 That always gets me fired up when I see that. So excited to be here this morning. Thanks everybody for being here as we're ending our Town Hall series as we're trying to do something different and actually come out and talk to everybody in districts. And we decided to do a little business Town Hall and I'm very excited to have Ayesha Driggers from our Office of Business Opportunity joining me and Ryan Coleman for our Economic Development Department here today as we're trying to do something different as we talked about engaging, getting into the community and talking about what's happening in Columbia. As you know, we've been really focused on open Columbia as we talked about, which is not only open for business but for ideas, innovation, engagement. And I think over the last 18, 19 months we've seen a lot more engagement. People fully involved but as we're coming into this as we all talked about an important piece of the puzzle is business and you can't have a strong neighborhood without a strong business community and you can't have a strong business community without a strong neighborhood. So we have to have that balance. But I also wanted to take time to acknowledge all of our city leaders that are here today. If y'all could all stand up, you're such a big key part we would not be able to get here if it wasn't for our city leaders and staff. You know, as we talk about what Ms. Wilson in her team we have ACM Simons here, ACM Sheely. Who else is here? We got Shannon and her team from Pecureman here. Yeah, Krista, Missy, there they are. Tucked away in the middle of planning and budgeting. Spencer Green working on our real estate, Greg Williams, Gracie Salters and then of course our police department I wouldn't be remiss if we don't give these guys a hand as well for doing it and thank y'all for so much for what you do. But you know, we wanted to start discussing citywide initiatives then into economic development, business opportunities team here both to give y'all some updates on what's going on and then we'll open up the question. I'm gonna try to make this kind of quick and simple. There's so much information, you know but for the next three hours just sit back and relax. It'll be okay. We'll get through it together. But seriously, we're just so excited that, you know we're continuing to adapt the one Columbia theme that Mayor Benji put together because truly for us to be the strong city that we are we have to be one. And working with every business, every public service, neighborhood, district, law enforcement, our firefighters, our officers, government officials, schools, churches and citizens together we make up the puzzle and everybody's a piece of that puzzle. And so when we come together we make multiple connections. And so we're gonna continue to focus on that theme of being part of the puzzle. And you can't mention, you know one part of the city without another part of the city as we talk about, you know it's not just neighborhoods and businesses it's individuals and in a town full of talent like we are it's just amazing of all the pieces. And I'm so excited that we're able to start telling people about it, that video we share all the time. Thank you experience Columbia for what y'all do and putting it out there because we're part of telling our story and our story is so important because when we tell people about Columbia and we've been on the road in Charleston we've been to Atlanta, we've been to Greenville, Charlotte and we're gonna continue to move around the Southeast and other places to attract people here but telling our story, people are amazed at what we have in Columbia. They realize that we're just not a college town that we are the capital city of South Carolina. So obviously it takes a united team to make these kind of things happen. And our job at the city of Columbia is to ensure the groundwork and the growth for development our community is moving forward. Partnerships, collaboration if you look at our competitive reports our biggest negative for so long was the collaboration piece and now that's changing, we're collaborating we're collaborating with our neighbor governments our partnerships in town if it's higher hospitality districts our business community working hand in hand building back up our neighborhood infrastructure as we prepare to continue to grow downtown we lost 9% of our population over the last decade so rebuilding that one house at a time creating more opportunities to live downtown and take part listening to our young folks who are moving here or here in college who wanna stay in Columbia but telling us why they're not and why it's important that we invest in downtown living and amenities in our greenways and making the connectivity thinking about future more walkability more bypass investing in our community both from everything from planting trees to renewable energy trying different things. So we're gonna cover a snapshot of Columbia today. When you walked in it was scrolling on the screens there must have been 150, 200 different things going on obviously we can't cover all of it but just so you know that we're spending millions of dollars lots of staff hours to improve the quality of life of Columbia our focus has been invest in Columbia that means into our staff into technology into training equipment but amenities into our parks into our greenways into our downtown. And as we continue to grow take advantage get away from being a city full of parking lots and a city full of people walking around spending monies owning businesses following their dreams right here in Columbia, South Carolina. So when we look at the city's work you see multiple pieces of the puzzle and the puzzles are theme because everybody plays that part. So let's talk about public service. First obviously public works is working non stop but you think about it we got 17 different departments that are serving you as a community and it's everything from 911 Animal Services, Building Department, Planning and Zoning, Parking it goes on and on police, fire everybody work in hand, forestry every piece plays a role and affects one of the others. So bringing everybody together and working and communicating is so important. You know, we run the largest municipal water system. Why is that important? That's our future. That's economic development and that's our future as citizens and the security for something is so important water upgrading meters 150,000 meters we upgraded. Why is that important? Because it allows us to share information with you the customer in minutes, not hours. Investing in that lets us know if there are leaks going on. It allows us to monitor especially when things are going on and directly communicate with you, the homeowner or business owner or landlord, whichever you are. Investing in our call times. We had a tremendous amount of complaints about call times because we are average of 1500 calls a day. So sitting down with the staff and listening to their input, changing the structure. So taking people who work in nights and weekends and putting them in to nine to five where the volume of our call was and then using technology answering services to deal with others so that we're getting right into the meat of the trouble calls and how important it is. But reorganizing, that's communication. That's us working across departments together but listening to the folks who are on the front line. Obviously a large part of our responsibility is public safety as police. We invested heavily in our police department making sure that they have a step up program. Giving them the tools and the technology, take home cars, shot spotter. Doing all the things that we can from a training but also investing in them with mental health clinicians. Making sure that we have things there to help them do their job because our guys work a tremendous amount of time and effort and being out with them and seeing what they do on a day to day basis. I think what shocked most of you how much these guys and they do it with compassion and care and having that with the call volumes that they have and the things that they deal with on a day to day is amazing. I think we need to give them another round of applause. But investing in operation hope and giving them the tools and the resources with having yellow shirts help supplement, private security help supplement. Continuing to invest and find ways to help them do their job. Red light cameras that we're going after at the state house, why is that important? Technology today could help prevent a lot of accidents, speeding in school zones and work zones where you're not having to take an officer away from what he needs to be doing which is taking care of each of our businesses and our residents and having that ability to do that and the flexibility is gonna be so important. The police department is not just in its public safety role is also a code enforcement. Being out there and doing the inspections, the cleanups, the demolitions of substandard structures, being there to make sure that we're living up to the codes that are placed that we're not affecting other people's quality of life but making sure that things are safe for everybody. We funded the Office of Violent Crime this year fully funded and staffed and the efforts around because we needed that quarterback. We needed somebody to come in and help us organize all the great efforts out there to make sure that we're having the biggest impact. Violent crime is the biggest a turn in our community. Gun violence up, domestic violence up and that's not who we are as a community. So making sure that we have somebody who's focused on that who's making sure that they're able to take the best of the programs out there and work together in partnership in collaboration to reduce those numbers. The one thing we don't wanna see is an increase in violent crime. We had domestic violence walk probably the biggest crowd I've ever seen out there and some of the emotional stories that we heard and the impact and people at every level but knowing a community is here to support them and that we're making efforts to try to reduce that was a calming effect but we also learned things there. You know, the fact that we need to focus on the cyber side something we hadn't thought about and really didn't think about but that these stalkers or former things being able to get into people's Alexa's and their phones and hearing what's going on in their house and keeping them vulnerable. We need to do everything we can take advantage of all the technology and everything that's out there to make sure that we're reducing violent crime in our community and we're gonna continue to improve and do everything we can to prevent. Obviously fire another public safety role. We inspect every business for safety. You know, we've invested in our fire department in the step up program, got second set of gear building a new fire house, investing in the fire houses we have but equipment as well. Making sure that we're taking care of those who are taking care of us but making sure they're safe and we're safe. Fire marshals doing hundreds of inspections but even doing good things in our communities like giving over 250 smoke alarms and installing those in people's houses who didn't have it to make sure that they're safe that we don't end up with a fire for the wrong reason but taking fire prevention week and actually going out into the neighborhoods and talking to people and little things like remembering to turn off your iron blow out candles, do the things that are important but sometimes we need a reminder of to make sure that we're keeping our community safe one house at a time. Obviously, homelessness on everybody's mind it affects every part of our community it affects the unsheltered, it affects our residents it affects our businesses so opening up our rapid shelter program and where's Ms. Shepherd and now I saw her Ms. Camisha is here, our director we couldn't do it without her and her team the time and efforts of what they're doing to help us deal with the unsheltered making sure that we're getting them the services and I'm proud to say with the rapid shelter program the 50 pallet homes we've been able to get 32 people into permanent housing with wraparound services it takes time and effort to do that but doing it one step at a time and obviously for us that's just the beginning we're focused on a one stop shop we wanna have a single point where all the services are included so we're talking about everything from DMV to DMH to urgent care, to physical therapy to clinicians, to classrooms having everything in one place cause right now services are fractured so we're losing people all over our community it's not helping those unsheltered we gotta change the way we're doing it we're spending $40 million a year and 103 different service providers providing service and our numbers are increasing we're seeing more people who are camping out and keeping themselves distance they're not getting service they're being enabled to stay and that's not healthy it's not healthy for the unsheltered community it's not healthy for our business community it's not healthy for our residents we have to change we're gonna try something different and we're gonna need everyone's support as we continue to do that obviously we've been super focused on highlighting utilizing and expanding the city's access to our rivers the William Street extension project is moving forward we have 30% construction documents worked out in agreement with the again yard family to make all that happen and open up that part for development but future access to the river so that we have more downtown access partnership with Dominion Energy to allow us to lease over 200 acres to connect between here and I-20 to open it up being able to partner with Irmo Recreation Commission the Mungo Foundation and others who have now gathered right away from the dam all the way down and as Carolina Crossroads finishes you'll be able to leave downtown on a bike, on your two feet never have to deal with traffic and go all the way to the dam and back and if we can continue with our program get the overpass into Elmwood Park and connect a whole another area so if you happen to slip on a rock you can walk yourself to Richland Memorial and get stitched up and then stop back at Warmouth and have lunch there'll be so many different things you'll be able to do with the connectivity and it's probably in the top five requests of our community is to finish the greenways get the connectivity, the walkability in all of these steps and we're very thankful for the partnerships including the Boyd Foundation who's investing millions of dollars in our community especially into our outdoors and our river this opens up our riverfront and it's bringing other partners to the table we've already heard from other property owners who now want to grant us access and give us ability to open up not only our Saluda and our Congaree side but the Broad side where it's very limited to public access and open up that beautiful stretch which will also help some of our neighborhoods who are on that side of the river and probably some challenge areas who don't have access to the river today but opening up for every neighborhood and every citizen obviously we're so proud of public works and others for all the many initiatives that they've launched but I think one of the greatest things for people to understand is that Columbia was selected lead cities we're the only city in South Carolina whose gold lead certified which is incredible so there are only 16 cities across the country this year that achieved this status and it makes me now want to get to platinum why is it important? That's what today's business community and consumers are looking for they're looking for cities to invest and plant that only you not only have a quality of life but are thinking about the future thinking about how we adapt to deal with climate change and that could be as simple as as we start repaving roads seal coating those with reflective white paint so that we're reducing our heat index you know we're 18 and a half degrees higher and according to our heat study well if we can reduce that with investing in trees doing white roofs doing white roads all these little pieces that we can do to make a difference and reduce that helps not only our climate but it helps out with power bills it helps out with people's health initiatives it's part of a bigger picture and doing that and partnering today with different entities we're getting ready to do a pilot program with the reflective roads which I think will be an incredible program to see and measure how much does it reduce and as we plan for the future to repave in our roads and fixing our sidewalks and building buildings how do we keep making sure that we put that incentive in there to help reduce that heat wave and make us relatively cool instead of famously hot as I like to say but also working with our state partners and our federal partners we've been talking about the modernization of railroad since 1905 in this town and for us to get elevated crossings on assembly and get rid of 15 crossings across the city opening up a part of our community that has been challenged because of the rail coming in rails very important to our state rails increased by 47% and a lot of that is the inlet port and the port and all the automotive that is happening in our community and things are being transported more on rail right now than they are on our highway which is a good thing for traffic but is a bad thing for a city that has 60 rail crossings and since none of those businesses are really located here we're just a past three so getting the state legislator to support us with $40 million working with the federal government on infrastructure, mega grants meeting with the DOT department working with the White House and very thankful that we have a former mayor in the White House because it helps going after those projects so that not only can we realign those rails but we also have the ability to go after the quiet zones which means upgrading all the safety in our neighborhoods so that we can have trains come through without honking their horns making sure that with the safety improvements with gates, lights, traffic, medians all the things that we need to slow down traffic and pedestrian and make it safer we're focused on that and that's 14 grade crossings roughly about $5 million and then obviously our next piece is neighborhoods and communities continuing to invest in our parks in Finley Park, Hyatt Park our tennis center Southeastern Park, Mays Park we just finished working on Hampton Park putting more equipment in there a new building equipping them with Wi-Fi making them back to being the center of our neighborhoods investing in the maintenance and having park rangers having ownership in all our parks a lot of people say well how are you gonna keep the crown jewel nice and I said well we failed the first time we didn't invest in maintenance like we should have and that's on us we recognize that but now we're gonna have ownership there having maintenance crews there having park rangers there and activation with all the outdoor activities that will be going on in Finley Park keeps it healthy and if you look at cities that have beautiful center parks and invested in their parks heavily they're full of families they're not filled with crime they're not filled with elements that you don't want there they're filled with families because they're activated and that's our approach and so excited about that obviously we've invested heavily by putting $100,000 worth of computers in our park bringing access to folks who may not have that at home helping with our youth as well we did I think over 15, 1400 youth this summer that we had in camps we have over 450 seniors that we're working with who are doing everything from exercising to being good but our parks are become the center we opened up a community resource center an opportunity came out of a neighborhood meeting where we had folks who wanted kind of an incubator space either for their nonprofit or their small business so we took advantage of a bad situation we had a flood in the library we took that and refocused that library and now it's filled with cubicles it has meeting rooms it has technology and Wi-Fi and printers so people can come up and actually chase their dream and we brought it to their community where they can be close to home and they have the ability to work at their hours and follow their dreams but also come up with programs to improve the quality of life in their community and it's just one piece obviously we continue to invest as we talk about neighborhoods, communities but in our city workforce market salary adjustments for all employees not only was it police and fire but all our employees got market salary adjustments we bring in our employees up but that's not where we wanna stop we wanna continue to work by investing in training programs, technology things to allow them to allow them to share with us their ideas we did about eight months ago we had an opportunity to go meet with employees mainly our folks who are out in the field every day and talk to them and what I learned from them is some of the processes and procedures we have we're actually keeping us from doing our job so switching that learning from our employees but having that engagement we're getting ready to do that again because every time we go and sit down with our employees we're learning more we can't be everywhere and we can't do ever but if we can empower give them the technology, the autonomy to do their job, the training they're their first touch with our communities it's about community service it's about customer service that's who we are we're in the customer service business we don't provide just services we provide customer service so continuing to invest in that obviously consolidating our office is our big focus we're looking to consolidate our employees and hubs so that the interaction can be much stronger that we can get things done in a more efficient and effective manner because we're communicating in close proximity that we're floors away, not blocks away also with that it allows us to open up key pieces of property across our community and I think that's so important that we're selling property to get back to create tax base if it's a corner of Bull and Taylor if it's Laurel and Maine if it's Washington Square whatever it is it's gonna allow us to get more people downtown, more businesses, more opportunity it helps us deal with the gaps and affordable and workforce housing as we continue to look at that because we have to find a way to continue growing we need 16,000 units over the next decade the housing authorities playing their part we're playing our part but part of our job and these guys job is to help us bring these development teams to our community but we don't just want development we want good quality development and good management so actually going to communities where they've done projects and see them and look at them to understand how do they manage it and I don't wanna see something that's just a year old I wanna see something that's 20 years old how do you do it over a period of time and we've had that experience and met some folks where I saw some 30 year old projects that look better than five year old projects because of their continued investment in management and how they build it up and this is across the spectrum from 30% median income to voucher eight, section eight housing all mixed in with each other and it works, the model works and people have the opportunity then to eventually get to home ownership when they're ready which is so important. So economic development, I'm just so excited. We have such a great team put together. Ryan and his team working with those small businesses helping us recruit those restaurants and retail which is our focus now, back office how we're investing and creating partnerships to go after everything from cybersecurity to different sales companies who wanna live in an urban environment who want to be, we urban development that's our focus, that's who we are we're not a manufacturing city we're an urban development city and so getting our focus making sure all those store fronts are filled but look, 600 million in development over the last 12 months, not a bad number. I see the projection for the next 12 months probably closer to a billion with what we see going on and let alone when we forecast out another two years you add scout and everything that's coming with it we're really huge investment and that investment is not only staying here it's growing here and it's reinvesting in our community they're part of it and so excited about it. Obviously our hospitality and business districts growing in advancing Main Street five points to Vista, North Main and North Main coming together and creating their own district but spreading it out by different areas where they can focus on their team members focused on building one block at a time. I think we have so far close to a thousand new business applications I think over the last 18 months, close to 1300 new businesses, not renewal, new businesses small, medium and large all growing here which tells me we're doing the right thing that the business friendly initiatives and our focus on encouraging people to follow their dreams is working. So we gotta continue to do that streamlining our license process and continuing to invest in the technologies to make it easier but also in working with our staff to make sure they have the ability to make decisions giving empowerment to our staff to do things at the staff level not everything going to committee cutting down time time is money when you're trying to grow a business and it affects a small business more than anybody else so anything we can do to reduce the time make it easier for those businesses to grow the more businesses are come and I'm so excited to, you know as we've gone to Charleston and others listening to these folks who are now looking at Columbia we just had a group in from Florida who runs an incredible restaurant group looking in serious about Columbia big step for them obviously to come to Columbia when they have nothing else in South Carolina but what they saw and what they felt when they were here it's so positive there's so much of the people are now discovering what they skipped over that we're not only the capital city but we're a city filled with talent and incredible businesses and people and quality of life and that's what they're looking for today so obviously, you know we're going to continue to take feedback from everybody and be part of that our economic development update I think I'm going to try to throw this to let's start with Ryan and then come back to Ayesha to kind of give us some big picture and short term and a little bit where we're headed Sure, thank you for the introduction and thank you everyone who's come out this morning and for taking time out of your busy day to come and learn about what's been going on at the city and our thoughts and our vision you know where we see things headed over the next year, two years, three years it really is an exciting time in the city of Columbia and a really exciting time to be doing economic development because Columbia's kind of got a vibe now like things are happening it's, there's energy people are looking at Columbia from the outside and say, hey, there's something going on there and I feel like I want to be a part of that you know, and we're hearing that from the other cities across the Southeast so we're just really excited to be a part of that action I really want to take a moment to kind of introduce my teammates who are here in attendance we've got some new additions to the team who've really helped bring some energy into what we're doing in economic development because at the end of the day we are really focused on sales and we're focused on customer service so we want to sell the city to those outside businesses or those businesses that are here currently and that are looking to expand but once we get them here we have to make sure that we prioritize that they're being assisted and they have fast friendly support and that's something that's been a huge priority for city council over the past few years and what you're seeing right now is a result of that prioritization so of course you've got myself I've been with the city for about 17 years now Greg Williams who's here he's our project, yeah, don't worry, stand up, sure Greg Williams is our project manager slash business liaison so as we have people that come in and start to work through the approval process he's really hands on with those projects and helps those people get from permitting to certificate of occupancy and he does a tremendous job with that. One of our most recent additions, Miss Grace Salter she has come to us by way of USC so she's had done some previous work in the property sector has done a lot of work with veterans programs and we're really excited to have her doing our business recruitment management it really is a relationship business at the end of the day and if any of y'all ever get the chance to interact with her she's just super positive all the time and then Mr. Spencer Green he's been a tremendous asset to our team as well he's been here probably about four months and he's helping us a lot with the commercial real estate items that the mayor mentioned earlier he's got a tremendous background in the sector has worked with large national firms previously it really brings that private sector expertise that we need as we look to start to unwind ourselves from some properties. So as the mayor mentioned the renewed focus really is on marketing Columbia externally and it's been a lot easier to do the past few years we've had so many new ribbon cuttings and announcements and we've got multifamily opening across the city we've got our universities that are hitting record enrollment numbers we're a very affordable community to live in you can still get a home on a nice piece of property for under $250,000 here and so it's a great time for us as we're working on our pitch book and we're going out to these other cities to solicit and say hey there's something going on here we're growing we're gonna be the next best thing and you absolutely need to get here and be a part of that. Something that we always kind of have to work around has been our commercial development program and that's something that the mayor and council have been a champion for the past few years and we understand the challenges to doing business here and that our property taxes kind of put a limiting factor on the growth here and so it's been really exciting to see the success that we've seen off this program in 2014 to 2016 it was a student housing incentive we got six large projects off of that 2019 through the end of last year we had our most recent program we had several significant projects then Arnold's Vista project, Bennett at Bull Street and that's been incredibly successful for helping us attract mixed use in multifamily apartments and now kind of working with the county to figure out well where do we go from here because we know interest rates out there are high it's really challenging and we need to do what we can do as a city county region to help make these deals work at the end of the day. I gotta add to what Ryan talked about the ribbon cuttings I mean it's close to like 70 ribbon cuttings but what I think so important about it is the last several months almost every ribbon cutting we've had are women owned businesses and I love that because it's a reflection on our community and who we are but it also is a reflection on our office of business opportunity and what they're doing and helping people follow their dreams and some of these businesses have been small some of them are great some of them are first time bricks and mortars some of them have morphed out of Soda City and some of these other great things that are going in our community but they're not stopping I'm going to another one today and another women owned business is bringing a different concept here and just but why it's exciting because this is what people are looking at they're looking at our community and the diversity of it we have a large international community here we have businesses growing left and right in every district and we're going to continue to grow that one piece at a time and take advantage now we get 16 million visitors here 16 million that's almost as equal to what Charleston is and put it in perspective Myrtle Beach gets 22 I think that says a lot our challenge is getting those overnight stays and so the more things that we have going on opening up the river taking advantage and getting growing our arts community growing our performing arts growing getting more concerts here there's no reason that the Colonial Center should have dark lights any day of the week if they're not playing basketball we ought to be having something going on in there people come here and geographically where we're located is an advantage because in 20 minutes you can be in five counties so the drive time for an hour for somebody to come to a show is not many cities that have three rivers and three major highways around it we are close we got to start taking advantage of our geographic location and continuing as Ryan mentioned the external marketing telling people our story telling them about our individual our strength is our people you can go on knock on every door in every neighborhood and every door you'll find a different story I mean we got award-winning authors artists inventors there are people here that hold so many patents that you don't even know they're just going through life enjoying every beautiful part of our city but we need to celebrate that and share that with people because that's our strength our people are our strength and you know I mean I do think we're the number one city in South Carolina we're going to get there but we're working on it if you want me to hit on any of these we've had some really significant projects the past year and a half and it has been tremendous to go for a situation where we walked out of COVID and you would go down to five points and half of those businesses were empty and now here we are and you can't find a vacancy in Columbia almost it's getting tougher and tougher for us to find places to locate people actually so Beer Keller was a tremendous one that was up on the previous list I got a video from the owner this weekend you know obviously big weekend in Columbia it was shoulder to shoulder at the Canalside Esplanade this weekend his text to me we have got to figure out what to do on our riverfront sooner rather than later because we have a ton of people who are coming in for this projects like EPC executive personal computers they bought the former Walmart on Bush River Road they've invested 10 million dollars and have created 150 new jobs out there just got their certificate of occupancy receivable solutions a new office tenant that's moving into 1441 Main Street downtown and seeing what's happening on the street on Main Street Moa, Columbia you know a concept from local restaurateur Sean Kim you know we're at the point that we're seeing the banks move off of Main Street and the restaurants and retailers come back and that's what we want we want that walkable pedestrian friendly city and it's awesome to see that that happening right now major projects that are in development currently you know obviously Peak Drift has opened their production side and they've got about 40,000 square feet of space that they're still working on for restaurant entertainment venue Jim Moore Cadillac that that project is basically ready to go and we expect them to begin moving dirt there that's 250 luxury apartments right there on a marquee site that we've all had our eye on for many many years here in Columbia I mentioned Ben Arnold's project the Vista Depot I mean there's a point you know in the next couple years where you'll be able to walk out the back of the convention center to a 300 room full service hotel and apartments and structured parking and you know the list goes on the Moxie hotel project that's underway I mean it's just really tremendous all of these things that are happening currently and success breeds more success so the more that we can lean into these things the more that we can expose people from the outside in here's what's happening here the more people want to come and be a part of it I think what'll be exciting is all the other announcements that we know are coming that we can't talk about yet that I think people will be really excited about and then of course when Scout Motors opens up it's actually gonna really change and what was exciting for me is we were going through that process with VW as they were coming down to narrowing us down to another city had an opportunity to talk to the mayor of Chattanooga and said so tell me you know how is VW as a community partner and he said they're invested in our community in every aspect everything from cultural to social to our schools they're living downtown they're part of our community and he said if you look at their history wherever they've built a plant they've never closed it and so when you hear things like that from another city you go this is gonna be really exciting and how many more opportunities does this open up for us I don't think we know all the opportunities that are gonna come out of of this opening up especially since we're only talking about phase one right now we haven't begun to talk about phase two which they're committed to I think also what's very exciting about that is the VW board member who this is kind of his main project he started off his automotive career as being part of right here in South Carolina he came from Germany to open up the BMW plant in Greenville so I know what they did there and I'm really excited about what they're gonna do here but with that I'm gonna kick it in this Driggers who is in can we say we're not a year yet on almost next month next month she will celebrate her year anniversary as our director and I say that because when she was put into interim director and we made the decision to make her the director it was incredible and the resounding feedback that we got from the community of what Ayesha and her team does it's incredible I couldn't be happier to have somebody like herself in that position being the frontline for the city she reflects everything that's great about our community and her team does an incredible job and if you haven't had an opportunity to interact with her and her team or you know somebody who wants to start a business and wants to know what's out there and offer please send them to our OBO office because they're gonna leave there happier than they went in I guarantee it but with that I'm gonna let you kick it off I'm always flattered when the mayor does my introduction because you do such a great job I appreciate it so thank you for the invitation I love getting to come talk to the community about what we have going on in OBO and of course we can't do it without our amazing team I only have two of them here today everyone else is back at the office working but one is Kalina Gignard if you'll stand up she's responsible for our workshops and technical assistance and Kalina is a recent promotion too so she took on some of the functions I was doing previously and she's just doing an amazing job so we appreciate her and all her hard work and then one of our most popular staff members Brett Whiting is back there Brett please send the money man exactly so Brett is our loan officer so most people want to come to our office and talk to Brett but I really can't say that what we do in our office is not possible without an amazing team and I appreciate them so much and we're also in a unique position because we work with a lot of our city departments and what we do to provide opportunities to our business community is because of the great relationships that we have with Columbia water parks and reg planting all of the different departments that are represented at the city so we appreciate that continued relationship absolutely and I'm going to touch on procurement very closely because we work with them often and they're in the three staff members are here from procurement Shannon was asking the director Nadia Johnson and Trent Watford also are here so I am going to touch with them oftentimes in our contract or supplier diversity program we're looking for opportunities for our vendors and suppliers to reflect the diversity of our city so the mission of our office is to support those initiatives that assist small minority women and veteran owned businesses and we do that very closely with our procurement department so here's just a pictures of some of our workshops and events that we have held throughout the year we do that probably a workshop at least two a month if not more than that we're always looking for an opportunity to get out into the community and share information about different topics that are of interest to them whether that be financial statements making sure they understand their profit and loss statements business planning we did one recently about bridging the generational gap because in the workforce we have different generations working together and so that's important to understand what that means in the workforce so we continue to do workshops and events whether it be women's empowerment black expo we do our signature small business week event every May each year so we're looking forward to that next year as well next we have our commercial retention and redevelopment program so that was formally our facade program and that's where we can make interior and exterior improvements to a business we've been in five points a couple years we are looking for opportunities to expand out into other areas throughout the city and really is so that we can address maybe some of the blight that a business may be experiencing and as you know if you want to have an attractive community you need to make sure that it's somewhere that someone feels welcome and they want to participate in supporting those businesses so our crr program is a great program i know ryan gets a lot of interest for businesses that are interested in locating in the city if there are any funds available so crr it gives us the ability to do that also our commercial revolving loan program is also a program that's available to businesses that are located within the city of columbia it's our loan program it's big like i said it's very popular and so if anyone is interested in that i encourage you to stop by our booth and get information so that we can have a one-on-one conversation to see how we can provide assistance to you i will also say our commercial revolving loan program requires participation from a private lender or maybe it's the business's own funding so it allows us to leverage those dollars so that they can go further in the community and there are some exciting new businesses that are coming that are participating in that loan program so we're happy that we have the opportunity to utilize those funds and it's a revolving loan fund so as those funds are paid back we can reinvest them back into the community we also have our toms creek family farms mobile market i will say um the mayor always talks about us being open to new ideas and i think the mobile market um is a great innovative way for us to address some of the food disparities that exist in some of our communities um specifically 29203 and 29204 will be our initial target there's definitely opportunities for us to expand on that but they're going to actually go into some of our parks and set up it's a trailer but on the inside it looks like a grocery store so there's fresh fruits and vegetables they'll have produce um meat fresh bread it's going to be a really great opportunity to meet the needs of the community they'll be able to accept snap benefits and of course cash cards and so it's an exciting opportunity for us to provide that the needed um food resources to those communities also toms creek if you don't know they just opened a grocery store the farmers market exchange on lady street so that is the same vendor that is doing our mobile market they also have a farm in hopkins so it's just a great opportunity for us to support a small business while also meeting the needs of our community so we're really excited about that they hope to launch the mobile market in january after they update the trailer and then we have food truck fridays that's been an exciting initiative that our city is our our office is responsible for we've been able to support over 30 food trucks and give them an opportunity to come right now we're at rei if you're familiar right there besides starbucks um colonial and bull street we're out there every friday from 11 to 3 o'clock providing opportunities for those food trucks to provide their cuisine and it's a array of cuisine so uh latin cuisine we've had a filipino uh soul food is always very popular in that area so um just i would encourage anyone who is not familiar with the different activities that come out of our office to follow our newsletter you can register for that on our website at obo.columbiasc.gov and we share information about different events that are coming out of our office initiatives funding opportunities which is always really important and just different topics that are of interest to our small business community and their team continues to reach out as she talked about it making sure people understand their financial statements making sure that they're prepared to go after if it's sba loan commercial loans being able to work but also making sure you're connected with the right folks accounting understanding the process of what it takes to start a business but also to take advantage of what's out there for you if it's tax incentives explaining the grease trap program if you're getting into a restaurant you know looking at you know we've taken away sewer expansion fees from from small retail outlets that change into restaurants understanding the system because starting a business can be complicated so when you have the resources that we have at obo it makes it so much smoother and easier for people to take advantage of what's out there and gives them the leg up to to be successful and it's so important i do have to add with the mobile market what's so exciting about that that's just one step that we're focused on food insecurity we're partnering with instacart and we're going to do an announcement later this month about providing food delivery at no cost to folks in our challenged neighborhoods based on medicare and medicaid to start in the beginning and then grow that but taking advantage of technology out there we have a banking partner to help folks who may not have a bank account so they can set that up at no charge we have somebody who's going to provide kindles if they don't have electronic device that they can do those orders then obviously we still have folks who don't like any of that want to do it by phone but making sure that people could take advantage because the majority of our city almost 97% of the city can be delivered to so let's take advantage of that technology to solve the problem short term long term having the right grocer come in is important but we have to build up on density in our communities we have to build up one block at a time get houses people living there because we can't afford to subsidize a grocery store and then it closed again we've seen it happen in our community before Spartanburg unfortunately just went through it themselves where they they just put $900,000 into a grocery store for the second time in an area and it closed within 12 months now they're not going to get another grocery store there and so that's going to be a food desert and we don't want that to happen here so we're being very intentional about how we address issues but trying to be creative to solve the problem in the short term with the long term we build up our community slowly we're going to get those grocery stores in that neighborhood retail back we want to make sure that every corner of our community has every it shouldn't matter where you drive you ought to see the same things and we're going to continue to push that we've talked a lot about all these general projects and I know we're going to try to leave some time here for some some questions but we broke it down in economic development public service neighborhood and communities but there's a fourth piece so if you look under your chair there's a little piece of something if you'll pick it up you are now part of the puzzle so we talk about puzzle pieces all the time and why they're important I carry around a one in my pocket and the reason I do that is I'm a believer well I put it in another pocket but why why being part of the puzzle is so important is if you look at a piece of a puzzle it connects in multiple ways it touches many different ways so the fourth piece is you all so when you leave here I hope you'll think about how am I going to be part of that puzzle in Colombia how am I going to touch different people different places and how am I going to join in and be part of making our city the number one city there is because we can only do so much and we shouldn't do everything there are a lot of things we've been doing that we probably should never do we probably won't we're going to stay focused on doing what we do best and how we improve the quality of life based on what our role is but we need the business community we need our neighborhoods we need everybody to be part of this puzzle so I ask you think about how am I going to be part of the puzzle moving forward and how we we continue to grow our community with that I'll open it up to any questions that somebody may have good morning good morning um I'm listening to Lewis Ellis I own LLE construction group here in the city absolutely love Colombia I really just have a comment um OBO y'all do such an amazing job with small business owners and I commend you as well I really miss your Facebook page and I'm gonna tell you why I know I think about a year ago you merged with the city Facebook page and a lot of times some of the things that you guys put out get kind of lost in the shuffle of everything else going on with the city that it's hard to find what's going on for small business owners so I just wanted to say it would be nice to go back to having that page because a lot of people use it as a resource to kind of show up for your events um and y'all did such a great job of keeping us informed so I really miss that I just wanted to say that thank you so much for giving the feedback that's what we need you know when we talk about being open for business innovation ideas but we want to hear that it's very important for us to hear feedback and and for us you know sometimes people go I don't want to complain them you're not complaining you know what you're doing because if we don't know it we can't fix it I take every every complaint as a compliment and that's the way we have to look at because you could just go post something on the internet and we never see it but no you're sharing that with us and so important yeah and city council also have pushed the staff and myself to look at our marketing and communications opportunities and so we are well underway we have a consultant that's been working for a few months now with our marketing communications team public relations and procurement and economic development so you heard Ryan mention a pitch book um you've um heard some of the other things that the mayor said about um the brand and so you will be seeing in the very near future some of the results of that but some of the due diligence has included listening to looking at how saturated we've been our public relations staff does an amazing job but it's a lot of information and so there was a request by the council as well to make sure we were coming from one message we had a brand that people truly recognize and some of that required us to stop them in and endow some things back but you're going to see the efforts come back and we have heard loud and clear that the OBL page was one that people really followed and so that um that marketing communications consultant is well aware of that and council will be getting some inside information I need to share with them first on the social media audit and some other things coming up in the next few weeks and then we're going to be rolling things out a little bit differently but thank you much appreciated feedback good morning I'm Karen Jenkins I'm also the in current chair of the columbia chamber um one question later but I do want to stop and thank the mayor and miss wilson and really this entire staff because what you guys have accomplished was not easy especially coming off of the COVID crisis so I want to acknowledge all of the work and effort that you and your team have put together when we look at the economic development piece and we're looking at bringing businesses in one of the challenges of our community is that we have some of the best colleges in the country with some of the best talent graduating but a lot almost the majority of those students are leaving so when we're looking at recruiting businesses and recruiting entertainment and recruiting other things are we tapping into the college community and finding out what would make them stay here what would entice them to what what other things do we need to bring in I need to write you a check right now so one of the things we did really talk about and part of our retention program is exactly that so a year ago we started council for college engagement and so we have members from every college and university here meet in the mayor's office with me and staff to talk about so what we learned is why are people not staying here you know one they didn't feel connected to be honest a lot of the students felt like they were being just put in the newspaper for going to five points or wherever and they're like what's the difference between us standing in line there and somebody standing in line at Soda City maybe 20 years difference in age but that's it and so they felt very disconnected so somebody tweeted out I chased it and we ended up creating this council so I have members from Alan Benedict Columbia College, CIU, Lenore Ryan, Midlands Tech, University of South Carolina all of them come every month and meet so we learned we need more downtown living we need options that are more young professional with the same amenities that that some of the student housing has you know they want to live, work, breathe, walk downtown they're not interested in commuting they're not interested in buying and so when they show you the examples that South Charlotte perfect example where all that growth is will those the corporation built their back office in the middle of that neighborhood because that's where all the young people were so doing the same thing giving those amenities finishing the greenways and the connectivity investing in downtown and creating that vibrant is what they're looking for but the other thing we learned from them is that they didn't under they didn't know about all the opportunities that were available here they didn't know about the internships that certain businesses were putting out so getting them engaged but cross pollinating the campuses so last year USC had two thousand tickets left over for their homecoming concert we got to spread those out the other colleges and universities so the things doing we're going to do another side hustle so we we we pay for their business license and we give them a half a block during Soda City where they get the students who have side businesses who can go out there and do it but it brings the rest of them together they've come together to help us go after an apple store so each college is invested in doing that they want to they want to take part in the capture program that was created so it's a project that allows people to get kind of immersed in columbia learn history and everything else they're dying to be part of it but what we're creating is a network for them to share information so that you know if Benedict's having a festival then they want USC students know about it they want them to come around if USC's got a student art show they want the other colleges and everybody's invested in we've learned so much from them and part of it is is they never felt part of the community and i think with the scattered downtown living now i mean i gotta throw my my hand out to dr artist she's engaging those students to say if you want to do a graduate program we got them all right here you don't have to leave she's showing them their opportunities right here and and i think that's what takes a different dr mcnealy is getting ready to do some big investment of it allen but they're now engaging in the community um you know president smith you know we had to leave ci u but the intern president the new president they're engaged we got a new president at columbia college engaged um so i think we're in the right path but that's what we're doing to try to include them in the decision making i think that's great because the other issue is that you know as you guys are recruiting businesses here if the businesses are coming here but we can't keep employees here if they can't find employees qualified candidates that's going to stay there that's going to be a problem so my second question and i promise i'll give it the mic is you know we talked about us being a part of the equation so we are i think this is a small or the business community so two questions how can we as businesses support all of your efforts and because we are part of the community so what can we do and then i also want to make the comment i don't know if it's a comment or a question so you know there's always the greenville thing and the charleston thing right and a lot of we're about the columbia thing we're exactly we're about the columbia thing and people try to compare us but one of the things i've done through some of the education that the city has put out and the chamber has put out is that we're different right we're different so we have to find our secret sauce and we have to share our secret sauce we can't compete with greenville greenville has to be greenville we can't compete with charleston they're doing their thing but we can be ourselves so when we look at us like some of the success i think that they have is a lot of public private partnerships so what are we doing there and then not only public private partnerships because i know we bring a lot of these big firms in you know from out of the state but we have talent here in columbia we have talent here in south carolina that i think can participate in that so i guess my question is what can we as a as a community of businesses do to support the effort so two things i'd say the first thing is as part of why we we're investing in the marketing side is actually showing people who we are we've never told our story one of the things and it goes back to why we took the facebook page down in the beginning everything is when people talked about columbia there were seven different stories university had one story airport had another story we had another story it was confusing nobody could they couldn't decide who we were and so pushing this effort to market i think is going to help us um as we look at those businesses obviously we want to grow home grow business so you know obviously we're doing internally i think we actually exceeded our goal for women and minority owned businesses uh in the city we're continuing to grow that but showing more opportunities on how we can do more business together but then do the age old question which was what are the gaps so working with the business community to understand the gaps so if i'm going to recruit a business what business would complement your business what would help your business grow here because we want them to grow together you know and exposing so we have a business here that's been here since 1972 a lot of people don't know about them they're getting very higher the reason they're hiring here is because the talent's here you know the one thing that we have in the state that nobody else has right now is workforce not only because of our college kids but seven out of ten military retirements at four jackson are staying here and when i heard that number is and so we're trying to work with the general uh how do we how do we celebrate those folks so that we can introduce them to the business community as well but we're seeing this this growth coming from every that's why that's why scout is here that's why all these businesses are looking here because they see the talent not only today but for the future here more opportunities more people stay and that grows the region and that's why regionally it is not about territory anymore it is about us working together so quarterly we meet with all the mayors we get together and we talk about everything from homelessness to business recruitment that's why every mayor in the region signed on letter support for for scout same reason when we're going after the the funding for relocating the railroads to open up our downtown we had the entire congressional delegation all our universities and colleges both house and senate on board both republican and democrat uh leadership signed on every mayor from east over up signed on on it why because everybody's starting to understand what's good for the region is good for all of us and that's what we didn't have before if you look at the upstate they come together every time to go after something you look at the low country they come together to go after major projects and major employers together and i think we're there i think the idea of collaboration has now everybody realizes that's our negative so if we keep building those partnerships one at a time the county i mean i i'm we we talk at least every week we're talking to our legislature we we're going to washington meeting with the counterparts there to say all right this is uh we want this how do we get it we didn't get our mega grant the first time but we went and got a debrief so we understand what we have to go after it the next time um we're not giving up we're pushing all of that but the collaboration piece is what people are noticing i think that's the key mayor and i would add since karen asked the question of what can the business community do to support some of the efforts you know obviously um homelessness is not an easy subject there's not a one-size-fits-all um but some of the unfortunate side effects of that this council really has challenged us to be creative and look at doing things differently so the mayor talked about rapid shelter columbia i mean we have hired a whole team um homeless services team to begin to work from the inside and collaborate with all of our partners but it is sometimes um you know a little bit disappointing when we hear at council meetings and such people from the outside coming into our community um other whole states um other whole cities coming in to suggest that we are not doing things right or change or putting in a narrative that is just false information and i do think that i would encourage our business community to be a part of understanding and that's incumbent on us to get the story out there and tell the messages very clearly of what we are doing but i can assure you that the data will show that the columbia police department our homeless services team and all of the city staff from a public works perspective even are working together in parts of recreation to create compassionate opportunities to deal with that issue um but it's going to be a bigger discussion that will come and we also need to be prepared to have it as a community that's trying to find a solution in a very compassionate way and the mayor is going to be giving out more information very soon about um operation hope and order and another um probably really big potential opportunity for a campus that um all of us are going to have to understand it and support it just like years ago when there was an opportunity for the business community to look at and support doing something downtown as the city's evolved and we just talked about all the things that everybody wants the city to be we have to dig deep and have that discussion together about what that now means for our city and for our unsheltered community and our residents and businesses together got time for one more and then i'm going to a ribbon cutting okay good morning everybody and i've enjoyed everything you've talked about one of the things that as you talk about workforce i want to go back to sustain how do we sustain that and and making that conversation i guess one of my concerns is the schools the public schools what are you all doing to engage the businesses to collaborate with our educational systems so that we can continue to have a sustainable um workforce so i just had that conversation i spoke to the midlands business leadership group on thursday and just had that conversation uh how important it is now more than ever you know we're there's a lot of skill training programs they're they're really growing up we're making advancements there but we've got to do more at the school level and so one of the initiatives that we all agreed to go together is to sit down with richland one and say how can we help you how can we provide apprenticeships internships how do we expose more young people to the vast difference you know because there's a growing population a growing need for for our skilled labor and you know i haven't met a broke plumber in my life um or electrician or anyone else and so showing those young people that the opportunities there in a path forward you know one of the the programs that we invested his jobs for america graduate program so we were able to work with the governor's office to sign up every high school in columbia and that's a partnership between the governor's office richland one and the city of columbia that program really targets some of our most challenged kids 50 to 60 kids per high school well suddenly now we can affect kids and give them a pass so it follows them from freshman year to their freshman year in college but it opens up those opportunities you know making sure that they're getting all the help so that they don't drop out and they know there's a path forward we got to do that you know we they've got the training center for cdl the hayward center um meeting with a group in a couple weeks they want to build up the barbershop portion how do we get more kids uh into that you know i didn't know how much hair braiding made until i sat down with some ladies here but what was great about it they were telling these young ladies about it and some of the long ladies like if i did that two or three times a week i could pay for my own education it wouldn't be a burden on my parents so i think us going in and telling real-life stories sharing the good the bad and the ugly about it you know you got to think this way i think it's going to be important and that and that's coming and that's going to be a big key when you ask what you can do i think that's too we got to show folks a pathway and there are pathways there's a job for everybody today there are more jobs in columbia right now than ever then but if you don't know how to ask questions you know it's not just about how you present yourself when you go for an interview it's also asking the questions well what are what's my projected pathway how do i get to a higher position what insurance do i get do i get retirement is part of this you know i mean understanding the right questions to ask but showing folks the pathway to get there and i think some of it is we just we need more hands we need more hands to help school can't do it by themselves business community can't do it by and we certainly can't do it by ourselves so combination of both of what y'all ask is what we what we need to do as a community thank y'all for being here i appreciate it