 plan. We look a little strange. Peter Fairweather has the microphone attached to his shirt, and I'm using it. That's why we're sort of huddled up here. I'd like to introduce Peter Fairweather for those of you who have not met him or come to earlier meetings. Peter's been working with a steering committee here in Montpelier for the past six months or so to try to develop a process whereby we come up with a draft economic development plan, which is what you're going to see tonight, and respond to and ask questions and kind of react to before it gets presented to City Council tomorrow evening. So this is Peter Fairweather and he's going to carry on. Thank you, Gene. As soon as I get this back where it was. Okay, that should do it, right? Good. All right. Thank you all for coming on this balmy spring day. And, you know, Gene set out the process right. What we're going to be doing is going through kind of the conceptual approach we're going to take to strategic planning for economic development in Montpelier as based on the work we've done thus far. And I will give you a sense of the agenda. We'll first just do an overview of the planning process. Then we'll talk a little bit about what is economic development, what is an economic development strategy, what is Montpelier's strategic position, and then start talking about what are the opportunities and how should we pursue those opportunities. So in terms of the planning process, Gene mentioned the steering committee and these are the esteemed members of the steering committee, many of who are here tonight and I'd like to thank them for their ongoing support. A lot of the work they did was to review drafts to make sure that they more or less made sense. And also, they're invaluable in putting me in contact with important stakeholders in the city and beyond so that we can get a variety of different perspectives in the strategic planning process. And, you know, they're set up with four phases in the process, the analysis, the engagement, and this is where we started to talk to folks about what they saw as issues and opportunities and then phase three is we started to talk about conceptually how do we approach economic development in Montpelier, what is the overall strategic direction we're going to look at, and then the last phase is action putting together the strategic plan and, you know, we are here. We're finishing the creation process for the strategy and what we're going to talk about tonight is kind of the general overall approach that we're recommending. And then from there, depending on the response and review, we'll put together the final plan which will have an action agenda and sequenced order, metrics, and all the details to make this stuff happen. So what is economic development? It's stimulating or challenging economic activity which could be spending, job creation, investment, so that activity preserves and improves the community's quality of life. Economic development harnesses economic power, but it isn't economic power. You know, that's the tricky thing about this process. We're looking for ways to facilitate economic activity in the city. And effective economic development depends upon market realities and motivated business people. And, you know, what we've tried to do in this process and what we're doing all the work related to economic development that I do is to try to understand what are the market opportunities and how can those be engaged in the community to build opportunity, investment, jobs, and so forth. And what is an economic development strategic plan? It's a plan that defines an approach to use the resources we have to capture the activity we want. You know, that we've looked at what are the things that are happening from an economic perspective in Montpelier, what are the assets that the community has and how can we mobilize those to take advantage of economic activities to generate the outcomes that we want. And, you know, part of this is saying, well, what's Montpelier's strategic position? What's the overall approach we're going to take to bring this about? What do we see as the opportunities? And what you can do to take advantage of those opportunities from the position that the city occupies. And now we're going to start to make that a little bit more specific. Let's talk about Montpelier's strategic position. And the model we use to think about this is that some of you have seen already is called the process of market polarization, which I will lay out for you. And this is an important concept in our strategic planning process here in Montpelier. This model works from top to bottom, again, some of you have seen it before, and it shows how markets grow and develop. And I'll walk you through an example and then we'll apply it to Montpelier. The typical example is the automobile industry. Henry Ford figures out how to mass-produce automobiles. So the inventor fills a lead. Paralympic competition enters and expands the market. And General Motors also can basically do the same thing. They're providing similar kind of product. Maybe the fins are shaped a little differently, the fenders are a little...but basically it's the same sort of thing. Step three is the important one. The extremes enter and are disregarded. Suddenly people show up in the market that are offering superior quality products like BMW or Jaguar or something like that. Or lower price products. Volkswagen, Nissan, and so on. And what happens is the big three automakers think, well we're the dominant thing in the market so we can ignore what's happening at the extremes. Though what happens is polarization accelerates, consumers realize well I could have the standard issue car or I could spend a little bit more money to get something that's really neat and cool or spend a little less money and still get the same basic transportation. So if you stay in the middle in that situation you lose. And if you remember the auto industry in the 70's and 80's the big three automakers were sort of in a panic because they were suddenly lost their dominant position. And the same thing happens with locations. You know there can be a low cost location in that the location itself helps minimize the cost of operations because rents are cheaper and so on labor is cheaper. Or superior quality. The location itself adds value to the enterprise. It's a productive place to do business because there are skilled workers here. There's a high quality of life that enables you to attract and retain workers more effectively. So that's the situation we're looking at in terms of non-period can be summarized by looking at what's going on in two neighbors as an example. When you look at Barry and their approach to economic development in their documents retaining good on Barry's better cities heritage the blue collar community that is affordable for working class families. So they're clearly positioning themselves as a low cost location for economic development. At the same time what's happening over in Waterbury is they're positioning themselves as this place of uncommon ideas. A premium location for economic development. And what's interesting in this process is Montpelier which 30 years ago was kind of the just about the only lively urban setting in central Vermont. Now certainly is find itself in the middle. And so it looks like there's a need to start thinking about what is our position in the marketplace? How do we respond? Some of you have seen this data before. This will give you a sense of what's going on. This looks at employment from basically the trends from 2009 to 2014 which is the most recent data for the full year we can get. It shows Montpelier, Barry and Waterbury. If you look at total employment you can see Montpelier is bigger. The change in total employment well Montpelier gained 600 jobs Barry 650 and Waterbury lost 1200. So Montpelier looks pretty good in comparison except when you start to look at private sector jobs and take government out of the picture. Private employment about 6,000 in Montpelier, 4,000 in Barry, almost 3,000 in Waterbury over the last five years the change in private sector employment in Montpelier 10 jobs as opposed to 400 in Barry and 300 in Waterbury. So you know there's movement that's taking place nearby and Montpelier hasn't really participated that in the same extent so we need to start thinking about what is Montpelier's position in the marketplace and what will happen if you stay in the middle in that situation. If the community decides to stay in the middle the economy will be growing slowly for the foreseeable future and that's the other thing that makes this complicated. But if you look at what's happening at the national level the growth rate to give you a sense and this is from a study from the Congressional Budget Office the national growth rate in the 80's which was not exactly boom times you know it was considered a somewhat slow growing time it was about 3% per year. The Congressional Budget Office now projects like over the next 10 to 20 years average annual growth nationally will be 2% you know 2 thirds of what it was in the 1980's so that national growth is going to continue to be slow and that's reflected in Vermont you know the new economic partnership forecast last year it's the pace of recovery and expansion will continue to be moderate and again so this is a time of slow growth. So if Montpelier doesn't respond what happens and I think it's important but it's not like there's going to be immediate cataclysm that you step out onto Main Street or into your own cut as well one day and suddenly there'll be nothing there tomorrow but what will happen is you'll see the population will continue to decline really new housing is built the retirees will stay put housing remains rare and expensive for younger workers. The state consolidates its Montpelier workforce in fewer buildings in order to save a little money, freeing up downtown commercial space. A stagnant population means retail and hospitality businesses struggle and become more seasonal because they have to wait for people to come in from the outside because the resident population is slowly getting smaller and smaller and the cost of government services rise and taxes go up making the city less attractive to new businesses because there's fewer and fewer households and other kinds of businesses to cover the costs of running the city is reduced capacity for regeneration or transition as we talk about how do we respond to the changing economy, the changing energy situation and so on in order to respond to that we're going to need resources and wealth and if we decide not to move and we stay in that middle position we see a slow decline which again won't seem like a cataclysm it'll seem more like things get a little cloudy in Montpelier and then over five to ten years you suddenly see gee, how did this happen? There are a lot of empty storefronts here that didn't used to be that way it's getting harder and harder to find work and again it's nothing that happens dramatically but it's gradual over time and that's why it's a good time to do this strategic plan right now because there are many things that are going quite well from Montpelier so we need to think about giving this change and the market polarization that's taking place, what do we do? So based on the work we've done this far here's the overall approach we're suggesting first of all in terms of how do we think about what are the goals of this strategy? It's to increase economic activity private sector jobs and population by providing value to local businesses through a four-pronged approach and we're going to talk about what's involved in each of these approaches in a little more detail than just the slide we first need to support key sectors that can drive the economy and we'll talk about what those are next, to champion transformational projects that strengthen the local economy to be able to show that Montpelier can get the job done in terms of competing as a premium location for economic development and we'll talk about what those could look like to make strategic investments to strengthen the economy and to assemble the tools to sustain the effort catalyze projects and build quality of life and now what I'm going to do is to walk you through conceptually what each of those four elements would look like First of all, supporting key market sectors and we've listed them alphabetically based on the analysis that we've done which you can see a lot of that on the website Montpelierplan.com These are industries that we see have growth potential in Montpelier listed alphabetically, adult learning food processing and advanced manufacturing and that is manufacturing that uses technology either in their processes or in their products entrepreneurs, particularly in software development and IT finance and insurance, historically a strength for the state capital and still very much so not-for-profit services professional business and technical services including green businesses specialty retail and tourism hospitality and the arts so these we see as important sectors with growth potential for Montpelier in the future and the other thing I'll point out that little golden triangle will appear on these slides as a reminder you were thinking about a premium positioning for Montpelier and that's kind of the the effort we're going to focus on so championing transformational projects and we'll give you some examples, some illustrations of what could be transformational projects for the city thinking about those sectors how do we take advantage of the growth in those sectors for example, creating a hotel and conference center which might mean working with existing operators and or developers to create additional rooms and conference space to support business and tourism travel and which of those sectors would that help tourism, hospitality and the arts, adult learning finance insurance, not-for-profit services and services including green businesses that idea of providing opportunities for conferences for functions and even just for business travel in addition to the obvious target of tourism and the arts so that's the first kind of transformational project second, a comprehensive parking strategy to ensure employees have access to parking to reduce problems associated with the legislative session to accommodate tourist visitation in previous analysis, one of the important things that employers look for when they're evaluating a location is to make sure that their employees have access to parking so part of this would be to put together a strategy to address the issues of what's the capacity where is it needed in what form and that could be anything from the bricks and mortar of a parking garage to looking at pricing parking in different parts of the city to make sure people distribute themselves in a way that's more effective and provides better opportunities for businesses to find their employees' places to park and for retail operations to have a place for their customers to be. Other potential projects provide a variety of housing types to ensure adequate housing for what's termed in the consultant land as the talent pipeline and that is the workforce in the community and that could include executive housing in the downtown and other locations housing for young professionals with families first-time home buyers senior housing for retirees to free up existing housing stock and affordable housing for young singles and others and some of the sectors that helps particularly finance and insurance the services including green business you know the companies that are using high-scale technical workers the whole question of housing is important ingredient in their development as they look to recruit talent to bring workers in to make sure that they can compete on the basis of the skills of their workforce Another potential project is to create a not-for-profit advocacy training center you know the Montpellier is the state cap and there's some inherent advantage of that in terms of working with the not-for-profit sector and advocacy groups to build their capacity to do their work you know this is a great place to observe the legislative process to get a sense of how the agencies work and the rulemaking process and so on and we think there's some opportunities to create this kind of training center which serves the not-for-profit services obviously but also adult learning and tourism, hospitality and the arts a lot of those operations are not for profits especially in the arts sector A venue featuring locally crafted food, wine and spirits to again capture the whole local food movement that's increasingly an important part of the Vermont economy the central Vermont economy there are a lot of opportunities we feel to look at ways to encourage those kinds of activities to benefit the food processing and advanced manufacturing and specialty retail sectors Others, a retail arcade with small footprint spaces for start-up retailers in a larger space in the town to basically see if there's a spot to create anything from stalls to small shops to enable retail businesses that are looking to get started to kind of get their operations underway without having to lease a full storefront to test the idea, to test the concept and there are a lot of communities that have successful spaces like this one that comes to mind is in Northampton, Massachusetts the Thorn Building is a good example where there's a variety of spaces of different size and the sectors that that could help obviously retail but also tourism, hospitality and the arts food processing and advanced manufacturing but particularly food processing in this case for processes that are looking for a small retail space to get their goods to market Broadband connectivity to key growth sites and the target sectors this would help are services, entrepreneurs and adult learning and actually probably just about every business these days could benefit from broadband activity in the downtown so we see that as an important part of the positioning of Montpelier so those are examples of some transformational projects projects that will signal that Montpelier is making that repositioning to a premium location to go along with those are also some strategic investments that can be made either by government or by the private sector to get the city ready to participate and these could include creating class A office space in downtown and the Barry Street stone cutters way area for professional services, entrepreneurs and not for profits create sites for food processing and second stage advanced manufacturing in the Barry Street stone cutters way area you know there's a way in which Montpelier is for example more expensive than Barry so the incubator kinds of activities mostly for manufacturing and food processing may go to Barry but once those companies grow and they're looking for well where do we go next to really sustain ourselves there I think will be opportunities for Montpelier again helping to create that hotel and conference center in the adjacent to the downtown core creating family housing in larger parcels and adjacent to existing neighborhoods and creating infill housing in the downtown core for young singles you know there are ways that these can be encouraged and to get private sector to participate in getting these kinds of investments to happen ensure adequate employee parking at each site again that's repeatedly came up in the analysis of what makes a downtown attractive for business is for businesses to know that their workers have places to park and then also to ensure pedestrian and bike connections to development sites for a couple of reasons it helps in terms of the mobility of customers but also the idea of quality of life is important for employers to sell a community to their workers to say this is the kind of place where you can bike to work you know that that's an attractive thing and we would look to encourage those kinds of investments and also provide expeditious project reviews first of all I've always wanted to use the word expeditious in a sense and this was my chance to do that but are there ways to increase the predictability of project reviews and you know developers that's what they want a predictable process the answer could be no but they want to know that it will take X number of months or X number of weeks to get there and that the process itself will be understandable and reliably expect what each step will be one of the ways that my period can be considered to do that is to adapt the Municipal Administrative Procedures Act for projects which basically puts project reviews more or less on the record and if the project is appealed to the environmental court what the environmental court then does is look at the decision making process that the local government used to make sure that it was done sensible that wasn't arbitrary and capricious and made the best use of the information that was provided rather than having to start the whole review all over again so the idea is again not essentially to make sure that the process is high quality but also gets done in as effective a time frame as possible and strengthen community amenities streetscapes, facades, recreation facilities you know these are good things to do it's a civic pride point of view but when you're thinking about competing especially for skilled firms firms that use skilled labor it's important to have a quality of life that's exemplary and this is something the good news is my period can build upon you know basically an attractive community to start with this is a place that has a lot of this we need to sort of put a fresh coat of paint on some things and also make sure that the amenities are provided keep pace with other communities that are in the marketplace also marketing another important investment is once we've got all this stuff going to make sure the word gets out and some of that is to build a brand for the economic development strategic plans to indicate there's stuff going on here this is an interesting place provide personal service for business development approvals and financing someone to serve a friend and a broker with businesses to just get them through the process so that they understand what is the paperwork I have to submit what are the grants and loans that I might be eligible for and so they feel that they're getting support from the city in a systematic way because a lot of that stuff happens now but it's divided between three or four different offices and it's very easy for things to fall through the cracks that way and then lastly recruit firms in the target industries to Montpelier especially once the situation is in place where the community is known even more for its ever higher quality of life there are interesting things going on here then even to get the word out through peer networks the people that employers in town know that are elsewhere is the most effective way to get the word out to companies to think about Montpelier if you hear from somebody that's in your business that maybe is a supplier or even a competitor this is a great place to do business they really work with you they make sure that you get the assistance you need it's a great place, they're great schools a good quality of life that's some of the most effective marketing if it's coming from their peers rather than brochures so now I remember four we talked about investments now let's just talk quickly about assembling the economic development tools and we've got a few things here first of all, tools to catalyze key projects to build partnerships with developers and property owners almost like creating a round table to meet regularly with the development community and property owners to see what's going on what are you thinking about we've got I've heard from these kinds of businesses that are looking to come into the city folks interested in the space that would work for these folks and in this case the column on the right hand side shows who would the partners be with an economic development agency that's working in the city and developers in the city government would be working with that the economic developer create grant and financing packages for partner developers to produce projects that can be priced from unpeeler one of the things we've heard a lot from a lot of different sources which when you hear this you'll see it makes pretty much common sense the cost of building something is pretty much the same in Burlington as it is in Montpelier you're using the same wood the same sheetrock you're basically using the same workforce employed at the same wages the rent that you can get in Burlington is higher than what you can get in Montpelier right now so if you're a developer where are you going to go? and so what we need to do to start thinking about is can we put together packages to help bring those costs down for the developers so that they can price it so it'll sell in Montpelier but they'll still make some money on it so they'll say this project worked let's do another one and again that's what we see coordinating with city government appropriate federal state and local agencies and what's part of that is to also think about long-term and annual fee for vacant buildings and this is sort of a mixture of carrot and stick the idea is to leave with the carrot and to try to make these programs attractive and create as much of an incentive for developers and property owners as possible but if that still doesn't work then there may be a bit of a stick to say here's another additional incentive of a different kind to get you to think about moving your properties and getting them occupied again tools to improve amenities and infrastructure again the parking strategy is important in terms of thinking about how do we move vehicles and people through the city in a way that supports economic development maintains and improves quality of life that involves city government appropriate federal state and local agencies streetscape improvements putting the best foot forward for the city and even possibly using tax increment financing to support public infrastructure improvements and that requires work with the state legislature to empower that but basically tax increment financing enables a project to be done such that some of the tax revenues from that project I mean are actually dedicated to retiring bonds that might be used to create extended sewer line build some broadband infrastructure and so on so that's it we're getting a little wonky here and a little bit into the weeds explaining that but that's the general idea and then lastly as part of tools to sustain the effort to create a lead economic development entity and you can see up there this is at least a five year commitment getting this you know doing this reposition and getting into the firmly into the golden part of the pyramid it requires sustained effort so we're looking at how do we create an entity to carry this forward be accountable for it and make sure it keeps moving one of the things we're looking at is a local development corporation and you can see we've got relisting advantages and disadvantages of that on the advantage side provides maximum accountability for the plan through a contract in the city who's responsible for this it's the LDC ensures continuity across election cycles because it's a multi-year contract it's separate from the city government so there's more administrative flexibility and also can accommodate private sector participation a little bit better it's easier to do maintain confidentiality easier if the opportunity comes along to accept private sector support to enhance the activities of the corporation there are some disadvantages there are startup costs you've got to create bylaws board has to be constituted creating policies for the organization they're all reporting the requirements it seems like there's more every day in terms of what's required from federal and state government and it also adds another organization in the city so what we're looking at and this is something as we come down to the final part of this is we'll be finalizing a recommendation about what's the best way to move this forward again it might be a local development corporation but it might be using an existing organization it might be creating a position or entity within city government but we need to look a bit more at the details of this the key takeaway on this though is it's a minimum of five year commitment to get this project working you know as we think about this sort of summarizing it the strategic position maybe we can think of this Montpellier is the innovative capital of central Vermont it's the state capital it's an innovative municipal government it's the single business biggest repository of creative assets in central Vermont and it's the hub for innovative enterprises in the region now and so to think about the strategic plan is the innovative capital strategy and maybe the projects can be thought of as part of this long-term strategic plan the innovative capital strategy because again this is something where the projects are going to be rolling out over a five to maybe ten year time period in a sustained program so this and this is the one slide summary of everything I've just talked about but I want to put that up because at this point oops we'll take comments questions reactions maybe a turn on this so if any questions comments reactions yes I believe that we are the innovative capital I think that's one thing that makes Longpellier really juicy and why people like to come and there's a diversity and there's a life to it but in this plan I don't see a lot of innovation I see a concentration on parking and the use of you know it's not very green friendly it seems very innovative to me it doesn't in large part call for the engagement of the community for example for example you talk about food processing I think that's a great idea why not have model farming our garden so that our food sources are closer to the center of the community why not have a transportation system that takes parking out of the city and people there's an innovative way to move people into the heart of Longpellier of course the riverfront development that could be a whole big area of innovation so that's just kind of my first take on it that it needs this is pretty cut and dry to me you know and then I want to bring up of course you know I'm from Onion River Exchange which supports an alternative economy it's a social economy where community members help each other and they help each other by fulfilling basic needs to be met and that would be an interesting component to develop because I believe that would draw people into the community or it could be an organized way that our community could be helping itself a couple of responses though I think in terms of parking when we look at a parking strategy it's I don't think it necessarily eliminates the things that you're talking about but one of the things we have to do is make sure that the strategy we come up with is something that the businesses can live with bottom line that's where we are I think there are some opportunities long term to think about what would Montpelier look like in a low carbon zero carbon situation and I think that's part of being the innovative capitalist to look at that but in the short term we really have to look at how do we accommodate the businesses here with the needs that they have and that strategy could include a variety of things that some of which might include the shuttle system and so on the other thing in terms of the community involvement and agriculture I'll deal with those simultaneously is this is just the start of the process and I think that there will be opportunities throughout the implementation process that's where you really engage the business folks you sort of say these are the things we're ready to support and we'll do that in any way that makes sense and food processing that industry the local food movement is really just starting so we've got a sense of some things that might be possible now but five years from now it could be some of the initiatives that you just mentioned come to the fore and I think at that point when the market is ready to do that the city's got to be ready to respond as well so I wouldn't I would love to say I've got all kinds of fancy bells and whistles in this one but I think what it does in terms of being innovative the idea is to try to set the table where innovation can take place it's just I did it when you were outlining the transformational projects I didn't hear any of that kind of okay well that wasn't an exhausted list of projects but those were some of the kids that came out of the discussions and again as we go forward and if a project shows up where there's a business plan that suggests it's viable then I think it's it can go and the economic development organization can support other comments one of the biggest problems I see is development is so important but the people that live in Montpelier don't want to see development happening in their backyard like for instance Savins Pasture how is it that we can manage the community how important it is to bring in more development and more housing without having always constantly battling against you know it's just people that that's a good question I think I'm going to answer from down here first of all there are always going to be situations where a project is going forward and the people next to it don't like it but that doesn't mean it's bad for the city one of the things we're looking to get out of this economic development process is a vision from the direction we're heading such that you know if a project comes forward that's been identified as part of the innovative capital strategy let's use that phrase people will show up to support it because that's the other part of this process is there should be a notion of projects that are worth supporting because there will always be a small opposition to almost anything I mean I could name or you could design an ideal project that fits everything I stand for in terms of economic development and you put it in the property next to mine and I'll show up at the City Council meeting cranky as all heck but I think what's needed is a shared vision about how we move forward and what it's going to take because again when you look at the whole market polarization idea which I think is really at work here standing still is not an option standing still just leads to a slow crumbling of all the good stuff that Montpelier has to offer yes sir I'll talk about advantages of Montpelier being a capital city the advantages of Montpelier being a capital city there are some in terms of the restaurant and retail trade during the day the net immigration people coming in is very strong secondly state government employment is stable so that you're not in a situation like if Montpelier was Detroit for example and you know you go up and down with the automobile industry the employment situation in Montpelier largely or at least somewhat because the state government is relatively stable that being said because there are some advantages it would be a mistake to rely on state government to even play the same role in the future that it has in the past because it's not going to be funded at the same level all indications are the workforce is aging and as it retires there are going to be opportunities probably to do some attrition so it's important to develop a specific private sector of Montpelier even though having state government here is an asset I know that seems sort of heretical in some ways but it does seem good things for the city two things one is have you talked about how this overlays with a lot of existing initiatives that are we're in the midst of right now and quite honestly past consultants plans that are still in a cupboard somewhere and the other thing I think that fits in in a couple of places up here would be dealing with energy use and housing that strategic investment it's a key sector if you look at the amount of money that goes out of this town just to pay for fuel oil what can we do to keep that in here that provides job and stability this is about a shorthand on my part but the green services I'm including energy as part of that for some of the reasons you just indicated but also dealing with the questions of energy and environmental protection is becoming very sophisticated technologically and I think to the extent to which Montpelier is seen as the place where there's interesting green stuff going on there's opportunities for technology related businesses to come in related to that and there was another how does this could be in an overlay with existing initiatives that's going to be part of the implementation process the idea here is we've tried to do something that first of all would be could be used as a chapter in the master plan for the city so that's bringing that together but there are a lot one of the strengths of Montpelier is there's a lot of community activism which means there's like 7000 committees so I don't know all of them to be perfectly honest but the idea behind this is it's to help inform the work of those committees that's part of this process it's not necessarily that everybody suddenly becomes an economic developer but when we're thinking about what's going on and how do we address our work do you remember there's a lot of creative capital and we've got to think about this other stuff as well and maybe eventually there'll be some much more elaborate coordination but that's how we start yes I'm assuming you've done this for a number of other localities and I'm wondering for those success stories after this process presented all these ideas strategies what do you see in those cities where they've seen a lot of success afterwards what are the biggest barriers that they've had to overcome in order to achieve that success well let me turn around because the big the strengths are leadership and tenacity because they're going to run into barriers everybody runs into barriers sometimes it's ourselves we're going to do this we've got three things to do and this first one fell apart okay we're doing the second one and you just move forward and I think that's particularly critical from Montpelier in the situation because we're talking from a time of relative strength and capacity here there's a strong citizen sector here so we need to build that leadership and that commitment to a shared direction and this is intended to be the start of this process and that's what they all have in common there was a community I can't take credit for this but it's really a good lesson in the Adirondacks that really did a lot North Creek I don't know if you know North Creek but they really revitalized their tourism sector one of the ways they did it is there was this thing called the Friday Morning Club or whatever it was and the supervisor of the town said it's the one meeting I'll never miss because they met every Friday morning and they talked about the plan and how do we go forward and that's what it's going to take here is a sustained effort to say alright what are we doing this week? here's the plan, here are the three things we're working on this year it's not 11, here are the three major things where are we, what do we have to do next? is that leadership embodied within a local development corporation or is that leadership that's seen more in municipalities? I'll tell you the role of the local development corporation or whatever structure you use is to free that leadership you know it's difficult for the economic development person to set themselves up as the leader but there's a leadership cadre here and the role of that economic development organization is to cultivate that leadership let them know it's okay for them to take charge of this and help them move forward and this is a community that knows how to do stuff so that is possible here I was wondering when you developed your plan, did you look at the physical sort of two part question did you look at the physical restraints within Montpelier, i.e. we're not a terribly big plot of land here a lot of our land that might be good for economic development is in flood plain so there's real big restrictions there and I guess the second part is thinking about the physical location I didn't see anything in there about taking advantage of recreational tourism and recreational opportunities do you think that Montpelier is pretty much out of the loop on that where Stowe's got a corner on that and some of the northern locations or do you think there's an opportunity and it may not be the ski especially in this past winter that may not be a good idea anyway but this is a community where the infrastructure for biking and other kinds of recreation is being completed and it's a pretty easy sell to say this is a community that participates in outdoor recreation we haven't even looked really and this is something long term the role of the rivers in all that the community is more and more discovering kayaking and all these things that can happen on rivers that most people couldn't even name in their communities so yes recreation is part of that tourism hospitality in the arts sector recreational tourism is part of it there's a lot of constrained land so we have to think in terms of incremental steps a diversity of businesses this is not going to be one of those things where we're going to attract one two thousand person firm that's going to suddenly save everything it's important to retain the large employers that the city has but you'll see in terms of the growth it's small it might be five to ten employee firms that you know that's where the growth is going to come from are you? I think I saw you targeting Berry Street and Stonehenge where you chose the two primary areas that you consider growth potential growth potential for the business services you know the green services because you know they've got there's good space there to do some office space some new office space but you know there's opportunities downtown for infill for better use of the second floors and the other part of economic development here is the housing element I think it's really critical that housing is part of economic development because we need to build the population base both in terms of making sure employers know that they have an access to adequate workforce but also so that the downtown businesses have a residential population that does business there as a way of keeping them strong and avoiding just being tourism related Peter First I wanted to say from this person's perspective you and your committee have done an excellent job it's a well organized project and presentation and it makes sense I just wanted to speak a little bit about strategic investment and the most significant strategic investment this city has done in five years has been in city streets working on the abyssal city streets but we still have sewer pipes and water mains that are 50 to 100 years old that haven't been addressed and the last five years we've invested less than $600,000 over five years and our water mains and our sewer pipes except for district 8 we have a liability there approaching perhaps $75 million is this really realistic to talk about facades and streetscapes before he devoted substantial resources to rebuilding our sewers and water I don't think one excludes the other but one is so massive for a time of 7,500 people shouldn't that be addressed first an organized plan for how we're going to address the true cost of water and sewer before we start talking about this doesn't admire it I don't know that you need to wait to do that what you pointed out is an important issue to make sure that the capital needs are planned for and as a program to address them I think that's every community I know struggles with that and the extent to which my period gets ahead of the curve on that again I don't know of any American community of any size that is ahead of a curve on this but you can't I don't think my period can wait on that to start thinking about what its economic future will be but it can't, it also can't ignore that let's go to somebody who hasn't spoken yet I would just I'd like your focus on that entrepreneurship certainly if we're going to see private sector job growth I think that's likely where it's going to come from it's unlikely, traditionally we've had the state and the companies that are hoping to rely on those growing at this point as you said it's hard to bring a big company in all of a sudden so that really seems like a great place to start and get some businesses going and maybe they build a building and build up the grand list and that helps us pay for infrastructure needs I was curious so you specifically focused on software and IT that seems like a very competitive area everybody wants to add in their town and you're competing against all these larger communities from Burlington the Silicon Valley shouldn't the entrepreneurship be cast a broader net and not focus just on that the idea was that would be an important concentration but not exclusively and maybe it should be restated so it's even broader than what I've indicated here but I take your point there is an existing entrepreneur class in town right now dealing with those issues local 64 and people like that so I think there's some momentum there that could be tapped into already based on existing activity but I stand corrected that it's not just those areas where there's entrepreneurial activity one other thing I'd like to in your report was the idea of entity I think the LDC is a good possibility I look at some of the statutes of what they can do and include starting business incubators and getting loans from the state to build buildings so it has a lot of a lot of things it can do I also believe they have LDCs in the two towns are used as examples Waterbury and Bering so maybe you can just address that or whatever you know about how it's worked out there you've described the potential advantage as well that there's some statutory powers that LDCs have that could be very useful what I think the next step for us is to do is to think hard about what the action plan is for economic development to move these things forward what are the tools that are going to be required and is the LDC the best because every community is different Montpelier has its own distinct set of characteristics and idiosyncrasies and we need to be sensitive to that rather than just say yep LDC it worked here let's do it there but I think it's an idea really worth considering yes let's I was really interested to see the hotel and conference center on there I wanted to actually thought Montpelier should have built the hotel on the DLR Street project and was very disappointed when the city council decided not to do that and I assume that you've been told about that history so what I'm wondering is how that was a suspicion whether it was a lot of local opposition very much feared by the people who have a community hotel given that history how much sense does it make to put that as a priority or maybe it does because you're talking about a different part of town or you're talking about smaller things rather than one big hotel how would we how would we get how would we encourage the city council and the city leaders to stomach the idea going forward with that well I think it's an important opportunity one of the ways to think about in terms of do the existing hotel operators in town are they interested in participating because it's an opportunity for them too and if they're not well that's their choice but then to think about other ways to make that happen because it's my understanding now that Montpelier is losing out on events because there's not enough rooms for events to grow here so so we have to look at that and again in an ideal world for those of us committed to the kind of local growth it would be great to turn to the an operator of a local establishment say let's talk about ways of building a new facility or expanding your facility to do this but if that's not possible then we need to look at other ways to do that and it's likely from what I understand in the hotel and tourism business ultimately if it's created it will help the other hotels and lodging places in the community because there will be more events more demand for rooms all around I see a lot of people not in your head so I'm probably covering it's not that we've already heard but anyway that's now let's go here and then here I think it's been proven that that really healthy cities are walkable cities which is the reason why we need affordable housing for downtown it supports young families it supports the elderly and so when I think of the development of Berry Street for office space I think of perhaps office space should be out more on the fringes rather than in the center where on the fringes you could perhaps accommodate parking more easily and then if people need to get into town there would be shuttles into town I think we need to keep switching that we keep needing to build office buildings in the center of town when it's really housing in the center of town I don't know that's neither a proposition part of what makes things walkable in my hometown I walk to work I walk to my office and both my house and the office are basically the downtown sort of area and I think there are opportunities to do that there also can be situations where you've got office and housing in the same building and all the principles of smart growth suggest that you're right to talk about walkability as a key competitive advantage so that when we're looking at these developments the extent to which they can be made walkable continues to strengthen the competitive advantage Montpelier already has it's the idea that having office buildings and business development more on the outskirts is that you could deal with the parking more easily than burdening the downtown with additional very large parking space I think you're right I just want to speak to that the importance of having a mixture of residential and office I work in city center and there's more than 50 of us in my office in a space that would maybe be three or four residential units and so there's 50 plus of us every day at lunch who walk the streets of downtown and do our shopping and have lunch and walk and I think probably I don't want to malign my coworkers but I would bet that most of them would not drive into downtown to shop and eat at restaurants and things like that so there's quite a bit of value to having all of us right here in the downtown you want the residential too because you want people here at night etc but I think it's really important to have the mixture of the daytime workers and the housing again that's an existing strength one of the interesting things for me doing this project is that when I come into town I pretty much park my car and then I walk to virtually all the meetings I have to go to and it's I really enjoy that I'm a big walker so it's it works very well as a walkable community yes Peter two things first I want to underscore a point that doesn't mean beginning about the onion river exchange I don't know if you're aware of it but it is an organization with hundreds of members that are currently delivering services throughout the community it could be a very important part of your development the second the topic of the river has come actually you even brought it up and having come recently from Hartford Connecticut which has been working hard for years to capitalize on the river front of the Connecticut river modeling like what they've done waterfront or San Antonio one thing that struck me when I moved to Montpelier was this river that went on right to the city there's absolutely no capitalization of that river front that I've seen here there may be a flow level issue that comes into play because I know it does fluctuate in height but I'm curious how that issue comes into play that might be better addressed in the larger comprehensive plan the master plan of which this would just be a chapter but yes there are amazing assets the rivers in Montpelier I'll never forget this was 1980 the first time I walked over the bridge and looked back at which is the bridge with the buildings where you look and you look under it there was the river and the first time I saw that I just thought that was the coolest thing other questions comment on the potential value of the buildings across the street potential value of the buildings across the street they're potentially valuable especially with the opportunities for mixed use development there retail and either offices or apartments overhead that's an important thing I'll give you an example from work I did last year in Corning, New York which is a downtown somewhat comparable to Montpelier's nice they were amazed because there's a company in town in Corning called Corning 10 years ago the top executives of Corning all wanted to live in this place which was this housing development outside of town with 5 to 10 acre lots in these 4,000 square foot houses you know the type and now they all want to live above Main Street they all want to live downtown and I've mentioned this before the locals can't believe it why do you want to live in downtown Corning because they have a different perspective and the locals really want to be part of an urban scene so these buildings are real assets and you know the time is right to sort of move them forward can you talk a little bit more about the hotel and conference center because what I've heard is that there's a vacancy rate in the hotel rooms right now about 30% and then there's another hotel just within a while that I don't know how do I say this in a respectful way I mean they're like it used to be an old restaurant that's still and you know nothing's being done with that and mattresses are being thrown outside it does have a lot of potential and I'm wondering if the committee looked at that's still an existing vacancy rate and then there's this place that has lots of potential and has a lot of space really a new space yeah well you know it's a question of the ability of that space to serve the market that represents the opportunity which is kind of a little bit of the higher end professional and conference space and tourists and the Econolog wasn't designed to do you know its name suggests who it's appealing to the low end traveler having spent a number of nights in Econolog's in my life so there's a situation where it would be difficult to convert that property into to address the opportunity that the hotel and conference center represents that being said should the sector continue to grow then eventually there may be an opportunity to redevelop that in real life in Lake George New York and both in landing which is kind of the shishi part of Lake George there are a number of old motels and they're not quite as big as the Econolog's but a similar character a lot of them right now because that part has gone so upscale families are buying the motels and using them as family compounds now I don't know that that's going to happen as the market evolves new uses can be found other comments questions well let me take this opportunity to thank you for coming out on a again a blustery spring evening we're going to give you a short presentation also at the city council tomorrow to give them an update on this and I mean if you thought this was fun you can come again and do it but again thank you for coming out and stay tuned Montpelierplan.com is the website where you can keep track on meetings and other things and you know this is just the beginning of the process so after tomorrow night what are the next steps funny you should ask thank you then assuming we've got sort of conceptual buy and then we develop the full draft report which outlines the strategic approach recommends a structure for economic development which includes the entity LDC and also potential partnerships who else can play in terms of financial institutions state agencies business groups and so on we're also going to try to put some estimated costs and returns and metrics in this to say if a job brings X number of dollars into Montpelier and you know you attract through into jobs that pay you back the investment that might be required to get this to work and then an implementation plan setting priorities timelines and again metrics for completion but thank you for queuing that for me Peter can we ask you to do one thing when you present to the council which is to repeat this gentleman's question and your answer about what are the two most important things for success leadership and persistence because I think that's a really important message for them to hear and I think my sense of it would be well received I think it's a language that they'll understand and they know about I'm praying for these next steps I'll probably August no I'm only kidding every next month in a month to get this done and that's the good news the bad news is once this is done then it's your turn to get started all right well again thank you have a safe trip on