Okay, I will call to order this meeting of the development committee.

Elaine, can we have a roll call?

Carlos Crawford?

Taylor Herman?

Here?

Here.

Kurt Ramsey?

Here.

Sean Sten.

Next on the agenda is the approval of the minutes.

Is there a motion to that effect?

So moved.

Second.

All the things.

Mm-hmm.

Say aye.

Aye.

All opposed, same sign.

Okay.

Today's business is a presentation on the proposed Veterans Memorial Plaza.

So I will I will start, but Logan Stang is our person on this.

He's been working with a designer to give us ideas in conjunction with the side of street extension project.

So there's a coordination effort going on there with the plazas that are showing up in that design and trying to really emphasize the need for looking at these in a way that potentially could accommodate the veterans memorial.

So that's what this conversation is going to be about tonight is can we accommodate a moving of the veterans memorial over to the plazas?

Logan will present that and then I'll have comments after.

Thank you, Jeff.

And I think what's what's important to start with this is you know, this was a concept that's put together.

There's a lot of things I think that would still need to be finalized as we get into more design work and we look at things, but there's a couple other efforts that play into this.

So not just the Veterans Memorial itself, but the daughters of the American Revolution reached out to all the cities in Delaware County about putting memorial installations, you know, honoring uh veterans from the Revolutionary War and finding a proper location for that.

So as we look towards that, as we look towards you know future improvements uh along Soyota Street and other areas of downtown, we wanted to take a look at some of these plazas, these spaces, the designs of them, and how they might work as part of a larger network to help connect and really create curated experiences all across downtown.

So when we start talking about the potential relocation of it, you know, we're looking at different portions of uh the downtown itself.

So not just bringing it out from Village Green, but finding ways to really elevate the space in which the Veterans Memorial would be placed, as well as finding opportunities to align some of these other efforts to really make that entire corridor more connected as not just a place of remembrance, but also being able to, you know, instill additional gathering spaces, you know, build on the future uh events that may take place on Soyota Street with the ability to close off a portion of that.

So looking at it from a lot of different angles as to really what are the purposes and intents for some of these plazas that you have.

So one of the things that as we look at the Soyota Street extension is, you know, while it's an important connector, it also starts to help shape different areas and points of interest within downtown.

So in particular, you start to have gateway features that could be along the major corridors, you have opportunities for anchors or destinations in between that.

So, you know, Grayson 750, you have the landscape feature that the city reached recently invested in to really spruce up that intersection, provide a little bit more vibrancy there.

Um this connection would also have plaza spaces that would be on Liberty, but that connects to a much larger area.

So not just looking in that Northeast quad, but as we start to look at different portions of the downtown district, what are other opportunities that we have and points that we could really create?

Um gateway features, destinations, anchors, so that again you have a larger network of not just public spaces but um attractions, entertainment, all sorts of options that relate back to downtown and encourage people to really walk and embrace all different areas of the district itself.

So as we start to take a closer look at Soyota Street, we know that there's a couple things that really dictate where the road connection is gonna be and what spaces we have to play with on both sides.

So you have that existing connection piece of Soyota Street to North Liberty.

As you extend that over, you know, one of the large focal points of that project is the addition of public parking that you have.

But within all of that, you start to have what's identified in these pink areas, are the plaza spaces, other areas along that corridor that would connect not just the shared use path, but could be other other um points of destination and really stand out as each of their own with a design with an intent and really a purpose that would then help build out into that larger network.

And I think an important aspect of all of this, like I had mentioned, is how do we connect and align all of these different features that we have within the district?

So you have the PAL the cemetery that's there.

How can we improve that access to the cemetery itself?

Really acknowledge that as a historic site within the district.

How can we take all of those different components of the existing veterans memorial and really make sure that they're brought in in a very thoughtful way, that we're carrying all those forward, and we're really looking for a way that we can just further elevate that memorial itself.

And then in addition, how can we incorporate some of these other components like the DAR Memorial and other factors that we're looking to expand upon within the downtown itself?

So with that, one of the things that we started with is really looking at a number of different studies that we can dive into.

We want to we want to explore a lot of options before kind of coming up with what could be a good foundational concept.

And there was three that were looked at in collaboration with Realm, who is the design firm that we've been working with to really marry all these components together.

The first one really looks at that, you know, kind of curve that gets created with the Soyota Street, and how to you how do you accent the different memorial elements and the plaza spaces as part of that?

So a lot of them are very open, not that dissimilar from what you might experience with the memorial in Village Green, but you still have a number of different areas.

You have a plaza space that's on North Liberty, you have a plaza space that would be on the Soyota Street extension, then you have one that's on the south side as well.

So all of those can interact with each other as well as connect to that primary corridor.

The next study started to look at how if we expanded some of those plaza spaces on both sides, what additional opportunities is that provide?

And one of the biggest things being are there ways that we can incorporate more green space, landscaping, open space, just other elements that can help soften different components of it and make them you know, just additional areas of reprieve, remembrance, to be able to sit down and really understand what's happening there, still part of the the rest of the community itself.

And then the third one looking again at if we now take some of those elements from the memorials, some different design features, can you actually frame these plazas in a different way so that you can better interact with them and engage, you know, not just necessarily having them as part of the uh of the design, but really incorporate it all around, so that somebody, you know, whether they're fully in the plaza or they happen to just be passing by, they can still interact with different components of it, and they can still acknowledge what is along this northern side of the road connection itself.

So, naturally, when you have a lot of different studies, there's different aspects of each one that you like and that you want to take forward.