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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010 04-06 Joint Planning & Zoning Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 A joint meeting of the Meridian City Council and Planning & Zoning Commission was called to order at 5:37 p.m., Tuesday, April 6, 2010, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd. Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, President Charlie Rountree, Keith Bird, Brad Hoaglun, and David Zaremba. P&Z Members Present: Michael Rohm, Chairman, Joe Marshall, Scott Freeman, Wendy Newton-Huckabay and Tom O'Brien. Item 1: Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird X Mayor Tammy de Weerd Roll Call. X_ Tom O'Brien X_ Wendy Newton-Huckabay X_ Scott Freeman X_Joe Marshall X Michael Rohm -chairman Roll Call. Larry Lipschultz -Chairman Craig Slocum -Vice-Chairman Eric Jensen - Secretary/Treasurer Tammy de Weerd -Member Shaun Wardle -Administrator Keith Bird -Member Jim Escobar -Member Julie Pipal -Member Ryan Armbruster -Counsel De Weerd: I'll go ahead and call this meeting to order. Thank you so much for joining us today for this special meeting and presentation. For the record, it is Tuesday, April 6th. It's 5:37. We will start with roll call attendance. Planning and Zoning, MDC, and City Council and, then, I will point out some of the commissioners in the audience. De Weerd: Okay. Thank you, Jaycee. Also we did We do have some representatives from the Traffic And -- thank you. And Steve Yearsley, who is also the Meridian Arts Commission, David Stolhand. Commission, Carol Harms, Frank Thomason, Jessica miss anyone? Okay. Thank you. Item 2: Adoption of the Agenda. invite our other city commissions. Safety Commission. Paul Stark. on our Parks Commission. From =rom the Historical Preservation Proctor, and Steve Turney. Did De Weerd: The next item is adoption of agenda. Council. Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 2 of 19 '~ Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move we adopt the agenda as published. Rountree: Second. Zaremba: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as published. All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carries. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 3: Destination: Downtown. De Weerd: Item 3 is Destination Downtown. I will turn this over to Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Members of the Commission, Mr. Chairman, Members of the MDC Commission. My name is Shaun Wardle, I am the administrator for the Meridian Development Corporation, Meridian's urban renewal agency, and Madam Mayor, with your permission I will run this as a workshop format and not address each of the individual councils, commissions, and Mayor with my comments, if that's okay. De Weerd: That will be ideal. Wardle: Thank you very much for being here tonight. We are very excited to have everyone here as part of our wrap-up process to a master plan. So, I'm going to begin and start with where the Meridian Development Corporation was. About a year and a half ago we were looking to update our parking plan and looking to update elements in our urban renewal plan relating specifically to parking elements and the future economic development drivers that those can create. And what we found is as part of our -- our process that we really were in need of an overall community plan to help us guide the growth and development of downtown and so as part of that we went out for a request for qualification, received a number of proposals from firms as far away as the east coast and as close as the Treasure Valley here. And so out of those firms we selected five finalist firms. Those firms were, then, interviewed, as well as background research conducted, phone calls, reference checks -- we went through a pretty exhaustive process to come up with a firm that we eventually selected, which is CRSA, Cooper, Roberts, Simonson. And so in September of 2009 we began our master plan process, which we have been calling Destination Downtown. And so I'm going to begin a little bit with the public involvement process and I will ask our public relations firm, which is Red Sky Public Relations, Jessica Flynn with that firm. Another quick housekeeping note. Those of you that are not at the table wish to make a comment, if you would, please -- Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 3 of 19 I'm going to leave two microphones at the end of these tables. If you could, please, pick up a microphone to make those comments, so that we can get you on the record. Flynn: As Shaun said, I'm Jessica Flynn with Red Sky Public Relations. We are the agency that's under contract with the Meridian Development Corporation to provide public relations and marketing support and when we began working with MDC and CRSA, we were pretty much putting together a public involvement and out reach program that would compliment the efforts that CRSA was going to be going forward with. It's kind of athree-pronged approach. Digital public involvement platform, which I will get into a little bit, and in front of you underneath -- I think at the bottom of your pile you do have a one pager which summarizes some of the points that's in this Powerpoint presentation that I will be giving you. So, the first component was this digital public involvement platform. The second was direct marketing. And the third was traditional media relations. And these are some of the photos from the different public involvement meetings that we had. There were stakeholder groups that were brought together that every month came together and met for several hours in a workshop format and that was often followed up with public Q and A sessions, along with the Charrettes, which Shaun will go into a little bit later some of those meetings. And so this is traditionally how we see public involvement happening, face to face, in person. So, when we began this process we wanted to figure out how to enhance this and so we developed something called a digital public involvement platform, which would be a web home for the process to live, to provide greater education, out reach, transparency. It's, '~ essentially, an enhanced website. Some people call it a micro site. So, it exists for the purpose of posting documents, so that they don't just exist at these meetings, but they are on there for an archival purpose for people to go back to. So, getting into what we did on this site is we did live blogging, so at every single one of these stakeholder meetings I was there to act as almost the reporter for the event itself, so that people who weren't able to be there, if media were there, if they were unable to be there, the information was being communicated and kept on this website. We also developed photos and videos. I don't have my prop with me, but if anybody has seen a flip cam, those little cameras that can fit in your pocket, we did several interviews with CRSA to explain the process that they were going through, so that people could hear it in their own words. And, then, we also -- probably one of the most popular pages was the documents page and every single document that was presented by CRSA at these meetings and every element of work product that came out of it, even in the draft form, is on this website and still exists today. It's destination-downtown.org. And so when we look at the traffic you see two bars up there. The light blue and, then, the dark blue. The smaller bars are what we are focusing on, because that's page visits. The big pale blue bars are page views, which are a little bit misleading when you hear people talk about web traffic, because one person could be on one web page and if there is many different elements to it, it will count as multiple views. So, we wanted to be conservative to show you the types of site visits that we had during the six months of this program on the site and if you add up the different months and you see where they peak and go down a little bit, there have been approximately 3,000 site visits. So that if one of you '``~ went on the site five times in one day it would only count once, but if somebody went on five times in a week, it would count five times. So, those people that just couldn't get Meridian City Council - P8Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 4 of 19 '~ enough of the master planning process, they counted multiple times if they went on it that way. Direct marketing. This was a component that existed online and, then, also in person with fliers that were posted, particularly around the Charrettes period to downtown businesses. We had a database of stakeholders that were identified by MDC board members and staff that we wanted to see if they could contribute more and be involved in some of those workshops. So, that was a list of 50 that were invited to the stakeholder meetings and, then, we had the general public list and these were people we originally started out with who had signed up to get information about MDC itself. If they showed up to the public Q and A meetings their names went on this list. And, then, we had an average of ten people every month that were signing up to be added onto to this public list, so that -- so, that at the end it was about 223 people getting regular updates about Designation Downtown. We sent out 14 different e-communications -- 14 different e-communications and the open rate was about 30 percent, which is pretty average nationally for this type of communication. It usually goes between 20 and 30 percent open rate. The most popular lengths -- and they are also the most popular pages on the site per the traffic were the blogs, where we had the most content and the documents pages where people could look and download. We also utilized Linked In, which is many people may also have profiles on and we posted these meetings in those professional groups, like the Downtown Meridian Business group that had just started recently. S Tech. Treasure Valley Business Owners. So, the types of groups where professionals that operate in and around Meridian would be looking. Media relations. We did quite a bit of online and traditional media relations. There is a website '~` newsroom that exists where all of the news releases that were put together are posted, as well as all the coverage that was received. We did multiple what's called day of advisories, notes to the media that tomorrow we will be having a meeting, today we are having a meeting, we'd love for you to show up, those types of information that follow up on the news release to encourage them to show up and cover them. And we also had sharing of digital assets. That's a fancy word for saying if we took pictures, we shared them with the media, and they sometimes used them, as well as the renderings that were developed by CRSA. And so for some of the coverage that we received, pretty much every media outlet in southwest Idaho covered some portion of Destination Downtown. We saw the most coverage come during the launch of the campaign, so that was at the end of September, and, then, also around the time of the Charrettes, in particular Channel 7, I believe, did four different stories in the month of November around the Charrettes and probably as we would expect, the Valley Times did the most coverage driving people to come to the meetings and did a lot of interplay and also participating in the stakeholder group. Wardle: Thank you, Jessica. One of the -- the things that we wanted to bring to you today, especially at the beginning of this presentation, is the amount of public involvement that we attempted to generate. At the outset of this process it was very -- it was communicated to both the consultant, as well as hopefully the community, that we valued their input and, really, we couldn't do this without having them help us create a vision for Meridian. So, I'm going to jump right into what we have as, again, we mentioned stakeholder workshops, we did a total of six meetings for those stakeholders, and we invited over 60 members of the community, all of the commissions, all of the Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 5 of 19 ~ public involvement groups, civic groups that we could think of. We had additionally three public meetings. The Charrette process happened May 11th to May 14th and as part of that process we actually set up in the former Farmers & Merchants State Bank building and the consultant team came in on Wednesday and they were there, essentially, drawing the community's ideas and this is in -- for me one of the second Charrette processes that I have been through. The first was the Ten Mile area specific study. And I really felt that the community enjoyed having our consultant on site to be able not only to answer their questions, but to be able to reference all of the past community experiences and some of the stakeholder meetings. And so out of that we received what we, then, put into as a draft document and for the rest of December, January, and February we are really trying to refine those documents that we had generated from the community input in the Charrette. Again, the website is still up and one of the things that we have been encouraging people to do -- this is very very voluminous and in today's age we can get everything on that site. You can see all of the work product that the consultant team has been able to put together, all of the meeting notes, and we think it's important to have all of that up. But it's also a great tool to be able see where the process has been. So, we have four final documents and I'm going to focus on the vision document and, then, implementing the vision here. So, as an early part of the master planning process the communities came up with about 15 goals and over the course of a couple of stakeholder meetings and community involvement, they really narrowed that down to four specific elements and, then, tried to place all of those projects under one of these headings. And so the first is livability. r`` Downtown Meridian will be a destination with a wide variety of entertainment and social options. That was important to the community and we heard from them that they wanted -- they wanted a variety of things to do and what we heard was give us a reason to come downtown. The community of Meridian has -- is very active and they want to come downtown, but they really need a reason. Downtown will have strong character and a welcoming and beautiful atmosphere. Downtown will have a variety of housing options and could be easily accessible by car, as well as other transit options. One of the things that -- that the community really wanted to focus on is -- is they want walkability and we will cover that here in a little bit. But they also wanted to be able to live in an economic reality, that is people in the Treasure Valley still drive and one of the key components here was taking a look at future transit and planning for future transit, but not building a downtown that was solely dependent on a transit authority or some type of mobility to be able to make this effective and so they wanted to keep that in there. Meridian's Downtown will be connected to the rest of the city by a greenbelt or pathway system. A lot of the community members, especially members with younger children, talked about their desire to bike into downtown. I know that most of us are aware that there are not very many residents in downtown Meridian, but people still want to come here and so they want to be able to bike in from the suburbs, but they want to be able to do it safely and they want to be able to have routes that -- that they can take their small children on. And so that was one of the things that we heard. Priority actions create more places for community gathering entertainment. One of the -- the bit things that we heard come out of this is give us a place for the community to meet. Community events were talked about, such as Dairy Days, such as the chili cook off, such as the former Fall Harvest Festivals. And overall the community really values Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page6of19 '~ those as assets and wants to see those expanded. The question is whether you expand them formally, whether you expand the formal place for them to do it, whether you allow these events to grow organically, there was a lot of discussion in there, but the general consensus is give us a place that we can gather as a community. Negotiate long-term lease for use of the Union Pacific property in the core of downtown. I believe that everyone recognizes that that could be a potential community asset and so we wanted to -- the community wanted to make sure that that was in this document. Locate a sports facility or stadium in downtown Meridian. I'm sure that some of you have seen our local daily and some of the coverage that has come out of that. There is a professional baseball organization that was part of our downtown master planning process and they were at the stakeholder meetings and so out of that grew a consensus from the community that some type of a facility should be considered, but that it shouldn't be a single purpose facility, that the community, again, as I mentioned, needs a place to gather and a place to come together, but it couldn't be a sole purpose, it needed to have multiple uses. Celebrate and promote local history and heritage. That was an important distinction that Meridian has been a long standing community and we need to embrace our heritage, but we need to try to balance that with new growth and economic potential. The next element category is mobility. Downtown Meridian will have a system of connectivity that supports and enhances both motorized and non- motorized safe pedestrian movement. This is a key component to the overall master plan and if you think back to finding a place for people to park and get out of their cars, extremely important, but one of the things, again, that the community said is give us a '~~ reason to walk. If there is not somewhere that l -- if there is not something interesting from point A to point B, then, I'm more likely to get in my car and drive to point B. So, give us something interesting. Centrally located multi-mobile port will be identified to connect the Meridian central business districts to the greater Treasure Valley and suburbs. Again, the multi-mobile center, planning for a potential transit, but not being tied to that for success. Adequate parking provided for critical port, stations, et cetera, to create and attract healthy, vibrant businesses and sustain the cultural community. Parking is a key component of this mobility study and there was a lot of discussion about whether one or two central large parking structures would work for Meridian or whether utilizing public-private partnerships, smaller scale parking structures, as well as on-street parking. And that's ultimately what you see within the plan. Priority actions. Improve walkability. Plan for amulti-mobile transportation hub. Develop signage and way finding infrastructure. This is a component that the development corporation has taken on and we heard from a lot of businesses that if they are off Main Street or in the future if they are off Meridian, which is going to have the split corridor phase two in, how do people find them? How do they know that they are there? How can you create attractive signage that will help people get to those types of businesses? How do you create business districts? An important distinction. Improve the bike-ability of downtown. Again, a large biking element in our community looking for ways to get to those businesses. And, then, vehicle circulation is effective, safe, and efficient. Our next element is prosperity. Downtown Meridian will be an economic magnet attracting different types of businesses to serve its residents and visitors. Most businesses will be ^ small, independent, and locally owned, providing unique products and specialty services. This, in my opinion, is a key component of what Designation Downtown is. In Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 7 of 19 '~ the beginning the community really embraced that downtown can be something different and so as they were talking about specific types of businesses that they would like to see, we were hearing a lot of regional, even national retail chains, and one of the things that someone would say is, for example, you know, we really think a specialty type of furniture store, such as a Crate and Barrell, would be good for downtown Meridian, but in the same breath those types of people would say -- but we want it to be local. We want it to be more interesting. For those of us in the economic development world, I think that the reality that big box locating in downtown Meridian in the core is quite a ways out on the horizon and so to hear that validated by the community saying we want local people to bring us interesting businesses that we can, then -- that we can shop at and we can -- we can patronize, was really important to the rest of our market analysis and study. A diverse economy with mixed uses, private-public partnerships and opportunities for the integration of upscale businesses into the local fabric. So, they wanted a mix. The community really said that they didn't want one type of business or they didn't want all of the businesses to be very, very high end retailers, they wanted a mix of those businesses. Fair and equitable practice utilized in relocation, dislocation of existing businesses and services. Take care of who we have here. Look at those -- those that we can help and where are those appropriate uses we heard from the community. Priority actions. Integrate existing businesses in the fabric of downtown. Create a destination that fosters social retailing. Develop a catalyst project on the MDC parcel on 3rd and Broadway. And, then, improve the diversity of business activity and the retail vitality. One of the things that the community pointed out was our existing 'r`` downtown businesses we have -- we have a large number of certain types. We have a lot of restaurants right now. We are gaining some that they really feel are great. We have a lot of bars, night club entertainment. They wanted to see that fostered in terms of improve that diversity. And, for the record, I'm going to introduce MDC Commissioner Eric Jensen. Eric, if you would sit up here at the table. Your seats right there. Welcome to the meeting. Thank you. Our next vision elements. sustainability. Downtown Meridian's existing urban fabric will be preserved and enhanced through responsible low impact development policies. Due diligence will be used in the master planning and development process to utilize and appropriately integrate existing infrastructures without overburdening them. So, the message here is find out what we have, find out what we need, but let's save our resources, let's not overbuild downtown until we are ready for it. Let's find out what's appropriate and make it sustainable. One of the -- one of the things that the community talked about, sustainability a lot of us think about environmental concerns and how to be friendly to the environment and one of the things that this particular stakeholder group and the rest of the community really said was we want to know what sustainable business is. Let's talk about sustainability in terms of economic reality and potential profitability for these businesses that we are attracting. And so sustainability when -- when viewed in that sort of a frame of mind takes on a little bit different analogy when you're looking at what's appropriate and how do we plan for the future. Strategies will be put in place to insure that new developments in redevelopment projects are built to last and environmentally and economically sustainable. Priority actions promote and expand the number of cultural events in the community. Again, we talked about the number of gatherings that are already in place. How do we promote those? How do we get the community involved? Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 8 of 19 ~ And how do we cement those into the fabric of what Meridian is? Develop a greenbelt pathway network. Again, getting people out of their cars, creating energy and excitement and connecting the community itself. Preserve and protect private property rights and minimize impact to existing downtown businesses. Promote and encourage innovation and progressive development. Incentivize sustainable development. Before move on to the districts, does anyone have any questions on the four focus areas? All right. Moving forward. There are a number of districts that have been created within the urban renewal area and just to -- just to back up, the entire urban renewal area is generally from I-84 south, to Cherry Lane on the north, 4th Street to 4th Street East to west. I have a handout for you on your table, which, actually, spells out these districts, if you can't see either the slide or my presentation right here and so, please, refer to those. Again, all of this material is on our website. The Northern Gateway District, Washington and Main District -- I'm going to go into each of these a little more in depth in the next couple slides. But I will tell you that the Northern Gateway District and the Washington and Main District, which are identified here in our northern portion, went through a number of iterations as part of this process. The community started out with kind of wanting to see how that redevelops. So, if you think about the corner of Cherry Lane and Main Street in Meridian and the Rite-Aid, former Smith's shopping center, as well as the Hepper Shopping Center there, they see that as a commercial node that will really be prime for redevelopment. And so one of the things that they -- they struggled with is what is appropriate for that redevelopment? Is it big box? How do you match up with the Cherry Plaza and Albertson's shopping center across the street? And so a lot '~` of questions were asked about that district and ultimately that became a potential higher density, but as you move south along Main Street, the community started to ask questions about what do we do with some of the existing businesses and existing structures along there? And early on in the process there was a -- a desire to somehow stretch that bigger box kind of larger concept south along Main Street and as we got further into the process and as the consultant team really began to bring this together, the community and the stakeholders said, wait a minute, we -- we are not sure we like how big that's getting and so they actually created a separate district which we are calling the Washington and Main District. And as the MDC Board will tell you, that district actually went in and out of a couple of our presentations and as a result of both their discussion and the community's discussion it sits in our final plan. So, that -- that was -- there was some discussion to that area. The traditional city core, what we are calling the Central Business District, Cultural District, Transit Oriented District, which is TOD, and, then, there is Southern Gateway Entertainment and Hospitality District. One of the things about that southern district is we have a lot of -- of current business that are built. That particular freeway environment is there and that will really drive the character. So, the question is how do we continue to facilitate development there and how do you buffer transition into your traditional downtown. So, general characteristics. Parking clusters available on large parking areas and structures in downtown. Smaller districts north of the railroad corridor, so -- the Northern Gateway District, again, taller buildings, that sense of entry. This really becomes the gateway to downtown Meridian from the northern portion of our community. Streetscape improvements. There was a ''~`~ heavy emphasis on making that very appealing and making it drive-able, but also walk- able. One of the things that the community pointed out is it's not so far to walk from Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 9 of 19 ~'~' Broadway to Cherry Lane. You can do so in a reasonable amount of time. But right now there aren't a lot of interesting things between here and there. There are some potential gaps in the sidewalks. There is a little infrastructure there. But, again, from a livable scale it's not so far to walk from -- from the central business district to that northern district. Larger retail and employment -- and this will really serve as a book end to downtown, the need for community parking is going to be important if you're going to push some of those buildings, as you see in the pictures that we have, we have what -- what I would terminologize as an urban environment where you're going to see those street fronts moved up to the property line and there is going to be some need for parking in the rear of those buildings and so there are some design considerations that will certainly be taken out of this process for the -- for the Northern Gateway District. Again, vision elements. Washington and Main District, smaller scale development. There was a primary focus on residential conversion. How do you convert some of the existing or even historical homes, how do you adequately convert them to office, to smaller scale retail development. And so that's one of the things that I know that we will be working primarily on, but it's also something that we are going to need help and input not only the Planning and Zoning Commission and staff, but the community in general as we move down this path. Neighborhood center. Hyde Park is an area that I believe most of us in the Treasure Valley are familiar with and that's a recurring theme for this particular district. As you move off of a main street, how can we get more of that Hyde Park feel. And, then, again, historic preservation. If you look at -- to our right here we have got land use, percentage of the district, you know, as we go through here one of ''~`~ the things that the consultant did was get us an inventory, so that we can -- we can see where we are at today and we can ask ourselves what are the appropriate mixes within these -- within these districts. Neighborhood preservation. Residential preservation. Again, historic preservation and, then, streetscape improvement was a common theme. If you think about as you move through the Washington and Main District and you get off of Main Street and you get onto Washington and you get onto State Street and move beyond 2nd Street, again, we have got some infrastructure issues, they really feel that that can be a -- I think some of the community used it as we can have some cute old houses there, but we need to focus on that to make it happen. Traditional city core. Two to four story in-fill. This is an important distinction. Some of the plans that the development corporation has put forth in the past have focused on larger scale in the central business district. Have focused on buildings between six and eight stories. think most of the community realizes that we are probably not going to see 12 and 15 story buildings in downtown Meridian in the foreseeable future. But one of the things that they said is we don't necessarily want eight story buildings either. We are not sure that six story is going to fit within our fabric and so what -- one of the changes from some of MDC's past thinking is that the community really came out and said we want to see two to four story buildings. Now, again, single story buildings don't necessarily maximize the use and some of those single family residential projects are prime for redevelopment. And so I believe that they were okay with the two story minimum, which is currently in place. But they really were talking about two to four story and how do you have those buildings vertically integrated. So, that was an important point in the ~'`~ distinction that we feel helps us get direction for the future. Traditional architecture themes. Again, when presented with -- with more modern looking buildings versus Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 10 of 19 ''~`'` some of the historic types of downtown, the community really, again, gravitated towards that traditional architecture. Continuous urban edge. Again, what Imean -- what they mean by that is bringing those buildings to the property line, creating areas of interest, but, essentially, don't put your parking lot in front of your store. Utilize existing street parking. Someone figured out how to get some consolidated community parking. Mix of uses. Utilize those deep lots to create some interest and, then, develop civic uses. Again, that central business core is where the community feels we need some civic uses, gathering places for the community. Transit oriented development cultural district. Integrate existing business, integrate some of the things that are there that can potentially take advantage of the rail. Again, plan for the future in that district. Public arts and cultural uses. Heavy emphasis here. One of the projects that -- that we have looked at and are talking about is throughout the split -- the phase two of the split corridor, some of those remnant parcels, how do you create areas of interest. Is there an opportunity for public art? That type of a theme really hit home with the community that this is an area that they think can integrate some of those community wishes and create areas -- again, areas of interest. Event venues. This would be an inappropriate location for some of those events that the community, again, wants to -- to really take pride in ownership in. Transit oriented development. And, then, increased density and height, which from an urban planning perspective is needed to take advantage of the potential future rail. Southern Gateway District, It was pointed out that currently bicycle paths and trails are -- are not -- are not there, with the exception of phase one of the split corridor, but the question there is how do you get over the freeway? Obviously, we '"~ are at the southern end and the community really talked about some of the fun things that are on the southern side of the freeway and things that kids might want to go to, things that my children enjoy. The water park and the amusement areas. How do you -- how do you integrate pathways to keep it safe for families and for kids to maneuver around in very very auto oriented areas. So, that was, really, on the top of mine. Hospitality and dining. Again, utilizing the draw from -- from that transportation facility to have people in there. Office and employment. The community really feels that there is some larger parcels which could create larger employment and opportunities for those areas. Upgrade the speedway. One of the things that the community said is it's an historic cultural icon from Meridian. But we might like to see it upgraded. You know, again, give us a reason to -- to go and provide us some new opportunities. Landscaping and gateway. And, then, again, that multi-purpose sports facility is one that -- that came up. Where is the appropriate location? How do you adequately park that. What types of businesses thrive around it? And how do we plan for that if it were to become a reality. Parking analysis. So, as a component of this and all of these scenarios, the consultant went to their parking consultant and -- and came up with a couple of recommendations. In the core of the city there is the perception of inadequate parking. A parking inventory of the core shows that there is a surplus of parking today. As downtown redevelops and fills in, parking demands will increase and additional parking will be needed. So, one of the things that the consultant looked at is for every day parking activities there is a surplus. That's a statement from the consultant. One of the -- the things that they did find out and as the community mentioned, when events ^ such as Meridian Business Day or Dairy Days or -- or any large event downtown, a large City meeting, that a lot of that parking is utilized. And so between the hours of Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 11 of 19 '^` 8:00 and 5:00 the question is how do we have enough parking to attract both patrons and new businesses. But to take a look at event parking is something that we are going to need to consider in the future again. The community craves those events. How are you going to park it. Or how are you going to creatively solve that -- that parking issue? Do you create a bus system for that event where people can come in and out of other areas of town. Those are things that the community was talking about. Parking demand analysis based on a full build out of the URA. So, if you look over here, we have got some -- some pretty large parking numbers. We have also got some pretty large land use numbers. Total retail and dining in a full build out of 2,341,000 square feet seems like a lot to me. But, again, this is -- this is a plan that looks forward and so what we asked the consultant to do is help us guide our future, so that we can take it in kind of bite size steps and so that's what you see here within -- within that. The results of the parking analysis are not dependent on any one single land use, i.e., the potential for a sports stadium, and a sports stadium may increase parking needs from those shown here, but shared parking agreements can minimize the need for additional large parking areas. So, again, if that were to become a reality, the solution needs to be in place. You can't -- the message here is you cannot build one without the other. Short to mid term recommendations. Transition the city -- traditional city core on-street parking into paid parking. So, could be one of the -- one of the things that comes out of here, potentially, one of the more controversial types of -- I'm just going to say parking meters and that -- I believe that's what that particular recommendation says. So, that's one that community input, I think, you know, when is it time for Meridian to start paying ~`` for parking. Do not charge for parking in any of the other -- sorry. Do not charge for parking in any of the other districts, at least until additional development or redevelopment occurs. Transition existing parallel spaces into angled parking in the traditional city core. There is a realization that some of that angled parking can -- could be transitioned. One of the -- the key components there is -- is traffic safety. One of the areas that we have looked at is -- is Pine Street -- is Pine Street between Main and Meridian wide enough that you could do angled parking on one side. The potential may be there for engineering, but the question is from a user standpoint do you want to be backing into traffic on Pine Street at 5:00 o'clock. So, those are -- those are areas that we will certainly be taking a look at. Meridian MDC should begin to acquire land for future service parking lots, could eventually transition into parking structures. Market analysis. So, I'm shifting here. Bonneville Research is a company that was hired by the consultant to do market analysis. I have got a couple of follow-up items that we will talk about after this presentation, some things that we have asked that the consultant to give us that are much more specific to Meridian, Idaho, and some of our opportunities. But they are general comments. Phase the development of downtown, focusing on the core first. Again, the central core's health is indicative of the health of the entire community, but certainly the urban renewal area. So, focus the efforts on the core first. Focus development and recruitment efforts on -- on uses with potential for Meridian. So entrepreneurial, professional office. The message here is look at what -- look at who is relocating in the surrounding Meridian area. Take a look at the suburban business parks, ask yourself who is locating there and why and see if you can maximize that to ^ attract some of those people on a smaller scale to downtown Meridian. Medical office, bio medical research is something certainly that -- that the community of Meridian is Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 12 of 19 '~ focused on. How does downtown play a roll in that? One of those market analysis questions. Energy development. Certainly a hot topic in today's world, but for both the state of Idaho and specifically for Meridian, the consultant pointed out and the community pointed out that this is an area Meridian can have an impact in. Idaho already has a large amount of attraction within the energy development world and so how can we leverage that in downtown Meridian, you know, how do we get those businesses attracted, can we create clusters of like businesses that will build upon each other. Unique independent downtown retailing and dining. Again, one of the key components out of this particular master planning effort is give us unique businesses -- the community went so far as to say give us mom and pop restaurants and retail. We want to support those communities -- those growing community assets. We want to -- essentially what this says, we want to support our neighbors. Those people that we can get to know and we can get to trust, we will come do business with them, we just need to find a way to make them successful. Art galleries and framing. Book stores. Cafes and bakeries. Boutique retail. Again, not that large scale retail, but some potential Boutique retail. Notions and crafts. And, then, one of the components on that -- on that market analysis is without residential, a true vibrant community could not necessarily exist. If the town rolls up at 5:00 o'clock and all those store fronts roll up, then, you can't really have the vibrant, live-able, urban downtown that Meridian is seeking and so at some point residential must become a focus of this master planning effort. Okay. Moving to implement the vision. At the outset of the master planning process Meridian Development Corporation board of commissioners made one thing very clear to both 'r`~ the consultant, as well as anyone that would listen. Don't give us a study that we are going to stick on the shelf and reference every now and again. And so as part of that implementation was a theme through all of the stakeholder meetings, through the Charrette process, and is one of the key components of my presentation here today. Implementing the vision. Strategic planning tool is a working guide to future decision making. There were 32 specific projects which were identified following the four vision elements. Each of the projects includes a name and -- a project name and number. An objective. Potential stakeholders. Implementation and action items. Geographical scope. A timeline. And a priority. And so I'm going to show examples of this in just a minute. I'm not going to go through every single one. We have got some time constraints. But one of the things that the development corporation is seeking is project champions. We need to identify those in the community that will help us achieve specific project goals. One of the very stark realities through this process is that neither the Meridian Development Corporation, nor the city, can do this on our own. The community has to be involved and has to get behind this. They have been involved in this process and so as we go forward and I talk about timelines, this is where we take off the jacket and roll up the sleeves. That's this part of the master plan. Stakeholders, community members, and other planning process participants voted on projects to help determine community priorities. This was the process where everyone that showed up got a set of stickers and they got to go to all of those 32 aforementioned projects and prioritize it and they got to give their input. If they didn't want to talk about their input, they could simply put the sticker down. But I can tell you having been in all of these, the ~ people wanted to talk. They wanted to justify their opinion and they wanted to hear from other community members why they either agreed, disagreed, frankly, didn't care about Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 13 of 19 .~"'~, their opinion. And so we saw a lot of that through this exercise. Highest priorities. Number one, integrate existing business into the fabric of downtown as the area experiences new growth. Improve the walk-ability of downtown. Plan for amulti-mobile transportation hub. High priorities. We have 12 projects. Celebrate history and heritage. Community gathering. The sports stadium. Railroad property lease. Performing arts center was something that came up again. Give us a place to celebrate. We have got an exceptional arts community. We are growing that community. Find us a place to perform. Find us a place to gather. Catalyst project on Broadway property. Transit. And, then, parking. Again, you can review all of these and all the steps and all of the priorities on our website if you'd wish. The implementation structure. Vision and strategic plan process is designed to be collaborative. mentioned that. Okay. The results are community authored and have to be community implemented. So, the implementation committee, consisting of the City of Meridian, community leaders, and the Meridian Development Corporation. As you look to each of these four areas, livability action group and action champions, mobility action group and their champions. Sustainable action group. And, then, prosperity. And at the bottom of this particular pyramid and it's not necessarily a pyramid, you could probably draw this in a circle, because from a priority standpoint the community is going to have to drive this, while the implementation committee can direct, the only way it's going to get done is to involve everyone. And so at the bottom of this is your downtown stakeholders. We have a group of individuals that have been involved. I mentioned that we invited over 60. We had just probably 30 -- 30 to 35 engaged stakeholders. Some of them unique, ~` some of them coming later on in the process, but we have a list of people that have helped us generate this idea and those are going to be the first ones that we go to. They are familiar with the process. Many of you are sitting in the room today. But those stakeholders are a group that we feel we want to continue to keep involved. Implementation committee. MDC administrator. Committee members. And, again, this committee's roll is track progress of the action groups and the overall plan. So, this would be that -- that implementation committee, those people keeping groups on task and looking at volunteer efforts. Track progress. Recruit project champions. Serve action group chairs. Determine project priorities and implementation goals. Help facilitate coordination between the city and MDC for projects. Facilitate the identification of funding sources for specific projects as appropriate. Item six is probably one of the most important areas. How do we facilitate funding. This implementation vision cannot be done with simply public dollars or a one time expenditure, it's going to take public- private partnerships, it's going to take planning, it's going to take financial feasibility analysis. In today's lending environment additional scrutiny, as well as the ability to economically develop downtown is important and so component number six is going to be -- is going to be important. Meeting scheduled quarterly or as needed. Action groups. Again, administrator. Committee members are the liaisons and those specific project champions, their role is to track and implement the tasks of the action committee. So, what we are creating is -- is, essentially, your overall redevelopment master plan committee and below them are those that are responsible for the action. Help champions organize specific project implementation teams. Encourage and ''~`~ remind project champions as needed. Track specific implementation goals. Action champions. Again, the administrator, specific project champions, recruit and implement Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 14 of 19 '~`~ project team members, stakeholders, volunteers. Responsibility for initiation, progress, and tracking of specific projects. That's a key component. That initiation portion is going to take some work and one of the reasons that we are making presentation today is there are pieces of the puzzle that some of the community are going to gravitate towards and we want those people that are passionate -- if you're passionate about mobility and you're passionate about sustainability, we want you to not only own that, but initiate it and to be able to initiate those goals you're probably going to have to do a little bit of research and you may not like everything that's exactly written the way we have it. That's okay. This is a plan. It's a living document, it's not something that we are feeding to the community of Meridian as a textbook. It's a guideline and a plan. Coordinate with action groups and implementation committee to find funding sources. Server on the action group committee as representatives for the individual projects. Meeting schedule. Meet with the implementation team as needed. Implementation committee checklist, form implementation committee. Step one. Determine those action groups and then, set implementation goals. Schedule those meetings. Project checklist. Again, recruit champions, implementation, set implementation goals. Identify project specific milestones or target deadlines. Immediate, long-term, and ongoing. Important to keep all of those in mind. One of the -- one of the things that we are seeing -- that we are seeing here at this level for downtown Meridian is we are seeing some interest in downtown Meridian. We are seeing some projects potentially be proposed and so we want to be in a state where we can immediately react to potential opportunity without losing site of the long-term goal and what those ongoing benefits and effects ~'``~ may have. So, important to keep in mind. Implementation tools. Other governmental entities. Federal and state grants. New private development. Reuse and maintenance of existing private development. Tax increment financing. Donors. Foundations. Specific special service from local improvement districts, city general fund, and capital improvement fund districts, city enterprise funds, and user fees. These are -- these are some of the things that have been identified to make this a reality. All right. That was a lot of Shaun talking. So, if you have any specific questions Iwould -- I would love to take them now or comments from those of you that have seen this for the first time. Charlie. Councilman Rountree. Rountree: Shaun, you went through a lot of work and the vision and goals and direct to a project specificity as the -- as the outcome of your study. Are those projects related back to the various visions in there for areas -- the various goals so people can understand what this project will result in? In other words, how will one of those projects facilitate small local mixed sustainable fiscally viable social retail? People are going to want to know -- if you are going to get champions of those projects, the champions of the projects need to understand how that effort is going to accomplish those goals. Wardle: So, on the screen I have put -- I mentioned we were going to discuss the individual projects in general. What we have -- again, 32 projects were identified. Those were broken up into four of the individual areas and so public art and ~'"'` beautification is the first one within that live-ability area. It generally identifies the objectives, which is celebrate Meridian's history and historic infrastructure and -- here Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 15 of 19 r-~, we go. Celebrate Meridian's history and infrastructure into new development and beautification programs. The stakeholders and the implementation and action items -- the one thing that I think I'm hearing from you that could potentially be missing is what I would call the domino effect, if you're a project champion and if you're to take on this public art and beautification, there needs to be a connection to the rest of the plan, and not just the rest of the plan, but the success of the overall, that live-ability area. Is that what I'm hearing? Rountree: -- to work together. Wardle: And so I think that -- I think that's one of the components that -- that we need to add to that overall oversight committee that's proposed, is if you have each of these four areas working on these identified projects, how do they each relate to each other and how can you build upon their successes. Did that answer your question? O'Brien: Tom O'Brien, P&Z Commissioner. Is there a demographic analysis done of the participants who provided input towards this process? And the reason I'm going with this is if there was a group of people that were say -- let's say middle aged, making decisions on projects that might affect the older generation -- the older generation, how do you discern the right project that's going to maximize the utilization of the different groups of people? ~'`` Wardle: Excellent question, Commissioner O'Brien. The -- there was not a demographic analysis done on the stakeholder committee. I can tell you that we sought out all types of people and we had all types of interaction from youth members in their 20s, to retired folks that had careers in big business, and so there was -- there was quite a dichotomy of people and not every -- not all the people showed up at the same time. I think one of your questions is how do you judge the viability of the projects based on the community of Meridian as a whole and so what I have got on the screen is a demographic and economics -- economic analysis, which was prepared by Bonneville Research. Again, this is on our website. What they did is they -- they took the types of ideas and things that the stakeholder groups were -- were thinking of, the type of businesses that would be appropriate, and what they did is they went to our actual demographics; they have charted that to a population of 145,000 people in your neighborhood shopping market area. Again, this is a five minute drive time, so there are some -- some key components in here, but if you look in the study, one of the things that we have asked Bonneville research to do is tell us what the community of Meridian from a demographic standpoint can bear and so they found -- if you look through the study that there are -- there are a surplus of some kinds of businesses and there is a shortage of others and they suggested that we focus our efforts on those areas where there is a shortage of service or product for -- for the community of Meridian and that those would be appropriate to start with for your retail and restaurant growth. O'Brien: Thank you. De Weerd: Charlie. Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 16 of 19 Rountree: Madam Mayor. Shaun, I just wanted to make a couple comments. One, I'm really pleased that we don't just have a plan, but you have an implementation process and it's long overdue and I think that should be a requirement of any future study that's ever undertaken. The second is I always enjoy presentations when I learn new words and terminologize is right up there with some of them that I haven't heard before and that I like. So, good for you. Wardle: You might see that in your new Webster edition. Rountree: Well, it's right in there with strategery. Wardle: That's all I had for my -- my formal presentation today. Again, I -- Rountree: I guess I don't want to dominate, but talk about the process from here. What's the next step with MDC, where does this -- when and where is the city's involvement. I have already had some information and dialogue about the Comprehensive Plan update and how this might meld with that, between the two. Wardle: Okay. De Weerd: Shaun, if you will hold on that for just a minute. I do know that our staff did ~~` review the documents, have been participating in the process -- Anna, before Shaun goes into that next step, do you want to make any comments on any impressions or even what the city can lend to this effort as well? Canning: Certainly, Madam Mayor. To start with, the Planning Department has -- was just thrilled that we are getting a vision for -- particularly the downtown core and the Washington Main area. We have struggled with how to use the Old Town Comp Plan designation and zoning districts appropriately for the needs of MDC and the -- the people that have businesses there and for the city as well. So, it's just -- as a starting point, just having that vision articulated clearly is really going to benefit. Our letters that we wrote to the consultant regarding the division document and some of the implementation documents, were really geared at implementation. So, I think Shaun probably would have gotten there with Charlie's question, but we will jump in, too, and that -- that's really what we are interested in. What can we do as far as zoning districts, what can we do as far as Comp Plan, you know, what kind of development standards do we provide for these areas and having that vision will really help us move forward to getting the appropriate standards for folks. Wardle: So, one of the areas that -- that Planning and Zoning, I, the consultant team, and everyone have really -- as Anna talks about -- been working on is how do you translate this plan into a smoother process for someone that wishes to build a new project, because that's what really we are talking about is if we are going to incentivize ~"'~ people and invite them to come downtown, how do we make sure that the vision matches up with the zoning documents? And one of the things that -- that I think that -- Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 17 of 19 ~`` certainly I have struggled with since my time as the administrator and I know that Anna's kind of inherited it, is that Old Town district, that Old Town zone. So, while there is some good pieces and parts to that, can we modernize it, can we make it part of this plan, can we take elements out of that that, again, help people know what type of development is not only a priority, but preferred. And so I think that's one of the areas that's -- that needs some work. I think we have got probably a little ways to go before we can incorporate this document into a comprehensive plan amendment, but I think that that is probably a proper thing to do, to take at least those components which are part of the zoning and the vision and incorporate those into the city's master document. And so there is some work there. In terms of a process, to answer your question about timelines, this plan itself goes before the Meridian Development Corporation board of commissioners on April 14th, which is next Wednesday morning, and we won't be making this -- this full presentation, they have seen it a couple times, but we will be asking for final comments. The consultant team is wrapping this up. We will have a final document that will be implemented by the Develop Corporation. We expect them to adopt it as part of their planning process, but more important than adopting the document itself, we feel that the -- or at least I have heard from the Commissioners that let's get it done, let's get it wrapped up, and let's get moving on those individual components of the implementation plan. We need strategic planning. We need to focus our efforts on those and one of the other areas that the consultant team took a look at and we are refining is what are the low hanging fruit. The MDC commission will see a presentation on -- on the opinion from the outside consultant which projects could r be undertaken quickly and have the maximum results. And so I believe they put together five or six of those that MDC will consider on Wednesday and, then, kind of make that the tip of the spear of the process. De Weerd: So, I guess I would also challenge each of the Commissions to kind of look at this in what -- your involvement and certainly encourage your feedback, if you have any comments or concerns or questions that MDC should be considering as they look to adopt it to make it a document that we can all get behind the vision, because it will be all up to us to make sure it's implemented. So, it's not just one of those plans that end up on a shelf, as the MDC board has wanted to avoid. We want to make sure that there is complete buy in by those that will be helping to do the heavy lifting to implement it and as projects come in front of the city to the Planning and Zoning Commission, to the City Council, that we are prepared to back up this plan and to streamline this process, so that people embrace the vision, embrace the processes and see that we are serious to implementing and seeing activity happen in our downtown. I think we can all agree that it's been long overdue. The health and the vitality of your community is -- is demonstrated in your core and we want to see some energy in our core as well. So, any other questions, comments? Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 18 of 19 ~~ Zaremba: I would just comment that I -- I made it to one of the stakeholder meetings and it was a very enthusiastic and productive meeting I thought and I wanted to thank everybody that participated not only in the meeting that I saw, but all the other meetings that I didn't see. I'm very pleased to see where we are in the outcome at this stage of it. I would also comment I think to reemphasize the value of getting this into the Comprehensive Plan, that not only do we use that as a guideline at all of our commissions and councils and stuff, but other agencies, such as Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho, and ACHD, VRT, Valley Regional Transit, all look to our Comprehensive Plan to say, okay, what has this community agreed on, what is it that we want to do. So, getting that coordinated is a very important aspect to make sure that it is in there, because other people use it besides us, but I wanted to thank everybody that participated. Thought it was great. De Weerd: Thank you. Pipal: Julie Pipal, MDC. I want to also say that we -- our intention when you look at how we want to roll this thing out, our intention isn't to wait for the champion to fall into our lap. MDC is committed to take the leadership roll on each of these elements until we -- we connect the right community members with those -- with those elements. De Weerd: That was a recruiting speech if I ever heard one. '~` Wardle: If I might make one final challenge just to follow up on some of the Mayor's comments. There are some elements of this plan for each of the city commissions represented here today and represented throughout the city. For example, the parks commission, you have got a pathways master plan and we have got a need for pathways. You got a community interest in open space, green space, but also urban gardens. Planning and Zoning, we just talked about the need to revitalize some of those -- those plans. The arts commission. The community has been very out spoken; give us public art and entertainment. Show us how to make that happen. Traffic safety. We have talked about some of the parking elements and I brought one up, how do you get good angled parking. And so while there may be some obvious connections from this plan to your specific city charge, I'd like you to take the opportunity to review the rest of the plan and see if there is something that you may be additionally passionate about and something that you can apply your time and effort to, because that's what we really need. We really need help from those people that feel strongly and want to guide and lead the future of Meridian and so thank you for your time today, but take a look at the rest of the plan to see if there is something else that you might be interested in. De Weerd: Thank you. Any other comments? Questions? Just for the record, I would note that Mary Jensen with our Meridian Arts Commission and Dr. Tom Hanna with HPC had joined us during the presentation. So, thank you all for being here. We look forward to your comments and/or, then, your engagement, because it certainly will take us all growing together to make sure that this happens and thank you, Shaun, for your ~'~"` presentation. Very well put together and articulated. Thank you MDC board for being Meridian City Council - P&Z Joint Meeting April 6, 2010 Page 19 of 19 here. Planning and Zoning Commission. All of our other commissioners and members of the public. I would entertain a motion to adjourn this special meeting. Zaremba: So moved. Hoaglun: Second. De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 6:47 P.M. (AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) DAVID ZARE ,ACTING MAYOR ~_l oZ ~ l 02~/ C7 DATE APP O D .,,~'~ pF Iu~ER/p~~''%, ~~tpORq TF ti '% ..~ ~ O - HO AN, CIT1~ CL RKgj'i,AL = ~ ~~~ O \ ~:~ '9~ ~~T 1S'~ • `Z' ``: /~''~ ~ C~uNTY ~ \°P~'\\\ ~ ATTEST: