Ballton Development Commission meeting of September 22nd, 2025.

It's still the 22nd.

Yes, it is.

All right.

I'll go ahead and call the meeting to order.

First item on our agenda is public comment.

This is an opportunity for anyone to address the commission on something that is not on tonight's agenda.

Please keep your comments to limit to three minutes.

Anyone in the chamber wanting to uh comment to the TDC?

All right.

I'm assuming there's no one in Zoom.

Everyone's in bed.

All right.

Okay, moving on to consent to the consent agenda.

The consent agenda, our items are considered routine.

Uh they'll be passed, but with one vote.

Is anyone on the city council uh have an issue with item number one on the consent agenda and want it removed?

I make a motion to approve the consent agenda.

Second.

Well, I gotta read it, I guess.

So the consent tonight.

The consent tonight, uh tonight consists of only one item consideration for approval of the TDC meeting minutes of June 23rd, 2025.

No, cancellor suck, okay.

I make a motion to approve the consent agenda as read.

Second.

I have a motion second to approve the uh consent agenda as read.

Any discussion on this motions?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, abstentions.

Uh it's um consent agenda is adopted.

Uh general business item number one, downtown revitalization project update.

Sid and Michelle still awake.

Welcome, Michelle.

Uh good evening, Chair Bubenik and uh members of the commission.

Uh Sids and Urban Renewal Economic Development Manager.

As you see, we have uh Michelle Reeves, our consultant, uh Seville's consultants joining us uh from the Midwest.

So thank you, uh Michelle, for for sticking with us.

Uh this is an update on downtown revitalization project.

This is uh update is provided pursuant to the council goal to uh be updated on uh urban renewal uh projects, and so uh we're excited to to have this uh presentation and I'm going to uh suggest uh out of respect for the commission's time that I was gonna defer some of my time and really give Michelle uh all the time.

She's had a great presentation.

And before I do that, I just wanted to uh uh point out three quick things.

One again the goal of this project is to uh how do we create some vitality and uh redevelopment, reinvestment in the downtown.

It's been 10, 15 years since we've had that type of investment in the downtown, and this is a great opportunity to do that, uh, and at the same time create a community identity, mixed use projects, placemaking, uh you know, pedestrian-friendly, multimodal economic development in our downtown area.

Those are the things that we try to focus on it through this project.

Uh secondly, where are we in this process?

This is a 24-month process.

Uh we are close to finishing up with Michelle, our phase one, which is our community identity phase.

Next step we're going to be jumping into is a partnership with the University of Oregon program, which includes uh designets for some uh parcels in our downtown area and some studies that will help complement uh the uh design shred.

And then lastly, is how do we how do we go from uh taking a community identity, visualizing what that downtown can look like and translate that into code?

That code component of it is is somewhat of an important component because one it provides a little uh context for the community as to what what the community's expectations are for the downtown.

It reduces risks for developers and it provides them some certainty.

Right now we don't have codes down there, and I think that's a challenge and an obstacle for down there.

So all of those three things combined, uh 24 month process.

And uh lastly, before I turn it over to Michelle, uh this is uh I I consider this almost like a movie trailer.

Uh, because we're gonna be back uh on December 27th.

Michelle will be here in person.

She's gonna talk about what the final report looks like right now.

She's gonna do a high-level overview of uh some of the findings and recommendations, and so hopefully this is a uh a teaser to the final movie that will be coming up, and um we uh hope to get you guys excited about the project.

And it will be October 27th.

October 27th, yes.

Yes, not December.

That's sorry, yeah.

October 27th.

With that, Michelle, I'm gonna turn it over to you.

Okay.

Um my big question is it says uh do I click all participants?

Um I'm not used to getting this screen when I screen share.

It says who can share host only or all participants, and then who can start sharing when someone else is sharing?

I don't usually set those things as a guest in a meeting.

Does that matter?

Or on your screen, uh, so there's the green button that says share screen, and then there's a little arrow to the right of it.

Yes.

Okay, just hit the big green button.

Yeah, I did that, and then I got advanced sharing options came up.

I'm not sure why.

That's never happened before.

Yeah, it should just yeah.

So I'm just gonna click host only.

Oh, go ahead.

No, do all participants.

Okay.

And then all participants, and then let's see.

There we go.

That's working.

All right, let's give this a try.

Okay.

So can you guys see that?

Yes.

Is that a yes?

Yes.

And then oh shoot.

Um there we go.

And is that changing?

So again, I can't really see you guys because you're super tiny.

So did that change to the gratitude slide?

Sometimes I have an issue with that, so I just want to make sure that's working.

Yes, we can see the gratitude side.

Perfect.

So um, well, anyway, just big thank you, you guys, for hanging in there and letting us uh come in here at the end.

And I just want to say it's been so amazing to work with you guys at the city and your community has been really, really awesome.

So I look forward to sharing some of the the feedback with you today.

So today we're just giving you guys an interim update, and here is what I'm gonna cover just a quick process timeline overview um for October, not December, and uh some sample findings and actions.

So, process and timeline, as you guys know, we've done loads of outreach and info crunching and time on the ground and documentation.

I'm working right now on a combined uh deliverable, which is a report and a presentation.

So the report is going to be delivered to you on October 10th to start taking a look at.

Um, a little uh information on that report.

Uh, two-thirds of this roughly is going to be identity findings, and about a third of this are identity actions.

So this is really meant to be so that that two years that Sid just talked about, this is really meant to be a report that is not a Gantt charted to-do list, but this the findings in particular are meant to help guide your planning over the next several years.

And the the actions in this are things that you can implement that would meet your community's wishes and are also grounded in best practices in economic reality.

So it's kind of a big pile of ideas that respond to the findings.

The last thing I just want to say about how you use these combined deliverables is never stop iterating.

So when you work on anything to do with real estate, and it doesn't matter how big or small it is, you are constantly zooming out and looking at the market and all of your goals, and then you're zooming in and you're taking those next two steps, and you do that all the way until the last thing is built and tenanted.

And so this is meant to be a very flexible document to help inform that process.

Um, next up, I come on the 27th and do a presentation.

I'm also gonna meet with some of your property owners for a little bit of technical assistance time on the 28th.

So that is a very quick overview of uh what's coming up before I hand everything off to uh stage two with the people from University of Oregon.

So I want to talk now about just sort of a teaser on some findings and actions, and I'm going to share them with you in the the format that they are in the report.

So the report is these two sections identity findings and identity actions, and I'm gonna start with each of these four categories within findings.

So the way that I organize the very complex information that comes out of all of this outreach and observation and documentation is by using the story framework as I've told you guys before that improvisers use, and that helps me to organize all of this.

So the findings are organized based on the core story framework, and I'm gonna start with characterization, which is the story a place tells physically.

So one of the first questions that we asked in these different communities or with our our different outreach related to the story framework was what are some words that describe uh downtown?

And the lake is obviously a super big one in every direction.

Um, and there's a mix of things here.

So I I don't actually usually have lake being a the largest response when I ask people for words about a downtown.

So that's that's an unusual response.

Um there are some kind of rough responses like parking empty, underutilized, hot, and there's some good responses, but like nice and and quiet and it has potential.

Um one-off phrases were really important here.

So what I'm doing in the word clouds is just taking all the answers and seeing what rises to the top.

But then I also go through and I look at everything that's a one-off answer, and I just grab some from the word cloud lists and put them here, and it kind of shows you that there were a lot of very individual responses that were really trying to focus on the fact that they felt like downtown's physical story was maybe not what they wanted it to be.

And I would say that overall the feedback that we got about downtown is that physically it does not look like a downtown to people.

They would, there was a lot of like, we don't know it's a downtown, I wouldn't call it a downtown, it doesn't look like a downtown, um, which means your physical story is not telling the story that this is a downtown place.

So just a reminder that you have to cohesively tell a story physically that this is a downtown with all of these different parts of the things that represent what a downtown experience is to anyone driving by or walking through downtown.

So an identity action that comes from this is obviously we want to make this look like a downtown.

So we go to our list of characteristics of successful districts, which we talked about before, and we look at those top three, which is density of building forms.

So we kind of talked before about how every downtown, whether it's a tiny town or or Chicago, um, you have a density of buildings built right next to each other, right up to the sidewalk without interruption.

And the difference between those is sort of floor plate and building height, but that basic characteristic exists.

So, in terms of an identity action, one of the things that I'm going to talk about in the report is site intensification and thinking about how you are facilitating that.

Um, so this is an example of a site.

This is in Portland on MLK Junior Boulevard, formerly highway 99 before the city took it back, and you can see there's a large building there, which was a former auto body shop, and it's surrounded by parking lots and empty lots.

So this is what that original building looked like.

It was a little bit of a super fun site, so it needed a lot of work.

And so, what we did on this site is step one was renovate and retenant the existing building.

So before this is the rendering, and this is the after of one of the interior spaces.

So, step two was to start to intensify those empty lots.

So we don't just keep them as one big parking lot.

And there are very important code approaches that you need to take in order to facilitate this.

So step two was a three-story mixed use building that was office over retail because it was on the busy side of the street, so we didn't have residential there.

And then step three was along the back where there was housing was to put in some row housing, and you can see that pictured here through the parking lot.

So the the parking lot not only serves as some parking for the site, but it also serves as the garage entry for the row housing.

So it's doing double duty, so less into intense use and site-intensified use.

So it still has some parking, but it has a lot less parking.

So one of the first things that I would think about everything that you do in here around densification does not mean you have to buy stuff and tear it down.

And sometimes it's easier to facilitate intensity of use if somebody can take a building and make it cash flow even more, and then they have that money and they can slowly intensify over time.

So step two and three did not happen at the same time on this site.

So next up in identity findings in the core story framework is objective.

And this in story is well, in the story of a place is the experience a district provides and how your values and passions are reflected in that district.

You guys, in my last several meetings that I've been to are very focused on, for instance, climate action and creating more urban walkable places is climate action.

This is a place to reflect those kinds of values, providing housing for a mix of different people.

This is a place to reflect those values.

So with objective, as you guys know, one of my favorite questions is if downtown were a person based on everything it's presenting to the world today, how is that person feeling?

And I often encourage people to provide me a description of that person in order to understand how that person is feeling.

And so what I do is I pull the quotes out from all the surveys that people write about this, and these three quotes I'm gonna share with you are not in the report because they're a little bit longer, and there were so many great answers.

So I want to just take a pause and say thank you to the people of Tualeton who really took their time to answer answer what is a difficult question with a lot of insight.

So the next one is here, and then this was the last one, which kind of made me tear up.

I'm not gonna lie.

So I would say one of the things that's really interesting is that people really love your community and they want something fabulous to happen downtown.

And there's a real appetite for change downtown.

And one of the reasons I asked this question about how would you describe the person and how are they feeling is because these answers are the way that people actually are feeling when they're in the district.

And so it's a great lymph test as you're working over time.

Are these these feelings changing?

Are the way you feel when you're in the district changing?

Is the way you feel when you go there or think about going there?

Is that changing in the right direction?

This is a very powerful question that tells you a lot.

So uh back to how you might act on this.

So identity actions, I have a million things around activation that are going to be in the report.

Um, but one of the things that you can do in the short term, and you notice in this little presentation, I'm talking a lot about short-term actions, is to think about how you can use TIFF programs to actually showcase the activity that you have right now that's kind of invisible.

So this wedding dress store, which at night is you know, you can't see in it, and during the day we can't see in it, is stunningly beautiful on the inside.

Their product is beautiful, they have gorgeous light fixtures that's displayed beautifully, and that is right on a money corner, and it should be something that everyone drives by and says, like, oh my god, I love that dress store and downtown Twileton is awesome.

So with just having more transparent glass and the right storefront lighting inside the windows and having them on, all of a sudden we're telling a whole different story about downtown just through small interventions in the brick and mortar environment.

And you can even sell stationary when you have a wedding dress made out of paper, well lit and visible in a source.

So actually, wedding dress stores are some of my favorite buildings in a downtown to activate.

And so this is the kind of opportunity that you can very quickly start to change the idea of how downtown feels just by really helping to showcase your already active businesses that are sort of invisible right now.

Next up is relationship.

And in relationship, I really want to understand uh what are people relating to and what are they not relating to and who is and isn't relating.

So one of the questions I asked is what are the most beloved businesses in Tualeton?

I did not specify just downtown.

And I do that because I want to see kind of what floats up.

Obviously, people want uh busy, busy places, but you notice there are some real themes here and the things that jump out.

These are community serving businesses, these are food serving businesses, and they're locally owned businesses by and large.

I do want to say, side note, your Fred Meyer is super interesting.

It was mentioned, it was the I think the biggest one in your leading businesses, which is different than your beloved businesses, but um it was mentioned throughout a lot of different kinds of outreach as a real community hub.

So having really good pedestrian access and tying that in to this this whole environment over time is gonna be really important.

So local food and community serving were all big themes in what people related to right now across your city.

So for identity actions, you have to think about with your programs how are you incentivizing local food and community uses?

So a lot of people mentioned Beaverton and how things have changed in Beaverton and how exciting that is.

And this is exactly what Beaverton did.

They said we're going all in on food.

They used TIFF money and worked with property owners to say, okay, we're gonna help you adaptively reuse your property and make it suitable for a restaurant.

They recruited restaurateurs, they played matchmaker between the two, and they put funds on the table to make the brick and mortar changes to have that happen, largely dealing with existing spaces in the downtown and using adaptive reuse.

So great example of having this experience they wanted to provide this objective and and using TIFF money to make that happen.

Another thing that was mentioned a lot was um the desire for a food car pod in the downtown.

And so that is something again, using TIFF funds, you can help create the framework for something like that, and that would have a big impact.

And also really, I think dovetail with the park and all the people on the greenway, uh, it would be a real magnet for people to come across from the greenway and from the park into downtown with a food card pod.

Last up are identity findings around environment, and this is the context of your story, and like we talked about in the workshop, you cannot change your context.

You you have to sort of work with what you got, right?

And you have to work with where you are.

So in environment, one of the questions that I asked was what how is Tueleton perceived in uh both the region and the state?

And I kind of plugged all those in.

And obviously, big words on this are um, at least on a statewide basis, people thought, you know, it's kind of just all Portland, but definitely suburban, suburban were both really big industry getting it confused with tigered I5 traffic, but a very kind of suburban business focus to the identity of the downtown and its perception across the wider region.

But I think what's really interesting is that's that's a super interesting tension that then goes with the things that are immediately around here and also the things that your community really connects to in terms of your context, which is river, greenway, trails, park, and then this future, you know, new iteration of your downtown.

So I think that tension is really interesting.

And then under identity actions, what I really think about are parks, trails, and downtown experience.

You have this very unique opportunity to really just go crazy, just go hard on on making those awesome and think about making your downtown experience.

I would go hard on the downtown.

Don't go downtown light or downtown um, you know, suburban, like create something really distinct there because you have world-class trail, world-class park, have a world-class downtown focus.

And I can't think of very many other places where I could create that with the park and trail amenities, and also be able to just walk right next door between a couple of strip centers and some smaller strip centers, really easy walking distance, pretty much connect to a full array of suburban shopping amenities.

That is very unusual and would be something that would be really unique for you guys to sell.

So I think that's exciting.

And if you can make that really happen, I think the way that those other parts of your urban renewal area might change to embrace that uh would be really interesting too.

So I think that that playing around with these two things, like go hard on the first three, and then think about how you interconnect with these really unique amenities that are right around them and make them a little more walkable and and bikeable.

Really interesting tension there.

Very few places you can access both of these.

So that is a super quick overview of the uh big pile of information that's gonna be in these next two uh bigger deliverables.

So that's the end.

I wanted to be very fast.

Uh, any questions?

Questions from Michelle Council Brooks.

Um thank you very much for your presentation.

I really um love that dovetail between having these now we have these two national trails in our in our community, which is amazing and this opportunity.

Um, and I think just maybe because I'm on the arts committee, but I do get a lot of curiosity around arts and culture, not just from the arts community itself, but from the community at large, and um I'm curious um your thoughts about that.

So I think um one of the things that was really interesting, I think a lot of people, so back to sort of community serving kind of uses.

So there is a lot of appetite.

Well, I would say this there's a lot of nostalgia for things that used to happen downtown that don't happen anymore downtown, and then I would say there's a lot of appetite for more opportunity to experience events in the downtown, and those are not all commerce-based events, so some of those are related to music and performance and and those kinds of things.

So, some of what I'm gonna be looking at in the report is thinking about how you can start interconnecting and thinking about things like festival, street, performance space, things that are flex use spaces, not just dedicated, because you don't have a lot of room in this square, and we already have like, for instance, a hardscape problem, so we want to think about how space can do double duty and serve those needs.

I would also say, and and in the uh workshop I showed a lot of pictures.

You you guys have a great head start on thinking about how you're integrating art uh into the environment in the downtown, and so I think that's something that should definitely continue.

Um so I think that those are both things that there is an appetite for, especially as it relates to community getting together.

And I just had one other question.

Um, I was thinking um at the Metro Mixture, I was talking to somebody about the there's some funding available.

Um, but around informational um environmental informational center, I know that some of the things that we want to do in our community, sometimes the weather is in the way, and we don't have a lot of indoor spaces, and we don't have enough space for the kids, and if we were to add something like a visitor center that had flexible information um about the river, about art um that could be utilized by the community and flexible um anyway, and if we could find funding for it.

Um I I like the idea of um I I think there are a lot of ideas where you can think about passion for the environment, which is definitely present, and this goes back to objective.

And I I like the idea of I think there are a lot of ideas where you can think about passion for the environment, which is definitely present, and this goes back to objective.

So how do you roll some of the things that people are are interested in in the community and want reflected in the downtown?

And so, you know, I definitely think environment is a piece of it.

I think one of the things I would be careful of, and it's something I'm gonna talk about more in the report, is um a downtown technically, what it's looking to be is have what I call sort of naturally occurring safety, commerce, and and and activity, right?

So if you set the down up town up right where you have 18 hours of activity on the ground floor and you have enough of a concentration of buildings, you have this area that is is naturally pretty safe, it naturally has eyeballs on the street, it naturally has enough of a critical mass that it has cross pollination in terms of commerce, so it economically supports itself, and I'm I'm actually creating a vibrant place that showcases people without spending a lot of public sector money on an ongoing basis related to events and and populating space.

One of the things that's a challenge when you have a district that does not have that happening on a natural basis, is there's this tendency to say, can we keep can we support all of these other things through public use of funds, which is tricky.

So I'm looking always looking for ways to create space that can be many things, yeah, and also thinking about how we can do it in ways um where we're not overloading our public sector having to program things or having to.

So that's just the the only concern I would have is is it you want to create, and that's why I like that you're thinking about how to combine it with you know these other uses because that's that's really recognizing the biggest challenge to that is is gathering space costs a lot of money, so you have to think about how it's supporting itself, and that we're we're not overburdening the area with with space that doesn't support itself, and part of it to me too is um almost could be utilized like a welcome hub center too, and other um, but we don't have a lot of meeting spaces, so there might be opportunities to rent and to because we really just I mean we do a lot of big meetings in our one little library room, right?

Anyway, right the Juanita Poll Center, like it seems like those are pretty full.

Yeah, those are always full.

Thank you.

Other questions, comments from Michelle andor Sid.

People are worn out.

Yeah, it's like 112 here, so I I get it.

So back to you, Sid, no more questions.

No, that that was it, other than uh we will uh be back on October 27th, and Michelle will be in person and uh excited to uh to be able to do that.

The next step after we do that we're we're gonna ask the uh uh uh the commission to accept the report, and then so the next step after that would be going back to the community advisory committee and have them look at the different action items and try to prioritize those low, medium, high, and that's gonna be a uh kind of a uh process going over over this two-year process because after we're we're done with phase two, are those priorities gonna change in any way?

And then the same with after we phase three.

So it'll be kind of a a reiterative process, and then we will eventually come back to the TDC with the CAC or the CEC will come back with some final recommendations for for consideration.

Okay.

And can I just hop in just super fast and just say that um I think one of the there's magic that happens when you start visualizing things, and so um I've given you guys a bunch of very grounded and economic reality, you know, uh, identity actions, and so you guys in the CAC can say, hey, these are the ones that speak to us the most, and we really want to go through some different visioning, and and they may be very different from each other.

And then as you go through that process, you're you're gonna then um you might go down certain tracks you didn't envision in in the beginning, because sometimes sort of magic happens when you start investigating something and and people figure out like oh, these three things that everyone wants goes together perfectly here.

But we hadn't thought about that before.

So I I think the point of this report is really to just provide a a lot of these ideas of things you should start exploring, and then you're just gonna have that whole iteration of exploring and seeing where it takes you.

All right, thanks, Michelle.

Go to bed.

All right, thanks, Sid.

Uh that is the last time on our agenda.

Uh, do we have a motion for adjournment?

So moved.

Second.

All in favor adjourning the TDC meeting this evening.

Say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Abstentions?

It's unanimous.

Have a good evening.

I dare you do.