I'll call the meeting to order. We are gathered today for a work session to discuss potentials for partnering with the vendor to review potential data as an input to our comprehensive plan. This is a working session for the council. So, we've invited special guest Mary Budel to speak on content that she has provided for us. Uh we will not be entertaining public comment in this meeting, but at our regularly scheduled meeting at 7, there will be a public comment opportunity for anyone who would like to address the council. With that, we'll begin with a roll call. Uh Mayor McKe is not present. I am the dancing bear acting mayor for this evening. So for now, uh Jeremy Nichols here. >> Uh Mark Lannerman, >> Michelle Friedrich here, >> Dean Bar here. >> Wonderful. Thank you so much everyone. And with that, we will turn the matter over to staff to lead discussion. >> Uh yes. So, council members, uh this evening, what we have before us is an opportunity to discuss uh economic development uh in the community. We've been discussing it uh at lots of different uh sessions. And this opportunity came about uh in our collaborative partnerships with uh concept plan that recently came forward to council with Continental. uh they proposed a residential development adjacent to um county road 30 and in that time council had given some direction uh to them regarding commercial development in this mixeduse guided area. Uh as we collaborated with them as staff, one of the uh things that they came up with was some challenges both in terms of the market uh and um what's happening in terms of where we're at in the phase of development. And as we had conversations, they engaged Maxfield Research uh is a partner to explore how they could address their situation and can and and get better information. They brought forward that they were doing that. That sounded really interesting to me. And so staff sat down with them and had a conversation about what their plan was. and we recognized a potential opportunity beyond the scope of just this particular project and parcel to to impact the whole city. And so um Mary is a a subject matter expert uh in this field. Um she has worked with a lot of cities on a lot of uh similar situations uh as they develop. And so we've uh invited her to to share her insights uh from from her profession and uh have discussion about how this impacts how we think about economic development and the staging of that and potentially consider joining Continental uh in their research project uh in order to have positive impact on the economic development of our community. So, subject to your questions, um, I'd like to invite Mary uh to the microphone to share uh or really lead us through this discussion. >> Thank you, J. So, mayor and council members, thank you for letting me be here this evening to address you and to present some information. Just I would in general, some observations and then overall just a discussion or a little bit of a presentation about where we find ourselves today in the marketplace because of a number of different factors that had significant impacts on real estate market both for the Twin Cities, for the western area in general. And I would just I would also say to And some of those well a lot of those trends are not changing very quickly and so we're in a flux situation right now with a number of different uses real estate. So with that someone you're going to thank >> I got you. Okay, thanks a lot. Um, so this this map just really shows Corp's kind of just position right now and it geographically as adjacent to Maple Grove and I don't think that it's really any surprise to anyone that Maple Grove has had a relatively long run of where it's focused a very substantial portion of development near the interstate towards primarily commercial and retail development. Um back when they first started this um they things start out started out I would say a little slowly and then of course they ballooned um during primarily the 2000s and 2010s and now what's really happening within this There's been some fallout in terms of commercial development and retail development and the city is actually reevaluating how it may restructure certain parcels to be able to increase utiliz >> Mary. >> Yes, >> over here. Hi. Yeah, >> I'm sorry to interrupt. What What do you mean by fallout? >> Well, we're Well, I I'll talk a little bit about that as the slides, but just in general, what I'm saying is is that we have um certain retail centers are aging. Certain retailers, largely big box retailers, are consolidating or closing all together. Um and vacating spaces. So, we have started to see increased vacancies. Some of those uh can be re or backed, but a lot of them cannot be right now primarily because there isn't as much market activity in the larger big box area and the costs to backfill some of those spaces are very high and retailers are being very some re a lot there's been a lot of store closings. They're focusing on locations that are optimal optimal for them. There is some development. It's typically focused on very high concentrations of where there's already other retailers that they can play off of. So I guess that's kind of what I mean by that. >> Thank you. >> Sure. No problem. Um so let's go to the next slide. So this uh shows we received this information from the city. I I will say that um because of certain um the way that they we the way the data comes off and we didn't want to do a a really significant deep dive into the permit evaluation at this time. So some of these uh there's certain categories in here that may be overlapping based on the information that I had. So as you can see single family development was overwhelmingly the vast majority followed by home or attached housing. I don't see this as a big surprise. I think that definitely trend is going to continue to develop residentially probably the vast majority of it near-term development. I won't say farm I'll talk about that later but near-term development is most likely to be resum home attached or even higher density level. and that may include additional senior. So then if we go to the next slide, this just looks at what the existing land use was in 2019 and then according to the comprehensive plan, the future land use. And so in the uh 2019 plan again we had quite a bit of gross acres and net acres given over to um single family development. Um we also had uh quite a bit of still agricultural and rural land area. And then I would say looking at the future land use of course there are a lot more categories there. Um just an observation I was a little bit um well I in this category for out to 2040 I guess I was a little bit um surprised about still such a very high percentage for rural residential primarily because it seems as though very very rapidly and a lot of that rapid growth is most likely to be there would be pressure to develop a lot of that rural residential land over I want to say higher densities but I don't necessarily high so it can be a low density residential and then a gradual increase lower mostly lower medium density res and then with specified areas to other types of uses Um I definitely I think we're going to see more commercial development as the city grows because because commercial development both retail development primarily relies on rooftops and traffic unfortunately traffic and um other types of development such as business or commercial would also rely somewhat on that, but primarily more along the lines of where how they're going to draw the workforce and then the type of business that it is. Do they need access to major arteries or do they need access to other shows just a little bit about where we're at currently with office market activity. So in the Twin Cities of course, well throughout the country since the pandemic and the back to work or the back to home and remote work situations, although companies are now trying to encourage their employees to come back into the office at least two or three days. Um we have had little to no growth in or absorption of our office space and a lot of it that is struggling to we have seen I think some there are a few location submarkets where we've seen some return and some absorption but it's modest. So overall in the entire Twin Cities market as of last quarter we only had 7,300 square feet of space throughout the entire Twin Cities metro area which is extremely low. Even we fluctuate back and forth but even in our worst times usually the suburban markets seem to hold their own in terms of even the markets. But we're seeing suburban markets evenly tested in terms of there is about 136,000 square feet under development in the southwest and that's primarily medical office. So this is a little bit about metro area retail vacancies. So uh so we are I would say strangely enough we are strengthening in the retail sector overall even despite some fluctuations back and forth between certain types of retail developments. So, one of the strongest, as you can see here, one of the strongest segments is the strict retail or convenience retail segment followed and then general retail, which tends to be single use. some of the larger general merchandise retailers like Target, Walmart, Costco, those um malls are struggling of course and um some malls are being reconfigured. Some malls I guess we're hoping in the future. There are a couple of malls in the Twin Cities area that I would say Prairie has done a relatively good job of reconiguring it. And then but still struggling very of the largest mall in the country actually seems to be doing pretty well. Um as I said as I was talking about before new development is relatively limited. So we're not seeing a lot of new development. We do have significant vacancy increases, not so much in our suburban locations, but we have quite a bit in our downtowns. So, our two downtowns are struggling. Suburbs are are there are pockets and largely they tend to be mostly in centers that are older and have um are larger centers and that are looking to restructure So retailers with growth plans again continue to target suburban growth corridors and demand is strongest in smaller format spaces. So spaces that are under 10,000. So we used to have a significant push for those larger kind of mid market segments but now those really are starting to And we're actually seeing some of those spaces, those vacant spaces being segmented into small. So for sale residential market activity. So I would say uh absent the fact that we have slightly higher um mortgage interest rates and our prices continue to climb um our sale market would have much better activity than it has. Once interest rates go down, I would say that this segment will be one of the first to show a lot more market activity and and buyers will be back. Um, unfortunately, I guess we can't necessarily or haven't been able to stop the price increases. So, price increases to ratchet up and that's all across the country. Um, I don't really almost any any market in the entire country that has oh there was one thing I wanted to say we are still in terms of homes available on the market we are still vastly under so you can see months of supply is well under that six month bance Mary. >> Yeah. >> Any This is Dean. Um any idea why? I mean, are we having that many more people move into the Twin Cities from outside or we just have >> people growing up and they want to get out of the house and they need houses? What What's the >> Well, so there's a number of factors. So, what happened during the Great Recession is building because we overbuild essentially stopped and for about two or three years we really weren't building And then we did have as the economy started to recover, we did have that big segment of the demographic market move out of their parents' homes and into the workplace and jobs were plentiful and so they moved into the job market and they moved in in significant numbers. So that demographic group that was quite large suddenly moved into the employment market and they started to move into the housing market but because of prices we didn't as prices started to increase we didn't have enough housing and traditionally when they first moved into the market they usually move into the rental market I mean the baby boomers that >> and we saw a huge >> building boom of rental apartments for me and then they gradually moved into market. So as prices have ratcheted up so dramatically in the for sale market and we did not keep up with the supply and we also had baby boomers at that point too moving up. So there were two large demographic groups that were putting significant pressure on the forale market just both at the same time. And then we started building rental units and now with the increase in the housing prices which wage rates have not kept up with price inflation there. So now you demographic staying in that rental market for longer. So that's kind of the short and then and seniors even though we we lag behind building senior housing but a lot of seniors don't want to move. So they've been staying in their homes longer and so that's also we're not seeing quite as many of those people move into the kind of more traditional housing. So now we're starting to see developers consider more active. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. So this is a little bit information on the multif family market activity. So the market absorbed about 2,000 units in quarter 2025. It was the second consecutive quarter of positive absorption signaling continued healthy demand. Um deliveries however are slow. So we are not seeing as many units to be put into the market. So that is going to mean we're going to continue to see reduced vacancy rates. Um we are already at a balanced rental market but in certain areas will more than likely continue to see some lowering vacancy rates. And also I wanted to say that in the downtowns we actually have the highest vacancy rates but those are starting to stabilize as well. Suburban very very strong growth continues concessions. There really hasn't been a lot of concessions in the market in terms of suburban locations. Mostly that has occurred in those are we're not looking at significant increase in deliveries probably for at least the next couple of years until So I think just a few key takeaways. So residential development continues to overshadow all other real estate sectors. Multifamily, urban urban development is still in demand, although deliveries will be significantly reduced due to financing challenges. Single family detached and prices both continue to rise. Inventories have increased slightly. Mortgage interest rates have moderated but still remain high continuing to challenge entry level and lower and middle market buyers. Industrial demand lagged in first quarter of 2025 with absorption down 2024. There is limited speculative development. It means that most targeted for specific users. So we are seeing industrial so we are seeing industrial demand. Um there is of course been a big push mostly towards interstate locations for again warehouse and distribution facilities. We are however seeing single tenant industrial demand as well as some limited office. smaller units users and we are seeing a couple of development being considered that would be incubator space for businesses that are trying to get off retail demand remains strong vacancies decreased slightly again but there are some persistent challenges that remain with big box users and reuse of larger vacant spaces in retail centers That was before that's before we know what this impacts may be from office is showing slight improvement. There is some stability in suburban markets where we do have some vacancies still do remain high and absorption in many many smaller submarkets smaller medical office. So I'm happy discussion. >> So, so Mary, I think uh one of the big things off uh to start off the discussion is um as we talk to the community, I mean, we just recently had night to unite and and I know that in my conversation with some residents, there's the strong desire to have commercial here yesterday. Uh and then you just showed us some data. So could could you help us crystal ball or however you timelinewise with our present growth uh how do you see commercial happening in the community because you alluded to the idea that it will happen uh and and a timeline but for expectation management what what would you project that timeline to be? >> So new commercial will want to go in areas that number one already have some existing commercial that are in high traffic areas and are situated in close proximity to a lot of so in in general those are kind of the rough three big things that most most retailers. said they they want to be near kind of like detail so that some I won't say all users but some users can then spin off there'll be demand for their retail that others so and when I say that that usually happens with restaurants it usually happens so grocerers it usually happens with hard It'll happen with certainly gas stations. So those types of users, we tend to look at them as either neighborhood or convenience types of users are usually the ones that will come first and those are the ones that tend primarily to serve the local market and serve them because those are the ones that people generally want to travel distance to get and travel because they So those are the that's the type of retail that we usually see. Now there's some potential differences depending on where there are can be zone for that. I know we had a discussion earlier talking about grocerers. So we are seeing um because of the situation that is occuring in our We are seeing some it's not fallout but we're seeing some pullback in the market in terms of grocery. There's some longstanding grocerers that are pulling back in terms of closing actually closing stores and the margins have continous. So we've even So, a couple of brochers that were really bullish on the downtown. So, there was a just went in several years ago to downtown St. Paul and now they closed that store. Um, we're still hoping that we can keep all of our grocerers in downtown Minneapolis. But I noticed that, you know, they've also started, well, different grocerers have started to I guess how can I say this? It's I I've noticed how some of the grocerers have actually change their attitude when you walk in the store. So, they're so much more friendly. They can I help you with anything? What are you looking for today? Which signals to me that they're not getting as much traffic as those are some of our longstanding grocery outlets and consumers are consumers once the economy improves I think consumers will go back to some of those outlets but right now we're seeing huge increases in demand for grocerers that are offering lower price so a little higher so Costco, Trader Joe's, Target, people switching their grocery. We're still seeing reasonable growth, I would say, in terms of well, the restaurant market is we're seeing some growth still in franchises. So, the the franchise outlets. We're seeing them maybe reposition their locations or choose, you know, being very specific about where they go. But the restaurant market, their biggest challenge right now is labor and the cost of food and we're seeing consumers again the biggest growth in restaurants is in that middle market. So casual So much fast food and lesser. >> So, so what I heard you say and and going back is a a couple things. We we had had a conversation about uh the desire as I've heard from residents for grocery here in the community. And what I just heard you say is right now at the market that would potentially be challenging with the volume of groceries that we have adjacent to us in the neighboring community. Uh and then what is more likely for expectation management is those types of convenience or this mid-market uh type of restaurant that that's probably the target that would be interested in the volume of housing that we have and then and then the traffic patterns that we have that are increasing dramatically. Whereas some of the other retail would be more attracted to a higher other like retail that's not too far from us that you showed on that first slide because of its adjacency to 94 and and then the volume of those. Is that a fair? >> Yes, I think that's fair. I but you also have areas well you have a small concentration of retail. It would be I think good to try and some of that areas where it's just immediately not necessarily away from that. So if there were if there was a way to you know add on areas that could accommodate that right very close to that could we bring up one of our maps that shows like where our commercial and where our industrial are located >> where existing is located or where >> existing existing I don't know that we have a map for the existing other than Henipin County. Would that be helpful? >> I'll bring that up. >> While they're looking at that, our logistics, we don't have main roads. We have county roads running through our little community. We've got new residents moving into our community because of the rural setting, >> but then their expectations are They want more conveniences, but not in their backyard. So, where do you put those? How do you balance? How do you do? You know what I'm trying to say? I hope. >> No, I do know what you're trying to say. And it's not it's not that's not unusual. I've seen that many many times. Um it's it's challenging. So, it's challenging to try and people the best of both worlds. >> And so at some point um there has to be I think kind of a little bit of a give because if you if they're willing to just drive elsewhere >> well that's that's my direction. If you want that you're four miles away from it and then I get well you get you got to fix that. We don't want to drive >> and then to a little bit further. My my way of thinking is we have a blank slate >> and when I read your presentation, just got done listening to what you have to say and something that I've thought for a long time and you're talking to somebody that lives on the rural side of town and let's do everything on the east side so it doesn't come out the west. Um, for us to attract retail, for us to attract commercial and even some more industrial, we're going to have to put up rooftops is kind of what I'm hearing. We got to what comes first, chicken or the egg? In this case, it's going to be residential. It sounds like, but a lot of our development and a lot of our requirements are under mixed use. They got to come in with a design plan of 5050 or 6040, 60% residential, 40% commercial. What am I help Natalie if you would on mixed use? >> So, our mixed use areas were our strategic areas along what we what are essentially our arteries of the city. >> And so, the mixed use areas, it's supposed to be roughly 50% residential, 50% commercial in terms of the So I yeah I think that that is accurate >> but but we're we're kind of saying you can't do anything unless both come at the same time right now >> that was the direction provided but that there's not necessarily something in code but I do think we want what we are what we should ask for is for some plan for that commercial area. It might be that we don't have users. It might be that it's not going to happen right away. >> You're you're going right to where I want you to but then we build a residential and all those people don't want the commercial there. Nobody told me commercial was going there and then we all catch hell. Excuse my French. >> But again, we're back to not in my backyard. Figure out someplace else to do it. And I think that's something where we may not be reasonable. And when I say we, that's the residents of our city and us up here of no, we want the best of both worlds. We want to build them at the same time. So we don't have to explain to these folks >> this is coming five years later, 10 years later, whatever. We've got to do something better at that. Yes or no? >> Well, I mean, so I I I do hear you. It's called nimiism. It's it's it's something that's been around for a long time. And the reality is someone is eventually going to have a commercial or industrial area in their backyard. Eventually there's going to be >> um an area part of the res area that abuts that there unless you put like a park in the middle, but do you want a park that abuts an industrial area? That might not make sense. >> Doesn't make sense. >> So, it there I think we've done a lot as a city to try to create buffers in our ordinances to especially if there is something that abuts residential to an industrial area >> and then we kind and that's how we kind of try to solve that issue. But you're never going to get away from that and you're never going to get away from neighbors being upset that they they weren't fully informed. I do think as a city we do do our best to try to make sure >> I think I think you do a great job. I think our our comp plan and everything we do >> as well to explain that to people. So I do think we are available to answer those questions for those who are curious about it. But you're always going to have some people that move into the community that didn't do any research. So they're feel very blindsided. But we can't do anything about people that didn't reach out to understand what was going to be in that area before they made that purchasing decision. >> So, and you but you do get that you get people who just kind of figure oh that'll stay the same and it's an unrealistic expectation. >> We get a lot of it >> or or there's an enthusiasm that I that I don't want to discount, you know. So, someone's new, they're buying a new home, and and since I've been here, we've had this conversation many times where on their plat, it's very clear that this trail is going to go in their backyard. >> So, so trails is another example. And so, so now the home's built, they're getting ready to put the deck on, the deck's on, and now they're building the trail, and they're like, "Wait a second, I had no idea this trail." And then they come here to the open forum, and they're really upset >> that this trail is going to be so close to their new deck. They don't really have plausible deniability because as I show them the plans, this was on the plans when you bought the house, right? >> I'm sorry that you missed the details of that. One of the challenges that we have and I certainly encountered this when I was in Shakipi is we had all of these gaps and trails and now it's time to build them is we have to stand to our plan because when we compromise and we say, "Oh, they're really upset." We don't want to do that because we don't want to deal with them being upset. Then it never happens and we have in this case a gap in the trail or in development we have what was supposed to come in at this time for a commercial development. We miss the restaurant because somebody has decided they don't want it in their backyard. Uh and and so I I guess the the underlying thing is is we need to continue to do the good job to make sure it's on the plans. We've communicated the plans. Everybody understands the plans. But we also need to understand that just because they should have the information. When it comes time to execute the plans, there's still going to be a lot of people that are upset with the plants. >> And we we've got a significant number of people that have lived in our community a very long time will come and say, "When was that thought up?" That was thought up in >> 30 years ago. 1998, if I use the Hope Church Corner. Yep. >> I mean, that's 25 years of planning and everybody around them, what do you mean? You're just pulling that out now? >> No, it's been there for a long time and they still don't even listen to reason. And it's not just a onesie. It's a lot of folks. So, it it's frustrating to sit up here. And I Natalie, you said it very well. We are doing a very good job of planning. This city, previous councils, mayors have done a lot of good things. Administration have done a lot of good things. The road map is there, >> but boy, there sure is an awful lot of silly out there. >> Well, and I'm always curious as to how we can improve our communication. I was talking about trying to do some kind of a story map because the story maps seem to be a very popular way to get some other information out so that our comp plan is a little bit more usable because it's right now it's like a 400page document. I can't remember exactly how much it is but that's not very usable for the common person. So how can we make it more usable? >> Look at our newsletter. >> 18 pages is this last one. >> I had one person walk up to be 19. How do I find out what's going on in our city? I said, "Do you get the newsletter?" >> What newsletter? Where do you live? How long have you lived there? You get that newsletter. >> Well, I just see it as propaganda and throw it away. That is the ultimate in our communication from our administration, all the all of you guys. I even get my wife sometimes, "What are they doing with Did you read the newsletter that we just got three weeks ago? Read that and then come tell me Well, now I know what's going on. So, I mean, there's so much frustration. We have so much communication out there. >> What are we missing? >> Speaking of communication, I think Michelle would like to say something. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> I was just going to mention that I think our city has changed a lot from the last time we reviewed the comp plan. And so, with what you're saying is more commercial and retail should be along a uh an area or a road or a county road that gets more traffic. So with 610 coming in, our county road 101 is going to become much busier and county road 30 is which is what we were talking about with that piece that that the presentation came in on with the 50/50 split and trying to determine where the housing would go, where the retail area could go. And so it makes more sense to me now even with what we suggested that makes even more sense because you're tucking your houses back in and putting your retail in more visible lines. >> I think the other and communities work very very hard and the fact that we have a comprehensive plan for a comprehensive plan process here in Minnesota I think overall does make our communities very I think we have really nice communities because of it versus other some other locations where you in other states pretty much where you drive along and they just have you know a house and then they have a restaurant right next to it and I mean they don't get anything I mean it's pretty much one thing after another and lots of times you don't even have to go through a review process to vote but I would say too one of the um challenges with some of our comprehensive planning is that we have these plans But then the real estate market shifts or it goes through cycles and fades and we can't always our comprehensive plan can't always just adhere like identically to what we planned several years ago. And we have to have a little bit of flexibility, determine how we can be flexible to still kind of identify what how we want to shape our community, but maybe we have to make some adjustments and I've seen that all over. That's that's a really helpful segue, Mary, because one of the questions that we were hoping to talk about here with council is we are going to be starting the comprehensive plan and one of the reasons we asked Mary to come here is we do see the value the the economic uh development assessment that informed the last comprehensive plan was conducted in 2008. And so it seems apppropo for us to update our research that's going to inform the comprehensive plan. uh the the challenge that we have in that is twofold. It's not typically a part it's it's not always a part of the comprehensive plan. I think it's wise for us to consider having it part of our comprehensive plan and then uh as we do that when do you do it? It seems before we start our other comprehensive. So the timing of this seems really good. The question is what is the scope of it? So, uh, we've had, uh, Continental come in as this opportunity for a parcel. Uh, we have corridors that we've talked about for consideration in the past along the 30 corridor. Uh, another way that we could consider this is we just look at certain guided properties as it stands right now. Uh, if if we looked at corridors, that would look at whatever properties regardless how they're guided in that corridor and reconsidering them. Uh so so there's a lot of different ways that we could do it. Um and one of the things that I would hope to get some guidance from council is this seems like a good opportunity for us is this also seemed like a good opportunity to council for us to partner with Mary on this. Uh and to to what scope or to what end would we partner? >> I also think that undertaking a process like this I to kind of combine that process with an economic development strategy for so and that's a little bit of a different I think approach but I've seen a number of different cities recently wanting to look at how growth and development in their communities kind of dovetales overarching economic development strategy and what components of that should there be in that strategy to go along with like the comprehensive plan and just regular just regular growth and sometimes it might help it covers new development but it also covers which I Even though Portland has a lot of land, I think that it's important to also consider that there may be some location that are ready for redevelopment even though they may. So, so an unfair question of you then Mary having not been familiar with the economic development strategy as you're proposing uh and and as we're kind of on the um could you tell us how much a market like that would be for not to exceed you know because we are in budget season two and I don't currently have this >> no so I think in all fairness what I would like to do I think I would like to be able to get back to you on that like an outline and some options in a range. >> Yeah, that would be really helpful to help bracket >> and and because because then we could come to council and say here's the scope of what's possible uh what's feasible in terms of budget and also what what accomplishes the objectives that council desires. >> Yeah. And I think that's important too because then you can kind of target certain things. So, another underlying need for us beyond the comprehensive plan is council, you've you've had um community development working on a commercial industrial update. Uh we've put that on pause because we wanted to hear how this conversation. It seems like Mary's proposal could be really helpful uh for commercial industrial updates. So, there's there's multiple layers of benefit in some initiatives that we've taken as staff. Uh if that's something uh that you want us to do. So I I keep talking I need to get some feedback. So I wanted to give a little feedback on I think we're still missing one significant piece. I I agree with comments that it's been a long time since the comp plan was created. I think there was a lot of good intent and thought that went into it. But I also think there's a lot of flaws in it. I think one of those major flaws is the intermingling of adjacent zones that don't really naturally mesh well. and the lack of a logical progression of density down from a commercial industrial core area and I think we've tried to bandage that with our efforts around how do we create these buffer areas between adjacent zones of different density but ideally you would need less of those if you had a more step down density map for the vision of the city uh I also think a missing piece is what are the unit economics for the different zones that we can apply. So every acre of housing at a certain density generates a certain amount of revenue and creates a certain amount of cost and we don't know what those values are. We don't know that value for commercial. We don't know it for industrial. And so when we show that table different zoning guidances, I know that was created with a lot of forethought and the best of intentions, but I don't know that there's an economic grounding in it for why those percentages are what they are. I know there's a widespread belief that we get more revenue and incur less cost for industrial and commercial, but I've never seen that borne out in detail. And I think if we're going to make trade-off decisions on zoning types in the future as we do the next round of the comp plan, having that kind of economic grounding is going to be at least as important as what we're talking about today for what we can expect the market to give us the opportunity to attract over that time period. And so this might be a necessary step, but I don't think it's a sufficient step by itself to let us make those longer range plans >> for expectation management. If you remember, we have Northland doing some analysis on an economic impact, but it's not going to be to the degree uh that you just discussed because it's within the scope of the normal work that they do with a long-term plan. Uh so the benefit to that us is it's not a lot of increased cost, but it's just beginning to nibble at the apple. Uh so um it's it's not going to give us the depth and breadth of information that's going to drive these longest range decisions. And as always, fiscal disparities is is a challenge within that equation that makes it difficult here in Minnesota uh to as as you're you're being the best stewards intentionally developing your community and then you watch those tax dollars go to help somebody else who is less intentional. It's very frustrating. And so if if that's our fate, if we continue on the path that we have, maybe we want to rebalance some of those because there is this inherent tension between our vision for the city and the level of industrial commercial that we end up with. So we have to be intentional about how we make that decision. And if we're missing the data to support it, we may find that we're better off with much more residential and less commercial industrial. It's also possible the opposite is true. We just don't know how to make that decision. To to that point too, Jeremy, though, we need to dovetail that with all of our school districts, too. If it was to turn out to be more residential and stuff, >> what happens for schools? >> Yep. >> Because we don't have >> fire service changes, >> everything dubtales with this. So, it's just it's >> crazy. >> Transportation corridors One additional complication is there has been uh proposals recently to remove fiscal disparities and so that would be a whole different game if that were to move forward. Not that it did move forward this last year but as we see sometimes things just keep popping back up. >> I'm sure >> who is the motivating force behind that idea? >> You know I just had it up. Close the tap. Hold on a second. Let me reopen it. What is it? You know, I will I'll get back to you on that. I will pull it up. It looks like it was a sponsor was a Democrat um Senator Grant Hash House. >> I would imagine people with a lot of commercial industrial would want to see that go away. So, in terms of discussion and as as we're hitting the end of the window, is there any other um recommendations from council or feedback from council? >> I have a quick question. At what point would it be beneficial for us to have like an economic development authority like a separate entity? I know council has acted that capac in that capacity in the past, but if it's as big of a large discussion, I'm just wondering at like what point would that be something that you would want to set up in a city? >> So, so we do have one, >> right? The council that it just isn't active at this point. >> Yeah. >> Uh so it has been activated. Natalie was actually in a role in that, right? >> Yeah. We were never It's So my understanding is we have an EDA and so we an active EDA theor in theory. It's just we don't have really a plan. So I I actually the proposal to get a bit much better of a economic development strategy in place. I think that that >> could definitely be a topic. But typically EDAS they're going to be looking at uh providing you know loan low interest loans for businesses for different programs and there hasn't been a desire to really do that. >> Yeah. >> That's why we don't really But we do have an activated >> there's also not a funding mechanism for it, >> right? >> So that might be the primary first step. There's >> probably not going to be a ton of appetite to increase levy to create funding for the EDA. But if there was a funding mechanism independent that gave us the opportunity to do things, it might be >> So So currently some of the functions that you'd expect from the EDA are through collaborative partnership with the I94 chamber. We don't have a chamber either, right? But in terms of those connections, that information and then externally Minnesota deed, we're working with them routinely. >> Uh but we get these, hey, we're looking for this really great and like yeah, not here. Um any other feedback from council? >> So at this point, my takeaway is uh to to move forward and collaborate with Mary. She will provide some feedback on what some options are for us to identify scope and potential price points that we'll bring back to council for future decision. >> Yes. >> And any other uh feedback from you, Mary? Any other comments? >> Very enjoyable discussion. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for your insights. It was great to hear from you. >> Thank you, Mary. With that, I will entertain a motion to adjourn session. >> I'll make that motion. >> I'll second. >> Very good. All those opposed. Sorry. All those in favor? I I >> I. >> All those opposed. Motion passes. 4 Z. We are journed. Thank you.