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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2003 11-18 PreMeridian City Pre-Council Meeting November 18, 2003 The Pre-Council Meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, November 18, 2003, by City Council President Tammy de Weerd. Members Present: Tammy de Weerd, Cherie McCandless, Bill Nary, and Keith Bird. Members Absent: Mayor Robert Corrie. Others Present: Bill Nichols, Gary Smith, Bill Musser, Anna Powell, Steve Siddoway, Kenny Bowers, and Will Berg. Item 1. Roll-call Attendance: X Tammy de Weerd X Bill Nary X Cherie McCandless X Keith Bird O Mayor Robert Corrie De Weerd: I will go ahead and open the – are we ready? I will go ahead, open the Pre-Council Meeting Agenda for Tuesday, November 18th , and welcome those of you that have joined us. I’ll ask the City Clerk to call roll. Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda: De Weerd: Item Number 2 adoption of the agenda. Do I have a motion? Bird: Madam President. De Weerd: Thank you. Mr. Bird. Bird: I move that we adopt the agenda as published. Nary: Second. De Weerd: Okay it’s been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye. All ayes motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES De Weerd: Item 3 presentation of the downtown revitalization market study. Mr. Siddoway. Item 3. Presentation of the Downtown Revitalization Market Strategy by the Hudson Company: Siddoway: Thank you Madam President and Members of the Council. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting November 18, 2003 Page 2 of 11 De Weerd: I should have said the Tom and Jerry show. Siddoway: We are here to report back to the Council on progress made since we were here last month. As you will recall when the Hudson Company was in town last month we were conducting a long series of interviews with local business owners, local property owners and gathering feedback and ideas and issues from them. Since that time, the Hudson Company has been synthesizing that information as well as doing a lot of market research. Looking regionally looking locally and looking at demographics, looking at market nitches and they’re here to share their preliminary observations on that as well. I have handed out a couple of items. The first is the flyer that was put together for tonight’s open house. This does begin at 7:00 P.M. across the street at the Nazarene Church. We will be holding a public open house and workshop on these issues tonight. We have had excellent coverage in the paper as I also handed out from the Statesman as well as the Valley Times. In last Tuesday’s addition on the second page, I’ve included the article that was in that paper for you as well. You have a copy of the full presentation as will be given to the public at the open house tonight. We have pulled out from this a – we have selected a hand full of what we feel are some of the most important in key slides that will give you the main points of what we intend to speak about at the public open house tonight. Tom Hudson from the Hudson Company will be presenting that to you. We have about 20 slides to get through in about – hopefully in about 15 minutes so what we would like to do is just give Tom that time to run through the slides, get through the presentation so that we can make sure you get all of the points we are trying to make. Then we will have time on the back end for any questions and answers. We can go back to any slides you want to discuss. With that, I would like to turn some time over to Tom Hudson. De Weerd: So that was your nice way of putting don’t interrupt right? Siddoway: Thank you. Hudson: Madam President Members of the Council it’s great to be back. We’re excited to be here and we have a lot of very interesting news. We appreciate your time and we understand you have a number of things to get on with this evening. To agree I feel like I need to apologize for a brief briefing but I assure you that we’re ready to take your questions now or if you would like to speak with us after tonight leave us a message and we will get back to you. We want to make sure that all of this information is something that you’re comfortable with, you’re clear where we’re headed with it, and if you have any guidance or concerns, we want to respond to that as well. De Weerd: Well I think it would be helpful – oh, I see some of you have the slideshow. I don’t. No, I don’t have it. Okay. Thanks. Just so, we can jot notes on it. Hudson: Does everyone have one now? De Weerd: It’s just me. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting November 18, 2003 Page 3 of 11 Hudson: We’re about one third of the way through our work on the marketing analysis and strategy for downtown. Tonight we’re here to share our preliminary observations and findings. I think you will see quite a range of issues addressed and a number of interesting conclusions. We are not at the stage where we’re ready to propose future strategies or a collective vision but I think you will see that there are a number of pieces of information that lean us in certain directions and I think that’s exciting. We’re definitely on track a little bit of schedule with our research and I must say that we’ve had a tremendous amount of support from city staff here from officials at almost every level of government in the Treasure Valley folks that we went to asking for information and assistance and really received it. You’ve got a lot of allies in the Treasure Valley. The first thing that I would like to share with is I’m sure you’re quite interested to see this is a summary of what we heard back from the interviews. There were three levels of information that I wanted to share tonight. The first was citywide priorities, second is views about markets and the third is about downtown priorities. On citywide priorities it’s a very consistent theme practically every person that was ever interviewed talked about the need to overcome traffic congestion. You may recall last time we were together we talked in terms of traffic management. I think that’s an end. There were lots of different means that were discussed by people. There were people in pro couplet. There were people who were pro destination versus that is destination-oriented traffic versus getting through traffic around and so on. We’re not here to promote one way or the other tonight but we do have some observations about traffic in the context of downtown revitalization and I’ll get to that in a few minutes. Focusing now again on the – what people were talking about. That particular item was followed very closely by a lot of comments from people from many walks of life. People who have lived here for a long time and people that were new to the community were very interested in restoring a heart or a central place for the community. That I think was linked to that general comment of we need a stronger sense of community. I want to emphasize that a lot of people that we spoke to who are from here, grew up here or what have you still have a very strong sense of community. That was not the issue it was more about many of the people who have moved here who may work some place else or shop some place else and are looking for ways to be more strongly connected to the community. There were a number of comments about growth management in terms of again the – maintaining or looking toward a unique look and feel of the community and one that is not just recognizable but also comfortable. As you look at some of our transportation figures on places like Eagle Road, you will see why people would feel that way. The Better Public Private Partnership and Vision – I didn’t hear many people say we have a bad public/private partnership. A lot of people, in terms of the down town said things like the conditional use permit process right now is, while it’s very understandable, does make it difficult for people to predict what is appropriate for future development. I think that was most of the context. Close public/private partnership in terms of implementing a vision for the community, especially the downtown was the other side – or the primary remainder of the source of that comment. In terms of market – pardon me, I am going to skip that because it comes up in a number of other ways. Downtown priorities, we talked about a heart social, cultural, even civic hub of the community. Many people Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting November 18, 2003 Page 4 of 11 were interested to see the City Hall remain in the downtown. This would be a great place to be; came up quite often. Not just from nine to five, but in the evenings as well. A place where the community can come together and including residential uses where folks can shop after five o’clock and it still feels like it’s their town. A number of people talked about – well, if I was to say what kind of a priority we should have and I wanted to give you a look or a feel of it, how about Hyde Park on a larger scale? It was remarkable to us how often Hyde Park came up as a very livable and visiting comfortable kind of place. This idea of a clear vision for the future I think that’s one that is clear to the private sector and clear to the community and one that is broadly adopted, endorsed and supported in everything from the regulatory environment to various tools that are available for community development. I think the other one that I would emphasize on this particular slide is the Multi Generation Destination Center. You will see in a couple of moments that one of the most remarkable things in your demographic here is that you have the highest density of families of any community in Treasure Valley, about fifty percent of your households as well as very young families as a whole. I think that, as important as that is, many folks still talked about -- is not just about one age group, it’s about all age groups and demographics being able to have a place that they collectively call their own. Just touching on a couple of points, you have a substantial number of people in this area. You see from 40,000 in the immediate Meridian community to about 330,000 in a 12-½ mile radius. That is very important to note. It’s also and perhaps even more important to note that not all those people are your primary markets. The question is who do we go after first and where do we focus limited resources? Go ahead. One of the most remarkable things about Meridian is your traffic. I am not telling you anything that you don’t know of course. Those of us who live elsewhere often hear about your statistics and they truly are remarkable. If you look at the lower right hand corner of this slide you see 51,600. That’s the number of vehicles on an average weekday going northbound at that one intersection. You probably know that is the worst intersection in the state and it really doesn’t have significant competition at that level. If you about double that number to get to two-way traffic, imagine over 103,000 vehicles per day. If you divide that by the number of hours and seconds in a day, it still comes up to be a whopping big number. Now, if you just move to the center lower screen 43,000 people moving north from the freeway, there will be a number of those who stay in that area for work or what have you, business shopping and so on. Moving north of Franklin, if you divide Meridian and main it’s still 27,700 people moving to heart of the community. That’s an extraordinary number of people. It is something like a – if eight percent of the vehicles were trucks, that’s something like a truck every 25 seconds throughout the day. So, that’s a lot of vehicles and think of your sense of what is a great destination place to be and we will get into that in a moment too. That’s a lot of folks. Notice a smaller number just above the 17,700 that’s on Idaho going eastbound on an average day, 1,500 people. So, that’s more or less your internal circulation numbers, so about 3,000 vehicles a day for the downtown as a destination. The rest are truly through traffic. The vast majority of those are going to be parties who have no inclination whatever to be in the downtown. Go ahead. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting November 18, 2003 Page 5 of 11 Hudson: I think it’s very important to comment on the concept of through versus to traffic. The great downtowns of the world are downtowns that are great destinations and as destinations I mean where people get out of their cars and they walk, they are pedestrians. One of the Litmus tests done of a downtown is how positive it is for pedestrians who are walking around. When you have such high levels, 28,000 going one direction – that’s 56,000 vehicles a day through the downtown heart, how much of a pedestrian environment can you have? How positive can it be? Is it pedestrians over drivers? You may recall I mentioned how long it takes for a pedestrian like me to push that button on Main and wait and wait and wait and what is the message that is going on there? This is not a pedestrian place. This is a place for automobiles and larger vehicles. So, what I see is people starting to take chances. As soon as they think there is a place to dodge they will try – those that can. That’s not healthy. So, through traffic can degrade the downtown experience and I can say from my many, many years in this business, more is not equal to better. I know that for some people it would be – seems to be common sense that if you just have more vehicles going in front of a store, that’s better. But, what is the nature of the business? And if the nature of the business is one that supposedly trying to attract people who are doing multi purpose shopping and want to linger and maybe go to lunch while they are also going to do business. All of that extra traffic isn’t making it a better place. There is everything from the splash to the noise to the waiting to the diesel fumes, all those kind of things that degrade the experience of going to a central place. We believe as one of our roles is to act as champions for that central place. So we are being frank about this particular, what we perceive to be a need. So we’d like to share the failure of the regional transportation network does not justify sacrificing the heart of your community to through traffic. We thought, we need to say it in a nutshell. Where do we stand on the issue of through and to traffic. That’s our position at this time. We stand to take your correction on that of course, but I think you understand where we are coming from that we are trying to do everything that we can to move downtown forward as a central place. One of the things that you won’t see is all of our charts and graphs and so on. We have limited the numbers of those for the purpose of saving time. I just wanted to show you among other charts this is one that shows something truly remarkable about your community and that is how young it is. If you look at the deep red columns there, these are all your communities compared to each other in the Treasure Valley, as well as Ada County and you have got the highest population of young people and the highest population of people in the 25 to 44 age group. Now, there are lots of other kinds of insights like this that we have got for you in your hand out and in our ultimate report, but go ahead to the next slide. What it comes down to is this is kind of a summary now. You’re significantly young as a population. While certainly you have a variety of people here the fact that you are 30 years old, have the highest percentage of children in homes – that is 33.7 percent. You have got the largest households, nearly three per household and highest percentage of families – that’s 50 percent verses 38 percent in the County. It’s truly a remarkable set of numbers. You have got the second highest household income. Eagle is the highest. Second lowest households in poverty and the lowest housing vacancy rate. One of the things that I also found very interesting was the highest owner Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting November 18, 2003 Page 6 of 11 occupied households at 84 percent. While, I am not going to show you the slide, I think it’s important for you to know that if you compare your local average income to the average cost of a house, you have the highest ratio in Meridian of any community in the Treasure Valley. Now, one of the implications is that it is very likely that that would indicate a much higher disposable income, in comparison to others because you are paying less of your income for your house, which is typically the largest cost of living. Okay. Next. This is one of a number of tables that we put together to indicate how important your local market is. You are certainly not the largest – second largest community, but you are the second largest community in terms of consumer buying power. You note that your ahead of Nampa, substantially a large community, but because of your income level you have got a lot of income here that collectively these other communities fall behind. If you compare down to Eagle that’s about – what 342 million dollars more than Eagle in terms of consumer buying power. That is, you don’t have to go far away to find markets. The question is what are great primary markets? It’s your own people. We do have another slide – go ahead – that I wish I could have had time to show you, but fundamentally what it shows us is that while you’ve got 21 percent of the Boise population you only have 17 percent of the retail trade potential. So, to a degree it says you are under retailed and that is very consistent with what’s going on with the other numbers. That is, you are a tremendous market and it seems that a lot of your consumers are going elsewhere to buy. So, that’s an opportunity. A substantial opportunity. These are some of the traits – I’ll just ask you to take a look at down the list, the ones that I have emphasized there in yellow are the ones that I think are very important to take away with you. We looked also at the – not just the demographics, but the behavior of consumers through a variety of information that is available out there and found that you are remarkably different here in your community from other cities in the Treasure Valley. For example, the top three consumer behavior groups, they are called psycho graphic groups in your community represent 78 percent of the population. The only other town with anything close to that of those three particular groups is Eagle with about 50 percent. Boise, Nampa and Caldwell are about zero. So, the primary people who live here are not well represented in the other communities. You are different. I think you always knew that. I have talked to a lot of people who said you know we are just not the typical Boisean or the typical Nampan. That’s right. It’s absolutely born out in the research that’s out there. So, it would also imply that in terms of service to those people, you have a great opportunity to respond to their unique nature. Go ahead. I am sorry this is very wordy, but if you saw a really slick presentation each one of those boxes fades in and out as we talk about them all, but we just had to throw them up in the interest of time. To give you a sense of some of the central strengths of the communities around you, as well as what’s going on with you – go to the next one please – so we are taking a look at that and in looking at it we started to see a pattern here of Meridian’s own strengths. Now some of these are clearer and some of them are growing. Retail along Eagle Road, Medical Office over to Meridian and then an education component that is actually broader than the circle board – we are just trying to say that you are starting to anchor your community with certain areas of specialization that can be tapped and grown. Now, the one in the middle, industrial, that’s an (inaudible) strength -- go ahead – We think that’s probably Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting November 18, 2003 Page 7 of 11 not going to last a lot longer given the kind of growth that’s going on here, the kind of densities that are here with more and more people coming into your center it’s going to be more in conflict with industrial uses. We anticipate that there will be an evolution there that will move toward mixed use – mixed use being more residential, office place, retail, social and cultural kinds of activities that make it a really a dynamic core. One of the things that is most exciting to me about that is that you have this rail corridor with an extraordinarily wide right of way. It has the opportunity to provide you with some of that infield, but still growth potential. Go ahead. Now one of the things that we always look at is what are your niches and who is your competition in looking at downtowns? Well, downtown as a whole isn’t competing. It doesn’t have what you would say a logical market place collective strength that’s identifiable. Individual businesses, George’s, for example, the cycle shop do very well within the region, but outdoor recreation is not a niche for all of downtown. Do you see where I am going with that? So, as a whole you really don’t – you don’t have competition because you are not a competitor collectively. Now that can change rapidly as you identify a vision and a market strategy and start to build and we anticipate the very insightful kinds of numbers and other information that we are collecting is a powerful argument for some specific niches. I don’t think you are going to have a lot of trouble given your very solid demographics, your buying power, etc., consumers and so on to begin to build a highly focused kind of a downtown that’s reflective of both community values and economic realities. That’s a direction that we are pushing. You do have strengths and I think they are important ones. City Hall representing the civic nature of place. Your Post Office is still in your downtown and it tends to anchor that kind of northern end of the walk-able part of the downtown. Food and beverages here, a lot of people come from around the region to some of your restaurants. That’s an important point of the social side of community. That fire is an acronym for finance, insurance and real estate. The post office I mentioned, certainly your schools, churches, and the rail line I have talked about and access is definitely a strength. But, you know strengths – you often hear about the double-edged sword. If it’s highly accessible and you have got a regional transportation system that’s not working well, that access can become a weakness. Go ahead. So downtown opportunities that we have seen include this list. We have looked at it a number of different ways, but what I mean by social retailing is the kind of retailing that brings people together where they can congregate, they can linger, they can have a meal or do culture in the arts or experience culture in the arts in any number of ways, not just performing but to see if – heritage oriented activities would be included there. Here is an interesting question: Where is it that all the people of Meridian go to be Meridian people? Where do we collect? Where are we Meridianites? Is that what you call yourselves? We are wocsomonians in Moscow. That is Moscow spelled backwards. It goes back a century. I don’t know if I should apologize for that, but that’s who we are. Anyway, the kinds of opportunities that are out there, I think, are ones that aren’t marginal opportunities, they are substantial ones. With people – who – very large in growing population that’s well to do, has disposable income, but according to our psycho graphic kinds of information they don’t necessarily travel nationally or internationally. They tend to travel more recently, there is a lot more stay at home orientation. What do they do? What can they do at home? Well, that’s Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting November 18, 2003 Page 8 of 11 again, opportunity. I won’t go through the entire list, but we believe that this is very exciting stuff. Go ahead. Some of the things that have come up both in terms of the interviews and also our own observations include an essentially oriented city hall that may tap into a future refinement of the rail line if it becomes a transit corridor. It may be your second front door and you might contemplate that. The Creamery is an icon of your heritage and it’s a visual highly identifiable place that’s somewhat on the decline, but what if it was – (laughter) Bird: -- sorry. Hudson: -- okay, that was a diplomatic thing, come on, I get some points for that I am sure. It’s the kind of place that I have been to in other communities and seen get redeveloped in fascinating, very exciting ways. There are a few places that I will see in a community – I would love to be a part of that one. I would love to be a part of an adaptive, reuse of the Creamery building, to sustain the heritage and tap its eccentric architecture. Now it’s eccentric for things other than diary, right? I mean, it was a creamery, but I have seen wonderful places all over the country. I am sure you can think of them. There is a torpedo factory, for example, in Virginia. A torpedo factory that’s a phenomenal arts center and the scale is extraordinary. Just type in torpedo factory on the Internet. That’s all you got to do and you will find it. Gate ways and signage, oh pardon me – the Farmer’s and Merchant Bank and block I think it’s a wonderful opportunity. What a great partner in your community, as I am sure you have heard they are working hard to be a future great partner as well. That is something that’s coming up soon. Gateways and signage. Let’s make sure we know that we are in and out and how to get around and to the parking places and when have you arrived and so on – I talked to you a bit about that last time. Zamzows Mill is another remarkable icon. What’s it’s future? Could it hold a place. I know a super regional mall, the Safeco subsidiary Win mar, not too long ago bought up some buildings over in the Seattle area that were old grain silos and what not for the purpose of turning them into a farmer’s market that was going to be aligned with and part of a super regional mall. They wanted community there too. So, when you have places like this and they are unusual and they are part of your heritage they also can speak to your future in remarkable ways. Traffic circulation – There may be things that can be done there in the near future and I think that everyone we have spoken to has hope that that will be something that will be addressed soon. Central open space for events – a lot of people talked about being able to come to the downtown core, not just the inside places, but outside. Go ahead. These are some of our conclusions. Your immediate past has been a past of decline, but you have a truly a public/private partnership that has got wonderful strengths that’s moving forward with visioning a viable future and I think it is truly not restricted by where you have been recently and in fact, you may be inspired by what you have been in a more distant past, in terms of strong sense of community. We believe your own community is just extraordinarily well suited to be your primary market. There are very few places that have such a great market built in, not even next door, but right here. Family and youth markets I think are important moderate price point. This is not necessarily the Beverly Hills kind of downtown future, but certainly a moderate price can be sustained with these kinds of demographics. I think we have spoken about most Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting November 18, 2003 Page 9 of 11 of these. This small scale I will touch on in the sense that many of your properties in the downtown are relatively small lots and it gets fairly difficult to pull those together into larger chunks to do something big. I don’t think that’s necessarily a disadvantage. Many of the people that we talk to talked about scale as something they wanted to be able to recognize in the future. At the same time, you do have the potential for higher density along the rail line should that ever become available to the community. I know that there is some discussion about that. So, then linking business residential and government to a transit line and service in the future, I think, are important. Very quickly, it seems to me that as with other places around the greater Boise area one thing you might think about is if we did nothing – go ahead-- what might happen to Meridian? One great architect said to me if there is no center can there really be an edge? I think that is a very remarkable question. Or, alternatively, can you have a distinct community that’s with a truly strong center that’s identifiable and sustainable over the long term? I think that’s the cross roads where you are today. If – and I am not implying in any way that the community is doing nothing, in fact, on the contrary you are doing a lot in both in the public and private sectors. But, if you weren’t focusing on a guiding development in the future, what would be the future? I think these two images as alternatives are thought provoking. Go ahead. Finally, next steps we are taking this information, pulling it together, focusing more and more on target markets, putting together a strategy and with that strategy you will be hearing from us about a draft strategy and giving us your guidance on that. We will move into, once it’s finalized along with a vision, an action plan and that acronym at the bottom is who, what when, where, how, why. We don’t believe that any action plan can be an action plan without those things. So, we will be here with that kind of information in hand very specifically talking about how to accomplish the mission. I would be very happy to take your questions or comments. De Weerd: Council, any questions? Bird: I don’t. I just appreciate the study that they have done so far and the information they have brought back. Nary: Sounds like you are on the track that we have been talking about. I think it’s great. Hudson: Thank you. De Weerd: I think you did a great market study that anyone can use in trying to attract certain industries. It reconfirmed that I think the Creamery is a great spot for a spaghetti factory. I think it’s marketable now. Nary: Now that we realize it’s only in transition. De Weerd: So, thank you very much. I do look forward to finding out tomorrow morning what the comments you get tonight at the workshop are. That will be exciting to find out. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting November 18, 2003 Page 10 of 11 Siddoway: Madam President. I just wanted to ask if I may to make sure that the Council is comfortable with the statement that we made on our view of traffic in downtown in the to verses through and that we do see it as destination as the high priority there. Is that agreeable? De Weerd: I think that it was noticeably no one commenting on that was (inaudible) well, you should have been here. You’ll have to attend the workshop now Jake. I think the point was very well taken. You built on what you told us when you were here the first time and you have actually strengthened what the original thought was and we need to decide if it’s to or through. Through your market analysis, through your discussions with the different folks that we asked you to talk to that’s a pretty clear statement. I guess the next steps are going – I will look forward to seeing what the traffic management solutions are and how we are going to utilize – probably Meridian Road is the only north south link as to managing some of that. Are there any other comments? Bird: I don’t. Nary: Nope. McCandless: No. De Weerd: Well, great. Hudson: Thank you very much for your time. De Weerd: This is really exciting. I think you have given us a very positive step forward and I look forward to the rest of the story. Hudson: It will be coming soon, Madam President. Thank you all very much. Item 4. Executive Session per Idaho Code 67-2345 (1) (c) and (f): De Weerd: What I look forward as to being part of the rest of the story. Okay, Item Number 4 is Executive Session per Idaho Code 67-2345 (1)(c) and (f). I would entertain a motion. Bird: So moved. Nary: Second. De Weerd: Okay, it’s been moved and seconded to adjourn into Executive Session per Idaho Code 67-2345 (1)(c) and (f). Mr. Clerk will you call role. Roll call: Bird, aye; McCandless, aye; Nary, aye; De Weerd, aye. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES De Weerd: Thank you. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting November 18, 2003 Page 11 of 11 (Enter into Executive Session) (Come back from Executive Session) De Weerd: Okay, it’s been moved and seconded to come out of executive session no decisions were made, for the record. All those in favor say aye. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES De Weerd: I would entertain a motion to adjourn the Pre-Council Meeting. Bird: So moved. McCandless: Second. De Weerd: Okay, it’s been moved and seconded to adjourn the Pre-Council meeting of November 18, 2003. It is 6:55 p.m. All those in favor say aye. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES MEETING ADJOURNED AT 6:55 P.M. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: ______________________________________ _______/______/______ ROBERT D. CORRIE, MAYOR DATE ATTESTED: ________________________________ WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CITY CLERK