Welcome all.

I call this meeting to order.

Mr.

DeManey.

Let's get going.

All right, so Mr.

Mayor, members of council, the first brief will be provided by Emily LeBose, Director of Cultural Affairs.

It will be a briefing on the recommendations coming from the Mayor's Advisory Panel regarding 2200 Parks Avenue to form a WOCA building.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of council.

Today I'm pleased to present the findings and guiding principles developed through the mayor's advisory panel process for the 2200 Parks Avenue property, which is the former Virginia Mocha building.

Over the past several months, the panel has spent time learning about the property, considering its opportunities and constraints, listening to the community, and ultimately developing a framework to help guide council's future consideration of this important site.

Today I'm going to briefly walk you through the process, what we learned from the community, the panel's guiding principles and staff's recommendation for moving forward.

This work grew out of the Focus Action Plan Initiative to assemble an advisory group to advise regarding a recommended path and future for the former MOCA site.

The intent was to take a thoughtful look at the property, bring together a range of perspectives, engage the community in considering qualities and priorities that should help inform its future.

The mayor's advisory panel convened in June.

The panel reviewed the building, site, and surrounding context, engaged the community to better understand priorities and interests, considered practical, financial, and operational factors, and ultimately developed a group of guiding principles for council's consideration that I'm going to share in a few minutes.

The important distinction through this process is that the panel was not asked to select an operator or recommend a specific use.

Instead, its work ultimately focused on establishing principles that can help guide council as future opportunities for the property are considered.

Before I walk through their findings, I want to recognize the wonderful panel members, Steve Harrison, Clay Dills, Donna Speller Turner, who is here with us, Elliot Jones, Eric Kiplinger, Kim Webb, and Charlotte Zito, along with many, many staff who supported our efforts.

Our community listening session was held on July 27th and brought 162 people to 2200 Parks Avenue, as well as 73 written comment cards submitted.

Rather than a traditional public meeting, we used an open house format that allowed people to explore the property and participate in several different ways.

Participants could identify priorities through dot voting, take part in facilitated discussions, and provide written comments and ideas.

The purpose was to provide the panel with a meaningful snapshot of community priorities, interests, and concerns to consider as it developed its principles.

The DOT voting helped us understand relative priorities, while the facilitated conversations and written comments provided context and perspectives.

But the feedback did not prescribe one particular arts model or use.

There was considerable interest in preserving and reusing the existing building and grounds and maintaining a connection to the VIB Creative District.

We also heard a desire to protect the property as a long-term community investment.

We explained through our information provided to participants that the property is subject to ACUS restrictions associated with the Naval Air Station Oceana, and that residential use is not permitted during its current zoning.

The panel also considered these restrictions in its discussion about the site.

Instead, the engagement helped identify the qualities and priorities people would like to see carried forward into the property's next chapter.

The panel considered this community input together with its own discussions and guided and developed these guiding principles.

First, arts and cultural identity, maintaining arts, culture, and creativity as a meaningful and viable component of the site's identity.

Second, community benefit, public access and connectivity, ensuring that the property continued to provide community benefit and welcomed opportunities for participation, while considering how people access the site and connections to the surrounding areas.

Third is financial and operational sustainability.

This principle reflects an important consideration in the panel's discussion.

The goal is a financially sustainable operating model that at a minimum breaks even and does not require an ongoing city operating subsidy.

The principle also allows flexibility on how that could be achieved through partnerships, private investment, complementary revenue generating uses or other approaches that help the property sustainable over the long term.

The fourth principle is active multi-use destination.

Both the panel and the community expressed interest in creating multiple reasons to visit, supporting year-round programming, and allowing the building and grounds to serve a variety of purposes.

The fifth is building preservation and site activation.

The existing building and grounds were consistently viewed as assets.

So taken together, these six principles provide a clear overall direction without prescribing a specific use.

The panel's direction is to build upon 2200 Parks Avenue as we as a distinctive community asset with strong arts and cultural identity, meaningful public access, active and adaptable uses, and a financially sustainable operating model.

So with the panel's work complete, staff recommends city council consider initiating a request for proposals process that could incorporate the advisory's panels guiding principles into the review and the ranking of the submittals.

The RFP could either consider the sale or lease or both, but in either case, arts and culture would be required to remain a meaningful part of its future use.

So at the time, I'm welcome.

I'm happy to take questions.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Ms.

LeBoes, for the presentation and also especially the seven-member panel.

We all met, we toured first the building, and then we had our meetings there.

And so I think I attended all of these and meetings, and I was reminded as I sat there and heard people speak, how beautiful this building is, this campus is in close to the resort in our city.

I mean it's it's just fantastic.

And so that being said, um, page seven and page eight, the principles they really reflect the community meeting was really well attended.

It was almost like a party, social hour party.

Um it really does reflect the community around it that's been asking us to move forward with this with a decision.

But I think these principles are tough to meet, and they are the right principles, and they're uh page seven and eight, right?

There's six principles here.

So to remain in the arts, remain tourist related, to remain community oriented, and financially and operationally sustainable.

Those are high bars to meet, and I think this council has uh we've talked about this, and that's why we are where we are.