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HomeMy WebLinkAboutEconomic Advisory Commission - Minutes - 01/15/2020 Economic Advisory Commission Regular January 15, 2020, 4 p.m. - 6 p.m. Laramie River Conference Room, 2nd Floor, 222 Laporte Ave 1. CALL TO ORDER Time started 4:05pm 2. ROLL CALL List of Board Members Present • Ted Settle • John Parks • George Grossman • Conner Barry • Renee Walkup • Aric Light • Braulio Rojas List of Board Members Absent: N/A List of Staff Members Present: • Josh Birks, Economic Health Manager • SeonAh Kendall, Senior Economic Manager • Jennifer Shagin, Redevelopment Support Specialist • Cameron Gloss, Manager City Planning List of Guests: • Kevin Jones, Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce • Community/Chamber member? Dale 3. AGENDA REVIEW Conner reviewed the agenda with the committee and described under unfinished business we will go through Board and Commission evaluation, continue our conversation on metro district framework, Harmony Gateway Plan update with Cameron, and an Industry Cluster update as well. Josh highlighted the new time and that this is the only month we will be here in this room. Our permanent location will be in the CIC room, in April we have a 30 min. conflict where we might go from 5-7pm. This room is hard to public to participate because the building is secure and public access is more difficult. 4. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION N/A 5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Amendments: None Minutes approved as distributed 7-0-0 6. UNFINISHED BUSINESS a. Board and Commission Evaluation (Experiment) – Josh Birks &/or Ted Settle Ted described his meeting with Honore Depew who is the project leader on this. I have been invited to join the staff working group of 10-15 people. The general plan is that CSU public deliberation will convene external groups in late spring. They are aiming for a super issue meeting where this will be one of topics in a newer more engaging format. We should be meeting in next couple weeks or so. Josh also met with Honore last week and reiterated how this starts to look at the structure in a deeper way and that we hope it focuses on engagement. He was very appreciative of that feedback and has been meeting with people from across the City for this. I will also say, from other boards where I visited regarding the metro district framework, that the center for public deliberation has staff that is attending other boards and observing as a run-up to this conversation. I will work with Erin to make sure that we are on the place to visit, I don’t think that we’ve had anyone from this group join us so far. Ted had suggested that most of the discussions at the working session where around continuous improvement such as standardizations that need to be done but nothing about the structure. I suggested that they make a list of things put them on the shelf but really focus on the structure – that’s the piece where work really needs to be done. Josh highlighted there are a number of council members that are interested in this structure conversation, but they recognize there is a lot of political capital associated with this and sensitivities they need to stay mindful of. Discussion Conner: It sounds like we might have an update by late Springtime? Or do you think before then? Ted: I meet with them in a couple of weeks. I can write an update on it for our February meeting, I won’t be at that meeting. Conner: We can keep this under unfinished business for February and then decide from there where to put this based on work outputs. Josh: We will keep this on unfinished business, and you can keep us updated as this work continues. b. Metro District Evaluation Enhancement Josh discussed how the metro district schedule got shifted, we did this last Tuesday on the 7th. Council had a really good conversation with a lot of differing opinions on what to do. I think that their preference is that metro districts will be an infrequent tool, and that exceptional will always be applied, however they didn’t really get into what exception means. So, part of what we will be doing between January and May is engaging with several external and internal stakeholders to build out a basis of what has to be met before a metro district conversation can be started. My ask is that we will be starting a working group and I’d like to bring some member from this group here, this will also a mix of stakeholders affected by metro districts such as home builders, partners in climate actions, etc... I would be nice to have a representative from EAC, one would be good maybe an alternate. This group is already fairly large and could be about 25 people. If anyone is interested, please let me know so that I can connect with them. I haven’t fully fleshed out the engagement at this point, it could be either a series of work sessions or more formal meetings. We will talk with IBE to figure out the shape of these meetings. Discussion Renee: It sounds like this will be about fleshing out ideas before Council’s next work session on this in May? Josh: Yes. I’m thinking that we can present a piece that is pretty consistent but still have some moving pieces. For instance, council was thinking about doing a pre-application process for them, it’s still unclear how this will be implemented, if it will be a formal meeting, or go through a sub-committee, etc… Renee: Is there a goal to stay with a certain percentage of building, I think it’s 1.4% right now? Josh: I think it’s more a preference that we only use metro districts in rare circumstances, when broader community benefits are delivered. The issue with this, is there is a lot of subjective terminology that I would like to work with the group to better define. Ted: Would a scale like Montava be a possible scale for exceptional? Josh: Yes, and absolutely. We have some sense of our goals from our existing plans and our existing policy. One of the things that I presented to Council were key action items, the idea of tying exceptional to our existing goals. Council seemed to like this idea, I think overall, we have enough to start building. The timeframe will likely be now until mid-April. I need to have this work done by mid-April; materials are due by the end of April. There may be one additional meeting after this to finalize before Council adopts in June. Aric: I would do it; it sounds interesting Braulio: I would like to join you as well. The articles from the Denver post caught my attention and motivated me to dive deeper into the topic. In my research I came to similar conclusions as you, that it is positive to invite the stakeholders and see what the pros and cons are. As a general conceptual topic, this is a great opportunity to deliver a message. The Denver post will have an impact on the real estate market and people buying, Fort Collins is not part of the problem but not a lot of people do not see this. It would be good to be proactive and in general reinforce what Josh has said. I think the City should deliver a positive message about metro districts to the public. I would be glad to join in this. Josh: Great. How about we go with 2 designees right now and if we need more, we can explore other options. I agree The Denver Post article has drawn a lot of attention to the issue. The issue is that they drew attention to extreme outliers of abuse and implied that all of the others acted in the same way. We wrote a memo in response to this article; this will be forwarded to you both along with some other background materials. You will both be pretty well educated on this. Conner: I also ask you that you stay informed, come prepared for the meetings and bring this back to us and this process unfolds. Josh: Great. Stay tuned for meeting dates. Our first meeting will likely be the end of Jan, early February Conner: No other questions, we will move onto New Business 7. NEW BUSINESS a. Update to Harmony Gateway Plan – Cameron Gloss Cameron clarified with the commission that he is looking for a recommendation on from the commission for three different aspects of the Harmony Corridor Plan. We are just about ready to go to council, if there are any changes at this point, I will be coming back to you with a memo explaining all changes. This area is west of I-25, 1 mile north and 0.5 mile south, it is about 420 acres in total. About a third of it is what is really referenced by the standards, guidelines and policies because this is the area that has remained largely undeveloped. Cameron presented to the commission how the completion of things has changed a lot since 1991 when the original plan was formed. Timnath has grown, we had an idea to buffer between Fort Collins and Timnath but of that has changed with their economic development efforts. This area now has a commercial corridor with a Walmart, Costco and some infill commercial. Looking at the context (showed 360 photo) we have the Arapaho bend natural area to the North, and Harmony Transportation Transfer Center, and park and ride and a parcel that is owned by the state land board – they are not planning on changing uses of this property. The important element here is all the water. No matter what happens in this area the floodplain and floodway must be addressed, it is important distinction to make how much of this area is in the floodplain and floodway. P&Z had recently asked about water rights, the reality is that some of the water has been grandfathered and can stay legally such as the Arapaho bend ponds. There is also the Weitzel pit ponds, the central pond (seen here in blue) are also grandfathered. The ones shown in green have no right to be there. In order to get rid of them they will have to be augmented and someone will pay for the loss of rights, the State or the property owner don’t want that to continue as open water, which changes the complexation of things quite a bit. There is one small pond in addition to this that is certified by the state as a reservoir. This is just some of the surface water issues with this site, a lot of the water here will go away with development. There are three components in your agenda tonight that you are considering for recommendation these are: 1. Standards and guidelines – these are City regulations that apply to the development during development review. Guidelines about how this area is to develop overtime and the ultimate vision. 2. Chapter 5 – Harmony Corridor. This expresses the overall vision of the site as it gets built out. 3. Chapter 3 – Land Use changes – Harmony corridor. Minor changes to one section to the overall Harmony Corridor and what it is all about. We are still seeing this area as primary employment. Central to this plan and base zoning are what we call primary land uses, 75% of the land use designation here is primary, Hewitt Packer is a great example of this. 25% of the land will be dedicated to non-primary (retail). Over the past year we have brought together several stakeholders and worked through the gateway corridor plan. We came up with concepts of how to define the gateway, then went through concepts and tested them to come up with our final recommendations. As a reminder what I am presenting is not development plans, these are concepts to illustrate what we came up. In our concepts we proposed to change land use from 75% primary and 25% secondary to: • Reduce Intensity – Require 40% of the land area to remain natural and open • Less than 50% retail/commercial, at least 25% employment and residential • Incentive to incorporate Civic and cultural uses on the site. • Other key aspects are no Drive Thrus, big box retail – space usage cannot add up to more the 250,000 Sq. Ft. or more. You can have retail between 100,000 and 250,000, this can be translated into something like a strip mall or small grocery store. In going through the design standards, the new plan calls for more of a landscape set within a landscape. There were 10 design elements called out, such as setbacks. Community Separator idea that were worked into the last plan is that Fort Collins would be separate from the surrounding communities, much of this area is gone now. There are some elements of this separator left that could be still captured. One of the major components is that 40% of the area remain open space, elements that can contribute would be natural area buffer, floodways, larger continuous areas of landscaping such as a greenbelt. There is also an idea is to have lesser setback for buildings with a screened parking area to create a broken wall of landscape and buildings, it’s really trying to strike a balance between the two. Everyone wanted businesses to be visible but at the same time the stakeholders really wanted to work in elements of landscaping. This area is unique to Fort Collins, but this is a large commercially viable area, so we are trying to strike a balance between commerce and open space. Building height was also discussed at length. We went back and forth we kept the standards at 6 stories for commercial/mixed use and 3 stories for residential. If you go to 6 stories, then you must have structured parking. Looking at the Wyatt, the height is less of a significant issue, it was more the density. Another issue is that we put in the requirement for wireless. We opposed the existing cell phone towers that are in the County and are still in the County, we are in process of setting up tools to hold these to higher standards once they are part of the City. The last item we discussed was regional trail corridors as another important aspect of this. Important aspects such as where do the trails go, how do they connect to the rest of our next work, and things of that matter. This corridor would connect to the rest of the community. We are still in the process of working through where these connections can be so that they connect to the larger system seamlessly. That is my presentation, your packet was fairly large, and I welcome any and all questions that you may have on this. We are asking for a recommendation tonight on this, and I thank you for your time. Discussion Conner: Would the Big Box retail size restrictions translate to a strip mall? Cameron: Sure. Think of a small grocery store as matter of scale for reference. The goal is to allow for moderately sized but well broken up retail as opposed to large retail buildings. Renee: With all the green space, will this include a park or two where people would have a place for their kids or a break from work? Cameron: We didn’t get into this level of detail. How that is configured is that a park area will fall within the minimum open space standards if it has the dimensions of 10,000 Sq. Ft. or greater. In that size range, you could have a pocket park, larger park and it would count as a civic use towards the objectives. Renee: I just thought that open space or a park would be a nice contrast to the rest of the corridor. Cameron: I’m glad you brought this up, a lot of our stakeholders brought up similar issues and ideas. Much of our discussions circled around exploring if there is a way to say this is unique to Fort Collins, while keeping it a large commercially viable area. John: There is currently a nursery in the area, what is the status on that? Cameron: There is a lease agreement on that property, but I don’t know the terms of it. Renee: Would this be in the gateway? Cameron: Absolutely. Anything that would happen on the property as redevelopment would be subject to the corridor plan. Ted: Can you share the nature of the discussion about the footprint going down to Ketcher and then the extra half mile and the pros and cons with it? Cameron: Sure. At one point we had discussed expanding the gateway a half mile further to the south, there is a lot of water in this area. It’s an area that is a little unclear talking to the state about water, there are some delineated wetlands and a very complex water situation with limited development potential. Because of the complexity of the water situation and low development potential, in the end we decided to leave this area out. Much of this area is floodplain and had groundwater issues, including water from the ditch which has been very problematic. Natural Areas has considered looking at purchasing this property before but ultimately decided against it because of the water issues. Aric: What are the costs associated with this project? What is the amount of infrastructure you need to make this project happen? Cameron: It’s tremendous. We went over this with the Planning and Zoning Board. It’s roughly 25 million to do the grading, channelize the floodway and elevate enough to build. Josh: Does that also address the overtopping issue at Harmony? Cameron: Yes, it’s addressing the whole package. But you have to consider the process with the cost, it takes a vast amount of engineering, FEMA permitting, and fill to make this site work. Josh: We looked at this site about 8 years ago when Costco was looking for sites and this site was too much for us to take on because of the infrastructure and fill cost. It was close to a million cubic yards of fill that was needed plus safety and access issues with Harmony and water overtopping it. John: Who owns this land? Cameron: Largely owned by one property owner. North is owned by Natural areas and the State. It’s virtually all publicly owned north of Harmony Aric: What is the point of this? Is this happening or what are we doing here? Cameron: This is not a develop plan; it is legislative action to guide how development will happen over time here. It’s about creating a guiding document on how this will develop over time. This is one of the reasons that we just have sketches, to keep it conceptual but also to show how these regulations will drive the overall character to create an inviting gateway to Fort Collins not to drive the actual development. Josh: One of the reasons for this is the ongoing development/market pressure for this site. Part of the reason to settle the legislative action behind this plan is because we need to stay ahead of the market and be proactive with this area before we are forced to be reactive. Renee: How far out is development here? Is it twenty years, closer or farther than that? Cameron: It’s all market driven, it could be two or twenty. The thinking behind this is that we cannot control the timing, but we can control the design parameters. Josh: The property owner that has it today, acquired it about two years ago and has expressed his desire to development. However, this doesn’t directly translate to his ability to tackle the infrastructure costs. Conner: Are there guidelines around how Harmony road improvement costs will be shared? Do we have guidelines for public improvements for the Right-of-Way? Cameron: By and large it is the land that for the most part the private sector will be improving. Ted: Is it fair to interpret option E as the least alternative to development? Cameron: In our discussions, we had a citizen initiated alternate, called option E, it was very similar to option D. There are some other elements that we disagreed on as well, one of these elements is the Heron rookery, in this rookery, there was a storm that damaged a tree and we don’t know if the heron will come back. There is a buffer area for the rookery that will encroach into the gateway, and there is a recommendation of no activity in this area. We disagree with this because most of it is water and would restrict a developer from ever being able to fill. Ted: I assume all of this was in the council work session? Cameron: Yes. Braulio: To me it seems like you are preparing general guidelines for development and for a market reaction for the property to develop under these rules. Cameron: I think this is true of the Harmony corridor and all parts of the City. The community is always changing, and we need to be consistent. We need to be open minded to this, there is a possibly that we could be wrong in our plans and we might not find out until years down the road. Conditions can change and we need to stay mindful of that. Renee: 10 years from now, would we possibly have an exit south of there? Cameron: No. We have participated in a number of I-25 interchange workshops and these are all pretty well worked out as to where they will be. There are no plans to add an interchange at this location. Conner: In terms of changes, do you know what areas that you foresee things changing? Cameron: The big ones, such as the 40% that’s a big area to not have an economic return. The setback is also substantial and the setbacks have an impact. I don’t anticipate changes in the other areas so much. Conner: When are you going to finalize this for Council? Cameron: First meeting in March. We have the second reading of Montava and a number of things that will go before Council first. Josh: Historically EAC makes a motion to recommend and create a memo expressing their support. The Board could decide to give a verbal nod or create a memo that states its opinion. John: One other question, the regional trail corridor is a priority of the City, I know that’s requirement of the City for the poudre river trail. Is that separate? Cameron: Yes. Poudre river trail is outside of the gateway. In the gateway, the trails will be really connecting the Poudre River and Fossil, it’s a new connector. People love trails and you still have to find them for the City. It is about getting the Poudre trail done then connecting it. John: Will that be City funds? Cameron: Yes. There could be private partners or the City acquiring Right-of-Way. We have had situations where we partner with a development and the City pays for the oversizing and for the most part this will be a publicly funded trail. Josh: There are also a number of grants and related monies that could be sought after for funding. Conner: Our next step is to decide on a recommendation. What are we thinking as a commission? Braulio: In the short term, it is more regulation. In the long run that area has been identified as an area of attraction. We want to attract people and investment. This is the second presentation that I’ve seen from this and with all the stakeholder involvement. If this is the right direction and the commission agrees then I think it aligns with the ongoing work. I will support to write memo in support as my opinion. Renee: I agree. This primes us for a gateway to control what happens in the future. To have this green space and entrance gateway to Fort Collins is essential. I support this. Aric: I agree. I don’t see us losing anything in this. Braulio: I would look for general support to have a memo expressing our general support for the Harmony Gateway corridor plan. Conner: Motion: Recognize plan as it currently stands and submit memo expressing our support. George: Are you recommending scenario B or D? Can you clarify what scenario we are recommending? Cameron: It’s not on a specific scenario. Scenario D most closely matches the pattern of development that most closely aligns with the stakeholder work. There are a number of policies here, but the main one being the standards which is regulations that apply to proposed development Connor: Motion on table, any debate- Ted: I am impressed with Cameron’s work and the balance they struck with development and natural areas. Connor: I agree and with the City being able to drive that as opposed to the development. I am in support of this as well. John: It seems like a well-developed plan and I like the balance it strikes between development and natural areas. Commission voted: 8-0-0. Passed. Braulio volunteered to draft memo. b. Industry Cluster Update – SeonAh Kendall SeonAh Kendall overviewed the programmatic history the Fort Collins has been doing this since 2006, and how this work stemmed from looking at other communities across the country and their models. The work we did was based on Michael Porter’s strategic approach to defining competitive advantages. It is about creating a strategic approach to understanding what our brand is and how do we can create a strategic approach in defining/sharing language and defining what our competitive advantage is. We began looking at our data and findings from a regional approach, collecting data, aligning our language and defining what is our competitive advantage in the region. Our Larimer county workforce economist has been our partner in this, the idea being to take a larger approach. Project goals were focused on where are our strengths and weaknesses are. Noco ready is regional economic group with a number of municipalities from across the state. It’s not us telling everyone what to do, it’s really been us. We hired Carolynne Alexander to be project manager on Economic plans. We held multiple workshops to strategically keep everyone in line and align our data as well. We are trying to narrow down what is our competitive advantage. We looked at commuting patterns to see where we are getting our labor which included Broomfield, Adams, Welder, Larimer, and Boulder County – this where we are seeing the massing of jobs and labor. The other item is that we have a regional strategy but wanted to allow for communities to individualize for their community and characteristics while still falling into this larger regional strategy. Goals were really around economic opportunity, job creation as well as economic resilience. We are exploring resilience and diversity so that if one sector left, that our economy does not just tank. We identified several areas, 6 Targets for cluster linkages: 5/6 had a manufactured component these are primary jobs or traded meaning products are produced here but shipped/sold in other regions. Other non-primary jobs identified were identified as important but not cluster, for example Education and Knowledge creation is our largest employer but this is not primary job creation. For example, if construction away right now, we are evaluating if oil and gas went away are there translatable skills to agriculture or construction in the community. We also looked at growth for jobs in the last 5 years and how we compare with our 5- county region, Denver and the rest of the state. We also looked at location quotient, other opportunities, major employers, on the job training, and employment of gravity to shows us where clusters are growing. We found the IT clusters are really surfacing. The advantages to this are in our report. We have 53% that have the skills to meet the demands. The report is really looking at how to identify the sectors. Discussion Renee: Is the overall goal to make Northern Colorado more attractive to businesses? SeonAh: Not only on the attraction side but more about tackling challenges relating to competitive advantage. We want to be data informed first then develop our story telling behind it. Looking at Michael Porter’s U.S. cluster mapping he already identifies what clusters to be looked at in Fort Collins and Loveland. In addition to this we know what is coming up through research and development and what our entrepreneurs are saying, we want to be sure we are looking at this from a holistic standpoint not just data. Aric: What are the current clusters? SeonAh: Fort Collins today, the current clusters are water, innovation, clean energy, bio science, technology and uniquely Fort Collins. Uniquely Fort Collins quickly began to serve as a catch all because it was anything headquartered in Fort Collins and our data began to skew as more businesses began to use it unrealistically. Today the only active one is the bio science. In the past 5 years sector partnerships have been booming and creating similar clusters that are industry driven. Sector partnerships are really trying to address workforce issues, and a holistic look at work force, industry and partnerships all coming to the table in Northern Colorado. Right now, our two active ones are healthcare and manufacturing, and these are doing really well. Both sectors are nationally recognized for Larimer and Weld County Ted: Can you define what is technology? SeonAh: That is both hardware and software. We are seeing a lot of cloud-based companies, particularly with entrepreneurs, and security is a big one in Fort Collins. John: What does it mean that we just have the one cluster now? What was the transition in the cluster? SeonAh: Technology was the big one. In the past, they had been not communicating with each other, they were concerned about taking talent, however now they are more interested in sharing with each other. In terms of clean energy and water innovation they were 501(c)(3) they had their own formal board, applications for grants, funding and we found that it became more municipal driven not industry. The Sector partnership model is industry driven with municipal support. Josh: We still have concentrations of firms and employees in these spaces. There is not a strong competitive advantage that we can articulate or private interest, this is one of the challenges here with the data. There are a number of places where we can identify industry and talent, but what Michael Portor will say isthat it’s not really enough to identify as a true cluster initiative. Another item about technology here is that it was fairly mature, it’s changed significantly over time and now they are wanting to talk, this could be a natural eb and flow in the community and industry. Our first set of clusters were adopted more from a place where we would like to see our industry grown than where we actually had the advantage or the talent. SeonAh: Now we are utilizing that data to really see where start-up firms are really driving the space and what the translation to other spaces is, for example we are seeing technology translate into human health that is a competitive advantage. Braulio: I got a little confused on which are the elements you are using to identify cluster SeonAh: I will show you John: What is the location quotiant? SeonAh: That is how we compare to the rest of the world. We have in essence a score above the rest of the state which translates to how we compare to the rest of the state. Josh: The average is 1, if its larger than 1 than you have a higher concentration. In the past we looked at location quotient alone but doing that we’re not looking at the numbers in sectors or the number of the sales or the other factors that go into sector growth. There are other ways to identify concentrations where categories are not actually clusters. SeonAh: We looked at GDP, sub clusters within each of these categories. Location quotient for computers is 4.98 in Northern CO, but then we see that software publishers is 1.9 so we know that our competitive advantage is really in computers, processing lab and electric. You can then get this to determine where your community sits with Fort Collins and where Fort Collins sweet spot is. Renee: Does Northern CO start with Longmont north? Does it include Boulder? Boulder is so different SeonAh: It depends on who you ask. Looking at manufacturers, Longmont initially identified with Denver but then saw their competitive advantage is northern Colorado. Josh: I think that they are trying to keep a foot in both Denver and northern Colorado. The reality is that the layer identified depends on who you are speaking with and how they relate to it. I think it’s OK to have a little bit gray here, when we look at data we often look at Larimer and Weld county. SeonAh: And you see a lot of labor shed cross over between Larimer and Weld, particularly with commuting patterns. You see a lot of crossover and amorphous definitions of what each region is. We took a statistical analysis to identify our labor shed to identify our competitive advantages. When we looked at IT, there are a number of sub-categories under this sector. We saw that in Greeley there are a lot of startups, showing Greeley this data was key for them. The education and knowledge sector that we are seeing is really a map that shows you how everything is really tying together. Manufacturing is starting to touch all of these. We have three strategies, communication success for clusters, fostering conditions for growth (including people) and aligning education, and actively encouraging growth in sectors. The strategies are high level but there’s 20-35 different approaches that each community can pick where they see themselves adding values or where they see their competitive advantage. These are high level but are broken down into sub clusters that each of these can then fall into. George: Can you break down food processing? SeonAh: This is meat processing, packaging, tea, wineries, glass containers, etc… We are really looking at it in those sub categories but to keep it in the same language these are all grouped under food processing. In talking about clusters it’s about making sure we are all talking the same language. Josh: Again, we used Michael Portor’s way of looking, analyzing and classifying this to the North American classification system, which groups industries by the true vertical integration based on 6-digit codes. The reason we did that was when we thought about creating our own but it’s not transferrable to other communities. We wanted to do this so that we could better compare our growth, talent, industry growth to other communities so that we can articulate what we have and how we compare to our competitive locations. Prior to doing this regionally, each municipality had their own clusters that didn’t match with other municipalities, now we are all talking the same language. SeonAh: The biggest portion of this was making sure we had buy-in from stakeholders in this space form the region. This is why we identified, what communities are and are not our competitive advantage and what industries we have a competitive advantage in such as biomedical sciences and medical devises especially translational medicine. Next steps for us are to look at these strategies, meeting with Noco ready to talk about the report and who is going to do what in this area as well as re-evaluating our cluster funding so that we can continue to support our sector partnerships. Denny: I read Michael Portor’s papers, but I think the greatest weakness that there is no scale in his analysis or critical mass factor. His stuff can work well in larger metro areas, but there is dispute his approach might not be the best in smaller municipal spaces. SeonAh: I would say that our scale here would be in the skills piece. Clusters and sectors is about talent and people, this an opportunity to scale to be able to look and do that comparison. We see Detroit and Salt Lake City doing this right now, we see clusters and transferable skills so that they are ready for the next things, it’s a matter of are your people ready – that’s where the competitive advantage comes from here. Ted: What does this mean to Fort Collins? For example, Bio Science? SeonAh: I sit on the Noco bio science cluster and they have had business prospects and it’s really about connecting them to the resources to make sure they have all the information in front of them when they make these decisions. It’s not about us providing the funds. Josh: Couple of years ago the City hired program evaluation people to be able to evaluate if programs are delivering on their outcomes, EHO had volunteered to be one of these to be evaluated. It really stressed, will it cause a theory of change? How will this guide your work? What is that you want to be different having completed this program and how will you know it’s different. One of the things Noco ready has done is to provide great data, we need to digest it and determine what it is we are trying to change and to bring those two things together to do a set of actions to measure the success of these efforts. In the end we will also have a clear way to measure the success of these efforts. Based off of today’s high level overview, let my group digest the theory of change instead of actions, then come back for you to evaluate. Renee: Is the objective to attract businesses to the sectors or clusters? Josh: Fort Collins wants to focus on helping the businesses that are here to succeed, most of the jobs in the community usually come from within the community. Will businesses likely be attracted from our work? Absolutely, but we won’t spend a lot of time trying to attract businesses. Noco ready came together out of interest in attracting businesses but it’s the idea of pooling resources, this model will likely have some attraction component to it but not individuals (not funded by city). The other portion is making sure we have good customer service for business so that we can connect them to resources in the best way possible. SeonAh: It’s also helping the businesses tell the story for what they are trying to attract, to our communities. Braulio: The only element that is a really good picture of businesses in our community. In my concept of cluster, it should be something that is really hard to take away and a cluster I don’t know if we should rely on a cluster based on labor because other City’s can take that away, it’s not a sustainable practice. Josh: There needs to be a non-replicable unique portion to it. Braulio: Exactly. That is why the beer industry took off here, there is an element that you cannot take away. I would focus on measuring things that are going to stay regardless SeonAh: I think the in the tech space a lot of retired HP and IT folks have developed and funded other tech programs in the City, they have been sharing industry insights in more or less a mentorship fashion. It’s hard figuring out how to tell that story, to attract other businesses and sector growth. Braulio: I think about high speed internet, if you invest in it you will create an impact in other sectors. Josh: Broadcom has been very successful and similar to this, a lot of the reason they did that is because the cost of power was so low. That is a competitive advantage that is hard to replicate. One of the things we’ve talked about is how to continue to talk about cheap power pre crisis to keep the prices low. Conner: Thank you. Look forward to the report and making a recommendation at that point. 8. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS 9. OTHER BUSINESS George: Did we vote on the minutes? I was wanted to abstain. Conner: We approved them unanimous at the start of the meeting. Unless you would like reopen it and vote on them? Josh: Historically, we have approved them at the start of the meeting and discussed any changes them but we can change this practice. George: I think they’re OK as they are approved. 10. ADJOURNMENT Connor: 6:07pm UPCOMING TOPICS February:  Open Slot  Open Slot March:  Open Slot  Open Slot April:  Open Slot  Open Slot Unscheduled:  Affordable Housing Priorities and Affordable Housing Strategic Plan (March Work session)  Destination Master Plan Update 1/15/2019 – Minutes