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HomeMy WebLinkAboutcclc.min.12052007COMMERCIAL CORE & LODGING COMMISSION MINUTES OF DECEMBER 5.2007 Chairperson, Bill Dinsmoor called the meeting to order at 8:30 a.m. Commissioners in attendance: Shae Singer, Terry Butler and Mark Goodman. Excused were Don Sheeley and John Stan. Kathy Strickland introduced CCLC's two new members, Fred Ayarza and Roger Haneman. Staff: Kathy Strickland, Chief Deputy City Clerk CCLC funding: Bill said that councilman J. E. Devilbiss said the city manager had funding and if CCLC wanted to present something to him and he liked it the cost would come out of the manager's budget. Steve Barwick, City Manger said he does have a budget but that money is for projects etc. that are small, like $3,000. Steve said there is a central savings pool and 10% gets set aside for use of things that council normally wouldn't approve. An example would be the initial web site that the city has. CCLC proposed 12 days of XMAS and the budget was $25,000 to $40,000. That kind of funding always has to go through city council for approval. Steve pointed out that council also requested more information and details and council felt that there would not be enough time to put on the event. Terry said a detailed request was presented. Shae said council was micro managing the request. Steve said in order to get counciLapproval you need to present a case and get them convinced that the event is good and needs to occur in Aspen. You need to get council on your side. Bill said he would rather the CCLC go to one person for funding so that we don't have to go through the months and months of details. It is tedious and counter productive. This has been a source of aggravation for the board. Terry said the board could have carved the event out. Steve said when you are presenting or want a program council has to agree that there is a problem and that the program is worth funding. You need to talk to them and explain what it is in order to get them onboard. 1 COMMERCIAL CORE & LODGING COMMISSION MINUTES OF DECEMBER 5.2007 Steve said if CCLC is adamant about funding you need to go to council and get the funding for one year then the following year go back to city council and ask for permanent funding. The budget for 2008 has already been approved. The work sessions for the 2009 budget start in June. Terry said the downtown area is like a XMAS card. If we had carolers walking around to make it as festive as we can the stores will sell a lot more and stay open later. We want the XMAS season bigger and better. Steve said there is a point of view that XMAS is the busiest time of year. Bill said the notion that we have to go to our council for XMAS money is absurd. Bill said if the CCLC had a budget they could pay for inoculation of the flue shot. If the flue shot were free more people would get it. Had we had money CCLC would have supported free flue shots. Steve pointed out that council's role is to allocate funds. Bill said we spent our money frugally when we had it. Andrew Kole, reminded the CCLC that $20,000 of the CCLC budget went to Parks and the other $20,000 went to the ACRA. Terry said the $20,000 went to one person on the ACRA to bring events to Aspen in the off season. The money in the budget was good because it expanded the core to businesses that did not belong to the ACRA. Bill asked Steve for direction. Steve said the theme is that CCLC wants a budget of $40,000. The CCLC needs to talk to council about the problems first and why you need the money. If council doesn't feel there is a problem you will not get the funding. Fred said getting a hearing from City Council is difficult. Someone from staff has to support us and have confidence in the us. The busiest times of COMMERCIAL CORE & LODGING COMMISSION MINUTES OF DECEMBER 5, 2007 the year are when you have busy businesses. You have to take advantage when all of our guests come. You can't micro manage everything. The City Manager has to have confidence in us and someone has to listen to us. The reason for this commission is to do things and we need the city manager's support. Fred also said he fully understands budgets and their process. Steve said the issue is long term funding. Steve said the CCLC should work on the budget in June of next year. Council has work sessions every other Tuesday from 4:00 to 5:00. Down lighting: Bill said the demonstration was set up and we didn't get enough council interest in the down lighting. We have had examples of down lighting two or three times. Mark said he approached Singer lighting and worked out a prototype. They use 80% less electricity. Bill pointed out that the prototype might not be the right one. Where should we go from here? Tom Rubel, Parks Department said they spent a lot of time on lighting. Bill said we need to make the lighting happen. Tom suggested Kim Peterson, head of the Canary Initiative program get involved in lighting. Kathy pointed out that Jeff Rice from the Water/Electric Dept. is also involved with lighting and energy efficiencies. Mark said the prototype was made with LED lights that reflect up and down. Roger said maybe the city is in violation of the lighting code. Bill requested that staff contact Kim Peterson regarding the down lighting to see if she can come to our next meeting and discuss down lighting and how we can get council support. COMMERCIAL CORE & LODGING COMMISSION MINUTES OF DECEMBER 5, 2007 Holiday lighting: Mark said Mill Street is deck out like crazy with lighting. It reminds him of the phantom of the opera. The feel is good and it is well lit. Tom explained that the Hyman and Cooper are dark streets due to the large trees. Mill Street has smaller trees. Tom said the trunks are wrapped and possibly we can add more lighting to the entrances of both malls. It is difficult to get to the Hyman and Cooper mall because the electrical outlets are far away. Tom said the landscaping on the Hyman and Cooper mall have huge trees. It costs $8,000 to light one tree. Tom said he would try to add lights to four trees at the entrances on Galena. Bill said the Parks budget needs to be increased for lighting next year. Tom said a lot of the city's budget is going for housing. That is one of council's main goals. The Parks Dept. went with LED lights which give us more capacity. We use nothing but LED lights. Tom said he is committed to improving the lighting. 75% of the CCLC $20,000 funding that was transferred to Parks is allocated for XMAS lights. The other 25% is for the color of the core program which is our summer flower program. Shae asked if some lighting could be incorporated on Cooper Ave. in front of Le Tub and Mezzaluna. It would also be great if we could incorporate lights at the far ends of the malls. Tom said he doesn't have the man power to add lights to the Cooper Ave. mall. We are doing 7 miles of beautiful lights already. Shae said maybe if Parks supplies the lights the owners of the stores can hang them up. Bill said we want businesses to keep their store lights on in the evening and CCLC decided we needed to enhance the environment to shop after skiing and get the retailers open in the evening. Lighting is part of that enhancement. Saturday Market: Bill brought up the idea of sending out an RFP for a cooking demonstration in Conner Park. There is a movement across the country to buy and eat 4 COMMERCIAL CORE & LODGING COMMISSION MINUTES OF DECEMBER 5, 2007 locally. The food channel is very successful. The chef could do a demonstration and sell cooked food. Kathy and Shae said patrons want some kind of food at the market that is easy to handle while they are shopping. Andrew Kole said the money would come from someone who is selling the food. You would need exposure. Possibly get a sponsor like Weber etc. The person putting on the food demonstration would make the profit. Bill said that would give people a chance to eat. Terry thought the cooking demonstration might enhance the market and keep people at the market longer. Kathy pointed out that she and Shae contacted chef's to do a food demonstration and sell food. We provided the tent and there were only a few people that wanted to get involved. Kendra's Kitchen was one and we had a chef demonstrate carving fruit etc. Restaurants did not want to participate because it is difficult to get staff to work extra hours and most of the restaurants are short handed. We also had sustainable cooking and that only worked out for two or three weeks. We have approached the agriculture vendors and two of them are interested in selling food. Shae said Colorado Tourism would like to do taste of Colorado during Food & Wine. Possibly they could be connected with the market. Maybe we could do cooking demonstrations six times or so during the summer. Roger suggested using the enemy for the cooking demonstrations, Clark's market or City market. The board thought that was a great idea. Fred said maybe Whole Foods would be interested in order to get some visibility and introduce themselves that they are coming to the Roaring Ford area. Mark said he certainly thinks getting a celebrity chef to entertain and be funny would be great for the market. Meet g adjourned at 1~ a.m. ~~ jam. _ _ ~~ „G~e~~ Kathleen J. Strickland, Chief Deputy Clerk