I'll call the economic development millet the committee of September 3rd to order.

I did talk to uh Commissioner O'Neal.

He's had a football game right now with his son, so he's excused, and uh Commissioner Healy also is excused from tonight's meeting.

Thank the rest of you for being here.

Uh first and only item on our agenda.

So I'll uh hand it over to you for report from BLDC.

Sounds good.

Good evening, everyone.

Uh so I'll just touch base right off the bat on uh when I was here last I said that we had applied for a couple of opportunities and rural economies grants, and one of those was for an entity in View, which turned out to be the Uptown Master Plan Association, and we got a twenty-five thousand dollar grant from that program we were awarded, and it's going to be for planning for wayfinding from the interstate at South Montana Street up to and through Uptown Butte.

And I brought I found just a couple of renderings that I could bring to show you, but it will use the wildly historic logo that we've been using in Butte.

So it's kind of a it that's not black, it's brown.

It's a brown and copper color scheme.

Uh so those are going to be really nice.

It won't be for implementation.

We'll have to come up with hopefully another grant or some other funding to pay for implementation, but it'll be for all the planning that goes into designing all of the signage.

Uh and we're working with water and environmental technologies on that program.

They're the consultant for that grant.

Uh Kayla, who is our business recruitment director, was in Chicago last week for a site selector event.

Um that was hosted by the Montana Department of Commerce.

And while she was there, she learned that a company she met in June is interested in locating in our connections park.

So uh she's out this week, so she and I haven't connected yet on who that is or what they're up to, but it's exciting to hear someone that she made a connection with in Washington DC looking at locating here in Butte.

Uh we've started two new hires since I was here last.

We have a new loan officer, so we now have three people in our loan department, and we have a new business advisor in our small business development center.

And then Kayla, who I just mentioned, our business recruitment director, is coming to work for Butte Silver Bow in Kristen Rosa's old position.

So I'm sad for me, uh, but happy for her that she got that job working for Karen Burns, and she's going to do a great job for the county.

Um we'll still work very closely with her as we did with Kristen.

Um she starts with Butte Silverbow on September 15th.

So we have got our marketing job posted.

If you know anyone looking for a position, send them to Indeed.com.

We're still in the midst of our membership drive, which we do.

We call it summer to summer.

We do that every year.

And it's going pretty well.

We've got about two months left to go here to wrap it up.

Our strategic plan, we have edited on our end version four.

We're on the fourth iteration of it, working back and forth with our consultant to get it narrowed down to just something that's a good stretch but also achievable.

So we'll be rolling that out before the end of this year or early next year.

It's a 2026 to 2031 plan.

With the Headwaters Tech Hub, we are a member of the Tech Hub Consortium, and we do have a little bit of marketing money, so we do some outreach for the Headwaters Tech Hub.

And then we've got uh so we've got reporting due for that in September.

Uh we also have the Tech Hub Summit coming up September 10th to the 12th.

Uh myself and Jay Doyle from our team will attend that summit.

I'm going to sit on a panel.

Um, uh someone from Snowy Mountain Development and someone from Montana Business Assistance Connection in Helena to talk about why folks looking to come to our state uh for the photonics industry should reach out to their economic development partners for assistance in all the things they need to do to move a business here or start a business here.

I had a meeting with Josh Bennett of Montana Department of Commerce.

They're going to be putting out some new capacity grants at the first of the new year.

And so they can help with a lot of different things.

They can't help with personnel.

They don't want us to do that in case the program doesn't stick around year over year, although they hope it will.

But we can do things like hardware, uh new computers, software, uh, branding work, uh, like branding for our company car, for example.

Uh they can pay for consulting fees.

Um, and our director of loan services is a consultant.

So it will help us maybe offset the cost of her salary a little bit.

Um we're gonna work with our team and our board leadership on what we want our application to look with look like.

We'll start uh developing a plan here pretty soon by the end of the year.

And then our Apex Accelerator, which is our government contracting arm, held an event here in August.

They had about 20 attendees.

Uh and among those attendees were representatives from water and environmental technologies here in Butte, and they talked about how much Apex has helped them in getting some government contracts.

Um they've had really good luck with Apex assisting them to secure contracts, and Apex really brings a lot of money to Southwest Montana and to Butte through the work they do.

I attended the National Brownfields Conference in Chicago in early August.

That's why I wasn't here last month.

And Brownfield is really one of the most impactful programs we have.

Um everything we do has such an impact.

But Brownfield is something that really can take some blight and turn it into something that lends itself to our economy.

And then Jay and I met with the CEO and the CFO at Southwest Montana Community Health and talked about some potential ways in which we might be able to assist them.

Um they've got lots of plans going forward.

I think some of those I can't talk about just yet, but one thing they do have coming up is a new brand rollout just to try to tell their story.

I mean, I think a lot of people there was a time when community health was considered uh health care only if you were low income, but community health serves everyone in our population, and it's a resource for everyone that needs health, good quality health care.

And other than that, um mostly the personnel stuff is what we've been working on, just getting new people trained up and looking for a replacement for Kayla, which big shoes to fill.

And you mentioned that job was on indeed if somebody out there is listening and looking at that.

Yes.

It's uh it's largely a marketing job, but it's also business recruitment.

Kayla's done all of our recruitment work for the last three years, so uh we'll be, you know, and they don't necessarily need to come to us with that experience.

We can get someone trained up to do the business recruitment work for us.

Okay.

Is there any other questions on anything covered?

Oh please.

Thank you, Chairman.

Uh I guess my only question was on the grant from the MDT um commerce grant.

Is that that's I'm assuming part of the same uh plan that we we had a a presentation from Director Burns, maybe it's been six, eight weeks ago now about the the wayfinding stuff.

I'm assuming that that's attached to that same plan.

Yes, yep, it's all part of that same planning effort.

Great.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

I had a couple questions that you may have information on.

I've noticed an awful lot of work being uh done at the new plaza on uh I saw where the Chipotle building is up that they've been had the block of uh Harrison closed off or tie into some of the utilities and everything.

Uh it looks like that project's coming along really well.

And some of the other things.

Do you know when some of those businesses may be opening up?

Uh what I've heard from Fortune Construction is that Chipotle and Planet Fitness will open in November, or that's their intention is to open in November.

Okay.

And nothing on the rest of the year.

I don't have anything right now on the rest of it.

No.

Uh Commissioner Manckins.

Uh thank you, Chair.

Uh thank you, Kelly, for being here as always and with a very lengthy update on some things.

Something just a shot in the dark that people are talking about out there.

Um what do you have any update with the old Plaza Mall on what moving forward or anything?

I know they're doing some moving of, or I'm told they are.

I haven't seen it myself, doing some moving of some businesses that are inside the mall uh to a different location.

And I thought that some of that mall demolition was scheduled for right around this time.

So hopefully it's coming soon.

But I I don't know a definitive date.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Uh yes.

Commissioner Welcome.

Uh microphone, please.

The highway 55, the pharmacy thing, what exactly is that?

Is that a good question?

Yeah, farm 406, and we haven't connected with farm 406 yet, but it's a it's a Montana-based pharmaceutical company, or not pharmaceutical pharmacy, and they're going to um operate the drive-through there, and they're also going to uh deliver, is my understanding.

They'll deliver to people that maybe can't get out to pick up their medications.

Commissioner O'Leary.

Thank you, Chairman.

The uh one additional thing that I found out the other day about the pharmacy 406 is they are going to be a compounding pharmacy too.

So if uh anybody out there is ordering things online because they're uh they need compounded uh pharmaceuticals, we now will have a local option.

That's nice.

I think there are just a couple compounding pharmacies in the state right now.

So it'll be nice to have one here in Butte.

Anything else?

Well, Kelly, thank you so much for being here again today.

We all really appreciate it and look forward to next month's presentation.

Hopefully you'll have the positions filled and more good news and information about what's going on in the community.

And with that said, I would entertain a motion for adjournment.

Motion is made and second.

Anything on the question?

Seeing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Aye, we are adjourned.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.