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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2008-05-08 ACE MINUTES• • • ALLIANCE FOR COMMERCE IN ENGLEWOOD May 8, 2008 I. CALL TO ORDER The regular meeting of the Alliance for Commerce in Englewood (ACE ) was called to order at 11 :42 a.m . in the City Council Conference Room of the Englewood Ci v ic Center, Chair Schalk presiding. Present: Absent: Schalk, Lonborg (e ntere d 11 :46), McDermott, Guinther, Vasilas, Verbeck Espinoza (altern ate ) Panetta (exc use d ) Also present: Joe Jefferson, Councilman Michael Morton, Executive Director, Chamber of Commerce (e nte re d 11 :5 3) Staff present: Alan White, Community Development Director Darren Hollingsworth, Economic Development Coordinator Mark Graham, Senior Planner APPROVAL OF MINUTES April10, 2008 Chair Schalk stated that the Minutes of April 10, 2008 were to be considered for approval. It was determined there was a quorum. McDermott moved: Verbeck seconded: THE MINUTES OF APRIL 10, 2008 BE APPROVED AS WRITIEN . The motion carried unanimously. 11. ACE BUSINESS BATES STATION UPDATE Mr. Jefferson said Council met with the owners of the General Iron Works property. H e said the meeting was somewhat disappointing as they themselves do not know how far they are off from the cost of the project. They came to the meeting with the idea the project was dead . Council is interested in mov ing the project along if everyone can figure out what it would take to do so. The owners have a feasibility study that is a few years old, but do not feel that study would provide any insight into the current en v ironment. Going forward they are going to reassess the project and be in communication with City staff as far as letting the Council know how far away they are from doing the project. 1 • • • Mr. Schalk asked if any pos1t1ve thoughts came out of the meeting. Mr. Jefferson said hopefully staff communicates and works with the owne rs and they communicate well with Staff, the gap isn't quite as big as the y think and Council may be willing to fill that gap. Mr. White said Staff has been in contact with the owners and they are putting together some revised numbers . We do have an u rban renewal area there and the potential to use a property tax increment for any potential gap there may be. Also on the table is RTD 's share of the Bates Station cost plus the cost of a parking garage that is still y et to be determined b y Council as to where that asset may end up . Mr. Jefferson said the parking structure idea was part of RTD coming to the City saying if the Bates Station is not going to move forward, how about using some of the Bates money to build a parking structure at CityCenter. He said to him that doesn't sound lik e the ideal situation and is not an attractive option. The City gets additional parking but it doesn't really do an ything as far as business and developing our tax base. RTD will pay for one-third of the cost of the station. The total cost 1s estimated to be between $8 and $9 million at this time. Ms. McDermott asked about the housing portion of the project. Mr. Jefferson said the for- sale housing may be scaled back to allow for more rental units. She asked Mr. Jefferson if Council wou l d be requesting a copy of the feasibility study from the owners. Mr. Jefferson said yes , they would be . Ms . McDermott said we need to get a solid number for the cost of the station from RTD , look at the feasibility study from a year and a half ago and see what the difference is. Mr. Jefferson and Mr. White agreed. Mr. Jefferson said an option that would allow the transportation infrastructure to be built might be to phase it and let the developers to do a slightly smaller project that wo uld allow it to expand as the market demanded. Chair Schalk said gas was probably $1 .25 a gallon when the study was done and now is approaching $4 .00 a gallon and going up. People are looking to be closer to transportation and looking for an easier way to travel. Bates Station could create a synerg y of development. Mr. Jefferson agreed . He said he hopes to have more information by the June ACE meeting. MARKETING COMMITIEE Mr. Hollingsworth said one of ACE's priorities for the year is to take a loo k at community marketing. Staff has talked about hiring a consultant and wanted ACE 's feedback and if there is anyone that would be interested in participating on a committee to interview consultants . Mr. Hollingsworth said Englewood's marketing is currently very minimal. A marketing plan for a city is ve ry different that one for a business. There is a lot more public involvement, more collaboration and a public process to go through in developing the plan . Staff imagined interviewing several consultants that have an expertise in this area. 2 • Ms. McDermott asked what is different about community marketing. • • Mr. Hollingsworth said in the general sense a business simply markets the goods and services. A community has to balance a lot more than marketing goods and services. It markets available space, to build community pride, to create awareness of the community and other businesses in the area. It's not just doing a brochure; it's the message in the brochure and who it goes to. The Englewood Primary Employer Study grouped the City's largest employers into six categories. A marketing plan would target those six general areas. He said the budget was not that large . Ms. Lonborg asked what the budget is. Mr. Hollingsworth said there is a grant from the states Enterprise Zone for $12,500, the City matched the $12,500 from the state and there is approximately $10,000 in Brownfield 's dollars to clean up Brownfield sites for a total of $30,000 to $40,000 for actual advertising. Ms. McDermott asked what would be accomplished that would be different from what Community Development is already doing. Mr. Hollingsworth said we already have a lot of the base materials; we just need to convey that into a message. It would be a two to four year plan. Council has indicated some levels of support for a marketing upgrade. Ms . Lonborg said she wasn't sure the City is ready to hire a consultant yet as 1t 1s not apparent to her what the goals for marketing are. She said she believes the goals will help Staff know who to hire . She said she would argue there is no difference between business marketing and community marketing and is eager to get more information from Mr. Hollingsworth. We need to know what we are trying to market before we hire a consultant and would like to have more discussion about what we are trying to grow. Ms . McDermott said she believes the City has come a tremendous distance in the last three or four years in marketing the City to businesses who are looking to relocate in Englewood. What piece is missing .... that is what Ms. Lonborg is asking for. Ms. Guinther said one of the pieces missing is "has the image of Englewood changed at all with all the pieces that have been implemented". Mr. Hollingsworth said Staff can define the goals somewhat, but that is in part what the marketing strategy does. Doing an advertising campaign would answer who specifically are our targets. Chair Schalk said he feels the people in the community know more about the City than a consultant would. He said marketing is changing enormously right now. Print is going awa y and is moving on-line with electronic marketing. He believes ACE could put together some gorilla marketing campaigns for Englewood. The money should be spent on creating materials that can promote what we have versus getting a consultant involved and trying to let them decide what we are. 3 • • • Ms. Lonborg asked if the City's website is optimized with the key word strategy. Mr . Hollingsworth said he did not know and would look into this further. She said she agreed with Chair Schalk that in today's day and age with what we do have we are better off to spend the money we have on the internet than anything else. She asked if the City's hands are tied. You don't have a marketing director or a public relations person at the City. If you hire a competent full-time marketing and public relations professional at the City that person can work for you for years developing what is needed . This is not a quick fix idea . Mr. Hollingsworth asked if ACE would be interested in establishing a committee to provide input in how to market Englewood in regards to strategy, website, and how we can better serve and market Englewood as a community. Chair Schalk and Ms. Lonborg said they believe ACE should be the committee. Have ACE work on immed iate priorities for the $40,000 you have this year and have ACE go to DU, CU, Metro or any college and make this a project for a marketing class and get it done for free . Ms. McDermott said she feels the ACE group could work through the process of the branding. Mr. Hollingsworth said at the next meeting we'll talk about some of the targets . Ms . Lonborg asked if he could bring all the printed material Staff has. He said absolutely. She also would like to better understand the money the City has set aside for consultants .... what are the restrictions on how that can be used . She also asked Staff to bring the web reporting that the City has off the City's web site . She would like to see the web traffic and know what is driving people to it and is the City's website optimized. Mr. Hollingsworth suggested the City's webmaster attend an upcoming meeting and give an overview of the City's website. Chair Schalk believes what ACE can do to help market the City through the web is the City's image, gather information and bring it back to a future meeting, bring in what material we have and have the City's webmaster attend a meeting to answer questions . We can develop a better on-line strategy from within. Ms. Lonborg said Littleton is a great example. They have a communications department at the City staffed by three or four people. They push out newsletter information blasts about what is going on in the city both from a business standpoint and from a safety ser v ices standpoint so they are in control of their image by being in front of it telling people what is going on. She said that is something that is missing in Englewood . Maybe we could use the consulting funds to get a public relations or communications professional working on the City's behalf so we are in control of what is being said and we're putting our message out. Right now it's all reactive based on what appears in the newspaper. Mr. Vasilas said the City has a newsletter that goes out every month, The Citizen. He said he has never seen an article for a business in the newsletter. Ms. Lonborg asked if it was emailed out. It is not, it is mailed to residents. Mr. Vasilas said we have to promote the businesses as 70% of the City's income comes from business. Ms. McDermott said The Citizen does serve a real purpose. It tells the residents what is going on in the City in terms of its improvements, parks and recreation, etc. It provides City information, but does not drill down to business. 4 • Chair Schalk said we'll discuss this further at the next meeting. • • BUSINESS WORKSHOP SERIES Mr. Hollingsworth said Le Dine University has a program where they do business seminars over the lunch hour. This has been done in the past at the City with the Business Education Series and we held two free classes on website optimization . Le Dine Uni v ersity and ACC have requested to use the Community Room at the City and he asked ACE if they would support continuing the business education series and, if so , what courses would be important to the business community. There would be a fee for the courses as ACC would need to pay for their costs and would be providing lunch. Ms . McDermott said she would be in favor of holding the classes if we have the space and the topics are relevant. She asked if the courses were professional. Mr. Hollingsworth said they are. Mr. Vasilas said he has taken classes such as these several times and they are very good. Chair Schalk said he would support the classes under one condition; that Staff put together an e-marketing piece that is emailed out to more than 100 people. Mr. Hollingsworth asked if there was a particular core interest the business community might want to focus on . Ms. Lonborg asked if Staff had an email list of all the businesses that we are going to contact. Mr. Hollingsworth said we do not, but can work with the Chamber to put together a list. Ms. Lonborg suggested Staff log onto Survey Monkey and do a quick survey of what topics they would like to see. Mr. Hollingsworth said the City does not maintain a list of business email addresses. Ms. Lonborg said the City needs to change that. Ms. Espinoza suggested us i ng Refe rence USA which is available for free at the Englewood library as a resource. She asked if Micro Business Development offers this same t y pe of service . Mr. Hollingsworth said they offer some courses and can do small scale seminars . VISITATION UPDATE Mr. Graham said he used Reference USA to obtain basic information on the companies he contacted for the visitation. Primary employers are the employers that generate wealth in the community. Secondary employers would be the businesses where that wealth is spent, such as restaurants and retai le rs. The Primary employers are where our economic development efforts are going to yield the most benefit for the community. Current thinking is that business expansion is the smartest way to proceed. Business attraction is a very expensive proposition; there are a lot of very competitive cities offering incentives. If you can get a business to expand they are not taking employees away from another business to be here, they are ac t ually growing. We have to go out and talk to the businesses to determine which are growing and which are not. 5 • • • Mr. Graham referenced a copy of the v1s1tation interview that was sent to all board members . Fourteen businesses have been identified to be contacted in the first round . Staff will go through the interview in a conversational way in a one hour period . The information gathered will then be entered into a program that analyzes the 14 businesses, but more importantly it will compare them to other businesses in the same SIC or NAICS codes nationwide. It tells us such things as your business is spending less in R & D and your products are at the top of their life cycle, your business is right on target, etc. You get a sense of how the Englewood portfolio of companies is doing overall. There are 1J60 businesses in Englewood that fall into the six categories (a utomotive, business support, construction, durable goods, life sciences and sporting goods ). These six categories employ approximately 80 % of all the workers in the City and their wages tend to be higher that the prevailing wages. The State suggested we focus on something we can get to in a 5 year cycle of doing 24 visitations a year for a total of 120. If the group of 14 can be gotten to in 90 days we have an opportunity to turn around and do another 12 to 14 before the end of the year. Twenty-four is the critical number you need to get meaningful data. After the interviews Staff would report back the local information to ACE and to City Council as to how Englewood fits nationally. Mr. Graham stated he was not sure of the timetable to get the national information back, but felt he could have both local and national back in the first quarter of 2009. To relate the visitations to the Comp Plan and Economic Development Strategy Mr. Graham said he pulled out some of the objectives . Opening communications is part of the Strategy. We generally do not have very much communication with the businesses in the industrial sector so we're going to try to overcome that. He said Staff is going to promote business retention and expansion and recruitment. The survey instrument specifically does go into local, state and national legislation so Staff will be looking into that and prov ide feedback back to Council. Mr. Graham said there is a citizen's survey that asks how the City is doing as far as delivering services and maintaining facilities. The visitation survey will provide some of the same information from businesses. Chair Schalk suggested the first thing to do is to obtain an email address and website for each of the 24 businesses Staff will visit this year before doing any study. Mr. Graham stated he did have email addresses for several of the 14 businesses on the list. Chair Schalk said the most important thing is to be communicating to all of the approximately 2,000 businesses as quickly as possible; you'll find out so much more information. He suggested reaching out to a bigger number. Should there be a collaborative meeting between the BID , Chamber of Commerce, ACE and Staff to assemble the database? Could that be discussed at the next meeting? Ms. Lonborg asked Mr. White if that could be a priority in his department. Mr. White wanted clarification as to what was being asked . Ms. Lonborg said can we build a database of business email addresses in Englewood. Ms. Guinther said email sent out from the City will change the image of the City quicker than anything. Mr. Graham asked if the list would be a self subscribed type. The members all agreed it would not be .... the emails would be 6 • • • sent out with a disclaimer on the bottom that say if you don't want future emails you unsubscribe . Mr. Graham said the City might not do that as you can end up on black lists and then other official communications from the City will not come through. Chair Schalk said let's start with a marketing strategy and the list first. Ms . Lonborg asked Mr. White if ACE could get a commitment from City staff to provide resources to help build the database. Mr. White said not until he speaks to all the staff personnel that would be involved in putting it together. Chair Schalk asked everyone to bring their email contact lists and business contact information to the next meeting and we'll go from there. Ms . McDermott said the list of 14 businesses is a good mix. She asked Mr. Graham how many employees are represented. Mr. Graham said 1,400 employees . 111. COMMENTS & EVENTS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE Mr. Morton said the Chamber is working with the Business Improvement District on several issues to help promote economic development and clean up the area on Broadway. The Chamber presented to City Council a proposal to hold an Englewood Sale Day each month . The group chose the last Saturday of every month to be designated as Englewood Sale Day . As the sales are held people will begin to remember the day. He said he has worked with Mr. White and Mr. Bell to look over the Ordinances to figure out what can be done. Mr. Morton said frankly a lot of the Ordinances are pretty much against doing business in Englewood in a lot of cases. He said this will not be a sidewalk sale type event. He said the group came up with flying a flag on the businesses between Hampden Ave and Yale Ave on sale day. The Lions Club has already put up 20 to 25 flag holders on various businesses in order to fly the American flag on specific holidays . The goal is to put up flag holders on 50 to 75 businesses along that eight block stretch that the BID will purchase and the Lions Club will install. The idea was to have a sale day flag, but that is a problem as the current Ordinance will not allow that. You can only fly a sale flag two times a year according to the Ordinance. You can fly a City of Englewood flag or the State of Colorado flag any day, so the BID board picked the City of Englewood flag to show civic pride. Hopefully, this will start the last Saturday in June . The Chamber will help promote it. The Chamber believes through the different programs that the different groups are working on jointly we can promote the business community to come together and work together. Ms. McDermott exited the meeting at 1 :03. Mr. Morton said he would be working with different staff members at the City to rewrite Ordinances so that the BID can fly a logo flag for their area . Since the Ordinance process could take up to six months and we did not want to miss the summer season the City flag will be used . He said he wanted to make it clear the Chamber supports all business in Englewood, not just the BID group. What the Chamber is hearing from new members off of Broadway is that they want to see Broadway cleaned up. Broadway to them is the image of 7 • • • what Englewood is. They feel if we can start the economic development on Broadway it will have a ripple effect on the businesses outside of that corridor. Ms . Lonborg asked if flyers would be printed regarding Englewood Sale Day. Mr. Morton said as soon as the flag holders are installed and the flags are purchased we will set the first sale date and flyers will be printed. Ms. Lonborg offered to put the flyer up in the hospital to get the word out. He said in the meantime we will start on rewriting the Ordinances . Mr. Morton said he has been in contact with the Englewood Herald and there may be an article in the paper. Mr. Morton said next summer he, as the Director of the Chamber, would like to bring in a farmer's market on Broadway. He stated the Chamber has already been granted use of the vacant lot at the corner of Broadway and Englewood Parkway. The next Business After Hours will be held on May 201h at Isis Books from 5 to 7 p.m . The annual golf tournament will be on July 18 1h at the Broken Tee. Mr. Morton said the Chamber has an opening for a part-time Administrative Assistant. Ann will be leaving at the end of May. ACE MEMBERS Mr. Vasilas asked for an update on the Kent Place Amendment. Mr. White said they are looking at amending their development plan. They would like to have more flexibility in exactly where structures would be built. Ms. Lonborg said in conjunction with their partners at the Colorado Neurological Institute Leigh Ann Hoffines and her best friend came up with a plan to have the City issue a proclamation regarding May as stroke awareness month in Olga Wolosyn's honor. It was presented at Council last Monday night. Swedish Hospital has taken out ads in various local newspapers reminding people of the warning signs and symptoms of stroke with a cop y of the proclamation . It was a very nice event. BID COMMENTS Mr. Vasilas said the BID has just finished the sidewalk cleaning from Yale Avenue to Hampden Avenue. The BID is also working with a landscape architect to develop a three- year beautification plan. Items initially discussed were flower beds and seating areas , but the problem of maintaining them was discussed. The architect is now working on other visual ideas such as art in the medians. The Arts Council has also been involved in the plan. As soon as it is complete we will present it to City Council for approval. The BID is working with a marketing and consulting firm to advertise Englewood Sale Day. Also being considered is a television ad. There will be another meeting next week with the firm to discuss further . Mr. Vasilas said the BID has been working on developing a coupon book and is very close to having it completed. 8 • The BID is hosting the Business After Hours on June 17th at The Falcon from 5 to 7 p .m. • • At the March meeting of the BID outside seating was discussed. There are two businesses in the 3400 block of S. Broadway that would like to have outside seating in the paseo ar ea. Currently, the Encroachment Agreement needs to be signed by the building owner, not by the business. Mr. Vasilas said his landlord is not interested in signing an y agreements with the City. He said he attended a City Council meeting and as he understands Council is in support of changing the Encroachment Agreement. He said he is ready to build out the area now; hopefully, it will not be a lengthy process to approve. STAFF COMMENTS Mr. White said Staff is working on the issue that Mr. Vasilas brought up. Council approv ed a contract to construct the medians from Tufts to Belleview. No further business was brought forth for consideration. The meeting was adjourned at 1 :22 p .m. The next meeting is scheduled for June 12 , 2008. Barbara Krecklow. Recording Secretary 9