Call to order the community and culture committee meeting for Thursday, March the 5th, 2026, so to stand for the Pledge of Leafs.

One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Welcome everyone to the committee meeting today.

Today we have two items on our agenda.

The first item origin is an economic development overview.

This item we're presented by Richard Griffin and Mary Ford now.

Welcome.

Good afternoon.

Richard Griffin and Mary Ford Neo.

As you all know, I oversee four departments of the city, and I have a strong manager who oversees the day-to-day operations in each one of those, and Mary does an incredible job running economic development on a day-to-day basis, and she brought a couple of our other colleagues with us, and I'll let her introduce them.

Sure.

With us today, we have uh Kennedy Wilson, who's our business development specialist, and we have Andy Feldman, who is our uh economic development specialist bilingual.

So we're gonna we thought that pictures were better than just a lot of words.

So we're gonna try to walk you through a story about economic development, but we're happy to stop at any time, answer questions, and uh and take notes if there are things that you ask us for that we don't have, and we can get them to you if we have them, okay?

Um so economic development, and we're gonna try to move quickly through these.

I just want to make sure that we all are working from the same page that economic development is generally considered to be a deliberate set of programs and policies that a community puts in place to improve the economic well-being of the community.

And why do we do it?

We do it because we want jobs uh for our citizens, people that live in our community.

We want the tax base that comes along with it.

Uh we want the um the opportunity that comes along with corporate growth, also comes stewardship for many, many other things, including the nonprofit sector, the arts and uh and things like that.

And then finally, uh private sector investment in the community stimulates additional follow-on investment.

Um we do it through a number of different techniques, and there are a lot of theories of economic development.

We subscribe to the economic uh the International Economic Development Council, IEDC.

They have a prescribed set of um economic development um best practices that we try to implement every day in our work, and we focus on business attraction, business retention and expansion, neighborhood development, and workforce development.

And so those are kind of the pillars that we that we uh everything that we do falls into one of those categories.

Um I want to share that when you look at studies that have been done across the world about what people value most.

After family and health and relationships, they value economic stability and jobs.

And you don't have to go very far from Frederick to the you know, to the Midwest and to other parts of the country to see communities that are not in the same condition that Frederick is in.

And you have to have a concerted constant effort to make sure that you're cultivating a community that attracts private investment, builds jobs, and builds opportunity for its citizens.

And I am really proud that Frederick is that kind of community.

Uh, and I am very proud of the work that's been done by our team over the years, and there's still a lot more to do, but uh we're headed, we believe in the the trends are in the right direction, and we're heading in the right direction for the types of things that we're focused on.

Um Frederick within our market is a desirable commodity.

People want to be in Frederick.

They like the authenticity of our community, they like the job opportunities that are here, they like our historic downtown, they like the arts, they like the culture, and as a result, we're growing, both residentially and job-wise.

And you can look at these statistics here on the slide that show kind of where we are, but I want to kind of walk you through a slightly different narrative.

The City of Frederick, can you see you got a question?

No, go ahead.

I'll I'll ask you for the spot.

The City of Frederick, we occupy only about 3.5% of the county's landmass.

We're about 24 square miles.

But we contribute almost 30 percent of the population, 25 percent of this county's tax base, 42 percent of the businesses, 48 percent of all the jobs in the county are physically located in the city, and about 30 percent of the entire labor force of our market.

So we are mighty, our our little three and a half percent of the county's land mass, but we contribute sizably to the economic prosperity of the county, and our residents, because of that have great opportunity.

We're really proud of the fact that our ratio of jobs in the city to the number of residents to the number of workers is about 1.6, 1.7 jobs for every um resident that lives in the city.

And that means that the folks that live here have an opportunity to work here.

Now, that doesn't mean they all do, but it means they have an opportunity to, and we are very focused on that.

Yes, sir.

Real quick, who's who's our largest employer in the city of Frederick?

We're gonna cover it, but our largest employer is It's a combination that's Fort Dietrich with all the government contractors there.

They're by far the largest.

AstraZeneca is where?

Uh in the top 20.

We're gonna have a slide that shows you our our our top employers and and they are certainly in the top ten.

All right, really quick.

I know I've ahead because that's at least my second question.

Um small business, what's the percentage of our small business make up our businesses?

About 97 percent of all of our businesses are small businesses.

Now, small is a relative term.

If you use the the uh the U.S.

uh SBA umber, it's anything with less than 50 jobs.

Um I think many of us would call that a big business.

Um, small, but we have a lot of small businesses with one or two or five people in them here in the city of Frederick, and the vast majority.

And when you go back to our pillars, you know, we talk about business retention and expansion.

If we have 4100 businesses, 40, what was our number?

4700 businesses.

4100 businesses.

If every one of them were to add one job in one year, that's more jobs than we can attract from any business attraction perspective.

If even half of them add a job, even a quarter of them add a job.

So you can see the value of working with the existing businesses in the community and helping them grow to the next step.

Because when AstraZeneca first came here, you asked that question.

They were not one of our top employers, but over the last 20 years, they've grown to be one of our la our biggest employers.

And we're getting a lot of national recognition as a result of the quality of place that we're in, and of course, only parts of these things are related to economic development.

We have an incredible park system, we have an incredible uh arts community, we have all these different things that contribute to why businesses and people want to be here.

Um, but we think that um the fact that we're on some of these lists is a good thing that we're being recognized for the quality of effort that's been put into the community.

So I think I'm gonna end here shortly by after these key industry sectors and let Mary take it from here, and then she'll have some of her folks talk you through some of the other slides.

But the key industry sectors really are health care, advanced manufacturing, uh, including bio uh biotech, professional and technical services, and um uh technology.

There are a few others.

Hospitality is very important to the city of Frederick.

We're getting more than 2.1 million visitors a year, and I think we probably have a slide that talks to that later.

But you can see that we have become a center of medical excellence in our small region with Frederick Health and with all the doctors that have invested and moved here into the community.

But also we have just an incredible number of technology tech companies.

And I'll use AstraZeneca as I transition over to Mary here as the as the example that when I first started working in Frederick, the most valuable property in the city of Frederick was the Frederick Town Mall.

Valued at over 50 million dollars.

And today, the most valuable piece of property in the City of Frederick, and one of our most uh important partners is AstraZeneca.

Uh and they contribute sizably to the tax base that helps pay for all of the other things that we that we want to and and do are able to do in the community.

And so our goal, of course, is to continue to cultivate that type of relationship while we also work with our small businesses.

Mary is one of the best in the business.

She has 30 years of real estate background in Frederick and has been working now for going on a decade almost.

Um here for the city in economic development, and I'm going to let her walk you through the next few slides.

Hold tight, Richard, about that the Fredericktown Mall, because I got some questions just in terms of we can talk about the market because we hear we hear suggestions, of course, from residents around certain business aspects.

So hold that.

Yes, sir.

And we did ask um Frederick County Workforce Services to grab some of the data with regards to where we're seeing key industry uh sector growth so that you have that information to know where we see the employment numbers are going to be coming in the future.

So I think that's good data to have and review.

Um and you asked about our major employers.

The the good thing about Frederick, the City of Frederick, is that we have a very diverse diverse business group.

It's a mix of government and private sector.

We have construction, we have manufacturing, um, institutional um providers such as Hood College, Frederick Community College, and so forth.

It's that diverse business um uh pool that makes us pretty successful here in the City of Frederick.

And another piece that we have that's leading towards the workforce and attracting more jobs here in our marketplace is that we have quite a few commercial development projects that are taking place in the city, and several of those are spec projects, meaning that the developers feel that Frederick is such a great place to do business that they want to speculatively build um projects like you see on the screen and attract those companies to our marketplace.

So it and what it does is bring um lots of opportunities for new jobs in our marketplace for our residents.

And Mary, can I just add that one of the things that happens in communities that don't have a robust commercial development sector is that organizations like ours are usually asked by elected officials to try to stand up industrial parks.

So they're developed by local government, then they're to try to attract investment.

And that is one of the key differentiator differentiators for Frederick is is that we don't have to do that piece of it.

Um developers are speculatively investing in Frederick because they see the opportunity to attract that those businesses into those buildings.

And we know with these companies, speed to market is everything, time is money, and so having a space that they are can immediately move into or move into with close proximity to getting their tenant improvements is uh is a win for them and the community.

So economic development, why is it important?

Um we have this great statistic from the Maryland Economic Development Association that says for every dollar invested in economic development, it's returning nine dollars and seventeen cents into the community.

That's a great return on investment for sure.

So now we're gonna talk about one of those pillars, which is business attraction.

And business attraction is probably a small percentage of what we do because we do focus a lot on small business development.

But in the business attraction piece, what is that?

It's growing the prospects that are looking at our community.

We're working with the Berkridge community, the developer community, the site selection community to try to say how do we um bring the best companies here to offer employment opportunities for our workers and our residents.

So uh business attraction focuses on a lot of things, and we've been very successful in in certain key areas such as life sciences, advanced manufacturing, tech, and logistics.

So some of those sectors, a lot of small businesses.

We've been able to see new businesses get created every day and open and with their dreams intact and uh stand up some amazing uh new businesses here in our community.

Over 50, we've been tracking over 50 ribbon cuttings pretty much every year for the last several years.

So that's a good sign of a strong economy here.

Did you sure okay?

While we're talking about it, what trends are you seeing with businesses?

So what what types of businesses?

And I'm just thinking about gyms.

Um, and this is just an example, but um cycling used to be really big, you know, during COVID, and now that's going away, and we're seeing a bunch of Ploty studios.

So not necessarily talking about just gyms, but overall, what kind of businesses are you seeing come up?

It is a mix of businesses, I'll be really honest with you.

Sometimes it's cutting-edge technologies that are coming out of uh the commercialization opportunities that from Fort Dietrich or the Frederick National Labs.

Sometimes it's just um ideas that are coming out of the empower program, which we're gonna talk about in a little bit, and we're gonna also talk about how people are coming up with these great new ideas that we didn't even think about years ago.

So I will tell you it's a mix of things.

But for example, we have a company right now that has an incredible technology, and they've already um uh successfully located at FITSE, and they plan on building a new facility here in the city of Frederick.

I can't name who they are yet, but when they do, you're gonna be saying, wow, this is great for the community, and just a great um great opportunity for our citizens here.

So we'll get into a little bit of that further in the presentation.

Oops, let me go back one more.

So some of the things that we do, we do participate.

Our team goes to site selection type of events.

So we are trying to interface with those companies that are looking at our community.

Uh a large one that we do participate in that's in our region, is the site uh the Select USA Summit, where they're bringing companies that are vetted that are international companies that are looking to establish a presence here in this country.

And because of our proximity to the DC area, which is where this is held, um, they often will come up for a tour here in our community.

And another uh sh really amazing opportunity we have here through our Frederick Innovative Technology Center is its partnership with the state of Maryland on the Global Gateway project.

And what that does, this soft landing program is an opportunity for companies that want to establish their first U.S.

presence here in our community, that they can come in through FITSE, develop those relationships, and then stay here and grow here.

And we've already seen that.

We had a company, for example, we had um about two years ago, we had a group of Irish tech companies that came to our community.

We toured them all through Frederick, and we said, Well, what can we do to get you here?

Well, one of them decided to come here.

They landed at FITSE, they have already built their company at FITSE here, their U.S.

presence here at FITSE, and now they've already expanded at FITSE.

So they've expanded into additional workforce and additional space.

So that's what you want to see.

You want to see that growth come from programs like this.

And it's great just having this in our community here in the state.

Other things we do, we're we are we are touring people through our town.

You will see us walking around town with someone and that and we're pointing out all the assets because we know that the quality of life is important when a company decides to locate here, that they want to know that their workforce is going to, you know, um love the assets that the city has from its parks to its downtown to its great other areas of the city of the Golden Mile in East Frederick and so forth.

So we are touring those groups through here and showcasing those assets.

Another thing we do is participate in regional conferences that are attracting entrepreneurs and and so forth, like TEDCO, which is uh Maryland's finance arm for technological innovation.

Uh we're we're interfacing with a lot of the entrepreneurs and so forth in our community.

And biotech, we are we're focusing as well on the international market at events like biointernational.

Attraction.

Attraction is even the hotel project.

It's gonna bring 200 jobs to our community.

It's been a long time coming, but that investment, that capital investment also generates additional tax revenue for our community.

And projects like Art Spiration are helping to grow um arts arch uh businesses in our community.

So it's really great to see the strength of our community have uh projects as well in the arts and culture.

This might be a good place to mention that businesses, depending on their size and their needs, um, go in.

We have kind of a uh a three-legged stool of development.

Um, but we also have you know adaptive uh reuse of old buildings and like uh art spiration is an example of that.

And then and then finally we have in-fill development.

So if you've been going out the golden mile recently, you've seen the hill, the old hill side coming down, and now there's a new business going in there.

Those, you know, that's in-fill development on lots that previously during the nor during the uh you know the first cycle of development never really developed.

And so now people are coming back and looking at those and picking picking this.

So we really focus on and we have tools that try to um help people depending on where they are in that uh decision-making process of where they want to locate.

So, whereas attraction is very important.

The majority of the work that we do tends to fall in business retention and expansion.

So that means our businesses that are here is supporting them so that they grow and expand.

Um so we're here to try to try to make them as strong as possible and to work um collaboratively with our other departments to try to make the processes as smooth as possible with regards to permitting zoning, workforce, and infrastructure.

So, yes, we attend a lot of ribbon cuttings and we celebrate, but there's a lot of work that goes in before they get to the ribbon cutting stage.

So we're often working with them one-on-one in meetings to try to address what their retention strategies are.

And we're trying to monitor how these are moving, these projects are moving forward.

So we talked about AstraZeneca, that's a shining star in our community, mul uh billion dollar um investment of new um investment in the state of Maryland, both in Frederick and Montgomery County.

So we see it on the larger scale.

And we see groups.

Mary, can I just add there that AstraZeneca, you know that we uh we sometimes get a little uh like to where we understand and know the technologies of the what they're doing in these places, and I'm just gonna mention that I have a sister-in-law in Florida who is battling cancer, and she uses a drug that is produced in this plant in Frederick.

And we can't ever go away from the fact that it's not just about the um the buildings, it's also about the products and the services that are being developed in these places, and I think that that's uh a good example of how that does it.

And then the next one she's gonna show you what incredible bread they make at this next one.

Yeah, really great.

So, again, they've been in our community for a while, and then we get a call from them saying, hey, we're ready to expand.

And so we help them behind the scenes along with the county and the state to work on a package of available incentives as they try to start stand up this new 176,000 square foot facility, which is under construction, and they're gonna bring 125 new jobs to our community.

So that's really important.

So we're really excited to see about that kind of growth here in Frederick.

And then you have groups like the Frederick Keys, and to see that they're investing more in our community, both with the facility upgrades in the state with the Maryland Stadium Authority, um, with those renovation projects.

It's all part of this huge picture that we paint about the successes in Frederick.

So business retention, we're visiting every area of the city, and I know you think, oh, the city it's it's it's one area over another.

It's every area.

So we are trying to focus on all types of businesses, small businesses, medium-sized businesses, um, uh underrepresented businesses in all geographic parts of the city because there are different resources depending on where where there are geographically located.

And what we're doing these visits, just so that you're aware, often we are bringing our partners to the table, whether it's a person from our colleagues at the Frederick County Office of Economic Development or partner organizations, so forth.

We are we are there trying to um bring them to the table as well to offer as many resources as we can.

Um, can I ask the question there?

And maybe you're gonna talk about it later, but you said there are different resources depending on where they are in the city.

Can you can you expand on that a little bit more?

Sure, and we'll get it, we're gonna get into that in another slide, but we will talk about the fact that there are certain programs, such as the facade grant programs that are geographically based.

For example, they're available in the downtown area, the golden mile area, East Frederick.

We have on the Gold Mile, we have the enterprise zone.

That's only the Golden Mile area of the City of Frederick.

So there are specific resources, so we try to listen and see what the organization, where they're located, what type of industry sector they're in, and what those programs are and try to connect them with the available resources.

So it's a lot to look, it's a lot to get your arms around with all with the diverse uh business community that we have.

So we we do participate every year with our colleagues at the county with Business Appreciation Week and visit a lot of businesses, and it's always a great uh time to uh get a pulse on what's happening in our community.

So if you have never participated, it's always a great thing to participate in every year.

It's usually in the fall.

So I'm gonna turn it over to um my colleagues to talk a little bit about what our team does uh with regards to small business development and neighborhood development.

I'd like to call um Kennedy Wilson and Andy Feldman back up to the afternoon, council members.

I'm Andy Feldman.

Nice to meet you.

It's my first council meeting.

This is very exciting.

And I'm Kennedy Wilson and also very excited to be here.

So one of our roles in economic development is to support small business in the city of Frederick.

One favor, excuse me.

Just my policy for interrupting you.

One favor, can you just pull the mic a little closer?

See, my friends are yeah, it's portable.

There you go.

I know you're a little nervous, but we need to hear you.

That's magical.

I was expecting a wire there.

Thank you.

Uh so as I said, one of our roles in economic development is to support small businesses in the city of Frederick.

To that end, we have a variety of resources and programs that we use to support this goal through our small business startup meetings, our one-on-one meetings, uh, different grant programs, um, networking, leveraging our partnerships.

We strive to provide a foundation for our businesses and so that they can make grow, establish or achieve whatever goal that they would like.

Ideally here in the city of Frederick.

Right, I forgot I have the clicker.

There we go.

Um the Department of Economic Development also created our business startup guide that walks you through starting a business from having the idea all the way through to operation.

It holds your hand through every step of the way, permitting zoning if you're a home-based business, how to connect with us if you have more questions.

We have the pro the guide available digitally, which you can access through the QR code through our website, and we also have print um print guides available.

And both excuse me, this is available in both English and Spanish in order to try to uh make this available to as many businesses as possible.

Um we're also happy to provide a copy of this to anyone who would like one.

And I believe we had a few copies on the table right out front.

I'm pointing to the door like it's right there.

Um I need to replenish those actually.

Next slide.

So Andy had mentioned that um we do partnership driven programs, and one of those programs is the Empower Program.

The city partners with the County Economic Development Office, and the city is in signature sponsor of that program, and it serves underrepresented businesses across all sectors in a variety of ways.

Um the first way is the mentorship program.

It's a six-week program led or taught by one of our state partners, SBDC, which is a small business development center.

Um, and tomorrow is actually our graduation ceremony for that six-week program.

So it's excellent um to see those graduates haven't come this far and establish that business knowledge and that insight from their teachers.

Um we provide hands-on support in the classroom and afterward to provide them with business resources and any type of support they may need in that journey.

Um we also do yes, Ms.

Um, is that a free program or do they have to pay for it?

It is a free program.

So a lot of what we offer is free.

We try to make sure that we understand that startups uh are limited on funds and we try to support them in that way.

Um free in the context of offering, but who the participants do have no cost.

Yes.

Yes, our financials provide the backing, yes.

Correct.

It's with clarity.

Yes, clarity, correct.

Oh, yeah.

Yes.

Um part of that is also monthly networking events where it let it allows entrepreneurs to be in the room with other state partners, city, county, um, and other entrepreneurs to expand their network and connect uh and make those um those next steps towards their business.

Um another one uh a part of the Empower Program is the accelerator program.

It is in partnership with MNT Bank.

Um it culminates in a pitch competition that allows participants to also learn and engage and understand the finances of a business.

Um through all of that, we are uh active participants providing one-on-one counseling and any type of support during and after.

Meaning once you graduate from either program, you are eligible for an LEDC loan, which is the Latino Economic Development Center.

That is one of our other partners.

They provide loans to entrepreneurs who are unable to get traditional loans through the bank and give them an opportunity to establish that creditworthiness.

So we partner with them on that as well, and they are trying to expand their Frederick base.

So they are very eager to meet with Frederick Entrepreneurs and Business Owners, and we love that.

Another program is Cheap Pitch.

It is through Frederick County Chamber of Commerce.

We serve on the committee and we serve as judges.

It is a month-long program that offers education and prepares women business owners to launch their own business.

It's a pitch competition, so that means they are prepared for that.

We are in the room every with the meetings and the competition and the preparation that goes into that.

And Maryland Women's Business Center is who helps to lead that.

So that's also another one of our state partners.

As you can see, partnership is one of our main drivers in supporting businesses here in the city.

Another program is the food business entrepreneurship program.

That is in partnership with Frederick Community College, where food entrepreneurs are given the business side of how to develop their business from front and back end of operations, financial management, all of the things, operations, all of those aspects to run a successful business, they learn that.

Because many times we find that people who are passionate about their craft often need to learn the business side.

So this is just an example of that and how we support them anywhere from catering services to food trucks to brick and mortar.

We help with that process.

And there have been some success stories from that.

One of them is Big Poppies.

He was a graduate of that program, so he has become that restaurant has become widely popular.

So we love to hear those type of stories, and we make sure we use those stories to encourage the next cohorts.

We also won an award, the International IEDC Award, which is the International Economic Development Council Gold Award for that program.

So as Kennedy has already said, we rely heavily on our partners and our partners rely on us.

We I think one of the most important roles is that we serve as a connector, especially through our partnerships, like the Maryland Women's Business Center.

We can provide additional and further support to our small businesses.

We are an active sponsor and we support their events.

In fact, we're set to host one of their events here on April 16th, right here at City Hall.

Um their coffee and connections, where they'll be bringing in a speaker to speak to small businesses, and it will be just another event to help support small businesses here.

Next slide.

So anyway, that that means a lot to me.

Related to this, um, some there's a couple locations in Frederick where people call it curse.

You're like, ah, this restaurant is restaurants that and you know go into this location, don't seem to do well.

They always close.

And there's you know, one on Benz, and there's one on the creek.

You might know what I'm talking about.

So is there anything you are doing or that could be done to give extra support for those businesses that for some reason it seems like they're in a good location, but they never stay open for very long.

We definitely have a list.

Um we try to engage those places and businesses as as much as we can as feasible.

Um we understand that entrepreneurship is part self-efficacy, part support, so we try our best to reach out as much as we can and and provide those resources when we find that the stage of business that they're in requires that.

Another aspect of economic development is neighborhood development.

Um we provide partner support strategically through grant writing and grant management by applying for state revitalization grants, and we deploy those grants throughout our primary corridors, east, west, downtown.

Umitiatives are in partnership with Downtown Frederick Partnership, East Frederick Rising, and Goldema Alliance, but there are some others where we support organizations who are working on projects and need that funding to bring it to life.

Can I yes?

Uh when you're talking about neighborhood development, do you you think about um how the arts can be integrated in that?

Or is is that uh obviously I'm gonna ask all the arts questions, right?

But I'm I'm particularly looking at that food court, that image because I know that I know some artists who used to have art studios there, and now they're gonna do a food court, and it's really great to have things for people to do before or after they eat, or in between, they have one meal and they go out for cocktails.

Uh how does that factor into that sort of development?

Well, we do try to engage and partner with our city departments, such as the arts and cultural department um when necessary.

Um I do think that when we get into those later stages of development, they are pulled in through through various partners, um, and they try to complete those designs and those ideas and bring them you know to fruition.

Mary, did you want to add something?

No, we can add something up.

Oh, so um we have secured uh in in fiscal year 2025, we secured one point seven million 1.75 million um in grants awards for city initiatives, and FY26 is 1.15 million.

So we try to bring the city a lot of funding for mission interior, fire suppression, strategic demolition, those special projects I was speaking of, and facade improvements to businesses.

Every year we apply for these grants, and every year we deploy them.

So through the mayor's budget, every year, economic development is able to allocate Grow grants to businesses to help with physical improvements to their buildings.

These improvements stay in the building even if the tenant moves on.

On the slide, you can see three examples of businesses that have received the GRO grant already.

And the grants range from 5,000 to 10,000 and are just another example of how the city tries to support businesses and support businesses with the expensive cost of physical improvements, things like HBAC when they want to improve it, and just be able to invest in their building and just put more skin in the game for the city for our small businesses.

And with that, I will pass it back to our fearless leader.

Thank you.

Great job, Kennedy and Andy.

And just so you know, Kennedy's only been with our team just a little over a year, and Andy just joined us in December, so I think they're both rocking it.

So uh doing a great job.

So now we're gonna touch on workforce development.

Well, actually, workforce development um intersects with every one of these pillars.

So every meeting that we have, whether it's attraction, small business uh development, uh business retention, the workforce piece is always part of that.

So um, but we do support um various um activities and programs that are trying to inform residents as well as the uh businesses about how to interact with each other, how to create those opportunities and support those opportunities.

And some of that is involved in in make educating them about training grant opportunities, recruitment activities, and so forth, as well as partnerships to provide stronger um employment, internship and so forth opportunities.

So, with regards to this, some of the tools that we use, um there are job fairs that we support.

And for example, the state um Department of Labor has a very significant job fair here in Frederick on March 17th.

Uh we know there are a lot of people in our community that are uh job seeking at this moment, so it's a great way for them to come and be around 50 plus employers from around our region to look for significant opportunities to maybe make that next career move.

So please note that we do work with that as well as very collaboratively with Frederick County Workforce Services to promote their programs, including internship development and so forth.

We participate in a lot of networking opportunities, and we have seen a trend, a shift where a lot of these networking opportunities where people are showing up.

I'm looking for a job, I really want to connect.

But for example, we were just at a Tech Frederick event, and while there were a number of job seekers there, we were also able to introduce them to companies that are there.

And you never know if they're going to be able to develop those opportunities or those partnerships.

Sometimes it's just that warm introduction that opens the door for future opportunity.

And we're just trying to connect those that labor pool with any available resources to get them connected in the community.

If we can make warm introductions, our team always tries to do that to try to connect people with opportunities.

Other things that we do, uh we work very collaboratively this year with uh Frederick County um public schools as they develop their career coaches program.

We had several uh occasions where we uh toured the career coaches to some of our our key industry um participants so they could see what it's like to be around an international manufacturer or so forth.

And these tours are very helpful for them.

They found them very valuable to really understand where those next current next career opportunities are gonna come from in our community.

And we host a panel discussion too, so they could understand better how we can all work together collaboratively.

Another program we're particularly proud of is that we were part of the creation of the biotech boot camp.

And it's just an example of what you can do when you partner together with organizations to try and the workforce and the uh companies to try to develop programs that help people find that next opportunity.

The biotech bootcamp is a partnership with uh Frederick County Workforce Services, Frederick Community College, the Frederick County Office of Economic Development, City Economic Development, and Maryland MEP.

And this program is provided free to participants, and after they come out of the program, they're actually interviewed by companies that are here for real opportunities.

So I think we're at our eighth cohort for this.

And so small cohorts attend this program, they're taught by industry leaders, they're taught to find out what it's like to be in a biotech career.

And when they come out, they're making good good wages and having great opportunities at local companies.

So very excited about this in the future for that kind of programming.

And we're going to see something similar kind of cropping up, probably out of the manufacturing um realm too.

We're often hosting industry sector um events.

We've hosted some here at even at Newspires, trying to connect our local community.

For example, this was a biotech uh event that we did, and again, it's connecting companies with talent.

And the talent we find they want to stay here in our community, so we're just trying to help make those connections.

This is an example of the uh construction career trades event was hosted in Frederick last year for the first time.

It's going to be hosted again this fall.

And they'll bring 400 plus high school students from not only Frederick City and County, but also some of our um adjacent counties to Frederick.

It was hosted at the Key Stadium, and the students are able to kind of come in and meet people in the construction trades industry, and where they might normally not know, I don't know what's what that entailed, but they're actually meeting and touching the tools and learning about the real opportunities.

They're meeting women in construction, they're meeting all types of providers in the construction industry.

So it's it's just a great way to kind of connect.

And I think it's there's such value in these kinds of um partnerships and programs so that we can kind of showcase where those next opportunities might be.

We were very fortunate also this year to participate um with the Office of Um Opportunity and Transformation, Erica Roarball, in the first returnship in the country here at the city of Frederick.

And what that means is someone that's returning to the workforce.

It could have been a stay-home mom or dad, it could have been someone that left the workforce due to uh taking care of uh an individual.

And we were able to have Carol Park on our team for about six months.

She did a fantastic job, and she just landed a great position, a full-time position as a director in a nonprofit with that works on peace initiatives.

So really proud of her, proud of her accomplishments, and we look forward to working and hopefully having another returnship position offered in our department, and we hope there'll be others throughout the city.

Yeah, that's a good question about this.

I love this idea of a returnship.

Uh what is the genesis of it?

I mean, if we're the only place that is doing this, like where did this idea come from?

How did it come about?

I think Erica and Guyan and the mayor have been very participatory in the National League of Cities.

And some of these concepts and ideas are things that have emerged out of these bigger think tank organizations.

And um, and kudos to Erica and the team up there that they put this program together, created the funding budget code for it that was approved by the city council, and then we were fortunate enough to land the first individual in our department.

Right.

We created the position and uh and I I think it's good with our department, big particularly because we interface with so many businesses that it gives that person a segue into what are those opportunities, our community.

And I think that's the biggest challenge we face, especially even with our um you know younger population is that they don't really understand who's here, what those opportunities look like.

They maybe know what the big buckets are, but they don't know these all these creative little industries that are cropping up and where there's opportunity.

So it's probably worth mentioning that when we do this, we use it as the example, kind of we're the pilot.

But then we can talk about it when we're out working with employers in the community and trying to encourage employers to think about doing apprenticeships and internships and returns and all the ships, as Erica says, and uh and then you then you're scaling it where the impact in the community is larger.

And uh so I think that the goal is, you know, we're the city is leading by example here, and I think that's a great place to be.

And that's correct, Richard.

That was the genesis, was necessary.

That was like a three-year process when we first went and we um received that information.

So I was looking for the common three-year process in terms of the implementation for that.

We're coming down the home side.

Coming down.

This is uh almost the last slide.

Um and this is just a synopsis of what we do on a daily basis across these different industry sectors.

We're working on helping with site selection, finding a space, whether it's a thousand square feet or two hundred thousand square feet.

We work on those startup resources from I have an idea to how do I get my business open.

We're uh connecting them with all of our incentive programs, and we do have several tax credit programs that are available that we try to connect people with when they're uh opening their businesses here.

We work on promotional assistance.

We want to share their stories, and I think it I it is definitely about the stories.

And I know we have some really, really great businesses here, and we have a very dynamic business community.

So we're trying to share those that information out on our social media channels, as well as we have a tool called PR Frederick that the city and county economic development subscribe to that allows businesses to drop a press release and is to distribute it to um uh uh hundreds of media outlets.

So it's a great resource for uh news article pickup at the local, regional, national, and even international level.

We uh drop a monthly e-newsletter, so we do write articles about some of the successes in our community and some of the stories in our community, so we encourage you to um read our stories and learn about our business community, and we're also providing um whatever opportunities we can to connect them with training opportunities at the city and the I mean at the county and the state levels.

And the main thing we do is we're connectors and collaborators.

We're trying to connect people with opportunities.

Again, I've been in the community a long time.

Richard's been in the community a long time, and I know some of our team has as well, and then sometimes it's just making those connections and putting the pieces to the puzzle together.

So we're here to um answer any questions that you have today about economic development.

We we're a small but mighty team, and I think we do a lot, get a lot done for uh uh what the resources that we have.

So questions for economic development.

I have a couple.

Um thank you so much.

I had no idea all the programs that you have, and that's really really incredible, and that is one of the things that people love about Frederick is all of the businesses here.

Um, and there's that's intentional, and there's people behind that.

So thank you for that.

Couple of questions.

One, um, council member Hempel and Rani, I think you'll like this one too.

So a lot of people talk about walkability, and they like mixed use, but it takes businesses to go into those mixed use sites, developments.

So, how can we encourage businesses to go into those mixed use areas?

It's a great question.

Thank you.

Uh my pre-economic development career was in urban development, urban design and urban city planning, and mixed use was just beginning to come along over the last couple of decades.

And now if you look at our comp plan for the city, we anticipate mixed-use development in almost every sector of the city now.

That's the plan for the Golden Mile.

That's the plan for East Frederick.

That's the plan for the brickworks.

The United States as a whole is over-retailed.

If you compare the square footage of retail per capita in the United States to any other country in the world, we have by enormous amounts more retail.

And retailers go where there's where they're gonna earn a buck.

And so they will go and they will follow places that have the walking traffic or that have the rooftops or the jobs nearby that will generate enough revenue for them to be supported.

And it's a complicated endeavor when you're in the midst of a transition.

So the Golden Mile, I would say, is a community that's in the midst of that transition.

And interestingly enough, it's one of our most walked communities.

I mean, you go out there, and I'm just really proud.

There's one thing I'm really proud of, is that the you know, a few years ago that we got those uh protected crosswalks uh across uh 40.

And I think Zach is here in the audience, and he, you know, those crosswalks have made a huge difference.

The the median divider to get people to cross at the intersections and not mid-block.

But the plan to get those mixed-use developments is starting to happen little by little.

West Ridge Shopping Center will be the first one where they're gonna tear down part of it and build some housing in it, and little by little in these communities, you will start to see the mixed-use uh concepts start to come alive.

It's harder in areas that are more distant, shopping centers that are built within a neighborhood and that it's d way distant from the other parts of the city.

Those are more complicated and difficult.

But we do know as you have in fill projects, that that is usually a component piece of those infill projects.

And we've seen that, for example, with the brickworks property as it's getting its planned and the development plan.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

I know it's not easy, but uh hope we can all work together to make sure that that happens more in Frederick.

And then just curious, and maybe you don't have this statistic, and I can't remember where I wrote it down, but um so it's expensive to live here, and that um in order to live here, you need to make sure you have enough money to do so.

So, how many people do you know how many people live in Frederick and work in Frederick?

Or the percentage?

We have the statistics.

It used to be that about 48% of our workforce traveled about two decades ago, and that number has gone down and down and down, and I think last I heard it was under 30 percent of our workforce actually travels to work outside of our region.

That as we have added jobs, as we've added employers, more and more people are working and living in the same community.

But we can get you the the actual numbers.

That'd be great.

They track it from a uh from a transportation standpoint too.

Right, because we're expensive a lot of reverse commuters too now that we've attracted some really good paying jobs here.

So we're definitely seeing some reverse commuters.

Yeah, that'd be great if you can give me those numbers.

Thanks.

Um I don't have any other questions.

I was gonna ask something along the same lines, is you know, one of the things we hear from residents is about traffic and traffic is largely caused by people leaving the community to go to jobs somewhere else, or people living in other communities coming to Frederick to get jobs, and so making sure that we have high paying jobs where we live, like solves that problem too.

So yeah, awesome work.

Thank you so much.

Are is there anything that you any support that you need from us, or like do you have a uh a dream project you're looking for?

Like what what do you what are you looking forward to in the future?

Can I yeah, go ahead.

I want Mary to answer it too, but I'll just say that um I personally have been very hopeful that we would be able to attract another um biopharmaceutical manufacturing plant to the community.

Um we've worked very hard at that.

Our real estate um brokers, our developers have worked really hard at that.

And you can see the difference that AstraZeneca has made in our community.

If we could attract another of those type of company, um, I think that would be outstanding.

If we could attract another of those type of company, I think that would be outstanding and where we need to be with site selectors and at trade shows.

And all of that, of course, takes resources and bodies.

But we we feel very supported by the mayor and and the mayor's office and you all.

We have great great uh great resources, but we're growing community and growing needs.

One of the things that we hear a lot, especially when we're meeting with our small business community is the access to capital piece.

And the city was able to take advantage of ARPA funds uh several years ago with an access granted program.

And we were able to deploy about 400,000 directly into the hands of small businesses who in turn invested in equipment or invested in very real things that help move their businesses forward.

We have now completed the interim report as well as the final report.

So we have their success stories.

I would encourage you to read the article.

We'll share those with you so that you can kind of see the impact of just those small awards, what they're doing for our business community.

And every day we hear their stories, we hear their passion, and these are people from all walks of life, all countries, and they want to start and live their business dream here.

So I would just encourage the um uh our our city to consider a program similar to that or funding it, at least at some type of level, that we can provide that access to capital for some of our small businesses.

Some of this, Richard, um, and we're going to get to our next um topic in a minute.

Some of this I wanted to incorporate because I wanted to talk about um particularly some of the questions that have been um as reinvestment opportunities.

Underutilized not only properties, but utilized areas of our city in terms of because it's not just in terms of economic development also encompasses planning, encompasses housing, encompasses transit walkability, all those things.

So I think it's incumbent for us to look at this in terms of our reinvestment opportunities, not just from an economic um context only, but also from a planning, you mentioned mixed use from a planning concept, from housing concept in terms of how we provide those workforce housing, price appropriate housing opportunities also from a planning mechanism and how do we zone these areas as well, and then also look at these underutilized, particularly making significant investments around that, and that's just from a standpoint of employment alone.

It's it's it's it's different context in terms of what we mentioned, uh you mentioned before about mixed use in terms of used to be a time where people worked and then they left.

Now it's it's different from people who want to work, live, social life, um, and those transportation mechanisms, walkability, cycling.

So one of the things I want to try to look at for us is how do we incorporate a reinvestment kind of commission and bringing all these partners together to have the same conversation instead of having these in silos.

So I just want to offer this to my committee members.

This is my thinking on this, that we really look at this from not only a short term, but also a long term in terms of how we're going.

So we do have these conversations and collaboration and not in isolation.

You bring an economic development project, and then what we're having planning over here, we're having housing over here.

All these are intertwined and interrelated.

So I'm sharing with my colleagues, this is my thinking about where we're going here in this in this conversation.

Thank you.

I don't know if you want to comment on that, Richard, at all.

Secondly, um you mentioned you mentioned the Freight Town Mall property uh in particular.

I think it's important for not only for us but also for our our public because we often hear that Fredericktown Mall properties to be the anchor.

When you went to the Golden Mile, you passed by other businesses, which then allowed them to have the economic vitality and vibrancy and also um appearance and visibility.

I use that word.

That when people went to the mall, they could stop by, shop at all these other various entities.

The reason why I'm going is also looking at mixed shoes and we also look at our Westridge properties, because the days of from transit oriented of you going in and out are over.

This kind of prevents that corridor also from having the economic vitality it has because I'm gonna go in, I gotta go in, I gotta come back out.

There's no transitional transit connectional um kind of context, and so that's another thing we need to look at in that area.

But I was thinking about Front of Frank Town Mall, that we hear oftentimes that property sits empty.

Now of course we have West we have Warehouse Cinemas and other uh business that move, but for the most part, they look at that and they say that property sits empty, and why don't the city just do something about that?

Can you talk talk us through your team in terms of how you um offer, how you advocate, how you facilitate, but you can't make someone put the business and also that ownership because the other thing of it is we hear this, um, and I'm all uh for we hear things such as well in context of the library, a hospital, but we can't make Trader Joe's Whole Foods, or we can't make, though we can create the environment and climate for these businesses.

There's also another aspect and that's market forces, and it's also whoever the owner or developer is may not want to go to that route, but talk about how you facilitate those conversations, those discussions, and we just can't make people do it.

Well, thank you for the lot to unpack there.

What I'll say is, and just follow up on what Mary and and Kennedy had said earlier.

We have a lot of tools in the toolbox, and we try to make sure that every property owner and every business knows what those tools are and that those tools are available to them to use.

As you just said, we cannot make them use those tools.

And I will say that most business owners and most property owners, when they find out that we have tools, they're very excited about and want to know how they can use them.

And then there are others that it's harder to get them to see the value, or they just don't have the time, or they you know don't have an interest in in that.

You've mentioned a couple of the properties, the mall being one of them, where it's a complicated property.

It's very large.

Um, it has a floodplain issue, it is um and it has millions of dollars of reinvestment that need to be made into the facility.

I will say there is another business in there, the pinball spinners.

Spinners is in there, they've just opened uh in the back in the old Bonton space in the back.

Um so little by little there is some reinvestment occurring there.

I will just say that I walked into City Hall for this meeting with the owner of the mall.

He was coming to pay his bills here at City Hall and uh had a nice conversation with him.

And and we do try at every moment to offer all of the support that we can.

We've had many team meetings, multidisciplined team meetings about that property, both with um with the Department of Public Works, Engineering Planning, and others.

And and it's difficult.

And some of them, and I wrote that down earlier.

What do we do with some of our most challenged properties?

And you know maybe maybe there is more that we could and should be doing, and we can be thinking about that.

Um but for the moment we try to bring everything to every pro to every property and every business owner.

And it would be a good time for me to just say too that while we stand up here and take credit for a lot of the beautiful things that happen, there is a huge team behind the scenes, and Zach and his team in engineering planning uh and permits.

If they were not doing their job, we would not have any of this.

Um they do an incredible job, and people hold us up as the example of how these types of things should work.

Is it always perfect?

It is not.

There are always one-offs and challenges and things like that, but I'll just say that we have a great working relationship and um and our businesses see that enough to remember Richard about that mall property, and you talk about mixed use.

That was a conversation, and of course, that's floodplain into that equation.

So we would talk about mixed use in terms of that one.

Here we are.

Any other questions for economic development team?

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Welcome again.

We appreciate your service.

Uh you too as well, Kennedy.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mary.

Next on our agenda is an overview of underutilized city-owned properties with development, potential for future city use or lease sale for proper development.

Um, before we start out in um, as we continue this conversation, can you also talk about along with your presentation acquisition and disposition of city property in terms of how we acquire some of these properties when they were acquired, also in terms of our disposition business disposition policy in terms of how we may how these properties may be sold as well in your presentation.

Thank you.

Well, thank you again, Richard Griffin, Director of Economic Development, and of course.

Oh, my apologies.

Richard Griffin, this we presented by Richard Griffin and COO, Zach Kirshner.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

So we have a very brief presentation for you, and then we'll take lots of questions, I'm sure.

Um and we will try to answer your questions, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh the city owns a lot of property, and the way we've acquired that property over the years is there's a lot of paths in terms of how we've gotten this property.

But the vast majority of our property is used to carry out our daily mission here at the city.

Um obviously you're sitting in one of those properties here at City Hall.

Um but we also have the annex where our engineering apartment sits, and we have public works where we manage all of our fleets and our um all of the people that keep our city running smoothly.

Our new police headquarters, how about that?

That's a beautiful facility.

It took a long time in the coming, but uh uh what an incredible investment the city's made in a uh in that new facility.

Um our municipal airport, um the Weinberg Center, water treatment plants, uh, water tanks and pump stations to keep all of our water flowing and our um and our wastewater moving.

Um we have a police training center that's uh out there.

We have five public uh parking garages.

So you can see the types of facilities that we have are very are varied, and we've come to own them mostly through purchase and act just direct purchase and acquisition.

Um but we've also uh gotten them through imminent domain, we've gotten them through um uh situations of donations, and let me mention a few of those here in a moment.

Um we also own and operate under Zach's group, under parks, 77 parks.

You want to mention the all the park that you guys operate?

We have a lot of parks.

I'm not gonna mention them all right now, but yes.

800 acres worth.

Uh and uh those guys and the minute that all the rain stops and the sun comes out, they're gonna be running mowers like no man's business for the rest of the summer.

Um but you know, I don't want to get off this can you talk about uh this might be also an opportunity for us to to uh be informed about parks in terms of from a planning.

So when a development is master plan, how that park enters into that equation.

Sure.

So for a development that includes a residential component, sure.

Uh parkland dedication is required and the specific amounts are per our land management code.

Um that dedication is required.

Uh the developer could uh choose to dedicate it.

Um sometimes the developer dedicates more than the required amount because perhaps they have some additional floodplain and area um that could be planted in forest.

And and so we've had certain developments where they develop well more than the required parkland amount.

We also have some developments that may be in our more dense urban core where it's very challenging to dedicate the amount of parkland and also achieve the the goals of the project.

And so in those cases, at times, the developer may request to pay a fee in lieu of that parkland for some amount, maybe not the whole amount, but for a portion of it.

Um through that process, then that parkland is dedicated.

Um as the project as the project develops, uh the uh the project is required to do some basic work on that parkland per our code.

Again, they're required to do uh uh basic grading, uh might be required to install some sidewalks or trail systems.

And they kind of set the stage then for um any additional park improvements which the city may do.

Um in addition to dedicating the parkland, the project is also required to pay park impact fees.

Those impact fees then fund the projects for us to build the park infrastructure once the land is turned over to us.

And that's generally I believe there's a requirement of land management code that by like the 50 percent point in the development of the project that the parkland has to be um any work required has to be done and it has to be turned over to us so that we can accept it, and then we'll move forward and and build the playground or then the pavilions and and so forth there.

So that's just kind of generally how that occurs.

And when we receive our the fee and loo, that that fee and then goes to what?

So fee in lieu of park land goes into an account and could be used to either purchase parkland or to pay um pay the I'll try to get this right, Katie's behind me, pay the debt service on parkland as well.

I'll say that works.

Yes.

Do we ever acquire parkland outside of development projects?

And I asked this uh in a particular neighborhood in District 5.

There is an open lot that I think is zoned commercials, but a lot of the neighbors would like to see it as a nature area or a park.

And of course, we get a lot of that.

Can't the city do this?

Sure.

Can the city do something like that, or would it partner with the HOA, or is is that something that's ever happened to acquire land for a park in a kind of non-conventional way?

Sure.

So the the specific project that I'm aware of that you all are likely well aware of as well is our Westside Regional Park.

Um that was a hundred and eighteen-ish acre tract that was acquired at the time for a regional park.

Ultimately a portion of it was conveyed to um the county for the uh elementary school, and then the city retained the rest, and we're you know, we're gonna have a presentation from your director of parks here in the next couple of weeks about the development of that project.

Um I'm not aware off the top of my head of any other smaller pieces of parkland that have been purchased over the years, um, but I can certainly inquire with Bob Smith to see if he is aware of any.

It's not to say that it couldn't be done if a piece of land was available for sale or if we were interested in purchasing a piece of land, we could go through a process to you know inquire about it and see whether or not there's an interest to sell it.

You'd have to value to get a valuation of it, and then obviously look at the funding that we have available and kind of go from there.

So in addition to the um properties that we own and operate for our own mission, we own numerous properties, some of which were gifted to the city or purchased for very specific public purpose, uh, but what are which are now uh leased to third parties?

And we do that under a property disposition policy, which I'll mention in a moment.

Um the leases for these properties are largely managed by Department of Public Works, the facilities department, and they include things like um the African American Resource Cultural Heritage Museum, Arch.

Um they're going to be opening in the next few months over at the East All Saints parking garage, and uh it's in space that was purpose-built uh to have a non-parking use, active use on the sidewalk level of a parking garage, and the city has leased it to them.

Uh the Dell Plains Center for Visual Arts, the National Civil War Medicine Museum, the Downtown Frederick Partnership, the National Park Service, National Preservation Training Center, down both downtown and at Westside Park, our airport land, we have numerous uh leases with state police, hangars, offices, restaurant businesses, and finally uh we sell space on our water towers to um cellular and communications companies for their antennas.

So there are a lot of properties that are um leased to third parties for very specific uses.

Um addition, we do have land that was acquired for one reason or another and uh is underutilized.

And there's a table in your backup of several properties that we've identified that are underutilized.

Um they total over 200 acres.

Uh and these properties have been identified as areas where potentially um you could do mixed use development of some kind.

Some cases it would just be affordable housing, other cases it might be fully mixed.

Um of them require park improvements, um, some shared use path connections, uh we've talked about downtown comfort station, these are all things that could go on some of these public uh on some of these properties.

Um but they are readily available and developable under our current zoning uh with perhaps some uh some rezonings required.

And then I'll end by just talking about our property disposition policies, which we've used since 2002, um, that just says that in order for us to sell or lease a city property, we have to go through a very specific process.

And that process includes um making an identification that it is surplus, in fact that it isn't needed for some other city municipal mission.

Um a declaration uh by the mayor and you all that it is surplus and appraisable of the property.

The fact that we have to uh determine uh or put it out to bid either through a uh a request for proposal or an invitation to bid on the property.

We have to list it in um in uh commercial real estate uh websites and and other facility websites.

We have to um evaluate, select, and then come to you all for approval for the sale or the lease.

Um there are a few other stipulations in there, but that's a broad uh overview of the of the policy, and with that we have a number of pieces that we are showing you the images of that are in that table that are in the back of your handout, and we can answer your questions.

Questions questions?

I always have questions.

So if we were to use a property for uh priced appropriate housing, how are those properties managed?

Is this handed over to a uh developer who does the property management, or does that go fall under DPW?

And if it falls under DPW, do do we have properties like that that are housing?

Okay.

I'm seeing a yes on some of that.

That's probably more for HHS to answer the any properties that we currently have.

Um as far as development of any of these properties into uh price appropriate housing or any other type of of development.

Um I think there's different options.

Um that um that we've certainly looked at previously is to put together uh a uh RFP, a request for proposals, and you lay out you know what it is that that you as the city are looking to see developed on this property, things that you might want to make sure are included, like you know, park facilities or maybe some infrastructure and you put it out for competitive bid and try to find uh private developers partners.

Um and really there's a there's a million different ways that I think those partnerships could work as far as maybe what the city contributes, the city contributes the land or contributes a portion of the land or and ultimately is developed by the private developer and then you know potentially leased or sold.

Um I I don't think I'd recommend the city necessarily build affordable housing and own and operate affordable housing.

I think there are um uh professionals in that business that could do a much better job at that um than us, but but we do have potentially the land to bring to bear to that um discussion.

And I should point out that over my shoulder is Jodi from uh she's a new hire of the city, but she works for Stewart over at the Department of Housing and uh housing and human services and manages the housing program over there, and I know that they're very interested in delivering some affordable housing options, and of course you all have heard the mayor state that he's very interested in in moving this initiative forward as well.

Um there are a wide variety of techniques for delivering the housing, and I think that there's a housing task force that's gonna be formed or is being formed that will bring forward some of those recommendations of how to do it.

Um I did want to point out to give you an example of properties that have been sold successfully and developed.

The property that Creekside Plaza is on, which is where Frederick Social is.

That building was built on a site that we put out to RFP and sold.

The site that former La Paz is on is also one.

Uh the Maxwell Place property where wine kitchen is a former city-owned property that we put out to RFP and sold.

Maxwell, the condos across the creek are an example of another one that was built on um city-owned property.

And then there are then there are a few that have been sold but not developed yet.

So the Warmold company owns a property further down on the other side of the Dela Plain that was approved for housing, and uh they have played the waiting game, but um but now with hotel being constructed and with other things happening, it seems that they have some gravity behind them in terms of uh beginning to move those projects forward.

So the east side is beginning to emerge, and some of these sites uh are on either the south side, the former Trinity School, Husky Park, sites J and K, maybe the maybe even the uh uh old the uh mark train parking lot.

But you have to think out of the box.

You can't do away completely with the parking.

You have to have parking included, a mixed-use project with housing and and things like that.

So is the uh multimodal transit center parking lot, is that underutilized?

It is as as parking.

So it could be built on and you would have like un underneath parking or some such thing.

It was always um anticipated, and if you look back at all the original plans that that site would be developed.

It was also anticipated that there would be a write-in off of East Street at the end of the railroad track that would take you into the second level of that that building so that you wouldn't have to go around the Horn of Africa to uh to get there, where you have to go all the way to South Street and then to Wisner and back in that way.

Okay.

Silly question.

Um you touched on a little bit, but um okay.

So if there's a property that we own and we put it up for RFP, can we say I want X built here?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

I have ideas.

Um something that I think one of the reasons why we asked you to be here to to talk about this is um I'm very interested in the city I don't um identifying city-owned properties to repurpose them as child care facilities.

Are these the only like with this list here?

Is this all that we have?

Uh this is a pretty comprehensive list of developable properties.

We have some postage stamps out there that might have a sewer pump station on them or a water tower on them.

But this is this is really uh I think this is a complete list of developable city properties, other than you know, redeveloping, like redeveloping City Hall or the Annex or something like that.

These are the these are the vacant available properties.

Okay.

Well, I was thinking redeveloping.

Um I'm trying to think of any other redevelopment.

So we have you listed City Hall, we have the Annex, we have the our public works yard, we have the airport.

My missing there aren't a lot of buildings that are vacant and underutilized and ready to be developed with something else.

We have this, we have land and we may have a few spaces, but there are other ways to skin that cat.

I wrote down your your point about child care.

It is a huge, huge need in the community, and a lot of people have exited the child care business.

Um FCC has closed their child care operations down.

Uh we hear about it a lot from employers.

We do have some employers that have on-site daycare, not a lot, but um that's an option sometimes.

But you know, if that was something that you were very particularly interested in child care, we could look at see what kind of targeted ways there would be to encourage or incent child care facilities to to open.

Yeah, I would love to continue that conversation with you.

I'm very interested in that.

We were talking to uh uh a few meetings ago about a mixed-use development that was struggling a little bit to attract retail, and as you just said, that we're sort of over-retailed.

Uh if I had a young child at home and lived in a mixed-use development, it would be awesome to have a child care facility nearby your home.

Uh can we I mean, this is sort of maybe to the economic development uh conversation we were having earlier.

Um there are ways we can incentivize that instead of retail.

Yes.

Uh there are communities that have put in place tools, um, and all of it it doesn't come free.

Uh there are costs associated with with doing these types of programs because at the end of the day, you're trying to make it worth someone's time to get into the business to renovate a facility, to operate a facility and to earn a living doing it.

And there are great models out there from other communities that are doing that.

But they these programs are not, you know, they're not free programs to the communities that sponsor them.

I I know some of the large projects that we approve my last term, in our last term involved that, and particularly with some partnerships of the YMCA in regards to offering those child care facilities and spaces.

And so to my colleagues' point, um, I think anything we talk about, we have we have something that which is valuable and a great commodity, that's land, which is at a premium these days.

Um I don't think we want to get into the business of operating these facilities.

We don't really do a good job of that, and then that requires also more looking at my my CFO over here to my left, um, also incorporates more uh financial resources from the city standpoint, which may not always be uh beneficial in regards to that.

Particularly we don't do well at these things.

I don't I don't think we do well at child care.

Probably not.

Um but I did want Katie Bartle, the chief financial officer for the city.

I did want to just um since we're talking about child care, mention that this evening at the public hearing we will be bringing forward a um opportunity to provide a child care facility tax credit, um, which is certainly not the complete answer, but it is one tiny little incentive that we can offer.

So hopefully that is supported, but that is coming before you this evening.

See how fast we work?

Yeah.

You're telling us people ought to watch because you're going to present that.

For your appearance tonight, correct?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what I'm saying.

You're telling, yeah, you're psychic.

It's like like a coming attraction.

Yes.

That's what I'm saying.

That's why you move from the back to the front to tell us that you're going to be talking to you.

That's okay.

It's okay.

Any other questions?

Uh I I've gone on record this my last term.

I go on record this Western Park senior housing.

I'll share that again because what that does, that also does not um put a burden on our schools.

But it also offers us an opportunity for some for some product tax revenue.

Um fulfilling a need as well.

Um along with that, Zach, can you also talk about I think it's important for us to understand what project open space, that there are certain things that can't go in certain spaces because of that.

Sure.

Yeah, so and and I don't have an exhibit to point to, but for Westside Regional Park, um a portion on the west side of that property is encumbered in what's called program open space funding.

So it was state funding.

Um so you you you can't develop it for anything other than basically open space park type activities.

Um but that does leave a uh uh a healthy portion of the property um that could potentially be developed now.

Um and as you'll hear from Bob when he presents in uh in a couple of weeks about Westside Regional Park, there's actually quite a bit of development that has occurred out there thus far between um roads, infrastructure, fields, Sophia Madigan's playground, plans to work with National Park Service there, and on and on and on.

Um but there is some portion of the land that potentially could be utilized for some type of residential development, whether it's senior housing, whether it's affordable housing, you know, whatever it may be.

Um back to the properties that we've provided to you in this list, just to make you aware.

So internally, staff, we've gone through and looked at each of these properties and um evaluated them from a um uh parks and rec need, um, from an infrastructure need, you know, do we need a road here, shared use path there, a pump station there?

Just to start to figure out were we to put any of these up or all of them up for RFP, what would we need to um obtain from the development of that property?

We might need um some road frontage improvements, or we might need uh more pickleball courts or whatever the case may be.

And so you'd roll all that into whatever ultimately you're requesting when you put that out to the private sector um to come back with proposals.

Richard, I don't know how much you could speak to this.

Um particular the Trinity site.

Now that we have the minor league baseball team, I know there was previous discussion around some mixed use around that development property because of his um acre also because it's visibility as well.

Has there been any conversation of with that now that we are having a minor league team and we're um doing these renovations to this Harry Grove Stadium?

No specific conversations.

Uh I I think I think you all can see from its location, it's a very desirable piece of property.

Um and we can certainly leverage its its proximity to the ballpark and to get some things that we want out of that site.

Um and of course, as we know, uh HHS is in that building uh every day with their offices uh and and programs, but also people are playing pickleball in that building, uh, which someone was asking earlier about trends.

Uh let me just say that we have at least two that I can think of massive pickleball facilities underway here in the city of Frederick.

So there's a trend for you.

Um but I think your point is, you know, that it is a desirable piece of property.

We can certainly leverage it to get what we want, affordable housing and maybe more.

Uh yeah, I think I think um in that since it's being desirable is visibility dislocation, all those things.

I think it's an opportunity for us to leverage that.

And pickleball can still be included.

Sure.

I mean, I think since I don't think we can use have to lose any services or any um type of amenity with that.

I think that can all be included in in that hopefully that proposal moving forward.

Yes, sir.

Just something else to add to keep in mind, and it's in the it's in the backup of the these properties obviously do have certain zoning.

Um, you know, as we move forward, if we're interested in potentially looking to develop some of these properties, we're gonna have to take a look at what is the zoning allow.

There may be a need to come through the planning commission and council process to potentially look at changes to zoning.

Um it's just something to keep in mind.

Any other questions?

So to my colleagues and to um staff, I would just sharing these presentations, obviously my thinking and looking at uh uh uh reinvestment um team commission looking at these properties in depth in terms of that.

So that encompasses our I'll get back with more information about that.

But I'm just sharing my thinking.

I don't I think sometimes it's challenging for us to think in isolation.

I think it's important for us to all to be at the table and have some synchronicity, but also could com and other cities have done this model as well, and we've seen significant reinvestments across across our um across the United States and across the world, in fact.

So I think this is an excellent opportunity for us to capitalize on this.

And I think there's a definitely an energy um and consensus to move on some of these things and to move on these in a comprehensive instead of isolation, more comprehensive um kind of context.

So any other questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Richard Griffin.

Thank you, Kirsten.

Thank you, Katie E.

Bark Dall, thank you.

Welcome, Jody.

Welcome to the team.

Uh any closing comments, Councilmemberani.

Councilmember Taylor.

I just want to highlight this is Women's History Month.

Thank you to everyone who have made significant contributions this month.

I'm married to a beautiful woman, and so happy women's history month to her and I'm also a part of from a beautiful mother.

I better mention that as well.

Thank you, everyone.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.