ladies and gentlemen good afternoon um I'd like to call this meeting to order um this is the city of Jacksonville Beach community redevelopment agency workshop for Wednesday March 12th
2025 it is 3 pm so uh we've got a little bit of an agenda to address this afternoon um first of all would you please call the uh Ro yes Mr Gary payel here Mr Ron Whittington Mr th Mosley Mr
Kevin Myers here Miss Megan Edwards Miss Sydney toot here and Mr Marcus cew here I'm gonna um maybe diverge just a little bit from the agenda and i' help
me uh Taylor because I believe um you have some additional information for as it relates to um the legislative um considerations that are going on at the state level y if you'd like to just
um present that that would be helpful yeah so I will hand these out um at some point during this meeting um but to not delay us too much from getting to our couple of items there are
two bills one in the house one in the Senate uh Senate Bill 1242 and House Bill 991 they are mirrored of one another um basically the overall goal is uh terminating CRA and a lot of
restrictions um for us as a CRA truly the termination date is honestly not that huge of a red flag for us we expire in 2047 this forces all C to expire in 2045 I mean at the end of the day if you're going to battle something that just really seems like not uh necessary
it puts a moratorium on creating any new cras you know again I know there are a lot of communities that would hinder um us not so much the biggest thing for us is as this reads it says effective October 1 2025 cras are prohibited from
initiating any new projects or issuing new debt so that would mean that whatever our project list and our plan looks like on October one of this year is what we have to work with until the year 2045 um so I have written um and I'm I'm not
sure if I can hand out my letter yet uh the city manager is taking a letter that I wrote uh to pass out to the agency the council our local representation um the F has reached out to staff members uh across the state regarding CRA issues uh
so I'll share with f Florida League of cities our friends at the Southern Group all of the Committees that are involved in this process as well and as well as the Representatives that initiated these my letter will go to all of that massive list um and it really just lists out why
this is a hindrance to agencies across the state and you know really uh one thing I touch on is that if it's passed in its current form this bill will style Redevelopment but can also also negatively impact local economies hinder tourism growth and prevent communities from achieving revitalization efforts
originally envisioned um you know I urge them to reconsider the language you know I it's not something that we're saying a hey don't put any restrictions in place um because if they're wanting to restrict different things as far as expanding districts and creating new districts I'm sure there has to be reasoning there the biggest thing for us
is the Restriction of new projects if we're in place until 2045 if this passes or 2047 if it doesn't um at least don't hinder all agencies to never do another project um if worst case scenario if it passes then we've got some ideas uh that
I will not say right now because we're being recorded but we ask I'm kidding but we have ideas in place um so we will keep everyone up to date on that like I said I've got two summaries and then I've also got the email that uh Redevelopment professionals the staff side that we're getting so I will make
sure you guys get these before our meeting is over and I believe that our consultant Mr gimore would like to speak thank you perfect it's not me I didn't touch
it all right you're done just Kidd um but like I said I will pass all this out to you guys and then we will as this continues um I know it made it through on the Senate side it made it through the first committee reading uh it was a
four yes three no vote so almost it it barely squeak through first committee um I believe the next Committee in the Senate is the Judiciary and they've got it on their agenda now so we will keep you guys up to date but we are very aware of it and staying on top of all the changes coming
and we will keep you up todate going to happen there Taylor thank you I appreciate it because I was just made aware of it um late last week and uh quickly dove in I didn't have a lot of information I quickly dove in and tried to figure out exactly what the bill says
and if you take the uh the actual lined out version of it and read it it's not very clear it's very difficult to understand exactly what uh they're proposing and uh what direction it might go I did take the initiative and have
already voiced my opinion in reference to this to U our local state senator clay yabor as well as um the members of the um the house that was going to be
hearing the bill yesterday so they all heard from me we'll see we'll see where it ultimately goes but I think each of the board members agency members should take a look at it and get familiar with what's being talked about uh it's funny how these things just come
out of so to speak left field sometimes and uh doesn't really address the local conditions or situations it's a reactive um thing in in my opinion from uh issues that are happening elsewhere in some
other c not not here locally and then on top of it the state is already requiring that we submit uh audited reports on the year early basis as well as annual reports so they know exactly what we're doing and at what level we're at and
that financially it's sound and um you know it's in accordance with the state statute so again just take the time this is something I think that's surprised everybody and is kind of Taken uh a little bit of the wind out of the sales a little bit but hopefully we can get
all back on the right track U with that I'd like to uh move forward with our agenda for this afternoon we have two items for discussion this afternoon the uh Boardwalk activation as well as uh discussion about First Street
and let me just start by saying that um you know this is an opportunity for us to do some brainstorming we don't always get to do that in our meetings but a chance for us to really talk about what is important to us to ultimately make
the downtown a better place um you know it's it's an opportunity for everybody to voice their opinion my opinion may not be the best but maybe we can build on it and come up with a better solution that you know will
ultimately really work for the downtown so I'd like you know want this to be an open discussion for everybody you know U ideas will be bounced around um and uh hopefully we'll leave here with some good direction for both staff and then
ultimately things that could be um moved forward to uh to the council level it from my perspective this needs to be a holistic Vision something that encompasses you know taking these pieces
individually I don't think solves anything I think we've got to take it as a whole you know we need a good ultimate plan and design we need um a good action plan and then how the implementation is
going to be done and then ultimately we also need to think about long-term maintenance so as we get into our conversation I think it would be good to kind of keep those things in the back of our ma mind and hopefully we can address them in some way as uh as we continue
the uh the conversation um I want to commend staff I've read through all the documentation Taylor thank you uh on everything that was done in reference to the boardwalk activation as well as um First Street
and I thought the information that was presented there is a great starting point for us to have our conversation um that brings forth quite a few uh great ideas um number of different options and um I think it's us
for us to discuss it and uh see if we can build on it or or just accept what uh staff has recommended and uh ask them to to move forward with it so with that I'm going to open up the uh the the discussion well let me backtrack Taylor
I do you have some things that you want to add in reference to uh well we'll start with Boardwalk I since that's number one on the agenda if you want to fill us in on anything yeah um thank you uh I think first and foremost in the
memo that's in your packet um we've kind of tossed around several different ideas of kind of what this process was going to look like um and what we really landed on was trying to make sure we had the most efficient order of steps if you will and so this is essentially step one in that process where we're presenting
this topic to you guys for discussion um we hope to be able to take away from today's discussion kind of a shortened list of ideas topics and things that you would like to see expanded upon um then at the next hospitality industry meeting downtown we plan on having and if for
some reason that's scheduled like three months out which I don't think it is then we would individually set up meetings with the hospitality industry business owners you know whoever in downtown to kind of uh talk with them a little bit and then based on feedback from the businesses from the CRA then we will then draft those proposed changes
um because ultimately this is changing an ordinance and then we would take those proposed revisions to city council at a briefing um in the future have their feedback at that briefing and then the step would follow just like a normal city council ordinance being updated you would have a first reading and then a
second reading two weeks later um so that's kind of the approach and then in your packet um we kind of explored you know what is activation uh that is a very broad term and there are a lot of ways you can Define that so we kind of took what we've heard from Council as
far as the Strategic plan and the vision that they have for downtown and we kind of honed in a little bit on the type of activation that seems to be kind of those overarching themes that they would like to see uh we then talked about the use area a little bit uh we looked at a little bit
of some pros and cons in the use area when we get to that section uh we've got some restrictions as far as the fire marshal is concerned for emergency vehicle access um and then we've got an example of phasing out this approach uh you know obviously we don't want to overwhelm and swamp everything at once
we want to be strategic with it um and then we've got sort of a plan of how we could have temporary uses on the boardwalk so one thing I'd like to one thing I'd like to just clarify in reference to the boardwalk is there were some
um somewhere in the documentation it talked about the fact that from a u safety standpoint that there needed to be at least 15 ft that where it was maintained for um First Responders and
so forth to have access to the boardwalk if you go from if you go from Beach to uh to the pier that is roughly 21 feet plus 15
feet 21 feet from the edge of the uh structure to that point uh where the concrete banding is and then another 15 ft before you get to the dunes but once you go north of um the pier it's only 15
fet so as we talk about the boardwalk are we really just talking about the area between um Beach and the pier because there you know we based on what's out there now what's existing right now we really can't do anything
north of the pier because that's only a 15 foot wide strip right that occurs up there I don't know if you can provide any clarification on that yeah so the best I can kind of show wrong Mouse um so on the screens uh you'll see in
majority of the sections of the boardwalk not every single one right in front of laam it's not there but where you've got this concrete band down the middle um per the Fire Marshall anything west of that concrete line down the center of the boardwalk is fair game anything to the east of that has to
remain um an emergency travel Lane so when you get into that section north of the Peer parking lot um it really there isn't room for this anymore so it really has to be only those areas where you can still maintain the travel Lane for emergency vehicles so it's really just
the area up to the pier that we're talking about and trying to find some way of act activate activation okay just a quick question about that um so the is it an option or something to
explore for that area where we don't have the 15 feet um to like lean more on the the various businesses along the boardwalk to like you know take on the onus of the activation so if that's
seating or something like that is that does that fall into the scope or no because they wouldn't be able to encroach on the boardwalk okay so yeah um they're if you know if it if it's only 15 feet in those areas then they can't do anything there anyway got it so it would be instead like Boardwalk
adjacent activation but that's not in the scope of this okay cool thank you Gary uh say a couple of things please um I spent a few hours U last several days up and down the area at different times of
day uh first the mural on the seawalk uh Pavilion uh side is beautifully refreshed somebody did a great job on that Megan do you know who did that who made it happen I'm sorry I that I'm to be very honest I completely missed your question I had a question
from the city clerk come through at the exact same time I apologize no problem the back of the seawalk Pavilion looks very nice yes that's all I had to say on that thank you um thank you to two other things that really struck me um the problem that we have with the seawalk
and to a lesser degree with First Street but still very much so with First Street is elevation the dunes are great we need the dunes um if you look at the old pictures of the beach you see a cutaway seaw wall no Dune
whatsoever and um all the arcade and all that area looking straight out at the ocean um there's not much we can do about that but there are two things that we should think about one is the best elevation currently available is up the
ramp to the pier and up the Dune crossovers now there are four Dune crossovers um at um um I think third fifth Costa Marina and seventh they're the old wooden ones
that are deteriorated and in the least two cases are not usable at all so I think that we as the CRA should recommend that the city pursue the replacement of those four walkovers that'll provide some degree of elevation and enable people to see the
ocean when they're W walking up and down the boardwalk more freely than they can now the other thing is is that um all the one-story buildings on First Street across from the Pier parking lot can't see the ocean either they're looking at a parking
lot and there's not much we can do about it but um rooftop decks or bar seating on top of some of those buildings um would enable people like the can from oku when they can stop looking at a pile
Rubble um at Fourth Avenue North like people upstairs at oku can see the ocean it's it's really pretty neat so any elevation that can be provided that people can get to is a good thing and the four walkovers come to mind immediately um also you know a bar can't
add seats without adding parking and getting permits and it's very difficult to do but still thinking about these on story buildings and there three or four of them also on the boardwalk on the west side and you stand in front of those buildings you're looking at the back of a pile of chopped up palm trees
and reer sand in you're not seeing the ocean anything we could do and I don't have the answer to this to get some elevation up in the boardwalk itself might be helpful there are a couple of spots where a little bit of elevation would let people even if they just came
up three or four feet over a period of a block see the ocean then the next thing and this is big um I've been involved with three Ocean Front properties in the area and in each case there's a 3ft striple l seaward of the bulkhead which was seeded
by the state of Florida to the owners of the Upland property in the 70s so we probably own 3 ft Sea of the bulkhead that's landscap that's bench seatable that's potentially even usable
in short stretches to increase the width of the U activation area because that would increase the width of the fire zone again you probably wouldn't want to Hardscape everything but there's chunks of it you could do a lot with and Taylor I don't know if our City attorney can
look into this um but in I'm three for three on getting the three feet in front of the bulkhead two times it wasn't passed on with the Deeds because the uh local surveying company and the local title companies didn't realize them been deeded had to go back and get it which
in one case involved getting a quick claim from a guy was two weeks from being dead but it is the property of the Upland property 3 ft SE to the bulkhead um and 3T 3T Fe but if we're talking about getting the most out of this thing let's take a look at it the
other thing is the fencing around properties at the foot of Third Street that basically takes out what would be the activation area uh notice that the fence in front of what was the um um The Joint that's closed has just been rebuilt brand new
fence yeah the fence in front of Sal is now a brand new fence and the fence on um the bar to the north of that uh it's just falling down it's awful it'd be ugly and I know we asked uh a couple of months ago uh what
the legal situation was with people fencing off the boardwalk and these two incidents particular and also the castle Marina has about 6 feet of it too if you look at the old concrete pattern and if they have the right to be there that's fine but if they don't have the right to be there somebody should at
least consider what that means to activating that area because that's a big break right in the middle of the area where we're talking about if both those fence lines are a legitimate property of the businesses that are maintaining
them so that's kind of my things um elevation elevation 3 feet four all walkovers and I'm talking about structural stuff that would help to bring forward any plans we want to talk
about you know there's lots of else to talk about but if we had three more feet if we didn't maybe have one of those fenced in areas fenced in if we had a little elevation in general you know those things might make it easier to activate the boardwalk over time the
last thing is that right away South the First Street I think it should be mentioned somewhere it's a don't know how wide it is but it's public accessible right away that's all grung over between First Street First Avenue South and Beach and that's completely
contiguous with the area we're talking about um which at least note that it's there and potentially could be developed as part of the experience on the ocean front thank you I'd like to just go back and and address one item that you brought up the first one about the
walkovers if I'm not mistaken those walkovers are scheduled to be replaced they were already in the budget for the CRA to uh fund those walkovers to be yeah to be redone there are other ones
that the city is doing but the CRA is is doing those that are in that location and I don't know what the schedule is right now I know they've think they had it out for bids and they're trying to um work right now in uh getting a Contractor on board to start that work
um later this year as you know Gary I live next to one and people really use that elevation we have people coming down to cocktail hour I'm sure there's no alcohol in the glasses of course um lining all the way up and down the high point to look out at the ocean
and um you know they're not they can't be any wider than they are but they they do make a really nice platform to look at the ocean definitely and the three feet three feet would be great even if you should just punched out in places to put in benches
or a little bit of landscaping comments from others um just a question that um three feet just to clarify you're three feet three feet from the um Eastern side of the boardwalk from the bulkhead line from the bulkhead line and
if you look at the boardwalk you see what looks like the bulkhead cap immediately east of it and you notice the palm trees volunteering and growing just outside of that bulkhead cap I believe that is the bulkhead the original bulkhead cap it was washed out pretty hard in Dora and they put in a
bunch of rocks and then it's been renourished three times I believe at least and the last one was a really Pro job a terrific technique lot of development as opposed to just pumping up from right offshore and watching it wash white back out so um I believe
that's usable and you might not want to use it all which you might want to use pockets of it I'm you know so in favor of putting food trucks out there and things to that extent but some of the other things that were mentioned in the
iate try [Music] forward rather than it extending out for a longer period of time talked about the first phase being about 12 months and then the
second phase 12 to 18 months out okay I didn't have but on no and I'm supposed to be able to turn it on from here but it wasn't not let so we're good now okay thank you sorry about that everyone we're still learning
apologize um so anyways I thought that the the you know the phased approach was was an appropriate way to uh to start and somehow we need to ultimately dob tail that with what we plan on doing on
First Street because I don't think this is just the boardwalk alone plus I think it ALS Al has an implication on 2 Avenue North and Third Avenue North End zones and we ought to we ought to take a look at that at the same time and make sure
that you know whatever the plan is and it may be that that gets phased a little bit later but we know where we want to go um as we uh as we head down this road open for up yeah I think
there's well a couple comments um to that's point I think having a clear definition of the area that we can activate and and aligning
on I'll say the strategy but I don't mean that word as intense as it sounds but the strategy of how we are looking to incorporate the local businesses for outdoor seating or you know that that's point the fences or the the footprint
that they do have I think will be important I'm not um entirely sure of the universe of the boardwalk that we are looking to activate and I think some of that's come out in some of the earlier conversation
that we just had right which is I think we just want to be really clear with what we're trying to activate because that in my opinion will dictate strategy for Activation so I I think a little more clarity there would be helpful and
I don't know Taylor is that a is that a a staff task us task yes and no I mean it's it's um there's really only so many areas we can so like the chairman kind of pointed out basically from where the lifeguard station is to essentially the
pier um those are pretty much your parameters anything outside of that it's just not feasible okay I think that's really helpful just to put that in set that in stone right um you know we I'm fully on board with
the considering the other projects that are going on in this area I think we have to so First Street being one um lean Plaza being another um the Peer parking lot probably also fitting into the mix in some form or fashion um
that's just maybe an overarching statement um I also want like as we continue to Define activation um you know we're a fairly outdoor forward
community at the end of the day I think that's what we're trying to achieve here is the use of this outdoor space and fitting into our community um I guess what our community is looking to achieve which is you know a Beach Community and outdoor Community um things like
considering things like children uh and Andor pets I think is an important Nuance as we continue through this process um I don't know necessarily how we weave that into our overall activation strategy but I do think those
kind of bubbled up to the top for me as I was reviewing the documents that they put together um you know things like if we're going to have like water stations or shade I think we brought up shade in previous conversations as well but um tailoring
those to both the the kid population and then also animals I think would be important like down to the Tactical level do we want to promote you know dogs and pets on the boardwalk I don't I have an opinion of that answer but I
think that's probably hon us to decide right so things like that kind of Po into my mind as well one thought back to the structural side of things Taylor looking at the pure parking lot and some other areas it it seems that
on First Street of the Landscaping in front of the Peer parking lot on First Street it seems to me that that could be incorporated into The Pedestrian redo of First Street giving you a much wider RightWay to work with um you're looking
at cars anyway looking across 10 or 12 feet of landscaping at cars you might want to do that in one spot you might want to open that up into a wider right away for whatever we're going to do on First Street you pick up
a lot of footage there and give yourself a lot more flexibility as regards to traffic lanes and pedestrian areas same situation on the boardwalk side of the pure parking lot there's a huge you know there's a a very large landscape area over there which could just as easily be
part of the boardwalk for Activation that you'd pick up 10 ft there by taking away that it's pretty grubby looking now I'm sure it could be the landscape prettier but it also could be part of the
boardwalk it's all public property um and you'd give yourself a whole lot more width there just looking at ways to maximize the space and that would let you carry your activation north of the pier All the Way North up to the Pier parking lot because you pick up that
much more space huge a bunch more a whole bunch more so that's another thought on space to activate on top of and um took me two cruises to check that one out because you can actually see where the concrete was cut at one
point coming from the north where you start the pure parking lot the concrete was cut to do that Landscaping I think and the Landscaping is a booger to maintain anyway Taylor in the packet that you sent out um the boardwalk
activation is that your is this is what I'm understanding is this the mission and vision statement in an Essence and this is by definition what it is that we then want the key activation strategies then
therefore to follow along correct I think that's a wonderful question and I think that would be our goal would be to take that activation page and then kind of use that um all the activation strategies that are listed in there are things that have come up whether that be at our meetings Council briefings
Retreats workshops you name it so we really tried to base that definition off of real things that the council has set forth okay um but yes I think that is a great Foundation to build on so yeah we need to worry about potential Crossovers
and space I don't think the space matters until we have a distinct strategy and game plan for truly what it means for us to make that space what it is yeah um that's just I look at like 30,000 for
view if we don't know what we want it to kind of look like what does it matter what we Implement correct and we may be able to right and we may be able to get more or we may not
those are still little nuances as we just kind of move along so you know as we talk about what it is that we're doing you know we need activation strategies okay what should we prioritize in regards to this space of activation is
what comes to my mind right away do we want specifically to focus in the initial phase going back to the phase approach pilot expansion full implementation which I think is everything should always have a pilot phase that's the way I think businesses
operate and run um but from that standpoint then which of these key points the event programming public art installation dining retail expansion and recreational enhancements need to be the key focus and almost like a pie chart out of them okay which of these
percentages does it need to be section so then as we go through the pie wheel and in essence then we then can then determine how we want to balance Community engagement or business interested into those different categories and then from there then we
can then determine how can then uh Boardwalk activation align with safety regulations because then we we would have a framework of an allocation of then okay we have these businesses that are here on the boardwalk then how then do we want to
implement and help them facilitate what it is that is this goal of events and programming music do we want Rec Fitness classes out there how much outdoor seating do we want available or do we want more
recreational enhancements to entice more active living that's kind of my two cents on the matter right now well it becomes a little bit of a challenge in that um you know we we
don't know exactly what's going to work out there we haven't seen anything out on the boardwalk in quite some time and the the challenge becomes how do we test it how do we first help determine what the it things are that we want out there
and um you know I think it starts with us putting some forth some Concepts working with the business Community then in finalizing those Concepts and then trying to implement them you know part of it is you know
what vendors are going to be interested in even coming out there is there enough foot traffic out there to do things um or is it more a uh thing something that happens during more festival type functions rather than on a daily basis
that we have uh activation out on the boardwalk I think we just need to come up with some kind of a basic action plan that gets us started and then we test it and once we've tested it we can then go back and
I think take a better look at what the vision might be and then uh implement it even further I that's just you know my initial reaction that's I guess why I zeroed in and what Taylor had presented to us in the way of a um so then the
question that then I have back is this is it our job to facilitate the needs of the community and then the community's job to help support the businesses locally and then the tourist then enhances those
things so what is it that we want for the community as a whole first and what is it that we believe that I'm sure we have enough data points over the years and different surveys to kind of tell us already what those things kind of
are well unless unless I misread something um we've got a 9 mill ion dollar amount in the budget to address First Street and related issues in the next five years is that about right Taylor yes
those are very early preliminary um but if I may Mr chairman there's been several kind of comments and things that I came up just kind of want to comprehensively address we keep um something that as staff you know kind of just hearing and uh that's maybe not
concerning but like a little red flag is First Street and the boardwalk and maybe it's on us for putting them on the same agenda and timing them at the same time and while there needs to be obviously a connectivity a cohesiveness and a relationship between the two it needs to be a very distant relationship from this
aspect you know the usage of First Street is a completely 180 degree opposite use of the boardwalk and I'm worried from what I'm hearing that we're starting to kind of Muddy the waters between the two and what I don't want to see happen is we kind of keep replaying
this first streak conversation and how is First Street going to implement what we do out here when the boardwalk is not it's not even a capital project we're not talking Capital we're not talking ripping out the boardwalk and rebuilding it we're talking about programming while First Street is capital so we're talking
about two very distinctly opposite projects and I really want to make sure that's abundantly clear because I'm worried we'll kind of continue down this road and then we'll be 6 months a year from now when we'll still have done nothing because we're waiting on the capital Pro project whereas the programming aspect of things that can be
almost instantaneous it's very easy to develop programming and easy being a very relative term let me be clear it's it takes work but it's far simpler than a massive Toth point9 million Capital project so I really want to make sure we're being very distinct between the two yes they need to be related they
need to be cousins they don't need to be like twins if that makes sense um the second thing you know we kind of threw a bunch of content at you guys for this and a lot of information I I think probably the best thing for today's conversation and moving forward and kind of where we need to be a staff to really
start kind of driving this thing forward is if you're looking at the section on the examples to phased approach if we just look at that little chunk in phase one and that is where we make our decisions from today and then the phase one temporary and semi-permanent Boardwalk uses if we look at kind of
both of those phase ones today and we go okay these are what we like these are what we don't like we don't want to see food trucks we do want to see life performances we don't want to see whatever you know and we do want to see yoga and we can kind of take those
Concepts and then run with that that gets us into that zero to 12 month chunk of this once we roll into that next 12 to 18 months part of this then it'll be time to really start bringing up more of those first streak conversations as far as the capital side of things but again Boardwalk programming First Street
Capital you say there currently no there's nothing in the budget to do any improvements to the existing infrastructure on the boardwalk side wow no just trying to facilitate traffic yeah we're trying to make it
more attra was never intended to be a capital project it wasn't that that's not the um intent of the boardwalk well if we can't uh pick up the uh footage on the edge of the parking lot on the boardwalk side maybe we can pick it up
on the First Street side um whatever but we need to know that these things do exist as we go forward and think about the longer term use of this because if it's not wide enough to do some of the things we'd like to do maybe we can come up with a little bit
Capital money down the line and make it a little wider um and there's some severe restraints where these fences exist is if if we go with the fire marshall it leaves you pretty chopped up it leaves really just the area right down by the
Lifeguard station a couple of blocks to the north pretty much wide open because once you get up to Third Street you start uh having areas that you could not uh utilize in any regard for public um use
thank you Taylor I and I appreciate your comments I you know I know I was the one who made the comments about um making this holistic and looking at First Street and Boardwalk and so forth it was more my comment was meant more from a
vision standpoint that we make sure that it's cohesive from that standpoint you're you know I think you're right you've got to look at the two pieces differently because one is more Capital project than the other one which is more a program type of thing so yeah but um I
think that you know even the boardwalk may take some Capital Improvements I don't know that we're going to get away from it completely because just looking at what is existing out there we' got issues with the pavement and things out there that going to need to be replaced that's already broken up and there are
trip hazards and things like that that are out there that going to have to be taken care of if we truly want to make it a walkable walkable area but and more of a maintenance that's minor which again is a completely different thing than ripping out an entire Street
segment um for the purposes though of today's conversation and again being able to move this forward and kind of feather in the cap check the box we're good to go we need to decide phase one 0 to 12 months programming aspect obviously if there's crack papers and
tripping hazards that falls into a maintenance we have money budgeted every year for that so that's nothing we need to do anything crazy for what programming in the next 0 to 12 months would we like to see you know let us go back and you know get feedback on you
know do we do a phased approach or we just jump into this with all feet I mean does how does the board or the agency feel about that phased yeah I would say I would say phased and I I love the phased approach
and Taylor the way that you broke it down I think it totally makes sense um and I think there's also an opportunity in this initial pilot phase to uh experiment with tight feedback loops for you know deploying and activation and then
okay what did the businesses in community think about it and then pivoting accordingly um I feel like this framework sets us up to test a lot of stuff and get validation yeah thank you and just like we did with the outdoor dining that was a two-year pilot program
and we did it it was these two businesses here it was successful so we extended the program but it gave us an opportunity to spend two years really look at it if we were to have a ton of 911 calls and a bunch of calls for service and this is creating horrible you know flow of traffic whatever
obviously we were going to then reevaluate that fortunately we did not run into that the pilot program was successful so we expanded it and I think that we're kind of trying to from our perspective look at structuring this very similarly where we're in a pilot phase what works and what doesn't and for the business owners you know they
may think something is a great idea like sure bring in a yoga or a ice cream whatever it may be and then that may happen for a few months and they may go okay whoa whoa whoa this is not what we thought and this is not working it gives us flexibility then to kind of pull in the RS and pivot a little bit before
implementing this entire permanent program and one thing that's really nice too about this being um like temporary and popup activations is that it's not a one-way door for anything that we Implement like we can walk it back if
yeah yeah it's not a hit so Mar so I would say we start with um choosing three or four of the restaurants for outdoor
seating and tap into seeing what they would do for a pilot program for that you know just so we just choose specific we don't open it up to everyone um and then as just a way just to get it kind of
started um and then uh definitely um we want to create a draw so therefore there's more people people coming down to these restaurants and these different shops um so therefore then maybe to enhance bike rentals or
Beach Rentals of sorts um they're for uh specific Market classes in an Essence I don't know I I don't even know what that I don't like Arts markets and those types of
things but a lot of people do I've been to the Riverside Market I don't mind it um I'll go to the a one and buy eggs uh but um so wait to that point I kind of feel like
we're trying to eat the elephant right um how do I want to say this um you look at the ab Market you look at the small little farmers market that happens that second off pinman and there's one at
jarbo um could we or why couldn't we just recreate that model for this pilot phase keep it super simple do an outdoors Market type of setting pick a
few weekends that work for the surrounding area not overlap maybe not overlap them with other festivals and events things like that um just to gauge interest try try something
that's fairly repeatable I use that in air quotes to Taylor's Point nothing's ever that simple um I don't necess I mean I don't think we need to get too into the Weeds on the the what necessarily but let's
maybe align on does you know should we set three weekends of like some version of a Boardwalk farmers market or something along those lines um to still down the list of types of vendors that we would accept into that setting and gauge interest I mean that that seems
like a pretty simple way to activate and get feed real time feedback on this strategy I don't know thoughts from the rest of the board I like it you know I would just ask that I think we need to go back and take a look
at where we place these because your comment about you would take certain restaurants allow them to put seating out um onto the boardwalk as if I understood it correctly question is where does that occur where does the um
you know just popup vendors occur uh on the boardwalk uh physically if those spaces are cordoned off with fences and things to that extent which we have some exist existing examples of we need need to just kind of figure out exactly how
we need to do that yeah and real quick sorry in in my mind we don't even touch outdoor seating until we have some version of does this work or does it not right so in let me say that differently
we hold three I'm using the number three just for a number we hold three pilot I'm going to call them farmers markets again for lack of a better term some market right events um and we we don't even necessarily touch the outdoor seating
portion of that we just let the events naturally occur and we see what works and what doesn't I think the outdoor seating in the local businesses are an important piece of this puzzle don't I don't want my comments to imply otherwise but I think that approach
gives us some actionable data Big Data guy um gives us some data to to actually Define what success looks like here for the community for the local business owners and for our board right
so if I understood the uh plan correctly it's staff looking for input from us but then ultimately taking them before we even Implement anything taking it to the business community and getting some feedback from the business Community also um and I think if we do that and
then come back and re examine that one more time before implementation I think you know I think we hopefully will have a better perspective on what's going to work out there but I I think I understand your
comments Uh Kevin and I I agree um yeah I think I think we're aligned I wasn't implying that we should carve out the business Community feedback by any means I just think we can find the balance between a a piloted approach with their
upfront feedback and then kind of open up the rest of the longer term plan as it develops I think the challenge for staff is going to be how do you determine who the vendors are you know who who are you going to allow in and who aren't you I think that's relatively
easy we've got a model for that already with parks and wck with things that are City sponsored events so as long as they're uh a registered vendor they have in the proper insurance they have the appropriate lure if you will they have to have to be a vendor at any City sponsored festivals I think that's a
pretty in this scope of things it's probably one of the easier things just because Parks and Recreation already has that model for their events in place so we can just steal that from them um I was just GNA add that uh well
I I personally like looking at all these ideas I want to throw spaghetti at the wall and test them all uh just to see what works but I I guess um you know some of the things Kevin said made me think like we don't want to muddy the waters with in terms of what we want to
test like if you know we put a farmers market and a yoga class and like some public art and there are tons of people there we like don't know what it was that moved the needle so good point Marcus so like when we do the
movie we could set up the boundaries appropriately for outdoor seating maybe on the boardwalk as a pilot program for those specific restaurants when we do different venues that wouldn't require and therefore than it would show more specificity to what it is to the pilot
program and how that actually produced an outcome because it would be specific to an an event I'm not sure I fully understood because we already do movies I know I'm saying when we do the movies now we add
outdoor seating available for into the boardwalk for those specific businesses if I the way that's set up though it's you're really sitting in Lake and plaz wor though I'm saying afterwards beforehand yeah I'm I'm not saying like during the movie that people
are going to be at the thing I'm saying like before or after to give people an opportunity if they want to go down there ahead of time eat that they can be on the boardwalk eat and then go to the movie or after the movie they could go down the boardwalk sit outside okay and then that way then they to help expand
if the weather's really nice most people would prefer to be outdoors than than to be inside Mr chairman if I may um as of now the only I personally love the idea of more outdoor dining it's been extremely successful right here but as it presently exists within the
parameters of the footprint where we can have it there's actually no restaurants that could utilize it I know I just totally rained on the parade I know I was that person scratch it I know that was listen I I've been toying with bringing that up or not but while it's a
beautiful idea um until we see maybe redevelop happening on some of those Parcels that are connected to the boardwalk right now nobody is eligible well salt does have a brand new fence around what was previously a dining area is the fence there for a reason or is it going to be a
restaurant it's a restaurant okay so there is one restaurant there not none okay and so to be fair when I said it they wouldn't be eligible they already as a part of their footprint already from a previously kind of grandfathered in situation they have that footprint already so they don't
need any special permissions and they can't encroach any further than they already are then I would just focus on events let's just focus on what are those workshops or those event programs that we want to do to then enhance that
area right Taylor do you think you have enough information that you could I'm just kidding um that's that's fine no I mean I think this is going to be one of those topics that there's going to be things we can
do in the immediate I like this idea of uh a market whether it be a Saturday or a Sunday we'll need to obviously I think out of respect for the existing markets get with the parks and rec department and the events Department because we do already have the penmen market and that's every what Satur that's the
Saturday situation we have a ton of events coming up so I can get with them on the calendar and kind of see what would be appropriate what would make sense um I think that's a relatively again low hanging fruit because they already have a model for hosting those type of events anyway um I think as we
are behind the scenes kind of pushing that along we take that to the businesses we let Council know hey this is kind of the first step of this is testing these Waters to your point not mudding the waters and having six things happening over the course of three days and then something goes wrong and we can't pinpoint it um and then I think
after that maybe what I would like to see in a couple of months is I've been to a lot of CRA communities where they have extremely successful boardwalks programs um things that are similar to this and maybe instead of bringing such a big broad
approach I bring some very specific hey this really works well in this community in a similar footprint what do we think and maybe we start bringing back more specific ideas um and kind of start funneling in on these topics if everyone is of course
comfortable with that so if you guys have consensus for us to start the necessary preparations for creating some type of weekend Market see what the council thinks of that see what the business Community thinks of that kind of get that model in place and then as once we kind of get that kicked off
start looking to other communities and bring back more specific activities for the boardwalk to you guys I think it would be helpful also to get the input from the obviously business community and see what how the all of that meshes together and so forth
but I think that's to me the approach that we need to take right now I don't know if anybody has any other thoughts on that but um if not you know I I think I'd like to move the conversation on to uh to First
Street which is really somewhat similar just really quickly uh um the uh Point Taylor you made about referencing like other C and kind of what's worked for them I I really like that approach in just like connecting with our like
sister C sort of um and seeing what worked for them and so I think in general as an approach for us in making decisions like looking at precedents will uh keep us from Reinventing the wheel each time so
yeah I can tell you behind the scenes we have an event that another SI community did when I was that we will bring to you very soon we're working a little bit with parks to find a good weekend but if we allow for tent Market vendor type things as part of this first phase I think that makes a tentative event we
would like to see happen a whole lot easier that came from another community that had a lot of success with it so I think that'll work well I did a little bit of research into that and when I was but you know the boardwalks that I looked at probably
don't fit the scale of what we're talking about here but they you know most of them have a success factor that includes um a lot of different activities and things um you know you go
to Santa Monica and it's the the pure Blends traditional Boardwalk Nostalgia with modern attractions appealing to a wide range demographic I mean we I think we've got to find a way to tailor it to to this community not so
much for what is you know much bigger and and broader but uh I didn't find any good ones that kind of related specifically to uh to what we have here but it was interesting to see what did work and didn't work in in some of the
communities that um I quickly took a look at but I'm sorry I didn't hear we have a unique landscape to work with too specific to our location any other comments on the
boardwalk Taylor do you have any questions for us that you want to get answer on the for one at this time um I do not I've got enough that we can kind of get started on some things and bring you guys some updates in the near future
okay just one more thing um I realize we're not talking about a capital project but if we could at least do some Landscaping in that 3 feet if we do own it it might make it more attractive looking out rather than than looking at chop back hack back volunteer Palms
sitting right at the bulkhead line it's pretty ugly um anything we can do to improve the the visual depth and perspective I think would make it a better experience for all these activities we're talking about so that I totally agree with you
you know walking along there there's a lot of debris in there there's old construction debris H yeah along there that just needs to get cleaned up and make it much more attractive but with that uh why don't we
move into uh First Street um do you want to lead us off on this on First Street sure Taylor yep so this is um I'm going to be very blunt about this this is going to be um a little bit of a beast of a
project to tackle for a number of reasons uh one of the biggest reasons being this project was not something that has been on the radar in this capacity uh since I've been here I mean there's been elements of this there's been elements of expanding certain sections but redoing First Street as a
complete overhaul uh that is new and we are currently in the CIP we are looking at the capital Improvement plan from fiscal year 26 all the way through fiscal year 2030 and there is not even room in the budget to even consider doing an overhaul until the earliest
would be fiscal year 27 and that does not come without Council having to prioritize and make sacrifices so I want to just start with that make that abundantly you know clear this is a big priority um but if this is going to get bumped up anytime sooner than fiscal year 27 that there are going to have to
be some substantial projects cut from the roster uh in future fiscal years and that is spread across right now three fiscal years but until we know the true magnitude of what the agency thinks and then what city council thinks as far as what plans they want to see taken with
this project um it's very hard to budget that 9 million was a really nice middle of the road um if it's a very small scale project it could be less if it's larger than that it could it be double up so I want to make that clear uh two
big things no papers nobody seems to have any desire for Ping uh decorative concrete treatments great they look nice but they are far easier to maintain when we do this with papers you get into a situation we're in right now where a row or two gets significantly damaged you will never replace them to match again
and then every time you have to replace one you end up with a lovely Mosaic pattern of pavers because the sun Fades them all at different speeds um so that's something to keep in mind and then the number one priority with this is pedestrian safety um right now it's a little bit confusing and there are not a whole lot of delineators between the
street and where you're supposed to be walking so that's kind of what led us to this point um we have reached out to the TPO about getting a traffic study from them they have not yet confirmed that but the TPO would do that traffic study for free charge which is huge being is
again we're looking at FY 27 before we can start allocating funds to this so being able to get a transer study from TPO would be huge um so what we would want to see as part of that traffic study would be looking at one and
two-way options uh you know again everybody has thoughts and opinions on that but we really want to see the data on what makes the most sense and what is the best use of the road um we were looking at different things the crosswalk you know if we're getting away from pavers we still need to have really good indication that hey this is where
you cross the street um and then looking at speed limits and traffic calming you know I'm not saying any of these are going to be what come from that these are all things to take into consideration and then looking at those aesthetic enhancements so Gathering spaces sidewalks Landscaping um Street
furniture Pocket plazas and these parklets that's something I've actually seen in a lot of communities recently um facing similar situations like this sorry there's a lag on the screen and this is just touching on again those
aesthetic ideas this is not necessarily I am not a traffic engineer so I cannot say whether one or two way makes the most sense I can say if something is pretty or not and that's what this is all about so this is raised planner beds um those serve as buffers between pedestrians and the street um so again
it doesn't have to be anything crazy if you look all the way to this far right hand side they can be very simple but they can be made of very strong concrete that have rebar in them so if a car unfortunately were to look down texting and swerve a little bit off the road you hit concrete with rebar you're not going to go plowing into the glass storefront
of somebody's business um also a great example and I tried to add it in here and I obviously did not save it is our friends right here on the corner at Jackal and Waka as part of their outdoor dining component originally they didn't really want the aesthetic of having this
big fenced in barrier so again they used very very very heavy concrete planners to delineate from the street into their seating and it has worked beautifully uh parklets with seating barriers these are kind of I've seen them in a lot of places they're not that common where we are I was in Tampa not
long ago and they have several of these um you know again kind of a similar concept obviously you want to make sure it's done safely but on a street like First Street where you're going to have much slower speed limits we're not talking A1A you've got these little areas where you have these little bump
outs and maybe you have a bench or a you know little seating area can be creative it's just aesthetically pleasing and you can use that to then break up sidewalk from roadway you know again none of this is these aren't any new ideas these are things done all over but these are things we
want some direction on so you know is there a preference from the agency on having these additional seating areas or these planner areas or what other their ideas have you seen in other communities and then kind of what is your vision for the
long term of First Street I um just want to add that um city council met last week and um in a workshop session and spent the day trying to develop their top six strategic priorities for the city and
the number one CR number one item that uh they have is uh identify and development the action plan for revitalizing the downtown area as top on their list of priorities so uh you know
this becomes is really important First Street obviously board park kind of falls into that but more so First Street to try to figure out how we WR vitalize the downtown area um I'll open it up for
conversation and discussion that um agree completely um until we decide if we're going to go one way or two way I think it's going to be rather difficult to do any any design work at all but I think that perhaps
using that strip along the Peer parking lot as part of the total RightWay uh would give us some more flexibility for parklets and bump out some seats and little um places to turn around the other thing is
um at Third Street and also up into Second Street um many many of the businesses have covered over much of the uh walkway and with columns and arches and again that space that I
believe is public space and I don't know Taylor if all of them have the right to do what has been done over time some of it's very old and some it's rather more recent a lot of themission previous revocable encroachment agreements uh we do a
monthly write around with the city manager and look at various things and those have kind of been a hot topic before and the majority of the ones that we see unfortunately years and years ago were granted permission to do what they've done well I'm not saying I'm necessarily against it but we need to
know what's ours and what's theirs and because that's that's a whole lot of turf in the area we're talking about and it's a whole lot of turf in the street ends we're talking about at first and third um so we just need to know but until we decide one way or two way I
think it's hard to get down into the to the details but Taylor's entirely correct uh sturdier is better and we all agree we need to protect pedestrians and we all agree that we need to clarify what is or isn't the street and or a walkway it's very confusing and I think
we all agree that Chief Smith can give us a lot of input as we get into tightening this thing up he may also have some thoughts on one way and two way I don't know but um until we decide one way or two way it's going to be hard to really tighten up very much because
one way would give us a lot more area to work with I'm all for a one way yeah me too but it's not our decision well I understand that but if we can help uh kind of direct or show the blessing and the benefits rather than
and enhancing the area to make it more attractive for us to come down and hang out be hugely much more pedestrian space it would and more ability to do things with that space with that space to attract to create events to enhance
business OPP all the the adjacent business owners to use some of that space that one way would make more available yes totally with you on that um and I think it's easier for traffic and again when we were in the
workshop with the city council I mean obviously um everybody felt that it should be able to be closed off pedestrian wise for events but as we talked about at that time because the hotels the traffic
going in and out of the businesses be kind of hard to make a pedestrian only all the time because you don't have a street on the backside of the ocean front ones that you could use to reverse their traffic flow like you do in some of the other areas that we've looked at
so I'm for one way and I'm for closing for special events in coordination with the hotels and the merchants there and I'm for once we decide which one or two ways going hunkering down on getting this design and maybe gobbling up that RightWay along the pure parking lot yeah
suck it into the program thank you I like all those different kinds of seating environments anything that you can help create I think more of a environment for family to come and hang I grew up in Portland so we had tons of areas all throughout the boardwalk the Portland Oregon that
is uh it's a little different nowadays but well Once Upon a Time the seating areas that we had on the boardwalk and some on First Street uh turned into very unattractive features because they were permanently occupied by folks who uh didn't have anywhere else to go but and with Boardwalk ons
people would stand up and watch for cops to come so they can signal their buddies to stop breaking into cars yeah I mean and that's what Chief Smith alluded to and we touched on that earlier in the meeting so you know his input's huge yeah but the more people we have down there the less likely they want to stay
we've seen that specifically at Gonzalez park though because that's right in my neighborhood it's two two blocks away from me or three but uh that place has cleaned out like crazy and that place is consistently active um and it's a great
Park um and so from my standpoint is the more people we can get down there the less likely that there will be that kind of environment that they would want to stay absolutely Taylor when do you think you could get the TPO to to help us or where we at on that I
think that's important well our friends at the Southern Group uh one of them has a meeting there tomorrow so we're gonna keep kind of diving into this and I'm I'm glad you brought that up because as I was sitting here kind of listening I was realizing I kind of did you guys a diservice I probably should have expanded more on
that and truly and realistically we were very hopeful we would have had some more Direction by this meeting we just don't and unfortunately it's just the reality of the situation when you're hoping an organization will provide you a free traffic study um um with that being said there's not a whole lot of action that
we can expect you guys to be able to give us until we have that study at least engaged and in plan so we're kind of we wanted to present this to you and just kind of these are some of the ideas this is kind of what we're thinking but truly until we have an appropriate traffic study where we can then have
concrete data and say okay this makes sense to do it one way two way here what you whatever that may be it's really hard to give true Direction um because I don't know I'm again I'm not a transportation engineer I can't I I think I know what would work out there
but the numbers may show something completely different and until we have those it's just really really hard to go too terribly far with this and kind of on the flip side of that I don't want you guys to dive too terribly far into it because if the numers show something completely different than what we're assuming then we've wasted all this time
and effort on planning for something that wasn't realistic totally there I mean between Chief Smith's opinion on oneway two-way and the tpo's opinion on oneway two-way will be well informed I think most of us think one way would be great just because it would give us so much more potential pedestrian area but
we're not traffic guys either so y thank you yep yeah on on the topic specific to like raise beds versus parklets um in general I think it would kind of
almost regardless of one way or two-way I like and it could just be the pictures that you chose Taylor but um listen I tried to find the best a little bit a little bit of bias in there okay um no the the comment I'll make uh
specific to the Future state of First Street is I really like the idea of raise planer beds and a solid like concrete barrier because I think it provides more opportunity for um landscaping and shade it just looks like
a like your top set of pictures that you have pulled up here just I'd rather walk down that those streets than um the park lit in full sun benches sure um so that's just I guess general direction from my perspective I I I like that
raise planner idea a little bit as long as we put in stuff that's salt tolerant wind tolerant as long as somebody cleans the cigarette bucks out of the raised beds it's a great plan agreed that hasn't historically always been the case agreed yeah I think that I think my my comment
is more vegetation is probably better than less just I think it provides a more inviting and enjoyable experience for all yeah okay I I totally agree and I I think the yeah the raised planter beds I think there's
also a lot you can do within that um and then so maybe a controversial opinion but I've lived places with the parklets and I I feel like they can when they're done really well amazing yeah when
they're not they become little nice little tents and camps for the types of characters we're looking to avoid so valid point yeah it it's just like if we were to do that and I'm not saying we shouldn't uh just like make sure they're
made really well and yeah somehow do not encourage that type of great point exactly yeah and so I I feel like we don't want to make a nice yeah pleas yeah you guys
absolutely Taylor I and looking at this a a little bit further um I just had some questions as to what area again we're kind of talking about because the uh paper area starts roughly at leam Plaza and then it goes north to fth
Avenue North and it stops there but then the the intersection of 6th Avenue North still has some papers in it but there's asphalt between fifth and sixth so the question to me just is you know what what is the total length that we're
really looking at are we uh I think honestly at least for the traffic study I would say Beach to six which is almost the district at least the the business core of the downtown district I'm sorry you said Sixth Avenue North six yeah
basically Beach to six North to six North and I would you again I because of the street width and the way it works is different as you as when you come off of beach on the first heading north it's
asphalt and it's wire Street has parking on uh on one side of the street but then as you start to get north of um first having you North that's where it starts to wind a little bit and it becomes a little bit of a challenge going through there
particularly if there's trucks coming I mean I've had I've had some real challenges um you know trying to avoid the trucks the bigger trucks that come through there you know with those thoughts I kind of zeroed in on concept B that was
part of the urban Trails study as being the what I thought would be most appropriate for the uh for the downtown area it's it's a oneway street I don't know whether it's oneway north or south but it's a oneway street it it allows a
little bit of the curvature of the street which is what's happening now but um since it's one way I think it'd be easier with you you don't have to deal with the trucks that are coming in the opposite direction that you're going uh
it allows access into the businesses that that need access um so I you know that's kind of the direction I was going I understand we still have the traffic study to do but um this seemed like it fit better it
allowed for things to happen such as what you're describing on the on the screen up there along with the potential of putting in um some bicycle Lanes down through that area we lose the bicycle lane from basically um 6th Avenue North
down to um well down to beach there is no bicycle lane there it suddenly disappears and so it was planned as a shared Road through the downtown but it's not defined as that I mean if if you go down the street it's
not defined as such and so you know I I think we need this Council a couple of years back did a resolution supporting the East Coast bike path and that runs down First Street and we ought to
celebrate that and we ought to you know make that a known element of our Downtown Development as part of you know the overall East Coast Greenway um yeah but but it's not it's not identified as such I mean there's no
sign yeah there's just a few signs that say share it could I will there's yeah the positive at least that I'm hearing please somebody correct me if I'm wrong but at least I'm hearing basically from everybody in attendance that the one way
seems like a really good idea and it seems like if the Transportation traffic study shows that that is a good option and that it works for our traffic counts and flow that the agency would be very supportive of proceeding with that pending the results of a traffic study um that's kind of what I'm gathering
which is pretty much what we needed to look for because I also want to communicate that to the TPO that the agency is very supportive of seeing this become one way for a certain uh portion and seeing kind of how we can work with that so yep I think that's what you were hearing this afternoon I like that
that's like that never happens at every single person and and you know again I'm in favor of simplifying all of the uh the p down there I mean to me it's the streets falling apart right now there's a lot of
issues with the papers and I don't there's been consensus at least from staff and administration to do away with papers altogether maybe a very minimal decorative sections and it but even that they're like please no no more papers there's other ways to make decorative
sections you can do decorative concrete I me I Public Works can't keep up with the work that needs to be done down there um they uh don't have the labor to do paper work and so you know they're it's simpler just to put some uh some
asphalt down and if you need to cut it up for getting through a sewer or something is a lot easier than it's just much easier maintenance like I said earlier when you have pavers it doesn't matter even if you had all the crews in the world to replace sections it's never going to match up without having to completely replace the entire chunk um
and I would just refer you back I think uh Heather was there with me when we went down to Fort Meyers for the F meeting down there and their uh streets were were paveed streets along with the sidewalks being pavers and it had a nice
feel to it it was simplified but it was clean and it had some nice defined seating areas for restaurants and things to that extent wonderful little um secluded uh Courtyards and so forth where uh restaurant shares that space
and and made it uh interesting uh to be outside sitting and eating your dinner and things but um any other comments on First Street at this point Taylor do you need anything else from us I am I think I'm good on First
Street um like I said a lot of that I know is kind of pending on us waiting on Transportation study um but at least we have consensus for what you guys think would be the best option and then we'll get the results of that and see where we go from there okay anybody else um anything else you
want us to touch on this afternoon I do just want to add on your way out I'm going to set up several papers up here they'll set up little stacks of things I printed out uh they're all different just take one of each on your way out and like I said four of these are things on that House and Senate bill and then
one is a summary and the takeaways from that Council Retreat uh that the chairman referenced it is not all of everything that was referenced it is just specifically the takeaways that affect the agency um but so I'll sit all these out up here for you guys to grab one there was one last item that you had
which was about future Workshop topics yes do um any of the agency members have some specific topics that you would want uh us to address in the uh coming weeks
months I don't know if it was last session or the one before but I know we had talked about kind of getting back together and revisiting the facade program just I would say as a whole and
just aligning on intent um moving forward we were going to make some tweaks to the to the program and so forth and I think that was just something you were to come back to us with but I do think that um revisiting the program kind of reopening that now
that we've had it in place for a couple of years I think that's um great especially as we're heading into fiscal year 26 and we start bringing budget things to you guys and late summer um itively actually had that one down for a May is time frame Workshop just so it
could give us a little bit of time to Kind of Perfect make some recommendations um and then I also had the chairman was at the Retreat last Friday one of the things I would like to discuss potentially at the April
Workshop um is a program that we've been working on kind of behind the scenes which we're calling basically the beach Alliance it's basically downtown business Alliance um and it's essentially additional eyes and ears on the ground in the downtown district um but that's something that we would like
to bring to you guys at the next Workshop to kind of start looking to get that into place one item I'd like to have in the way of a conversation in the near future is just backtrack a little bit and and this is new to probably most of the
board members but at one point we had talked about um maintenance in the downtown and the need for possibly a handyman or something along those lines or hiring a company to come in and and help us and maintaining the downtown I'd
like to go back uh I'm not sure that we ever brought to that to any kind of resolution I would like to have that conversation and see how the board feels about uh what we need to do to maintain the downtown and with a better appearance the term that had been used
before is they wanted we wanted it to be Disney esque like is what we want so uh uh that'll kind of set the tone for you so a little backstory there there was some resolution what it came down to at that time as Administration the way our
positions are work I work for the city therefore I City employee I.E I have City benefits I am a city staff um there was no desire at that time to add additional Personnel under this hat and so what we did end up doing and have done is the contract that Parks and Recreation has with their maintenance
crews in the downtown we elevated the frequency and the amount of times the amount of employees that were allocated out of that line item and that budget increased last fiscal year for maintenance in the downtown so we did do that City manag right they weren't something a random
handyman could do anyway right and then more graffiti appeared more of it came back don't yeah don't bring that up to theity manager well and part part of the con well if we could just sit down and
talk about that a little bit because the other concern I have is I know we're working on the design for lean Plaza but if you go out there right now PL Plaza is a disaster it it it looks terrible when you go just go down First Street and look on either side and and there's
no grass it's gone the the ball the Ballard the ballards are in terrible shape and some of them have a u cone or whatever is sitting over the top of them because it's broken off and it's missing um the area in front of the uh Pavilion
is uh well it was flooded the other day and then in those Gres in front of the Pavilion and and there's missing grates there that somebody's going to trip and fall on and things it's just and if I may add when you see these
things like it I I'm one person I mean you know and we've got but I I can't I'm not realistically standing in every corner of downtown every single day all day long when you see things email me call me text me if you're not letting me
know and you're waiting until a meeting how are we supposed to fix that please I can't reiterate that enough let us know when you see an issue please that's the whole one of the whole driving forces behind this business Alliance too it's additional Eyes Ears Like hey I may not be in front of Tavern
every day but if they've got something that's damaged or broken or it's a hazard they certainly are and having this Avenue where then they communicate that to us it's going to help to elevate things downtown kind of across the board it's not a onep person thing it's going to take effort from the board from
Council from staff from businesses it's going to take a little bit of everybody yeah and I agree and I've you know been doing some of that it's just that I don't know that that's what you're doing it would just be good to get some but if if we got some feedback at least understood that that's what you
you know how you were addressing the issue would be it would be helpful that is how we're addressing it I mean there's there's nothing more to it than that we're finding issues we're sending it to the right no I people to deal with and then following up to make sure that they they did it so in our second drive around we had that original
list of stuff we identified so we could go and look to see if it had been repaired yet or not um so that we could follow up with the appropriate department or company or or what haveen you so it's you know it like Taylor said it's going to take not just one person
it's to take everybody and I think the getting the bus owners involved I think be a bigit to everybody again they're there in front of their bus on street corner are not what we do so that will help us a deal okay thank you what did
we determine for a budget for us did that go through yet for you last time you said that you were still for line item for the CRA yes that we had we weren't in the red we were in the posit
forade forade we have not Ed that out yet okay so I'm hopeful before the 24th I'll have a better a little bit of a better Direction on that um but stay tuned got it anybody else further comments
otherwise I'm going to close the meeting and must you um oh oh no there was one thing there we go it almost left me I but caught it right before um the art committee will be meeting next week to review uh
dumpster enclosure mural submissions we open that to local applicants only um we received 28 proposals for that mural from local artists I had the pleasure of going through all 28 and verifying three
references for all 28 and their resumés and their background and checking into everything that they claimed um and they are all quite incredible I will be very blunt again this is going to be a big push they are looking at this on
the 20th the art committee is used to having like two or three meetings to make the decision and I have given them one meeting you have two hours pick uh that comes to you guys the following Monday on the 24th and whereas their meeting it's the only agenda item on your meeting it's like one of five
agenda items um so buckle up it'll be a rapid fire but hopefully they will bring you one candidate I will say one really great thing with our committee thus far is when they have made their recommendation it knock on wood has been unanimous so as long as we have a unanimous recommendation that comes to
on the 24th and then exactly a week later it goes to city council with the goal and intention here being to have this mural completed or as close to completed as possible prior to opening of the beaches April 27th so we've got a pretty big we're we're pushing this one through pretty aggressively so if you
feel like it's being shoved at you it is just saying um so we're very excited though and there's a lot of really great ones I don't I'm glad I'm not a Committee Member and I don't have to make the decision so but that is all Mr chairman with that uh thank you all I
appreciate all the input this afternoon and uh hopefully you found it productive and we'll Jour this meeting thank you thank you