 And welcome back to The City Considerers here at Davis Media Access. You can catch this show on DCTV Channel 15 on the Comcast System Tuesday nights at 6.15. It's always online and we'll promote it on social media too. We've got quite an archive going of city guests and city issues, so check it out. Tonight, I'm really pleased to have city council member Will Arnold as my guest. Welcome Will. Thank you. It's been a while since we've had you on. Yeah, at least a year and I love coming here, so thank you for having me, inviting me back. So we're going to be talking a bit about economic development and sort of through your lens and what that means and what you're excited about. The last time you were in, the city was at the point of moving through the process to grant permits to cannabis dispensaries. And so we kind of focused on that. Let's do a quick update there and then we'll move on to some other stuff. Sure. May, we approved five dispensaries to come to town and three of which have already opened up shop and are operating and the city's receiving tax revenue from those businesses. And to my knowledge, we haven't received any complaints about them. Of course, we also have a number of other ancillary cannabis businesses operating in town as well, manufacturing type businesses as well as research and development businesses in the cannabis sphere. And that is something that I was passionate about as a candidate for city council. And I'm very proud that I was able to be a part of us moving forward in that regard. One of the reasons is because it is a relatively small but important piece of our economic development portfolio. Private companies generating tax revenue, employment and those good things for our city. And so economic development as a general issue has long been a passion of mine and is one of the reasons that I decided to run in 2016 was to aid our ongoing economic development efforts in the city. And of course, moving toward allowing this new type of business, cannabis business is part of that. But there's a lot more that the city is doing and has been doing recently and that we have on the horizon in that regard. And I'm excited to talk about it with you here today. As you know, I'm a small business owner. I come from a family of business owners. The first car dealership in Sacramento was Arnold Motors. If you go down to Zocalo restaurant, you'll still see the name etched in the side of the building. The reason we live in Davis is because my family moved here in the 50s to open a business. But in our city, folks operating in the private sector are in the minority. Most people who live in town and most folks who work in town certainly work in the public sector. It's pretty easy to guess why. We have a major research university. We live 20 minutes from the state capitol. You combine that with the sort of normal background, public employment, school district, city employees, things like that. And you have a city that is predominantly made up of public employees. And that's a fantastic thing. And we wouldn't be Davis without all of that. Being tipped so far in one direction has some negatives. And so if the state cuts budgets, all of a sudden it hits a town like Davis a lot harder. Our revenue is not as diverse as some other cities in terms of tax base. And so the city, before I came on the council, but has continued on, has really taken on economic development as an important issue that we ought to address proactively. And I'm very proud of the work that we've been able to accomplish. And you're right about the perception and even the reality that I was at an event recently where someone described Davis as a one-shop town, meaning referencing the university. And unfortunately, that does disservice to the pop shops, the restaurants, the nonprofits, all the other businesses who make up our community. So earlier you mentioned to me that you were feeling pretty good about some of the businesses that Davis has been able to attract. So let's talk about that for a minute. Sure. Well, because of the university in part, in large part, we have an opportunity here where certain types of businesses, not a business that I would ever be qualified to be a part of such as biological research, enzyme research, food and agricultural research, those types of private research and production and manufacturing entities see our little town as an incredibly attractive place to open up shop. And so we've seen some of that. Morone Bio is a great local example. But recently we've had a number of additional larger businesses that one might just recognize decide that Davis is the place that they want to be. So last year we had a ribbon cutting for Archard Daniels Midland ADM, which is a biological research company. And they opened up a facility in South Davis off of Research Park Drive in what is now known as the University Research Park, formerly known as Interland. And we're hopeful that that's going to be a long-term relationship that has room to grow in the city. Just recently, Mars, the candy company, just announced that they will be moving to town, moving an important part of their research arm right downtown in the USDA building, right on the corner of Fifth and G. That's, you know, Mars. They make M&M's and my favorites, three musketeers, Milky Way. But what I've learned in this process is that there is a lot of work to be done in terms of sustainably and humanely producing the cocoa that we all enjoy on Halloween and all year round, as well as they make pedigree dog food and a lot of other things. But it's there, I gather, the cocoa research, a lot of it will be happening in Davis. And this is exactly what I described, which is seeing the university and the incredible talent that comes from the university in terms of the research that's being done on campus, as well as students who graduate and then want to, you know, work in the field in which they studied that Mars plans to provide opportunities to do so, and not just as a benefit to our community, but potentially as a benefit to the world as we are able to produce and harvest cocoa in a more efficient, environmentally friendly and humane way. Right. And I'm well aware, if you think about the Second Street corridor where it parallels the railroad tracks, how much that street alone has changed in the last couple of years with the addition of some pretty large businesses manufacturing, you know. Right. We attracted Mori Sakey. That's a very large company that makes parts for robotics and other machinery that I recall that they were looking at essentially Chicago, Illinois or Davis, California as their U.S. Two vastly different communities. Two vastly different places to set up shop, and they chose Davis again in no small part because of the university, and so we have a real opportunity here, and I think sometimes that gets lost in the discussion when we talk about benefits to the community and potential changes that may occur in the community if we go down the economic development road in one way or another, but what gets missed sometimes is the opportunity that we have here in the community to benefit our city, benefit the wider world, provide jobs for young folks who are graduating from the university, and to do so in our own backyard. Right. So one of the other pieces of this equation is if you have new businesses and you have people working here, you have to have places for them to live. Right. So let's talk a little bit about the housing arm of economic development. Right. So I'm very proud of my record on the council in terms of housing. When I was running for city council, we were asked multiple times what we thought the biggest issue in town facing us was, and my response was this incredibly low vacancy rate of rental housing. It stood, and I don't know that it's changed any at 0.2 percent, meaning that for the 10,000 or so units that exist, there may be 20 available at any time. And that causes a whole bunch of issues. Now, one of the focuses that the council has moved toward is housing for students, because that's critically important. I mean, the vast, vast majority of renters in town are students, and we've approved a number of student housing proposals. But what those proposals miss is housing for other folks, families, or single individuals that want to live in town because they either work here, or work nearby, and that this is, and they want to take advantage of all the things that make Davis great. And so we recently approved, just last week, a housing project on Childs Road. It's just west of all the car dealerships on Childs, and it's a building that had long remained a mystery to me. I mean, when I was a kid, I think I thought it was a CIA black site or something. That the university used for some years? That the university used for a number of years with the big, big lawn and frontage. And they had, this was a piece of property that was zoned for commercial use. But highway commercial, we're not talking about research and development. We're talking more car dealership or auto repair or something like that, or offices like it was being used recently. And after years of attempting to market it for those uses, the owner realized that there was a real need here, and the city realized that there was a need here for workforce housing. And so we just last week approved a project. I believe it's 225 units of studio or micro one, two, and three bedrooms. The vast majority are one and two bedroom units, which is somewhat unique. There hasn't been a rental housing project like that approved in Davis for many, many years. And so we're very proud of that. There's also, I mentioned earlier, University Research Park, formally known as Interland recently acquired by Fulcrum Properties. And they've submitted an application to the city to take a piece of their property that's currently undeveloped. It would be just north of the Holiday Inn. So it goes I hop Holiday Inn and then open undeveloped land. And they want to turn that land into a mix of uses with the first floor being office R&D, so commercial or light industrial. And then the next number of floors being workforce housing. These would be, if I recall correctly, all studio one and two bedroom with the intention being, again, this is going to be folks that can work at the very businesses that are on campus, so to speak, right there. We have just a couple of minutes left. So before we run out of time, because you mentioned Holiday Inn, I think hotels are increasingly playing a piece of this puzzle, too. Right. So it's not just research and development. It's not just those university spin-offs that we're proud of, but the council has approved over the last couple of years three hotels. And then there's also a major change happening to one of our hotels right in the middle of town. So we approve the Hallmark Inn. So we'll start with that one. The Hallmark Inn is changing brand and it's going to be a Hilton now. And so those Hallmark was an independent hotel, very nice hotel. But what you get when you're part of one of these bigger chains is you get the loyalty customers that are business travelers or university travelers. And then we also have a Marriott residence inn that is, you can see it going up over there on Mace and Second. And then the Hyatt House was approved and that is in South Davis, near Davis Diamonds. That would be, there is a Hyatt on campus, but not one in town. That's one of the longer stay types of hotels. And then the former, I guess, current university park inn. There's the council approved a proposal there and that's in the works as well. So we do have, there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on. I would be remiss if I also didn't mention just down the road from that Marriott residence inn is the new, will be the new world headquarters for Nugget Market. That's an exciting development that all of Nugget's corporate employees will be housed in one place and that place will be in Davis. It's a big deal. It's a really big deal. And so, you know, I, I, this is one of the main reasons why I ran for city council. As you know, I worked very closely with former councilwoman Rochelle Swanson. She, this was her major focus on the city council. Today's her birthday, happy birthday, Rochelle. And, and so I'm, I'm, I'm trying to follow in her footsteps in terms of the, the work to really keep Davis on the map and to embrace some of these opportunities that we have as a community. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, because I'm chair of the arts alliance, that the really cool thing about the hotels is that one of the, the taxes, one of the, the transient occupancy taxes actually goes to support arts related projects in Davis, which is very cool and is, and is helping us accomplish good things. And I think all tied together, they, they start to make Davis even more of a kind of a destination place as well. No doubt. So, although I always want to tell people don't come in August when it's really hot. I know, but what can you do? Folks, folks need to come here at that time to get their, you know, get their kids in the dorms and things like that. Well, Will, thanks so much for your time for all the work you do in our community. And we need to get you back in here sooner than, than a year for the, for the next round. Thank you so much. Come back and update us. Great. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks so much for tuning in here to Davis Community Television at Davis Media Access. This has been The City Considerers, and I'm Autumn Lab-A-Rano, and we'll see you next time.