This time we'll call order the February 2nd, 2026 meeting of the City of Clearwater Downtown Dissolvement Board.

Move to item two point one in the agenda.

Approval of the minutes.

Approve the minutes of the January 12th, 2026 Downtown Development Board meeting.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Proposed.

Unanimous.

Moved item three point one on the agenda.

Approved the downtown development board first quarter budget amendments.

Good afternoon.

Jesus Nino, CR Executive Director for the Red.

This is an item is to approve the Downtown Development Board's first quarter budget amendments for fiscal year 2025-2026.

During the first quarter, the DDB's budget was reviewed to reflect updated revenue projections and funding needs.

So a total of ten applicants did receive total ten applications were received by staff for the vacant seat.

Each application was reviewed for completeness and compliance with the ordinance ordinance.

Based on that review, five applications did qualify.

So the qualified applicants are Jessica Andehar, employee of Nash Keys.

Kevin Tatlisi, business owner of the business the district bistro.

Then Pavlinka Vitanoff, employee of the ring workspaces.

Then finally, Alana Whitehouse, employee of Frank Crum.

So these applicants didn't meet the qualifications, did meet the qualifications of the ordinance.

Was that in addition?

This morning we did receive a letter of recommendation for one of the applicants that was forwarded to you for your record.

I think some of the applicants are here in attendance since they were invited.

So is that leave it for your discussion and for your action?

Let's do this a little bit.

Does anyone here from the public that would like to speak to this agenda item?

I know we have some candidates here, so would it any one of them like to say something?

You're not you're not compelled to, but uh giving anyone here today from the public to speak to this agenda.

I'm not sure I heard the whole question.

Yeah, does anyone here from the public want to speak to this agenda item?

Um I'll just say I'm gonna have a phone call.

Well, yeah, if you do, you have to come to the microphone and uh and hand the clerk so yeah, I was trying to be efficient, I'm just being courteous.

Um I'm Dan Mahoney, I'm the owner of downtown pizza, and I just say on behalf of one of the candidates who I know Kevin uh with District Bistro is uh they've been a great addition to our block for the past six months or so and adding additional you know life there, and we're I think coordinating well, and he knows our interests.

We know his us clear sky tequila's uh them, and uh, I think are bringing vibrancy to to the block, and uh, I suspect more of the same would occur with his representation on the board.

So okay.

Good enough.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, if you could play complete a comment card for us, that'd be helpful as well.

We've got comment cards over here.

Oh yeah, to we gather information from anybody who speaks.

So thank you for that.

Okay, next to um, yes, I'm uh Tony Teller, 500 block.

Uh, you guys all know me.

I got decently well.

Uh my wife is trying to represent be part of this.

You know, she's been a great part of our community, has helped me greatly and understands it.

I think we need to see if I have people on this board that kind of like emphasize on unity, community, and growth, and not necessarily slandering one block or the other block, but it has to be someone who represents growth in the community.

I think I think uh the not only my wife but also the the young gentleman who's not here tonight, helped me out greatly.

He uh there's a new push to make a Netflix series down here in the in the 500 forward block.

That would be great improvement for us, things a lot of publicity.

Uh the gentleman who owns the gym, he was the one who recommended Nash Keys, helped us out a lot and it's constantly been there as well.

You want people like like my wife and like these gentlemen who grow the community and stand for growth, not just self-interest.

Okay, thank you.

Want to speak to this agenda.

Okay, not necessarily council discussion.

Excuse me.

Councilmember Albert.

Well, I was uh surprised to have so many people on the list, but probably over half of them weren't qualified because you got to meet certain criteria.

Uh but I did get uh more like I got more um emails regarding Kevin Tet uh Kevin Tetlisi uh from restaurant owners downtown that thought he would be a good uh addition to the downtown development board.

Okay, vice mayor.

Um same here.

Um the things that I feel we were lacking up until now uh was the representation from an existing business from downtown and having Mr.

Tetlisi be present would give um a very much needed viewpoint and a voice.

So um I would agree with Councilmember Albrighton with Ms.

regarding Mr.

Tetlisi.

Okay, Councilmember Cotton.

Yes, thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I would uh echo the same sentiments as Councilmember Albert and Vice Mayor Tosheda.

Um it is once again good to see all of the 10 applicants, um, even though half of the field didn't um qualify for one reason or another.

Um, and then the ones that did qualify, I think they all have unique special characteristics.

Um I also agree with Kevin Tetlisi.

I think that he understands um the downtown pretty well, owning three businesses down there in different parts of the block.

Um he seems to have good representation and relationships with majority of the business owners and uh a good feel for where downtown should go and making good recommendations in the future.

So that would be for uh Mr.

Tedlisi too.

Yeah, and I'm with you on that.

I've been um client to District Bestrove for since basically the opening.

Before that, I've been a client to all of it in time, and um uh I observed Kevin and uh some are running their business firsthand, and uh I see how they treat clients, they see how they treat neighbors, and I believe that since a lot of things we approve here has to do with Cleveland Street has to do with uh downtown specifically businesses on Cleveland Street, the merchants.

I do believe that having a merchant representing Cleveland Street is very important, and uh because they know exactly what is needed and wanted, uh they have much more information and data than sometimes we do, and I I think that would be very valuable.

Okay, I just wanted to say just one thing before before we uh come uh talk about exactly uh you know vote on it.

I want to thank everybody that put in their application.

It really shows, I mean, if anything, it really shows we've got a lot of people that are interested in being part of the community in Clearwater.

And um, and I know we uh among the ones that did qualify, it was hard to really pick somebody, but I think the at least for me it was good to have somebody from a business uh that can you know downtown that can really help.

So uh thank you all for filling out the application, and uh maybe next time you know go at it again.

Yeah, I'd like to um to echo that.

Um it was great to see so much interest in it.

Um obviously, uh, and uh support Kevin too.

He's he'll be great.

And for the reasons mentioned, uh I also did want to uh one Garcia uh moved his his business from Clearwater Beach to downtown, uh brought a lot of folks from the beach to the downtown.

He brought a clientele and uh uh a visitor, a patron to uh to downtown Clearwater that has been really important for us as we continue to try to grow.

And uh he has he's an inspiring story, he's an immigrant and uh and has you know built his business on his own and and works really hard and uh certainly want to encourage him to continue to show interest in being involved.

He has a lot to bring to us, even if he's not on this board uh that he can contribute.

So I want to want to give uh give that uh acknowledgement to Juan because uh he has a hard for service and has done a lot for downtown already.

He's a business owner, which was important to us here, and uh don't and just because Kevin is getting pointing today, we don't want uh discourage Juan from continue to show interest in leadership because he would be very good on this board or or any other board that we have.

So with that, uh I'll entertain a motion motion to approve Kevin Tetlisi to downtown to development board.

Second okay, all those in favor?

Aye opposed, unanimous.

Move to item 3.3.

Next item I'm gonna have parks and recreation also join our staff members to give the presentation of the special events report.

Um so good afternoon, Vicky Shire.

Just wait for the presentation to come up.

Yeah.

Today we'll be presenting a consolidated report on DDB funded special events from April through December 2025.

This report combines information from event applicants and placer AI data provided by staff, giving a clear view of how DDB investments are supporting downtown activation, increasing foot track traffic, and engaging the community.

CRA and Parks and Rec staff work together to streamline this their individual reports into a single cohesive overview, highlighting the impacts of the events sponsored by DDB.

Following this overview, Chris Cook from Parks and Recs will share additional insights on the Placer AI data and how it'll benefit the city.

Our first event is the Ukulele Festival.

It was held on April 12th.

The organizer was the Tampa Ukulele Society.

It was located on the 400-500 block.

The self-reported attendance was 3,000.

Placer AI data was 1,100, and they were approved for $20,375 in DDB funding.

Next is Cingle Day Mayo Taco Festival.

The event was produced on May 5th by UNIMEX.

It was located in Coachman Park.

The self-reported attendance was 2,000.

Placer AI data was 5,500.

And the DDB approved funding was 6,200, but the applicant came under budget and was reimbursed $4,629.

Cingle de Mayo Cleveland Street Market.

It was produced by NM residential LLC on May 5th.

The location was between the front of Nolan and the 1011 of Cleveland Street area.

They self-reported 6 to 800 in attendance.

Taste of Clearwater, which was organized by Clearwater, the Rotary Club of Clearwater.

The event was on May 31st.

The location was Coachman Park.

The self-reported attendance was 2,500.

And Placer AI data was 1,300.

The DDU funding amount was awarded for $30,000 for this event.

The self-reported attendance was $2,000, and Placer AI data was $2,300.

The DDB approved funding for $15,000, but the applicant came in under budget and was and was reimbursed $12,503.

So Clearwater Jazz Holiday did two events.

The first event is the 46th Clearwater Jazz Holiday, which was October 16th to the 19th, located at Cosham Park.

The self-reported attendance for October 16th was 4,000 200.

October 17th was 3,600.

October 18th was 4,800, and October 19th was 3,800.

And then you can see the place or attendance for the 16th was 2,200, the 17th, 2,300, the 18th, 3,800, and the 19th, 2,200.

The other event that Cleoter Jazz Holiday Foundation produced was the CJH Presents Holiday Music Experience.

That was on December 6th at Station Square Park.

And their self-reported attendance was 200.

And unfortunately, uh AI policy didn't have enough significant data to record it.

That total.

Next is Fall You Alt, which was organized by Saucy Queen.

The dates were October 5th through the 6th.

The location was Coachman Park.

Her self-reported attendance for October 4th was 5,000.

For October 5th was 3,000.

The Placer AI data was for October 4th was 4.9,000.

And for October 5th was 2.9,000.

And were reimbursed $21,705 for fall y'all.

Her next event was the Jingle Bell Family Fund Fest, which happened on December 20th.

Saucy Queen organized again.

Location was Coachman Park.

Her self-reported attendance was between four to five thousand, and Placer AI data was 3.9,000.

DDB approved funding for $12,900 for this event.

Thank you.

And now I'm going to turn it over to Chris Cook.

Thank you, Dick.

Welcome.

Distinguished board members, Chris Cook, Parks and Recreation Senior Manager.

I think a couple of things in kicking this off.

When we added this, you know, Placer AI data.

I think it's important that we address what it's not.

It's not a gotcha.

It's not trying to embarrass anybody, but what it is trying to do is to be able to provide provide you all with accurate third party information before you make decisions.

So helpful now in being able to see how people produce what they produce, but even more helpful in the future when we put together the reports for you guys to be able to make those funding decisions.

So a couple of things that these numbers do represent.

Just I'm certainly not going to speak as an expert on IT or with Placer AI, but I have probably had the most experience from city staff working in the system, working through and providing some of these data.

So they have multiple different uh drop-down categories that you can use to filter the data.

So you can look at uh who's going into retail shops.

You can look at who's going into restaurants, or you can look at the the metric we use for these was the festival data, which basically uh breaks up the the cell signal density, the duration of visits, the movement patterns of the people while they're on site, as well as pretty extensive demographic uh modeling.

It's important to note that it's aggregated data.

It's also um the word is uh can never pronounce it right anonymized, but anonymous data, basically, that we don't know who the who the people are, we just have the raw figures.

So it's not counting each cell ping, it's taking data that it receives through the system and then running it through a series of analytics to spit out a final number.

So the numbers you see since we have jingle bell on here, it's not saying that there was 300 3,900 pings of cell phones, it's using all the analytics to create that figure that we're able to share.

The also why it's more than just attendance and where we think this will be helpful in the future.

Uh as staff gets time and training, this this technology will allow us to look at historical trends.

So we can get a baseline of data to say on a typical Saturday on December 20th in the park, there might be a thousand people.

So 3,900 people would be 2,900 more than normal.

So we can even give you more uh data specific to the event based on historical trends and baseline activities.

And it even, I think this will be proof helpful for the the DDB, is we can pull the entire district information.

So even if an event is on the 400 block or if it's in Coachman Park, it can actually pull data for where people parked, uh, where they went before the event, where they went after the event, and and really give us a good identification of the visitor uh experience that they had when when coming.

So we'll be able to evaluate funding requests.

We can compare these requests objectively.

Um we'll be able to pull these reports again before the decision making comes.

So when Vicky and their team comes with funding requests, we can go back in time.

We can go back several years and pull pull data.

We can even find events that may have taken place in other cities at other times and pull data from those.

So we'll be able to really get the kind of information that you all uh want from us uh to be in those reports when you're making these important financial decisions.

A couple of other things that this will do, uh, and and I'm gonna talk more to our city council later about this, but there's a uh a big uh value for sponsorships included in this, where we can see you know, true hard, raw data that we can provide to sponsors, and again, that that tool of where did they come from, what hotel did they stay in, where did they go after the demographic information will be very very valuable when it comes to additional revenue sourcing through sponsorships.

Um, even broader applications from that.

We can see what times of the day people are coming in uh to downtown.

We can just pull regular reports uh wherever the the downtown development board would see there's information to be found.

So I do want to acknowledge and and give uh gratitude to the city manager and her leadership on getting us this tool.

It's a very very important thing for many things in parks and recreation to track our recreation centers and our programs and how many people are attending is is huge for us to be able to offer the services and programs that that our citizens want.

So thank you for her leadership and for our IT for getting trainings and implementing this into our workflow.

With that on this, I'll happy to answer any questions or any other reports.

I'm sure Vicky would as well.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Comments, Councilman Cowden.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Um thank you guys for the presentation.

Fantastic data and analytics.

I love it.

I think everybody in this room knows that uh about me now.

Um, and thank you for going over what place or AI was vaguely, right?

I've heard it, but I don't know exactly what it's drawing, where it's getting its metrics and what algorithms algorithms it's throwing things through.

So great way of uh giving the layman's terms, so you know, technologically less advanced people can fully understand it.

Um and I think that it's going to be awesome, especially for this board with the future of where we can go and the decisions we can make.

Something I would be very curious about, and I think that this board can agree with this statement is we always put an emphasis on not just drawing the traffic down through our through our events, but making sure that our businesses and the downtown are taken care of too.

So when you hit on being able to pull data to people visiting those brick and mortar restaurants, I would be very uh interested in seeing that data as you all get trained and and are able to fully start implementing um whatever this AI is able to provide for us because I think uh I think it will be well worth it in the future, and and I'm grateful for the city manager for looking at technologically advanced ways to promote the city and make it more efficient.

So thank you all.

Appreciate it.

Okay, any other questions?

I just want to say thank you.

This is absolutely great.

I love the fact that we were able to go through that data really quickly, and you guys give me exactly the information I need, and uh, I'm sure true for the rest of the board.

Um makes much easier to make decisions on the few in the future.

Um it's just fantastic.

Thank you so much.

I wanted to echo that.

Um, this will provide us another tool to help us make better decisions.

I find it interesting how sometimes there's such a big discrepancy between the AI and the self-reported, and others are so right on point.

And I do realize that they're not specific pings, but I think it's a reliable number that we can base decisions on, and I appreciate having that.

Yeah, thank you.

Um, great report.

Thank you for that.

Thank you, um, leadership team for making that possible.

Uh, when we decide some of these events and almost shark tank it on how much money we're gonna throw at it.

We scrutinize two figures so often, and it's a budget that's easy to fold things into, and their own estimated attendance.

Uh it was interesting to see a couple of those were almost dead on on their estimated attendance, and then some were almost double off, uh, which is interesting.

I would find it interesting if there is a way at some point to identify if they're coming to the park and give us a figure, but 85% of them stayed in the park and left, or 10% of them actually went to our downtown restaurants.

How we can find a data number to correlate who's coming and staying, because it's probably gonna be well, that event that had food and drink didn't go visit our brick and mortars, but those that you know enticed them to go or certain programs and find what's working and what's not.

But very much appreciated.

Thank you to the team.

Thank you.

And for that point, there are multiple reports you can run on the same data set, so you can look at those people who attended the event and then cross-reference that over to who dined in downtown local.

So we can once we know exactly what's important to you, we can provide the that data.

And also, I should reference that this was taken specifically from visitors, it can also filter those who live there and those who work there.

So, this data set you saw was specifically from visitors, so it didn't count in maybe the people that live there and walked down.

So I should have referenced that.

Okay.

Yeah, you you kind of um reminded me of something.

You know, that whole idea of how much is it per person, meaning attendance is important.

I think it's only one of the things to factor in.

Uh, other things are of those people who attend that are they new?

You know, what demographics do they represent?

Um, do they come before or after the event?

Um, will they come back?

So I'm not quite sure if you can capture that data, but I've always been um one of those who believe that just attendance alone is not enough to deem events successful or not, but it is something important to consider.

So I would be interested in knowing how much we can filter those um that those numbers.

Okay.

Same things everybody else has said.

Um this is exactly what I asked for.

You all crushed it.

Um this is incredibly helpful to just evaluate the every future request.

And uh I mean, if you really did answer every question that I had.

So thank you for putting this together and thank you for you know, the place where I AI I'm familiar with and know all the possibilities of that, and appreciate, and you can't get lost in all the data, which you pointed out, which is uh can be a temptation.

So I also appreciate how you're you're uh wisely spending our time and you know just diving into the data that's the most helpful to us.

So appreciate that as well.

So with that, thank you for your report.

And then that's all for 3.3.

So we'll move to gender item 3.4, approved the October through December 2025 financial statement for filing.

Uh this item is for you to approve the October through December 2025 financial statements for filing.

Uh total expenditures and transfers out through December 2025 were 575,971 dollars.

So as of October 2025, the remaining available balance was 653, 810 dollars.

That concludes my presentation.

So is there anyone here from the public that they desire to speak to Ms.

Jenna?

Yeah, hearing saying none.

Is there any board discussion?

If not, is there a motion?

Move to approve agenda item 3.4.

Second.

All those in favor?

I opposed unanimous.

Downtown Development Board Directors report.

So this is a director's report, but before I get into it, um Mr.

Battle did ask me to say a few words about Placer AI, but I'm not going to do that anymore just because that was a very well put together presentation by Mr.

Chris Cook.

Uh but I did want to say just very briefly on it that you know, I do thank city management for approving that particular product for us to use.

It is going to be extremely valuable in the future.

It is funded by Parks and Recreation, the CRA, and a small portion of it from economic development.

So that tool goes forward for economic development and their staff.

It's going to be extremely valuable as well, just to kind of uh review and monitor market data and all the trends and the product is extraordinary, so I look forward to it as well.

Uh before I get into my particular presentation, I did want to have Miss Amber Bryce come up here and get a presentation on the world's largest rubber duck.

And again, she's superstar, she's up here.

Good afternoon.

Amber Brace, Arts and Cultural Affairs Manager.

I have with me Jules Smith, the special events programming supervisor.

You can call us the Crazy Duck Ladies here to give a presentation on the success of the world's largest rubber duck.

Um how it came to be a lot of you know we were just looking for rotating art exhibits, something that was going to bring people downtown.

And here were all of our duck day events that we had.

So first I'm gonna go into we had 108 photo time slots that we put up that Jeep owners or whoever could purchase to take an exclusive Jeep photo shoot.

We had 108, we completely sold out.

It was a very successful day.

We had a lot of foot traffic.

Um we had a photographer come out.

We didn't pay for him, but um the Jeep owners could purchase a photo if they wanted to.

I want to thank the special event staff.

We had a lot more foot traffic that day than I think we anticipated, so they had to get the Jeeps in and out safely around people.

So they did a great job.

Then we had Market Marie, which I don't have a slide for, but that was a huge day, um, which I'll show you some of the stats for that.

We have over 8,000 people came to the park that day.

The Ferris wheel had a record-breaking day.

They sold 800 tickets that day.

It was amazing.

Our next event that we put on as a city was our Duck Dash 5K.

Um just want to say on our opening day of Mama Deck, we had 228 registrations, which we thought was amazing.

We're like, yes, that's that's great.

The media coverage we got, we literally doubled that overnight.

We had 441 registrations for our DuckDash.

We capped it at 500, so we almost met our cap.

The medals, the t-shirts, everything turned out really cute.

It was foggy, which lent itself to some cool photos.

And then we had our biggest event for sure was our rubber ducky birthday bash.

It was a tremendous success.

We had a little under 5,000 people turn out for this event.

Um we had the the Boy Scouts did um duck races.

That couple in the bottom right there came all the way from Cocoa Beach.

It was really cool to see everybody dress up in all of their duck gear.

So many people came out with their duck stuff, and we were just looking at each other the whole time.

Like, I can't believe how many people are here.

It was so positive, it was so great.

It was just a wonderful day.

That we had our scenes on the green, not as well attended.

It was a little chilly that night, but it was still a free, fun community event.

And then to top it off, we ended with our duck and drive Jeep invasion.

Um still less attendance than the butt the birthday bash, but we still had a couple thousand people that showed up.

So we had Jeeps parked down Cleveland Street, we had a Phil Collins um tribute band, axe throwing, paint bus.

VSPC had a claw machine they brought out so people could win a rubber duck.

I like the photo on the right just showing perspective, people doing cute things with the duck.

And then we had a touch a Jeep area, which was very successful.

So numbers.

There was been a lot of talk about budget, a lot of wrong information about budget out there.

So I just want to stress this is not including PD cost, which we don't have those invoices yet, and some other costs like the Facebook ads we get invoiced later.

But our cost thus far is 45,360.

This does include the duck rental, barricades, security, all the performers, all of the bands, everything that went into putting uh this two weeks of events on.

But if you look at our revenue that we generated just from the 5k in the Jeep pictures, and this does not include the vendor spots that we sold, which I think is about an extra thousand dollars were probably put on top of this, 18,853.

And then in sponsorships, of course, DDB was gracious enough to give us 21,05, but I was able to secure 23,500 in additional sponsorship and outside sponsorship.

So thank you to Spa Manufacturers, visit St.

Pete Clearwater, CGS Energy, Hanson Inn and Suites, and Clearwater Marine Aquarium.

Additional revenue and also an interesting economic insight is our parking revenue.

Our parking revenue doubled from last year, the same time last year, and that's with zero concerts at the Baycare Sound.

Of course, the predominantly our downtown parking is free after six, it's free on the weekend.

So this is daytime for 6 p.m.

23,931 dollars we made in parking.

Then I want to talk a little bit about the downtown businesses.

Um we had a couple ideas just kind of come up.

This was one that I was like, what if we just paint ducks on Windows?

And all of the business owners were in full support.

It was really awesome.

They all got a cute, you know, something that was themed their restaurant, and we also put their specials on our page.

So like Nash Keys hit a little duck, and if you found it, you got a prize.

District Beastro gave away ducks on the Jeep.

And if everybody um brought in a picture with themselves with Mama Duck, most everybody was giving away some sort of discount.

So that was a really cool way to make everything seem cohesive and bring every everybody up Cleveland Street.

Here's some feedback from the owners, all positive.

You know, pretty much all of the businesses were busy the majority of the time.

Placer AI, I don't have to go into because Chris just went into, but here's some of the data.

Important to note, we do not have the data for the 9th, which was opening day, and we don't have the data for the 24th, which is a Jeep event.

So just in this time frame, you can see on the 10th, over 8,000 people, and you can see at the birthday bash, we had a little under 5,000 people attend, but in total, 21,500 unique visits to Coachman Park.

So once you factor in those other two days, that number is gonna go up.

And this is just people with cell phones, so I don't I don't even know if that counts the kids that were there.

So another really cool stat is our website analytics.

We had visitors from 46 different countries onto our city web page.

We had 35,475 page views, some of the highest traffic our website has ever recorded.

Um thank you to public communications, they put the live stream on the page, and we called it duck cam.

That got uh that live stream got 7,391 views.

Um we had a Timmy contest, a Timmy Selfie contest, 414 submissions.

All of the sponsors were super happy.

Including CGS Energy because they made it into the uh Wall Street Journal.

So this was an article from the Wall Street Journal, so Clearwater.

And there was pretty much not um one local media outlet, I don't think that we we didn't have there.

From radio to Telemundo, Fox 13, everybody was there.

This number is basically what it would have cost us as a city with all of the media coverage that we got if we had to pay for it out of pocket.

That's essentially the value, the PR value.

And then social media, again, off the charts, public communication basically.

So we've never seen this kind of engagement before.

If it had a duck in it, it was pretty much guaranteed to get at least 300 likes.

This is our first post.

It had 3,100 likes, 700 shares, uh 2.7 million views on our city Facebook page.

So I just want to give a big thank you to public communications, they were super helpful in making banners and social media posts.

Brooke Harris with IT, that poor girl had to change that webpage every single day.

So thank you to her.

And then Jason McCoy, Lloyd Gardner, Zieron Rants with Public Utilities.

They moved the generator for us, made sure it was full all the time.

They were just really awesome.

And then, of course, Jules Smith, my partner in crime, couldn't have done it without her.

She was at every event at like six in the morning, sometimes earlier, making sure special events people were where they needed to be, so she's awesome.

And thank you to the trustees.

I know this was a little bit of a shot in the dark.

We didn't really know what to expect, but it far exceeded I think anybody's expectations.

I personally spoke to numerous people that came from the East Coast.

I met a couple that came from Tennessee and made it a birthday trip.

I met a guy from Denver that came specifically for the duck.

So it did exactly what it was intended to do.

It brought people into our area.

And I'm interested to see the Placer AI data for like if how many people patronize businesses on Cleveland and things like that.

So we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

So you have any questions?

Consumer Moralberry.

Wow.

You know, when you first brought this up, I I thought it was oh what are you doing here?

You know?

I had no idea.

This this is, and then when I saw it and I saw the people, and I I saw the people that were disappointed that came down the windy days because you had to let it go down.

I'm like, this is bigger than I ever thought it was.

And you guys did a great job.

Thank you so much.

You know.

Yeah.

Yes.

Um, so this is the most perfect example, and the way you convey the information uh is part of the reason.

How a simple idea can't happen, and you've proved the snowball effect or the economic impact.

And that data with the parking was such a clear black and white.

How something here can have a big effect down the road.

Um, so if that's just the parking, can you imagine everything else that wasn't measured, right?

Um so this is brilliant, and you and I have been talking for a while.

I don't know how we can top this.

We I mean, I'm brainstorming.

I mean, this was incredible.

Uh Daddy Duck.

Daddy duck, I think that's uh my sister actually sent me a text.

She lives in Montreal, and she said, So you got a flamingo in the airport, got a duck in Pushman Park.

Where are you gonna put the inflated inflatable pink uh but honestly?

This made it worldwide.

Um you know, I have family from um Portugal that actually saw this.

So wonderful job.

Talk about you know, smashing it.

What did you call it?

Smashing it, or what did you call it?

Nailing it or something.

Incredible.

Thank you.

Next member may know.

Yes.

Hey, thank you, Mayor.

Congrats to the whole team.

Um, absolutely amazing.

There's only a couple topics in the city of Clearwater that we all get daily calls on.

Uh, and this was one of them.

And the the I hey, nice to talk to you.

Is the duck inflated today?

I can't tell you how many calls I got.

I'm so sorry to the city manager how many times I was away from my phone and had to text her.

Is the duck to Flake Gate today or not?

And she right away down for a little bit, should be up.

But um, how many days did we lose due to weather?

Do we do we know?

It's hard to say because even like the 5k she was up in the morning for the 5k runners, but had to come down.

So there was just multiple days.

I would say probably maybe four.

Of course, the weather could have been nicer to us, but um, last week it was up for every major event.

I think that's important.

And then it last week it was up for 24-7 for four or five days straight, 24 hours a day.

Absolutely amazing.

Thank you to the team.

Have we booked our next date with the duck?

So that was something I didn't know if you guys wanted to sit to talk to talk about.

Um please.

So I I will tell you, we have the right of first refusal for the duck.

Um, I can tell you the city of Largo and the city of Sarasota have already reached out to the duck owner, they want the duck.

So we don't want to give it up.

We can tell them you know, we want the it doesn't have to be annually, it could be biannually, so we could do it maybe in 28 when all the construction is gone.

I'm just I don't I don't want it to lose its specialness if we do it too much, but there are cities that do it every year, and it brings people out every year, so maybe I'm wrong.

I I don't know, I'd be supported for annually.

We celebrate annually semi-annual annually, but annually.

So I agree with that too, because if we were to go to biannually, would that mean that Sarasota or Largo could get the offer?

He wouldn't, no, he said no, even if it was biannually, he wouldn't within a 300 mile radius, they wouldn't book anybody.

Interesting.

I still agree that I mean it's a birthday, so we sold out 108 photo slots.

You know what I'm saying?

I'm sure people were and we actually had more booked for the Sunday, and those all sold out, but we had to cancel because of wind.

So those people were probably see those people wanted that, you know.

Yeah, I can already see your social media countdown clock until she returns.

Um that's gonna get your 300 hits again.

Sorry, Joel.

Congratulations and thanks to the team.

Councilmember McCartney.

Thanks, sir.

You guys nailed it.

I know it's already been said, you know, you've gotten all the kudos, and I mean the numbers are right here in the pudding.

That's an it's incredible.

The how you guys stood up here, pitched the idea, and Amber, I think you even said it, love it or hate it, that's gonna get people to talk about Clearwater, and it did, right?

Um, I got the phone calls too about the duck being down, so the duck cam was a fantastic idea.

Great idea.

Um, so whoever came up with that was clearly sick and tired of dealing with us calling to get that information.

So great idea there.

2.7 million views on the first social media post.

I mean, again, big data guy.

This is fantastic, and to show that you guys produced a revenue from it as well, just bringing all of the hype.

I went to St.

Augustine for my son's uh field trip, and just walking down the you know the shops with him.

One of the owners was asked, where are you guys from?

Over from Clearwater.

He goes, I just took my mom to see that giant duck.

And I said, that's incredible.

You know, like what are the chances?

So fantastic.

I'm all for definitely getting this thing back on the schedule every year.

Great job.

I think we just want to be strategic about it, you know, that we're not maybe mixing it up some, but we'll let you figure that out with them.

But I think there's the consensus we're interested in having it back, maybe in a different way, maybe some different events.

I'm sure we learned a few things, you know, this year that uh would help us next year, but I think consensus is to go ahead and start talking about that, bring something back to us.

We look at it.

Uh a couple things that just pick kind of, you know, I guess duct backing on what people said, not piggybacking.

Um is you know, we did get some scrutiny over how much money we spent, but uh I I said I I'm glad you shared the number how much it would have cost us to buy that media exposure that we got because it paid for itself uh immediately almost with I mean it was a tremendous management of media exposure.

Not to count all the social media hits and uh I mean people were you know I I've said after the hurricanes, which was true.

I thought that uh you know we can take all the photos we want of downtown Clearwater and Coachman Park and you know, photo brush it, make it all look sunny and pretty every day.

Uh but for a visitor, you know, what they really put a lot of emphasis on is that friend, that person who went there and had their own picture taken there and not photo brush, they know this is a genuine experience that they had there was positive.

We get all those folks coming down, taking having their picture taken, posting it.

That that's the best marketing we could possibly have.

And I think the number one thing I saw of the whole thing was um that you know, we've fought for a long time, you know, there's nothing to do in downtown Clearwater.

It's nothing is going on there.

No go there.

Don't you know go to Tampa St.

Pete and other Sarasota don't go waste your time, go down, go out to the beach, don't go to downtown Clearwater.

It it introduced folks to a fun activity from all over Tampa Bay in downtown Clearwater, that were beginning to change the mindset.

That Becky Reside had already done that some you know on a piece by piece, event by event basis.

But it's incredible what you created here with uh with this because all those thousands of people now they have a different perception of what it what's happening in downtown Clearwater.

So thank you for that.

Now the last thing is I I agree with Councilmember Albred, and you know, we're on that train, and you're like explaining to me what you were proposing and other okay.

I guess I see where that could attract some people.

Um I mean, at first to at least two of us, maybe all five of us, but at least two of them.

Sounded like a really crazy idea.

Um, but I want to uh thank you so much for bringing it forward.

I mean, it's a bit incredible, Amber, what you've done.

This is this was you.

You you're the one who came up with it and got the idea and proposed it to us.

And I hope it's encouraging all of our team to yeah.

Well, there'll be a lot of crazy ideas that may be okay.

Not now, let's wait on that one.

But it was out there, and it worked in a big way.

And I hope it encourages everybody on our team to suggest some things that might at first seem crazy because this is the kind of thing we need.

We need to stand out, and this certainly did it.

So thank you.

Thank you for the entire team for supporting this great event.

Uh, and congratulations.

You did a you did an amazing thing, not just for Clearwater, but for the citizens of Clearwater in uh bringing this event to us.

So thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Hey, Zeus, you have more for us.

It's hard to follow.

Might as well pack it up and go home.

Extraordinary unique visits did not include the people.

Again, hey Seuss, for the record, this is a director's report for February 2026.

Right.

I'll give you a status on basically what we've been doing in the downtown for the past uh few uh weeks.

So as far as the marketing and public relations firms at uh RBOA, I am happy to announce that they did sign the agreement that was reviewed by our legal department and other staff member uh should be ready for signature with the mayor here, that's the board chair.

It's the board chair.

So we have also started scheduling meetings one-on-ones with RBOA and council members so they can get interviewed and get their perspectives over to the firm.

In addition, we're also going to schedule them to go before city staff in one of our strategy sessions to get our feedback as well.

So we're looking forward to having them get to work quickly and start to meet milestones.

We're saying 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days.

That's a DDB budget of $50,000.

In addition, we're starting to have conversations with St.

Pete College.

This is just more for FYI to kind of understand why their original concept with the mobile vendors initiative kind of didn't materialize like they first presented it.

You know, we do have some preliminary information on why that happened, but once those meetings are kind of finished up with them, then we'll kind of give you a better answer on that.

But they are committed to trying to do some activation in our downtown as far as events.

Then Tasty Tampa Bay at Coachman Park.

This event will take place February 21st from 11 to 6 p.m.

This is presented by Saucy Queen, DDB funding sponsorship of $12,900.

She spent a staple in our downtown.

We really enjoy working with her because she gives us everything we need and she always produces and that's what she needs to do for the downtown.

Then the downtown Clearwater Ukulele Festival presented by the Tappa Bay Ukulele Society and Achieva Credit Union.

They requested $15,000.

That event will take place on March the 15th from 11 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

located on Coachman Park and the 400 block of Cleveland Street.

I'm going the right way.

Then I'm not going to go into the rubber duck because I wouldn't even try to do that.

She's did a spectacular job on that regards.

We were originally going to have her come to do it in her presentation in March, but she just moved so quickly, she had all the information ready, so we fit her into your schedule, your agenda.

This was just for DDB supported activation of the smaller grants for January.

The list just goes on and on.

I know some of the ones from the later in the month got canceled because of the cold weather weather, but this is basically every month now.

They're constantly just taking in applications, constantly reviewing them, working with other departments to make sure that these micro events happen.

Then as far as past events, I'm not going to go too much into these since Chris and Vicky did a great job.

You know, we have the Fresh Start Market.

That event was from January 16th, 23 and 30th.

That was hosted by St.

Pete College.

DDB funding was $50,000, then some city fees.

Then the Hello Cleveland Street, a Saturday night live music series to enhance nightlife and dining experiences on the 400 block of Cleveland Street.

That was January 10th, 17th, 24, and 31st, hosted by Downtown Pizza, Sports Bar and Grill.

Dan Mahoney, he did a spectacular job in that particular event.

It was a D2B micro grant of $5,000.

Then Saucy Queen, you know, she her dates for her event were the Jingle Bell Family Fun Fest and Tasty Tampa Bay.

Took place December 20th and February 21st coming up.

DDB funding was $12,000 for the Jingle Bell and $13,000 for Tasty Tampa Bay.

And SASA and Bachata in the district.

That was canceled, correct?

I think that was canceled because of the code weather.

Then as far as the grants in the downtown for the DDB, we do have the DDB special event grant funding.

We had a total of 12 approved.

So that would be for a total of $340,000 and $75,000.

$340,000.

Total amount that was paid out was $245,479.

The reason is because many of those events came in under budget and two were actually canceled.

As far as the DDB micro grant, we have coming up three approved grants for a total of $8,012.

We've paid out $8,012 for those.

Four individuals have applied for that particular grant.

Three were awarded, and one is in progress for a total of $23,551.99.

That concludes the presentation.

But we are looking forward to putting RBOA to work and start to help us rebrand the downtown with your help, of course.

Uh, and just continuing to work to activate the downtown.

Was that about the questions?

Okay.

Okay.

Any questions from the record?

Hearing that.

You have one?

Yeah, I don't necessarily have a question.

Just wanted to thank you and staff for all the work you're putting in.

Uh, I know our merchants are appreciative as well.

Uh, we're finding uh our secret sauce downtown is our special events and then keeping them in our district to eat and um bring their families and hopefully weather gets a little warmer and we can continue to do that.

I'm very excited.

You know, I've been screaming for months and months and months about finding a way to get some sort of branding of our downtown so that we start sharing a message of consistency throughout.

I think that's how we're gonna change that perception of who we are downtown.

Um, I think it's important that we keep the merchants involved in that messaging so that that consistent storytelling, we can kind of pull all those threads together, but I I think we all feel the the hope and the optimism for where our downtown's going and whether it's called a urban renaissance or whatever we decide to call it.

Uh exciting times for downtown.

I just hope everyone keeps sharing uh that those hopes and aspirations that we have because we can feel it as well.

So thanks to you and your your team's hard work.

Okay.

Anything else?

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay, with that, we'll move to excuse me.

Item five on the agenda, and that is to adjourn to the February 2nd, 2026 meeting of the City of Clearwater Downtown Development.

Yeah, we will recess for a minute.

Will we change some nameplates and potentially take a picture?

Yeah, friends.