All right, good evening everyone, and welcome to the Redwood City Council meeting of February twelfth.

I'd like to welcome everyone for joining us today.

We're continuing to offer in-person and remote options for our city council meetings.

However, due to recent and continued disruptions during public comment at open meetings throughout our region and state, we've modified our public comment procedures until further notice.

The city welcomes public comment on topics within the city subject matter jurisdiction, and this can be provided in person during the meeting or by email ahead of the meeting.

At this time, we are temporarily suspending public comments by Zoom.

We want to ensure that the city can continue to conduct the city's business in a manner that allows all residents to participate.

We continue to evaluate our public comment procedures and we'll share updates as necessary.

Comments that were received by 5 o'clock PM today may be read into the record by the city clerk.

Excuse me.

Lastly, if we have a high volume of public comment this evening, we may decrease the time allotted for each comment or limit the total time for public comment.org so that we can see your comments and they will be part of the meeting record.

I will now turn it over to our city clerk to call the roll.

Before we go into closed session, I'll ask the public clerk or city clerk if we have any public comment on the item.

Thank you, Mayor.

We do have one speaker card, and the speaker is Chris Robell.

Hi, uh good evening, Council.

Uh, just I don't have a lot of background on this, obviously, it's closed session, but to the extent this is uh a land acquisition purchase and we are going through tough financial times looking at tax increases for the community, et cetera.

I would urge um judicious consideration of this, whether this is needed.

I don't like it, I don't have a lot of details, but if this is Caltrain property, why are we doing it?

If it's for high speed rail, which seems kind of like a pie in the sky project that'll never happen, why are we doing it?

So we've got to really prioritize and do belt tightening like all the residents.

So again, um I might be totally off base, but if that's the if that's the topic, I would request um that you give it a firm no on that one.

Thank you.

And no further public comment, Mayor.

Thank you very much.

Council will adjourn into closed session.

We'll be back about hopefully forty-five minutes.

Thank you, everyone, for your patience.

Okay, thank you, everybody, for your patience.

Uh, the council has adjourned its closed session, it has come back into public section public session, and there was no reportable actions taken this evening during our closed session.

Thank you for your patience.

The fun part of our agenda is section number five, our presentations and acknowledgments.

Please check out the Red City Public Library for a wide selection of good reads on African American culture and history.

And also I recommend a visit to the Dominique Hoskins Black History Museum right here on Jefferson Avenue through February twenty-ninth.

It's a special year.

It's the year of the dragon.

Hope to see all of you there.

Actually, what was Sequoia Station was a car dealership and uh my senior summer in high school, I worked at that car dealership doing odd jobs.

So tonight it's actually really exciting for me, because in my 40-year career of running Hunter Properties, a six-year-old development firm, for me to come back to Revit City and buy an important piece of property like Sequoia Station has been quite exciting.

It's uh in my career, I've developed over 10 buildings in Revit City from shopping centers to self-storage to the box building when we kicked off the initial specific plan.

Um I continue to own 500 Arguello, which is at the north end of the transit district as you redevelop Perry Street and see that vision through.

So as the new owners of the shopping center, really what you'll see us focus on is putting, I don't want to say Humpty Dumpty back together.

But as they started to uh contemplate redeveloping the property, they'll let a number of vacancies uh develop in the property and shopping centers, as we all know that when you have dark storefronts, not our best side of our communities can present themselves.

So you'll see us focus on making the shopping center vibrant, safe, engaging as we work with the planning department and tighten up our own development agreement, being prepared to redevelopment, which we think will be in the next cycle, probably somewhere between five to seven years down the road.

So it's uh it's exciting for me.

Um it's not like in our careers you think about your last project, but I think it might be by the time I get around to redeveloping Sequoia Station in the next uh seven years, by example, probably be time to put me out to pasture.

So uh uh we're looking forward to owning it.

We own it privately.

We don't own it with an institution.

We don't own it with any debt.

We own it as a family.

Um, and we will run it and we'll run it responsibly, and then we'll work with it's a very important piece of property as you finish your your vision.

We've been there for the beginning of this vision uh for the downtown plan.

Um too many nights in high school.

I even went to the Fox Theater, so I won't drag you that far back.

But I will tell you it's something that um, and I mean it with absolute sincerity.

Um it is really important for us to do a great job owning it now, owning it for people that use that shopping center as a daily needs center as a grocery drug store, and also seeing it as the next vision to finish off the downtown.

So I understand the responsibilities that come with it.

By example, we are redeveloping downtown Sunnyvale, which is a million square feet of office, a thousand apartment units, and all the ground floor is retail.

And um, we've invited planning, and we'll get to that when we get further into it, to show another similar-sized project that we're developing.