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HomeMy WebLinkAboutcclc.min.090617 1 COMMERCIAL CORE & LODGING COMMISSION MINUTES OF SEPTEMBER 6, 2017 Chairperson Bill Guth brought the meeting to order at 8:33 a.m. Commissioners in attendance: Bill Guth, Steve Fante, Charles Cunniffe, Bill Dinsmoor, Terry Butler, Kiki Raj, Amanda Tanaka. Absent was Erik Klanderud. Staff in attendance: Nicole Henning, Deputy City Clerk Mitch Osur, Parking Services Director Matt Kuhn, Operations Manager Dan Nelson, Downtown Coordinator APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Mr. Guth made a change to the last paragraph on page 3 regarding retailers not being interested in more rules. Mr. Guth moved to approve the minutes, Mr. Dinsmoor seconded. COMMISSIONER COMMENTS: Mr. Osur noted that Kathy Strickland sent him a note yesterday with all of the vendor’s current electrical needs and said there are about 15 vendors who currently use a fair amount of power. He and Mr. Guth recapped the last meeting with Ms. Strickland for those who were absent and the issues that she mentioned regarding the market. Mr. Dinsmoor and Ms. Butler both did their own survey this past weekend at the market. Mr. Dinsmoor asked who benefits from closing an hour and a half earlier and Mr. Cunniffe said that he and his family don’t ever go to the market until after lunch. Mr. Dinsmoor also noticed on Saturday how many truck loading zones there are downtown and said that on Saturday, no one was unloading. That’s 30 to 40 spaces that could be available for parking on Saturday. Mitch said they have changed some of the times of these zones. Ms. Butler said that one of the aggies had sold out by 1:00 p.m. Mr. Dinsmoor and others asked about the aggies bringing more inventory. Ms. Butler also said she spoke with Siam and she wants to come back on the board since she’s going to be here 10 months of the year now. Ms. Butler made mention to Mr. Nelson that the new grass is looking quite good, but said there are still no doggie bags. Mr. Nelson said he has about 40 new bag dispensers ready to go along with new bags and he is working on it. Phillip Supino – Sign Code Update: Mr. Supino recapped his last meeting in May regarding the Supreme Court ruling and said that on the 28th of September, Council approved Ordinance 22, so on the 28th of October, it will go into effect. This will be functionally the same regarding businesses getting signs and the permitting and review process is the same. On the working end of the ordinance, it’s not going to feel any different. Real estate signs can be displayed the same way they are now. Residential signs in general changed a lot, but functionally not very much. Residents can display up to four election season signs along with holiday décor between thanksgiving and new year’s and noted that it’s a very strange gray area and said they don’t make distinctions between a blow-up Santa and a sign that says happy new year. Marijuana businesses can’t 2 COMMERCIAL CORE & LODGING COMMISSION MINUTES OF SEPTEMBER 6, 2017 have their selling or display areas visible from a right of way, so the current ones have put a full coverage, vinyl wrap in their windows. Council says this deadens the building so for any new businesses or anyone wishing to amend their signage, must construct a display box, which is three-dimensional and creates more visual interest from the street. There will not be any retroactive enforcement on this. Regarding backlit signs, some of these in town are extra bright, so council has enforced brightness limitations and there can only be one per building. There will be future changes to construction site signs and an amendment to the Construction Management Plan (CMP). Council wants to limit the amount of construction site signs on fencing and they would like to see a 24x36 sign to list all essential info with permit #, contact info, rendering, etc., all rolled into one sign. Council has eliminated sandwich board signs completely. Mr. Fante and Ms. Tanaka think that is going to put a lot of people out of business and will be very bad for them. Mr. Supino stated that on September 28, 2018, all sandwich boards should be removed. Mr. Fante suggested that council is penalizing tax paying businesses that are second tier for no reason. Mr. Supino said the planning department is open to receiving apps for sandwich boards until the 28th of Sept and it will be good through to September 28th, 2018. Mr. Guth said he’s going to keep doing what he wants because nothing in this town is enforced and this is going to hurt other businesses. He also said that one has ever sued the city over a sign code issue. Ms. Raj pointed out that the city has been sued regarding free speech issues. Ms. Raj asked Mr. Supino what the options are for Ms. Tanaka and Mr. Fante. Mr. Supino said that council wants to look for alternatives or solutions to sandwich boards and said it was a reluctant decision they had to make. He said there is a potential option to allow a larger directory sign with a way-finding component without having a sign in the right of way. He said that council wants to hear the ideas that CCLC has for alternatives. Ms. Butler said they should have had an alternative ready to go before they made this decision. They city has now put one more obstacle in front of the small businesses. Mr. Supino said he will keep everyone updated on what is happening moving forward. He also mentioned that he read Ms. Tanaka’s email to council and that it was the only one entered into public comment. Mr. Osur said the city did a lot of outreach and felt like the businesses didn’t care until after the decision had been made. He feels that the tendency is not to care until it’s too late. Mr. Supino said that according to his research, there are 52 second tier units on the mall on average including upstairs office spaces, etc., so if they said that all second-tier businesses could have a sandwich board, there was potential for the sidewalk to be overloaded. Mr. Supino encouraged CCLC to reach out to council to help solve the issue. Ms. Raj said it should be a part of CCLC’s mission to find a solution to this regarding the small businesses. Dan Nelson – Christmas Lighting Mr. Guth complimented Mr. Nelson on the parts of the mall which are decorated with Christmas lighting and said he would love to see all of the malls done like that. Mr. Nelson said they would do more, but he is basically out of electrical power. He said he can check on a no-noise generator and Mr. Guth said that a lot of them have brought power out to the middle of the mall themselves and he would be willing to discuss this when they are not using it in the winter and Mr. Nelson was on board with collaborating on that. Mr. Guth said he would love to have a big tree and/or lights by his business. Mr. Nelson said he 3 COMMERCIAL CORE & LODGING COMMISSION MINUTES OF SEPTEMBER 6, 2017 will meet with Ron Christian to walk around the mall together and see what they can do or how he can help. Mr. Osur said they will have a hard time getting the city to approve any non-solar power. Mr. Guth asked Mr. Nelson if getting ski racks in place throughout the malls is a possibility and business owners don’t want people leaning their skis up against the store windows. He suggested that they also put signs on ski racks as local advertising for some of the second-tier stores like Mr. Fante’s who lost his sandwich board privileges. Sidewalk Sale – Mr. Osur notified everyone that the city is interested in running two sidewalk sales twice a year to help get rid of end of season retail items and bring people into town. Ms. Tanaka said she liked this idea a lot for people looking for sales and intimidated by Aspen prices. Mr. Osur mentioned that Steamboat does it every Labor Day and brings in thousands of people from all over. Every store participates and it’s the best weekend they have of the year. Ms. Raj said she thinks it’s horrible and cheesy. Mr. Dinsmoor said it would bring people into town who don’t normally come and there is potential since it’s just one weekend. Mr. Osur said his goal would be to say there are no rules, but just to sell and get rid of stuff and let them do what they want for those 3 days as a free for all. He said the city will promote the last weekend of March and the second week of September. The week in between Ruggerfest is also an option. Christmas Market – Mr. Dinsmoor circled back around to a particular Christmas market he knows about and said it has brought in quarter of a million dollars to European towns. He said the city would pay for the collapsible wood structures and store them or use them for other events throughout the year. The managing company would augment their traditional vendors and cherry pick specifically for Aspen. He mentioned that the city said no last time and that Mr. Barwick had assigned our event manager to do the research on it. He said Ms. Lesley didn’t do anything to help this or do any research on it and there was no support, therefore, the city was not receptive at all. Mr. Osur and Mr. Dinsmoor decided they are going to spearhead this. Mr. Osur suggested that on the next agenda they discuss Winterskol and how it has outlived its usefulness and come up with other ideas. Ms. Raj agreed and said they got rid of Soupskol and all of the fun events. Mr. Cunniffe suggested that the restaurants can offer a Winterskol soup special and said they need to bring back the parade. On the 12th of September, Mr. Osur is going to council regarding the art shows and said that they have spent about 20,000 on ads in the paper, the art walk, etc. He mentioned that ACRA and the city did this together and was relatively successful. He said that in the work session, they will be talking to city council to make a decision on if it is right to rent a city facility to competitors who come to town. He said 4 COMMERCIAL CORE & LODGING COMMISSION MINUTES OF SEPTEMBER 6, 2017 he now has a lot of requests for the ice garden. Mr. Cunniffe mentioned that a lot of people from the art museum went to the ice garden art show. Mr. Guth said he loved it. Ms. Raj claimed that the art show was full of lower tiered galleries regarding prestige in the art world. Ms. Butler said that all of this just adds to the town in her opinion and makes things more interesting. Mr. Osur said that we don’t necessarily need it today, but next year when the recession hits, we need to be prepared and planning for things like this. The city told ACRA that they can no longer do their art fair on the street so they have asked them to move it to Paepcke Park or elsewhere. He said for next year, there are no street closings for special events in July or August. Mr. Guth said that city council needs to look at the events individually and ask if the event is creating vitality when determining if city property should be used or not. He also mentioned to Mr. Osur that there is a hole in the side of the garbage dumpster in his alleyway that is causing garbage juice to pour out of it said it’s a public health issue that is falling on deaf ears. He feels that environmental health needs to be made aware of it. Mr. Osur agreed and said he would speak with them. The next meeting will be on September 20th and agenda items shall be, alleyways/trash, the December market and winter events. Ms. Raj motioned to adjourn, Mr. Guth seconded. __________________________________ Nicole Henning, Deputy City Clerk