The city of Lacrosse.

Welcome to those joining in person and those those online.

We jump right into our agenda with approval of our minutes from our February 26th meeting.

Entertain a motion to approve and a second.

A second by Ed and sorry, motion by Ed and a second by Gus.

Any questions or comments on the minutes as presented.

Seeing none, all in favor of the motion, aye or thumbs up.

All opposed, same sign.

All right, motion carries.

Thank you.

First agenda tonight is 26-0304, a discussion and possible action on an update to the public market documents through a city RDA partnership.

And I'll welcome uh Julie to the podium for a summary and some discussion.

Julie, welcome.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

So just to give some background on this item.

So back in about 2017 and then leading up to 2020, the RDA in partnership with the city did some pre-development work on a public market project.

So the RDA specifically oversaw the completion of a feasibility study, a site analysis, and a business plan.

And then shortly thereafter, the world kind of shifted on its access with the whole pandemic thing.

So this got pushed back on the back burner for other high priority projects.

So I was tasked with kind of with doing that and working with my intern Ethan, who's been incredible on this.

And also to just better understand what would be the next steps for lacrosse to maybe move this forward.

We've met with multiple Wisconsin markets too a couple of times asking those questions about you know the good, bad, and the ugly.

And what we kind of became clear through those conversations is that there would be a need to update the feasibility study in the business plan.

It has been some time and there's been a lot of changes in the world.

Additionally, something we heard repeatedly that there really is a need to have a person or an organization potentially dedicated to the project, like a role that was dedicated not just to be an add-on to someone who's already maybe has a full plate, uh, but what somebody could own the process, build the concept, oversee some of these feasibility studies uh business plan things, not necessarily doing it themselves, but the process to get those updated.

And so of course that requires financial resources to move that forward.

So we looked into a possibility for that.

Um and so uh TID 11 was one of the resources is an urban renewal project that uh this would be eligible for, and there's availability of funding currently.

Um so this concept might sound somewhat familiar because it really started to sound a little bit like the RDA uh the River Point District project and kind of a similar relationship that we that has been created with the role that Jason Gilman has.

And um, so the idea was to maybe have somebody be brought on that could uh facilitate this project, but on a lesser amount with a lesser time commitment um in lesser uh lesser amount, meaning less funding needed.

So the purpose of my of me coming today is to give you the update and to get feedback from the RDA on the interest in participating in a project like this.

Um the next step would be that we would bring forward if the RDA was was wanted to partner on something like this again and kind of renew this project.

We would work as staff to bring forward a resolution at an upcoming meeting that would further specify the dollar amount that would be transferred from um to the TID.

Of course, this would all have to go for council for approval as well.

Um, and then just specifications on the the duties and the expectations of what the money should go towards.

Um then there would be an agreement drafted too between the city and the RDA if that resolution were to all be approved.

Um so that's what I had to share today.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

Julie, thank you very much.

And just for historical context, uh public market as Julie mentioned, has been discussed in this body just as a I think a concept and then for community feedback, right?

I think this this body's generally given some its support to this, but I think the point of today is to um confirm that support, right?

To to as Julie mentioned, confirm that we are um interested in um exploring avenues for our public market and and as Julie mentioned, a partnership with uh the city through appropriate review processes, etc.

So as Julie mentioned, do we have any any questions related to current process current state or um what we may anticipate in the next weeks, months?

Councilmember Jason.

Julie, could you maybe um for anybody that might be even listening um as well as the committee go into maybe kind of a timeline of what that might this might all look like?

Yeah, so the public a public market in general is a is a it's a pretty big project.

So um many communities, they it takes years to get something like that off the ground to get the capital needed.

Um, as an extreme example, I shouldn't well, I shouldn't say extreme, a larger, a longer timeline.

The Madison public market took almost a couple decades to get to where it needed to be to get the funding.

Um the Green Bay Market was uh had a much shorter timeline, maybe like I think it's five or seven years with COVID in the middle of that as well.

Um so it is something that wouldn't just happen right away.

And I think this first step, what we're looking at as the next year, possibly two, of just that pre-development of work of determining does this still make sense?

Does it make sense right now?

What would it require?

And that funding piece would be a big portion of it too.

You know, where would the money come to fund the not only the capital that would be needed for it to get off the ground, but what would the operation look like?

Um, not only and then also the operational component of two, what entity would oversee this, who would be responsible and getting that work.

So the overall project I imagine would be probably four or five years, best gas, but what we're looking at is this immediate one to two years to get it in place to the next take to the next step.

Julie mentioned TID 11.