Economic Development Authority Meeting   9/29/2020

Rich, you wanna call the roll?

Okay, so Mr. Long.

Present and in the City of Charlottesville.

George Ray, Mr. Ray?

Here and I'm in Albemarle County.

Present in Albemarle County.

Ms. Imhoff, President and in Albemarle County.

And Supervisor McKeel.

I'm here in Albemarle County.

Chair, we have a we have a quorum.

George, you want to go next?

I'm a real estate developer in central Virginia and former director of economic development for the city of Charlottesville for 17 or 18 years and excited about being able to participate in the new things happening in Albemarle.

So Dave, you want to go next?

I'm an economist and an economic historian, also the director of a regional nonprofit, and I represent the Jack Jewett District on the Authority.

I should say you need no introduction.

I am, Diantha McKeel represents the Jack DeWitt District, I am the Board of Supervisors liaison to this group, and I'm just thrilled to have everybody here today and to start our meeting, Kat, with you representing the Samuel Miller District.

Roger, you want to start off?

And I'll turn it over to Doug.

Thank you.

Jeff?

I work with Roger and Doug and with the Board of Supervisors and welcome aboard and thank you very much for your service.

J.T.

I have been with the county for 12 years, and previously I was in community development before coming over to economic development, so I work on a daily basis with Jennifer and Roger on a variety of things, but always here if you need anything.

transferred from community development to economic development, IQ in both departments went up.

And then Jennifer.

Been here about a year and a half.

So, Richie, you want to go next?

And I'm here to answer any questions that you may have at any time.

Jim, you're muted.

Can you hear me?

I can, thank you.

I look forward to working with you.

So it's a checkered history, but I'm very proud of what this area has done and glad to be helpful if I can be.

Hearing none, is there a motion to approve the minutes?

I'll make that motion, Don.

So, Dave, I don't know if as the newly designated finance or treasurer, you've had a chance to look at this or.

Great.

Roger, you wanna give your report?

So I'll pause here before I move away from the Lyft grant and see if any of the directors have any questions.

Yeah, and that's a great question.

Directors, any other questions about the LIFT grant before we move on to our next grant?

Is that what you said?

So our services and or local taxes are still being used for core services.

Directorship, et cetera.

And then the third bucket was those that were related to economic development.

Most of them in the first?

And then the smallest amount would have been in the economic development agencies.

And are the distributions similar to the other round, kind of the 50, 20, 30, 10, whatever?

assuming we were able to serve the remainder of the folks.

Were they eligible, Roger, if they had also received PPP forgivable loans?

Great questions.

It's complicated to give money away.

We wanted to be strategic about where the first wave of funding went so that we tried to do so in a way that gave the county the best return on investment.

Going forward, looking at round two, are you aware, Roger, of what the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation has underway right now for a similar round of grants for nonprofits?

Certainly if you have some information for the good of the order, feel free to share it.

It's a large program.

I tell you all that to say, Dave, this will be the first agenda item that we discuss next week when we get together to make sure that what's happening gives consideration with what CACF is doing.

We should know about that fairly soon.

and Jennifer, do you have the latest number of applicants or number of inquiries in week one

So the latest, we have 48 inquiries so far.

Some were either nonprofits located in the city or had other things that made them ineligible.

So nonprofits are not eligible for this?

And then if you'll hit the next slide, J.T.

by Excluded Nonprofits?

They have a pot of funds to help with organizations like nonprofits.

So I think I'd like to see us kind of reconfigure that in the future.

in economic development terms.

Anything else related to safe spaces and places?

It's not an arm of a larger grant program?

and then there's also the likelihood as discussed earlier that we maybe expand the eligibility for nonprofits in the safe spaces depending on how that conversation goes with the task force.

Well, Roger, it's my understanding that the CARES Act money has to be spent this year, is that correct?

Expanded Outdoors in February, Insult Reimbursement, they just simply would not be eligible.

We're certainly in the planning stages, Dave.

Did I get it?

Yeah, so that October 5th, is that something that is going to happen then, or that's a target?

That's the target.

OK, gotcha.

While these businesses don't start out as Apple or Yahoo or the like, in terms of scale and scope, this could be Steve Jobs Garage, if you will, and it could really mean a lot for our community's long-term economic health.

this particular Go Virginia grant, where would I find that information?

I don't know that it's been shared.

Yes.

Can you show the whole team, we got to see everybody except for Diantha.

This is my baby, I'm really excited.

It's perfectly all right.

Supervisor McKeel, where her information is stored on the main page, this will click over and actually we're going to lose.

Redirect.

So here is her information, which is very.

We need to go see if that's actually current.

If you remember, our other site didn't allow us to do all these things.

Is there lift grant information under the resources tab?

I'm just kind of hopping around here.

When we're parts of other plans, like I would assume that we're part of the comprehensive economic development plan for the region, will there be a link to those kind of documents as well?

We actually source out to the specific site.

I'll go play around on the site.

And for those of you who may not be familiar, oftentimes, you have to have a SEDS program in order to qualify for certain types of federal or USDA grants.

So it just seems like maybe a nice opportunity for the county to think about how we can leverage some of those dollars.

J.T., do you have any update or do we need to go back and find out what the status is?

And it's just a matter of addressing some of the pressing community needs as a result of COVID first, I think.

It is part of his working plan, and I can't offer anything else at this point, so I think he's optimistic he's going to get support from moving forward.

Is there still ongoing activities associated with that that's going on now?

OK.

And I want some assurance about that, I think.

In fact, I just made a change a minute ago.

That's great.

And again, we update this as information changes.

Jennifer Ovel herself and be glad to walk you through it.

his screen back.

Roger, are we doing Willam Mills or?

All right, go for it.

And if not, if there are any, if there's a member willing to make the motion.

Delay, mostly pandemic related, or is there an engineering problem?

I see.

And that wasn't anticipated?

I wasn't involved enough to be able to comment on that, so I apologize.

That's the way that I want to address that thing.

Is there a motion?

I'll move that the EDA follow the lead of the Board of Supervisors and amend this resolution.

Is that good enough for you, Richard?

Verbatim?

Yes.

Thank you, sir.

Rich, you wanted?

and Mr. Long.

So to extend anything needs to happen, Mr. Ray, we need to lead us.

So happy to answer any questions about it before moving into unfinished business.

And so we'd be back in front of you, perhaps as early as October, to talk about this particular development agreement.

It looks nice.

Are they locked into the 70s architecture?

And I think that with further input

We've literally had existing businesses that we would like to reside in our county unfortunately leave our community because there was a lack of space for affordable available space.

And I hope we can find something that will fit with the neighborhood and fit with the market.

It'll be interesting to follow and I think it's gonna be important to follow this and see how this actually plays out with what the needs are gonna be going forward.

Might it be worth considering in that light?

for funding future activities.

I think there are some that which even subsidize that space to some extent for targeted businesses.

J.T., anything else?

George, not to put you on the spot, but I wonder if you've thought about that or have any comments on that.

Another part of that is that some of these employees who were so excited to work from home are changing their minds and their productivity is suffering because they've got to watch the kids and they look over their shoulders and see that project they haven't finished at home and so I think there's a reversal of that earlier trend where people are so concerned that office space was going to go back because people were going to work from home.

And it does jolt the receiving communities in myriad ways that are worth considering.

It's just insane.

I think this particular area, this corridor is so interesting also because you've got longer tour and the ability when Biscuit Run finally gets opened up, you have a very, a lot of amenities are close by to this area and I think it's a valuable piece of land so make sure you do what's going to be best for the market and best for the community in that area.

Thank you.

So we'll have a report for you on that information next month.

Kat,

That was piloted in Orange County in part, the carbon credit, so we can reach out to our partners in Orange County and get information about how that's worked out for them.

So just another way of bringing financial resources potentially to our area.

Chair, I interrupted you.

Any unfinished business?

If there's some other reason for the delay.

Are you referring to the VJIP portion?

Yeah, the VJIP portion and with respect to the cooperative, the electoral cooperative, the TIF agreement there.

numbers, it's just they've had some delayed hiring with the pandemic and some of their projects were placed on hold, but they gave us a report that said they fully expect to go back to ramping up and hiring again.

Or 2019, maybe?

We'll get you a full report next meeting.

I'm surprised that we haven't seen more movement in that regard on that project.

Good question.

So I just wanted to say that I appreciate those those efforts.

I also voted and had the same positive experience.

All right.

Anything else?

I'm not sure.

Economic vitality, maintaining the character, those things were included in those vision statements.

Very pleased about that.

I know that you've been working also with Jody on that.

So I would just add that.

Anything else?

I appreciate everybody's participation and I guess we will be adjourned.

Thank you very much everybody.

Jennifer, do you want me to come to your office tomorrow and sign all that stuff?

Sure.

Okay, I'll shoot you an email and I can come down and just get everything signed at once.

Do you know yet?

There's a retired