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HomeMy WebLinkAboutcclc.min.041818 1 REGULAR MEETING COMMERCIAL CORE & LODGING COMMISSION APRIL 18, 2018 Chairman Steve Fante opened the meeting at 8:30 a.m. Commissioners in attendance: Steve Fante, Charles Cunniffe, Bill Dinsmoor, Amanda Tanaka, Angi Wang. Absent were Terry Butler and Kiki Raj. Staff present: Nicole Henning, Deputy City Clerk; Linda Manning, City Clerk; Mitch Osur, Parking Services Director. PUBLIC COMMENT: None. Councilman Ward Hauenstein was present and said he wanted to observe. Mr. Hauenstein said that parking is a huge concern for the central core and for City Council. Our attention has recently been focused on people in town lobbying hard not to remove parking for electric vehicles. He said their goal is to have turn over parking spaces and feels it is contradictory to give away parking spaces. Primarily, he said he is here because he’s heard about CCLC for a long time and thought it was time to sit in and get a pulse. Mr. Fante thanked Mr. Hauenstein for coming and said unfortunately, they have no parking discussion on the agenda today, but he is more than welcome to listen to the other things they have going on. COMMISSIONER COMMENTS: Mr. Cunniffe said it’s a shame that Ms. Butler and Ms. Raj aren’t here so Mr. Hauenstein can have the full flavor of this group. Mr. Fante said that one of the things he’s been thinking about is how much the group wants to accomplish and if they want to work outside of the meetings, etc. He wants to get a feel from the group to what their desires and expectations are. He noted there are six projects and given the amount of time, if the subgroups want to work outside of the meetings, we can make it happen, but if we’re going to stay inside of the meetings, we need to reduce the scope. Mr. Dinsmoor said he thinks having specific goals and having folks from city staff to help out is a good thing. Mr. Osur said he puts a lot of extra hours into alleyways and spends time with environmental health and suggested himself, Mr. Dinsmoor and Ms. Butler spend some time outside of here walking the alleys together. The reality is it will take a couple hours to really get a good feel. Mr. Cunniffe suggested it be a delicate balance and said we don’t want to do things that Council isn’t interested in us doing. We want to focus on things they are on board with. Mr. Osur said that’s kind of why he’s here as the downtown liaison and the alleys fall under his issues. Ms. Wang entered the meeting. Ms. Tanaka said she feels they won’t be able to get any of this done unless they do work outside of the meetings. She does have some time to go and talk to other businesses regarding the outreach, newsletter, welcome baskets, etc. Ms. Manning said that Mr. Cunniffe has the right idea. We do need to get through the meeting today and then we need to talk to Council and let them know the six goals and ask if we’re on the right path and make sure we’re not wasting time. Mr. Fante agreed that CCLC needs to come up with a format to present to Council. Ms. Manning said the idea is to find out what Council can do to help us. If they like all six ideas, we can run with it or focus on other items such as neighborhood electric vehicles. 2 REGULAR MEETING COMMERCIAL CORE & LODGING COMMISSION APRIL 18, 2018 Mr. Hauenstein said it’s important to be cognizant of those lenses of supporting local businesses, etc. Mr. Fante agreed and said we are local businesses so that is dear to our heart and really the whole point of CCLC; to support local businesses. He offered to explain the goals that CCLC currently has to Mr. Hauenstein. He listed them as pop ups, events to bring to town primarily during the Christmas slow down, the newsletter and creating a channel of communication. He said they would be discussing three projects today. Mr. Osur mentioned the newsletter and said he spoke with Jim True about collecting email addresses from the sales tax refunds and Mr. True said we cannot do that, so we’re going to have to pull them from the business licenses. He is currently working with the finance department to do this and it will take a couple of weeks to gather this info. Ms. Tanaka said she could do a bit out outreach too with some of the core businesses. She brought up David Fleischer from Pitkin County Dry Goods because he was upset about the lack of communication on the bridge project and also mentioned Wendy of Meat and Cheese. Mr. Osur advised her to be careful doing physical outreach by picking and choosing certain businesses. He said that after speaking with Mr. Fleischer, what he wants is face to face communication and he only wants to hear what is important to him. Mr. Osur explained to him that we can’t judge what is important to him or not and he agreed with that point. He ended by saying the business licenses will give us 80 percent of the emails we want. Mr. Fante circled back to what would be a reasonable expectation of time from everyone and Mr. Dinsmoor said the efficacy of the outside work is relevant since they don’t want to do work that isn’t going to count. Mr. Fante said he sees our job as telling staff what we see needs to be done and then getting feedback from them or a yes or no on whether to move forward with something or we get City Council approval and then we execute. Mr. Osur asked the same question, how much time is the group willing to put in and what is realistic and Mr. Dinsmoor agreed that he wants to be effective and focused. Mr. Fante said we are all on the same page. Mr. Fante said we are creating the projects here at CCLC. Mr. Hauenstein said one of City Council’s goals is to have meetings with different boards. Ms. Manning clarified that is what these discussions are about, is CCLC preparing to come to you all. We want to be ready to come to you guys for approval on these goals. Mr. Osur said we will hopefully come to Council within next 60 days. The idea of coming to council is what spurred Mr. Fante to work with the group to come up with these ideas and goals. Ms. Manning mentioned the welcome baskets for new businesses and said this should be a quick win with Council. She explained to Mr. Hauenstein that Ms. Wang has a great list of new businesses coming in so she’s a great resource. She listed all the fun things to include along with a letter from CCLC. She said a member of CCLC will deliver it to the business with the code of excellence which lists the expectations of any business. She noted this is not something to compete with ACRA, just to let businesses know the City is here as a resource so let us help you. Mr. Hauenstein agreed and said that small businesses need as much help as they can get. Ms. Wang pointed out that if you’re not a member of ACRA, you don’t get that assistance and some businesses can’t afford to be a member so it’s nice to have another resource. Mr. Osur asked if two hours a month reasonable and they all agreed that is a reasonable amount of time. 3 REGULAR MEETING COMMERCIAL CORE & LODGING COMMISSION APRIL 18, 2018 Moving on, Mr. Fante said we need to put a timing on the previous three goals that were covered in the last meeting. Ms. Manning explained that there are work sessions every week for City Council and it’s a fairly open schedule. The Clerks can notify Barry Crook to add an item to the schedule. She said we can potentially shoot for the second or third week in May. We will do a memo for it and we would like for all members to be present. Mr. Osur said he doesn’t feel they can do the second week of May. He wants to make sure the board is ready and organized. Mr. Hauenstein said one thing that is really helpful from people coming in are strong statements for or against projects. That is really key so they can see both sides. Have the strong affirmations for each idea and the pros and cons ready to go. Mr. Osur mentioned the newsletter and said that Council got the message loud and clear that communication is important. Our goal is to have the first one out on 7/1. We can go to Council with an example of what it will look like. Council wants to see our vision and see how we are featuring a business, etc. Mr. Fante had the board break up into sub groups. Mr. Osur said he would work with Ms. Wang on pop ups since Ms. Butler is out. After the group sessions were over, Ms. Tanaka reported back on the newsletters. She said she would like to see them start July 1st and continue it on as a quarterly thing. She would like to split the newsletter up into four quadrants. One will be the featured business of the month. We can nominate the which business as a group and we can get a reporter from the Times to help us write the article. Another section can be about what is going on with City Council and is pertinent to the business community. A third section can be about upcoming events: parades, road closures, etc. The last section can about what CCLC is and what we are up to, a survey, etc. Mr. Dinsmoor said their feedback is very valuable and we must do the survey right and ask the right questions and make sure they are carefully crafted. Mr. Cunniffe suggested they collectively come up with the questions together. Mr. Dinsmoor reported back to the group on events We find there is always push back on new events. Mr. Osur said that coming up with a business model of an event bearing fruit and which demonstrates a financial payback, takes a long time and to him, it makes more sense to go to Council with a plan of discounts the week before Christmas because it only costs marketing money and asking the community to give something away. Mr. Fante said this could be a step process. We need to do one thing to start the process. He agreed with Mr. Dinsmoor and thinks it will take a lot of time; maybe two or three seasons. Mr. Cunniffe agreed and said we need to make a festival environment. We must get them here based on an event that is happening, which ultimately induces impulse shopping. Mr. Dinsmoor said it’s a very different notion to start with instead of just giving discounts. Mr. Cunniffe said you can’t look at is as competing with town, it’s adding to it. Ms. Wang reported back on pop ups and said it closely ties in with vacancies in town. We have some legal issues and locals don’t like the pop ups because it affects their businesses in a negative way. Mr. Osur said that CCLC needs a stance on if they feel it’s not good for the community and we can’t discriminate on allowing some and not others; it would have to be all pop ups and do away with them completely. Ms. Wang said we can make the timeline whatever we want and ask for at least a year 4 REGULAR MEETING COMMERCIAL CORE & LODGING COMMISSION APRIL 18, 2018 lease, etc. Mr. Osur said to put a plan together and take it to Jim True. He said If the pop ups are tied into an event, that is provisional and we need to allow this since the community benefits from this. Mr. Osur said we have eliminated the pop ups from the hotel rooms and don’t think this is still happening at all. Mr. Hauenstein mentioned the new “gig economy” concept that he read in Outside magazine. He said the trend is moving towards a lot of businesses do short term business with temporary or independent workers. The newer way is not to be tied down to a space. He said it’s a trend throughout the world and we have to be open to this idea as well. Ms. Wang said we need to determine how we feel about having vacant spots over having pop ups and then determine our stance. APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Motion: Mr. Fante motioned to approve the minutes from April 4th, Mr. Cunniffe seconded. I told the board about Elevate Elixir and how they want to add hemp massage oils and tinctures in addition to selling kombucha. The board voted: Mr. Fante, yes; Ms. Wang, yes; Mr. Cunniffe, yes; Mr. Dinsmoor, no. 3-1, motion carried. Meeting was adjourned 10:03 a.m. ______________________________ Nicole Henning, Deputy City Clerk