 I have the good fortune of hosting this program, which gives me and you a chance to learn more about what's going on in Longmont. We're coming to you tonight live from beautiful downtown Longmont and the Longmont Public Media Studios, and I am joined this evening by two of the leaders in our business community in Longmont, Kimberly McKee, who is executive director, so I write the right title, of the Downtown Development Authority, and is the interim, or I guess interim, director of Visit Longmont. And there's a relationship between LDDA and Visit Longmont in tonight's topic. And Stephanie Pitznoggle, who is the interim CEO of the Longmont Economic Development Partnership. Stephanie's been with the Economic Development Partnership for a couple of years and has recently stepped into a role where her profile will grow and her responsibilities have grown as well. Our topic tonight, familiar to anybody who's watching this tonight, is the new proposed boutique hotel at the corner of Kimbark and Third. So lots of interest, lots of questions, we're going to try to answer virtually every question that someone might have about this proposed project, the reasons why, the benefits to the community and what people can assume going forward. So with that, maybe the last thing I'll say is that we are doing this the last Monday of every month, six o'clock in the Longmont Public Media Studio. So I don't know that we'll do it in December because that is December 26th, as I look on the calendar, we might pass that one up and do a rerun. But if anybody's interested, we have a live audience, we have a studio audience here tonight, and we would welcome anybody with interest to join us. If we have time, as this unfolds, and if audience members have questions about 40 minutes into the hour, we'll give them a chance to ask. But we'll see how it goes and if we have enough time to squeeze more questions in because we have a long list for this project. I want to start first by welcoming, thank you for doing this tonight. Thank you as well for what you do every day, right? I know this has taken an hour out of what is a full schedule for the two of you. And I know what you do day in and day out and makes huge differences in the community. So as a member of the community, I want to say thanks for your service. And as the host of this program, I want to say thanks for being here tonight. So let's start just by learning more about each of you, right? I know a little bit about both of you, but share backgrounds, roles and responsibilities. A little bit about your organizations. We'll get into more of that as we go along. Kimberly, get us started. My name is Kimberly McKee and I came to Longmont about 12 years ago to become the Executive Director of the Downtown Development Authority. Fell in love with the community actually when I was hired, we visited around holiday time and just all of the lights and walking around Roosevelt Park in downtown, it was amazing. Prior to that, I was at Akron, Ohio. I ran the downtown Akron partnership there. Very different downtown, different type of community. But we did a lot of clean and safe programs and marketing programs there. And when I came here, there was still the clean and safe and marketing, but also the redevelopment and development opportunities that Longmont was looking for. So had a long journey in downtown development. I have also worked for higher education for a few years and a non-profit. So have had a very, an event planning. So have had a very interesting career, but have spent the bulk of any of my time here in Longmont. But thanks for choosing to leave Akron for the promised land here. Probably two best times of year to recruit to Longmont. One is when all the lights, holiday lights are up. The other's like the Fourth of July when a bunch of fun things are going on. Your role with LDDA interacts with Visit Longmont cuz that's part of this role. Just talk a little bit about that connection. Absolutely, my job as the executive director has a standing board seat on Visit Longmont. The two organizations are very tied. Having tourism dollars and tourism come into our community is very important. And one of the things that we hear luckily over and over from our visitors is that they love the authentic downtown. And visiting that is always something that they do. So the two organizations certainly work together, do joint projects when we can. And during COVID, we merged office spaces. So the visitor center is now in the front of the downtown development authority. And both of these organizations have a pretty keen interest in this particular project. I'm gonna switch, but I wanna ask just one more question and I wanna give Stephanie a chance to introduce yourself in more detail. I've heard you describe or attribute attributes to downtown Longmont. You want Longmont to be, and I don't mean this as a surprise. Could you share just with whoever's listening, you want Longmont to be known as, or downtown Longmont to be known as thriving, vibrant. Vibrant, thriving destination. Yeah, it didn't mean that to be a quick or a trick question. Yeah, absolutely, I think that often we hear about the L towns on the front range. But I think Longmont is so much more unique and really can set its place on the map. Downtown, what we've heard when we updated our master plan, we brought in consultants. They look around our downtown and said, these are the bones that people are looking for. This is the authentic type of downtown that was built. We still have historic buildings. We still have that character. We really want that character to grow, to become a vibrant destination that serves people day and night. That is a great place that you can live, work, and play, and that's brilliant. Vibrant, health, safe, safe, right, yeah, and welcoming, right. Stephanie, tell us about you and just enough about LEDP. People may have heard about it, but the interest and connection to this kind of a project. Yeah, so I'm Stephanie Pitznoggle, newer to the community like Kimberly. I am a transplant, so arrived here during COVID. Originally, I'm from Southern Ontario in Canada, moved to Chicago, found my way to Champaign, Illinois, where I was living for the better part of a decade, and ended up out here, needed a change of pace during COVID. This is my first role in economic development, in an economic development organization. Before that, I was working as the business specialist librarian at Champaign Public Library. So still a lot of the same kinds of things, but with a slightly different focus on small business and entrepreneurs and whatnot. This role allows me to really tap into my experience in market research and a lot of data stuff, and I'm here to support with a lot of data, the things that Kimberly is going to say tonight. So I have a little bit to contribute from that perspective, and I just really believe in the work of economic development organizations in terms of economic development is really the rising tide that lifts all ships. There's not really anything that goes on in the community that isn't touched in some way or another by a thriving economy. That's just the nature of capitalism. So this town is very, I mean, to be honest with you, the job posting that I responded to for this job, well, not this exact job, but the job I originally had when I came here, is what inspired me to move to Longmont. It was so beautifully written that it made the community sound so fabulous. We came and checked it out and ended up buying a house here, and now we live here. That was before I ever got the job, so. Well, I know that's a big part of the work of LEDP, right, is to promote the community in talent acquisition. Having a talent pipeline is one of the priorities. Yeah, so that's not going to go one to one thing that really works out. Well, it's working pretty well if we're getting more talent like you to Longmont. So, I don't know how many people might have questions, Kimberly, about the background in history on LDDA, right? We read about what goes on downtown. We read about what goes on uptown and differences between what happens downtown and uptown or other parts of Main Street. Help people understand a little bit of the history of LDDA, how long has it been around? How is it created, and what's the kind of role and mission of LDDA? Yeah, the other day was created in 1982, and it was created out of state statute. So, there is a state statute that allows DDAs to be created in the central business district. In the 80s, if you remember, malls were coming into town, really making a huge negative impact on our downtown. Imagine how things change. Absolutely, and when you talk about malls and downtowns, it's kind of an ebb and flow, how things go up and down. So, the state recognized we need a steward of our downtowns, and we need to really make sure that local vibe, that local economy has a little extra stewardship. So, by state statute, you can create one, the city stakeholders have to vote, and then it's established by city council. So, ours has been around since the early 80s. DDAs were established to really kind of preserve property values and prevent flight and really work to redevelop. We know that downtowns are often the historic core. Fixing historic buildings sometimes takes a lot more energy and time and cost than not fixing it. And so, how do we preserve some of those bones of our community? We are governed by what's called a master plan of development, which I can talk a little bit more about. But that master plan of development guides what we do. So, the DDAs is governed, like I said, by a board of seven people. And we are really here to develop and promote a vibrant and valuable downtown. So, can one assume that the downtown development authority generates revenues to address development issues and, you know, all that's required to maintain a vibrant downtown? How do you generate revenue? We're funded by a few different funding streams. One is what we call an operating mill levy. It is a, you know, tax on those property owners only within the DDA boundaries. For context, a lot of people don't realize where the DDA is. It starts basically at first in May. It goes on both sides of first. It goes up to Longs Peak to the south. It kicks over to Martin Street between first and third. So, if you know where the cannery is, the cannery was the DDA's first project. And then it goes up Kimbark and then to the west it goes over to Terry. So, the downtown core from first to Longs Peak with a little bit of an extension on L on the south. And the key message in all that for me and maybe for others is that the authority generates its revenue by the members or the property owners in that footprint taxing themselves. Yes, the operating mill levy is, yes, them taxing themselves. Other funding arm is tax increment financing. Folks in the DDA pay property tax the same way that they would pay property tax if they were somewhere else. The state recognizes that you need some money to really be able to catalyze that growth and stabilize those properties. So, they establish what's called a base year. And as those properties increase the tax value, that increment, that increase goes to the DDA. We used to get all of it up until our 31st year of operation. When you become 31, half of that property tax goes back to the original taxing bodies and our base year jumped up 10 years. So, we lost about 64% of our funding through that tax increment financing, but we were still able to avail of that. I just think it's important for people to understand that money is generated by the property owners in the district. It's through their taxes and not through the benevolence of somebody else. It's not taking away from other parts of how the city funds programs or operations. And I think it's important to point out that we don't get any of the sales tax. We use it as an indicator and we are always striving to grow the sales tax within downtown, but that all remains. It goes into the general fund. It's property tax from the property owners in the district that generates those funds. What's the relationship between, is there a relationship between LDDA, visit Longmont, if that's part of it, and LEDP? And if so, what are those connections? How do you work together? What do you share as interest in operations or as strategy? How would you start? Yeah. So, we obviously are a little bit different. The Longmont EDP covers all of Longmont and we're really focused, although every economic development organization is different. Our organization is mostly focused on primary industry. And the reason for this is that these are the businesses that are generating most of their revenue from outside of the region. And that new revenue that comes into our community in the form of, you know, paying for labor and stuff. So you've got talent living in the community, getting their wages from their primary employer. Then they spend those at places like what you would find downtown and throughout the community at, you know, smaller businesses and whatnot. So we're related in that sense. We, I also, we are the administrator of the North Metro Enterprise Zone. I won't get into that too much. It's a little dry, but the Enterprise Zone includes the, all of the LDDA now. So now every business owner within those boundaries are able to take advantage of these incentives. And I mean, there's very little free money for for profit businesses out there. So the Enterprise Zone program is a really key way in which all businesses can take advantage of tax credits through making investments in their business in one way or another. So those are kind of the key ways. But we also have another, we also are the stewards of the advanced Longmont 2.0 economic development strategy for the city. And through this strategy, we embrace a collective impact framework so we can bring partners together from all across the community, bring experts together. And we really use this framework to solve massive challenges in our community that are faced not just by our business community, but by, you know, people as well. And of course, LDDA is a key partner in a lot of that as well. The more successful you are, the more opportunity there is for LDDA to benefit from primary employers bringing more talent into town. Anything you want to add to this in terms of the relationship? Yeah, you know, the advanced Longmont 2.0 partners that we call it is really our network of economic development organizations. And having a steward of that has been very helpful. It's been able to identify projects. We've done joint market studies together. We have done joint management investigations to figure out how can we get things done more smoothly? Where are their gaps in the services? How can we serve the community better? We can partner on some other grants and some of those types of things. So it's fantastic to have a network of organizations throughout the city that we can make sure we're not duplicating efforts and we're not stepping on each other's toes. Well, there's an interesting, there is an interesting synergy, right? The more successful you are, the more likely it is you can attract the kind of large employers. And is there a successful everybody in town, but in particular, small businesses benefit from the multiples, right? When somebody's paid a salary, how that money gets spent. So what's the relationship between LDDA and the City of Longmont? The City of Longmont, the City Council appoints our board. We're governed by a seven-member board, so they're appointed by City Council. We are part of the City Council budget each year. One of the things that we really tasked with is implementing our master plan, but also kind of being a steward of how other city things are going to impact downtown, downtown stakeholders, and really kind of being that voice, reaching out to the community when we need to. We have a voting City Council member on our board. We have a staff liaison. But really every project that happens, we try to have a great relationship with the folks that do the cleaning downtown, the folks that do the parking enforcement, public works if they're doing any kind of construction projects. I mean, everything from the ground to the top, we try to pretend if downtown was a city within a city, how would that stewardship need to look? And it's a very, very solid partnership with the city to get those things done. We can really call them up, talk about the things, but we also add an extra layer of communications. So when things are being disrupted within the downtown, we can really reach out to the community and make sure they know. Now, most folks who might watch this will know or have heard of Envision Longmont as the City of Longmont's master plan. Does LDDA have a master plan? And if so, how does it relate or how does it align with the city's master plan? We do. Everything that we do has to be part of our master plan. So it was originally created in the early 80s, it was updated in 1995. The Envision is a community plan, right? It's how the community said they want this town to grow. And we can't be good stewards to this community unless we align with the community's vision. So when that was adopted in, I think it was 2016 and 2017, we adopted a new master plan. We went out and did our own community input and everything and really said, how do you want this downtown to evolve? It was a great process. We live and die by the plan and it has six major things. Economic vitality, really helping those businesses. Placemaking in urban design, that's the clean, safe and comfortable. Our creative district, really trying to serve our creative community. Connectivity and access, which is super important. Land use and what is that mix of uses that we're bringing the community down for in leadership and management? So what you do, at least in terms of planning, is really aligned and integrated with city priorities. Specifically, if I were to look at the LDDA master plan, would I see priorities or would I have to dig? And if I did, what would I see as priorities for LDDA in particular? So those are the six priority areas. And underneath that is the cadre of things, of keeping and retaining businesses, attracting new businesses. Really filling those gaps that are needed in the community that may not be able to be done easily. So how do we kind of fill those gaps? Working with our creative community to make sure that we have opportunities for creative output and culture within our community. The placemaking in urban design, that's really where a lot of that historic preservation comes in. One of the things that we did out of our master plan, we understood that people really wanted that historic character to stay. So we went out and did a lot of research and became a national historic district, which allows property owners to get different tax incentives if they're able to keep their spaces commercially viable. So recognizing those kind of things and going out and getting extra funding is important. Some of the things that are long-term goals are what we call redevelopment opportunity sites. And knowing that a compact urban form and really making sure the best use of that land, of the infill land that we talk about, instead of having to take more trees out and more grass areas and more open space. Really redeveloping the infill, what you've already have, already has infrastructure to it. So we identified some of those third and main happens to be one of those. So given everything you just said and everything we've talked about so far, it's kind of context. Now let's start to really drill down on this proposed hotel because I would assume that there's something that you could find in the master plan that would lead you to what we're talking about. So what is that? What would I see in the master plan? How long has this been under consideration? Why now as opposed to then? Are we talking about this? Very interesting. The original master plan came out in the early 80s, 83. In 1984, the DDA board commissioned a feasibility study for a hotel. That hotel location was Third and Kimbark and it really talked about the needs of those. From 1984? Third and Kimbark. It was the first time that we saw that at Third and Kimbark. So this is not like a very recent idea that somebody came up with? It's a very tenacious idea. Again, 1995 when the master plan was updated, lodging was included as a need. In 1997, they commissioned an additional study. And then in 2006, they put out an RFP for a mixed use development including a lodging, that type of thing. And again, when we updated our plan in 2017, lodging was still what it needed to, what we needed to do. I risk now adding just a slight political aspect to this, but it occurs to me that phrasing might be instill they persisted. Since 1984. So why now? What was the trigger that would put this front and center in terms of your work, city council's attention and the public's attention? It struck me as I was doing all of the research and looking at the hotel. It was always us going out saying, hey, we'd really like a hotel here. Don't you want to put one here? Recruiting. Someone said, you really need to wait until the market gets closer. And so work on other things that make Longmont a great community. This past year, I will tell you, we have block captains that we meet with each month. This year coming out of COVID. There was a huge sentiment that they were seeing more tourists than ever that were coming in and coming. We took a hit. As you said, I'm also the board chair of visit Longmont. So we did take a hit, but man, our rebound is coming back very strong. The Plaza hotel did a lot for this community. And that is where all of the conferences and meetings were when it closed from a visit Longmont standpoint. It was utterly impossible to get people to consider Longmont for conferences and those kind of things. We didn't have the right kind of meeting space. We didn't have the right kind of other things. I'm going to come back to that by the way before we finish. So the time was right now because the market started telling us, hey, this seems like a great place to visit. And I think a lot of people haven't thought of Longmont as a place that you'd like to visit. But our geographic location within the front range is amazing and you can really get to all of these different places. And so the market kind of said, yeah, I think you're ready for a hotel. And that really changed the conversation because there was a desire to put one here as opposed to us saying, what would it take for you to go? So this wasn't a product of going out and recruiting. Correct. This is the market saying, and somebody from the market being in touch with you, that we think Longmont is the right place at the right time and matches up with a vision or a priority that's been in the master plan for a long time. Yes. And the important things about the Envision Longmont plan and the downtown master plan is folks that want to invest in your community, they go to those plans before they ever call you to say, does this community want us? Is this community something that we want? And if they think it's a match, they'll call. They actually called LEDP first and then they turn it over to us. So that's how closely we all work together. Well, talk about that, because that is how this happens, right? You're the first point of contact in many cases for a new prospect that would be whether it's a hotel or something else. This is a hotel, but would fit into the kind of eco, economic ecosystem or landscape of economic development opportunities. How does that unfold and how does that handoff occur? Yeah, well, it can happen in a variety of different ways. I mean, there's no one way for prospects to come through. So sometimes, you know, you've got commercial realtors who will reach out and say, I'm talking to somebody. Sometimes you get contacted just by the person who's saying, yep, I'm interested, which I believe is the case here. Now, I did not do that. I want everyone to know today is the first day that I'm using the title interim president and CEO. How does that feel? It is great. I am loving it. Yeah, you light up when you say that. Anyway, so that was not, I wasn't the one fielding that stuff at the time, but yeah, sometimes, you know, you just get the knock on the door and you answer it. And it's like, is this a realistic opportunity for us knowing as we did what we do about LEDA and what they've, I mean, we know each other very well. So we know that the hotel has been a long time coming and has been an interest for many, many years. I didn't know 1984. That's interesting. But that was something that we would then call up Kimberly and say, I think this is the person you probably need to talk to because she can really rally the specific support that you need. It's a little bit different than something like a manufacturer coming to town. I'm not sure coming to town. That would be a very different process. So we have hotels in Longmont, some newer than others, but we have a number and we could talk about occupancy rates. That'll matter as we go along. But this one's a little different. So what is it about this one and why would, why would LEDA and visit Longmont think a higher end? I don't know if this is a high end considered high end when we think about high end, but higher end than some of the hotels in town. What was it that made you think this was a good fit? You know, I felt like with the character and the board certainly felt like with the character of downtown, it had to be the right type of hotel. And this is going to be a boutique hotel. A boutique hotel isn't the highest end, certainly, but it really embraces what a community is about. It is not a chain hotel where you know what you get and there's a great room for that. But this is really that little step above. We have seen in lodging, Longmont has a lot of what they call limited services hotels, which are fantastic. The Hilton Garden Inn is a full service because it does have a restaurant. But we were really lacking that kind of unique, interesting hotel and we were hearing that. We were hearing that from folks that would bring visitors in or people that would have business travel. That might be their CEO level that was spending the night in Boulder or other places. We don't want that to be the case. We want those dollars to stay in Longmont. So having a different kind of boutique hotel and a lot of people ask, what does that mean? I don't understand what that means. It usually means a very specialized, dialed in product that, again, is not duplicated in the market. This hotel will be a one of a kind. Every single boutique hotel is different. It's a little bit smaller in scale. It has about 80-some rooms, so it's not a huge. And it has just special curated amenities that really kind of help. And we don't have anything like that here. So again, it's something that was missing in our market. We also didn't have a downtown lodging option, so that was completely missing. So we'll talk about the synergies between location and what else is going on in downtown and other parts of Longmont that I know is part of this calculus. But to get a hotel like this, or in this particular case, the developer in this case or the group that's proposing this are not new to this business. So what we know is they've been successful, both in Colorado and in other parts of the country. But there is an incentive package that becomes part of this conversation. Let's talk about why would we be offering incentives? Why would they be asking for incentives? How does all that work? And why is it in the interest of the city of Longmont in LDDA to be packaging some kind of an incentive? And then we'll talk about the specifics of what the incentive might be. And I'm going to ask you for some kind of the modeling you've done here in just a minute. So do you incentivize things where there's kind of, like I said, a gap in the market? One of the things that we use our TIF incentives for are upgraded facade materials. Things that are really going to make that fit into the character of the downtown. Where you could use other materials that are less expensive or things like that. So we really try to figure out what is that public realm going to be and try to incentivize that to happen. One of the unique propositions in this hotel is a rooftop restaurant. A destination restaurant that anyone can go to whether they're staying at that hotel or not. Putting a restaurant at the top is much, much more expensive than putting a restaurant at the bottom. So sometimes there is extra cost. So if you really want to have something that's dynamic and fantastic, you can reach that gap. The interesting thing about the incentives is they are dollars that are generated by that hotel. They aren't dollars that we have saved up. They're dollars that if that hotel does not perform or if it does not reach certain thresholds, those dollars won't be there. So it's kind of a paying it after the fact as opposed to paying it forward. So that's how this ends up. So we've heard and read concerns about, gee, the city and the LDDA will put together an incentive package. Well, why wouldn't we take whatever those dollars are and spend them on other things, right? Youth recreation facilities or homelessness or whatever. What are you saying? It's not like there's a stack of money that you just could start doling out. These are revenues generated by the property over time. And then there are some discounts or reductions in their tax obligations to the city is how they recoup their money as part of that incentive. Is that how this works? The reimbursements. Yeah, reimbursements. So there aren't or there are tax dollars, sales tax revenues being generated other places in town or property tax being generated other places in town. They're going to be diverted from some other priority to this incentive package. No, no, this incentive package will be generated by this particular project. And is it likely that of other cities, well, this developer was interested in other cities, they'd also be having conversations about incentives similar to what we're talking about here. So one of the criticisms or one of the comments that I hear from time and time is this is such a wonderful community and it is. Shouldn't businesses feel privileged to have a chance to do business in Longmont? Why should we worry about incentives? It's in their interest. The answer to that is, you know, these these projects don't come without risk, right? And this is first to the market in a downtown area. I use Roosevelt Park Apartments. We built Roosevelt Park Apartments. It was the first market rate housing that we had seen in downtown in a really long time. And it was the first multi-story mixed use. And we didn't know if it would work and the developer didn't know if it would work, right? So there was an absolute risk there, but we wanted to make sure that it had the right things. The same thing with this hotel. There is a gap in the market and it might take longer to get to where you need to go. And so as folks look at it, they think, well, maybe I could go here and get a return a lot quicker because they don't know. They're confident, but sometimes you need that little help to say we want you to build it the way we want it in the future, not build it halfway to take the risk to see if it will be successful. So to meet a particular standard. Correct. And then there's risks, economic risks that go along with that. And the incentive package mitigates some of that risk, encourages people to take the risk because they're going to put... What's the total investment here? $24.5 million. They're going to put $24.5 million at risk and they want to make certain that we're as interested as they are in making this work. I want to come back in just a bit. I have another question here about what you have done. What LDDA has done specifically when it comes to pedestrian safety, homelessness, or housing, because I know you've made some investments. And I think people need to know this is not something that you're disinterested in and you've invested in. But before we get there, let's talk about the modeling. Stephanie, you did the modeling. You built the economic model for this particular project. And on a $24 million investment, only a small portion of that, 17%, I think, what was the number to come as part of an incentive package to offset some of that risk. That's an investment. There are returns. So what have you modeled in terms of potential returns? So this model, I didn't just come up with the model. I know you did. Just so everyone can. We are using a really good, so there's a company called Impact Dashboard. They're one of the leaders in economic and fiscal impact modeling. They really are, and they customize your software. We don't even have to do anything. They're so on top of it. They will customize everything about the plan specific to your community. So they know, for example, here in Longmont, we do sales tax and lauders tax together. Now, not every community does that. So that is all accounted for in the model. This is all based on a NAICS code as well. So we did the hotels except for casino hotels and motels. That's a single NAICS code. So everything about the NAICS code. It is a North American industry classification system. That is the standard for industry classification used most prevalently in the government. There's a few places that still use sick codes, but don't start me all the time. I can talk all night. Anyway, this is the boring stuff, but I love it. So this doesn't even include the restaurant that Kimberly was mentioning that will have these gorgeous views of Long's Peak and whatnot. So this is just for the hotel alone. And, you know, as Kimberly was mentioning, it's not a hundreds and hundreds. This is not a Vegas hotel. This is a smaller footprint, smaller number of rooms. And yet even with all that, we've modeled that the net benefits isn't even the gross benefit after the city has made its investments in the hotel. And what I mean by that is in order to provide services like power, water, internet, like there is in every development. Some need for the city to provide something. So the city does, you know, your own homes, for example, these cost the city money to provide services to those homes. So then services are provided here. But over a 10-year period, the net benefit is almost $5.2 million. That's just to the city. That is not, we have additional benefits to the county, to the St. Rain Valley School District, which gets a huge $4.2 million bump from the creation of this hotel. So these impacts, and this is a 10-year impact. So over 10 years, this hotel will generate almost $5.2 million for our city, which is a very good amount of money. And it's mainly based off of that lodger's tax and that sales tax. So these are folks that are coming in to spend a few nights in our beautiful community, spend their money in our community, and we get both sales and lodger's tax from each of those nights that they pay for. And is there, as you talked about benefits to the school district and to other parts of the community, those are multipliers, right? Do you have a number that rolls up to in terms of the multiplier? Like how many in total? Yeah. Yeah, I didn't actually bring that one. It's like a, it's $10 million or something like that in 10 years, is it not? Yeah, I thought it was something, just under $11 million. So that's a slightly different model, and so I didn't want to conflate it to. So we actually used, that was when we were transitioning to our new economic impact modeling software. So anyway, this $5 million though is just in the benefit in terms of these taxes and whatnot. But yes, the other model that we ran had something. It's 108. Yeah, 100, yes, that's what it was, $108 million. That's the other number that I had in mind. Yeah, but that brings in a lot of other different aspects that are a little, let's call them squishier. These are like much harder numbers based on the real cost of, for example, utilities and the FF&E, which is the fixtures, furnishings and equipment. All that stuff is these are much harder numbers and less speculative. Yeah, yeah. So on the, in terms of no speculation or less speculation, $5 billion plus, wild speculation with the multipliers, community wide, 108. Yes. And that's both the economic and fiscal benefits. Yeah. It's really looking at all of the dollars spent in its entirety. It's very holistic. Yeah. But that's where you get the squishiness and whatnot, and I like to be. Well, most people I would think if you're, if you're investing, and somebody said, you can get, let me see, what's the city's, 17% of the 24 million is. 4.3 million. 4.3 million. You could, for 4.3 million invested, we're going to see the benefit of potentially 108 million over 10 years, who would not take that return on investment. So, you mentioned a few minutes ago when we lost the Plaza Hotel, we also lost a whole bunch of meeting space, right? And since then, everybody who has an event that's larger than who can sit around this table or, you know, we have some meeting space in London. I don't want to, the Times Cooperative and other places have, I don't want to understate the value because that's very valuable meeting space and time. But for events, corporate board meetings or larger events for which visit London might want to submit proposals and compete for that business, we simply have been shut out of that as a community. Is there a way to do that, that calculus? What's the kind of volume of business that we have just had to stand the sidelines and not even be able to consider, because we don't have hotels to accommodate, provide the space, either meeting rooms or hotel rooms. You know, prior to COVID and prior to, even prior to the Plaza closing, we were losing up to 20, 20 RFPs a year, because people would want to come to the community, but we just didn't have the right place or the right type of meeting space. One of the things that the Plaza did offer was several different rooms, right, within one place that you could go to. We've had great additions to MeetingFace, the St. Brain Event Center, which is largely a wedding venue, but really looking to grow their corporate business. The Times Collaborative, which opened up here on Main Street, which is fantastic. The Elks Lodge has made a lot of improvements to their meeting space. We have the Callahan House. These are all great meeting spaces within one to two blocks of where the proposed hotel is supposed to be. Having a lodging option where you could home base there, there will be meeting space built into it as well, but then easily walk to these other destinations. That's what we're seeing. When people are having conferences or meetings, it's not the old, let's go into this deep convention center. Let's go out into the lobby and eat cheese and crackers on our break and go back in. That's just not the way people want to engage any longer. They want to explore a town. They want to have walkable destinations. On their break, they want to go out and get some fresh air. They may want to ditch a session to go shopping and dining and those kind of things, but we've never had a downtown hotel to be able to do that, and we've never had really the right kind of meeting space. Certainly from a Visit Longmont perspective, we still anticipate talking about the great lodging we have on Homer Street, talking about the Hilton Garden and talking about all of our great hotel properties because each one of them bring a unique proposition. The Marriott Suites are great. We have also, if you really look at our assets from a Visit Longmont, we have some of the best transportation around. We can get the Bruhop trolley. We can get the Wonder Tour bus. We can get people to and from this lodging, and now I think we're going to have the right kind of meeting space to really start making a mark on that, where people haven't really considered Longmont because we've told them no for so long now, and so I think it opens up a whole new opportunity to really go after this. Is any of this potential business factored into the modeling that you've done? The larger trickle-down stuff does include the impacts on local businesses and whatnot. The numbers that I was giving before is literally money straight into the pockets of City Council from the hotel itself, not from the people who are coming into town spending their money, where they're spending their money. Those are these larger, sort of the domino effect impacts that are more reflected in that $108 million in 10-year kind of number. Although that number itself doesn't take into account the revenues from the restaurant as well, which could be in and of itself a destination. Even if someone isn't staying overnight, they might want to say, you know, we've done all the restaurants here in Lafayette. Let's go to that new one in Longmont. Got the great views. So I think those are the things that are not the softer numbers. Yeah, hard to, hard to. There's enough variability. Yeah, really hard to pin down, because most economic modeling is going to be based on staff salaries and then them living in the community and where they spend that stuff. But with a hotel, you have a lot of these outside dollars and these spending money in the community that's really hard to quantify. And those behaviors are different depending on where the hotel is. This one, so near to all these places where you can spend your money, you know, that's a little bit different than maybe a quaint, fattened breakfast that's out a little more isolated. Yeah. Well, I know just around in dinner parties or, you know, in various settings, social settings, the number of times that my wife and I have in conversation with other couples have heard, we would like to have done, we would like to have scheduled our wedding reception or this event at the St. Vrain, but there was just no place for family, family reunions to stay. And the prospect of a two-block walk, right, from some of these event settings, right, to a nice hotel, talk about the hotel, what's nicest about, what are the appealing features? You've been looking at this, you've been in conversations with the thrash group, which is the developer. What should long monitors expect to see when it's ready to be seen, when people have a chance to walk in? I truly think they should expect to see something they've never seen before and something they'll never see again, because it will be unique. Talking to the thrash group, they've really asked lots of questions about our local arts community and really looking at putting local art within and throughout the hotel. The rooftop, like we talked about, really look, how do they curate special experiences for travelers? Things like a bunk room where they have bunk beds that are good for not only kids, but bridesmaids and things like that so you can really share. They put tents in rooms for kids. They do things like they want to have a craft brewing suite where they can bring in all of the craft brews from our local economy. They really want to curate what is great about Longmont and infuse that through the hotel. And so I think they're really going to look at those extra touches and really look at how can this really, not only be, I'm going to sleep here, but it's going to be an experience that draws you into the hotel, but that pushes you out to all of the great things that are happening in Longmont. One of the criticisms that you've read and I've read is that the price point to stay in this hotel will be beyond what I can afford as a Longmont resident. I know there's a response to that. What is it? Well, the price point that they really said when they were there was about $179 or so, and so that's pretty in line with what lodging truly is. Maybe it'll be a special occasion type place. Maybe it'll be, but I think it'll be open to anyone if they want to go to the restaurant, that type of thing, but it's certainly not a Ritz Carlton or something that's such high-end that it would be an impossible. Yeah, I just think about how many times I've stayed in a hotel in the city in which I live, and the answer is not very often when we were having our floors redone where you had to be out of the house and then you would go to the closest less than full service hotel. So it's just a different asset in a different market or segment of the market that this particular property is going to be available to or marketed to. Some you've heard, we've all heard about parking and how much this is going to be constructed on what's now a surface, right, asphalt surface parking lot. I don't remember the number, I'm sure you know the number of parking spaces that are there now and the concern that we're going to lose all those parking spaces. What's going to happen with parking relative to this project? In the portion of the lot that we're looking at, there's a small strip to the north that'll remain. There's about 105 parking spaces right now. When it's built, the hotel will take the southernmost portion and it'll be all together. Then there'll be a parking surface parking and then a one level deck above that. The surface parking will have 75 public spaces, so we'll lose about 30 public spaces. Above that, there'll be 65 spaces that will be dedicated to the hotel. Overall, there's a gain in parking, but there is a loss in those public parking, but it's still retaining 75 of those public spaces that can be accessed. That's really going to be the change in the parking situation. Say more about this. I know that parking is an ongoing topic, not just for this project, but in downtown. You've shared with me in other conversations some observations about where parking is available, how it's utilized. You want to add anything for anybody who listens to this to say, why hadn't thought about that as a parking option or where I could go? We commission a parking study about every two years and we're just finishing that up right now. It really tells us where is the available parking in the underutilized parking. Lots of issues with our parking. Number one, I would say if you're not from here or you don't know exactly where you're parking, it's hard to find. It's hard to understand where that parking is. Our board invested in a wayfinding program and they invested about half a million dollars to implement that. So next year you will be seeing what we call parking identification signs that say free public parking here. We'll also have parking trailblazer signs. So once you realize maybe this lot's full, it's pointing you to the next available lot. Capacity-wide and system-wide, we have seen our parking system is hovering around 50% utilization. So we have parking. It may not be directly in the block, but it could be in other blocks. We have heard that, well, I'm afraid to maybe walk a block or two at night. The DDA recently redid all of the lights in our parking lots to make sure that they were brighter. We are adding cameras in the alleyways to kind of keep it safe. Our colleagues in Fort Collins have said when they did that it made a huge impact in the safety of their alleys. We added the string lights on Main Street to make sure that that is well lit. Recently we added a parking structure up on the 500 block of Kauffman, which added 50 additional public spaces to our inventory. There are things like the RTD lot at Asen Kauffman, which is all day and free and anyone can park there at any time. So really we're going to work to add parking where we can to work with private property owners that have underutilized parking to see if during construction we can have our permit parkers park there and really kind of work on that education of how we can get that parking distributed and people understanding where else they can park. One of my questions is about mitigating, doing what you can to mitigate the disruptions that will occur as this is developed. So one of the things you're doing is working with those who have available parking to make certain that those who need it who would be parking with permits have a place to park. Anything else that you'd want people to know about this? Yeah, you know whenever there is a construction and disruption and we understand that construction is hard and first what we do is we implore the local community to continue to patronize those businesses. It might be a year or so. We do constant communication with the businesses to make sure that they know what's coming up and what's coming up next and have any reasonable accommodations that we can. So it's a lot of communication, the back and forth and the education during that time. Among the things you just mentioned where parking is available, 50 parking spaces available in a parking structure at 5th and 6th in Kauffman. We've heard to as the spoke is the project, but LDDA participated in that project. Talk about LDDA's participation, the fact that there are parking spaces available to the public at no charge, free parking in that parking structure when people go in where they see free parking here, covered parking. What else, how did LDDA participate in that project, both for parking and for housing? Yeah, I will say the spoke on Kauffman really shows how those TIF dollars can work for our community. The DDA board understands that affordable housing and parking are two of the major concerns that our community has. We had a small surface lot, the GID did. The GID is GID? The general improvement district. And we managed that on behalf of city council. We knew that they wanted to have affordable housing by adding in our land they could do even more. But that took a small parking space or a small parking lot away. We were able to work with them to give $2 million of this tax increment financing we've got to be able to increase the number of units that they had of affordable housing in the community and then work to have shared parking arrangement and parking. So we have actually 70 spaces in that lot we had more than we had before. And we're able to work with the county then on nights and weekends to have all of their parking available. That parking structure has about 264 parking spaces. About 150 of those if not more are available to the public on nights and weekends, 70 during the day. So this is how we can leverage those dollars in that tax increment financing dollars to tackle the problems that we're seeing within the community. Our hope with the hotels after their incentives are paid out, they'll continue to generate money into these coffers that can help continue to address these problems. Well, among the concerns or questions that people have asked, one of those has been about well, we know we have housing issues. We have an unhoused population and homelessness is a challenge in every municipality. And there's lots going on. The city is doing a number of things. We have nonprofits involved. What is maybe new information for some is what LDDA has has done to address both housing and in this case parking issues in the downtown area. Any other kind of final thoughts on that just on that issue? I know homelessness and dealing with an unhoused population has been an issue for you in a priority priority for LDDA. Just talk a little bit about what you've done to help address the concerns and work with the unhoused population as well as the resources in town available to them. You know, one of the great things about the downtown business community is they really are a community in a neighborhood. And those business owners said we'd really like to have some more information and could you put together some trainings and some resources for us? And we were able to come together with Hope and the hour center and the police department and children, youth and families and really give some great information of what business owners should do in situations, how they can be compassionate, how we can reach out and get people to the right places. So we're able to work in that with our business owners and hopefully help the community. Maybe one of the reasons, LDDA probably is maybe the biggest reason why some of what we see in terms of homelessness and the effects is less obvious or prevalent in the downtown area than other parts of town, is because of what you've done in working with resources in the population to get people where they need to be. In a recent city council meeting, the council took action, passed a resolution and then met as the board of the general improvement district. Is there any more council activity? Is it a done deal from the city's perspective, the city of Longmont's perspective? And now it's really up to LDDA and the GID to work with the developer on this project. Nothing will come back to city council unless there needs to be an amendment to that particular agreement. In the next month or two, we will see this go into the pre-application in the development review committee. As it goes through that, it'll probably be four, six months, I'm not quite sure. I think the only way it would come back is if there needs to be some kind of variance. But right now it'll be in with the planners and public works to really review that, the impacts and make sure that it's... That part of the city is zoned for this kind of project so there won't be zoning issues. It's just a matter of the permitting process. So it's full steam ahead from a policy or regulatory standpoint. Now it's all about complying with our development codes and whatnot. When you anticipate, let's assume six months from now the permitting process is finished. How long do you suppose from the time it's permitted to go ahead to the time they have a grand opening? What should we anticipate? Our best idea is about 14 months of a construction to open. So 20 months from now. Let me see. Prior to Christmas time, we might be seeing Christmas parties there. Or maybe Halloween parties there in 2024. Something like that. Anything I haven't asked that you wish I had or that you'd like to add to this conversation and for Long Monaster to understand the what and the why and the how, this is going to unfold. No, I think this has been great. All right. Well, I appreciate it again. Thanks for being here tonight. Again, I want to say again thank you for what you do every day. It's an exciting project. It is one that has attracted lots of attention and that probably still will. But if people have a question, I'm going to encourage them to keep sharing the recording of this conversation because I think you've answered just about every question that could possibly be on the minds of Long Monters. So Long Monters, if you'd like to join the studio audience for these sessions, we probably will wait until January. But the last Monday in January, right here in the Longmont Public Media Studios, we'll be promoting or advertising the topic of that conversation between now and then. But that is your backstory on the new proposed boutique hotel in downtown Longmont.