Welcome to our city council study session.

Today's date is November 12, 2025.

The time is 6 p.m.

This is an open meeting of the Grand Island City Council.

The City of Grand Island abides by the Open Meetings Act in conducting business.

A copy of the Open Meetings Act is displayed in the back of this room as required by state law.

Now I ask that you stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

And to the Republic for which it stands.

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

Council President Sheard.

Present.

Councilmember Stelk.

Present.

Councilmember Conley?

Present.

Councilmember Nickerson?

Present.

Council Member Brown?

Present.

Councilmember Hazi.

Present.

Councilmember Mendoza present.

Councilmember O'Neill?

Present.

Councilmember Pollack?

Present.

Councilmember Lampier.

President.

And Mayor Steele.

Present.

Also present are Jill Grenier, the city clerk.

Patrick Brown, the city administrator.

Carrie Fisk, the city attorney, and Keith Kurtz, the public works director.

A sign-up sheet was available in the lobby for individuals wishing to provide input on any of tonight's agenda items.

If you did not sign up to speak on an agenda item, please come forward, state your name and the agenda topic on which you will be speaking.

Item five, a Woodsonia Good Life District review and discussion.

Please proceed.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I am going to introduce this this evening and we'll turn it over to Woodsonia for their presentation.

But all of you do have the memo that was written that goes with this.

There are several things that staff is hoping to get from council for negotiation purposes to help us know what lanes we are supposed to operate within, because as all of you know, this is a new process for the state of Nebraska.

There are five good life districts that have been approved.

All of them have some significantly different parameters in ours.

One of the key functions or key factors is that the city of Grand Island is the primary owner of the property that is most likely to be developed.

So as council members, you are operating not just as council deciding how good life district funds are to be spent, but also as the owner of the property, making sure that the property is used to the best interest of the members of the public and of the citizens of Grand Island.

How do we negotiate this?

But in order for you to do that, you need to see the application and what is out there.

We were limited in the application and making it public by the ordinance and by state law.

We had to go through a number of steps and get to the point where in this case, Woodsonia has released their application to council, and that's where we're at this evening.

So what we're looking for from you is percentage of non-revenue producing funds or that can be dedicated to the project.

The state says up to 20% of good life district funds can go toward non-revenue producing things.

Something the city is building or something that is built specifically for the city is not considered in those non-revenue producing funds.

Even if that's streets or sewer or water that the city owns the property that they're under, they're being developed for the city for this development.

Those are exempted from those non-revenue producing funds.

Something like building housing would not be exempted from the non-revenue producing housing or revenue producing funds.

Realistically, that's probably two or three years from now before that part moves forward.

There's a lot of work that needs to be done between now and that happening.

Good life districts funds can be used to do that.

There is an issue with an existing fiber optic line.

We will be bringing to council next week at the meeting on the 18th a contract with an agreement for relocation with ATT.

ATT is the responsible party for that line.

And we'll be bringing that forward.

So we can't negotiate this.

They're going to tell us what it's going to cost.

We're looking at about half a million dollars to move that line, but we can't go plowed any further depth than plow deep in the easement for that line.

The lake expansion crosses that line.

So we have to move that line.

We will get started on that as soon as possible.

There is debate as to whether $15 million will build the kind of aquatic center that the city of Grand Island is looking for.

That needs to be a decision that council makes and gives input on.

Public infrastructure will have to be extended throughout the site.

There are proposals for that.

Those are things that will be decided later.

But so any decisions that are made tonight, next week, two weeks from now, there will be more decisions on this over and over and over again as we continue moving down this road.

So don't think that we're gonna decide everything all at once.

We just need to get a direction to move forward.

So they are working on that.

Woodsonia is requesting that we do a one-time transfer of property to be developed.

I think that is something we need to know from council.

Do you want to do it one time all at one time?

Do you want to do it in phases?

How do you want to do this?

There may be some things with the non revenue generating funds that if the city owns the property and Woodsonia or whoever is developing streets, sewer, water, those kinds of things that are generally non-revenue producing, but they're being done on city property for the city's benefit.

We're exempted from the non-revenue present, non revenue producing, whereas if Woodsonia, we give the property to Woodsonia and they give us back the streets, they may or may not be.

So there's some things that we still need to figure out there, and I don't have answers for that tonight.

Um then any issues with ongoing maintenance and capital improvements, how do we pay for those?

Woodsonia is going to show that they think that this will be a revenue producing, the transformational projects will be revenue producing and will cover those costs.

I don't know that we'll let you decide what you think of what Woodsonia presents.

But with that, I will turn it over to Woodsonia.

Um I've given you an outline of the things that we're hoping to get from you that will help us negotiate this.

Ideally, we were hoping to have this next week.

That means it needs to be done tomorrow.

I don't think that's gonna happen that we'll have an MOU fully fully negotiated tomorrow.

We've got a basis of one.

I think it'll probably be the December 2nd meeting where that comes forward.

But next week you will have a decision to make on the fiber line and ATT and getting some things happening and rolling out there as soon as possible.

Turn it over to you.

Okay.

All right.

Great.

Thanks, Chad.

Um, Drew Schneider, Mitch Holand with Woodsonia.

Um, I think before I start, I really have two thank yous.

First off, we had just come away from Conestoga, uh, the Constoga Marketplace.

Um I just want to say thank you to the city.

Um I don't know if everybody's been over to the new target, but that project has really turned out phenomenally well, and we couldn't be more happy with the results of how that's turned out.

And the city was a huge part of that through the public-private partnership.

So uh just a big thank you to you guys for the support that you gave us uh in that project and everyone involved city staff, uh Olson, everyone.

So been really really proud.

That's been a project that uh has been uh I know kind of near and dear to our heart.

So uh just want to thank the city for that.

And then the second thank you is for city staff on this good life district.

Uh this thing has been going on for a long time, and uh everyone's been very patient.

There's been a lot of changes between the state legislature and just everything that's happening, and so um just want to say thanks for everyone for your patience.

Uh, we're excited.

You know, we've we've been wanting to get to this point for a long time.

So we're really excited to have the opportunity to take you through what we submitted to the city, um, answer questions.

I think Chad brought up some great points of things we definitely want to talk about, and and we can hopefully resolve and move this move this project forward.

So uh just want to start by saying those things.

We submitted an application.

We thought the most appropriate thing to do would be to take counsel.

So we we uh put together an executive summary.

I don't know if everybody had a chance to go through this, but um, I'll go ahead and start and then turn it over to Mitch to talk a little bit about just the project itself, some of the phases, uh things of that nature.

But uh we thought it'd be easiest to just walk everyone through instead of the application itself, which is probably over a thousand pages to try to get this into an executive summary format.

So as you can see here, this is kind of an overview.

There's the plan.

So, as everyone knows, this would be the land, the city owned land uh north of the the railroad line there on the north end of town.

Um, we intend to call the project Veterans Village.

Um, this would be a true mixed-use development.

It would have mixed use component to it, sports complex, aquatics, um, housing, both single family for sale, uh, multifamily for rent, Eagle Scout uh lake expansion.

Um, so lots of different components to the project that we're gonna walk everybody through tonight.

Uh, but you can see a site plan.

Hopefully, if people can't see this, I'm happy to move these easels around.

So just please let me know.

Um, the other thing I would say, I'm suspect there'll be a lot of questions tonight.

I think for us it would be most helpful if we got all the way through the presentation if you'll allow us to get all the way through the presentation.

We brought some of our consultants here as well, so they can talk a little bit about the aquatic center, the sports complex.

Let's let those folks get through what they want to present and then at the end open it up to questions if that's okay with everybody.

Um, so I'm gonna dive in.

Uh here's really what we want to cover on the executive summary.

Thought it would be helpful to touch base on sort of the key dates where we've been, things we've covered, um, the overall project overview.

I'll let Mitch talk us through that.

Project phasing.

There's been discussions about the phasing of the project, so uh we'd like to cover that.

Then we're gonna turn it over to our consultants on the sports complex, the aquatic center.

Um, we'll dive into the financing, some of the public financing requests, the use of good life funding, uh, use of TIFF dollars, things of that nature.

Um, I think a lot of our open item or open discussion points are similar to what Chad just brought up.

So we'd like to walk through those, sort of give council some of our logic uh on why we we asked for certain things the way we did.

Um next stage documents timing, and then really open it up to questions.

So uh that's how we'd like to conduct and and talk through this executive summary.

So, first off, uh just key dates.

Can everybody see this?

I can zoom in here a little bit if I need to.

Um so if you remember, we started this uh it was roughly two years ago.

Um, it was at the tail end of 2023.

Um, I can't remember, I think most of everyone was on the council, but we came before the council asking for your support to get our application into the state of Nebraska.

Um Good Life Districts were considered.

Gretna was sort of the poster child for how we were gonna do this.

Uh, you guys had supported us in the Conestoga project, and we thought it'd be very beneficial to bring a second large project like this to Grand Island uh to really help bolster tourism and uh seeing Conestoga thrive uh as a mixed-use center.

So we put in the application, council was supportive.

Um the application went in December 19th, 2023.

Um we were approved June of 2024 uh through the state of Nebraska.

Then, if you if everyone recalls, we went through the the voter approval of the Good Life District program.

That was August 13th of 2024.

Uh, and then the city council adopted the economic development program around the Good Life District in September 15th of 2024.

Um so a couple other key dates.

Um we submitted our original application November 4th of 2024.

Um, and then if you if everyone remembers the state of Nebraska did the Good Life, the Good Life amendment in June of 2024, which affected some of our funding a little bit, uh, which is one thing, obviously, as we all know, we've got the state legislature coming up here uh in a few months, and I think there's a good opportunity that good life districts will be discussed as well again.

Um, so we uh submitted uh our updated Good Life District application.

So this the third bullet point from the bottom here, this would be our Good Life District application to the city of Grand Island.

That was on August 15th.

Um, and then obviously we have our study session tonight, which the intent of the study session is to really cover our application uh and what we've submitted.

Um, and then as Chad mentioned, uh hopefully we're on the November 18th uh meeting to discuss an MOU to talk about how to move this project forward.

Um so these are the key dates.

With that, I will turn it over to Mitch to talk about the project overview.

I'm I'm happy to walk by the site plan and point out where certain things are as much as talking about these.

Hi.

Well, it's good to see you guys all again.

So it's it's we talk about this every time, which is fun to have familiar faces, right?

We know most of you now for going on four years.

So hopefully we built some trust.

This is a really big project, as Drew mentioned.

But really, what we want to do, or at least I want to do right now, is give an overview of the whole project and then talk through the phases, and then that from there we'll get more granular, right?

On each of those.

So if you do, as Drew mentioned, I'd like to save as many questions as we can till the end so we can get through it.

If there's something, you know, quick clarification, just ask it and interrupt me.

That's fine.

So the overall project, kind of our position has been there's no single element of this project in and of itself that's transformational, right?

But what is, I think, transformational to the state in Grand Island is the project in and of itself, which if we do deliver on this should be a 600 million dollar project.

So the whole project is one anchored by a new to market indoor-outdoor sports complex.

The idea from that from our perspective came what three years ago when we were working through the mall, where I think we had had some discussions with with one of the groups that was trying to get a sports complex off the ground.

It's actually how we met Norm.

He's here tonight, and we'll we'll talk about that.

But we had wanted to bring them on the mall.

That wasn't feasible, ended up moving forward with the mall project, but did kind of have this looming desire to see a sports complex in Grand Island.

Um fortunately, the Good Life District legislation kind of provided us an avenue to do that, and that's where the Veterans Village idea came.

So the overall project is going to be anchored by an indoor-outdoor sports complex.

Drew, if you want to point to it, it's positioned right kind of there on the south side of the of the site.

In addition to that, we really think this plays off well with the existing ball fields that are on the north, and then we are going to relocate the existing soccer fields kind of into that southeast corner of the site, which is a great use because most of that's floodplain and not otherwise buildable.

So, as Chad mentioned, our intent is to make sure those are there, established.

We don't want to disrupt the soccer folks.

We know those are used regularly, uh, but we would relocate those into the south piece of it.

The indoor sports complex is really geared around a tournament focused facility.

That's a key consideration for the state, right?

But on the other end of that, Norm can get much more into the details is this thing's going to be there throughout the week, right?

It's not gonna have a tournament there every day.

So we think this is gonna have huge community benefit as well.

So the indoor facility will accommodate 16 volleyball, eight basketball, and then the courts are multi-purpose.

So those could be turned over to pickleball, dance, cheer, gymnastics, wrestling, um, the assortment.

It'll also have an indoor concessions uh and meeting rooms, and then the parking facilities, which you can kind of see position around it.

The second piece is the outdoor components.

So this would be an all-terf multi-sport field.

And again, Norm will get more into the details on this, but when we talk multi-sport field, this will be able to accommodate at one time four full-size baseball fields, collegiate.

Four full-size softball fields.

I think we have four full-size football fields, and then I think it's six full-size soccer fields.

So that'll all be accommodated within that big rectangular box that you see uh kind of on the south side of the site.

In addition to that, we do have the an area designated for the city aquatic center, which is that blue rectangle, uh, just actually just the other side of that, drew the rectangular piece.

There's been a lot of discussion, and this is why we do have um hopefully a couple folks here that are really educated on the aquatic center of what does this need to include.

I don't think there's consensus on that, right?

I think if we ask each of you, we might get a different response.

But I do think the consensus in the community is you want to see an aquatic center.

We think that's an important piece too.

So, what we've what we've relayed to staff is let's designate, I think a significant amount of funding for that.

We can talk about what that all includes, but we do have placement for that.

So, what we would do is we put in all the horizontal infrastructure, we'd put in all the primary parking fields, and then what the city ultimately desires to do with that aquatic center, they can desire to do.

But there is a space designed for that.

The other piece is the Eagle Scout Lake expansion.

We think this is really a key piece of the overall site.

So the existing Eagle Scout Lake is hatched, as you can see, kind of up in that upper corner.

We think this is a really great opportunity to enhance this.

It's it's fine today, but I think we can really bolster that with walking trails, landscaping.

The other key piece we want to do is dredge it quite a bit deeper so that it stays wet throughout the year.

So ultimately, this would be a 20-acre expansion, it would go across the site.

As Chad mentioned, we do need to relocate that fiber line.

If this is going to be feasible, we do think that's possible.

But this would stretch all the way across the site and really serve as more of an amenity space for all the components of the project.

So, in addition to that, we'd have two miles of walking trails throughout.

I think we've got two different pedestrian bridges and fishing piers, but would really kind of anchor the overall development.

The other piece that we've talked about, which you can see positioned just north of the red is a city uh amphitheater.

We think there's a great opportunity to bring an amphitheater in Grand Island.

There's not one today, uh, but we would position that on the south side to kind of anchor that mixed use uh area right there.

I should have said this too at the start.

What was really helpful, what we found really helpful uh about six months ago was our our confluence design meetings.

So the original plan, you know, we did put some thought into it.

I think Jeff Bollock was the one that actually designed most of the site, which that's kind of crazy.

But we did have Confluence come in and redesign some certain elements of this, uh, which we incorporated all of those into our overall site plan.

So the site plan that you see today does follow the master plan that Confluence came up with.

Um addition to that, we've got 72 acres of mixed use area.

That's predominantly made up of the area in red and then pink and then green and yellow.

So if you point to it, we got yeah, there you go.

So we got the area in red on the south, red on the north, the pink is additional mixed use, and then we've got more kind of traditional commercial up along the airport front edge.

Exactly.

Lastly is the multifamily and single family, um, which we'll talk about as kind of a key anchor to the site.

Ultimately, if we're gonna be able to bring businesses up here, whether it's a restaurant, a hotel, sports complex, there needs to be some residential density.

The example that we continue to use is kind of the Prairie Commons, where a lot of the businesses that you're seeing move into that district now, they came after the residential came there.

That's a key piece of activating this area.

It is, I mean, it's no secret.

This is up on the north end of Grand Island.

If we're gonna be able to activate this in the way that we really want to, residential is a key, key component of that.

But all together, it's 1,500 multifamily units that's spread out between the area in orange uh and yellow, and then we've got about 300 single family units, uh, which is green and purple.

And then we've got about 300 single family units, which is green and purple.

I think the next kind of key P piece we want to walk through, which will take you through some of these elevations.

Yeah, why don't you pull those up?

Here's an indoor shot.

I don't know if everybody can see this.

So the overall imagery, what you're seeing here would be looking south.

So you can see the city amphitheater with kind of the purple awning.

Uh I'll pull the actual image here first.

There you go.

So this would be looking south.

You can see the sports complex positioned here, the multi-sport positioned here.

Get your existing ball fields, uh, and then you got the relocated soccer fields.

So this would be a shot of the hotel, the restaurant, the amphitheater, and then we'd hope to bring in a couple more hotels in future phases as part of this development.

But hopefully, this gives a feel of what we'd like Eagle Scout Lake to feel like as you actually walk around it, which is very walkable and more of a neighborhood uh type element.

The sports complex uh is positioned.

We got an image right there in kind of the um the floor, uh, but this was what we'd like the exterior design to look like.

Again, this would be a hundred thousand square foot indoor facility.

We would do a raised mezzanine seating area to bring a lot of that viewing up top.

Um, no one can talk about the efficiency on that, but hopefully, this gives a flavor of what this facility would ultimately look like.

Here's another shot of the interior, and then another.

There's a shot continuing to look south, but on the other side, one of the which we can talk about one of the key pieces of our initial phase one would be a 15,000 square foot event center, uh, which is that facility.

We think that would really benefit from the views of Eagle Scout Lake.

So let me talk about this map first, and then we can talk about the specific elements.

So the there you go.

So part of the overall, I guess, challenge with this project is conveying what does this look like, you know, in kind of bite-sized pieces.

But a 600 million dollar project, this is gonna take time to develop.

But the initial phase, and when we say initial phase, we talk about the initial kind of two to three years of the project.

The first piece of it would be mass grading the site, which the entire site would get graded.

So we'd expand Eagle Scout Lake, we'd pull all that material out, and then the entire site gets raised about a foot.

That's every single piece of the site, which is kind of critical to activating it.

The site sits pretty low.

So we'd masquerade the entire site, and then the areas that you see colorized on this plan would be the various vertical components that would be activated in phase one.

So that includes the indoor sports complex, which is down here, the all-terf multi-sport field, which is here, the relocated soccer fields, which are here, the aquatic center, phase one would also include one hotel, one restaurant, and the amphitheater.

So all this area would be complete.

We've got the expansion of Eagle Scout Lake, we do have the event center that we would plan to position on the north end, and then the initial 250 multifamily units would be positioned uh on the north end as well.

And the single family is on the uh the west end of the site.

So these future phases, I would consider these all to be pad ready, where once we see demand, we could go vertical on those, but the common infrastructure would be complete.

So the initial spine road connecting airport road all the way through the site, connecting it to Broadwell would be complete.

The primary artillery streets, which will provide connectivity through the balance of the site would be complete.

But what areas would be waited until future phases would be these interior streets you can kind of see faded in the future phases.

Mr.

Nickerson since we're talking about phase one.

I wanted to ask you, you talked about elevating everything afoot.

How does that timing tie into use of current soccer fields versus what you have to do?

Do we lose a season?

Does everything work out okay timing-wise, or how's that?

No, I mean ultimately we're talking about a smaller area.

Mitch soccer fields sit about there.

So I think we'd be pulling a lot of the material over here.

We'd obviously come up with a phase grading plan that has this area raised, relocated, field zen, and then we would regrade and ultimately put the Broadwell in right here, Mitch.

You see any loss of season, or is it I think we'd strive not to.

I mean, there might be a period of months, right, where we don't have access to it, but since it does front Broadwell, I think we've got a really great shot of not losing access to those fields.

This is the phased site plan.

Again, those are all the various elements that we would complete at the onset of the project, which we're deeming as kind of the critical pieces to get this project off the ground.

And here's a little bit more details on where those various phases are.

So again, sports complex.

You've got the phase one commercial, multifamily housing, the single family housing.

And also together again to get a little more granular.

This would be 250 multifamily units, 20 single family units, one new hotel, one new restaurant, one new event center, the indoor and outdoor sports complex, and then the aquatic center once the city has that designed.

I think the next agenda item we have would be Norm Gill.

Norm, as I mentioned, Norm is with uh Pinnacle Sports Group.

We've had the pleasure of meeting Norm actually through the chief uh construction folks.

Uh Norm's been looking at this market for five years.

Close long time.

So anyway, uh we found Norm to be uh of a great resource.

Uh he helped us conduct the market study, so we thought it'd be appropriate to have Norm talk a little bit.

I mean, this is his industry, this is what he does day in and day out.

So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Norm.

Please state your last name.

Norm Gill, G I L L.

So Mitch got to show all the pretty pictures, and I get to talk facts and numbers.

So again, my name's Norm Gill, I'm with Pinnacle Sports.

Uh we are a consulting firm out of Louisville, Kentucky.

Uh, but more granular than that.

I used to own six of these facilities that I ran on a day-to-day basis in six different cities uh, mainly in the Midwest, uh, probably closest to here were a couple I had in in the Twin Cities.

Uh so we feel like our experience and understanding of various we've also done probably 800 feasibility market studies across the country.

So we've got a broad exposure to different communities to different aspects of it.

We've seen over 30 years this industry change and grow.

Uh we also have a very practical hands-on knowledge of the working day-to-day real-world elements, not national trends, not regional trends, but uh actual um specific uh elements as it relates to the financial elements of a of operating one of these.

So we've actually been in this market a couple times.

We were here in 22 uh looking uh doing some work with a group that was looking at a public-private partnership.

Some of you may be aware of uh that project was primarily focused on quality of life enhancement uh with some uh elements of of sports tourism.

Uh and then uh earlier this summer we reevaluate, we relooked at the community to see what had changed, what opportunities there still may be, et cetera, as it related primarily to sports tourism.

So those are the two kind of elements that a facility of this nature can satisfy.

Sports tourism is a $52 billion a year industry now.

Just three years ago, it was under 40.

So it continues to very rapidly grow across the country to which facilities are needed to take advantage of that.

But it's not meant to drive people from out of town to come here.

So as we focused on this time around based upon the funding source as we were directed, or that we were told, sports tourism was a key to that.

So we did look.

You can uh uh read the gummy details for yourself.

But we we talked to numerous numerous stakeholders uh locally and regionally, we talked to some national governing bodies, we talked to some tournament promoters in various sports, uh, all trying to get an inclination of what uh likelihood they would have to come to Grand Island.

Uh from a sports tourism standpoint, um Grand Island has some very great assets.

Uh it is centrally located to a number of major markets.

Uh in fact, the great analytical computer software we have says that in the what we refer to as the travel donut, which is a one to five hour radius around your market, one an hour to five hours, the one hour being critical, two, because within one hour people go home.

They don't spend the night, and that doesn't help with the socio or with the economic impact.

So, in a one to five hour donut around Grand Island, there's nearly eight million people.

That's a good size opportunity to come here.

Uh, you have obviously major markets uh primarily to the east and and southeast, uh, all of which have easy access to I-80.

You also have numerous uh uh hotel accommodations, something that we find in a lot of communities, even when they come upon uh funds like this and want to do something like this, it's not going to be beneficial to their community because they don't have enough hotels, or they don't have enough eateries, and so you certainly have that infrastructure to support that.

Um so as we looked at our study, we talked to these people, uh, tourism being the key to that.

We looked at both indoor and outdoor opportunities that could serve that uh that that opportunity for people to come to town.

Uh what we know from our experience is that the primary driver of that are assets that involve hardcore.

So basketball, volleyball, um, futsal, I have to mention pickleball because everybody wants to mention pickleball today.

Um mat sports, wrestling, cheerleading, uh, dance, gymnastics, uh, and then a great deal of diversity, and we'll show you the the floor plan that and it's in your packet, but that we have uh come up with that also gives tremendous flexibility to offer potential for small expos for trade shows, not massive, but boutique 100 vendor, 120 vendor uh products that are looking for a space of reasonable value.

Uh these facilities, most of the facilities we've built do accommodate uh shows of this nature, and it takes very little effort to do so.

The basic infrastructure uh is already all there.

So what we have proposed from an indoor standpoint, as Mitch mentioned, I'll go I'll come back to this.

Yeah, I gotta get fancy.

Um so we've proposed approximately just north of a hundred thousand square foot facility that is primarily hardcore.

Eight basketball, sixteen volleyball.

I think I did count you could put 32 wrestling mats in this space.

Uh we've laid this out and designed it in such a way that it is tournament friendly.

A number of facilities that you all may have been in if you have children in sports come somewhat come into being a sardine can for tournaments.

They weren't designed for the kind of bodies that you would have in here.

Literally, if we were to hold a 16-court volleyball tournament at any given time, you have 640 athletes in there.

And on average, there's 1.5 spectators per athlete.

So that's another nearly thousand.

So you have you know 16, 1700 people in this building at one time.

And so creating a venue where that is comfortable is paramount to people wanting to come back to a facility and enjoy it.

Not be feel felt like it was built for something else, and now you're doing you're during tournaments.

But you know, has a has an entry coming in one way.

We have uh which we find very important as it relates to safety and risk management.

Uh we have the ability to have uh concessions, we have plenty of gathering space downstairs.

Uh the court space is divided left and right, uh, which also gives you the opportunity to be flexible.

This layout would allow you to run a four-court basketball tournament while still running an eight-court volleyball tournament or a mat sports event along with a small expo.

So this layout gives you tremendous flexibility to uh ebb and flow with the opportunities that come in a uh in a community.

I know early on we spoke with your your C V B and they seemed anxious to help to program this with that kind of flexibility.

Um as mentioned by Mitch, we have taken advantage of the area uh the real estate that is not over the courts and and put a mezzanine level there.

That also helps to spread out this crowd that could be there and also give some very advantageous viewing uh for the sports below.

Uh so this has been our recommendation for the indoor on an outdoor standpoint, and I apologize I didn't notice today that this did not come out graphically as well as we had liked.

But this the outdoor component is approximately 550,000 square feet of synthetic turf.

Um it would be able to accommodate four collegiate baseball fields, and again, I see that the graphics did not come out as clear as we would have liked.

Um that can be converted then into four uh softball or little league fields.

Uh when baseball and softball, probably five, six years ago, accepted synthetic turf in fields as an okay product collegiately nationally, that's a game changer.

It'll it meant that we can put in a facility that now is almost weatherproof.

Lightning is probably, and obviously, if you have a Kentucky phrase here, a gully washer, uh, then you know you would have a challenge.

But all in all, the utilization is much more guaranteed, which promoters like governing bodies like you can start earlier, uh, you can go later because you don't have to worry about the natural product.

Uh this configuration again also allows us to convert into six uh rectangle sports, uh, whether it's soccer, whether it's lacrosse, whether it's football, and then further to that, they could be divided even more into U12 size, U 12 and undersized fields for 12, eight uh tens and eights.

Um this would be adjacent uh to the to the indoor to allow for some sharing of resources, uh food service uh restrooms, uh, etc.

So I know one question that has been burning in those of you that love okay.

This is gonna be way too small.

So I think this is in your packet, so we don't need to go uh try to go through line by line, but I'm sure at some point there will be questions towards this.

We took the approach on this facility of a ramp up, it's not going to be golden on day one.

Uh our our financial model does show a deficit in year one, which we've taken care of in the the capital uh uh startup budget.

Uh but we do believe that this facility, if managed well, and by that I will emphasize that we believe the best management for this would be securing an outside professional firm to run it.

And by the way, that's not us.

This is not self-serving.

But the management professional firms that are out there can focus on the their attention on the economic impact initiative here.

They know those promoters, they know those governing bodies, and they have direct pipelines to try to persuade them.

I'm not going to say it's a guarantee, to come to Grand Island and bring their bring their tournaments, et cetera.

We have been what I feel is very conservative in the in the revenue.

We've not booked this every weekend.

We've not booked this 52 weeks a year, et cetera.

We've also been realistic to the costs.

This is something we feel we have an inside knowledge of because of our background.

We have made a few assumptions.

The biggest of this that makes this project totally not totally unique, but very unique would be that this would not carry any debt service, nor will the community carry a debt service in another stack somewhere.

Because we do have communities that go and float a bond and build it, and guess, hey, guess what?

It's cash flowing positive, but nobody takes the three, four percent whatever bond debt service and applies it to this PL.

So having that not be anywhere, or even a contingent liability in your balance sheet of a community, we think is very unique.

Obviously, if it's municipally owned, there's no property tax.

We have assumed a few shared services.

We uh since it's owned by the municipality, we have assumed that probably the the city's overall umbrella insurance uh would cover this as well.

Uh we've assumed that the public works would probably do some snow plowing and some lawn lawn maintenance.

Um but we've uh everything else we've assessed is a as a direct cost to the facility, and we do feel that there's the opportunity if run professionally for this to cash flow positive by the sustainable year.

So happy to uh answer questions uh when after the aquatics, guys.

Thanks, Norm.

I'll slide down to our next um if you guys want to step up, I believe it's on the aquatic side.

Shrink this down a little bit.

If you guys want to introduce yourselves, I'm gonna get you to the spot on the presentation.

Go ahead, guys.

Hello, everyone.

I'm R.

Chastler.

I'm with Health Fitness Corporation.

Um we're a company that operates centers such as this.

We've been in business for 50 years.

It's our 50 year anniversary of this year.

Um today we manage several hundred of these centers, um, aquatics, fitness, recreation, wellness.

Um, the three markets we mainly work within are community sectors such as yours, corporations, as well as higher education facilities.

Yes.

Uh good evening.

I'm Ben Brandsteter, President of Brands or Carroll.

We're a uh regional architecture and engineering firm, and uh one of our main focuses is uh in the recreation space and in the aquatic space.

And uh Charlie Schneider is here with our firm tonight.

He's our lead aquatic engineer.

And uh so we're our goal tonight is to go through and kind of answer the question of what would make sense for the aquatic and fitness component for this project as it relates to an indoor facility.

Yeah, it's uh brand setter B R A N D S T E T T E Rame again, Charlie Schneider.

So our goal, our goal this evening is to review an overview of the Quad amenities, uh look at industry trends, give an overview of the fitness center amenities.

We have developed a concept plan based upon a targeted budget for what the funding would be available for this, give a projection of the uh uh costs for the facilities.

Arch will talk about a uh operating model and um and then give you an overview a little bit about about what we do, but uh we want to focus mainly on your all's project and your old needs uh this evening.

So, Charlie?

Sure.

So jump right into the aquatics.

Um there are a lot of different routes you can go with this.

There's a lot of different types of facilities out there.

Um, going from the you know, the dramatic, I don't know if you've seen Epic Waters down in Dallas with the water park to you know, training facilities for Olympics swimmers, but we're focusing on what we think is best for this community uh and what we see a lot in municipally ran and owned and operated facilities.

So some of the components we look for uh in these aquatic centers, um I think the key one is the middle one, the flexible layout of the pool, the ability to offer multiple uh programming uh in the same body of water.

So you're getting multiple uses out of the same same water at different points during the time.

You never want to, if you're just doing one thing all the time, then it's a really it's not it doesn't offer the flexibility and options that that are uh for successful operations.

Um, for me, that really means the air quality, the water quality, and the safety of the facility uh that it's designed and built to a way that's it's comfortable and finding for the people to come in.

And of course, uh the interactive and illusion portions of it, getting the families involved.

It's not just there to train athletes like so much of this other facilities are, it's there to bring the family to be together and spend some time at the facility.

So again, family friendly design is important, um, a recreational pool along with with the the lap pool, uh, combining those two elements together to where you have both the recreation activity and the exercise activity is very important.

Um, having those lap lanes, a lot of people still like to swim a lot, but those lap lanes don't are not going to be used all day all the time.

So being able to do other things like aqua aerobics and swim lessons inside the facility is very important.

And we'll talk a little bit more about programming later.

And then the support facilities around it, um, everything to do with the locker rooms and the other amenities that go with it.

Standalone aquatic sitters are not very common, and uh having all the other components of a recreation facility there together with the aquatics is very important.

Yep.

Just go down here a minute.

So just to take a quick pause to tell you a little bit, you know, I've worked with Norm on several projects as we look at all of them have been community facing.

Um, and we've worked with BCI, Brandstead or Carroll most recently on several community-facing projects in Ohio that had aquatics uh as a component as well.

Um like I told you a couple minutes ago, we work in the community, the corporate, and the higher ed.

For example, we run all the rec centers at Harvard.

We just opened the new center for Walmart at their head new world headquarters in Bentonville, and we probably have over 20, 15 to 20 community-based.

We have a listing in here on one of the last slides, I believe, of probably 10 or 12 that I think are very similar in concept and scope of what we understand that you want to do.

What we were tasked with and what we're going to show you today, again, I can't disclaim or preface enough that it's written in pencil and it's a block of clay.

We were asked by our associates here to look at how where it sits within the current master plan, what makeup is it, and then also the budget that we would show you what you could get within that that budget realm.

But one of the key things when we look at community-facing family-oriented centers, we don't run one that's just one thing, either wet or dry programming.

Where we've seen the most success that our community clients have got is there if there's a level of wet and dry programming within the program scope, that's where we're seeing the greatest return for the community, um, the greatest satisfaction within you know the residents of those areas.

So when we're showing you these numbers, um, as Ben said, we're family aquatic and fitness are the categories that we put in here.

So Charlie went over the what I call the wet amenities, the aquatic amenities, but just to touch real quick, it's very similar makeup to the the fitness center concept.

Um today's fitness centers, you have open layouts, a lot of functional training.

There's a lot of technology integration from the deck on the treadmill to the automation of the member management systems, and then there's dedicated training zones from a fitness perspective.

Common features for the dry based fitness areas.

Obviously, you have an exercise equipment floor, recovery space, stretching zones.

There's also multiple group classrooms today where you can do spin or yoga or tai chi, things like that.

And then the amenities outside the fitness components, the plan that Ben's gonna show you in a couple minutes, they're shared.

So we don't have two sets of locker rooms and administrative space and entryway.

So all of these support amenity areas uh would be shared obviously with the facility.

So I'm gonna hand it over to Ben.

He's gonna talk to you about how we appropriated uh the space um and then the design.

Yeah, thanks, Arch.

Um, you know, the uh the the I guess the problem we were asked to solve uh for this for this evening's discussion was um a little bit unique in terms of providing the budget and said, okay, kind of what can we put in that box, so to speak.

So we looked at and we used our our experience in in all of our previous projects to look at what are the what are the value propositions, what are the elements that need to be included in a uh in a project such as this.

And so we essentially added all that up, all the things that we've talked about, including the indoor water, the uh the support spaces, the uh exercise equipment area, uh, and came up with a program that's about a 27,000 square foot project, uh 27,000 square foot building.

Um and uh I asked one of our architects to kind of tell show give me a block diagram of what that could look like, and that's what the image is on the on the left over here, essentially showing the aquatics and the mechanical space, meaning that central focus, and then wrapping wrapping that around with the uh support and fitness areas.

And fortunately, we took that also, we took that a little bit to the next level and came up with a little bit more of a concept plan so that she should try to give you all something that you can touch and feel and provide some perspective on what that would what that would look like.

So we oriented this to uh to the site, so north is up, and uh so you you you would come in off of a uh central entry lobby area, and then off to the side you'd have child watch um capabilities to uh to the right, to the left you would walk in, you'd have a couple different classroom spaces that you know that that uh group classes could be in.

Those would also be multi-purpose areas if they want to you move the uh move the equipment out either you know to the side, but it's more than just those two use the uh the the uh the cycle classes, and then uh as you kind of get into the heart of the heart of the facility, um the the um the locker room family changing areas are are integral to that, and really that what that the location of that is certain it's allows is to serve both the the exercise equipment area and the indoor aquatics area.

Um Charlie alluded to uh air quality inside uh in uh in an indoor facility, indoor water facility, and we can't express that enough of how important that is.

The industry has learned a ton in the last 10 uh 10 to 20 years.

We attend conferences on a regular basis where we sort of make sure that we stay on top of those trends.

Um but indoor water quality adds a lot to the quality of the experience of the uh of the user.

That's why the the mechanical space probably seems a little bit big for a facility this size, but it's really needed.

We we're showing you three three lap lanes, additional uh open swim areas, uh two water slides, and all of that actually, I'm sorry, one one main water side.

But uh all that really would be we would want to tailor that to the needs and the wants of your all's community.

This is uh I don't always like coming with concept plans and something like this because it's this is our guess as to what you all need, whereas we really would want to have a conversation about okay, what are the needs of the community, what um and uh and looking at that.

But what this does is is it provides that direct access from the locker rooms, family changing areas, uh straight on to the onto the pool deck and provides easy access over into the exercise equipment area while also allowing for some staff workspaces and and check-ins and really provide an open, you know, an open environment.

When you walk in, you you've got visual eyeballs on all the things that you're looking for, because a lot of times when you come into something, everybody looks up, okay.

Where am I going?

We want to be we want that to be very intuitive.

the onto the pool deck and provides easy access over into the exercise equipment area while also allowing for some staff workspaces and and check-ins and really provide an open you know an open environment when you walk in you you've got visual eyeballs on all the things that you're looking for because a lot of times when you come into something everybody looks up okay where am I going we want to be we want that to be very intuitive so as we get into the cost projections as I said we're looking at about a 27000 square foot facility and uh we based we we kind of we tested that both ways looking forward and backwards in terms of the uh of the of the um overall building program and the scope and uh we've got a high level of confidence that that plan that you saw a couple slides ago could be built for 15 million dollars and uh that's based upon the recent experiences that um that we've seen in uh in the markets that we serve so um art I'm gonna turn it back over to you and look at the operating cost aspect of this so again you'll probably hear this from me a couple times um written in pencil it's a block of clay so um as I said we operate several hundred of these so again um as Ben just mentioned we're we're coming at you with a concept um one-sided concept but again tasked with the 15 million you know in projected budget for the actual physical plant we as operators we're tasked with well what could that look like operationally and again um the the numbers I'm giving you in this scope uh we're not just throwing darts on the wall I'm looking at all of our other community based centers of similar size similar makeup and and what are they offering so as you can see in this slide here if you look to the far right I don't expect you to read the multicolored table because the print's pretty small but the right gives you kind of a summary so we're looking at 105 hours a week and when I look at all of our community based centers that's exactly the average that um the hours per week that the centers open so that's typically like a Monday through Thursday five in the morning till ten Fridays we usually close open at five close at nine and then on Saturdays and Sundays we open between 6 and 7 a.m and close maybe at 8 p.m.

So it averages around 105 hours seven days a week the programming that we have in this projection here this draft projection obviously it includes aquatics and I'll go over those in a slide fitness services the general member services and then facility oversight and I didn't say a couple minutes ago one of the things that we found key and I think our oldest community based account that we have right now it's we've had it for 29 years.

So we've had a lot of years to learn what works and what's been successful and what we've realized is one revenue stream plays off another so what way we categorize it is a membership or subscription based model that's attached to an event based revenue stream when you put those two together they can support each other well over a 12 month period and what I mean by that is membership into a program and a club and then the service or event based revenue are swim lessons personal training group classes things like that when you have those two combined together you have a good successful model there.

Like Norm said we employ a little over 3,000 degree professionals in recreation aquatics fitness wellness and that's their charge to go out to your market and basically profess and promote you know the message that you want us to give uh to your residents we have three what we call business units in this in that operational tree there we have the aquatics in the center obviously your aquatics manager your lifeguards we have the fitness staff personal trainers group class instructors and then we have member services that's front desk staff membership sales things like that that make up that 20.75 FTEs are a head count of about 41 so what's and again this is a proposed these are things that we can do in each of the aquatic and the fitness categories but recreational play and you can see a lot of those pictures and I just wanted to give you a little bit of a note here that all of these pictures you see here are centers that we manage.

Then you have aquatic fitness classes.

That's your aerobics, but doing it in the in the pool.

And then we have instructional swims.

So we have group and we have private, and then we have age-specific swim types of categories that we can offer to your community residents.

And then lifeguard training.

All of those people are employed by us, and we make sure that they have the right lifeguard certifications, and then rentals for birthday parties and pool parties and things like that is kind of the core menu that we see.

And then when you get to the operating model, this is part of the program and service revenue that you see in that line item.

For fitness, it's general member services.

It's meeting and greeting at the front desk, handing a towel, telling them you know when the pool event's gonna be on Sunday at noon, what have you.

We also offer basic fitness assessments to help people understand what their current fitness is before they get in the pool or maybe get on a treadmill.

We have a lot of a big menu of group classes, what we call dry land, obviously in the group classrooms, and then the aquatic that we offer.

Personal and small group training, assisted stretching is a really strong component in the fitness world today.

Someone comes in and they work out on a Monday and they're real sore Tuesday and Wednesday.

So we've really brought in that whole stretching component as a part of the activity program, and then recovery services as well.

So we put together a potential program model, but then we also uh looked at what the potential could be as far as participation within your community.

I'm gonna focus on this slide here, really that middle table there.

So what we do, um we use Qubit to get our household demographic data from any region that we're looking at.

So we ordered the demographic data in an 8, 12, and 20 minute radius from the location of where this potential center is going to be.

And then we we apply our experience.

So we look at that, and if you look at that middle table, um the numbers came out that there's 22,762 households, club eligible in that eight, twelve, and twenty minute.

Then we look at different um penetration rates.

And our what we're seeing in our normative data with existing centers within an eight to twelve minute range, we're seeing around a 30% of those households in that drive time radius would want to participate in this type of club.

And then in the 13 to 20 minute, we're seeing around a 15%.

So if you do the math, 22762, um, it comes out to about 5900 households, is what we're projecting that may want to join a club with these type of amenities that we're showing you today.

And then from there, we basically look at it and say, what's going to be impacted by the competition, existing centers, whys, what have you in the area, and then from that, it comes up with a number that we call our steady state.

So if you look at that powder blue table at the bottom, we take the 5904, and about 55% we'd say would would go somewhere else to be active.

So that's about 3247, and then that leaves us with 2,657 as a projected membership unit.

And again, that's based on an assumption that we're promoting to the market a membership-based model for this facility.

The table at the bottom shows you what we see as a typical maturity over a five-year timeline for a center like this.

So you see the yellow column, that's pre-sale.

So we think we usually start pre-sales maybe four to six, maybe eight weeks before we can get several hundred memberships, you know, before the center even opens.

And then if you look at the the powder blue column to in year four, that's what we call our steady state.

So we're basically saying that in about four years, in between years three and four, we'll hit that average of 2657 as far as membership units.

I want to make sure I preface that that's a membership account.

If I one account might be me, my wife, and our three kids, and then might be single, and he's a second accountant.

Charlie's a third, so they're accounts, not head count.

So with that, um, this is a very truncated operating model for you, and it basically just shows the two main revenue categories and member services and member services enrollment, monthly dues, um, and visitor passes.

Someone might want to come for a week or a weekend and try out the club on a visitor perspective.

The program service revenue line is everything that I went through in those two slides with aquatic and fitness services that we could offer.

That's the projected level of revenue, fee for service revenue that's the way we call it that we projected to generate on program services.

You can see the revenue grand total there, 1.6 matures to 4.4 by year five over three or five years.

We're projecting close to 16 million in revenue.

Expenses, core staff compensation, that's that 20.7 or so FTEs.

The variable supplies and services, that includes an additional labor, that's for personal trainers, group class instructors, that that fee for service staff, and then pool chemicals, office supplies, utilities, things like that.

Account management is if we were to manage the center for you, that's basically our overhead general administrative surfaces, all of our resources, all of our marketing templates and tools you get access to, and then the management fee is the interest of the partner in the operation.

So as you can see there, in this this trends, and by the way, on the plane I was looking at our current average membership units, and right now we're at about 2347.

So in a year from now, we'll we'll be at about 2400.

And it's it's it's tracking with your year three and four.

So again, I wanted to preface that we're not just coming up with these numbers as a what if we're using our current 15 to 20 some community-based centers and where they're tracking and where we think they'll be in two or three years, and it's married up with what our projections are for you.

So you can see on average, it shows about a 10% positive net income over the five years on average by year three.

Um, it's at 27%.

Um, our current community-based operations right now are operating at about a 31% recovery.

So it's very much in line with uh what we're doing uh within our current book of business.

This list here, and then I'll be done.

Um I don't I'm not gonna go over every single one of these.

These aren't all of our community, but they were these are community facing.

Um there are two corporates in there.

There's the Walton Family Whole Health and Fitness Center down in Bentonville.

That was a great project.

We launched it, I think in February.

It's eight acres under roof.

It's easier to tell you what it doesn't have than what it does, but it has a lot of aquatics and and fitness in there, and then the JMBA is the um uh really nice aquatic center at SC Johnson over in Wisconsin, but everything else on this list, um, they are community-facing centers that have aquatics, fitness, wellness, recreation components in there as well.

All these pictures again are actual centers.

That picture of the outdoor um up in West Hartford for the Cornerstone Aquatic Center.

We evolved the relationship to where we also manage their um seasonal pools around the city of West Hartford.

So I think that's it.

Yeah, we've got there's two more slides in here that you guys can take a look at and just give you a little more background on who we are.

But uh, we just want to thank you for the opportunity to present here tonight.

We'll be uh we'll be in the room in case any specific questions come up regarding this topic.

Thank you.

Thanks, guys.

Um yeah, just some quick background.

I knew Mitch and I knew as the aquatic center discussion was advancing.

Um we're certainly not aquatics experts, so we're very thankful that Brandstead and Health Fitness, uh, Norm Gill actually introduced us to these guys, and they've been just a just a wealth of knowledge.

So uh we're definitely excited to have them as part of the team.

So with that, we'll continue to work through our executive summary.

Um the next part is uh a breakdown on the request, and this will break down.

I can zoom in here a minute.

So this breaks it down into uh I believe three phases of funding.

Um so we can walk you through that.

So the categories here, site preparation, Eagle Scout Lake Expansion, infrastructure, the sports complex, the aquatic center piece, which we just talked about, the phase one mixed use area, the venue, the restaurant, the hotel, the single family housing component, the multifamily housing component, and then the associated soft costs.

So phase one would be 142 million dollars.

There'd be 47 million dollars of private debt and equity that would be coming in.

Really no use of TIFF here as a lot of this really that the housing is the only real piece and the mixed use that would have any increment.

The TIFF will be a pay as you go, and then good life bond proceeds of 95 million dollars.

And so you can see how those those dollars are allocated.

That's over in the right hand column on the phase one area.

So this phase one area matches what's up on that cork board right there.

Uh those are the areas that we would want to activate.

Mitch talked about that.

Those would those all those areas would go as part of the phase one of this project.

It's a $600 million project, so we're gonna have to take this elephant down in chunks.

Um but this is what we would anticipate doing in phase one.

Phase two, um you can see would be focused on the mixed use area, uh, more of the housing component, the single family housing component, uh, another phase of the multifamily housing component, and then associated soft costs.

So that would be $76 million, uh $39 million of that would be private debt and equity, um, there'd be $11 million in TIFF, and then there's good life proceeds of $26 million.

Uh we'll talk a little bit more about that here as we continue to work through here.

Um and then really kind of the remaining phase.

Um phase one and phase two, we think will bring kind of the critical density that's needed.

I mean, right now, if you go up here, this thing's on the edge of town.

Uh it's very much there needs to be density up here in order to support any kind of businesses, restaurants, mixed use, uh obviously aquatics will help, uh sports complex will help, but we also need permanent residence.

Um, and so um so that you know, phase one and phase two hopefully will establish uh at least a baseline of that, and then those future phases, there'll be additional infrastructure of 40 million dollars, there'll be a phase three mixed use area, um, and then the rest of what we would call the single family area, the rest of the multifamily area, uh, the soft costs.

So that would be broken down private debt and equity be $330 million, uh, the TIFF portion would be $41 million of that, and then the good life proceeds would be $9 million of that.

So those are the three phases.

There's questions at the end, we can certainly come back to this slide, but um, this will provide the breakdown of what we had asked for in our application.

I think in Chad can jump in here too if we missed something, but we thought this is really kind of our last piece, and then we want to open it up for questions.

I know there's gonna want to be discussion here, but some of the items that we've heard as far as just questions, discussion, we wanted to provide some feedback, and then obviously let's get into questions and discussion.

But you know, good life good life funding allocation.

So the funding of the the allocation of good life dollars.

Um so again, as you saw in our phase one, phase two, and phase three, you saw how we broke that down.

The biggest the I would say the the biggest part of this project is gonna be the upfront part of it, right?

That's gonna be the biggest lift.

You got to get in the infrastructure, you got to get people coming up here.

The Eagle Spout Eagle Scout Lake expansion.

We need to make this a conducive neighborhood that people want to come to, both from a tourism perspective that people want to live here.

So we need to make sure the amenities are there to want to draw people to come up here to live, uh to dine out, uh, to experience the mixed-use housing.

So most you'll see most of our good life funding allocation is slated for those first two phases because that's where the heaviest lift, in our opinion, to get this project going is gonna is going to be.

Um so I think the other critical part I mentioned is the multifamily and the single family housing.

Then a lot of discussion of why would we allocate good life district fund good life funding for housing because we need density, and because the project in its entirety is transformational, not one not one single element, but the project in and of itself.

That's how we view this project.

Um, and so that's why we've made the request for those dollars to be used on the housing component because we need density up here, and we also need increment to help fund the TIFF.

If there's no property tax increment, the aquatic center will be publicly owned, that will not generate any property taxes.

The sports complex will be publicly owned, that will not generate any property taxes.

So we need things and improvements that will generate increment in property taxes.

So we talked a little bit about Chad brought up the single land conveyance.

Um, from our perspective, um, if we're gonna do a project of this size and scale, um 600 million dollar project, we're asking that the land be conveyed in one single conveyance.

Um, I know we've all been anticipating this.

We, I think, along with the council want to move forward on this as quickly as we can, but we also want to provide assurances.

You know, I think hopefully the council has some trust level with us.

I mean, we just completed Conestoga Marketplace.

That project isn't done.

That was a 200 million dollar project from our perspective.

As I talked about it at the onset of this meeting, that's gone very well.

And so we hopefully have built some level of trust with the community with the council.

Um, and so but we we are happy to discuss.

We've put in proposed clawbacks.

If we don't do certain things, how does the city get this land back?

Um, we certainly are willing to talk about that.

I think those items need to be fair and reasonable.

Um, this is a large scale project, this is going to take time.

We do need to be patient, but we also want to move quickly.

I mean, a lot of these, I think the infrastructure, the Eagle Scout Lake expansion, the confluence plan was adopted.

We like the plan, we were a part of that process.

We want to move forward with that plan.

Little components within the plan where things move, things like that, that can certainly be talked about as we advance through here.

But the core infrastructure where the the right-of-ways will be, those type of things, we in our opinion, those are set.

Where we want to expand Eagle Scout Lake, those things should generally be set.

So definitely we can talk about clawbacks.

Um, if the council's concerned, developer gets in this, things don't happen.

Okay, so we can discuss that.

So we've we've addressed some clawbacks in here.

Um, if if we want, we can go back to these, but obviously you can read them uh as you go through our proposal here.

Sports comp sports complex programming size.

I think Norm did a great job talking about this.

This facility is designed to bring in tourism.

Um, there's obviously a quality of life component.

I think the aquatic center fitness piece really fits that quality of life component.

That's not necessarily what good life districts are set up to establish.

We understand that's what the community wants.

We want to try to address that.

Um there was discussion about sports complex size, how come it's not as big as Carney, Carney's size is bigger.

I think norm's a great resource to talk about the balance between having a facility that draws tourism versus quality of life.

And so we wanted to put that on on sort of our points that we thought would be talked about.

Um, sports complex, aquatic, again, brand stetter Carroll and the health fitness folks, extremely helpful.

You know, as far as is there enough dollars allocated?

Um are we gonna build a 100,000, 150,000 square foot aquatic center?

We don't think there's dollars in the budget to do that.

27,000 square foot aquatic center, that's very nice, that's similar and comparable to communities that these guys brought up, we think makes a lot of sense.

That's why we've allocated the funding the way that we did.

Um, and then I know there was some discussion about um how the city is going to administer fees on these good life funds.

Um, we actually have a similar larger scale project in Missouri Joplin, Missouri, where we've brought in an outside legal council and accounting firm to help with those.

And the reason we're a little bit sensitive to this, I'm sure Mike Rogers can touch on this.

Anything that we take out of the good life funds just reduces the bond proceeds, is gonna basically reduce our bond capacity.

So if we want to create maximum bonding capacity, we're trying to have work with the city hand in hand here, but to make this as efficient as possible, so there's as many dollars available to build out the project.

So with that next stage documents.

My understanding, um there's gonna be discussion tonight.

I know we talked about having a council meeting next week.

Um, I think if we can get aligned on these things, we'd love to have an MOU and then work through definitive documents to move this project forward.

So that's sort of how we would envision this happening.

I'm sure there's gonna be questions and discussion tonight, but um, those would be the next stage documents and timing on our end.

So with that, we'll open it up for questions, Mr.

Shear.

Thank you.

Um I've got a few.

Uh the first thing I did want to say is well done on the target.

Uh is fabulous.

I've been through there more times than I was anticipating, and the place is always full.

Uh I think we've seen that it's been a great impact.

You guys did a great job, continue to do a good job on the uh marketplace.

Um I will say there's some good stuff in your plan here today.

There's some questionable stuff, and there's some stuff that just I think we're gonna have some issues with.

Uh that said, I I'm hoping that tonight gets us to a point where we can work with you guys on this.

I think our best step forward uh to get this done is to work with you.

You got us to this point.

Uh so I I just want to start my comments by saying that's where I hope we end up.

But there's a lot of questions here that I haven't looked at every page of the 612 page document that we got two days ago, but I've looked at a lot of it, and I've read a lot of it, and I've dug in and talked with some folks.

So I want to start with the sports complex.

Uh you mentioned that it's not the size of Kearney's.

Um you guys have done the studies, and I don't know if this is for Norm or for you guys.

When you did studies, when you looked at how competitive this can be, and you talk about the one and five hour distance.

How does a Kearney fit into that?

How does a Columbus fit into that?

Or some of these others that have been put in place since we first had some of these conversations.

Yeah, two kind of a two-part question there.

One is this the size relevance.

And I went to Kearney today.

Um, and you know, applause to all of us in the Midwest.

I walked in, introduced myself as just a guy who's a sportsplex geek that goes to communities and looks at sportsplexes, and they said, look around.

And the next thing I know, the general, the executive director and the head of the parking rector of Kearney right behind us going, hi, welcome.

Gave us a tour, chatted up.

So where are you from?

Why are you in town?

I'm in town to help Grand Island possibly build a sports center.

Great.

Let's keep talking.

And it was it was it was very nice.

Um s there, the turf, I believe, per their website.

I didn't go measure 66,000 square feet of turf, is a quality of life play, as I had mentioned in terms of breaking the two up.

Um it is not going to be, it cannot run asterisk.

It cannot run anything of scale on multiple fields.

It's got potentially one large field.

You can't run a tournament, you can't have an economic impact draw at that.

So has stated to me 90% of the time it will be divided in thirds or fourths, like it's like it's even labeled.

Um during the summer, right now, batting, she said that uh batting cages in baseball softball was the primary user.

They're anticipating the winter, a whole lot more soccer, etc.

But that's all quality of life.

That's not bringing people in from out of town, and that's great.

Something you want to talk about, something we want to look at that's fine.

The track, okay.

Another 11, 12,000 square feet, I think, according to the math on their website.

Quality of life.

It's free.

It's open to the public anytime they want to come in and use it.

That's certainly not going to track.

The pickleball, the four pickleball courts they have.

Um she commented that it's been slower because I believe there's a dedicated group in Kearney, a pickleball association or something of that nature that has opened or renovated a tin court facility, and that's prodominantly where they are they are play.

So they've seen minimal use to date of that.

But that's kind of the difference in the size is the assets that will generate tourism versus the assets that are something that, yes, I understand the community like, but it's gonna be a function, I think, of funding of whether there's enough to do both.

In their space versus ours, will they be competing against us for tournaments?

Uh tournaments and events, yes.

Will we compete well with them with ours versus what they have?

I think they're based on our study, there is plenty of diversity of business for both of them.

One other key.

If you look at the eight million people I mentioned between the one to five-hour donor, if you look at the some of the major centers, they all have to come through Grand Island to get to Kearney.

Oh, I like Grand Island better.

Trust me, I'm I'm with you.

Well, I'm not yeah, but my my point is that that driving, and I don't know how many of you travel with your children.

I mean, five hours is a little excessive to me, but we've got facilities that these places are nuts.

They're driving eight hours to get to it to the right event.

Um, but to drive an extra hour to get the same assets is is not necessary, and they have to come through here.

One of the keys, and I mean this, and this is not a right or wrong answer, but by the fact that Carney is municipally owned, as this was, but it's also municipally operated.

There is a sense I got from talking to these of much more community park and reclocement, and secondary was the tournament economic impact drive.

And this business, this industry is not a build it and they will come.

That was a movie.

This is build it and go get them.

And I think the uh having a professional management firm whose initiative and motivation, by the way, and not to get granular in that, but the incentive for that or for that operator is not simply a PL, it's PL from out of town.

That's what satisfies the I I agree.

I think to do this right with that event center, that sports complex, we have to count on people traveling to get there.

Uh I just want to make sure that as we talk about that facility, the way it's designed, in your opinion, it's the best for us.

It's the right size for us, it's the right makeup.

And configured, and I'm not I'm I'm I'm a sports center geek.

Some of their layout on their hard court side is not overly conducive to spectating or even to player competition.

To some degree, the it's at Kearney.

At Carney, okay.

At Kearney.

And so we built into that this experience.

I also say, and this is a little ticky tack element.

They she told me that they because I kind of noticed they've got I'm saying this like has everybody been there?

Has everybody seen it?

They've got a small little concession stand over to the side that actually they decided because of budgetary constraints to eliminate it at one point, and at the last minute said, No, we have to have something, and they stuck it in a corner.

Food service can be one of the greatest parts of the experience of coming to a sports center.

That you can come in with your family and have a nice, I'm not talking about sit-down meal, but you can have upscale concessions food, if you will.

Again, done by a proper operator that adds to that experience that we don't have to leave to go somewhere.

The way they've done it, it's at clearly it was an afterthought.

Thanks, Norm.

I appreciate the update on that.

Um you're good.

I was I'm gonna say one more thing, because Norm, I think hit the nail on that.

I have four kids, I've been to 25 of these things.

The experience matters, the experience matters.

We've gone to so many facilities that are huge, and I don't remember how many times we walked away and saying, gosh, I hope we don't have to come back to this one.

But we'll go to a smaller venue, and it's the great experience.

And so I just thought I wanted to mention that because I think Norm kind of said that in a in a roundabout way.

It looks yeah, I think you've added some great amenities in it.

Um to I'm gonna skip to the aquatic center.

Uh guys, this is not even close to what we were asking for.

I I appreciate you guys coming and presenting this, but this is uh, in my opinion, not at all what we would need up there.

We're looking for uh and hopefully it can be redesigned if that's what it takes.

Uh when we say we don't think that 15 million is probably going to cover it, you've probably heard us grumble about that.

Uh the facilities we're looking at would be for a high school sports team to have their tournaments there, to potentially host tournaments.

Uh to have uh I like the swim lesson part, but I don't I don't think we've ever talked about competing with Island Oasis as an indoor version of that with the with the uh slides and things like that.

That might be a nice amenity.

That's an extra.

Um I think swim lessons, I think laps great, but a facility where we can have kids and our high school have a replacement for the Y.

I think that was our number one, and and I think communities asked for an indoor pool, so there is some of that community aspect of it.

The field house part of it, I think we when we met with Confluence, we were talking about we want a field house that looks a lot like the one we have at Fonner Park.

Not something that's going to compete with our private gyms or the YMCA for all those amenities.

So that to me uh that's disappointing to see.

Uh we we were pretty clear every step of the way, I think uh that we wanted that type of facility included in this.

Um I don't know if we're allowed to pull somebody from the crowd if they talked at all.

If anybody wants to volunteer, but these facilities as we know them, they're not $15 million facilities.

One of the things that worries me a little bit too for the sports complex and the aquatic center is in your financing plan.

I'm not seeing a lot of operational costs.

And you mentioned that yes, there won't be debt, so that helps this versus a lot of these being private companies that have to have debt, and that's why a lot of them, most of them lose money.

Where I I see your numbers, but where what experience do you see that I haven't seen that that's been accurate?

We as far as we're concerned, we don't operate sports complexes.

We don't operate aquatics facilities.

That's why we brought experts here.

And the consultants we brought said that if built correctly, if managed correctly, these will operate profitably.

So we we're gonna simply rely on our consultants and what they I mean, we're not aquatics experts, and I would say we know enough to be dangerous on the sports complex, but certainly not to the same degree as norm.

But these professional consultants are telling us if operated correctly, these will operate profitably.

And that relies on people coming from outside.

Well, that's realized by that's realized by consultants who have built hundreds of these.

I mean, these guys have built as many facilities.

I don't know how they would rank amongst other consultants across the country, but probably fairly high up there as groups that have done a lot of work in this individual space.

So that's why we relied on those folks.

Just wanted to address your one question.

Like I said, when we drew that concept, the big rectangle that's the aquatics, we thought maybe the family component was splash pads and things like that was a stronger pull.

If you're saying it's more competition, you can take that same footprint.

It could be an eight-lane 25 meter or 25 yard with a dive well, dive platforms where we can do high school swim meets, dive meets.

So you can easily take that and configure it and have it be competition focused as well, as well as you know, the grandstand area for you know three, four hundred spectators to watch it too.

So we could reconfigure that space if you're saying we want more competition type of a focus as opposed to family area, that can be configured in that footprint.

I think I'm not the expert on that.

Just when I talk to somebody who is uh he had even more concerns than I do when it came to this plan and and even with what could be done in this cost.

Uh I think is it North Platte is putting in a are you guys doing the one in North Platt?

They're putting in one I I believe was in the 30 to 35 range, 35 million range, that is closer aligned with what we're talking about.

Uh so when I see the funding for this and see that 15 million dollars was left for it, I feel like that's that's almost a non-starter.

Uh it is almost a non-negotiable uh from what we've talked with the community about.

Uh what you're talking about turning this into, say what what we're describing here.

Can you do that in 15 million?

I believe we can.

I believe we can take that pool, and I'll let Ben help me out here from the facility perspective, but we can take that footprint, and as I said a couple minutes ago, and switch the focus from more family-friendly orientation to a competition type pool, eight-lane, 25-meter, 25-yard for high school with a dive well with you know diving in in the competition focus as well, can be done.

I'm not gonna be as confident on that number uh just because of the we we get burned a lot on on that kind of stuff.

Um that's something that we can definitely look at to see and like I'd like to take a look at that other project just to make sure we have an apples apples because there's a lot that goes into those projects.

It's and from our perspective, as we were looking at this, granted, in a vacuum without any interaction with anybody in this room.

What this one of the things that we don't like to see is dead water.

We want to have good utilization of all the water that that's out there.

So that a lot of times in our world it's it's a balancing act.

Um because what indoor water is a is an expensive proposition to build, it's an expensive proposition to maintain and operate.

So we always want to be we're we're gonna if if we're gonna err on some on some side, it's gonna be on getting good utilization, and then at the at the very beginning, and then we can you continue to work with you guys what that's gonna look like.

I appreciate that.

That's you know, I think about this community asking for an aquatic center for Mike longer than I've been here.

It's been talked about the need for something like this.

I think it is a community conversation.

Um I think we got to involve the the swim teams, we gotta involve the swimming community locally, the people that know that's not me, but they they talk they reached out to me when they saw this and had the same concerns.

Uh so I I'm hoping that we can we can continue that conversation.

Uh, but I don't believe it's a $15 million potential.

I think it's gonna be higher than that, which means we have to find where that money's gonna come from.

Uh I think about this being a transformational project, and that being the first and foremost thing we need to accomplish.

I think the sports complex, I think the aquatic center is transformational.

You guys have mentioned traveling far to go to these places.

We've mentioned bringing people from far.

That makes me question the need to rely on all of the housing that you're asking for immediately to be funded with this good life money when we have people building houses now without good life money.

They're using other incentives.

We know we need these things, we need the event center, we need our the complex, the sports complex.

We've there's been a demand for the aquatic center.

We need housing in this community.

That's a that's for sure.

But I don't think that will fail because people don't live in apartments across the lake.

I think it's gonna bring people there.

I think organically, you put a lake right there, the housing will be a demand.

I think that's gonna be high-end housing, even if there are the apartments you speak of.

I think that will be a demand.

I'm struggling to put this much of the good life transformational money into the housing on this on the front end, especially when we're looking at not enough money in this plan for that aquatic center.

Uh I have a few other we kind of didn't talk about it, but it's in the plan for the event center, the wedding venue.

Um I think that was in phase one, the the venue, the hotel, and a restaurant.

You want nine million dollars of good life money for that.

Um, sorry, scrolling through this is just the 60-page version.

Uh to see some of why would a restaurant need good life money in this case.

I'm just trying to find that the rest of that aquatic center money and trying to figure out where we where we get that.

Sure, yeah.

I I understand seeding a hotel a little bit, but if a private business like a restaurant is gonna survive, why does it need part of this nine million dollars?

Well, I think it goes back.

I mean, Jack, all your comments are we appreciate them.

I think it goes back to the project in its entirety is transformational.

And personally, Norm can give you his feedback.

I don't think people we don't want to create a project where people come to a sports complex on 300 acres with a sports complex and aquatic center and an expanded lake.

We want to have adjacent restaurants, we want to have an adjacent hotel, we want to have walking trails, we want to have people there, we want to have life there.

Okay, so we want to use funding.

I said the front two phases of this are really the big heavy lift.

So that's when we want to get people there, we want to get residents living there.

I understand your point, it's well taken.

Why are we using good life funds on housing?

Because we need to create a destinational development up here.

We need people living here, we need people coming to this sports complex, and we need without housing.

I find it hard to believe if we got any kind of quality restaurant concepts today and said, Well, you put a restaurant up here, nobody would come, right?

There's nothing up here.

There's nothing up here.

Part of that is creating the vision and putting the infrastructure in, but a big piece of that is having a residential component where people live here day in and day out, and we'll frequent those businesses.

And I think to the sports complex, I mentioned experience.

I think this is not going to be the largest sports complex in the state of Nebraska.

So we better create an experience that people remember, so they want to come back and use the facility.

I understand what you're saying about creating demand.

I'm I'm gonna still struggle to see if this is the vision that we share out there, it's gorgeous.

I I think it could be a very slow go.

I think it could take a long time.

And so the question is do we want to get this activated and moving quickly?

We do, right?

We don't want to be we don't want to be building houses houses up here 20 years from now.

We want this project to move along.

Um we want to create something that's special that's unique for the community.

Um, and we think housing is a big component to that.

When we sat down with Confluence and worked through this master plan, I mean, that was a big piece of creating a development uh where people are there day in and day out.

So the flip side of that is you just do public facilities, and people are just there to use those public facilities.

So do the walking trails, do the amenities around Eagle Scout Lake get utilized?

I don't think they do as much.

That's why I'm not there.

That what's that they're utilized now, and nobody lives out.

Well, but I mean, but we're talking about 10 times nicer.

Yeah, we're talking about much nicer amenities.

Um, and so that that's why we think it's a really important piece.

Plus, we need increment.

You know, if the TIFF is going to be worth anything, you need property tax increment.

And a big portion of our good life proceeds are being utilized towards non-property tax generating items with the aquatic center and the sports complex.

So that's the other reality of just the financing part of this whole development.

It's a 600 million dollar project.

If the TIFF is going to be worth anything, we need to create some increment.

So I guess I'm still not there yet.

And uh I will probably I have lost my place in all my notes and questions, but I'm gonna struggle to see housing as being the transformational chunk of this at the high rate of dollar before we get everything we have talked about that is transformational.

I'll disagree with you that housing makes this work.

I think I think the everything you have, hotel restaurant, possibly wedding venue.

I can't I can't see that.

Uh we have people in town that are doing these with their own private dollars and not next to a lake.

It's hard for me to give you three three to nine million dollars to put something in there to enhance this property.

Would be gorgeous, would be great, would probably make it without a dollar from us eventually.

I don't think it's the transformational part of this that we're looking at.

So it's things like that that I look at, and I I'm just struggling when I see that we don't have the money uh allocated for the aquatic center.

Uh I think there's some beautiful stuff in here.

I didn't talk about all the stuff I actually like uh because it's already 745, and I haven't let any of my friends talk.

So I'm gonna do that now.

I might have some more questions.

Uh thank you.

I didn't mean to be rude to y'all.

You guys it is it's a good plan, it's just not what we asked for.

And you didn't know that.

So thank you, Mr.

Hawsey.

Thank you, Mayor.

Well, I want to start off with uh the wonderful job you guys did at Connestogan Marketplace because Target, Chick-fil-A, all of those have well received by the community, B.

I mean, all of that stuff.

So I think the trust is there.

Uh this project now is three times bigger, so it just basically goes from a 200 million dollar to a 600 million dollar.

Uh and I got really there's three three points I want to make.

Two of them got questions.

The first point is on the land.

I'm agreeable to the one-time transfer.

I I think that makes sense because we're going to be developing the infrastructure all the way across the footprint with the lake and everything else.

So I think that makes perfect sense with the clawbacks that are in there.

And I think I trust the clawbacks are all done, and I've, you know, so I I certainly agree with the land at one-time transfer.

The second thing, and I'll talk a little bit about the housing.

So let me try to get granular on the on the housing side.

Um in workforce housing, we got about 300 single family houses in this project.

Uh workforce housing is about 350,000 max on the price of the house.

If we use a TIFF, and right now you could probably get about 1.85% on the TIFF for thir or for the 15 years, that literally gives you a TIFF of about $97,000.

So now I got a $350,000 house that you just got TIFF for $97,000 so now it's really down to a $250,000 house.

Then we're gonna add good life district money, and I'm okay using some of that good life district money though, but how much of that 20% or whatever is in there, what does that lower the value of the house down to?

That I don't get to an up to a house level, and the same thing on the apartments.

So the apartments, because there's a thousand apartments in there.

Uh they're at 235,000 for an apartment per apartment, you know, which gets you down to this uh 65,000 in TIFF.

You know, and so we're lowering the cost by using TIFF.

So now we want to layer on, I just want to understand what's the rationale for the good life district money outside of just creating a destination.

I'm looking definitively, what's that house gonna sell for, or what's that apartment gonna rent for?

Or you know, so if we build the house or build the apartment and we've already subsidized it down to here and we're gonna do more, define for me what does anybody see?

How does that translate into me wanting to buy a house or live in an apartment there?

I think it's a couple things, um, Chuck.

One, and this is the point that that Jack brought up is I I don't think we envision this to be, you know, Grand Island's luxury estate, right?

We want this to be attainable housing.

That was really a big piece of what the state ultimately approved was bringing affordable housing to Grand Island.

That was a key component of our state application, and one of the key considerations.

So I don't want that to get lost.

You know, one of the big reasons why they were willing to give up their sales tax revenue is solving a housing problem.

So I think that's a key piece.

Bring O'Connor in here, right?

He's a great example.

He's got a huge development of copper field.

Ask him, why haven't you built that on our lots?

It doesn't work.

He's got TIFF.

So I the one piece that kind of gets lost in this is we're allocating a significant amount of these good life dollars to what we're calling non-incremonate producing project areas.

So the sports complex, the aquatic center, Eagle Scout Lake Expansions, the amphitheater.

None of those are generating any tax increment.

What we are ultimately wanting to do is leverage some of the good life proceeds for the housing that will create increment and then use that increment in areas such as additional infrastructure.

What we're not talking about is the full build out of the project.

It's great.

We're gonna get the key pieces of the infrastructure in at the onset.

We still got 40 million dollars to put in over the course of this project.

That's got to get paid for somehow, and that's gonna come from the TIFF.

That's no different than any other residential project that we have.

But I think the key piece is if we're gonna be able to activate the beginning of this chuck, we we do need subsidy to the housing, and it's because we're leveraging that TIFF for future infrastructure needs.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, I just I think the I'm a numbers guy, so I'm trying to I'm trying to try to get it down to a so if like in Ray O'Connor's case, he built homes, three hundred thousand dollar homes, and he sold them for two hundred thousand.

And so the first buyer comes in there and he buys that home for 200,000, but a year later or two years later, that guy sells a house.

He sold it for 300,000.

So the you know, the advantage was just getting the first guy in there, you know, and and that's where he got in on a on the low cost because that was raised cost.

And so he got people to buy into the development.

Are you planning the same type of idea?

I don't think there's a spread on the initial housing to answer your question, no.

Yeah, I I we anticipate we may have to sell some of that initial housing for less than our cost.

I mean, that's very likely.

I mean, this thing, you're we're pioneering this coming all the way out here.

That's what I'm trying to communicate to Jack is this is a huge risk.

We have to go find lenders who are comfortable with this who will come out here.

Uh I mean, this is on the very edge of town, and so I think it's very likely we could build a $300,000 house and sell it for $260, $250.

But to your point, Chuck, we need to get the ball rolling.

We got to get the ball rolling.

So if that means we have to sell for a slight loss, but keep things moving, that's what we want to do.

So I I in that regard, I I would be supportive of using some of that 20%, whether it's 10 or 15.

I don't know what the number is.

I don't know what the right number is.

I I don't know that I want to give all of the non-revenue generating the 20%.

I don't want to give it up at the very beginning of the project and have nothing for the next 30 years for non-revenue.

So because I think there might be something else that comes up later, and even though I don't have a project today, the you know, anyway, so that's where I'm at.

I'm okay using uh the good life district dollars to supplement the housing, but I don't know that I want to put the whole 20% in there, and I can't define what would be a lesser amount.

Um but that's that's my sense on the housing.

Um the last thing is on the aquatics, and we talked about it a little bit.

Um the three lanes that was in the in the diagram of the concept page.

Yeah, and that wasn't gonna be.

If we talked about competitive, we're not gonna have a competitive thing with three lanes.

So it does need to be more.

I I don't know what the right number is.

I I like the idea, the thought about let's we can redesign the same footprint and make it eight lanes or something like that.

I don't know if it's eight or ten that's necessary uh in the deep deep well on the end.

Um 15 million, I don't think it's gonna cut it, but what I'd like to do is see 25 or 30 go into that pot, and then if it's not used, if we actually do develop a 15 million dollar plan that accomplishes it, then the rest goes back in the good life district money.

You know, it it's still there if we don't use it.

But I I don't want to shorten it up and just have a neighborhood pool.

You know, I do want I do like the competitive nature of it in addition to the family use.

And so it's that balancing act.

But I don't think three lanes was gonna do it.

Uh I'm thinking more, you know, than eight, eight to ten lanes.

Um, but I'd like to beef up that pot a little bit.

And if we don't need it, if we come in with an eight-lane and it fits in 15 million, the rest stays in the good life district pot.

So I'm good with that.

I think part of the aquatics piece, we didn't we didn't totally know, right?

Right.

And so we were we were we wanted to get an application in, we needed to allocate, we allocated.

Um but again, we took a little bit of a hit last legislative session, as we all know.

So we had to, you know, it's it's Christmas, but we had to start moving around.

Where do we allocate these dollars?

And we can't get everybody the present that they want.

So to me, there's got to be a little give and take on that.

And I'm I'm good with the TIFF and I'm good with the EEO stuff that we talked about in the in the past.

And you know, then what one last question is on I agree that we all need a professional management to run this whole facility, the whole complex.

Uh how many of those people exist?

Do we know it?

I mean, is there two in the is there ten?

Is it a big market?

Yeah, probably between 12 and 15 qualified.

Okay.

And and when when do you bring them aboard?

Do you bring them aboard now?

You know, or because somebody who's gonna manage it, when's the right time to bring them aboard?

Is it when you're developing it so that they can give their expertise on we're not building something that is so unique that there's gonna be 15 different options in terms of I mean, there's gonna be X from a from a uh community standpoint from a sports tourism standpoint, the assets from certain side.

There may be a quantity question to it.

And if I could, councilman, I would like to comment just real quickly to the, and I think there was a segue there that I just want to make clear.

The out-of-town visitors aren't the majority of the revenue that are being generated from this facility.

At the end of the day, the cash cow is the 52 weeks of the quality of life.

It's the leaks, it's the instructional programs, the summer camps, the birthday parties, the uh school's day out functions that we do there, all of that is what require because the out the revenues we get from the out of town a lot is simply the uh rental fee because it's a it's another group that's running it that's getting the the gate that's getting the registration fee, and so it's not it's not the majority of the revenues that come in there.

So I just wanted to make sure that's the nuance isn't there.

Thank you very much.

Mr.

O'Neill.

Uh first off, I just want to say uh I think that the city and Woodsoni have had a pretty good relationship.

Uh you guys have been doing a really good job and kind of stuck a marketplace.

I think it's turned out really well out there.

And uh we just need to keep this constructive.

You know, I think there's a lot of feedback, and um you know, we just need to be honest with you guys.

I want to start in on the aquatic center a little bit here as well.

I'm I'm pretty familiar with that.

I've swam a lot of laps in the current pool here in town.

I have a kids that used to swim competitively a long time ago.

Um so the current pool is six lanes, and it's uh nowhere near meeting the current demands.

Um it's fallen well short.

It's very it's older than I am, it's on its last leg.

Um, obviously we talked this three lanes isn't remotely close to being able to do competitive events.

If six lanes isn't meeting it, we're never gonna need to go eight or more.

Um a couple other needs, I don't think we're mentioned, I want to cover this.

Um there's a need for therapy in these pools as well, outside of lap swim.

A lot of times warm water therapy pools are very common for this type of thing.

I don't think that was mentioned tonight.

I think that'd be a key need that needs to be met.

Um, there's a lot of people that use the existing pool for therapy, it's over capacity.

Um, the diving area, I think we talked about that already as well.

Um that should be there so we can allow diving um and also consider some other type of like zero entry zero entry pool um and some other features for uh you know, splash pad, those type of things.

So we really need that pool to be beefed up a lot.

I think that's been hit home quite a bit.

Um obviously I don't think that you can do that for 15 million, but some more research probably needs to be done on that.

And I just want to give you the full feedback.

That need just didn't happen now.

I I've been talking about this for 20 years with people.

It's it's been needed a very, very long time.

Um this is a huge need.

And competitive swim events will also help draw people here as well.

Um I've been in a lot of these other pools around the state.

Um some are better than others, but Grand Alley needs a good one.

Um, and hopefully uh you guys can do a little more work and kind of see what you think it would take.

Um beyond that a little bit more.

So when the voters voted for this, they had an expectation of what they would get.

They saw an athletic complex, they saw an aquatic center, all this stuff, and they're gonna expect that to be built right.

And I say, well, how how could we fail to meet their needs?

If we do not have enough good life dollars to meet the expectations that they are demanding with that, then we're gonna fail.

And we need to make sure we have enough dollars allocated to those projects, and the really big ones, the Athletic Center, the Aquatic Center are huge.

I know you might need them for other things, but we have to make sure what the voters want is covered.

Um that's uh that's a massive need.

So that's the feedback I wanted to pass along.

Thanks, Dan.

Thank you.

Mr.

Nickerson's we're talking about aquatics.

I'll put my two cents in worth there as well.

I can't disagree with anything I've heard.

I made a list of things when the guys were presenting the aquatics part here, people that needed that.

And from what I was seeing, I'm not sure that covered as well, but I the competition part is important.

Schools was important.

Just athletes in general training, which would be part of the competitive part, the public use is important.

The therapy, which Ryan talked about in the aerobics, all those things are public input or not input, but public use is very important.

I'm not sure that one pool is enough to cover all that.

So my question to the guys, the aquatics experts.

Do you see an opportunity for you could have one pool that does a lot of stuff, but you also got that other pool for the therapy, and you've got you know, I I don't want too much water, but right now we have one pool in town, and it's not serving the purpose, and I'm not even sure what the per what the future of that is.

I'm gonna ask that question after we're done with this.

We collectively worked on a project um in Cincinnati area, the Delhi Athletic Center, where it does have a competition pool with a dive well and grandstand area for high school competitions as well as a warm water therapy pool, as you were saying, for some of the therapeutic needs uh that the community has.

Okay, yeah, I think one important thing that you said public input.

And you know, from a normal standpoint from a project we're working, you know, that's how we'd like to hear what the public wants in their pool.

I design pools year in and year out, all different shapes, all different sizes, but it's always generally designed to the need of the community.

Um we like to say this, we right size the pool for the needs of the facility.

So uh in that, you know, we also have to design the budgets.

So there's those two sides to that when we're trying to design this to get the facility for you.

And we're hearing now, I'm hearing for the first time really that it's a competition pool that you're wanting.

So obviously that was the wrong fit.

And you know, getting a six-lane is too small, eight-lane is great for a high school, uh, but there's a lot of other considerations to go into that too.

So, you know, that's a process where we go through and we design the facility to meet your needs, and also to meet your budget.

So we got to make those two come together.

Okay, yeah, and I'm I'm not faulting you folks at all.

You were given a number and a concept, and you did you did what you thought was best.

So that nobody needs to beat you up here tonight for that.

Do you have a comment?

I think a lot of the a lot of the projects we work on start with that.

Hey, we think we have this much to spend.

What can we get?

And then that ends up fostering a lot more conversation.

Right.

So we really have a need, and it we need to tailor it to your point, what the community wants.

And we know we've got a lot of seniors that like to uh they're gonna probably be there in six in the morning type things, not me, but they'll be there, I'm sure, uh, to do all that kind of fun stuff and get to swim and do your exercises and all these, you know, things that that people like to do.

And and I think our water center will get used a lot.

I think it'll get used a lot because right now we're limited at the Y.

So I appreciate what you guys out have presented.

I'm not crazy about the full service fitness center approach because I think that starts competing with the people we have here already that won't have the advantage of water, and then when that 2600 people that you're talking about that you think will come here, you know, are gonna be pulled away from somebody else.

So then we may have fitness centers sitting idle that because nobody wants to go there.

So we've got to have that balance in the community look as a whole.

I know competition is competition, but if you're using a lot of taxpayer dollars to fund something that puts somebody else out of business, I'm not.

I think we just have to think through that well.

But the aquatics part definitely we've got we want to focus on, I think we want to focus on.

Yeah, we we have we have both.

I can tell you from our experience though, as I was showing you some of the demographics.

I think um I don't think the latter would happen where you'd have fitness centers going out of business because we have this.

I think you can vary the scope of the wet and the dry land.

I just think you'd you'd have a greater draw if you have some type of dry component.

It doesn't have to be the size same scale or size that we show in there.

Um I I mentioned the West Hartford project when we transitioned that they have three separate pools and they had no dry land, but they had two smaller rooms, so we made a smaller equipment area and then a small group classroom to just offer some of the wet and dry programming, and it was a big plus for them.

So just trying to share with you some of our experiences, but if it's wet only, it it certainly can be that.

Oh, I think you've got a fair point that we don't need to make it of scale that that it's gonna draw all of our people away from our competitors, but to have some component.

I think that's a fair point.

So thank you for that.

My question to anybody in here that may know this answer, because I've only heard this second hand, third hand, tenth hand.

I don't know.

What's the future of the Y pool?

Because I heard at one point the whole idea of going north was so they would not have to have their pool.

Does anybody know that story, or is it baloney?

I'd like to bring up our YMCA consultant, Pat O'Neill.

Yeah, thank you.

Pat O'Neill, uh former YMCA board member for six years, uh, currently back volunteering for the YMCA board just two months after I got off on their search committee for hiring the new CEO.

We met three CEO candidates, um, YUSA and the regional representation.

Uh, a lot of what we talked about was actually pools.

So lifespan of a pool is about 40 years.

Uh current YMCA pool is about 48 years old.

Um Lincoln Pool was about 40 years old when the city gave up on it, tore it down and replaced it.

The McCook YMCA was built two years after the Grand Island YMCA chief construction was the contractor, Bonzall Pools built the pool.

We just demolished that pool about three months ago.

Um the YMCA pool here is on its last legs.

Um as soon as this pool is built, that one's gone.

Um it's very very difficult to replace an indoor pool inside of a building.

Uh, as the director of the McCook YMCA can attest to.

Your problem is you have to hold that building up in the air while you tear the pool out because your footings are about in that case 11 feet higher than your actual pool depth when you excavate that to build the new pool.

They decided to replace their pool in place.

Um, I can guarantee you they would not make that decision again today.

Uh shoring alone to hold that building up was about 400,000 uh cost to demo that everything.

It's about a it was about 800,000 more to replace that pool in place versus building new one.

Um so the YMCA pool uh once again past its the end of its useful life, um, not really able to replace it in place due to a lack of space.

Any place you would build a new pool at that existing YMCA, you would have to tear out parking.

Um no, basically that pool would be gone.

Uh Chad Mistake with Chief, me and him worked on a uh budget two years ago or three years ago.

Uh new standalone indoor aquatic, eight lanes, 25-yard short course, uh the associated locker rooms, all of that stuff was about 13 million bucks at that point.

Um you're probably 15, 16 million dollars to do that nowadays.

Um the the the pool proposed tonight, it just it's the Holdridge YMCA built a new pool um eight, nine years ago.

It's Holdridge's population of 5500.

Their pool is larger than the pool proposed tonight.

Um, this would be the smallest municipally owned pool in the state of Nebraska.

I don't think it's what we're going for.

Um I'm not gonna speak to where the money comes from or anything like that.

Um if if you had a $15 million budget, could you build an indoor aquatic center?

Probably not.

You can do a you could do a warm water therapy pool.

I think we budgeted a warm water therapy pool, eight-lane, 25-yard short course, diving well, um, room enough for about 300 spectators, and you could probably hit that in that 15, 16, 17 million dollar budget range.

Um, if you guys want to look at aquatic centers, Pierre, South Dakota is a was in a very similar uh situation.

The city wanted an indoor aquatic center, they did not want to run it.

Um they built a an indoor aquatic center.

This one here was I believe 7500 square feet.

They build one about 15, 16,000 square feet.

That was 12 million dollars.

I don't know how they got it done for 12 million dollars, but it was a 12 million dollar center.

The YMCA fundraised $2 million, they built it on the site of the YMCA.

The YMCA operates it.

Um North Platte, we're actually a contractor on that pool project as well.

Um if you really want to be jealous, if you look at what North Platte did with their new rec center, it was a 43 million dollar bond issue.

It will create an indoor aquatic center with an eight-lane competitive pool, splash pad, water slides, and an indoor therapy pool.

It's about three to four times the size of what was proposed tonight.

Um obviously that's a price tag far in excess of 15 million.

That overall project was 43 million dollars, but it included a new super gym, a bunch of new programming space.

Uh the aquatics portion of that, I reached out to him today to try and get a budget on it.

I didn't hear back, but it's probably in that 20, 25 million dollar range.

Fish Family Aquatic Center is a new one in Ames, Iowa, which is also about three times the size, similar to what North Platte is doing, and they had a 28 million dollar budget, but I believe that included land acquisition and remediation of contamination.

So it all depends what the city wants to do, where you're going to end up budget-wise.

Um the need right now, our swim teams, we cap them.

The senior high swim team is capped because we don't have enough pool space.

Um, the YMCA swim team is capped because there's not enough pool space.

So you would, I would think you'd have to do at least eight lanes, maybe ten.

But really, once you get to ten lanes, you're you know, eight lanes would probably be sufficient.

So I appreciate your input and your expertise with the Y because I think it's important.

If that's even more important for me to emphasize than the rest of us that have talked about it, a bigger aquatic center than what we're planning because the one we've had just wasn't adequate, just didn't meet the need.

So it's got to be bigger than that.

We've got to think bigger than that.

The use of the Y pool is more than just swimming, though, correct?

I mean, you do all kinds of stuff down there, or not?

Yeah, the YMCA pool is we schedule that thing from it's not just six in the morning, it's 5 30 in the morning to basically when it closes.

What surprised me is when we started researching new pools, how many people we have there at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday.

But from the time you do lap swimming at 5 30 in the morning, um exercise classes uh for elderly, open swim for families, um, then you have high school swim team, then you have the YMCA swim team, open swim again.

It's it's programmed 24-7.

You would if you built an eight-lane pool out there, you would it would be you would probably overuse it the day you open it.

We also provide all of swim lessons, uh, city does swim lessons, YMCA does swim lessons as well.

One of the great things we did at the Y, we were able to secure enough grant donations to give free swim lessons to low-income children.

And that's something, you know, if the if the city was looking for someone to operate this pool, you know, the YMCA would definitely would definitely be interested.

The last iteration of the master plan I saw had room to build the YMCA on the side of the aquatic center.

I don't know if that's still in there or not.

Um, most people who build pools do not want to operate pools.

Most municipal owners who build pools do not want to operate pools, and that's where you generally see the private sector come in, someone like a YMCA.

Um, obviously, exception would to that would be City of North Platte.

Sure.

Just one more question.

What's your definition of elderly?

You threw that word out there.

I will tell you that that definition changes every single day.

I would say right now over 110.

Okay.

There you go.

All right.

Well, thank you, Pat.

I appreciate the input.

Brown.

Well, I'm not done yet.

I'm not done yet.

I'm just getting started.

Please proceed.

All right.

That covers the aquatics part.

We need something bigger.

And a little bit of dry sounds like probably a fair deal there.

We'll re-look at that.

The next thing I want to talk about is let's talk about the housing.

That's already been brought up.

And one question for you folks, and again, I want to just reiterate what you've heard tonight already about Conestoga Marketplace.

It's just phenomenal change there.

I drive by there.

I actually ate at Chick-fil-A last night at 6.15 p.m.

And I could not find a place to sit down and side until somebody left the six-seat table, which then I took and invited three other people to come and join me because there was nowhere to sit at 6:15 on a Tuesday night.

The other part of that story is those three people came from Henderson, Nebraska after practice to come in and dine at Chick-fil-A because they had to go do some other shopping.

That's kind of an interesting story.

I mean, that's and that's not uncommon.

All right, let's talk about housing.

In the Conestoga Marketplace Master Plan, you had proposed an apartment complex.

Is that still in the cards, or do you see that shifting because of this plan here?

Still move forward.

Still on the plans?

Okay.

So that was how many units?

I've got different numbers here.

I'm not sure what the real numbers are on that.

312.

312?

Okay.

That is between 250 and 350 that I had.

Okay.

So when we talk about housing, and I'm a realtor, gradually getting out of the business, but involved looking at listings every day and aware of what's going on.

We're currently at a little over between 150 and 160 homes.

And the new construction is happening.

It's happening, but you can't hardly find things anything for 400,000 or less.

And the longer we wait, the proposed housing out here is not going to be any less.

So you I'm trying to think when we're looking at the magnitude of homes that you want.

And I guess the houses themselves are not a huge part of the number.

291.

Somebody has to buy them.

That's an important part.

You can build all the homes you want.

You can build all the apartments you want, but unless they're at a price point that people can afford, they're going to sit vacant.

And so that's got to be factored in.

I don't know if this number is big to me, very big, because you're not the only people that want to put up houses.

We have other developers in town that are doing that.

Our need is roughly 300 housing units a year.

What you've got proposed at Conestoga Marketplace is another, I mean, if you want to rent versus buy, you've got another year's worth there.

We we reach a point we have have to balance what's coming into the city because you can saturate the market to where you've got too many built and they're sitting.

And then that can have an uh reverse effect on the properties themselves.

I'm gonna give you a case in point.

I have a home that's managed in Colorado Springs by a property management group.

I got a letter the other day letting property owners know that because of the saturation in the Colorado Springs market, they are recommending that you start lowering your rent because there's so much competition right now.

At one point they said we want to fill your lease, but if we don't have anybody take this lease or resign, we're recommending that you reduce the price five percent each week until somebody comes to get it.

That's Colorado Springs right now with a real estate group that is deep into the market.

They're so deep into it that they have have Zoom meetings every week to let people like me know what's going on.

So I don't want that to happen here.

So I want when we look at the housing component, I want to make sure that we've got the other builders that are building that they've got a fair chance that you build what you think's important, but we've got to space this out, and I don't don't have an answer for that tonight.

I'm just letting you know the reality of where we're at.

Your one project alone at Woodsonia at notwood sonia at marketplace is already a year's worth if in a rental.

We've got some other people in the audience tonight that have been working on some projects of other units that are over 200 units.

Uh so we're we're getting pretty good, and I've got Chad here.

I'm not gonna ask him to tell me I'm right or wrong or anything.

I'm just gonna tell you my my observation is that we're getting to where we're getting our our 300 paces looking pretty good.

And we've still got some on the books here.

I've still got a couple that have been approved for TIFF financing that amount to another 360 units.

They just waiting for prices to come down, interest rates, and they are starting to come down, so we may see those happen.

We just need to balance that because we may hit a point where you may have all good intentions to to build out here, and and the homes won't sell.

I've got on the listings that I've seen recently, there's many, many of those homes that are already built at less prices than what new homes will be, and they've been sitting on the market three, four, five, six months.

Some of them one in particular has been on the market for over a year, but it's and it's like 700 and some thousand.

So that's just a reality check of where we're at, as we're looking at a nice, beautiful in product here.

That's my comments on the housing.

Don't don't have any uh great things about that.

I did want to touch base on the event center.

You talked about an event center there, so that event center word kind of clicked with me.

What does that event center mean in your opinion?

What is it?

It would be you know, events between 250 to 500 people, wedding events, um, graduation ceremonies, uh, those types of okay, but it's not where you're gonna bring in bands and hold concerts and stuff like that that would compete with we have we have an event center here as well, and so I don't know what kind of going to compete with.

It's more of a community type event center type thing, like we have it here, Grand Island type thing where totally different okay, and then you may not even have the bands, okay.

So that's not gonna compete with the Heartland Event Center or anything.

That's a much grander scale then.

Okay.

Then so that that's where I'm at on those.

My next question will be more for Patrick.

And we take a look at all the costs of what's being proposed here tonight, and I did send him a note a while ago.

He he gave me answers, but I can't read his handwriting, so I'm gonna have him.

I'm gonna have him talk to us.

But I'm looking at a hundred and thirty million dollars here of good life proceeds that are at least being estimated right now on the three phases that you have.

I'm curious about what is the revenue that we're anticipating on good life proceeds over the next 30 years.

We've already got what, two under our belt, two years already under our belt.

Uh yes.

A little over a year, actually.

A little over one year?

Yeah.

Okay.

So we still got 29 years technically on the books.

What what is our estimated revenue for those 29 years?

And I know we're it's all that's gonna be a guesstimate.

We know kind of real world now, but we don't know what's gonna happen down the road in the next five, 10 years.

So this the state last year at the legislature uh limited the income to five million, okay.

That particular area was doing roughly seven and a half million in tax.

So the five million would pay for uh, and correct me if I'm wrong, guys, the 93 million dollar bond, which is phase one.

Yeah, we we we would pledge, we would ask that those be pledged for a bond issuance, Mitch, and then our hope would be that it would net about 95 million dollars, which would fund, yeah.

If you want to go to the chart, which would provide the necessary good life funding for phase one.

Okay, so how that would work because it's a combination of Mike Rogers can speak to this.

It's a combination of that five million dollar cap plus new, and it's a sort of a complicated formula.

Um, so there will be a determination probably went through the Department of Revenue on how what's classified as new.

So we made some assumptions, and I think DA Davidson, your underwriter may have actually provided this projection.

It it's on it's on page 496 of the PDF.

I it's it's in the PDF application.

We did a bond analysis, Mitch.

So like Pat talked about.

There's there's really two categories.

There's existing sales, right?

That were there the day that the application got approved.

And that got capped at five million.

And then a new sales within the district, which there's parameters for what constitutes a new sale, right?

But new sales, and I don't want to misquote, it's in there, I think is around you know, 100 million, and that's made up predominantly from users at Conestoga Marketplace.

At this point, it's only users at Conestoga Marketplace that are new.

So by example, Target, Chick-fil-A, Pet Smart, Old Navy, uh, those use boot barn.

Those are users that are all new, those are all users where their sales tax revenues, their good life revenues, flow in addition to the five million dollar cap.

So when we looked at the 95 million, and this is we'll talk about phase two and three.

This gets a little bit complicated, but this is one of the big changes that happened as a result of the legislative of the last legislative session.

So before, we were estimating that bond proceeds would be about 135 million dollars when we did the initial bond issuance.

Today, that's closer to probably 92 million.

The other three million that we have is the funds that the city's currently collected, which the city has been collecting funds for called 18 months.

So a big change is we think the existing revenues and new revenues will support 95 million employment proceeds.

Okay.

For phase two and phase three, the proceeds that we're requesting, this 26 million and the 9 million, there's no guarantee those proceeds are going to be there.

Those are on top of the existing revenues.

So to be frank, we're taking, I think, a substantial risk of saying, okay, we're gonna guarantee that the city gets you know the key components that the city's talked about.

I can't guarantee it's gonna be an 80,000 square foot aquatic center, but we want to make sure we are delivering on the city's expectations, be it they want to see the sports complex, they want to see the aquatic center, and I think they want to see Eagle Scout Lake expansion.

We want to make sure that gets covered in phase one.

That's in the initial bond proceeds.

That money gets issued, that goes in, that's happening.

This 26 million and 9 million, these are proceeds above what is necessary to service those 95 million dollar bonds.

If we don't have an increase in sales, we don't get that money.

Yeah, it's like a it'd be like a pay as you go, kind of like a TIF.

So that's where we said would Sonya privately pledged.

These are shown as you know, amounts, 13 million five hundred thousand.

But it's gonna be our job to go actually get private debt that's gonna be backed by those good life district revenues.

And if those good life district revenues aren't there above the initial 95 million bond revenues, we don't get paid back.

Yeah.

So I that is something that we haven't talked about because it's a little nuanced.

I'm glad that we are.

But we we would ask, so I'll just add this.

We would ask though that if rates come down and we're able to refinance the overall bond proceeds that that could pick up some of that 35 million.

We'll take the risk on it up front to kind of get some payments.

But if rates drop 150 bips, and suddenly the 95 million in proceeds can go to 130 million, we would ask that those dollars can be paid out.

But we'll take the risk, sort of like a TIFF, if you will.

I don't know if that makes sense, Mitch, but we'll take the risk that we'll go try to get the revenues created.

So again, Patrick, with this guesstimate that we have and five million, five million has been approved.

But that that's not a cap on the additional additional sales tax from new business.

Is that correct?

Will that be on top of that five?

That's correct.

So and we don't know what that is for sure.

No.

Um, the estimate for target at one time was 1.5 to 1.8, I believe.

And that's not counting the other businesses that make that up.

I mean, that's just target.

That's just target counting the other.

So we let's say we're we anticipate seven million, seven million or more a year total.

Uh that's over 30 years, that's 210 million dollars.

Uh so when we're when we when we hear a proposal or request that you know, give us let us bond 95 million, the debt service on that is roughly how much?

Because that how long is that gonna be?

Is that a 30-year bond, or is it uh what how's that all work?

Like 30-year.

30-year bond.

So you're just kind of curious, how's that debt service compared to what we're making a year and estimating to make a year?

Uh uh Mike Rogers with Gilmar and Bell bond counsel for the city.

So uh yeah, the the projections go out the for the duration of the good life district, so now a little less than 29 years left, I believe.

Um, and so yeah, the those projections showed um the five million was capped, and so you max out on that side of it with debt, and and you have some coverage because you've got 7 million or so of revenues now, and that's going to grow.

And then the other side, the additional revenues from the new businesses that have that have opened, uh, you know, starting at two million and and then increasing each year.

That's the that's the one that's a bit more of a question mark that you know would uh how much of those additional revenues that come in will dictate how much in bond proceeds can be uh delivered uh from uh from an offering of bonds.

What's your what's your rough estimate for a 30-year bond on 95?

What what's the annual debt service look like?

Uh well annual debt service is you know ranging starting at 2 million and going up to um you know six million dollars at the end of that uh range based on expected growth in sales taxes.

Uh and that's just you know, it's it's an estimate based on some of the businesses that have already either opened or announced that they're going to be opening, and it really kind of depends on as Mitch said, how well these guys do it, bringing in more businesses and you know what natural growth looks like.

Um and the the other thing I will I will mention is the 95 million in in bonds is a rough estimate.

Um more conservative number would uh based on interest rates uh would would show that as being less than 95 million in proceeds delivered at closing, but that's just a function of the market at the time bonds are offered.

But the bottom line is we should have more than enough revenue to cover our bond payments with plenty to spare.

It sounds like and that's that's the other thing that um you know the five million dollar cap that can function on its own.

That that financing uh would likely function on its own, and then the other the other side of it would have a coverage number.

Uh investors are going to want to see you know a certain coverage ratio uh uh on the the revenues compared to debt service.

So there's there would be additional revenues uh generated on top of what the debt service is to cover either um uh adding money to pay down bonds earlier so that these other subordinate obligations could be refinanced, uh like Drew mentioned, or uh um those excess revenues possibly being released and and used to pay the uh the subordinate obligations that that Woodsonia is proposing to uh to take here for phase two.

What do you typically see lenders require for that little extra coverage?

Are they usually looking for a two to one?

No, no, not that much.

Not two to one.

I think uh the projected coverage that was modeled here by D.

Davidson, DA Davidson is the city's underwriting firm, uh, was ranging from 1.2 times coverage to you know 1.5 uh times coverage, sort of again, depending on how revenues come in over the course of those future years.

Well the five million satisfies that pretty steadily if we maintain that five million, it sounds like and that's the five million is on its own, and that coverage ratio would be one to one because you already have the built-in coverage with the additional um revenues that are generated.

If it's seven million, it's more than seven million dollars.

7.8 million dollars in revenues, and the state's only gonna send you five million.

If those revenues drop to seven million, the state will still send you five million dollars.

So that's got a coverage ratio built in already.

It's the other one that would have that would need a coverage ratio for investors because you're not you don't have the built-in statutory ratio that that the state just imposed last legislative session.

Okay, and in your opinion, is this a good project to go out and look for bonds on?

Somebody's gonna be out there willing to jump on board.

It's a pretty straightforward disclosure document in terms of disclosing um, you know, a sales tax revenue bond like this with a large amount of existing revenues is something that um I think the this the city's financial advisor and underwriting firms have said are marketable, and from our perspective as bond council and disclosure council and describing the risks, uh it's it's um more straightforward than most projects.

Most projects like this don't have any existing revenues to to build from, and this is pretty unique because there is such a large amount of existing revenues that can be leveraged to deliver um bond proceeds at the start, which is great for everybody for everybody involved.

Good news.

I mean it financially it sounds like a very good project overall.

Yes, I think.

Okay.

That's what I was hoping for.

Thank you.

And then just one more comment, Norm.

No dedicated pickleball courts.

You make me sad here, buddy.

I I you'd be surprised how much those things get used, but I suppose we got to live with the secondary lines and hope that we can figure out where the auto balance is.

All right.

I am done, Mr.

Brown.

Yeah, I'm just uh there's no new questions from me.

I think all my questions got answered, but I just want to tell you how I stand on this.

That uh everything on the aquatic center that Ryan and Mitch talked about.

I agree that we have to please this what the citizens wanted on the aquatic center.

And the other thing that uh Chuck talked about the housing and the percentage, the 20 percent, if you could do less than a perfect number on that, I agree with that too.

And uh I agree uh all my questions have been answered question.

Thank you.

Mr.

O'Neill.

I just want to expand on uh what Mr.

O'Neill said, who's no relation to this, Mr.

O'Neil?

Coincidental.

Um, and I think the aquatics guys will know what I'm talking about here as well.

Um so I've spent a lot of time at this pool as well.

You have a lot of different profiles, the types of people that swim, and I think it's really important that everyone understands this and and we communicate this and be transparent about this.

So at the pool, you have people just doing regular lap swimming, you have people doing senior swim, you have people doing swim lessons, youth and adult, you have people that are going for therapy, you have people doing competitive swimming, and then you have uh kids and recreational swimming.

You know, you have about six or seven different profiles of people swimming.

Right now, that happens in one six-lane pool, and if you want to use this pool, it's like scheduling a dentist appointment uh to get a time to go in there.

I think you guys know what I mean.

And you can look at that, you know.

I can go there at five in the morning, I might be able to go there at noon.

Depending upon the season, if there's competitive stuff going on, I may or may not be able to get in at night.

It's it's a nightmare.

That's why you have to have more than one pool.

You have to have the competitive pool with the diving ability.

You need uh the warm water type of pool, and then you need something recreational that kids can do as well, otherwise it's just kind of anarchy in there.

So I want to be very clear because I think you guys are kind of in a tough position tonight.

Um, and and I just don't want to end up in a situation again, so I just want to be very clear.

Uh, and maybe if you want to expand on that too, feel free.

But I think Charlie was shaking his head when you were talking.

I was watching the back of his head.

I just wanted to add on one thing.

Those are all the things that that we do think about, and we've even done some graphics that show kind of color code the various uses of the water to meet those specific needs to show how those get used.

But we still want that good utilization.

Is that yeah?

Yeah, it's tricky.

And I think Senate is you might need more than one pool there, they could be different sizes, but yeah.

Possibly the the problem with the two pools is you have different water temperatures, that creates a whole other set of problems that you may or may not even want to deal with.

So that's just a future conversation to have.

Yeah, and I know that's one thing a lot of people are looking at, and uh we want to if we're gonna do a project this big, we need to make sure we're doing it right.

And I I just want to communicate a lot of the the feedback that I've heard in the community and I've heard a lot of feedback over this aquatic center.

Um I I just wanted to be transparent with you guys and kind of clarify on all those different use cases out there.

So it's not just one thing, there's many different needs.

Pretty much every demographic in town want to do something in that pool.

Right.

I can't say no that to come up to the microphone, please.

Sorry, you'll have to come up to the microphone, please.

I couldn't agree with you more operationally.

Again, we missed we'll miss the mark on the type of center that you or aquatics that you wanted, multiple pools, warm water therapy.

I'd say six or seven of our community-based clients are health systems, advocate health system, Chris's St.

Elizabeth.

So we do a lot of medical integration programming and warm water therapy.

Um we have eight ten lane, we have some pools with multiple eight and ten lane.

So I think everything you're explaining, we have the capability of of coming back and re-scoping it for you.

Absolutely.

Just want to communicate that.

So we'd always do two aquatic centers as well.

I'm kidding, right?

Yeah, I can say I don't think you need two different buildings for that, but no, understood.

But uh, yeah, whatever we can do on that.

But I think you've heard half of council communicate this as well, so there's a lot of strong sentiment on that.

So thank you.

Mr.

Shear.

Thank you.

Uh so you've heard a lot of us talk.

What do we do from here?

How do we get to uh meeting some of the needs that we're representing the community on and getting to a point where you guys can make it work?

Because I think obviously we gotta look at the aquatic center, right?

That's gotta be enhanced in this in that 95 million.

Right?

It's it for us.

I uh I believe that is a first round we have to have along with the sports complex.

So what is our next step?

What do you guys need from us?

What what what do we do next?

Well, I think Mitch can give you his two cents and feedback, but I we we understand we're hearing we're hearing the council loud and clear on this aquatic center.

I think for us it's an allocation of funding, right?

Whether it's competition focused, it's six lanes, it's eight lanes, it's we just didn't get that granular, if you will, on this facility.

We tried to allocate funding as we saw fit.

Um to us, we can we can put our heads together with Mike Rogers, see if there's other ways to enhance the funding.

Um, if there's other tools, if there's other things.

I mean, we we talked about a TIFF.

Um we hadn't really talked about an EEA.

I mean, there are there's there's other tools in the tool belt.

Um, I mean, obviously, this will be a huge amenity for the city.

Um we want to try to accomplish that as best we can, uh, but we only have so much in dollars.

So I think it'd be short-sighted for us to tell you tonight.

Sure, we can instantly reallocate 30 million to the aquatic center and make the rest of the project work.

I don't think we should say that because I don't think we can tell you that.

Uh, our position has been the whole project in itself is transformative, including the housing components.

Um, Chuck brought up some great points.

Um, you know, how does that look?

How do we re-evaluate?

We can go back, we can look at these phases, um, see if there's some ideas that we have and and come back or talk to staff.

Um, you know, I think some other key things need to be ironed out.

Is the council going to support a single conveyance?

We need to get that figured out.

That's been gone back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

We need to figure that out.

Our position is it should be a single convey.

There can be clawbacks put in there.

Um, you know, hopefully our consultants got everybody comfortable that the sports complex, the size of that is sufficient.

So to me, if we're trying to drill down on what are the high-level issues, are we just talking about aquatics and funding?

Is that really what is that?

I think I think that to me is the biggest takeaway I have from tonight.

So if that's our homework as the developer, Jack, I mean, that's what we can go try to work with the consultant on, but I still think it still comes down to an allocation of funding, and how do these how do these phases get allocated?

Um, you know, and how involved do we want to be on the aquatic center?

Part of what we had proposed in our application was there's a $15 million allocation.

I mean, don't forget the city is also getting it's fully improved, right?

So it's not to Py O'Neill's point, there's no land acquisition, there's no so it's $15 million just for the vertical and the soft cost, which hopefully gets it a little bit further along.

But I think it's an allocation of funding, and then it's probably working a little bit more on the programming, it sounds like to be more competition focused.

Um, but it's been a little bit difficult to be able to answer that because some council members may have one opinion, some council members have made and may have another opinion.

Let's pretend we all want a eight-lane 25-yard competition pool with a with a diving well, and we want the stuff Ryan talked about.

Let's let's pretend we want to.

Ryan, you may be the designated aquatics expert, but Ryan and House.

We'll put the O'Neill boys together and uh solve this mystery.

Uh are you are you hearing the message on housing though?

Yes, but I do think we need I need we need good life funding for housing.

We need to get that moving.

So we we need the council.

I understand the council's concerns, but we're taking a huge risk building housing up here as part of phase one.

It needs it needs assistance, and the good life funding would be so to we will we probably would not support saying take all good life, all good life funding from housing and allocate it to aquatics.

You're not gonna see us support that position.

Are there other ways we can try to skin that cat and find out how to get more funding allocated to aquatics?

We're willing to explore that.

When I look at the the lots you have up there, I I think about what Scott Reef has brought in front of us a number of times and what he has done using incentive money and and support.

But he's put in a lake and he's putting in lots.

He is filling them as fast as he makes them.

I think the demand for those apartments will be there.

There is a lake there.

I think about I live in a pretty nice neighborhood in this community, and 10 years ago, lots in my community or my neighborhood were 50 grand.

There's no lake.

There's not even a park in my neighborhood.

We need to work on that.

But $50,000 a lot.

That's to get built.

Now, obviously there's already infrastructure there, right?

Chad reminded me that.

But we're gonna work on the infrastructure with you, I believe, is part of what's in this with TIFF.

You're putting lakefront apartments up there that you're gonna turn around.

You're not selling those.

Right.

That's 250 units that you're gonna own, right?

Right, right.

So I just I think one of the guys up here said something about being competitive.

I think this is gonna attract you're gonna be able to build up there and fill them.

Right?

I don't think it's gonna be a real poll.

I think there's incentive money that we can support you on that we've talked about.

But I'm with Chuck, the more we knock that down, the less competitive we can be anywhere else in town.

I think it's not as much a poll as you're talking about.

I think the amenities you talk about up there are gonna get people to want to live up there.

And I do believe I believe it's gonna support itself after a while.

Uh it's it's it's not gonna be the the big ask to get people up there.

So I guess what I have heard from council tonight at different levels is that this is too much housing right away.

Not no housing.

That's not what we're saying.

But I believe we're saying reduce that down a little bit in these initial asks of what we support with good life dollars.

Maybe it's not a 35 to 43 million dollar aquatic center, but maybe it's not 250 apartments that we're worth supplementing.

And you're putting a lot of your own money in there.

I see that chart, and I appreciate it.

Right.

But that's a lot of good life dollars for it as well.

On top of some groundwork and infrastructure that's already been put in place as well.

So I get I guess my my biggest question is are we do you see a point where we're gonna come eye to eye?

Because I still say you're our best bet with this.

You've put a lot of your own cost into this to getting this far.

I don't want to throw you out.

I don't think anybody's saying that right now.

But what are we gonna do?

What what are we gonna come to?

We can go back and look at ways to we'll come up with ideas on how to get more funding allocated for the aquatics.

We'll work with the consultant to come up with a program and a design, whether or not it meets the specifications of the O'Neill brothers.

I don't know, but we'll we'll see what we can do there.

But we're gonna want some good life funds for housing to get that first phase.

We're gonna need that, we're gonna need that to get going.

And so I don't want to sit here and tell you no, and then we get this project started.

I think part of what we want to do is we don't want to be overreaching, but we also want to be successful.

And I don't want to steal from here to move to the right hand, steal from the left to go move to the right, and then I can't get the overall transformative project going.

It's a huge lift.

Jack, I hear everything you're saying, all the council's comments.

We definitely hear it loud and clear, but we also want to be successful.

We want to come up here three years from now, five years from now, you come up here and you say, Oh wow, okay, these guys got everything they said they were gonna get done in phase one done.

It's kind of what happened in Conestoga.

I mean, the mayor may not, mayor may or may not remember this, but we had to arm wrestle for a little bit, and we had to kind of push back, but we wanted to make sure we had the right funding to make sure the project was successful to bring in target to get these things done.

So it can come across as developer greed at times, but it's really more coming across of I want to make sure I have the funding so I can get a lending partner on board and I can get the rest of this thing going as phase one area.

So we heard the council loud and clear on the aquatic center.

We understand that.

Let us see what we can figure out there.

But I would say keep an open mind on being able to use good life funds for housing.

I think that's important.

Especially I think that's fair.

Especially if the mixed use, if we're gonna build a hotel and we're gonna build a restaurant, I need some rooftops up there.

I need people living up there.

I think the restaurant uh I think we're gonna struggle to be able to fund that for you.

Uh if it can make it, it'll make it.

You're right.

When housing gets there, it'll support it.

Uh organically, I believe.

But I want to personally, Jack, I want to build a sports complex that has amenities around it that creates a great experience.

So when people come to Grand Island, if they're from Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas, they come here, they can stay on property and they can go get something to eat.

They can stay in a hotel.

Is one restaurant, one hotel gonna be a complete game changer for that sports complex?

No, but it's a great start.

It's a great start.

So that's why I would ask you don't shy away from allowing us to be able to get that part of it started.

I think that's important.

But you agree we can hold off on the wedding venue, right?

I mean, people are getting married around here, you gotta have somewhere for them to go.

Uh the last thing I'll say is I think we had somebody that wanted to talk.

Did somebody signed up to talk about it?

We have some yes.

Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't want to forget about them.

Is there any other questions?

We we haven't forgotten about them.

Okay.

Uh that was it for me.

Thanks, guys.

I appreciate it.

Mr.

Still.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um recognize you and thank you for the good job you guys did at the Conestoga Mall marketplace.

Um, just fantastic.

It kind of turned out the way I thought it would be.

Um when we voted, you said you'd bring a lot of restaurants and a lot of out of town businesses to Grand Island, and I've seen that.

Uh do you have any anybody in your pocket uh that that you haven't announced yet or that that is seriously looking at us or Conestoga?

Yeah.

Not but not that we can announce.

Come hang around there on next Tuesday.

Yeah, you'll probably see someone.

You'll see some because I I've I've seen a lot all chained off by the bank, and I kind of assume it's chained off because it's sold.

And we've got uh we've got five pending outlaw users that hopefully should be going soon.

I know the city's got some permits from users that haven't started out there yet, but we do have a handful of users that are going to be on vertical on that.

But on that end, too, not to belabor this, but I mean, Jack, even on I would say the arguably the best location in Grand Island, we're struggling to be able to pencil with restaurants, right?

It's a challenge.

It is a we just talked to me, called Jeff Whitey.

He's as good as they get.

We've been talking with him for a year about doing another restaurant in Conestoga.

It doesn't work.

So there's challenges that we're trying to overcome.

And when Drew says we want to we want to be able to deliver on what we're telling you guys, right?

And I think we've been consistent from the start too of this right here.

This is the project we want to do.

So we want to put a plan that actually can accomplish that.

But yes, Mark, to answer your your question, we do have a couple more users that are gonna start soon.

Okay.

Um, and additionally, um I support the pool idea.

Uh I'd like to have maybe the city talk to the school system to see if they could give us some financial support for the for the pools.

Um, since they'll be using it for competition, and there's also two other three other schools in town.

So I think that might be a source of funding that we could we could ask to see if there or if the schools are gonna be sending their kids there.

Do they have any grant money or anything that can help us uh do that?

Um on the housing part of it, I I do agree with uh Chuck and Jack.

Uh I think we need to start slow and do it right, uh, kind of uh with our economy and the slowdown uh economically with the housing and that.

I think we just need to be cautious, but but uh I'm sure you can work it out right.

You got the experience to do it.

Um I do support the sports complex.

I see what Carney's done.

I drive by there a couple times a month, and it's just a fabulous facility.

And and I'm sure, and I have the confidence in you guys that our facility will be just as great as theirs, because the whole idea of the good life project is being to bring people to Grand Island to spend their money shopping or eating and and have a good time with entertainment and at the ball fields, and and we can make money on that and grow as a system as a city and be a place, a destination place for sporting events, and that's what I'd like to see uh from you guys when you put everything together to come back.

And we can make money on that and grow as a system as a city and be a place, a destination place for sporting events.

And that's what I'd like to see from you guys when you put everything together to come back.

This I'm sitting here thinking that this reminds us of about four years ago when we were sitting planning out the Conestogo Mall and what we liked and what we didn't like, and just hashing it out.

And I I think you got some good ideas and some good feedback from us.

So good luck to you.

Mr.

Nickerson Much shorter this time, but this is going to be for you to explain to me.

Walk me through the first phase, the first phase, the first five years.

What do you envision happening, the sequence of events, and how you make that happen?

The uh the five years, first five years.

I think it would probably be this.

Well, we're starting with grading.

So it's a grading.

I mean, we're we're talking about the whole process.

You got the grading, which is a big project in itself.

How do you start?

And we're talking about this to be done in five years, uh, according to what you've got here anyway.

I'm assuming it's the five years of completed, or is it just a started phase?

Yeah, so I can't figure this thing out.

So you trying to shrink it?

Yeah.

Yeah, there you go.

So I I will say this, Mitch.

I fortunately we've got what eight of similar size projects going right now for master plan subdivisions.

So I do think that we are well one qualified, right, to be able to talk about this, but two very experienced in this area.

Our plan would be if we can move through, let's just assume that we work this out and we move everything forward, right?

Got a big kumbaya.

I would say as early as we can this spring, we would start mass grading, which will start with the dredging of Eagle Scout Lake.

That's both the existing, because we're gonna dig the existing lake down about 15 feet, and then the expansion.

We'll take a lot of that soil, the soil that we can uh and spread out and masquerade the entire site.

So the whole site will get masqueraded.

Um after that, we'll put in the primary infrastructure.

So I'll kind of if I can't point over here.

You know, I I'd like to let you do that, but you have to stay at the microphone.

Yeah, you can certainly bring it over there.

I'm kind of curious, Mitch, what what do you think the time frame is on the mass grading, you know, that type of stuff.

Are we talking about a year or two years of the project alone?

I mean, so just kind of we're talking conceptually here.

I think we're 12 to 18 months for infrastructure where we would hope to be able to go vertical on some of these components, Mitch.

That's the real question you're asking.

When can we go vertical?

I would say within 18 to 24 months.

It's probably a reasonable point at Jeff and Chad.

It's gonna be their responsibility.

But our our hope would be to put in sanitary, storm sewer, gas, power, get all of that going.

Now we can start vertical components as soon as we have water in.

So that would be our our hope is to be able to start some of these vertical components at that point.

And in terms of the phasing of the initial components, Mitch, we'd want to start all of them at the same time.

So as soon as we have that water in, we'd want to go vertical on the sports complex, assuming the city's designed the aquatic center, the aquatic center, 20 single-family homes, 250 multifamily units, the event center, the hotel, the restaurant.

And then in conjunction with that, all of the horizontal pieces of phase one, so Eagle Scout Lake Expansion, all the trail system that you see running throughout the site, all of that's a we want it to be a livable site and not feel like you're living in a construction zone.

So that's the fishing piers, it's the amphitheater.

You're gonna be able to live, work, and play within this.

Mitch, I think all those pieces are done within 48 months.

I'll say 18 months of infrastructure and 36 months of vertical construction.

Yeah, it's probably just some will go faster.

I mean, I think that the sports complex, what do you think the sports complex construction is, Chad?

16, 18 months.

Yeah, and he'll agree to LDs on that, so that should be fun.

But so Mitch, I think that's I think that's realistic and what we anticipate.

The other piece, because you did bring this up months ago.

This is in our application, is we agree that we're not gonna flood the market with housing.

So we agreed no more than a hundred units a year on the multifamily end.

I think we said was it 20 single family units on the single family ends.

At the end of the day, I mean, this goes to Chuck's point.

We do need to sell these, right?

No matter how much good life proceeds we're getting, we are signing on to the debt for a substantial amount of these pieces.

It needs to be financial, and we do need to make money.

So we are agreeing, hey, we're not going to do more than 100 units a year cumulatively, right?

We might do all this in one phase.

You might get 250 units, but it's going to take three years to do it.

But that would be our those are covenants that were agreeable to, Mitch, and that we propose to the city.

So that's not just us giving you warm and fuzzies.

We will agree to that.

I think it's important that we have a balance there.

I also like the fact that you're looking at a much greater rental market than single family home sales.

I think the rental market is still going to be more conducive to what people are going to be able to afford as prices get higher and higher, they're just not gonna be able to buy, and they will be willing to pay the rent versus trying to come up with the down payments and $400,000 homes, $500,000 homes, that type of thing.

I think the other piece in here too, Mitch, um, and maybe we've done a poor job of communicating this, but the the for-sale product type is a mix of housing products.

This is gonna be single family, this is gonna be duplexes, this is gonna be four plexus, but we want a mix of product types in here.

This is not a luxury estate, right?

You're not seeing multi-million dollar homes in here.

That's not our intent, right?

We want this to be attainable housing, right?

The fact of the matter is when you're looking at 275 dollars to 300 a square foot, a thousand dollars property, a thousand square foot properties three hundred thousand.

So I mean that's that's the real world.

We can we can I mean you gotta shrink them if you're gonna try to live within a certain dollar value.

And you guys can work through that.

Um, and so that's just I'm just kind of visually.

I'm a con I'm not a conceptual guy.

I'm I'm I've got to see things, so that's where my weakness is.

So I'm just trying to think it through.

But during that 18 months of grading, what happens to some of the other what's affected around that?

Because you know, I'm still thinking I've still got pickleball courts out there that I and we still have the soccer fields.

How's that all does it affect the field?

We know that impact to the existing fields, nothing is hurting and heritage.

That's not those will stay.

I mean, there's gonna be a period where we relocate the soccer fields to the south, right?

But as we've talked about, we're gonna have those fields done before we go rip up there.

There might be a two-month period where there's not fields, and that might just be necessary, right?

And unavoidable based on when we're gonna get a street in.

Some of those pieces we just can't work around.

The city's not gonna probably allow direct access off Broadwell.

Keith might, I don't know.

But uh that's just a necessary evil, but is that gonna be extremely limited?

Yes.

But the existing fields, we're not gonna be shutting off the access on the north end, so I'd see no reason why the existing baseball softball pickleball fields would be affected.

Good.

Good.

Okay.

Well, that's what I was looking for.

Thank you.

Mr.

Hossey.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, you know, the community momentum is awesome today.

Everything that's going on in Grand Island, and I think this project will continue that strength for the next decade or two.

Uh, I still support the one-time transfer of the land.

You've heard all there is to hear about the aquatics and how we need to retool that whole thing.

But the other thing that was pointed out that I think that I uh learned tonight while listening was that I think that the uh housing risk and the financial risk is significantly higher than what I had thought coming into the meeting.

And so I think I understand better the financial risk that you guys are taking coming in here, and so for me, I'm supportive of using the good life district non-revenue money for housing because of this fine increasing financial risk that I see in this whole project, and I think it is gonna take the whole project to make it work.

So thank you.

Well, yeah, I just uh want to say that I agree too that 100% conveyance and what the clawback seems sufficient to me.

So I just want to tell you where I stand on that.

Mr.

Pollett.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh all I've got to say is the competition pool has been floating around in the town for many years.

Uh it's not something that just popped out of the woodwork.

And if we can't get one that's the right size, like I said before, you won't get my vote.

I would rather see us wait 18 months to move, start moving dirt, have the financing in place and do it right than start early.

That's just me.

Now I know you guys need an increment on your apartments and some of the houses that are built.

That's the only way you guys can make money.

I hope we can find a uh solution to our problem.

Because this pool and aquatic center, if anybody has looked at the one that they were planning just north of Boston, it was almost 50 million.

And it had a lot of amenities.

So if we if we don't do it right, the citizens are gonna hang us one way or the other.

We either did it wrong on the low ball or we did it wrong on the high ball.

Thanks, guys.

You did a nice job tonight.

Okay, thank you.

Try to keep you safe, Mike.

Did you want to speak?

So uh please.

Um I haven't seen Drew uh I haven't seen Drew Snyder for I guess 30 years.

Um he was on a basketball team in Columbus, and we went up against him each and every week.

So uh when he stands this tall, it's really hard for me to hear on the microphone.

But once again, uh good to see uh Snyder here and congratulate uh the initiative that his company has brought forward.

And um after listening to all the different comments, uh I guess I'd like to make two points.

Um, first I voted probably like each one of you, I'm guessing, uh, for to approve the Good Life District because of the tremendous opportunity it poses to redirect money that's going to the states now can be back here.

I think there was also a fair assumption, and I've heard aquatics mentioned a hundred times tonight, and I know a number of you have indicated strong support for an aquatic component with the hope that it could be a part of this.

And I've seen slides, I've heard comments, I've heard references to it, probably more than even the sports complex.

And where I'm going with this is I think voters also had that understanding that aquatics would be part of this.

The ballot language itself may not have specifically mentioned it, but I think that's the expectation that that would occur.

The second part, it was included in the master plan, and so it gave reassurance that that would happen as well.

When I look at the council memo, it says that the application proposed included major components that would be the aquatics, but then it goes on to say that the application uh of the plan, except for the aquatic center.

So I I just think from a voter standpoint integrity of election that was well, not surprisingly, but astoundingly supported, had that expectation.

And yet I think if this comes forward a week from now and you approve it and it doesn't include that in there, I don't think we'll ever have that opportunity.

I'm just shooting you straight.

And I don't know exactly what the cost is, but when I reach out to the Carney YMCA, and they have a 3,000 square foot pool, it's not an aquatic center, but it's well, in fact, I think every city of the first class has a better pool, better aquatic center, and that's no disrespect to the Y and Mr.

O'Neill's leadership and others there.

That facility is 50 years old, and our community has changed where even if it was a pristine aquatic center, there it's it's probably in the wrong part of our community to attract visitors more so, and that's just my feeling.

So where I'm going with that is and I think we you all I think the community deserves an action plan.

If indeed this application does not include a pool or aquatic center, well, then this have an action plan to figure out how we do that and where it goes.

But I think the earmark, and it's reassuring once again from Mr.

Snyder and the components here when they say there's there's an allowance, it's a public-private partnership, so that's to mean it's a win-win deal that everybody can agree on.

There's space allotted for it, but if it's not built, you know what's gonna happen, it'll never happen.

And I have attended a lot of basketball games in not so much volleyball, basketball in Lincoln and Omaha, and they're all great facilities, but I don't think a one of them yet has enough parking yet.

People are still parking wherever they can find a place to park.

So, not to be short-sighted, there's a lot of great things in this plan, but if we if we don't move forward with the application for aquatics, I think it'll be lost unless there's an action plan to do it there with that allowance or some negotiated settlement that you folks can agree to with the proposals before you.

Well, I believe it references tax increment financing of 52 million dollars, and even though that would not occur under phase one, aquatics is in phase one.

And even though that would not occur under phase one, aquatics is in phase one.

But I don't know how you would necessarily approve the application for tax increment financing before it's been approved.

And we can look back in the last several years where there's been one or two occasions where TIFF was not approved because they already had financing and lined up, but what we're going with this is this application almost assumes it's going to occur.

And I don't know how a week from now you could potentially I think you need to address it, if I'm not mistaken.

Finally, um this is a Wednesday night council meeting, it's a big project.

Uh and it's not the city's fault, but in my estimation, the news media in our community is does not give enough advanced publicity or awareness of meetings in advance of their occurrence.

Might get a bit of what occurred, but there's really hardly any advanced notice to attend.

And when Jill asked, would I like to speak?

Well, it did occur to me, maybe just to leave because by the time you sit through three hours of meetings, it's tiring.

And with that, I would just like to say thank you once again to your leadership to be here and go ahead and make a sound decision on the best interest of our community and what people expect and what we would hope to attain in the near future, let alone 30 years from now.

Thank you, Mayor Steele, for your outstanding leadership as well.

Um Patrick Brown, good to see you.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Uh yes, thank you.

My name is Derek Hanson.

I have been, I was on the Harland Football Club board, which is a soccer board here in Grand Island for eight years.

I served as the rec representative, I've served as vice president, president, and past president.

Um, you know, there was there's obviously been a lot of talk about all the other things that have been going on with this.

One of the things we haven't stressed a lot about has been the soccer options, which is kind of interesting because soccer is the only thing that's out there right now.

Um, I will say to start off, I appreciate you know, Chad, Woodsonia, the council for the uh understanding and sensitivity to the relocation of the soccer fields.

Obviously, we have 400 to 450 kids and their families out there for eight weeks in the fall, eight weeks in the spring for games, practices, all that goes on.

Um, so certainly appreciate the desire to at least not be affected because there's nowhere else for us to go.

Uh, do you want to cut touch on a couple things with the soccer first?

Um no hard feelings or anything towards Mr.

Hollin here, but I do want to do want to make one correction from Councilman Nickerson's, I believe, question.

If the on the field there where the soccer fields currently are located is smack dab where the aquatic center and the fitness center is right now.

So if there's some type of staging area or something, obviously that that's where the soccer field is to the north and to the east.

So I just wanted to, you know, there's a lot of information there.

I just wanted to correct that question that was um asked at the time.

Um I don't know if it was November 23 or whenever Councilman Sheared, I know we were at the Woodsonia and uh Confluence initial presentation.

I'm just apologize if any of you guys were there.

I probably mainly remember Councilman Shear because of our uh hairstyle selection.

So back then I stood up and I said in the current grass fields, there's not enough.

Looking at this presentation, there's not enough.

Um I believe they would say that there was 12 and a half acres out there right now for soccer fields, and that there's 14 now.

That's for the grass fields.

That's you know, an improvement.

Um, but that's one soccer field.

And we HFC has been out at that complex for 12 years now.

Um we kind of and you know, in the last five, six we've been able to work with the city to actually go out there and practice.

And now over all those years, we're on top of each other.

We're probably out there 50 hours a week, uh, Monday through Friday, and we still don't have enough time slots to schedule practices for our 40 plus recreational teams, our six to ten competitive teams.

Um, so like I would like to have some type of consideration made, some amendment made that we need, and we're one of four clubs in Grand Island, and we're the only one out there that was out there this last fall.

Um, previous seasons, there's been up to three clubs out there.

And so if we're already on top of each other, getting this increase and this notoriety of this complex is only going to increase the interest, and we don't have enough room as it is.

I know that probably some of the thought has been well, the turf fields.

It's a consideration.

Um, but the turf fields aren't always going to be soccer.

You know, they've got to be striped for softball, they've got to be strived for baseball.

They, you know, I mean, I highly doubt these are going to be stitched uh turf fields.

I mean, you're not gonna have a stiff uh stitched turf field for soccer and baseball and football and all that stuff, but regardless.

The problem is is that as you know, you guys have heard from Confluence mini sessions about the price sensitivity of Grand Island.

And I think it's like page 221 in your packet.

I didn't look through it all, but roughly estimated.

I know these are projections, these are estimates.

But on that estimization, it was $75 an hour to rent a field for the turf fields.

If we applied that to our just our competitive teams only, we're talking over $20,000 in additional overhead that has to be passed on to the families of Grant Island.

That's not gonna work.

We cannot, you cannot go into this thinking that we're gonna be able to use the turf fields in a proper way.

We're gonna have to pay fees.

We get it, we understand that.

Um we've had a great contract with the over the years with the city where we go out and maintain the fields, we paint the fields, we do all that for him, we just pay setup fields.

We understand that's gonna change, but the price, you can't overly rely on people wanting to use that turf field recreationally for $75 an hour.

Again, I know those are just projections, but it's all I got.

Um so the reallocation, like I said, it's great, we're appreciated, but more space might be needed, and I don't know where you're gonna find that space according to this plan.

Um it's or what you do.

I I again this plan, I don't even think includes the grading that has to be done off Broadwell.

So that's even less area that originally, I don't like so does this have the grading in there at all that's got to be done off Broadway?

Yeah, the grade separation.

This plan, as it is shown, has four fields that are right along Broadwell.

Right that need to come off.

So you agree.

But the rest is still more space.

They showed these with the intent that at some point the grade separation would go in and those fields would go away.

My recommendation at the very beginning of this was let's take those fields off.

Let's not show them there.

Let's treat it as open green space that could be set up as practice fields as something of that nature, but is not shown and expected that they're going to stay there.

But the reality is that a grade separation at Broadwell and BNSF is probably 13, 15 years away, Keith.

So you get 10 years of use out of it as open green space and managed grass, but not the this is going to be soccer fields forever.

So as obviously that's gonna have a huge impact on our recreational side of things because you know, Saturdays are fine.

We can, if we have to schedule games for six hours because of less less fields, okay, fine, whatever.

But it's the practice, it's the flexibility of it.

Obviously, you're condensing how many fields you have, that's more wear and tear.

We're already kicked off in, you know, um, other competitive clubs get to start practicing in like uh March.

They get to continue to park practice in September, October.

Um, because of the use, the city kicks us off, which already puts us at a disadvantage to many other competitive teams around uh the area.

So we need more space for the soccer uh fields, and the turf is not going to provide an adequate solution for that.

Um, the final thing I wanted to make is if you look on page 356 of your packet, you'll see a list of the current soccer field complexes in uh Nebraska and other surrounding communities.

And I want you to pay note to how many fields are at each of those complexes.

Um there's only one which is brand new in Valley, Nebraska that has less than 10 of their multi purpose use fields.

Pinnacle's own study suggested to have eight to twelve multi-purpose fields out there.

Um, but the project overview just has room for six.

Things don't matter match up there.

You have Nebraska State Soccer who hosts five to six tournaments a year in Nebraska.

They're quoted on pages 371 and 372 that eight fields would be a good start.

They're the plan right now has six on that multi-purpose turf.

And they're in their corpde even is saying to secure a site, they want eight.

So they're not gonna want to meddle with half turf, half grass for guarantees.

So when it comes to even more expenses and planning area, I strongly suggest that you look into, especially Nebraska State Soccer's quote, that they want eight as a starting point.

Otherwise, you're handicapping Grand Island tourism from being able to recruit tournaments even in our own state.

They can't do it because they want eight as a starting point.

Um so yeah, you you have those pinnacle studies says it.

Nebraska State Soccer says it, and I just don't want to see this opportunity slip away because we didn't listen to what people are telling us, and I haven't heard a lot of people talking about soccer.

It's fine, you know.

It's why I'm here to hopefully address bring the presentation or bring it uh there.

And I believe that's all I got.

So I appreciate your guys' time, and thank you for uh letting me speak.

I don't know if you folks from Woodsonia want to respond on the soccer issue.

Yeah, I I think the only thing we can say is um we're more than replacing the existing fields, right?

We don't want to take away from them.

Um not counting the Broadwell uh access right away.

We've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten fields.

So, and those are not included in our programming.

We're gonna continue to let them operate on those.

I mean, they're the city's fields, so they can decide, but continue to operate the way they are.

Um, and again, this was the plan that I think confluence did take in a lot of this input, right?

That they came up with.

Um, so that that's that I guess that's kind of what our short position would be, Mayor.

Thank you.

I just I know we're running really long, so but Jack, back to your back to your question.

I just want to mention four things.

I'll make this really brief, but I was sitting here just kind of collecting my thoughts after our three-hour plus meeting.

Couple thoughts for council.

Would the council consider electing an aquatics contact person for us?

I'm looking at Brian here, but um that way we have somebody we can work with on programming, we can work with our consultant.

Um I think we're gonna be in a position hopefully to come back December 2nd.

And so we're coming back with more specifics and we get more granular.

What does council think about electing somebody on council that we can work with so we have a direct dialogue?

So, anyway, that's you guys think about that.

Um enhancing funding, there's ways to enhance the funding.

Okay, that could take some creative financing, that could include asking the city to maybe consider backing the TIFF.

There's different things that we could think about and come up with.

So, would the council be agreeable if we spent considerable time, which we already will with staff, but your your underwriter, DA Davidson, and then Mike Rogers.

Those are really the people we need to get in the room.

Obviously, uh Pat Brown needs to be a part of that as well.

But those are where some of these ideas I think will be able to take shape to figure out how do we get more.

Can we get more than 95 million dollars?

And what does that look like?

And what is the risk profile look like to the city?

So I'm asking that's another comment I have that I would like council to consider.

And then we'd like to come back, Jack, to your question.

Next steps.

We want to work through the funding issues, the aquatics issues, um, the good life funding allocation issues, and come back before council with an MOU on December 2nd.

I don't think I don't think next week's reasonable.

That's probably not reasonable.

So that MOU though, just sort of clear on that, would be probably a four to six-page document, maybe shorter, that just lays out the key terms that we're agreeing to.

That then we would go build the framework of a redevelopment contract on, which we would hope to do within it's already 75% done, to be honest.

This got started last summer, so Mr.

Nabony.

I I was just going to say I agree that December 2nd is probably the next logical date that we could have something before council.

And it would be that MOU.

That MOU is the first decision in a whole string of decisions that will happen over the course of the next several years.

So it's not the be all end all, but it is a roadmap for how we get to the end point.

I have a question for legal.

I mean uh the vision and perhaps the excitement we have tonight may change in five or seven or fifteen years.

This is a 30-year project.

When you talk about a single transfer of land with clawbacks, are you confident we can draft something that does not take us into litigation to try to get our land back?

To give you the best lawyer answer, it depends.

I think we definitely have the framework to start those discussions and look at exactly how those would work in a large scale real estate transaction.

Are they guaranteed?

No.

Is it an absolute bar?

No.

Um, but it gives us some framework to start those discussions.

And I I guess I would just say this to uh you gentlemen from Woodsonia.

You heard a lot tonight, and um I also want to recognize that these negotiations have gone on for months because uh you submitted your original applicate application November 4, 2024.

Then we had several months of negotiations, and then the legislature changed the rules of the game.

And so you submitted your amended application June 4 of this year, and we've had several months of negotiations.

And you heard the concerns of the council tonight, and I would ask that when you come back on December 2, you bring your best and final proposal because there has to be an end to negotiations.

And I would ask that you take what was said tonight by the council in good faith, try to meet the council's desires where you can, but if you can't say so forthrightly, and bring your best and final proposal so that we can get to a place where we can then enter into a memorandum of understanding of memorandum where we as has been stated, set forth a framework that will guide us over the course of the next several months and perhaps several years.

Um because otherwise we'll just have meetings, and you've been in a lot of those with the city rather than fun.

Where it's just back and forth and back and forth, and can you do this and can you do that?

So I think I think the council needs to hear from you where you can give and where you cannot, and then we can do an up or down vote one way or another.

Totally agree with you, Mayor.

The only thing I would say is, and again, back to my original comment, appreciate everyone's patience.

Let's just not have that happen again going into 2026's legislative session.

I don't know what's gonna happen.

It's an unknown, but we just that's why we're having so many meetings because we when the rules of the game change by no fault of any of us, it just makes things more complicated.

So that's my only ask, and that's how I think all of us hopefully have time is of the essence of what's move this thing forward so we don't encounter those issues again.

So anyway.

I think I speak for everyone.

I uh I appreciate uh the thoroughness of your preparation, and I appreciate all the experts you brought with you tonight uh to make this more easily understandable.

I think we have completed our agenda.

Thanks again.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.