Note: The agenda provided for this meeting is dated November 18, 2022, but the user specified the meeting date as November 4, 2022. This summary uses the specified date, with the discrepancy noted.
The meeting was primarily informational, featuring a presentation from Joe Spencer of the Downtown Alliance on the Downtown Development Strategy. No formal votes or decisions were taken.
Joe Spencer (Downtown Alliance) presented an informational update on the downtown development strategy. Key points:
Commissioners and staff engaged in a wide-ranging discussion:
Good morning everyone. As you may have seen, our agenda item today is more about education, education components, so we don't need a quorum to uh to begin. Um I'll pass it over to Luis who has updates for us. Morning, uh commissioners and staff and members of the public. Um just a few announcements this morning. Um have seen uh Metro Transit is uh assembling some work groups for the Purple Line, which is the former rush line stationary planning now. Um they are convening the work groups this fall and winter um to work on stationary planning for for the Purple Line. Um and of course that includes stations in St. Paul as well as other communities. Um the areas that they're they've sort of come up with six groupings in St. Paul for station areas, and I'll I'll read those out loud. 10th Street, 14th Street, um Mount Erie, and then they've grouped uh kind of the Phalan corridor ones here at Olive, Cayuga, Payne, and Arcade as a uh a group. Uh and then they've grouped Cook and Maryland in the um Phelan Village area as another group, and finally Larpender uh on the border with um a suburb there. Um and so um what are they looking for? Uh I just wanted to share this because I think it'd be a good opportunity to spread the word about this uh engagement opportunity. Um looking for interested residents and business owners to be part of our station area work groups. As part of the groups, their role will be to help guide the planning and engagement process around station areas, uh such as refining station platform locations and improving connections to and from station areas. There's an online application you can fill out uh if you're interested in becoming a working group member for any of those areas, any of those station areas. Um they're looking to obviously reflect the diversity of interests and stakeholders along the Purple Line uh project area. Um and actually it looks like uh NAO partners who we're working with on the anti-anti-displacement project is also doing the engagement piece for Metro Transit on the Purple Line. So uh we can share with you uh the application materials, and if you wouldn't mind helping to spread the word for that, especially those uh those those east siders out there that uh where in downtown where the project would be uh serving. Um just the kind of a programming note. So December uh planning commission meetings. I at the moment I believe we are gonna have both of those meetings. So December 9th, um and certainly and possibly December 23rd as well. Um if we get zoning committee applications by next Wednesday. Um I believe we we may have one already, but I'm I have to double check that. So just to um just remind you that we have we still have meetings in December to finish out the year. Um also on the 9th, uh and possibly uh before or after the meeting. I didn't get to this at the previous meeting today. Um, we'd like to bring the outline for the annual report um to the communications nominations committee um around that time or or a different date if that works better for committee members because that'll be coming to you in in January, so for the 2022 annual report. Um and um I guess I will let uh Chair Underwood give give the report on communications nominations uh committee meeting when we get to that item um on the agenda. That's all I had unless people have uh questions for me. No questions, we'll move on to zoning committee. I think there's no business on that much more than that here, and I don't think we had a meeting last week or two weeks ago. Um we'll move on to the presentation for today for the downtown development strategy project update. Oh yeah, go ahead. That's fine. And that's um Mr. Spencer from downtown life. Chair, if you if you don't mind, maybe while we're getting set up here. Um a little more context. Um so uh Joe uh Spencer, some of you may know, he um will talk, he'll introduce himself, but um works with the downtown alliance, and uh we've been in some staff level conversations this year uh about the work that Joe is doing and team um at the downtown alliance. Um and I thought it'd be important for you all to hear about this work. Um it's there's no action items today on this, but it's a informational item. We thought that it would be good to engage with you all, uh get your questions, your thoughts, your comments as we begin this process. So certainly staff, we've been talking a lot recently, and we have our downtown planner Katie Dadless here as well. And so at the end, you know, if you all want you want to have some conversation discussion, that sort of thing, we thought it'd be a good space for that. So thank you. Thank you for the invitation.