Community and Economic Development Committee Meeting - June 5, 2025

We're going to start this meeting, everybody. Good morning. It's 9:04 on Thursday, June 5th. We'll call this meeting of the CEDC to order. My name is Assemblymember Martinez.

We'll begin with introductions. Anna Brawley. On the line is Member Baldwin-Day.

Yes, sir. All right. They're here. I heard it in a different angle from where the owl is. But thank you for being with us.

All right, thank you for being with us. I'll turn the audio off. Turn it off. All right.

As you all know, one of the projects is upgrading the AV in this room. We have Mr. Wilbur with us too. And so we do not do these technical difficulties to demonstrate the need for improved AV, although they are—. It does have the desire—. They are complementary.

Yeah, it works to that effect. In fact, um, thank you everybody. We'll begin with our regular reports. And speaking of which, I'll turn it over to Planning, Development, and Public Works, and we'll go from there. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Maybe to start with this, I've been working with IT and Purchasing, and we are at a place right now where we've got some— we've got a quote and we've got the resources lined up to pay for it. We're just working through the preferred procurement process, Mr. Chairman, so My sense of urgency is probably not as high as yours, but it's pretty high. I'm looking forward to this. AMATS uses this room a lot. We've been working with, uh, Mandy and others to try to make sure that we get a solution in here that's benefit for everyone.

So thank you. So we'll get through that. My next item is I just want to say thank you to the assembly for the special meeting last week on behalf of PME. I know that is not something that that is— you like to do. But I have to tell you, we appreciate the, the opportunity to do it.

We were able to get 3 projects out to bid. We're going to have a project coming up on the addendum for Dowling Road. So again, I just— I know that is— I think Assemblymember Johnson expressed some, some concerns, and I, I validated his concerns. I didn't think he was out of line or wrong, but we do appreciate the support. We do like to make that happen.

But thank you. Couple things going on. We've been— the departments inside the building, we've been working to support the administration on their housing initiatives and transportation items that they're working on in a variety of different ways, and the departments may touch on some of those things. A couple of the things we've also been focusing on— a lot of stuff going on downtown, not in any particular order. One of them is we've been working with the owners.

Block 41, we expect the fill and grade permit tomorrow, and then we expect a footing and foundation set of designs coming in in July. They'll start getting that hole filled. The plan is to— they will get it, get the foundations in, get the hole filled, and then they will do the structure next year after winter shutdown. So more to come on that. The other thing we've been working on has been brought to our attention We've got a lot of tree wells downtown with broken grates, and some of them might pose some kind of a, maybe a safety hazard in some particular locations.

We've been working with Parks and Planning, Street Maintenance to find out some of those things. Interesting thing about 5th and 6th Avenue is they are not— while we own the facilities, we don't manage the facilities. And we're really going to be focused on a combination of planting some trees in some of those locations where we think they're going to have the highest survivability. But we're not going to replant all of them. Some of them, we're going to just replace the grates.

As you have seen in other places, there's the— we concreted over them and we'll do that same to match. A lot of places there on the south side of a build— south side of the sidewalk, real tall buildings, they really don't survive. And we just— we're going to be selective about where we do it. But it's something that we're working on right now. We've been—.

We've got a contractor that we're working with, so as that matures and we make those locations, we'll fill you in. But don't have much more to report than that. A couple last items just to make you aware of is the folks in the department here, we're recognizing that with the Supreme Court decision about how the delineation and designation of wetlands can change. We have a wetlands management plan. The planning of the wetlands, the designation of the wetlands, and then the permitting of the wetlands has a role by not only planning, a little bit in development services for issuing, also in on-site and in watershed.

So getting those folks together to get a— get the resources and the talent that we need to do that, to put those— because every permit basically basically has to have the Corps of Engineers jurisdictional approval, or they have to have their approval on it. So we're trying to figure out a way how we expedite that and support the development community, but we are still sort of got one hand behind our back when it comes to the Corps of Engineers. And so we're working to figure out a better way to get that done. And, um, so my last point is maybe some of the folks will mention we've After we've had some significant retirements, and so we're still sort of recovering from those. We've also had an opportunity to make some offers and we got turned down on some key positions.

Just to let you know that it's not without us getting quality applicants, it's just our ability to, you know, bring them on and attract them. So I've been working with the administration and HR on those things. I just want to make you aware. If you have questions or you hear some concerns, please reach out to me or any of the directors, and we'll be happy to let you know how we're doing. So with that, Mr. Chairman, I'll leave it at that and let the departments report.

Thank you. Thank you. Just to note, uh, Member Johnson is here. Do you have a question? Yeah, and I think I might be kind of beating a dead horse here, but it's worth it.

You said you're having trouble hiring, and then you're— they're identifying applicants out there, they're not taking the job. Uh, can you point to why? It's a, it's a combination, and some Some folks offer us, you know, reasons why. Some of them, they just take another job in the uni. They get— they're in two different— they're going to two different places, and we're just— I mean, we've had a couple folks that applied for project management engineer, they took a job at AWU, and so that's good for them.

We've also had some folks that just got a better offer, and we've had some folks that just changed their mind. They just said, look, we made an offer, and they just said, nah, we've changed our mind. So you can't can't figure that part out. But the retirements and then just people moving inside one vacant to another creates vacancies. So it's not all bad, but it's what we got to do.

If I could just make one minor comment, Mr. Johnson, to your question— or Member Johnson, uh, we have asked HR to do kind of an informal survey for candidates who may decline after we've offered jobs, just to see we get a sense of what the reasons are. Yeah, I'd love to hear what the result of that is. Thanks. Excellent. Uh, if you wouldn't mind just popcorning and tapping the next person down the list, and this way— who's here?

It's Daniel King. Well, and Greg is enjoying Japan, so I'll do development services real quick. Excellent. Uh, the permit counter is very busy. I think we are at, uh, last week we had a $140 million week in permits values.

I think once the Block 41 project comes in in about a month, that's going to jump up. They, um, they have some struggles in the staffing on the plan review side, but, uh, you know, other than that, I don't have any other key specific things. They've been working close with planning on some of the Title 21 and some of the Title 23 things. But yeah, I don't have much else to report for them. Cool.

Sorry, what was that top line number you gave us? I think the permit valuation last week was $140 million. Can you compare and contrast that to—. It was, I think it was, I want to say, some remember Johnson, it It was more than this week last year, but I don't recall the amount. I can get that to you.

Good news anyways. Thank you. Absolutely. Yeah, I had a question, but also just a general request. I know it's been kind of a multi-year thing to try to get, you know, more dashboard-level numbers, and I know some of them are out there, but I think that would be helpful to maybe create a template, and then whether it's monthly— probably not weekly reporting, monthly reporting, something so we can gauge those over time.

Because I know, you know, people keep asking, like, you know, are we seeing more development? What kind of development? What type of housing? And so I think I just want to really push that we need to figure that out because we can't measure all of the work that we've been doing without that. And so, and I know that a lot of it rests with the departments, and I know some of it is tied to, you know, our outdated systems that don't measure or don't have the software capability to spit out those reports.

But I think if we can build something real basic, that'd be helpful. And then my question is, just thinking ahead to third-party plan review, because you mentioned plan reviewers being out, um, I know the department is required to produce a report, I think, in October, which is— so that's, you know, we're early for that, but I would like to just keep.

On everybody's mind because otherwise they sunset. So I think we need to have some basis for determining, you know, are both residential and commercial appropriate to keep going or appropriate to sunset. And so that's kind of the purpose of those. And I think the sunset happens in January, so we just want to keep that on the radar and maybe later this summer get an update on where development is at. Thanks.

Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. Public Works.

You're the chair. I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. No, I invited you to tap the next person. So in your absence, somebody got skipped.

Well, let's go to Planning Department. Good morning. Um, I just wanted to thank the assembly for the chance to present at the work sessions last Friday. We had some great discussions about planning and zoning work plan for the Planning Department, the 10-year comp plan review, and then our— what was the third one? Side Act.

Site Access. Thank you. Um, which will be appearing at Assembly, um, on Tuesday of next week. So you'll see Site Access, and then I believe there's also a, um, a proposed AO to change some of the uses in B-3 as well. That's coming from Assemblymember Farah.

Um, next week at PCC, we are going to be presenting an AO to make some proposed changes to the mobile dwelling units code in Title 21, and then also an AO regarding nonconformities and changing the threshold at which people are required to bring their properties into compliance with Title 21. And then we're also doing a work session with PCC next, next week on the targeted 10-year comprehensive plan. And then next month we have the transit supportive development overlay going to PCC So keep an eye on that. And then other items of interest, we are looking for members for our boards and commissions. We're having trouble meeting quorum in a couple of our commissions.

If anyone knows of anyone who would be willing to be nominated to one of those positions, please send them our way. And as you know, if we cannot meet quorum, that delays the meeting and causes delays in development. We had a great meeting with the tax assessor's department, with Jack Cadames and his team, about Kamah data to speak to Member Brawley's point, just trying to sort out some of the sort of different uses that the departments put that data to and how we can all work together to make sure that it's actually meeting the needs of all the different departments. As Lance said, we are working with the other departments to try to figure out the wetlands permitting and where that will live in the future. And I think that is all I'd like to report.

For planning tonight. Thank you. Excellent. Are there any questions from members? Thank you.

Now Public Works. Now Public Works. Good morning, everybody. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In the maintenance and operations world, the street maintenance is working on their first round of sweeping. They're expecting to finish up in about 2 weeks, and then they'll immediately start their second round of sweeping. In addition, they're grading all the unpaved alleys across town, grading, and then they'll apply dust control mitigation to those. That is underway. Their street maintenance crew is gearing— they have a paving program, small paving program.

They're gearing up for that work right now. So that's a combination of— it's more than potholes. It's cutting out areas where there are recurrent chronic potholes, as well as they do some minor paving projects on neighborhood streets that are within their capacity with all the other work that they do. So they're gearing up for that. We took delivery of 2 or 3 new graders a couple weeks ago, and I think on the agenda for next week you will see a purchase of 3 more graders.

So we're taking advantage of the fleet levy that passed for street maintenance equipment. That'll be a good stroke for, for both the street maintenance crew and the citizens next fall.

In the PME world, we have 6 or 7 projects that are kicking off this summer, new construction.

Quinnheck off of Dowling, Jewel Terrace off of Diamond, Forest Park Drive, which I think most members are familiar with, the neighborhood greenway and resurfacing project. 42Nd Avenue is already underway. I'm sure folks may have experienced difficulty getting up and down Lake Otis. Hopefully that intersection will be cleared soon, but 42nd Avenue will be under construction all summer. Dowling is going to be resurfaced from Lake Otis to Elmore, and you'll see that, the award of that contract, on the agenda for next Tuesday.

And then, Lance mentioned the watershed management organization that we're looking at between the 2 or 3 departments, to figure out how best to make that work. And then, the last thing I'll mention, unless there are questions, is, I think I've mentioned in the past, or I know Lance has, that we've been working for quite a while with DOT on how we might obtain management authority for 5th and 6th Avenue downtown. As Lance mentioned, they are, they are municipally owned rights-of-way, but the management authority was granted to DOT in 1968 by the City Council at the time. And, well, quite a bit of federal money has been spent, so there are some restrictions on how those rights-of-way can be managed. But nonetheless, we're working with DOT.

We had a pretty productive meeting with DOT and FedHighways a couple weeks ago and got some good insight on Federal Highways as to what the process might be. I would say that the process looks not as easy as we had hoped, but there, there may be a path forward to, to gain management authority. Our interest is getting— our interest is to gain management authority and have it be advantageous to to us. We don't want to take over management authority and only have the liabilities and responsibilities without the ability to do some of the things that the administration and the Assembly has shown interest in downtown. So more to come on that, but we're at least encouraged that we've been able to sit down directly with 3 people from FedHighways and get some good guidance from them.

So, glad to answer any questions that members may have. Yes, and we'll start off with Member Crowley. Yeah, I'm just curious about kind of status of DeLong Lake. I was thinking about that since It's been raining a bunch over by the airport. I know that's an ongoing issue.

Uh, we are, we are poised. I would say the city PME is poised to— or maintenance and operation is poised to participate with the state in their pumping program. I think the state has been— my understanding from the last time I talked to the airport, they're waiting for, uh, their construction contract to kick back off. They're doing some work along the taxiways and runways there. I will follow up with them this week.

I haven't heard back from them for a couple weeks. I did go to the, uh, Community council meeting a couple weeks ago and gave a briefing to the council, but I'll follow up and see where we are. Now, we're without— objectively, I would say we're waiting for them. Okay. All right.

Yeah, thanks for going to that council. Yeah. And a follow-up from me, Mr. Colhays. Just go back to the management authority question. I think it's a very interesting conversation.

You described two streets, blocks. What is Fifth and Sixth Avenue to you? What do we call those? Uh, streets. And when you describe the, the management authority, you're describing in a particular area or all the way across east to west?

Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue, I believe, from Gamble to L Street, and it actually includes I and L from Fifth Avenue to 15th Avenue. So essentially the management authority for these particular corridors are the East Downtown corridor. Correct. The Downtown corridor, East Downtown corridor. Yes.

Right on. In those discussions, do we cite similar opportunities in other areas other than that particular corridor? I'll give you an example— Muldoon. Uh, I think the distinction, Mr. Chair, is that, that the municipality owns the underlying rights-of-way on 5th and 6th Avenue.

Okay. Um, we don't own Muldoon or Tudor. That's state right-of-way that was granted to the state either at statehood or at some point along the way. So we're not in position I mean, there have been discussions for decades about the city taking over all roads and within the confines of the municipality, perhaps with the exception of the Glen Highway and the sewer highway. But we're not in a position right now to request management authority of Muldoon because we don't, we don't have any rights to manage Muldoon.

For Fifth and Sixth Avenue, because its underlying right-of-way is ours, at one point prior to 1968, we did manage those rates. So that's the distinction. I'm not intending to sound argumentative, but that's the challenge, is that we, we don't, we don't really have any management rights to assert on mold in rates. Right on. Thank you for your vantage point.

The word assertion is a subjective word, because I'll assert something very different from my vantage point, right? So I would just suggest that.

The learning don't stop with the two streets downtown. I would suggest that whatever is the past relationship of the wise have little potential to do with what we need as a city for our economic growth and opportunity, right? And so if we don't explore those opportunities those other areas, and we don't learn from the case study of downtown— Fireweed, I think, is one of the potential areas as well— we don't learn from those particular corridors, then because, because of the limitations that people see with respect to the— what you just described, that's less important to me fundamentally, because what's more important to me is recognizing that Local development has been stifled, has been hindered by the relationship of these state roads to our development strategies. Town Center is part of the Transit Development Corridor strategy that we're bringing to life. That is Muldoon, the northern part of Muldoon Corridor.

So in essence, Whatever we're doing here will either run up into the brick wall of the state, and we'll predict that and we won't do anything about it, or we will become the city that pushes the state in the direction that we want, rather than the state telling us what we can't do because they just have no vision about what we need to accomplish. And so I think it's a different opportunity now to use the learnings of those other roads, not through the barriers of the difference, but to why they make economic sense to us. Back to making the point. And then I've offered an op-ed this week and a resolution that's coming forward that gives us some specific language. I don't know if the body is going to move on it, but essentially Part of the language of stackable ROI is going to be important to why we don't want liabilities, but we're looking at these as assets of investment opportunities, right?

Then it's also why our control potentially gives us more preemptive resilience because we have more control over the future and the destiny at a local level rather than waiting for the state outsiders. So it gives it— so these frameworks help to align, in my hope, but I would love the learning to be extended out to other areas that we need the same look. If I may, Mr. Carroll, I would offer that, uh, I would observe, I guess, that, that I think that thinking is in line with what I've heard from the 3 or 4 administrations I've worked for, that they're that there certainly is recognition that the more we are able to control our own destiny, the more we can do that's in line with what you're talking about. I would say that, I would observe again that Municipal Manager Lynn Pearson and Graham Downey meet at least once a month with Shawn Holland and representatives from DOT, and certainly Lance and I can take that message to her. I know they met yesterday and had productive discussion on some other items.

You know, I think that, you know, I'm certainly willing to be I'm not a part of the discussion, as I guess Mr. Wilbur is, but discussions about taking over management authority of non-MOA-owned roads probably should happen at the administrative level. Sure. And I'm going to follow up with the difference between what you describe in the probably very technical term, management authority, meets strategic influence.

We have been told that it's difficult for developers to think about mixed-use density on corridors like Muldoon because the speed of the road is too fast for pedestrian letout. But I know that Muldoon is coming up for state investment in 2027 in terms of resurfacing, repaving, and redoing stuff, right? Which tells us— and I just walked with Huddle and PM&E when we're doing a potential project on Dubin Avenue, right? So we're going to invest in the corridor. We want to activate development on this corridor, and they're going to— they have a plan already for surfacing.

We need to be in front of their plan with our development strategy to positively influence and shape their strategy, because if we don't, then we're going to have to fight after the fact. Again. And we may not win, but at least it gives us the upper hand in saying this is where we're headed, and this is how you're in the way. And this is how you can help us. Thank you.

Appreciate that. Cool. Moving right along, real estate. Good morning. A couple updates from us.

The Holton Hills off-site improvements, the construction of those is out to bid right now. Bidding closes June 9th. The goal is to have that awarded and construction on those off-site improvements begin later this summer. And then, um, at a meeting— I'm not sure if we made the addendum or not for the June 10th meeting, but we'll have an ordinance for 3rd and Ingraham to ACDA. So that'll be coming up.

It'll either be the 10th or the 24th when it gets introduced, but that is in the queue. So that's all from real estate. Any questions? Mr. Johnson? Yeah, so for, for Holton Hills, the outside improvements, is that, um, is that being funded with that congressional need to delegated spending that we got for it?

I guess, how are we paying for the outside improvements? Um, so I believe it's just going to come from the HLB fund. Um, once we find out what the bids come in at, we will be bringing in appropriation forward to move some money around. We'll get reimbursed by the developer at some point? At the back end, once the lots are— I think that's how it's— yeah, when the lots are sold.

Do we have a better sense? Because we talked about this, this idea of this profit sharing arrangement where there'd be some upside for the meeting at some point. As you guys are looking at the projections for the revenue that will come to us from selling the lots compared to the costs of putting in the off-site improvements for the development of the benefit of development ostensibly, Are we getting a better sense of kind of, you know, how much are we collectively, HOV, the community, going to benefit at the end of this? I think not yet, but we will, and we can start bringing updates once we start getting better numbers and start updating on it. I think it'd be nice to know.

And then, because I know there was some money that I believe Senator Murkowski appropriated to pay for some of this work, has that been spent or is it about to be spent? Is this part of what we're talking about here? Um, that has not been spent. Maybe I'll take this one. So we looked at the congressional designated spending, and the plan is to use the resources and talking to AWWU to use resources in Girdwood.

But what we learned from the type of grant is that it— there's some restrictions on using the kind of grant money that we got on new extensions. And the environmental process for that kind of money would have taken years to get done. So it doesn't mean that we can't use the congressionally designated funds on other, other like projects in the area. So we were really working with AWU to make a determination on what is the best use of those resources to support, one, the intent of congressionally designated grant to support Holden Hills and potentially some other projects. We still got 2 more phases of Holden Hills coming, so the infrastructure down there is going to need to be improved.

So happy to, you know, catch up with more information, but that's generally what we're doing. It was a, it was a thoughtful process that we went through because the amount of money that was in the grant would have done potentially two things: the environmental review would have taken a long time, and we were concerned that the actual— when the congressionally designated spending amount got, and then we found out what program it was coming from, it sort of restricted what we could actually originally intended to use it for. So that's why we're going to work to use it after review, but happy to share more information with AU and AU on that. Okay, and we feel confident that we're not going to run afoul of the senator's office I mean, you should back that up and say, like, my intent was this and now we're going to do it correctly. I know that AWWU has been conversing with this, with, uh, Senator Mikulski's office on with the intent to use the funds for a particular purpose.

Okay, I'd love to learn more either here or somewhere else. Okay. Um, yeah, just a quick question on Third and Ingra. I know we call both of them disposals. Is it disposing land for sale or for lease?

Release.

Okay, thanks. Right on. And on that note, on the third and anger, just to connect, I know we'll hear from, um, Mr. Robbins, uh, shortly, and it's not— I want to raise it now. It's more of, more of administration question, and it's not necessarily even a departmental level, but it's connected here.

Um, today the only municipal RV site, public municipal RV site in Anchorage is Centennial Park. Right on. Aren't there dollars supposed to be coming? Didn't we approve some funding or we put some bond money into Centennial and we're supposed to have some improvements on Centennial? Does anybody have an update on that?

Right on. And I tracked that because it'll be very difficult for people who have a legacy relationship to that unique asset to see a wonderful new RV park installation coming online at the expense of forgetting us with some old Centennial. And I heard that Centennial is supposed to have some improvements. I just want to confirm those improvements and make sure that we're seeing the share— the asset, not to discard an old asset, but to improve and grow the capacity of the stock of this source of asset. It's a different type, but essentially it meets the same purpose.

And we've always counted on Centennial. It's critical for the base. It's critical for all sorts of folks that utilize that asset. And we don't want to get stepped over. Yeah, Mr. Chairman, I'll verify the funds if they're there and second of all what the intended purpose of those, and I'll let you know.

Excellent, appreciate that. Member Baldwin-Day has a question on the line.

Yes, thank you, Chair. Um, I, I was wanting to go back to that conversation about the congressionally appropriated funds for the holding health infrastructure. Just out of curiosity, what are the approved or perhaps maybe the more accessible uses for that funding?

Through the Chair, Assemblymember Baldwin. I'm going to get back to you. I don't want to misquote that because there were some, you know, it's basically what the grant was for and the grant was worked with AWWU and I will get back with you. Yeah, excellent. Thank you so much.

Uh, thank you, Bode. Appreciate that. And thank you, uh, Lance, for, uh, the follow-up. Cool. And moving right along.

Excellent. And, uh, we'll move along, and I know Mr. Robbins is here, so we'll have an update. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, so might as well just continue on in the discussion about 30 Ingra. We did bring some maps if anybody's interested in seeing what the This is a concept map of what the site's supposed to look like, so I'll leave these here and I can email them to you.

And they were in our presentation that we did a while back, but I just brought some extras in case anybody was still interested because it's been a while. And, and, uh, keep in mind that the funds that will be used to develop that park will come from private sector funds, not from the city. So I just want to make that caveat or note. So, uh, and then we— there's— it's been It's been a busy summer for us. I want to say thanks to Lance and the folks over at his department.

The mayor wanted to see some color put into downtown, and Lance took it upon himself. He drove around and street by street did a survey of where the plywood is. And so now we're painting. We have a big mural project that's going on at the Nordstrom's building with Rhonda Scott, the artist, and they're going to paint a very large mural on the side of the building using other local artists. And actually both places, there's D Street and then there's the 6th Avenue side.

So that color will be there before the folks from Good Morning America get here. And then we're also— the mayor's— part of the mayor's art grant— arts grant program was Beyond the Beige, and ACTA matched the mayor's portion of that money to create $100,000 in available funding for adding color to neighborhoods around the city, not just downtown. And I think we received 12 applicants that are being reviewed now, so that 12 different programs to add color and, and, uh, into the community. And then I also want to mention that we are hoping to go in front of the assembly June 10th, come in front of the body with the disposal of the Third Ingress so that we can get to work on issuing the RFP for that project for the end of the summer. I did bring copies.

I know that these were dropped off at the assembly chambers, but if there's anybody that is here from the public We did publish our annual report this week. I brought some copies of that. And then we also just published a downtown survey. It's, I think, one of the most comprehensive surveys I've seen in downtown in the last 5 years since I've been here. We did it with Alaska Survey Research, 770 adults.

Talks about— we started it out to be a parking study for us to try to figure out how to get people to park more downtown. And what we ended up with was a real snapshot of what people people think about downtown, what they like, don't like, and what they want to see. So I have some copies of that if anybody wants to see the executive summary. And then just to, uh, end with, uh, our Fireweed Housing Project, um, that is currently being in the RE-PLAT process so that we're going to combine those two lots. And as soon as that finishes, we'll issue an RFP.

We hope to do that at the end of the summer as well for housing on that property. Any questions? Mr. Johnson. The Beyond the Beige, the $100,000, you said half ACDA, half from the mayor's office. Is that from the mayor's, what is it, community grant program?

That arts grant? Yes. Yes. Okay, I heard that.

Excellent. Follow up on that, um, as a person who has a long history of the interest in the placemaking aspect When, uh, when a, when that campaign is launched and you describe there are 12 applicants—. Yes, sir. Um, how are— how are— what's the rubric of how you determine where the sites are? How does that work?

Um, you know, I, I would have to refer to the actual score sheet that was in the grant program to give you the specific details. It's on the mayor's website. But I will tell you that having looked at those, reviewed those 12 applications, I don't want to— since they're still in the review process, I don't want to get ahead of myself. But they're actually not all sites. There are mobile programs that have been suggested.

It's not just put up a mural on a building. There's been some very creative suggestions on how to use that money to add color to neighborhoods around the city. So it's not just restricted to downtown, it's the city, right? Excellent. And I think that's a wonderful— I think that's a wonderful opportunity.

I would offer one caveat. Um, y'all are the Anchorage Community Development Authority. Yes. And placemaking, all that is in there, but you're not the Art Council. All right, so hopefully the overlay is not driven by those with influence versus driven by the impact that we're trying to get.

And your impact is not just color, although that's the edge. Your impact is community development. And so that should be a different lane. And I've raised that because we often see folks who are better mobilized petitioning, and sometimes it's aligned to the interest that I described, but oftentimes it's special, a special interest. It may meet the needs overall, but it doesn't necessarily meet the development aspect, and I would love to see that.

And I've raised that because, for example, I'll be meeting with local artists this week with a Fognac Corporation because they have a brown jug on Muldoon with an ugly— with an ugly wall that faces a bus stop down the street from a school.

So we've had this conversation around the same sort of thing, but the impact for me is strategic and targeted. Right, I'd love to see colors everywhere, but the limited resources have to be better targeted. So that would be my encouragement at home. Thank you, sir. Thank you for sharing that.

That's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, on those notes, I don't know if everybody has had— have we done the liaisons yet? Do we know who's—. No, I think, uh, next week, or yeah, next week's committee.

Okay. Very cool. I just wanted to drop that. Chair, if I could, I'd also like to introduce our new development director. I think I've mentioned that our old development director, Jim Weingart, retired and is enjoying life with his grandchildren in Florida now.

I'd like to introduce Chad Stovall. Chad is our new development director, so you'll get to know Chad. He joined us, he was the state director at HUD, and luckily, all the goings-on in the federal government, we were able to snag him and bring him over to do development. I just wanted you all to put a face with the name. Snagging a little federal uncertainty for our positive good.

We like it. Um, yeah, I just had a question, um, and I know we'll see the item on the agenda, it sounds like, but you said that the RV park is being funded with private sources. Um, what, what are those private sources and what is their interest in kind of its operation long term? We won't know that until we issue the RFP, of course, but most of the money.

Will come from the private sector to build the park. Okay. I would say that if I was to look at a breakdown of the actual numbers, it'd probably be like 90%. Okay. From private sector and some money from ACPA too to help see the development.

We've already invested some money to work on the development, but—. Okay. Yeah, and I think just long term or as that moves forward, it would be helpful to know, like, you know, going back to this, the question of public benefit, right? Like, you know, if we're— because it is a positive sometimes if we're not using public money to do that stuff, but also we are using a, you know, a government-owned asset asset for private benefit, right? So, um, just making sure that whatever that looks like, um, that we're clear on who, who is benefiting and for what period of time, all of that.

So thanks. Through the chair to Member Brawley, I think that one of the things that we could do— we'll be making regular reports to HLB on the progress and on how the development's working. We could do the same thing— we'll do the same thing here for you to make sure that you stay informed about how it's working. And yeah, I think that's good. And they just be mindful of the, the terms that are set out, right?

So it's not just essentially a giveaway, right? So thank you. Excellent. I don't see any additional questions at the time, and we'll move on to the next area of our agenda. But I would note, from the community partners' perspective, the way we have the Chamber often see this committee as a place to come talk to committee members and Assembly members.

The way, um, ACDA is different than the Chamber and the outside groups, the quasi-us and themselves, but they see this committee. I also want to just do a public invitation, a call to action for members in this crowd to also help send this message on.

But I'd love to have the Downtown Partnership looking at this meeting, and I have the expectation that we'll be inviting them to the next meeting or so, but I flag that from the, the city's perspective, uh, and the top dogs listening. The reason that this is important that we flag them, because they are unique in that they are funded by a tax, right? It's an assessment to the downtown properties. That funds the Downtown Partnership. And the shifting nature of their responsibilities with respect to the work that they have done in the past that we counted on for community economic development purposes is very different today.

And I think there are some important questions that we need to be able to think about with respect to— they just got reauthorized like 2 years ago or so. But at the same time, we are about to have a deep exploration of the bed tax this year and the review of the Visit Anchorage contract. So I just think it's a— they shouldn't go under, off the radar, not noticed. And I'd love to just— I'm doing that as a public signal now. But it's an important conversation because when we think of those interventions on the streets and public safety and the Clean Safe and all those other values that we're not seeing happening and where that shift is coming to and going from when we know it's undergirded with public dollars.

I think it's a vital conversation that we have right now. So if there are any other thoughts about that, cool, but we'll have that expectation to bring them forward. Great, cool. If there are no other mem items, we'll move to new business. Our new business I will share— there's an email that went around with a handout.

It's also posted. It's an executive summary that, uh, of a conference that I attended. It's online. I'll just walk through a couple of these elements. Uh, a couple weeks ago I attended— as you all know, I've been the liaison to NACo, the National Association of Counties, and I have been also folks who are here don't— may not know this.

I was brought and appointed to the National Association of Counties to two committees.

And the two committees are the Economic and Workforce Development Steering Committee for the National Association, and then also the Arts and Culture Commission. For the National Association. This conference is around economic mobility and opportunity, and it highlights some, some really good opportunities that we can seize and anchor around language, creating frameworks, and really moving beyond activity into strategic, targeted steps. But when we talk about economic mobility and opportunity, one of those points that were raised that I think is really important is when we think about who's left and what Anchorage is, you know, what are the indicators to say that we are healthy in Anchorage? What tells us that the working families have a chance here?

We use one of the indicators often around housing and affordability of housing. It's been one of the main indicators over the last several years, but there are other indicators that this conference highlighted. I'm not going to walk through them all, but highlighting them. These top 5 I'll just flag for us. The session highlights of— that were relevant to Anchorage.

The value of our work aligning labor with wealth creation. Jobs alone don't drive mobility, ownership, credit access, these other sorts of things. So how do we build pipelines from working families to the things that we know are assets of wealth creation?

That area is about— housing ownership is one of the things we all talk about. Um, Connie Yoshimura talks about that all the time. We get people to have more ownership. There are other indicators than just ownership. Red lines to green lines, breaking legacy inequities.

The history of this— this investment in middle neighborhoods must be reversed and through targeted investments. We don't use the language of middle neighborhoods, but essentially we're talking about infill in Anchorage, and we're talking about infill and corridors that have been designated for the infill, but never— the promises of the development hadn't been kept. And the reason they haven't been kept is because part of what we know is politically other areas are a little stronger that call for growth than where we see the infill areas are, which is— tends to be working families that have lower voting terms. So political power drives development often. And this says, no, you have to have targeted reversal back dedicated into those areas that were effectively redlined, that were effectively promised, never kept, and then skipped over.

They're called middle neighborhoods. And if you start thinking of the cores of development and in Anchorage, and you start thinking where those middle neighborhoods are— we just mentioned like the East Downtown Corridor, to start moving into Fairview, stuff— you start thinking of that, all of a sudden the development of those middle neighborhoods creates a different type of cohesion across community. Example would be, you just don't build a city by building a downtown. That's not how you build a city. And in fact, Anchorage didn't even think that for itself because it's a commuter downtown that we have, and Anchorage built itself its different places to call home across our community.

That's how you know you have to build a different strategy, just all downtown. So the middle neighborhood strategies, part of what they raised. Social capital mapping is something that I thought was really important. Mobility is not just financial, it's relational. Connections, trust, shared values enable communities to weather risks and seize opportunities.

So when we think of how much people have the time to volunteer and contribute to their communities, and when we think of how much we match those commitments so that sometimes communities get a match with their volunteer hours, like a Challenge Grant, for example, they can match volunteer hours. But if you're in a community where you're working multiple jobs and you're likely to not have a lot of time because you don't have a lot of economic mobility, you're not likely to be able to have the same matches. So there's these built-in inequities that cut across the ability to have economic mobility and recognizing those things. And lastly, I'll just flag on this screen and I will float it up. Creative economy as infrastructure.

I have hope that we will see the creative economies as a main pillar of our community. I believe we're seeing the roots of it. This assembly has invested in placemaking. This administration has invested in these placemaking and ideas as well. We've.

In a music census to start to take a temperature of a sector that creates vibrancy and quality of life and jobs. So this is happening nationally, and I'm also part of a group of Beyond the Coal communities that are old rural built coal communities that are looking for economic diversification extract communities. They're looking at how to get past extraction into diversification, and these are parts of the questions that they're asking all over the country. Are our people mobile? What does it mean to be mobile in the town economically?

And can we be more diverse in our economic outlook? Um, slide up please.

And, uh, right here, the last one I'll just flag for this is From red tape to green tape, streamlining development. This is happening all across the country. Everybody's trying to have these conversations, how to get faster, how to get more nimble. And the insight was legacy permitting systems hinder innovation and impede inclusive development. Anchorage takeaway, what is the right sizing for city permitting, efficient, predictable, and aligned with neighborhood visioning?

And there's some recommendations, but the right sizing is what I'd like to just kind of frame a little bit. And if I can, the right sizing to me is about how we open for business, how we create barriers for inclusion, and then also how much work is required from the municipality moving forward to do those things.

When we lose people, uh, do we have conversations about what does it mean in a future replacement aspect? Um, I'm interested in that conversation as well. And we'll have it a little later with improving government efficiency. I wanted to flag some of the things. But that's happening nationally.

I'll be attending another conference this week around the arts economy, and hopefully bringing back another report. And the hope of these reports is we educate ourselves, we educate the public, but that the administration has some opportunity to see the language that the members are starting to swirl around and we can see if there's a policy alignment. Are there any, just high-level, or any questions for anybody about this conference or any of the things that I flagged?

Yeah, I think I appreciate the, the overview and I think there are a lot of good things in here. I think the question is really where does this align with things that are already happening? So two examples I thought of, with the kind of revitalization of Mountain View. There was a huge effort in the late 2000s, before I got here, to really rebuild Mountain View. That's when a lot of those buildings were built, like the Success for Six building, ACLT was created, you know, so, and that was, I think, tied to some version of federal funding back in the day.

So I think there's, I think that's something to look back at, and because I know there was lessons learned, there was some concerns about that, or kind of the people see it as a mixed success, I think. So maybe unpacking kind of when that happened and, you know, and that really fits in with the middle neighborhoods piece. So I think there's been work on that. And then the streamlining development, I think that's a good one. You know, we've been talking about that for a while.

And I know the administration is already working on that. So I think also thinking about, again, just kind of what's already happening as opposed to a new— starting a new thing, I guess. Yeah, no, and I love that. And if I can piggyback off the first element, The— and this is really my hope for the administration, because we're framing conversations, but we're not going to implement it. You all will.

And to the extent that you establish the how, you may not be able to fully get to the doing it, but establishing the how is important now, so that beyond anyone's time and beyond this administration, The consistency of how happens. I'm going to flag what Member Brawley mentioned. This idea is always— this community has always had starts and stops of a decent idea. And you can see where they started and where they stopped. Where it didn't continue.

Where it had no additional growth. Where it wasn't part of a complementary nature. Where— watch these indicators. We built all those buildings and can someone tell me Back in the day, the people who were there at the table, I guarantee they couldn't tell me this. When we did that investment in Mountain View and we built those corridors from the Vagus Administration outward, did someone track credit scores in the neighborhood of individuals?

That would be an indicator of economic mobility in the neighborhood we're investing dollars in.

But we didn't track the credit score. Did we track ownership? Did we track— job opportunity, transportation needs. Did we meet those needs since we built those buildings? And the answer is we may have tracked some of them, but they were discrete into a project.

They were not part of the way we built the city, not part of the conversation. Starts and stops. And so the hope is that there's a consistency of about the development strategies, and there's indicators to know at the people level people are coming, there's a growth, there's success happening, there's mobility and opportunity happening. So the things we do matter to the people we serve, not just to the language of policy. And we're like, we did a good thing, look, we said we did, and it sounds really great.

And I think that's what I hope we can consistently get toward, because there have been great starts and stops. But then the question is What happened? Where was it left? And another part of that is, you mentioned it, federal grants, other people's money, is always good to do unique and interesting things with that have no destination of integration. Critical to flag, and that's my hope, some good insights.

I don't want to beat them all up today, but I hope that people look at this, and, uh, and we use these things as part of our discussions. On that front, we'll turn it over to a report on something that's very interesting to me— micro shelters and recovery residences in other communities— with Daniel McKenna Foster. Y'all took a trip and you're going to bring back some lessons learned. Got a report. Hey, prove that we went there.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, I'm Daniel McKenna Foster, Long Range Planning. Just giving a kind of overview of a trip that we, I went with Jed Drollet from the Health Department. We were invited to go and look at the work that Atlanta, Georgia is doing, sort of sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies and also Mayor Dickens' team.

So really great project. I don't want to tell Thea's story too much because she's working on sort of the recovery residences, but this is just an overview of what we learned about a project they did there and some other experience we with sort of tiny forms of housing or shelter.

So the— here we go. The Melody Project is a project done by the City of Atlanta. They did it amazingly fast. I think it's 40 units of housing. Next slide, please.

So this is working. Anyway, so basically to start out, the We went to Atlanta. This is a Bloomberg Cities Idea Exchange learning tour. A bunch of different cities coming together, everybody trying to do similar projects looking at small forms of shelter, small forms of housing. So it was Anchorage, Columbia, Missouri, Jersey City, New Jersey, Montgomery, Alabama, Shreveport, Louisiana.

Really wide range of cities from a lot of different places, but of course a lot of similar problems and trying to ask similar questions. So it was really great just talking to people about how the process works, what types of problems they're looking at, where they are along in the process. Anchorage, fortunately, we're lucky. We— our project is a little bit further along, so we were kind of an example for the group, which felt pretty nice. But that's thanks to the work that everybody's been doing already.

So— oh good, this is working now. So overview of the Melody Project. The Melody Project, it was a $5 million investment. The City of Atlanta developed it. They had a developer, of course, but the City of Atlanta was really the sponsor.

They ended up with 40 housing units. The parcel was publicly owned, so it was an old public parking lot next to the MARTA. MARTA is the public transit system there, the subway, next to the MARTA station. And the construction was repurposed shipping containers. So what they actually did is they took shipping containers that had been used during COVID as extra hospital rooms and repurpose those into housing.

So because of— and I won't go too deep into it— but because of the, I think it was the funding or the target audience, they needed to build the shipping containers to be ADA accessible. So that it ended up with a design that they actually recommended that we probably wouldn't recommend doing this exactly because shipping containers are kind of constrained. And if you do an ADA bathroom in there, basically it was one container becomes two units and half of that unit becomes comes the bathroom. Really nice spacious bathroom, but there's probably a better way to do the design. So, again, here's the site.

This is downtown Atlanta. This here is the MARTA station.

And this was the publicly owned lot. One thing that really struck me about this project is they said that a lot of the people who ended up being housed here had been living in this area. So it was really like they just moved a couple of blocks. There's, you know, there's some service providers, I think, in this area, but, you know, a lot of it had been people in recovery, people living on the streets. And so they were able to build housing exactly where people were.

So looking at it a little bit more closely, It was a paved lot. It's a little bit sloped, but just that it was in public ownership was really helpful. A really interesting thing about this is in the city of Atlanta, the city does not need to follow zoning when it's doing projects for a public purpose. So that, of course, as a planner, my first question is, what does the zoning say? They say, oh, it's, it's not something we had to look into because they've had that on their books since the 1980s.

Here's what it looks like. Again, different considerations in Atlanta, right? You don't need sort of something covering the door for snow. You don't have to worry about shoveling snow off of these sort of patio areas. But everything is accessible.

They kind of designed it as sort of 3 spines, and in the middle of each of those spines, there was one, there was like a dog and pet area. One was a sitting area. Another was a sort of garden area. So they got 40 units. And I believe they built these actually on foundations.

So it's just housing. But the purpose of the conference was to think about all sorts of creative ways to do small forms of housing or shelter, maybe on foundations, maybe not. This is what it looks like from the outside. So from the outside, you can't even really tell that anything's there. And again, previously it was just a parking lot.

So they were big on even when you can't provide the plants, the infrastructure— yeah, great. Atlanta is doing a really good job with a lot of cool street infrastructure. They've got a lot of really cool projects going on with that, and there seem to be a lot of different types of choice infrastructure in, in the right-of-way. So here's just sort of what it looked like on the inside. We were able to go meet with residents, have lunch with them.

Everybody loved it. They loved living there. They're like, we're so happy to be here, this is awesome, it's a great opportunity. And I think people It was a paid facility, so people were paying. I believe they had to pay up to 30% of their income, or if they couldn't, then they went through a sort of like a voucher system, I believe.

So here we were touring around, talking to the managers and the residents, and some of the residents were walking along with us. And, you know, you look at it and people say, "Oh, it's a fenced-in area." But for a lot of the residents, they said, "This is great because it's safe." Right? And so you see the bicycle here. It is a place for so many people who have been sort of living on the street or sleeping outside, it's a big thing is safety and not being able to secure your belongings. So one, just having a place where you can lock your door, but two, where even outside the door you can keep some of your stuff.

So everybody, they seemed really happy with this and it was just a lot of positive feedback about it. And so here's just sort of a little note. Back between some bike parking. The transportation piece is interesting because it's next to the MARTA station. But they even told us that even so— and MARTA's a really good system.

You can get all over the city to everything you need. They said even so, we still needed a shuttle to go to Walmart once a week because some people, they can't get on MARTA very easily or they don't want to. So in thinking, in Anchorage we've had this conversation. If we were trying a little project, we need to make sure it's on the bus line. Always a good idea.

But also, even in a place like Atlanta where they have really good transit, they still had to have a shuttle. So that was a big takeaway. So other takeaways, um, this project was a major priority of Mayor Dickens, the administration of the city of Atlanta. Uh, he came and spoke with us and you could tell he was just really jazzed about this project. Residents love it, strong public support.

Again, it's in a downtown area and it was replacing a, a parking lot. Um, The Melody was built in the same area where the people were already living. That was a really interesting insight. Zoning does not apply on publicly owned parcels when used for public use in Atlanta. We heard you say that 3 times.

I'll probably say it 3 or 4 more times. We caught that one. Say it again, brother. So, and then, and interesting too, and they said if we did this project again, we probably wouldn't do it in containers. We'd probably do volumetric modular or modular construction.

They also have better access. I mean, there's somebody building these in the Atlanta area. So that was interesting too, because initially we went down with, "Oh, it's going to be a conference about container housing." And only, they're like, "You know, there might be a different way to do this." So that was, it was really open-minded about that. And then the shuttle I mentioned. So, and I just wanted to bring up some similar efforts or, you know, these conversations have been going on for a few years.

In my former, uh, few jobs ago, I was an affordable housing planner in Oregon, and we had a project or a program similar to this. And actually, Eugene, Oregon has similar. So many cities across the country have looked at how do we sort of rapidly rehouse people or find little spots where people can stay. This is in Eugene, Oregon. I think this is a public parcel, might be a DOT parcel, but their, their style is these Conestoga wagons, which are really cheap to produce.

And again, every place has its different kind of sort of climate, climate conditions. So it's a little bit easier here. In Oregon, of course, you just have to make sure they're waterproof. So this— and they have a number of these across the city. You can find them on Google Maps.

And one thing, you know, these— I think they put these in maybe 5, 6 years ago. When I was looking them up, there doesn't seem to be any news about them, which seems to be a good sign, right? It's like, okay, they seem to be working. They seem to be functioning. There's no outcry.

So it's interesting how these have been kind of integrated in. This is an interesting one in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I think it's called Camp Hope. Also interesting because here they provided both sort of camping sites and actually little microshelters, little structures. Again, everything is sort of climate dependent.

In New Mexico, it's probably a little easier to have a safe setup like this. But this also has been a really successful community for getting people sort of back into the system and like the housing system so they're getting a bit more stability. Here's Corvallis, Oregon, which I'm familiar with. Smaller sites. These are mostly located on church properties, but another model.

These, I think, were— get built by the local high school or donated labor. And then this is also in Eugene. This is a slightly different— these are actually tiny houses. Each one is built by a different sort of architectural group. This is the Emerald Village Co-op in Eugene, which is pretty cool.

So that's maybe a step higher, but really just looking at all the the sort of options for building small forms of shelter and housing and what different places have seen. And it's been awesome for us as staff to be able to talk with the other staff from other cities, like talking to Atlanta and say, well, what did you, you know, what was in your RFP when you put these materials out? And they've been really helpful. So it was a really great exchange. We learned a lot and we're continuing to learn more.

So glad to answer any questions.

Yes, I'm sure there are some. Yeah. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I think, well, so this is helpful, I guess two questions. One is like how generally how long are people staying there? Like is it a six-month, you know, is it transitional?

Are they moving on to somewhere else, right? Or are they allowed to stay there for five years? And I know it may be hard to answer because they're, it's new, but is it permanent housing? And then other questions, it's being described as micro shelters. And then the other question is for Atlanta, it's interesting because I think I'm trying to remember it was a couple years that I've been there, but it looked like it's kind of near the railroad area, which is a very industrial area in the middle of downtown.

So it's really far from where anybody else lives. And so just wondering if there's examples closer to neighborhoods, essentially, because I know a lot of times the move is to put them as far as possible in industrial areas or, you know, but then it creates a transportation problem. So I'm just curious kind of from these examples, those two aspects. Yeah, speak Through the Chair, to Member Brawley, the Melody in Atlanta is housing. It's just housing so people can stay.

Some of the other examples, I think they are shorter term, although if I recall, I think in Corvallis, it's sort of you get into the program and you stay there as long as you need. Some of it is the intention is to transition, but I don't think there's sort of an endpoint. In terms of location, you're right, the Melody is located sort of in the center of the city, in sort of the downtown. They're also working now on, I think it's maybe 200 units in a more residential area. So that will be interesting to see.

In my past experience working in Corvallis, they generally had smaller sites and some of them were in neighborhoods because they were basically going where churches were. And the rules is they sort of had them sited based on like an accessory dwelling unit, so similar setback requirements. And they would require an onsite manager. And I think, if I recall correctly, the main thing there was that people, they're concerned about something different, but as long as there's a contact person who they know they can get in contact with if there's an issue, that always seemed to sort of calm things down. So if somebody's having a fire outside, you call and they know, and then within an hour it's sort of figured out.

So I can't speak for all of them. I don't know about New Mexico or Eugene or any of the other ones. But I recall that that seemed to help, and it was an important part. Of the management piece rather than the design piece. Yeah, it just strikes me that they're basically— some of these just look like a deconstructed apartment building, right?

Like the way we have the Lusak Song and the Adelaide downtown that NeighborWorks owns, those are traditional apartment buildings but they're single room occupancy, so they're like a boarding hotel, and like the Lakeshore and those places. So this is basically that, but instead of one building, it's a whole bunch of little buildings with a property manager and all that stuff. So anyway, so yeah, it.

Interesting examples.

Erin, you have a question on the line?

Yes, I do. I'm curious about the funding mix for some of these developments. I know some of these are on church property, so, you know, I'm assuming, you know, that was arranged by the religious community, but for others, are these located on on public lands? Is this public-private partnership? Are these completely publicly funded?

I mean, what can you tell us about the funding stack for each of these? Through the chair, in Atlanta, I believe it was funded by the city of Atlanta. The mayor, Mayor Dickens, came in and housing, specifically affordable housing, income-restricted housing, and kind of quick rehousing was a major priority. So I think they've dedicated a lot of resources to that. But they did have the land which made it easier and the mayor's office there was kind of facilitating getting that project moving.

In Corvallis it was mostly relying on, they have a, this organization called Unity Shelter which is sort of the manager and they're sort of privately funded and then the church is really donating a lot of their space and time. In Eugene I think it's a separate, it's a third-party manager but it's also generally on public land. I think they used either DOT land or city land. So Atlanta is probably the only one where the city had a pretty large role in the funding of it. And I'll get— we'll get— I'll be able to provide more details on that.

We're still getting some information back from the City of Atlanta. But they really went all in and the Melody was their first project so they really wanted to make it work. And they learned some lessons too. As I said, they started with container houses that had sort of been repurposed from another use. And on the next one, I think they're looking to do it a bit differently.

But yeah, I can find some more information on that. Yeah, that would be great. So it sounds like there is a plan to, you know, expand this project elsewhere in Atlanta based on the learnings from this sort of pilot effort.

Through the chair, so yeah, they— this one was a kind of unique project because they had the units and they were going to try it. They— I don't know if I could say that they're going to expand the project in the same way because I think the next one they're doing will be modular construction rather than the container houses. And I'm trying to remember what the name of that one is, but I'll definitely share that around. But they have— they had a goal of 500 units, I think, of sort of like 40 low-income units for this year and they were already at 300-some. Again, it's a bit of a bigger city and they have a little bit more going on, but they're moving pretty fast.

And the interesting thing about this was that it took them 4 months to get those 40 units, which is like lightning speed. So I think what they really—. Wow. —Is one, they were able to— they had a lot of sort of initiative behind it, but also figuring out which pieces they could streamline and get things done faster. I think in the second one, because it's not the first project, it won't be sort of as intense, but they did learn a lot about what's, what's possible with that, and they're, they're moving that on to meet the rest of their goals.

They also have a pretty ambitious housing goal for the city. Fascinating. Well, thank you so much for reporting back. Really interesting. Excellent.

Um, I'll just flag a couple of questions I have, or maybe some points. Um, back to Member Brawley's point, I think that I'm interested in the, the vision, like the map of the, of space to get a sense of the, this— I'm thinking of the social, the, the power mapping essentially of place, um, because when we think of industrial zones, I mean, I, I— 104th Street and Cordova is an industrial zone. But when you think of the power mapping in the areas around those particular corridors, there may be more insightful understanding of how decisions get made and the difficulties. But I think that's very interesting. And the other part of this all is, who were the recipients of housing?

What were they?

I know they're humans. They are people. But how were they framed in these conversations? Were these part of a homeless continuum? Are these workforce housing?

Are these housing in gen— it seems to me that depending on the frame, it shapes the political potential And also, it shapes the public's response. If I'm doing workforce housing for people who are already in my neighborhood who are being displaced from an emergency— fire, rapid rehousing for that— there's a deserving nature of that, generally speaking. But as soon as I say this is part of a homeless continuum in this city, it seems like No, housing is not the question. This is a different category. And so walls go up.

And that's at least— how are they framed in these other places? Is it overtly part of a continuum of care homeless response, or is it a different type of economic development meeting the needs of our working families frame? I think in—. Thank you for the question. I think in the Atlanta example, it was explicitly that this is to get people who are living, who are not in housing right now, getting them into housing.

So one woman we talked to, she had worked, she said, "Yeah, I used to be a cook at the cafeteria in the Greyhound station downtown here in Atlanta. I grew up on the west side, then I grew up on the east side." And so it was interesting because it actually was people who were really from that area, but they'd just been living on the streets in that area. So it's slightly different, but that was the focus. So in Atlanta, Mayor Dickens' priority is— I think it's like 20,000 units. But these 500 of these sort of rapid rehousing, or like the first step back into the housing units.

And that's what these were. But it was— everybody we talked to, they said, yeah, I'm from this area. I lived in this part of town. Or I used to live over here. Or I used to live two streets over on the street.

But it was really interesting talking to that woman who said, yeah, I worked at the Greyhound station for my whole career, and then she'd fallen on hard times. So the— I think you're right, like the type does depend. In this case, they had a pretty specific vision about what they needed, which problem they needed to solve, or which segment of that need they needed. So yeah, and that's the other part I would flag. The differentiation across the segment, I think, is important because unhoused means what?

Means anything subjective to what everybody wants to think about it. But underneath, in the subcategory where you described, they're like locally displaced people, there's like goodwill for that.

And there lies this kind of differentiation distinction. Well, I think, for example, when we see, when we see unhoused folks, it's often wrapped up in the failures of the state's mental health response out in our streets. And so we, we're thinking it's all realm together, but it seems like in Atlanta they— we know this is like homelessness, unhoused, but here's a category for rapid rehousing that we can make a demonstrable difference in that meets the needs of the people who are here. And so this unique cutout creates goodwill, it seems, around success, gives you some opportunity to do more. Yeah, they got— it got a lot of success because people didn't— you're not going to be able to do this in 4 months.

And they did it, and then they saw, oh, this is right. Good, right? Yeah, thank you. So as you're looking at these different projects around the country, and then there's like a range of different types of housing, right? Shipping containers, semi-mass-produced kind of looking units, the one-offs in that cool little village, you know, permanent foundations, not permanent.

Do you kind of have a sense of like sort of what the best value is there? Not necessarily cheapest, right, but sort of the best value to where if we said tomorrow, you know, in Anchorage we want to— we have a site, we want to put in 40,000 units, like what is the product we, we should do? I mean, just sort of being mindful of the fact that we're kind of resource constrained around here, right, but we want to get the best bang for our buck. Do you have a better sense now of what we should do, or where would you point us? That's a great question, through the chair.

So the Atlanta units were pretty expensive. They were like $100,000 per unit. I did that math. That seems high. Yeah, it's really high.

And part of that is probably because maybe they were designed to a hospital standard. They had to be ADA. And so— and they had water inside, like water and sewer inside of them. And so I guess the question is, how do you, you know, which of the sort of the levers do you move here and there and say, you could produce something and maybe have a communal shower, you know, like a shower truck or a communal bathroom that like house or something like that. So I think it kind of depends on what the specific needs are.

Like in Oregon or probably New Mexico, the weather is such that it doesn't get that cold and New Mexico doesn't rain that much, doesn't probably snow that much in Las Cruces. I think it really would depend on here figuring out like, is this going to be a long-term? And is it, you know, sometimes long— it's a short-term housing, it ends up being there 10 years. Like, look at any Kwanzaa hut, those are supposed to be gone 40 years.

So I think it kind of— it's a matter of like figuring out which pieces fit particularly well and really like what the long term is. And because those containers were placed on a foundation and that— because of that they were able to— I think they accept HUD vouchers, which made it easier. So that's another piece too, is looking at the users long term. Do we expect that— and then if you take HUD vouchers, I think then it has to be ADA. So say Anchorage does something and we build it and we don't do it to be ADA, it's like, okay, so those people can't take HUD— that can't take HUD vouchers, that's fine.

Maybe we need to build one that does take HUD vouchers. So maybe there's a range of the types of small forms of housing or shelter, whatever you want to call them, that— or maybe you'd have to do a couple of different implementations. So I'm kind of dancing around not giving you a real answer, but it was— everywhere seems to have, you know, they can get the cost down on building one of these small units, small shelters, and then it really just comes down to maybe which population has the greatest need right now. And also too is the land we find. If we find land, can we make it a long-term permanent or does it have to be something that is kind of movable?

Because I bet even those, those container houses, they're on a foundation but they probably still are fairly movable versus something that an apartment's built, not as movable. So I guess the short answer is it's complicated, but you know, I'm glad the administration is looking at this and taking interest, and I hope that you guys are a part of that conversation so that ultimately if we do decide to pull the trigger on something, that we can say confidently like, yes, this is the best bang for the buck, you know. I mean, like, that what we're getting is appropriate and within our means and that we don't overspend for something that, you know, we can do for less potentially. So, yeah. [Speaker:JOHN] Through the chair, yeah, I think that from what I've heard is that, you know, cost of any sort of public activities, we got to make sure we're getting the values worth it.

And that, I think there were some other decisions decisions that went into using those containers. But, um, yeah, there's, there's a— it can be done for less than $100,000, I'd say. Good, thank you.

I have people reach out to me all the time saying they can do it for nails and plywood. So, you know, like, there are people I think we could do it. Thank you for that, um, presentation. Thank you for taking on that trip. I just also got invited to, uh, another conference in the city as well, in Atlanta.

I'm not sure if I'm going to attend that one, but It is a city that's doing some things, and it's interesting. Thank you for that. And I would also— I would just say that from my vantage point, this conversation about the housing, the differentiation is really important. And someone flagged for me this week, just to throw it out there, the subset of housing that is underrecognized, that is in great need, is workforce housing. Very specifically workforce housing, even if it's based on the nature of our seasonal workforce increases.

But we are not meeting the workforce, the actual workforce demands. And when you think of workforce housing and seasonal, you're thinking modular, you're thinking SRO-tied. And so there's some real opportunity to think of rapid units, workforce housing, that relieves pressure on our actual housing stock. And that's an important aspect that I think we need to really get focused on, especially when we're thinking the seasonal nature and how much workers we actually import across different seasons, and then the impact of the housing on that and the displacement ripples. There's an area that I'd love for us to continue to, to really focus on, back to differentiation.

Cool. On that note, the last element for our agenda was, as you all know, this committee is responsible for economic development. It's also one of our values in our mission is government efficiency. I invited Member McCormick— that his last name? Yeah, right on.

New folks, I apologize. I invited Member McCormick, uh, to this conversation today and hope that he would have I'm going to hear, primarily because there was an interesting moment at our— at the last assembly meeting that framed around the size of government. Too big or so, I think it was about that. And it was subjectively framed in a very matter-of-fact way. And the chair, Chair Constant, described that there was more nuances to how people see that depending on where you stand and what you're getting out of it.

Even further than that, I'm more interested in the efficiency conversation with respect to community and economic development. Efficiency in a language in and of itself is as subjective as anything else. I could make it— but if efficiency is going to improving outcomes, then there's a— there's the nexus point for us that I'm much more interested in. And so how do we have a real conversation around improving government efficiency to both the technological aspect of what's coming on the horizon technologically that will be impacting workforce.

To the extent that jurisdictions are having this conversation, to the extent that workforce retraining is a conversation that we're having, to the extent that recruitment These are swirling around all together from my vantage point. And so when I hear that people have a difficult time with getting to yes because of people or hirings and a lack of staff sometimes, these are pain points that are interesting around government efficiency, let alone like what are we trying to put up barriers for. Those are other things that we talk about all the time. Why did we say no to this, and why is it more difficult? That is also a government efficiency conversation.

And the point is, this can go anywhere when we talk about government efficiency. So I'd love to open it up. I'd love for us as a municipality to start thinking of in 5 years when work is obsolete in areas, are we preparing our workforce? Are we preparing the municipality? And what can we use better today in terms of the tools that are available to us to meet the needs of people better.

And IT, like the IT is one of those units that when it was started, I remember the hope that that team was going to be part of the innovation front edge of helping the municipality do better business. And it's part of the Bloomberg philanthropic space that we invest, that we're part of. But My rub has always been the practical application of all those things has to meet the real world of what we're doing today. And we deal with people who are disgruntled about the level of government efficiency while we're taking credit for the cool innovative things we're doing that are not necessarily meeting— helping the people get a better response from government. So I'd like the futuristic stuff that we can think about to start to get a little closer to the practical needs of meeting the people.

And to me, that's an area of government efficiency, that it's not government is too big, it's how do we get savvy with the tools we have in the conditions we have today to make the outcomes we want to see. Cool. If there aren't any other thoughts on that, I just welcome that conversation. It will be continuing, and I look forward to McCormick and anybody else getting the message that I'd love to have us really think through that so that we're all on the same page strategically. Thank you all, and we'll adjourn at 10:32.

Until next meeting in July is scheduled for the 10th of July. It's usually scheduled for the first week, but that's the fourth week. Enjoy your holiday. Thank you.