conditions the park improvement plan further breaks down each park by category and defines locations area amenities and recommendations for improvements the park and rec commission park and rec committee currently suggests and before i go further i'd like to thank everybody on the park commission and council member tim cole for all their hard work in the last year to get this all put together oh hi candace implementation strategy and prioritization along with the prioritization table the strategy of the implementation stresses the importance of not stretching funds too thinly across the system but instead making an impact with comprehensive plan projects this also helps reduce redundancy and makes maintenance much more manageable here are our short-term projects which i believe are within one year i believe jill with one year about one year we went from i believe one one year one to three and then three to five and then long term about 10 years notable short-term projects park signage at um the lions the rotary park which we've been working with um joe miller and some of the rotary people on housing park improvements which would include the tennis court ada accessibility between the park playground and the tennis courts and all the way back down to the ball field and the pavilion continued work on polar polar park which i believe we are almost done with last year we put that ada accessible road on the north side north road which accesses all the way to the playground so i believe that is close to be completed otherwise it may be already completed in a downtown park location and working on mcnike park specifically we're looking at something like a water park in downtown north saint paul somewhere and ideas have come up at the old gas station on helen and seventh and possibly changing that into a water park of some sort and mcknight park in the mcknight park area which i don't know if several of you have been over there but the tennis courts are pretty well dilapidated the parking area is pretty well dilapidated so we're thinking about doing some long-term ideas to better improve the aesthetics and the look over on that end mid-term projects focus on extending plans that previously developed in short terms such as northwood our liaisons with northwood have realized that that little pavilion that ice ring pavilion is pretty well shot and needs some improvement or as we have suggested we take it out take it down and put a new building up there make it ada accessible also considering trying to make sure it's ada accessible to the swing sets because the swing sets over by the water towers pretty much are a hill to get to and then there's a small pavilion back in the corner the south northwest corner that right now really isn't ada accessible and we were working on trying to improve that area plus trying to figure out what we're gonna do with the hockey rink that pretty much sits there year after year conclusion the park commission plan provides general insight into known infrastructure needs highlights the need for making more significant investments and improves the need for strategic investments rather than reactive improvements and i'd like to reiterate like what tim said we at the park commission would like to start planning some short term working on some of these short-term plans and getting them to you once this gets approved our idea is to start working on this and then once approval comes from the city council on this plan we can start requesting funding so i'm going to open it up to questions i'm curious what makes a regional park a regional park is usually owned by like a regional implementing agency so it's typically like three rivers those types of agencies and they have special criteria for the types of elements that are provided a lot of times you see them they are a lot of like nature preserves or they have you know something that is just regional so that you get all all across the metro area kind of coming in so they do have requirements in terms of acreage as well as the types of use and programming for those so like southwood nature preserve is that is that a much smaller scale so but it because it's locally owned uh what do you call it the size of it correct yes okay interesting and again it's it's run and managed and operated by a regional implementing agency so if ramsay county owned kc lake park that potentially could be considered a regional park because it's owned and operated by ramsey okay again it's it's kind of small to be considered a regional park but so size also comes in okay um i noticed that the there's a uh the urban ecology center that's located behind the the school district bus garage that's included in here but and the sign still says pcu pond but i know they've changed names since it's ideal credit union but that i think on the map that's included in here it says north st paul environmental um learning center but it's spot it was at one point sponsored by an ideal credit union all the one on over by target yeah so and that's not in here is there a reason why that one's not considered part of the park system it was our understanding from discussion and uh that that was not part of the park system because i pull up the ramsey county map and so there's there's two parcels there's one parcel that's owned by actually the watershed district and that's the one that's off of mcknight road but then you know it's a pretty large parcel that basically encompasses that entire pond it's owned by the city and i know there's no there's no park structures there's no trails but there also are no trail like paved trails in southwood nature preserve and in that urban ecology center it's a similar thing it's just like a swamp surrounding uh you know you know there's no there i think they they put wood chips down there might be some sort of trail but i'm just i was curious as to why that's not included in here and the other one is and again that was my understanding and maybe we have uh council would address this or the park commission we can address this at another meeting and bring it back to you as far as putting that into the loop because now it's not listed as one of our parks and and the reason it came up was i was soliciting uh support for that park for uh postal credit union was kind of outdated so and an idea was doing it so we had brought it up at one of the meetings last fall and then we had a discussion and there was some understanding that that may or may not be on our loop anymore on our radar so clarification if we could get that sometime down the road as to whether that should be in our loop again that would be great the urban ecology center on the south side by the bus garage would be another area that's kind of sat for many many years and it's been left forgotten but considering all the development that's going on in that area with the bart with the bike trails that would probably be a good idea to start looping something there our biggest objective is to start supplying some sort of in uh park for people in the area of all this development so we're trying to like northwood even housing uh something downtown to start giving people something else to do other than just go all the way over to casey or silver lake thanks well and then i don't know what the criteria was for at the time postal credit union getting credit for that in that center but there's a sign there and it matches kind of similar signage in other parks so you know i was always under the understanding that it was a part of the park system because that's how it's being advertised there's a city sign it says pcu it never got updated when they changed their name but maybe that's because the sponsorship and i don't know what entailed the sponsorship for them to get that if they did the annual cleanup in that area but it'd be just nice to know you know if there's a specific reason why one urban ecology center is included in the other one isn't especially being is that the city owns that land but i guess the colony could be maybe the county records aren't correct and maybe that's all just watershed but i just pulled this up this afternoon and it says it's owned by the city of north st paul and it's a pretty large plot of land and i know a previous meeting council member cole mentioned the idea of putting us a sidewalk on 13th and possibly looking at doing some trail system through 13th on to 11th because it just seems like there's a lot of foot traffic there anyway so it seems like residents in that area are just utilizing it as a shortcut over to target or maybe they're just walking walking around that area but it might be something to to look into i think back in the day uh before they did all the improvements and ron richie maybe you can give us a little history on that pond because that was uh i believe when they did highway 36 that was expanded and the reason why i think the park system was looking at it is because it's kind of a natural trail people over in that neighborhood would walk around the park and you know we've i think we even talked about putting a park bench you know a couple park benches there because it's an overlook you know naming it as a park i don't know if it was ever a part but you know this yeah it's owned by the city but i think naturally we asked pcu uh ideal credit union back in the day probably 15 years ago i think it was a five-year naming rates and they gave us twenty thousand dollars uh to have naming rights for that uh and that kind of started the park fund that was the beginning of the park fund back in the back in the day and that's how that that's how it started last fall is it became my liaison park and then i brought up the fact that uh how are we going to do do we need to solicit and this is where the discussion started coming about well is this part of our park system or is it not it can can we i i can suggest we put it on our agenda if you'd like us to move forward with having some discussion with the park commission well i think that's something that the city would have to yeah i think we need to game gain clarity as to it's it's my understanding along with lloyd's the communication that we've had from city was that it's not a park it's city-owned property but it isn't deemed a park um so i guess we need some some clarification and classification if if that's what it's going to be then yeah it would fall into the parking rack do you have history on it mr historians over there at the mic you guys know more about it than i do i can tell you that we mow it and our storm water dumps into there i don't know if it was classified a park or not i know that we maintain you know 11th avenue the boulevard there and mo around you know on 13th and the trails in there but that's i i don't know for sure if it's deemed a park or not no i and well it that wasn't my question all my question was is i i'm looking at the park map on page nine of the park improvement plan and it says 13th avenue north st paul environmental learning center i'm not proposing that we change it into a park my question was why is this environmental learning center not included in this plan when this urban ecology environmental learning system is on this planet it's on the map that's all my question was why is one environmental learning center listed in your plan but the other one according to the map maybe it's just mislabeled isn't that's all that was my question i don't know okay don't have the answer we can look into it from the park and wreck standpoint and get back to the count send it back to the council that's what you'd like i think it's a city issue or we just leave it at the city issue unless uh well i have other questions so we i'm not trying to bog things down here just a simple question of why why one is listed as an environmental learning center and the other one is two and it's not included in the plan here and that's the nice part of the whole getting this park and wreck uh this plan figured out is is issues like this that are still floating out there for many many years that we can clarify and move forward with yeah but the urban ecology center has a trail through it it has a trail it's got a bridge that was built years ago to go across the pond it is a walking path and i think it was always labeled that as a as a park i believe it can bite bike back into there too that tire bike maybe well at the park but the the bike trail the gateway trail goes right to the right by it yes yes yep well and public works knows they mow it i used to mow it too maybe it's an unofficial path in that park too because people clearly walk there enough to where maybe it's you know we're not putting wood chips down but there's enough foot traffic there where it's leaving a path but at any rate my only question was just why is one environmental learning center listed in here and the other one isn't and i guess we'll we'll get follow up on that just a general question uh park usage in particular amenities so you know i i'm i'm going to use hockey rinks as a good example when i grew up playing hockey there were many hockey rinks there were several at mcknight fields there were multiple ones at the schools now it seems like there's just you know there's one at casey and one at northwood and that's just evident that there's less people playing parks north st paul doesn't even have their own youth hockey program they have to partner with four other places the high school doesn't have a program they lost their varsity and junior varsity you know so there's less people that live in north st paul playing hockey so naturally there's no need to have as many outdoor rinks because they're not being used and it would kind of be ridiculous to kind of utilize our resources to continue to put something up that people don't use tennis courts do we have any kind of handle on how many people use the current tennis courts and is it does it make sense to just you know a tennis court and and then this is i was going to bring this up in other comments it's kind of our city's model that we just use things and let it deteriorate to to the point where the only option is to kind of tear it down and start over which hopefully we can fix because i don't think that's a good business practice but tennis court's a good example mcknight fields how long have those been closed because of the condition i mean that people haven't been using those as tennis courts for several years is that correct i would re i would uh estimate at least five years if not more that they they've been sitting idle because of the damage to them in the city but i ask well no one's using mcknight fields for tennis courts isn't a fair question because it's been closed and no one can use it but the tennis courts that are open i mean do we get i mean i i i'm just curious if there's any kind of formal informal feedback from community that hey we use this a lot and it's not being used you need to fix the tennis court netting or whatever i mean is there any kind of uh reporting on the usage of these types of facilities other than visual no but i've when i go by the uh several times a week when i go by silver lake it's it's full and we've also had the requests from people to specifically have it be pickleball till i believe nine nine or ten o'clock in the morning on weekdays in the summer i have noticed people using it for a dog park and hopefully they're cleaning up but i think there is a there may be a need even on the other end to have housing reconstructed because we know that one's having issues to have pickleball over in that area of course we'd have to have some community input on that because we know pickleball can be somewhat noisy and people are having it we're having issues with it but that was that that is our objective that we've recognized especially things like pickleball and tennis are starting to pick up again in this community yeah and i guess that's kind of you know my concern again with halsey is that it just has gotten to the point where no one is going to use it as a tennis court even though it clearly obviously is so so if we're asking well does anyone use it as a tennis court well no because they can't so it's not a fair question for us to be asking well it's a tennis court but no one uses it so let's just tear it out it's probably not being used because it's just it's it's unusable because we've let it deteriorate to the point that it is so that's why i'm asking these questions if there's any kind of monitoring it are you getting lots of feedback from people around houses saying when are you guys going to fix that tennis court we're itching to get out there to play tennis maybe there's a different use like you're saying pickleball you're hearing feedback that's becoming a more popular sport and my other question was has there been any discussion about like a hockey rink at casey parks a perfect example it's just boards around grass and for my observations it's used in the winter when the ice is good and in the summer it's used as an area where people you know let their dogs run around but that's pretty much it if it were paved like northwood is there any is there any thought or feedback about multi-use like you could turn it into like a basketball court in the summer maybe get more use out of it you convert it to some sort of pickleball or tennis court or i mean people probably don't like playing volleyball on hard surfaces but something that's got multi-use rather than just well here's a hockey rink and that's what it's for here's a baseball field that's what it's for i've seen ball fields particularly at casey park because i live right there and with covid with basically no activity it's kind of a default dog park people are taking their dogs inside the fenced-in area and and i think that's great because i think that's something too that's been brought up about the desire to have a dog park but it just seems like we don't have the space and then there's expenses and constructing one so the question is has that been considered about multi-use for one area like a tennis court hockey rink basketball court where it can be used all year round i know i've been working on larry hamston's one deal liaison sarah zarat because one of the liaisons heather haas is one of the liaisons and they've been getting feedback from people especially larry's been bringing things to the meetings about people want to get the boards fixed and the uh improve that little area so people can at least play hockey in there i think it would be an opportunity to figure out what we're going to do with these hockey rinks in the summer since we have that one and we have northwood and i don't know what use they're being used for now but we have these resources that we could research in the future again there's going to be cost issues with uh redoing the boards and so forth i think pickleball in my opinion may not be the option there but there could be skate park uh skateboard park things like that that we could use in the summer and that's something that we've been looking at what the park commission is what we're gonna do with these hockey rinks during the summer when they're not in use as opposed to in the winter when we we've got some ice skating going on um i can chime in a little bit too for instance if like on page 38 we talk about casey lake part and it says you know we do recommend that a master plan be created so that we figure out what the improvement should be out here in line with what the community values and what they would you know desire to see out there some of the things that we listed that could take place is the hockey rink could be as you see in there paved for multiple year-round uses it could also be relocated to a more convenient location for access and oriented north-south so you have fewer issues with ice melting so those things were taken into consideration but again we do recommend that some sort of master plan process be undertaken and working with the community to figure out the details of that yeah because i i don't know and just kind of my personal opinion my uses of it growing up playing outdoor hockey it was hard to get 20 kids together at once where you're playing five on five with two goalies and utilizing the full sheet of ice a lot of times you're up there with five six buddies you're playing two on two three on three there's no goal you're flipping the net over there's other people using the rink is like pleasure ring skating so maybe it's maybe part of this is as things change we look to scale back and instead of building one large rink we do three smaller ones and maybe a rink you know a basketball court is smaller than a hockey rink maybe you you situate in a way where the multi-use is in the spring summer and fall it can operate as a basketball court and in this in the winter months we got three small hockey rinks um just an idea i mean i don't know if that kind of input's been provided yet or not but maybe it's just that hockey's not being played enough and it doesn't make sense to do it and we look at utilizing the space i'd be curious to see if figure skating and just all around ice skating the value that we have with going to these park meetings from may june july and august as we get this great input and when we have these events that we have we listen to the park commission members will listen to the people and they they will be comfortable with discussing hey it would be nice if we have this here or that there and then it becomes very um unique to their area and especially with like housing it's such a neighborhood surrounded park and there's such a some potential for things to go on there but we have to do some research as to what we want to do there and i know we we had talked about with the park commission that we had approved and sent to the city council a while back some funding to do some improvements to the court but then we had to start working on the park improvement plan but the amount that we had approved wasn't going to be able to pay the cost of doing the tennis courts uh making it ada accessible i i believe we had to redo the footprint at um housing in order to accommodate the new tennis court and make it ada accessible and along with the playground and then i believe there was a piece where we had to have it accessible to down to the pavilion too so that's a big large piece in the area what's the matter peterson yeah i know the housing park the pony league uses that in the summertime because it's a smaller field and my grandson has been late on that and um and then i think a lot of people are putting ice rinks in their backyard so i think that detects the usage that you know they i mean not everyone's doing it but i can probably count five or six families that i know have a nice ice rink in their backyard so that's all i have to say i had just a couple more councilmember i'm sorry um i i had a question here you know and this my personal opinion is that i i just kind of view the parks is more of you guys are looking at the needs of what the parks want and then you're recommending those to the council and then we deal with the financing but it seems like in the past there's a lot of discussion about costs and and things at the park level which to me is problematic but we won't get into that um but with that being said with that discussion of of costs our maintenance considerations ever i mean you talk about well we want to build a pickleball cart and it's going to cost 75 000 but then after is there well and every five years we need to do crack filling and then that's usually last two to three years and they cost this much is there discussion to that level of maintenance and continual operational costs for these recommendations that the parks commission has when they're talking about costs yes okay yes long term that's where when we were doing the park improvement plan we we focused in on what we want to do and then jill jill and candace helped us remind us about well you can have this maintenance cost and that maintenance and upkeep and so forth and who's going to do that and where's the money going to come from we with the park commission understand that it's the city council's final decision but we look forward to starting to improve make some improvements to the city with some of these parks and because i think it's very important that we start moving progressively forward council member peterson i think you're you got a good point that there's ice rinks around the area and we can revisit we had closed housing because there was funding issues with with uh paying somebody to be there at certain times and it just didn't seem to be fiscally sound to have somebody sitting there and it wasn't being used but that was oh five six years ago now things change and i'm noticing people are involved more with ice skating and like you said these ice rinks are coming up maybe we need to revisit this yeah well i'm gl i mean again my opinion is that parks should focus on parks and recreation and make recommendations of the collins like say hey we we desire a new park structure at northwood park we've done some research here's some options you know and then we take it from there to say okay what's just let's establish a budget and things like that but i get that's traditionally not how things have worked and that was just my question of do we look beyond the initial just cost to build it do we do we consider the ongoing maintenance because you know this idea of a water park has been talked about for a long time kind of unofficially and then you mention it here again tonight i didn't specifically see anything in this document in reference to that but to me that you know as a council member i look at and we're talking about multi-use and things you know we're we're experiencing a rather longer winter it just was snowing yesterday um typically in minnesota you're lucky to get five four months of really nice warm weather maybe if you're lucky we're a water park would actually be used you know just the construction of a water park in itself i'm sure is expensive and then the maintenance and upkeep of it is probably very expensive as well so to me that just seems like you know i don't know what's driving that if you have some i know there was a a park study or a survey done uh like a year half ago maybe two years ago i don't know if we ever got the feedback from that and i think a water park was on there but i you know i don't know what is if there's just this force here within the city demanding that we do that and that's why you're looking into it but to me you know we have these broad it's highlighted in here a lot of different things in a in a water park in downtown two of all places i was just talking to public works director beforehand we're talking about difficulty that they're gonna have with these new construction projects departments they don't have a place to store snow anymore where they traditionally did there's just no space and now to dedicate something in downtown to a water park that potentially could only be used for maybe five months of the year i mean it just kind of seems like a stretch to me but i guess that's uh you know something we'll look forward to seeing the parks commission bringing forward to the council and recommendation on what that might look like that's the glory with our us being able to choose the opportunities that we want to move forward and then have them researched and i had to understand that kerry it was we might there's a possibility of water consumption decreases so and i would we were we found out about that uh i think in december or november about when we were bringing up the water park that there may be an issue with water park or water consumption issues so at the time when we were looking through all this so we thought wow this is going to be a great idea we can move forward but the park commission members are realizing that we come up with the ideas we present them to the city council we present them to the city how feasible is this going to be is it going to work into our budget and what's going to be the best thing moving forward and i'm not sure but i i'm thinking that down the road we may have to reevaluate that is that appropriate to be able to reevaluate this so we under we've they've come a long way in learning to understand again candace and jill and lisa richie have helped us learn to grasp this is when i first started this was a one-page agenda and that's and we were done in half an hour now we've we've strived forward and the baby is starting to walk and run and it's it's exciting and then covet hit and we had to adapt to that but we're moving trying to move forward and we realized this isn't gonna the bigger we get the the more we're gonna learn and the harder it is to be able with fiscal issues to get everything we want right away so we're just going to prioritize what we want and that's what we've done with the park commission plan and send it to the city council send it to the resources and tell us well this is how much it's going to cost let you guys decide and if it doesn't work then we just move on to the next thing and try something different that's all i have thank you for answering my questions i appreciate it i hope that helps and i think the you know the park commission too uh brings new ideas brings the trends that are out there you know things that you know maybe worked 20 years ago it doesn't work now and it's you know there's new ideas new new types of things pickleball who would have heard of pickleball 10 years ago five years ago now it's now it's in every neighborhood and streets and you know so it's being played different than tennis but you can repurpose tennis courts for for those which is which is nice or when we build the tennis court down the road we turned it into pickleball like we did with silver lake right turn it into pickleball a and tennis right uh any other thank you this is i think it's a very good report thank you staff and um other commission make sure that gets told to them because i know when i was on the commission for a long time too we were always kind of you know [Music] discussing things and then you know we want all this these wants it's just it's it's the fiscal yeah we have to be fiscally sound yeah and and we're learning the water park isn't going to be like a splash pad yeah it's not going to be a water partner it's a baby more like a splash pad where it's where it raises up so the ideas were there i think the primary thing is a park something downtown with all the new people living down there and i would say you know housing park being as close to the downtown you know it's a it's a big park over there where i think that might be a natural pathway to housing if people walking their dogs downtown will probably be walking towards halsey and using that park kind of a downtown park for right now we don't have the downtown park what may i ask the uh projection of timeline as far as how soon this would be a approved so we can start working on funding and if it's okay with the council we want to start giving you ideas working on which ones we want to work move forward with and once it gets approved start requesting funding is that okay with the council and the mayor yeah i think we get this thing approved as soon as we can i'm surprised i think we do mr cd manager uh thank you uh mayor and council members we pl uh we are hoping to bring this to the next city council meeting i believe on may 3rd as a regular agenda topic to approve the park improvement plan okay can i ask the city manager question go ahead of course uh is this supposed to be reviewed by the planning commission this plan and it already has okay i don't know does it was that it was a formal review right okay okay so that's been done already okay what what meeting did that happen at do we know december november it was yeah it might have been november or december because then i believe it was the january meeting we went through all of their notes okay because i want to say it was november because normally the park and rec doesn't have a december or was there a december meeting lloyd so we could get so the document could be prepared for the planning it was it's in that it's during the holidays it was we had a december meeting because the the information came back from wsb the adoptions and the changes and we wanted to be able to review them and take a look at it so yes we did have a december meeting on the beautiful 65 degree day that we had that day okay so that's already been okay i just i must have missed that um usually i review the minutes of the parks or the planning commission but i'll go look back and look and we on the park commission that's another learning piece that we found out you know we understand that we're going to present things but that doesn't mean just because we at the park commission present these they don't have to go through other hoops they're going to have to go through several hoops especially if we start building things they're moving things even the boy scout project we had we had to have the parking or the planning commission the inspectors improved one of the scout projects because of all the building that was going to go on so it's a learning process but they're doing a really good job and i want to commend every one of them on the commission for all their hard work in the past several years and thank you councilmember cole and again candace and jill and lisa and everybody on the council for listening to us and we'll move forward it's a good group of people it's a great yes and back in the day there was no park fun you know now you're you're able to plan which is which is nice yeah we're learning on what dedicated money is and we're learning what park fund money is and we just want to make a better improved city and there's a lot of opportunities to do that but again fiscally we're going to have to recognize and like you say with the growth of the city there's going to be a lot more need for for the parks yes absolutely councilmember cole anything i just i i want to build on lloyd's comments um just a huge round of applause to to the park and wreck commission um the the dedication the time commitment the additional meeting that was held to to get this done uh the sheer amount of frustration that took place in that room on multiple occasions um you've you've got a committed group that definitely recognized the importance of parks within a city and that it becomes an actual selling point to the community to gain new development to gain new to gain new residents et cetera um does the fact that the fact that it's now started and created this improvement plan becomes really a fluid document now that we have something here and we're not going to wait 13 10 years before it gets looked at again i believe it's a goal to to review this on an annual basis and priorities changed we've learned a lot through this process i found out that wsb has a spiffy little tool that can draw a circle around the park and determine the demographics and the needs and so that we can you know take a look at the age of who's living around the park and be better prepared to make recommendations is this for lack of a better word a toddler park a teen park an adult park um and to be able to help guide the park and rec to be able to make the right decisions for the right areas as well where i think we've just kind of taken a scattered approach and it's like ah we need a playground so let's you know let's put in a swing let's put in a slide and now we're able to to utilize the information that's provided to be able to to to get that where it is so um you know again you know huge round of applause to lloyd and the whole commission for for getting this put together they're an awesome group they're an awesome group and council member thorson just to touch base on community input that just dawned on me we're getting requests uh from community people about well casey lake any issues with casey lake and and the drainage over on margaret and when it hits hits the park they call the park they call the city about the park commission so we've had meetings about things like that and then we funnel it into wherever it's got to go but people are saying oh something's going on the park what's why why is the park commission doing this how are you addressing the activities the the request and i would say uh you know music in the park now uh getting out of covid are you gonna be starting to do more activities uh the easter egg hunt uh the uh starlight or star watch star watch is on fire and ice iron ice is coming um we're work the three bands are already booked for customers in the park and those dates are already set i have talked to heather about um expanding that and she's okay with it because i think i've had requests from people just in conversation as far as hey can we have more of these things can we have more of them in different venues which would mean we're going to have to have more people and i and i'm all for working with that and setting it up but i wanted to make sure heather was okay with it and she said yeah she's okay with it not this year so much but in the future the trick or trail that we are working on tweaking a little bit it seems like every time we have an event we have fifteen thousand or fifteen hundred people it's gonna say wow that's the unofficial money here the first year we had 1500 people we may have to look into charging fees just to have these some of these programs but we're a very the growing community that's going on in the city and the the houses are they're on the market and they're selling right away and we've got a lot of people saying hey can we do this hey can we do that and they're loving all this all the little events we have the parade downtown they love having that back we get feedback from that just at the park commission meetings yeah and i'll address it during commission reports but the eda is moving forward towards green space in downtown where there's an existing parking lot today and so i'm excited about getting um movion maine back on the calendar for for the park and rec that was a huge huge success and moving it down a little further but yeah moving it away from the band yes logistical issue the band was right there oh yeah the band was playing and the music was playing and the movie was playing and that was not a good night that wasn't a good night but it was a learning lesson yes it was yeah well thank you lloyd i appreciate it uh you guys do do a good job and your leadership uh moving this forward thank you very much so anything else for thank you thank you thank you awesome job yeah thank you i don't know if candace if you wanted to add anything more to it you're welcome too but you're good all right good all right our second topic uh the community center and uh city manager i don't know if you want to chime in on this yes thank you mr mayor and council members so um as you know i'm i'm under the weather so i i'm doing this remotely so i don't spread my my germs so thanks for allowing me to do it this way i'm going to give you some some background and facts most of this you know far more about than i do but just as much for people at home to hear so the community center building was built in 1992 uh originally the city it housed city sponsored recreational programming the programming you know gradually got reduced year after year until it eventually halted all together in 2013 at which point a hockey business went in there to do some programming related to hockey training and practice and i think they did a little academic work with um students that were in their programs as well sometime you know five years ago or so kokoro volleyball became a sub-tenant of the hockey arrangement eventually the hockey arrangement left and kokoro became the primary tenant the building houses a number of other things as well though since 2005 it's been the location of a branch of ramsey county library it also houses some public things the we have a major fiber optic hub at that location that metro inet our service provider at the city they provide services to other cities as well it's a major hub there and pretty significant improvements related to that we also have an electric generator that is not attached to the building but a lot of the controls the wiring a lot of the components to that generator are housed in the building so this 30 year old building quite frankly just hasn't been maintained over the years like it should have been and there are a lot of items that could have had their lives prolonged by maintenance that now just are in need of total replacement uh and the price tag is uh is getting pretty steep um i've got some repairs in here that we're aware of uh in the in the memo and i'll just run through them really quick um the roof uh the estimate we've had is 660 thousand dollars that's for the entire facility uh tuck pointing the brick there's some issues how they um the roof interfaces with the the side of the building and that's caused some damage to the mortar i believe and public works director richie is here too so uh you know he can provide a lot more detail about this stuff than i could uh the efus uh needs repair the efus is like the um kind of fake stucco that's on the outside of the building um so the the brick was 555 thousand the efis is 140 000. the flashing around the windows that's where a lot of the leaking there is a lot of water intrusion there that happens either because of snow melt or during rain events so that's coming into windows and flashing that's 234 thousand dollars we put in interior repairs of 200 thousand dollars that's quite frankly that's a guess uh we pulled that out of the air um i wouldn't want you put too much stock in that number the rooftop hvac which serves the gym is 2 200 500 to get the parts we need the issue with the parts is because of supply chain issues we really needed to order those quite frankly probably weeks ago and we have not yet i don't believe and then there are common area boilers that provide heat to the rest of the building words unsure of um of if there are repairs that need to be done with those excuse me so when you add all this up uh you know the the things that would need to happen right away are the roof and the um hvac for the gym area if those don't happen i don't think we could really even get through next winter uh if you remember public works director richie was up on that roof um he can tell you how many nights if i had to guess you know a handful of nights you know at two o'clock in the morning when they he gets a call that uh that there's problems um so he was out there a lot and i'd like i said i just don't think we can get through another winter without doing those two items so that's a million dollars just to do what what needs to be done to help us as i say in the report limp by i'm not a fan of limping by i'd like to have a long-term solution to me the long-term solution of this to do everything is more in the neighborhood of um you know two million dollars to do everything we don't have any money identified for this so i'm not i'm not anticipating we're going to come up with any solutions in the next 32 minutes but i did want to talk through some um some of the ways we could think about using the building so maybe i'll just halt there for a minute and see if people have questions about the needed repairs or the history before i move on to some of the options i don't think i have any questions on history but councilmember thorson well i mean i i think it's an omission but you know we're talking about the history of the building the first tenant was the school district and they were in there let's see i have a copy of their leash um and i wasn't aware of that well i mean i it uh it was it was adopted on march 13th or march 5th of 2013. i remember that because i was on the council at the time and at the time councilmember furlong made the motion i seconded it and everyone voted to approve it and at that time they were they engaged in a 15 month lease at 2 and 50 cents a square foot they were paying 5 416 and 16 cents a month and then at year 2 or after the 15 months it was then it bumped up three dollars a square foot so 6 500 a month i don't think they made it to year two um just to clarify so you're talking about isd yes it was they were the first tenants in there after well and to go back i think it's also important to kind of you know the context of the history of how we got here it was back in 2010 2011 there was kind of the financial crisis we were facing some budget cuts some serious issues and this was uh there was an internal study done it's called the north saint paul community center economic assessment um it was done internally by staff a staff member that did that cited his sources and they include wsb tyson group elevator representatives our own electric department burwell company um you know there's just that we have the report and it's you know it was done internally they they specifically talked about deferred maintenance and and referenced a lot of these items you're pointing to here and the cost estimates at the time we're kind of right in in line with what we're coming up with now so this has been known about for well over a decade um you know so so that's why are we here well we're here because the community center we thought served a purpose it didn't fill that purpose it just there was no demand we we closed it because it was far too expensive and now we've been trying to trying to figure out what we're going to do with it and initially it was renting it out you know in the last you know negotiating with our current tenant there was great concern over market rate we're not getting market rate well we're getting the closest to market rate we've ever gotten and if you look at the history of our previous tenants it shows that and the whole reason why we went through that whole discussion from in the first place was because we look originally looked into fixing the roof i believe it was in 2016 and the current tenant approached the city and said well wait a minute before you go and invest a bunch of money i've got a proposal i'm interested in buying the facility and i want to expand i want to build up and so that makes sense why would we invest a million dollars to fix the roof when potentially someone might buy it and then just tear it all out i mean so and that's where we've got into the negotiation and nothing you know the council voted it down and but meanwhile throughout that process i was asking questions about these costs and we were told various different things uh flat out that this this this assessment that we did wasn't accurate and that none of that well you know it was kind of no there's no deferred maintenance and in fact in 2019 when we got our own appraisal it says on page seven and this is the appraisal that we got ourselves the building is well maintained and shows very little evidence of deferred maintenance photographs and building sketches are attached here within to further identify the subject and we were we were using this information to base our decision on whether we're going to sell the building you know um you know there's also an incorrect figure in that assessment in that it's stated on page five gross annual income 336 000 that's not we've never gotten that amount of money the most money we ever get is 12 500 12 months 150 000 a year we don't collect utilities either ramsey county pays a well they're supposed to pay a dollar a year too that's that's in their lease 20 year lease and i think that's a big item too we need to discuss and resolve because there's all these questions about well when does the lease from the library end and obviously when we had discussion about closing the community center back in 2010 2011 that became a concern and rightfully so for the library because they were committed to a 20-year lease and the fact that the city was closing it put that into question and so what had happened from my understanding is we lost the contract we lost the resolution i don't know how that happens but the city at that point and i have a copy of it here sorry hold bear with me here um we decided at that point to extend the lease or we redid the motion because we lost the contract we couldn't find it so in 2010 we redid it and i have a copy here i know i forward a copy to the city manager and it's dated and signed by victoria reinhardt board of commissioners 9 28 2010 um but then our city manager at the time didn't sign it it's dated may 2nd 2013. and so i don't think there's any dispute on when they moved into the building and i actually have a copy from the ramsey county their original resolution this is dated january 27 24 2004 okay and they're referencing dates in 2003 when they chose to close the old library and sell it they took occupancy in 2005. i don't think that's in dispute 20 years from there is 2025. but because we lost the resolution when it was brought up i'm assuming by ramsey county hey what's the status of our lease then if you guys are closing the community center we need assurances that you're going to hold your end of the bargain we chose to renew the joint agreement and that's where the discrepancy is now is it 20 years from that date which was signed by ramsey county commissioner commissioners in 2010 so 20 years to put it out to 2030 or is it the last date but our city officials signed it which was 2013 that would push it out to 2033. so i think the first step is to kind of figure out when does that lease end because no matter what we do we have to honor that lease to the to the library because if we break that unfortunately we have to reimburse them for not only the construction costs at the time which in their resolution they estimated to be around well it was 517 899 but also their their books and their computers and their technology so their grand total is 749 889 the number that's been floated has been 7.50 so if we say sorry ramsey county we're tearing the building down we'll give you time to move out we're going to have to reimburse ramsey county 750 000 there's no dispute on that the tenant who's currently in there who's made multiple proposals to the council to buy the building has explained where he's arrived at those numbers deferred maintenance is a huge factor and there seems to be discrepancy with what the council was being told by staff at the time in reality and now we're seeing a report and a city manager just said yeah we've been we've had deferred maintenance on this building and there's i know there's no denying it the roof is leaking these things you know you have to maintain them and if you don't their useful life shrinks down you know if you don't change the oil in your vehicle ever there's a good likelihood that the engine is going to seize up you know so i agree it's unfortunate that we've have not maintained this building much like we didn't maintain the buildings at the at casey lake much like we haven't maintained the structures at northwood park it makes it hard for us to make decisions when we're only left with when we need to tear it down and and build new and to me you know we've already made the decision to close the facility because it was underutilized there's all sorts of fitness centers i believe part of this study referenced that at the time in 2012. it's on page five at the time there's ten different fitness centers within a four mile radius of the community center the maple community center being one of them i know for a fact there's more than that now these apartment buildings that are being constructed have their own private fitness facilities in them i can see the entrance to our own private fitness facility right here in this building that only has access to pub to public employees police fire ems and staff i mean i don't know what the final membership numbers were at the community center when it closed but i want to say it was around 60 people i mean what if we open that up to those 60 people would they be interested in coming and using this during the day i don't know but if that's the drive and desire to i'm not even gonna say double down i'm gonna say go all in and say let's invest two million dollars in this facility and bring it back as a community center a fitness center that's just crazy to me that's not being responsible i know some people have said this is a an asset to the city i think it's a financial liability because as we've just got done hearing from the parks commission and all their hard work and putting together this park improvement plan this isn't something that they're saying yeah we we need about five thousand dollars here they they're talking millions of dollars and i and i agree we need to continue to invest in our parks because they're so important this we have a clear out and i'm a little disappointed that this isn't listed here as an option we're told there's three options repair existing demolish or partial building demolition what about selling we can still sell the building we've had two offers one for 1.5 million the last offer 1 million now instead of being out 2 million we're up a billion that's a 3 million dollar swing and and we also haven't talked about the fact that this building has never been on the tax rolls so if we sell it to a private entity the building goes on the tax rolls i pulled up a building appraisal that was or a comparison that was used our at the time interim finance director and the city attorney they they sent up a letter it was dated october 1st 2021 to rt lutzec cocoa volleyball talking about the long-term lease and their justification for raising his rent 92 percent uh to 24 000 approximately a month plus common area maintenance and other fees they used a warehouse right behind uh it's it's uh right across the street here the charter school i call it the upper atrium building that's what it used to be called that parcel of land i just pulled up the property tax statement it is uh where is that somewhere here well i'll go off of memory they paid in 2021 96 000 in property taxes because the value of that parcel according to ramsey county is 2 million 750 000 of that 13 900 something went to the city that's what we got in 2022 it's been appraised at over three million they're gonna pay over a hundred thousand dollars in property taxes that city portion is set up to seventeen thousand dollars now so if we sell this property not only do we not have to concern ourselves with how are we going to fund this and how are we going to maintain it continuing on the reason why it's gotten to this point we don't have the staff and we don't have the funds to do it i'm sure if we did we wouldn't be here talking about this now but that's the reality and i don't see that changing anytime soon if we hire one two three more employees that's still not going to change things we shouldn't have our public works director up on the roof 20 below all trying to get the furnace going multiple times it's just mind-boggling to me that we're even going to consider continuing going down this path when we have a clear out sell the building use the proceeds towards our park improvement plan and and the other thing too that's missing on this and we haven't really discussed it but it is discussed in our assessment here is the parking lot okay the parking lot in 2012 was estimated to cost between three hundred and twenty nine thousand seven hundred dollars and seven hundred and fifty three thousand eight hundred ninety dollars and there's a little asterisk next to it this cost range to repair the parking lot is based on different repair scenarios provided to the city from wsb in 2010 so at some point in 2010 the city had discussion about boy this parking lot is getting bad we need to do something about it let's get away in range low end 400 300 330 000 high end 750 000. now we did do some maintenance to that parking lot i don't know what year it was i know it wasn't like a a mill an overlay they kind of they late or maybe it was i i guess i shouldn't say that for sure but again that's kind of coming up on a concern and you know that's not being included in this estimate so you know i know i kind of jumped ahead here and the question was what's about the background and the facts but i'm tying this all in because i don't think the council has had the full facts and a clear understanding of the background on this facility i think we made a decision in haste and that we decided not to sell the building not knowing the full picture and and the path forward on well if we're going to keep it what's it going to cost and now we're being told we're going to have to spend a million dollars and we need to know yes two weeks ago because like everyone we're facing shortages in materials and labor um our tenants here and he's you know expressed that he's he's going to be moving in and to another community um which is unfortunate because also the other thing to it you know i appreciate the time here i'm going to wrap it up here but the eda made a recommendation back in 2018 or 19 to that they supported the council selling this building i was in that meeting i didn't have time to pull up the the minutes to quote it but it happened i asked the question does this does the eda and at the time the business association representative was also there they all supported the decision to sell the building they thought that's in the city's best interest to my knowledge they haven't gone against that that's still the recommendation and you know as far as economic development is concerned i mean this is the type of business that we would be hoping and praying that would come in and locate here they they they have a business where thousands of people come to our town weekly monthly whatever your statistics are you've shared them before and they're here they drop their children off for hours at a time some of them live long distances away they look to spend time here restaurants antique stores bars and i mean we have it here and now here this is the type of business that just again i i just struggle to understand why we're telling them no um and so i hope that you know obviously having a half an hour is not enough time i've taken up 20 minutes of that time and i'm grateful for that because i've been wanting to have this conversation this way for a very long time we finally got it on the agenda we're clearly going to need to continue to talk about this but the problem here is we need to make a decision we can't just say we don't know that's why we're here we're here we got elected to make decisions and so this idea that we're just going to sit on this clearly is not an option um laid out by the deferred maintenance items that need immediate attention we can't we don't have the luxury to sit back and try to make up our mind because unfortunately there are other businesses that are relying excuse me on that facility immediately the library our current tenant excuse me who's also expressed he is willing to extend beyond our lease this one year we've seen that there doesn't necessarily need to be a drop dead date uh you know the liability behind this you've been in this facility since 2017 operating under an existing lease where was this concern about liability back then i mean it just kind of weird how it pops up also but that's done and over with and i'm glad so i'm hoping that you know we can continue to have these discussions and that this isn't the door is not shut on this i'm i would love to hear our finance director's opinion on what he believes would be the best interests of our city and i'd also love to hear our public works director who's basically his default maintenance guy on what what's your opinion on ongoing maintenance with this is this something that we should consider doubling down on well what i just wanted to say for the roof and for the the units that we have on there the the problem or the what we're up against the units we know from two different vendors they're nine months out to if we order them today so and one of the furnaces up there is running on half half of what it is right now so even if we made a decision right now today it's nine months and back when in the fall we were looking at getting foam for the roof out there insulation they were a year out on the insulation so what my concern is right now you know for the tenant that's in there for just a constant water coming in there the furnace not working you know just us having some type of a plan i mean it's important i have some type of a plan because before you know it we're going to be right back into the cold weather you know and we're in a building where there's a hundred people in there and they're wearing stocking hats and you know in the middle of playing volleyball so this is like uh we we just can't kick the can down the road anymore it's what's happening the leaks the cold the no heat it's it's real it's it's happening and it's it's to a point where i have to go face the tenant and say i don't i don't know what i can do for you right now so i mean it's we need to figure something out and it's uh you know something that's been going on for a long time but yeah it's we need to do something and i i know that to some of you this feels like rehashing things um or that i'm like picking at scabs or something but we really do need to um you know it's it's a pressing situation that we need to figure out a solution to i don't have all the facts i don't know if any of us have all the facts um but you know i'm new to the scene i have i know less than most of you but i think just talking through what some of the solutions are you know the idea of putting uh two million into it and you know granted we maybe we can get it done cheaper than that um i don't think it'd be a ton cheaper but you know if we have some local folks um bidding and maybe they're giving us a break because they're local people certainly that could cut the cost a little bit and so if we're talking about a million and a half two million dollars to upgrade um to bring the community center up to speed um you know in the grand scheme of things i don't want to you know act like that's not a big deal but when communities do community centers all the time those are numbers that wouldn't be considered astronomical um you know we're we're considering a 9.9 million dollar general obligation bond at the regular meeting first for streets uh and i i know we consider street improvements every year and those are ongoing costs so the the price tag alone isn't something that you know scares me um it just has to fit with the long-term goals i wouldn't want us to spend the money unless it fit with the long-term goals unless we thought it was sustainable and when i say sustainable i mean from a programming standpoint programming is the thing i'm most worried about having sustainable users in there year after year um that we can count on providing service to the community well we get about four minutes uh and i know this is going to be an ongoing discussion uh but it sounds like you know the need right now is is that roof and that furnace i mean that's the biggest two biggest things right now you know and i think that we need we need to give the okay to to go ahead with that to make sure that we do have a rough and and a furnace i mean it's always in the cost of the building but council member called i can't i cannot go ahead on anything until we have an understanding of what our commitment is to the library that i since in my short tenure being on council i asked the city manager at the time i asked the interim city manager and i've now asked john i need to understand what our liability is to the library one it's an asset to the city and i do not want to see it leave two to scott's point if we sell it for a million dollars we're on the hook for 750 000 back to them the city that's a quarter of a million dollars on a three million dollar building or whatever the the numbers have been um if we're looking i i i there's just i can't i can't can not vote for anything to approve a penny until i understand what that is that makes sense oh we didn't yeah and i agree with that i think that that's an issue that um is more is as much legal as anything else and i need to work with sauron on that um you know i don't know lee's law the way he does and when the lease is considered to have started i don't know the answer to that uh it's the questions been asked of me i just don't know the answer sorin and i will just have to work through it and ultimately it might end up being our best um our best guess and until something's litigated it and i hope it wouldn't come to that but um you might not know the the answer for sure i don't know if um i don't want to put sorin on the spot but if he had anything to add about the the the police obligation to the library he's out he's out in the uh oh okay one last quick comment i'm sorry you know go ahead okay and i've said this before and i agree with council member cole that yes we have to get that understood and i would think the best resource would be reach out to ramsey county and say how do you interpret this do you believe your lease is till uh 2033 and if they say yes well then we clearly know where they stand but this idea of the absolutism that if we sell it's our building we own it if we sell it we can sell it contingent on the whoever purchases it honors the lease whether it be 2025 or 2023 that is a negotiable condition so this idea that if we sell the building the library's out and now we add a front 750 is not necessarily a a foregone conclusion it's a negotiation stance and and our the the tenant who's offered has said he's open to to extending that lease and honoring the lease so i just want to make that point clear because i glazed over that one on my 15 minutes or 20 minutes here that that it's not an absolute selling the building does not absolutely mean the library needs to relocate and that we are on the bill to reimburse some 750 thousand dollars so real quick we got about two minutes rt i want to get a quick update from you in regards to not about the facility or anything but what your plans are because you gave us you know end of the year but what what what's the update from you thank you um so where we are right now we are still in the building process the timelines as you can hear from ron are getting pushed back um we can help you in this sense and that hey we can stay until probably june no problem and maybe in i mean and even if we even if our building is done in march or april we'd honor that through june very simple um so we can certainly move that to help you guys out um because i mean as as i saw in this like this still requires a lot of work and even if you do decide that you're going to let's say you decide to demo it okay well you continue making money because what i didn't see and john help me out if it's in there somewhere and i missed it but the current operating costs of the building and that in relation to what we actually pay right now i think there's still some profit in there or at least some money that can that could be used for deferred maintenance and you can save that money and then apply it to the demolition i mean you're basically just saving yourself money by having our state having a stay for a little bit longer and but anyways yes we're looking at april june somewhere in there we'd be happy to extend till then that's not a problem at all i appreciate it so yeah thank you thank you so at this time we're going to uh we'll adjourn the workshop but i just want to know that this is going to be an ongoing discussion moving forward john do you have anything else to add no i just i i appreciate that this is something you guys have been talking about for years and years and uh you've got a lot of information on it i'm you know i'm new to it and so i appreciate your patience as i get up to speed um and these meetings help me do that so thank you okay good so this time motion to adjourn moved by councilmember peterson taken by council member thorson in discussion if not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries we'll take about a three four minute break