Alright. We will call the 06/17/2025 beta meeting to order here. Can I get a motion? Or I should say, are there any changes or additions to the agenda? I don't have any changes, but I do have a project update that, we will have. There is one on there. Oh, I'm sorry. I missed it. Yes. There you got it on there. No. I have nothing. Okay. Motion to approve. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Perfect. The agenda passes. Alright.
And then any corrections or changes to the minutes from last time? Okay. Second minute. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Perfect. Motion passes. Alright. Communications reports, petitions, council minutes. Any questions on that in anybody or any comments, Al, that we need to be aware of from those meetings? Nothing of significance at this point. The p and z minutes, I think you'll see that we have some, or we have a preliminary plat for a small housing subdivision that's moving forward.
So, we're we're getting a few more lots. Not enough yet, but that would be the only thing I'd know that I have. Sure. Okay. Community newsletter. Another outstanding product. Yep. Nice job. Project update. For project update, we have been, working with, with Nate, and, we felt it was time to update the the board on kind of where we're at. So, I'll turn it over to Nate. Yeah. So I think in just candidly, the original size and scope of my plan was maybe a little too ambitious. And so I've scaled it back just a little bit to get the bank on
board. Okay. I met with a number of different investors and really again, I'm not naive obviously, return on investment's huge, but I was concerned that they were going to take over the too much ownership and that it would start pricing the objective out of this which is the community ability to bring kids in and bring families into an environment. So, I wanted to retain the ownership of the majority ownership of the building and that was always the challenge with the bigger plan. So, what I've done is I've scaled it back so it'll be a 15,000
square foot facility to start with. That'll include, and if you want to flip slides down to So, we'll have a couple, like, classrooms we can do with some school aged childcare. In there, it'll have an indoor playground, two basketball courts, two basketball shooting cages, and then an escape challenge will bring our business from Rochester here, at the end of its lease term next year. And then, again, the objective would be this would be Phase I and then when we open this and get a couple years in and actually show profit, then we can actually scale to a second phase which will be more of like
a field house, feel to it which, again, utilizing that large land footprint. We can my original objective was always I wanted to have some indoor field space, whether soccer, football, whatever field space, something indoor that we could do that way. Which was challenging for the first phase but hopefully I can scale to that here within a few years. So that My You know, I talked to the bank and my expectation is that the bank approval will come this week. So they, in fact they said that it's kind of a formality at this point.
They would have already approved except for Based on the appraisal that came back last week they were able to drop the, the required equity upfront so that I'll actually be able to retain more cash than what I was originally expecting. So that's obviously a benefit for just making sure that it gets off the ground as opposed to, you know, cash strapping myself early on. But, and then we'll be able to retain the majority ownership, within myself and my family so that we don't we aren't beholden to an ROI objective that someone else is putting on us.
And we can then create most of those classes and camps and things that aren't pricing out everybody in the community. Sure. Awesome. So I talked to the builder this morning. I think the goal will be to get to, civil engineering within the next week or two. Again, I was given the timeline that potentially by the end of the month we could close on the loan and then, again, pending some documents. But I think most of that's already actually done. So then hopefully we'll be able to get to civil engineering,
later this month or early next month. My understanding from the process and what the builder has given me is that the permitting process is probably the biggest variable at this point once that part's done. The hope would be, you know, August, early September to actually be able to move dirt and start actually, the process with the hope of opening some time next spring. Perfect. Are you going to be are you selling memberships? Like, can you tell me a little bit more about how income is coming in other than the concessions? Yeah. Think of it,
sort of like a YMCA type version where it's again, you're going to have your memberships, which what the membership will give you is mostly discounts on programs but also unlimited access to open gym space. So the big key is is making sure that we have a good booking platform that shows what is available, what the open gym times are, what that is, versus the stuff that's actually taken for, like, programming. So we'll do a lot of, youth sports leagues. So again, Byron doesn't have anything significant for a basketball presence before third grade.
They and again, even beyond third grade and beyond, there's no rec programs or things like that. So, the objective will be actually building a lot of that type of programming where there's rec leagues. So, if you aren't, you know, super committed to the travel concept and you don't want to go away eight out of or 10 weekends to travel and, you know, be super competitive, there's another option for you. And that's something that doesn't exist today. So, I've actually been in touch with, Nick, Poshas who's actually building a similar a little smaller footprint but he's working on a
similar thing in Cassin. And so we talked about some sort of a reciprocity thing where, you know, certain age groups can do maybe here because again, if you take the kids out of an age group and split it between the travel and the rec, there isn't that much left over. It makes it kind of small. But if you combine with CAST and we do some things like that, I think we'll be able to actually achieve decent sized groups and actually be able to offer some of that. I think beyond that, there's a number of different opportunities. We you know, with the seventh and eighth grade, this year having cuts,
and having kids being cut out of the program, I think there's a future need for having an option for them, beyond that. And again, our youth sports boards I know are all working on a process or a plan for what they're going to do with that. But, you know, the gym space actually ends up becoming one of the biggest keys. And so, the ability to solve some of those problems will be part of it as well. Okay. And then, yeah, beyond that would be hosting tournaments, hosting things like that. Like, I have an idea of, like, again hosting tournaments as sort of fundraisers so that we can,
bring in funds and then actually offer scholarships for the memberships. But even people without the means can still have a membership and still be able to get their kids into programs and actually be able to utilize the facility and not be priced out. I think. Well, good. Well, good luck. Couple questions. You've been to the 507 In The Castle? Is that have you been to that building yet? Yeah. I've been there. Is that a similar size? No. I think they're well, yeah. They're about 10 I wanna say it's like 10 or 11,000 square feet. So, yeah. I mean, it's ours is,
you know, 50% bigger and it has a bigger mezzanine. So the idea is actually the 15,000 square feet, if I could just say that in fact, actually, if you flip down a slide, or two slides, I guess. So that would be what That would be what the main, area looked like. Though this is a rough, like this isn't the I mean, obviously not the permitted plans because it cut out the restrooms on this version of it. But, again, there's obviously still some work that has to be done to finalize, this. But that's generally what the layout will look like. You still have a playground in the corner,
the two basketball courts, batting cages, and then, the classrooms over on the top there. And then, if you actually go down one slide, there's actually, mezzanine that'll actually go up and that's where Escape Challenge will exist. And so, it gotta be separated from everything else, in its, you know, so it can operate separately if necessary. It won't have a separate entrance, but it'll have a separate operating so we could lock that area if we want to and not have it open to the public if, if we don't have groups or people in there. On the floor layout, I see if you wanna back up the floor.
You got the two courts. But within the courts, what other, painting are you doing? Are you doing pickleball painting, volleyball painting? Is it multi use, obviously? Yep. Pickleball and volleyball will both be on there as well. Certainly an objective of offering camps and classes for for volleyball. My sister, is gonna take over that area. And then, pickleball certainly will be part of it. I think you can get, free pickleball courts per basketball court. So that would be the the objective there. I think that'll be well received by the pickleball people indoors for them. That's Mhmm. Awesome. Yep.
That's gonna be very good. I like the layout. Thank you. That's pretty cool. Awesome. Very impressive. Thank you. Well, good luck. Hopefully, getting all your approvals in place this week. Yeah. That's the that's the hope. It it went fast over the last couple weeks once certain things were done. Like I said, they they had to go back to underwriting this week just because they changed the down payment amount. Otherwise, they would have already approved it. So, so hopefully just a formality at this point. Wonderful. Thank you for the update. And like a lot of other things out there, naming rights is nice. I don't know if you've ventured into that yet or not. Into what? Naming rights to it or something?
Yeah. We'll definitely do. And I In the business plan, I definitely put kind of a ballpark, like a line item for, sponsorships. So the ability to do, you know, sponsor courts, sponsor things, talk to some people. Extra funding is all yeah. Right. Extra financing. I'll just work with Mike on that. He's an expert on that. Mike Donovan is, our resident expert on the basketball board for going out and getting sponsorships and being creative with that. So, he's, you know, again, learned a bunch just watching him go talk to businesses.
Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Good to know. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Awesome. I guess the only other thing is like the land, we had and Al and I exchanged a couple of emails on this. We still have to figure out the appraisal when they did that. They made an assumption based on what what was available that some of that land isn't usable. So that's the only, like, open ended. We just have to have a conversation between them and, and kind of looking at the geo, check that came back last year, I think it was. And just making sure that, again, what Everything fits. What's usable and what's not and and just trying to figure out the the x's
and o's on that. But, again, we'll work on that over the next little bit here. Perfect. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We have no unfinished business here. So new business, firewood and chamber request. Okay. I got one. Yep. Mm-mm. I think I yeah. I've got one. Yep. Well, I haven't looked at it. I'm sure I did. It came to my house. Right? Looked at it. I always look. Yeah. And a new deliverum for $2.50 a package. So they're environ looking for whoever this would be. I just wanted you to know about that.
They joined the chamber and they're sponsoring our next lunch. So That's interesting. As far as our request, you guys have given us $5,000 in the past for the guide. And unfortunately, costs have risen so much that our last bill came in yesterday. It's $9,020 to print this and mail it. So we're asking you for 9,000. And what I would like to do with that money is combine it with three from the chamber and get an executive director for a thousand dollars a month,
which is not too bad. It's about $20 an hour, ten hours a week, two hours a day, which having done this for a year is almost reasonable. K. So that's why I'm asking for more. We would have a steady source of income. So if we actually hire somebody And I don't think they would be an employee, they'd be a contract person like I am, so you don't worry about their taxes, their bennies, all that. Anyway, that's why I'm asking for more money. Those were my thoughts.
And this is a one time thing? Or are you looking for I was thinking you guys could constantly fund this. Well, it's something to think about. What we made this year on it was $11,000 and my goal would be, of course, to increase that so next year we make 12,000. Again, you guys fund the 9. So that there's a steady fund for that executive director. And I thought maybe I mean, he's already given 5 and gotten used to that, so, you know, inflation poses. That's why I went up.
So before you vote, a couple more things for you to know. I met Jake yesterday from State Farm. Delightful guy. Wonderful guy. The first thing he said was, Good neighbor days? Was that named for State Farm? I was just joking, but it is. Wonderful. Also, I've already received two, businesses reached out because they got this. They wanna join because of this and advertise in it. So I think it really is a a good thing. I think that's all I have. Any questions for you? So the,
the question I'm I'm left with is do we call it sponsorship for the guide, or do we call it what it is and we're helping fund a Position. A position. Call it the guide. Okay. And Who he is. Okay. Sorry. No. No. It's fine. I'm I'm just I I wanna be upfront with what we're doing and what is the money going for because there'll be people coming after those of us in this room, and and I think it makes it a lot easier if we're clear on what we're doing and why.
And that would be my concern with that, so I think, and I'm just thinking out loud here, if we call it sponsorship of the guide, right, it just is going to offset the guide costs if a position down the road ends up, you know, being eliminated. Let's say we get an executive director and that just doesn't pan out or can't find anybody or whatever. You're still then able to get the money towards the expenses of the guide, right, which then still keeps money in the coffers for the chamber, for other things. So if we say it's for a position and you now have no position,
then we're not Mhmm. Yeah. That's fine. Then there's no need to give the money. Right? Yeah. So, I mean, if we're giving a donation anyway every year and it's 5,000, I agree with you probably some costs have gone up. We hope to increase membership every year. So there's my thoughts. What's this person do? What's this person do? Me. Do what I do. Okay. That's very valuable. I agree with that. I do it now for a quarter of that because I'm retired, and it's something to do. But guess what? I would apply for this Mhmm.
If you fund it. Mhmm. Does that fall in line what we've talked about in the past, Al, helping out the city and stuff with Yeah. Well, I think the the goal right now or or our intent my intent of the chamber position and and when I first brought it to you was to create more substance, if you will, with the chamber. The chamber has to do something if they're going to be viable. They have to provide a service or a benefit, and and without a director, it's very hard to do that because it's all volunteer driven. Right? Right. So having that paid position is somebody that can go out and represent the businesses
and do those things that are gonna promote the chamber. So I think it fits. It's, you know, the chamber's done their work on defining what the need is more than what we have, so I can't argue what that need is. I just think it'd be very important to have somebody that's focused on their promotion, on on their their duties to promote the chamber and the business community. So, yes, I think it fits. Okay. Any other questions on it? I'm good with that. Okay. We have a motion. Yes. I'll make a motion to approve it as as it was written.
I kinda lost it here. I got on the wrong. $9,000 towards that? Yeah. Mhmm. Thank you. Oh, here we go. Now we got it. Yeah. Just to approve the $9,000, for the cost of the guide for the chamber. Second it. K. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Motion passes. Thank you very much. Thank you. You bet. Okay. Strategic planning. This is something I'm I'm wanting to plant a seed, and I'm gonna go through a list of some of the things that are going on right now and and why am I planting the strategic planning,
seed with you right now. There's a battery storage meeting coming up on the twenty fifth. The the folks that are putting the facility on the Northwest Side Of town will be here at City Hall, at 05:00 on the twenty fifth presenting to the public what they're doing. This is one of two. There's one in the Northwest Side Of town. There's one East of town. They really mirror each other as far as what they're doing in their initial phases. They're capturing, renewable energy from solar and wind, and holding it until there's a demand. And so, the substation is very important to them.
They can easily dump their power into the substation, sell it back to the to the system. They make money on that resale of power and the power companies can buy it lower at a lower rate than they can on the MISO, open market, which is where they'd have to go for peak power right now. So they're going to be in town, with their presentation to the community on the twenty fifth. At what time? 05:00, from five to eight. And they'll be downstairs here at City Hall. Is it a different company than the one that spoke to the chamber?
I don't know. Year That's the same one. Oh, okay. The same one. Okay. We had at the council meeting, at the last council meeting, we had the folks east of town presenting theirs. Okay. Again, the principle is the same. The size of these developments is pretty much identical. The the one on the Northwest side of town actually has a phase two that would double the size of it. There is a a conversation tomorrow at 03:30 at Woodlake Conference Center discussing a regional development organization. We are in an 11 county region that has no formal regional development organization,
which means that we don't have a mechanism or an avenue for federal funding to come through our region. We are one of two in the state, Saint Cloud and the Rochester region do not have this RDO. And there's been about a year, year and a half of study on what would this look like, what would they do, what are we missing type of thing, and that's tomorrow's discussion. Having worked in regions that have a development organization, we're missing a lot because they do a lot of the things that are volunteer
driven right now, like the southeast Minnesota League of Cities, southeast Minnesota Together, there's a regional housing consortium that is doing a lot to promote affordable housing in our region. All of these things are happening with volunteers, but they're all getting to the point where they might not wanna volunteer anymore. And, you know, who's going to pick that up? And and those are things that we would be missing if they went away. On top of the fact that we don't have a federal, we don't have an avenue for federal funding, to come into our region. So just something to think about if you have an interest.
We did sponsor the city of Byron is a sponsor on a grant through the University of Minnesota and Minnesota Extension to look at major utility users, water and electricity specifically, targeted at the concept of data centers. I mean, that's kind of where it started. Data centers generate a nice tax base. They also use a lot of water and a lot of electricity. And my concern was, at 800 to 800,000 to a million gallons of water a day, that puts a pretty big dent into my ability to pump here in the city
of Byron. So if I'm prudent and I say we don't wanna tap into the aquifer and take it away from our residents, but my friends in Stewartville think it's a great idea and move ahead with it. Does that affect Byron? And the answer is yes because we're in the same aquifer. So, you know, what are we doing and are we being environmentally prudent or are we just losing out? And, you know, we have to answer some of those questions and what are the alternatives. So this grant is designed to look at this holistically for the whole region.
And, Stuartville and Lewiston are partnering with us on the sponsorship. But, again, it's looking at that economic development piece. Housing, there's a market rate housing study that's it was supposed to be out in March and then April, May, and we're still waiting on it. The rumblings that I'm getting right now is Olmstead County is short 1,800 housing units annually for the next five years. If we're short 1,800 and doing simple math because I'm a simple person,
Byron should be generating in the neighborhood of a 100 rooftops a year, and we're not. But that's my target, that's my goal is how do I help promote that? But we need something in that neighbourhood. Aside from the city of Rochester over the last five to seven years, Byron will have as many building permits as everybody outside of Rochester combined. So if you look at it from that standpoint, how important are we to this whole growth index? If we don't find a way to start generating it, they're going to go someplace.
And and so, that's a missed opportunity for us if we can't find a way to do that. We do have a developer that's looking at a recreation opportunity in Byron or in the Byron region. We're excited about it. We've sent them a lot of information. I know, Kelly, you and I have had a chat about options and opportunities there, and it sounds, hopeful, promising. This individual has done this particular concept a couple of times in other states and is successful and he was excited about Byron because it matches the prototype that he has had success
with elsewhere. Being a bedroom community to a larger metropolitan area, drawing on that population, but not all of the land costs and and everything that goes with building inside the metropolitan area. So, this is something that actually came out of our council strategic planning, and and so we're we're able to promote that. That's a whole lot. In addition to that, we have music on Wednesday night. We've got the barbecue coming up August 23, which is our inaugural brew b q. We're excited about what that does to bring community together to maintain that sense of
community. The music series is about creating that sense of community. And we start adding population as fast as we have, it's easy to lose that. And so these activities are really, really important to maintain who we are as a community. So what? We have to, at some point, decide from an economic development standpoint, and and I've been three years here kind of on the on the backside watching this, but we have to decide if we're going to be reactionary and just take whatever falls in our lap, or are we gonna be pro proactive?
Are we going to identify targets, identify those things that are important to our community, and actually start working on them? We talked about a pharmacy and and Kelly has been working with, some folks on a potential pharmacy in town, and that is a major uphill battle. Pharmacies are not in vogue, they're difficult to make money, they're struggling and we're asking them to expand and grow out into our community, but we think there's a need here, as another example. But I think that at some point we have to spend a few hours and
decide who we wanna be, what are we going to do. We can't chase everything that falls or drives by Highway 14. We have to decide what we want and and how we're going to do it. And my concern with the strategic planning is something's gonna happen. We either respond to it or we decide what we want it to be. And so, I'm planting the seed. I want people to think about, Byron and where we need to be and those things that we should be doing that we're not. I'm sorry, you know, the most important one that I'm missing and we don't have an answer yet is
our municipal cannabis dispensary that you have put so much time and effort into. We're just waiting for an update on whether or not our license is approved. We did get a preliminary, you got some work to do, we need some different information. Kelly has done a great job of addressing the majority of those things, and so I think they have everything they need from us. We just don't have that formal go ahead. We expect it. I expect that we will have it in the near future. As soon as we have it, we have to decide, are we going to build a new facility or use the existing one that we
have? Location is the only difference there. The cost is not significantly different from what I've been looking at. But we have to design that and build it or decide if we're gonna put that money into it. Now now the the checkbook has to, you know, come into play if we're going to have a municipal dispensary. How important is that to our community? So I've rambled long enough. I just wanna plant the seed and say, look. I'm a big proponent of strategic planning, setting those directives in those directions because that guides every decision that we make. It it really dictates to staff,
what we should be spending our time on and and who's tree to shake when, when we have that opportunity. So I guess I'd open it up for questions or comments or, if you think I'm off my rocker, that's okay. But How many laptops are you building currently in Byron? We maxed out at the high eighties, low nineties k. Before this most recent, slowdown. The last last year, I think we had twenty twenty seven. Model of the rentals around here? Or Rentals and townhomes were a lot of that.
I I mean, the excuse me. The multifamily and the townhomes, make up a big number of that. The problem is is the 18 a lot of that 1,800 that they're missing needs to be more affordable. Yeah. You know? You can build a $800,000 house all day long, but, you know, your market, those aren't the people that need the rooftops as bad as the ones. And and there's there in lies. The issue is how can we build it? Because that's the only re that's the only way we're gonna get out of the shortage is to build ourselves out of it. Because unless you have to,
you're not trading in your 23% interest rate to go somewhere else, right? So life changes, right? We're retiring, we're relocating. Those are the things that are going to make you move. Otherwise, those resale opportunities are just few and far between. So, we have to be able to build our way out of this shortage And the cost to do that, that's the problem. It's just it's that affordability factor. And I think you're talking about the 300,000 to 500,000 range because you're not gonna build something less than 300,000 today. Correct. And and and even 300 is pretty modest.
Yeah. For a single family home. For sure. Isn't happening. Right. Really anywhere. You know, it's Well, it's I mean You either get that or you you stay in your apartment renting. Right? So, I mean, it's like people have to be more open minded too in regards to this is my first step. It won't be my forever home, but it gets me out of the apartment, starts helping me build some equity, and then I can move on. Right? But we need that that level of housing. That's the hard thing. And and when we say rooftops, you know, if if we put in 50 units like we did with multifamily, that's 50 units. Right. So do we have room for multifamily in Byron?
Probably. I'm waiting for the study to tell me how much, they view Byron, the Byron area needing for multifamily, but are we missing the vote on senior housing? Because there's a market for retirement housing. I don't know what that is. I don't know if it's something that's in demand here, but it is some place. So I mean, there's different markets within housing that I really wanna take a look at because, we should target those areas where the demand is the greatest. Affordable is study should tell should give you lots of information in terms of And
that's why I'm impatiently waiting. Yeah. But, again, when I talk about a 100 units, it's collectively, we need a 100 places for people to live annually. And I'm guessing a little bit until I see that study, but that would be my, my personal target, based on what I think I see. I think these are good seeds that you've planted. I agree that maybe the, EDA looking at taking a more proactive approach to this versus just waiting to see what comes in front of us, but us saying, based on our strategic plan and the wants and the needs,
who do we need to start going after to try to see if they want to come to Byron, right? And kind of formulating that plan, I think is a much better approach than us just sitting back and waiting. And the data centers are knocking on everybody's door right now in Southern Part Of Minnesota because water is available or perceived to be available, and our climate is right. So we need to know whether or not that's something we want before they you know, before they walk in the door. If we don't view that as being responsible,
we need to know that before before they're here. So Any other questions? Perfect. Alright. Public comments? Any other public comments? Okay. Any motion to adjourn? Second it. Well, I can't make it. Oh. You're making it? Yes. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Perfect.