Recording in progress.

Good evening and welcome to the December 8th, 2025 Towalton Development Commission meeting.

Those of you expecting a work session tonight, we're not having a work session tonight.

We're having a Tualeton Development Commission meeting because we have some exciting news uh to share with the community.

That's going to take a couple hours, so rather than having this stretch out to 10 o'clock tonight, we're doing a TDC meeting rather than a work session.

So I'll go ahead and call uh this TDC Commission meeting to order.

First item on our agenda is public comment.

Public comment is an opportunity to address the commission on something that's not on the agenda tonight.

Please leave it.

Please limit your comments to about three minutes.

I'll take those who are in the meeting first for their comments, and then I'll switch to Zoom.

Do we have anyone in the commission chambers who would like to address the commission?

Seeing none, do we have any on Zoom, Bates and or Nicole?

All right, give them an opportunity to speak.

They'd like to.

No hands.

All right, we'll move on to the consent agenda.

The consent agenda are those items that are considered routine and will be voted on by one motion on the commission.

If there's an item on the consent agenda, one of the commissioners does not uh like or wants more detail about that uh commissioner can have that pulled and heard late heard separately later tonight.

Tonight's consent agenda consists of one item.

Item number one consideration of approval of the Tualton Development Commission meeting, minutes of November 4th, 2025, November 24th, 2025.

I move that we adopt the consent agenda is red.

Second.

I have a motion and a second to adopt the consent agenda as read.

Any other discussion on those motions?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Abstentions, it's unanimous.

Thank you.

That brings us to general business.

Item number one, consideration of resolution number six four three-25 authorizing the purchase of real property located at 18925 Southwest 84th Avenue, the Matthias property, and execution of a deed to acquire the Matthias property for inclusion as part of the core of plans 18970 catalyst project.

And if approved, adopt resolution number 644-25 authorizing an introcup interfund loan from the Southwest Urban Renewal District to the core opportunity and reinvestment area.

Our discussion will be led tonight by Sid.

And with Don will be waiting for his uh part because we have to approve Sid's part before we can get to Don's part.

So if we don't get to that, then it doesn't happen.

Uh so which one's the public hearing?

Just so I'm sure.

Third resolutions.

Um we've got to do a public hearing thing too.

That's for the button.

But a budget one, yeah.

So Sid, no script for you yet.

Sid welcome.

Thank you.

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

Um asked to consider uh the two resolutions.

One is to purchase the Matthias property, and then the second resolution is to approve an interfund loan between the South Southwest uh Urban Renewal District and the Core Opportunity and Reinvestment Area.

Um just a little background on on the project.

Uh as you all recall, the CORA plan was adopted in November of 2022.

It talks about uh the city's sustainability effort to strengthen the social cultural and um economic vitality of Tualeton specifically through funding uh some specific projects, and those projects are intended to improve property values, address blight in the area, and also uh create an active uh civic core.

The uh the image in the bottom left is generally our downtown core area.

The red line kind of I generally also identifies the area that we're talking about as far as kind of what we're trying to strengthen as far as our our civic core area.

Uh the boundaries themselves uh uh may uh expand a little bit through this uh process.

Um of the projects identified in the core plan is the uh 18970 catalyst projects.

Uh and then to the right is an image that was uh shared uh when the plan was adopted.

This is just an illustration of the the potential mixed use project.

Uh that's along Boone's Ferry Road, and the road just to the left is is uh uh drop the blink on it.

It is sorry.

Seneca Street.

Anyways, the uh the project is identified as a public-private partnership.

Uh the purpose is to redevelop uh that site, and the site is about a half acre.

It's in the red area identified in the um the site plan below it.

Uh and the mixed use project is intended to include uh attainable housing as well as commercial retail.

Uh also uh last month the commission also uh approved a minor amendment to the core plan.

That plan did two things.

One was to add the three parcels to the right of the the um catalyst project, and it's the two properties in the green, and then the one property identified in the blue.

Uh the amendments uh also added text to the 18970 project uh to indicate that if the properties were ever to become available for purchase that's uh the TDC would consider uh acquiring the property.

Uh and it's come to our attention that uh the uh Rick Matthias LLC owns the property and they've approached uh the redevelopment agency to purchase the property.

Uh as I mentioned, it's the two parcels in green.

The first parcel uh to the north is the parking lot with some lawn area, the parcel to the south uh is the uh site of an existing single family home.

Uh both properties combined are about 0.28 acres.

Uh the uh the seller is a willing seller in this, and their asking price is six hundred thousand dollars.

Uh and as discussed a little bit, uh, we were looking to fund the acquisition of property through a uh interfund loan from the uh SWERD district to the CORA district.

And there's just some images on the the bottom there.

The one on the left is from the parking lot looking south towards the house.

A couple of uh interior shots that used to uh in the 80s, it was a dentist office, and the most recent use was as a uh radio station for the structure.

And then uh the bottom right is uh alley shot looking to the south with the property to the left.

Uh so uh the request again is the uh approval of uh resolution six four three twenty-five, which directs uh staff to uh acquire the Matthias property.

If that resolution is approved, then we're asking the commission to approve resolution 64425, which is the approval of the uh interline interfund loan from the SWERD district to the CORA district for the amount of 600,000.

And with that, that concludes my presentation.

Uh certainly staff is recommending approval of both of the resolutions.

All right, so we're gonna tackle resolution 643-25 first, because if we don't pass this, we don't go to 644.

So questions for Sid.

No questions, then motions would be cool.

Okay.

I motion that we adopt resolution 643-25.

Second.

I have a motion, a second to adopt resolution 643-25.

Do council rules apply to the commission.

Do I have to do a roll call vote or just a voice vote?

Your Honor, for consistency, I'd recommend a roll call.

All right, we'll do that.

Councillor Sacco.

Aye.

Council Hillier.

Aye.

Councilor Reyes.

Yes.

Councilor Gonzalez.

Aye.

Councillor Brooks.

Aye.

Council President Pratt.

Aye.

Chair votes aye.

It's unanimous.

Resolution 643-35 is adopted.

Now, Don is up.

And this does have a script.

So resolution 645-25 authorizing changes to the 2526 budget.

That's the next one.

This is 644-25 for the interfund loan, and then we'll do that.

Oh, geez.

Then the next one will be the public hearing.

All right.

Okay.

So thank you for approving 643 to F25 for this exciting uh purchase of property.

As you know, when we talked before when Cora was adopted, that we knew the tax increment collections would come in a little bit slower than SWERD.

So to date, there has not been sufficient collections of the increment in CORA to fund this purchase.

There has been more than enough in the SWERD district.

In fact, we are way ahead of the game on the collections in that district.

Statute allows for an interfund loan to be uh gun between two funds for capital purchase for up to 10 years.

So the funding plan at this point would be to do an interfund loan from SWERD to CORA for up to 10 years.

The repayment on that would be as soon as there are sufficient collections in the district to fund other items as well as to pay back this loan.

The loan can be repaid at any time with no prepayment penalty, so we can make payments on it or pay it all off at once.

The commission has the ability to set a interest rate.

So staff is proposing the interest rate of the local government investment pool.

That way SWERT is kept whole during the whole time those funds are being in CORA.

The other if collections don't come in that fast, which I anticipate within the next couple years this will be sufficient.

But if we do a uh borrowing of some sort for other projects in the district, we would include the repayment at that uh in that uh borrowing.

Uh at that, I'll be happy to answer any questions you have about an interfund loan.

Any questions for Don?

Council Brooks.

Um I'm sorry, but can you just remind me what the um Southwest Urban Renewal District is?

That's down in the Basalt Creek area.

That's that district we did in the South Ends.

Right.

And then um as far as so we're ahead of the game in there.

Can you tell us what that means?

So we were anticipating a few hundred thousand or more in the first few years.

The PGE property, that big development was part of SWERD, and it hit the rolls at such time that now we're getting the increment on that property, and that was sufficient.

That was a much larger, so we were getting over a million dollars of increment when we were anticipating far less.

Thank you so much.

Other questions for Don?

I move that we adopt resolution 644 25.

Second.

I have a motion and second to adopt resolution 644-25.

Any discussions on those motions?

Councilor Sacco.

I.

I'm sorry, Commissioner.

Commissioner Reyes.

Yes.

Commissioner Gonzalez.

Yes.

Commissioner uh Brooks.

Yes, you can just call me commission Commissioner Bratt.

Aye.

Sure, votes aye.

It's unanimous.

Resolution 644-25 is adopted.

Now can I do a script?

Feel free.

I try to give as much time to Michelle as possible here.

All right.

So a public hearing for resolution 645-25 authorizing changes to the 2025-2026 adopted budget.

Is a public hearing for the development commission to consider resolution 645-25 authorizing changes to the fiscal year 2025-2026 adopted budget.

The hearing will be will be conducted as follows.

First, the public hearing will be opened and city staff will make a presentation.

Next, the commission will hear from members of the public who wish to set testify in favor of the resolution, followed by members of the public who wish to testify against the resolution, followed by anyone who else would like who wishes to testify.

Upon conclusion of the public testimony, individual commissioners may ask questions with city staff and any person who provided testimony.

After commission questions are completed, the public portion of the hearing will be closed to consider the resolution.

Upon conclusion of deliberations, the commission will consider whether to adopt resolution 640-25.

A few questions here.

Does any member of the commission wish to abstain for participating in this hearing?

I don't see any.

The development commission will now open.

I will now open the public hearing for the development commission with a presentation from city staff.

Mr.

Hudson, you're on again.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, members of the Commission.

My name is Don Hudson.

I'm the assistant city manager and finance director with the city.

We're here tonight to talk about changes, proposed changes to the adopted 2526 budget.

So local budget law under ORS 294 allows for uh changes to the adopted budget under circum certain circumstances.

There are three types of changes that are on your agenda this evening.

The first is a transfer of appropriations within a fund that were author that can be authorized by a resolution of the council.

And these are items that were already approved in the adopted budget, and we're just asking for them to be moved from one appropriation to another.

Typically, this is the type of thing where I ask come to you and ask for a contingency transfer falls under this category.

The second is when an occurrence or condition that is not ascertained when preparing the original budget and that requires a change in financial planning, that generally requires a public hearing, and that is one of the reasons we are holding a public hearing this evening.

This typically are things like moving monies out of the reserves, which is not an appropriation and moving that into an appropriated item.

And that's I've got a couple of those this evening.

The last is a creation of a new fund.

So because we are looking to purchase property out of the CORA, we are need to move that into a or create a project fund.

And so that's the proposal this evening as well.

And that also requires the public hearing.

So I'm going to walk through this because even as I was putting this all together, I had a lot of circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one to try to explain what it was.

So I thought this would be a lot easier to have somewhat of a visualization.

So the first one is based upon your your last action approving the interfund loan.

So the this item is moving the $600,000 purchase price out of the reserves in the SWERD bond fund and move that to a category called transfer out, and that will be transferred to the CORA project fund.

And that's for the $600,000.

So that's the first action that I'm asking you this evening.

Because we need to move it into a project or a new project fund, then the second item here is a creation of that new fund, the core opportunity and reinvestment area project fund, which will be recording the capital projects in the CORA district as we go forward.

So you'll see there are a couple different components to this.

There's the $600,000 transfer in from the SWERD bond fund into this into a capital outlay account in the CORA project fund.

The additional $50,000 is coming from reserves to that transfer or to a transfer in, and that's for items that are be over other costs related to the property that we're keeping outside of the loan.

And so the loan will be 600, but we know that we have a few other expenditures that will be related to that.

So we're asking to move the 50,000 as well, so a total 650 into the project fund in the capital outlay category.

So because of that, uh the now we're talking about some additional CORA expenditures.

In the current budget, SID's time is all budgeted to in the TDC admin fund, uh, and there's a transfer in from SWERD into that for his time.

We now also have a second staff member in the TDC, Quinn has come on board.

And so that since both of them will be doing work in CORA, we figured this was a really good up time to then split how the two different districts and two different funds where the money's coming into the TDC to cover personnel expenditures.

So that transfer is 166,675.

Uh that's coming out of CORA bond reserves, the bond fund reserves, and then that 50,000 that I just talked about also.

So if you look at, if you were to look at your uh the the way it's laid out in the resolution, there's a total of 216,675 from reserves, and that's made up of the two components 166 to go to the transfers to the TDC admin fund for personnel cost, and then 50,000 to go to the CORA project fund for those additional expenditures beyond the purchase price.

The last is some changes then to the TDC admin fund.

Uh I just mentioned the 166,000 of personnel services.

Uh so this is again that change in the addition of staffing.

Uh fit and then we also have costs related to uh some other uh uh expenditures in the TDC ad fund admin fund that we think will cause the fund to go over budget, uh as well as when Quinn came on board, we had some expenditures to bring him on board as well.

So we're asking for a $35,000 transfer out of contingency to go to those cover those additional materials and services expenditures that we're seeing in the TDC admin fund, and then there's that 166,675 transfer that I just talked about.

At that, I think I talked to Rawl.

I don't I might not have that question slide.

So I'll be more than happy to answer any questions over that whole convoluted uh the adoptions and things that I'm asking you to do this evening.

Questions are done.

Commissioner Pratt.

Oh, I just wonder, can you give examples of materials and services?

Uh this is uh contract services, this is uh things like the computers and software, uh it's kind of the miscellaneous things that are not personnel or capital.

Those two.

Other questions.

Council Brooks.

I mean Commissioner Brooks.

It's hard to make that change.

That's okay.

Yeah, commission.

You'll get it.

I miss I um this is gonna sound a little off the center, but I'm just curious with personnel services being transferred from there where we're um what we're looking at for regular our regular staff budget.

And I'm also curious where we are at our climate action person.

So let me get to the TDC part first.

I think I'm if I'm not answering your question, please let me know.

Uh so we budget all personnel services in the TDC admin fund.

So that is all costs, salary, and benefits, and this will be for Sid and for Quinn.

And then we transfer the money from these the funds where they're doing the work into the TDC admin fund to cover those personnel services expenditures.

Did that answer the question you were?

Yeah, well, you transferring it from the general budget.

Uh from the so from the SWERD uh budget into TDC admin and then from core and TC admin.

So it's all staying within the development commission.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Other questions?

All right.

I'd like to motion that we're no, we got your public questions.

Oh, sorry.

She's eager to all right.

Uh at this point, I'd like to ask if there are any members of the public who wish to testify in favor of this proposal.

Somebody in the room.

Zoom land.

Nothing.

All right.

Are there any members of the public who wish to testify against this proposal?

No hands.

No hands there.

Is there any member of the community that would just like to testify on this subject?

See none here.

All right.

Now time for questions.

Any other questions for Don?

All right, so I'll go ahead and now close this hearing and we'll go into deliberations.

Any deliberations.

Yeah.

I'd like to motion that we adopt resolution number 645-25.

Second.

I have a motion and a second to adopt resolution 645-25.

Any discussions on these motions.

All right.

Seeing none.

Commissioner Sacco.

Aye.

Commissioner Hillier.

Aye.

Commissioner Reyes.

Yes.

Commissioner Gonzalez.

Yes.

Commissioner Brooks.

Aye.

Commissioner Pratt.

Aye.

Chair votes aye.

The resolution is passed unanimously.

It's adopted.

Thank you.

All right.

Don.

Can we get to Michelle?

Now we'll get to Michelle.

All right.

All right.

So that brings us to item number one, special reports.

Downtown revitalization, revitalization, community identity final report.

Sid and Michelle.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Chair Bubenick and uh members of the commission again.

Uh Sidson Urban Renewal Economic Development Manager.

And with me is Michelle Reeves from Siviths Consulting.

And I was going to turn it over to her for introduction and her presentation.

But before that, just wanted to touch on a few things with you.

We have in the audience, and that's Kathy Holland representing the commercial CIO committee.

The other is this is uh kind of a significant milestone for us.

We've reached our first milestone, finishing our our phase one process.

It's a long process.

We have a phase two, phase three over a 24-month process.

Uh but certainly it's it's an important one worth acknowledging.

And if you'll recall uh the three phases, one was to to establish uh or to create a community identity.

What is a community wants it to look like through public participation?

We've got received a lot of feedback.

Michelle has consolidated that.

That's our presentation for this meeting.

Next phase is phase two is our partnership with the University of Oregon sustainable sustainability city year program where they're doing studies, but uh one of the big projects coming out of that is uh doing a design charret.

A lot of times you'll ask the community, what do you want the downtown to look like?

They'll say, I don't know, but I know know it when I see it, and that's where it trying to get at.

It's almost a a uh visual preference survey as what uh um through this uh design charrette.

And then lastly, phase three, uh which is in the summer of 26 and winter of 27, is uh to look at trying to put together a um uh downtown urban design plan, basically a blueprint for what this downtown would look like, for example.

We may to the north we may have a uh parks and open space kind of district.

How does that fit in with all the other uh parts uh uh of the downtown area?

Uh the other piece of that is also to develop some design standards to provide a little cohesion, provide a little certainty.

Uh and so the ultimate goal that we're trying to do here is how can we put the downtown in the best possible position for reinvestment and redevelopment?

So that's where we are in the process.

Uh the CAC also did have an opportunity to look at the uh the report as well as look at the recommendations.

We're gonna visit the uh CAC's recommendations uh later on in 2026, but certainly uh those will be forwarded uh to the commission uh when those become available.

So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Michelle.

Further ado, I'm not gonna spend any time uh introducing myself, but I am going to say Oh, is it on?

Yeah, sorry about that.

Did somebody turn it on for me?

It's like the guy in the back there.

Thank you.

So super excited to be here.

I do just want to say that um downtown Twalleton has been living in the back of my brain since I started on this project, and this has been one of the most fun things that I have worked on in my career, actually.

And I just have had so much fun.

So uh Sid, you know, this poor man has, you know, I have this crazy process, and he's made it all happen and been there with me throughout the whole thing.

But just everyone, the city, your community, your property owners, your business owners.

I mean, they're very welcoming and engaging and thoughtful.

And I think there's a real appetite to to do something downtown.

So it's super exciting.

So thank you for having me.

This has been a lot of fun.

Uh, orientation, I just want to say this is the presentation version of the deliberal.

There is a report.

It is longer and more comprehensive than what I'm gonna highlight in the presentation.

The report is about two-thirds findings, one third um actions you could take based on those findings.

Um, this particular presentation is gonna be a little bit different.

So I'm gonna just use the story framework, and then I'm going to share from each part of that a some findings and some actions based on that.

So that's what the presentation uh structure is gonna look like.

So we're gonna jump in and we're gonna start with characterization.

So a downtown is a brick and mortar place.

So, how important is the physical story?

Right?

It's kind of everything.

It's everything.

Your physical story is everything.

But also wayfinding, marketing, anything that you can touch and see and smell, that's all physical story.

So I'm gonna spend a fair amount of time here, and that is uh the the longest section in the report as well.

And and any time I'm doing downtown work and I'm using the story framework characterization is always a really big one.

So identity findings, let's talk about that.

So, one of my first questions in the workshop and in the survey is uh what words do you want to see describe?

Or what words describe downtown today?

And we have a real mix of words here.

So we have some words that aren't great, like parking and empty and underutilized and boring.

Um we have some good words like nice and potential, and then we have some unusual word, which is lake, which I don't normally have, right, in the middle of a downtown.

So that's uh unusual.

Now, a word clown, the bigger the word, the more frequently it was said, and the smaller the word, the less frequently it is said.

So what I do is I take all of the survey results and the workshop results, and I just dump it into a word cloud to kind of see what pops up onto the surface.

But a lot of times you need to make you know a more fine-grained look at some of the information.

And this was one of those cases because a lot of the answers to this question of how would you describe downtown today was some version of these smaller things that you see up here.

And and those are not great, a lot of these things are not great words, but because they're not all said in exactly the same way, they don't all pop up to the top.

But I would say that there is a huge appetite for the physical story of downtown to change.

And I think one of the biggest themes as you read individual responses, is that it doesn't look like a downtown, which is just another way of saying, you know, you know, because they would say, like, I don't even know what you mean by downtown, or it's not a downtown, or it's you know, or they would describe the ways in which it's not a downtown.

So that is really speaking to the physical story, is not there.

People do not feel like this is downtown because it doesn't look like a downtown.

So these are the kinds of physical stories that tell you whether it's a downtown or not a downtown.

All of these things are telling stories.

I'm not gonna talk about all of these today, but we're gonna jump on a few and we're gonna start with road stories.

So we have a lot of different road stories going on here.

We definitely have very busy off-the-freeway suburban road stories, but we have, you know, this is kind of a small downtown main street e-story.

So we have some different stories on our border roads.

Um, where are your best border roads?

I would say they're right here.

These are the ones that tell the story from the road uh of this might be a downtown or a main street.

So we also have some interior streets, and some of those are telling a nice little main street story there.

We have some charming streets, particularly on the west side.

So what's interesting about your road stories internally is our little grids.

Is that a road story that we see in a downtown typically?

We see a little grid.

So you have a little grid going here.

On this side of the street, we don't.

So our east-west streets don't even feel like streets, and then the way you get north-south is private laneways going through parking lots that you're pretty much not sure whether you're allowed to park there or whether to be there or whether you can drive through there.

So it's super uncomfortable, and that's something that a lot of people talked about.

So we have very conflicting road stories, definitely not telling a consistent kind of downtown story that makes sense.

Our parking lots are um telling stories, and those tend to be much more of a suburban story.

So the first thing I did was take a map and try to figure out how much land area was devoted to parking.

That feel like a downtown.

No.

So one of the things that you can do is look at some other towns, roughly your size that you think are doing a great job, and say, what's their land area devoted to parking?

And that's our goal, you know, that's a goal.

Uh-huh.

About how many square feet?

I I don't know because I didn't measure it, but if you eyeball it, you you know, you if you take out the lake, you've got more than 50% that is in vacant lot and and parking.

Yeah, it'd be interesting to know.

Yeah, square feet.

Thank you.

Um, so we have uh some stories here that um from a building perspective, uh, a little bit suburban here off of these roads, but we also have some of the buildings uh have a quaint kind of main street feel as well.

So there's a mix of stuff here, and that's okay.

That's interesting, that can be good.

Um, the next question was what words do you want to describe?

Downtown Twellaton.

And what's something that strikes you about these words?

Because this jumped out at me like immediately.

They're feeling words.

So people didn't describe how wide a road was or what a sidewalk looked like, right?

They talked about how they want to feel when they're downtown.

And that is going to be one of the challenges on this project moving forward is you're going to have to think about these feeling words, which is how we think about places and how do you translate that into the physical story in the built environment for people?

And so that means you're gonna have to talk about what I call is the P word, which is parking, and the D-word, which is density, and you have to figure out how to do that in a way that makes sense for your community, and I'm gonna be talking about that some here as well.

So a big part of your physical story and what you're thinking about and and and the findings around your physical story is this list.

And if we're gonna talk about actions, we're gonna go back to this list and we're gonna talk about what can you do with this list.

So I'm gonna start with your road stories.

I think you can think about your best roads, and these roads are super important because they're interconnecting with the park in your greenway, too.

So you want to think about how you can make them better and more active.

What is this perspective?

Yeah, it's park looking at downtown.

So is it a surprise that nobody leaves the park and goes into downtown to eat?

Like ever.

Right.

Yeah.

Why would you?

You don't even know it's there.

You can't see it, and you have to walk through a parking lot, which is an auto-oriented use.

So this connection between the park and downtown is super critical, and that road is super critical.

And how those two things are relating to each other on either side are super, super critical.

So I would love to see more of these people cross-pollinating into your downtown into these kinds of things, but we need to invite them.

We need the road and the environment to tell them, yes, please do come in here.

Um, your greenway, super interesting.

Um, it was really fun to like.

I felt like I was, I don't know, like top secret access over by the LA Fitness, you know, like in the greenway, sneaking in uh the back door.

Uh so wandering on the greenway, and then you pop out, and then you're like, where do I go?

And what do I do?

And there are a lot of communities in Oregon that have really, really great rails to trails that go into town, and you know what?

They go into town.

The the rail trail goes right into town, and people eat there and they stop there and they grab a beer, and it doesn't matter if it's the at the beginning of the right place or the middle of the right place or the end of the right place, and right now nobody's taking that ride and stopping in your downtown.

Nobody.

So uh definitely I think there's opportunities for connecting up.

Uh, because this you just get lost in here, just like, am I do I turn around?

Am I going where?

So it's it's very, very unclear.

So that's um some things to think about with your road stories to improve your road stories.

Another thing you have to do is think about your building stories.

What stories are your buildings telling on your roads?

So I shared this with you before.

This is a list of characteristics that you would see in a downtown that's pretty economically successful.

And if you look at these top three, these top three are essentially the physical story, which you need a critical mass of buildings built right next to each other, right up to the sidewalk.

And so this is the D word.

And the D word is really not about height, which is what everyone focuses on and what freaks everyone out.

It's about lot coverage and continuity and activity on the ground floor.

And so you can't have building parking lot, parking lot, parking lot building, right?

That's not what a downtown is.

This is a small town in Massachusetts.

It's called Great Barrington.

And this is a scale that you look at and you just say, Oh, this is a cute historic small downtown, right?

You immediately know what it is.

You know what kind of experience you might have here.

You expect those ground floor spaces to have activity.

When you look up that street, does that make you want to continue to walk up there?

Absolutely.

Um, you also might have the same kind of density in Chicago.

The only difference between these two is height.

They both have buildings built right next to each other, right up to the sidewalk with a critical mass of buildings.

So the difference in terms of density, really here is height.

But what you want to focus on with your community is they want activity and they want people and they want stuff going on, which means you need a critical mass of buildings right next to each other, right up to the sidewalk and move the height argument a little bit later and think more about that continuity and density.

You're in a flood plain and uh ground floor uses can be active and they can be elevated.

So this is Auburn, California.

It is in the Sierra Foothills, it is directly on this part of Old Town, literally just past that tree.

Uh you can see I-80, which is how you get from the Bay Area to Lake Tahoe.

So lots of traffic, it's very busy.

Um, because it's in a very hilly environment, almost everything there is elevated in some form.

And it's a super successful small town on that trip.

And for all the people who make that trip, this is the town everyone stops in on their way in and their way back, and all the little towns that are along uh the freeway that people cannot see or interact with, they don't stop there, they stop in Auburn.

So uh this is a great example of a community where almost all the retail spaces in the old town are elevated.

So you can think about how you build that in a more organic way in a floodplain.

And again, I just want to say this is even more freeway adjacent than you guys are because you guys have like a little bit of an off-ramp and a street, like the freeway literally goes right by old town here, and still a very successful community.

That doesn't mean that everything needs to be uniform or exactly the same height in this future downtown.

So where is this?

It's in Oregon.

Astoria.

So Astoria is a working river town.

A lot of downtown is one to two stories, but they also have an eight-story building.

And that's okay.

And so you can think about maybe in your downtown, there are some places that you could absorb something that's really tall.

I personally think that these two areas, they're on the widest street, the busiest street, it's your going on the freeway and off the freeway.

So a lot of times in suburban environments, people are like, you know, I need a sign to tell people what's there.

And it's like, no, we need a tall building to show people this is downtown.

Now, these are not great environments directly on that street to have active retail because it's really busy and it's allowed, it may not be great for housing, it can be really great for civic infrastructure, it can be great for recreation, it can be great for um uh you can have active uses around some of those corners, but maybe not right on the busiest.

So there's a mix of things.

Um we just were brainstorming with some property owners in downtown about you know whether you create a city hall in the corner and you move the library into it, and then you can do something active and more park-oriented, um, you know, right on that corner.

But I would say if I was gonna pop something really tall in here, I'd want to do it probably on one of those two sides.

So back to Auburn, California.

They have a tall courthouse at the top of their hill, and it's lit really well, and you can see it on the freeway in both directions day and night, and it's very compelling, and it's one of the reasons everyone wants to stop there.

So building stories, there are more what it what is a characteristic of a downtown road.

You have buildings on both sides of the street.

Super common.

Where is this?

Yeah.

So there aren't a lot of opportunities around the border of your downtown to have buildings on both sides of the same street right now.

But a couple that popped out at me.

Um TriMatter ODOT owns this over here.

And that there's potential to put row houses in there, and then maybe you can put the park and ride parking, you can work out a deal with the strip mall to have it there.

So whatever you build here could start to have you know some softening off that busy intersection and have some cross-pollination on both sides.

And then with the park project coming up, you could potentially have there it is.

Um, you could potentially build something here that maybe includes kayak rental in Minneapolis.

We have a cargo bike library.

So if you want this to be a district where people cycle more and use it bikes for more of their daily goods, you could have a cargo bike library there that people could rent to buy bigger things, but also not drive.

And then you could think about how you're maybe activating the front of the library with something like recreational bike share for the trail riding.

So people can just come down and rent a bike and ride on the trail and come back.

So how are we creating activity?

So that's sort of like a complete corner.

There's something going on on all sides on that corner.

Parking lot stories.

So we talked about we have a lot of parking lots, and that's gonna be a heavy lift to, and I'm gonna give you a lot of ideas today of things you can do like right away and in the short term and medium term.

But I did want to talk a little bit about roughly how much space.

So just as a reference, and these are obviously bigger cities, but um uh Portland has about 11% of their building area or land areas devoted to parking in Seattle, it's about 9%.

So you guys are definitely way above that.

Um parking lot stories.

I like people to think about site intensification because it's sort of a medium-term thing that you can do in these districts without tearing everything down.

So if I own a little building with a parking lot, and that building is cash flowing, there are a lot more things that I could actually build next to it because I don't have to pay for the redevelopment of the entire site, and it's already cash flowing on part of it.

So you can take what you have and improve it, and you build something new next to it on the parking lot.

Now that would require really managing downtown parking and having a downtown parking toolkit.

So I just want to talk about site intensification from first the perspective of this is how we always used to build.

So I love when you're in Europe and you're just wandering around some little area of Europe and there's like two and three-story buildings, and you come around a corner and it's always weird, and you get jump scared by a freaking cathedral, and it doesn't fit anything around it.

It is not on the grid.

You're like, what were they thinking?

Of course, it takes them like 900 years to build these things, but it doesn't look anything like what's around, and that's fine.

Everything does not have to be the same era.

And there are plenty of weird, ugly mid-century buildings that we have repurposed and made into really awesome, fantastic buildings, and that makes places more interesting.

It doesn't have to all be uniform.

So here's an example of a um a site intensification project that we did in Portland right before the Great Recession.

So this is on MLK Junior Boulevard, former 99E, and you can see we have an existing building there surrounded by empty lots and parking lots.

So the first job was to take the existing building and renovate it and reten it.

And it used to be um a car dealership back in the day, and it had a lot of contamination.

So it was a borderline super fun site.

And here is a rendering of what we wanted, and here is the after of one of the interior spaces, which was a pizza place and one of you know, high ceilings, bow truss.

I mean, you can't build those things today.

They're really, really beautiful.

Um, so when that's done, you add a new building on the corner.

And because that's a busy street, we did office over some some retail on that street.

We did not do housing.

And so here's a rendering of that.

And then along the back of the lot, we added housing because it's quieter and it's closer to existing housing, and it's row housing that you access the garage through the parking lot in the middle.

And so that's looking at that parking lot with the access to the garages in the back.

So we went from uh, you know, a parking ratio that's similar to what you have here today to a much more intense use that was able to be developed over time.

And so I'm a really big fan of site intensification.

So in this particular project, we created commercial condos.

We used TIFF and New Markets to fund it, and the buyers assumed a slice of the new market tax credits in order to be able to pass that benefit through a wide cross-section of people instead of just one owner.

And they bought these for 6% down 0.41% interest, and we were trying to get it the roughly the equivalent monthly cost of a lease.

And this was a product that we were trying to make available to existing businesses who could not afford to buy as sort of a little bit of a wealth-building product.

And we prioritize minority women and people who had lived in the community for a long time businesses.

So there are a lot of fun things that you can do with TIFF and site intensification.

Um, one of the things I think you should think about in terms of site intensification is if you have some existing buildings that are kind of cash flowing, you could pop up some missing middle housing pretty fast and and quick and really uh test different kinds of housing on these lots.

Uh, Oregon just passed their single stair.

This is the first phase, and it allows you to do four stories, 4,000 square foot floor plate with one stair and elevator well.

They hope to get that up to uh in the next couple years to another couple stories.

And I will tell you that it's how Japan and Europe has still managed to build family housing, high quality housing, our double-loaded corridor requirements mean that we have a bunch of small studios and their little bowling alleys with one window at the end.

So when you have just one stairwell, you can redevelop a small lot and you can have three bedroom units and you can have windows on two to three sides, and you can have cross-ventilation.

And this is how other places are very successfully adding housing and keeping housing increases lower.

We are also a place in an estate that is really trying to push more mass timber.

We have people here that are doing amazing buildings with mass timber.

You have a developer who owns property here and um is based here who's done mass timber projects.

So I would think about how you can dovetail that into some of the projects that you're doing here.

So site intensification is also a way to bring on more housing very quickly.

So that is the speed overview of characterization, which is the longest.

And I know I'm giving you guys a ton to think about here.

Um but next up I want to move on to objective.

And objective sounds really crunchy at first, um, but really it's how downtown reflects a community, what experience it offers, what motivates a place.

People want to understand that when they're in a place.

And so that's what these questions are really trying to get at.

So some of the findings.

We started with uh wanting to know what is Twileton passionate about.

And I actually couldn't resist doing the tree shape for this word cloud, um, because so many words were about that.

So parks, sports, water, nature, river, outdoor biking, water, summer active are all things that are on there.

And I don't normally have necessarily in the community such a coal, you know, just coalescing around that idea.

That is a huge part of your identity.

So people um, you know, community, family, food, local, all of that, all these things are really great.

Did I just accidentally oh no?

Okay.

Um, but I also wanted to share.

I asked the question what where have you been, anywhere in the world that offers an experience that you would like downtown to offer?

And I don't mean you're gonna copy it, but but what about that experience?

Do you think it would be cool to offer in uh in downtown to Walleton?

So what I love is is this is the range of places.

I mean, people went to town.

I mean, Japan, New Zealand, Germany, Portugal, all around Oregon, all around the country.

And when I asked them, what about that experience did they like the most come on.

There we go.

Um, these were the words that came to the top.

And and really you can tell just from the number of individual responses.

There were a lot of very tailored responses to this, and they're they're actually fun to read through.

Um, but this really boils down to people want activity people.

They want to see other people, they want to be around other people, and they want a lot of stuff to do.

That's what people want.

So it's pretty simple.

Then we get to um this idea that it has to be naturally occurring.

So one of the things I hear in your community a lot is well, we need to have more events or we need to have more, right?

It is not possible.

You do not have enough money to program 18 hours of activity, 365 days a year.

So that's the thing about that buildings built right next to each other, right up to the sidewalk with active uses, is they create a critical mass of naturally occurring active places.

And that is really what people are looking for, and that's why we build things that way.

So places that attract and showcase people is largely what we're we're looking at.

So then we get to my third question, which I think I've told you guys before is my favorite question.

If downtown were a person, how is that person feeling right now?

And if you have a hard time answering that question, please feel free to describe the person.

So the first thing I did was take all those answers and enter it into this word cloud.

And this word cloud is actually really powerful because it actually reflects the experience and how people feel when they're downtown.

And so these are not great words.

These are not great commerce words, these are not great community words.

Kind of rough.

So this one you definitely have to dive into and look at individual responses.

These three are not in the report.

This one made me cry.

Downtown needs young Russell to add adventure and fun.

That's so evocative.

So some excerpts from the report are here.

They might be a little bit hard to read.

I thought that these, I thought Eeyore was a funny one.

Um the one on the upper left is I'm gonna refer back to.

So Aunt Marge, who is in an assisted living facility that we just don't go to visit because we sort of forgot about her.

Um, that actually was a really big theme that I'm gonna reference um in in another question.

So I would encourage you to look at the report and read through these because they actually are really nail a whole bunch of things about downtown.

And so what's interesting is is a lot of times people feel more comfortable talking about downtown from the feeling word perspective, and like I said, our job and the job of this process is to is to get them to the the what that means in the physical environment.

So identity actions around objective activity.

I mean, you're in the activity business, right?

We gotta get more activity on the ground floor.

So some of the things that we can do with TIFF, we can get creative uh and we can do some things in the short term.

So we can um we can showcase existing active uses.

So you can create small programs with small amounts of money.

I do one that is called the lighting lighting improvement, storefront lighting improvement program.

And all we do is go through and try and find businesses like this.

So on this money corner in your two best streets, you have this incredible wedding dress store.

And you can't really see it here, but there is an insanely beautiful light fixture right here.

And if you have the right track lighting in the window and I don't have super dark tinting, this thing would look like this 24-7, and everyone who drives by would be like, oh wow, what's going on down there, right?

So there are already active things in your downtown that nobody even pays attention to or knows it's there.

And our job is to start daylighting those.

The second thing you can start doing is installing a food cart pod.

Everyone wants one.

And uh, this is not, you know, the the end result of this.

They can they can move over time.

Um, I wanted to share this was the Portland Mercado project, which is out on foster on a very busy road on outer Portland.

Um, this is what the project started like.

So it was a mid-century building.

Um, it was not attractive.

I like to joke that we could make the the landscaping requirement with the weeds in the the lot.

Um, and we had no money for this project.

This was a hacienda project, and there was literally no dollars.

So this is a before of the building and then the the parking lot, and this is the after of the building.

It's the same building.

We just carved in some storefronts and we painted it cool colors and put in some neat tenants.

Um, and then site intensification, we didn't have money to build new.

So we bought the food carts and we rented them out as space, and we rented them out to the Latino community as a leg up to uh starting and getting uh into the restaurant business, and it came with training and a host of other things.

And you notice we brought it out to the streets so that we showcase people and we so this is like right after it opened.

So food cart pods can do lots of things and they can come in a lot of forms, and they don't have to be giant.

If I personally had to figure out where to do a food cart pod like tomorrow, I might think about here.

So you can connect it up with the greenway and then going over toward the park, you can think about across onto the park.

You already have a walkway that goes from the park all the way down into downtown.

The city controls the parking lot on either side of that, and you could park food trucks and and find a place to stash some people to eat, and it would be visible from the road, it would be visible from the park, and it pulls people in from this best-selling product, which is the park, uh, you know, further into downtown.

So that's something that you can think about.

Another thing is adding temporary retail space.

So if we go back to this slide and you have a food cart pod here on the next set of that sidewalk going toward the lake, you could install like Bothel did a couple of temporary incubator retail spaces.

So all of a sudden we have this little trail of activity crumbs to bring people into the lake and into downtown.

So these are ways you can spend smaller amounts of TIFF money to start to change the idea that hey, stuff's going on here.

On a longer term basis, you're gonna really want to think about how you're incentivizing and controlling and making sure that there's activity on the ground floor.

So that is objective, and now we're gonna work on relationship.

So understanding who does and doesn't relate to downtown and what they do and don't relate to are actually super critical for tenanting, marketing, and development.

So we're gonna dive into that a little bit here.

Uh and I wanna again start first with findings.

One of my first questions was who relates to downtown.

And this was very consistent.

People really just felt like kind of family, young kids, splash pad, and then uh this middle schooler.

Yeah, a lot of people describe this guy right here.

And I want to say that I love that I see a lot of middle schoolers, and they're mostly boys cycling related to kind of fishing, but I there were some also negative feedback on the fishing, which I don't even know if it's legal or it's stocked, but um uh fish hooks are being found in ducks and and you know, on the ground and other things.

So there are a lot of people who were not happy about the fishing.

So the other question was who does not relate to downtown?

There we go.

Um, and this was the answer.

And anyone was it like, you know, it was kind of like, well, I don't know why anyone would relate to downtown.

So this this is the Marge answer.

So if you go through and read the individual responses, people here said, it's not so much that I don't relate to downtown, I just don't think about it.

It's like Aunt Marge, it's just over there, I don't see it, I don't go to it.

And there's good and bad news about that.

It's obviously not great to be on no one's radar.

But it's also good news, it's not that they hate downtown.

You're not trying to overcome like this super negative brand relationship.

It's just that they don't they don't know you're there.

So that's actually a much easier bar to get over.

But I think it's important to remember that people just it's not on their radar of a place they stop or a place that they relate to.

Um, and that was a very consistent message.

So the Aunt Marge little word cloud was was super prescient.

Um I asked broadly in Twilight and most beloved businesses, and I I don't give any other clues other than that, and that kind of lets you know like what are the characteristics, what are the things that people do develop a strong brand relationship with?

Obviously, things, you know, they always talk about well, this place is busy or these things are right, other people, places where people are.

But you know, local food community.

Those are those are three of your big characteristics.

These are the things they're gonna want to see downtown.

So related to actions in relationship, you're gonna want to think about how you're incentivizing local food and community.

And here are some examples of that.

So Beaverton has been very successful with their Watson Street um repurposing as a restaurant street, and they did that with TIFF, and they did that by incentivizing restaurants, and so their um economic development people went to property owners and said, we want to bring restaurants and we'll give you some TIFF money to fix up your building.

And then they went out and recruited restaurants, and they said, Hey, restaurants, instead of paying a fortune and system development charges in Portland, why don't you come open a restaurant here and we're gonna help you with some of the build out, and we have a property owner who's ready to go.

Um, that was very, very successful.

So you can use TIFF to facilitate what you want to see on the ground floor.

There is a huge appetite for more things to do as a community, and a lot of people talked about that, and a lot of people miss the things that you used to do downtown.

And so you do not need more hardscape downtown.

I think you know, we have a lot of parking lots, we have a lot of hardscape, which I'm gonna get to around the lake.

Um, but having a festival street is a great way to do that because it's still a street, but you can close it and then have it be something else temporarily.

So this is a festival street in Kirkland, Washington.

It's focused on kind of a main street that has a very heavy food focus.

So there is pass-through traffic one way on this part and parking, and then they close it down at night and it just becomes like this really cool area to eat and circulate.

And there are retail stores and restaurants and uh, but it's very, very vibrant and it's a great place to rub shoulders with your community.

And downtown is where we want to go to see and be seen and where we want to see our community members, not just Fred Meyer, which is what people talk about a lot.

I see all my neighbors at Fred Meyer.

So we want this to be the Fred Meyer of downtown.

So uh Festival Street definitely could be something that I think would work in downtown and something you can think about as you're considering this broader development framework in your visioning work with U of O.

So the last thing I want to talk about is environment.

And in story, environment is the context of your story.

The problem when we're talking about a story like a downtown is I can't pick up Twileton and put it in Texas, right?

I can't change your context.

You're stuck with your context, and you have to respond to it and you have to um uh incorporate it.

So I'm gonna talk about like a broader context and and uh local context for your story.

So findings.

I asked people how is Twileton perceived in the state in the region?

Pretty much the same answers.

So uh, you know, suburban, a lot of people felt like people don't even know that it's not a part of Portland.

Um, they also said that it's just a place you pass through on the way to Lake Aswego or tiger, or it gets mixed up with those two.

Um, but also some interesting things, like it's perceived as being a job space and having uh some industry, which I thought was uh pretty positive.

And then I-5 is an identifying feature of it as well.

Um I think one of the things that's interesting is those pieces of your perceptions of your context are really at odds in an interesting way with all of the things that you guys were super passionate about as a community, and I think that tension is actually really interesting.

And thinking about how you can be the suburban place with this, you know, kind of super hot downtown, that's an interesting tension.

That is a place people want to go visit and check out.

Um, so I'm gonna talk about that a little bit more in a second.

The second part of your context, it's very dominated on a local basis by your lake.

The lake is driving everything in your downtown in these fundamental ways.

Um, so I want to talk about that a little bit more.

Um, the lake has created this inward.

So a downtown typically has a grid.

And the reason a grid works is because you put buildings that face the out of the grid on each of the four sides, so there's no back.

So in your downtown, we have the front, which is the lake, and we have the back, which is everything else.

And that is very much not a downtown experience.

And so the lake is a is really having a huge contextual impact on this idea of downtown.

And it is also um, you know, lots of conversation about cleanliness of water and geese and and duck guano, really throughout all of the survey stuff, which was also a first.

So I would say that with the lake, I I'm not saying like you you're not ready to make any decisions right now about the lake, but I would really encourage you to think big about options for the lake.

As you're just, I mean, you there's no cost to design scenarioing anything, right?

There's no cost to saying, like, okay, let's look at it with you about what are the things that we could do.

But here are some things that I think you should think about.

So with the lake, people love it or hate it.

Like it there was I talked to almost nobody that was agnostic about the lake.

And and I thought that was interesting.

So it's it's a lightning rod.

Um I I will say this that the first person to notice this is one of your uh commissioners.

Um so one of the weird things about the lake, and this is a subconscious thing is that you don't hear water anywhere.

So you're there, it's an artificial lake.

There's nothing about it that says this is a natural lake, and then you can't hear water.

So one of the things when I'm working is I'm trying to constantly what I call daylight my subconscious and understand why do I feel the way I feel when I'm somewhere.

And there is something intensely strange about the lake, and it has to do with some of these things.

And one of the first ones is you don't hear any water anywhere, but you're but there's a large body of water and it's artificial.

So usually when we have artificial water, we have a fountain or we have like something.

So that's just it's something that's weird, and you don't know why you feel weird.

The the second thing that's weird is that it was built to enter and nobody enters it.

So we have all of this infrastructure like this.

We have these graded steps that that are supposed to be, you know, very low profile entry into the water.

And in places that have activated this and the water is safe to go into, you'll see people sitting with their knees in the water and kids waiting, and and so it gives it sort of a ghost town feel.

It's like ghost town lake.

And it's hard to activate because the water is not clean.

And one of the things I hear from parents a lot is that it's gross and I don't want my kids anywhere near it.

So that is something that was very consistent.

So those are some weird physical story characteristics, right?

About the lake that that's creating some issues.

Um, and then it's creating a lot of circulation confusion and problems.

So we talked about a downtown is usually like this grid that you can kind of get around.

So we have five ways to get into downtown and they're all dead ends.

That's weird.

That is not very downtown-like.

Um, it's stopping people from, you know, if you're on one side of those things, and pedestrians talk about that, you know, like sometimes they're in one part and they're like, oh, I mean, we're so lazy.

They're like, I don't want to walk all the way around the lake to get to this other thing.

So I'm just not gonna go over there and get a drink, or I'm not gonna go over there.

So that's something that we heard.

So it's creating, you know, a lack of being able to cross through the downtown after you're in it.

So, in terms of environment, some of your possible actions, I think you guys should really lean into.

I cannot think of another place that I have worked in the country, and I do a lot of suburban and corridor work that has this mix of amenities.

So you guys have the chance to connect up world-class parks, trails, and have this like real downtown experience, while also simultaneously having access to amazing suburban shopping, grocery stores, medical vet, post office, like you know, it's all right here, literally in walking distance and a very short walking distance.

So, really going hard on those top three, and then thinking how you're connecting it with these bottom three.

Um, I think that's an interesting story.

And there aren't very many places that are that have these amenities all together.

How many places have a greenway, a beautiful park, a river right next to a real downtown, right next to some pretty great suburban shopping amenities?

Not very many people that you can legitimately walk to.

So I think that's really cool and interesting, super interesting tension there.

And uh with the lake, I think you really need to study some options.

So and these are just ideas, things that you can think about.

These are ideas that people talked about throughout, both in the surveys and workshops and individual meetings.

So you could think about converting um the lake into something that's more of you know, a water feature.

Uh or I'm sorry, I'm starting with flood mitigation.

So you can um I heard from somebody who was involved very early on in the project that a lot of the fill for downtown actually went into the lake.

So the lake is higher than the rest of downtown, and so your downtown floods and your lake does not.

That is a little weird.

And it's a little weird to have a lake in a floodplain that is above where uh your buildings are and that floods.

So a lot of urban places in response to climate change today are looking at establishing urban wetlands and flexible parks in order to absorb these rain events that we're having that are unprecedented.

And so um one of the ways this came up in the workshop, and also some people talked about it in the survey was they actually were talking about the Chicago River has created these parks on top of the water with plantings in the water to improve water quality and habitat.

And so they were like, could we do something like that, something that's more environmental?

So thinking about how the lake could become part of your stormwater mitigation and being a flexible park for that.

So that's something that you could think about.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Um you see these kinds of is the mitigation of a project like that anything enough to change maybe what insurance companies are like one of my questions that I have around all of the downtown re-improvement is as we re-improve on a floodplain, how do the limitations of what insurance companies would charge for doing that impact what our um perspectives are?

Well, I mean, this is one of the things you'd have to talk to a consultant about because I don't know enough about um specifically you know this floodplain, but it is a whole really interesting field of study right now.

So there are people whose jobs are just urban waterways.

So people who work on like uncovering the LA River or figuring out how to manage stormwater through like the city I live in, Duluth right now has you know boatloads of creeks under the entire city go going down to Lake Superior.

So how you manage all that water coming through?

Um, so I don't know if there's enough space in the lake that you could really use that for flood mitigation to the point where insurers would feel more comfortable in this climate.

But um I would say in general, developers and insurers are much more excited about communities that are being serious about it because uh as much as people want to deny that it's happening, all you have to do is look at the insurance industry because they're the ones who have to put money on whether it's happening, and they're all like not so much.

So being able to tell the story that we're taking this seriously, and here are things that we're doing about it.

I think it's definitely worth thinking about.

Thank you.

And can I ask one more question?

And it might be somebody else too in the room.

When the Army Corps of Engineers was designing this lake, was there an overall vision about what that was?

I know that I talked to one of the leaders of those guys at one of the water things I was at, and um, he said it was we always use a lot of concrete.

And um, but I was just curious if there was like why did they build it higher?

Was there any kind of goal?

Was there an overall vision of that project besides getting rid of the dog food plant?

Because we did have that first issue that you were talking about, obviously.

Yeah.

I don't have an answer to that at this time.

We could look into it.

Okay, I'm curious about that, just to know like what it is that they were thinking, just to start from a place that had form and function, whatever it was.

I have heard um, and I think it's not uh crazy that one of the reasons the lake was built was because residential property on the edge of the lake is worth more, just like if you build apartments near a grocery store, they're worth more, about 15% more.

So uh that having a lake made the redevelopment of the buildings, uh like building them pencil because they were worth a little bit more.

So that may have been it may have been very just sort of aesthetic versus yeah.

So uh okay, so environment.

So you can change it.

So it could become, you know, a dramatic fountain.

It could become uh a park that you has some water and it has walkways and you can walk through it and it could have more of a theme.

Uh lots more places to take selfies here, which people love.

Um so it you can just change it, right?

It doesn't have to stay exactly the same.

You could restore some circulation.

A lot of people talked about that.

I don't know whether you want to or not, it could be pedestrian circulation, doesn't have to be car, but you could you could have some circulation going across it.

Uh but I would say at a minimum, this is rough.

This is rough, right?

It's a lot of hardscape.

There's not a lot of activity on it.

Um, and it's kind of weird because it's the antithesis of you guys are about parks and the river and outdoor recreation and and yeah.

And and I can't even go in there.

So I have this big area for going into the lake that I I can't go into.

So you're gonna have to think about how it gets agreed and and how we tell the story with that lake that that's that's relevant if if you're gonna keep it.

So I just think I don't think anything's off the table, but I think you should be bold and say, like, let's look at some big things and see what that does.

So uh that was the end of environment.

I just very quickly just want to say this document is meant to give you a lot of ideas about what your community thinks and ways that you can respond to that.

It is not like a prescribed you have to do these three things.

It's meant to arm you and give you tools so that going forward you have something that's gonna help you because you're gonna sit here today and next year over the next year and a half, and you're going to make your best guess over what you should be doing for the next 20 to 30 years of this urban renewal area.

But you know what?

You are always gonna be iterating on that because the way we live work and play changes all the time, and we have recessions and we have pandemics, and we have all of these things, right?

Um, building an office building right on that busy corner would be something that I would have done seven years ago, but it's not something I'm gonna do today.

Maybe it's something I could do in 10 years.

I don't know.

But you're always gonna be iterating.

So hopefully, this information is information that will help you figure out how to translate like how your community wants to feel to places and also help you as you're iterating on this.

And don't, you know, don't be afraid to to be bold and also like to get stuff wrong, because you just you gotta go forward with the best information you have now, and then just continue to look at it over time.

You're always iterating on this stuff.

And then remember with TIFF, you can do things in the short term.

It doesn't all have to be a big giant you know, hundred million dollar project.

There's a lot of things you can do with small amounts of money to really move the dial and help your small local businesses that are here today.

So that is what I wanted to cover.

And I know that um we're we wanted time for QA, so hit me.

Questions from Michelle, comments or Pratt?

Um Commissioner Pratt.

We're still commissioned.

Oh, co-commissioners, yeah.

For the moment.

Um when you talked about the parking in Portland and Seattle, and the and were you talking about land coverage?

Because like um, they tend to have like multi-story where ours is all surface.

Well, we might have one.

No, you do have multi-story, yeah.

You have some.

Yeah, but very little, yeah.

Most of its surface.

So when you were talking about land coverage, were were you talking about land coverage or actually?

It's just land coverage, but even if you look at that, Portland still has a remarkable amount of its parking is in surface lots.

Yeah, yeah.

There are a lot of surface lots.

Okay.

Yeah.

Commissioner Brooks.

When you were talking about that, we were a unique city with the different um the three different highlights around parks.

Um, and I've said this before here too.

We also have um a national like several national water trail and national ice.

So, as far as national parks, we have a lot as well.

And I was curious around when you were doing this information gathering, if you were thinking um through our culture as well and lack of of culture too.

People talk about arts, architecture, you know, um those types of things, and I'm curious if um having a central point of not just uses like the bike paths, but also of like maybe art and information around the environment around these parks that were in the middle of would be an opportunity to explore.

Especially there'd be varied funding opportunities, I would think.

Yeah, I I would say it was interesting.

So I would say for a suburban community, I was surprised at the appetite for like a downtown.

And I was surprised at how like robust it was.

I mean, people you know, so there's still some like when you get into the details, people get a little nervous because some people are like eight stories, and some people are like not more than two, you know.

So that's you're still gonna have to work that out.

But I would say that idea of a place to express things like something architecturally interesting, or or these interconnections like the lake and the environment and these other pieces, like there is a real appetite for you know, a place to do it.

I keep thinking too, yeah, like sort of a bridge building kind of thing throughout all those and utilizing some of the things that we already have existing because they're really amazing.

Yes.

All right, thank you.

Other questions?

Dr.

Gonzalez, thank you.

Council Gonzalez damn it thank you for much for uh this is very um it's eye-opening because that lake has always been when I talk to people the Lake is why is it there?

What was the what was the purpose and there's no purpose right now it feels like it's just a body of water maybe at one time it was probably a 30 year vision that never really got developed as things changed.

But the most eye-opening is the access from the park to the lake that alone is a very low hanging fruit that can easily be incorporated.

You can begin to funnel people into that area but we would have to create environments around that to attract people there.

Yep.

The geese would be a problem but all that could be mitigated and there's technologies for all that and make it and even sharing up the water to make it into a splash pad that eventually rolls into another larger incubated water but I would have to agree with you this is just we're rich for opportunity in in our in what we have here to work with.

Thank you for this yeah other questions from commissioners okay oh Michelle I want to thank you for all your work in this interesting from my perspective you know sitting on the advisory committee and having attended three of the four of the U of O presentations how well your report segues and some of your suggestions and that you know we have your report we're gonna have uh a bunch of ideas from you of all all two like you're saying synthesize through filter you know try to do our best job of guessing what the community wants uh doing the feedback but uh as cut as Commissioner Gonzalez was saying there's a lot of good stuff in here again the U of O focused a lot about around the lake uh the routes same things you did they had more suggestions uh because there that was their purpose yours was the vision uh but this was fantastic I you know I read through the report and I'm not a touchy feely guy I was like looking at the word clouds but then the last chunk of your report I thought was gold with some of your suggestions so I want to thank you very much.

Yeah yeah all right all right anything else it thank you we got done early first time yeah first time everything uh so uh since this is a commission meeting do we have a motion to adjourn the commission meeting so moved all those in favor vote aye aye against we are uh adjourned until seven o'clock and we'll pick up at seven o'clock with our traditional Twalton City Council meeting well I was gonna ask if perhaps you could do communications um and just you know like the council does their red regular communications but as the commissioner you want to do it now or later so unmoved second all right so we'll go ahead and we'll do a hybrid kind of thing where we're gonna do our traditional uh round table uh also look at let's do the agenda a lot of good stuff so tonight uh we have a uh a bunch of Eagle Scouts we got 10 Eagle Scouts coming tonight uh to be recognized for the Eagle Scout project so they will do the uh Pledge of Allegiance uh we have four oh wow seven items of on our consent agenda any concerns with those items on the consent agenda all right uh we have no proclamations correct we have a new employee tradition and we have a couple reports and then we have the LAM resolution which will be the majority of the night uh so with that we'll go ahead and start the council round table and I'll go to my left this time since I was going to my right for voting so counselor slash commissioner Gonzalez so I only attended one uh event which was I think uh Councillor Reyes and I uh were in that meeting when it came to the immigration issues and and those types of things that was um it was very encouraging to see the kind of support the cities are trying to provide for our community uh all of us in that meeting we're very aware that um there are limited things that we can do to try to to provide the kind of protection we hope we could but there is support to reach out to our neighbors there is support for legal services that some of the cities and counties are putting together and that was encouraging um and this was the first meeting but I'm sure there's more to come um so I guess I'll leave it at that that it was it was just nice to hear this kind of support that we're getting and uh and on the federal levels as well on the things that um it's hard because we can do anything other than just provide support and encouragement to our community to hang in there and reach out so that's all I got comes thanks Mayor um you're still a mayor right sure okay all right um all right so I did one meeting which isn't really a city meeting was the um uh League of Oregon Cities women's um group and we had I'm uh I was elected on the board for the League of Oregon Cities um women's caucus and so I'm one of the directors again so we had our um first board meeting as a board that I was in attendance

So I did one meeting, which isn't really a city meeting, was the um uh League of Oregon Cities Women's Um group, and we had I'm uh I was elected on the board for the League of Oregon Cities Um women's caucus, and so I'm one of the directors again.

So we had our um first board meeting as a board that I was in attendance for and in town for.

I think it was our first one.

Um and it's so it's interesting, so it's just something that any women elected, it's nonpartisan, it's part of the League of Oregon Cities.

Um it's a place to get support and address issues that are particularly relevant for women serving and using your voice in a non-traditional way.

Um with other people that aren't used to it, so it's interesting.

I also forwarded we had some meetings that were canceled, so I forwarded the water consortium budget report, and I just want to give my hats off to our public works department and just the whole region.

When I listen to what other districts deal with across the country, we are really fortunate.

Um we've come through a lot since I've been on, including the fires and handle things um safely, and um just looking at the consent agenda, um, looking at the fact that we're doing the new pump states uh project, those kinds of things.

It's a lot of work that we don't talk about as much, but it's a it's a lot of really important work, and water some would argue is the most important service that a city provides.

So just hats off to Rachel Sykes, her department, our um city manager and um our consortium that we work well with, and congratulations on Rebecca Geison's retirement.

All right, commissioner slash counselor.

Thank you.

Um so on Tuesday the second, we had the CCAA meeting.

Um we had a handful of um interviews that we conducted, some again, as always, great um candidates for um those committees.

Um I think we had mostly um budget um as uh the new budget seasons coming up soon.

Um so those will be before you, probably in January.

And I think great job, everybody that participated in the holiday lights parade.

Um your cars were amazing.

Thank you.

I had no formal meetings during this time.

Counselor Commissioner Reyes.

Um, yeah, I attended the on the first we attended with uh Councillor Gonzalez, the first uh uh more of that immigration and and knowledge and how to like um support our communities.

It was mostly a lot of reporting of what other city cities and and what governments are doing around the state, um, similar to what we're doing.

So I thought that was a really um good thing to see other cities getting together and try to help as much as they can.

Um and there were some representatives of our uh Washington representatives, so that was really nice to to hear also what they're what they want to propose.

Um our next meeting is December 15th, and um it was mostly uh getting to know one another, what's happening in our community, and and we talked about the um the presentations that are happening on December 10th, um, and how everyone's participating or promoting it.

So that's one, and then the other was the CCAA um again.

Great community members and um good candidates as always, and we were able to appoint some people and reappoint others, and yeah, January will be the next time we'll bring up bring the names and all that to you.

Thank you.

Now we'll flip over to the city manager Lombos's report.

Hi let's see.

Let me get there.

Yes, um, well, hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving holiday, and uh I know that um city offices were closed, but our law enforcement was you know, um emergency services were out and about and um doing good things keeping people safe.

Um holiday light parades, um Councillor Sako alluded to it.

I know several of you participate in it.

It was the biggest ever.

Um people really stepped up their game.

Both residents as well as city vehicles and Republic and who else did I see out there that uh anyway, just so many cool lights.

Um duty calls.

Including the mayor and council president Pratt.

So we have our annual employee appreciation holiday breakfast on when on Wednesday.

That's always a lovely time to appreciate our wonderful employees.

Looking forward to that.

And then we're gearing up for our first ever board and committee summit on Wednesday evening.

Also looking forward to that and getting uh good feedback from uh the folks that you appoint um in uh to our boards and committees.

Um Jerry Ann and I are continuing to uh work towards a what will ultimately be a new intergovernmental agreement with Washington County uh for the new levy cycle.

So the levy passed in November and the levy um expires at the end of June of 26, and the new levy takes place um July starting July 1st of 26.

And so we will need a new intergovernmental agreement by that time.

So we're working on the components of that, and there's a lot of action associated with that.

But of course, the allocation of funds, which is a big part of that, uh, was already decided and um as a part of the levy discussions.

Anyway, lots of work around that.

Um the members of the idea committee are um uh not all of them, but and some staff are headed out to the Grand Ron this week uh to uh meet with members of the Grand Ron to talk about relationship development and building and um seeing how we can strengthen the connection with um with the tribe.

So um I'm excited about that.

You received an email, but I just want to point it out action on the riverfront park, that's moving ahead.

Uh we're under or we're in an RFP, a request for um proposal for a consultant to help guide us through this the whole process, but we're doing um invasive um removal on the site right now, and then the existing houses will be removed.

Um we've um already abated them, and I believe that uh at least the A-frame will come down this week, and so um look for that.

We've reached substantial completion on Las Casitas Park, and that's very exciting.

And the fencing is going to come down this week, I believe.

And um yeah, the community will be able to use that wonderful amenity.

Um councillor Brooks asked about this a little earlier.

Our climate action program manager starts next Monday.

Her name's Amanda Watson, and she comes to us from the city of Lake Oswego, where she's been since 2019.

Or um, yes, another uh Lake Oswego uh person.

Uh Quinn worked with her as did Sid, and um she's been implementing their climate action plan.

She's their sustainability program manager right now, and so it's a good catch, and she's very skilled, and I can't wait for her to get her feet on the ground and get started.

This is the last meeting of the year, of course, and um we've got holiday closures in place.

Uh the library closes early on both Christmas and New Year's Eve.

And so if you're going to the library, um check our website or um make a call and make sure we're open.

So with that, that's it.

Council President Pratt slash Commissioner Pratt.

Thank you.

Um on December 1st, the mayor and I went to the R1 Act Committee meeting, which you know, um it was kind of I guess a gobsmacking moment when they talked about their um their capital improvement plan.

There they're I got it was pretty clear they're assuming that they might not have the funds because of the ballot measure.

So they asked us as R1 Act to um come up with three projects, and our the region one for ODOT is all the way from Hood River to almost Tilmock.

It's huge.

They want us to come up with three projects that are our priorities for not this year but like five years from now.

Um three projects in the whole region.

Um and they're also not willing to give us any staff time or real assistance with this project.

So we all these people on this committee who are I I'm sure everybody's as busy as we are.

We're supposed to somehow piece this together.

Oh, and we're supposed to do it in two meetings.

So it was a little I I think everybody was just shaking their heads through the whole process.

So that was a little frustrating.

We'd hope that we got a nice talk from Jeff Baker from the OTC and thought maybe we were kind of moving forward with a little more transparency and cooperation, but I think we're all questioning that right now.

That's where we're at.

Um gosh.

Oh, yeah, and then we have the um the next we had the C CAA and this is for Don, but there's nothing more exciting than seeing people excited to be on the budget committee.

Yeah.

Um the next um day I went down um with Sid and Quinn, and we had a we went down to Eugene and we saw the U of O um Multimodal Transportation Committee Finals presentations, and uh it was really interesting.

There were three different groups, and they had some great ideas, and um it'll be interesting to see um when it comes back to the whole group and which things stick and which things don't.

Um, oh it went to the chamber of ribbon cutting and um that community warehouse building.

It's amazing how it's changed.

It's just amazing.

And then later that um right after that we went to that now.

I can't read because the mayor smudged my wet paper here.

Um we went to the Oregon um downtown market.

Downtown market, they study from the um consulting group here at the library, and and they were very professional and very good.

And um, I thought it was interesting that a lot of their ideas are things we've done in the past, but they had it more of a um private public partnership kind of idea.

So that was really interesting.

Um then I had um I missed two.

Um League of Oregon Cities, the women's caucus had a presentation by Mayor Beach Pace, and she talked a lot about the um ice activity, the um supremacy law, which limits what we can do.

Um, but one interesting thing I thought she said is that we have to be really careful to only be getting factual information out there because they had um a false report of an ice raid on a local market, and then they didn't have they that market had a terrible time because they had hardly any customers for over a month because of that scare.

So it's really important that part of this is that we're being clear about what is true and what is not.

And um, oh, and then we had for C4 in December, we always just have a get together.

But it's um oh, and Mayor Buck mentioned that he's not giving us any more employees.

And um we just had some good discussions, so anyway, that's it.

Okay.

Uh so council president Pratt and I like overlapped a lot in the last few weeks, like stalking each other.

So I'll go through this pretty quickly.

Uh on the first of December went down with Sid and with Quinn and Aquila down to UVO for the Twaltum planning uh presentation by the student group who had three different presentations, three different spins on what they saw as potential in our downtown.

Uh later that evening was the R1 Act, which uh council president Pratt has covered.

Uh December 2nd uh was invited to Lamb for Governor Kotec's announcement of her new business initiative, her new business council.

Uh you know, basically trying to make Oregon more business friendly, uh workforce development uh and attraction to the re the whole state of getting more businesses and more jobs here in Twalton be good too, and Oregon uh and trying to shake the image that we have throughout the country of being anti-business.

Uh got to chat with her a few moments after the event, and she was very excited about the land building G expansion and the potential that's there at LAM.

Uh later uh actually that morning I had the Twalton Chamber of Commerce, their annual meeting, uh basically reviewing the accomplishments of the chamber over the last year and what their plans are next year.

On the third, I attended virtually the U of O uh multimodal presentations from the students again.

It's very well done.

Uh on the fourth, uh went to the Greater Portland Inc.

mixer in downtown Portland and got a vibe of you know the challenge that we're gonna have again uh in attracting businesses to Portland to spell in the what you know what the media and uh the president's saying about what downtown Portland's like and the challenge are uh again it's gonna continue part in the 2026, uh, but that we do have money in the Greater Portland Inc.

They got a grant from the Oregon legislature two years ago uh to help uh fund campaigns of true information going out to the business community across the United States to attract businesses here to relocate or grow here in state of Oregon, particularly in the greater Portland Metro area.

Uh there was an after hours chamber event at Ancestry Brewing.

Uh was fantastic.

You've got the tour, Ancestry, and the history of ancestry um here in town.

Uh one of the comments they made is how they do have a devoted following of folks here in the area, and I very much appreciate the city uh and the support they've given over the years.

But to be blunt, you know, restaurants and bars are struggling right now.

Um folks have limited income, so they're not going out as much.

So uh they're one of several restaurants slash bar owners have talked to me about you know, please come out if you have any extra income or just go out for uh water or beer or something.

They are really struggling just to break even at this point, even during the holidays uh with decreased um dollars, and also the social change of uh the young 20-somethings do not drink alcohol.

Uh they gave a number from Maltese distributing the alcohol uh consumption is down 40 percent compared to what it was a few years ago.

Um, and uh one of the questions asked was can you brew non-alcoholic beer?

Uh they could, but they'd have to put a whole nother line in, of course.

Right now, you know, get funding to put a whole nother line, more tanks, they don't have the capital to do that.

So uh if you're an ancestry fan, buy more beer.

Uh we had the ribbon cutting at Rex again, like uh Council President Pratt said, tremendous the change that's inside from the old community warehouse to what they did.

The architect and the builder did a fantastic job of renovating the inside.

Uh also attended the U of O downtown market study with the school business students you know in their suits and very professional looking and super professional presentation.

Uh Friday through last night, holiday lights parades, like you mentioned.

Everybody keeps every year up upping their game and uh more and more lights, more and more stuff, 12-foot freaking blow-ups on trucks and cars is getting crazy.

Good thing we don't have overhead you know, bridges to go under.

Um Saturday, it went to the Towalton Historical Society's old-fashioned Christmas.

Uh that was fantastic.

One, because old fashioned Santa was there.

Uh, two, it was the first performance of the Crimson Ears for the holiday season.

They have 18 performances to do over the holiday season.

And that was and they're for the first one they nailed it was fantastic.

Uh wrapping up here, had the aging task force meeting today.

Uh they're laying out their agenda for what tasks they want to take on in 2026.

Uh, and the last item I want to mention is the uh event tomorrow night.

I want to remind the community of the training that's happening on December 9th.

Cities across the metro area are partnering with Central Cultural, PERC, and the ACLU to offer practical tools for allies who want to support neighbors impacted by ice detentions and immigration activity.

This training is designed for people who want to learn how to show up safely and effectively for others.

It is not intended for individuals who are directly impacted by ICE activity.

Registration is required, and participants will receive uh their viewing site location directly from the organizers.

I've had for folks who mentioned they have registered but haven't heard anything.

You'll probably hear later tonight or tomorrow because uh they're vetting the folks that are registering and wanting to keep the actual uh site where the trainings are occurring.

Uh they don't want wide distribution of where it's being held.

Uh the training is free with optional donation opportunities supporting families impacted by the detention.

If you'd like to attend, uh please see the city's website for a link to the registration.

Uh that's all I have.

I actually believe that I went on the website right before this meeting, and it looks like registration is closed at this time.

So um and I still haven't I I don't think those emails have gone out yet about the location.

But but yeah, I've had a lot of folks.

I haven't gotten one either yet.

So I know Council Brooks, lots of us haven't gotten anything.

It's it's gonna be coming out soon.

Yeah.

Yep.

I did follow up with them, and that's what they said.

That it would like hopefully 24 hours in advance of the meeting, but it's six o'clock tomorrow.

But so I I expect to get it sometime soon.

Sometime soon.

Yeah.

It's be somewhere here in Twalton if you're raised for the Twalton one.

Uh that's all I have.

I move to adjourn.

For real this time.

Yes.

I got motion and second to adjourn the commission meeting.

Uh all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

It sounds unanimous.

We'll get back together in about 16 minutes.

Recording stopped.