 I guess today folks is Nicole Roberts. Nicole is the community outreach coordinator for the city, for St. Petersburg downtown partnership. Now downtown partnership folks has been around a long time in St. Pete, particularly for St. Pete. This is started in 1962. The partnership is a private non-profit corporation focused on the promoting urban growth and redevelopment. Nicole, welcome to TFNN. Hi, Tom. Thank you for having me today. Absolutely. So tell us, what is the partnership? Yes, like you said, we're a non-profit focused on the urban development of downtown St. Pete. Anyone who's been downtown the last 10 to 5 years has seen that we've grown exponentially in that time period. So we're really focused on making sure that as we grow, we're doing so in a safe, sustainable way that continues to keep that vibe that made St. Pete cool to begin with. We do that through focusing on our six different priorities, urban transit, higher education, marine science, transformative land project, higher work, higher high impact workplaces, and telling the St. Pete story. Nice. Now let's talk a little bit about what happens in St. Pete. Well, this isn't any major city folks. As the city is growing, which St. Pete is growing exponentially, thank God. The bottom line is that you come up with a lot of new different ways to interact with people. And what we have in St. Pete was the St. Pete market, which is really a great market. And this is something that has grown exponentially. And what has happened, folks, is grown across county-wise, not just the city. So we get the great breakout happening right now, meaning coming out of COVID. So tell us about the St. Pete market. Yeah, yeah, we're really, you know, obviously, we've grown so much in these last five to 10 years, but we're expecting that we grow even more post COVID. Obviously, a lot of people, a lot of companies realize that they can work from home. And Florida has a lot of advantages that owning your business here. We don't have state taxes. It's just a great place to own your business. So we anticipate that post COVID, there's going to be a lot of companies relocating here, a lot of people relocating here, enjoying our beautiful sunny weather, our great tax advantages, and getting to work from home and be able to work, you know, maybe remotely from New York, Chicago, any other place in the world as well. Now, one of the big issues, and what happens this year, folks, is that we have an election this year. I mean, there's a lot of stuff happening. And what happens in St. Petersburg, Florida, folks, is that everyone's term limited. So the city council can only have two terms, the mayor can have two terms. So no one actually gets a real powerhouse in general. So depending which city everyone's from, it's a little bit different when you have term limits. So talk to me a little bit about, we have 85 acres. And where this is, folks, this is literally downtown. This is where the rays are. And this is going to be a redevelopment. So tell us, where does the partnership stand on the redevelopment of the TROP? Yeah, so we're really trying to be influential in this process. Our CEO, Jason Mathis, was actually a part of the Harvard Bloomberg Initiative that was studying this redevelopment and really analyzing the way that we can do this most equitably. There's a lot of history at this site. A lot of promises were broken. And we really, as the partnership, and I know the city takes this as a priority as well, is making sure that those promises are made good on in this redevelopment. So making sure there's a lot of workforce opportunities. There's integration of equity into the community. So we're very, you know, we just released our own recommendations on this. We definitely want to make sure that this is, you know, this itself, this one development is going to be basically its own neighborhood. So making sure there's a lot of great transit options in that area and making sure there's a lot of diversity of housing for affordable housing to high income housing. So just really making sure that this is developed in a smart way that is going to give back to the community over the next, you know, 100 years. Sure. And I'm sure that, I mean, everything's pretty dicey right now, because the fact that the matter is that you have, we have the mayor that would like to see this come through. The election, however, is in September. And so the reality is, is that, you know, where is this going to go? Yes. And the future of the race is still, you know, a little up in the air. So we're very, you know, we're listening to that two city ideas that they have and we're open to it. We definitely would love to see the race stay in this community in any way they can. And when we, when we look at the aspect of the, the partnership in general, right? So you see the partnership as basically leading basically with ideas inside of the city and then what you put the ideas out to the folks and out to the city. Is that how it works? Yeah, yeah, we really consider ourselves conveners. We want to get the right people to be able to have these conversations about future developments about policies. One way we do that is we have a monthly developers council where we gather people in the area that are part of the development community, real estate agents, bankers, construction companies, to talk about things that are coming on the docket for city council, or just to talk about that, you know, thought leadership and how we can develop St. Pete in an even more smart, more sustainable way. So yeah, we like to invite city councils to those meetings. We are very sure that we're not breaking any sunshine laws and that, but we like to get those, you know, developers in front of the city council members so they can have those one-to-one conversations and find a solution that works best for everyone in the city. Nice. That's a nice way of doing it. Now talk to me about, you know, what we definitely need down here, and actually all Florida needs, they are very slow on transportation. So talk to me about where the downtown partnership stands on transportation, local transportation. Yes, we are big proponents of transportation. I'm actually one of the head of the car-free St. Pete initiative that we run, which is a social media initiative trying to encourage people to use our alternative transportation options in downtown St. Pete. And we just got together our committee for this this year. So we have 12 diverse individuals, yeah, from around the community, and we're going to start working on a little more advocacy efforts as well just to help for more funding in the area, improve those transportation options so that people don't feel so locked to their cars and they see that they have lots of other opportunities to get around the city. You know what's so intriguing about that, Nicole, is that because of COVID, I'm sure this happened in a lot of cities, most of us stop using your car as much because what happened in the city of St. Pete, folks, is that the mayor and the administration allowed the restaurants to basically get out in the street, okay, and they put big barriers out, and it just really made it so convenient that, you know, it'd be really sweet to see some streets closed. I mean, we don't need all the streets we have. That's my take on it anyway. But, you know, yeah, it is really intriguing that that is one part that I think that you may have the wind at your back. I mean, because we got plenty of water, those little electric bikes and regular bikes, and, you know, the bottom line is that we have a walkable city and it's like, why not stay healthy? Exactly, and we have beautiful weather all year round, so it really is the best place in the world to go car free. I love it. And you know what? We're going to leave it right there, folks. We're going to come down and visit us, come down and visit Nicole, come down and visit the St. Pete downtown partnership. Nicole, you have a great one, a safe one. We look forward to having you on again, and thank you for doing a great job.