August 8, 2023 — Meeting Transcript

Good evening, everybody. Mayor, do you want to say a few words

on Zoom? No. Just welcome, everybody. Sorry I'm not there. And Bridget is going to take over and just be great. Thank you, Bridget.

Right. So we're just going to start at the 6 o'clock hour. We're going to have a discussion and a presentation on the comprehensive plan.

Got it for me. All right. Hi, everyone. My name is Catherine Hamaker. I am an urban planner at PGAV. So as you all know, we have been engaged to lead the comprehensive plan process for the city of Clayton. So you may have met me or another staff member at a past meeting, steering committee meeting or presentation or public meeting open house last week. I am here to give you kind of an interim update. I'll do this a few times throughout the process. Some of you have seen some of this information before. Some of it might be all new to you. So feel free to ask questions throughout, but we're going to try to bust through all this information. And I should have said at the beginning, this is sort of a update based on all of the information we've collected. There's tons more. There's a really thick report that'll be sent to you that you're welcome to read if you've got a lot of time. So this is just sort of the top line information. Happy to answer any questions throughout.

Where do you think my mouse is?

There we go. All right, so this is what I'm going to talk to you about tonight. I'm going to review kind of the process and the timeline for the comprehensive plan. Overall, we're going to go through some of the existing conditions information we have gathered, and then I'm going to give you a little tidbit of the community feedback and then some next steps moving forward.

Oh, that went backwards.

Okay, so here is a bit of an overview of the process. So where we are right now is at the end of phase one and we're about to head into phase two. So phase one was really gathering all that baseline information about the city of Clayton. So what's happening on the ground in terms of the population and land use and economic development and all those things. important things that make your community great. So we're really looking to see kind of as we show up in 2023, what does it look like? As you all know, it's been a while since you've done a comprehensive plan. So getting all that baseline information to be able to plan from is really important. So that's what I'm going to talk to you about tonight is that phase one information. Well, then we'll move into phase two, which is really a lot of concentrated public engagement. We've done a little bit of that already with some meetings and one public event but lots more of that is to come. And then phase three is really thinking about land use in your community and what are your priorities moving forward so we'll do some kind of intensive exercises to think about different kinds of land uses in the community, what might be changing, what might be to come. And then ultimately that'll wrap up into a final plan. So you'll have a plan document, a comprehensive plan to adopt and move forward. All right, so the existing conditions review so as I mentioned, this is a big document that you're welcome to lead your way through. it's got all kinds of information from demographics to residential land use to how much green space, you have and. kind of everything in between so again we'll follow up with the link to that in the next couple of weeks and then that will also be provided to the public if they're interested in seeing that as well. So what that includes is all kinds of things, but it begins with a review of your past plans. So City of Clayton has done a lot of planning over the years. You have a 1958 master plan, which was Really early planning document, not a lot of communities were doing a ton of planning back then so it's great that the city has a kind of a history of a lot of planning. You've done some intense planning for the central business district for the downtown area in particular so that's been updated a couple of times you've done some topic specific planning like housing studies or parking studies things like that. And then the strategic plan in 2020. And so what we did is reviewed all of those plans and kind of learned, you know, what were the themes throughout? What did you say you wanted to do? What did you actually do? What kinds of priorities maybe are still relevant today? Maybe what isn't relevant? Thinking about if there was engagement as part of those plans, kind of all of that just to make sure that we've taken advantage of the work you all have done already.

Can I ask a question? Sure. I don't know that I know about the strategic economic development plan in 20, like, can you fill me in on that? Yeah. Or do I know it by another name or?

No, it's just economic strategies. I can forward that over to you. Okay. I'll resend it to the board.

And did we do it pre-COVID or post-COVID?

Yeah, it was pre-COVID and adopted by the time I got here in February 2020.

Oh, okay. So it was like very early 2020. Okay. That's what I was kind of very confused about the timing of that. Thank you.

Yeah, that's an important thing to note is that lots of things have changed since 1958 but then lots of very important things have changed since the 2020 strategic plan and so thinking about what parts of the plans are still relevant and do still provide really good guidance for the city, and then which ones are maybe not accurate and from anymore or maybe are not the direction you want to go.

So some of

the themes that came out of that 60 plus years of planning is the importance of the residential character of Clayton, you know that one really came up again and again since that 1958 plan it's something. Clayton residents are very proud of. It's also something that makes you all unique. The focus on the regional location as an asset. So being so close to the city of St. Louis, being a central, easy-to-access municipality among many is a real asset for Clayton. And it's something that came up again and again when people were talking about your residential market, your retail market, your office space. population, all of those things were all really coming back to that regional location. There was also a desire for a robust mix of uses in downtown. So since you all started really intensely planning for the downtown area, that's been a consistent theme is thinking about what that mix of uses might be. Now, what it's the use of mix of uses has been recommended. That's kind of varied over the years. You know, for a while there was a real focus on office versus retail. And so that has changed, but the idea that a mix is important has been consistent. And then lastly, those city services and community assets, you know, the green spaces, the services provided by the city of Clayton, those kinds of things are an important reason why people decide to

live here. So I'm going to see if I can scoot this up. There

we go. Some demographics. So you all might be familiar with this stuff, or this might be new to you, but your 2020 population was just over 17,000, which is a 7.7% increase since 2010. So it's a pretty substantial population increase, particularly as it's compared to the five county region. And when I talk about the five county region in this report, there's several other geographies that will compare your community too, depending on what we're comparing. So if we're comparing residential, sometimes it's two adjacent, more similar municipalities. But the five-county region that we looked at are the five counties that directly surround the city of Clayton. So St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and then the three to the west and south. We chose those as a geography that was sort of manageable. You know, using the 15-county MSA is a really large geography. And so the population stats, for example, become pretty skewed when you're 17%. 1,000 of 3 million you know and so when I talk about the region that's the five county region we'll be talking about. Anyway, so you all have gained about 1200 residents in that 10 year period over half of these residents were added to the downtown area. which may not be surprising to you given the additional units in downtown, but interesting nonetheless. And then that jail population is important to note. So these are U.S. census numbers. So the U.S. Census counts people where they live at that time. So this would count the jail population at the time. It would also count the student population at the time, so if people are living on WashU's campus that falls in the city of Clayton, those would also be counted here as well. So that's an important thing to think about when we think about all kinds of statistics. Age, for example, race, income, all of those things are going to be a little bit skewed by the fact that you're counting those different populations in the census data. So when you're looking at age of residence, for example, you can see here the breakdown by kind of generations. And you'll see Clayton's in the green. The five-county region is in the gray. And so you can see that Clayton has a lower amount of representation for all of those demographics except for millennials. So right now those people are about 27 to 42 years old. And that represents a really big portion of the city of Clayton. You know the student population makes up a portion of this so that's something to keep in mind. But as we get through the rest of these kind of demographic stats you'll start to see that there are some other relationships to this age piece that might be important to know when we start to think about land use. So household structure, for example, 37% of residents are living in one-person households. That's a pretty high number. And so when you think about, you know, those could be students living alone, but it also is a lot of older people that might be living alone. It could be young professionals living in some of the units in downtown. The household structure piece is particularly important when we think about residential land use and the kind of units, the kind of housing that you might need moving forward, depending on what your population is now and then what you might like your population to be in the future. The families with children is another interesting stat. You can see a little snippet there of a map showing the four census tracts that fall in the city of Clayton. So you can see that the families with children are most likely found in those two that are more blue and less likely found in the one all the way to the east and then kind of central Clayton. When you look at racial and ethnic diversity, I think this is really interesting. You all have a pretty consistent breakdown of minority race or ethnicity as it relates to the five county region. So 27% in Clayton versus 30% in the region. So pretty consistent. However, how that breaks down is really interesting. you have a far smaller percentage of black or African-American residents than the region does, but you have a far greater percentage of Asian residents Again, that's just something to think about when we're thinking about what population we're planning for. In terms of income, you know, you have a significant student population so those people are likely making little to no income so that explains part of that $10,000 or less population because that's really where students that are maybe have a work study job or maybe don't work at all would fall. But 40% of your residents have a household income of 150 or more, which is quite a bit higher than the five county region average. Some other demographic stats that are interesting and kind of I thought worth noting is that 12% of Clayton residents are foreign born. That is more than twice the average for that five county region, which is really quite remarkable. It's something that I think makes Clayton very unique, particularly compared to your peer communities. More than 8% of residents speak an Asian or Pacific Islander language at home. So again, I think that's a really unique piece of the city of Clayton that's worth thinking about in terms of your population. 6.4% of residents or about 1,000 people are living with a disability of some kind. So that could be a physical disability that might inhibit their choice of place to live. It could also be something like a cognitive disability that might make them unable to live by themselves. So That spectrum of disability ranges pretty wildly, but it is also something to keep in mind when you think about the kind of housing that someone like that might need. Just over 7,000 residents make up your working population over 16. So that's a 54% labor participation rate, which is relatively low compared to some communities. It means only 54% of people that are eligible or above working age work here. And nearly 80% of residents over 25 have a bachelor's degree or higher. So 80% of those residents are very well educated, only 54% of those people are actually working. So the next big section of the existing conditions report looks into land use. So as I mentioned, I'm an urban planner. So I think of things in a geographic way, you know, that's what a comprehensive plan is really to think about your community comprehensively in terms of how things are used where. And so what you can see here is a land use map. This reflects What's going on on the ground and on land throughout the city of Clayton so I know this is a lot, but we're going to kind of pull it apart the different types of land uses. So you can see that so 46% of your land is used for residential purposes 8% is commercial 1% mixed use 15% institutional. Parks and Rec takes up about 6% of land, and then right-of-way is about 23%. The 23% does seem kind of shocking to people that don't know, but that is relatively standard for most communities. So it's roadways, it's all the public easement, Metrolink, all of that. And the residential is an interesting piece because 46% doesn't feel like a ton, but it's just really about how land is used. So it doesn't count any residential that might go up For example, a hundred unit building that would go up would use maybe the same amount of land as a few single family homes. So just something to keep in mind on that. Do we do the raise hand thing? Okay.

Hello, it's me. Hi, Mayor Harris. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I just wanted to ask you, where are you putting condos? Is that single family or multifamily?

They

fall

in multifamily from a land use perspective. And I will, maybe I can

go to the next one. That's from a land use. I'm sorry. It looked like a low percentage of multifamily, but that's land, not number of units. Okay. That's good. Okay. No problem. Thank you.

That's okay. That's a good lead in. So the first big section that we looked into was residential. And so in this case, we're inventorying what kind of residential you have. We're looking at how that residential performs in the market. We're thinking about how that might fit the needs of Clayton residents today and tomorrow. And so 46%, as I mentioned, of your land is used for residential. You can see it in yellow on the map. It represents a pretty significant portion of your community. And it's about 6,000 housing units. So that would include both single family and multifamily units. That 46% so 82% of that land of your residential land is occupied by single family housing. So, if you think about single family housing, usually it takes up more space than say a multifamily building and so that's how you get to that 82% number. The rest of that percentage would be multifamily or multi-unit buildings. 37% of residential buildings were built before 1939, and you can kind of imagine the city of Clayton as you go further west in the city and further from the city of St. Louis. Buildings tend to get newer and newer as the region developed. Clayton has a higher concentration of multi-unit building than the five-county region. So only 30, I know I'm throwing a lot of statistics at you here. I promise we'll send you the real report if you want to dig into it. Only 34% of housing units are single family detached units so they could, you know, the opposite of that would be multifamily units or attached single family structure something like a condo would fit into that. And then you have a kind of a mix of owner-occupied housing and renter-occupied housing. In our report, we do a lot of analysis to compare your multifamily market to other nearby communities. You know, Clayton's unique because your peer communities for your single family markets are pretty different than your peer communities for multi-family markets. You all have a pretty good mix. And while your single family is pretty expensive and on relatively large lots comparatively, your multifamily units create kind of a different experience than say the multifamily units in Ladue, for example. And so thinking about what are the right comparisons was a big part of this.

Okay, so this is the amount of land versus the number of units. I know it's somewhat confusing. Yes.

If I

wanted

to

buy a home in Clayton and there were 100 on the market, 34 would actually be single family homes and the other... 66 would be condos or apartments. Correct. And if

the city of Clayton was 100 acres big, 82 of those acres would be covered with single family housing. I know it's tricky.

No problem. I'm

going to ask the same question.

So the next things we looked into is housing affordability. And so again, your market is unique compared to the five county region. Nearly two thirds of homes in Clayton are valued at more than a half a million dollars compared to about 8% of homes in the five county region The median home value is $863,000 about 62% of owner occupied units have a mortgage so the rest of them would own their unit free and clear. The median rent so for a multifamily unit is $1,400 versus about $1,000 in the five county region so significantly more expensive. There's a lot of nuance to this related to amenities offered and even you know the environment, the reason someone would want to choose downtown Clayton versus an adjacent municipality for a multifamily unit. So the prices doesn't tell the full story, but it's an important piece of it. And then about 27% of residents are considered housing cost burdened, which means they spend more than 30% of income on housing. There's a lot of analysis about this in the report and it's relatively consistent with the five county region. And it's a little bit more complicated because housing is more expensive here. And sometimes people are willing to pay more money for a certain experience. And the argument could be made probably better in the city of Clayton that someone is paying more for a multifamily unit in downtown Clayton to be adjacent to their job or to amenities or something like that. that maybe they wouldn't be willing to pay more to stretch their budget for in another community. So again, there's lots of analysis of this because I know people are, this is a hot topic to think about. So the housing piece in particular has a lot of comparisons to nearby communities and thinking about what money kind of buys you in Clayton.

Spending on housing, is that taxes and mortgage or what goes into that?

Yes. So it's taxes, insurance, your mortgage or your rent in that case. What else would fall on that? Utilities, yes.

a housing and urban development, you know, HUD term is cost burden that 30% comes from them.

I think you said, though, that that 27% is actually fairly consistent with what's in the five county region. Correct. points out, right, the homes are more expensive, but median incomes are higher also. Correct. Right?

Yes. That's why it's kind of an interesting metric to think about because it's not necessarily an apples to apples to compare to a nearby community. because you have to take into account the amount of money people are making. And then if you're making a certain threshold of money, then spending more than 30% of your money still leaves you with enough money. You know what I mean? Versus if you have a limited amount of money and you're stretching your income over that 30%, leaving you with not enough to pay for those other essentials.

So here's some of that

comparison. Clayton's housing falls kind of in the middle and a bunch of different things. So in terms of the renter versus owner mix, the housing age, the number of units, you can see some different communities that we selected here to kind of compare you to. Some of them are adjacent communities and so you know, relevant to compare yourself to someone like U City because of that. But some of them have way more housing units, for example, than you all have. And so less of a good comparison in terms of the market. Similarly, you know, someone that's choosing to live in a condo in downtown Clayton is probably choosing that for a bunch of reasons that they may not be able to find in another community. So you'll see lots of this kind of stuff in the report. So this is some housing cost comparison. So looking at Clayton, compared to some peer communities, you know, you all are more expensive compared to some peer community when it comes to multifamily single family home prices also are higher than those adjacent communities. So you can see here on that multifamily chart on the left, we've compared you all to the Central West End in the City of St. Louis, Kirkwood, Richmond Heights, and University City. But those are slightly different for when we're thinking about single-family homes, Clayton, Ladue, Richmond Heights, et cetera, that may have a more similar

single-family home stock to you all. So the next big bucket is commercial.

So about 8% of your land is used for commercial purposes, you can see it really concentrated in that downtown area. It's about 133 acres. Again, a lot of your commercial land is on is in really dense environments and so you can imagine that the square footage just goes a little bit further when it comes to commercial because you don't need as much space as, for example, a single family home. So we looked at employment in Clayton. So the people coming to work in Clayton as a big piece of that economy. So in 2020, about 34,000 people worked in Clayton. This is pre-pandemic, about 34, 000 people. 98% of those workers came from outside Clayton. So they don't live in Clayton. They live somewhere else in the metro area, come to Clayton to work every day. In 2020, post-pandemic, foot traffic in downtown dropped by about 46%. And so that was a large decrease in employees and visitors. And then actually, interestingly, a slight increase in residents. And so it probably is because Clayton residents were stuck at their homes and walking in downtown Clayton, and they had never had time for that before. In 2022, employee foot traffic was at about 68% of pre-pandemic numbers. So on your way up compared to that 46% drop, but not yet back to that pre-pandemic number. And then 44% of jobs are in the professional sector. So looking at what kind of jobs are in Clayton, you all have a lot more professional jobs as opposed to the region as a whole, but then you have a lot less of, for example, healthcare jobs than the region. So just interesting to think about what industries have a lot of representation here versus other places.

How do you measure

foot traffic? So it's a little bit big brothery, but it's actually cell phone data. So we use cell phone data to track where people are moving, where they're coming from. That's how we know if they're coming from inside Clayton or outside or if they're visitors or employees. And you can track it for almost any period of time. So looking at pre-pandemic to now, one of the things we've worked with the city a lot on is answering this question of, you all have really high lease rates. Your buildings are leased, but they're not necessarily full. So businesses have chosen to rent the spaces. And you might think from the numbers from a building that you all are completely full, but then you see the number of 68% of pre-pandemia. And so thinking about who's coming back to work or how often they're coming back to work and what that might look like moving forward paints a little bit of a different picture than just simply lease rights.

I feel like before 2020, there was a 40-some thousand number of people coming into Clayton, so does that not necessarily include the people that are just coming in to... go to court dates or, I mean, is there, did you ever come across a higher number than that? Yeah.

So the 30

like visitors during the work week or something.

Yeah. So 34,000 people are, that's actually just employees coming to work in Clayton. So that would not count people coming to pay their traffic ticket or to view a public meeting that would not count any of those people. However, the foot traffic numbers do count those people because we were interested in knowing what did it do to visitor traffic? What did it do to residents moving around? And so let me maybe go to the next slide. We did a lot of analysis on this kind of foot traffic, who's moving where and how many people are going there in your business district. So we worked with the city to kind of define what these business districts are for the purpose of analyzing them. So the boundaries are a little bit arbitrary, but trying to group together your commercial businesses for the purpose of analysis. So then you'll see here how those different business districts break down in terms of their available space. So you can see the vast majority of it is in the central business district. And the vast majority of that is office space. Visitation varies wildly from certain business districts to others. And so 600,000 visitors per month to less than 20,000 and some other ones. We did an analysis of visitation pre-pandemic, visitation monthly since the pandemic, and then when the peaks are in terms of events, things like that, and then what we're at today. And so I just threw a couple of interesting ones up here. But the DeMunn neighborhood, for example, is at 96% of their pre-pandemic peak. And so they're almost back versus the Central Business District, which is at that 66% number. They vary kind of everything in between from in the 50s up to that 90 number. But interesting to think about which districts have performed better and why that might be. It's an interesting implication in terms of maybe the mix of land uses that's preferred, maybe the preference in terms of commercial or office spaces, that kind of thing.

Are the numbers... from you said 2022 so are there they literally are last year so like taken from a year from now or a year ago or is it even could we say 2023 yeah so we

actually went through june of 2023 okay and i think that it is accessible up to like two weeks prior to the moment um so things like the art fair you know that is going to happen after this analysis is done but that's something we'll look into because you know i would be curious what the art fair numbers were like in a sort of post pandemic, several years later world. And then how that relates to traffic overall. So we'll continue to use this tool throughout the process as we start to analyze different things that come up.

It just seems so much busier in June as it was like June of 2020. Totally.

Yeah. So the commercial office market, I can move this a little further. We talked a little bit about this but you all have about 7 million square feet of office space in your city 61% of that is in class A buildings. And so that means you do have a good chunk of office space that's not in class A buildings and so as office becomes You know something people are thinking about they're thinking about what's worth going to the office for and what's not you know that's something to keep in mind, what's going to happen to those other buildings. We looked at the occupancy the weighted average of occupancy in the 10 largest office buildings here, and it's about 81%, which is pretty good. You all have higher lease rates for office properties than the region overall by quite a bit. You can see that the trend for lease rates generally follows the region's trend line, but you are quite a bit higher at every point. You can see a similar analysis of the retail market, so about 335,000 square feet of retail exists in Clayton. It's a mix of small historic storefronts and ground floor space and big mixed use buildings. So it's kind of all over the board in terms of size and quality and rates and all kinds of things. But occupancy and lease rates are higher than the region. You can see here, Clayton has a little bit of less consistent trajectory. There's a little bit more ups and downs. A lot of that is just a function of the fact that you all are relatively small and we're comparing you to a much larger geography. And so when one business leaves the five county region, it makes much less of an impact than when one business leaves Clayton, for example. But good to know that you are generally following the trend and that you all remain higher on all those metrics.

Can I ask a quick question? A couple of slides ago, it had the Wydown Gateway, which I assume you're looking at where the restaurants and the businesses. Do you capture at all the numbers of people who come in to bike or walk Wydown Boulevard or the running groups that come and all that?

So that would not be captured in this analysis. Because how it works is that we set a timeframe, basically, that someone has to spend a certain amount of time within this catchment in order to be counted. So it wouldn't count people driving through downtown, for example. So those people would not be captured in this analysis. However, we did do a lot of analysis related to transportation and how people are moving through Clayton. So that is coming up.

Yeah, it's a

little different than that. Something as we do our comprehensive planning, I think we all need to stay aware of what how valued that, that Y down corridor is to the broader community. Because I think we all know people who come in simply to meet their group in the morning and run or walk or bike residents and non-residents on that. So I just was sure we continue to keep that value in that as well as the business and the retail and the residential

and Absolutely. So I have a meeting actually tomorrow with the livable communities consultant who's doing the, the more sort of parks and rec oriented plan. And so we're going to coordinate on the data sources to make sure that we both get them because that it does fall a little bit more in their bucket but it is something that you're right we have to consider from a land use perspective

so good timing. The other piece

we looked into is the hotel market. And so you can see the similar trend on those charts as well that Clayton performs better in terms of occupancy and average daily rate than the five county region, but follows the same trajectory. That big dramatic drop is 2020, it's the pandemic. So that's what every chart looks like all around the country. Hotel rooms command about $15 a night more than the regional average and occupancy rates are about 4% higher. In June of 2023, Clayton's occupancy was 63% compared with 72 pre-pandemic. So you're not quite back to pre-pandemic numbers, but it is getting there. Okay, the next big section is we looked at green space and the environment. And so this includes all kinds of analysis related to how much green space you have and where your trees are located and how people have access to green space. This map up on the screen is just a snippet to show you, you know, we were interested in seeing if you live in the city of Clayton, where's your access to green space? Is it within five or 10 minutes? And you can see here on the map, almost every resident in Clayton lives within a five or 10 minute walk of a park. And a lot, I would say almost the majority of Clayton lives within five minute walk up a park. And so that's an important thing. One thing we did consider parks outside of the city of Clayton as well. That's an important piece of the analysis since you all are bound by other communities. So the next piece is, and I don't want to make it sound like we didn't look into a lot of green space in the environment things. We did. That stuff is all in the report, but I just, I'm trying to bust us through this. So the next one is institutional land. This is an important one in Clayton because you all do have quite a bit of land owned by different institutions. So 15%, you know, you can see up there in blue, it's WashU, it's Concordia, Fontbonne, the school district, government buildings, things like that would all be falling in that 238 acres. Again, it's something to consider, you know, both from a revenue standpoint from, you know, your taxes and thinking about that, but also thinking about how it, how residents on, for example, the East side of all those institutions might relate to the, to those that live on the West side, you know, things like that. They can be assets to the community. They also can be physical barriers, you know, just something to think about as we move forward from a land use perspective. And then transportation. So we looked a lot into how people are moving through Clayton, what kind of transportation assets you have, what that might look like moving forward. So you have about 9.5 million square feet of pavement. 72% of the pavement is maintained by the city of Clayton. So it's Clayton roads, things like that versus something that might be someone's a private road or a St. Louis County managed road, something like that. So when we think about how people move around Clayton, your relatively compact community, we were interested in understanding how people are getting to Clayton, where they're going after, how they're moving within the community. And what we discovered is that 43% of trips are traveling to Clayton, 44% are traveling from Clayton, and then 12% are traveling within Clayton. So that's something to think about is that there's not a lot of trips happening within Clayton. Living in Clayton and also going somewhere else in Clayton, you know those numbers are obviously things like work and we talked about how 98% of your workforce comes from out of the Community. But also things like amenities, you know people are going elsewhere for other things why that might be you know determining what those are is something to think about. In terms of mode of transportation, 83% of trips are taking place in a private automobile. 13.7% are walking, which is actually quite a high percentage for a community like yours. And then only 1.2% is taking public transit. So for a community that has good public transit access, that's something to keep in mind. 38.6% of all trips starting in Clayton are less than three miles. So that means people that are leaving where they live in Clayton, almost 40% of them are only going three miles to their destination. So it could be work. It could be a friend's house. It could be shopping. But that three miles is really a manageable length. It's something that you could consider a mode shift for, whether that is encouraging people to walk on those shorter trips, thinking about how your community could be more accessible to bicycles, encouraging transit use those kinds of things that three mile distance anything over three miles it's a hard sell to get people to think about a mode shift. But thinking that you know almost 40% of your trips fall in that is something to consider there's a lot of analysis related to where people are going, so the purpose of their trips and the report. To think about you know, is it more likely that you can convince people on these short trips. if they're going to school, that they might be able to walk or if they're shopping or things like that. Again, it's also something to think about when you think what might be missing in Clayton, what are people leaving the community on those short trips to go do that you might be able to put here instead. I got another hand. Yes.

It's the mayor again. Go back to the previous slide for a sec. My little arrows. There we go. Okay. Yeah, I'm just curious on the trips to and from. It's pretty much equal trips to Clayton and trips from Clayton. Are those the same people just going in and out for work? Or do you have data on who that is? Yes. But you know what the purpose of those trips are?

Those would be different people. And we do. So in the report, actually all of the trips are broken down in terms of purpose. So if you are going to work or if you are going shopping or if you're going to school, you know, all of those different purposes are broken down because that, like I said, that's an interesting thing, you know, which ones are potentially things that you might be able to shift. You're probably unlikely to shift people's mode and place they're going to go for work, for example, because most of those trips are longer and they also have a job in a certain place versus shopping that you might be able to get people to shift to a different store or shift to a different mode of

transit. Okay, thanks.

Okay, so then this last piece is community feedback. This is a little bit of a taste of phase two where we're headed. So as I mentioned, phase one was that existing conditions report, which you all will get and can kind of dive into and let us know if you have any questions. And then phase two is where we move into really talking to residents. So we'll share some of this information. We'll talk to residents about what they'd like to see in the community moving forward. A comp plan is really something you would only do every 10, 20 years. And so it's an important time to stop and kind of ask the community What do they love about this place? What would they love to see different in the future? Why did they choose to move here? You know, why did they decide when they returned from college that Clayton was the place they wanted to settle? So a couple of ways that people can do that is there's a survey online right now at engageclayton.com. So encourage all of your constituents to complete that. A lot of folks filled it out at the public meeting last week. We also got lots of feedback from people that came in person to complete the survey, to participate in activities, to share their thoughts. I put some sort of Top line priorities that we heard from the community when we were there, a lot of people appreciate the parks and open space. Those kinds of community assets were really, I mean, we were at the center when we were doing it. So I think it was top of mind that people were feeling grateful for those kinds of assets. A lot of people made comments about wanting more small businesses and retail space downtown and in the neighborhoods. you know, vibrant commercial corridors in each neighborhood. When you looked at the business district map, they are pretty spread out throughout the city, but each of them looks really different. And so there was a lot of jealousy for the demand neighborhood and a lot of jealousy. Different parts of the community that people wished existed where they lived. And so thinking about what kind of land use decisions might be able to, to influence that a little bit. And then there was a lot what kind of residential you all have, and if that is or is not suitable for people that

want to stay in the community as they age. Okay, I'm going to stop for questions.

I know you all asked a few throughout, but I'm ready.

I had one about, we talk a lot about, we know that we have student population. And I don't remember seeing a number here or at the open house that actually said the number or percentage of our population that is students.

Yes, so there's a few ways for us to determine that. So we can determine how many people live on those campuses in terms of the kind of geofencing to understand those geographies. We can also understand from the U.S. Census the population under 18 or the population under 25. That's about as far as we can go in determining exactly how many students live in the city of Clayton. Yeah, that's about as good

as we can get. So I heard at least two different ways to do it. Obviously the location, if they're actually living on campus, that's relatively straightforward. Otherwise looking at like 18 to 25, which certainly would not all be students, but could be largely. So did you actually like... do that I mean I'm just trying to figure out like is it um is it two percent or five percent is it a thousand or five thousand or five hundred like I have no

yeah so we didn't come up with a number of how many students live in the city of Clayton um but I haven't given up given up on that quest because I do think it's really important we've requested some information from the school district because I think that's also another piece of it and so that would be another way that we could kind of pull out the school district population from those 18 under 18 number or 18 to 25 number to try to again triangulate ourselves back to the student number. Um,

Yeah. Yeah. I think even just like, you know, um, like general scale would be like, what, what can you tell using those things? Um, cause we say it a lot, but I have no, and I'm ward one, I live over there. So that's like huge institutional use and students, but yeah.

And the same consideration probably needs to be given to St. Louis County Jail that ends up in our census data as well. But when you look at that, the population number of individuals that are working age that aren't actually working, you're going to have people that are falling into that category that are incarcerated. So we need to try to figure that out a little bit too.

Right. One of the tricky parts with doing a plan for a community the size of Clayton is that census data only gets so granular because it's anonymous. And so as you get closer and closer in terms of your geography, the information gets less and less specific. You know, when we look at the five county region, you can get a lot more information than you can about the city of Clayton.

There is one way to tell that I know of and it's experience of going to Schnucks. and Straub's and other grocery stores in our community is when WashU comes back, those stores are prepared. And they have the numbers of the inventory that they have to increase to service all those students coming in to get groceries and things like that and services. So there is a way to kind of tell an influx by even talking to Chinooks, honestly. I have the numbers.

I'm going to ask on the subject of hotels, you provided a lot of regional perspective. Right. I don't think on your slide there was any particular perspective on hotels. We have at various stages like three new hotels in Clayton. Of course, we already have a bunch of hotels. But I don't know whether comparisons are meaningful because there are very few real downtown areas in St. Louis County. So perhaps they're... Is there a perspective at this point on our hotels either existing or new coming online as to whether that's an appropriate number?

Right. Yeah. So that is a good question. So hotel markets are interesting in that they do operate as a region and similar to multifamily, people are choosing to stay in the city of Clayton. for a hotel night for a particular reason. You know, you all aren't the most convenient to the airport and you're not in downtown St. Louis. And so they are picking Clayton for a certain reason. And so that does make the market a little bit more unique. You can't just look at straight numbers of performance. However, even looking at straight numbers of you all are performing a lot better. So you all are, you have higher average daily rates, you have higher occupancy. you know, usually the threshold for occupancy is 70%. 70% is kind of a successful hotel. You know, right now you're at 63%, but you were over that 70 pre-pandemic. And so as you can see, the trend overall is that recovery just hasn't quite happened yet from the pandemic.

You know, on that note too, with hotels, we've had, I don't know what the raw numbers are, but with additional hotels, opening up the actual hotel usage may be back to pre-pandemic. I don't know. Right.

Yes, you do have a bunch more rooms coming online. And we did try to kind of analyze what that might mean for the community. You know, they're already coming online. And so our commentary is purely forward looking because they're already happening. However, thinking through this process about if it makes sense to add more, you know, after what is already coming online, I think is something that will be important to think about both from a is this how you want to use your land perspective? But then also from a perspective of, is this going to be a successful economic development,

you know, addition to your community?

I have a quick question

about the future community engagement. What are you, what are your plans for like, you know, that big chunk of like millennials, for example, that was like such a huge part of the population to get them engaged and all

Yeah, so we have a few. So the survey is live and then we have a few pop up events coming up so tomorrow will be at the parties in the park. And we have these very cool engaged Clayton koozies so everyone go to the parties in the Park, take the survey participate in the activities, but we've got events like that kind of throughout the fall to target different populations so parties in the park is really targeted towards people that are working in the city of Clayton. So they may not live here, but we still want to know why, you know, how their experiences when they eat lunch here in Clayton every day, where they're parking, you know, all those kinds of questions. We've got one at the musical nights at Oakville park, and then we'll do one in demand at the pocket park there by call these kind of. And then that last one, we're toying with the idea of something, doing something more arts focused. And so we think we're going to pull up with the livable communities to try to do something bigger. So we've got those in addition to a whole bunch of stakeholder conversations and interviews with a wide variety of different kinds of folks that either work in Clayton or own businesses here or are residents or work for the Clayton Community Foundation or, you know, all of those things. Do

you have like a goal of how many people would like a threshold of engagement you're looking for to like? get accurate data for

what people want? Yeah, that's a good question. So it, I would say that it varies pretty significantly across municipalities. Ana, do you have a goal? Does the

planning department have a goal for how many people? Not a number. Okay. Well, you know,

for a community your size, like for example, we did a planning process in the city of Richmond Heights recently and and they engaged about 2,500 residents. So they felt like that was a really good number. You guys might think 2,500 is like a silly low number and that doesn't matter at all. So it's a little bit up to the steering committee and you all to kind of think about what is a representative number of your community.

Well, and Kami, I think too, I think they're planning on having a table at the back to school bash. So I think that will help get

in the

art 30s to early 40s, like students with parents with children and stuff like that.

I just want to make sure like, you know, whatever, like the largest population, are we getting a good chunk of that? And like, if we're not seeing that, will there be a way to pivot, you know, some of these engagements to kind of attack those kinds of groups and say, like, get involved?

I think that's the plan. And that's actually why we haven't put those next two pop-ups on here yet is because we're kind of still waiting to see how that first open house went, how the pop-ups go. You know, the survey has demographic information so we can judge who's filled out the survey and what kind of pieces of the population we're actually hearing from and who are not so that we can kind of adjust moving forward.

Chris, do you want to, I mean, you can, or the microphone if you want to come forward a little bit so we can all hear you.

Who doesn't want a microphone? So if I'm reading.

I were to write a persona, but the average resident of Clayton, I would say they are a millennial married couple

We think you're my mic went off.

I'm sorry. Do you want to come stand up here? Sorry. Okay, so

Give this back. Use this one here. OK. Hi. So based on this data, would it be correct to assume if I were to write a persona of the average resident of Clayton, they would be a young millennial married couple living in a two-bedroom or less multifamily building? That's based on all the averages, right? Because the average home family size is 2.2. The average size is two bedrooms, and we over-index in millennials. And by the way, aren't we all surprised that no one's cohabitating anymore? What happened to the 60s? So given that, right? I

think that each of those individual things are different.

Well,

just because there's people.

Each of those individual things are true, but I don't think that you can attach them all to one persona. For example, I think a big piece of that millennial population are those people living alone, living as one. So to say that the millennial population is all married with two kids living in that, like you can't make the connection between each of those data points, but each of those data is true.

Right. So again, I'm going back to my little marketing world and we would write a persona based on all those things coming together. It'd be very colorful. We'd have a drawing. It'd be great. But I guess the point I'm getting to is I think our perception is that Clayton is all about the wealthy people in single family houses. And that's what contributes to the economic engine of Clayton. Yet we know from data on a national basis that as a percentage of income, people in lower incomes spend more in their community. So are we going to track who really is the wealthiest or brings the most wealth to our city so that we plan for housing that attracts them? Does that make sense? Everybody's just staring.

I think that's a great question.

Yeah,

I think that's a great question. And I think part of what this phase one piece was to get you to think about that. So when we start to think about from a land use perspective, how do you want your city to change or to be the same or to grow or alter in the future to think about those populations? statistics. And think about if you do want to encourage a certain type of spending in your community, what's the kind of people that might do that? Where would they be likely to spend their money? How can you kind of arrange the city of Clayton to support that moving forward? Right.

And then the other thing about speaking to a representative sample, we also know from national data that the people most likely represented in their voices and communities are old white ladies and men. So wouldn't we set about a goal of getting a rep sample by our demographic in different areas? So just, you know, yay, Richmond Heights had 1,200 people, but if those 1,200 were all, yeah, so wouldn't we have an established target for rep samples by our demographic?

I think that's a great idea.

Yeah, me too. Thanks.

Yeah, I do. I mean, Chris, I mean, I think it's so important for us to get, you know, across the population. So, I mean, otherwise it just seems, you know, silly in a way to come up with a plan if we're only asking such a small part of our population.

Totally.

I have a question that might build on that just a little bit in terms of data. Are you able to track transiency or term of duration of residence in Clayton? So right when houses are turned over or apartment units?

Yes. So that is a data point in the U.S. Census is how long have you lived in the community? It's also a part of the survey. So there's a couple ways that we can get that. And then in terms of the market, you know, we know when houses turned over. you know, when they sold, when their condo sold, that kind of thing. Connecting who is the person that sold the house, you know, that's not something we can do, but you can kind of triangulate your way into that by thinking about demographics over time and shifting that as residential shifts happen.

yeah so ultimately in the final comprehensive plan you'll have a series of objectives and key results strategies to get you towards where you'd like to be in your community. And those will be the sort of feature of one of the open houses, because we will work with the city and with you all, and with the planning Commission and the steering committee. to come up with what we, you know, we hear all this stuff from stakeholders, from individual interviews, from the community. You know, I want an ice cream shop. I want a frozen yogurt place. Get a lot of ice cream at the open house. But translating that into actual specific objectives and then tasks for the city to move forward, you know, whether it is... you know, increasing green space, which would direct the city to make choices about their public parks or, you know, if it's a new amenities somewhere that would direct the city's specific actions. And so deciding what those objectives and key results are going to be is going to be very important. The other key part of a comprehensive plan is the future land use map. So a future land use map is the basis for zoning. So future land use map really what you'd like your community to look like from a land use perspective in the future. And so that's another big thing that we will go back and forth with both city staff and you all in the public on determining. So your community doesn't have a ton of land that is waiting to be developed. You're a landlocked community that has already been developed, but thinking about things, areas that might be susceptible to change or Areas that maybe are in transition right now thinking about what those future land uses are is going to be part of an exercise where we're going to think about some different scenarios some, you know, what if we put a bunch of houses here what if we put A condo building here what have we put a hotel here. What would that do both to the revenue of the city this to the population numbers you know those kinds of numerical impacts but then also what people think, is that what you want to see in your community. And so all of that kind of has to feed back into both that future land use map and those objectives and steps that the city and you all are going to have to take to get there.

Yes. And I'll come back to you many times at different phases of this process to tell you what the community said during all of that phase two engagement. It'll be up to you all to think about is do you feel like that's representative of what you think, what you hear from your constituents, all of those things. And then ultimately, when we move into that land use planning phase to think about how we can get what we heard from the community into that land use plan. And so, you know, if people did say that they'd like to see these kinds of different businesses or this kind of different residential housing type because they want to age in place, whatever that might be, how can we get that embedded into the future land use plan? Where could those things go?

Elizabeth, do you have a quick comment or question? Yes, please. First of all, thank

you.

When you talk about lower income families here, they spend more money in the communities they live in. And well, we have no place for them to spend money at this point. We're losing a lot of our small businesses. We've lost a lot of our businesses. One of the best small businesses has been run out of town, and that is wine merchant is leaving this week. So we need to do more about getting and keeping small independent businesses into Clayton. That would mean that maybe more people of the Clayton residents of any income might spend more here in Clayton. I would. I don't like having to drive out of town to get my groceries. Then also the hotel market, I'm not sure about that, but I'm not fond of the idea of the hotels moving their way down west on Maryland. And I don't think that that's an appropriate use of our land being right there. But there are a whole bunch more things and I'll save them for the next time. Thank you.

Okay. I know I'm at the very last moment, so I'm going to wrap up. But if you all have any questions, you know how to reach me via Anna. Feel free to keep an eye out for that existing conditions report if you want to dig into it. There's also going to be an online dashboard with a bunch of data that you can look at as well. But you'll see me many more times during the process.

Thank you so much.

Just to clarify, the existing conditions report is not yet on the website, but we will be notified when it is. You will. Yes. Same with the dashboard. Great.

Okay,

awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Members of the Planning Commission, you're welcome to stay, but if you would like to exit for the regular part of our meeting, I completely understand. For any members of the public that do not want to stay for the regular part

Yeah, he's got to sit next to me.

the room. He was

recess.

I was going

maybe a good idea. I

All right, I think we are back for our regular seven o'clock meeting. June, would you like to do the roll call? Alderman Berkowitz, Alderman Buse. Here.

Alderman Gary Feder.

Alderman Fader.

Alderman Rick Hummell.

Alderman Hummel.

Mayor Harris. Mayor Pro Tem McAndrew. Here. City Manager David Gipson.

Mayor Harris. Mayor Pro Tem McAndrew. Here. City Manager Gibson.

City Attorney O'Keefe. Here. Thank you.

Before we start, I just wanted to make a couple of quick comments. First, I just wanted make sure there's not many people out in the public, but our Clayton Fire Department had a huge honor this week. They received the EMS Service of the Year Award from the Missouri EMS Association. So it's really a great honor and certainly a testament to how hard they work, their professionalism, and just their exceptional service to our citizens in Clayton and also the surrounding region. from a family that unfortunately had to call upon their services multiple times in the last decade, most recently last fall. I am certainly, I'm just very grateful that we have such a wonderful group in our fire department, in our EMS department. So thank you to Chief Rhodes and the members of our EMS. I also wanted to, I saw on social media, recently or this week that there's actually a National Purple Heart Day. And I didn't realize that one of our Clayton police officers received a Purple Heart. Officer Tyler Rigoni received a Purple Heart while serving in the U.S. Army during Operation Enduring Freedom. So I just wanted to mention that because I think that's just an exceptional moment. exceptional honor and i feel like we're really lucky that we have an officer in our uh police department um who received a purple heart so so chief please bestow our um all right and so this is the time in the meeting where if anybody has any public requests or petitions uh that are not on the end agenda that they would like to address us with

Okay.

All right, so I will open the public hearing for the conditional use permit for Barcelona.

Thank you. This is a public hearing to consider application for a conditional unit by Barcelona LLC, doing business as Barcelona, to allow for the operation of a 1600 square foot restaurant with outdoor dining. Barcelona will be open Monday through Saturday from 11am to 1am and on Sunday from 11am to 12am. The restaurant concept is a full service sit down restaurant open for lunch and dinner. The applicant has stated an intent to apply for a liquor license. The restaurant will have 26 indoor seats and intends to operate outdoor dining along the sidewalk. Off street parking is not required for restaurants located in the central business district measuring less than 3000 square feet. Deliveries will be handled by an adjacent alley between the hours of 7am and 11am Monday through Friday. Trash and recycling will be handled by existing facilities at the rear of the building. The Plan Commission considered this request at its meeting on July 17, 2023 and voted unanimously to recommend approval as requested. Staff recommends that the Board of Aldermen approve a conditional use permit for the operation of Barcelona located at 7810 Forsyth Boulevard per the conditions outlined in the resolutions.

You

have the applicant here this evening as well.

All right, I will open the discussion. Does anybody have any questions or comments?

I do. I am excited for it to open and I'm just curious. It's not directly part of the discussions with the CUP, but I think we all are increasingly aware of our sustainability obligations. And while Clayton doesn't have currently, and I hope our board can move on that any no styrofoam or other practices that we have put into ordinances. I certainly hope that the, I'm just curious where is it as a restaurant opens, what type of efforts are meeting being made towards sustainability whether it's with lighting, whether it's with you know, materials used you know, even as simple as asking for a takeout, the use of plastic utensils and, and if there's something that you want to share of practices that you, that you're looking forward to. And then also I would ask that both the board and everyone in our community, you know, sharing that responsibility going forward and always being aware often it's more cost-effective sometimes a little bit more, but it is something that we need to increasingly put into our everyday thoughts as we make decisions. So is there anything in particular that are your views on that, that you'd want to share with us or where you are?

Frank, do you want to... Hey, Frank, will you come up to the podium? Thank you. And just state your name for the record.

Make sure the light's green.

Yeah.

Is it red or green? Red or green, yes.

Oh, green. Good evening. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be back here after a couple of years of... part-time retirement, so to speak. So finally found a good location and I'm really happy that the staff has recommended that Barcelona should come back. With regards to your question, I am working with Angela Castelli who has a company that provides restaurant services and containers and things like that as a sustainability. Great, great products. I've used it towards right after COVID when we were still open. And they are all bamboo and straw pieces, from straws to utensils to packaging to bags to the entire thing. Personally, I'm very much in favor of saving the environment and being all there. Now I'm in a building that I have no control over what they do with regards to ergonomic conditions there. I don't know if there's... I know there are no solar panels or anything like that, but I'm a tenant in the building. So when it comes to the building, there's only so much I can do. But when it comes to... producing products and selling products, I will do my best to definitely use good products for that that are sustainable.

That's very helpful. I think that as our community, again, every step along the way, as long as we think of that as a through line, which it sounds like you do, that will serve us all. Thank

you. I'm happy to answer any other questions. We don't have plans because I think the ARB already approved and recommended, so I didn't bring anything else to show you. But I'm sure you all have it in front of you. Any other questions I can answer, I'll be happy to do that. Frank, how does your square footage compare with your prior location? It is smaller. So it's 1,000 square feet smaller. So... the much less people in the building, as you can see from the plants if you have in front of you. I'm hoping to open the front, the entire front to sort of a glass front, glass garage door opening front that opens to the outside to be able to give the feeling of that Spanish open product It's going to be very interesting as you walk down the hill on Forsyth, when the doors are completely open, you will see a half-round wall that is in the restaurant. It's the staircase that goes upstairs. And a Spanish mural on there. I'm hoping to... use the alleyway, the brick site of the building to put some artwork on there as well. Landlord already agreed to that. So it's going to be pretty interesting.

Cool. When are you targeting to open?

So I'm hoping for opening date on the 28th of August, which is very soon. But everything has been in place already. There was a restaurant in there before. So all the infrastructure is there. I just decided to buy all brand new equipment for cooking and refrigeration stuff. So that's all coming in. A little bit of painting. Like I said, the biggest thing is the front facade of the building to make that, to make a change in that so that it becomes again the same style that I've had before.

We would still need to approve a liquor license for liquor, right? That's usually a separate action. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

All

right. Thank you.

Anybody

else? Come on up, Elizabeth. My name is Elizabeth and I live on

Brighton Way. I'm just concerned about the fact of on sidewalk dining, which I'm thrilled about with the exception of when I want to walk down the sidewalk. And I just need to know that the city of Clayton has some kind of regulation about how far out onto the sidewalk that seating can go so that people who are wanting to walk on that sidewalk because they don't want to walk across the fire department's driveway or whatever. That is kept and enforced. Because I've experienced that on Central in the past, and it's really unfortunate.

We absolutely, there are definitely regulations in place that provide that tables and chairs have to not be in the right of way so that at a minimum, a wheelchair can go through. So obviously then people walking. So if there are problems with it, then people from quota enforcement, people can come out and take a look and remind business owners that they can't encroach upon the sidewalk.

Is there any kind of markers or marking that can be done for a restaurant that wants to do outside seating, very subtle in the sidewalk or that can be not something that sticks up, maybe just paint or something like that, that could show them where you got to

stop. I'm not sure. I don't know if we'd want to put anything permanent on the sidewalk. I'm not

talking big lines like in the street, but yeah.

I mean, perhaps that's something to think about if there's continued violations. But yeah, I don't think that we generally do that, no.

I didn't think so, which is why it's tough walking down Central, or it used to be before the apartment building came in. Thank you very

much. Thank you. Anybody else?

So I will close the public hearing. Okay.

I move to approve Resolution 2023-26, granting a CUP for 7810A Forsyth Boulevard for a restaurant doing business as Barcelona.

Second. Any questions,

comments? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Got your permit, Frank. Thank you. I look forward to it.

Now we're at the point in the agenda for the consent agenda. Any comments or questions? Otherwise, I will, Alderman Buse.

Okay.

I move to approve the consent agenda with the items listed. Second. Questions or comments? Alderman Buse? Aye.

Alderman Patel? Aye. Alderman Gary Feder?

Alderman Patel? Aye. Alderman Fader?

Alderman Rick Hummell?

Alderman Hummel?

Mayor Pro Tem McAndrew?

Aye.

Thank you.

All right, the next item on the agenda is our third quarter budget amendment. Karen, I'm

assuming you'll come on up. Did anyone have any questions after reviewing the third

quarter budget amendment?

They actually got through.

the budget amendment? No, on the

The financial report. I'm just starting with the budget amendment. Did anyone have any questions about the budget amendment? No. Okay. Then we can move on to the financial report. you want to start with your questions or do you want me to bring up? I think it's fair to

Okay. Um, okay. So, um, to start with by the end of the third quarter, the majority of our real estate personal property taxes have been received. We do receive some trickling in sometimes usually around this time of year, we start to see like negative inflows, which is always really fun to book. Um, if you'll notice, excuse me, so sorry. Um, We are at 96% overall collection rate. After looking into this and doing some calculations, we had a very large amount of new construction for our 2022 assessed valuation. And those numbers are deducted from our post BOE assessed valuation, which is what that 4% is after doing the math. So if you have any questions about that 96%, that's what that represents. Our utility taxes, sales taxes, parking revenue, those are all up over last year. In my opinion, it's because everyone's coming back. I don't know if anyone else has noticed a lot more people around here, but I definitely have. Personnel costs are up. We've had new hires coming in at higher rates, and we've also got fewer vacancies than we had at this time last year. As we've continued to note, for a while now, the cost of commodities and contractual services are higher than they have been. So if you notice in your report, they are higher than they were this time period last year. They just keep going. I'm so sorry. Sales taxes are up overall by 7.3% over last fiscal year, and hotels are up 36.9% since the same time last year. If you'll look at the little chart In the little back where I compared the different industries, you can see that hotels have gone up significantly. Restaurant sales taxes have also increased by about 23.7% over last fiscal year, and they've increased 80.2% over the third quarter in fiscal year 21, which is kind of where we saw that big dip due to the pandemic. Vehicle sales are up by 12.87% from last year, and grocery pharmacy and liquor sales are up 34.4% from last year. Across all funds, the revenue is at 83.4% of budget, excluding other financing sources and total expenditures, excluding other financing uses as at 62.2% of budget. Now some of those revenues are cyclical like the property taxes so like I said we've received the majority of the property taxes that we're going to receive through the third quarter and. like business licensing, that just happened in June and July. So we'll see those revenues come in the fourth quarter report. So does anyone have any questions on any of that information? What you got?

Can I do a point of clarification? In your question, Rick, you talked about the surplus or deficit line. And for FY23, we're projecting a deficit of just over $4 million. In all funds and then in the general fund, that's 2.3 million of that.

Okay. But so I want to make sure I understand that means like so far, we have a surplus of 5.4 but as we look at our continued revenue and expenses for the last quarter we're going to end up with a $4 million deficit.

you handle it, but no.

I'm asking. I have no idea.

This is what I would always recommend before we get to year end. So we're looking at a three-quarter snapshot. So each one of these funds is different in its progress, especially on the expense side through this part of the year. and really on the revenue side too, because if you're property tax heavy, that's already been collected. If it's sales tax, you're not going to have all that money until later. So I always recommend breaking this down and looking at each fund individually. So I know we have the all funds listed and you always do that on financial reports, but it's really, really helpful to look at those separately. And when you look at the general fund, and this was your question there, we had In the budget, as you see here, the amended budget number, we had projected a deficit of about $2.3 million for fiscal year 23. The way we are through three quarters is we're projecting that we're gonna have a surplus. However, all the property tax has been collected at this point. We've got a bunch of expenses that come in the latter part of the year. So those contractual services that we have for mowing, for lifeguards, for other things, those all start to hit later in the year. You're gonna see that surplus number under the general fund erode from that number that's there. We don't think it's going to be as bad as the $2.3 million deficit that we had projected because the revenue numbers are stronger than what we had anticipated. We had anticipated about a 5% increase in sales tax. The number, as Karen said, is about 8.3% at this point in time and looks to be... picking up some steam maybe, which is a little bit more than what we had projected. So that number is going to erode and the trend that we have here is a downward trend. And that's going back to the decision that was made as far as waste collection is to put next year in a better position where we stop that erosion by turning that billing over. So I don't know if that helps or not, but if you look at 22 through the third quarter to where we are now, we fully anticipated that we would be lower this year. We thought we'd be considerably lower though.

For your question regarding fund accounting and whether we can use money from other accounts outside the general fund to support the general fund, we do have in the current fiscal year budget, so 2023, and then when you get the proposed budget in 2024, There is a transfer that's been in place since 2019 from the capital fund to the general fund that exists here. That's about $650,000 I believe for fiscal year 23. Now that we're looking at 24 numbers to I'm trying to remember exactly where it's at. but that's about the extent of the support. That particular money that's transferred from the capital fund to the general fund can be used for a couple of different purposes, but primarily what it is is maintenance on capital items is a qualifying expense and personnel expenses related to capital projects. So think engineers, those types of expenses. So that's a transfer that's been occurring since 2019. It's in this budget here. It is in the proposed budget. It's probably a conversation we'll have again with the board because what we're anticipating next year going forward with 24, now that we've taken waste collection off the books, is that we're gonna run a surplus as we'd shown the board before. The question is, well, you have that operational transfer going from capital to the general fund. If you know you're gonna run a surpluss, You rather, or we rather, and our recommendation will be that that fund, that extra money stay in the fund balance for the general fund rather than capital because it could be used for a multitude of purposes where if it's kept in the capital fund, then you're limited as to the scope for the usage. So to answer your question, yes, there is some inter-fund transfer that you can do, but it's very limited and we do take advantage of that. Okay, so that's

so excuse me i'm so sorry and i'm gonna throw some numbers at you because our 2021 assessed valuation was around 683 million we had 1.5 million in new construction and the new construction amount is subtracted from the post-BOE assessed valuation. And this is just residential numbers, I'm not gonna throw them all at you. Which makes our residential assessed valuation after subtracting to our assessed valuation base 682 million. In 2022, our assessed valuation before new construction was 689 million. Well, we had 10 million in new construction so that reduced that by about 10 million which made our taxable base $679 million as compared to the 2021 $682 million. The new construction will get put back in this year. It's just they subtract it out of our total assessed valuation because they don't pay on the full year.

it's all of it. So when, when a piece of property is in construction, excuse me, I'm so sorry. I've been doing this all day. When it's in construction, it goes, it's not carried at that higher value. Once it's put into place and it's functional, then it goes on our rolls at that higher value, but that doesn't typically happen say January one. So they, they don't take that into consideration. Like that new construction number is the new construction, but because they're not paying, that's the value of that new construction, but they're not paying on that full amount, they're taking it out of our full assessed valuation. It will eventually come back on at a high value.

And we will, but we will also see a little bit of ebb and flow in the meantime while we're having this construction happen.

Yeah, I think what would be helpful is Karen ran some numbers and they actually, you can see with the math how she got to that. We'll put together a summary and send that out. So you can look at true numbers and how all this factors in.

I can try to answer that. What I would look at more than the over under the previous year, because a lot of that is compensation, but some of those are one-time expenses that may fall into that department as well, is if you look at the budget percent received to date on those, you can see we're really right on track with all of them. So through three quarters, we've got two departments that are at 75%. The others are you know, under the mark where we thought we would be expense wise. Each department's going to have a different reason for why their amounts going to fluctuate year to year. So in planning, if you look at the budgeted amount because of the comprehensive plan, it looks like it's significantly more in 23 than it was in 22. But when you look at the total expended amount for planning and development, you'll see it's only at 61%. That's because we just kicked off the comprehensive plan and we haven't incurred any expenses really to date. on that particular project. So there's really a story to be told with each one of these departments, and it varies a little bit from one department to the next. Overall, with salaries and benefits and insurance related to that, I believe with personnel expenses, we had put year over year, I think it was 7%-ish. It was a 3% increase. And then with health insurance and everything else, I think it year-over-year increase that we've anticipated there. Personnel expenses, again, about 77% of our overall expenditures in the general fund. And when you look at the raw numbers and you look at the personnel expenses, um, and you see that 1.2 million number, you know, that looks like a huge increase over the prior year. Um, but that's a big increase, um, over the actual amount for last year. And if you look at last year under personnel services, and so just so everybody can follow, we're on page 37 here under expenditures, which is the middle category on the page. You can see the amended budget was $19.5 million, let's call it, for personnel. We only spent $19 million because we had significant turnover last year. So there was about a half million dollars in savings there that's actually carried over into that year-over-year comparison. So it's really about $700,000 in budgeted amounts that were over. And that $500,000 was just savings that was realized through turnover. Personnel generally is kind of a tricky one. You can see where it's 72%. As Karen had stated earlier, we've had a lot of turnover this year. However, when we hire new people in, they're coming in at a higher rate than we had been paying previously because we can't get anybody at the starting rate, which is why we did the comp study and why we're bumping pay up. So people keep coming in at the midpoint. With the turnover levels we had, if we hadn't had to make that adjustment and bring people in at a higher I would think quite a bit less than what you see on here. The other effect that we have, especially with public safety is when we have people that aren't here, the people that backfill those spots, we're paying overtime for that. So it's expensive when we have openings. So it's been really interesting to see how personnel plays out this year. I don't know if I got your actual answer there, but I wanted to break down kind of how that expense category worked out. Well,

Yeah, so that has been the trends since before the pandemic, and that's continuing here. And it's going to continue. Like you said, we can control personnel costs by just how competitive we want to be within the market. Unfortunately, with commodities and capital outlay, we go through line by line and we've really cut back since 2020 on everything possible to run our services. So when we're talking commodities, it's only 4% of the general fund, but those are things like salt and fuel and other, you're going to have to buy those supplies out. So we're at the mercy of inflation on that particular item and inflation has been hot and that's showing up on the sheet here. Capital outlay, those big increases that you talked about like in parks and rec, those are things like lifeguard services that went up significantly this past year. Our mowing contract went up a lot on contractual services. Those are just examples where everything on the expense side is outpacing revenue at this point. So yes, it is a concern. you know, thankfully we have a lot of big projects that are underway, uh, that eventually will hit the books, uh, and help on the real estate tax side. Um, we're hoping that the hotel occupancy rate gets better because that's a significant portion of our sales tax. Uh, and it still hasn't recovered. And we talked about that previously this evening. So there's still a lot of work to be done there and you're, you're right. Expenses are outpacing revenue. Um, and short of, um, increases to taxes. I'm not sure how you shore that revenue side up any more than it already is and the way we've attacked it with the waste collection decision was this particular issue. is to take something off the expense side. And that's gonna buy us some time and as we ran those projections, it buys us maybe five years or so before we need to have another conversation potentially about revenue. And I'm not sure after going through line by line what more we can do on the expense side. Because what we don't want to do is run into the turnover problems that we've had. So while you can control personnel and what you're paying, there's also been a big detrimental impact with all of that turnover. The only other thing... We're in a tough spot. And

We utilize every cooperative purchasing opportunity that's out there currently. Especially on the capital side, every vehicle we buy most of our capital expenses that aren't going out. Well, even buying the pavilion for the park last time we used a cooperative. We buy all of our salt through cooperatives. Fuel, we're not buying that just at retail on our own. So those major expenses, insurance is a great example. We pool with 17 other cities in an insurance trust and get competitive rates that way. So we utilize as many of those opportunities as we can. I would love to see more regional collaboration in certain areas. um and i think that's that's something that needs to be explored but it's something where we need other cities that are willing to do that with us and the way that typically works is it's slow going i mean dispatch is a great uh example of seven cities getting together and providing a common service and we've realized savings by doing that and i think we could do it in other areas as well but we need partners that are willing to step up and um trying to figure that out together. So I, I totally

yeah i agree but that that is the trend and that's that's the takeaway and when we talk about the budget again you know we're going to be fortunate where we're going to in a surplus situation uh for a couple years but we're doing that knowing that on the back side of that expenses are going to overtake revenues again and we're going to need a little bit of a cushion before we have to make some some hard decisions on the revenue side

thank you I think we have any other discussion related to the budget

amendment? I'd like to introduce bill number 6985 to approve fiscal year 2023 third quarter budget amendment to be read for the first time by title only.

Second.

Discussion.

Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6985, first reading an ordinance amending the fiscal year 2023 budget and appropriating funds pursuant thereto.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? I move that the board give unanimous consent to consider for adoption bill number 6985 on the day of its introduction.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Let the minutes reflect that the board has given unanimous consent.

Introduce bill number 695 to approve fiscal year 2023 third quarter budget amendment to be read for the second time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion? Just any attorney?

Bill number 6985, second reading and consideration for adoption. An ordinance amending the fiscal year 2023 budget and appropriating funds pursuant thereto.

Alderwoman Buse? Aye. Alderwoman Patel? Aye. Alderman Gary Feder?

Alderwoman Buse? Aye. Alderwoman Patel? Aye. Alderman Fader?

Aye.

Aldermen Rick Hummell? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem McAndrew? Aye. Thank you.

Aldermen Hummel? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem McAndrew? Aye. Thank you.

That's it.

That is it. I would just want to thank Karen Dilber and her staff. They've been shorthanded really all year, or for the most part, they're full staff now, which has been a long time coming. But all the stuff you see in front of you this evening, along with the audit that's been with a new firm this year. So they've been having to go back and dig out information from years and years and years ago as a part of that process. It's been a lot of work and I appreciate everything they've done. So thank you, Karen. Great. Thanks, Karen.

Thank you, Karen. All

right. If we want to go around quick. Yes, unfortunately, I've had a kind of crazy summer and missed a couple committee meetings. But one thing I do want to share tonight is I know that our particular neighborhood is having a flock camera meeting to see if we should add them with the neighborhood buying them and then tying into the surveillance by the police department. I just want to understand the support it gives to public safety, which is wonderful. And we should proceed with those types of efforts. But I also want us to be circumspect if you look at the flock cameras and the surveillance and concerns with over policing and continuing to use our structures for, you know, continuing whether you're through equity, racism, things like that. It's a concern and we should go in this intentionally with our eyes open. If you look again, if you do a Google on these cameras, You're going to see ACLU suggesting certain conditions in there that we put when we contract to erase data as it's collected. And to watch out, it was used to, you know, there's one report it was used to track Black Lives Matters protesters. And the use, it's subject to abuse. This flock is a private company, a private national database that everyone participating can access to some degree. And we need to go in with our eyes open and not just jump on this public safety bandwagon. This is not only people driving through our neighborhoods, which we want to welcome, but it's also us. It's also our kids. And you can go back, depending on when the data is collected, you can go back years and find out how someone travels, where they go and what they do. And I certainly have full trust and confidence in our law enforcement and our city government officials at this particular time, but our structures have to captured that. And I don't know that I have that same familiarity with or trust with outstate whatever, or people all around the country and whomever might have access to getting the data. So when we're collecting data, giving it to a private company, a collection site like that, that's accessible to everyone who contracts with them, we have to be careful. And I think we need to research. And I'd like to know if we do have contract provisions for erasing the information over time, things like that. Maybe we need a board discussion. Maybe it's already in place. I don't know, but let's be careful going through it, especially as our neighborhoods jump on it to buy those cameras.

Was this just a trustee initiated?

Right there. Our neighborhood trustees are initiating and we're meeting in a couple of weeks and they're going to take a vote whether to buy them, which I know other neighborhoods have already done. And again, when I've looked at this,

I'm sorry, who purchases them?

I think it's the neighborhoods who purchased the cameras and then they tie into, then we do the monitoring and everything else. Yeah. Sure.

That's correct. Some neighborhoods first start off in the Hillcrest neighborhood after they had their carjacking and they're looking for a solution to provide security down there. They pay for one camera in their neighborhood, and we have access to that data. And that data can be shared with other agencies. Actually, I'm sorry, the camera that's owned by the neighborhood is only shared with the police department. The cameras that are owned by the city of Clayton can be shared with another agencies if we allow that to happen. And so residents in neighborhoods, like if if Claver Park is the cameras, they can actually opt out of it. So when the camera recognizes a camera license plate that's been on the no show list, it gets erased right away. So there is that option for residents who don't want their license recorded.

And when you look at the and again, this is just me doing an amateur look to get a feel for what this is all about, because, again, it sounds great in in the practice. And I think the way that you're using it, but it collects not only license plate, it can collect type of car, you know, whether it has a luggage rack, there's a lot of areas in there where you could be profiling something in a neighborhood. And again, it's, it's data that the data does go to the private company. Right. And I don't, I don't understand the accessibility and who can do it or not. And I understand that it's supposed to be in the contract that you have with flock exactly where that access happens, or maybe from our neighborhoods, communicating with you and then you pass that information

on. The neighborhood can see the data, but they can have policies in place to say, usually there's a trustee who administers it. In Hillcrest, there's three trustees and we discussed that. As trustees, do they want to look at the data or just hand it over to make sure the police have access to it and that's it? I gave them some model policies to look at that they can review for their neighborhood. But, you know, with the, we can see the blyson plate but blyson plate, the flock system won't tell us who owns that car. We still have to access the criminal justice database to find out who owns the car. That's another search in a any abuse of that system is subject to charges, and there was a sale and I sent you an email responding to your email by the way.

there's a St. Louis County police officer who was charged a couple years ago for abusing that system so there are, you know, there are consequences for abuse. We do audit the system and Regis audits that's regional justice information system. They conduct audits as well. Every year they come in they randomly look at searches and they'll ask you why you search something. So, there are those type of things in place to prevent people from abusing it.

Right, and that gives me some comfort. And I don't know if this is a discussion because this is just a reporting out time. I appreciate that information, but it's something we may want to look at. If our neighborhoods are doing it, if we're doing it as a city, understanding where this technology is going because the more and more information that's collected on each of us We just have to know that that's okay and that it's actually serving us and not getting us in situations.

And I want to point out that we don't go to neighborhoods and say, you got to get these cameras. No, you don't. They come to us and usually ask about it.

It's a fear of the car, the car jingling of the handles breaking into cars. And so it's property damage things that were, I just don't want us to go overboard in trying to do. I like the

idea of us having a discussion and understanding like what policies are in place and if or how the policies differ based on who paid for the camera and what is our role then in each of those different scenarios and stuff. I think that'd be good just for clarity and then to figure out if there is something to do or not. Yeah.

Great. We can do that. Thank you. That's it.

Thanks. I had the pleasure of attending the MAPERS conference since I last reported out. That's the Missouri Association of Public Employee Retirement Systems, so learned about some fiduciary and different responsibilities. It was great. Good experience. And then we had a sustainability meeting today. The overwhelming like part of the meeting was discussing benchmarking and building energy performance standards but still remember we had a presentation. from Emily Andrews from the Green Building Council some time ago about what the city of St. Louis does with that. And so the sustainability committee is considering making a recommendation to us about setting a program like that in place. So they're kind of considering what they think some of the thresholds or the substance of that recommendation, but we can expect that probably in the next couple of months. That's it. Oh, I also attended the open house. I know many of you did some of you were in the picture that we saw, I think tonight if I recognize, but I thought it was a great event and I'm really looking forward to the other like future engagements and there's a lot of interesting things that people bring up. So, thanks.

I tried to find myself in the picture from the open house, but I wasn't, but I was there. And I thought it was well done. I mean, you know, I'm sure we'll get more people as time goes on. So I think the only thing I would mention is since I knew Steve Strom, our new judge previously, I had coffee with him last week. And so he's a, I think he's a good, good man. I think he'll do an excellent job. So I think between, between that and our new, our prosecutor, I think we're going to see some, some positive things.

I would like to report on that because I forgot that we had a meeting with him with the subcommittee of the Equity Commission. Have we talked about this? Have you guys? Okay. And it was just a very open and interesting discussion. He's just learning, obviously, the position and getting into the data and the current state. But what seemed really open to just like you know, questioning and learning a little bit. So it was a good, it was a really good like discussion. And I know certainly the equity commission members that were part of it, I think felt Like it made them feel very good about the system and the process that we have in place. You know, like transparency increases confidence and systems and stuff like that. So it was a great example of that. Great.

to now. Two pieces of this so one like you said big bend is a huge theme here we had one initial meeting with St Louis county. But it was really conceptual in nature, and I think we need to get a little more specific about what kind of improvements may be required there and i'm not sure that we have enough data on the wash you side. To make that determination at this point, but if we could have some understanding of what may potentially happen there. I think that would go a long way with the neighborhoods. And I think it's something we need to have in hand. So continuing to work on the traffic part is one. The second is building the overlay out with specificity. So we heard a lot of different concerns. So concerns, as you said about lighting buffers, drainage, those are all elements that you can control and regulate within an overlay district. So it's, this is what we heard as far as concerns and this is how we can protect our neighborhoods and alleviate those concerns uh in the regulatory framework so the next steps are going through along with anna and i'm sure we'll have a lot of conversations with with washoe and concordia um about those parameters and we're going to put together the specific overlays. So the next time we're talking to the public, a lot of the vagueness that's there when we talk about things like lighting and drainage and those types of things, we want to have very specific information about how we might regulate that in an overlay district. So that's the next step is one, let's work on traffic and then two, let's put these overlays together so we can have a real conversation about what those regulations look like.

If I can just tag on to that, and again, this doesn't do with the overlay as much as the safety on the county-controlled rolls, Hanley is incredibly dangerous as well. And if this is an opportunity to have a conversation with them on how to handle Big Ben safety, you know, that sidewalk there, we've had instances where people have been seriously injured there. If we could broaden that conversation, if the opportunity is there, I hope that we grab it.

That's what I was going to say. You know, because I think development, like new development, like this potential WashU Concordia thing does open that discussion where, you know, you can bring the sidewalk in or widen the sidewalk to make it better for pedestrians and bikes. And, you know, Hanley, there's not quite as much opportunity, but you're right. I mean, it's horrible. So yeah, you would love to see new development in places on Hanley, if only... because it allows for different you know sidewalk widths and you know that you know i don't know if the county's gonna you know i would love to just see like a raised platform or something because hanley is terrible um i just had we had a plan

do you mind if i ask a question since the discussion came up about the um if the next step the next step is actually like working on the overlay. And I want to be clear about like who like owns and is responsible for that. Like I might, I believe that like the city develops the overlay.

That's correct. That's

right. We're not and we're taking into consideration everything we've heard from all of the residents and folks interested in the area, we are not necessarily like trying to meet any particular needs of the institution? How do we think about who we're serving in

doing it?

Yeah,

that's a great question. So we are the applicant in the end to establish the overlay, to do the text amendment, right? So they're not going to submit an application to say, hey, amend your code. We're the ones that own that process. So we're going to own the document and we're going to uh, take the feedback that we received in those community meetings. And those are the things that we're going to try to mitigate. Uh, what we need to know from the institutions is, and they haven't been, um, overly specific if you've been in those meetings, but what is it that you intend to build here? So that we know what those targets are from a youth standpoint. So that way we can try to figure out what's some reasonable building heights, maybe those types of things. Uh, but in the end, no, I, our, our job here is to, uh, preserve those neighborhoods and the quality of life and the concerns that we heard. That's exactly what they are. And, um, I think when we put up the list of parameters that we added at the second community meeting, you know, I think most of the concerns that we heard in the room, those are all incorporated in that information. So for us now we need to go in and fill in the blanks and get specific. But in the end, it's the city that has to move forward with the text amendment. They don't have an application. They don't a formal site plan that they're going to submit or anything like that. So this would need to ultimately be a city initiative. So it's absolutely critical that for meeting the community's needs, so. Thank you.

If I can jump onto that too, something that I've had to clarify. I think that the way some of the presentations happened, which I understand why, is clarifying that even though everyone may be sitting maybe on the panel up there with the universities we are a separate entity. We are taking feedback to do an overlay to control, you know, we're not advocating for them. I think that that clear distinction that we are representing the neighborhoods and the city as a whole, which does include, quite honestly, our university members, and they bring us a lot of good, but it's a clear divide in the responsibilities the roles and the we

are we are the applicant it's our overlay when we start talk about traffic on on um big ben that will be a city hired traffic engineer now we'll make them pay for it but we're going to select the engineer um and we're going to run that process as well and figuring out what that should look like just like we do with every project uh that you've seen come up with a pud or anything else so uh no we're the ones that are in control here. They don't have a formal application to make, but we have to hear from them what it is they want to achieve so that we know how to build this. And in the end, what you're trying to do is find that balance where if you can find a way for those institutions to thrive and with whatever kind of growth they need, and at the same time, protect the neighborhoods, that's the aim here. So, and it's tough and it requires a lot of community input. And I feel like that's been our priority all along and that's where our effort continues to be.

And I had one other quick question I wasn't going to bring up, but since we started this. So we do have overlay districts other places, including downtown and we've had this issue about the PUD essentially preempting the overlay. And so I would think at some point we're going to raise the question if I if I lived over there anywhere Clayton. you know, are we going to go through a very extensive overlay with lots of regulations and then projects either by most likely by Washington University would qualify as a PUD given the amount of acreage involved. And so how do we avoid the risk of the ultimate PUD three years from now preempting this very detailed overlay district and result in exactly what the residents don't want.

First off, I don't think they meet the requirements for a PUD under the zoning code. But secondly, we can prevent that from happening and put that in as an exclusion. We did that in the Maryland Gateway overlay where we were working with the Heights and the Williamsburg shop area over there.

I guess that's what I was thinking is that maybe we deal with that up front. That's not an option.

I think... The end product needs to be rigid, and I think everybody involved understands that. And I think that's one of the biggest neighborhood concerns is, hey, you're going to put this together, and they're going to find a way around it. And so

So we had a planning commission last night, a planning commission meeting. And the big we talked about because we talked about Barcelona last time I can't remember. No, maybe that was two weeks ago. But the big thing was pretty quickly the project where the world news site across the street came back really quickly. We continued I mean, I mean it was a formal application, we continued it because they don't have they had to get a new parking study because the project had changed so We didn't vote on it last night, but it was a long presentation, a long discussion. They definitely changed the parking garage so that it kind of matches the rest of the building, so it's more attractive. Just some highlights they did do, I mean, part of as the building, you know, with the way the topography is over there, where the jazz club is going to be, I mean, it's a pretty big space. I think it fits upwards of 400 people or something like that, so And I did David from Midas. I told him I could quote him on it. He said, if they can't find a third party that they would do it themselves, that they would operate it themselves. So we'll see. And another cool thing is they do plan a couple murals on the building. And then also an art piece at the corner so I don't know it's, you know, it's a hotel. But I think they, you know, they did make a lot of changes based on the original feedback from the conceptual hearing so we'll see I think and then it'll go, it'll come back in a couple weeks,

Yeah, it's Canopy by Hilton, which I did a search. There's not very many canopies like there's a couple in Europe and there might be one in the United States but yeah they're pretty uncommon. They have a canopy that kind of goes over the bed like a wood canopy. paneling that kind of is their signature thing i think in their guest rooms but

yeah

so it is a product

there's one in columbus ohio yes yeah i stayed there last year because when we were talking about that project they had mentioned hilton canopy and the hearings i made sure when i went to a conference i stayed there it's very nice

i mean if the it looks i mean inside the pictures obviously they look it

Go to Columbus and check it out.

Also, and there's a seventh floor terrace that is just open. You can walk in there. And so we had a discussion if some of our unhoused population would come up and just sit for hours at a time. So, but it would just be something that would be somewhat attached to the bar up there. But yeah, you can just go up there at any point and sit and read a book. And so we'll see. Yeah,

awesome presentation. We'll see. Great. Anybody else? I guess I move to adjourn. Bye.