Welcome to business session.

Welcome back.

First business session of 2026.

Our first item is approval of minutes for business session of December 11th, 2025.

Is there a motion?

So move.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

All in favor of approving the minutes indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed.

Motion passes.

Our first update is going to be a city update regarding open doors.

The storefront vacancy program.

Yeah, you're right.

Okay.

All right, we're going to get IT to hook us up with the presentation, but you should have it all in front of you along with a one pager.

Uh good afternoon, Neil Webster with the City of Kansas City Neighborhoods Department, assistant director.

I'm joined here today.

Regina Sosa with the EDC of Kansas City.

Since I don't have the thing in front of me.

Go right ahead.

This one right here.

Okay.

Thank you.

Well, while he's working on this to get the presentation pulled up for everyone to see, um, like I said, you have a packet in front of you along with the one pager.

Uh, this today is to give you an update on the ordinance number 250436 for the storefront vacancy program that is called open doors.

Um, again, you have a one pager that kind of gives us summary overview of that.

Today we'll kind of give you an update on where we are with the program, um, how we kind of got started, little timeline of things, and where we hope to be next, and then be able to answer any questions that we have for you that you may have for us.

Oh, there you go.

The business session one right here.

No, that's it.

Thank you so much.

All right, I won't take that front.

All right, let's get started.

So, quick overview uh about open doors.

So, again, we were looking at models in Seattle and San Francisco and looking at opening uh launching the open doors program as a way to help businesses get in position for the World Cup uh through vacant storefronts downtown.

Uh, as a part of the program, selected applicants will receive a temporary subsidized lease from three to six months in the downtown Kansas City storefront.

The pop-up must be a retail concept.

They will be provided grant funding up to 10k to cover build-out inventory, permit fees, and insurance expenses.

Um, they will also get access to technical assistance and lease negotiation, build out marketing, financial legal services, access to capital.

We opened the applications on October 14th through a website.

We have is KC opendoors.com if you want to look that up.

That website will constantly be living and updated over time throughout the project.

Uh, right now we just have the applications and things on there, but as we kind of move move forward in the project, we'll add more resources and profiles about all of the businesses that are participating of program.

Similar cities that you can look at will be Seattle with the Seattle Restore Program and Vacant to Vibrant in San Francisco.

So if you go look at their websites, we're kind of mimicking that with updates as we kind of move through the program.

After the launch of the application, we hosted two webinars, one on October 29th and November 13th.

Do you remember how many people participated in the first one?

It was about 50 for the first one.

And probably about the same for the second.

Prior to us opening the application, I think we had well over 400 interest forms uh for retail concepts, and probably close to about 70 or 80 for private property owners who may have been interested in the program.

Uh, for the sake of the program and time, we had to uh put out two applications at the same time, which was one to identify vacant properties that we can match up and also to allow people to pitch retail concepts.

Uh, the private property application right now is still open.

We are still looking for additional properties that we could work with, and then the retail application closed on December 5th, and then we'll talk more about that selection process and the update on that.

And then the retail application closed on December 5th, and then we'll talk more about that selection process and the update on that.

Throughout this project, we will be looking to get the private property selection done by no later than January 30th.

Retail pop-up selection or later than January 16th, start matching them up no later than mid-February and getting the leases finalized so that they can move in by March 1 and start their build-outs or any tenant finishing that they need.

And then we need those pop-ups to be ready to go by May 1 so that we can do our citywide marketing campaign to support the pop-up activations, which will be kicking off National Small Business Week and going throughout World Cup, so May, June, and July.

Pop-ups must be activated for the three months of May, June, and July, which is during the World Cup.

For private property owners, they will be giving a lease subsidy for the space.

To break that down, we broke it out in three tiers one for micro retail, one for mid-size and large size, and then that determines how much we would cover up to 80%, not to exceed a certain amount.

Ideally, we are looking for properties under a thousand square feet.

Once we do the math and look at the lease subsidy, it creates a more affordable amount for these property for these businesses to be able to stay in the spaces.

We are looking at spaces that require a minimum tenant finish.

Again, we don't have a big timeline, so as long as they can get the properties up to par as much as possible, the better and the faster that these small businesses can get their spaces ready to go by their deadline.

For the purpose of the program to try to get the business, the property owners to get the properties in play or get them up to par for move in.

We are working with the property owners to offer them tenant finished reimbursements in lieu of a deposit for the space to make sure that these properties are ready by March 1.

All properties must be in compliance with building codes.

The planning department is reviewing all of the private property applications, giving us notes on them, and those are things that we're discussing with each private property as we do our site visits.

Again, it covers up to 80% of the costs.

We'll match up the properties, match up the businesses with the property.

So once the selection committee is done, they'll give us a short list based on what they think per property.

We'll work with the property owner to help out with that selection.

They won't go in blind and they'll be a part of that decision making process.

Tenants will pay the 20% difference of what we would pay, and then the leases will be with the property owner and the business that's going into the space or the tenant.

Right now, without giving too much detail because we are still in negotiation.

Here's a listing of about nine properties that total maybe to about 13 or 14 spaces that we are in the process of conducting site visits with as well as negotiations for letters of intent for them to hold the properties until March until we can potentially match someone up.

As of right now, we kind of have a nice spread across the downtown area, hoping to touch many parts of downtown communities to where at least there's one space where when we do the marketing campaign and we push that put traffic to that pop-up, the businesses around it will benefit from it as well.

So for the businesses as a part of the application, we offered it up to businesses, artists, and organizations.

So for businesses, they had to be at least two years old and a minimum of 50K.

We did not accept applications for folks that were starting new businesses.

This is not what this was for.

This was really for existing businesses to help them get into position.

Of course, those businesses have to be in compliant with all regulations, business licenses and being good standing.

And then again, we are also offering up to entrepreneurial support organizations that support retailers or artists that can bring forth concepts for those who may not otherwise qualify to be on a standalone building.

What this looks like for the small businesses that will be in the spaces, they will get a working capital grant up to 10K.

Again, that's broken down by tier or square footage of the space.

So if it's a micro retail up to 5K, if it's mid-size or large, 10K, and if they do a collaboration, we also have $1,500 for each collaboration that goes into the space.

As a part of the application process, we ask them to submit a proposal on their concept.

And so here's cover the couple of things that they will be adding to their proposal to make sure they have a clear story, goals.

We want to understand the uniqueness of their showcase, demonstrate readiness that they have any experience of doing pop-ups or residencies of any of those things before.

What's their plan for their activation to make sure they've thoroughly thought it out?

And then if there's any community impact that they see, are they going to engage with the community, do any other types of activations as a part of their storefront?

And then, of course, we want to make sure that they understand the budget and funding.

The funds from this project or this program should not cover 100% of the cost for their pop-up concepts.

Like in the previous programs that we have done in partnership with the city, we used the beam application for both applications.

If you go to the next slide, we like Beam because it is pretty simple for applicants to create a sign in, log in, complete their application.

For the private property applications, if it's the same building, same property owner but different buildings, they must have submitted a separate application for each application they wanted to volunteer for the purpose of the program.

Applications that were missing any sort of documentation were marked as incomplete.

And applications that were submitted early on did have the opportunity to resubmit complete applications before the deadline.

Of course, given that the team had enough time to review.

If this was submitted two days before the deadline, there was no guarantee that the team would have had time to review.

Moving on to the selection process.

So we received 122 retail applications when we closed the application on December 5th at the end of the day.

Then we moved on to the first phase of review, which was administrative review.

The EDC and this care team went through all 122 applications and marked out applications that were missing documentation or who were not eligible for the program per program guidelines.

After administrative review, we moved on to financial review, where we had a committee of five volunteers from various financial backgrounds, including banking, to help assess the financial health of the business.

So the strong applicant applicants who were generating the financials that were required, then moved on to selection committee review.

About 52 applications are currently in selection committee review.

We have 10 volunteers from various industries around Kansas City helping us do this selection process.

And then as mentioned previously, we hope to have private properties selected no later than January 16th with leases finalized no later than February 20th for a May 1 kickoff date.

Currently, as a part of the program, some partnerships that we have, one is with UMKC Legal Clinic.

They're working with us to put together the letter of intent.

They did a case study to say whether or not we do a lease agreement versus a license agreement when working with the short-term leases.

They're also be working with the participants one-on-one to provide type of legal advice or support, and we'll be around after the short-term leases are up to help them get into a long-term lease if they need some legal support for that.

Right now, we are only telling people that we have enough funding to do a round of the short-term leases, depending on what we have available at the end, we may come back and for those participants that are in the program, try to offer some type of lease subsidies that help them transition into long-term leases.

We do encourage the business owners and the property owners to talk about long-term leases after the fact, they won't be penalized for it or things of that sort.

We're also talking with IKEA and their local store on being a program partner.

They're going to offer up furniture discounts to help with the businesses to furnish their spaces and get what they're need at a much cheaper cost.

They're also interested in partnering with us with local artists, like they've done in other cities like California, and looking at maybe doing an in-store activation as a part of the city-wide marketing campaign to promote the activations that are going on on the Missouri side from the Kansas store with some artists.

So we're still in conversations about that.

Another new sponsor program supporter is Airbnb.

They came in as a sponsor, and we'll be creating a small business guide with them that will be distributed to Airbnb host in the KC Metro area, as well as any STR registrants that we get through the short-term rental office.

So they'll all get a copy of the small business booklet that will be used to support or promote small businesses or shopping local in Kansas City.

Another new partner is EverGee, they just came in with a sponsorship.

Kaufman Foundation provided a program capacity grant, and we were discussing with housing department to finalize some CDBG funding to support technical assistance and administrative cost.

And that is our short presentation.

Have any questions?

Thank you so much for the presentation.

Any questions from the council?

Councilwoman Robinson.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your presentation.

We can see that it's well thought out and flushed out since we approve the funding for this.

And there is an expectation during FIFA that are also how parts of our city are vibrant and there's robust activity.

So this definitely helps us with uh meeting some of those expectations.

Um I have a deep interest in ensuring that there's economic mobility on the east side of truths.

Um I have a deep interest in ensuring that there's economic mobility on the east side of truths, and also that residents have access to you know entrepreneurial activities.

And so oftentimes we see that we're either not collecting data in terms of who's participating from those communities or they're not present.

And so when you talk about the hundred individuals that participated in the webinar, can you tell me how um my district was um present um in those the webinars and and have access to that?

I wouldn't know because we didn't ask uh what districts they were coming from.

We just did a a webinar via teams, have people sign up and get access to it.

Uh we would have to probably try to go through that list and see what representation was there, but we did not ask about what representation they were, but we'll be sure to do that in the future.

Yeah, that is something that we continue to have conversations about, like not collecting the data to see if those individuals are having access to these opportunities.

Um, there any strategic ways that we reached out to um entrepreneurs that are typically left out of these processes?

Uh nothing specific.

Um, if you remember, we got this ordinance passed back in June and had to quickly turn it around to even get it up and set up and built for October, which took a lot of processes with procurement and things of that sort.

We did our traditional outlets, advertised through start land news, advertised through our own news outlets.

Uh, we worked with um some of our ESO partners in the community to help spread the word about the opportunity.

Like I said, we had over 400 applic uh interest forms.

Uh that was one way of us capturing people who may have interest in that to make sure they were one of the first to know when things were available.

In fact, they got 24-hour advanced notice about the application being open before it came open to the public.

But other than that, the with the time frame that we have, that was probably the best we could do at that time.

Okay.

Um, and then I see that you have 18th and Vine on the list.

And one of the things the feedback that we've been hearing from folks in that community is that you know, they don't want things to just look good for the World Cup.

They want to make sure that there's some sustained investment.

Um, and so um how are you are you coordinating or are you open to coordinating with our offices to really talk about how that that looks if it's a if it's um this program has a term on it, or um we just want to make sure that we're not opening up spaces and then closing them after the lease is up in a year.

Yeah, so for the properties that are in 18th and bond, these are all privately owned.

So we're at the mercy of a private property owner willing to partner with us.

Uh so we're happy to have some availability there.

But originally we tried to have the conversation within 18th and bond where we could actually launch the entirety of it.

That didn't kind of go the same way, but I did reach out to um general services to see if the vacancies that we had have ever been filled, and if there's an opportunity to partner up and try to help fill those vacancies uh with the properties that you do have, if we do fill them up, again, it is up to the discretion of the property owner whether or not they want to continue the lease with them.

But ideally, what this does is that it helps set up businesses within the space that otherwise may not have had opportunity and then offer a way for them to get affordable leases and get going there.

That should be some way to kind of catapult them and hopefully they stay in the space a little bit longer.

If we are able to come back and assist with longer-term leases, and that would depend on funding, we would absolutely love to do so.

We are actively trying to fundraise to continue this on beyond World Cup, but right now the pilot is World Cup.

If we can prove concept, the hope is that we can do this and maybe focus on other downtown communities and communities across the city to help bring more small businesses in.

Okay.

Um, just finally, Mr.

Mayor, I just I would love to be dialed in, especially the conversations around 18th and Vine, because as you know, we do have a lot of vacancies down there.

So to hear that it's 100% private is what I would love to know more about the spaces that we have.

Yeah, if you have any folks that have spaces within the third district or within 18th and Vine, again, that application is still open.

Please encourage them to go online and fill that out so we can review their properties and go through that evaluation process and then see if there's potential to match folks up with them.

Yes, um, I'm speaking more about general services.

Uh, you had mentioned general services and the spaces that the city owns, so if you can kind of dial us in there, and then it would be interesting to also know from the Bizcare perspective, not today but future.

How do we provide capacity and supports for these um these businesses so that they can have some sustainability and just one other observation and kudos around just ensuring that they have some skin in the game that there is not a hundred percent that we're putting in, but they're also um sharing in the cost.

So thank you.

You're welcome.

Thanks so much, Councilwoman.

Any other questions?

Councilman Bunch.

Um the it's always excited to have projects like this in front of us, so thank you.

Um this one, uh a few folks on this council really, but but thank you all so much.

Uh BizCare and real quick a quick question on the number of actual spaces.

Yeah, um, how many is the target?

I perhaps I missed that to be.

I'm sorry I was late.

Um, and then are do we have enough identified yet?

No, we would love to identify more.

That was uh kind of the calling.

Let me go back to that slide there so everyone can kind of see.

Uh we would love to get people to get more properties.

Uh, like I said, right now is potential between nine locations up to 14 spaces, but again, they could pull out at any time as a part of negotiations.

Maybe they have someone else that they want to work with.

We would ideally love to get up to maybe 20 properties, so which means we need to identify more than 20 in order to ensure that we can match them up.

But we had over 122 applications.

How many do you did you say how many actually went through selection?

52.

Yeah.

So 52 50 plus businesses that we could potentially match up if we had more uh spaces, that would be great.

But 20 is probably that sweet spot for us.

That's good.

I'll uh I'll look for some properties and to remind folks to apply at January 16th is when you're looking at the as soon as possible would be great, but we would love to get all of the properties finalized by that date.

Perfect.

So that's great.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Thank you.

Oh, Councilwoman Patterson has.

Um, and so I went I've asked for updates, but um, so maybe where's that at because we've got to fill our own stuff, right?

Yeah, I'm not for sure.

I did um reach out to um the director just to ask to see what the status was.

Um before we launched it, they were in the process of doing the RFP for the spaces, so we were respecting that process.

But yeah, if they are still available, we would love to link up their stills and match up some folks.

Thought you're right.

I mean, I will discuss with uh general services to see about making the space that's vacant over there available through this program.

Um, and and just to see how much interest we can we can garner that way.

Any way we can help out, especially with any other properties, especially the ones across the street where the Biz Care office used to be, we would be interested in helping out is there as well.

All right, thank you so much, ladies.

Appreciate your work here.

We'll move on to the housing and community development data dashboard.

All right, good afternoon, Mayor, Council, City Manager.

My name is Deion Lewis.

I am the deputy director of the housing and community development department.

Um Mary Owens, Deputy Director of Housing and Community Development.

And I'm Santha Bradfeld, and I'm the policy specialist for housing and community development.

So uh this process has been nine months in the making.

I want to do a uh thank you to our housing and community development staff, uh planning apartment, uh special thanks to Samantha Bradfield, uh Timothy Esparsa who helped engineer the build-out of the data dashboard, and which you will be seeing today during this presentation.

Very proud of our team.

Um housing community development department is dedicated to the mayor's goals to create 10,000 new and preserved units of affordable and attainable housing.

The department tracks performance-based goals identified in the citywide business plan to include affordable housing units, um, which is going to be 10,000 by uh year 2027 and housing units offered by supportive services.

The data dashboard was created to measure progress towards the goals and provide transparency.

So our purpose uh is to track development projects and other incentives funded only by the housing and community development department.

Uh, we're gonna provide quarterly updates and uh the housing um this data dashboard is hosted on the housing and community development website.

Um, this is the blueprint and data uh trans transparency when it comes to bringing housing and other development projects uh so this is our landing page for the projects tracker um dashboard.

This is what uh residents or community members whoever goes onto our webpage will first see when they land on it, and it gives you an overview of the intent and the functionality of the dashboard.

Uh we included a high-level snapshot here on the right-hand side that you can then um filter by different programs.

Uh for example, if you only wanted to see housing trust fund, you would be able to click that, and then this would change dependent on the program you're looking at.

Uh, we also wanted to highlight here that um our department puts in an average investment of about $25,000 per affordable unit.

And so this uh tracker is looking at our federally funded and local funding sources that we have.

We have uh six main funding sources that we provide to our development projects.

And so to walk through this dashboard, we're just gonna um go through federal funding and local funding to show examples of what the pages look like.

So in our federal funding section, this is where you're gonna find CDBG and home.

We also have a couple of the rebuild casing neighborhood grants under this as well.

Um, an example here is the home repair section.

And so this is looking at data from city home repair as well as targeted minor home repair and our paint program.

Um it shows information since 2018, and then our map here is showing our 2024 to 2025 projects, and where the majority of those occur, it will have that darker blue color.

Uh so you're able to look at it by zip code, and if you hover on the map, it then shows you how many projects have been in that area.

Uh for our local funding, we are highlighting our housing trust fund and then also C C E D because we still as a department retain um financials from rounds one through seven, and so we are including that in this dashboard as well.

And so the example here is going to be housing trust fund.

So um we get a lot of inquiries about um how many units that we are uh financing, and this dashboard will permit anyone uh from the public to be able to access that information and it will be updated on a quarterly basis.

So um a snapshot of the housing trust fund page, uh we have the total project budgets, the total of bound, and then the average award ratio, as well as the total number of projects that we funded.

And we've also broken down our investments by um the type of project, so preservation, supportive housing, etc.

And then um to Sam's point, we also have a map where you can uh see how many affordable units are being developed in various districts.

Um and then I did want to show that if you click on projects that it zooms in and that this data is all tied together.

So if you only wanted to look at one specific one, you would be able to do that by clicking on the project.

So our next stop, or excuse me, our next steps include working with data KC uh to include units from community-wide incentive uh uh agencies such as EDCKC and Port Authority, or excuse me, uh Port KC, uh, other city departments related uh funds, such as the uh health levy uh out of the health department at project status to highlight completion, and finally evaluate incentives to assess impact and reassess programs as needed.

That concludes today's presentation.

Do you have any questions?

Any questions from council?

Councilman Bunch.

Thanks so much.

And once again, I missed the first part of the presentation.

Um, but thank you so much.

I think I got the gist of it.

The dashboard looks great.

Um question is uh do we have a goal?

I should know this for just market rate or all housing types.

Um do we have a goal for development of of all housing, or is it just affordable and preservation of affordable?

The last direction we likely had, and this is probably going on a few years.

Our member um assistant city manager would talking about it.

I think we used to spend some time talking about the total gap in the market of housing units we need to fill.

Uh housing authorities spend some time typically talking about that.

Do you know how many units they suggest were down in Kansas City?

I hear different numbers sometimes it was behind like 14,000 units.

They were behind about 14,000 units.

We actually would like to do a housing needs assessment.

Um, I don't think that we've evaluated uh the housing issues uh based on supply since COVID and and a lot has changed since then, and so um that work we think would be really valuable in evaluating how many units overall we need, market rate included.

Yeah, I yeah, I uh I know that you know just pumping out new market rate units is just one part of the affordability equation.

However, um more supply means I and there's some rarely interesting data coming out of cities like Austin, Texas that overbuilt uh new market rate and luxury housing and the rates the rents are actually dropping.

I'm not saying we're pointing to any one particular city or holding them up as an exemplar, but um I think it would be really valuable for us to set goals for just all housing types at all affordability levels, just so that we can make sure that we're supplying.

I'm also reading a book that's very uh very much favorable to an abundance of housing.

Um and so and I see Councilman Rogers' eyes lighting up and probably agrees with me on that in that uh uh but uh it might just be and this is not a question or or a request for you guys at this point, but I'm just you know throwing that out there that the need to uh set goals, uh targets for housing development uh and tracking those would be maybe a really good thing.

So I'm glad to hear that that's been on on your mind.

Other questions mayor pro Tim.

Thank you.

Uh thank you for the presentation.

Can you go back to slide four, please?

Okay, well, maybe that's not it.

Maybe it's uh this slide.

Oh, I guess actually it's when you maybe when you actually pull up the actual data dashboard dashboard.

So um I just want to make sure I understand you correctly.

Um the how the preservation numbers are added into this 5100.

And so can you provide the breakdown?

How much of this is preservation versus how much is new?

We don't have that like here on the data dashboard.

We can provide that if you would like to have a breakdown.

Yes, we could get that number to you and pull it uh from our our list.

Can we see that please?

And then um and then also so as you talked about your next steps is to evaluate how uh all of the other uh um incentive agency projects roll um you're gonna c add that into the calculation.

What is your timeline on getting that done?

Um well, you know, we're gonna have to go back to the drawing board and get everybody in um you know involved into that process.

Uh you know, it took us nine months to build this out.

Um I'm sure we can we got the blueprint, so so it's just a matter of us uh engaging in those conversations, making sure everybody is is on board and then um having them fill out the information that that's needed uh working with data cat KC to ensure that we have uh you know support at those at the city uh city level and um hopefully we can get a quick turnaround.

Uh I would assume um and and don't quote me on this, but a few months, three to four months if everybody's on board.

Okay, and then I would just like to uh just ask now that once that is complete if you'll make sure that we um that information comes out to the council.

I think we're all interested in that.

Thank you.

Sounds good, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tim.

Any other questions?

Mr.

Mayor.

Councilman Duncan.

Thank you.

I just want to say thank you.

Um we we know that there's gonna be a lot of tweaks that that we can make in the future, like Mayor Pro Tim was bringing up.

Um but the the hard walk the hard work's been done.

Yes, I love a great dashboard um provided it provides great transparency, not just for us um, but but for our residents.

So thank you.

Thank you all.

Thank you, Councilman Duncan, Councilwoman Robinson.

Mr.

Mayor, the 10,000 goal, the goal of 10,000 units.

Was that approved by the council?

No, we uh it might have actually been.

We uh I'm trying to think if we had it in a resolution.

This would have been back around the time of the housing trust fund.

Okay so circa fall, August of 2022.

Well, I just want to let the staff know we're all behind that goal as well.

So thank you.

I can vote this all the same.

I was like sometimes I don't need that smoke all the time, but appreciate that.

And thank you all for the work.

We've we've made transformative efforts.

Councilman Robinson and I and others have been here some time, and we have seen a transformative change in housing in Kansas City.

And I believe Councilman Robinson, it was our council that created or recreated the housing department as well.

Yes when we started neighborhood and housing services.

Yes.

It was uh downhill from here.

Uh any further questions.

Very none.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I would propose this for the uh council.

You're all good to roll.

We have requests for two different uh closed session topics, both relating to contractual issues, one relating to entertainment facilities and sports more broadly, the other relating to the uh health care health levy funds.

Let's uh try to split those, probably starting with the health levy funds.

We come back, have a normal council meeting because it seems like there's a crowd outside, and then we can do the entertainment and sporting facilities at the end of our legislative uh session.

All right, so we'll entertain a motion for a closed session, likely related to contractual issues on the health levy concerns.

Motion honorable mayor, I move for closed session pursuant to 610.021 of the revised statutes of Missouri subsection one and uh 12.

Second we move to second it is there any further discussion?

Hearing none of the clerk will call the roll.

Rhea bunch.

Aye, girls, aye, park shaw.

Aye, Duncan, Neil, aye Willie, French, Rogers, Patterson Hasley, aye, Robinson, Lucas.

All right.

We'll stand in closed session.