 Welcome to the backstory on economic development in the pandemic and post-pandemic world. My name is Tim Waters and as a volunteer for Longmont Public Media, I have the good fortune of interviewing experts, activists, policymakers, elected officials on topics of importance and relevance to Longmonters. And in this session, we're going to tell the story that you might not otherwise read about in the newspaper or learn about on your social media platforms, and that is the story behind the story on economic development. We're going to go deeper than you might otherwise have a chance to go and hear just through your more traditional media sources. I'm joined this morning by three experts. Those individuals charged with economic development, resilience, growth of macro and micro in Longmont. Jessica Erickson is president and CEO of the Longmont Economic Development Partnership. Kimberly McKee is the executive director of the Longmont Downtown Development Authority. Kimberly is Scott Cook is the CEO of the Longmont Chamber of Commerce. So thank you to the three of you for joining me this session and telling the backstory on economic development in a time that's different than any of us have ever experienced. Let's start by learning a little bit more about you, your organizations, and what some of the challenges are for you and your organization and your membership. We have found ourselves, we don't know how early or late we are in a pandemic. It's certainly in an unprecedented moment. Jessica, pick it up. Thank you, Tim. Thanks for the invitation and for including me in this conversation. As you mentioned, I'm president and CEO of Longmont Economic Development Partnership. I'm the executive director of the Longmont Economic Development Organization, serving the city of Longmont. And so we're really charged with what we call strengthening Longmont's competitive position through our advancement of strategy and the initiatives of that, as well as attracting new and opportunity to attract new talent and industry and business into Longmont and also advocating for policies that strengthen our business community and opportunities for growth and prosperity and inclusion within the city of Longmont. We are a nonprofit organization, so like many nonprofits across the country and certainly many of the businesses that we work with across the country, we're facing some of the same challenges and decisions from a financial perspective as many of our member investors and others are. And so what that looks like for us is doing more with less just like many of the people watching this are faced with right now. We really see ourselves in the Chamber of Commerce and the downtown development authority and all of our partner organizations is kind of the first responders for business response and recovery for our community and so looking at how we better use our resources create more efficiency and share resources and align across multiple organizations to address the needs of our community, understanding similar kind of resource challenges that we face as well. Tell us about you and LDDA. Great, the downtown development authority has been around since the early 80s and it is designed to create and keep a vital and valuable downtown. Look at downtown is possibly a city within the city we work with the with the city of Longmont to make sure that it stays clean and safe to make sure that we're attracting businesses to make sure that we're doing redevelopment and keeping our historic core, as well as developing a sense of place for our community right in the center downtown has the largest collection of locally owned businesses 470 different businesses that are all have different needs. And so we work really hard to make sure that we meet those needs that we work with all of our economic partners. A little bit of what every economic organization does happens in downtown and so we are always looking to make sure that we're doing best practices and really doing the best that we can for the community. Thanks Kimberly Scott pick it up from there. Alright, well thank you, Tim, for the invitation. As Jessica and Kimberly said, Scott cook with the Chamber. The Chamber is one of the older organizations in the community, just about as old as the city. The predecessor of the Chamber was founded in 1887. And we've taken on a number of different roles throughout over 130 years of being in existence. Currently we are refocusing the chambers. It's a look to be more of a community organization and that doesn't mean that we aren't concentrating on business and promoting business and representing all of our different businesses. But we're looking to the community more. And I think that's important because our businesses want to interact with the community more that encourages people to purchase things and that sort of thing. But it also is good education for community members to understand the importance of why business is so important to our community. We have just under 800 members currently, and I'm very happy to say that that number really hasn't changed that much since mid March when all of this started and that's for a few different reasons we've got a couple different programs going on for membership. And also we just really have the support of our members of our businesses in this community. The Chamber recently has been working more with our regional partners and our statewide partners. So we work with the Northwest Chamber Alliance and with other chambers in Boulder and Bloomfield counties. And then especially during the legislative session we work with the Colorado Chamber and the Denver Chamber and that helps us represent our businesses on a lot of different policy issues and also even our advanced law and law partners. So Kim really and Jessica as well. So thank you. Well, you know I should have added to in this introduction to all three of you. Not only my thanks for your being here this morning but my thanks on behalf of the whole community for what you do for the community every day. And I know you're on call 24 seven and you're, you know you're hitting it hard every day so we, we, the community deeply appreciates that. So just months ago on January 1 of 2020. As we stood on the first morning of a new decade. There is no way anybody could have imagined where we would find ourselves only a few months later and now five or six months into this pandemic. We're going to talk about some of the lessons learned but what should the community know at this stage in the pandemic what should the community know about the effects of the pandemic on your members on your mission and on economic development, resilience, business growth, resilience, etc. Who wants to pick that up. Well I'll start from the perspective of the member investors of long line EDP so it's kind of a mixed bag for us because we have such a cross section of investors from some of the smaller locally owned and operated businesses to the largest employers in the city those that are investing in real estate development projects in our city some that have been very heavily hit and heavily impacted by both the public health and economic effects of the pandemic and some that have not yet been as impacted though they recognize that the tail on this is likely pretty long and they will see those effects over the long term. So what we've seen that's been encouraging is those that have not yet been impacted or won't be as impacted from a financial perspective, have taken the position to kind of double down on their commitment not just in my EDP but in the community from the perspective of understanding that if they're able. There's value to them and to our community in supporting the recovery of our local businesses and revival of our local economy through investment in small locally owned and operated businesses and so we had a meeting of our leadership council month or so ago and the number one question that was asked by then is what can we do. I know some of the largest employers and largest investors in our community. What can we do to support response recovery for our local business community understanding what that means to our community as a whole to our employees and to our long term success as businesses and investors in this community. You know we also have a very, very diverse range of businesses so there's not any one size fits all model that we were able to do for our downtown but we made a lot of calls and talk to folks and what we were hearing is this is going to be a long slow road to recovery, especially with the type of businesses that that we're serving not only are we trying to balance what's happening in public health but also what is consumer confidence, how do we make sure that we keep people safe. Businesses are kind of struggling with getting people to abide by the public health rules. So there's just a really large amount of things and I think that what we heard from our businesses was really helping them with the outreach to the community letting them know how we are safely reopening what measures we are doing to keep them safe so they can rebuild that consumer confidence has been extremely important. And we continually are checking in on what those needs are they change they change as things move forward. And I think really no one has a crystal ball and trying to know how are we going to get through this holiday season and what is it going to look like and preparing all kinds of scenarios. So no matter what comes up we have an idea of what path we're going to move forward. Well, one of the things that I was hoping for in in this program would be the crystal ball. And how I've learned there isn't one. But we will get to what kind of what we're learning. It's pretty go along Scott. What are the effects on your members. As soon as I find that crystal ball I will let you know, I'll let everybody know. I would say very similar to what Kimberly and Jessica have said. I have been meeting regularly with all of our different leads groups are different committees ambassadors public policy things like that. And what's surprising in talking with many of our members is actually how well they're doing. So I would say of our leads groups and our networking groups probably about half of those represented in those groups are saying they're doing. Okay, too well to some of them actually saying that they've had the best few months ever in their business, which is obviously very great news and we're very happy for that. But then there's the other side to and we all know about that and there's just different industry sectors that are struggling much more than others and Kimberly and I have talked a lot about the restaurants in the downtown and that sort of thing, or everywhere in the community. But to similar to Jessica's point that there's a lot of businesses that have stepped up and said that they want to help more and they realize that some of their fellow business owners are not doing as well during this time. So I think that's been one of the encouraging things to see to us coming together as a community and working together. I'll also say to Kimberly's point in consumer confidence and helping our businesses promote people wearing their masks and staying socially distant. That's also that we as a community can stay open. We do not want to go backwards into a lockdown and stuff like that because some of our businesses are barely hanging on and if we do that again. I fear for them and I don't I don't think it'll be good. So I think as much as we can encourage and promote safe practices, those safe practices that have been pretty well communicated I think from the state and from Boulder County Health and that sort of thing. So we're trying to help get the word on that out to that if you don't do these things you're going to hurt businesses and ultimately it's going to it's going to hurt each one of us as residents here. So this this program isn't intended to be a an appeal for mask wearing but just as a real practical issue, not a political one, not a power one just as a practical one that's a pretty clear message I think that we've heard from both of you. And that is in the interest of our local businesses staying in business. That is a fundamental it during the pandemic. One of the do fundamentals is public safety and what we do in the interest of public safety to keep our businesses open and moving. Is that fair. So I want to I want to pivot, not this isn't a huge pivot but just a bit. There's no crystal ball, but there is no doubt you two, you two, you three have, have, have learned a lot. As we've gone into this pandemic it but all of the uncertainties from day one, and now that we're months into this there, you know there are new uncertainties and maybe more uncertainties. And along this is going to go on. What our trajectories are from everything from schools to, you know, to downtown businesses. Without a crystal ball is sir going to learn what are the big lessons you've learned that you not only that you're going to apply now, but probably are lessons that you apply in the post pandemic era. And there will be probably not a post COVID-19 that'll be with us but they'll be a post pandemic world. And once we get smart enough to figure this, this out how we lower these curves and whatever the new normal is. What are the big lessons that you'll be applying now and then, you know, I'll, I'll go. I'll go ahead one of the things that I think we have really seen, especially from a business response team is that there's really not the time or energy for any duplication of efforts. And I think that what has really risen to the top is each of us are experts in different things and each of us are able to excel in different things and how are we able to really package that I think we worked well together before, but I think this has really shown us where each one of our organizations can take the lead where we would really excel and be able to move quicker, further advocate on federal states, local levels, and really be able to pull all of our resources. So I really think that has been the biggest biggest I think, putting into practice what we had always hoped we could do. And I think we can take that steps further in the future. Thank you Jessica. That's really good point that was one of the things I was going to say as well but for me. I think not so much learned but reinforced and expanded my understanding of the delicate nature of the ecosystem that is our local economy. It's not just about each individual business and their success and how they grow and what that has to offer toward our local economy, but it's about understanding the needs of individual employees and residents of our business from daycare and early to day education, education in general health care, all of the variety of needs that create a healthy labor force that then creates a healthy business community that create then creates a healthy local economy. And so this importance of one of the things that we looked at when we developed the advance on one 2.0 strategy was the importance of prosperity and inclusion to a healthy local economy and not just growth because no amount of growth can create a healthy local economy. If it's not shared amongst all of the residents and all of the businesses within that. Reinforced that and I think we've seen that under a microscope under circumstances. Sure, I think Jessica has my notes. But I'll add though that to Kimberly's point that we were working together I think so well and a number of ways through advanced long line. And now that has just become stronger and better and I think we've to Jessica's point it's not maybe not something that we learn but was reinforced. In such a time as this, we don't have the time to do everything the chamber can't do everything, the LDA, the LDP can't do everything so you really begin to rely on your partners, more and more to do that. And I'm proud to because when I've met with our other chambers or other communities in our alliance of that sort of thing there's always been a question of well what are you guys doing in long line because you guys have this advanced long line setup. And I think that we've just as a community been able to approach things quickly, but also very thoughtfully. As well sometimes we weren't the fastest to do something our strong lot fun for example came out a little bit later than some other communities, but I think it was more well thought out and it was very just too long because of the fact that we're all working together so well. I think also one of the lessons that we're all learning or becoming more aware of personally about ourselves is is resilience and how resilient we are as individuals and as organizations. When we first started this, we were under, we had the understanding or we're under the impression that we'd be doing this for a month or two. Well, that is not the case anymore we know that this could go on for some time when we started this we saw thought we saw a light at the end of the tunnel. And now that kind of seems to be dimming a little bit we'll see you know how the rest of the year plays out. So I think that that's an important thing that we're all learning is what is our resilience look like when we don't see an end quickly in sight. How do we keep working together how do we keep encouraging each other to to work together and support our businesses support our entire community. You know, just as a listener. You know we talk about at times being in your own lane and staying in your lane and you know this is my lane and that's yours. It sounds to me and I don't know that that characterized your work together before the pandemic. But it does sound like it's more like a Venn diagram today than it is lanes like much greater clarity on on where what shared and and how you create achieve efficiencies there, plus when you're in your own lane as some of the insights. I'll go back. Jessica in the 2.0 strategy you made specific reference to how to think about prosperity. And I know part of the tagline there and at least part of the thinking is top line, but top line growth doesn't mean shared prosperity I didn't quote that quite. But the concept that it's not just enough to think about top line growth you've got to think about how that's distributed. And how that shared is that fair. Absolutely I mean it's the basis on which advanced long month 2.0 was created. So, so I'm going to put that in this frame of sustainability. Right. We had lots of conversations. So prior to the pandemic about what sustainable development, economic development, business development and growth. What does that look like. And I don't know the three legs of sustainability where people plant and product right. If somebody's going to make an investment whoever the the investor is has to have a return. But we need to have an eye on the effects on on the population how that the benefits are shared as well as the impacts on the environment. And this is an assumption you can confirm it or or disabuse me of the notion that that the three legs of sustainable development are going to be with us in the pandemic and post pandemic world. They may look different. I don't know. We may reinforce parts of that in ways that we didn't before, but talk about what does for all three of you what is sustainability, which is foundation right foundation to growth to resilience and growth. What does that look like pandemic and post pandemic sustainable development. Well, for us from kind of more traditional economic development perspective. There's been, you know, there's a lot of talk about incentives and the value of incentives and whether they make sense for a community. We prefer to think of them as investments rather than incentives so our ability to invest in those projects that are going to contribute to achieving the long term economic development goals of our community and a conversation that was started by the staff, Longmont ADP and the DDA prior to the pandemic, and has certainly accelerated and continues and will hope to bring to city council and city leadership. In the months is this conversation about how we look at leveraging those investments that we make through economic development incentives in projects that support sustainable sustainable development and sustainable economic development for the long term for our community. So looking at not just the profit. And, and when we think of profit we think of not only profit for the investor the business that's coming into our community but what are the fiscal and economic impacts of our community so is there a net positive fiscal and economic impact for our community number one, when we invest in that project, we need to see a return on that investment as well as a community. And also how do those projects align with our values and our goals as a community for things like supporting the living wage for all of that businesses employees, or contributing to and not taking away from the, the environment here in Longmont carbon footprint what is being contributed overall to environmental sustainability within our community and then certainly like I said the fiscal and economic impacts of of the community, not only direct to the tax rolls but what are the multiplier effects of that industry and how do they impact secondary industry like our restaurants and our retail and our service sector that are going to support that company. So our hope is to adjust our strategy around leveraging those investments that we have the ability to make in those projects, so that they support that triple bottom line sustainable development concept. You really got you want to do this. Yeah, you know I really think that as we move forward, I think people. It's going to be such an important piece of this equation, and I will say we at the DDA, we do investments in projects, a lot, and a lot of the reason we do that is in a historic core of downtown it's sometimes harder to we have those buildings to reuse those buildings but we know that reuse is so much better than greenfield development or taking out more of our land so we have always been there to help preserve our historic core. One of the things that we had done right before the pandemic hit was finished up a market analysis of the state of downtown and what that looked like and it looked so promising and it was wonderful news. And so we'll probably have to revise that a little bit, but I will say that it was so important to really look at people and when Jessica talked about us working together on incentives, one of the things that our board had talked about was we do need people living downtown people working downtown and people enjoying downtown and we have a new south main station which just came online which is 300 we just helped work with boulder county housing authority will be breaking ground in the next few days on a housing affordable housing and parking structure project, and then we really wanted to work with Jessica to say we also need more daytime employees we need to attract more companies that will generate more sales tax revenue we know that people bring retail so it would help strengthen everything so really as we look at all of these things they do really work together. When we look about the planet, you know some of the things from the pandemic were were helpful to our planet less people were driving or people were biking things like that. But other changes weren't so great with restaurants doing takeout there were so many single use plastics and things like that so how do we try to make those things better and work with our sustainability folks to get more compostable goods and all of that so it really does all work together. Scott last word on this. Sure, I was going to speak again about people. A few weeks ago the chamber had a community conversation on race relations, and which is another thing that's kind of come out of this pandemic or is happening at the same time. We had our national conversation on this and we took this up and I got a lot of questions about why a chamber would do that, and a little bit of pushback but a lot of support as well from the community, and in my opening comments in that meeting. I just said you know businesses about people and we have businesses to serve people and the customers needs and desires, and that sort of thing. This way back in March I also reminded our staff that we're going to go into difficult times, and there are no wrong ideas. And I wasn't necessarily saying that there can never be a wrong idea some ideas are better than none. But I wanted just that environment amongst our staff, so that they could just come forward with a lot of different ideas some of them will use some of them, we won't. And I think we need to have that approach as a community to make sure that everybody's included I think one of the reasons why we're seeing some of the things happening at the national level a little bit at our own community is because not everybody feels heard, or the impact of the pandemic is impacting people in different ways some more severe than others. And I just think that if we're going to get through this if we're going to come out at the end, prosperous and successful. It's going to take all of us all of our ideas. That sort of thing we're going to have to really learn, I think relearn to be listening to each other to give people a fair shake you know say, you know maybe that will be a good idea maybe that we could do that I don't think that many of the norms that we had before are going to be the same after. So we just need to keep a very open environment where people feel free to speak up and and share their ideas. I've heard all three of you talk about investment of different types, investing in people investing in ideas and investing in in real projects. If there was, there probably are dozens of investments you'd like to see the city of Longmont make, but if there was one, if you were to say top of mine and top of list for me. Here's an investment that the city of Longmont, I'd like to see make in in in economic development in the interest of recovery, resilience and growth. What's top of mind for you what would you like to see or you need to see the city of Longmont investing in with those thoughts in mind about recovery resilience and growth that might differentiate us from other communities. I think for us, sometimes it's having the tools to be ready to take action when we need help to make something be development ready and there's always these. Things that would have to be weighed or changed, but if we had a fun that when the right thing came along that would help people, planets, profit, all of that that we're more nimble and can take action quickly and swiftly and help those that are trying to invest in our community. And do so as quickly and as efficiently as possible. And I think that all trickles down so when we get the right project it's going to work and hit all of these things that we're able to take action swiftly. Scott. I would say the, the promotion of our community. I know there's some work being done already and promoting our community nationwide and and regionally and that sort of thing but I do think that we have several things that are pretty cool about Longmont from next light to our location to our advanced Longmont purpose that I already talked about how we work together. The first thing there's a number of things that we do well in Longmont, and I love it when Longmont as a model or other communities call us and say hey, what are you guys doing over there, I would say, getting our name out there, and making sure that we're at top of mind for people that are trying to relocate here, or, whether that be an individual or a business. Jessica. So for me a couple things I think to just reinforce something that Kimberly said about our ability to be flexible and nimble in the face of opportunity and so I think maybe not as much a financial investment but a people investment, a time investment in improving the process or a process for getting from opportunity to actual execution of a project. And then I think to, as we talk about housing and housing affordability, making sure that we're making investments, not just in what is traditionally considered to be affordable housing which is obviously hugely important for our community and the prosperity of all of our residents, but not neglecting the need for that middle tier housing and what we would typically consider workforce housing that is affordable to the majority of the workforce or the largest percentage of the workforce here in Longmont. So I'm wondering how and what types of investments can be made in the development of workforce housing for our community and for the waiver force that is so crucial to our primary industry base here. You know, you made a comment earlier about living wage and, and what that means and obviously the, what the number for living wage will change from county to county across the country based on cost of living. You just identified housing. And earlier, there was a reference to childcare as, as two variables that have a huge impact on what is or is not a living wage is that fair. If there isn't the kind of housing available that you just described or and there isn't access to reliable quality affordable childcare. The number of living wages just got like much higher skyrocket right yeah, if I if I if I'm going to be housing burdened and I don't have access to affordable childcare. You're going to either have to pay me a lot of money to move there or to stay there or I'm not going. Is that fair. Yeah, I think just reinforces the idea of this, you know, the delicate nature of the ecosystem that is our local economy and how all of those factors impact every other. Yeah, all right. There are things to do there's things not to do what what have you learned. At this point in this experience that we should stop doing right we were we were spending time and money on these things. And simply there aren't going to be the kind of returns are going to be the kind of benefits that are that you'd like to see or we all like to see as a result of those. We're spending time and money spent are there things like that on your list that we should that people ought to know about we're not doing that anymore and hear the reasons why. I think it's been said already but this idea of going it alone and not just from an individual organization or entity perspective but also from a public and private perspective. That Venn diagram that you mentioned earlier should be a Venn diagram of of both the public and private sectors as well as nonprofit and education sectors it should be a Venn diagram of all of our individual organizations and the roles that we play. And then also not going it alone as a community so long what has a great history of bootstrapping and and and taking care of ourselves. And it's paid dividends in next light and and some of the other investments that we've made in our infrastructure but I think post pandemic or current pandemic world. The idea of regionalism and approaching some of our challenges from more regional perspective is going to become critically important from both a resource and an impactfulness perspective as well. In my professional life when I had a professional life from time to time we would talk about organized abandonment. What can we what can we plan not to do anymore. And the only thing we seem to ever abandon was that conversation. So, Kimberly and Scott anything that the entry the name of organized abandonment let's stop doing these things that you've learned. I think there's just when you see that you're spinning your wheels and you're spinning your wheels and you're doing these different projects or things that have small yields there's just no time for those anymore and I do think it's been really easy to say there isn't much of benefit there and we're going to be able to be more helpful if we do this or that so I do think that has been. You know having a hard time, it's maybe little marketing or events or things like that that just really aren't fruitful and deciding where is the best time because, like you said we are working a lot. And so when you are really taxed you really have to say what is going to be the best thing to do. And we've really looked at those and really move those forward. Now you want to add to this. Yeah, I would agree I think you know before the pandemic, there were things that you would work on and you'd give it another try and give it another try and just never seem to to go forward to Kimberly's point and nowadays is just that you quickly cut that out and move on to the next idea which is, you know, probably a good thing in the long run. And I think I don't mean to be too political but as we were looking at different things that came up during the legislative session there were just so many bills that were pretty onerous for businesses and many business owners are trying to just stay alive and and many of these bills we just looked at you know with some kind with just a little bit of curiosity you know who's who's behind this what what what's the thinking behind some of this and I think. And again I think everybody's trying to help I don't think the many of these bills came from a bad place everybody's trying to do the right thing, but I think what happens is probably the opposite of what Jessica was mentioning that if we're not working together for talking to other people and I think that's probably what happened a little bit in this last legislative session. But I think trying to do trying to go about fixing a problem all on your own without looking at all the other people and organizations that are impacted as well. I just don't think it's going to get us very far anymore. You know, a mantra that's been repeated over and over again during this pandemic is that we're in this together. And I know that can be a cliche and it has different meanings for different people and some are far more affected by the pandemic and its health consequences, other than others. Some are more affected by the economic consequences than others so it's easy to say, but it sounds to me what I'm hearing in this session is for the three of you, you've taken that seriously. That from economic recovery, resilience and growth perspective and sustainable development, economic development that's shared and has and that does not negatively affect the plan and hopefully what we're learning, you know, from single use plastics to the compostable materials if we're going to continue to take that helps the environment, long term that that becomes maybe the differentiator for long mod from other front range communities I suspect in the pandemic and post pandemic world competition among municipalities will be no less intense, maybe more intense in the post pandemic world is that there. Well, the big question it seems to me to all of this is why should why should long monitors care. Why should anybody care about this topic about what you've described that you're doing what is it. What does it mean to them, you know they're they're living their lives or we're living our lives. Why should anybody care about economic recovery, resilience and growth. Tim I don't have you start you start you know I thought about this question a little bit and really all I have to say about is because your whole way of life depends on it. Everything that you do today is dependent on business and a healthy economy and yeah your whole life depends on your whole way of life or whole American way of life. depends on on it. Kimberly, and I think just going back to the idea as economy. Oh, sorry. Now go ahead jump in go go. Okay, as a local economy as an ecosystem and just this idea that what happens to you know the restaurant on Main Street has a ripple effect on to spots point every aspect of your life from the quality of it your ability to experience the quality of life you've come to know and love about Longmont as well as the ability of that business to be able to keep people employed who then contribute further to the the economy and so just this idea that it's not about just what happens on on Main Street and how Main Street is affected by that but what happens on Main Street and what the ripple effect is to every single person within the city of Longmont that resides here and that that runs a business here throughout the city. Main Street just being an example you can point to any other whether it be the largest employer in the city and what happens to them. And that's what happens to the individual in home day care worker, and how this has affected them and how that ripples out and affects every other person within the city. Kimberly last word. When we talk about people planet and profit, it's, it's the people that are are really affected by all of these decisions by economic development by the way that we're trying to bring in jobs healthcare education childcare all of that so it really is all interconnected. Is there anything. Any question I haven't asked any idea any topic that you'd like to to reinforce or get into the conversation. The one thing that I will say that will help in the future, I think is being willing and ready to take action on calculated risks. And at some point, the conversation just needs to stop and you need to try something and I think it's great to have these thoughtful conversations but they need to be time limited and action needs to be taken or everything is going to pass us by and when you talk about in a regional perspective and being regional competition I think long mod is aligned much stronger than other communities to be able to rebound from this. I think we still are a, as much as we talk about affordability we are still fairly affordable, I think we have a different type of product that companies if they're downsizing large offices are able to get intimate office base they're able to have walkable urban spaces so I feel like we have a lot of tools next light I can't say enough about next light and the fact that Longmont might have looked very different through this pandemic if we weren't able to stay connected no matter where we were. So there's so many strengths and I feel like we have the ability to package those together and go out and make a very strong rebound to be able to attract new people new investment to our community and make it stronger for everyone. You know just on the topic and I'm going to give Jessica and Scott you a chance to weigh in but just on this idea of risk calculus and next slide. Right. I mean the city made an investment years ago. And there was a fair amount of risk calculus that played into that a lot of pushback initially, first time failure on a ballot, but persistence and vision. So today, a differentiator prior to pandemic in the pandemic. And no doubt will be a differentiator for Longmont in the post pandemic world we see now municipalities, not just in Colorado but across the country, seeking to replicate what Longmont achieved with with next slide. And it's implications for business development for community connections to one another into the outside world. And Scott you want to add to this. What are the ideas that we haven't touched on. You'd like to add to the conversation. And Scott. Sure, I'll just say that I hope that we as a community residents of Longmont have understood or have a better understanding of why it's so important to support businesses all over the community. Several weeks ago, we were going to come out where we did come out with a article with our Northwest she reliance, and that the first title of the article was put the mouse down and go stand in line or something to that effect. But now, while many of our businesses have moved on to an online model and you can you can support your local businesses online which is great now that's one of the ways that they've pivoted but I just I hope there's a greater understanding that the restaurant in downtown or the small retailer on somewhere else in Main Street that kind of thing is your neighbor. They are the the business owner that will support your little league, or will support the symphony or one of our human service organizations. And so it's just very important that we support our businesses during during this time these are our neighbors and our friends I just hope there's a greater awareness of that through all of this. Jessica last word. So I think ultimately, what I realized in a long time doing this is that we in this country and certainly we've seen it on some level in Longmont have very short memories for the bad times for economic downturn and so we have a tendency and in particular, the longest economic upcycle in the history of this country, I think have forgotten where we could end up and you're very, very quickly brought back to reality in terms of what the potential for downturn is from an economic perspective. So my hope is that when we get past this, whether it's, you know, two years from now five years from now, 10 years from now, that we remember this time post recovery, and don't take economic uptimes as an opportunity to remove tools from our toolbox. So any tools that we add to our toolbox, whether it be, you mentioned Metro districts, the charter change to allow for 30 year leases, any strategic investments that we make in projects as a community that we not just consider those as part of recovery but as part of long term resilience to ensure that we're able to weather these storms in the future equally as well if not better than we hope to be able to this one. And I think we have to look at things from a fundamental change perspective. So when we look at the impacts of COVID-19 on businesses and how businesses operate, not just adopting for the time being some of the changes and innovations to standard business practices, but we're adapting to them over the long term. And that means training and educating our workforce to adapt to them as well. So making those investments and training and educating our workforce to adapt to them. That hopefully over the long term that this transforms our attitudes about kind of our fellow long monsters and really that idea of what happens to the least of us happens to all of us. And so really considering policies that support again the prosperity inclusion piece of our economic development strategy. And this generally reevaluating the roles of government in how we recover from economic down times and look at how we better partner between both the public and private sectors to address the needs of our whole economy and of our whole our whole community for the long term. Well pretty profound last word. So I want to say thanks again to the three of you for joining me in this program. I'll reinforce what I said earlier thanks as well for what you do every day day in and day out for your members and for the larger community. And for you can say long monsters, long monsters, long monsters are long monsters. That's your backstory on economic development in a pandemic and post pandemic world. Thank you. Thank you.