Ready?

Okay.

I'd like to call the Edmund City Council workshop on August 24th, 2026 to order.

Item two on our agenda today is an only item on the agenda today.

Is discussion of topics related to downtown Edmund.

Including do we pick them up one at a time, or do we want to just read through them and then go?

Well read through them, then we'll just go on.

Sure, I'll read through them, then we can just go because I don't know where we're gonna wander on this.

Um discussion regarding what area constitutes downtown Edmond.

Discussion regarding the 2014 downtown master plan and investments, projects, and activities that have occurred since the 2014 downtown master plan was approved.

Discussion regarding future downtown Edmund planning efforts and other citywide planning efforts that would affect downtown Edmund.

Discussion regarding tax increment finance districts in downtown Edmund, discussion regarding current potential future of uses of city-owned properties in downtown Edmund, and discussion of prioritized actions and next steps related to downtown Edmund.

So Mr.

Bryan, you're sitting right there.

I'm guessing you're gonna start us off.

Yes, thank you.

Uh Ken Bryan, director of planning.

Um I just want to start by saying a lot of staff have contributed to assembling the information we're gonna go through today.

We've tried to design this workshop to be highly discussion-based, so feel free to um interrupt and interject at any point.

I've got some natural pauses in here to uh solicit discussion and feedback from from the council.

So as we get going, quick reminder the purpose of this workshop, we think um we're trying to provide a shared framework for downtown and a related discussions.

We're gonna highlight recent activity and successes and catch up on applicable planning efforts that have occurred in the past 12 or so years, and then see if we can have a discussion about prioritizing short-term, long-term, and maybe even medium or uh long-term actions and initiatives.

As a quick reminder, I think the reason we're here is the council's strategic initiatives include three major bullet points related to downtown, update of the 2014 master plan, identify and evaluate city-owned properties, and produce a plan that supports an enhanced festival marketplace.

So jumping right in, we had a council mapping activity.

So everyone, um, council members are invited to map out what they believe to be the area they consider to be downtown.

So you've got a handout in front of you that shows two versions of this exercise.

Um, the one on the screen is designed to overlay all five responses onto one map.

So it's easy to point out that there are uh a wide agreement in where the you know the downtown is in the kind of the downtown core, Stevenson Park area, um the area south of Edmund Road and west of the railroad tracks, um sometimes affectionately referred to as the PaCon Grove, and working your way over to Fretz.

I think areas of discussion that we're interested to um to hear from the council on would be um particularly south and east of Boulevard and second.

So you can see an area there, Capitol View neighborhood and Clager, and that has not traditionally been included in the urban district.

Um a discussion about how far north downtown might extend, whether it in fact includes UCO in the area around the campus.

Um so with kind of that as a setup, I would invite um I would invite council to kind of weigh in on on their thoughts, and I'll try to take that.

I'm just glad to see that we all have an exact agreement on what downtown is um thoughts.

Well, my my first thought when I look at this, and and I know we've tried for years, other councils, the city, everyone tries to include east of a boulevard toward the campus as part of downtown.

I think I'd be lucky to find a hundred residents of Edmund that think of that as downtown, and especially since UCO is now going to we'll have to see what they do, but it's the university district.

I see nothing wrong with calling that the university district or Bronco blocks or whatever you want to call it.

I I think that the thoughts about making it walkable, leading into proper transition and what we want in there is great, but but I just feel like we're trying to cram a square peg into a round hole that there's nobody in their mint mental mind thinks of that as downtown.

Except that I had a meeting last week with someone who said I live in downtown Edmund, and she lives one block east of Boulevard.

So you found one people, there are a few people out there.

You found one over.

Of course, then we'll have a problem if we say it stops at Boulevard.

We can't call or can we call the current library the downtown library?

Because then it wouldn't be in downtown.

Closest there too.

So it might help me to talk about why it matters what we what we call downtown.

I know we've got like various overlaying districts that are intended for different things, like TIFF and Opportunity Zone, and so are we just trying to nail down like what we want the downtown master plan to cover.

It seems like maybe there are definitions for different purposes.

Maybe I'm overthinking it, but I think why does it matter?

I think that'd be a part of it for you to tell us what you think represents uh the poor part of downtown.

We started talking about like a lot of other topics where we have maybe more wants and needs than we have resources.

You you mentioned something that we want to talk about as part of this presentation is the uh the potential to update a downtown uh master plans.

Um I think kind of all those questions just rattled off or are relevant.

I don't I don't think we need necessarily need to look at it as boundaries necessarily.

Although when you get into the use of a TIFF district or something like that, obviously boundaries um do matter for us.

I think it's beginning to understand where do you think the this downtown is, and maybe there's there's obviously more than one answer.

Uh Ken will tell you in a second which one of you got it right.

Um, I just think for us it's about uh planning and uh eventual resource allocation.

Okay.

Yeah, this I think it's been a couple weeks since we did this, so now I can't remember exactly what I did.

Um, and I am interested to hear who's right because I think we all are.