand assisted living and Memory Care are still recovering from the pandemic and continue to be constrained by labor shortages although demand is returning primarily because of need so for sale recommendations for single-family demand for 40 to 50 units likely that most will be infill potentially resulting from tear Downs although I'm not certain exactly what parameters there might be around that we do see that happening across again across the metro area although I will say that there has been some resistance in different areas about well there have been certain parameters that have been placed on tear Downs recently and turned to try and actually kind of more fit them in to the existing neighborhood fabric demand tends to be at the upper middle price points when are putting in new housing although I think that is largely because there's been less product less different type of product that has been put in for those infill units it will be constrained in the short term Again by high interest rates so multi-family demand for between 105 to 135 units new Association maintained product has been well received and it tends to appeal to a very diverse group of buyer segments so we see younger people we see older people we see people in the middle age groups so we do tend to see these units be attractive to a lot of different buyer segments single level of course is always popular with older adults and seniors but depending on the product and where it's located I know sometimes that has been preferred but we're seeing such significant price increases in that category that we've had a number of people kind of switch over to something that's even has multiple levels potential housing types so that might be Twin Homes row homes there is well a number of years ago we used to see more quad style development especially with single level units um i s I've only seen two or three of those kind of come back in the metro area I depending on the situation and how long interest rates remain high we may see that product start to come back again rental housing recommendations so 150 to 180 market rate units and then 140 to 175 Workforce units so those would be kind of mid income there's demand for all incomes all household types and all product types so we have not been building we just have not been building enough rental housing or enough for sale housing so we're still behind there's going to be continued significant demand through this decade and beyond for senior housing again demand is greatest for active adult with no services and independent living so a little bit about the takeaways growth increase in North St Paul due to new Housing Development and transition of housing units to younger households the largest age cohort again in 2022 was 25 to 34 followed by 35 to 44. and this is a shift from the previous decade the rate of growth of 65 plus households remained significant increase in households living alone and other family households high in higher income younger households moving into North St Paul continued low vacancy rates well below market equilibrium independent senior housing is most in demand assisted living and Memory Care recovering but are constrained by labor shortages new housing product is needed across the board but Housing Development will now be constrained in the short term by high interest rates and continued construction supply shortages a focus there should be a focus on higher density development for various market segments and assist in for sale housing renovation and Rehab to maintain the existing housing stocks and I will take questions any questions for Mary council member Peterson thank you Mary that was a good presentation um how do we shake up with the other municipalities I mean are we good bad ugly I mean I mean well I I've seen a housing boom right now that I've seen in my tenure here on the council so yes I was I will say that I when I was doing this analysis I think that North St Paul is positioned quite well in terms of its neighbors I mean obviously North St Paul doesn't have as much overall land area but I think there are other things that you do have you know so I think one of the interesting things is that this transition likely because of a little bit more affordable for sale housing you know in terms of single-family detached so we've seen younger households come into the community you have a very strong commercial downtown district that virtually no other nearby community has that and that has really proven I think to be a significant strength to those communities that have them because when this housing transition starts I think we're seeing a lot more young people who are looking for that kind of an environment something that's more walkable where they can have kind of a little commute more of a neighborhood and community that they look to and I think the other thing is that you know it North St Paul is very well connected to major transportation arteries so it's very convenient to get to a lot of different places when you're here in North St Paul so I from my perspective I don't think North St Paul should feel intimidated at all by other nearby communities I think that you've been very good at being proactive in terms of Redevelopment and I think it's been proven that that Redevelopment has been successful and and just driving down the Main Street you know and seeing the new buildings here I think it's it's North St Paul is transforming transforming itself and I think that's very positive thank you council member Thorson when you're taking a look at this study um did you take in cons into consideration the larger projects that are going on in our neighboring communities like Oakdale and and maple like the Hillcrest yes of course and then all these single-family homes that are going over and the old 3M property yes we did I did take that into account and I I know that it's always um so there's two things about that there's there is new construction going on we still don't have a final framework for Hillcrest um and that so that's still a little bit in flux and we don't exactly know it was supposed to be more mixed use now it looks like it might be more housing but we don't know exactly what density of housing is going to be there I mean and and that's true I think if Hillcrest goes ahead and puts in a significant number of housing units there that will present some competition to North St Paul I would say to you though that the new housing that's largely going into Oakdale again we're really seeing pricing in those areas ratchet up dramatically I mean for some when they're putting in detached to villas now we were we're seeing home values half a million or above I mean so I think you know and and that's not to say that prices haven't increased at all in North St Paul they have but I think what we're what we're seeing too is you know there's a group of people that kind of want to be in that a little bit more middle price range if it's either an infill single family home I mean or the the row home or townhome I mean they're willing of course to move up but I I wouldn't say that we're seeing kind of that I wouldn't say that we're always going to see that leap of people wanting to kind of move to that half a million and above yes yes thank you for your presentation um I have a question in regards to any observations you may have had with multi-generational housing or just that pattern or something along the lines of um um communal housing or cooperative housing yep so we are seeing we're not seeing a lot of developments although I will say as you know kind of you have asked and we have mentioned before so I think the neighborhood um surrounding the Hillcrest development there was quite a bit of neighborhood input in that wanting to have more units that were would allow for multi-generational housing and I know that there's demand for that I think it's been very difficult though to be able to encourage the private Market to develop housing products that will really meet the need for intergenerational housing um even I would say even accessory dwelling units we've had a difficult time kind of trying to increase significantly increase the number of accessory dwelling units that we have here and I would say that as a metro area War behind kind of some of the other areas of the country that are more accepting of that I think one of the things I think that if we can well some of its design some of it is price point some of it is I think trying to really just find product types that we can encourage our local Development Group s to consider when especially when we're looking I think at infill housing or the other or the other thing I would think too is if we can look at when we're looking at expansion of existing homes so if we can look at different types of additions or when we're looking at Rehabilitation how to accommodate multi-generational within kind of an existing but and existing home thank you um just wondering too if you if for that particular group of 25 to 34 and um their income their their Ami is there some level of housing burden that you see with that particular group well they want to mow the lawn well they don't want to mow the lawn I can tell you that it but we see that generally I don't think many people really want to mow the lawn anymore there are some I know but um we continue we continue to see that um having that very large lot is not necessarily that appealing so even if the so we tend to see this happens a lot when we do infill is we tend to see the size of the actual yard um shrink and the house size increase I I know that there's been some contention in different communities back and forth about that about where those actual lot lines should be but I would say overall we tend to I think the two things that we tend to see is a larger home but we tend to see also wanting at that really nice kind of backyard outdoor space that can Inc include you know a deck or it includes a garden so there I think we still do see that you know people still wanting to have that outdoor Space is really important just not necessarily in just a lawn though that they have to mow I did that really respond to your question or do you certainly okay yeah and I was just wondering you know within that age group the um um whether where they stand in terms of housing burden um so I would say that it it depends so we do I think we do have um we they definitely have higher incomes overall so we've continued to see those incomes go up I would say though that it's been more of a burden for them to be able to get into the ownership Market again because of student debt or other types of situations that they may face I think again be again that whole idea that I think we need to look at some type of alternate housing products the way we construct housing to be able to make building home types kind of more affordable to younger people so that they can get into that home ownership vein I think is important you know and I I guess as an example I would talk more about than kind of that traditional small Rambler or Bungalow even with an expansion space and there's a lot of people who a lot of younger people who actually have been purchasing those but then they've been adding on to them as they can as their families grow thank you very much you're welcome kind of interesting so we did the development the m i homes over on McKnight and those are multi-level level and they went you know very fast but the older population you know they don't they don't want that it was that middle age right that was the need for that and I think it filled filled up right away I mean they didn't sit around very long but I would say you know this study this bottom line is what we're looking for for our developers because we're looking at the downtown here again possibly putting another development project in uh downtown and then also possibly across the street here and this just reinforces the need for the housing in in North St Paul so I I know too that we do have you know as households age they really prefer to go that single level and uh it's right now we just have a big gap in the market we have a gap between kind of what that group is going to sell their home for and then what that new product is priced at I mean so it you know they're selling even if they're selling their home for like close to 300 000 or the high 200s getting into that single level it's a huge leap and developers have kind of just almost kind of run away with kind of the you know the villa style all of the features and amenities and I mean that product has been successful too but I think we're still seeing that Gap in the market for where do people who want to sell that home kind of move to that middle price point we used to have it right we used to have that middle group for those single level Twin Homes or even the quads and we just we don't have it right now I know quite a few people who have downsized and it costs them more to downsize smaller unit but yes it's a newer unit and right uh again you know the study you know has a lot of data for us to be able to afford think on on our housing for well I'm always open to two additional questions too so if you know there are questions and people want to send questions over I'm happy to respond to them I just last quick question when you're talking about these things I was thinking about our we have a HRA program where we have been essentially buying up dilapidated homes and tearing them down and then building new homes but most of the new homes we've been building have been large and I think you could call them expensive the last one we we went we did on 19th we bought it I think it was for like a hundred and 50 000 are on there and tore it down and built an a newer home that the original plans were downsized but it sold for 400 and was it 460. and now we recently bought another home and tore that existing home down and they're doing a lot split and they're going to build two similar houses to that but it sounds like kind of what you're saying is there's a real demand for maybe smaller more affordable homes for those first time home buyers or just younger families that are maybe looking to just you know they they can't find out they can't afford a 460 000 home right and so maybe you know that's something where we as a city can control what goes in there because we are running the program and owning the property so maybe hopefully we can take that into consideration as we move that program forward and what types of houses we're choosing to build and taking that into account like you know things like not finishing the basement you know absolutely and like you said maybe build it smaller but give them options to expand in the future if they want to so no I think that those points are all very well taken and I totally agree with you everybody else not thank you Mary thank you very much it was my pleasure thank you letter b yeah thank you Mary I think I think we'll throw this over to Dr Waldron to get us caught up where we're at now and where we're moving forward before we get into the world group come up and discussing please thank you honorable mayor members of the council we're ready for our next uh big step on the community center if you choose to go in the direction that we discuss tonight just a summary of where we are if you remember the last time we talked a we talked about stopping the bleeding and getting the extended contract and Ron was telling me that our bleeding has essentially stopped for now and as the repairs have been made thus far and they'll have heat this year and so forth so we're now past that stage and then if you recall we were talking about you know needing to figure out the actual cost of the repairs and then eventually figuring out what goes in there and um yeah you subsequently authorized us to have a conversation with Wald to really figure out what that next step would look like your staff and myself had a really good working session with them and the Wald group has come up with what we think is a really positive approach that kind of deals with both situations on uh at the same time so what I'd like to do if we could is have Jonathan Lewis from walled come up and explain to you what he's proposing and how we could move forward and then later on tonight if you are comfortable with that we do have the contract up for approval under your regular agenda so with that if we could turn it over to Jonathan and he can tell us the plan looks like you got a team of people they have some of our other team members here just so you got a chance to know them especially moving forward here makes sense for you to know that it's not just me by myself doing this and I always appreciate having help anyway um and I appreciate Greg inviting us here tonight again my name is Jonathan pronounced loze not easy oh I'm sorry I'm so I don't expect that to be uh 12 years um so I'll just do introductions really quick um oh yeah how do I do that this happened earlier today yeah there we go um so introductions just of ourselves personally again my name is Jonathan loze I've been with Wold for about 20 years working all of our work is really public sector so we've been doing this for about 50 years well it's been downtown St Paul and so worked with a number of neighboring communities worked with Ramsey County a lot of different municipalities that have helped look at facilities and plan you know New Visions for them or plan new facilities so a whole spectrum of different solutions that we try to kind of help our you know individual communities that we work with so that's myself and a little kind of brief introduction of Wold I'm Joel Dunning I'm on my 26th year at Wald I'm a partner in I'll ped up the government practice and my role is really these days Municipal facility planning so I'll be integral to the process of figuring out how the building can be best utilized and what the facility conditions are I'll also plug that along with uh City and County government our office also works on K-12 schools and you might be familiar with our name from working on North St Paul schools so we're already in your community and working yeah and my name is Paige Sullivan I'm an architect at Wold um I don't have quite the experience they have I've been with old for close to seven years now on the government team as well as they both mentioned we do projects like this all the time North St Paul is pretty near and dear to my heart my dad owned a business here for about 15 years and I've got some Family Ties here as well so very excited for the opportunity to work here what was the business all right okay connections I didn't even know that are you born here or something no yeah all right I'm dating the niece of the hot the hawkland VFW if that helps I don't know is that the connection her sister lives just down the block so moving on [Laughter] um so I I again I think we had a really good conversation with Craig um Brian Dan Ron we and really this goes back probably a year now where um whether it be Dan or Ron have asked us to kind of come in and help with various different needs at this facility and whether that had to do with the library or a leaking roof or how is this volleyball group going to work in here and you know we knew that there's a lot of questions that were coming in about what was going to happen here and I definitely um you know want to give kudos to that group to say it wasn't just us coming and saying this is how we can help it was really us kind of working together to determine what are the needs that we're hearing here and how can we make that be successful so that at the end of all of this there's really some clear path forward and so I think really that's kind of fits really within kind of what we would call Long Range planning and there are kind of two real big components to that as you look at just sort of this graphic it kind of just walks through that process a little bit and I'll give a brief kind of introduction of what that looks like I think the um at the heart of all this is sort of the people that input into this process and so Joel and Paige will talk a little bit more about that but um sort of that collect data piece is really important you know we have data that we know about in terms of what the facility needs are and some of the Deferred maintenance and you know where there might be still some blood on the floor or something like that that's Ron's trying to clean up and and make do with what's at the building and you know I think he's done a fantastic job of keeping things going there but at some point you know his job is limited and his skill sets um you know you got to look beyond what what he can just make do and sometimes he does too good of a job probably so it's not as urgent for you but then the other part of that data is just who's going to be in that building and how is it going to get used because you can keep maintaining a building for a long time but if it's really empty and there's not people that are there to use it it and maybe to some degree help offset some of the utility costs of the building and things like that too it really doesn't make sense to keep keep going with that facility so that's kind of that first big piece is looking for information on the facility itself but then starting to really augment some space planning needs in the facility too and so when we look at that sort of core Planning Group process that's kind of that big group that says Where are all these different stakeholders could potentially plug into this building and then we have a smaller group that kind of gives feedback to the council and talks through what those needs are and how that might actually come to fruition in the building itself when we kind of have agreement on what that's going to be and we know okay it's going to be XYZ groups and they're going to take up this amount of square footage and we know these are the Deferred maintenance needs of the facility then we can really start to come up with some different options within the building and say yeah this works within the confines of the existing structure sure you know it might be that there's two different you know ends of the spectrum and sometimes it's like tear the whole thing down and start over or it's do nothing and leave it alone and sometimes usually there's something in between there which is some minor renovation and maybe some deferred maintenance needs and we kind of go through all those different options and costs to determine really what makes the most sense for you know the city of North St Paul once we get through those options and kind of look at what we believe the core Planning Group is going to potentially you know recommend to the city council we sort of finalize those recommendations with that community group with you know Council input and say okay this is really what we think is the most viable path forward and at that point our long-range plan and really what we're presenting to do ends there and then it's the choice of the city and and um Council to decide if they want to move forward into potentially a design process that may come out of this um but again like I said it might be that do nothing option where we found all this information we've given you that feedback and then you decide that okay we know what the next PATH is forward but it might may or may not lead to some other sort of design decisions that need to go forward from there so it's kind of just a real high level overview of the process that I kind of quickly talk through I do want this to be a little bit of a dialogue too as we go through this like I said we've got some slides and a presentation to show you what this could look like and how we think it pairs up nicely with what we've been asked to do at the community center but stop me if you want to ask questions yeah so go ahead so I think that one of the things that Wold believes is very important in any sort of process whether it's a study or whether it's a design project is having a high level of collaboration that drives a lot of buy-in from the community there's this uh kind of fantasy idea or stereotype of Architects just you know working away and coming up with this master solution but really it's a very collaborative effort and being public sector focused we know that we have to be accountable and help you be accountable to taxpayers for whatever the outcome of the decision is and that decision has to be grounded in fact that you can lay out to people and say this is why we made this decision so on a process like this I Envision that there'd be stakeholders from anyone who might have buy buy into the building potential use parks and recs certainly maybe a council person City staff all part of this core Planning Group that helps Define what the overall objectives are we're trying trying to look at the cost benefit analysis we're trying to look at the different range of solutions that Jonathan talked about about the do nothing to the whole renovation toward sort of thing we're definitely going to need input from the community on what the potential uses are we heard you know a lot about the changing demographics and the building and of out of residences and the young demographic coming in and trying to tap into what they want to see is there any any possible use of the building that uh the community is going to want that we can come up with lots of ideas from all the different municipalities we work with but it's really about the values here and that's that's what this core Planning Group does is it really helps us hone by getting input from a variety of different stakeholders what the local values are what's going to be important here and kind of sets the criteria for what the solution is um so just trying to build off of what Jonathan and Joel have said already is really the it starts with the the core Planning Group starts with the council then core Planning Group and then we've got the stakeholder groups we've got you know a number of example groups listed on here but as Joel mentioned it's really who's important to you guys and or who's going to represent the best groups in the city of North St Paul that might use this space so oftentimes we see you know community members we see Partners from possibly the school district as part of these what we call input givers that that go on to these stakeholder groups oftentimes we see council members as part of you know Representatives as part of the core planning group so that you know and sometimes they do also attend some of the stakeholder groups but so what we do is we meet with all these stakeholder groups we get as much data and information as possible and then we bring it back to that core Planning Group and then from there after the core Planning Group has a chance to kind of you know determine what's important what's really rising to the top here we're able to bring that back to council and do you know a presentation to let you know everything that we've found out so it's not a waste of time for everybody to kind of sit through all of these meetings we're doing that for you and then we're bringing forward just the the brightest and best ideas that we've come up with and then you know the feedback is then up to the council to kind of determine what the next steps are yeah I think I mean like like Joel kind of talked about you know it's easy to Envision us just sort of going back into our little closet and coming up with some ideas and then presenting it and seeing if it sticks or not you know it really makes a lot more sense to have sort of involvement and um this is by no fault of of anybody else's here but you know I've been sort of working behind the scenes with Ron and others for you know like I said maybe a year and I I don't I've never met any of you so thank you for having me be here but I think my sort of thought process in moving forward is there's a couple Representatives as a part of this group whether there's a subcommittee of the council that kind of feed into this core Planning Group that there is sort of more of a formal process of how to move forward so it's not just you know deciding whether or not we're going to replace a roof or whether or not we're going to do this and whether or not this group is going to be here I was trying to just like focus in on how do we get through this so we understand at the end you know is there an end goal and a vision that we can all kind of stick by so I I think that's kind of what I see being the most beneficial part of of going through this process and then a schedule you know working with paid just on kind of how we normally would kind of schedule this stuff out I'll let her talk through kind of what that might look like a little bit um so this is just a draft schedule this is something that we put together just to prepare for today but so this is kind of you know best case scenario this is how we'd get through it so core planning would start in October right away and then we'd go through a stakeholder engagement meetings throughout the month of November agreement on needs would then be in December through January Design Concepts then we would work through February 2023 stakeholder re-engagement would be back in February or March 2023 public engagement then we could have in March as well and then you know if we need to revise and re-engage at any time we would see that in April of 2023 and then overall Council approval would be May 2023 um you know again this is just putting it out there but this could definitely take you know as much time as we need to get a consensus on you know possibilities so this is not set in stone by any means it's really a working schedule yeah I mean to be honest what we find normally is not that we we can always stretch to schedule out um you know condensing it has less to do with our own efforts and has more to do with how often can we schedule meetings and get commitment from staff or those different Community groups you know you have to be pretty creative and make sure that you've got a work plan to look out and schedule those things ahead of time and if that happens then yeah we can certainly we've seen this happen in a much more condensed time frame but we just kind of put something in here that made sense for right now but certainly want to look at what what might work moving forward and kind of adapt as we go as well so I see that core Planning Group that's kind of the kind of the the ball of that's the thing right there right yep so you know with the council potentially changing over but we potentially have three you know still here yep I think having uh them engaged as part of this should not deflect what if there's a council turnover at the first of the year I don't know I I don't see that as being a deterrent no I I mean there's there's five of you that have to make decisions for the future and you know potentially in you know a few months there's a there's a different group of five that have to do that and if that means that core Planning Group you know um takes somebody that's still seated now and a new member and maybe that's kind of a good mix to help a new council person um kind of get up to speed on what's going on that might be an option but again I I think there's nothing fixed about that core Planning Group you know we see people move in and out of that group as needed all the time you know at the at the meat of it is really you know staff and and probably Craig being the one to really lead that group and ourselves being a part of it as a consistent face throughout that process good is that it uh yeah okay um I mean there's there's there's next steps which I kind of already talked about in terms of what um you know that planning process would look like and um you know there's really sort of the get out to the building and understand you know the bones and sort of the needs but then there's get out with staff and the community and understand what might be needed there as well have you done this with other communities getting that core group together how do you go about you know getting those people the stakeholders you know personally yeah um you know most of the time I'll say what we're doing what we're looking at from a facility standpoint is more internal so it's really looking at you know say what what is the police and fire and and City Hall needs and what are the square footage that might be attributed to them and so you know we look at the community center and say okay well does that mean that there's more than just the community it's like what other City needs might feed into that as well and so we can certainly look at that um but usually um when we meet with Council or with City staff they kind of know who those outspoken individuals are within the community or maybe the ones that are underserved and and and don't have a voice and we we kind of use um you know maybe Craig and and some of the other folks City staff as a liaison to tell us you know who are those people that we should reach out to and be a part of these meetings and like I said those things change along the way you know we get 97 90 of the way through this process and there's a new business owner that comes into the City and we say hey they really think like they may have something to you know have a stake in here then we bring them in and have them be a part of it too so have you ever worked with a community center like this that's um yeah some of them not as many but like Little Falls and Litchfield are ones that we're kind of currently working with to help plan out what their community centers look like and um like and Columbia Heights I guess the that's a pretty pretty good example because it's an existing facility that we're looking at you know they kind of already have they know what their needs are they've got you know weddings booked there from now until 2027 or something like that so um you know but that's an aging facility that has some needs but then we also look at you know the the newer facilities and that's where we see a lot of Partnerships on the school district side and where we've done a lot of work with that between cities and school districts as well most uh parallel project that I've worked on is actually down in Lakeville and I bring it up because it's a similar challenge in that you have a facility but you don't quite know what to do with it and there's you know facility Investments deferred maintenance things like that that are a component we designed a new police station for them and they were left with this old police station and said well we don't want to just knock it down what do we do with it and so we started a community engagement process realized that their senior center was really underserved and in the brainstorming it came out that uh the Historical Society could use a permanent home and someone in the community had an idea of creating a yellow ribbon Center and it happened to be located on Heritage Avenue so they be it became known as The Heritage Center so a senior center yellow ribbon and arts kind of all Under One Roof but it's similar a similar process where there was a Structure but no one knew what could go into it and it was part of our job in a sort of pre-designed study to figure out what's the best use for it and what would it cost to do that and in that case um how could they even raise funds to do that because they didn't have anything budgeted so that's the most similar that I'd well to me it makes sense to have a core group you know your stakeholders talking about it and let's get a plan put together and it kind of makes sense yeah I I think the one the other thing I'll say is you what you don't see on here past the next steps is like any sort of implementation process and really that's that's a longer term thing where you know let's just propose there was sort of a renovation or something like that um that came out of this you know if if the schedule still stands you know then sort of potential design on that would start in the spring and you probably wrap that up by the end of 2023 and so really construction would probably start in 2024 so that that just gives this group kind of an overall mindset of what that kind of time frame would look like and we've talked to Ron about that he knows that potentially that means the building just kind of stays as is and he can keep it going for for that amount of time he didn't scream and run out of the room well I like the you know the concept of getting that core group and how we go about getting those people I think will be the kind of the challenge not not the challenge but I think stake there are stakeholders out there who'd be interested in being part of this group and having counsel you know on there we do have council members that can be on theirs so Craig is for you you know when you had that meeting with the community with some of those folks be possible stakeholders or I think they would be there's a couple strong individuals I remember really good folks there yes absolutely okay thank you you think having that many kind of can kind of uh yeah I let me go back to and and just distinguish there's kind of two different chunks here so there's the core Planning Group that really helps make some of the decisions and help give feedback to the council the stakeholder groups are really sort of ad hoc groups where we kind of get some input and you know there might be like a thousand different ideas that come out at those stakeholder meetings but then really we're going back to the core Planning Group and saying okay what's really feasible here and what works and you know we might do some fit plans and you know you might have the indoor soccer guy coming in saying we want to use it for that and we'll go uh sorry it doesn't fit in there you know so I mean there's kind of that like reciprocal process there between stakeholder group and the core Planning Group but there does need to be some feedback to that group so that you know the community doesn't say we want all this and then we come back and Council says nope we're only going to do this well they didn't hear any of that and so you need to have some meetings along the way just for open communication would you say it's fair that another term for stakeholder group might be focus group yeah that you know we might go have a photo yeah with a school district and say how does this facility might fit in with what you're trying to accomplish we might certainly we'll talk with Eda maybe we'll have a open house in one of the new uh apartment buildings you know it was just built and talked to those residents and say what do you see for the community and just have kind of a focus group with very you know narrowly focused people I don't think we want all of those represented on the core Planning Group because we don't want arm wrestling about no I want it for my purpose the core Planning Group more has the they're wearing the Hat of they want the best investment long-term Community that's going to be the the best use for that building and something too that we established early on with the core Planning Group is um to set up you know some goals and objectives for the project um so that you know when we're meeting with all these stakeholder groups as Jonathan mentioned we might come up with a thousand different ideas it's really hard you know to come back after the fact and you know make rules based on what what's possible so if we have those you know goals and objectives set up early on in the process then we're always kind of looking at you know these possibilities that come up and weighing them against the goals and objectives so it's you know kind of sets up some boundaries that that makes it a little bit easier to make decisions later on hmm thank you honey and put um honorable mayor members of the council not really anything beyond what I had said before I'm just really pleased with what they came up with and I think it it really provides a viable path forward particularly because Beyond stopping the bleeding we're not spending two plus million dollars before we know exactly what's gonna what's gonna go in there and what's doable so um I I think it's a very good process and I think we should take a close look at it do you think having a you know a plan like this it helps with potentially funding bonding you know if we were to go down that path later absolutely the plan absolutely I mean just to show the effort and that uh I mean they're going to come up with dollar figures for US based on what shakes out here and so it shows really a significant planning effort this just isn't North Saint Paul saying getting us and you know get us in the bonding Bill and so forth look at come see the building here's what the community's saying and here's the financial plan to get at it so it'd be extremely helpful any questions other questions I maybe have some overreaching comments as opposed to to questions and I may have a challenge um one I'm excited thank you very much for the for the presentation I think this is exciting I think every one of us up here um when Craig asked us what we wanted to do with the community center all had different opinions um and I I think that's great and that that makes it for what it is but I'm I'm very excited about not being close-minded and yet being open-minded to what your group brings forward what the community feels they they want what we want to do with the property so that that excites me um and I understand the the timelines that are they're laid out here and I I heard that the timeline is going to be tightened up I heard that the timeline this could be best case scenario um I I guess I feel that I have a responsibility and accountability to the taxpayers and the residents we have a current tenant that is has a lease there through June um I Heard construction timing somewhere in 2024. the challenge is can we continue to go through this process and maintain either a current tenant or attract additional attendance sorry tenants for that shorter period of time because what I don't want to I do what I don't want to see is the the full cost of the of the maintenance of the building falling burden upon the the residents and the taxpayers in that planning period if you go if you worked through some of that has that been out there before um you know I I talk about in this like very black and white way that the outcome is like here's the here's the vision and here's how to implement it right sometimes it's not that sometimes it's well we know that so far we're halfway through this process we know we're not talking about any sort of building expansion we know that internally you know things are going to probably work pretty well within the you know different stakeholder groups that we've talked to so far you know maybe there's some moving around of the Interior stuff but we might find that you know by and large we probably need to reinvest in this facility and here are kind of the top five things that need to be done right away and so it might be that there's some separation as we move through this to say let's continue with the roof replacement some mechanical systems replacement and some of those you know high priority items so that you do continue to maintain a facility and have it be viable for current tenants but then you're not having to come back and spend money twice on it and so once we get partially through this process I think we'll know which ones we could touch and which ones we may not want to mess with because it could potentially put you at risk for having to put money over top of itself and meanwhile maintaining a tenant of some type so there's Revenue yeah I mean honestly I think a lot of it has to do with just listening to the tenants too and saying well what do you need okay well I don't want it to drip on my head anymore okay let's do a little repair job here that's not going to put you into you know serious financial trouble as far as I know so thank you yeah yeah I'll just provide some comments I'm I'm in the minority here so you know I've where I struggle is that you know the decisions already been made in my mind 10 years ago to close this facility and then we keep calling it the community center where it hasn't operated as a community center in over a decade and a lot of the reasons why we closed that facility uh we're we're outlined in a an assessment that we did internally uh I don't I know I gave a copy of that to Dr Waldron I don't know if you had a chance to review that but they kind of took a look at a lot of factors on why the facility was failing and and one of those areas they looked at is just how it was you know in our area there's so much duplication of fitness centers and rec centers and we're talking about you know the school district and all their facilities I mean we're three square miles in the school district I don't know what their percentage is but they they take up a big chunk of land here they just recently closed LC Webster Elementary School and I don't know if they've got a final plan for that but I'm sure they're not looking to sell it to someone to redevelop it but um you know you're talking about stakeholder groups um I sure hope that there's some sort of taxpayer advocacy stakeholder group because you know we know what we know now is that it's going to cost at a minimum of deferred maintenance two million dollars and and to me we're doing this backwards you know it's like we've got this thing we don't know what to do with it um but we just know we we're not going to get rid of it we voted not to sell it which could potentially could change with a new Council um my fingers are crossed for that but uh you know it's like we're we're trying to figure out what we want to do with it but then we know we got all these costs and then meanwhile we do have someone in the facility who's paying rent but essentially we're driving them out by the decision we're making and yeah we are going to face a point where they're going to leave and we're we're going to front the full we're here at this facility so it is going to be a hit on the taxpayers and it is going to come through either increased fees or a levy um and so I think it's important that people realize that so um you know I understand that you know what your guys is part of what you're doing here is to give us that potential use and who knows what comes from that but I just it'll be interesting to see who these shareholder groups are and who the core Planning Group is okay see here we got different opinions up here you know I looked at 10 years ago it's a lot different than it is now you know we just went over a housing study and we've got new people coming in we got new buildings going on the needs are different than they were 10 years ago so that's my opinion too uh anybody else not uh thank you if you want to add anything else before you leave otherwise I think we'll look at it agenda this evening no okay thank you appreciate it thank you appreciate it thank you uh city manager frandel thank you mayor that is all that's on the agenda for tonight that's all you got you can't add anything else that's it all right uh uh nothing else we'll have a motion to adjourn so moved by councilmember Cole second by councilmember Peterson any discussion if not all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed we are adjourned what's that say that