Please.

I actually had a time to go.

This time we'll call to order the February 17, 2026 meeting of the City of Clearwater Community Redevelopment Agency.

This time we'll move to item two point one on the agenda.

Approve the minutes of the January twelfth, twenty twenty-six CRA meeting.

Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

Yes.

All those in favor?

Opposed, unanimous.

Move to item three on the agenda.

Are there any citizens here today to be heard on uh items that are uh regarding the CRA that are not on today's agenda?

Here we see now move to item four point one.

February twenty twenty-six legacy business spotlight, direct mail two point oh.

Good afternoon, board members, uh trustees.

He's using CRA executive director for the record.

I'm gonna introduce Ms.

Tasha Hadley to present this particular item.

Hello everyone.

Good afternoon.

My name is Sasha Hatley, CRE specialist, and today I'm honored to recognize Direct Mail two point oh as February twenty twenty-six business spotlight winner.

This is considered the legacy spotlight because they are long-standing business that have operated for over ten years or more in our downtown redevelopment area.

So established in 2015 and headquartered on 600 Cleveland Street, Direct Mail 2.0 has continued to grow while maintaining a commitment to an economic activity within our downtown Clearwater district.

CEO and co-founder Brad Cook Kugler established Direct Mail 2.0 with a clear mission to ensure traditional marketing could adapt and thrive in today's evolving landscape.

By blending direct mail with modern tracking technology, the company has provided businesses with measurable data-driven insights that strengthen performance and results.

Beyond innovation, Direct Mail 2.0 is invested in people, fostering a collaborative workplace and culture supporting educational institutions, charitable organizations, and community food drives.com.

At this time, we invite you to view the video.

So it's really important to me to give back.

We help local learning institutions, beach cleanups to keep this area vibrant and renewed, and what better place to raise a family and grow a business.

Oh, sure.

Direct bill 2.0 greatly appreciates this recognition and the acknowledgement of our contributions to this community.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Oh, you can do that.

Thank you.

Congratulations.

Thank you for all of the officers.

Oh, great.

Yeah.

Thank you should adjust it.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Okay, that will move to item 4.2 on the agenda.

Approve the downtown committee redevelopment agency fiscal year 2025-2026 first quarter budget amendment and adopt resolution 26 slash 01.

Good afternoon.

Ann Lopez, CRA Assistant Director.

This item that I have before you is to uh approve the amendments.

The first quarter budget amendments for the downtown CRA.

Florida statute section 163.387.

First quarter budget amendment reflects these required adjustments and the amendments allocate existing funds as follows.

217,844 and 79 cents to continue supporting our engagement activities.

500,000 for downtown commercial grants and the uh development commitment for the demolition of 115 MLK.

200,000 to support infrastructure improvements within the downtown CRA.

These amendments uh do not introduce any new revenue sources, um, but they instead reallocate existing funds, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

So you want to hear from the public today that desires to speak to this agenda.

I'm saying none is there any trustees discussion.

No discussion.

Is there a motion?

Wait before the motion, the resolution.

Okay.

A resolution of the committee redevelopment agency of the city of Clearwater, Florida adopting the first quarter amendments to the downtown CRA 2025-26 annual operating budget providing an effective date.

Okay, now is there a motion to approve agenda item 4.2.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye, aye.

Opposed, unanimous.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Agenda item 4.3.

Downtown revitalization.

Hey, Susan Lito, CR executive director for the record.

Uh, this item is your item to discuss any issues you would like to discuss about the downtown.

Any questions for the rector regarding this agenda item?

Kiss Marie Manino.

Thank you, Mayor.

I don't um I don't have any questions.

I appreciate this continuing to be on our agenda because there are so many awesome and great things going on in the downtown district.

I think there are going to be those moments when it's time to brag about them and tell the stories.

Um the construction's going, cranes are all over the place, and we've all been uh praying and begging for these opportunities for a long time, and they're they're upon us, so I think we keep spreading that that story.

I know the downtown branding and the city branding opportunities are moving forward.

We're excited about that, but I hope we all just keep continuing to share that hope and optimism of the direction of our our downtown and our city.

So thank you for this opportunity.

Uh I'll say I attended the market marie on Saturday.

Uh great turnout.

Yeah, it seems like that keeps getting more and more momentum.

Construction doesn't seem to be you know, dissuading people from coming downtown for that great market.

Uh parking lot was full.

I had to wait for a parking spot to uh to get in.

So that that continues to be a great draw for our downtown too.

So hopefully we can continue to help our businesses, particularly on stream and Cleveland Street benefit from the activities and events, and then we had a concert Saturday night that that uh seemed to go well too.

That we're continuing to draw more and more people to park, and hopefully that'll filter out throughout the downtown and help folks uh succeed.

Okay.

That will uh if there's anything else on that, we'll move to item 4.4.

Update on Placer AI product.

So this is an exciting item for our department, uh community redevelopment agency department.

So today we're gonna have parks and recreation.

Mr.

Chris Cook give a presentation, a demonstration on the Placer.ai platform.

Uh but before he does that, I did want to give you a little bit of history on how this came about.

So the initial purpose of pursuing the Placer.ai platform uh was to better equip the city council, the community development agency trustees, and the DDB board of directors uh to better understand the traffic that's coming into the downtown because of special events to give you more reliable data on attendance instead of just word of mouth, uh basically reporting individuals that put together the events that's kind of guesstimating what kind of attendance is occurring in the downtown, and also just because the Placer.ai tool, it also provides other information and market data is gonna be very valuable for the CRA department, parks and recreation, economic development and housing, and other departments.

So we're pretty excited.

So as far as how it occurred, uh initially when I first started, I was trying to get this product.

I was pushing for it, pushing for it, but then I also found out that parking parks and recreation was also pushing for it.

Uh of course, we got slapped down a little bit, said you have to go through the procurement process to make sure that you make it competitive for other type of entities that do the same type of work that Place.ai does.

Uh so it did go through that process.

There was multiple proposals that were submitted, and ultimately Placer I did end up getting awarded the contract that was signed by the city manager.

So this all occurred basically in late 2025, and then in late yeah, late 2025, and the agreement was thereafter it's signed.

So just to give you a little bit of breakdown on the cost of it.

So it is $50,000, and that cost is being shared by the CRA department, parks and recreation and economic development and housing with the CRA contributing $25,000, parks and recreation 20,000, then economic development and housing 20 uh 5,000, I mean for a total of 50,000.

So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to and also we're Placer.ai is providing intensive training for the city staff to learn how to use the product, and a lot of us are already learning how to use it and become pretty proficient in it.

Uh so Mr.

Chris Cook will give you a demonstration.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Um trustees, board members, uh, Chris Cook, Parks and Recreation Senior Manager.

Uh I think the idea here is to show you the the usability and how uh simple it can be.

So they found a parks and recreation person to come and demo some solidware for you.

Um couple of the things that that I it maybe as as you uh see some of the the ways that we drive through here.

Any questions that you guys have or things that you find might help you in decision making, uh make sure we we get those answered for you because there's we're still scratching the surface and having those intensive trainings that that um director Jesus had mentioned.

So we can find if we don't know the information, we can certainly find out if it's capable, and they are uh adjusting and adapting the software all the time too.

So even if they don't do something, it doesn't mean we can't ask them to.

So the first thing I'm gonna show is is uh especially related to to downtown CRA.

Um they have uh a district that's been created, right?

So it's uh it's already mapped.

Um and the nice thing with this is we can just uh pull open a pull open a market report and I'll just walk you through some of the details that it shows directly in here, and for the purposes of a few minutes in here, I'm just gonna add one filter in here, which is a specific date, and the mayor had mentioned the market marie, so we'll pull open a market marie date, and we'll get some data here for the district on that specific date.

So just give a moment it'll pop up.

It's usually good.

Okay, so as you can see, it's just got some uh market population metrics.

It has uh we can show year over year, we can uh go farther back if we'd like.

Uh this specific model is gonna show residents as well as workforce.

Oh, we wanted to get a screen working.

Oh, we're not now.

Oh, okay.

Sure.

It's on now.

Now it's January.

Oh it's just a similar map.

Okay, thank you.

So it's got uh general uh population numbers.

I think we we've mentioned at the last about how the the data is given.

So this would be unique uh people we're looking at.

So even as you see over the course of some hours that I'll show a little bit later, uh this would be a unique uh populace.

So the same person isn't pinging and showing up uh over the course of several hours if they're at an event or a location.

So because I picked one date, we don't have another um date to show it for, but it's it will show us some of the top visited places that people that picked up in this um in this model on this date uh locations that they've been to uh frequently, and then it gives kind of that hourly breakdown that I mentioned.

So uh this was during our our our duck season, we'll call it.

Uh so we did see uh higher uh traffic at at different times of the day, but as you can see, Market Marie, there's clearly a bump in that uh attendance you can see between 10 and 2 as we keep going down a little bit further.

There are demographics that that are broken down, um brings up education out of uh market visitors income variables, demographic breakdowns that uh they have some ways that they've packaged some different demographics together that that I think is is interesting and just gives us a good idea on who's attending which events and uh uh part of our role in parks and recreation is to have events that speak to a wide audience.

So this is a good tool that will help us make sure that we're uh providing entertainment and things for for all sorts of um different audiences.

So what I'll show here real quick too is we'll just use that same date, but a little bit of a more drilled-in area.

So what we can do is is create kind of our own map.

We can do this anywhere in the city.

So if we want beach information, we want softball information, like we just had, we can do that.

If we want to drive up Cleveland Street, okay, we can create our own map, and then now it's gonna see the festival one.

I like for this model because it has out-of-town visitors specifically or out of area specifically in here, and it'll take just a second to populate so this would be in that hand-drawn map that I showed you specific to that.

See if I can show up the fastest, sorry about that.

But as you as you can see, we can drill through data pretty quickly and do custom reports.

So again, as we see, so this is showing 11 uh 12,000 visitors on on that date on that Saturday's market marie date from January.

Uh the average time that they were there was 73 minutes.

Um again, it doesn't have any uh we can do trending data, so this can help us look at what last year on this date without an event compared to this year.

And then here's just some additional uh info that we get from the um going and drilling down into event details.

We can see you know where people are coming from.

Uh specifically with some of our tourism markets.

I already did a quick one on the the softball tournament from last weekend.

You can really see the red pockets from where those teams are located, where those colleges are.

So for an event like the market marine, not surprising uh that we're we're drawing so heavily from within the clearwater market.

Um the again it's got audience overviews that that um do a comparative to Florida.

You can change that to nationwide to different states.

You can use it against the census um information, but it's got good comparative uh details there as well as different ways to look at charts.

The um this one I like from an event perspective because it tells you within 15 miles of other events that are taking place on the same date and time, so we can make sure as we're we're planning things that we're we're doing so keeping in mind what other what else is going on in the community and how we rank against those.

So on a Saturday in January, the the market marie that time that we put in was the number one uh festival uh in the area, according to this data.

So again, some of these things that we'll change will update as a staff is some of the addresses that are in the Placer software are are repetitive, right?

So we have Winter's Dolphin Tale Adventure as an old listing.

Uh but we can clean up some of these um locations so that that just gives us even better data.

This shows us where they're coming from before and going after.

So a lot of people came from home and went home after for this event, and it's interesting to see on the data where they will come from and where they will go, and then some of the the routes in which they have to get there so traffic engineering can benefit from this.

We can see where traffic flow is going specifically, we think of 4th of July and how we make uh you know traffic patterns with with closures.

This will be really helpful.

I've already shared with some of the traffic engineering folks some of the software already.

And then here's the the data that we showed with numbers at during um during that event specifically.

We can dive in and see how many times individual users have visited, either uh similar event, same event, different events.

Um again, as Jesus had brought up at the beginning, we we want to provide you when looking at funding um sources and making funding decisions, the information that helps you know the kind of impact that these events are having.

So if there's any specific pieces of info either that weren't covered here or things that that we can have uh to present to you before an event comes for a funding request or even in the post-event request, we'll be happy to get your information, field it and put it together.

So with that, any any questions?

I will do my best to answer questions.

I'm not the expert on this, but I'd be happy to travel.

So um I'm on the website and just went to placer.ai.

Um how do you bring up specific like clearwater?

Do we have to log in for that or yeah?

So as a city, we have a number of logins that came with that that investment that was made.

And so we'll have uh as long as is you're an active uh user for the city, you have access to these kinds of reports that the general public wouldn't have.

Okay.

All right.

Consumer many milk?

You done?

You done, sir?

Yeah, thank you.

Um thanks for the presentation.

Uh awesome.

Um moving us forward uh with technology is vitally important, obviously, to us and our departments.

Uh capturing data is important.

I think what makes us different as a municipality will be how we capitalize on that data we collect.

Um, sometimes people can get lost in data.

I think our our team will be successful in navigating that.

I just had two quick questions for you.

Um, is there a monthly or yearly subscription that comes along with this software?

To my knowledge, yes, it's it's we have a year-long agreement, might be be longer than that because of the procurement process we went through.

But there is uh there's a subscription process that we went through.

And that'll be broken down CRA, parks and rec and housing and economic development, I assume, or that's that's who helped fund the project.

But as I I shared earlier, if if traffic engineering is looking for information, we were happy to use this across all lines to make the city better.

Absolutely.

And then the last one, help me just better understand define out-of-market visitors.

Is that out of that district or the map you create or yeah?

Thank you.

And just so I don't take up more of your time driving through this.

Um, there is uh some click downs.

You can uh you can uh include residents, you can include uh businesses so that your your numbers will will grow if you want to see the overall market report and how many people are there.

Um, but that specific one through festivals that I I chose.

I like that one because it is uh from people who live outside of a 15-mile uh or do not spend enough time where it shows that they work within that 15 mile gotcha.

Very cool.

Thank you so much, and thanks for demonstrating it.

Anybody else?

Um I I want to say a couple things.

One is that uh for me this information is really important.

So I know visit St.

Pete Clearwater is using similar technology, maybe even placer, uh, and they are really learning a lot about how many out-of-town folks visit events that they sponsor.

Some they've been surprised that a heavier number of out-of-town residents have participated in an event uh than they thought, and then there's been others where they've been sponsoring events that they've been told, hey, it draws folks from all over, and it turns out their data isn't showing that at all.

It's mainly local folks.

So for the TDC, that's really important because the whole point of the bed tax is to draw and uh tourist in, and I think that helps us kind of find for us as CRA and the downtown development board, you know, you know what can we use our funds to maybe supplement or to you know use for local that attract locals uh where maybe the bed tax money, the TDC money isn't going to be there for that event in the future.

So that's very helpful.

I think the other thing I see too is you know, we've always talked about you know what role could the beach and and visitors on the beach play in the revitalizing downtown, or there are things that we could offer to attract that large population that comes and goes.

It was absolutely packed this past weekend.

The beach was hard to find a room.

Couldn't get a dinner reservation, particularly on a I don't know why on the 14th of February, you couldn't get a dinner reservation.

Um, even if you're the mayor, but um it uh I I think that this you know could help us kind of learn more about what kinds of things are happening downtown that do attract those folks to come in off the beach, and maybe that's you know something we can use for further success.

So for me, this is really really helpful.

And um for all kinds of departments, not just parks and recognition.

As you pointed out, police department has control traffic and all these other departments that uh can really learn a lot from this and and provide better service to our citizens.

So I think it's a good thing.

So okay, thank you.

That's moved to item 5.1.

Again, hey Susanino, CR executive director for the record.

Uh going back to the placer.ai item, I did want to thank uh the IT department.

They were critical in helping us select the proper platform to use for the foot trafficking data collection that the platform does provide us, especially Dave Pearson and Mr.

Dan Mayer.

So enough of that, but um just wanted to put that out in the record.

So this is the February 2026 director's report.

So the items we'll go through is like every month is the downtown activity and the North Greenwood CRA activity.

We do want to start highlighting more and more, and we're starting to get help from other departments, and now that we do have Mr.

Christopher Edwards here with some economic development housing, the new director.

So I'm not sure if I'm the first one to introduce you to, but he's demand back there.

But this department and other departments are going to be critical on and planning development to help us start identifying these new businesses that are coming down to the downtown.

So we'll try to get better and better to report that to you every month.

But this month we do want to highlight golf side pizza and subscribed in the corner of you know the 500 block 530 Cleveland Street.

They've been open now for a few weeks, and so far, just the feedback we get from them that the service that they've been provided by the city departments, it's spectacular, and they so far being successful within those few weeks, and hopefully, with us helping them and provide them any kind of resources they'll need, they'll remain successful there.

So I know that the direction was that Miss the Councilwoman Leon Teshara, she would be basically the liaison.

So Mr.

Battle and myself and other staff members did meet with her, and we'll give you a quick little update here as far as what occurred so far up to date.

So to date, this is for the Clearwater that reimagined Clearwater Maine Library Cultural Destination Initiative.

So staff is actively targeting organizations, associations, and individuals that are in that industry either directly or develop it or just provide data.

And we have engaged over 147 plus organizations.

Then some of the key partners that is it not on your screens?

I'm sorry.

No, it's not.

That's okay.

It keeps shutting up.

Yeah.

Yeah, they've been they're trying to get it.

Just continue on you.

Okay, we're going on.

We'll do it afterwards.

Don't worry.

We are this is a multi-department team that's starting to engage these organizations, museums, cultural institutions, and just catalytic individuals out there in the market that do this type of work to activate these types of libraries.

So we have economic development, we have Amber, she's with some arts and culture.

We have public communications, we have parks and recreations, just multiple departments helping us make that contact.

For instance, you know, we've interviewed the Creative Pinellas with Edgar Hall, uh, Clearwater Historical Society, Florida Rama, uh Great Explorations Children Museum, Zero Empty Spaces, Heather Wick Studios out of London, Fairmont Properties locally here with Mr.

Ruttenberg, Museums of Science and Innovation.

We have industry up there, but it's actually Museum of Science and Innovation, MAPS Museum, and this is just a few of them.

There's many, many more individuals that we've been interviewing.

We've been traveling to them, you know, economic development myself.

We've been traveling to St.

Pete, to Tampa, and anywhere that makes sense for us to travel fairly quickly.

For instance, we just met with the CEO of Mosey, and we're also going to provide him a personal tour of the library to see he can come in and kind of take a look at what we got and see if he can identify stakeholders and partners that he might be able to identify to bring to the table.

So again, we're doing direct interviews, we're exploring discussions with individuals in the industry.

Again, that's with cultural institutions, arts and creative organizations, placemaking developers, regional stakeholders.

We're also starting to see if we can do interviews.

For instance, we had councilwoman and the mayor do an interview with 82 degrees, which is locally.

We're also working with economic development housing, see if we can create some time of sub type some type of publication and industry publications.

And obviously, we have the regular social media that we're exploring that we're posting items on.

Just to give you a little bit of the timeline so far, you know, back in before the end of the calendar year, we did bring this item to you at the end of the year, and basically we we did get the direction to move forward starting January 1st.

So we've been doing that since January 6th, and through April 17th or went a little bit too fast there.

So in planning phase one, you know, September 16th to December the 1st, that's where we brought it to you to get that direction to move forward.

Then we also had the planning phase from December the 1st again to January the 6th on how to strategize and internally on how to market this a little bit better and just kind of learn from lessons learned from the past.

Then January 6th to 2026 to August 17, 2026.

We've been doing pre-marketing.

That's where we do this targeted outreach and the interviews, monthly reportings, starting to schedule tours of the library, and just implement any kind of stakeholder feedback.

Then the final phase would be towards the end of the year, where we're continuing to do tours, but we'll also issue a call for development concepts for the library, or if there's some type of catalytic project comes in before that that has an awesome proposal, then we can entertain that with city management and potentially bring that to you early, or just advertise it early to open that window up.

So before I move on for that particular slide, I wanted to see if Mr.

Battle had any input because you know he was part of some of those interviews, and I'm not putting you on the spot or anything.

But we are getting a lot of feedback, and we're scheduling these tours.

So we're continuing our monthly community outreach meetings at the last meeting.

Sorry, not sure what happened here.

So at the last meeting, we had the Denunzio group here at the library, and they gave a presentation on the downtown project that they're working on.

I think the feedback from the community was well received that they're we'll bring in those individuals that are actually doing the construction to them so they can ask questions.

So our next meeting we do have is scheduled for February the 24th.

And that meeting we're gonna have our city engineer and public works and other staff kind of start giving an update on the downtown construction and get their feedback.

Right now, what we're doing is we do have public works staff and CRS staff.

We're doing those one-on-one meetings with the downtown merchants and the community just to kind of get their feedback on certain construction activities or certain plans that public works may have.

In addition, it's not on this particular slide, but we do have Mr.

Mr.

Ruttenberg.

He's going to with Fairmont Properties.

So he's pretty booked, but he's agreed to be able to do that in the summertime to come in and talk to the community about you know downtown activation and projects he's working on.

So this is for the Cleveland Street District signers that we just had installed.

This is uh as part of the Cleveland Street activation uh project.

So we did have a few signs that are very nice.

If you haven't seen them, you know, they're beautiful, they're located in the 400, 500 block.

This says Cleveland Street District.

Then for North Greenwood, we had a lot of activation as far as the grants.

Uh right now, to date since July 2024, we have a total of 52.

Uh of those 52, 18 have been completed, 15 are under construction, then six of them are under review, then 13.

We were already engaged with those residents to see how we can help them.

Then as far as the commercial grants, uh, we still have four approved projects and two projects that have been completed for the North Greenwood area.

Then for the North Ford Elementary School, staff continues to advance forward with North Ford Elementary School redevelopment through council coordination, site engagement, and targeted outreach.

I do want to thank Economic Development Housing and Mr.

Battle that have taken the lead on this particular project.

But because it is located within the North Greenwood CRA area, we continue to give you updates here because it's just easier to do that from time to time.

It will come to you at City Council work sessions like in the past.

So after reviewing the shrink wrap options, the orange orange material will be used to cover the structure.

The first site tour was held in January 16th, so it's positive interest.

A project brochure and landing page have launched.

Then media issue release issued with public communications.

Developer Outreach is underway, focusing on historic preservation experience.

And there is articles out there that you can read.

Wednesday, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

at the North Greenwood Recreation Center.

We'll we'll continue to introduce CAC members to the public, and we'll continue to hear that feedback from the public and bring any anything that bears from those CAC meetings, we'll bring it to you.

That concludes the presentation, but I also had one more particular item, and I think almost slide.

See it.

Yep, you can.

So Miss Mailer and Terman and Miss Gloria Campbell wanted me to share this.

So last night they had a business showcase basically for businesses that are potentially gonna be selected to move into the mini container village that they're working on.

So that occurred last night from 6 30 p.m.

to about 9 30 p.m.

Um at the Curtis Museum.

So I was part of that panel that heard those small businesses that have potential to move in to the mini container.

So it was pretty well attended meeting by the community by the businesses and some of those businesses that are gonna move in, they're have very interesting concepts.

And uh this is a partnership, so we have a partnership with Site Peak College, we have a partnership with uh Pinocchio County Small Business Development Center, uh SCORE, and many other partners, financial institutions that are all at the table to help the Mini Container Project be successful.

That concludes the presentation.

Okay, any questions for the director?

Vice Mayor?

Not so much questions, but actually uh commentary.

So I want to first thank our city manager Jennifer for allowing um me to have that opportunity to be to have a brainstorming um session with our assistant city manager um Mr.

Battle and Jesus, and I really appreciated the opportunity to have a good discussion, share our thoughts, and uh as well as our research.

And I brought with the with my with me and I shared with you all some of the research that I had, and I was so pleased that you also shared the same results that I did, uh, two of which were two locations that were international, which to me showed that um we are pushing forward and we're thinking big.

Um I think one of them was an AI company for Japan and the other one in London.

So um I was very pleased about that.

The second thing which I found a little bit surprising and I and I'm grateful for um is the idea that Mr.

Battle opened up my um my mind to different opportunities that uh we should look at.

So I always um enjoy and and put value to um expanding our minds.

So I really wanted to uh thank you all for that.

And I look forward to working together with you all.

And like I offered at that meeting, I'm willing to be part of that process if you guys wish.

That's it.

Anybody else?

Okay, thank you.

That we'll move to item six, which is to adjourn the February 17th meeting of the City of Clearwater Community.