Economic Development Authority Meeting   4/21/2020

I'm sorry.

So we just need you to say that you're here and give us a general idea of where you're located.

Albemarle County or Earlysville or... Yeah, I'm here and I'm in Albemarle County.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

I'm here.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Richie.

And I want to read a resolution at this point that we will need to vote on.

This resolution is adopting procedures for public meetings under Section 6 of Albemarle County's ordinance to ensure

the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

Whereas the press in the United States of America, the governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the county executive of Albemarle County have all declared Albemarle County to be in a state of emergency because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And whereas the catastrophic nature of the emergency, highly contagious and potentially fatal viral pandemic makes it unsafe to assemble a quorum in a single location,

and whereas the Board of Supervisors of the County of Albemarle, Virginia adopted an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

On April 15, 2020, we're in it recognize the Economic Development Authority for the County of Albemarle, Virginia to provide essential public services and functions and authorize this authority to conduct its meetings and business according to Section 6 of the ordinance.

and whereas the authority finds it in the public, it's in the public's and county's best interest for the authority to continue to conduct its governmental functions and to hold public meetings in accordance with section six of the ordinance.

Now therefore be it resolved that the board of directors of the Economic Development Authority of Albemarle County, Virginia hereby approves the conduct of its meetings through real-time electronic means consistent with section six of the ordinance

and Article 6 of the authorities bylaws.

I move that the authority adopts this resolution authorizing the authority to hold meetings through real-time electronic means consistent with Section 6 of the county's April 15, 2020 ordinance described herein in Article 6 of the authorities bylaws.

I, W. Rod Gentry, do hereby certify

that the foregoing writing in this resolution duly adopted by the Economic Development Authority of Albemarle County, and we haven't voted yet, as recorded below as held on a meeting on 21 April, 2020.

You seconded.

Mr. Shreve.

Okay.

Any discussion?

All right, there being no discussion, we'll do a roll call vote.

Mr. Gentry?

Aye.

Mr. Atkinson?

Aye.

Has Mr. Munson arrived?

Not yet.

Mr. Long?

Aye.

Mr. Mellen?

Oh, he's absent.

Mr. Ray?

Mr. Ray?

Let me go back to the agenda here.

OK. And as always, the first order of business is approval of our meeting, our minutes from our meeting in January.

Has everybody had the opportunity to review them?

Are there any changes or additions?

OK.

Opposed?

OK. And first up is a discussion about the microloan program

which Roger will explain to us.

This is, I'm assuming, on the heels of the Board of Supervisors discussion about the same thing.

Thank you, Chairman and Directors.

Yes, sir, that is correct.

J.T., you should be sharing the screen with you all.

I hope you all can see what was presented to the Board of Supervisors on April the 15th.

It is a business recovery fund.

I'd like to invite Mr. Irby to come sit in as a panelist, and he may have some comments at the conclusion of this as a member of the Community Investment Collaboratives Board.

J.T., if you would go ahead to the next slide.

I'm gonna spend just a minute talking to you about Project Enable, move into business continuity strategy,

I'll explain how the microloan fits into our broader strategy and then what the next steps will be.

As you are keenly aware, when the Economic Development Department started creating a strategic plan, we took the following steps.

We assessed Albemarle County as a whole, meaning our strengths and our weaknesses, our opportunities, our threats.

We assessed existing business support, meaning who was already providing support to Albemarle County businesses like the SBA, the SBDC, SCORE, et cetera.

We did an archive review where we looked at comprehensive plans, other existing documents that had already been created.

We engaged the community.

And after doing all those activities, we created a customized plan to support existing primary businesses

specifically businesses that produce a good or service here locally and primarily sell those goods and services outside of our metropolitan statistical area.

J.T.

next slide please.

So economic development staff has been focused on providing services to those particular organizations that didn't already have support from other partners.

and in doing so we have continued our strategic initiatives to focus on business retention and expansion for primary businesses, providing customized solutions to these primary businesses, promoting public-private partnerships for the purpose of furthering the public good, increasing our commercial tax base and creating a built environment as outlined in the comprehensive plan.

We focused on innovation and entrepreneurship to take advantage of our existing intellectual capital

and site readiness to make sure that all the businesses that are already located here have plenty of space to grow.

We're standing before you today saying that we need to pivot our strategy as a result of the pandemic.

And we need to focus for a while on the continuity of all businesses.

Our small businesses, which were thriving when we wrote this plan two years ago, are struggling today.

So we're coming before you and sharing what our interim strategy is to help all businesses in Albemarle County.

We wrote a business continuity strategy for now until the foreseeable future.

Objective one is to look at the cost side of businesses, which means we're going to contemplate reducing, suspending, deferring or changing business taxes and fees, which includes things like filing deadlines, payment deadlines, waiver of penalties and the like.

This work is being conducted by our finance department

Roger, may I ask a question?

Sure.

I don't know if it's individuals and businesses.

I do know it is for businesses, Rod.

And I will also say that

I think all items are on the table, Rod.

I have a question about that too.

I don't know, David.

I can speak to it a couple of years ago when we measured it.

It was like 84-16 for property and 16, but honestly we have not done that assessment in the last couple of years.

In addition to looking at all the options as it relates to reducing, suspending, or deferring or changing expenses for businesses, the county has hired a consultant

An expert, if you will, to study the federal stimulus package and determine if there's ways that our county can leverage that for the benefit of existing businesses.

The second objective of this business continuity strategy

is simply to increase the access to capital for our existing businesses.

We're doing that through connecting business directly to grants, loans, and other resources that are available from the federal government, state government, locally, as well as through private philanthropic endeavors.

We've created a business resource guide, which we've shared through the county's communication department,

and it includes all the information on how to access these particular resources.

I want to pause right here and spend just a minute on the bullet that you see highlighted.

This is how the microloan program fits into the broader strategy.

We've requested permission from the board to provide $200,000 to the Economic Development Authority.

and then we're asking you all to forward this $200,000 for the Community Investment Collaborative to administer a small business microloan program that's focused on a couple of things.

One is recapitalization in layman's terms.

I would like for our county to help these small businesses put, restock their shelves, perhaps make payroll for a few months before they are being asked to repay these loans.

It also has a community focus, meaning a certain portion of these phones would provide guidance where about 20% would be set aside for nonprofits.

Another 20% would be set aside for key service or businesses in our rural community that will be identified through this process.

That could include things like a small convenience store,

maybe the only rural daycare that's open.

We've learned that if these particular businesses don't survive entire large geographic areas in our economy, particularly in our rural areas, we'll have a difficult time surviving.

We continue to meet with the city, the CACVB, CVPED, the Chamber, and UVA.

I'll speak more to a project you may have heard about

Today, it's called Project Rebound that will follow under other news matters, but I'm pleased to report that things are moving forward in that regard.

There's also been a joint educational webinar program that's being administered for small businesses.

This is free for them to participate.

It includes helping them plan through the pandemic and other issues that are associated with the pandemic.

particular webinars that the city and county businesses are invited to participate in.

And then the third objective, if you will, J.T., is really just to effectively communicate all this particular information to our business community.

It's been a difficult task to be candid.

We don't have existing contact information for all businesses.

We're having to rely on our

our CAPE department to help us do this and they've done an excellent job but still we're not certain we're reaching all parties we're trying to improve ways to do that we're going to do things like create educational videos create the economic development offices serving as a single point of contact for businesses and we're promoting other EDO partners initiatives so that's kind of how our overall business continuity strategy is aligned

for the next few months, if you will.

We don't know when it starts and stops.

It will continue to be an iterative process.

But the microloan, as you'll see, is a healthy portion of that particular strategy.

J.T., if you go to the next slide.

And the reason it being is our federal government has provided a significant response of over $350 billion in

loans through the CARES Act for small businesses.

You've probably read that those funds have already been all used up.

Additionally, we've learned that there's been some gaps in the process.

Lending institutions are setting their own standards for who they will lend to and in what order.

Many banks have started serving their existing clients first, those existing clients that already borrowed from the bank.

And then secondly, they would move to those clients that had an account

before they would open it up for other businesses.

And that particular triage has resulted in gaps in small businesses being able to access some of these carriers' funds.

There's been an overwhelming demand.

As I mentioned, the funds were already expended.

And our head economic development officer for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, or the Commonwealth, has stated that his belief of

This being about one third the amount of total funding necessary to meet the demand.

This particular project was focused on short term employee retention.

We're looking at both survival of key businesses as well as recapitalization.

So a slightly nuanced, different mission.

And we do expect further action from the federal government, but we don't know what details will be included in that further action.

The point being here is our local economic development office feels it's imperative that we take independent action to help our businesses be successful.

So what does this actually mean for us as a economic development office?

It means that we have $1.85 million remaining in our economic development fund that was earmarked to complete all the activities listed in Project Enable.

and by transferring $200,000 out of our fund to you all and hopefully from you all to the CIC, it will reduce our funding available for site readiness.

But it will fill gaps in some small businesses access to capital in hopes of restoring business activity and providing essential services for those at risk communities.

I will also mention that this is a joint collaboration with the

City of Charlottesville's Economic Development Authority.

You may have read some three weeks ago that the Economic Development Authority held a emergency meeting and they reallocated funding to a program called BRACE.

They also set aside $100,000 in funding to seed this particular microloan program.

It is our thought and hope that once this money reaches the Community Investment Collaborative,

that the CIC will go forward and seek other philanthropic organizations to also provide funding in this particular loan fund, meaning we hope this seeds a much larger and broader program that involves our community, philanthropic organizations and the like, leveraging both the city and the county's funds for a bigger impact.

We're recommending that

Yes, thank you Roger.

No, I don't have any comments beyond just really saying that we are

We remain grateful to partner with Albemarle County on this.

We've done some partnerships in the past on similar measures and this just speaking as the treasurer of CIC and someone who's worked frequently with Latino businesses and others, you know, small businesses in our area that this will be very meaningful to them.

I know a lot of individual businesses that had a difficult time accessing capital through the federal government, PPP loans and otherwise, and this will be a great benefit.

and help to them.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Roger, this is Diantha.

That's correct.

Thank you for pointing that out, Supervisor McKeel.

That is correct.

Thank you for asking that and reminding me of those details.

There will be a scoring matrix.

Assuming this Economic Development Authority moves the funding over, there will be a scoring matrix.

Applications would begin being accepted on April 24.

We begin scoring those applications immediately upon receipt.

No business has provided any loans until after May 18.

The deadline at that time, hopefully all applicants will be scored and then those scoring behind us will be a lot of loan opportunities first.

I'll also mention while I'm on that subject that the supervisors also asked about who would be eligible and what was eligible.

I will mention that it's for local existing small businesses so large chains from outside the area would not be eligible for this.

I apologize, I am unmuted now.

I was just saying that there will be two buckets at CIC, one for the city, one for the county, and a well-defined approval process, which sounds great.

Go ahead, David.

In the resolution, it says that the funds will be maintained in the revolving loan fund.

It doesn't say CIC revolving loan fund, but I'm assuming that is the case.

So this will capitalize their loan fund

Yes sir, that is correct.

Thank you for pointing that out.

And I have a second related question.

No, they would not fall under the same criteria.

And for those, I'm going to try to guesstimate part of what you said, Director Shreve, because you were breaking up a little bit.

But this would be a brand new, mutually exclusive program that would have a different criteria from the existing program that you previously approved as an economic development authority.

We don't have all the details of the scoring matrix worked out today.

That's something we're working with both the CIC and the city on creating.

All right.

We'll do that.

And just to point out, we're reading the resolutions because this is the first electronic meeting and we're doing it for the benefit of all the attendees.

So the resolution reads, resolution to provide grant to the Community Investment Collaborative to support and assist businesses impacted by COVID-19 emergency, whereas the Economic Development Authority of Panama County, Virginia,

has supported the Community Investment Collaborative in its mission to support entrepreneurial business growth and development through education and microloans.

And whereas the disaster and state of emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has already impacted local businesses dramatically, it is likely to have long-term adverse implications for Albemarle County's economy.

and whereas the authority finds the CIC's mission and operations are well established and appropriately situated to advance and promote economic recovery in Monroe County,

in the surrounding localities and finds it is in the best interest of the county for the SCIC to manage a business recovery fund wherein it will offer, make, and administer microloans to restore business activity, employment, and critical community services in rural areas close to pre-pandemic levels as is practical, subject to the program's terms and conditions.

and whereas on April 15, 2020, the Board of Supervisors of the County of Albemarle, Virginia appropriated $200,000 from its Economic Development Fund to be disbursed to the authority for the purpose of granting such funds to the CDC to be used in the Business Recovery Fund microloan program established in response to the COVID-19 emergency.

Now, therefore, it resolved that the board of directors of this authority hereby grants condition upon receipt from the County of Albemarle $200,000 to the CIC to be used in its business recovery fund microloan program to assist to describe Albemarle County businesses

in the recovery from the COVID-19 emergency and authorizes its chair, W. Rod Gentry, to execute all documents necessary to effect such practice.

and there's a motion attached to that and it's already the motion and then if someone wants to make it and then another second, they can do that.

So the motion reads, I move that this authority adopt this resolution approving the grant of $200,000 subject to the receipt of such appropriation from the county to the Community Investment Collaborative to be used for its business recovery fund microloan program.

OK. All right.

Roll call.

Mr. Shreve.

Aye.

Mr. Atkinson.

Aye.

I should probably abstain since I represent the CIC.

That sounds fair.

Mr. Mellen?

I keep forgetting.

I'm sorry.

Mr. Ray?

Did you hear me?

Thank you.

And Mr. Shreve.

Aye.

All right.

OK.

Excellent.

And now we have the next item on our agenda is the Albemarle Business Campus.

And I'm going to ask Mr. Kyle Redinger, who has joined us, to

We'll talk about that in a moment, but Roger, do you want to lead off just kind of as an introduction to this?

I'll be happy to introduce Kyle.

Kyle comes to us as a UVA graduate and a Garden School of Business graduate.

He is well considered a subject matter expert in the startup and investment world.

He's a serial co-founder.

And I think just as importantly, I mentioned that we hired a third party private investigator to do a background investigation on Kyle and his partners and his LLC.

And he passed all of those with flying colors.

So he is deemed officially a good partner for the county.

Hello, everyone.

And I mentioned to Roger this is not Florida, so we'll probably have a lot more flying color passes than his prior employment area.

Let me try to share my screen here.

Great, so I'm just going to deliver the same presentation that I delivered to the board on Wednesday of last week and I think more importantly I'm here to answer any specific or additional questions any of y'all may have.

So before I begin, I just really wanted to thank Roger and J.T.

and Don for working with me on this project.

When I first approached Roger and J.T.

about this, oh, gosh, I don't know, about eight or nine months ago, you know, they were very important to to forming sort of what Albemarle Business Campus has become today.

And, you know, we've been through sort of a lengthy

Rezoning process with a lot of changes along the way and they've been instrumental I think in defining our scope a lot more specifically about what this project is.

Sorry about that.

Don represented us in our negotiation and agreement with Admiral County Economic Development.

So really the key, I think, parts of what we're talking about with the performance agreement today are economic development in a designated opportunity zone.

and how we contribute positively to the county.

And J.T.

and Roger will go into a lot more details about the site.

So I'm not going to do that, but happy to answer questions.

Quick background on our progress.

We've been working virtually for the last couple of weeks without, I think, any hiccups.

In fact, I've heard a lot of folks say who work with the county that the county has been a little bit more efficient.

Then they had pre-COVID, I think that the lack of meetings has encouraged more work to get done.

So take that with a grain of salt.

We've also hired our full design team and I don't have full renderings to share with you today.

but we're planning on the first week in May delivering I think a pretty representative architectural rendering of the whole site.

Bruce Wardell who has a local architecture firm and a former ARB member will be leading all of our design efforts and he'll be designing the two retail buildings and the main Class A office space that will be the most prominent component of the development.

And also I think important for everyone in this room is we've already had businesses asking about availability of spaces.

Local food hub and the light manufacturing business have also asked us when is stuff going to be available.

Just a quick teaser.

I think this is really more geared towards the planning staff.

We've had to balance a lot of different factors on this site.

Building a business campus for a Class A tenant conflicts with some things that the ARB might require an entrance corridor and those things conflict with

what a planning staff member might be looking forward to in a rezoning approval.

So we've tried to design a site, I think, that fits really well into the natural landscape of Fifth Street and makes, I think, a nice visual sort of appeal to what will be a very important intersection down the road.

And just to caveat, you know, these images are not, you know, we're not going to have all white buildings with no architectural elements.

This is just to give an indication of the massing and kind of how we've

Integrated Greenspace, and to make this sort of a pedestrian-friendly campus.

But the key points of my brief presentation today are what is your sort of return on investment in this agreement?

And the first and most important thing, and we're able, with Roger and J.T.

's assistance and all of economic development, to co-market

and opportunity zone designated space.

I think this will be highly desirable for businesses that intend to locate in that space for at least 10 years.

It will attract investment in better and more aggressive terms than other places in the county.

in a minute.

Also, just in terms of immediate returns to the county, just our building permit fees and application fees alone will be well over $100,000.

There's a lot of structures on here, a lot of stuff that we need to pay for the county to review.

When the site's fully built out, we estimate conservatively there'll be $325,000 in annual

property taxes that will go back to the county.

And most of these impacts are relatively low to our school system, which has expressed some concerns about having too much residential in that area.

And finally, and I think most importantly, if you read through the economic impact analysis of the Willow Tree project, it's very likely that we can generate at least 10 million in positive economic benefit to the county by bringing in a similar tenant.

So we're sort of

doing everything we can in the design phase, in the planning phase to design a campus that's very attractive for another technology or biotech or pharma or something that is a qualified business, but also someone that sees themselves as more fitting to sort of a modern, appealing campus design.

Some other maybe intangibles or indirect benefits that are available today or with the successful rezoning of this project.

You know, doing entitlements for this project and we have three separate architecture firms.

Two of those are going to be local.

We have engineering firms, consulting companies, contractors, surveyors.

I mean, the list, communications firms, the list goes on and on.

I mean, we're spending millions of dollars just in entitlements on local firms alone.

and I think staying busy through what might be a recession will be very important for a lot of these who are small businesses and have to put food on the table.

So I'm excited to pursue that in a downturn.

I also think that doing this in a potentially recessionary environment will allow us to stay competitive in the region.

I mean, as many of you know, we are very short or have essentially zero vacancy in Class A office.

And if we're able to continue through this process virtually, I think we'll come out of this when office demand jumps back up with a very ready and able site that will be very friendly to the types of tenants the county wants to attract.

I also think this project will be very complimentary to what's on 5th Street already.

As many of you know, there's a big investment in the county in Southwood.

We think we can provide jobs and other business opportunities to Southwood residents and vice versa.

So developing out 5th Street with us as a key part of that I think will be very beneficial to the county.

And sort of next steps, if you approve this agreement today, this performance agreement will be our first proffer.

There's another dozen or so key terms in the proffer agreement that will be important for staff to review.

We plan to have a community meeting with our design updates either end of this month or early May.

I believe that

I haven't heard when our planning commission meeting is yet, but I believe it will be in sometime around the middle of May.

Obviously, we'll continue to work with economic development and staff and sort of flesh out any challenges we have with zoning requirements and things like that.

And I think most excitingly, and as soon as Bruce Wardell and his team gets me something visual to share with other people, I will start marketing his site to potential tenants.

I mean, it's never too early to start that conversation.

My contractor's already telling me they've got some ideas of who to talk to.

The commercial real estate brokers are excited to get started.

So we're excited to get started on attracting tenants to the site.

So that's all I had.

And I think J.T.

's and Roger's presentation goes into a little bit more detail about the site, and I'll let them

Take it from here.

Kyle, thank you.

Yeah.

So J.T.

has pulled up the site.

Thank you for that, J.T.

On the right hand side, you'll see two parcels or actually more than two parcels outlined in yellow.

I wanted to first point out we're talking about a specific location down Fifth Street directly across the street from the county office building on Fifth Street.

We'll be talking about this project in totality, but you'll see there are two different parcels that are adjacent to one another.

We're actually talking about, primarily talking about the site on the western side or to your right in terms of what we're focusing on today.

So I know that you're familiar with these particular projects, but I think it's important that we point out that as part of our economic development strategic plan, we decided that we as a county would focus on public-private partnership that furthers the public good or does a societal good.

And here before you are some examples of that.

Habitat for Humanity was a P3

increased affordable housing.

On your right, top right hand corner, you see Barnes Lumber, which you're very familiar with.

It includes public elements such as a street grid, a public gathering space, as well as grows the commercial tax base.

In the bottom left hand corner, you'll notice the Willa Tree symbol.

This also included the adaptive reuse of an existing building, Willa Mills,

It includes public amenities to include walking trails, bridges across the Moore's Creek, other sorts of amenities.

And probably the most important economic development function is it retains an existing business here who has a high paying career ladder jobs.

And in the bottom right hand corner, you'll see another P3, which is not in terms of a performance agreement the way we normally think of it, but it was a public private partnership that informed our future planning initiatives on how to deal with

autonomous vehicles and the built environment.

And additionally, it helped an existing business create traction in our community with investors.

So public-private partnerships can take many forms.

But as a general rule, we want them all to include societal benefits as part of that particular project.

So if you would, J.T., go to the next slide.

What's the societal good for this particular public-private partnership?

We have a lack of diversity of product for primary businesses in our community.

and many times product is defined differently but here we're meaning it in terms of different types of projects for primary or excuse me real estate or opportunities for primary businesses such as rail serve sites or wet lab space or industrially zoned space.

In this particular situation we're talking about adding to the diversity of product a class A office space or a very

You know, in layman's terms, a very high grade of office that is attractive to a higher end client.

If you're not aware, the county owns a software program called CoStar and CoStar allows us to run different types of queries to determine what's going on in commercial space in our community.

And when we first listed this particular project, we ran a costar report and found that Class A office space had a vacancy rate of 1%, meaning that 99% of Class A office space in Albemarle County was filled, and our county had nowhere for existing businesses to grow, expand, or even new businesses to start.

So what we're trying to do is solve for this particular problem through this particular project.

Kyle mentioned that he's going to set aside some Class A office space and we have set that aside for a primary business and J.T.

will go into details about that in a minute.

And as I mentioned before, not only did Kyle pass a background check in terms of his good standing in the community, he's also a willing and experienced partner who has property in the Opportunity Zone that we feel is a great opportunity for our county to take advantage of.

All right, thanks Roger.

Over the next five or six slides, I'm gonna try to take us through some site history, the specific terms of the partnership, and then just a few illustrations.

I'll try not to be too duplicative of everything that you've already heard.

So just starting with some of the site history, I think it's important to note that there are existing approvals on this site for residential development.

that includes both single family dwellings as well as townhouses.

The developer pursued that approval in early 2018 and those remain valid.

And so although he's currently in the rezoning process, that is certainly a possibility for this property as we consider the rezoning going forward.

The first rezoning that the developer submitted was called Royal Firm and that was mixed use.

It had some elements of residential and non-residential components, but ultimately the Planning Commission recommended denial of this application primarily based on the planned unit development zoning that was requested.

and so late last year the developer went to the board and requested to go back to the planning commission and work on a revised layout and that was the first time that the public heard about Albemarle Business Campus.

The rezoning was revised to include a lot more non-residential space and that provided a good opportunity for a public-private partnership so

After Christmas in mid-February, the Planning Commission got to do a work session with the developer to look at that revised layout as Albemarle Business Campus.

The applicant got feedback from both community development staff

and the Planning Commission and resubmitted their rezoning application in mid-March.

And as Kyle laid out, they'll be going back to the community with that updated layout, presumably the 5th and Avon Community Advisory Committee.

And then there'll be a minimum of one public hearing with the Planning Commission and one public hearing with the Board of Supervisors.

To touch on some of the highlights of the specific terms of the partnership, Roger and Kyle both talked about the value of Class A office space.

Our partnership outlines that the developer will reserve 25,000 square feet for a primary business for up to five years.

And there are some other public elements that are included that we'll look at in just a second.

That includes some enhanced connectivity to the site.

This particular property is situated adjacent to many residential areas and as the master plan calls for accessibility, walkability, bikeability is very important and so there's some enhanced connectivity that's included in our partnership.

as well as elements related to transportation.

There's an enhanced bus shelter adjacent to 5th Street and Old Lynchburg Road.

There's also a space for dynamic transportation pickup included within the site itself that's both central to the site and on a raised pedestrian crossing so it allows for accessible and safe access to that transportation pickup.

On the county side, what we're bringing to the table is a tax grant in the amount of $100,000 through a synthetic TIF arrangement and to talk a little bit about what that is, the developer will pay their taxes as the site develops

We will subtract the existing taxes on the site from that additional incremental taxes that are being paid

Those will go to the economic development authority if this partnership is approved and the authority will then return those incremental taxes to the developer until $100,000 is reached.

And so that will help cover the costs that the developer is incurring to create this marketable space.

Typically, a developer wouldn't take

Speculative, office space entirely through the development process until a tenant was in hand.

So he's doing that on our behalf so that we have a place to market and we'll be returning this tax grant for that as well as some of the other public elements.

We'll be helping to promote this location in an opportunity zone.

Through the state we have access to different websites that promote opportunity zones across the state and so we'll be featuring this property in Albemarle County.

We'll be supporting the request for expedited review in community development.

and then economic development also has a relationship with retail strategies which is a consultant out of Alabama and this site does have some retail space so we'll include that in the retail strategies marketing materials and that's in addition to this location for primary business.

To look more specifically at the site, the last page of the development agreement is the project exhibit and that's what you see here.

So these arrows point to that office space that's envisioned for the site and that's where the

The 25,000 square feet would be reserved.

That could be in either the building that's closer to 5th Street extended or the building closer to the rear of the site.

Some of the other public elements that you might notice here, there's the dog park in the back of the site and there's the meandering trail that goes from the multi-use path along 5th Street and it cuts through the middle of the site, goes back to that dog park,

To highlight some of the enhanced connectivity, I think this slide really does a good job of showing all the different ways that pedestrians will be able to move in and out of the site.

I mentioned that raised pedestrian crossing.

This crosses the middle of the private street that cuts across the middle of the site and again that would just provide a safe place for transportation access as well as getting to all the different elements.

There will also be bike racks adjacent to the transit stop as well as all of the buildings within the site.

The bat-shaped ones are some of the creative ones you see in Austin, Texas, but it could be as simple as some of the other illustrations here.

Because of all the residential areas that are adjacent, we thought the enhanced bus shelter was an important element.

So this shows that there will be seating area, an area that's covered.

There'll be lighting associated with this.

So any of the residents that would be coming over here to catch transportation will have a safe and convenient place to wait.

Before taking questions, I just want to quickly mention the opportunity cost.

Roger mentioned in his microloan presentation about the funds that are devoted to Project ENABLE and site readiness being one of the important goals that we were working on before the pandemic.

I think it's important to note that it would cost the county no less than seven million dollars to pursue an equivalent space.

You know, Roger and Kyle have talked about this.

I know Jennifer and I could also talk about the businesses that are continuing to grow in the county and are looking for a place to locate and we feel very positive about the

Questions?

Excellent presentation.

Kyle and J.T.

and Roger, I mean, this is a project we've discussed at some length in prior meetings, so it's good to see all of this come full circle.

You guys have done a great job with this.

If there are no questions, I have a resolution to read, which we will then respond to.

Two of the objectives listed on one of the screens

Welcome to this class A office space had to do with the low vacancy rate and then the other one was a note about businesses unable to afford to stay in the county.

So the implication with that one is that

This would contribute to affordability in some way of office space.

I'll address that one and if Kyle and J.T.

want to add anything that would be fine.

I will say that there are

Several large projects in the pipeline in the city to create Class A office space.

The cost per square foot for those particular locations extend into the high 30s and even in some cases over $40 a square foot.

Those are not affordable for a lot of businesses in our community.

This particular project, although it's Class A office space and still expensive, would theoretically be less costly than those I just mentioned.

Secondly, Director Shreve, we mentioned this in passing about the

Location being an opportunity zone.

It allows for a business to locate in this particular area and benefit from those federal tax advantages, which also reduces the overall cost.

Their cost of capital, their cost of investment could also be reduced because they will now have access to opportunity zone funding from outside investors who wanna shield additional tax expenses

and put those funds to use in this particular opportunity zone.

So it's not only a lower cost alternative than what you would find in some of the main street of the city.

It also is in the opportunity zone, which reduces the cost of capital for them on the other side as well.

Any other questions?

All right.

Once again, resolution approving an agreement between the Albemarle County Economic Development Authority

the County of Albemarle and Fifth Street Forest, LLC.

Whereas the Board of Directors of the Economic Development Authority of the County of Albemarle, Virginia finds that it is in the best interest of the county and the authority to enter into a development agreement with the County of Albemarle, Virginia and Fifth Street Forest, LLC, subject to the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors approval

of ZMA-2019-00003 elements of Albemarle County Business Campus that outlines Fifth Street Forest LLC's provision of various elements of development in exchange for its receipt of synthetic tax increment financing grants from the authority as provided by the county and whereas the County Board of Supervisors

approved the development agreement on April 15, 2020, subject to the conditions precedent contained herein.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the board of directors of the Economic Development Authority of Albemarle County, Virginia, hereby approves the attached development agreement referenced above, subject to the board's approval of ZMA-2019-00003 Albemarle Business Campus,

and authorizes the chair to execute the agreement subject to its approval as to substance and form by the county attorney.

There's a motion following this.

I move that the EDA adopts this resolution approving the attached development agreement between the EDA, Albemarle County, and Fifth Street Forest LLC and authorize the chair to execute the agreement

on the EDA's behalf once the agreement has been approved as to form and substance by the county attorney.

OK, is there any further discussion?

All right, so we'll do a roll call vote on the motions.

Mr. Gentry.

Aye.

Mr. Atkinson.

Aye.

Mr. Munson.

Mr. Munson.

Mr. Long has recused himself.

Mr. Mellen is absent.

Mr. Ray.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

W. Rod Gentry do hereby certify that the foregoing writing in this resolution duly adopted by the Economic Development Authority of Amarillo County, Virginia by a vote of by unanimous vote as recorded below at a meeting held on April 21st, 2020.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Kyle, thank you.

And we look forward to getting updates on the project as you go along.

Absolutely.

I just wanted to add a comment and I wanted to thank Kyle for the great project but I do want to in response Kyle to your comment about how smoothly the process went.

Remember you were talking about the number of meetings?

I would be remiss to say that our staff has almost exactly as many meetings.

They're just having them in a different way than they used to.

I'd second that.

Jody is fantastic.

And we're really trying to simplify the processes so that they don't take us long.

And in reference to that, as you go through this, if you encounter sticky or pain points, let Jody know, because I know that unless she knows about it, she can't address it.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, everyone.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

At this point, we're at the agenda item for unfinished business.

Does anybody have anything that you want to bring up under unfinished business?

Rod, I do have something for other matters.

Hopefully I can share my screen.

I'm going to try to do so.

I can see your screen.

I apologize for not getting this particular item on the EDA's radar in advance, but there's been a fast moving project called Project Rebound.

and it is a collaboration between the Chamber, City of Charlottesville, our county and the University of Virginia.

And the Chamber is serving as the lead agency with all the other institutions I just mentioned are actively involved and serve on the Steering Committee.

Earlier today, the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce announced Project Rebound.

They're using a local

College coach named Tony Bennett's statement as sort of the motto, if you will, for why we're doing this.

But Tony Bennett said, you learn to use a right, the adversity, it will buy you a ticket to a place you could not have gone in any other way.

The point being that this pandemic is a type of adversity that could lead us to a new location that we could not have gone any other way.

We've created a bunch of teams that focus on economic development sectors in our community.

Each one of these teams have co-leads.

We're gonna see that it's an all-star lineup of people.

These co-leads are gonna form committees or tiger teams, if you will, and focus on how we restart our economy post-pandemic or whatever that future may look like.

So this team-based exploration of industries and sectors

will identify opportunities in our community and put together a blueprint for how our community can get back to an economic recovery that's close to pre-pandemic as possible.

I wanna share with you this list of economic development sectors and co-leads, which you'll find hopefully at the bottom.

We've developed sectors of the economy to focus on, which includes revolving small businesses,

which will be led by Yolanda Harrow and Rebecca Haidock.

Yolanda is the CEO of New Hill Development.

Rebecca Haidock is the new director of Central Virginia's Small Business Development Center.

We're gonna protect the arts and the creative economy.

Chris Ure from the Paramount Theater and Justin Reed from the University of Virginia's Humanities Department will be leading this particular group.

We're gonna focus on restarting the hospitality and tourism engine.

Courtney Cacachian from the CACVB and Russ Kromberg, the general manager of Boardshead, will be leading this particular team.

You're gonna see that assessing key industry clusters has quite a few leads.

That has to do with the size and scale of each one of these particular industries.

We couldn't have one particular group, so we've divided them up.

You'll notice that Helen Coughlin, the president of CVPED, and Chris Ingle, the director of economic development for Charlottesville,

will be serving as leads for these particular clusters.

There's also going to be co-leads from the IT, Defense, and Financial Services subgroup.

You'll see Adrian Fels from Signature Science.

Our own Rod Gentry, the chair of this particular EDA, will be leading a group of folks in determining what our future looks like in this particular sector.

In our Biotechnology and Manufacturing subgroup, Dr. Nikki Hastings and Hunter Smith from Champion Brewing.

We're going to look at biotechnology and manufacturing.

We have quite a few anchor institutions in our community.

The president of Sentara Jefferson Hospital, Jonathan Davis, and the president of PVCC, Frank Friedman, will be co-leading this particular group.

We're going to look at the vital infrastructure in our community to make sure it's adequately prepared for reopening our economy.

It's going to be led by Chip Boyles, who's the executive director of Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

and Doug Walker, our own deputy county executive for Albemarle County.

We're also focusing on restoring the non-profits and community organizations.

Elijah Coby, who's the deputy director of operation and advancement for the CNE will be leading that along with Charlene Green, the deputy director of Piedmont Housing Alliance.

And then there's a steering committee that's comprised of

the economic development leaders from the CEO of the chamber to the city of Charlottesville.

Myself, Pace Lochte, who's the assistant VP for the University of Virginia's economic development efforts, and Denise Herndon, who is the program director for the economic development of the University of Virginia.

There is a project manager, which works for the chamber.

Her name is Andrea Koper-Whitsitt.

She's gonna oversee this project.

The county is providing scribes to document all the processes, the decisions, and action items.

And additionally, the University of Virginia has a department called Organizational Excellence.

Those professors from that particular department and or professionals from that department will serve as group facilitators.

Each one of these sectors that I just mentioned will have a professional facilitator to make sure we come up with the best recommendations possible for our community.

That project was announced today.

It will begin in earnest actually starting today.

We don't know exactly when all the leads and co-leads will call their first meeting.

Currently, the Chamber of Commerce has created a website in conjunction with the Student Committee.

That website is up and functional.

Anyone who wants to participate with this particular project is invited to do so.

They can go onto that website.

Roger.

Yes, sir.

It is not, but I'll be glad to.

J.T., I'll ask if you don't mind to go out to the Chamber's website and see if you can put a link in the chat.

It's just Charlottesville Chamber of Commerce.

It is on the front page.

We'll put that in the chat so anybody can access that at any time.

I'll put forward to you all to say that while this project is going to be very important to ready our economy to restart, some great ideas will come out of this.

I'll also tell you my personal opinion that

This is going to create a roadmap for engaging our business community to solve a lot of societal problems here locally.

I feel like this is some of the biggest value for this particular project will not only be the roadmap or the blueprint that comes out, but also the relationships and the collaborations that will be formed for generations to come.

So Rod, I share this story to say some of the folks that we have on our economic development authority or some of the brightest folks in our community are keenly aware of all the different

plans that we have going on related to economic development.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And this will be a very quick project.

It's going to begin and end from now through the month of May.

So by the end of the month of May, recommendations will all have been

amalgamated by Andrea Copeland.

I'm assuming it's going to put those together.

But it will be a fast moving project.

And I look forward to anybody's involvement on any of the committees who wants to be a part of this.

I think Roger and I were talking about it the other day.

And I think one of the biggest things is the spirit of cooperation

which all of the entities involved have been demonstrating for some time now.

But this is a special demonstration of cooperation when we are at a time of greatest needs and we are seeing businesses beginning to really suffer.

And you just saw an announcement yesterday that, just an immediate example that was on the news, the Downtown Grill,

Many of us have enjoyed going to many times as closed forever.

And that's somewhat shocking, but it's, you know, there are many others that are going to struggle in the same way.

So anything that can be done by anybody to come up with a way to help us come out of this as strong as we can, it's going to be a very important project.

Anybody have any questions or anything you want to add?

If not, I will say thank you for a very successful virtual meeting and special thanks to Jennifer and Roger and J.T.

for doing this and especially to Jennifer for engineering and testing and doing all the things it took to make this happen and to Rich DeLoria for

writing resolutions till he's gotten writer's cramp, I'm pretty sure.

But thank you all very much.

And if there's no further business, we will adjourn until our next virtual meeting, May the 19th.

Thank you.

Thanks, all.

See you next month.

Bye bye.