It's time for this bi-weekly meeting of the Finance and Business Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us for the Finance and Business Committee starting now.

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to the Finance and Business Committee.

I think we have a bit of an echo.

No, okay, good.

Oh, we have an echo.

I think you can.

Okay.

All right.

Well, um, welcome to the Finance and Business Committee.

Today is Tuesday, September 9th.

Uh, I am my name is Sadana Gonzalez Cuchillas, and I'm one of your council members at large and chair of the committee.

Well, we will start off with introductions from council members, and then we'll go over what is on today's agenda.

Um, so with that said, I will start on my right.

Okay, it's perfect.

Councilmember Darrell Watson, fine district nine.

Good morning, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

Good morning, Amanda Sandoval, Northwest Denver District 3.

Great.

And I am looking to see if we have anybody online.

And I think we do.

Uh, Councilwoman Gilmore, you want to introduce yourself.

Good morning, Stacey Gilmore, District 11.

Great.

All right.

Um, well, that's all of our council members.

We have one action item on the agenda today, and one item on consent, so one for one.

Um, but today we're joined um by we have a couple people joining us today.

Um, but I believe Donna, um, you're gonna be probably kicking us off.

But if you can all introduce yourselves and then go ahead and proceed with the presentation.

I will start a queue for council members for any questions.

So go ahead and begin.

Great, thank you.

Good morning, uh, council committee.

I'm Donna Wilder with the Department of Finance.

Bill Mosier with the mayor's office.

Deep Khan, Executive Director of Denver Economic Development Opportunity.

Great.

Well, thank you so much for hosting us this morning.

We were really excited uh to provide you with uh updates on the Denver Downtown Development Authority this morning.

We are here today, really as a result of uh the amended and restated plan and development uh that was adopted by uh city council in December of last year.

Um this amended and restated plan and development guides the work uh that is undertaken by the uh Denver Downtown Development Authority.

Um, so really the reason why we're here today is because of uh your support in getting us to this uh place.

Um so just as a reminder, the amended and restated plan and development um was uh underscored by an economic study that really focused on upper downtown.

Um the reason why it was focused on upper downtown is because it was uh seemed to be slower to recover than lower downtown from the pandemic, and um from that study it found evidence of blight, and so that study served as the foundation to this plan of development, which provided uh general categories for investments and how we can uh take on projects to help eliminate that evidence of blight.

Now, this plan of development was very broad for a reason, uh, to allow us an opportunity to sort of experiment uh to see what sort of projects works to help eliminate that blight and allow us an opportunity to pivot if needed.

Um, and so what we uh found is that we needed some uh immediate courses of actions, some projects that we could select to have immediate results, and so Bill Mosier from the mayor's office came on board and started to identify some of these micro priorities, and I'll kick it over to Bill to explain those.

Okay, thanks, Donna.

Uh good morning, everyone.

Um we have this slide really summarizes the DDA's uh initial focus on strategy and priorities.

Um, number one, uh, besides the plan of development, we have interacted very closely with uh CPD and the downtown area plan, uh which is moving along, but we wanted to make sure that we weren't contrary to what the area plan was proposing.

So we've taken that under consideration, and our primary focus besides Upper Downtown was to really focus on 16th Street, and uh similar to the area plan.

We really focused on three Nexus locations.

Uh and these aren't necessarily intersections or specific places, but sort of areas of 16th Street.

The first being around Skyline Park, uh Curtis, et cetera, the connection really to the to the performing arts complex and that portion of 16th Street, which also ties uh as we know, to Lower Downtown.

Secondly, uh sort of the core of the retail, which is kind of California Street, particularly Clan Arm Plaza, which also has thousands of hotel rooms within walking distance, is probably the really the center of our hotel community, which connects to the Colorado Convention Center.

And then thirdly, the terminus of 16th Street at Broadway and 16th Street, which really really connects to Civic Center Park, the terminus of the RTD station and the Broadway Lincoln Corridor, and all the various neighborhoods from Golden Triangle up to Five Points and all of Capitol Hill.

So those are our three, those were the places that we really focused on.

Secondly, we all know that one of challenges downtown right now is either vacant buildings or underutilized buildings.