 Thanks for being here everybody, because this is my first economic development infrastructure committee meeting partners as a national redeveloper of mostly in-town type projects, super successful and have raised a ton of money which makes them an immediate player when it comes to these types of redevelopments. What I want to do is have somebody and also what are the certain challenges and opportunities that they see for Columbia as far as economic development. So we're going to go ahead and jump right in. I put the record I've noted the attendance and the fact that Russell is participating. Thank you. All right. You're welcome. So anyway, there's hard copies of the presentation. And I'm sure Jason be found this we want to make this as interactive and possible. I think we all realize that economic development in Columbia is challenging, but also it's not to the point where it's just, you know, challenging to the point where it can't happen. Absolutely. All right. Go ahead. Jump in. Perfect. Well, first of all, we're honored to be here. We represent Asana Partners, which is a company that was founded here in Columbia about eight years ago. A number of us worked at Eden's, who I'm sure many of you are familiar with Eden's, a company that had been headquartered here for 60 plus years. In 2015, a few of us left Eden's to form Asana Partners and we saw an opportunity across the country in really cool near urban neighborhoods to aggregate institutional capital and bring some expertise to renovate buildings, bring interesting local regional tenants into the neighborhoods and really drive economic activity in urban and near urban neighborhoods across the country. Today, 105 people, we have six offices in addition to the office here in Columbia. We have a portfolio of about $7 billion of assets in 26 cities and we've invested in about 65 neighborhoods across those cities in the U.S. With no city that is more important or dear to us than Columbia, so we have been and will continue to look for opportunities to invest here. We've not yet invested here beyond having a significant office in Columbia and we can talk a little bit about why that is. We are, I would say, certainly in South Carolina, a third of our people went to a South Carolina undergraduate school. We have a significant office in Columbia but our investment strategy is pretty simple. Most of the investments we make are in neighborhoods that look like the Vista or look like Five Points. We're active in Charleston, we're active in Nashville, Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham. Most of our assets are in the Sunbell or Mountain West and then we have some other investments. You can see some images in the document in some larger cities as well but we really prefer, for a lot of reasons, the Sunbelt cities that are high growth, a little bit easier to do business in and where we think a lot of the future is from an economic development perspective. So our strategy is to sort of quietly kind of move into a neighborhood, identify owners and most of these neighborhoods, the owners are local and we will look for an opportunity to, we don't have to own everything in the neighborhood but we want to own critical maps where we can put our capital to work and improve buildings and really change in a good way or enhance the way a neighborhood feels. A lot of these investors, do they come to you or do they go to them? It's a really interesting business model because we have tenants, local tenants, growing regional tenants and then growing national tenants who come to us and say, we want to be in this neighborhood, these are our requirements, can you help us find a building and we may have a building that works for them or a space that works for them or oftentimes knowing what their requirements are, quietly going to a neighborhood and look for an opportunity to acquire a building, renovate it and then put them in place to make the neighborhood more vibrant and generally when we move into a neighborhood, we really celebrate the history in the neighborhood and we celebrate and identify the local tenants that are beloved by the community and we protect them and want to keep them in those neighborhoods but when we get involved, we're very focused on making the place vibrant, making the neighborhood active 18 hours a day, seven days a week so we're very focused on being really strategic about the merchandising of the ground floor, retail, we want to have coffee shops, fitness, restaurants, soft goods, service oriented tenants and then upstairs typically there's a few stories upstairs of creative office and residential and the types of neighborhoods that we invest in, young people want to live there because there's a really cool amenity base on the ground floor and interesting high growth companies want to be there because especially now because of COVID, you really need to offer your employees something different and the cool neighborhood and what's happening on the ground floor is that amenity that a lot of the employers are looking for. Is there a certain mix or a certain metric that's associated with the number of people who have to actually live in that area? We're very focused on a one-mile radius because we, most of our investments draw from a more distant radius but we love to invest in neighborhoods that are walkable where people can walk to the businesses, they can walk the work, things there and walk just really interesting stuff so we start with what are the one-mile kind of metrics and we're really focused on places where at least 15,000 people live with a near urban experience. We're also focused on growth so we want density but then we also want to see, you know, projections where that population is going to increase by at least one and a half percent a year which is two to three times the national average and usually there's a, as you know, a high correlation between both and there's a high correlation between job growth and income growth and just to be blunt obviously we all know this but Columbia had lagged a lot of what I would consider sort of pure cities in the southeast from a job growth income growth. I always find this so frustrated because of all the things that we have going on here and we talk about it a lot. What would you consider the chicken in that? Circular. That's a really good question because we are very focused on investing in neighborhoods that can catch fire and when they catch fire they catch fire. Once you get, once there's interest from really cool businesses to be on the ground floor all of a sudden really interesting high growth, you know, office users want to be upstairs all of a sudden young people want to live in the neighborhood, institutional capital, you know, wants to live in the neighborhood. So we're just looking for neighborhoods where we can get involved and help it sort of catch fire and one of the things that excites me the most about Columbia is I continue to believe Columbia and by definition of with our jobs we travel all over the country and spend a lot of time in cities like Columbia and I think Columbia is probably the single greatest opportunity of a secondary city from a population perspective that we see across the country. So you got this wonderful investment overview I'm sure that y'all go through. Here's the list here. I mean how far off is Columbia from these metrics that would really engage the private investment to start and we're willing to we categorize neighborhoods as sort of you know pioneering neighborhoods, emerging neighborhoods and then established neighborhoods and we tend to want to invest in emerging neighborhoods and we're willing to make up that like we're willing to we don't have to check every we're very quantitative we're also qualitative we want the trends to be moving in the right direction but we don't have to check every single box from metrics. In fact a lot of neighborhoods we invest in don't check all the boxes but we get a good feel that there's really good momentum and if we can get involved we can help accelerate that momentum and by the time we're done with our physical work five seven years later the metrics all do sort of conform with our investment criteria. Have you found that these trending neighborhoods you know often have a municipal component to participate with you? In all these larger markets you have a public private partnerships that we've worked on or I wouldn't say it's not as common on a formal basis but informally there's a lot of support from municipalities. If we move into a new city and we're not a known quantity the initial reaction is who are these guys from South Carolina or from Charlotte that are moving into our city and buying properties but once we show them what we've done in other cities their blood pressure goes down and they're they're really excited because we preserve existing buildings we love historic buildings we love what makes a neighborhood diverse and energetic and dynamic and that celebrate that and want to defend that and enhance that and we really believe that elliptic high does rise all people raise all boats so if we can drive traffic 18 hours a day seven days a week to a neighborhood every business net neighbor is going to do better and generate more sales. We work with the SANA and Coalites on the signage for their product couple projects at Atlanta what was Crock Street in the outskirts yeah you know the first time I've only been to Crock Street once and that was at the very beginning that that area appeared at the beginning not to check a whole lot of boxes so that's right we're curious as to what your overview to Crock Street if you can google it's an amazing city about in town in town what's the bell line it's in town but it's very much like you know obviously on a different scale but it's embedded in a residential neighborhood very much like five races and we love that a lot of people can walk to those buildings there's a lot of history there the Stove works building used to be a manufacturing facility for stoves it's a hundred-year-old building we renovated the building it's right on the east Atlanta bell line so the bell line then the signing factor for that area it was a big part of the deciding factor and I think we have been calling you know state me obvious like a lot of this is not rocket science a lot of this is pretty obvious but we have the single greatest belt line opportunity along the river that Atlanta doesn't have but that belt line in Atlanta is now like waterfront property like everyone wants to be right on or within the walking distance of that of the bell line so it was a big factor for us and then just the historic buildings we're good with a lot of history MLK's birthplaces three quarters of a mile from those buildings so it's just a really cool place to come in and invest you know but it's you know I think to give get back to your question I would say the single most important factor for us is we need to see some growth like we can bet on where the numbers are going to go like where the population is going to go in a neighborhood where the you know other metrics are going to go but it needs to be vibrant there needs to be growth and we all know this we look at the bar charts you know we compare Columbia to another dozen or so you know secondary from a size perspective cities in the southeast and we're pretty consistently in the bottom quartile on an income growth perspective population growth job growth and until we start to see that you know bend a bit you know we've been reluctant to invest because we we don't want to be the only national institutional investor in a city or in a neighborhood we want to invest with others and ultimately you know we're going to improve our properties and eventually we may want to sell them and we want to know that there's a there are other institutional lectures that are provided with properties more times so that's been the but I do think I think we're getting close I mean I think we're columbia is the type of city state capital major university influence southeast it should catch fire and we're willing to be on the front end of that is there is there in the time period until we're there I don't think it's going to give you a few more like announcements of major employers I do think I think I want to not the river because a lot of good things happening here I think we need to make columbia even cooler for young people I think columbia has incredible natural resources and in my opinion if we just focused on five points and the river and by definition if we focus on the river we're focusing on vista right we in five years could have just two vibrant 18 days seven daily neighborhoods right now five points is too far and food beverage centric and the river is just an untapped river it was just a river the river's just a river and the damage from the flood in 2015 has not been repaired I run down there all the time it's sad like if that damage had happened in Chattanooga it would be repaired it'd be better than it was you never before and then still you know so I think as soon as we start to see activity we would get I did you know it's it's really just I think it is a chicken and an egg thing we need to make columbia cooler for young people and then I think employers are going to also want it's going to want to be here and I know you're already working on you're making it even more business friendly place to start a business um you know so Jensen do you feel like that concept of a rise in tide maybe needs to be um amplified the message about that Erica's going to get me because I might um because I think in Colombia too I guess and from my vantage point which is more the practitioner and of course the mayor and the council members of policymakers in this city where we're um broken up into districts and oftentimes there are some areas of the city that may have over time felt disenfranchised or it's not our time or we're not focused on I think what you just said is really interesting to me because you said you focus on the best to focus on um making it cool place focus on um the riverfront and put that focus and energy in it make it happen make people come but I think what's missing sometimes in the narrative is once you do that that rising tide then affects all the other districts and all the other communities and I don't I really feel like we don't we don't um we try to spread ourselves a little bit too thin and we're trying to accommodate maybe the other surrounding areas and districts and from your perspective as a developer how do you how could you give us some advice on how we narrate that better about that rising tide and what that would do for economy and commerce and and keeping our critical infrastructure which is human beings and young people right here I think you you just said it I mean I think if you look at what our income growth has been over the last 10 years on an average household basis for the entire city the entire metropolitan area we're at the bottom of the list of medium-sized southeastern cities and I just think I think if we can create make Colombia cooler for young people employers are going to want to be here there will be a a rising tide for everyone regardless of what district you live in and there should be better jobs better paying jobs and then I think we'll have the resources at that point to really focus on on all the districts but I think we need to be strategic and not spread ourselves too thin we have two I think really near-term opportunities to really have Colombia catch fire and I think everyone will benefit but I I can hear you it's a more challenging you know sitting in your seat than in my seat yeah I was just wondering if there are other cities like you mentioned where you've seen that happen and they did focus in but no one was left behind ultimately and maybe we could use that to our advantage too to you know use them as examples yeah I think it's amazing and maybe this is you know apples and pecan I just think this is it's amazing how Charlotte has just transformed themselves in a really short amount of time I mean so I'm not sure that you know how we relate to Charlotte but you know 20 years ago I mean Charlotte was dead I mean you know if you went if you're downtown or anywhere six or whatever yeah you ask any of those leaders up there that tell you that their change came when it became the best air out of that I mean so how long was that shit about 20 years ago right yeah so 20 years ago and then what you find out is that you know all the the number of like in-town living developments in Charlotte are just amazing yeah I agree and there are a lot of examples in Charlotte of neighborhoods that have improved over time and there's been incredible job opportunities in Charlotte so I do think that's probably a good case study I know we don't want to be Charlotte correct right but I think in Columbia it was more vibrant that and there's better job growth and better income growth every every citizen would benefit so two of the quick questions so how do you see USC participating in this you know five points it's the river you know how what's the best way to incorporate them into this vision or growth I mean they're here and you have thousands of families passing through the city you know multiple times a year and a lot of young people come here for four years and then leave you know it sure would be nice to you know I think we're already making a really positive impression we could make an incredible impression on all those people and I don't necessarily think it has to be in partnership with the university I think we already have a university as an asset as a resource I don't think it's going to take the university's partnership to reinvent the five points or reinvent the riverfront kind of the university has some land and they're trying to figure out what those do with the land including some land making everything you know on the riverfront but I think that's a small part of the puzzle it's just it's another standpoint when you're trying to get right employers here it's an incredible thing uses their research and their patents and all the things they're creating businesses they're going to do out of here and then they're all economic part I think from an infrastructure and development we just we gotta find the right partners with the vision they can take a place like five points and drop a hundred million dollars and then change three blocks or suddenly it becomes a vibrance I mean we look at the south end the straw is a perfect example you know we had prices of chicken coop there for you know four decades still my favorite place to see jenny's but it was all industrial now Utah where the jenny's ice cream it probably does I can't I face one of their top soils doesn't see it at all so you know that's concentrating on what we're living they allow towers they're allowing creativity to happen in the cross section of the business and the retail is what we've been saying they need more people living downtown more options now maybe my next question is so in town living so if we could help develop or improve in town living in this kind of importance do you think that would be I think it would be huge I think it's a missed opportunity the fact that there aren't like incredible places for young people to live within a few blocks of Jervais Street I mean there are a few okay but it from from the capital down to the river all along within a few blocks of Jervais Street should just be a mecca for young young professionals in my opinion and if you could get to the river you could get to Main Street easily you know it would be amazing you know getting back to Charlotte I think Charlotte wishes like they had University of South Carolina Charlotte wishes they had a river Charlotte wishes they were a state capital I think they did all that over the last 20 years without those resources I think we really have to do a good job of attracting that sophisticated customer because that's what all these national retailers and restaurants want and not to say that we want only nationals to come into Columbia but I think that's like a big piece of it right because they think the same way we do you know we want a sophisticated consumer we want lockability we want that 18-hour neighborhood where we can lock live work and play you know I mean that's why we've been successful across the country as a company in partnering with a lot of these tenants you know we're Jenny's largest landlord we're Patagonia's largest landlord and I think tenants like that are really transformative you know to that end I think there's another layer of it is finding the right institutional capital to come into Columbia because you know for us you know it's not just about making money it's really really important to us to create that right merchandising mix you know we want the the gym use the service use the restaurant breakfast user and then someone you can go grab a cocktail at five o'clock and also have a great dinner so I think like that's a really important piece of it because it's not just buying real estate and you know changing Columbia it's buying real estate and curating the perfect tenant mix that really does attract that sophisticated consumer you know that young person who's coming from USC and scoring a great job who really wants to give them some money I think adding to that so we created this intercollegiate council engagement that's what we heard from those young folks that the reason they're choosing other places is that vibrant they want to be able to walk to work they want to be able to walk to entertainment they want all of their resources right there within much like they had at the university in a downtown setting they want to be part of that and that's what they're looking for that's why they're thriving to places like Columbus and Nashville and Charlotte and etc you see I think one of the things we've missed is part of it is we don't market our our community we don't share and a lot of communities that have three major highways 60 000 students let one of the 4 000 recruits at the 4 500 45 000 recruits that come rolling through here it's 15 million difference is usually the emergency only gets 22 million so when we look at that but our visitors only a third of them are spending time so the more we can activate the river the more we create more activity the mix of chain and local are important because that creates excitement you know we've seen people who flock here for a change because within you know 20 minutes you're about in the county so there's a huge draw from where we sit we just haven't really told our story we've always said we've always said that it's really hard to recruit people to Columbia but once they're here they don't want to leave so we can fix like the top of the funnel and make it easier to recruit it would it's just gonna catch fire people don't want to get here they love it Jason I'm asking someone you know you're in these markets that are high-demand high growth and have a steady record of that for a long time moving into the future we you know hopefully get a piece of that someday locally the municipality's counties you've worked with in these areas any incentive packages they've put your way maybe outside of you know just your standard water tap these stuff like that like the really big things that make you take a second look the biggest stuff that we're working on in few cities are you know is we're working on a few adaptive reuse projects where we're converting you know I would say a class B or class C obsolete office building which doesn't have a very bright future as we all know into a really vibrant mixed-use residential and retail building and a few cities are using us as a case study incentivizing us you know for your property tax perspective they want to have that case study to attract additional institution capital to the city to do the same thing because most cities are going with half of their office inventory it's never going to be so right well and we see that I mean I just sat here yesterday through a meeting in town where we're real through some exactly what we're talking about we have a shortage of class A space we need some new towers we haven't had one since 2019 but we all like 2010 but we also have a whole network you're looking at one through the window right adaptive reuse for residential makes use this and that it could do would help us speed up the downtown but it takes the right person to understand it how to make that happen it's tax credits the issue and that's what we thought about yesterday as a matter of fact could we issue tax credences and incentives to get that private investment here for that activity it probably is what it will require some tax credits because on a stand-alone basis the numbers just don't make sense just the construction costs just the purpose of everything yeah most of the office footprints aren't the right dimensions for residential so you have to think they're not really something yeah or you want to run through the case study yeah I think we touched on you guys can get a sense for a lot of the neighborhoods you invest in we put the case study of the south end of charlotte in here because this is a really good example of a place that caught fire and in a very short period of time you know a decade um is now the most vibrant neighborhood in the city of charlotte so we you know you can see on page 10 this is kind of typically what we we like to do we like to sort of quietly move into the neighborhood and buy some buildings try to get critical mass we bought you know through 14 transactions 14 buildings in the south end of charlotte about 300 000 square feet initially invested 94 million dollars and then over the ensuing couple of years we put another 50 million dollars into those buildings just to give you a sense for the order of magnitude of the capital that we're going to put into the buildings to improve them um and you can see some of the metrics here you know population exceeds our 15 000 person target it was much lower than that when we started investing here population growth this is a neighborhood that's growing to an half percent a year um you know walk score is really important to us and the neighborhoods we're talking about in columbia have really high walk scores they're very convenient places for people to walk and accomplish all of their daily kind of errands on foot um these types of neighborhoods typically attract the young professionals using the average age in the south end is 34 and you kind of see some of the other the other metrics but and then the tenants we thought it was important to put give you a sense for the tenants because our strategy is not to bring a bunch of national tenants into a neighborhood and just destroy the soul of the neighborhood we are very thoughtful in we want to we want primarily local tenants and regional tenants we're very selective when we bring in a national tenant our national tenants need to kind of feel like a local or regional tenant so it's the patagonias who have an incredible mission or jennies those those are national tenants that kind of feel like more local and regional tenants and we think are additive to the to the neighborhood and then you can just see some before and after pictures so we'll buy one off dilapidated buildings we'll buy entire city blocks um i think one of the most transformative photos here is on page 12 you can see the service alley at the top left corner of page 12 that was only being used to back load you know some of the the tenant pre-existing tenants we ripped all of that out converted to the death tree and only popped in some storefronts and now on a weekend or even in the evenings that's one of the most trafficked the death tree corridors in the city of charlotte just a really vibrant place we have markets there festivals you know live music it really contributes to the kind of we think the quality of life of the of the community of charlotte you all leverage the store tax credits we do in some some places um you know we most of our investors are tax exempt investors big state pension funds and sovereign wealth on types so federal programs don't benefit our investors as much but the municipal programs certainly do and i would feel the last thing i would say touched on it but you know esg is is really important to us and what's really cool about our strategy you know from a sustainability perspective you know we're buying typically buying existing buildings that are not very energy efficient bringing them out to standards investing significantly and then making them very energy efficient we're not tearing down trees building new buildings we're investing in neighborhoods that are diverse we want our tenants to represent the diversity of our neighborhood we have a tremendous number of minority owned businesses women owned businesses across our portfolio and that's really important to us we think part of what makes these neighborhoods you know vibrant and attractive places to spend time much participation that's the utility play sometimes is it with the local government i'm looking at the power the lines are removed and some of these pictures and some of the logic is that more of a common thing than it is here we have to really request it and we have good relationships with dominion and all that there are programs we have a director of of esg who has a relationship with some of the power companies and there are programs that we can take advantage of when we make our buildings more energy efficient and i would say generally and i think one of the reasons we prefer to invest in the sundell versus like some other gateway cities is it easier to engage municipality or engage the utility companies to beautify the street or the corner i think that's one thing that we all right no clumbier to be beautified like there's you know a lot of power lines need to get under the street there's just so you know i think that would just be part of the solution of attracting institution capital to the city but yes we we cities like charlotte delis you know charleston nashville have been easier places for us to do business the relationships are good with all the partner yes there's questions my only question is is page your official city of columbia you know broker and char absolutely cheerleader absolutely you know she lives in the district peter so good she's she's the big champion of our degree that page on the team she's joined us gets a little over a year ago about a year ago and um leads a big portfolio from a leasing perspective of course so she sees a lot and she's saying that thanks for talking to me about that she cares as we all do about the city so it's important for her to be here at born and raised here so definitely hopeful that we can make columbia here i will be here for the long haul so let's do what we need to do to get these awesome folks in the right great thanks so much any other questions anybody just anything yeah good thank y'all thank you yeah it is too oh well you'll have a good one thanks all right you guys want to move on to the next issue brian you want to yes sir you just want to absolutely well first of all before we do that i did want to take a quick moment um to introduce grace salter who is our new business recruiter with the office of economic development i'm not sure if everybody's had the opportunity to meet her yet she's just started her fourth week with the office but uh this is a position we've we've worked on filling for a while and we're incredibly excited to have her with the team so great thanks appreciate it i think we're on the same schedule i think i've been here well what we've built like four years so the first item we have up is the central sd alliance contract for services this is the contract for the current year that we are in now this item had previously been referred out of committee late last year along with the other partner contracts we brought it back to committee for consideration but we're pretty late in the budget year right now and so wanted to kind of bring this back up with y'all i know we will need to get some consensus on the contract and if we intend to pay the 72 000 for the current year we do need to kind of resolve that because it probably will need to go back to council for an official approval and i think you know probably a little more importantly something that we had discussed earlier we're coming into a fresh year we've got new leadership new staff members probably a good time for us to sit down not just with this but with our other partner contracts and really assess our strategic plan that we put together last year where we're going as a city what our partners can bring to the table and make sure that the the items that we were blessed that they work on on our behalf are really reflective of where we want to go with our economic development priorities i think that's extremely well said you know i mean you know some of these issues that are coming up they're calling the hangover issues for me because they've got they go back a long way and you know i have been here a long time so um this particular 72 000 dollars covers what period of time uh you know why uh last year july 1 to basically June 30 this is like the so that's right yeah it's like the budget negotiations in your congress talking about you to where we're negotiating the past and so so i mean i feel like i was a future yeah right yeah i feel like we're we're kind of beholden i mean this money's already been budgeted right yes yeah so i mean i feel like we're i mean it feels like we're we're obligated to this money however it doesn't feel like we're obligated to the future and i think you bring up a really good point i mean i think you know if you just listened to what we just heard and the things we've been talking about i think we're all extremely open you know like we're on a you know awareness tour you know of you know what what are we going to do going forward and so it feels like an amazing opportunity time going forward and and you know this does a bit with what we think we should be spending money on and then i think i'm open to that as well well yeah i agree it's looking attractively i think we have to meet this commitment moving forward we need to let them fit into the story we're gonna tell right and the the role that they play is it a more of a who's that organization out there really buttoning up our workforce development pursuits connecting to the universities that's been a big gap maybe that this is somewhere where they can step in but i'd like to see them come to us do some research tell us how we can fit into your plan so yeah with some and with some you know i hate to work deliverable because it's overused but but but it's really still true what are what are they you know what are they selling for us you know so so we're all selling something so when it comes to columbia what are they selling well and and um mr. chairman i tell you with scout i'm gonna think everybody's game plan is changing but i'm gonna roll being redefined um so it'll be interesting to see who's doing what in the next three four months right but i can i ask a clarifying question so the 72 000 was committed this past budget cycle correct yes are we talking about what's coming up now yes ma'am past okay one of the things that we had talked about um councilman taylor and i and the mayor had met with um central sc alliance uh at the end of last year was focusing on one piece of what they're good at and potentially it being just doing research for us or helping market a particular component that we may not have the capacity for um and councilman brendan i know we had potentially talked about a 25 000 investment in the past but i do want to put that on the table in terms of um really narrowing down and taking full kind of advantage of maybe a particular skill set that the central sc alliance has one of the concerns we've had is first of all even the term central sc is not widely understood or used so as we're thinking about telling our story columbia often gets lost in some of their efforts because it's um focused on a much larger region i totally agree with the concept that i mean i'm not you know i'm not even sure columbia really even resonates with their work you know so so i think it's just important for us to understand how we fit into you know because why they represent seven counties county city right so so i mean so it's a big footprint yeah they they do do research for us um marketing support one thing we were actually talking about earlier was having them do a custom drone flyover the river you know we could certainly probably using our repertoire at some point going forward a a package that promotes the riverfront as an opportunity in its hold um i think there's some some things out there but i think it also goes back to i think daniel's i think you know i think we really i think his comment about how we've done not marketed ourselves you know we talked about two different things marketing and messaging you know they're different but they're similar you know marketing is making you better than you are to somebody else messaging is how you present yourself as yourself to everybody else so so when it comes to marketing and messaging i think we need that we even talked about this with the police force you know we have to develop the proper marketing and messaging for and that that's in progress with the rfp submissions that are coming in from the the broader which i think the economic development marketing is a component of that correct we've gotten all the feedback back from the morse school on the research projects that the students were working on we're still kind of digesting that because we got it back two or three weeks ago you know but i think kind of having that informed consensus from yet that targeted audience that we want to have more of because we lose them right after college i mean we're great in the gen z demographic 18 to 24 and then 25 to 30 there's just a drop off and we've gotten some pretty good intelligence from them as far as where some gaps are so today's request is retroactively go ahead with what we owe on the last contract and in the future we're just going to wait for a proposal to come in we're not going to specifically budget align item or that component what's the what's the forward request going forward there's no obligation for us to do anything in the upcoming fiscal year we do have funds budgeted within the economic development budget for this group or other groups so what we had discussed yesterday and this morning and really this is something that we've discussed over the past year we've got a lot of things going on so maybe we haven't given it the full uh flashlight look or a full look at as we should but we need in the early fall to have this group and various other groups that we fund that are supposed to support us to come and talk to us about what they really can do for us that supports the mission and what the city expects and then we can make a determination of if we're going to utilize them and to what extent and what that cost is going to be so I would argue that even for the upcoming year it might not be 72,000 it might only be 20,000 it depends upon how we're going to utilize them but as we get through the summer we need to have some good in-depth discussions with this committee and with these groups coming in and it might be that some of these people we have funded in the past they can't really provide something for us for what we need and that it might be time for us to say we're done or it might be that they're going to adapt or it might be they have certain parts of what they currently provide that can assist us. Well I know that I'm on a day-to-day relationship with every one of my customers so I think we have to just really re-look at what we're doing why we're doing it and what we're planning to get out of it. But am I wrong in thinking that that overall branding, marketing company we bring in could carve out a a lot of our option for an economic development consultant to come in and help us with that particular I guess part you see what I'm saying so so here we are we're rebranding all of cities on everything we do in that niche of economic development so there might be somebody specifically that can come in and fill what we need there that work in something like this could potentially funding or potentially even the specific industry that we have our eye on that the RFP isn't covering I agree with you I think that we could we could do something like that where we bring them in. If I'm going to read this before I'm going to apologize in advance I'm saying this because I just think this really ties into what we're talking about so and what the mayor said so this is by the A&E Golan Bitsky who's the head of Austral Development going to do the departments over there by None and Del. This is his quote out of the state newspaper. Columbia is still a little bit under the radar which is attractive to us okay so keep in mind think about where this is going. The region is stabilizing factors which include government offices universities healthcare facilities for Jackson and the Bull Street district make awful development confident in the project. Also he goes on to say certain types of retail tenants and certain types of places physical features will attract young people that's what I like that's the marketing and that's the messaging that we want in Columbia as this guy tells us we're under the radar straight from the investors now. We don't want to be under the radar. We want the radar on us and we've got to figure out how to get people to know who we are. The concept that if you drag people kicking and screaming here they'll love it is not a marketing plan. Sorry and that's what we I get out of this we got to get out of this mentality that if we can get people here they'll love it. Nobody else is that's not on anybody else's website I promise you. So this is what I talk about marketing and messaging that's what I want to market and message is that we do have all these things and we are going to be a vibrant community and my point is when you market something what you do is you say I am a vibrant community and then you say how okay just marketing you know it's not lying but it's also representing what you want to be not who you are. So what we got to do is represent where we're going not where we've been and I think that's just so important to just you know have this basic awareness of that's the way the world sees us. We want our messaging to be affirmative. Yeah right I mean this is what I'm just telling you all those things you know even when I read it I was just like wow he really he really summed it up great that's what we want people to know. We just got to do a better job telling the stories. That's not everything but that's a that's a good start telling them better a really good story you know we're all selling ourselves every day. I mean I tell everybody that works you know at Coalight every day you talk to somebody you're selling you and us to somebody so make sure you're selling us the way we want to be seen. So it's just that important so as we title this together that's that's really what I think you got to focus on is is how to message and market ourselves into the future. To get patient to say we're going to do this not that we could do this but we're going to do this and and we believe in you know where the city is going and that's I mean it's interesting I mean I think their metrics are amazing I like them I mean we're data driven world but I also think that what he told you was there's there's data but there's also some trust and and some you know sorry I always say this there's some you know believability and hey we got faith in this city and we have faith in this community and we got faith in the future and if that's what I was going to sell Columbia that's exactly what I was telling um that that you can get we have just trust you have trust in the city and faith that that we're we're going to deliver and that we're we're committed to moving forward so anyway all right so we need uh some type of motion to come out of this saying that we're important of the seventy two thousand dollars is that correct are we voting on a consensus you don't need to vote we did I mean are you on that now he prefers not to vote but we do endorse or rip it out of the committee how do you have any reservations no I think that this works moving forward okay I agree okay so we've got a consensus to move forward and we will move that forward and possibly next agenda okay that's okay and Nelson has offered to come in as early as June to our future committee meetings and that's right I think they do a really good job I think it is easy to understand what that means that's perfect and there's a fit what we want okay you all right if they could come in with some suggestions yeah right do not just to jump out of general communication okay that's one of my hand go over it so you want to move Ryan to this yes sir next thing the next item is this now they created create opportunity with the workforce development training programs specifically focused on the information technology sector that program is being transferred over has been transferred over to the South Carolina technical college system foundation and they will be running running that from here on out but he's come back again asking for some additional support as the program transitions over to continue help growing that as well and so what he has put in is a $50,000 one-time request from the city if we would like to support to get that program transitioned over and to help grow it over the next few years he did indicate this does not need to be done in a single budget year so if we're inclined to support and we wanted to break that payment up 25 over two-year periods they're open to that as well but demand for information technology jobs is growing they've had good support through the program so for they've placed some employees at colonial life diesel laptops nephron yoban and others and that's the request before us where the students come from specifically so in the program the students and you don't necessarily have to be a college student per se but they go on and they take an online aptitude examination which takes about one and a half two hours once it kind of pre-screens you and identifies that you have you know the traits that they're looking for you do basically a six-month boot camp through midlands technical college once that process is completed and then you go into a two-year apprenticeship program with an identified employer the employer gets some some labor with some preliminary training at a lower cost so you're not paying full freight for an IT graduate you don't have to pay the 70 000 per year maybe it's closer to 50 per year and then the point that you've finished that apprenticeship you're finished you've got a degree you've got two years of on-the-job training and your commitments ended and you can go work wherever you'd like so it's the training and then into an apprenticeship program so do you have a specific recommendation for this bringing it here for the consideration sir so i'm sorry chairman so how many you funded this last year for the first we funded it in 2020 to get it started and i believe we contributed $40 000 at the time okay since then we've not paid anything we'll just just give me the success stories so they've um got uh 13 students or they've had 15 students that have completed the six month training program and then they force it three three years yes so they they did some initial phases where it was just two forced students a piece um because it takes a while to run through that program now they're kind of ramping up to where they're doing full-sized cohorts which are more the 15 students per batch and these are essentially these are uh grants to Milistat for the students to go through their program but it covers tuition costs is there any recommendation that they or requirement that they live live work in the city of Columbia afterwards or it don't have to i believe our initial um request of them that was that they um have was it in came from the Columbia from within the city of Columbia they came close to meeting that they probably got more around eight yeah i'm supportive of it again but i would like to add the layer of priority for students that live within the city limits um if possible i guess i'm i'm i guess i'm reasonably reasonably supportive of it as well um i'm just trying to figure out you know if we didn't do this does this thing exist or not exist going forward or you know so it's just it's just hard to tell i mean you know i mean i would think of it was an uh an amazing what are the other funding outlets there are other funding outlets definitely right yeah i mean the um the employers have a buy-in so you know colonial life diesel as an employer um you know i'm willing to i'm willing to fund stuff as an employer as an employer just hoping that i could get some employee down the road so so i mean the fact that we're carrying you know i don't know how much of the freight we're actually you know of the total percentage i mean i would just think that the employers would have their own you know the other model where they pay versus that's what we are in today's world where there are no employees you know this should be driven by the private sector in my mind you know it's not us it'd be fair to say that this model we are taking on more of a incubator role to incubate these this future workforce that will find hopefully a job of the wonderful large employers here in the city very close to the city i think that's more of the approach that this group is asking yeah i don't i'm not asking for a long term recurring commitment i see this as more of like a help kick start this and get it to the next phase you know we want to transfer we want to ramp up and with your support we feel like we can boost the program up to where it needs to be i guess i guess what i'll i guess what i'll say is this should be important enough to quality like diesel labs out of net brown pharmaceuticals joe v and cyber world will do this on the ground and really really drive this thing um so so i'm not i'm not saying i won't support it i'm just saying i'm not going to support it for long um if we support it because i just i just don't see that this is a good use of this is going to happen without that's what i'm saying this is necessary stuff in the world in today's world where you don't have technical employees that you need and and we're basically paying for this program when the private sector should be paying for this program they're what's benefiting from this right i mean you know so we know almost we know so little about this so yeah i don't know that we we have to answer affirmatively or negatively today i think you know this was just to kind of get the request in the queue if there's follow-up questions that we would like to ask regarding you know commitment to um power in the city or information about us to understand no free plan or lexington's just understand why why this can't just be driven through the midlands tech in the private sector out of store play and i think that's a larger conversation what's what's our role in or force development and investing in it right yeah so but i think it's a great program and yeah i'm all for it i just don't know that it's it's our yeah we can just get some more information we have any questions we want a prayer phone who else is participating from public sector level or level yeah what's the total what's the total need and what's the total you know commitment and you know what are the companies the private sector uh contributing to this what's me list text role i mean i i would love funding yeah it will it move or without the participation of the city yeah i i didn't i did not get clarification on him if it was kind of a but for situation i think that's what though are there partnering opportunities for grants out there where we can partner with not this nonprofit sure dr bustle are you okay with the approach yeah and i think going back to what councilman brandon said about making a clear connection as to the direct benefit to the city and how many folks from this cohort are either staying after going through this program and being clear but i agree with you chairman i think that it would be a initial startup investment if we did anything and then i think the private sector needs to take this and run with it we need to focus our efforts on building quality of life and some of the other conversations we've had um earlier today totally agree all right everybody happy with our approach yes sir rotten you got anything else no sir that was it jack you got anything else that did i think we're good she all got something else it was all almost on time good job i didn't do a lot of talking so you're saving that for another time okay i'm saving that for we haven't figured out i love to talk so um anyway so that's uh i guess uh we'll adjourn yes thank you there be happy yes sir thank you