i'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order and i'm going to start with the approval of the minutes council members of onik or lawson do you have any changes all right we're going to go right into general business uh 3a an update on the airport overlay for centennial airport thank you and kathy can i please share my screen oh yes i can it's okay yes okay i think i'm sharing you are we can see it thank you uh good morning everyone i'm karen hancock a planner in the planning and development services department i have two very short items on the agenda this morning my first item this morning is a request to update the airport influence overlay on the city's zoning map this slide that i'm showing right now is the city's currently adopted airport overlay for centennial airport the city maintains the airport overlay to make sure that development around four area airports is compatible with airport operations a few months ago centennial airport staff approached the city with a formal request that we update our airport overlay to include more current noise contours our current overlay was last updated in 2008. the federal aviation administration has protocol for how the these noise contours are calculated and the contours are provided to the city by the airports the red patterned area is the airport influence district navigation easements are required for all projects and property located within that red patterned area per the udo for this item today we are not proposing any change to the area that requires navigation easements as a reminder navigation easements attach to the property title and let property owners know that their property is located in an area that may experience frequent aircraft overflights and nuisances associated with overflights the yellow and orange areas have different types of zoning restrictions for instance residential uses can be compatible in the yellow area but our code requires that these residential uses include noise attenuation and construction noise attenuation looks very much like energy efficient construction since noise enters through gaps in the building envelope no residential uses are permitted in the orange areas that are closest to the airport the white area on the map is the incorporated city limits and the gray areas are outside of aurora these current noise contours do not overlap with the city limits i get my slides working so this second map is the updated noise contour map that centennial airport is requesting that the city adopt there are no changes proposed to the red patterned area there are changes to the noise contour areas these contours also do not overlap with city boundaries although neither set of noise contours overlap with city boundaries it is important to centennial airport that the most current information be reflected on the city's zoning map because centennial airport is an important economic generator for the city staff is bringing this request to you this morning and asking for your concurrence that the noise contours on the zoning map be updated because there is no proposed change to property rights in aurora the city attorney's office staff has determined that an ordinance is not required the question for the committee is do you concur that we should update the zoning map to reflect the current noise contours from centennial airport that concludes my presentation and i'm happy to take questions thank you karen uh council members do you um how do you want to answer her question do you have any questions i don't have any questions and i'm fine with movies same with me karen uh that will conclude that go ahead and go right into your 3b here the resolution to transfer certificate of designation so happy to do that prior to 2012 the city did not permit any waste treatment or disposal land use within the city limits in 2012 a new business owner approached city staff with a request that we permit a new biomedical waste treatment use in aurora the more staff learned about this new technology and the proposed location in an industrial zoned area of the city it made sense to change our code to permit it the technology uses ozone to treat the biomedical weight which is very effective at removing pathogens and the byproducts from waste treatment are water and oxygen the technology also significantly reduces waste volume even better is that the whole process takes place in a fully contained machine inside of a building by statute the state regulates all waste treatment and disposal uses this is a photo of the machine the zoning change in documentation required by the state was fi all finally approved by city council by early 2014 and the business has operated successfully since that time the property has had no code enforcement violations they maintain compliance with all state and city regulations and they've operated within their license parameters this biomedical waste treatment facility is located near the fitzsimmons and shoe campus and the technology is currently the only one in the state of colorado the second slide shows what other biomedical waste treatment looks like and what ozonation treatment looks like on the left shows what is transferred to the landfill after traditional biomedical waste treatment and on the right shows material generated after biomedical waste treatment using ozone ozonation technology waste volume is significantly decreased after ozonation treatment the waste is shredded and not recognizable as such recently the business sold to trilogy med waste headquartered out of texas even though the zoning was resolved in 2012 the city can't let the new owners operate in aurora without following state statute which requires that the city issue a certificate of designation the former business owners received their certificate of dis designation in 2014 and now to get this business up and running and generating revenue we would need to transfer the certificate of designation to the new owners via a resolution this business has the one and only certificate of designation in the city the item i'm bringing to you this morning is a draft resolution that will transfer the certificate of designation to the new owners they will operate the business essentially the same manner as the previous owners based on a review of their engineering and environmental plans the state has recommended that the city approve transfer of the certificate of designation and to be clear this process to issue and transfer the certificate of designation is a state requirement and not regulated by the udo the state opened a 30-day public comment period during the review of the engineering operations plan and no public comments were received the question before you this morning is does the committee wish to move this draft resolution to the city council study session for review by the full council and that concludes my presentation and i'm happy to take any questions all right karen thank you council members do you have any questions and you wish to approve this i same no questions same with me thank you so much karen for both of those presentations we will go on to item 3c development review update workload and resources uh thank you council member this is jason batchelor can you all hear me yes yes okay uh so while todd is pulling up uh the presentation um this is just an update uh this is uh an update on um a couple different things so one is um kind of the current status of uh development um review so both kind of uh what we're seeing for workload what we're seeing for performance what we're seeing for revenues and expenses and then um also an update on uh the items that we've identified as part of the red tape reduction committee uh so we're going to provide that update uh and then finally uh this item will uh as a response to uh those workload and um performance numbers it's gonna be a request for uh some additional staff and i'll go into that that process so um kind of see the agenda there so the next one is uh the development review fund is um again we've set up the fun uh because council has told us that they want development uh to pay its own way so we take all of the fees associated with uh processing development applications it goes into the development review so that represents the revenue and then all of the staff that are dedicated for reviewing projects all of the consultants that we do when we hire an outside consultant to help assist with that workload that all goes into the development review fund so that we're meeting that policy direction from council that uh development pays its own way um so next slide uh so this kind of shows you uh both the this is the pro forma uh so this shows you both the revenues uh and uh the expenses uh for the last couple of years and then uh kind of uh year-to-date both the budget and then what we project um so through may uh we have not closed out yet june so through may through the first five months of the year our revenues are uh trending over what we had budgeted so that is in keeping with what we have uh continued to see which is very strong development activity um throughout and then uh similarly uh we're also seeing our expenditures uh trend over and so that is uh largely due to the fact that uh to meet that increasing workload we have uh continued to um both from a staffing perspective and from a third-party contractor continue to hire folks to make sure that we are doing our best to keep up uh with our resources to meet uh that very high volume uh and demand on the development side so you kind of see those numbers and where we think we're going to be for the year next slide so this uh slide shows us both workload and performance in terms of how we're doing and it shows you the different areas you'll see that in general what we're seeing is again very uh that far right column shows you what we're seeing in terms of workload numbers and so we are seeing again very high volumes increasing workload uh in 2022 over 2021 and as a reminder 2021 was sort of um historically high uh workload demand so we are continuing to see very strong development activity uh pretty much across the board in all sectors and so we are seeing that generally uh remain very high um and then i think you'll also see in there in some of the performance numbers as we've discussed in the past uh we have some areas that are are doing well but we also have some areas that we've struggled on particularly earlier in the year i think you all heard about those as part of the red tape production committee and that is the challenge in front of us is to make sure that we are raising those numbers that are not meeting the standard so that has been the focus uh particularly over the last uh three to four months uh and the outcome of that red tape production committee is to make sure that we are uh meeting the expectations of council of the development community and of staff that we are are providing a timely review um you know the overwhelming majority of the time it's obviously you can kind of see those numbers there next slide so uh this is kind of now transitioning into that red tape production uh committee items and so as we've talked about these are the four uh focuses areas of performance within the um the development review function uh you can kind of see those there so next slide and then as we discussed we presented previously to council we've identified a number of different initiatives and what we wanted to do is start now grouping those by those that we consider uh complete and done and then those that are in progress and that's what we're going to be reporting on regularly to ped is these initiatives that was part of the direction from the resolution adopted by council that came out of the red tape production was that we provide regular updates and so we're going to do that so you can kind of see here uh these first five items we think are complete so that includes development review governance so this is making sure that we have senior management uh across all the different departments that are involved in this we are meeting regularly to look at uh process issues workload issues and we're staying on top of that so that process is complete and stood up it is getting focused from again at the most senior levels to make sure that we are staying on top of it the next item there is an expedited review process uh so that has been uh stood back up that is something that we had that we had um suspended that during the pandemic and that is now reinitiated and available for projects that that meet those criteria and so that is something we've stood back up we know we heard loud and clear that the expectation from some of our developers that we be available for in-person meetings and that is available if folks want to meet in person we will meet in person if they want to meet hybrid we will meet hybrid if they want to meet virtually we will meet virtually uh we are meeting uh the demands of our customers so if they want in-person meetings uh we will make those available uh at at request and so then uh that's in place uh the other thing we've heard is that for our pre-application meetings uh that those um are not mandatory they have never been mandatory and we are um making sure that we continue to relay that and then beyond just that uh we're actually actively searching for projects that perhaps request uh pre-application meetings and we're looking to take those out and we're actually looking to to reach out to those folks and say hey we know you've requested it we actually think this is one where if you want to we're happy to meet but we also think that you know we can um you know answer any questions you may have and this does not need to go through a pre-app so we are again actively looking to um you know for those to make sure folks know that they're not required and in some cases where we don't even think they may they may be needed uh and then finally the the on this slide uh there is the item for uh third-party inspections and uh we have uh done that uh for third-party inspections um and so uh we will continue to do that we'll look for workload issues and if we need to bring on third-party inspection inspectors uh due to workload we will do that next slide uh this next one is uh we had a request to uh eliminate uh the uh temporary certificate of occupancy extension fee and that is done so you can kind of see there that's a more recent development so beginning uh just last month in june uh we will no longer administer that for single family and so that uh that is case and that's complete uh so now we're moving into some of those items that are in progress as you heard from laura perry and her team we are in the process of reorganizing public works so we have transferred drainage to uh or water so that that reorganization is complete and then you kind of see some of the other aspects are in progress and you can kind of see those different components uh and where we're at in terms of the implementation the final one on that slide is digital mylars we have had successful meetings with adams county arapahoe county and douglas county and we are in the process of actually uh doing the testing um on a entirely digital process so we no longer have to print mylars uh we anticipate being able to go live in the next few months here so again good progress on that one and that's one that we hope to complete here in the very near future next slide jason the slide changed i think this is the one you wanted thank you yep thank you ma'am uh so then the next one is uh we actually we have a major initiative to update our uh guidance and reference manuals and then uh you kind of see that we've now provided a little more detail because that's a that's a pretty broad topic and so we've kind of broken out both for the drainage manual the ueo roadway design as well as a number of other items we've kind of broken that individually and we'll provide individual status updates on those those are in progress and those are the ones that we'll be updating council on and ped in particular over the coming months but those are underway you can kind of see the status on those and the final slide on that one is trying to implement something that really gets to um our plan review comments uh tracking and scorecard and so that really looks at um even you saw back on the earlier slide where we talk about our performance um you know that really breaks it down into the different components and the intent of this last item on this slide is to really get to well what was the total time for a project and really looking at a project from when they submitted all the way through and not necessarily just the different components you know or different reviews within that because you might have a planning a review that was on time you might have a public works review that was on time but in totality uh what was that project uh you know done so we're looking at a scorecard in a way to sort of track this on a project by project basis so that's that's what that project's going to report on and we anticipate um continuing to work on that and we will look for implementation of that uh later this year next slide uh so this is these are items here that you'll see so this is a third party referral so we're working with our outside agencies on that process that's underway uh we are looking at continuing to develop our intake checklist so that we have written checklists of what's required uh from uh applicants uh when they submit so that our requirements are very clear and understood uh we think that will help with a lot of the concerns we're having both from a staff perspective uh where we're getting incomplete submittals and also from frustrations we're hearing from the development community consultants as to what is exactly required so that's something that is is underway and we'll continue to work on large project reviews that's something that actually we got underway for a number of different projects and we're going to continue to document that process and we think we'll be able to go live here in the next few months in terms of you know taking that broader beyond just the handful of large projects that we've done we're going to document exactly what that looks like what qualifies and be prepared to go from there uh we are then as part of both reviewing checklists and manuals we're going to be looking at our timelines and clocks uh to make sure that we are not getting late comments uh and um so that will be something that uh probably after we get through the checklist after we get through those manual updates we're then going to be looking at sort of that those timelines and clocks to make sure that uh we are um meeting our requirements and then you know can we revise those so milestone approvals are looking at our standard review processes to include approvals that defined milestones throughout the submittal process we again probably have to get through that guidance manuals and checklists as well as our plan intake before we implement that so it's probably a 2023 project and then finally we are looking at a multi-department review process to again sort of look at a individual project to make sure that you know that it's not getting held up by different silos and the different you know kind of um the number of different agencies and so this is a different approach that we'll we'll take we'll probably start that later this year and then we'll continue into 2023 and we will be um talking to you all uh as we develop that we'll also be working with the development community on you know what their pain points are and then how this process could help us with some of those next slide this is just showing you that timeline just in terms of uh kind of what that looks like over time so again we've got a number of items that are checked off and complete we've got a number of them in progress and so we'll be back in the coming months to hopefully report on progress um and go from there next slide now we're going to transition into looking at our development of review staffing so you've kind of seen over time how we've staffed up that is consistent with workload and so we have this year in particular we are augmenting our existing staffing with um contract services uh for a third party review we're currently doing that for engineering drainage real property and traffic and so those are all underway right now and you kind of see our staffing so even with those staffing numbers that'll take us to the next slide we uh we think we need uh some additional staff and so the way we've set up the development review fund is um we have the ability uh we have what we call um non-departmental um units and so these are fte that have been authorized uh as an ft but they're not funded uh we keep those uh those fte that council authorizes uh non-departmental uh and they're sort of a um you know undefined fte and what we really want to do is what council in the policy says is that as we see workload increase and as we need to hire additional staff to make sure that we are meeting our timelines and meeting the workload will come to ped and we will request to essentially pull down those fte that are authorized but not funded we'll come to you all explain both where we're at on workload where we're out on performance and why we need to add additional staff and so that's what we're doing here today so we'd like to talk to you about uh pulling down eight of those um fte that are currently sitting there waiting for uh approval of counsel and you can't see those there so with this i'm going to let laura talk a little bit about the request in both aurora water and public works and then she'll throw it back over to me to discuss the plant ft good morning chair durinski council laura perry deputy city manager so i'll start with the drainage requests so the goal here you'll see for water and public works is really staying ahead of workload reading meeting our on-time metrics and meeting customer service needs so for water specifically with the public works reorg that consolidated team is responsible not only for plan review but fema reports reviewing preliminary drainage reports master drainage reports and the need for these additional positions is to decrease staff over time and increase our ability to meet on-time reviews for drainage and so based on workload and analysis around what we're seeing come through the pipeline we are requesting three ftes to accomplish the on-time metrics as well as work through other tasks like updates of the drainage manual to move forward on the requests and recommendations from the red tape committee to overall improve the process and these positions will provide that capacity to achieve that moving down to public works so for the building division there are two requests for new two new supervisors it's important to note that the supervisors in building are also working supervisor so they also engage in plan review so for life safety that team again is seeing a large increase in workload and the supervisor position is needed to handle the daily supervisory issues to allow for the life safety manager to engage in advisory services and other needed tasks that the manager needs to accomplish and also to maintain customer service levels so the building division has uh continued to maintain very high performance and on-time metrics and uh serve our customers very well and this position will support that on the life safety team and the safety plan reviews next the permit center supervisor so as jason mentioned as you all heard we're consolidating planned intake in the permit center which is under the building division and that entails moving over our real property easements our license agreements small sales and civil plans so that workload is moving into that team and an additional supervisor is needed to perform the daily quality control checks training of staff management of staff and as well as customer service and then similar to the life safety supervisor the permit center supervisor is also a working supervisor and will be engaged in managing that workload for intake on that team and then last for public works is our plan review manager and this position is a new position that will report directly to the new deputy director of development review in public works and this position is solely focused on ensuring that we are meeting our performance that we are providing consistency in the organization around process improvements policies criteria etc and they're really the the operational manager of the new development review team uh this position is critical to fulfilling a lot of the upcoming work uh that's needed in the develop new development review division and uh we are proposing an ad for the engineering team for the plans review manager here and with that jason wanna wrap up with planning thanks laura so um kind of continuing that theme so within planning we're looking to add a planning supervisor as laura said all of our supervisors are working supervisors and one of the things that janine and brandon have been looking at is sort of the span of control of our supervisors and making sure that you know the number of uh staff that they're supervising uh is appropriate and and sort of workable and manageable and one of the concerns we heard out of the red tape process was that we want to make sure that we are getting senior level review early in the process and we think one of the keys to that is making sure that that means that our managers and supervisors have again a manageable and workable span of control so with that we think we need to add a supervisor so that again that they uh can you know make sure that they're reviewing uh their staff and we're getting those comments early uh we think that's gonna help us again avoid those late comments and we're making sure we're getting that senior level review early in the process and so this is going to help us with that and then the project coordinator is um a position that's actually going to help us make sure that our planners are focused primarily on reviewing so we've got a couple of project coordinators down there this would give us a third uh and that this would again be primarily focused on all those tasks uh outside of you know doing the actual review again really help us focus both our planners and our supervisors again making sure that they are focusing all of their efforts on getting timely reviewed on regular customer service uh and doing that so those are the two positions that we're requesting uh in planning uh those are the eight positions if you all are uh the committee is okay with that request then the next step would be uh i would send uh essentially a summary of this request to all of council to let them know that we are uh you know per the policy that council had adopted a few years ago that we would be pulling down uh these uh eight positions again out of the non non-departmental sort of set-aside we would be putting them in the appropriate departments uh and then we would move forward uh with hiring them so that's it on that slide and next slide and we'll take any questions you all may have all right um council members lawson and zavonik yes i'm councilmember dorinski i have a couple questions if i could ask yeah okay um jason thank you for the presentation just a question on the roadmap and the in-person meetings i know that i've talked to a few developers that still have challenges with in-person meetings and and i understand because i just i i don't understand how you can really do a lot of this review process online because when you're looking at maps and and different things like that you know to me you gotta sit out and look at things but the city there's really still people who are still working from home and some of the complaints are not well it could be a complaint but it also could be um just a question is it's kind of hard when some developers have to go to multiple departments and talk with different people and trying to get those connections so i know that you have this on here and it's the decision of the developer but there's still some struggles with that that i'm hearing in the development community about how the city is not really i mean we have people there but the city isn't as vibrant as it used to be i i can tell you that in my opinion so it's kind of hard for people to move from department to department because of course we do have you know they can't get up in the elevator so we understand that because of safety and public safety precautions but it's also been hard to connect with different people that they have to to work on a plan or work on whatever they're working on a site plan so i guess i know you have this in the road map description i know this has been brought up before and i know that you'll be updating the committee but how has that changed or evolved since we've even discussed it about a couple months ago so there's a couple things there so one i would say that um uh part of that is that that's the function of the office of development assistance is that you know we don't need uh developers to be experts so we you know typically when folks have an issue we tell them to go to their oda project manager and then really uh oda is responsible for um either getting questions answered you know via email setting up a meeting you know if that's what needs to happen and so that is something that they do routinely and regularly on on on an ongoing basis sort of a project by project because you know every situation is different sometimes it can be handled through kind of a quick email a quick phone call and other times there's there you need a um you do need a meeting and so uh if jacob's on i'd ask jacob to kind of touch base on a little bit on that in terms of their experience and what they've been seeing so that that's on that front uh in terms of what that looks like going forward um i would say that uh i think you know you know if you have examples of that we'd love to know who's having problems because if we can get uh identify what those problems are that helps us kind of fix them we know that's a general generalized issue or complaint we've heard um and so i'm not sure if that's something they've experienced recently or if again they're going back to um something that was perhaps you know a few months old and you know we've since you know we've made those in-person meetings available so if we can get some examples of that that'll help sure that the processes we're setting up we can address them specifically um and so jacob if you're on let's talk a little bit about how you you guys approach those uh that that problem-solving process sure hey jason this is jacob cox i'm the manager of oda so yeah i have project managers that are assigned to every project that comes in the door at the city and we certainly you know as jason mentioned kind of offer that spectrum of options in terms of meeting with developers and so you know we're finding that a lot of the consultants out there working are kind of liking the idea of being able to jump onto a quick microsoft teams call i think that's added a lot of convenience out there in the total new orleans but certainly we're doing more meetings um especially the last few months in our office with some hybrid options or some large group meetings so we're doing some large workshop meetings now back in the office so we really try and you know if there are specific examples as jason mentioned please let us know happy and happy to reach out and provide some due diligence on that but yeah we're trying to absolutely offer developers whatever options are convenient for them to meet those needs and and and take away those silos so that we can kind of provide a holistic approach um on their project specifics um but i'm happy to answer any questions okay thank you does anyone else uh count members of monica gave anything yeah just one question on the uh the ftes um are there any of those roles that could potentially be filled with contractors i i don't i first thing i want to say is i want to make sure that we have adequate staff to get through the development process it's critical um just want to make sure that before we ever add fts we're always thinking through can something be done on a contract basis before we add them and i assume the answer is yes but i have to it's ask great question we actually uh the city manager asked that same question uh and so uh what we're finding actually uh is that uh our consultant community is equally uh tasked theirs they are having some of the same challenges we are having in terms of hiring staff in capacity so i know both laura and public works have had some of those discussions i'll let them talk primarily where uh the bulk of our contracting out is going and so i'll let them talk a little bit about um you know what they've what they've witnessed in terms of uh capacity for third-party uh contractors sarah young um i don't know if you're on today if you want to speak to drainage specifically i know you've done a lot of due diligence on that briefly as to our landscape reviews sorry i've got two screens going here let me move you um we recently contracted to have landscape reviews and some of our residential done by contract and we took the last hours of the consultant that they had available and i think it was about 30 hours a week so that's the max we're getting there just by one example and and i can chime in to speak for sarah i know uh she did do a lot of due diligence reaching out to different contractors and the response back to us was we have no capacity to add on any additional work at this point folks are inundated uh they're at their max in terms of workload capacity but we do actively utilize our contractors as jason mentioned for engineering real property and the ones that we do have for drainage to assist us and augment staff in reviews and it's a balancing act that we're consistently monitoring through metrics and workload metrics and performance metrics and we'll continue to do so go moving forward no other questions for me thank you god mute thanks dee uh uh mayor pro tem did you have a question still i do thank you so much um two questions um quickly on the re on the fees um did that include review fees um for planning and engineering in the entitlement process um guys someone are you talking about revenues are you talking about the tco extension i'm talking about revenue on review fees yeah so it it includes um any of our development fees so that that does include uh you know fees that folks uh pay for uh development application reviews and so that includes the revenues for that it includes uh revenues for building permits it includes those revenues what it does not include typically the other the other major uh fees and expenses you see associated with development our either are impact fees or our uh connection fees and the water utility and so those don't come to the development or review fund uh those both go to either the the water capital fund or the capital projects fund uh where they are accounted for and used in accordance with um uh the ordinance is that establishment like architectural fees that go somewhere else as well uh again architectural fee i again we've again we any fees that are associated with the development review uh go go into that so i'm not um i guess in terms of architectural fees janine todd um do we charge an architectural fee or is that sort of part of our development applications per house on average i'm not sh that that i don't know if we charge a specific fee for that if you can get us an example now i do know what we do have is we have um uh architectural standards whether it's masonry or other things like that that are part of our um development standards and those those certainly may add costs to the cost of a project but i don't know if we're charging a fee for that janine your thoughts on that one i will need to look into that and get back to you that's part of what i'm doing with the working with the consultant to look at our processes so i'll get back to you on that one okay and then my second question real quick is back to the ftes i know we lost heather lamboy in planning um so how many do we currently have i know you're trying to add three or two so this would again on the project coordinators we currently have two project coordinators this would add a third and i would say similarly in the development review we currently have two fte uh one of them is steven rodriguez is still there the other one is heather lamboy's old position and we are in process of advertising and filling that position and then this request is to add a we only have one filled we have two authorized and we're in the process of filling that second one and then this one would add a third uh supervisor so janine anything to add to that one you got it correct and then heather's been gone three months or two months about month okay all right all right thank you jason i guess the only question i have is um i know you laid it out before but can you just say again some of these fees that you guys have already done away with and and some of these processes that um have already been updated changed we are actively um letting the development community know about this right someone is yes and so we meet every other month uh with what we call uh the joint task force which is typically um everything from you know sort of large home builders to you know developers that have major efforts and so there's normally a few dozen people uh that are in the invite list with that and i think that's what we've used to kind of let them know that the tco extension fee was done away with um todd jacob uh you guys want to add any more color to that one that is on our next agenda which is early august i think we're three weeks away okay perfect and that'll be a pretty good um update for the development community council member i don't know if there's somebody from the communications team on here but i know that they have been working on a website uh that's gonna be specifically uh tracking all the progress uh that we made um and the updates from the red tape reduction committee that included the elimination of some of these fees um it's on our i believe it's on our uh homepage for the city but it's uh aurora here for business um and i think it'd be helpful to get that out to you know people who are on this call and the business advisory board and others to share um you know that website because it will continually be updated and uh continue to allow us to track the progress yeah and i saw that um here for business link and i greatly appreciate it i just want to make sure that we're actively engaging with the development community and not just putting out there hey you can come to our website and see what we're doing um you know they had a lot of complaints and so um i want them to know they don't really just get to sit around and complain anymore the city is actively working to change processes and eliminate fees and working very hard and so i just hope that we are engaging them with that we will go ahead and move on to item 3d the retail presentation all right let's see if i can um get this up on the screen um i'm going to be doing this this is going to be a slightly different presentation than we normally do this is going to be about icsc so um this says that if i can i can start this this is going to bring it up can everybody see that no no okay great so let's see how this works um [Music] all right uh so if i can't bring it up on the screen here and present is it present online kathy are you sharing the right screen bob uh i'm oh i see okay like this let's see if that works there we go we see it now now you see the whole thing okay so if i go from presentation into presentation mode present from beginning it's in presentation mode bob it is okay so and the screen that's showing is meeting with owners of existing centers okay so now we're at the beginning hold on a second uh no you're not at the beginning yet all right so i'm not sure if this is going to work properly um it's this do you have a screen up on your yes i have the opening screen up on my okay does it have a red line around it or yes it's on there it's just not at the first page um okay so is there any chance you could bring it up kathy do you can you bring up your copy uh this doesn't appear to be working from here well you guys work on that in the meantime why don't we have chance she looks like she's the only one for miscellaneous matters that wanted to give a report chance do you want to give a quick update for the havana bid while we're working on getting uh yeah good morning everyone chance horyucci on havana street thank you always for letting me do this quick update i won't read all of the new and closed businesses but i just wanted to let you know that the havana tower owner um is a nigeria is a nigerian owner and is actually looking to open a primary care clinic in the building in the next few months he also relocated his home healthcare and his actual corporate offices to the havana tower a new mexican seafood restaurant is finally going into that former village inn don't have an opening date there are a lot of new leases that will be going into amcap actually the large space the former xfinity store and also the hair salon space will be fulfilled by the summer unfortunately dmz pub which was known for their korean chicken wings closed and the new ownership is mr tang it's been very popular it just opened i believe july 7th it's like a korean specialty soup restaurant it's been already a destination restaurant i've heard quite a few people from all over colorado drive out to aurora just to try this restaurant new ownership at shiny blinds which is a showroom um on havana street new ownership at a new nail salon i think with covid we've had a lot of new ownerships unfortunately sam's fantastic sam's closed um i think it was a corporate um choice and um that lease is now available in that king super shopping center come and go just reached out we will be doing it on havana street district marker sign and will include a 8x8 concrete pad to be in the art and public places rtc program in 2024 to 2026 after the after the property is redeveloped by 2023 and then lastly we have a new karaoke bar chinese cuisine restaurant that opened also in the old buckingham the art to see program is still moving forward for this year we actually just completed a new art mural at the tlj building the tula jurors building at havana exchange and then quickly we have a frozen treats giveaway for five hundred dollars or five hundred dollars in gift cards to frozen treat shops national ice cream day is july 17th and this saturday is the first date of the havana street global market this is actually um put together by bonfire events um if anyone would like to join i'm actually doing a hundred free sambusa samples there's going to be an ethiopian coffee tea coffee ceremony and then high altitude martial arts will actually be providing a kickboxing class where everybody will receive a milk grow gift card for participating in the class and thank you for my very quick um update perfect thanks chance for the pulse you keep over there on havana bob do you have your presentation ready to go um kathy it looks like you've brought it up is it sharing can you see it yeah okay great yeah so this is the opening page right yes yes all right uh all right so uh thanks uh for inviting us to present about uh the international council shopping center show that we go to every year this is not gonna be my normal retail presentation uh where we go over sales and everything this is gonna be specifically about the biggest show that we go to every year to present aurora to the world next slide all right so the international council shopping centers has actually recently changed their name they've been the initial international council shopping centers for 60 years and i've been going to their shows for over 30 years they changed their name to change with the times they're pivoting towards the new world where retail shopping malls are changing into much more mixed-use projects and parts of much larger projects and so they've changed the name from international council shopping centers to innovative commerce serving communities a little bit of a tricky name but they didn't want to give up icsc.org apparently so they decided to change names to this and this reflects the new view that a retail is part of a much larger development community that creates a sense of place and so they're now trying to attract more municipalities and more other players that go to icsc and we've been going to iccsc for a while but other municipalities are now starting to show up this is a little bit of a review of kind of who we meet with when we when we go there and then we're going to talk a little bit about the welcome packet when we're done next slide all right so this is a view of the eye of icsc from the upper tier this is one of three convention halls there is uh probably about a half a mile straight back and this is what a lot of the booths look like they're very corporate these are usually developers and owners that are trying to show off how much money they have they usually have a very fancy booth a very uh kind of either modern looking or very old school kind of mahogany cherry wood kind of stuff uh and so but when we go to the show we're not trying to show how much money we have we're trying to show this is a very exciting place to do business and so next slide you're going to see aurora's booth this is what our booth looks like very different than everything else and this booth got so much attention from other municipalities that we had more people walking up taking a picture of themselves in front of our booth than probably any other booth in the place uh aurora illinois even showed up and was kind of jealous that we had such an amazing presence because most cities show up with a little walmart fold-out table a little pop-up tent like 10 by 10 that looks like something out of a soccer game and they show up and just try to hand out brochures so we had a presence there that blew people away not just other cities but also developers and we'll talk about that in a minute these are the groups that we meet with and we'll go through each one of those in a second next slide okay so we meet with developers specifically to attract developers to specific areas of the city a good example would be we met with aurora one and they're doing business up in the in the northeast uh over by uh murphy creek um we also get a chance to present to larger developers like uh aurora highlands will come in and talk to us about their overall mix they have a much larger project and they're they're talking about residential commercial what should they do with the commercial um sometimes they're asking us about whether they should put industrial offices and some of these other things in there so we get involved in some of the master planning at the very beginning uh when they're really asking about where's the retail go and what retail do you think we should have here um and of course we get to present all of our services to them and um and we have ongoing discussions with them uh even when they're we're not at icsc next slide all right so the retailers and the merchants uh one of the things that we have to do is we have to tell our story uh many of these folks are from out of state and they've heard of aurora uh and they may not have heard of rora the way we want them to know aurora so we're very much presenting our story to them we present a lot of data at icsc and we're going to get into that a little bit of placer data but one of our one of the best things that we can do is show these developers and and retailers and merchants um that we can assist a system in understanding their market southlands will be an example of that we're going to show in a minute but in many cases the market that that uh the retailers are looking at and the restaurants which we'll get to in a second um they they are looking at demographics they are not looking at the level of information we have and we can show them how uh each ward has an area that they should locate in because each ward not only is the demographics within half a mile a mile of where you put a pin in the map it's also all the people that visit that area and we'll show that in a minute but our ability to offer technology uh to uh our merchants is uh and our developers is a big deal and we'll show that next slide okay all right we've gotten i think we've skipped a few um all right so uh this is a heat map of basically southlands and so when we showed this to southlands this was right at covet we had another map that showed sort of the seasonality curve of their sales but we don't they track their own sales we track their visits because we could geofence their their entire center and or any individual retailer and tell you where the customers are coming from how often they come and that's what this heat map shows so with southwinds if you would have asked southlands before they saw this map where did they think their customers coming from they would have shown they would have said that dark red part where those are the folks that come all of the time but take a look at how many people are coming from littleton englewood lakewood even golden now they have to pass three major shopping centers uh uh uh south glen they have to pass park meadows they have to pass southwest plaza all to get to to southlands that's phenomenal if southlands did not know they were attracting from that far now they can start to market their events that they're having way out to the western side of town and draw far more people you could also see the provisional shoppers way out on the eastern plain coming in and shopping with a vengeance because that is such a distance for them to travel that when they come in they come in half as often but they spend twice as much money and so the provisional shoppers out on the planes this is very good information for the southlands folks they like this information so much plus the other information we showed them they went out and bought placer data for themselves because they found this so interesting uh placer uh but we offer pleasure to everyone not just developers is existing owners and to retailers so as an example if a retailer or a restaurant came to us and said um we want to locate in aurora but we're not exactly sure where we want to go we can show them where all of their customers are if they know their customer or we can geofence one of their other locations and tell them who their customer is a lot of the smaller retailers and restaurant operators don't have the money to pay for this kind of information so when they're coming to us the fact that we can provide provide this and other cities don't makes them want to do business in aurora and so this this place your data stuff is extremely important to us and we we've gotten a lot of good uh feedback from it uh i think this might be the last slide in this one next okay we switched them up a little all right so um why do we go after right we go after retail of course but we also go after restaurants and why do we go after restaurants so significantly well restaurants have the ability if you took a five thousand square foot space and put a retailer in it they might have five or six people on the floor at any given time maybe 12 15 employees running two different shifts you take that five thousand feet put a restaurant in there you could have a hundred employees in there and since economic development is very much about not just economic not just the retail sales tax dollars but also creating jobs in the same square footage we create a lot more jobs with the restaurant than we can with a retailer not that we don't want retailers but restaurants also produce more sales per square foot uh if you take a look at some of our top restaurants they they crush the numbers per square foot that the retailers do so they produce more sales tax dollars so we can get more bang for the buck if we're incentivizing restaurants in a five thousand foot range than retailers in a 5 000 foot range and we could also show restaurants where the in each ward where the customers are coming from so let's take a look at the arts district for a second uh ward one uh you may say that if you took put a pin in a map on ward one and said the demographics for this area a restaurant might say that's not really my customer and then we would show them who's shopping at the five restaurants that we put in the area which would be uh the old um third culture which is now bon and butter and we uh mason's dumplings and bob and pops and lady justice we could show that those people are drawing from stapleton slash the new name central park and fitzsimmons well the demographic profile of stapleton central park and fitzsimmons are miles past the demographics if you put a pin right on fletcher plaza and that shows that they're drawing from all over and that that gives them the ability to maybe get a much lesser a much more reasonable rent in the arts district than going over to stapleton and paying two and a half three times as much rent and doing similar volumes with the similar customers so that's kind of how we go after the restaurant community they also have a hard time understanding who their customer is because they know their customer that walks in but they don't necessarily have a demographic or psychological or psychographic profile of them and we can give them that so we also have the restaurant program which also looks at qualified candidates to put to relocate and incubate restaurants in each one of the awards so that's our restaurant program next slide meeting with brokers okay brokers are the bridge between us between the retail community and the development community when i first got in the business one of the bigger players brinker which owned chili's and macaroni grill had 45 real estate reps in-house that knew the whole country they now have about five and what they did was they basically over at every downturn every recession they got rid of half their staff and then they started using local brokers so the local brokers have now become the tenant reps and the landlord reps uh because the landlord arrest and tenant reps are too busy they're trying to actually just manage the brokerage community so we get information to brokers brokers get it to tenants and they get it to developers that we may not be in in touch with because they have to get covered and that's how a broker gets paid so as an example brokers call us all the time we exchange information with them same what we do with developers but if brokers are always asking us for information that nobody else knows about and we generally don't get that stuff out but if we just found out one from let's say maybe trevor called us and said hey i know about the site coming available we would call a broker and say hey this one's in your market here's the site that's available uh you know just let you know well they know they're the first one in and they're gonna turn around and put a brochure together and send it out to 5000 people on their mailing list in a matter of seconds because that's how they're going to get covered on that and that's how they're going to get a commission on that so brokers can get this information out faster than we can get it out because even if we want to take it out the next day it would probably take us a few days to put it together they get it out instantly and brokers that's how brokers get paid so brokers are a big part of our community and they're an integral part of what we do and we meet with them at icsc also because they're all there next slide existing centers so the difference between a developer and existing center operator would be the difference between let's say southlands which are developers uh and the mall or the aurora mall which are existing center owners so when we're dealing with an existing center owner they're generally not developers but they need this kind of information so we can provide this kind of information void analysis our canvassers for data to lace at least individual spaces but when it comes to development they're going to bring in a developer so the mall when they're trying to do redevelopment they're actually bringing in other developers to do it because they're really owners of existing centers they're not really developers we also help them pursue larger anchor tenants at this icsc we've had some pretty good activity and we are talking to a few larger anchor tenants which of course we can't talk about the names right now but there is a lot of activity right now uh especially down in south ones we also partner up with innovative marketing ideas incubation markets the photo studio idea which uh just to remind everybody we have a photo studio that we can actually bring to a place like southlands and they can go from one unit to the next and take all of the pictures of stuff in their stores so that they can be put online and look as good as any national player that has professional pictures online kind of evens the playing field for online um and of course we also offer assistance free redevelopments and we're constantly peppering them for information on what trends are they seeing what new concepts are they seeing and what new players are they talking about in the marketplace and then we also say if it's a desirable use we might be able to incentivize you guys next slide okay so these examples of some of the folks that we met with um and these are a lot of the big players that we all know um so uh each one of them come and meet with us i will tell you a story about uh the developers up in the northeast when they come to the booth uh they brag to their other developer friends that aren't developing in colorado that they should be developing in aurora because we have a booth for them now we don't necessarily really have a booth for our development community but we do allow them to stop by we do hand out their brochures and we do promote their projects so when they come over to our booth they feel like they're home and there there's no other city that does this as far as we can tell in the country that gives them this presence so a developer doing a large project in the northeast can basically say i'll meet you at the aurora booth they have space for us and we have three little meeting areas here uh one private one behind that the fencing right there so this is a big service for the development community to be able to go to icsc where everyone goes to icsc and they don't have to build a booth they can actually come to our booth and basically bring all of their players here and of course we get to sit on their meetings and listen to what they're talking about um so this is the the list of every this is a list of the of the handful of the 50 meetings that we had in basically about 14 hours if you take a look at all day monday and half a day tuesday we had meetings every half an hour we had four different people there we were understaffed because it turned out we only had two openings for walk-ups and we had a lot of walk-ups so i'll talk about one of those walk-ups i think i have another slide for that so next slide i don't have that side so i'll i'll talk about that walk up right now we had a person that walked in and said hi i'm from the west coast i represent this chicken concept it's called xyz chicken and uh we want to come to the front range we saw you guys here we want to talk to you and we said okay tell me what you're looking for and they said blah blah blah we are also looking for master plan communities we're like well senate son of a gun we have our ipad right there we can pull up all of the master planning communities we started showing them everything we had they're like oh my god this is exactly what we're looking for here's my card let's talk when we get back from icsc an hour and a half later one of those developers from the northeast walked in and said how's it going we said hey we got these folks here that are looking at your development here's their business card give them a call that guy looks at us like wow thank you that's great now that's about a 50 000 lead if a broker had just brought that in and we just handed it to him and so that guy's thrilled not only are they thrilled that we have a booth but we actually help them with their getting connections with the folks that are walking up to us and giving us this broad statement that we want to be in aurora so another example of how icsc works for us now this particular slide is about reinstituting the welcome letter uh which we had done in the past and and jim trauma had asked us to bring it back again because we really do need to introduce our services to the retail and restaurant community as soon as possible ninety percent of the time they call us it's too late for us to help them because they already got an eviction notice or they have to move in a week or and and so we're trying to get to them right at the beginning so this is a great thing that jim's asking us to do so that we can show them as soon as they get a business license we can send them one of these letters that basically outlines everything that we can do for them including all of what the sbdc can do for them all of them all of the help that the chamber of commerce can do for them all of the tourism and hospitality information that visit aurora can get for them and anything that we can do in economic development on the retail side and so that welcome letter has been just approved and that's going to start going out we're currently going through the list and pulling out the folks that are more service oriented businesses that um that don't sort of qualify for a lot of the things that we're talking about next side okay and outside of icsc what else do we do so that we can help these folks well we do stay in constant communication with all the folks that we meet out there and we go to the local events so the colorado real estate journal puts on a local version of these events where all the local community shows up we have a much smaller booth that we just purchased that is much more mobile so we can bring our own booth to those shows instead of having to hire someone to set them up and of course the sbdc helps us with our incubation programs when we get new players that want to come to the market the sbdc can put them through a program which allows allows them to understand how to write a business plan how to do online marketing which is a new thing that they started after after the the photo studio came up sbd stepped up and came up with uh online marketing uh classes so that people could figure out how to do it um and uh basically uh everything else all of the technology we can provide all of the assistance we can provide and um and that's a lot of what we do to keep ics's momentum going next slide all right so that's that kind of wraps it up it was a little bit all over the place it's a lot goes on there um and uh so any questions yeah well i would just like to say i don't see trevor vaughn on this call but um tax and licensing had started uh they have started communication that is pretty similar to what the state sends out um from the liquor enforcement division and trevor's just done such a fantastic job of sending these notices out to anybody who has a liquor license um in the city with this welcome letter that you're talking about i know you're talking about for every new business that opens i'd like a copy of this letter i would like to see what all these resources are and i would like to see if there's a way uh maybe we link up with trevor um and and actually just put that welcome letter out to all current existing i know you said you really wanted to focus on the service industry for for some of this so if we could link up with trevor and get this welcome letter to go out um through the correspondence that he's been doing and he's pretty much mastered at this point to every liquor license holder in the city i think that that would be really really helpful i know that i can tell you i i don't even know what the services are or what is offered to uh businesses in aurora and i don't think we should just start by welcoming uh new businesses i think we should send that letter to every current business as well i think that's a great idea um and we do deal with trevor constantly on this and i think andrea's got something to add andrea remember we can make that happen we can get a list of businesses we can put together a letter that's very similar that kind of lists high work development services these are the kinds of services we provide and we'll be happy to do that and work with trevor that would be great thank you council members zavonik and lawson do you guys have anything i don't i just have one question thank you for the presentation just a question and i understand that we're having restaurants are really important but also um you know shopping in terms of clothing more stores smaller boutiques i mean i'm just i know that you know retail there people do a lot of online but there's still some to me some um i guess wanting of those type of stores or something like that where people still don't have to go out to park meadows or to cherry creek or chair you know to that mall or to other areas i mean when you go to these particular this this particular um i guess conference are is there any interest of bringing some of those stores to maybe some of the areas that we don't see in aurora specifically and i know you said that you know restaurants and i understand that brings people but also stores as well maybe a couple high-end maybe a couple you know that could be in aurora so you're still not going out to these other communities and you're shopping within aurora so it has there been some interest or is how is how does that work to bring those and i know you look at demographics but there are some demographics that could support some of those stores that i'm kind of mentioning council member when we do our meetings with the owner the overview here was to give you a sense of the kind of conversations that we have and we do that we meet with and it's not just large centers large brokers things like that we have met and uh we have met with smaller center owners who have vacancies and part of what our meeting does is talk to them about what kinds of of businesses are they looking for have they thought about this we actually interact with them and try to say have you thought about putting in this kind of business and the other thing we do because we have the small business development center in our offices we are aware of lots of small businesses who are looking for spaces and then we can offer them certain incentives for taking you know smaller businesses into their shops and we're looking very closely at providing incentives for um smaller businesses that are not um credit tenants a big credit tenant is someone who has a number of places and they have you know a history of sales and things like that that they can show a shopping center owner that says oh you know i know i can pay my rent blah blah blah so we try to match make and that's what a lot of our meetings with the owners are about are some of that matchmaking and bob i didn't know if you wanted to provide some examples or if you had anything to add to that well um yeah i would like to say i'm sorry if i gave the impression that we were ignoring retail in in in place of restaurants uh retail is the the dominant uh uh conversation happening at icsc and so we do t uh t uh talk to the anchor tenants we talk to their brokers we talk to junior anchors we do have a couple of them that seem to be hot and heavy to come to aurora right now can't talk about the names yet but they were new players that we had not known were looking and not only are they looking they want to be specifically in aurora so you'll see a couple of those coming down the pike in the next 12 months um but we do meet with all of the retail community um the difficulty with the retail community is they they compete directly with online selling so if you're a particular retail store it used to be that when you saw online uh sales in a particular market you wanted to go drop a store there but now that so many people are shopping online that we have to try to convince them that see your customers there you should open the store and they would say we're already getting that customer why do we need to open a store and and so there's a little bit of a shift with some of these folks trying to go online trying to open fewer stores but do more business online restaurants aren't in that situation restaurants don't necessarily compete with the amazon of restaurants they do compete with chains but restaurants um you know are having a much bigger issue with delivery and meal replacement and all of these other things that are eaten away pun intended at their business and so um we are focused on retail the two biggest players we're talking about are retail uh but uh i just wanted to make a little presentation about restaurants because we do have a restaurant program we probably should put together some version of a retail program to address what you're talking about and i think we've we just started kind of that conversation a couple days ago around here so um i i i i'm very i'm thrilled at the idea that we may be able to put together a program for retailers well that would be nice i mean i understand um you know people are going online but i also know that i don't i've lived here for 21 years and i have not really seen the diversity or just different trends of mix of retail and i do have to admit a lot of people that i know including myself i hate to admit this goes to retail sometimes outside of this because there's certain there's no diversity of stores where people can go from different economic brackets or if you choose to so some people are going to cherry hills because they have zara's they have different places some people are going to park meadows so i hope that that might be something to consider a retail just so we can have more of a mix of just more retail and i know we're competing with online but i still think it's important with the city with so much different diversity um shopping is still important so thank you for that i totally agree and by the way the names you're mentioning are money meaning they don't show up without throwing money at them so uh so yeah that's if we want to start going after the better names we probably should focus on this program about retailers because we do have a restaurant program right now but we don't have a program that parallels this for retail so but great suggestion okay do we have any other questions um i i have one please um yes thank you bob for the presentation i know you guys um icse is fantastic for us to um to bring you know um retailers and so forth to aurora my question is you on the placer data with the heat map can you track who goes from aurora to park meadows sure i would love to see that because i just know you know kind of following on council member lawson's concern is it's great that we get all the sales in the city but there's a lot of sales that actually leave and and go to you know those other centers so i'd like to see that data okay no problem all right great thank you everyone the next meeting is scheduled for august 10th at 8 30 in the morning and with that have a great day this meeting is adjourned thank you everyone