These gentlemen like to call the order of the economic develop development committee meeting March March 4th, 2026.

President are Josh O'Neill, Eric Mankins, Trudy Healy, Tommy Walker, and Butch Gerbrand.

I'm absent of Russ O'Leary.

Also present at the meeting is Kelly Sullivan and Melissa Wanamaker.

We're gonna hand the floor over to the famous Kelly Sullivan.

Good evening, everyone.

Thank you for having us tonight.

I did something a little different this time.

We put out a top 10 list every month to our subscribers.

It's a little different than our newsletter.

And I brought you our top 10 for March, and some of these things you might know about already, uh, but I'll touch on them briefly.

And then uh the star of the show tonight is going to be Melissa Wanamaker.

She's going to be talking about the Brownfields program and projects in Butte that she has in the works.

So I think you'll be excited to hear what she has to tell us.

Um first a congratulations to Jeff Riggs and Keith Waring.

I know that this purchase of the Old Boys Central Building on East Mercury Street came before the Council of Commissioners.

Uh these gentlemen also have invested in the Thornton Building, the Manual Arts Building, the Butte Elks Lodge, and the Broadway Street Baptist Church.

And I just think their passion for Butte and investing in Butte and what you can do with a little vision and a little ingenuity with these old buildings is really exciting to see.

So we want to give them a congratulations.

So that training focused on credit management, and Brennan is educated in bringing credit management assistance and will be able to help homeowners and small and entrepreneurs from throughout Southwest Montana.

And he's already uh he's only been back for about a week.

He's already had quite a bit of interest in that.

Uh along with two regional partners, and Melissa will talk about this some as well.

This is in her wheelhouse.

Uh, we submitted a one point five million dollar Brownfield assessment coalition grant application um to accelerate redevelopment in Butte.

And then moving on, uh, spurred by client suggestions, our small business development center is now making our workshops available to people who want to join online.

And I think you all know we do QuickBooks training, we do HR training, marketing and social media training.

Uh we've done some cybersecurity training.

And I'm drawing a blank on the other one that's on tap right now.

Um but we've got quite a bit of trainings going on.

We've just had several.

Uh we'll be doing more in the spring, and then we do them again in the fall.

Uh I think most of you know that Governor Gianforte's Energy Task Force in conjunction with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality hosted an open house at Montana Tech a week or so ago with a focus on data centers.

There were folks there from Department of Commerce, Department of Revenue, um Butte Silver Bow, Butte Local Development, Northwestern Energy, and very importantly, Sabi Corporation to answer questions from interested citizens.

Uh Butte's newly opened planet fitness had a ribbon cutting recently.

Um the big news that came out of the ribbon cutting, and if you haven't been to that facility, it's fantastic.

So he was so impressed by the warm welcome he received with the development at Cornerstone Plaza and Planet Fitness that he wanted to make another investment in our community.

And then our client Gloss, the Green Beauty Counter, which is located on Park Street in Uptown, is the recipient of a USDA rural business development grant, and that will assist them with social media marketing efforts to promote their business.

So we have access to grants that kind of run the gamut for all kinds of different things.

Harder to come by construction grants, but planning, marketing, technical assistance, legal work, we can assist with a lot of those things.

And then tomorrow I'll be spending the day with Brigitte Miranda Freer.

She is from the Montana World Trade Center.

And the World Trade Center, along with Butte Local Development and Butte Silverbow Community Development will be hosting World Trade and Investment Day for the state here in Butte on the Montana Tech campus on May 12th.

One of our guests at that event will be Franklin Delano Roosevelt's grandson Delano Roosevelt.

And he's going to be talking about economic development and foreign trade investment in our community.

So that's kind of an exciting bit of news.

And I see that I don't have ten things on here.

So I must have done a bad job copying and pasting.

I apologize.

Commissioner Walker.

That was a little disappointing that it was scheduled the same time as uh the meeting.

It was a little before.

Yeah, it was a little before.

It was at 5 30.

Yeah, well.

By the time you drive there to here, you don't have much time.

Yeah.

And I don't know planning.

Yeah, and that was Montana DEQ who planned that.

So I don't think they realized that we had a council meeting.

That's who put that together.

Well, they did a poor job in planning it.

Okay.

I'll pass that along.

You know.

We would like to have attuned it.

Especially since the data center's got a you know a big issue right now.

It is.

I agree with that, yeah.

Thank you, Commissioner Walker.

Does anybody have else have any questions?

Any questions for Kelly?

And one thing about that, it did was poor planning on on there for what hopefully some citizens were able to go up there and get the correct or not, I don't know if they're correct, but get questions answered that we can't answer anyways.

So we're gonna have many meetings, I'm sure.

And hopefully they're gonna be coming here soon.

So Commissioner O'Neill, there I do think that I do think that people got a lot of questions answered that evening.

Um the SABE group was very busy throughout the evening answering questions, and all of the tables really had very good visitation.

And I'd say there were over a hundred attendees, so it was a good turnout, and and hopefully people did get some information that they needed.

Definitely.

Yeah, thank you.

On the subject is hopefully maybe Sebe will come here to our party one Wednesday evening.

That'd be kind of neat.

So on the positive note.

Anybody else have any questions for Kelly?

No.

Melissa Wanamaker, everybody just give a round of applause.

Well, I'm here tonight.

I'm the Brownfields manager for Headwaters R C and D.

And I wanted to just give you guys an update of what's available, what's coming, um, what we're doing with the impact it's making on our community and other resources we're trying to leverage.

Um so Brownfields is we a couple years ago, I think 2022, we got an EPA Brownfields grant for one million dollars, and it was a cleanup grant.

And it took I came on in January 20, I don't know, two years ago.

January 2024, and hit the ground running, and there was some benefit of coming in a little bit late because I could kind of see across the state um where the trends were, where the barriers were, and so um we got to learn from other people's mistakes.

Um and when we set it up, um we w at Brownfield is property that is vacant or underutilized because of contamination or just fear of contamination.

Um, so it could be an old gas station that could be a coffee shop, but you know, it's been empty on a street corner for 20 years and everyone's afraid to buy it or touch it or go near it because what if there's been a release?

Um so we can help with that.

Um in our uptown Butte, it's asbestos, lead-based paint.

Um it's mercury in the light bulbs, it's um PVCs.

Um, you know, all of these things, uh, what Brownfields can do between the assessments and the cleanup funding, the assessments can tell you what's there and how much it costs to get rid of it.

And we do the assessments.

I'm I'm getting I'm I'm getting sideways, so let me let me finish talking.

So if you have a blighted underutilized property with fear of contamination, and an inspiring redevelopment plan, you know, so there's gotta be someone that wants it, and someone that knows what they want to do with it because we have no shortage of underutilized properties.

There's not enough money in the world.

We need to be strategic with it.

But if you have somebody that says we want to put some low-income housing, senior housing, veteran housing, uh, workforce housing, um, we want to build a coffee shop in that old gas station.

We want a boutique hotel, um, and a new brewery, and you know, so all of these things are cool plans.

So it could the things they look at as jobs is really big, housing, and then it could also be green space.

So somewhere that's junky and full of you know, old metal and kind of yucky, and we want to make it a park.

Um that that's something that can happen.

That's a little tougher in view because Brownfields is not allowed to touch Superfund.

So we we tread a a little bit of a different line, but but green space is legit for the right project.

Um with our grants, if it's a nonprofit or a government agency, 50% of it has to be used in loans, and then we have a tiny, you know, roughly a quarter of it can be granted to nonprofits or government agencies, and then the rest pays for our QEP, our environmental engineering oversight of the project, and then salary office space, um, stuff like that.

The one thing that we did to protect our clients that we learned from everyone else is Brownfield's money wasn't really moving because they wrapped the oversight cost into the loan, and that can be $30,000, $40,000.

Um, and that's most citizens can't get a loan or aren't don't want to take out a loan when for an undisclosed amount.

You want to know, you want to have some certainty.

And so I asked permission to to take that out.

Um and so we pay that through our contractual um just to help so real people can redevelop, you know, you don't have to have deep corporate pockets necessarily to um you know to start a new business here to save one of our buildings, um and then we try to be super flexible on the on everything else.

I I don't want to make this in a sales pitch, but um but that's gotten things started and gotten things moving.

Um we've also been talking to some developers because what we're seeing with some of these historic buildings, especially as projects are one and done, you know, you do it and you never do it again.

Oh my god.

You know, there's so many risks, there's so many things that can go wrong.

Um or you know, a a developer in Deer Lodge, you know, his project incredibly popular, you know, housing and condos, and the minute they were ready they sold that minute.

They had people lined up around the block, and it'll take 30 years to break even.

Um so what can we do, you know, w how how can we make this happen before our buildings rot?

You know, other buildings that like our Deer Lodge Hotel was in for a cleanup grant in 2017.

It would only cost 400,000 to completely abate all the contamination in the building.

Now they and they just fell barely short.

Um, but now the roof's caved in and it and the weather's gotten in, it's melted all the asbestos off the pipe.

It's assumed to be in all the debris in all the building.

It's gonna be four million dollars just to abate the asbestos and it might be too late to save the building.

We have that's gonna be paid whether or not the building has to be torn down.

So that's a lesson for our whole region.

We have all these we have old buildings incredible old buildings and time is of the essence.

In addition so um Karen Burns came to our our dinner last year and something she said just like lit me up she said in a SWOT analysis our historic buildings are number one in all four categories.

They're our number one strength our weakness our opportunity and our threat and the way I'm kind of seeing it with the huge the tech hub coming in the 42 million dollars of photonics I think 68 new businesses opened up in Bozeman they're all gonna need support services housing prices are going through the roof if you look at housing in Helena in Bozeman in Missoula and what's happened in our rental prices just over the last two years.

We need safe housing we'll look walk around and look up downtown.

We have so much capacity in our empty buildings um so those are some things on the side um with Brownfields that we're trying to make our case for more funding projects we have right now the Phoenix building and you guys are going to be asked to vote tonight I hope on permission for um custom construction to use the parking garage as staging the fourth floor of the parking garage um to to help this building go.

And if you say yes we get to start Monday um and on the cleanup and we'll do all the pipes in the basement take the asbestos of all the pipes in the basement and that's gonna allow them to build some new accessible bathrooms and that's for the yoga studios, the pottery studio the art co-op um and it also will make a safe passageway for the elevator corridor um so that like the pottery shop can teach kids they're afraid to teach kids at night because if anyone needs to use the bathroom you know they have to go upstairs or you know it's just it's it's better.

It's gonna be better.

So um that was a priority.

The most important thing they're gonna start on is the third floor that's going to become 15 units of um low-income housing and that's ready to go that plan is ready to go then we'll clean up the contaminants on the fourth and fifth floor and um the fourth, fifth and sixth will eventually become 75 units of overnight and short-term accommodations.

And then we're gonna be able there was asbestos in the glazing of the windows and we're gonna be able to um abate 292 windows and replace all the external windows um we we had planned originally to be able to replace all of the windows including the light well in the middle and the budget fell a little bit short so we'll we'll take the contaminants out and the light wall windows will be pushed into the construction phase of the project but that it will seal up the envelope of the building and make everything else possible.

So we're we're excited about Phoenix um we're have our kickoff meeting Friday on the Basin Creek Caretakers Cottage to clean up all the contaminants on the inside of the cottage and get someone in there so there's no more Ouija boards covered with asbestos um you know uh teen mischief and and dangerous mischief we don't we don't want that so um excited to get that kicked off um we've got a couple more projects that are still in negotiations on cleanup um anaconda pay office is outside of assessment and we're just waiting for the right time um to maybe maybe start that project um we've started the assessment of the Blaine School to become uh it it'll be a public-private partnership between Walkerville and um possibly the Hungry Hill Art Center is going to be able to expand their range and not just do pottery but expand to glass blowing and textiles and welding and all use their successful formula and do all kinds of art instruction and at the same time Walkerville will have access to the gym for wedding receptions um possibly put in a nice kitchen commercial kitchen so people that want to do Saturday markets can rent the kitchen or if you want to do a pasty fundraiser um you know for a nonprofit uh and they talked about you know we talked about maybe making space for the ro roller derby girls and the what is

Uh and they talked about you know, we talked about maybe making space for the ro roller derby girls and the what is the bike polo um, you know, those guys have called like how can we help?

Can we get involved?

And you know, so um maybe or may maybe not pickleball, we'll see.

But we're kind of excited about the Blaine School.

Um I've got uh a couple more in the assessment pipeline, uh Salvation Army building is in the assessment pipeline, and probably a couple more, it's too early to talk about.

Um and then some funding.

So I put in for a 1.5 million dollar assessment grant, a coalition assessment grant, working with um Karen's group and a couple other places in the region.

Uh we learned at at the last Brownfields um workshop uh the last two conferences, they've brought in some kind of cool models, and the first one was called West West Virginia's Bad Buildings Models.

So bad was Brownfield's abandoned dilapidated, and so we've used that model out in the region to um kind of the idea behind it is if your downtown has more gaps than teeth and it's smile.

Um, you know, what do you do?

So um we we've kind of brought that in.

Um and then we uh we've brought in this interim ownership stewardship model.

What are some ways to de-risk these projects, especially in our uptown?

And and that's the one um Karen's group was already working on it, and when I came back really excited, they're like, why don't you let's all put our heads together?

And so I put in for the 1.5 million.

The cool thing about it is 30% of it gets to go to planning.

So not just environmental assessments, phase one and two and cost estimates.

Um that's a fairly traditional brownfields assessment grant, but it could also be the um architecture reports and the structural engineering reports, so the PAR structural engineering uh feasibility studies.

So some a little extra tools that can be pretty expensive but can help de-risk and move some of these forward.

Um in addition to that, by March 16th, I have to have a grant together that is our supplemental to refill our RLF.

Right now we have 278,000 left in um grant funding or in loan funding, and a little bit more than that in grant funding.

This will allow me to go for at least 400,000, and if everything lines up perfectly in the next 10 days, I can go for 800,000 more dollars, um, which is what I would like to do because the projects that we're looking at are pretty expensive and it's more grant money, it's more very, very low interest loan money.

Um so for that to happen, you part of that is gonna be in front of you guys as well to approve the grant we gave to uh Basin Creek to get that started.

Um the the rule that we just learned about is if we roll 20,000 from one project into another before we turn in the grant, um, we're eligible for the 800,000.

And so if Phoenix starts on Monday and um we've committed to roll 20,000 of funding that we know that's coming back in into Basin Creek.

Um it will give us more tools to help our community.

And I've talked a lot.

Do you have any questions?

Melissa, thank you.

A lot of great information.

Keep keep it rolling.

I I couldn't repeat everything, all the stuff you got going on, so I normally have to have a couple in my head.

But it's great.

Keep it going.

Appreciate all your hard work and any questions for Melissa.

Butch.

Yes.

Chair O'Neill and Ms.

Warnmaker.

I was just curious about what were the abatements in the uh base basin creek caretakers cottage in the Blaine School.

So in Basin Creek Caretakers Cottage, we have vermiculite insulation.

Um which has kind of gotten itself in a lot of places.

And so um it it's going to allow us, we we nor we normally can't do biohazards, but um to make it safe for the abatement contractors to be in there, we're gonna be able to clean up the um the pack rates and pigeon waste and make it a safe area first for the abatement and then for the construction that follows.

Um in the Blaine School, it's only going into assessment because it was built in 1959.

That is the height of the use of asbestos um uh uh uh uh uh uh the official term is asbestos containing materials.

So we we're assuming it there could have um asbestos in the mastic that holds the tiles down, maybe in the tiles, possibly in the windows.

Um we know that there's lead-based paint, a little bit of lead-based paint.

Um we're gonna check the roof.

Um they they I don't know if you guys know the whole roof peeled off in that last windstorm.

And so uh it's going to need a new roof.

Uh that building, it's like somebody took a California building and plopped it on a hill in Montana.

It has single ply windows, there's no insulation in the ceiling.

Um I just can't imagine those kids must have been freezing in that school.

And they're um, you know, but we're gonna they're gonna the redevelopment's gonna have to change a lot of things, including they had an inverted roof, which in Montana in the winter is not something that you want.

Um so having it peeled off now.

They just have to decide what kind of roof is right next.

But before they can do that, we have to get our contractors in there and know how to make it safe and what really needs to be done.

But that we're we're expecting the typical historical building stuff.

So thank you much.

Appreciate that.

Anybody else have any questions?

We're coming to the top of the hour.

Um ladies, appreciate your time.

Thank you always.

Thank you.

Thanks for all your hard work.

Keep them rolling.

Can't wait to find a building and get a bunch of grants.

So good job.

Thanks, ladies.

Take care.

At this time we're gonna meet adjourned.

Or can I get a motion to adjourn?