 the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you for coming. All there's bitters, damro, drawn, whole shoe, Lewandowski, Schneider and Truster are excused. Thank you for the nine of you who are constituting our quorum. Do we have anyone for the public forum? We do now. All right. I would ask for a motion to approve the minutes of our February 12th, 2018 meeting. Second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, state aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye. All right. 3.1 is our item for discussion innovation community presentation by the SCEDC and our planning department staff. Take it away. I'll just start out on a bit of introduction. We have Dane Cekolinski with us, the director of the Economic Development Corporation and Jim Sushler, who is the business development manager at the EDC. And we have been embarking on this presentation to a number of companies across the county about where we see workforce needs going in the future. And what we thank you for those that have attended tonight because we wanted to get to the council and be able to kind of brief you guys on the presentation we've done to a number of companies. So as you start hearing buzz out in the community, you kind of know what's going on. This is really about looking at the capsule property and the Indiana Avenue corridor in the area of the buildings that were tore down between 9th and 10th Street. And then looking at how the entire corridor looks in the future. So the presentation tonight runs through some facts and solutions about what we feel is where we're going as a county and how we're going to track the new workforce we're going to need in the future. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jim to give you a little story about how we got to where we are. And then Dane will take over the presentation. Thank you, Chad. And thank you, Madam Chairman, for the opportunity to speak with you all this evening. I'm Jim Schusler, the business development manager for the SEDC. And first of all, I just want to thank this body for everything that you've done on housing here. My role at the EDC is working at the highest levels of our companies countywide in addressing their barriers to their existence or sustainability and their growth. And the top three issues that they're dealing with today and they have been at least since I got here in 2014 is workforce. The housing has really been a big breakthrough. It's getting better every day. We're still not there. We have a huge housing crisis. As a matter of fact, Chad Dane and I met with one of Sheboygan City, Sheboygan's larger employees last week, larger employers last week. And they said that they lost three potential skilled workforce due to our lack of housing. So thank you for what you're doing and know that we're still not there. And a lot of these skilled folks are tending to look for the urban areas. And so that's also good news for Sheboygan. When I first got to the SEDC back in 2014 after dealing with the same housing issue that many other folks have talked about, I went to a meeting at Rockline. It was part of a Coastal Connections meeting. And the general manager, Frank Hacker, the general manager of Rockline, stood up in front of the group, a very talented person, a very important employer here in the city. He had talked about the success Rockline was enjoying and the challenge that they were going through with workforce. And as a matter of fact, he had said that chances were they would probably, they would continue to grow, but that growth would be required to take place outside of Sheboygan because of the lack of workforce. Well, I kind of circled that on my role and saying that's one thing that I'm going to have to address in my role, at least collaborate and address in my role. And in fact, Rockline, this isn't, this isn't a criticism of them. We're wonderful to have this locally grown company first started in Plymouth and then grown in Sheboygan and such an important employer here. But all their growth has taken place outside. They've got three plants in Arkansas. And next month they'll open their newest plant in Tennessee. They'll be taking all their medical work that they do right now, which is a big growth area for Rockline to Tennessee. We'll be doing things like coffee filters and cupcake things here in Sheboygan. The problem with that part of the business is it's been declining about 1% per year. So we're losing a growth business and we're attached to another business. Workforce is something we've got to solve. I didn't come here to complain. I came here to tell you some good news is that there are best practices today out there. Now we developed someplace better. There was no best practice on someplace better. So we developed it from a clean whiteboard to help attract talent here. Projects such as the Joseph Project and a lot of the digital promotions that we've done to help attract entry level workforce here has been designed to help answer the needs of our companies. But none of those things answer the need for skilled workforce or at least not directly enough. Good news is this last April I was down in Atlanta at a conference on entrepreneurship and was introduced to the concept the best practice for attracting skilled workforce and it's built around innovation. This is something that's taking place in communities seeking growth from coast to coast. And the most awesome thing I would say is the fact that all of the work that's been done here today, all the placemaking that's been done, all of the housing that's been done to date gives us a wonderful foundation to make this happen so that we can both keep the potential skilled workforce here and attract the needed skilled workforce for now into the future. Dane? Sure. So the presentation we're going to present to you is very much what we went out and we're showing companies. So you get the same presentation that firms are getting. This is a breakdown of the channel. I'm going to stand behind the podium. I know I apologize, but I can't see the numbers that well. Dane, you're going to have to take those. Oh, I have to. Sure. Apologize. What you see here is population distribution from 2000 to 2014. And I know the number is a little small, but basically what it says from 2000 to 2014, Sheboygan County's population is essentially getting older. We're having fewer and fewer people under the age of 45 and more and more people over the age of 46. When we look forward, this is Wisconsin Department of Administration estimates on population. Should we not change anything? Should we stay the course? This is what our population distribution is going to look like about 35 years into the future. And basically what's going to happen is that our number of working age adults, 20 to 64-year-olds, will decline by about 6%. What that means is one out of every 16 employees cannot be replaced. We will not have a physical body. Their skill sets aside, work ethics aside. We don't have another person. Our senior population will explode by 72%. So if any company is offering senior services, you are going to have a field day in the next few years. And what's interesting is what do we know about working age population? They're the ones with the kids. And again, not only are schools currently in decline in terms of enrollment, they're going to decline even more. So we are now in a negative feedback loop from a population standpoint. This is the primary challenge. All of our companies are fighting for talent on a global scale. It's no longer local. It's no longer Sheboygan to Fond du Lac or Sheboygan to Plymouth. It is Sheboygan to Mozambique. We ran into it. This is a typical example. So that's the data. Here's an anecdotical story of an electrical engineer in town. So we ran into an electrical engineer who works at a local company in town. He's about 25 years old. He gets here in 2014, right before we started building a lot of new housing. So he's living in substandard housing near the company here in Sheboygan. But the interesting thing about him is, is he's got no roots to this community. He's an electrical engineer who goes down to Milwaukee as much as he can two to three, four times a week to the Milwaukee maker space. And the Milwaukee maker space is a place where they can go and tinker with other people from Rockwell and Johnson Controls and different venues around Milwaukee and take apart electronics, do welding, do different disciplines inside of a building. But the interesting thing about it is, is when he went to the company leadership and asked him and said that he doesn't feel like he's connected to this area and that he doesn't know how to get involved with anything, the company leadership told him to go find a girlfriend, get married, have kids, and start a family and he won't have time to do any of that stuff. So as Jim would say, so in order to keep that kind of talent here and build what the new workforce is looking for, you know, this is really where these best practices are coming from, to think outside the box, to try to retain these engineers that they went out to recruit from Virginia Tech. He grew up in Pittsburgh. The company recruited him, paid probably a couple hundred thousand dollars training him with the idea that he's probably going to be out of here in a couple years or less because he's got no ties to the community and no ties to the area. So it's really about trying to retain that talent here for the long haul. And we know companies have two choices. Either they are going to do all they can to relocate talent here. You see what Johnsonville did with its headquarters, obviously acuity is a world-class example of that, or they have another option. And that's to move their operations to where people live. Anyone here, this isn't a whole lot of a secret, but who here knows where Johnsonville's new product development center is? It's in Chicago. They moved the facility there because of fear they could not find food scientists to move here. Where did Kohler build its most recent office building? Milwaukee. Companies are already making the tough decision to split their operations because they feel that finding employees here is tougher than putting a plant somewhere else. But we have some tremendous assets to play off of. The first is we're known for locally owned firms that care about the community, for example, of our nonprofits are doing extremely well. The other thing, too, is most of their headquarter functions are still here. Just so you, I don't know if anyone's aware, but Sheboygan County since about 1974 on average has filed a patent every six days. A patent is filed every week. There is more intellectual property per capita created here than Madison. It's incredible. We have some beautiful tailwinds. One of the dirty secrets that, you know, we talk about job creation. We have lots of jobs. One thing that you may not be aware of is that we actually had as a county more jobs in 2007 than we do today. The demographics, the retirees essentially is what's causing the extreme workforce shortage right now. But we do have some beautiful tailwinds work off. There is energy in this market. There is momentum. Here's another very interesting fact. So we're looking at census data from 2000 to 2010, the most accurate information we can find. And 100% of the county's growth from 2000 is explained by the growth in minorities. Their traditional German and Dutch ancestry is quite frankly in the decline. 100% is by minorities. Our cost of living here is absolutely phenomenal when you look at the value of what it takes to live here as compared to even close metro areas and especially once you get on the coasts. And we are constantly, Sheboygan County is constantly being named as one of the safest metro or polyton areas in the United States. Constantly named as one of the best places to live on a modest budget. We have 1,400 acres of parks from the lake to the Kettle marines. The geographic diversity is incredible here. I don't know how many in this room know this, but Sheboygan County is the closest MSA in the United States to eliminating poverty. There is no other place in the United States that has a lower poverty rate than Sheboygan County or any MSA. The amount of partnerships, because of the workforce challenge, the amount of partnerships in the local owned firms has been absolutely incredible. You take a look at just red raider manufacturing. Private company is putting about $5 million into public high schools to build new technology labs. The same thing happened in other high schools. Not only are those high schools talking with the employers, but they're talking with each other through Inspire and they're talking with higher education. I don't know how many of you know, but last time I checked Sheboygan area school district alone has 64 college accredited courses with partnerships with various universities. This is absolutely incredible. I know nowhere else where this amount of collaboration has happened. And collaboration geared directly at the needs of the community. Sheboygan Falls High School is the only high school in the nation with a plastic injection molding machine geared specifically at Bemis. Plymouth High School is the only public high school in the nation with a high speed packaging machine geared directly at the cheese processors. It's happening, in terms of maximizing career potential of our students, it's happening. We don't have a major research university, but what we do have are three colleges and universities locally run that are doing exactly, again, partnering with area companies. LTC with its new Kohler Center for Manufacturing Excellence. UCUW Sheboygan with its new four year mechanical and electrical engineering programs. And Lakeland University with its new co-op programs, hospitality programs, culinary programs, all geared for one thing. And that's to offer people, individuals career opportunities here in Sheboygan County. Now, even though we may not have a major research university, every one of these colleges, anyone here could probably call up the dean or the president of the school, sit down and 30 days have a cup of coffee. Try doing that at Ohio State University. It's just not gonna happen. And I'm gonna have Chad talk a little bit about what's happening in the city that's doing the placemaking that basically is getting us ready for this next investment. So we have a legacy of transformation, and you guys are pretty aware, but this is the South Pier District, probably in about the early 1990s. This is what it is today, and obviously it's more built out today than what this image is even depicting. But it's the idea that when we think big or when we have big projects, we can get stuff done. New central housing developments that when the EDC did the market study that determined the need for additional housing downtown. The encore apartments were developed as well as the green space known as City Green. These are 81 units. As I just said at the finance committee, the plan is that these units will be hopefully filled by the end of April, early May. Portscape apartments, 88 units. Phase two under construction today, phase one is 100% full. Phase two is about a half pre-least. And then the high point apartments on South A Street, which is under construction today, which when we're showing this to companies, they're impressed and very excited about the opportunity of this type of housing at this kind of scale and this modernism as it relates to A Street and downtown Sheboygan. And then the Founders Club, we were involved with that project last year, 274 dorm style beds. And this is one of the few areas really across the state that has an opportunity like this for housing interns and visa students and cooperative students. There's probably one, the closest one is Washington, Wisconsin, Dells, and then besides that, that's about it. And this is really running at full occupancy and it's a great resource for all of our businesses, including hospitality. And then recreational amenities. So the city has so long pride itself on the access to the waterfront, as well as walkability, and then active recreation opportunities with our whole river and lakefront. And then urban amenities, the arts and culture is key and really the Levitt Amp Concert Series in the partnership with the Art Center that bring in the multicultural events and different nightlife events to the downtown. And lastly, transportation options. So the downtown trolley, the public transit system, walkability, we're one of the top ten walkable neighborhoods in the Midwest and one of the one of 17 bicycle friendly communities in Wisconsin. So this is a list of what millennials the new workforce is looking for. And you can see by this list, the top is a thriving job market all the way down to a local college or university when we look at this list, Sheboygan County, particularly the city as an urban location, has pretty much all of this. So we normally would ask, is there anything that stands out? And I know some of you are chuckling about quality pizza. So even though there's a pizza joint on every corner and people keep saying to me, how many pizza joints can this community support? People must, the demand must be there for pizza. Is there anything else that comes to mind on this list that anybody's thinking about? So this innovation district, the Indiana Avenue Corridor, this area was chosen particularly because of its location to everything that's happening in the downtown, the South Pier, and then the Lakefront Mix Use Business Center, which is the former Panterre property that in 2011, the city finished a master plan that showed that area being redeveloped into corporate office buildings as well as mixed use development. So this, the district kind of falls in between all of those areas and the location makes a lot of sense from place making aspects of what we've been trying to do within our downtown. So obviously one of the biggest questions is what is an innovation district? We're gonna show a brief about one minute video that explains it. I'm gonna make sure, I'm just gonna go down and see if I can. Hopefully. The geography of innovation shifted one years ago. A worker needed to drive to a secluded research park, work in isolation, and keep ideas secret. Today, proximity is everything. Workers want to be in urban places that are walkable, bike-y, hyper-cathed, where they can move into other workers and share ideas. Firms also want to be close to other firms, research labs, and universities in collaborative spaces so that smart ideas can be turned into smart products for the market. Innovation districts are this century's productive geography. They are both competitive places and cool spaces. And they will transform your city and the trolleys. So we were lucky enough to visit several of these last summer. And one of the examples that we really liked was Cortex and St. Louis. Cortex is an innovation district. It's been around for about 14 years. They're on a 50-year plan. And as we went around all these districts, they tended to have the same building blocks, the same themes again and again, and just kind of explain a little bit what makes an innovation district an innovation district. The first one is things that you see, the co-working spaces, the coffee shops. I mean, that is just the physical layout of a district. But really it's the programming that brings it alive. For anyone here who belongs to the YMCA or sports corps, you think you go there any time, there's not much going on. But once you go there during a spin class or in a swim class, the place is just full of people and it ignites. The same is true for an innovation district. The programming that is brought is everything from simple social events, the yoga and beer, to food trucks, items of those nature, to challenges. Trying to get the best and brightest out of their basements from cities across Wisconsin and get them here to compete in challenges. And then of course you could easily do something with a hackathon, a software creation, and then for every company looking for software engineers, well, there's your pool to recruit from. They do more traditional, what we call mind melts, things like having an entrepreneur talk about their experiences, having a CEO talk about their experiences, having an existing large firm say, you know what, we tried and we tried, we have this issue, we have this problem, but we still haven't solved it. Does anyone else there have an idea? And then all the way to community events, taking the innovation district and its services out to other communities, as well as bringing in the roadways, bringing in the Lions Clubs. Again, all you're trying to do is stir that pot of molasses and stir ideas and get people to connect. Innovation districts are really anchored by higher education for several different reasons. We'll get into that a little bit later. But they're really synergized around an industry cluster, around a certain industries. These are the four industries that we think are very well suited for Sheboygan County, food and beverage, information, technology, robotics, and chemicals and plastics. But it has the attitude of entrepreneurship. This is all about problem solving. This is all about what are our customers looking for and how do we deliver that more efficiently and quicker? Just so you know, we always say this is Jeff Bezos at his plywood desk and his spray-paid-in Amazon trying to do this crazy thing about selling books. And today he could be argued as the richest man who ever lived. But they're driven by companies. In Cortex, there are at least two Fortune 500 companies. Actually, I know there's a third. But they exist there and they located there specifically for the assets that the innovation community has. The first one is Boeing has a satellite facility that actually is their computer programming, their IT department. The most recent building being built in Cortex right now is Microsoft's newest building. Microsoft chose to locate a building in an area that quite frankly, if you went there 20 years ago, it was an area you did not want to kind of stop and get out of your car. This has absolutely transformed this part of St. Louis. Now when we went there and we asked all these innovation districts, why are companies located here? There were three main themes. The first thing is employee attraction. Companies know that more and more workers today want to be in urban, walkable, livable places, live, work, play. They love being co-located with education not only for the access to talent but also the access to the professors and of course the research that many universities do. And they use it as a marketable asset. So for example, if Boeing is bringing in a new candidate, they will interview them and show them their Cortex facility before they take them out to the other facilities they have in St. Louis because quite frankly, it's prettier and it gives a better first impression. They use it for employee retention and every company seems to use it in a slightly different way. They really like that the fact that the social and professional programming is brought to them but they also do some very interesting things. Things like exploratory sabbaticals. If they have an employee that has a great idea and wants to create a new division or a new product for the company or project managed change, they'll say, okay, go to our Cortex facility, stay there for two, three months and just get it done. And they'll also use it as perks for employees where employees can get out of the cubicle farm, go sit at a place where they can put on shorts, refresh themselves for a month or two and then come back in the main office. They also use it for idea acceleration because again, it's purposely driven to have that problem-solving attitude. So everything, I believe it was Boeing that said if we want our engineers to come up, the next idea, we have to get them away from the company water cooler and the accountants and the attorneys that keep saying, no, that'll never happen. That can't be done. There's no way that'll ever work. They like the solution-orientated culture and they love being co-located next to entrepreneurs and again, higher education because they think differently and it's always good that they can always meet someone at lunch. They're not having to arrange schedules. There's a lot of chance meetings. And so the question is where we are on this innovation district today. Chad's department has done a great job of running up a master plan but the way I kind of view an innovation district is think of it in terms of an urban business park. So think of a traditional business park and we still need traditional business parks and again, thank you for investing in a new one but think of an urban business park as a single family home. You go out, you buy a lot, your building looks very much like everyone else's and you rarely, if ever, talk to your neighbors. What we're building here is the urban condo complex. An urban condo complex that has a specific hub designed to provide the employees with experiences and that's what we're building here is the urban condo complex for businesses. So it has two main sections. The first one is off to the right where we're calling the Lakeshore Business Park and then kind of some infill sites. We have had conversations with the owner of this property as you know, they own Blue Harbor and they are very interested in this idea and are open to any development ideas that come their way and I can think of no better place if someone wants to site a 30 to 100,000 square foot class A R&D space than this spot in the mid, this is the best spot in the Midwest. Absolutely gorgeous. There's some other pieces in play. The city has been working with a developer as you know to redevelop the former tannery site about 115 apartments, a rather significant investment that will go a long way and kind of raising the bar in the area. We're still in conversations with a proposed industrial co-working space. This building here is 1234 Kentucky. It's about a block south of Indiana Avenue. And as of last week, they were still on par. As a matter of fact, I think new renderings are coming out here soon to basically create a series of spaces much like Jake's Cafe, except for more than just office except spaces for small little industrial companies, small little warehousing companies, a place where someone can have a little bit of a shop floor but still drive a really cool atmosphere. Jim, do you want to talk a little bit about the information technology where we are on that front? Well, we definitely have to grow our own talent. And I'm pleased to say that we're currently working with SASD and a charter school on the development of a 14 grade that includes preschool program that will help us build and develop our IT professionals of the future. That plan is being done currently in cooperation and collaboration with both LTC and Lakeland. So it's moving along quite nicely. I expect that we'll have some strong corporate sponsorship behind it as well. Sure. And of course, we talked about we need to put in a hub for workforce experience. And the site that we are looking at is site that's currently under control by the city. That would include the site basically the former capsule property. And so the dream, the vision, the goal, what we are driving to the very first step to really launch this thing is a creation of that super hub. This is a rendering of what an architect took a stab at. It may, may not look like this. But essentially this building is going to provide three main functions. And the three main functions are really the most important that we need to be able to provide in an innovation community. The first one is programming. Let all the program that I mentioned, we need a central hub, we need event space, we need meeting space to be able to perform that in a specific geographical location. The second thing is higher education. We've been talking with several of our higher education institutions that are in there is interest in either a satellite facility or be a very specific program to fit in one of the four main industry clusters. And then the final one is class A office and R and D space to kind of serve as that first jump into that professional market. And that's the reason one of the primary reasons we're going around talking with companies is to gauge their interest and see who might be some of the first tenant or interested parties in the programming. The timeframe for this over the next spring into early summer, we're going to continue those one-on-one conversations with firms. Over the summer, we are going to create the business plan that's going to primarily focus around the programming of this district. And then we're going to get a third party feasibility study done and really shape that up very nice. And then hopefully by the end of this year, fall, winter of this year, we will have a much better idea of exactly what we're building or what we're having to be able to provide those services and launch the urban business park known as the Innovation District. So I guess with that, are there any questions, thoughts, concerns? I noticed earlier in your presentation you had that engineer that's living here that's going to Milwaukee for various reasons three or four times a week. My question is, are you aware of what the ground rules are for this chamber organization that caters towards young professionals? What's their definition of a young professional? The reason I asked that question, I saw a really interesting article a week or so in the journal Sentinel. I believe it was in, I think it was in Eau Claire where they have a similar organization that they've opened it up to a lot more people. And what I mean by that is, they're getting young carpenter apprentices, electricians, pipe fitters, that whole, and the reason they're doing that is they were finding that when a lot of these skilled occupations were getting their journeyman card or whatever their credential was, they were losing them up in Eau Claire. So they've been much more inclusive with defining what a young professional is and they've been including some of these people. And I think if we're not doing this in Sheboygan, we hear about all of the people that are getting out of school and they're leaving Sheboygan. I think if we're not being inclusive to a lot more disciplines, I think we're missing the vote. That's a great question. I know Coastal Connections 20 to 40. I know they have no requirements in terms of education attainment or career path. And I do know that they consider everything from policemen to pipe fitters to carpenters as young professionals. Now, how far are they reaching out and how many individuals are involved in what type of program are they doing to be more proactive in that area? I could not tell you, but what we do know is that there's been more than one conversation that Coastal Connections and many of the other young professional groups like JC's definitely need to be involved in what this is ultimately gonna look like. Because what we're really talking about is solving our workforce challenges of the future and being as inclusive as possible. That's the point of this, is to break down as many silos as possible. And over the next couple of months, we will be having more and more conversations. The initial feedback. Jim, I guess we're on TV. So if you'd use your mic. I guess the initial feedback, if that was so clear, has been very positive because these other professions are feeling a lot more included and rubbing elbows with a lot of different people that they ordinarily wouldn't have. And maybe they're gonna be more inclined to stay in Eau Claire if it was Eau Claire because they feel more included. Other questions? Ryan? Thanks, Dane, for doing this today. Could we go back a few slides to the millennial stuff millennials like in the city? Sure. If we get in there somewhere? Yeah, I think it's something's right. I'm curious who did that study and if that was like a national study, if that was like a Midwest sort of base that they used to get a lot of that demographic information? It was the green. Sure. So this is by a publication called Condé Neste, they own a series of newspapers and magazines across the United States. I do believe that the primary source of the study was the East Coast. But as we looked at the study and we tried it, you could find these all over the place. This one just seemed to be the most comprehensive and well done where it was weighted. Okay, so I guess for you guys and what you all do, are you guys using this because a lot of the beginning of this presentation, it really kind of demonstrated that people are leaving Sheboygan, the city of Sheboygan, Sheboygan County. And these are a lot of my friends, a lot of my peers that I've known throughout my short life. And I'm wondering, are you guys kind of taking this in consideration about where we need to kind of grow? Because I'm looking at quality pizza. Yeah, I love pizza, I order pizza a lot. But it's not necessarily like you want dominoes or you want little Caesars every day. We do want that diversity because sometimes we will eat it, but that's beside the point. So I'm wondering, are you guys incorporating a lot of this? Are you guys kind of creating some measurable goals to incorporate this? Because I'm looking at movie theaters, for example. Yeah, we have one movie theater. There's coffee shops, we got a few coffee shops. Like what are you looking at? Like the diversity of coffee shops, LGBTQ friendly, how do you measure that? I'm just kind of more curious about that with the retention of millennials and younger people as well. And more specifically, I guess what I question about this, polls, what do Midwestern millennials want? I kind of challenge, I mean, some of them are right, but if there's other things that we're missing, specifically to Midwestern, I think sports teams on there or something like that, something along that line, I don't know where that fits into with entertainment or whatever, but I'm just more curious if you could kind of talk about this because I'm curious about how we're gonna really build in retention and also kind of going on what Alderman Bourne said as well, are we measuring kind of what younger folks are studying? Are we working with the Schwauginary School District to see what students are going to school for? I mean, if it is for food sciences, what's the closest university that has a food science program that we can bring back them and really engage them? Sure. So I'm just curious, I kind of was bouncing around a lot there, but if you could talk about that. Being one of the only two resident millennials on the council, I gotta speak up for our people, so. Very, all very good questions. So I guess the initial answer to what the SCDC is using on this is a punch list. I think it reaffirmed there are two primary things in our punch list. The first is housing. We have over 3,000 jobs posted and as Jim mentioned, we did have a company who lost three people because they could not find housing. They ran out of their window of opportunity. Their kids restarted school and they just said, you know what, forget it, I'm not taking that advancement, I'm moving on. So housing for us is absolutely number one and critical because as we look at our apartments filling rapidly, we look at our single family market. Our single family market is as tight as it gets. My neighbor sold her house. I live in Sheboygan's sold her house in two days. Had over 30 showings, 10 offers, got 11,000 over asking and that was two weeks ago. That is the craziness in the market. So housing is number one because without housing, we don't get anything else. And then I would say the second one is we've had efforts to proactively go after retail. That is one of the top dings that we constantly get again and again and again as a community that when someone moves here, they're shocked that we just simply don't have more for our size. I know there's some other proactive efforts going on but your answer to food science, for example, Lakeland University is actually starting a new- Not just one example. Yep, food science program. So there is a proactive effort and primarily in the K-12 area to kind of gear students on what to go for. Inspire Sheboygan County as one of the hubs. There's also a group, they call them the cells of the Red Raider Manufacturing Group. It was the core group that helped the SASD and now they're like, okay, how do we get this into all other school districts across the area? But really one of the linchpins is Inspire Sheboygan County by driving a whole network of work-based learning opportunities, everything from job shadows to one quarter long co-ops to youth apprenticeship and then finally into full employment, concluding with actually a job fair every April that started last year and we'll probably roll into the future. So I don't know, what other questions did you have? What I wanna say is that certainly there's a lot of talk and better aiming education alignment with what career opportunities really are in Sheboygan County. Was there anything else I forgot? That was a long. No, I had a lot of concerns. And I guess kind of you mentioned housing so I do have a follow up question regarding that. So it kind of, crap this. So in your terms, I know definitely you guys put a study out a few weeks ago with more apartments. I agree, we definitely need more apartments in the job market. Do you also feel like that part of that is the diversity in the job, in the housing market as well? And we do need more condos, like do townhouses include it? Do we need more single family homes? So, absolutely great question. So the number one thing, I spoke to the Board of Realtors not too far long ago and without question the number one housing demand that they cannot meet, it was almost unilateral, was at least a two bedroom, two bath, two car condo. And when I asked them, do you want it more rural? Like an almost a duplex style or do you want something urban? Again, without hesitation, it was urban. With that large growth in baby boomers and individuals getting over 65, I think the number one target market that we have not hit are urban condos for people to downsize their home. And of course, when we do that, the home that they leave is now available for a family. So I still think that is the biggest low-hanging fruit in the rental market. One thing that has not been built yet are three bedrooms. I would love to see three bedroom town homes come online. And I think we could probably put a couple dozen on the market and they'd probably be gone by the end of summer. So those are the kind of the two big items. We've also been pushing single family itself extremely hard, especially at the entry level product, a product that's under 250,000, kind of going back to that 1973 bedroom, two baths, two car garage. And again, I think if we had hundreds on the market, I think they would sell pretty rapidly. So again, we're sitting with 3,000 jobs and we're sitting with probably a few hundred housing stock that's going quickly. So that is the challenge. Yeah, one more question I popped in my head. So looking at that, what's your ultimate goal? I mean, for me, I think getting the population back above 50,000 is definitely a goal that we should all be working towards. And I also think that part of that big component to get there is working with a lot of our employers to figure out how we can attract and retain a lot of people. So the SCDC's ultimate goal, I would say that we kind of have two items that I like to say. The first one is that family-owned companies have been the backbone of Sheboygan County's economy for 150 years. How do we make sure for the next 150, it'll be the backbone? Because that's where our nonprofits, that's where all the generosity comes from, that's where companies who make decisions with local input, that's where it happens. When you have a firm that's traded, you don't get that. It wild swings in terms of employment. So that's gonna provide us the best ability in the long run. The second piece, our second goal immediate is workforce. Because we know that every day that passes, companies are going without open jobs and we know that every day the odds of them either relocating or expanding outside of Sheboygan County, Sheboygan, Sheboygan County, we know what's happening. We just know. So I don't know if that answered your question, but those are the two things that keep us up at night. I think one thing that, I'm sorry, Todd, I see a region, one more thing. Because for me, I'm very fearful of what our neighbors to the north of Manitowoc, I think Manitowoc's been really hit hard. I think we're doing a lot of great work and I just want to thank you guys for doing the good work that you guys do, so. Thank you and honestly, we could not do it without the support of the Common Council and you guys should be deserving much of the credit because as aggressive and as quickly as you have helped projects happen around this community, the new business park, the apartments, the river dredging, all of that, it comes to play with, without that table set, there's no way we could be looking at what does the next 10 to 20 years look like? Todd. Good, Chair. I think you guys have done a great job. You've got a lot of data here. Couple of things that I wanted to point out and you kind of touched on them in different areas. You know, the city of Sheboygan, like you said, small family companies that have grown over decades, over generations. You know, the city of Sheboygan was known for what the three C's, what churches, chairs, and I don't know, I wasn't here. Children. Children, thank you. But the point is, Four C's? Four C's, come on. Four C's, come on. Okay, I wasn't here, sorry. I'm not that old. But anyway, yes you are. Anyway, my point is that when you look at technology today and the way things are done and even as technology has changed in the last 20 years that I've seen, what you're looking to fill are the needs for the technology point. Everything that's being done used to be done more manually and everything is becoming more and more automated. So as you look, as you identified some of the areas of where the workforce is going to change, that workforce is still gonna be needed but a lot more of it's going to be automated. And it's happening all over the world and we all know that. Even in the countries that are out there that we think like the China and stuff like that, they're using automation even more than we do in some respect. So these people that we're looking at that we're gonna need are going to be those engineers and those programmers and things like that, the people that are gonna be using these innovation districts. So I think the direction that you're going is huge. I think we need to continue to add on to our real estate like you were saying before and we need to expand on the great things that the city of Sheboygan has and we just don't publish it enough. We're a diamond in the rough that nobody knows about. So keep up the good work. Thank you. Other questions, comments? Yes, I have kind of two questions. One is if it's like a scale of 10 to reach fruition for this program, where are we on that numerical scale? And then the second one is at what point I know the city obviously is helping with housing, but at what point will there be a more direct need for involvement in the city? Obviously, maybe not obviously, monetarily. Sure, so I guess the worst scale where it would be I would consider around a five with a full plan knowing exactly what we're going to do in the last five is execution. We're probably sitting around a two or a three right now. The second item is at what point is there, what does the partnership look like with the city? As we know and vet that business plan and know exactly what it's going to look like. I think we're looking at again this fall, this winter to know exactly how this is going to shape out and thus if there's any assistance or any partnership that needs to be developed at that point. But in the meantime, we're working very closely with planning and development. They've been in all these meetings with us and certainly help guiding us as to what we think that we might be able to accomplish, what other partners we can develop and trying to be as inclusive as possible. Because again, that's the point is more inclusivity in this development the better. Other questions, comments, John. Is anybody reached out to the Walker administration and specifically getting contacts from Foxconn? Foxconn is going to be transformative. They could be the state's largest employer. They, there is no high tech manufacturing done in the United States. This will be the first. They're extremely innovative. They are going up the lake shore. Now they bought a building in downtown Milwaukee for their world headquarters or for their US headquarters. They're going to incorporate all the other universities LTCs, schools like that for education for their employees. I'm just wondering if somebody has reached out to them and said, hey, we're thinking of doing this. We would certainly like you to be part of it. High tech manufacturing doesn't get any more innovative. I think that would be just a great natural fit. And I think we'd be missing the boat if we're not doing that. Sure, great question. Our first round is obviously talking with as many locally owned firms as possible because we are building this for them. And once we get the locally owned firms certainly reached the firms outside of our areas the next item on the punch list. We've not reached out to anyone from Foxconn as of yet but certainly reaching outside of Sheboygan County's borders as time progresses is certainly on our docket. The main thing is to take care of our local companies first and foremost. Mike, what you do up simultaneously? We certainly can. It's just a matter of making phone calls and as we go, we've been probably doing three, four, five of these presentations a week to various companies. And that's just kind of the cadence we've been going with to try to meet with all of our major employers. All next week or this week yet? I mean, I would, you know, why wait? Great question. Thank you. Ryan. One last question. Feel free not to answer this if you don't want to. Does the SE- It goes on for three minutes then he doesn't have to. I know. Does the Economic Development Corporation have a thought with the future of the Armory at all? The SDDC has taken no official stance on the Armory. Obviously both proposals have housing involved which we are very excited about. And whichever, whatever direction the Common Council takes we are more than happy to support any investment in this community and we'd be proud to have either proposal. Other questions, comments? If there is nothing further, I believe our business here is concluded. Could we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Those in favor, state aye. Aye. Opposed, chair votes aye. We are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you all for coming in. Really appreciate it.