December 19, 2025 — Meeting Transcript

Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for coming. It's December 19th. We're here for our Friday afternoon discussion session. Myron, could you call the roll?

Yes, I can. Council Member Buse?

Here.

Council Member Patel? Here. Council member Gary Feder? Here. Councilmember Humble? Here. CouncilMember Waldman?

Council Member Patel? Here. Council member Fader? Here. Councilmember Humble? Here. CouncilMember Waldman?

Here.

Team manager, David Gipson. Mayor McAndrew.

Team manager, David Gibson. Mayor McAndrew.

Here. And I know council member Jeffery Yorg will be here a little bit later after there's a lot of holiday elementary holiday concerts this afternoon. So so I think the first item and we're going to talk about today is some lighting some new lights in Clayton. So I'll invite our Matt Malik, our public works director.

Here. And I know council member York will be here a little bit later after there's a lot of holiday elementary holiday concerts this afternoon. So so I think the first item and we're going to talk about today is some lighting some new lights in Clayton. So I'll invite our Matt Malik, our public works director.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, we were back for round two. If you recall, last time we were here, we were getting an idea on some of the streetlight fixtures that we'll be installing for some streetlighting projects we have throughout town, as well as restoration from the tornado so that we could dive deeper into the selections that go with the poles for the standardization of those lights throughout the area. You'll see Rich is going to come provide some information here, but you'll see as we get into it, there's a multitude of poll options. And we provided some options that give you an idea of some cost ranges so that we can go even further and try to find something that fits. It just ended up being a lot more options, I think, than we anticipated. But with that, I'm going to turn it over to Rich Wilburn, our principal civil engineer who's managing the lighting projects in White Elm Forest and High Point Dubon and going through the selection process. He'll recap some of the previous information. we covered and then some of the new information on polls and costs.

Hey Matt, just so we're clear. So are you looking for some, I mean, do you want us to potentially pick something or are we narrowing it down? Just giving you some direction just so I'm clear on what you're looking

at. I think at this point we were hoping to get a selection with all the different options we have here. I feel it's a little maybe unfair to ask you to pick one. I think it's some direction from what we were finding. There's so many options. got a little some cost range but some direction on we like that and then we can finalize it some more with the different manufacturers

thank you thank you

yeah and ultimately the the reason for that is we don't have another meeting as you know until uh january 13th so four weeks from now and we want to get going on putting together that scope of work so we can bid the street route street light replacement in the city so every week we can save on that is you know another week sooner that we've got lights back up in these areas so

As Matt said, I think I've met, stood up here in front of most of you guys before. I am Rich Wilburn, the principal civil engineer for the city. We are, as Matt presented to you last time, and as we mentioned a few minutes ago, we are starting to peel away the layers of this onion and get down into the transportation. We're trying to keep you out of the weeds so that we're presenting you with some curated options and you can give us some guidance as to which direction you'd like to see this process take forward. As you recall, last time, you know, we kind of showed you where our existing streetlight concern areas are. We are currently working as part of the modernization, the regular modernization project in the High Point, Des Moines, White Island Forest area. And then we also have the situation where from our tornado damage in May, where we have a lot of lights that are going to need to be replaced. And what we want to do is we want to make sure that when we're putting new lights in, we're working towards having a single light standard for the entire city as much as possible. At the very least, to come up with a pole standard so that if there is some variation in the luminaires, We can work with those, but if a pole gets knocked over or damaged and needs to be replaced, we want to be able to have those on hand to replace them or put the other fixtures back in, however that works out. But we're trying to get some consistency right now to, as Matt pointed out last time, what is very much running the gamut of all different design types and options here. As you can see, and Matt mentioned last time again, we do have a wide variety of light fixtures, poles, pole materials, bases. Essentially, the wiring and the power systems and everything are all sort of standard, and they don't vary much between our choices there. But obviously, there's a very wide range. variation and a wide availability of options for us when we start looking into these both from manufacturers and from each manufacturer has dozens and dozens of styles and options as well. And just to kind of recap, Matt went through in more detail, but these are kind of the general things that we're looking at when we're evaluating these things for the future. You know, we want somebody to supply us who's going to be around for the whole time that it takes us to do this project. We want to look at all of the aesthetic options. And then from sustainability standpoint, we want to look at energy consumption. We want to look dark sky friendly so that we're keeping all of the things that are, that are important that we've made important in the city in mind as we move forward. But what we're really looking for here is interchangeability can consistency and just being able to stock this kind of material on hand. So yeah, As Matt presented last time, we presented two significant options. There was a third that we didn't follow up on because the general consensus that we got back was that it wasn't really something we wanted to look at. So this is the first option. I think the The general feeling on this one was that this was an acceptable option. I think the second one that we'll look at here shortly was the preferred option. So we kind of ran a little farther down that, but we wanted to give you a little follow-up on this one as well. So the second one that looked at was the Sternberg lighting system, and that comes from a whole family of lighting that goes all the way up from street lighting, cobra head type lighting, all the way down to accent lighting on walls and bollards and things like that. So going back to the first option, the manufacturer here is Signify. You probably knew them better, maybe if you've heard of Phillips before, but now their lighting branch is called Signify. They are a world leader in this field. Good reputation. They're These options that we're looking at are all dark sky friendly. Again, Philips signifies it everywhere. They've been around for pushing 130, 140 years, so we have good confidence in them and they're going to be there when we need them. That particular fixture that we looked at is called the Signify Town View, and it has more of that colonial lantern look. Those luminaires, depending on the exact features like the lenses and stuff, those range from 1,800 to about $2,000 just for the light part of the fixture itself. This particular manufacturer, they sell theirs actually all as a unit. So the pole and the base are all contiguous. They're all one piece. So you may be familiar with our streetlights downtown. They're poles bolted to the ground that have been a clamshell base that goes over those that allows us maintenance access and then gives it a more aesthetic look. This particular manufacturer, their pole options as I said, are all built into a single piece. And so you see here, all of their options are the fluted poles, which we have in a lot of places around town. The standard 15 foot fluted pole will range from $2,750 to $3,000. And you can see the costs go up with each level of increased detail and the height of the bases and stuff. So when you take that previous cost, the $1,800 to $2,000 for the fixture, and a range of the poles that are available, you're looking at a total unit cost. And this is our little asterisk there. This is the hardware cost. As I mentioned before, the wires, the control system and everything is sort of a sunk cost. That's going to be the same no matter who we go with. So what we're really boiling it down to here is just picking the part that you see, the outside part, what looks nice, what works well, and we'll take it from there. So your total unit cost with the luminaire on this can range, if you were going to go with something like what's on the left, could be as low as $4550 per pole. If you go with something as complicated as the one on the right, it could be as high as $6500 per pole. So that gives you kind of an idea of not just the range of costs, but sort of the variability of options that we're trying to wade through here. Going back to the second option that you guys had looked at last time, this is the Sternberg E350. It's called the Euro. As you guys may or may not know, Sternberg manufactures our existing central business district street lights, our streetscape lights, I should say. We have a history of working with them. They've been around for a long time. as we mentioned is something that we're kind of interested in, belonging to a family of lights that is scalable. And we can put these in different places. You could put bollards in Shaw Park that might have lights on top and they would match these lights that would be everywhere else in the city. They are dark sky friendly. Your poles and your bases in this case are separate and they're interchangeable. So you can kind of pick one and pick another and mix and match and put things together. So the Luminaire itself in the standard size is about $2,100. So it's a little more expensive than the first one that we looked at. Your basic round poles, which go down to the ground and have just a round cover that goes over the base, those are $1,650. If you taper that pole, make it be about seven inches at the top, maybe five inch, or seven inches at the bottom, five at the top, then you would have about $2,000 for that pole. If we added the fluting, which you can see the difference between the smooth pole and the fluting on that, that will push that up to about 2,350. than a flare decorative base. These are actually kind of where a lot of the money on these gets spent. The actual cost that you see there, the $4250 is for the one on the left there, which gives us a general range of $3750 to $8700. So again, there's a very wide number of options. And when we say that, We kind of mean that there are so many different specifics that we can choose from. So what we've tried to do is narrow it down to a few options and give you an idea of what the cost is going to be for not the basic, but sort of a more standard typical installation would be. Since we had a lot of feedback the last time that indicated that the Euro was a style that was popular and everybody seemed to agree that that was kind of the way to go, we wanted to look at other manufacturers other than just Sternberg and try to find something that was relatively similar. This company, NLS Lighting, have a model called the Del Mar. NLS is a newer entry into the market. They are American-made, like all of our others are. They are based in California. Their company is more known for being competitive price points, like bringing that value level up a little bit, but still maintaining good quality. The poles and the bases, like Sternberg's, are separate and interchangeable. They are dark sky friendly. And again, the cost for a single luminary unit of this kind is about $1,690. Again, we have multiple pole options. The round aluminum pole, $1345, going all the way up to the fluted pole at $2525. You can see the different shapes. That kind of gives you an idea of what we're talking about there. And again, decorative bases. The cost, again, is based on the one on the left. But there are, again, many, many, many options available to us. The total cost of that unit of the luminaire and the pole and the base would run anywhere from $3,035-ish to about $7,300, $7,350. So kind of what does all of this mean? There's obviously a very wide range of costs that are available here, and we want to put in the best possible product that we can. We want it to look nice. What we have to keep in mind is the scale of this investment. The estimated number of residential streetlight poles that will eventually be replaced in the city is somewhere in the neighborhood of about 950. That does not include parking lots, alleys, our parks, central business history, county routes, any of that. That's just really the residential poles that we're talking about. So a difference of $1,000 in that cost over the life of this project, each $1,000 more that we spend, we're talking about a million dollars more to the project on that scale. And obviously, this isn't something that we're going to be diving in and doing all in FY27 or something like that. This is going to be a multi-year project. And like everything else, the cost of materials and And electronics and all the street light, all the things that go into a street light are going up. So those costs will increase in the future. And again, just to reiterate, what we're talking about here is just the material cost. Not the wiring, not the control systems, none of that. This is basically just, you know, you already have the base in the ground. You already have the power run to it. This is the price to bolt the pole down, put a base cover on it if you want to, and put your new luminaires. So with that, that kind of wraps up what we wanted to present to you today at this stage. We'll be happy to, again in the future if we need to, we're going to be continuing to narrow this down to a few options based on hopefully the feedback that we get from you guys and then we will turn around and get you our recommendation as to what we should move forward with. So again, just to recap, There's the general options that we've curated so far and the range of prices. Basically, you're looking at that left line because I don't think we're going to be probably looking at putting in something as complicated as what would push it to the far side of that. But as you can see, there are a lot of variables for this. We're trying to boil that down to as few options as possible. I'll be happy to answer any questions if anybody has any.

Yep. Rich, thanks for that presentation. Yeah, we'll just kind of go around. Susan, I don't know. Do you have any questions?

Yeah, I do a couple. So the actual infrastructure, the wiring will be roughly the same no matter which option we choose. Okay. And then the desire for uniformity in the poles, does that include the pole and the base that you want everything the same? I

suppose that's...

What usually comes down?

I think the pole is the important part when we talk about interchangeability. When somebody comes in and, you know, we get a car that hits one or if we get one that we locate later on that needs to be replaced because it's been damaged for whatever reason or it started to degrade, there's a flaw in it or something, we'd like to be able to pull those poles off the shelf, replace the pole very quickly and If we can put that base back on again, great. If we have to get another one, we'll have some of those in the shop as well to replace those. But right now, we simply have to stock too many different replacements or we have to wait and order the replacement parts. And sometimes it takes a long time for those lights to get back up again.

To add on to that, Rich wasn't here the last time we presented it, but I think he did watch the video. But the goal is to have the same fixture, same pole for that. interoperability that he mentioned and be able to grab and install

for all the resident for the residential. And so the advantage of having the family of lights is extending beyond residential not that you can have a choice within residential areas you keep saying the benefit of that is

yeah when we talk about the family we were talking about scaling that up so it would go everything from parking lot a new cobra head down to 15 foot poles at residential areas again could be bollard lighting but everything looks the same it's considered about and if one needs to be replaced we'll have a dozen in the shop that we can bring out put it in and then take it from there.

And the other, just to make sure I'm clearing this too. So 950 need to be replaced. Is that true?

That's how many residential lights we have of this scale and neighborhood. Okay.

Everything is done. It's 950. We

look at the resident, not what needs to be replaced now.

Okay. Right. Okay. Um, Okay, and the quality and everything else of these are all comparable.

Consistently,

yeah. As far as the materials used and everything else. We're really just looking at a matter of style.

It's

more aesthetics than anything.

And those bases, because we know from option one and two from last time we had some feedback. Option three, it was a recommendation from our designers and suppliers. We understand they are newer. It did have a similar look to two, so because there was some lower-end cost savings, depending on where you go, we just wanted to throw it out there and get a little feedback, but... We were trying to narrow things down, not broaden them, but we did want to include that one.

Okay. And then the dark sky, what was the term you used? Friendly?

Friendly, yeah.

Compliant. They're all compliant. So they're all pretty much the same range of dark sky compliance. They all should

be available in both 2700 and 3000, the temperature, the color of the lighting.

Right. And they all shine down their targeted areas. That's correct.

Rich, I'm sorry. And just to follow up. So the temperature for all these lights would be about 2,700 or 3,000? 2,700

or 3000. They're available in either. And

that

would

be the

temperature throughout the city? We've looked at trying to get ones that were scale are switchable. That's kind of a higher end feature and it can be more expensive. So we will continue to look into that. But at this point, we are looking at kind of picking one or the other.

Yeah, 3000K is dark sky compliant. 3000K or lower is dark sky compliant The switchable feature sometimes rules those lights out from dark sky compliance if you have the ability to change it higher, even if you don't use it.

Yeah. And the last thing, there was one more thing. I think I probably said that before. The last thing, when we heard this last time, there was a question with the more modern lighting that we may not need as many poles. If you're starting with a blank slate and spacing them, you might not need as many

I would not characterize it, I guess, that way. With cobra heads, they can be spaced out wider.

Okay, that was just a

cobra

head.

With these lights, I expect it's going to have less output, more evenly distributed, but not necessarily further spaced. In some cases, they might be slightly tighter spaced.

So it's pretty much the same of what we have. Gotcha. Thank you.

That difference, I think what Matt had talked about from my viewing of the review of the video was more along the lines of if we decided to replace Cobra heads with these residential style, you would need a lot more of those to get the same even spacing of the light and the consistency.

Thanks. I have one question. I was curious, because you talked a little bit about the single pole in the first option versus the bottom two having pole and base separate. I'm curious about whether that or any other aspect of these makes one of them easier to maintain or replace or... Like, what's

the pole one piece versus two piece? It's really not. It is more about how you access it and you install it. I would defer and check with our operations staff where we make a final selection. But generally, you're mounting these onto a concrete base, and it's just how you access those bolt holes and the door for the wiring. If you look at... far right picture you can see that it's just molded into that base there as opposed to removing a base where a door might be hidden underneath of it if it's a two-piece construction

okay

so i'm not aware of anything significant that

that it wouldn't actually make it like harder to maintain or replace okay um and then i was curious about whether can you go back to the current state all the different varieties we have So that light hill crest is right in front of my house. And so I have this idea that like we have fluted poles, but we don't necessarily. We really do have a mix.

Oh yeah, throughout the city, right?

Yeah, that's what I was thinking about because like the fluted is more expensive. And is it really worth it? Or how do I feel about that? And so I guess I would just say, given the scale of what we have to do and maintaining good, like a strong operating budget, I would definitely encourage being on the low side. And I think if that means we don't have fluted poles, it's probably all right, too.

is fluted or the decorative base. Is there one that weighs more than another?

Yeah, I don't know. Great question. I don't like, I guess the point is I don't believe that I have a strong feel about it. I think a base over a round pole might be better than a fluted pole with no base, but like,

I

don't really like to play designer. So

And then when you look at this, on the left there, you can have a base, a simple base, and a round pole or a fluted pole. And then the decorative base becomes sort of the aftermarket add-on, so it pushes that cost up quite a bit.

One comment I did want to add, understanding here and coming back to the slide was, The benefit, I guess, to having the two-part system would be as if you decided that decorative base wasn't worth it in the future or gave you flexibility.

We could just stop using it or use it someplace other than not other. Yeah.

It's something else we'd have to maintain and replace.

Yeah, I mean, I think the point is even like looking at what we have now, there's a wide variety. It doesn't, I don't think it looks bad in the places where we just have a simple goal. And so I think like from a position of fiscal responsibility, I'd encourage us to go that way. Thank you.

Gary?

So NLS looks attractive because on the low end, it's the lowest. But that, of course, raises, I guess, a couple of questions. One is, since this was not a company brought to us previously, and it kind of sounded like here are some folks who are trying to beat their competitors, is that a fair characterization?

From what I've seen in the material, obviously they don't have the – the record or the long standing track record field performance of some of the other options. But I don't think that anything that we brought here, I think we've curated out anything that we had any significant concerns about.

I was just wondering, so probably this is something you worry about 20 years from now or 25 years from now. You want to make sure your supplier didn't go out of business because then you can't replace the poles. So I guess the converse of that is do you all get a better comfort feeling with Sternberg knowing that you have a working relationship with Sternberg already?

say that's a that's a point taken the longer history companies i think there is a little bit more comfort level but we understand these lights are expensive so we wanted to be able to share this option that was recommended by others as well even though we don't have experience with them to let you know that on the more cost conscious side here's what you'd be talking about as a delta We could find another option that looks maybe very similar to that, but it just gives you an idea of a company that's maybe been around 10, 20 years and is a recommended option for the less expensive end.

Well, if we're only going questions right now, I'll save my preference to some other.

I mean, I think if you have a preference.

My preference would be Sternberg. I mean, aesthetically, I think that's a more attractive fixture. And I think we could stay on the low side with Sternberg and I think get some quality. I think the fact that we have a working relationship with them gives me some more comfort. And conversely, I just have a little bit of skepticism about NLS. So to me, it is between option two and option three. And I think right now I would lean towards Sternberg. Having

the ability to not have that wide decorative base integral to the pole itself, definitely gives us some flexibility with Sternberg and NLS too. But the NLS is, you know, it's not that NLS isn't good. It's that, you know, what I'm getting from you, I think, is that we have a working relationship with Sternberg and we have a longer history with that company. I think that's a fair point. Thanks.

Member

Rick Hummell? Just a couple of questions. So first one is, in general, can you give me at least a range on how long these lights are likely to last, these poles? Is this like a 40-year decision, 50-year, 20-year? Any idea?

Hummel? Just a couple of questions. So first one is, in general, can you give me at least a range on how long these lights are likely to last, these poles? Is this like a 40-year decision, 50-year, 20-year? Any idea?

So Sternberg has lights in our downtown area. What we're seeing there because of their location and the high exposure to salt is about 30 years. When you get into residential areas, they aren't they don't have the same exposure. So we've got some poles that have been out there, you know, since the 80s, and they're fine. So I would anticipate we're looking at a 50-year life in these areas where they're not getting that direct harsh environment, salt, and impact. We do have things that happen, whether it be, you know, freeze cars, different things. Obviously, you can't predict, but I would anticipate, you know, close to that 50-year lifespan.

So given that, so what I'm getting at there is there's the long-run cost versus the upfront cost. There's a combination. So I'm concerned about things or would like to know things like, is there a significant difference in installing these poles from one manufacturer to another, the choices? Or for example, one is a little more complicated than the other, requires more man hours. So that would be one thing to look at. Another would be... You know, you mentioned the salt. So is there a track record that these manufacturers can somehow share to give us a better idea of like, is there one that is any meaningfully better than another for life cycle? How long they'll last in our environment, in our climate, how we use them?

One thing that you're seeing now is there's been a big change in materials from when we started the Street K Project in the 90s. We put a lot of steel bowls in, and those are a lot of the ones that we're finding are reaching the end of their service life. And now pretty much everything that we're putting in, if it's metal, it's going to be aluminum. So it's going to have a much longer service life, we expect. Obviously, when you put those in, you don't know what it's going to 50 years from now. But we're not recommending at this time or moving forward with similar material to what we started with in the streetscape. For that matter, all the new streetscape holes that we're putting up now are all

Okay. And then, you know, just I don't know even what else to ask in terms of, you know, what could go wrong kind of a thing. But like, is there any one poll that withstands wind better than another? Or, you know, depending on where we locate them, is there a likelihood that, you know, lawnmowers are going to bang against it and over a time period it's going to fall down or what? Or be damaged. All I'm trying to get at is, as we make the decision, if there is some other meaningful measure that can talk about the long-run cost of these polls, if you can present that as part of the package, that would be helpful.

Real briefly, when you talk wind loading and things like that, there are design standards for those that these polls would all meet for our region. There's different wind factors throughout the country. So you'll get something with each poll you order that has a load rating that it can handle for things attached to it. And those will all be designed to meet that standard. The manufacturers could have different finishing practices, but they're all going to be aluminum and some kind of protection. But yeah, we can look at that

information. If there is, if they're all pretty much, no, they're all the same, and now it just comes down to design, that's fine. But I just want to make sure that we've at least looked at that.

I think the finish is the thing where you could get some difference. The ease and installation and those other factors, I think, are pretty universal.

Okay. Okay. So other than that, I kind of like the Sternberg option because of the family nature of it and the consistency that we would see throughout the community.

Yeah, I think that the family component of these fixtures is important. I know that you had said in option two that you had the COBRA fixture, but would we be switching those out with...

That's not,

it would never happen.

Okay. Part of our design and what we're, what we're calculating here is just putting back in kind.

Okay. So then like, for example, in the demo neighborhood where they have like the two heads with those also be replaced with two heads or we're just going to go one.

I'm sorry.

No, are we just going to go with one light throughout all the residential?

Yeah, as part of that project on Des Moines Avenue, a lot of that system is actually in good shape. It's a little bit newer. So we did have it. We showed it last time, but we just didn't come back to this time because it really didn't need a decision. The retrofit for the LED to go into those lights, those would stay in generally the same format as they're in now.

Okay, so these light fixtures would not be put in? Okay.

I would consider that streetscape similar to a downtown streetscape just in Des Moines.

Okay. And then as far as like warranties for these light fixtures or these families, is there one that's better than the other or anything like that?

I don't have that information offhand. I know they all come with a form of warranty that would be limited to some degree because of the environment you might install it in, but we can get that information. I just

know if one's 20 years, one's five years or something like that, because that might...

They'll mostly be consistent, but there may be some minor variation, but they're willing to...

Okay. And not to completely disagree with Councilmember Patel, I do think a little bit of a design feature on these is important. I'm not saying go all the way to the $8,700 per fixture, but when we're putting these throughout the entire city, I do think You know, our city is not like a modern minimalist type of architecture, especially in the residential area. So I do think a little detail, whether it's with the base or the fluted poles, will go a long way. So

of the three options, like for instance, we have up here, is there anything that stands out? Or as long as we have something that's decorative that provides some kind of anchor, mimics what we have around town,

is it

effective?

So I just think like the round pole is... not good at all. I like the fluted pole and I do, you know, if it's not too cost prohibitive, I do think we should consider a base of some sort. You know, when you're walking down these streets, your eye level is not going to go oddly up, you know, so you're kind of looking at the base of things. And so I do think a little attention to design is important.

Part of what we wanted to convey today is sort of the big scale cost of those little decisions that we say, oh, it's $1,600 or $2,350. When you multiply that by 950, then it becomes a much bigger option. So there is such a range, as we kind of showed in that one slide, there's such a range of these that we can do something without going all the way to 8,700. Right,

which we don't want to do that for sure. Thanks.

Yeah, I mean, I agree. I actually like option three. I think I like the simplicity of it. I like the top. I know it's a little bit less expensive, so I'm kind of curious if then if you added a fluted pole or some sort of decorative base, maybe it would kind of even out with... you know, option two. Yeah. I mean, my only concern with three is, you know, I think Gary makes a good point like in others who have said that, you know, that history of the relationship option, that company has been around a lot longer. This company, I think you guys said was only around for 20 years. So, um, you know, people have already mentioned that, but, um, but I actually do like option three and I, I mean, and I think, um, And like, at least going forward, Jeff, I know that you weren't you haven't really heard the conversation very much. But, you know, we have these three options. And so I don't know. I mean, I think you've it sounds like a lot of people do like option two. Will you like how will you guys evaluate going forward? Yeah.

I think one question I would like to ask is if we look at some of these base options, is there things we try to throw in there, things we thought matched the existing aesthetic throughout the neighborhoods? Is there anything that's just like, that's a no, I don't like that style or that's a yes. We would get more information on that manufacturer and make sure we fall within this range, medium into the range. That would be helpful to know that there's guidance on that look.

I mean, I think we all certainly want to fall in the mid to lower range given how costly this is. I think everybody would probably agree with that. I mean, I don't dislike any of those bases. I think it probably again comes down to cost and trying to figure out if there's like a mid range you know, mid to lower cost that we can, again, have a little bit of decoration at the bottom or a decorative pole. You know, again, as Becky said, I don't like to be the designer either. Council Member Waldman is probably the designer we all want to rely on in here. But I don't know if anybody else has any strong feelings on any of those poles. I don't. But

Add to that for a reference point, if we were to place one of those existing poles out there today, you might average $5,500 to $6,000. So we're not talking about things jumping up significantly from where we are in replacements now.

I've got two random thoughts, not having sat through it, but having stared at the ones in my yard. I find that some of them will change colors based upon how much the sprinklers of your yard will spray them. So I want to be thoughtful about Little things like that, like how hard is it going to be to trim around it? All those practical questions that I think don't outweigh the cost. But as soon as you guys are thinking through it, like is this going to make it hard to trim the yard? When the sprinklers hit, is it going to change colors over time compared to the stuff on top? Like some of the cement ones, you can clearly drive by and you can see the difference. Those sort of aesthetic things, just as you guys are looking through it, all I ask is don't lose sight of some of those practical pieces. Again, it doesn't outweigh to the extent all else is equal. Just something to

think about. I'd only ask questions. I'll tell you what I'm thinking about this. You all curated this very well. I think they all look great. And I would opt for the option three because of the cost, because to me, they all look very similar. And if you think that the quality and the maintenance and everything else is equivalent, that's fine. But again, any one of them, I think fits our need. And some type of base, unfortunately, on the less expensive side is probably what fits our neighborhood better versus the starker pole.

What I'm kind of hearing, what I'm thinking we'll do is go back and some decorative base but mid-range to lower end so we can refine this more because number three might not be the cheapest once you do that.

And number three does not have a family of lights, is that right?

It has some options, but not as much as number two.

You would tell us if that family is sufficient for what you would want in that or not. Right. Yeah, I trust you all. Yeah, that's

great. Yeah, I would also on these bases, because I think there are probably height differences that we can't really tell from these pictures. So that might be helpful, just like the scale of them.

Yeah, you're probably talking from a foot to two and a half to three foot scale there. The right side is more close to that two and a half foot.

Yeah, so just like dimensions might be helpful with that. Okay.

I think some of the bases on the left side, on both those, they were only 17 or 18 inches. It really is more of a variation at the base that then very quickly kind of tapers in.

It would be nice at some point if we could actually see them more than just on this. Like there's a way that we could get some samples to at least look at them. If you guys narrowing down enough, And I don't want to be designing it, but it would be nice to be able to see what they're going to look like before we sync the kind of money.

See if they can provide us with a few select options.

And well, and I also want to recognize too, cause I don't, I mean, I don't want to micromanage this decision either. And I want to make sure that we get stuff ordered. So people get lights next fall, you know? So I want to make that we're moving quick enough so that we can get people some lights. Yeah. So, yeah. So, I mean, recognizing that too. So

we'll talk about why down in a little bit, and this will impact that project timing as well. So we've got Areas that are dark, like I said, and we need to get those out to bid just as soon as we can. So what we'll do is over the next few weeks here is we're going to keep developing the overall scope. This is kind of that remaining question. We figured design would be that last remaining piece. We're going to narrow this down to like A or B. And if we can get a sample in hand for you all to take a look at, I think we have enough direction at this point to narrow it down to a choice A, choice B. And we'll go ahead and get it done the first meeting in January. That way we can get this thing going and out to bid.

One thought, going to wanting to see them, do any of our neighboring areas have these lights? Don't recall. A drive-by would be easier than lugging it in here. Maybe

just a picture. I don't think yet, but it's just a picture.

Yeah. Perfect. So the idea of you can see it given the time. Nice. Right.

Okay. And if you have a, as you've done all the analysis, Or you will have done. If it seems like there's an apparent obvious choice to you aside from design, it would be great to hear your recommendations as to, you know, here's why we would prefer this one, but we're willing to go with either one.

Yeah, I think we've got some guidance here. No big red flags to avoid and some general direction. We'll pick those, as David mentioned, A and B with those considerations

in mind. We've filtered the red flags out already. Right, yeah. We don't want to come up, we're not going to come up here and put something on that screen.

Right, that doesn't have, yeah. Okay, perfect. Yeah. Perfect. Thanks.

Thank you very

much.

Thank you. Great. Thank you. Rick, do you want to come up and ask a quick question?

Aftermarket for salvage value for all the 900 lights you're going to take out. I recall at one point the city was buying equipment on eBay to keep the ice rake open. There were market for used

For anybody watching remotely, there was a question from the floor about the ability to perhaps sell the existing streetlights aftermarket on one of the government sites or even as scrap. So what's the return on the existing equipment?

Yeah, recent scrap values have not been great but that's what we do utilize recycle and scrap right now, usually when poles are being removed it's not because they're still in good working condition. These projects, something will get hit or it's determined that it's close to failure and we'll be removing it. Now when we go through and do wide scale removals on subdivisions you might have a few that are reusable. I just don't know that we're going to have enough yet to say, hey, we've got a sellable lot that another city or somebody would want to use. I'd say more than likely it's going to be scrap material, but we do utilize government auction websites for disposal of surplus goods when we feel that it's relevant.

Thanks, Matt. Okay, I think just moving on to our next agenda item, we're going to talk about the new project in Shawbrook.

A real thank you. I just wanted to really come up quickly and just do a quick introduction of our team before Aneshka here is going to do our presentation. I'm Neil Eisenberger. I'm a principal and senior landscape architect, and I serve as a project manager with Lamar Johnson Collaborative. We also have members of the design team here today. Aneshka, Boshawa? We'll be speaking to Crawford from Trivers, our architects, Neil Chase, Maggie Hayden. And we have Oliver Wright, one of our team members as well. And Colette Koschelski will be here at the end going over budget and next steps for this project. But again, just thank you. We're really excited to share this with you today. We wrapped up schematic design just before Thanksgiving. We're beginning design development. What that really means is that we're still at a phase where feedback is super important. and nothing's locked in. We've had great feedback from the steering committee that we've met with several times. So again, thank you for having us. And with that, I'm going to let Aneshka start the presentation.

Thank you so much. I want to make this full screen, unless you guys see it full screen on your... There we go. So today, just we'll do a quick overview of sort of the previous plans and all the work that has been done before we started. We'll do a quick landscape overall design, then we'll have architecture come up and talk about the building design. And then we'll get into the fun minutia of things with hardscape, softscape, ice rink, and all of that fun stuff. And then a quick budget update and next steps. So, you know, anytime we start a project, we really want to talk and acknowledge all the hard work that has gone on beforehand. And you guys did that livable community plan and all the engagement that was done. And there are four goals that stood out to us from that plan. The first one was to leverage public spaces for gathering and connection. So emphasizing flexible year round use. So that's something that we made sure to incorporate into this park. The second was improving safe, accessible walking and biking infrastructure. Again, you'll see that in the design. Promoting sustainability and equity in the public spaces. So you'll see some of the decisions about the materials that we've chosen that are reflected through that. And then reinforcing Clayton's role as a regional and recreational hub. And I think the programming that was chosen for the park really reflects that. Okay. Just an overview of, just a recap of some of the survey results, right? So residents saw gaps in diversity and recreation opportunities in Clayton. So we made sure that the programming for this park is diverse. And also the other kind of thing that we saw was there wasn't enough cultural events, environmental education, and adult-centered programs. So you'll see that all the programming in this new design reflects that. Another recap, you have gone through, you had five different concepts in the past. And we also have been working really hard with the steering committee. It's actually been a really great process on developing kind of that new design and come up with what you see on the screen right now, which I think is a great balance between More sort of like symmetrical and informal, but also kind of design language with having some organic shapes and bringing in a little bit of the play. So I can walk through a little bit of this design. I know a lot of people in the room have seen it already. So I'm really sorry for boring, those of you that have seen it like six times already. But so we'll start at the north side. So we have the drop off on the northeast end. We're expanding that actually to make sure that there's capacity for larger events. And then this north end is bookended by a new concession building, which our architect team will talk about. And we'll have a lovely beer garden up here at the top, which is right now that existing sculpture garden. The beer garden, you will be able to be closed down for private events will be a revenue generator. And we're also talking about seasonality and how it could be used sort of all year round. next is this band shell shade structure sorry stage it's going to face both the beer garden it'll be kind of double facing so facing both the beer garden and that large event seasonal event lawn or seasonal ice rink down here so uh that's kind of the main focal point of this the large space and then you have the large event lawn um and then flanking that lawn on on the sides you have these kind of smaller vip areas which will have a shade structure some fire pits some really nice seating on this side we'll have an area for food trucks and then down here some flexibility so if you have a large event you can have you know we always think about introverts extroverts families people that are coming in large groups small groups so if you want to you know you kind of have two different types of spaces down here you can have families if there's a big event going on they can have a sort of quieter time down here. And then a big thing that we heard was expanding the pickleball courts from four to six. And so we figured out a way to do that on the east side here. Yeah, so that's the plan. I forgot to say, if you guys have any questions, please interrupt me. I sort of hate talking. So if you want to talk, that's great.

Say something really quickly. If you could go back just for general orientation for anybody that hasn't seen this before. The area where you see the beer garden, that's the current century garden that exists between Shell Park Pool and the former ice rink site. This is Brentwood Boulevard over here on the east. Here's Bonham, the intersection with Bonham. So that is an existing drop-off. And as she mentioned, it would be expanded. This is the existing tennis court 10, we call it. So there's kind of, you'll see in a minute, there's really two elevations there, but this kind of raised section that has four pickleball courts, that's the existing tennis court being converted. And then you have the tennis courts just to the south of this site. So I just wanted to give that overview really quickly.

Thank

you.

I have a question. Yeah. What is the line divided into pickleball courts? Is that a road or a street? You've got four pickleball courts, and then you've had... Yes.

So currently

the... Because of the elevation.

Okay. Yeah, it's because of the elevation. And we had an option where we had it all at the same elevation. But I think going through the SD set and trying to save a little bit, you know, trying to find ways where we can, A, be more environmentally sustainable and save some money, we think that sort of having them at two different levels will be, just because of the current grading, will be the best way to do that.

Okay. And then historically... I've been around too long. There was a lot of objection to getting rid of that tennis court. Has that kind of subsided? Have there been counts on need or are we comfortable not having it anymore? I

mean, I think the steering committee talked about it. I think we certainly talked, you know, we really wanted to capture that flat space over there and that was basically taking over that court. I think also the pickleball courts are so well used that having, because there was a time where there was only four, expanding it to six, I think was something we thought was important. Yeah. but yes, I think, yeah, I think, I think being able to do everything. I mean, the space is not very large. So I think being able do everything we wanted to do and yes, having to sacrifice that court where you can do the single play, you know, you can stand there, you know, I mean, that's what people primarily use it for. If they're by themselves, they hit balls against like a rebounder. So it's losing that.

Right. And it, It would not, it could be done to put that rebound wall somewhere else in here. It's just a wall on existing fence or something. So, okay. Okay.

I would just say anecdotally in Ward 3, just based on the coffees in the last couple of years when we've talked about what would basically be the site, we've always talked about the fact that that particular court would not be part of the plan. And I've never heard any objections. Now, that doesn't mean anything. That's very scientific, but at least to the extent that we've talked to people about the plan, I've never heard any objections to replacing it with pickleball, which seems to be very popular these days.

So are we going in order?

No, I mean, go ahead. Yeah.

What – you may be getting this, but capacity numbers on the lawn? Yeah. Okay. Then I'll save the follow-up question to you later. Like, on the pickleball courts, what – I'm still not 100% sure pickleball is not just a fad. I'm debating this. So I'm thinking about what else that could be used for and how easy it would be to convert it from pickleball to something else and the way you guys have envisioned it.

Great question. I have not played pickleball as well, but I think that since the four courts are right now tennis courts, it's just it's just striped differently for pickleball. So you can always convert that back to, to tennis courts. Um, and yeah, this, the two, so then you would keep the two smaller pickleball courts there. And I, I'm sure that could be converted into, uh, well, I mean, yeah, maybe if you have like, um, basketball hoops.

Yeah. And I guess the only other question I've gotten, it's partly for you and maybe it's partly Gary and others that were involved. How much are we changing the Century Garden to this beer garden? What's going to be left and what isn't? Because I know a lot of money and a lot of thought went into that on the Clayton Century Foundation to kind of help that. So I want to be thoughtful as to what we're getting rid of after the amount of time and energy and frankly money that went in to do it.

So we will be keeping, there's some of the circulation we're keeping so some of that concrete on the north side and I think the south side, you have existing I think there's like six magnolia trees that we're hoping to redistribute throughout the site. And then there's that like wonderful sculpture, but we're instead of having it in the center we're going to move it, the to the entrance right here put it on a smaller pedestal so it's it's a little bit more accessible and it kind of frames the entrance to that space so keeping a lot of the same things even like in terms of feel that right now that you have trees and like that tree canopy we're hoping to kind of keep that feel we're definitely keeping all the trees on the north side that are going to provide shade so I think we're keeping a lot of infrastructure that's there and just sort of updating some of the things that, that need maintenance and yeah. Thank

you. And I would say too, and Tony can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that the century garden is very well used. I mean, I, you know, it's just not a place where people go and gather, you know, I mean, it looks nice, but you don't often see people. Right. So I think being able to use the space in a way that you can make it you know, attractive to people, vibrant, actually get people to go there and sit is the idea because it's really just not being, yeah.

And I'm feeling fairly supportive of that. I just was, I was asking the question for those who aren't here who spent the time and energy to be there. Like if the whole thing was gutted, for example, I could see some people being like, we just did this 20 years ago or whatever, what are we doing? So I wanted to at least ask. So thank you. It sounds like it's a workable plan to

keep

the guts of what people spent time and envision, but also trying to rework it for what we're trying to do.

A hundred percent. We're trying to make sure that we're not overspending money where we don't need to. And so kind of keep it. Can

you confirm if your mic is on, like, is the light green or red? It's green. I'll just put it. No, no. Thank you. No, you're self-spoken. Thank you very much.

This may be premature, my question, or perhaps you're going to discuss it later. But I'm curious, have we also thought about programming in terms of looking at this design? You know, when I glance at it, I see, oh, I can see special events. But I'm wondering, what about just everyday activities? How would this be used? Have we thought about that? Just to help me bring it to life in terms of what you're thinking.

Yes. Why don't I go through some of these other slides, and then I do have a slide about programming a little bit later on. So this is just kind of bubbles over the plan just for an understanding, you know, beer garden at the top, building stage, flexible green space, the pickleball courts, food trucks. We're keeping that vehicular path going straight through. That was something that we discussed and wanted to manage or wanted to keep the access through here. So we also have some renderings of the kind of aerial views of the site plan. So you can see that's the entrance. This is the sculpture that we were talking about. Really nice kind of inviting entrance both to the beer garden and down to this larger green area. And this is the view from pickleball courts. We're also looking at lighting and that's something that we'll be talking about in our future steering committee meetings, but how the lighting affects some of the neighborhoods in these residential buildings.

Before you go to another slide, just because I know this has come up frequently just so everybody on the council understands. Well, where the drop off area starts, the hope is still to kind of reorient. That intersection there, so that the pedestrian walkway across Brentwood is shorter. Is that still.

Yeah, we actually just got some drawings from our civil engineer. We're looking at keeping kind of that north end where it is and then pushing it down. So here I can go back to here. So I think the renderings right now show it centered, but I think what we're going to end up doing so we're not having to reconstruct the entire intersection is keeping that north entrance and then pushing the whole thing down. just expanding it to get enough cars down here. Um, and they're, they're looking at how that works with the lights and yeah.

Cause it is confusing. Yeah. Like that light there, whether you can turn left, whether it's, so I just want to make sure that we're still considering that and thinking about that. Cause that, you know, something we often hear people having to race across the street in order to get to the pool and, you know, just being thoughtful. I understand the i don't want to change the whole intersection because that would blow our budget but but just being thinking

about how we're doing help people cross and also um we want to i think what we've been talking about as part of this project is that entrance to or kind of including the entrance to uh the pool and the aquatic center and making sure that it sort of connects with this up north so right now we don't have the survey for that area so we're we're just kind of working through those details. We're in SD, but that is another area we're thinking about including.

So is this the time to ask about that access law? Okay. Because if I look at the four goals and it's talking about, you know, gathering, making accessible, equitable, and regional, we're going to have, ideally we'll have more people coming than are currently there. And I think many of us talked with Ben that the idea, it's very difficult to, access point with Brentwood cutting us off from most of Clayton. It's busy roads all around it. And even if we don't have the budget to do it now, I don't want to preclude or we may not want to preclude refiguring that in the future, whether it be even by slowing down traffic by putting parking along there, additional parking, because right now there will be a shortage of parking if we do this, unless we're parking on the other side and having to cross Brentwood. So I don't know if if there are some traffic studies that could be done. Again, just so we don't preclude making this more, having that welcoming frontage to this in the future as we go forward with this.

We can look at that, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, again, there's just been thoughts about how we can, you know, I don't, it would be great to have a wider sidewalk as you move closer to Forest Park Parkway. And, you know, that would be great. And that I think it's thinking about, yeah, how we can make things more inviting, a nice buffer into the park future. So making sure that we're not doing things that would preclude better improvements later on. And also

bicycles. I assume there's somewhere for bicycles to be

parking for bicycles. Yes. Yes.

Okay.

Yeah. Again, just SD stage so we haven't modeled all the...

The only other question I've got, and it's very basic just for my own thing. So is it designed to be hardscape in the front, grass in the back? Is that what that gray spot is?

Yeah, so and we've done a couple amphitheaters like this or like when you have a stage, even though we're hoping that the lawn would be accessible, usually if you have people in wheelchairs or you want to put down chairs or things like that or it's also an area that's probably going to be the most heavily used, you want to put it down as sort of more durable material. That makes a lot of sense. I just

wanted to make sure I was understanding what it was.

Yes. I think it's a fundraising opportunity too that we've talked about Like the brick

there. I wouldn't even thought about, but it makes a lot of sense in terms of disabilities and other folks that don't want to be going through the grass.

Talked about

mosh pits. If we want to have a mosh pit, different conversation, but yes.

I'm sorry, can I ask one more thing? Of course, go ahead. Yep, basketball. There's been a lot of demand. It's a different demographic, a different interest. What was the conversations about having basketball courts somewhere?

I mean, we definitely talked about it. It was something that came up. I think it was being afraid of trying to put too much in one site. You know, I think there was concern about... I mean, a little bit maybe it kind of came down to one or the other, you know, like, did we want to make this a flexible event space or did we want to kind of pack it full of like a sporting area? You know, cause I think it was clear from our community, at least the engagement we did as part of the livable communities plan that people want to see some pickleball. So and then, but then trying to think about where we would put other courts became more difficult. So I think it was a little bit of picking and choosing but that, and again, But then also thinking about where potentially basketball could go in other areas of the park or in other parks. I mean, it certainly came up, but I think there was a concern about putting too much in a space that is really not that large.

I appreciate that and I understand that. long as we don't lose that because as i recall there was quite a bit of interest in having that in one of our parks so even if it's not in this space yeah and we can get that out for sure okay yeah

and i will say we we had the park board meeting was it two weeks ago and um you have on on on that board you also have um i think two or three um kind of uh are they members of the like youth high

school

high school students and they seem pretty excited about this and like the different uses that because what we find in research in terms of parks is that you have parks for there's there's uh programming for kids and there's programming sort of for seniors or adults for families but there's also always that the missing piece is always uh teenagers and so i will say they seem pretty excited so yeah

Do you have any questions?

Yeah. I'm not sure. I always like to give you a chance to present what you have to present. Too many questions.

And I will say, so this is just an overview of the landscape and I'll have the architecture team come up and then I will get into the really nitty-gritty details of the landscape and the materials, and we'll go over the hardscape plan and things like that. I know there was a question about the programming for that large lawn. And so we thought about, you know you can see some of these up here. You could do outdoor movies, you could do yoga, kind of yard games, picnics on food truck days. So there's a lot of different things and they're both kind of family oriented and large group oriented or sort of teenage oriented things that you could do on that flexible lawn. I don't know if that answers your question. That's helpful.

Yes, that's helpful. What I was also wondering on the rendering though was, so some of it's addressed like food trucks and why you have them where you have them or the stage. So I get that, but there were some, I think you called them VIP areas or sitting areas. I'm just more trying to see if you've contemplated what, why other than they might look appealing, what's their purpose? How do they interact with this?

Yes. Yeah. I'll share that with you in a, I'll let Neil present architecture because I feel like

Hi, everyone. My name is Neil chase architect with trippers here in St. Louis, part of the design team. Here we go. Thank you. So I'll give you a brief overview, and then we'll get into a few details. There's a handful of slides here. So first of all, talking about the building location. In early conversations, we found that the northeast corner was a good spot for the building location, not only to support all of the event, sorry, to support the events happening within the park. So we have Pickleball and the Event Lawn to the south. but also to be a destination as you're approaching the park from downtown Clayton, from Bonham. So the building is here to support, but also to be at a new destination within the park. Looking at inspiration for the design of the building and the materials, we looked to Chapman Plaza and Interprovise Pavilion. So we wanted to look at materials and inspiration of something that is in the park already. So lots of natural materials, a lot of wood, soft stone, soft appearing stone, metal, things that are found in nature and pleasant to be around. Looking at proposed materials, taking cues from those two buildings and experiences on the park, and proposing a stone for the building, which is not only beautiful and inviting but also very durable. And then aspects of the building being wood, which is also inviting and natural, and then metal in a supporting role. So the materials are all timeless, durable, they're of the park and the place, and natural and welcoming. So getting into the floor plan of the building, it's a simple shape. There's really four main programs. We have food and beverage. So that would be a place for park goers to come and get a drink, something to eat, and a kitchen to support that. It would not be a full service kitchen, but more of a warming kitchen. The design team did a lot of research and went on a couple of field trips and looking at the Rockwell beer garden at Francis Park as a good precedent. So if you haven't been there, they serve pizza and beer and I think sandwiches. So they're doing that all in a warming style kitchen. There's no commercial hood. There is a three compartment sink and a grease trap to support that. So not a full kitchen, but more of a warming kitchen. And that's in kind of the upper right area. We have support spaces like a freezer walk-in cooler area and then a mechanical space on the left. And then finally, the other support function of the building is the restrooms. Those are accessed here on the lower left. We're currently showing gender neutral restrooms. We feel that that's appropriate for a pavilion building like in this area in Clayton for a lot of reasons. It's about cost neutral on number of fixtures if you were to have two separate restrooms. But it has a lot of positives for us. We feel that it's safer for most, if not all users. If you think about families, situations where they're coming and going, it gives them a lot more flexibility and equity in use there. It also allows for more, I guess it opens up the spaces. And we imagine that if there's a large event, there's going to be a lot of demand on the restroom. And hopefully with this arrangement, folks can get in and out a lot quicker.

So, oh, yes. Well, a couple of things. So I'll be very brief on the kitchen. by not having to be a full-service kitchen, what are we losing on that? Because part of this is you want to make sure the kitchen's flexible enough for things you can't think of. So by not having the range, what types of food are we now losing the ability to be able to produce? You talk about Rockwell being pizza and being beer and sandwiches, but are we losing the ability to do burgers and hot dogs and deep fryer or whatever? Are we losing all of that?

Yes. Yes, without the commercial hood, you would not have that ability.

And is there a reason other than cost we didn't put a commercial hood in there? I

think cost is a main driver. And I also think there's, David, maybe you can speak more to that, just the relationship with the vendor. The conversations we've had, cost

is the driver. It's a substantial cost to put that in. In the end, if we decide not to make that improvement ourselves and that's something that a vendor wants to put in, that's a substantial cost that they would have to incur in order to do that We see this with spaces in downtown Clayton all the time that may not have commercial kitchens in them. We wonder why can't we get a small cafe or something? It's always the kitchen and the hood system that becomes the obstacle. You know, if a vendor, when we put this out, if a vendor wants to not have some sort of warming feature in there and wants to do a full kitchen, then we can talk about doing that. And if they want to do it at their expense, great. But for us to incur that expense upfront, not knowing who the vendor will be, we felt like that was too much for our budget to handle.

Just real quick, does Shaw Park Pool have one in there? I

believe it does,

yes. Do they do have a hood in there?

Yeah, because there's

all types of food, burgers. There's actual cooking in there. So how much money are we talking about like an actual cost of a hood? Are we talking $500,000, $3 million? I'm trying to weigh it off of the flexibility we're losing here.

I can get back with some hard numbers. I mean, it's definitely six figures for just upfront cost and it takes up quite a bit of space as well. And then you have the need for a mechanical system. So you have to bring in fresh air and then you have to get that out abducted return. So you'd have a larger dedicated air handling unit that goes along with it.

Okay. No, I

was going

to change. I was going to ask different questions. So go ahead if you're in the program.

The issue is if it could even be done if a vendor wanted to do it, if it's going to take more of a footprint.

Anything's possible with enough money. We've seen that play out too.

Yes. I guess the concern is that some of the problems with getting retail and food downtown is that the space that's supposed to be retail doesn't have the full kitchen, and so they can't get a tenant. Now, I'm certainly hopeful that we get somebody in here who's generating some revenue to help offset the cost. And so it's that question of the upfront costs versus attracting somebody who's going to start giving us an income stream.

Well, I guess, I mean, when we and I can just report what we've talked about at the committee, I think we really tried to really think about people rave about the experience. And I've been Francis Park is a great example, you know, and you can go to restaurants throughout the city of Clayton and get an elaborate dinner experience. I mean, we're talking about having dinner in a beer garden or a snack or something that's simple, right? So if you really want to go have a burger, go to Five Star. If you really want to have a sit-down meal, we have a lot of restaurants. So I think the idea with this, and again, I'm not arguing, I guess, one way or another, but the idea is to try to model the experience because Francis Park has been so successful. So, I mean, I know you've already said it, Neil, but I know all of you went there and actually talked to the concession staff. You know, person there who said, what has worked here? What hasn't worked here? What would you like that you don't have here? And that's what we're. I think we're getting things that he is already reported saying, oh, I'd love that would be more helpful if we had that. So that's great. Thanks.

And I guess the only other thought while we're on it before you move is I, while I understand the idea of single sex bathrooms. I'm going to have to think about that, and I think as a community, I'm not sure if we would be all ready for that. I don't know. I'm just saying I think we need to be thoughtful on how we proceed with that piece, even if some of the logic may make sense otherwise. Yeah.

I want to just share, I mean, we talked about this at Parks and Rec, which is a different group than the steering committee. And I think it's something that I feel like I'm seeing more and more at places I go to. And one of the things that, are you familiar, like have you been to one that you know of?

It's been a while, but yes. The

idea of it is like the stall itself where you go to the bathroom has like where the toilet is, is full floor to ceiling. You're completely inside it. Why not? Like

some, for example,

even like, you know, see under the wall or anything like that. So I think, like, I think it's a great way to, like, ensure access and not get into gender. Like, people actually talked a lot about how it helps, like, parents with children of another gender than them, like, that they, it makes it easier for them to go to the restroom together and feel safe doing it. Does it also help your fixture count for, like,

these larger groups?

It'd be about the same. I think we would propose, because it's tough on a project like this. Obviously, we're not going to have enough restrooms per count. Like if you have a large concert, you're going to have to bring in supporting temporary restrooms. So this is our recommendation based on some of the uses around this number of fixtures, if we split it into two separate rooms or one.

I'll issue you.

So those are the spaces, I think just to talk about how you use the space, this notch here on the right-hand side, that is where you would queue undercover to order food and then pick up your food. So there's kind of a large waiting area, it's about 15 feet by 30 undercover which is nice from the elements. And it obviously faces the beer garden and also faces to the south, the event lawn. So it's legible. If you're out in the lawn, you can see the building. You know where you need to go for refreshments or if you need to use the restroom. Little details we're looking at. We have a similar overhang outside of the restroom. We'll show an image of what that looks like, but that could be a nice space. If you have families, you park a stroller there, it's undercover. You get the kids out, you get the family out, you go into the restroom and you come back out and you have a place to kind of gather yourselves before you go back to what you were doing before. The north side of the building, so between the building and the pool fence there, that's kind of a utility area. There's still pedestrian circulation, but that's access into the kitchen and access into park storage and a small mechanical room. So here's some images of what it could look like in the materials. So this is from the south looking northeast. So this is the restroom area I just talked about on the left, the covered area, and then the beer garden as you move through the space to the left. So you can see the outer kind of shell of the building is the stone material. It's kind of the lighter color. And then where it's protected, we've proposed using the lighter natural wood on both the walls and the ceilings. A view from the south, Anushka mentioned there's the stairs between the event lawn coming up. So as you ascend up to grab a beverage or a bite to eat or just to pass through the space, that would be the covered area for ordering and pickup. And then a final image of what it might look like from the beer garden or the current century garden looking west.

This is more detailed than I think we had at Parks and Rec. It looks like you've got long windows into the serving and kitchen area. Is that right? People will be looking and able to see into it? Is that the intent?

Yeah. They could, it's also adding legibility and lightness. We don't want the building to feel really heavy. So if there is kitchen equipment planned for there, maybe it's a light film, but just the idea that at dusk that the building has activity and then it's legible. And then also for the folks that are in those spaces, that they're not just in this really kind of dark space, that they do have the views and natural light coming in.

Thanks. Is

that it? That's it.

Great. You have a green roof, it looked like.

Yes. I failed to mention that. I think some of the views that Ineska... So we are looking at a few things. When we look at the design of a building, we're looking at what the AI calls as a framework for design excellence. And a lot of those measures are sustainable. And I know there's no initiatives to go for a LEED credential anymore. But we are looking at things like water ecology for this project. So we are interested in the idea of a green roof. So it's simple as something like the sedum trays that can help filter the water and to offset some of the BMPs that were required to do elsewhere. We would like to... I think, celebrate that fact. And we know we can't have the green roof, a deep green roof that's growing over, but the idea of maybe a trellis or a vine growing something on the building just to celebrate the fact that we're in a park and to celebrate ecology and wellness on the building.

It's a flat roof.

It is a flat roof.

Canals make any sense for any energy generation for this?

Potentially. We haven't run any calculations on that. There's also the budget, so it would be first cost, lifecycle cost analysis. We haven't done that for panels, but we could look into that.

Sure.

One more on that note, kind of back to the inside. Is there what is being proposed in terms of like, dishwashing? Like, would the place with the facility be able to use glass or plates or would it have to be disposable?

I think it, well, it would be up to the vendor primarily. I think we're planning for a three compartment sink with the dishwashing component like you see in a commercial kitchen.

Okay, that's what I, like you're planning to allow that or to provide the ability for it.

Yes, and then it's up to your agreement with the vendor on who provides that.

Two more questions. So on the kitchen space, if we wanted to use the beer garden for events, I assume what you're envisioning is a kitchen that's going to be amenable to that size event in terms of providing a variety enough food to make real event space or are they going to expect it to bring it all in and then just warm it in like a toaster oven kind

of deal large event we're probably going to utilize that food truck space and

we'll have other supporting vendors I'm just thinking like if you wanted like a high-end event on the beer garden, you're probably not going to have food trucks. You're probably going to want pasta hors d'oeuvres. You're probably gonna want that sort of cocktail style. I want to make sure the kitchen's built out enough to be able to do that. Oh, just

serving the beer garden. I imagine that that could be accommodated in that space. I thought you were talking about a larger event, like on the lawn, like five kind of people. I'm thinking about

somebody renting out the beer garden and wanting like a nice, like Hotel hour

or something. If you've got a kitchen that size, you could use it for catering as well. It's more than large enough to be a caterer. Even without the hood? I guess that's my question. Yeah, as long as they're not cooking in there. I mean, we've got catering kitchen space within the center of Clayton that's smaller than this kitchen is envisioned to be.

And I take it with the park storage and mechanical, that's all the HVAC. So you're going to have AC and heat.

That's correct. And then some storage for the parks team to store things. Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Thank

you.

Okay, we're back to the fun stuff. kind of a little bit more details about hardscape and softscape. The diagram here you see are how we've sort of separated out the hardscape. You can see the pedestrian circulation in purple. We're thinking that's kind of a brushed concrete to save money where we can. And then doing pavers in sort of these areas, kind of like we call it like acupuncture. So you do it in areas that... like you want something special in. So you've got that in those VIP areas or these it's shaded areas with, with Seeding and a fire pit and i'll show you a rendering of that, so you can see what it looks like even if there isn't a big event. And then, in the beer garden we're thinking of having decomposed granite that's a slightly different material it's essentially like crushed stone it's got a binder in it and it's. better than using concrete because it's more permeable. So we're kind of meeting that sustainability. And so that it's also kind of you can have trees grow through it. So it's kind of the aesthetic that you have in a lot of the European beer gardens. And then for the food trucks, we're thinking about also having maybe some sort of special material, but we'll see what that turns out to be depending on cost and pricing. And then pickleball will have that acrylic surface. um this is the drop-off area and i don't i think i've already bored every most people in this room with the statistics on this but essentially if you're having an event with 4 500 people you need around nine drop-offs places so we're going to make sure that that new drop-off area has spaces for nine cars uh in terms of softscape um yes

again you may be getting this but when but based on that You're assuming that you can hold 4,500 people? Is that the generalized assumption?

Yeah, I have a here. I can go down to that diagram actually. Um, yeah, so you kind of have the max capacity and this is done, you know, with, if you had done standing, you know, even in the beer garden, which I don't think you, you ever would, but, um, done standing. If you have like a really big, uh, band coming in and you're most people are standing, um, you can, you could fit 5,000 people in this. 4,500 to 5,000. I think more realistically for a community event, you're going to be doing around 2,000 people, you know, with having people sitting in the lawn, cafe seating in that beer garden, you know, people sitting in the food court area. That's kind of a multiple.

In Tony and Matt, like for like Jazz Festival, how many people are we talking about? could this be where that would go going forward if we wanted to i

thought it was around 3500 yeah i don't i don't think it was yeah and i think um It's my understanding that some of those events we could consider moving to the site. I think that's the idea. I don't want to

pin anybody down. I'm just trying to wrap my head around when I'm bad with numbers. So, like, that gives me a good sense of giving that volume kind of how to think about it. Having lived in Chicago when they have this in downtown and Grant Park, like, I've seen how it's worked at that size. So, I'm just tryingto think about how it would work on this size. So, thanks.

You're welcome. Yeah, I think the hope is that to alleviate some of the stresses and closing streets on staff and stuff. It's thinking about having events like that here. Yeah.

I prefer the interruption. Please ask questions. So for softscape, you know, kind of the edges where we're going to do a native planting, some of the, you know, You know, it'll be a mix of and I think we heard that that the park board also wants kind of more native planting and a mix on the edges. We'll have a small area kind of just a long area for if you do have those large events and you want to put down port-a-potties or something like that. Or if there's an ice rinks, a place where you can do snow melt. And then we're discussing what this material is for the flexible lawn. We're kind of in between artificial turf and like a reinforced fiber lawn. And I have some information on that as well, but that's kind of where we're leaning towards because you want to have you want to make sure that it's durable enough for those large events. And then we're also thinking about sustainability. So looking at the studies around that.

You want to talk a little bit more about that? Would you like, would you like me to? I mean, I think there've been some questions about maybe just talking about, you know, the pros and cons of synthetic turf versus fiber reinforced, you know I think that might be helpful.

Yeah. We've actually done more research since this Monday as well. Okay. So yeah, I think probably everyone in this room is kind of familiar with what synthetic turf is, right? It's kind of that carpet you put down. You've got a layer of, there's a mat underneath it and then there's drainage, you know, aggregate and all of that. It's, I'll just go through kind of the In terms of cost it's got the highest cost sort of at the beginning maintenance, it will have the lowest maintenance costs, although in St Louis it's a little bit debatable because you do have really hot summers here we have really hot summers year and so that. That turf can get really hot and so you still have to water it during the summer months. durability that that's going to be your highest and most durable kind of material to use in that area. It's excellent for skaters and vehicles. the kind of drawback, the lifespan is between 8 to 15 years. And so even that initial investment, you're going to have to come back and replace it within, you know, depending on how well you take care of it. You know, in terms of user comfort, probably lowest user comfort. And it works structurally, you know, for ice rinks. So it's great for kind of if you have an area that's used frequently. But our sort of recommendation is this fiber reinforced natural turf. And so what that is, you have regular turf And then they tell this like fiber into the soil into first three or four inches below and then you do kind of a sand like you do a drainage level below that, and so it. It prevents compaction of the the roots, so that the you can have grass growing and it grows back a lot quicker and you're not really damaging it during kind of these big events, so the install cost is a lot lower than it is for synthetic turf. It is. you know, behaves like it's grass. So behaves like grass. So it's cool in the summer. The kind of thing that you have to be worried about there is event recovery. Obviously, for synthetic turf, you can keep having events over and over again. Versus this, it needs a little bit of a break. It is designed for heavy loads. So we usually use it. You can use it on projects like we'll do fire lanes with it. So if you're running a fire truck and you don't always want to have concrete for fire trucks, you can do this fiber underneath the turf. And you can run trucks over it.

But I think, and sorry to interrupt, but that fiber reinforced, I didn't really understand. But there is like, even though it's much cooler, which would make things much more comfortable in the summer and has this very natural component to it, if we have a really busy event or pandemic, if we end up deciding to put temporary ice down and like, you know, it ends in February there might be a month where this area is like roped off because the grass literally has to grow again. So there is going to be that temporary time where if there's a really busy event or if it's pouring and raining and you've got people like running on it, there might be a period where we can't have people on it for a little bit. And I know you guys were gonna cause they do use this material. There's a huge concert area in Chicago. Yeah.

Under the Pritzker Pavilion, if you've ever been. They

use it there. So I know you guys were maybe going to talk to, just because we had questions on Monday about this material, just trying to understand how long it would take to bounce back or what their experience has been, because obviously- thousands of people attend concerts in Pritzker pavilion every summer. So

yeah, that's a very heavily used space. So in terms of maintenance, this is a little bit more maintenance than regular turf because we're going to do that drainage layer below. So you're going to need to water it more, but it also means that during, if there's a lot of like, this is not going to have puddles, right? This is going to drain really well. Um, so you're, you're not having to wait if there was a huge storm event and you have a, uh, a concert the next day it'll be fine

sorry quick question for the turf and like heat i know like for example at merrimack they don't allow the kids on the turf when it hits you know whatever temperature and that's during the school year and so then i know our summers get much hotter so we're hosting events on here how is that going to

that's why the fiber reinforced turf doesn't get hot

For synthetic turf, what they would do is, you know, they would still have, they would water it. And so you're thinking that you're saving money by doing synthetic turf because you're not having to water the grass, but really because in St. Louis it gets so hot, you would have to still water it. So there are certain things in terms of maintenance, like the synthetic turf is going to have the least maintenance cost year to year, although over a 25-year span, that's more expensive than the fiber-reinforced natural turf. But if you're just looking at kind of maintenance costs.

Are you recommending the fiber-reinforced natural turf for this phase? Yes.

we are yes okay yeah we're um unless um so this is the the research we've we've done and obviously you're not going to have to read this but um we looked at they've been doing research in zurich and there's another city um in the states that they did they kind of looked at kind of the difference between the two and looked at the life cycle analysis and so what they figured out is um if you're looking at sustainability per hour of use, then the synthetic turf gives you a better yield. But that means that you're using that synthetic turf 14 hours a day or you know you need you need to it's it's for like sports sports fields so when people tell you kind of these studies it's it's like they're looking at it like per hour of use and really i don't think for this case and for this scenario that's that's really what you're looking at right you're looking at this is not going to be rented out every hour constantly yeah so um Well, studies support the fiber-reinforced soil.

And maybe this is something you already know. Maybe it's something you can check with the Chicago folks if you haven't already. In terms of maintenance... It's clearly more maintenance than artificial turf. But when I'm thinking about a budget and staff and mowing lawns and water, is it no different than mowing a lawn like in the rest of the park? Or is there a whole different maintenance

you can manage? No, no. It will be more water use because of that drain. It's draining faster, so there'll be more water use. But in terms of maintaining the grass, it's the same. I

asked a question about that too. Also, having learned from school district property, the replacement cost is huge. And it comes up 8% to 10%. I thought it was like 20 years. But is there any replacement cost? Is that compacts or does the fiber need to be replaced?

That is an excellent question. I asked and it's like 50 to 75 years. I mean, essentially, no. Essentially, you're fine. Yeah.

And then the other question, the big issue with artificial turf is off-gassing the chemicals and things like that. Is they... The fiber? Yeah, what are they using?

It's, I think, hold on, I had it in there. I think it's only like five, it's like 5% of the, so it's kind of, it's very much negligible compared to synthetic turf. It's 5% of the... Hold on, where is it? Oh, maybe I took it out.

Creating the plastics for fertilizer.

Gotcha.

There's no good. We don't have a totally pure environmental option here. So I do want to make it clear

that

you've got the plastics if you're doing with the artificial, if you're going with the synthetic turf, you're still going to have environmental impact because it's going to take a lot of water and it's going to need fertilizer to make that work. Like any

grass would, right? Yes. Like

any grasswood, the water load is going to be higher.

Because

of the way it drains. It might have to be watered twice a day. It's going to be similar to like a putting green or a tee box at a golf course. It's got that sand base that requires a lot of water.

Now, obviously, unlike other parts of the park, we don't really water. We'll put water. They would do it. And with the fertilizer, we at least always can use natural fertilizer as opposed to your traditional

fertilizer. In the end, the fertilizer has to produce nitrogen to work and that nitrogen is what causes the issue downstream when it gets into water. I'm just saying there's a difference between petroleum-based and fertilized in terms of like the environmentalist. But in the end, it's the nitrogen that is the concern. But I just wanted to throw that out there that it isn't, hey, one's really environmentally bad and the other one's good. There's impacts with both.

It's tough, Mark. And so in the areas, I'm sorry, this is the first time I'm seeing this. In the areas like the VIP seating, there's a lot of hardscape going into here. And the more, you know, the impervious surface increase is pretty real. Are there any other places because of how strong this is that they can do fire trucks? Is there any other places like the VIP places or somewhere else where there could be more of a permeable surface used versus just concrete or the

yeah so we can the permeable or the vip areas um or kind of that those areas of the shade structures we can use pavers that are permeable pavers um we're also um they'll they'll definitely be a stormwater strategy for all of this so even the fertilizer and all of that runoff we're hoping to do kind of these nice rain gardens to help treat the quality of water before it's being released. But yes, you bring up a great point. I mean, right now all that what we have now is the flexible lawn space is all concrete. So actually we are sort of becoming more permeable, but yes, we're still thinking about the same way that I talked about the beer garden, right? We don't want that to be all concrete. We're trying to put in that decomposed granite. So it is something that we're taking seriously, making sure.

Pardon, treat the waters great. Yes,

yeah.

I just want to say I'm thrilled that you did this work when they came to Parks and Rec a few weeks ago. It was just like artificial turf, and there was no consideration of it. And I think, not to make you go back to the first slide, but one of the things that I think is really important is that when people tell us they want green space, I don't believe they want artificial turf. And so... I'm thrilled to see how the reinforced lawn compares in terms of cost and maintenance and durability. I think the use cases described in that column And that table are actually exactly the scenarios we're talking about programming in this space versus like an athletic complex. And so I think that's great. I think the only other thing I would say is that if... if we have concerns about the grass, the other thing that I brought up then was like, even like what other kind of hardscape options do we have? Like, cause we're not playing sports on this. Like we're not playing lawn sports, like field sports in this area. So the thing, the other point that I want to make is So I definitely support the reinforced turf, natural, like no plastics in our, not like adding plastics in our parks where we don't, where we have other options. Can you go to the next, the slide that showed the layers? Because the picture, the video is blocking what the layers are. I just want to make sure I actually understand what all the layers are. Yes.

Yeah.

Like what is geofiber? Is it natural or is

it? That's what they're tilling in. That's those like, or if you want to.

Yeah, so those fibers, the best way to describe them, we've used them under greenways and things like that. It looks like Easter grass. So if you ever made Easter grass, the little fine fibers, it looks like that. They probably are some sort of product, I would imagine. We can get you the specifics on that. So they are a fiber... You put it in concrete also, it's like fiber mesh. It helps strengthen the concrete when you don't use reinforced rebar. It does have those qualities. We can check and see if there's alterations. But what it does is when it's compacted, it basically... helps tie things together uh more than you used to use fire lanes used to use those um little rings

like we have down wide um

that which

is

all plastic right so we've gotten away from there we've gone to this system which uh we've been we've tested on a few different projects we didn't there's two important projects that i hope during the as we're working through this we're working on uh the Director's Garden at Tower Grove Park. There is an event lawn there. Now granted, it's not to this scale. It's probably about one quarter of this scale. It will have this same reinforced lawn product on there. So potentially we can see this in operation. You guys could visit it as well. I know at Keener Plaza, they're taking that big mound down that was lawn area because it just wasn't usable and they're flattening it out and they're going to be using this product as well. So we reached out to the installer to get this information. But I definitely think as we get more into it, we can definitely provide you all with more information. But basically, that sand product is really actually getting away from a lot of heavy structural soils that have a lot of rock and going more towards some of the sand that allows it to drain, but it also allows for the strength that we're getting instead of a lot of heavy rock and all this type of stuff so that's what you're seeing all those different layers there is a drainage layer at the very bottom it's important to note that this all will be under drained so similar to a baseball field or something like that so i'll be under drain captured and then goes to those rain gardens that we're talking about which treat both volume like runoff reduction and water quality those both those two things so

Awesome. And then my last question for this section, I think, is about accessibility. So I'm curious about the decomposed granite and the pavers, because I think I really like those surfaces, like generally. But I know I've seen like no matter how well they're taken care of, like pavers get uneven and it poses accessibility issues. And I don't know exactly what the decomposed granite is like.

The decomposed granite has an...

A binder.

A binder in it, sorry.

It has an organic binder that actually ties together and it actually kind of hardens like a crust. But it still allows water to pass through, but it allows a crust where you're not kicking it onto the concrete or getting people caught in people's shoes a lot and scratching up terrazzo floors when you go. So it has... It has enough to keep it in place so it's not loosey-goosey to walk through it. It can allow for wheels and things to pass through it.

Yeah, strollers or scooters.

Exactly. It has just tight enough that we can actually do it. We've used it a lot on bike paths and things like that as well. Okay. And then the pavers, it's a great conversation. So we've been doing a lot of pavers throughout the city and a lot of the things that we've been doing, the brickline greenway, all that. has pavers, they're on a concrete base. They have a small sand setting bed. But important to note, they have a microbevel joint, so there's not a lot of pillowing. We've been working with David Neuberger and the folks at the Office of the Disabled there to choose a product that we can use that has the least amount of discomfort for folks with disabilities. So

if

we do use pavers, they will be a microbevel, so they won't have that heavy pillowing. You think about that even down to the level of expansion joints, making sure we're not There's ripples and things like that. So we'd be very conscious about that change in level. That's the one thing with permeable pavers you have to be cautious about because permeable pavers have gaps. So in places where people are more congregating and not moving, it might make sense in those. But in pathways, those are really those differential settling because it's not

the

things we're very conscious of.

So probably that area in front of the stage, we do concrete base. And then any of those like areas outside, we could do a permeable paver.

Thank you.

Yeah, no, go ahead.

So I was curious, I didn't see anything and maybe we're not at that level of detail regarding just some basic utility things. So I heard reference that we'll have irrigation, at least for the lawn. I'm wondering, will we have any like water stations? What about lighting? If we have like a large number of people here, I'm concerned about safety. So are we contemplating lighting?

yeah so lighting will be discussed at our next steer meeting um or that's going to be january 12th i believe so we'll provide some options for lighting uh we have talked about um you know even for for the food trucks having uh power and potentially water hookups for those we'll have gas lines running into uh for all of the fire pits on the on the outside So it is in conversation, but we are in SD set. So it really is kind of a narrative at this point. And it was in the pricing package, but we're still working through the drawings. Yeah, but those are great thinking. There's just some in terms of scale of these things. So just for comparison, and yeah, you guys can't see because all this stuff is in. in here, but just to get an understanding of the size of the project, right? So we looked at some projects around St. Louis and kind of the neighboring areas. So for example, Keener Plaza that we just talked about, right? That overlaid on top of Shaw Park, and you can see the size of their ice rink, right? And what that would look like maybe on our site. You know, kind of the Chicken and Pickle in St. Charles, which is kind of a similar programming, right? And again, their ice rink their stage. So we've been looking at event spaces or kind of these get large gathering spaces around just to get an understanding and kind of right size this, especially the stage. Um, and this is the, um, the VIP area or the, the area with the, the shade structure and a fire pit and some really nice seating. Um, I think, you know, if you, you don't have to run the, if there isn't a big event, this is a, an opportunity for, I think, I think we talked a lot about like where you could have donor opportunities. This is like a great place to have branding for donors and things like that. I think it's a great place. Um, If you know if you have sort of a more social event happening on the event lawn you can have like a family picnic or you know you see that a lot in parks, where people just kind of rent out gazebo so it's kind of that that it could function is that as well. So that's that's that sheet structure fire pit area on the side. And then ice rink and I know everyone wants to talk about the ice rink so we did do a lot of research on that as well. you know, we went back and forth in the last couple of weeks on the sizing of the ice rink, whether it's an ice rink, like an NHL-sized or a high school-sized hockey rink, whether we do a ribbon. And so I think we're still kind of trying to decide that. But I think we're leaning sort of closer to a smaller rink. We've definitely decided that it's a temporary. It's something where the city either buys all the equipment and stores it or they rent out the equipment so that there's a lot of flexibility in how you do that. But we're as designers trying to make sure that we're incorporating and making sure you have the space for things like the space rental, we're thinking about where the rubber flooring goes, where you have the tent for the Zamboni and the snow melt and potentially an area for hot chocolate and fire pits and all of that fun stuff. It's something we're still discussing and we're making sure that our design can accommodate whatever the city decides in the future with its budget.

Yeah. And I, I mean, I want to say, cause I think we probably really could get in the weeds about the ice rink. So I want to make sure everybody knows the idea is to create the space and then make sure that there are different things that we can accommodate there, you know, perhaps temporary ice in the winter that, you know, I think I love the, yeah, the example up on the left. So, I mean, going forward, well, the hope is that the design will, you know, have some sort of perhaps like temporary ice in the winter, but that's not something we have to decide right now. So I just, you know, we don't have to decide what sort of perhaps temporary ice we might have two years from now today. So I think the important thing though, is just to understand that the flexible event space will perhaps have some temporary ice in the future. And then the ice, I mean, we have had a lot of discussions at the steering committee about whether there would be a lease-to-own option, whether we would purchase the ice equipment. So I think, again, discussing all these different options. And the team has definitely helped us put us in touch with different programming people that would literally come and do everything for us to everything you know so there's a lot of different options that I think we could you know discuss ad nauseum and we don't have time for that today but just so everybody knows that's kind of there have been a lot of discussions about it

real quick

yeah yeah I would want to be mindful of everybody's

time at the time of doing the park right it's time of doing this all the all the infrastructure yes

yeah and we're and the idea is we're not putting any sort of coolant down because this is not the this is not going to be an ice rink But the hope is maybe there'll be some temporary ice in the winter. So everything will lay on top of this flexible event space. Okay, and last question.

Yes. What is the season currently in St. Louis for ice? Do you know? I think the idea

we... No, I think the idea, we've talked about like eight weeks, eight to 10 weeks or something. So it'd be a temporary timeframe.

Yep. Yeah. And like I said, we're trying to make sure that we have like a power infrastructure in place so that when you bring them in, you don't have to like bring in a generator. So we're trying to if you are running it, that you can run it smoothly and we're lowering the costs of running it. You know, it's also size wise, you know, you can decide to just do a small kind of 48 by 80 ice rink and not do this ice ribbon, but in the future, if this is super popular, you know that you can do an ice ribbon and kind of do like a really an experience in this space and that it compares to other lovely ice drink experiences across the country. So you have the flexibility for that in the future. And then lastly, in the beer garden, I know I briefly talked about that stage that's kind of facing both a large event and you can have a small stage and close down that beer garden and have a smaller event up here. You know, the stairs coming up to the building, that area in front of this stage, that's hardscape and then some lovely planting. And we will be replacing you at, you had asked about the beer garden. We would need to replace that existing wall on the side there. So I wanted to be transparent about that as well.

Is the last thing that you're kind of talking about is budget. Are we kind of getting in? Cause we're kind of, We're just getting low on time, so I just want to be, yeah. Thank you, Nishka. Hey

there, I'm Colette Koschelski. I'm with Navigate Building Solutions. I serve as the owner's rep for the city for this project. So when, on the onset of this project, the city identified 6.9, just under $7 million of funding available for the project. So we want to periodically take a check on that and make sure that we're still fitting in that budget. So that's what we did at the end of that first design phase that they described, the schematic design. We estimated what we saw on paper construction-wise. Your total program budget, that $6.9 million has to include also your soft costs, the cost of a design team, other consultants, any furnishings that will go in the park. So we did a quick check. We did a detailed estimate of the construction and all of the other soft costs that go with it, and right now it's tracking to be on budget that this is feasible within your $6.9 million budget. Any questions?

Less for you, but more for David, I guess, and Tony is it would be good to know as we get farther along what we're thinking from an operational budget standpoint. Like this 6.9 seems to make sense, but I... In my mind, to kind of use this space the way I would love to see it and the way I've seen in Chicago, I would be hard-pressed to think we're not hiring another person in part to just operate the event season for that, which I'm fine with. I'm just thinking through those year-to-year operational costs, either people or additional police officers, because if it's busy every night of the week, even using the fire pits and people hanging out, we're going to need to make sure we staff that. Yeah. If you guys can start thinking through those, that would be helpful to kind of

have

a

sense of. Right now we're really focused on the construction portion of it. As you know, with this initial contract, we're just getting to the – point of time where we're going to have construction drawings in hand so we can... We know what the cost is, and then when we're ready to bid the actual project, we can. We've got a whole other set of conversations we're going to need to have with the Parks and Rec Commission as it relates to programming and other things. So we're definitely thinking about that. Don't know quite what that looks like at the moment.

Okay,

fair. That will be a part of the discussion as we move along.

Yeah, because that's like the other part of this, right? Is you get it built, and then it's like, okay, how much is it going to cost us a year to just maintain it in a way that we all... Really, when

we... dive in on the ice discussion because ice is an operational cost when it's a temporary feature and it's a massive operational cost. So that's, that's something we'll need to discuss later.

Another point I wanted to touch on, totally unrelated to budget, and I apologize if it is in your slides yet to come, but one of our next steps, in addition to moving on with construction, is to hold an open house for the public. We're looking at the last week in January just to give them an update on, we heard you, here's what we're working on so far, just to keep them updated.

Okay, great. I mean, I think we'll continue to hear more about this project. Obviously, does anybody kind of have some last-minute burning questions? We still have one more thing to tackle in our discussion, so if the question can wait. It's not a question. It's just awesome. I'm just really impressed

and excited. So that's all.

Great. All right. I think thank you, everybody, very much. We appreciate the presentation. Thank

you.

Happy holidays, happy new year. All right, so the last item to talk about is YNOWN. I think David's going to go over some couple of brief slides.

Okay, so what I just handed out is information you've already seen. It's that previous memo that was distributed. I just wanted to make sure you had that in hand that had the results from the EngageClayton.com survey that was up for about a month with the YDOWN concepts. Tonight, what we'd like to talk about, and I'd mentioned with street lighting, you know, we've got another month before we get together with the city council. And we want to keep these things moving, especially putting together scopes of service so that we can go out and acquire design professionals, contractors, whoever we need in order to implement these things. So I wanted to talk for a minute today about the Y-Down Boulevard concepts and see where the city council's at at this point in time with the information you have to date. just as a really quick uh recap on this i'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because i know you've all seen it and we're short um on time at the moment but concept one was just going back and basically replanting the median with trees much like it was before let's put the trees back in street lights irrigation uh maybe some plantings that are at the uh um at the edges of the medians, but really what you see all the way down wide out of what you saw in the area between University and the city limits previously. So the second concept was where you had these prairie pockets and understory ground covers. There was some area that they showed for art, but really the differentiating feature between concepts one and two with these large oval planting beds that were kind of scattered throughout the medians. Concept three was that, um, uh, the echo plan I'll call it, uh, that they'd put together. Um, and so that one had a, uh, quite a bit of hardscaping to it. It had a lot of native landscaping. Uh, the designs I would say were, were much more detailed than what you saw with just the regular replanting where you'd go in. There's a lot going on at that, uh, understory level. along with the hardscape. So got some stuff up in the corner that might make it a little difficult to see if you're in the room, but just concept one, the estimated cost was between $1.7 and $1.9 million for it. The one thing I will point out is when you look at these, the tree spacing is really pretty similar in these plans, as is the streetlight spacing that you see here. So those counts really don't change a whole lot. What's changing is what's going on underneath those trees, that understory. so i just want to point that out but the cost here estimated between 1.7 and 1.9 million dollars concept two where you have those oval beds that were underneath those understory uh plantings you're looking at an estimated cost of 2 million to 2.2 million was the estimate from the designer and then finally the echo landscape um sculpture solution they had is 2.2 to 2.5 million dollars so we've got a range here from 1.7 up to potentially 2.5 million in total costs in order to restore the medians there. We had the survey that went live. A couple of the key questions I just want to put up here.

David, if I can, sorry to interrupt, but since you talked about the budget numbers for the projects, do you have any guesstimate as to the operational cost year-to-year different to be to maintain Option one versus two and three, because I would assume with all the under beds and everything may require additional person power and cost.

Replacement cost is going to be high on those two. Okay. You know, if you have to go in and replace those plantings versus throwing down grass seed, that's going to be different on the natives. They're great long-term once it's in place and grows, it really doesn't require a whole lot. It's an area that you can let go to some extent where if you go back with the You know, the concept we have, you see Brightview or a contractor out there every week, every other week, mowing those medians. So in the end, there's not a whole lot of fluctuation because there's pros and cons to all of these. We can run those numbers for you, but I would say it's not going to be a wide enough difference where I think it's a big component for consideration. Not enough to factor in. Got it. So just a quick... Overview of the survey results, really the key results that we saw here. The highest ranked item that we saw from the public was concept one, going back in with the replanting. We've got the average rankings here. Concept three was actually the second most popular and concept two, which is the understory plantings with those kind of oval planting areas. That one was at a 2.43, so considerably lower than concept one came in in the overall scoring. Another good way to look at this is, do you have any concerns with the concepts? So when you look at concept one, 77% of the people that responded said they don't have any concerns with concept one, which is going back in with what we had there previously. There were a few other concerns that came up in the comments, but you can see neighborhood character costs, maintenance, those things really weren't community concerns when we surveyed the public.

Is the other please specify specified somewhere?

It's in the comments that are in the

detail, right?

Yeah. And those were wide ranging. Yeah. And on the back or in the last couple of pages of the survey results, Anna actually went through and tried to compile those and give you an idea of what those comments really were. Do you have any concerns about concept two? Fit with neighborhood character, almost half of the respondents had a concern about neighborhood character and how two would fit given the context of the neighborhood itself and the rest of Wydown. You can see some concerns with cost. There's that other category.

Two is prairie pockets.

What's

that? Two is prairie packets,

right? Two is the oval landscape understory. I can show you the... Oh, I keep...

I think

it's getting buttons on my lap. This doesn't do anything here. It's hard to see here, but you can see these plantings underneath here. It's not necessarily that native.

Two is art.

Right.

And okay.

Two is art along with this grown up brown cover.

Well, and I just want to, I believe I have the idea that we aren't necessarily picking one, two or three. Like we could. Mix components of them.

Correct. This

is a very early concept to get feedback.

Yeah. Right. So, yeah, let me show you this and then I'll ask you the question here on concept three. You can see the concerns that people have maintenance being the biggest one neighborhood character, 22%, none at 22% cost and the other items here looking at this. I mean, concept one was the highest ranked there are very few concerns 77% of the respondents didn't have concerns at all with that particular concept my question today because. We need to get moving on the design process, we need to actually go out get a landscape architect and an engineer together. and on board. We need to do an RFQ to get this thing going. It's going to take some time, but we really want to get that process moving. My question is, with the information you have to date, are you ready to give us some direction on these three concepts? And if not, what information do we need to provide so that you can make that decision? For us, if the If the city council said we want to go with with concept one it's a much, much quicker process, I will say this than if you were to go with concept three that had a lot of hardscape and walls and other things that would need to be designed there. So there is a speed component to this overall process, and I want I want to be clear on that too because it's not necessarily captured in the survey. But I guess that's my question, because we want to know how to scope this thing. Do you have enough right now? Do you want to see more? We're already through our full contract with the landscape architect that put these concept designs together. But what do we need to do for you all? Or are you ready to just give us some general, hey, go out and hire somebody to run detailed designs on one of these concepts? So I'll leave it at that.

um i'll maybe start with our ward one council people since you guys are closest to it i mean i don't want to put you on the spot but if you have strong concerns i love

yeah i mean i've i talked to folks who were at the event and then obviously we got a lot of other feedback online and obviously i see this every day um right by my house so um i uh was honestly surprised by the like strength of the preference for option one and I say that because I believe that all three options are like planting the trees like you said essentially in the same like density and types and all of that and so what I what Like what I can't help but wonder is, or what I want to think about as a member of the city council is like, what, if any opportunity, do we have something that absolutely honors that desire for like a strong tree canopy while also encouraging really considering the opportunity of something that's like somewhat transformative. I mean, we have had lots of engaged master planning that has suggested people want more native landscaping and people want art and people want things like that. And so what I wonder, which is I don't know if there's a way that we could try to get at this, is whether people felt like, let's just do number one because we want the trees and we want the trees back fast and just get those trees in. Why aren't they there yet? I'll give you a million dollars to buy ones that are already a foot wide. I mean, like literally, that is what I hear from my neighbors. And what I can't tease from the responses is whether people were afraid of That even considering the other options would take away from that. And so. What I would actually love to know from you, David is given the fact that the. Plan for the trees along the space is quite similar between all 3 options whether we can't actually start that. and engage in some additional consideration of whether what goes around the trees is just natural lawn or is something different. But don't let the plan for tree planting wait for that. How possible is

that? It isn't necessarily the tree planting that's the issue because the trees are similar in all these. It's really where's the irrigation going to be? If you've got landscape beds, it's going to be a different irrigation system configuration that it's going to be just lawn. If you're going to have the hardscape that you see with concept three throughout this area, then that's going to impact where your bed is, where your irrigation, perhaps where your streetlight electrical circuits are run. There's these other things that are going on beneath the surface that are impacted by those decisions more than just trees and where the trees are located. Now, that's not to say with concept one, you don't have areas on the ends where If you go down Y-down, you know, there are various plantings on the ends of the medians. Yeah, they make it really hard. If CCF wanted to donate some piece of art to put on the end caps of some of these medians, there's nothing, if you went with concept one, that would preclude you from doing that. You could set aside the space to put that type of feature in. It's really at the outset, that understory portion that's really through the heart of that median. Are we going in with something really simple and minimal, or are we going in with a more complicated design? And I would say that everything underground is going to be dependent upon that choice that's made at the service.

And you would want to know, to that point... It sounds like you're saying we need to know what kind of irrigation plan we're going to have before we do the tree planting?

I would say that we need to put out an RFQ that has a scope of work. And that scope is going to be informed by the decision that's made regarding landscape versus hardscape, whether or not we wanted, you know, what types of beds we need. How important is a landscape designer going to be in this process versus how important the engineers will be in this particular process? I

guess what I'm trying to get at is actually what if we stop and think of it as two separate projects? Like what, and maybe it really isn't possible, but if we're not I mean, and I guess it depends what the rest of the council thinks. So I'll just wait and we'll talk more later.

So my understanding from all of this and the feedback that I got is that what we try to do is present three very general concepts and differentiate them. And that we're now at a point where let's go with a general concept. That isn't to say it's going to be exactly like we saw, that we're going to hire somebody that's going to make sure that we get to see what that looks like and embraces what we want. So given that, what I've heard is, number one, people were very strong about generally replace what we had as opposed to embrace all kinds of radically different things, at least radically different compared to the way it was in the past. Second, get going on it already. It's taking a long time. So I think it is important that we start initiating those things. I think the idea of... introducing things like park benches or water stations or maybe a planting area or two or, you know, room for a sculpture. I think those are all things we should embrace. But to me, that's part of what Concept One is. And so that's what I heard. And I actually heard a lot of pushback. While there were people that certainly supported the other concepts, there were actually more negative comments about some of those other ones as well. So they were certainly more controversial or at least more polarizing topics to bring up. So that's the feedback that I got.

Yeah, I mean, I would agree with that. I think when I hear from people, they're just like, like you said, Rick, let's just get going already. And that's my biggest concern with if we, and I'm not discounting having some sort of prairie pockets at the end or something like that, something that does embrace some native plants. And I feel like art was very negative in the survey, but I think people thought that we were buying art at the expense of doing something else, you know what I mean? And I think art in my mind would only happen if CCF is able to fundraise for art. But I, you know, I just think we, and I don't know if people just, you know, of course they want to just put back what's already there, you know, and they, because this picture makes it look like we're just going to put back and hopefully it will be eventually. But I also, I just wonder if people, people don't necessarily want to see something. It seemed like so different than the you know, I mean, it is going to look different for a long time, but they ultimately just want to see what might be along the rest of Y down. So, you know, and not necessarily differentiate that section that was so hard hit from the rest of the area. So, I mean, my preference would be to go towards option one, which was clearly the, you know, favorite in the survey with thoughts that if there is the ability to fundraise for art, you know, by CCF that there's that ability that, you know, a consultant would be made aware of that so that we can make sure irrigation doesn't run into a sculpture or something.

Yeah, I think what I heard is, you know, a sculpture is one thing, a sculpture park up and down is another thing. And so I think that's really the difference. The only other thing I would add, and this is getting a little bit into the detail, is that every time we have a cross street, like at University, Dartford and other places, not to put things in that create traffic hazards and pedestrian hazards because you can't see. So we need to do that somewhere else.

There's a lot of adjustments we can make, like the... the pro the closeness of the trees to the the curves which is an issue there's there are lots of things we can go in and actually correct with this

i had one question i forgot to ask um if we go with something like number one and or if we like are generally doing that or regardless of what we're doing we plant the trees what like how long does it take for the trees to look like they did on may 15. is that like 10 years or 20 years or 50 years Okay, that's what I thought. So like, I just don't know if people realize that. And so the idea that we're going to have little trees there and then nothing else, it's going to be really depressing as someone who is going to look at it every day. I just, yeah, I don't. And that's right. And it's hard to know because I don't want to say like people didn't know what they were responding to because that's so patronizing. Yeah. But I don't. I don't think that we said that. And I think people think it's more like maybe even 10 years, like 50 years is crazy. No, I won't be here. Like, probably. You

preface that idea. I was the one who answered from the audience. That would be to return back to like condition. Yeah. That doesn't mean it would feel empty in 20 or maybe even 10. You're going to start getting some growth and fill in. But to get back to what it was, was what my response was. Yeah.

No, that's what I asked. Thank you. And I would just say, I definitely would like to get rid of the big bushes that block line of sight um at the intersections and i would like to see native planting like we have some areas of it or of like diverse planting um even just like a white on in big bend there's planting there i don't know if those are actually native or anything but yeah don't block line of sight they don't feel dangerous and they look nice

Yeah, and I'm wondering too, like Becky, to your point, like thinking about, yes, option one, but then is there a way to, again, talk to a landscape architect as part of RFP saying, are there places where we can have some native plantings in areas, again, to soften the fact that there will just be these skinny little trees for a long time so that people have a little bit more to look at? Like, I don't know. I mean, that's kind of maybe merging a couple of components, but I'm wondering if there's a way to kind of...

Well, and I wonder when you look at concept too, if that, if you wouldn't mind switching it, that image of that art is so jarring. I know. Like, I don't think... You know what I mean? I think that's probably immediately off-putting. Right. And I also think, you know, when you look at these plantings, when you think of lie down, you do think of like that running path that goes straight down the middle. Well, this image completely eliminates that. So probably immediately people are like, well, I don't want that. I want my running path and I don't want this alien shaped figure also right in the middle of my street. Yeah. So I do wonder a little bit, you know, and again, to the point of like, you know, we're going to have these skinny trees. are people really against these little beds for native plants versus tall prairie grass? You know, things like that. I do think there's like a nuance there that might be missing just from these simple images. Yeah, so I just, that kind of worries

me. That's why I'm wondering if we can find some middle ground.

I think we probably can. From a hardscape standpoint, is that something that The council's generally uninterested in being more concept three. There were various walls and other things that were like, if that's the case and you don't want any hardscape, then we'll get this thing going. And where we do some native plantings or some low lying stuff underneath these trees that may shift the irrigation stuff a little bit, but it's enough for us to go ahead and scope the work at this point in time. So I guess more so than just which one of the three concepts you want, we could probably move forward with if you're okay eliminating three and going with let's put the trees back and then let's look at maybe how we can incorporate some natives and maybe save some space for art. Then I think we're good.

We're not doing an age. you're not eliminating three means that we can still do a CCF once a sponsor pieces of art here and there. We can do that.

I think the

temptation was, and also saying prairie grass, you think of these wild prairies and even native native plantings don't have to be out of control. You can keep them. So, and that's where I think there might've been that confusion that it's different with the culture of the neighborhood. It's what you plan. And also I certainly would hope we consider native grasses and not the long grass that only goes down that far. And I don't know if that changes if we're doing that concept, you know what irrigation to put in, right? We're not doing a lot of hardscape. So

I mean, those are the

same energy. Those

are all things when we're talking about the type of grass that goes in, we're going to look at all that. And, you know, so we're going to,

we'll

look at whether or not it's a native versus, you know, what it looks like when it's at full growth before it's cut. And then we'll also have to look at things like salt resistance because it's going to get salt thrown all over it in those medians. So, I mean, all those things are going to factor in.

Yeah. And even putting in, and I'll trust this to you all in the, the landscape architect, whoever it is, the understory trees, the red buds, things like that will come up quicker and have some color there because it is going to be 50 to whatever years before people get what they're asking for. But I do think that some of these responses didn't understand.

I

feel

like we need to focus less on concept one, two or three and more on what it tells us with what David mentioned on the concerns. So people have the least concerns and then you add in the other questions at the end, like what else do you want? to tell the project team and what are your general priorities, the first two questions. So any landscaper through the process of hiring a designer, they're going to be able to take these are the common themes, biodiversity, stormwater management. Those were really strong themes that people wanted. They didn't choose prairie maybe but there's other ways to be sustainable within your plant choices and so that will all have to come later choosing item number one doesn't mean we forget about the amenity benches that people said that they wanted and all the other things you know

yeah i say i agree with the direction we're going i would hope that in all this we we still give ccf the opportunity to take advantage of what i thought was a lot of enthusiasm at the last meeting to be able to play a part i don't think we should relegate them just as saying if you want to do a piece of art at the end of one part of that that's that's fine otherwise don't bother us i mean i think there is apparently a lot of groundswell of people who somehow want some involvement in this and i i would hope perhaps this concept one with some pieces of concept two being possible might give ccf some more opportunity to uh to work on this and work with us so i think that would be very positive

i agree

i don't um

Ditto for everybody. I wasn't obviously here on the 26th, but it looked like the third design when I originally saw it looked like a half memorial garden for the tornado, which seemed a little, I mean, to take nothing away from those who suffered with the tornado, it seemed a little bit of an overkill potentially, no pun intended. So I'm with everybody else. Like I think if we generally are like put the trees back, accomplish the benches figure out a way to do like a good walking path to the extent we can i know david you've got some reservations for not wanting to put a full park and a full sidewalk through all that for all the reasons not going to

call it out as a path we're just going to leave space

yeah that's what i'm saying like like accommodate those clearly those three or four things people are asking for and if you can put some natives i mean natives in whatever like everybody's talking about like i think that's that works for me and i think it's an easier way to move it forward

great um all right if there's nothing else i think we need a motion from oh

it's in the drawer

I move that the Board of Aldermen hold a closed meeting with a closed vote and record as authorized by Section 610.021, 1, 2, and 3, provide statutes of Missouri relating to legal issues, real estate, and or personnel negotiation of a contract pursuant to Section 610.0112 RSMO. and or proprietary information pursuant to section 610.02115 and or information related to public safety and security measures pursuant to sections 610.02018 and 19 RSMO.

Second.

Myron, would you mind? Yeah, do a roll call vote.

I had to do it for Alderman or Councilman Gary Feder. I had to be as strong as I could. Views?

I had to do it for Alderman or Councilman Fader. I had to be as strong as I could. Views?

Aye.

Council Member Patel?

Aye.

Council member Gary Feder? Aye. Councilmember Humble? Councilmember Yorg? Aye. Councilmember Waldman? Aye. Mayor McAndrew?

Council member Fader? Aye. Councilmember Humble? Councilmember Yorg? Aye. Councilmember Waldman? Aye. Mayor McAndrew?

Aye.

The ayes have it.

Great, thank you.

We can stay here, right?