Okay, good afternoon, everyone.

I'd like to call this meeting to order of today's economic development and innovation committee.

Thursday, February nineteenth, one PM.

Clerk, please call the role.

Here.

Habs.

Jones.

Here.

Comrades.

Martinez.

Morris.

Thank you so much.

Pretty exciting.

Pretty exciting day, I think, we have here.

Um you never know how news is going to kind of roll out.

But yeah, this is the presentation to council that we heard about yesterday.

After the mayor's uh work announcements.

Okay, well, I'll call you that then.

Um Brandon, take it away.

We're excited to be here and to hear what you have to say.

Good, great.

Thank you, members of the council.

Uh Brandon Sellhorst, Chief Growth Officer for the City of Toledo, joined by Paul Searing, General Counsel.

I want to thank you for your time.

This is a really exciting uh proposal that we're bringing forward today.

Um we wanted to spend some time with you to kind of walk through uh this in greater detail, uh, but there will be two ordinances on your agenda for next Tuesday.

And so the thought is using this time uh to kind of walk through that instead of using the time during agenda is a better way to use uh to use your time.

Um so today um what we bring before you is a is a proposal.

Um, at a time where we're grappling with do we cut the budget, do we raise revenues?

Um we believe this proposal presents the third solution, the most sustainable solution, which is growth.

And so I want to give you some context as to what we mean by that, um, and then dive into a little bit of the details of the two ordinances that will be on your agenda.

So, as council is very well aware, um, the overwhelming majority of the revenue that the city brings in is from income tax.

Over 63% of our revenue comes from income tax.

That's on withholding taxes on personal wages and also on net profits taxes that businesses pay within the city.

Our income tax is growing, that has been growing for um you know, as long as this chart shows, which is 2015, it's projected to grow in the upcoming year, um, which is a good sign.

However, as you all know, while this grows, our expenses continue to outpace our growth.

Last year we faced a pretty substantial budget deficit, and this year we are also grappling with a $52 million budget deficit, as you all are deliberating that now.

While these two things are true, we are bringing in more income tax than we ever have, and our expenses are greater than they ever have.

We continue to spend less on our residents than any other major city in the state of Ohio.

This graph shows here while our income tax is consistent with every major city in Ohio except Cincinnati, the amount of income tax that we bring in per capita is less than every other city in Ohio.

And what that means to us is that our tax base continues to decline, and we have a less wealthy tax base than many other cities in Ohio.

That coupled with our continued loss of population in this city since 1970, we've lost over 113,000 residents over that 50 year time period.

And unfortunately, we continue to lose population.

This is these are population estimates by the American Community Survey for what the population was projected to be in Toledo over the past four years.

As you can see, we are the only major Ohio city that is continuing to lose population.

So we started to ask ourselves the question well, what would it take to grow our revenues inside the city?

What does it take to bring in a million dollars, let's say, of new income tax revenue, whether that's new jobs or new residents?

So we started at the level that most Toledoans feel, which is the per capita income in this city, which is $12.43 an hour.

That means they have an annual income of $25,000.

In order to bring in one million dollars of new tax revenue to this city, we would have to attract over $1,500 new jobs or Toledoans at that wage per hour.

So then we said, okay, well, what if what if we did more moderate wage per hour, which is 25?

How many would we need to attract in order to get just a million dollars of new income tax revenue?

The answer to that is 770.

And then the final solution that we came to, or the final estimate we did was at 100,000 an hour or 100,000 annual income, how many people would we need to attract to the city?

And the answer is 400.

Just for a million dollars of new income tax revenue.

Our budget deficit is 52 million dollars this year.

So the question is, well, what does it take to bring in those new jobs and those new people?

And the answer is clear.

It takes proactive redevelopment of sites, buildings, and infrastructure.

And how do we know that?

Because we've done it before.

The sites that I'm going to show you are sites that this community has stepped up, proactively acquired, remediated, demoed, and prepared for new jobs and housing.

The first and most notable example is the Willie's Overland Jeep plant.

As we all know, it's kind of the crown jewel of all of these examples today and serves as the city's largest industrial park.

If it were not for us stepping up to proactively acquire and do all the things to prepare a shovel ready site, we would not have over 2600 jobs on that site today.

That site represents 130 acres.

Another great example is the Gulf Oil Refinery.

This is in East Toledo, right by the port of Toledo.

This is a was a heavily contaminated site that the city with the port authority stepped up to remediate and prepare as a shovel ready site, which ultimately led to us attracting the Cleveland Cliffs plant.

This is a was a heavily contaminated site that the city with the port authority stepped up to remediate and prepare as a shovel ready site, which ultimately led to us attracting the Cleveland Cliffs plant, over a billion dollars of investment in that structure, provided construction jobs in the city for over five years, and currently employs over 212 full-time equivalent jobs with an average annual salary of over 130,000 per year.

That property represents 145 acres of land, just to give you some context.

The next example is the Textile Leather and Medcourt properties.

To the right on this graphic, you can see the Jeep plant.

This was a very important property for Jeeps potential expansion back in the uh around 2015 when Jeep was struggling to solve the problem of how to create more Wranglers.

We were worried that we were going to lose the Jeep Wrangler, that we were gonna lose our workforce, and so we stepped up to buy the only property around there that is able to be developed, and that was these two pieces of property the textile leather and med court properties.

This uh this acquisition ultimately led to the vehicle customization facility being developed on that 42 acre piece of property today.

That's home to over 300 UAW jobs.

Another example in South Toledo, the Southwick Mall property, uh, this site, as we um, as we all know probably fairly too well, sat vacant and dilapidated for a number of years.

If it wasn't for the city stepping up in 2014 to acquire this property and remediate the asbestos in the building and do the demolition, uh we wouldn't have been able to welcome the Amazon uh delivery station that ultimately we cut the ribbon on there and announced in 2020.

Today that's home to over 410 jobs.

And finally, the Northtown Mall site, um, again, kind of similar to the Southwick Mall property fell into a state of disrepair.

The mall closed in 2005.

The city stepped in in 2011 to remediate the asbestos and get them all down.

It was a public nuisance and it presented a huge challenge for our community.

We were successful in getting the the property down and creating a shovel ready site, which ultimately led to the city's next industrial park, uh the Toledo Trade Center.

This is on 60 acres of land.

This council approved just a few short years ago the sale of this property to North Point Development, which invested over a hundred million dollars here to bring this industrial park out of the ground.

Today, building one is complete.

Um it's occupied by MOBIS, half of that building is just about 185 jobs are there.

We still have half the building to lease out closest to the Alexis Road portion, and somewhat breaking news.

Uh, there is site plans into the plan commission already that will be reviewed for a new building to be complete that would finish out this industrial park.

Um that's about a 400,000 square foot facility that will be built next to building one by a to be named tenant.

Hopefully, more exciting news to come on that.

The point is if we would not have stepped up and proactively acquired, remediated, demoed, create created these shovel ready sites, we would not have attracted over 3,700 new jobs.

That brought in almost 115 million dollars of annual payroll.

That brought in almost $3 million of new annual income tax to the city and ultimately represented 1.3 billion dollars of capital investment.

This is significant.

I can't point to another project or projects in the city that had that big of an impact.

Um, and these things took decades to get ready.

Um in a large degree they were reactionary.

Every site that I just listed was in reaction to something closing or something happening.

We weren't necessarily being proactive.

We were reacting to the problem at hand, which was a building or site that was fallen into disrepair.

This site, uh this slide rather, um, shows a list of sites request that come through the state of Ohio.

So jobs Ohio is the state economic development agency.

They get contacted by companies, international and domestic, that are looking at establishing new operations all throughout the United States.

They frequently reach out to Jobs Ohio and say, hey, I'm looking for a site or a building that meets this criteria.

Will you conduct a search?

As you can see in the second uh column there, total state site searches.

Um, in 2022, there were over 122 site searches.

122 companies that had reached out to Jobs Ohio saying, hey, I'm looking for a site or a building.

Can you conduct a search?

You can see in 2021, we only as the city could submit three properties that met that criteria.

Fast forward um to 2024, which is looking at this, there were eight total, 88 total site searches statewide.

We were able to submit 30 times, and 13 of those submissions were the Toledo Trade Center.

If we didn't have the Northtown Mall property shovel ready, that would have been 13 less submissions that we that we applied for.

These are what I like to call our at bats.

You know, it allows us to step up to the plate and take a swing.

Maybe we'll have a site that meets this criteria, maybe we won't.

Um some interesting data that came out of that uh 2024 uh year, over 60 percent of the site searches that came into jobs Ohio were looking for an existing building.

Spec buildings continue to be the most um competitive economic development tool that we have because time risk and money built companies don't have to worry about building a building, uh which reduces their time, their speed to market, the money that they have to put into it, and their risk.

So the fact that we had uh spec building at Toledo Trade Center allowed us to win the MOBIS project, for example.

Forty percent of the site searches that came in requested a site that was over a hundred acres of of land.

A hundred acres um of land represents basically the overland industrial park.

That's the scale of what we're talking about.

The Jeep plant, for example, is over 300 acres.

Um so the scale of these projects continues to increase in terms of the amount of acreage that they're looking for.

And then you can see there the number of on average the number of jobs associated with these opportunities.

The reality is we um are a victim of our own success.

We've we've stepped up and and prepared sites uh as shovel ready, and we've attracted a lot of jobs and opportunities to those.

Unfortunately, we're out of land.

We have no other opportunities, especially with the with the upcoming announcement for the Toledo Trade Center to compete for these job opportunities.

And there's a lot of other competing site alternatives in Toledo in the Toledo region.

Here's all of the established industrial parks that currently offer available spec buildings and available land that would meet the site searches that come from Jobs Ohio.

As you can see, only a few of them are in the city of Toledo, but Overland Industrial Park is now full, Toledo Trade Center is now full, and there's very small parcels available at the North Cross Business Park.

So the question for us is well, where does the next one in Toledo go?

Where's the next big job creation project go?

But it's not only jobs that increase our revenue, it's also attracting new people, new Toledoans.

And uh there's a number of examples of where we've stepped up as a city to prepare properties to attract new housing to the city.

Um of the most notable is the marina district property.

So this is what the site looked like in 2006.

As you can see, the sports arena is still there, the acne power plant's still there.

The city stepped up to acquire this property to uh remediate all of the environmental contamination and build a very attractive road down the center of it.

Um if it wasn't for us doing that, um, the vision for really the crown jewel of our region right now is the Glass City Riverwalk, would not have been possible.

Um today that site stands as the Glass City Metro Park.

It's received in just its one year of being open over a million visitors to the city that that a lot of them aren't from Toledo.

We're bringing new tax dollars in to the city.

But the site also represents the largest housing development that we've seen inside the city in decades.

The Marina Lofts Project uh sprawled out here over 12 acres of land, which brought 367 uh residential units to East Toledo.

Another great example of that is the McKinley Elementary School site right outside the Prometheca Toledo Hospital campus.

The site was proactively prepared uh by TPS and Prometica for as a shovel ready site, which ultimately led to us cutting the ribbon on 262 units of of new housing right outside the Toledo Hospital campus and the Colony Lost Project.

That project was sprawled out over 8.4 acres of land.

And then more recently, and this is one that's a little closer to home because it's a piece of property that we owned, uh, we acquired through the land bank through foreclosure and actively were remediate remediating it and played a strong role in getting the uh the grand uh townhome development to happen there.

This brought in 20 units.

Um they will be will hopefully have a nice new picture of us cutting the ribbon on those soon.

Uh but that project is again sprawled out over 2.8 acres of land, 20 units.

So just to give you some context, because I like context, two acres of land is equivalent to the Paramount parking lot right outside of this building.

Okay.

For council members, you probably are aware of what the slot is and can kind of visualize it.

Whenever we're talking with prospective housing developers, the two-acre minimum lot size is kind of what we often hear.

So if we want to see more multifamily housing in the city, we need at least two acres.

That is that is a minimum that we continuously hear.

So to put that in your mind, where do we in the city have a shovel ready two-acre site the size of the Paramount lot?

If our goal is to grow this city, and this is the mayor's goal to grow the city by 300 to 300,000 by 2040.

The question is where does the next housing project go?

How do if we're going to intentionally grow this city, where do we intentionally have shovel ready sites for new housing projects to go?

We've been very strategic as a city in investing ARPA dollars, for example, and leveraging those to remediate and create shovel ready sites throughout the city.

Here is an example of 10 properties that we used our ARPA dollars to leverage state funds to clean up and prepare shovel ready sites.

Our 11.3 million dollars of ARPA leveraged 13.9 million dollars in state funding to help us do the remediation and demolition necessary for these for these 10 sites.

Just a point of uh a point of notification.

A lot of these sites are currently being demolished right now and actively remediated.

So, for example, if you drive by the select mattress property on Bancroft right next to the Toledo Urban Federal Credit Union, you'll see that buildings coming down, craft type craft houses also currently under construction.

So things are happening, and we're excited to have those as shovel ready sites as well.

The state of Ohio continues to invest in these programs that we've been successful in pulling down.

Um the last biannual budget allocated 200 million dollars to the brownfield program and 43 million dollars to the demolition and state site revitalization program.

Again, these are the dollars that we've been able to pull down, matching our ARPA dollars to to create shovel ready sites.

This um this notion of creating local uh fund to pull down state dollars and create shovel right shovel ready sites is something that other Ohio cities are being proactive in doing.

The city of Cincinnati last year established what they're calling the Quick Strike Acquisition and Project Support Fund.

They're allocating a million dollars a year into that fund to be able to do exactly what we're talking about doing today.

And then finally, um the City of Cleveland uh created their site readiness for good jobs fund.

They were able to invest 100 million dollars into this fund.

Mayor Bibb has a very aggressive goal to remediate and prepare a thousand acres of new land in the city of Cleveland in order to attract 25,000 jobs.

So very significant that very significant initiative by the city of Cleveland.

One of our um answers to these questions was delivered last year.

Um council helped launch what's called the Toledo Community Improvement Corporation.

I want to dive a little bit deeper into what that means.

Uh council created uh the Soto Community Improvement Corporation, and it's a it's authorized under the Ohio Revised Code.

Um it's a 501c3 entity that primarily supports economic and community development.

Um as of today, there are over 239 active CICs in the state of Ohio, so it's a very well-used tool by cities, counties, and townships.

Um, for example, this blade article here shows that the county has a CIC, LCEDC, and they often describe it as their Swiss Army knife.

And the reason why they describe it as that is because it can do a number of different things in terms of acquiring and holding real estate.

Um it can be the recipient of public or private funds, it can act as a land bank.

Um, there really is a lot of uh utility with with a CIC.

So our CIC, the Toledo Community Improvement Corporation, was established in 2014.

Um it was designated by the city as the development agency for industrial commercial and distribution projects.

We did it at that time to primarily facilitate the redevelopment of the textile leather and med court properties and to induce bonds for the Southwick Mall.

Um, however, since that time, the organization has kind of been dormant until now.

The organization is governed by a board of directors, so this is in the Toledo Municipal Code in terms of who is uh who is outlined as a classification for a board member.

So as you can see, we have four ex officio members on that board, which include uh the president of council, the mayor, myself as director of economic development, and our DE and I director.

And then there are four appointments that are non-city appointments, several which are from the business community.

All of these are recommended by the mayor and confirmed by council.

So again, this is a public entity.

Board meetings are open to the public and subject to Ohio Sunshine Laws.

We do get annual audits every year from the state of Ohio and annually do a 501c3 filing.

The organization itself does not have any direct employees.

The city staff provides that support.

So I, as acting economic development director, help lead the organization.

For example, the law department helps the city's finance department helps provide that administrative support function.

We recently launched a new website for the Toledo Community Improvement Corporation, Toledo CIC.com.

All of our audits, board meeting minutes, governing documents for the organization are on this website.

I encourage you to go check it out.

This is going to be our tool to be as transparent as we can be about the CIC and what projects we endeavor in.

So again, CICs are nothing new to Ohio, but the differentiator for ours is how we decided to fund it.

So you may remember last August we had a very similar conversation about this regarding the Toledo Rossford joint economic development zone.

So we have several joint economic development zones in districts throughout Northwest Ohio.

This one was the first one we ever did, and it was completed in 1992.

And essentially, it allowed it allows the city of Toledo to collect income tax from a portion of the city of Rossford in exchange for providing water.

That agreement was amended last year.

This is significant.

This is money that is not coming from our general fund.

This is money that's coming from an agreement that we established back in 1992.

Today we are looking at turning that revenue source, that dedicated stream of funding into the 20 million dollar shovel ready sites fund that the mayor announced yesterday.

The first of which is authorizing the city to issue a bond, an amount not to exceed 18.7 million.

This bond is the second ordinance is intended to be loaned to the TCIC, the Toledo Community Improvement Corporation.

So the city will issue economic development non-tax revenue bonds and loan those bond proceeds to the CIC.

This loan of funds, this bond fund will be used to establish the CIC's shovel ready sites fund.

And again, we'll talk a little bit more about what that is going to look like, but that specifically is meant to go towards attracting new jobs and new housing in the city.

And it also provides the CIC with a dedicated flexible capital to support the redevelopment that's going to be needed for the prop for the projects that we take on.

So the borrower will be the Toledo Community Improvement Corporation.

The city is going to bond 18.7 up to 1818.7 million and lend that to the CIC.

The CIC will then create a separate project fund to deposit those loan proceeds, which those loan proceeds will be exclusive to site readiness.

So you can see here this is language that will be in the bond legislation.

It will be in the loan agreement to the CIC.

So this is not money that we can use for anything other than preparing sites to be shovel ready for economic development and housing facilities.

The annual payment for the bond is anticipated to be about a million dollars a year.

The loan will be coterminous with the bond, which means the loan will terminate as the city's bond terminates in 2056.

So how this will work is the TCIC will take them the revenue that it gets from the Rossford Jed and pay that to the city as its loan payment.

Because I think this is probably one of the most creative parts of this proposal is that from a city fiscal perspective, this proposal is to be budget neutral.

So the city will not utilize its funding to pay the bond service.

It's using the money that it gets from the loan payment from the TCIC.

The TCIC board of directors met in January.

Happy to answer any questions that you all may have at this time.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

I'm used to saying director, I'll say chief, I suppose.

Which ever you like.

Good.

Well, thank you.

A lot of really good stuff in here.

I have some questions.

I will wait on those.

Councilman Driscoll.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh Director, if you could go back to slides like 52, 53.

I have some questions of our finance director who happens to be here today.

When it comes time to actually take this vote, are we are we going to see like an amortization schedule for this?

Good afternoon, Council.

Melanie Campbell, Department of Finance.

Councilman Driscoll, we have a current projected amortization schedule based on the current market conditions.

And we could share that with you after this meeting.

Okay.

Yeah, I think the at least I'd be interested, I don't know about the rest of the council, but I'd be interested in seeing that.

I'm also curious.

So the city carries this debt.

Is that correct?

Not TCIC.

Correct.

It is debt of the city of Toledo.

So we are so is our internal debt limit then affected by this?

In this case, no, it would not be because we do have a source though of repayment coming from those payments from the TCIC.

So anywhere we have a dedicated source, we don't count that against our internal debt limit.

Correct.

Because it's not general fund money that's paying this back.

Correct.

We do expect the debt service on this to be approximately a million dollars over the course of 30 years.

Yes.

And these are 30-year bonds.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Councilman Saratu.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Could you go back to the Dana site?

The old Jeep site.

Dana is there, but who who are the other companies that are there directly?

The other company that is there is MACO.

They're an automotive supplier to the Jeep plant.

Sorry, get there.

So Dana is the blue, the one on the blue, and then there's like a little red line.

That's where Mako is.

And then all phase electric is the smaller building on the left side of the screen.

Yep.

And many of those plants run three shifts.

So the jobs are counted over those three shifts.

Right.

Okay.

And then thank you for that clarification.

And I was also going to ask about debt limit, but it sounds like this will not be a factor, obviously.

So that's that's good.

A couple of other questions.

I know that you said consistently we don't have the amount of acreage available uh for large projects.

Uh but I'm wondering if um in the central city area, there there seems to be a lot of empty land, uh perhaps not uh uh next to each other, but there does seem to be that.

Is there any potential for economic development and companies to be located within the central area of Toledo?

Uh champion spark plug, you know, we know that we know the grand, but I'm just thinking again beyond door street and so forth.

Sure, absolutely.

There's plenty of opportunity.

You know, not every company needs 50 acres, for example.

There's a lot of smaller manufacturers that are looking for smaller sites.

So that 10 to 20 acre uh amount is kind of the sweet spot of what we see.

I think that's actually our sweet spot of what we can plan to deliver as a city based on our current footprint of available land.

Okay.

And then at the Southwick location, um, you've got Amazon.

Is there I believe there's still room to expand for other companies, or am I wrong?

There is.

Um when we sold that uh land, um Amazon, the company actually bought it, which is kind of unique because in every other instance, for most instances throughout this um the country, Amazon leases their building from a developer.

But at that time, uh Amazon sold that property as strategic for their long-term growth in this city, so Amazon the corporation owns it.

And as you can see from the graphics, there's plenty of room for them to grow on that site, and they intend to do so from my understanding.

Okay, excellent.

And then a final question.

Franklin Park Mall.

We've got an empty, huge department store.

How many acres is Franklin Park Mall?

Um, do you have any idea?

It's a hundred acres.

And again, uh I don't want to get into confidential economic issues, but has there been inquiries regarding uh the Macy store and uh what could be possibly used uh for yes, my understanding is there's been um interest in the Macy's site.

You know, that site is is owned by Macy's, the company.

Um we have proactively um done an environmental assessment on that building.

Um just the Macy's building itself has about two million dollars worth of asbestos that will need to be abated for anything that goes in there.

So we are actively trying to be supportive because we understand how fragile um that that project is right now.

And I would also uh say as I discussed uh at a committee hearing uh when our when uh Westgate was here, that there's a real need for housing.

And I'm hopeful that in the future, as interest rates come down that housing developers will look at those areas, uh Elder Beerman, the Sears site and so forth for housing.

But I'm also wondering if that might be a possible uh remedy at the Macy site once that if it's ever taken down, that that housing could be in that area also.

I absolutely think it needs to be.

Um I think it could be.

I think there's a lot of interest for that in the city, but again, it's coming up with the available land to be able to attract a developer to do that.

And so um, you know, for example, look at fallen timbers, the announcements that we've seen recently.

There's gonna be a big focus as has been reported to add new housing around the mall to kind of support that.

Um so I think that's a that that's certainly something that we're focused on.

That's a great site to add new housing into the city.

I I agree.

I think Westgate and the Franklin Park area are prime sites uh for additional housing uh for uh people of all ages.

I think it's a great location, and I look forward to hearing more about those projects in the future.

Um thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you.

Thank you.

If I can, Councilman Martinez, I want to kind of stay on this point just for one quick second.

So uh Brandon, talk to us about like it's one thing to want something.

It's another thing for that thing to be possible.

So we want housing at Westgate, I agree.

But in all of the examples, like you I mean, to a certain extent, you're you're bringing together some sites and the market is doing what the market's doing.

You know, I I don't necessarily get the impression that if there wasn't a developer looking to put housing on colony and there was another industrial, like we would have probably been like, all right, we're gonna use the we're gonna use it somehow.

Talk about strategy, prioritization, direction, vision.

Uh it's you know, again, it's one thing to put these dollars in play, put together a site.

It's another thing to determine determine use and look for use cases in a strategic way.

How do you think about that?

And what is TCIC's role in that conversation?

Yeah, you know, creating a shovel ready site is not just getting the site demoed and and you know ready.

Um there are other things that we need to do as a community to accept the development there.

One of them, and we've done this on a number of the examples, especially the one on the slide is proactive zoning, that there's community support for the vision of what is anticipated to go there.

That's the work that we can do proactively.

Um and then issuing, and this would be our intention for properties that we get involved in at the CIC, issuing a competitive request for proposals for a developer or a company to come occupy that site based on what the community envisions for that property.

You know, we recently just had a new land use plan done in the city forward Toledo.

It it talks a lot about the things that we want to see as a city.

Um but to your point, Councilmember Meldon, we have to be intentional about that.

And I would have loved to have seen housing at Westgate, right?

That that would have been a great opportunity.

But we don't own the land.

So we are reacting as a community to a proposal that the private sector is bringing us.

If we want to see housing in the city, then owning the land is is gives us the opportunity to say this is what we want on this site, and we won't settle for anything less.

It gives us kind of the ability to be um in control of our destiny as as it relates to those particular sites.

So I think there's a number of things that the CIC will be doing outside of just the getting the buildings down, getting the sites ready as an opportunity that are proactive that also make the development community wanting to work with us, right?

If there's a public agency that owns the land that's saying, I want housing here and I'm willing to you know work with you to do it, that's that's really really compelling to people looking to our invest in our community that there's that public support for um for what happens on that site.

So a follow-up, if if you think about at bats, we only get so many.

Right.

Um and this is not a hundred million dollars like our friends to the east, where you're putting, I mean you're doing some really savvy stuff to get us to 20 million.

Yep.

Uh which is huge.

Big deal.

As you think about kind of staying on that exact same wavelength you were just on, as you think about it gives us control if we own it.

We're not just kind of like hoping a developer does XY or Z.

Right.

Um has the TCIC board kind of intentionally prioritized housing?

And if so, go back to I'm going back to your premise, which is the chart, you talk about three different kind of pay brackets, X amount of employees bring in X amount of tax revenue.

What type of housing would you try to look at to bring in that level of income tax revenue?

I mean, how are you thinking through those things?

Without getting like too specific, we want this development in this exact location.

We as a board have been uh in a lot of conversations about this particular point.

I think our focus is on both jobs and housing for sure, because we need to do both, um, especially now that the Toledo Trade Center is full.

Like we we need to have an answer for where does the next Jeep supplier go?

We're getting a new vehicle in this city, right?

Where do those suppliers go that supply that new truck?

I we have to answer that quickly.

Um but when it comes to housing, the another beautiful thing is we just had a comprehensive housing study done in the city.

And it doesn't say we just need X type of housing, we need all sorts of housing and all sorts of styles of housing.

So we often talk about affordable and market rate.

Yes, we need those, but we also need new single-family homes.

We need new uh missing middle, right, which is what our uh forward to leadle plan says that we need to focus on, and we need the bigger, you know, uh sites that can accommodate larger mixed-use um opportunities for multifamily.

So the the answer, I think, to your question is is we're gonna do both, but we have to do it all.

And we have to be strategic with these funds, I think.

I I know we do as it relates to the residential, so we can have the biggest opportunity to attract new residents to the city.

Um, but that's also going to be dictated on what sites are available, right?

And what sites, what the community wants to see on those particular sites that we choose to focus on.

Thanks for that.

Councilman Martinez.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um Brandon, thanks for the presentation.

Excellent, as always.

I have some general questions, then I'm gonna kind of do a little bit of a deep dive.

Okay.

Uh so first is around the bond rating.

I'm not sure if you're able to answer, or maybe um the director can or chief what it whatever you're doing.

So the director, okay.

Um so my my question is the impact for the bond rating.

Will this impact our current bond rating?

Because we're taking on more debt technically, but even though we have a payment methodology, you know, but taking on a new financial facility, I just am curious what the potential impact to our current bond rating.

Um I don't see any current potential impact to the bond rating.

I think long term the agencies would see this as a positive for Toledo in terms of site preparation and development and growth in the future.

Um the new debt does have a source of repayment, so in that factor it wouldn't be a negative.

Okay.

Or is it maybe just a zero sum game since we've already been carrying the debt for so long?

We're just kind of renewing it.

Is that my understanding?

This would be a new non-tax revenue debt.

Okay.

So it's not going to impact our bond rating, and then thank you.

That was my only financial question.

And then the going to some of the piggyback on what consummate Soranto and Consumer Meldon were talking about.

What is your target market profile of your end user?

Do you have you guys gotten that granular yet?

Like what I'm expecting a manufacturing of some sort.

Is there any specific industries that you've identified?

Is does this tie into a bigger picture of an ecosystem for manufacturing, advanced manufacturing, automotive manufacturing, what have you?

Yeah, um, great question.

Thank you for uh for that.

You know, we do have industries that we're that are our target industries.

They're ones that we're competitive in because we've got workforce, and um they're ones that we as a state have also resources to be able to assist.

So advanced manufacturing, automotive, food processing, um, logistics and distribution.

These are constantly the companies that we are industries that we typically compete well in.

And those typically have a certain criteria for sites that they're looking for, which are are primarily the ones that come through the jobs Ohio database.

Um our focus is on trying to bring high quality, high paying jobs to this city.

Um I don't we know the industries that we're we're competitive in, but we also want to have stretch opportunities, right?

New opportunities that we see that there's ability to bring uh more than just manufacturing to the city.

We know that there's a need right now for that, particularly because of the Jeep plant, the announcements that have been made.

Um, but there are other opportunities of companies that are growing and scaling, even in our community.

There are countless examples, countless examples of small to medium-sized manufacturers that have left the city because we don't have land available to support them and they go out to Rossford and they go out to Monclova and they go out to all these areas.

I want to keep them.

I want them to grow inside the city, but we don't have the land to do that.

And so not all of those are manufacturing focused, but I would say that uh when it comes down to the sites, that 10 to 20 acre site that um I mentioned to councilman Soratu is kind of a sweet spot for the companies that I think are across the manufacturing tech other industries that we want to focus on.

Correct.

I'm actually glad you said that.

So one of my concerns is because of as we do land assembly, we're not gonna be able to track the big auto manufacturer, we just don't have the scale to do that.

But if we can focus on the small to medium size and help the homegrown uh manufacturers here be more competitive and not just the local economy but the regional economy, especially with assuming the bridge opens in Canada, um, you know, trying to be able to go create more global type uh entity.

So thank you for that.

That's very important.

Um along that same thought process in terms of where we're focusing on acquisition of property, um, so you mentioned the forward Toledo plan.

Um have you strategized of where your key areas are going to be, for example, along the 475 corridor or 23 quarter or wherever.

Um have you given some strategy thought to that, number one, and number two, as we're looking at uh rezoning and our our new zoning code um we may have to make some hard decisions about where we put light industrial industrial that may encroach into neighborhoods that may have not had it in the past.

Sure.

So have you considered that?

We we have those a lot of questions.

And you know, it's kind of a chicken or the egg because we need the funds, you know what I mean, to really start meaningfully talking about sites.

But but I think the answer actually is simpler than that to some degree.

We're gonna think like a developer, and we're gonna think like a company, and we're gonna think because we know based on data what they want to see, the sites that they want to they they want to uh locate on.

Um, you know, industrial companies, they want to be by I-75, by the highways, by the rail, by um by our port.

Um, and we know that there's a huge need for housing, and and we know where developers want to want to develop you know all sorts of affordable housing based on where they can score competitively for low-income housing tax credits, for example, and where there's interest in doing new market or new market rate housing where maybe the sites just not assembled and ready.

20 million dollars is not a lot of money compared to what other communities are doing and to the scale of what we're talking about doing.

So how do we invest in sites that we can have a better return on our investment and remember our return on our investment it's not only selling the property for what it's worth our return on investment is the fees that come from the permits that they apply for the construction jobs the payroll tax the long-term sustainable that's the long-term sustainable revenue source back to the city.

And then in addition to that I'm gonna go a little bit down a tangent um is what tools can we put in place on these sites to proactively ensure that there's a dedicated revenue source back to the city or the CIC to revolve this shovel ready sites fund over and over and over again.

And there are tools like TIFFs that we've used as a city to kind of create a portion of that real estate tax and capture that for 30 years and revolve that back into the fund.

There are new tools available at the state for example called the new community authority which is something that we haven't used here in Northwest Ohio but many of our other 3C partners have used where you can create a dedicated source of revenue even longer than 30 years from that site.

So we're gonna we're gonna think like a developer and like a company where they'd want to locate and hopefully be able to revolve that because we're successful in thinking like them revolve the funding that we get from the sale of that property or the tools that we put in place to make this 20 million dollars go even further than it otherwise would have.

Gotcha.

And you actually touched on my last question which is about layering of subsidies and other uh financial uh incentives so TIF probably CRA if available um what else we got TIFF CRA is a tax abatement TIFF allows us to capture that you know new increase um and have that go towards a project or repayment the new community authority tool that I just mentioned is uh is a really um exciting tool I think especially because we'll own the site so we'll have some ability to control I think uh that tool um sometimes and I'm not saying that this is necessarily the goal but sometimes providing the land in exchange for some of those tools has been a has been a um compelling incentive for us depending on what metrics that project is bringing to this community whether it's a certain amount of housing units affordable housing units or number of jobs so there are there are tools in the toolbox I think but it's gonna depend on what the project needs and what we value as a city in terms of what they're bringing to us in order to offer.

Gotcha and I guess one last thought is because you mentioned affordable housing and tax credit um projects are we working with the state to look at our census data because my fear is kind of what we've done in the past is concentration of poverty and scale and that's what we don't want to do.

So because they score higher in low income census tracks and we can work with the state and I would assume HUD so we can at least disseminate some of those or even out some of the the tax credit and the affordable housing not that it's not important but a lot of as long as I can remember it's been high concentration of poverty and that doesn't do anything to help uh bring people out of poverty.

It keeps them kind of trapped in that cycle versus uh diversifying and bringing them out out into more diversified neighborhoods and income levels right so that's for example uh the um high concentration of tax credit projects back in the day and that's why we've had so much concentrated poverty um we've since gotten away from that but my fear is that we haven't worked with the state to figure out where it makes most sense so we can get competitive building in our community but just not in one specific section if that makes sense.

It makes sense I I don't I I can't respond to that I'd love to talk with Rosalind Clemens and just understand from her perspective what what what has been done and get back to you bit by way of referral if that's okay okay all right thank you.

Um I'm kind of curious what level you intend to consider various infrastructure that might help benefit some of these projects that might also benefit the neighbors around it.

Um certainly uh we've seen uh I voted in favor of uh a sewer line with the housing development, the colony, for instance.

So I'm just curious to what degree this fund could be used uh around infrastructure as well.

I think um you I'm glad you asked that question because in every site that I can think of, the city also helped with infrastructure, right?

I mean, we're building 367 apartments in the marina district, and we build a new road and provided some water and sewer um assistance.

We did that same thing with the colony.

We moved a line.

Um I think because this is the city's entity.

This is the TC, Toledo Community Improvement Corporation, these projects aren't going to be done in a vacuum, they're gonna be done in coordination.

And so that's gonna require that we as a city, I think, leverage our capital improvement fund to match up with the sites that we're also trying to spark new housing and new economic development opportunities.

And depending on what opportunities go there, also kind of open up different funding sources at the state and federal levels to be able to attract to this.

So you know, for example, the Northtown Mall site, because we were proactive in rezoning it and getting that developer to invest 100 million dollars in building a new industrial park, we were able to attract a two million dollar grant from Jobs Ohio to rebuild the ring road around it, which was essential because that was the worst road in the entire city at one time.

I remember going to that press conference and dodging I don't I don't even know if I'd call them potholes, maybe more craters.

It was moon, we were moon driving, I think, when we did that.

Um you know the same's true for residential properties, you know, uh cre creating new infrastructure to support that.

So it'll de it depend on the project.

And I I think having the city, this be the city's entity, have it aligned with the CIP fund and our goals of what we're trying to do with that fund um are going to be really critically important because it's not just getting the site ready and every single one of these examples I can point to infrastructure.

Yeah, because I'm also I mean, I think that you have a lot of leverage with this entity to really kind of I mean you could potentially loan money back to the city at a very low interest rate to do the infrastructure project, and that one percent or whatever you charge the city to do that infrastructure and we pay it back and go into your revolver fund.

I I just think there's a lot of creativity that could probably come with it that could both help get the sites ready but also help with our lagging infrastructure needs that we're sort of saddled with these days.

So yeah.

I I'm excited.

Um I'm gonna keep looking into it.

I've I've definitely engaged the county and can talking a little bit more about an infrastructure bank, um, especially when I think about how maybe some of our outlying communities that are gonna partner with us on some of these sites just ways that it can really benefit the if they have the ability to loan money for the infrastructure side, for instance, right?

So I think there's a lot of opportunity here.

I'm just excited to see where it can go.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Sarante.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

A couple of follow-up questions.

Uh how are we going to get the word out to the development community that this exists?

Well, the mayor did a good job at making a big splash yesterday at the Chamber of Commerce um uh meeting.

So we're gonna be as transparent as possible, which is a part of the reason why we proactively put the website together.

You know, we intend to use that to have all of our site opportunities and RFPs out there.

I don't I I envision us working with commercial brokers, working with you know, RGP, working with everyone that is in our network to let them know that we have a site, but working with the right people that we want to be able to get the message out about what we intend to attract to that site too.

So it's gonna be I think specific on what our goals are for each individual site, but um but but I don't I don't ever have that problem of people not knowing what's who to talk to about this about these opportunities.

Our problem is we don't have sites to be able to talk to them about so good.

I I think this is a enormously uh important project.

I think if anything, I think Wall Street will view this very favorably.

Yeah.

For years, I've attended um either 12 or 13 uh rating meetings in Chicago or New York, and I can tell you that very often they want to know what what are we doing economically?

What are we doing to diversify our economy?

There was a time in the early 2000s when we were being nailed to the wall because we had too much of a dependency on the the automobile industry.

And now when we go to these meetings, we talk about all the other uh sources of jobs, especially in health care and education and so forth that we have in the community.

So that's very important.

And I think that um we need to continue this in terms of broadening our our resources for employment, because that's a real positive.

And I also have to say that uh Wall Street also looks at our management of our budget, management of our rainy day fund uh and our revenues.

How much revenue is coming in?

Have we increased it, have we decreased it, and so forth.

So these are all important issues that come up, but I think this is a real positive uh to talk about uh at our next meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Does um you know, Brandon, I remember when you brought this up.

Uh I don't know when it was, but I remember that it was.

Uh and you know, you're like, what if we did this?

You know, there's this opportunity to dedicate these funds, and it was a no-brainer then, it's a no-brainer now.

I'm glad that the council is so supportive of it.

Uh I'm I'm intrigued.

I th I know the answer is yes to this, but I'm gonna ask anyway that Simon is involved.

I mean the 501c3 aspect of this thing, I think is a real interesting opportunity.

Um, various like research and grant opportunities, and you know, this committee is uh not just a name change, but we're thinking about innovation a lot more in this committee, and I think there's some innovative things you could do with this because of the 501c3 in particular.

Right.

Uh so I hope that and I know Simon is is easy to work with.

You might even be like across the hall or something.

But um I certainly would encourage that.

Um I do have one quick if you can go back to the map with all the sites all over as we finish up.

Um I don't want to like hammer on our neighbors to the south too much, but that's more of a golden rhombus, I think.

I don't know that it's a triangle, but I'm no geometry major.

Uh this was a great overview.

Thank you.

Um I saved the least serious for last, let the record show.

Um I appreciate this.

I think you know, um Mr.

Searing, did you uh he did okay?

You didn't had no corrections to give him he did well.

I'd just like to add uh I have a long view on this.

Uh 14 years ago, Eileen Granada did the heavy lift on establishing the TCIC as a procedural step to get bonds issued to acquire the Southwick site.

And then it went into the TCIC after that task went into a state of dormancy, and now that we're funding it, I think it's going to be a wonderful tool.

It had potential all along, but this city struggled with uh a funding issue with it.

And I think this is a great solution, and I think uh uh you'll be very proud of the results.

Yeah.

I'm glad you brought that up.

You know, it is it is a funny thing, and I know certainly for me when I first thought about running for office at all, I was thinking about generational impact and and work, and that's certainly what this is.

You know, in parenting, they say the days are short but the years are long, or the years are long but the days are short, whatever it is.

No, the years are short, the days are long.

The days feel I feel like economic development is the opposite, in a way, right?

Like, yeah, the years seem long, but then you look and you go, wait a second.

Like, huh?

I mean, Westgate, are you kidding me?

Sitting here January 2020 thinking, what are we gonna do?

And hopefully we're close to some some good news there.

So I'm so glad you brought up that point that there are these kind of generational um perspectives we need to have.

Uh I should have gaveled us out of here before, Councilman Driscoll put his light on, but I missed the chance.

Just for the record, a rhombus has two pairs of parallel sides.

That is at best a trapezoid.

Which has one pair of parallel sides.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I know.

When we came out with the new committee structures, I was so heartened that so many of my colleagues wanted to participate here.

And then our first meeting of the year, I've come to regret that.

Um thank you for this.

Very exciting stuff.

More to come.

More to come.

Um so we're looking forward to it.

Thanks for everyone participating.

Meeting adjourned.

Excuse me.

What were the two websites that you had mentioned?

I have to go back to the look.

CIC.

CIC.com.

I don't know.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right, you're welcome.

I know I don't know.

I should ask one question.

Um staying farm site.

Right.

Uh is there a restriction on using that as for housing?

I believe in that.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

And I don't think that there's a risk.

I guess I just bought it once.

I think they were strictly using it for their own.

I think RC RC was behind that.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thanks for coming today.

Okay.

So it will be Monday on the city's link.

Okay.

And that's what the is that what the order is.

Yeah, so you'll there'll be two ordinances that will unless they choose they have a general because one will be the long three net that says the city can probably be responsible.

It's the beginning of a meeting.

I don't know.

I would like to confuse T C C C that one of the dollars is gonna go.

Yeah, so when we uh setting up service at the same time, TCIC is gonna pay the city back.

Right.

It's won't and then that's what it's city's budget.

Okay, sounds like I don't think.

Yeah, I guess we have a question.

Yeah, yes, no, it's like people.

No, right?

Yeah, I'm gonna go that way.

No, it's like yes, yes, yes, we're gonna wanna know how many traffic tells you.

I guess I think that makes sense.

Yeah, we're gonna have to suggest a plus of line.

Yeah, yeah.

So you have still right never starting to find just thank you.

I'll I'll be in the question.

I think you do, yeah.

I'll never do that.

Okay, cool.