And there's no one online.

No, okay.

Seeing no members who wish to speak, I'll now close public input.

We'll now move on to approval of the August 11th, 2025 meeting minutes.

Are there any corrections to the minutes?

Oh yeah.

Is there a second?

Hi, second.

All those in favor of correcting them.

Any post?

Correction passes.

We need to approve them now too with the correction.

You can move to approve with the correction.

Okay.

So I'm gonna just assume that that's what just happened.

We all move to approve.

Yeah, yeah.

Great.

So we do a roll call vote since I think.

Jin May is not online.

So we don't have to do a roll call vote.

We can just say it.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Moving on to regular business.

The first agenda item was going to be Lafayette Farmers Market Partnership.

Just in time.

Is going to be Lafayette Farmers Market Partnership Presentation.

I'll now turn it over to Executive Director Keating.

Cool.

Hey, Peter.

You can sit right there.

Okay.

Nice.

Do you want me to drive your presentation?

Is that easy?

Sure.

Cool.

Yeah.

And maybe it'd be great just to go around the room to introduce ourselves.

Um, since this is the first time meeting Peter.

Um and then I can kick off the presentation.

Does that sound good?

Do you want to go first, Arena?

Sure.

Hi, Peter.

I'm Joanna Kagan.

I'm chair of the DDA, and I'm executive director at Wild Children's Museum over in the Harris.

Nice to meet you.

Hi, Peter.

How's it going?

He's in Coffee DDA board.

Peter, I'm Tom Hardy.

About a 25-year resident of Lafayette, and I own the Confluence Small Business Collective here in town, which is for Word and Space and the Betsumer.

Cool.

I'm Faith.

I'm also a small business owner.

I own the little herbal apothecary on Public Road.

Yeah.

Thank you for coming.

Yeah.

I'm Ian.

We own the lumber yards that collected up by Public Road and Genus VO.

I was born and raised here.

And yeah.

Cool.

That's me.

Right.

Hey, Peter.

Thanks.

I thought you were gonna go.

But so City Council and the City Council lays on to the DDA.

Okay.

Cool.

Yeah.

Great.

So I can kick us off.

And then Peter has a presentation.

So I'm I'm really excited to have Peter here.

As we all know, we've had we used to have a farmers market with Boulder County Farmers Market for years, and during COVID, they decided not to come back.

And so this year is the first time that we've been able to have a farmers market again through the Lafayette Farmers Market.

Peter and his wife Margo.

This is this is their first year, June, they're also a Lafayette residence, which you'll learn about.

And Laura did a partnership with them for this first year, which was super helpful, which you'll hear about with the traffic control.

And within our work plan and also our plan of development, we talked about establishing an ongoing partnership with a uh the farmers market, and so excited to have Peter here tonight just to talk about what he's been up to, what's been going well, their mission, um, and some opportunities that they have, and then um at a future meeting, uh, if we have some pretty good consensus, I'll come forward within what a partnership could look like moving forward.

So tonight is an opportunity to get to know Peter, the farmers market, and really just have a casual conversation and ask questions and we'll go through it.

All good?

Great, cool.

Um has anybody not been at the farmers market?

Okay.

So shamed not to shame you just because we've got some stuff that might be like over exploited, like might be like in here because there's a lot of like you know what we've been up to, um, but a lot of it is cleared if you've been.

So uh who we are.

So my wife Margot and I um we have a one-month old at home making bedtime complicated, so apologies for being a good one.

Thank you for being here.

So uh yeah, so Owen, Oliver.

Um Lafayette residents, we're about a year and a half into living to uh living in Lafayette, and we love it and we want to live here for a very long time.

Um my wife Margot, so she's beekeeper.

That's actually partially how we got into farmers markets to begin with.

Um, between that and coffee, I used to run uh a coffee company roastry and had two cafes in Denver and Aurora.

Um I used to do a bunch of farmers markets all over uh mostly Denver area, and originally just was like these could be better run.

Just thought that there was a lack of um there was a lack of really advocating for small businesses and vendors, and there was a lot about running an event, and it felt like the heart of farmers markets, why people were there was kind of missing.

And so I was doing that in the small business world.

Marga was teaching, but she also was a beekeeper and running a honey business on the side.

So we got to know kind of the farming community, you know, various locations of where the hives were also just at farmers markets themselves.

Um next one.

So five years ago, we side hustled the start of the City Park Farmers Market.

Um, there was an existing farmers market at City Park that had run for about 30 years, so very long-standing location for farmers market, but it had declined to a state where like we used to run it as a coffee company, and it was just um it was very lackluster.

It was our it was the worst farmers market that we did out of all of the farmers markets that we were part of, and the infrastructure was really excellent.

The community was ripe for something to be there that was well organized, and so when we were there as a vendor, we we were always like if if the permit ever drops for this location, we we want to pick it up.

So 2019 was the last time they ran a market, they dropped the permit, we picked it up, started it in 2021, and it's just grown really well.

It's grown really uh in a really healthy way since then.

Um these are just some stats just to give some scope behind like what the farmers market, you know, like what we're doing over there and like how big it is.

So it's a significant size farmers market, usually we have about 110 vendors on site, um, and that's 27 farmers rangers dairy.

So it's got a really good foundation and being representative of the farming community, 100% growers focused and local, and then 2500 to 5,000 weekly attendance, so a high attendance number, we've got a huge field as I mean, this is a fountain area behind that.

There's a big esplanade, very open space.

So there's just there's a ton of parking, there's a bunch of infrastructure, it's right in the middle of uh of Denver.

So there's a big potential to be a big farmers market there, too.

And then you know, roughly estimated three and a half or four million in sales with all the vendors put together.

Um, so a significant amount of just like economic clout for small businesses and farmers.

Um, and so we we still run that event on Saturdays.

Um so that's our Saturday business.

Last year I sold the coffee company, and then we got Lafayette going over the winter this last year.

So now Lafayette.

Um so this year, our launch.

Um we launched with about 75 total vendors, so you'll see about 65 there on any given Sunday.

And that includes I mean, so there's some rotating vendors and some some folks that you know come less often, um, and then some seasonality with uh the vendor team that comes in that's 16 farmers rangers dairy.

So for uh a starting farmers market, it's a very excellent representation for the farming community.

Um enough so that there's more demand or there's more supply than there is demand right now at the farmers market.

So there's plenty of veg, there's plenty of fruit at the farmers market.

Um hundred percent growers focused local.

Um this is like a real spitball.

125 weekly attendees.

What it fells like.

Uh no clue how accurate that is.

That's just my I'm there every week, and this is kind of what I think is about is about close.

And then probably like 1.5 to 2 million collectively with all the vendors uh over the course of the season, I would say um total like transaction amount.

So Sundays nine to one, Pullman Simpson.

This video is for you.

Thank you.

This is just an overview video, it's kind of like a uh snapshot of kind of what we're doing.

It's like some highlighting vendors, um, giving music uh you know, sampling fresh wage.

This one is actually from this is from the LBA.

So vegetable harvest is all and you also have branded t-shirts and posters and hats and bags.

Yeah, lots of good merch, a lot of artists collaboration.

When did we launch?

We launched beginning May, and we went to the end of all.

So we run a pro just a clean six months to see.

Cool, yeah, I mean, so the ethic and strategy behind what we're doing.

Um, so what we've talked about already, growers only, food focused.

Um the goal this year was to limit the scope and grow the reputation of the farmers market.

So we wanted to not be doing everything.

We didn't want to, even things like face painters, which seemed very harmless, and like at some point we'll probably have a face painter because they're always knocking on our door.

But the focus was really we want to grow a brand.

We want to grow a uh some clout within the vendor community specifically, so that we can continue to continue to attract high quality vendors, and then we can grow our draw regionally and not just hyperlocally.

Because we have a uh the community's been very supportive so far this year, but in order to be sustainable at that top tier, like that top echelon of farmers market, we really need to draw uh a regional crowd to be coming here to be shopping for you know the local products that we have represented.

Um so the goal this year was really to like do that, execute it well, and then build that brand for future years.

Um yeah, control vendor categories, we're not trying to have a ton of duplicates.

Uh we really want people to be able to shop for their weekly groceries pretty comprehensively, and you know, be able to get a bunch of different pantry staples, be able to get uh you know, whatever local veg is is currently in season, um, and then pretty much check off those boxes.

So there's like some things we're probably missing a little bit this year, but for the most part, like most of the things that are represented at most front range farmers markets are at are in Lafayette.

Um create a diversified complete shopping experience, just what I talked about.

Build relationships between producers and consumers.

That's our number one goal uh at the farmers market.

That is what we are, that's what we do.

We are the bridge, you know, we're we're an event, but we're more than that, in our opinion, and you'll see that in a few slides.

But really, we're an event that's that's driving a bridge between people growing food, people producing food, um, and people consuming food.

Um, so just keep that in mind as we kind of like talk about the next um ways in which we are doing that.

Yeah, and to add on, when Peter and I first met, um, I was talking to him about how we have such a creative identity in our downtown and about our artist community.

I was like, so how do we get some artists in here?

And we had that conversation of like this is what I'm trying to do.

It's a growers only, this is food focused.

And once I learned about what he was doing and his mission, I was like, I got it.

Like our night out is a great place to showcase all of our artistic and creative community, and this is something that's different that we don't have that complements it.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it it feels sometimes like I mean, I read a lot of rejection emails, which feels intent, like and it feels really like this is a community event, it's very open, it's very public, and at the same time, we're like we're trying to be something specific, and we're trying to build a brand in that specific direction.

Um, and so those are just the decisions you make along the way to kind of like be that to build that brand.

And then you've got an initial scope and want to expand it to other areas or completely.

No, yeah, we want to be food focused.

I was just using face painting as an example of something that you can be like, okay, face painter, you can hang out here sometimes.

Um, in general, uh yeah, we'll be we'll be completely food focused.

Um, and one of the primary reasons is that the top quality vendors, and a lot of that is farms.

That's where they want to be.

And so if we're trying to retain top quality, we need to build a brand that's something specific.

And so those vendors are part of that, they want to be a part of that brand.

So that's that is like probably the driving force of why that is, is because you get a better representation of uh people knocking at your door.

There you go.

High quality vendor team.

Um farmers ranchers dairy, these are the three categories that we think about that we kind of like bucket our vendors into, and this is what we think about when we're accepting applicants.

Um with fee categories.

So farmers ranchers are those that whole crew has a lower fee structure than everybody else.

Um this year, I think we're gonna have that forever because again, we get to attract really great uh people, and also small farming economics are super hard.

So it just makes the equation a little bit easier for them.

Prepared foods, um we have a I guess when I was thinking about it the other day, we have a reasonable prepared food selection.

Um we don't have too many like food trucks specifically, but when you think about tents and the other things that you can actually go and grab a bite to eat, um, there's a significant portion of people that are doing that.

And then locally made food products, it's the biggest vendor category by like count, and that's like Mario, holding peanut butter right there.

Uh that's the honey, the crackers, all the things that are like being made locally that are gonna be just products, not fresh foods and not freshly made foods.

And what are the what are the fees?

So we charge 10% for most vendors and then 5% for uh farm focused um vendors.

So unique connection.

Um so this is just you know, first year kind of like metrics behind what we're doing.

We have uh a 2,000 person uh newsletter now that uh has a good readership rate.

Um we have an Instagram with 5,000 followers, not a huge you know, number, but for an organic growth for first year, um it's going in the right direction.

Um farm tours, mini dock sale videos.

This is one of the things that uh has been a real sleeper with also building our brand within the within the vendor in the farming community, where um this vendor.

Do we have I mean how much time do we have?

We have four minutes to watch a video.

Yeah, probably have any have any of y'all seen this video before?

Um these go out in our newsletters.

Let me um the sound's not working.

Um shoot, okay.

But if we can just while you keep talking, let me go see if I can fix that.

Does that work?

Yeah.

Is this all specific Lafayette focus?

This is Instagram is just Lafayette Farmers Marketing.

Correct, yeah.

Yeah, so we wanted to start and build a brand only for Lafayette, yeah.

That's a good question.

Um, and so these are just this year specific to Lafayette um marketing and growth.

That's pretty good.

Um so the farm tours, uh they are yeah, really impactful for us for motive to be motivated, one, to be like understanding what's going on behind the scenes with local food, uh getting to know those people more intimately, and then what we say we do from an event.

If strand of your hair looks like this when it's wet, this is how it's we want to be doing that in more than just the event.

So we also want to be a beacon of that communication for not just front range, but for Colorado.

So even in the world of like media stuff, uh people who are like, you know, the people who are like engaged in watching this stuff, a lot of farmers, they are liking sharing and being a part of like that network in that community.

And so Alex in the video right here, he jumped on board Lafayette because he had seen the media that we were doing in City Park and said, I want to work with Peter Margot.

Um, and we'd never met before, but that was just an example of kind of like that brand growth within that world.

Uh, and then something that we want to continue doing is even aside from just the farmers market scene world that we're working within, we want to grow a bigger media presence for farmers in the front range in general.

So that's like a whole nother project beyond this, but that's definitely been the more we've done this, the more it seems like uh there's a huge need, and it seems like there's a huge attachment with hearing people's stories and then engaging in the local food system in a meaningful, impactful way.

And so that is just one of the doors that we've found that just opened uh at some point, and we want to keep diverting more of our resources in that direction to be storytellers.

Um whatever that storytelling means.

So newsletter is a big one, growing our newsletter presence.

Um it's way more impactful than social media has ever been for us.

Um we get really good direct feedback from that channel, and that's where we we spend a lot of time and energy on newsletters.

Um yeah, we send this video out to everybody so they can watch it.

It's so good.

This one in particular, Alex is really well spoken, and he really really perfectly distills so much of what I've been trying to talk about with the world of small farming and market farming, and he just he crushes it, and then my video guy Nick just he crushed it.

So it's worth a watch.

Yeah, I'll send this out to everyone so when you're able to watch it.

What is he talking about?

Yeah, so we're doing we do kind of like a hybrid, like who are you, but really like our big the big focus is the why uh of like who are you, why you're doing this, here's our farm.

But the why is the heart, it's a central tenet behind these videos because it draws people into knowing somebody.

So when we do when we do these farm tours, they're really the the bulk of it is a marketing tool that can live somewhere forever.

So they can live on YouTube, they can live on our website.

So when people are going to our website, which needs a lot of love right now, um, but they can look at the vendors, they can get all this you know, backlog of information on the vendors, and then the vendors are utilizing these videos too to put on their websites to share on their socials, like all that stuff.

Um, but it's really why.

The question is like so he's talking a lot about like the economics of small farming, why he got into it, and then the the wildest part of the commerce marketing just like takes a constant uphill battle.

It takes really hard.

Our heart, our brain, and our soul.

It takes everything else that I it is just it's not for the heart.

Like, we are really trying to do something.

Has honestly gone to the wayside.

I love seeing people enjoying it.

The food industry itself has zagged one way, and we're zigging the whole other way.

In a world where our food system is truly global.

That's basically like the artist to be competitive in that market.

As a two-acre farm, it's just getting people.

To be honest, it's a miracle here.

It's a miracle that we're having.

We are really trying to change how this food system works.

We're really trying to like escape past these blemish-free perfect apples in the grocery store.

We're really trying to culture and bring nutrients back to food and bring healthcare people.

And then when they're shopping there, it's just to do that, that's where they do that's where they get.

It takes everything that you're either you go home and you're eating.

It just means a lot.

It means a lot when people get a lot of people.

Thank you for buying this.

And it becomes a good idea.

Thank you for supporting the experience.

Like my life, the life of my crew, the life of my family, like contributing to that.

I'm really grateful to do what I do.

That's a good idea.

I don't really know why I do what I do.

I can't help it.

Honestly, I like a problem.

If anyone's watching, so we'll just send it up to you guys to watch later.

So those at home.

Yeah.

Community gathering and oh, now I have my mic is on.

Sound triggered something.

Okay, there you go.

Community gathering and identity.

This is um another side of what I was just talking about with growing rhythms, uh, growing a culture, but beyond that, like the benefit of events that are central to community, especially weekly events.

But this can be coffee shop rituals, uh, it can be retail rituals, it can be um you know, developments that foster community.

Um, like y'all have experienced this in many other facets, but community gathering identity is crucial to just human flourishing in general.

Um, but so we're creating a big retail situation with live music.

Um, but we view it like the other side of trying to be a habit forming thing is not just being like, hey, come get this local food in this like janky warehouse that's weird.

That you have to like there's a big barrier to entry to be able to go get your local fruits and vegetables.

We're like, okay, the other side of this is that it's an event, um, high visibility touch point for neighbors.

So these are just obvious advantages of like that weekly ritual.

Um, so when we see, you know, when you all go to the farmer's market, you run into a bunch of people you know, it's a small town, it's a small community, and so there's just like tons of additional touch points that you have.

Um, so that's amazing for growing social capital, mental health and well-being, community resilience, all those things are are huge benefits in just the weekly ritual of something like this.

Um then we put out some infrastructure, some tables and chairs for people to not feel like it's just a um experience of purchasing and going home, because we want people to shop, sit, commune, you know, experience like what that community is like, shop more, commune like we want that to be rhythm.

So we want there to be a retail experience uh on public every week that we create.

Um I think to add to that, um, when we were talking about the layout for the first time, Peter was mentioning how the city park is in a park, and so the infrastructure of being able to just like sit on the grass and be there is very easy, where this is closing down a main street, public road, and so creating those different pockets of experiences was something that Peter really focused on when putting together that layout.

Yeah, so and you know, like the parking lot, for example, uh, and like um front of the class.

It's just like trying to activate things that make it feel a little bit more expensive and a little bit less like a road.

Um vendor team cross-planation, um, that's another thing that we just like stress and try to kind of like foster the vendor team so that they're they're also doing the same thing that you know, it starts with us.

We have a great volunteer team, that's the nice point.

It's volunteer run primarily.

Um so creating a hospitality experience for our volunteers, our volunteers creating a hospitality experience for our vendors, and then our vendors creating a hospitality experience for the community.

Um so kind of you have a trickle down of you're thinking about it as a retail space again, and that includes hospitality.

Um being in coffee for almost a decade was near and dear to my heart and seeing spaces, amazing spaces, amazing product, awful hospitality, terrible experience.

Amazing hospitality, mediocre product, you know, mediocre space, pretty good experience actually.

So hospitality goes a really long way.

So that was one that was one thing that we've also just focused in on food access.

This is gonna be an interesting one as we transition from 2025 to 2026.

Uh a lot of snap uh cuts from the federal level.

So we're doing fine this year with Snap and Double Food Bucks.

WIC got cut for us this last year, so we were not able to access WIC from a federal perspective.

Um, but we are currently in conversation and working with Boulder County to figure out WIC.

It doesn't look like it's gonna be in the cards for 2026, but for sure for 2027, I think.

Um they had a hard time kind of thinking about changing their existing systems of what they've been doing, which says there's been funding sources from all over the place for Boulder County farmers markets to run, they have extensive food access programs for the 30-year-old farmers market um in a city that has been rewarding those food access programs and helping them fundraise.

They've also fundraised a dedicated food access person to run those programs at the farmers market.

So a lot of uh aspirations in that world.

Um this year, we're running SNAP, and we were granted double up food bucks because we've been doing it on a market.

That we really had no business getting that um this year, which but we were really grateful for it.

So what that means is that if somebody comes to the market and they want to use Snap, um they can come to the info tent, swipe the card, we will give them Snap Bucks to shop the market with, and then up to $20 can be doubled, and those $20 double up food bucks just can be used for fruits and vegetables.

So basically, economics of farmers markets are can be challenging, they can be um not the most accessible for all people, just because the economics of small businesses tend to be high cost and poor economies of scale, so it just creates a more expensive product that includes farming, but also just the food products that you see and prepared foods.

So generally speaking, it's not the cheapest place to go shop for your groceries.

This is our best tool to kind of figure out how to make it a more accessible place for low-income shoppers, and we don't know what the future is gonna be like for it.

So that's what we're doing this year.

We want to see those programs expand.

We want to allocate more of our time and energy towards seeing those expand.

Um we don't know what opportunities are on the horizon for us, though.

It's a time of uncertainty for that.

Have you been able to measure um how often people are using uh benefit?

Yeah, we measure um the outputs and the inputs, so outputs are like they don't have to use those when they pull them each market, so that's our output of like how much is actually going out each week, but then we do measure, and this is weekly, we'll count through uh snap and double up food bug dollars, and then we'll reimburse our vendors for them.

So that's a weekly weekly process for us.

Um we don't have numbers off the top of my head.

Um I'd say for a new program, it's going well.

I regret not doing more marketing behind the program of that this year because I think we could have grown it well this year.

Um but I think we can, if it exists in the future, I think we can really dedicate some good resources and see it grow.

It's an interesting positive contradiction.

Um that I've um had participants tell me not about Lafayette, just you know, being newer on the scene, but but ironically, considering the high cost of the small-scale farming that markets that have set up some way of welcoming and receiving SNAP participants, um, those um recipients that the conversations I've had is how in turn generous and welcoming farmers who know the ups and downs of of um of difficult financial living are to those dollars, and so there's not the awkwardness or the um some of the really unfortunate stories we've heard in in regions, including Lafayette about um vendors being a little bit hostile to um to public assistance dollars.

Instead, um, what I've had described to me is a very positive atmosphere with a lot of empathy and understanding, and that's nice about farmers markets in general.

So did you do any marketing at all?

Is she towards that?

Or is it just more work?

It was baked into some of our other marketing efforts.

So there wasn't a dedicated marketing effort towards food access issue.

But it was something that was like baked into being like we welcome, you know, it's on our top of our Instagram or description, it's in the website, you know, right on just kind of like dedicated marketing that's uh baked into everything else, but there was not a dedicated effort to see that outreach.

Yeah.

Um so accessibility and sustainability is the next slide.

Um so this is just generally some of the things we do to try to make it to be uh uh accessible, sustainable event, English, Spanish signs, and marketing.

Um the mark, you know, the marketing that we're doing where was translated as well.

AVA parking and portable restrooms, so pretty basic stuff there, lower farmer fees in other markets.

We've talked about that for farmers.

Um we've run a small farm program in the past, and this year we just made all farmers the same fee as what we had run that small farm program for with us.

Um and then progressive against event waste model.

So we work with a really cool company, which uh finally convinced right before we launched to get on board with us this year, color compost, and they basically do all the they do all the composting in-house, they just put a facility together in Denver.

What's it called?

Color compost.

They um they got some grants from Denver, some sizable grants in the last couple years to be able to compost on site inside of Denver City Limits.

Um, and they're over at the like the CSU campus.

Uh what's that?

The Spur.

Yeah.

Yep.

So they're over there, and they've yeah, they've done a good job.

We've actually we've been working, I've been working with them for a long time since they're started up.

So we've had some good equity in their world, um, and then they we could figure out a situation for pickup and lafa this year.

But the reason it's really cool is because we can use 100% compostables at our event.

So we have all of our vendors uh mandate, you know, we mandate that they use compostables there, and then all of those actually in Denver get turned back into soil.

So that's why it's really cool.

We have a real really like full circle situation in a small regional area, which is really unique.

Um it's expensive, it's resource intensive, but it's something that makes our event, you know, we walk away from the event in Lafayette every week with one with we have two trash stations, we walk away with two trash bags and two recycling bags, um, and then the rest is compost every week.

So we have a really small um yeah, we have a really small uh waste output for an event, which when you have a bunch of prepared foods is rare.

Um the next best step would be reusable, and it's really hard to figure out how to coordinate that with a bunch of different vendors.

Um, and we don't have a closed, you know, we're not serving alcohol, we don't have a closed event.

Um, and so this is kind of the best situation we figured out.

The there are some challenges to it, um, one of which is that sorting is really intensive, but we've got great volunteers.

Um, and so that's one of volunteer tasks is just sorting compost, but most of it is educating people.

So most of most days we're able to have to we're able to have volunteers staff the compost stations and just kind of help people sort as they walk in.

That's the ideal scenario.

Um and then part of that education is like we don't exist within the what everybody else's existing, like because people are like, we can't compost this.

Um and we're like that's true at home, you can't compost this.

Everything is you know, in Boulder County in Denver, uh, that stuff's all going to A1 organics.

A1 a couple years ago said no more packaging material like compostable packaging, and so then that's what everybody is trained in now, and so we're doing things a little bit differently, which hopefully is clear to people when they come by because we're trying to do as much information as possible, but all that being is that's been something that's also been kind of like close to my heart as we run this event.

If I can add to that, I was literally just the spur last week, and I think one of the that's what that smell was that I'm the soil.

Yeah, I don't know what it is.

That's what it's called, it's called soil.

Um I can't tell you how valuable I think it is the education piece of uh for our residents because going getting getting just composting into Lafayette was challenging.

And then when the whole A1 thing came about, that just threw people for a loop.

Yeah, so this is yet another interesting thing when people are noticing that they can compost cups here at the farmers market, and they notice they can't do it at home.

When people are noticing that they can compost cops here at the farmers market, and they notice they can't do it at home.

It's helping to again get people to recognize what the process is, and that there are more there's more than one place to compost.

Um and that you can actually compost those bits and pieces.

So I know they're reusable as you could go to that, but I highly value the fact that you've got farm to table, local, and mixed in the sustainability piece of having a good circular society.

Because I'm guessing that you circulate economy, I'm guessing that the soil is accessible to some of these farmers as well.

Well, the hope is that it comes back.

We're trying to connect the bats right now to have it come back to the farmers market itself.

So the customers that are buying cups, tossing you know, in the compost, are gonna be able to buy the soil again for their home.

That's the goal.

This is a story right now.

I think we'll be able to connect the dots this year by the end of the season for that.

So yeah, and it's it's been really cool.

Um we have another, we do have a mini uh just like a mini uh we did a real, a reel, an Instagram reel, and put in the newsletter and then did like a YouTube short.

So if you go to our uh YouTube channel, um we have a tour with Van, who's the founder of Color Compost, explain the process, and then you get to see a bit more about like you know, there's they're shredding the plastic, they're adding it in as basically uh a carbon sequestration tool.

Like that's kind of what our vet waste ends up being in their compost system.

It's really cool.

So yeah, I got I get super hyped on that stuff too, for sure.

And when we could, this is the first year too that this is what we have in the past.

It's been going somewhere else, and Van has been doing it, but they've been able to just be a loophole because we're essentially triple sorting this.

You know, we're sorting on site, they're double sorting it, they're starting to get into the compost.

So because it was just super clean compost, we've had a pass in years past.

This is the first year it's actually being done in Denver, uh, and then being able to tie it in full circle.

So it's pretty cool.

I I love it.

I think it's I think it's fantastic.

I mean, this is this is not talking about actually doing it.

Um so then yeah, the kind of big question is like, did it work this year and like how'd it go?

And people asking me that a lot.

Um I think I asked Peter that every single week.

I'm like, how's it going?

Yeah, yeah, and and and like it's cool.

Residents have been asking me to when as I get to know people on the market uh over time, you know.

I get a lot of like people being like, because everybody wanted it, but like there's a difference between wanting it and it actually like the community supporting it and it working, and not just working, but thriving, you know, and that's really what we want.

We want we don't want a farmer's market to live along year after year.

We want something that that is thriving.

Um the win, the wins category.

We'll just I broke it into categories to make it kind of like how I how I've been thinking about it, but um, we had a really good high quality vendor team off the bat, which was a huge win.

That means we gotta put a really good foot forward, and we've heard through the grapevine just kind of like uh subjectively that other vendors in other markets have been hearing good things about Lafayette.

That's really really good news for us.

We've had excellent volunteer turnout retention.

Um so Lafayette wants it bad enough to that there's enough volunteers that have showed up and are happy to sort through compost, which isn't like the most delightful job in the world unless you're like really psyched.

Um yeah, great reviews and feedback, just I mean, that's we've had good reviews, you know.

That's kind of like subjective, and then people writing reviews.

Um reach is growing, so if you just Google us, like all of the normal stuff you want to see.

Like your reach is growing, just if you Google us, like there's more organic content out there.

There's good articles that's been put out.

We hired a good PR company, and that helps at the beginning of the year.

Um, and then the big one is economically viable for our slim labor models.

So we want to run a slim labor model that's volunteer focused because we like that it feels community run because it is community run.

I feel like that really gives a unique identity, and it's there's a real fingerprint of the community that's in the midst of that market.

And the way that we've run it this year, um, you know, like it made money, so it didn't make a lot of money, but it made enough money to be like this is viable if it grows, this will be a thriving event in future years.

So that's good.

Challenges, um of the vendor feedback noted low foot traffic in comparison to other high volume markets, which makes sense.

Um the people that we have on board, a lot of them are doing Saturdays in Boulder, Longmont at City Park, um, Sundays at Pearl Street, often some of the other markets that are just they're the highest volume markets in not just Farrange, but in Colorado, like there's there's some of the most uh you know there's some of the highest volume markets that you can be a part of, they're excellent places to be.

So we are uh good and bad, we're being compared to that, and so it's low foot traffic in comparison to those places.

Uh high traffic control cost, diverted potential marketing spend, it costs a lot to shut down public road.

Um, including the police barricades, which is just an extra tack on um to what is a normal kind of like shutdown of public road.

But we're doing this for um 26 events over the course of a year, so we're just paying that 1200 every single week for this event to run.

So it's just it's something that's feels like it's not rocket science, but it's really expensive, and that that's kind of frustrating because that could be otherwise spent towards marketing and driving foot traffic to the farmers market.

To add to that, um, because of this market and because of just event I don't know the right word to put this, but the horrible catastrophes that have happened all over the world about events and vehicles driving into them.

The city invested a hundred thousand dollars in actual vehicle um barricades, and so if you've been to the market, it's that red and yellow, very discreet um barricade that's in on I think it's Cleveland and then baseline near baseline.

Um that was a big thing for the city to invest in.

But because of those barricades, it's a lot to deploy them every single market, and because we are closing down public road, we the city requires a certified traffic control company to put up all those signs about detours and closing down baseline.

Um it is it doesn't feel like a big deal when you're at the market because there isn't like a lot of signage and noise, but the amount of work behind the scenes scenes and funding to get that into place was a really big lift for the city team, but also now we pass that on to Peter and his team, and so um the urban renewal authority this first year provided 25,000 to help with traffic control, um, which is a big way for Peter to not to focus on deploying things and focusing on the actual market.

Perfect synopsis.

Um, I love my traffic control guys.

It's great.

These uh it's like two brothers and a sister who started a company this year, and they're the best.

So I love yeah, just in general, like so.

One note about Lafayette in general, uh lack of like chef relationships in general to draw on of people that are doing like farm to table food.

Um that's kind of a question mark for future because that's one thing that really helps drive in general, like the ethic of like high quality food, uh people are paying attention to you know, restaurants and what's going on there, a lot of cross-promotion, it's a really good uh way to kind of like keep spreading your brand.

Um then we talked about this lower snap double food buck engagement than we were hoping for.

It's pretty good actually for a year one market when I actually go back and look at it in comparison to what we were doing in City Park.

But I think we could have done better.

So, and that is just primarily I think on us and our marketing effort.

So, conclusion, it was a very solid building block year, but we want to see significant foot traffic growth, foot traffic growth in the coming years.

We're satisfied with the trajectory, we think it was a good year, and that generally speaking it was a win.

So that's kind of where we're at.

Um, so future direction.

We talked about this grow regionally, we want to draw more customers from surrounding communities to make it um something that's a draw in Lafayette and not just for Lafayette.

We want to grow our media presence, um, become a statewide example of what it looks like to champion local food by telling stories in education.

Um that sentence is pretty much exactly what I want to say on that.

Um manage operating costs, we want to run SLAM and divert the max budget towards marketing, and that's just one of our operational goals is we just want like I we want to own or operate this.

We don't want to just um we don't want to ever like not really be on site unless we're taking some fraternity leave.

Uh but we really want to we want to make an advantageous model so that we can divert the most amount of expense possible towards marketing because it's the best way that we can spend money as an event company, basically.

Okay, so that's the last slide.

I didn't put a question slide on it.

That's all right.

Do we have any questions?

Yeah, so I'm gonna turn it back over to Joanna to open up for questions, but also just general comments, yeah.

Are there questions?

I have several.

Yeah.

Um terms of a revenue revenue for the city, we're collecting sales tax on sales.

Yep.

It was how has that looked here?

Um, well, we haven't had a market previously, so any sales taxes again, right?

Um, but we haven't run that specific model yet.

Okay.

Yeah.

What's your general sense?

Is it positive?

Is it significant?

I mean, hearing the sales that Peter is talking about, that is a big boost.

Yeah.

Um, I think anecdotally, what I've heard um is that the adjacent businesses have loved having the farmers market there.

That they're seeing like Sundays being some of their busiest days, um, that they're seeing you know, class cross collaboration.

Um, and so that's been really exciting to hear, particularly because um there's some businesses in the Art Night Out footprint that um aren't super jazzed up about that event.

Um, and so when we moved when Peter was thinking about where this market was and moving to where it is, it it actually fit really well.

And so anecdotally, we've heard really great things from the uh adjacent businesses.

Um I will also just say, separate from sales aside, um, when we decided that we were going to issue a permit from the city side to allow to close public road, we were very worried about the complaints that we were going to hear, and we did not receive one.

The only thing that we heard about was someone asking for a different signage near their um business a few like a block or two down.

Um so that was a really big deal and a really big song in dance to be able to divert the flat orange church traffic.

Um, so we've heard a lot of really positive things.

And haven't heard criticisms of or lack of parking, I mean losing parking from businesses.

Nope.

And shockingly, I haven't heard any feedback about that either, which I was expecting to hear.

Yeah.

I've heard a little bit you have heard of from some of our businesses at the lumber yard.

That makes sense.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense for you.

But that's sure.

That they're not losing parking or yeah, that they're losing parking, that it's filling up almost exclusively with patrons for the farmers market rather than for their businesses.

But I haven't discussed specific, you know, overlap of whether or not they're seeing increases on those days as opposed to like sales, yeah.

Yeah, like and and you know, they probably don't have a metric on that for this year given that it's been every Sunday as compared to last year, so I don't necessarily know, but yeah, and that's something that we can pull.

Um, we can look at the adjacent businesses on Sundays historically, and then see, are we seeing a boost in sales within those businesses?

So that would be something interesting.

I mean, we we get we get everything in like some people file our taxes quarterly, some people do it, you know, and we run that um the month later.

And so once we have a full farmers market set of data, um, I'll be working with Heather and her team uh to look at what were just some metrics that we can look at.

For us, it's been about a 10-15% uptick in foot traffic, like on Sundays, or Sundays are already crazy.

Just made it out of your because people do have to park all throughout, because it's generally like people coming back with advantages, grabbing something and go back to the car, grabbing something and we do the market, but you talked about um it's the expansion of the foot growing the foot traffic and set.

What is the plan, or do you have a plan for because obviously the public's like it'll be wider?

Um what is the plan for that?

At some point, yeah, we're gonna become traffic.

Yeah, we had a pretty good side.

Honestly, with the footprint this year is a pretty good, we've got room to grow.

Um that's totally anecdotal.

We have no metric spot enough, but being around another market every you know, every day for the last five years or every Saturday for the last five years, we've got plenty of space within the market to like grow foot traffic.

Um I would assume that along with that, like we would try to kind of like expand eventually.

I don't think that we're going to expand much next year though, and that's like kind of what I think about is just next year.

Expand your footprint.

Expand footprint isn't in that.

I don't I don't see us expanding footprint.

I just I I hope to see, you know, you basically like you see a peak at about 10 a.m.

in the farmers market.

Um, and there's plenty of room for you know, strollers and dogs and stuff to go around each other at that time still.

Um but yeah, I mean part of that is just it just gets busier and it's a little bit less it's actually a really pleasant shopping experience right now.

Well, customer perspective, it's a really great spot.

It's a really great volume from a vendor perspective, they could see a bump.

I had the same idea.

I don't have a great answer.

But you're talking about cities that are three times our size, and so how much bigger can we get in terms of making it worth vendors worthwhile, but we're not you know, we don't have the same infrastructure of a lot as a lawnmower boulder or the same population.

That's a weird question.

No good answer.

Because I'm on I'm on the side of you know, I'm gonna be on the side of like we want to grow.

Sure.

Uh we want to see my my primary job is just like we want to see vendors the best they can possibly do at our farmers where we're like, we're their champions.

Simultaneously, like we're liaisons to the city, uh vice versa.

But well, and you're not at this tipping point.

Yeah, it's a serious thing to think, look forward.

Yeah, thinking of it.

Yeah, I know how that happens.

And what and I thought we were gonna have way more severe issues this year, and then being way less like parking in it not being a big deal, routing traffic wasn't a big deal.

Um so maybe at some point in the future, it's a big deal.

Suppose give feedback around uh the traffic situation and such.

I did have a question about the signage because it did seem like this year, like signage just got left everywhere all week.

Um is that is that indicative of the company?

Is that just the policy of how it would go?

Because that could that was a little disruptive at different times.

Like I would just have a big giant sign in front of the coffee shop that said, you know, road closing road close, but it but it was a Wednesday, you know what I mean?

It just never got picked up and it was sitting there.

So that that happened quite a bit on a lot of the different side streets and back streets, and so I don't know if that was planned or if it was like it was just less, it was more cost effective.

If you're like, ooh, yeah, we'll put it back next week.

No, they're supposed to be picking everything up this week.

If that happens, you should tell me.

Because I don't if that's what it was happening so regularly.

I thought it was the I thought it was the pattern.

Like I just thought that's the way it's going to happen because it was there every week, you know.

And so I just assume that like, oh, it's easier for them to leave the signage, I guess.

That probably is true nonetheless.

Yeah, so just know that that that was a cons that has been a consistent thing, like weekly, that there's just signage that just gets left.

Okay.

That's farmers market side is specifically.

Yeah, okay.

The days that they block off, like they'll take, you know, they're blocking it this way, and then the day just turns and pushes it like us on the side of the street.

So it's like not blocking the road, but it's also not somewhere, you know what I mean.

It's like if anything it's an eye sole, we can just be there.

Yeah, well, I don't want that happening, so if I know that's happening, I'll make sure it's not happening.

And Ty, can you unmute your mic too?

Sorry.

Just for those at home who are watching.

Are there any other questions for Pete?

I have another question.

Um we talked a little bit about the accessibility and particularly for low income, but is there any strategy beyond um facilitating the federal and local programs um financially and some of the marketing to make it um welcoming and you know culturally culturally diverse, so that not only is it more affordable to be there, but they're you know, are uh reasons that people feel comfortable there or want to be there culturally?

There is no I mean there's no gray plan.

There's I'm always welcome to feedback.

Like we did an event at Sanchez this last week for the back school, and where are like a bunch of farmers were there giving away fruit like veg and fruit, and we were talking about like snapping the food book stuff.

There's like lots of those opportunities, I think, available for us.

Um generally speaking, I think it's just uh openness to kind of like if there are opportunities that we might be able to be a part of.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know enough about how this is all I'm learning a lot tonight about how you run an event like this, but you know, are the vendors, you know, that they look like you know, the people that are coming to the event and are they selling the kinds of things that they're using and their recipes and you know, I don't know what those things are, but I imagine there's a strategy out there to be that.

Yeah, yeah, I was intentional.

I would say, you know, speaking of what you're saying, like doing some outreach to the folks that maybe don't know, you know, because I know that a lot of farmers markets, you know, vendor type events.

If you're not someone who's a regular vendor, you generally don't know how to become a part of that stuff.

Yeah, you know what I mean.

So, but I do know that there are some small businesses, some culturally diverse businesses in the community that probably would have interest, but their automatic assumption is it's too expensive for me.

That's not somewhere they want me, you know.

It it can be kind of off-putting.

So trying to figure out how to do some outreach on the vendor side to get some of that involvement would be probably pretty great.

But then on the other side of things, um, we also have a very giving community, I feel like a supportive community when when people know people need they try to help.

Uh, so there may be an opportunity on the um on the uh shopper side of the what I'm trying to say here, the customer side of things to create similar to what uh I know safely and all those guys do it during Thanksgiving and such, where like you can have a bag that people have committed groceries to that that is given to someone who can't afford to buy the stuff that's in that bag, you know what I mean?

Um so I think we have a unique opportunity to do like the buy give type situation.

I know people do it at the shop all the time, and I don't even ask them, like just put a cup of coffee for the next person that can be, you know, that kind of thing.

I don't get a lot of people who can't buy coffee, but if we do, you know, people are willing to do it.

So I think that if if it was done properly, there may be some opportunities to supplement like the snap type situation or actually get lower income folks involved in the process if they know they can actually participate because there's nothing like being hungry and then looking at food you can't buy.

Right.

So a lot of those folks won't come just because it's it's overly enticing.

Like, why do I want to look at stuff that I can't have?

You know, so find a way to draw those people to the market where they can participate and not feel like it's gonna break the bank.

Yeah, you know.

Wearing my economic development hat right now, um we uh I mean a great follow-up to this is we have a dedicated partnership with the Latino Chamber, and so setting up a meeting with them and us um to just talk about our existing businesses, they're helping with a lot of our outreach and resources to see is there some existing businesses that could tap into the market in the future.

Yeah, um, and then also we have um uh a dedicated partnership with Sister Carmen who does a lot of work with our low-income residents, and so we can think about what are some ways that we can um market to you know uh members that um go to Sister Carmen and um and I know that you did a uh postcard to every resident in Lafayette and thinking about like how can we just maybe target you know different sectors of our community I think from a foot traffic and growth standpoint too, it's uh it'd be a mistake to assume that all the Hispanic people in the region are low income.

I think there's a huge market out there that you know if we're trying to go traffic, is you know, very capable of yeah, and we did, I mean, and that's why we we have bilingual marketing material.

We did put a flyer in every single household right the city, yeah.

Um within city limits.

Um I do think we can yeah, hone in and target like more specific marketing efforts in the future.

Great.

Yeah, I would just say to this group too.

If we're gonna talk about financially supporting this, I think they're I think we ought to talk about what agreement we're gonna have about the intentionality of what's going to.

Yeah, yeah.

Lean into this a little bit more because you all started it.

So I'm gonna go a little bit harder on it.

Uh then when the the chef relationships they didn't materialize and wanted uh I'm I'm looking around at the restaurant.

I'm thinking of the restaurants that are here, yeah, and the chefs that are here.

Uh one of the things I meant I'm hearing is that there's an interesting reality with uh food production in that there's not enough always kitchen space in that kind of kitchen space.

And then the cuisine that we're looking at is not always supported by what's after the farmers market.

So I don't know.

I'm way outside of my knowledge base at this point, but I'm I'm wondering if there's a we could even uh maybe ask some of the chefs in the area.

What do you need that's not at the farmers market?

And are there any local growers that produce those bits?

Um I get I asked for collard greens, and somebody came up with them, and I was like, that's that's impressive.

They were like, nobody wants them.

It's like I do a bunch of people bought them.

A lot of farmers love growing collar greens, actually.

All right, then I'm Brian.

Uh and you know, there might be other things that are being grown, but they just don't have that relationship yet because we haven't, and there is a we're we're still learning how to green chili reach the people who haven't typically been.

We're we're still going to make it comfortable for people to be able to reach out.

Yeah, there's some reasons to be afraid right now.

And one of the things that we saw is five years makes a big difference too in a lot of that stuff.

We saw our snap double food program grow tenfold in Denver from year one.

And so like some of that stuff just grows with word of mouth.

Yep.

You know, the more times that we get it just the more like, and we have I mean, some of our farmers are really local too.

Like we've got a couple Lafayette farms.

And they're also doing like I know at least I know like common name, they definitely have free CSAs for people that can't afford it.

So like people are people are that also farm specifically, like outside of just organizing the vendors as a whole, individually, a lot of those owner operator vendors are really passionate about food access.

But they're not, you know, they're not being drug along by me.

They're dragging me along in many ways.

Do you know what I mean?

And like we're down for it, but like that that also they're developing their own things that I don't know about, too.

So from an individual vendor perspective, there's a lot of farmers that are doing that sort of stuff as well.

Um but there's definitely room to keep you know to all to keep growing all this stuff in that direction for sure.

From again, an economic development standpoint, it's been really interesting to work with Peter, but also get to know some of the local vendors about what they need.

Yeah, and the commissary kitchen is a huge one that's hearing from so many different businesses, especially since we have a strong food truck um sector in Lafayette, and like that's what we love to see in economic development is like someone starting from a booth in a farmer's market to a food truck and then a brick and mortar and seeing people move throughout that just business expansion model.

Um it's from that standpoint.

I'm I'm like, how do we get another common story kitchen in Lafayette?

Because we want to be able to, you know, we have some, but we want to be able to make sure that people who are creating food can do it in Lafayette.

I think it's there's some of the intangibles that we haven't seen materialize yet, too.

Is there's been there's been commentary from some of the people that have uh some of the food vendors that have been like, oh, we should be thinking, maybe should we think about brick and mortar in in this area or the surrounding area when they went, it wasn't on the radar before.

So I think hopefully that that's like also just being a tool to be like, oh, there is a market here, there's you know, there's a test market, it's part of the farmer's market.

That's what it gets used for a lot for prepared food vendors, is like let's test an idea, let's test a product.

Um so hopefully that also can kind of like grow legs and help other future economic development stuff.

Yes.

Um I just want to say thank you.

I feel like you guys have done such an amazing job, and it's been a huge asset to Lafayette.

So I'm really grateful.

We've been trying to get a good farmers market for a long time, so it was really exciting to see it finally happen.

Um if there's anything that we can do to help with increasing food access, like through marketing or fundraising, I would love to hear more about that.

Like please bring that to us if there's something we can do to support you.

Um then also I'm just curious like how many vendors do you think are wanting to come back next year?

Do you have a lot of people who are excited to continue?

Yeah, I think we'll see um somewhere in the 75 to 85% retention rate.

Some people are just closed, like this is small business world, so we all know.

Like, especially like this isn't a storefront.

People are testing concepts here.

So, you know, we had a vendor pandemic donuts, they're they closed up.

They've been with this for five years.

Yeah.

But specific.

Yeah, it does seem specific.

It's good.

Uh but they had a big brand coming out of it, you know, coming out of kind of um, but they they you know, they shut their doors the bakery this year, and uh we had another bone broth company that just started restructuring, and so you just organically lose some people uh in that world, and then there's definitely some people that are like, I don't think volumes here for us.

Um but and because we took a mid-season survey, so I'm saying this out of that from that survey.

Okay, and then there's some maybes on the table, but uh it's looking like the majority of people are excited about what's going on.

Is that pretty typical retention rate, or is that good or is that not?

That's a good question.

I only know the one other thing that I've been doing.

Um, and so I'd say it's like gonna be a probably a slightly higher churn than what we had, but I think it's reasonable, like it doesn't sound scary to me.

I'm not like worried about that turn.

And there's also been other, you know, there was another bone broth company that has reached out and been like, hey, I heard bone broth isn't there.

Uh can we hop in and like try some markets at the end of the season?

Um in their uh high quality, they're doing boulder county farming markets, like that sort of stuff.

So they heard they've heard through the grapevine that it's good, so that makes me not as worried about like dropping below a rate that we want to be at.

Let's have a little pipeline.

I think I mean who knows, you never know until the season closes.

It's looking like we're I'm not like discouraged so far.

Um, and then uh Faith, you're asking, like, you know what?

I I have some kind of like general questions that more in like the nebulous space of like food access that I have questions to.

So one of them is we have leftover veg in a market.

A lot of times, like, so there's a gleaning organization, some sort of food rescue cleaning organization that will come by, and there's a lot in Boulder County.

So there's a lot locally, there's a lot we've we've been reached out to by many people that are like, hey, can we be the people that come by and kind of like get the space to like grab leftover veggies from farmers and then bring them to someone that's distributing that?

Um I have been privy to what Fort Collins is doing, which the city has actually funded some of that food access effort, so they're paying farmers 60% of that retail cost for those vegetables to get distributed um into back into kind of like that redistribution system.

So I've been trying to get somebody to pay us anything, 15% just to get a foot in the door of like we want our farmers to be compensated for their super super hard work in some capacity for leftover vegetables for whatever.

Um so that's one thing that I'm looking for, just if you like I don't know if that's a city funded effort, that's how it goes down in Fort Collins.

I've been trying to talk with more private some of the organizations that are they do big private fundraising efforts very successfully to say like, hey, can you put a budget aside for this?

Most of them are like that doesn't really work because there's tons of vegetables that come out of Walmart and King Supers, and like we just don't need to pay for vegetables from the farmers market.

It's great if we get them for free.

We can come by and get them for free.

And so it hasn't worked out yet, but I'm still uh holding out to try to find some liquid.

I mean, you know, if I've got access every Sunday to some veggies and fruits and stuff that I can then turn into things that I can buy at a discount and turn into something that like I can't afford it at yeah regular prices.

I mean, obviously, but if it matches your wholesale prices, price.

I mean, we'd be down if we're doing something like that.

And I don't know why.

I mean, it gives most restaurants the opportunity to have special, you know, or something like that based on whatever you pull from the market.

Yeah.

Uh route, we used to do it with um waves of grain.

You know, they would come on Thursdays and set up and then whatever they have left, I would buy off of them and sell them at the end of the week.

So that's probably an option.

Cool.

Yeah, I love that.

I think also that's what Breck does.

They just got a farmer's market.

The reason they're getting farmers to drive up to Breckenridge, it's because they say we'll buy the restaurants up here, want a farmers market so bad that we'll float anything y'all need at the end of the day, basically.

So and I mean they can afford it, right?

Like it's no big deal for a different economic situation for sure, but uh it's just interesting to know the different ways that people are kind of like drawing those folks.

I mean, we have a lot of brick people here, but we do have the other side too, you know.

And so it's just making sure that that we're being intentional about making about including you know, getting everybody to play together, like the everybody should be there at the same time doing the same thing.

Ty, you mentioned or you asked earlier about is there any program to let people buy groceries for somebody else, right?

Yeah, maybe that's the model.

Maybe it's collecting donations through a QR code to fund the purchase of the leftovers to then do Sister Carmen, right?

Or whatever.

Yeah, I mean, so there's gotta be a way.

I just I I know that I just know that if you ask this community, they generally show up, you know, for things that make sense, especially for other folk, other people that need, you know.

And I will say part of the part of these things is like looking for external partners because we run slow.

I don't have that much organizational clout outside of like operating you know, two admin days a week, a prep day in around two markets, and so like we do that because we get a divert costs elsewhere.

Um, also just because that's the way the model works out for us.

But so like additional organizational things, I'm always like, man, that would be so cool if we had that, but we'd have to like it's just beyond like my capacity for a weed to be that's organized restaurants.

Let's do this, let's do that.

But yeah, no, I think that's that's awesome.

So in Port Collins, it's a city funded program, and the food stays in the community.

Is that how it works?

Yeah, it goes to food rescues.

So basically, like their food rescue does whatever distribution, you know, a food rescue does to organizations of need or people in need.

Um, but as far as I understand, it's a city run organization.

Okay, but it's something that I'm also trying to do here.

So do you have a company that picks up extra food now?

We're not right now.

People have, and I've asked around, and people are people all have their individual ways of not having waste within their farms.

But it's convenient if it can happen on site on Sundays.

And if they had like at least they were getting some compensation, it would probably they'd be more likely to be like, yeah, sure, please take the rest of it.

Do you think with the farmers?

Yeah.

Okay.

And if it was 60%, they'd be over the moon.

And that's a super super good compensation model.

And that's not what we're expecting.

But yeah.

So that's one thing.

A lot of people are doing Denver markets.

They don't collect sales tax on groceries.

So people came here and they were like, what?

But farmers in particular.

They're like talking, and we'll see what happens year over year.

I'm guessing it's a non-issue.

They just pass it along to the consumers.

It's like tier.

Yeah.

But just keeping that in mind, like for this group, that's one thing that people have talked about.

They talked about on day one.

And I was like, I don't really think about that to be honest with you.

Because I've always just kind of been in Denver World.

And then Boulder County, their uh licensing for food tents is like crazy.

Hefty.

Yeah.

Crazy high 5x, 10, like it's crazy, it's like way higher than that.

And that's probably the other block for folks that want to do the market, you know, 800% fee.

Afford your fee, the fee they have to pay to be able to be there is more than your fee.

It's more than your or could be more than your fee.

Yeah, it's huge.

Don't apply to everybody or just the prepared food paid foods.

I wonder if we could have some sort of like micro grant program associated with the farmers market so that like vendors could apply if they couldn't afford the fees or they needed like you know better access.

Yeah.

And that's one thing.

We're we're hoping to do an internal grant for like in the future.

We're not we like we haven't laid a plan on that yet, but that's one thing that we've also talked about.

Is like having a couple spots where we just have vendors be able to um come for no fees.

And maybe we could help you with the funding as well as them administrative.

Yeah.

Be cooling partner for the administrative process.

And I'm not at home.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Are there any final questions?

I know we're running um a bit long on time, but this is amazing, and and I think it's such important information.

So I assume we could also follow up with Peter if we yeah.

Um I just want to thank Peter so much for coming here.

It uh from my own city job, it was a big deal to be able to get a farmer's market back here, and the and the the brand and event that Peter has created is incredible.

Um, and I've heard such great things from our community, and so um we're really excited that he's interested in continuing to do this and excited to continue the conversation with the DDA and also the city about how we can best support you.

For sure, cool, thank you.

Yeah, um, yeah, one thing to note is I am super accessible via email.

Uh so if y'all ever have any issues like traffic control situation or parking issues that y'all are dealing with, like I'm happy to troubleshoot those because I really do like we worked with all the public bug road businesses that we were directly butt up against to try to put access gaps and whatever people need it, like we try to make happen.

We definitely have a vested interest in keeping the small business community happy.

Um that's my background, you know, running retail, so definitely know just just a quick I'm just curious with the Flat Irons Church.

Are you getting any positive or negative feedback from them about the traffic?

Nah, crickets, yeah.

We met with them earlier and they were like, I mean, it is what it is.

And I was like, all right, see you later.

Bye.

Um, and I haven't heard anything since created up for their own traffic.

Great.

Thank you.

We appreciate it.

We appreciate it.

And uh thanks for coming with three kids at home.

Yeah, so no problem.

We're saying two of them get jealous.

I know.

I was trying to find an updated picture on a good one, so I was like, I need to take a picture.

It's like why just the baby in the picture.

Yeah, that was just our first.

We just we were wearing you know, a collar and some reason.

Now it's just the only thing goes or yeah, that's right.

That's right.

Um, thanks again.

Are you guys gonna keep meeting?

Yep.

Okay.

Should I leave?

Yes.

Cool.

See y'all.

Don't run.

Um second agenda item is the approval of an intergovernmental agreement with the Lafayette Urban Renewal Authority.

Great.

Um, all right.

So we as you know, we have done a lot of foundational things in our first meeting with an intergovernmental agreement with the city.

Um, and so this is the one that we are um considering tonight for an IGA with Laura.

I'm going to go through the framework of the agreement, which includes administrative support, additional funding, the parking lot leases, and then Laura has some existing economic development agreements and loans that are going to be repaid.

And talk about next steps, questions and discussions, some motion language.

So this is the time where we actually approve it.

So for administrative support, the IGA talks about that the city, as you know, the city IGA talks about that there is going to assign an executive director to cover that role.

And that is me, which you approved, and I report to the city manager, and I also report to the DDA board.

The Laura IGA with the DDA talks about Laura will cover that administrative costs through this first year.

So we haven't had to pay anything for this role.

That's one thing within the IGA talks about is there's the startup phase.

Laura's going to wrap up some things and cover the executive director cost.

For additional funding, this is the $2 million, which I talked about during the budget presentation last time.

And so Laura wanted to provide a framework for how this funding could be spent without being too prescriptive of saying like this amount of money needs to go to this.

So within that, uh they want uh the DDA to prioritize the administrative fee.

And we negotiated with the city, that's in our IGA with the city that there will be a reduced fee with a ramp up period for those first five years, understanding that we're having modest increment.

Um the Laura is also gonna be reassigning the parking lot leases at a future meeting to the DDA and taking over that program.

Um I'm a side note, excited that we just um through the city did a parking management study that I received a draft of today, which looks at what our existing um parking stock is, including these parking lots, what will the demand be at future build-out based on what we think our new zoning will be, and where are there areas that we could strategically look at keeping parking lots or adding additional parking lots.

And so um, while we look at our parking lot program, and um I know Director Rogers has talked about wanting to just do an audit of what those leases are and thinking about how we take those moving forward.

This will be a really cool thing to use that as a basis of strategy.

So we have that.

Um, and so there is funding within Laura to continue that program.

Um and then these last two buckets of small business support and district support.

Um, this is where they are essentially saying we you have to pay the fee, continue the parking lot program.

But with small business support and district support, you all are gonna know what's best and how to allocate that based on the plan of development and your work plan.

And so it roughly comes out to be around 300,000 per year for those core services of creating a grant program, um, assistance, uh, marketing, farmers market holiday lights.

And so that can all be covered through the the Laura um funding.

So it doesn't seem like we're we're still open for business and we'll we're still uh doing those amenities that and services that everyone's used to um and so that $2 million is still we're finalizing what exactly that amount will be, and that's just based on final accounting that we need to do with Laura.

Um and we're very close to understanding what that is, and so if anything, there might be a tranche one and tranche two of that funding, but it's roughly gonna be close to that two million.

So the IGA talks about there will be a final accounting, um, and we'll figure that out.

So for the parking lot leases, as I was just mentioning, we have three active agreements with unique terms and some renewal uh automatically.

And so with this reassignment, we'll have the opportunity to kind of have that fresh set of eyes.

Why does that say 11?

Did I what did I say?

You said three.

Oh my god, 11.

That's 11.

Okay.

Sorry.

It is getting late.

I was like, uh, if it's binary, that is no math.

No.

Too late for that.

Thank you.

That was a test, and you guys were all listening.

I didn't catch it.

All right.

So we have 11 active agreements, all with unique terms.

Laura typically provided routine maintenance such as snow removal, line striping, and pot poll repair.

There was only two leases where we paid a fee, a lease fee.

One is the um Chase Bank parking lot, which we will no longer have to do.

And then the second one is the Lafayette Florist, which um I spoke to Stephen Tebow and just let him know that we may or may not be continuing that lease because it's vacant, and um we if they have an active user in the future, then we might want to continue it.

So those are the two that we previously were paying a nominal fee for.

So Laura's gonna in this IGA talks about Laura re-assigning it to it, and then we have the opportunity to audit them.

And then this is also an interesting thing is you know, we can think about when we take over these leases about how we want to add maybe additional bike parking or EV opportunity.

So having this program is um exciting just to think about how we want to use it in the future.

Is there also the opportunity to not have 11 agreements with unique terms and hundred percent?

It's a really predecessor was really good at negotiating deals.

Some may say, some may not say.

Um, but all of them had different terms.

This would be a great opportunity just to have a this is our program.

Are you interested in coming into it?

Okay.

Thank you for adding that point.

Yeah.

So we'll have the opportunity to do that as part of the reassignment.

Um so for loan repayments, um, Laura has provided loans through different economic development agreements to encourage private investment and growth.

And um, this one it makes sense that each one has their own unique terms because each project is different.

And so um the two projects that we have outstanding loans for is one is for um the Foxglove and the Yard Adventure project.

Laura provided a $750,000 loan, um, but $600,000 of that is eligible for debt forgiveness, basically turning to a grant.

So $150 is going to be repaid over time over a 10-year period.

And then the other one is for 210 South Public Road.

This is um for the little herbal apothecary is currently, and that was an agreement with uh Faith's uh property owner and landlord, and so that's gonna be repaid over a five-year period.

And so you can see just that funding breakdown of it's not a ton of money, but this agreement just says don't put into the Laura's bank account it put it into the DD bank account and reinvest it.

So um it's a pretty um straightforward IGA and it's based off of the IGA.

Um, our city attorney was also the city attorney for Golden, and so they did a very similar IGA when their um urban renewal was transferring funds and these services to their DDA.

So we have some foundation for why we're doing it this way.

Um so uh Laura approved the IGA last month at their August 12th meeting, um, and they've been working on this um for a number of months about how they wanted to structure this and set up the DDA for success and not having having it be very flexible.

Um, and so if Laura or sorry, I'm sorry, it's the same Laura.

If the DDA approves the agreement, then council will approve the DDA budget, including the Laura transfer of funds at their October 28th meeting.

So, oh I didn't update the motion language.

Um, there's motion language, blah blah blah, uh in your packet.

Um, so I'm happy to turn it over to um, and I'll update it in a second, but I'm happy to turn it back over to Chair Kagan um for any questions um and discussion.

Are there any questions about the um intergovernmental agreement?

Uh some dirt any question comments.

So we move for a I make a motion to approve it, but doesn't have to be specific.

One one second.

You're gonna be so amazed by how quick I can do this.

Okay.

There you go.

I moved to approve.

Oh man, I was so like that's not right.

Okay.

Don't show us behind the curtain.

I know to approve an intergovernmental agreement with the Lafayette Urban Renewal Authority.

Is there a second?

I'll second that.

All in favor?

Uh any closing motion passes.

Did you vote?

I did.

Okay, so then it was a quiet delay.

Uh okay, so time moved.

Okay, great.

Everyone's paying attention.

Okay.

Congratulations.

Yeah, there you go.

All right.

So uh the other item we have is approval of the recommended 2025 to 2026 uh Lafayette Downtown Development Authority budget to city council.

Um, so um tonight you're gonna, as you know, I introduced this at our previous meeting.

And so we'll be looking at our budget to recommend to city council.

And so I'm gonna be going through that budget process, talk about the revenues, expenses, um, key outcomes initiatives, um, next sex and discussion, and then we'll um make a uh we'll have a motion for this.

Um, and um I will also highlight what has changed since the last time, and it's very minor just based on some of the discussion that we had.

So as you know, I introduced it in the last meeting.

Um, council will have two readings of this.

Um, so I'll introduce it at the October 14th meeting after tonight, and then they'll approve it through a resolution on October 28th.

So for um revenue, I wanted to.

This is something that I didn't show last time, but I wanted to step back to show how the city is doing overall in sales tax.

And so um, you can see this table from 2021 to where we're headed.

Um, we are just one piece of the overall sales tax, and so for 2025 sales tax citywide, overall it's been flat.

You can see that there was a huge boost of sales tax um after COVID in 2021 and 2022.

We saw that within this area as well.

Um, but it has flattened, and we're looking at um, you know, it was down last year, and we're seeing very small growth.

And so I wanted to just highlight this that we are just one piece, and being able to have the DDA is a really important piece that we will have a dedicated authority and revenue stream to focus on the the downtown, particularly because when things are flat or low for the city generally, that means that they're gonna have a you know a hard time making decisions, and so it's important for us just to think about how we fit into the overall picture.

Um, and I will be welcoming Heather at um, you know, twice a year just to give some overall um uh forecasting about how the city's doing, and I think it'll just help us make smarter decisions about what is our role in partnership with the city with the overall uh economic health.

So a lot of these slides haven't changed from last time, so feel free to jump in.

I'm kind of just gonna breeze through them.

Um, as you know, we're funded through tax increment financing our property and sales tax.

Um we just went over, you know, that some of our funding for this next year is gonna be the the Laura budget with two million dollars.

And then looking ahead, this is the first year that we're gonna be collecting um TIF.

And so for our revenue for 2026, we're gonna have that property tax tip, our sales tax TIFF, fund balance interest, interest from that uh Laura funding in a bank account, and then also miscellaneous revenue from those economic development agreements being repaid.

So for property tax TIFF, you know, this is based off of historical trends that we've seen within the urban renewal authority.

Um we looked at uh during the Old Town Tomorrow project what we think potential TIFP revenue could be for property tax and saw that there was a pretty solid uh ratio of base growth of 60% versus increment growth of 40%.

And so we we mapped that out, and that's how we um our basing off of our property tax revenue for this next year.

The base is gonna be set this year, and it's gonna be run through the Boldy County Assessor's Office.

So this is a budget, this is our best guest, and we'll actually see what we get once we actually get the assessment through the county.

Um, and that that overall growth assessment that we looked at assumed, you know, there's probably some info that's going to happen over time.

There is probably gonna be some economic cycles and downturns.

Um, and the growth that we saw with Lura is probably not the same growth that we're gonna see with the DEA.

And so in this budget, it just shows what we think 2026 is happening, but we are looking at forecasting out about what that could be long term.

So for the sales tax TIFF, um we are again basing it off of the trends that we've seen in the past, but also looking at what is the city doing overall in sales tax, are people spending money?

Um, and so we I'm I always approach budgeting pretty conservatively, and if we do better, that's great, but I I don't want to sign us up for a bunch of things and realize that the revenue's not coming in.

And so we in we're seeing that we'll likely have a 2.5 increase in sales tax um with our base being at one uh 1.75 million.

And we've also heard, you know, in the working with the finance staff that it's probably gonna be closer to four based on what we're seeing in Old Town, but I'd rather, like I said in the last meeting, just take this conservative approach and just see how we do.

Four percent.

Four percent.

Okay, yep.

So for um fund balance interest, again, fund balance is like a savings account or a checking account.

It's uh it's a cushion, um, and so we'll be getting interest on that.

And then again, the miscellaneous revenue, we're gonna be seeing some of the um the loan repayments.

So for our expenses, um, you know, what's in this budget?

So for our expenses, um, you know, what's in this budget, it's based on our plan of development, but also um based on the workshop that we did with uh Puma earlier this summer and that work plan.

And so um, we did that, we have our plan development, right?

With our our key priority areas, then we look at what are what we were trying to focus on in that workshop, and we have our work plan, which we reviewed last time, and now this is the budget that um complements that.

So, again, with some just um you know what I like to kind of set the table with this is a budget doesn't authorize us to do these things that we're interested in doing, it doesn't authorize me to spend those funds independently.

I can only spend those funds and we can only spend those funds based on our bylaws, the city's purchasing policy, the executive director resolution, or through DDA approved motions.

And so if we're um if we're interested in doing a grant program and we've allocated funding for this, I'm gonna come back later to approve the grant programming and um put that funding towards it.

Um and you'll see that this budget, you know, we try to have buckets of funding.

So when opportunities pop up, we're able to respond to them and have some funding available.

And um, you know, as part of our work plan, not every initiative has a financial contribution.

Sometimes we are supporting something through policy coordination or staff time alone.

So for um the 2025 expense budget, so the remaining of this year, um, we have funding for repairs and maintenance related to snow removal.

Um, this also is kind of a is it gonna snow a lot this year, but we have funding available for it.

Umperational administrative, um just related to the county treasurer fees, and then also just operating supplies, and then we do have a bucket in here of $50,000.

Um, I plan to come back to the DDA in October to introduce some potential grant programs, and we could approve those as early as November.

And so if there's a project that is available and wants to move forward, um, this budget allows us to move quickly on that.

If we don't spend it, that's fine, it just gets rolled over.

So for 2026, um it's helpful to kind of see what those big ticket items are, and so um we have uh downtown development, advertising and marketing, professional services, streetscape, and cultural arts and community events are kind of those big core buckets.

So I'm gonna go through what this budget achieves with it.

Um so for um the expense budget um for the administrative fee, operational and administrative, and then repairs and maintenance.

So that administrative fee is um just seven percent of our budget.

This is that reduced fee to pay to be in this this room for my time.

Um I one thing that has changed is I did increase our um operational and administrative costs, and this is because one of the things that we talked about in the last meeting was wanting to have quarterly networking events, um, and so this provides more funding for that, and we also have our new logo and want to do more outreach related to our who we are and how can we help you?

And so I I um put additional funds in for this as well, and then also the parking lot program.

So for um streetscape, um, this includes downtown holiday lights.

Um, and then I also included um we've heard a lot about bike racks, and we've talked about um within our work plan and also the plan of development, the up, you know, if those opportunities present itself that would be interesting in looking at them.

I have a small amount of additional funding that I put in for that.

Um, and uh so we'll have that if something pops up.

Um, but as I mentioned last time for professional services, I think that we can um in 2026 get a designer on board to look at new wayfinding, which was a big thing that came out of our workshop and our work plan, and then also I'll just have some additional funding in here for special district consultants if we need to tap other resources.

Is this the bucket that for instance we wanted to update the audience of Dezval Plaza?

That would come out of this bucket.

That would probably come out of downtown development.

Yep.

Um, so for um cultural arts and community events, and then also advertising and marketing.

I do have allocated funding for potential farmers market um partnership, which we'll be talking about at a future meeting.

Um, also this idea of doing a creativity and cultural arts microgrant program, and then um also in our October meeting, we're gonna be talking about uh how we want to move forward with district marketing, so staff or consultants so have funding available for that.

And then for downtown development, um, this is uh this will end up being a really big catch-all bucket, but the intent of this is investing um both in the physical uh realm, the public realm of downtown, but also the um policies and programs behind the scenes, and so um we I have funding here to create a new small business support grant program, um, and then also exploring uh how we can support pathways to ownership program.

Um, but this bucket also is tend to is meant to be flexible.

So if we do as something pops up, for instance, like we want to change the the awnings or the sun's shades at Festival Plaza, that's something that could be come out of this.

So um, some this is your budget.

So um the the key outcomes and initiatives is you know, establishing who we are as the DDA, getting a small business grant program off the ground, district marketing, begin design for wayfinding, support the farmers market, continue and audit our public parking lot program, holiday lights, and then launch a new creativity and culture microgrant.

So I have um the proposed budget here, it's also in your packet, and happy to turn it over to um Chair Kagan for any questions.

Are there any questions to executive director Keating about budget?

Comments.

Thank you for the clear presentation.

Great.

Yeah, it's very clear.

And I just checked, I have the correct motion language up here too.

We were gonna stall for you.

Is there somebody wants to make a motion?

I'll move to approve on the recommended 2025-2026 Lafayette Downtown Development Authority budget to city council.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor of approving the recommended 2025-2026 Lafayette Downtown Development Authority budget.

City Council.

Any opposed.

Okay.

Motion passes.

Great.

Um, it's lovely to meet you all.

Thank you guys to hear you.

Moving on to upcoming meetings and staff updates.

I'll turn it over to executive director Keating.

All right, so I have a couple updates.

Um, for our meeting look ahead, I just wanted to remind everyone that we are rescheduling um our Thursday or sorry, our regular October meeting due to the Jewish holiday of um Sukut.

And so we're gonna be meeting on October 16th instead.

Um, it's on your calendars, and we've already uh noticed it.

So if you for some reason don't have the correct meeting invite, just let me know and I'll resend that out.

And so for that one, um, I'll be giving a presentation about the 701 Pocket Park, which is the pocket park that is gonna be going on Kim Bark in public.

Um we've done a lot of outreach.

Um that's a joint effort led through economic development in the parks um team through the city.

And so I'll be giving an update about the outreach that we've heard, um, share some conceptual designs at that point, but also we can just open it up about how the DDA might want to support this project in general through programming or um just provide feedback as this champion of old town and this district.

Um, there's different ways that we can kind of influence the outcome of this to make sure that we're representing um just those voices in old town, the business community, and also the adjacent residents.

So I'll be giving an update on that project.

Um I hope to be able to introduce potential grant programs to you all relate to small businesses and assistance programs to get feedback, and then we can um kind of have this be an iterative process to um make sure that we're um thinking about what should be included in that.

So I think that that will be a conversation through a couple meetings.

Um we also have to do uh an annual report every single year, and so um I'll come with what I think a framework could be like, and then also we'll have um plenty of time to have that marketing strategy discussion.

That I think might be the first thing that we do.

That way we can um scale those other presentations accordingly.

Um some other updates.

We have a DDA logo, which is very cool and makes us feel like we're we're we're growing up.

Um a majority of you all love this logo.

Um, but what some next steps with this is now we need to be able to share that this is who we are, and so from a um asset standpoint, I'll be working with Emmy to come up with brand guidelines for about how to use this, and that really will just be behind the scenes sort of thing.

Um we're gonna translate this logo into Spanish as well, which is really exciting.

So we can have um all Spanish materials, including our logo, um, finalize some templates and then uh get business cards, but because surprisingly people still ask for those.

Um, and so I'll I'll need to be able to have those.

Um we do the RFID after that.

Tom?

I was just gonna say I uh I voted for this logo and I love it.

There's only today I realized how similar it looks to the Google Maps logo.

Yeah, but I don't know that we care.

I think uh the pin is something that we see a lot, you know, a same same with the the sunburst was one of the low options, and a Sun Burst is a very classic logo as well.

Um so it's making it our own, but I appreciate that.

We like it if it's all comes after us, it puts Laffia on the map.

Yeah, see and desist.

They could pay us for the all those disposals.

Yeah, um so I also have an update on bike parking.

Um, we've heard a lot about it through public comment.

It's something that's talked about in our plan of development.

Um, for the past, I don't know, year.

Um, economic development, public works and sustainability have been looking about opportunities to add additional bike parking in old town.

It's actually really difficult because our sidewalk widths aren't that wide, and there are um constraints with site triangles.

So if you're at an intersection and you want to turn, you don't want to have something that helped that blocks um being able to see pedestrians or cyclists or other vehicles, and um, so it's been very difficult.

I didn't realize how how constrained we were in our old town.

That said, um economic development and sustainability are interested in partnering with each other to pilot a bike corral.

Um, this is a mock-up of what it could look like, and actually taking over um uh a parking spot, but in this opportunity, there is a a driveway cut right near Tip Top Savory Pies that is not being used because it's not for vehicle access that could actually be used for this, and so um sustainability is looking into grant opportunities to fund it, and so there could be an opportunity for us to see how we want to partner with this.

We don't have to partner with it um through a financial contribution, but do we want to help with the branding?

Um, or are there certain metrics that we want to be looking at?

It like how do we want to play into piloting another piece of infrastructure in Old Town?

Um, so um Lizzie um Bocan, who is our sustainability director is gonna try to find some uh a grand opportunity for us, and then I'll be keeping this group um updated about how we want might want to interplay with this and see if it's successful.

Um, but it's it's really cool, and this is just one of the mock-ups of it.

There's also different corrals that uh can fit longer bikes, which we're seeing now, those different cargo bikes, and so this could be a really cool opportunity to just try something new, and um, it's very easy to install with a couple bolts into the city street, which uh Public Works is on board with.

So anticipating this being large enough for the e-bikes that are really giant ones.

I think that we could probably fit one e-bike and then a couple of regular bike stalls.

And so if this works well, we can see how we want to maybe put this in other areas on the street, but also even in parking lots.

Um, so it's it's cool, and um I'm excited to see if it works.

Okay, yeah.

And for those, are they is lighting included with them?

No, but we would probably want to cite it near somewhere where there's a street light.

Yeah, and I I think it's gonna be one of the non-starters if you can't see what you're doing in that spot.

Yeah, scratch or get tangled up in there.

Totally.

Yeah, and we want people to be able to see you when you're in entering and exiting it.

Yeah, and the little people running around trying to get in the cargo bike.

Yeah.

Um, so then the this one, um, I am looking to kind of this might be a longer discussion if we need to, but I wanted to at least um update you all.

Um, Suzanne, who is from Particulars and Lynn, who's an artist in town, um, approached me about this idea of launching a second Friday's campaign.

And so they want to figure out how we can bring people to Old Town on the off season of Art Night Out, so from October through April.

Um, you know, they originally thought of this idea of calling it Art Night In, but they want it to be much larger than just art.

So if a restaurant wanted to have specials or a business wanted to do a collaboration, um, it could uh be other than art.

Um, and so this idea is to have, you know, if you're a resident or or customer, I know that every second Friday of every month there's something going on in Old Town, and so um they did have a meeting with some.

I don't know what the only way I can think about it is like heavy hitters.

They had like a really incredible meeting with a lot of creative people in Old Town.

And me.

Yeah, you were there.

I saw the sign and sheet.

Um and what they said is there were so many great ideas that it got to it wasn't focused, and so there was idea of like, do we turn into like a big R night out?

Do we need a band?

Do we need to hire someone?

And Suzanne and Lynn were like, we just want to be able to like promote something that four businesses signed up for this, then it would be great.

And so um they asked, would the DDA be interested in helping support this concept, like through marketing?

And there's definitely different ways to scale this, and the and you know, Faith also spoke to um to them, and the the thing that I came up with is if you're not gonna have a dedicated person running this, how do you create like a plug and play packet?

And that's likely through marketing.

And so um, you could do some sort of promotional kit where you have a logo and you you figure out how do you want to talk about it, and um have social media like assets already designed, and then we could have an advance page on our website to just show what everything's happening.

Um, so this might be a much larger discussion, but I just wanted to kind of open it up about are you all interested in this sort of idea?

And is this something that we want to help champion?

Um, or do we feel like this is um this might be too big for what we're interested in right now?

Who's anchoring it?

So Particulars has done a second Fridays like gallery reception is what they've shared, and so they want to be the ones to kind of like organize it without having to be to be the organizing.

Yes, so we we did a thing in when I was still in Denver, it still actually goes now.

It's called uh the first Friday, it was a jazz hop during the during the winter months, um, and it was jazz hop because it was welted and it's like the jazz area, but the idea was all of the uh participating businesses on the street or in the area, they all had something going on on that Friday, and then like you said, it was all brought together through marketing, so everyone was responsible for their own pieces and their own thing, but it was a unified effort to get people they called it a ha because you were jumping to all the different locations.

So I mean it I think there's some opportunity there to be able to help.

Yeah, and you know, another another thing that we do now, which at least for me as a resident, is like community hangout night with E Simpson.

I know that every single Thursday like you guys are doing something, there's gonna be also a food truck at odd 13.

Jonathan from Clydescope's gonna be doing something.

Public wine has their wine tasting, and so it's like almost like muscle memory of just like it's Thursdays, let's go see what's happening.

And so without trying to make it into uh art night out, which is like a huge event.

This idea is like how do we just get people?

It's second Fridays through October through April, each business could be trying to do something.

I think it can um having been at the meeting, which was um it was positive, but it was also contentious, and so my recommendation to the DDA at this point would be more along the lines of how do we support things like this without specifically deciding um because I think there's some unresolved issues, and and I wouldn't want it to turn into a situation where it's sort of the DDA's stamp of approval.

I mean, I mean there's fantastic people involved, there's a ton of creative energy and strong ideas, and and I think people left that meeting feeling like there needed to be additional conversations before it was agreed upon, so that even I don't think we should be the organizers of it, but even I like the idea of something that's a sort of plug and play way of supporting things like this without us having to sign off in one way or the other because I I think I think there's a lot of unresolved questions in this and a lot of different visions about directions it could take.

Yeah, and like there's there's two different ways that we can do this.

Like we have a consultant, right?

Through Cone.

We could help create these plug and play assets, or we could say we're gonna create a micro grant program, you can apply to get someone to do this.

So it's kind of figuring out like there's this idea, they've approached us, they're seeing if we're interested.

What do we need?

Is there interest?

Do you want me to bring back con like ideas?

Should we meet with them before we don't know like doesn't need to be out or washed out a little more before we yeah, and it's more so like are we interested in engaging in this is really what I'm coming to all tonight.

Yeah, yeah, I think we're curious, yeah.

Cool.

Yeah, but I think I think there needs to be some kind of a presentation, like we've seen tonight.

What what is the concept?

What are their goals?

What is success look like?

Yeah.

And how can we help?

Uh I think you I guess my first question is where's this fit in our strategic action plan?

Which which what is this?

And this is kind of I mean it could potentially be what I was a little concerned about is like the what's uh this is the cultural the cultural piece, yeah.

So and I see the second bullet there is for build businesses to offer specials, events, promotions, and collaborations.

So where does that actually land in what we're promoting?

I I don't want to lose track of it, and I don't think the DDA should be the ultimate stamper on it, but I I guess we need to know where it lands.

I mean, I can maybe that's what the presentation supports exactly.

The businesses are considering doing something, we're here to try to support the businesses.

So if it makes sense and there's some way that we can help it, you know, then I think it would make sense to do, but like I said, it sounds like it still has to be out to do for yeah.

Are they stuck with the second Friday name?

Because that's no, I mean I think they sure they wanted second Fridays because it's one second Fridays, I don't think it has to be night out is and then Lucille's got the first Friday, so yeah, yeah.

I don't want to I don't want to confuse people with something that's similar to something else, but not yeah, no, I mean so to reflect on those points, like our action plan talks about supporting our the district, supporting businesses, bringing people throughout it, and also supporting community-based events, right?

Um it we also talked in our uh uh workshop that we don't want to be the leader in these things, we want to be the supporter.

Yeah, um, so it sounds like we're all pretty curious about it, and so um, you know, I came here tonight to say, are we interested?

It's also super helpful having Joanna who was there, um, provide some like additional context about there was a lot of ideas and maybe some unfinished conversations.

And so, how about at our um at an upcoming meeting we we bring that crew in to see that'd be great what they what they might be interested in and then have that like larger discussion?

I just want to add, I think this is a really good way to extend through the winter um the activation of the downtown area in a in a in the way that Art Night Out does in the off season and it and it kind of brings together our interest in the uh the connections piece, like making sure people can get there year-round right for good reason period done.

I feel like just as a small business owner opportunities like this can be really supportive, and I think for me, it seems like it falls more into like small business support in a way, because if it's like the businesses are running promotions or having events helping to support the marketing effort feels like a really simple way that we could be supportive, especially because we have a marketing team or potentially a marketing, you know, staff member or something.

Um it's sounded like I in speaking with them.

I feel like they they're just like we love Lafayette, we we love the businesses, and we want to like help them kind of do work through the winter because they had been getting feedback that people had a harder time getting like but feet like in the door during the winter months.

Um but when they called the meeting, they didn't have a clear vision.

So it's almost like way too many cooks in the kitchen all at once because like everybody's gonna have an opinion if you leave it open-ended.

So I feel like trying to get them to sort of hone in more on like what their intention is might be helpful.

Um in general, I feel like the idea has potential, and it's really just about like getting people to come to Old Town and spend money in the businesses, is the sense that I get, which is like, yeah, let's do that.

Great.

So this was super helpful feedback.

I'll figure out how to plug this into one of our upcoming meetings, and we just can continue the conversation and figure out like is this something that we want to help with and what is the role and is there a financial contribution?

Yeah, cool.

Um real quick, I sent out that uh feedback survey, which will help me just make sure that we have a pretty um productive and focused conversation.

So you have until September 19th to do that.

Um yeah, that'll be helpful for me to give some options.

Did you I can look back at my email, but did you distribute the presentation that Cole gave?

Or can you?

Um I can I did that previously, but let me re-attach that to the email so it's top of inbox.

Refresh my memory on what we said.

Yep, great point.

And what is our timing on that?

We're gonna talk about this in October.

No cone.

Oh cone we have on board till the end of the year.

Okay.

Yep.

And we can but based on our process, like we have to obviously start talking about it before the end of the year in order to in October.

I hope to get some like clear consensus about what sort of model we want to look at, and then we can figure out different options and um funding pieces, and um we can be flexible with do we want to continue engaging with Cone for a short period of time?

Um so I think every single option has different um routes, yeah.

Choose your own adventure with marketing, yeah.

Love those books.

Yeah.

Um and then lastly, I just wanted to highlight some general business um support.

So uh the city has a partnership with Workforce Boulder County, and we're gonna be doing a workshop on October 8th at the um the Lockett Public Library.

We the their uh the city sorry, there's lots of we've the city is doing a working hour for that.

Yeah, that's a good thing.

Yes, so general city updates.

Okay.

Um and so this could be a really great opportunity if you have a business, um, also those who are listening, or if you know other businesses that need help getting just uh workforce in general or trainings to learn what uh workforce Boulder County does um and how you might want to engage with them, and then also the city has um a dedicated contract with Boulder Small Business Development Center, and we do different workshops, and so there'll be one on October 9th about commercial leasing for small businesses, and then also we're gonna be having a lending panel conversation later in December.

That will probably be in superior, but also a really great opportunity to do peer-to-peer networking with businesses and also just learn about these different topics.

Where's the Word Force Boulder County workshop again?

The Lafayette Public Library.

Okay.

And then we also do a small business newsletter through the city's economic development team, and so we'll be doing some um promotions about these different uh opportunities, and it's also on the city website.

And if you're interested, creepy knows someone who's interested, wants to know more, they can email me.

Is Cone doing uh newsletter too?

Cone does a quarterly newsletter for Old Town Pacific, and then we have one that's small business focused for city in general.

Because I was thinking the more times people hear about this the better.

Yeah, but service to small businesses.

Totally.

Oh, I guess we're gonna be from uh Isabella Isabel about it.

Yeah, great.

It's working.

Yeah, no, but that's a good point, Tom, because I you know, I was just thinking as a head of a small business.

I I've done three or four of the SBDC workshops and they've been fantastic.

Yeah.

And on top of mind, yeah.

Yeah, and so the more small businesses that know about them, there's there's no downside.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, yeah.

Great.

Um, so I'll uh we're doing a lot of promotion about this, but I'll also send these dates to you in general.

And so if you have a neighboring business or property owner or someone who might be interested, you can also spread the word.

And those are all my updates.

Uh we move on to new business directors' reports.

Any directors have any updates?

There's a new business coming to the lumber yards in October.

Probably the goal is to get started on October 1st.

Uh probably not gonna happen.

It's probably gonna be mid to end of October.

Um, Ben and Samantha Anderson are opening what they're calling the craft place, where the general concept is you got snacks and drinks, and they bring you out a menu, almost restaurant style.

You pick a craft that you want to do, and then they bring you all the supplies and everything that you need to do that.

You have a reservation at the table, and then you can drink craft and drink and go home after.

So yeah, pretty exciting.

Are they gonna have a kitchen in there?

No, they're just gonna do, yeah, not nothing, nothing cooked.

And I don't I don't think they're doing liquor either.

I think it's just beer and wine.

Yeah.

We had our liquor license hearing together.

Nice.

Oh, did you?

Nice.

They're super super nice couple, so we're excited.

And uh that's coming up.

And you you you anticipate October.

Yeah, yeah.

They're getting in there on October 1st, and then there's you know, a few things they've got to get done in order to get the place ready for that use.

Um, but it shouldn't be too much because right now it's the gym.

Uh it's right there in that second unit, so it's where the golden life project is.

So it's gold.

Golden Life is moving into one of the um spaces.

I I'm like, where am I right now?

On South Boulder Road, right near um City Hall.

Oh so that's that's exciting to see them expand with a new business coming.

No, no, no, right near City Hall on South Boulder Road, like a like across the right.

Right, but I was like, we met in City Hall.

Yeah, um near across from City Hall on South Boulder Road.

right now it's the gym uh it's right there in that second unit so it's where the golden life project is so it's gonna map golden life is moving into one of the um spaces i'm I'm like where am I right now on South Boulder Road right near um City Hall um so that's that's exciting to see them expand with a new business coming no right near City Hall on South Boulder Road like a cross right now right wait a minute we're not in City Hall yeah um near across from City Hall on South Boulder Road yeah um and the mirror where the snow hut used to be where the BMW is next door okay yeah oh the bike person knows where the BMW is right uh and also next to the Muse yeah okay so right over there um and con is going to be doing some promotional stuff for them once they uh are up and running for the craft place the craft place yeah and so we'll do a a blog post and a um uh just some social media um and then also uh have them as the feature business on the website they should be sure to stop by the museum because our front desk staff do so much promoting of lumberyard businesses and E Simpson and all that kind of stuff so I think it'll be a natural fit for yeah yeah absolutely so that's exciting great yep we gotta put a wow on our balance sheet seriously can't go anywhere we love recommending you guys um any other director's reports or new business okay not yet that Thai restaurant that just opened up Calsoy's like no not yet I would recommend it's a I want to try that's pretty good I enjoyed it wait what where cow soy it's right you know where Fortune cookie used to be it's right it's this you mean the shock everything's happening yeah okay yeah I saw the sign yeah I saw the sign I'm excited it's good it's good yeah I would recommend giving it a try it's spicy good it's really hot does uh Khalida Grow have a uh clear girl um was uh delayed a little bit because of an excel transform that need to go in but they I think it went in and so they're they should be opening up soon which will be awesome and the optometrist um peak to peak is almost open too yeah great a lot of investment in all ten great well if there's no other new business um the time is thank you everyone the time is 805 we are at German thank you