Economic Development Authority Meeting   3/15/2022

Should I start over?

Albemarle County's continuity of government ordinance and declaration of a local state of emergency in the EDA resolution of April 22, 2020.

We are holding this meeting by real time electronic means with no authority member physically present at a single central location.

This is because the pandemic's catastrophic nature makes it impracticable or unsafe to assemble in a single location.

All authority members are participating electronically.

All authority members will identify themselves and state their general physical location during the roll call, which we will hold next.

This meeting is being recorded and will be uploaded to the county's website.

The public has real-time audio-visual access to this meeting over Zoom.

and real-time audio access over telephone, both as provided in the lawfully posted meeting notes.

The public is invited to offer live comment during the public comment period.

Comments are limited to three minutes and must be germane to matters on today's agenda.

I will do so, thank you.

Director Ray.

Present in Albemarle County.

And I understand Director McNaughton is absent.

He hasn't logged on.

No.

Director Mottola.

That's six.

Mr.

OK. And I guess at some point during this meeting, we probably need to talk about

maybe in other matters or unfinished business sort of how, talk about the county's policy for virtual meetings going forward so that we can know what our marching orders are.

Mr.

Okay, has anyone indicated that they would like to speak?

Okay, all right.

Then let's go to the minutes.

No, I move for approval.

Is there a second?

All right, all in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, the minutes are approved.

Financial report.

Do we have a financial report?

Okay.

For fiscal year 2022, which began July 1.

And through for information we have through February 28.

We've got operating revenues of $101,618.34 against operating expenditures of $422,696.39 This goes along with pass-through funding of $415,021.39 and pass-through expenditures thus far of $23,200 The operating expenditure

are comprised chiefly of three components, payments to Firefly, CIC, and Habitat for Humanity.

Along with that, we have net revenues thus far this fiscal year, $70,743.34, along with our accounts payable and receivable, and the cash balance at the beginning of the fiscal year of $731,000

82427, that leaves us with a cash position or cash equivalent position of $831,768.01.

And as an asterisk, we should note that for committed funds, we have 109,000 of EDA funds still committed but not expended to go along with

Great.

Thank you, Dave.

Any questions or comments on the financial report?

All right.

Then on to new business.

The first matter in new business is the loan payoff by Southwood Charlottesville LLC and execution of deed of release and lease termination by the Economic Development Authority and Connor Childress and Scott Kroner is

here to present.

I don't know if there's anything Roger or J.T.

All right.

Welcome, Connor.

So in 2007, Habitat purchased a number of parcels from the Miner family.

And the purchase price for that was six, it was $6 million.

They executed a note to purchase the property.

In 2010, Habitat work, it was named Southwood Charlottesville, had made arrangements with the EDA for the EDA to assume that note.

And there were certain advantages that worked to the party's benefits for that arrangement to happen.

So long story short is the EDA assumed a $6 million obligation

that was secured by a deed that was presented to the EDA for, Connor can correct me, I think it was three parcels, might have been four parcels.

That was an unrecorded deed that the EDA received in 2010 to hold a security for the note.

Habitat through Southwood Charlottesville

had agreed to pay the installments on that note, essentially through rent payments.

So they leased, the EDA leased the property to Habitat.

Habitat agreed to pay the installments on the notes by way of rent.

And that went directly to the previous owners.

There were a couple, I think a couple amendments or modifications that occurred over the life of that loan.

and at this point in time Habitat through Southwood Charlottesville is interested in refinancing that debt.

So there was a bit of a long and lengthy history but it's actually pretty straightforward, pretty simple.

They have plans and arrangements to refinance the debt that will release the EDA from the note and as part and parcel of that

The habitat would like a deed of release from the EDA and also a termination agreement for the lease.

And that's fairly standard and it applies with the terms of the lease and the terms of the deed.

So really any controversy here.

The only catch is that they haven't refinanced at this point in time.

So in terms of the resolution that the EDA is asked to adopt, it authorizes the chair or the vice chair to execute the documents that Mr. Childress has prepared.

Bond counsel has reviewed those, and I've reviewed those, and they're appropriate.

But they will be held, once they're signed, they will be held in escrow until we get a closing date, and then they'll be provided to the settlement company to be held until everything's taken care of.

So it had a long and somewhat difficult history for us to put back together, but we did.

And it's all pretty straightforward.

So the recommendation is to adopt the resolution.

And so with that, I will turn it over to Mr. Childress.

You know, Mr. DeLoria, my spiel just got taken, I think.

So you did a great job.

Thank you for summarizing it.

Thank you all for having me on.

No questions, I guess.

Okay, okay, whatever works the best.

All right, then I think,

If there are no other questions, we have a resolution, correct?

So, any questions about the resolution?

Is there a second?

Did I hear a second?

OK. Any discussion on the resolution?

All right.

Aye.

All right.

And I'll call the roll.

Let's see.

Director Ray?

Aye.

Director Shreve?

Aye.

Director Imhoff.

Aye.

And Director Mottola.

Aye.

Thank you.

Thanks, Connor.

Take care.

All right, so the next item is the executive director's report.

Thank you, Chair, fellow directors.

Before I get started, let me just thank Richie for his contribution to that last piece of business.

While it sounded pretty simple, we had to put it back together by parts and parcel, and Richie was a big factor in doing that.

Thank you very much, Councillor.

Next slide, please, J.T.

Just a couple of items I thought would be of interest to the directors.

First, you probably noticed that the county executive provided a recommended budget for 2023 to the Board of Supervisors.

And I just wanted to highlight in there an important element for the success of economic development, and that is the recommendations to use year-end savings

to reinvest into economic development.

For those who are new on our board, you're probably aware we have a regular budget, but we also have no way of ongoing funding for our economic development projects.

The board, the county exec, and their ultimate wisdom said we can't operate that way without having funding set aside and in advance to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

Our processes would take too long for appropriation.

So our board has heard the recommendation from Jeff, Mr. Richardson, to put $5 million back into the economic development investment pool.

And that would sort of reestablish our investment pool that we have been spending over the last four years or so and is getting lowered as every project comes along.

And I just wanted to say that listening to the Board of Supervisors, they were very supportive of this and their initial comments.

While this is still in process, I wanted to note that our liaison, Supervisor McKeel in particular, made some public comments that were very supportive.

So the board in general has been supportive, as has the county executive, and I thought that would be important information for the directors tonight.

So thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

Also updating this group, had a special interest in what was happening with the land capacity analysis for economic development.

Our team has continually been working with community development as well as Camley Horn to wrap that report up.

We expect this particular authority to receive the results sometime in April and May.

contingent.

I don't know if it's going to go to the board first or the EDA or the EDA or the board first.

Nonetheless, we're wrapping that up and we'll have that information to share at a later time.

I also want to make you aware that the building reuse grant has not fallen off our radar screen.

We continue to work on that.

We expect to have a draft policy back to you all.

and either April or May's board meeting, hopefully for adoption and a new tool in the economic development toolbox.

So those are some brief announcements.

The Broadway Blueprint Study, as well as the designated outdoor refreshment area will take just a minute.

And we have some additional slides to share with you.

So by way of history, I wanna make some of you aware that we started this Broadway Blueprint Study some two and a half, three years ago.

And the general idea was to take the 46 and a half acres that are located

on the Broadway Quarter.

For those who may be watching at home, that's the area where Woolen Mills is located, and it extends up to the city line.

And turn that into a place that people, businesses, and activity all occur at the same time, and everyone would like to be there.

So we started the Broadway Blueprint study, and as we got ready to make our final original recommendations to the Board of Supervisors, COVID hit.

So we presented a draft final proposal to the Board of Supervisors, which included recommendations such as creating a business association for the quarter.

It included the contemplation of an arts or cultural district overlay to promote the arts in that area.

It included recommendations for increased pedestrian and bike connectivity.

It also included the design and the study for a multimodal streetscape.

to enhance public transportation and visit all businesses on the Broadway Street corridor on a recurring basis to make sure we're keeping our finger on the pulse of what's happening there and keep that place relevant in the future.

Well, as luck would have it, COVID hit, so we got postponed just a little bit before we could report that.

And during that timeframe, the county adopted a new core value of community, which really is a focus on

equity and inclusion.

So we took a pause.

And if you go to the next slide, J.T., we took a pause and looked at looked at the Broadway corridor study with the new equity layer.

And so we have a second round of recommendations coming forward.

It's in the Board of Supervisors packet today, and they'll receive this as a consent agenda item tomorrow.

But the new recommendations include connectivity to all outside communities, including the city.

We were talking about it being a county-only type project, but there's some surrounding neighborhoods that we believe it makes sense to connect to as well.

It also includes targeted programming and the use of public space to serve the broader neighborhoods.

While it's very difficult to stop market conditions and gentrification in general, we do want to make this a place for all people.

And one way we could do that would be programming that would be attractive to the surrounding neighborhoods and or creating public space that the surrounding neighborhoods could use or utilize.

It included considering additional strategies to limit gentrification of smaller businesses who find the Broadway corridor as a reasonable cost place to conduct business.

The only strategies that we were able to locate, and this includes through the Office of Equity and Inclusion, were either land ownerships or underwriting or subsidies to help lower the cost.

The market rates are going up all across our community, but in particular on the Broadway corridor as well.

Another strategy recommended by the Office of Equity and Inclusion is to conduct proactive community engagement throughout the planning process.

Right now we're studying, this project will be held, sent over to Community Development to create a small area plan, but the recommendation is to engage all the surrounding communities, which will take some targeted outreach for certain neighborhoods that don't always show up to community events.

And then the other recommendation is creating free public transportation for all.

There was some conversation about the public transportation being restricted to those who are generally paying for that.

We have an agreement with the developer of Willing Mills, Willow Tree, and ourselves to create public transportation.

connecting the Broadway corridor to the downtown area.

We want that to be free public transportation for all as a recommendation.

So that concludes sort of an update on the Broadway study that you heard about some two years ago.

I'd love to just jump in and say I'm just so wowed by this project overall, just think it's such a going to be a great contributor to the community, and I've also been

Following, as I'm sure you have as well, the Rivanna Bridge, different options for that, which could also lead into and blend into this project.

So, you know, hats off.

I think this is a really good overall community project.

I'm sorry.

I'm very aware of that group.

Yeah.

J.T., can you go back a slide?

I'm sorry, I was on the slide that you had it on.

My apologies.

Supervisor McKeel, if you will look at the third bullet here, maybe I didn't go into great detail.

We went out to find out what practices were there to limit gentrification.

And what we discovered was there was no successful way to control market conditions.

We just could not figure out a way that local government could

could control the market conditions.

The rates are what they are as the free market sort of dictates what the rates were.

So the only strategies we found that were successful to prevent gentrification would be the EDA or the board actually owning or controlling property in the Broadway Quarter itself.

or providing subsidies to those folks who are located there.

And that could be subsidies directly to those individuals or substitute subsidies to the landowner that offset the cost of rent in that particular area.

Now, we're not recommending that as a strategy.

That is correct.

We're talking about there are a host of art and cultural and unique entrepreneurial and small businesses that are co-located in a couple of buildings down there.

And as the Willie Mills and the Broadway Quarter have been developing, the cost of doing business on that quarter has increased.

Those particular businesses came forth and spoke out about their concerns of the lack or dearth of

Lower cost industrial space.

So the board asked us to come back with some strategies which may prevent the gentrification of those small businesses.

And some of those businesses are making that area a pretty cool place to be.

And so those strategies that we found are land ownership or site control.

Maybe we lease the space and sublet it for below market rates or maybe we buy property down there or provide subsidies to keep the rents down.

But those were the only way that we felt that we would not gentrify those businesses.

It's going to require some sort of participation in order to prevent that from happening.

And that's just happening organically now.

Yeah, and I appreciate that expanded discussion because the Board of Supervisors were certainly concerned about those businesses.

We've talked about them several times.

So thank you very much.

Roger, I think it is smart to look in these directions.

I think you're right that trying to manipulate the marketplace is pretty much a dead end.

and that we have to go to these other alternatives.

What percentage of those businesses are leasing space versus owning property there?

I'm guessing most of them lease from other persons.

Is that correct?

Yes, they're generally owned by one person at least, the predominant number.

So one component, potential component of this strategy would not be helping the business owners acquire property.

Yeah, Dave, I think that's a strategy we could look at.

If you mean, for example, we could certainly

Increase the access to capital for those small businesses through an organization like the CIC.

If they're going to locate in a, you know, a designated area, we'd probably have to create an overlay district first in order to identify the boundaries for which you'd be eligible.

OK. Yeah.

And the reason I think of that is I did talk to Stephen Davis at CIC about that kind of a strategy and whether he thought it would work anywhere.

Not specifically here.

Well, we'll further vet that suggestion.

Thank you.

Any other?

Yeah, this is actually exactly what I was going to ask about.

We're struggling with a very similar issue down here in Scottsville.

We're looking at whether to approve a special use permit and for what us is a big development of about 36 houses down here.

And one of the things that we really would like to see is

is some affordable housing up there, but we had not been able to figure out a way to make that happen from a special use permit condition perspective.

So this has been a really interesting discussion.

Seeing no other comments or questions, J.T., if you'll go on to the next slide, I'll continue.

You may have read about some new legislation that was passed at the state level, and it is for designated outdoor refreshment areas.

We call that a DORA.

Next slide, please.

So what is a DORA?

It's a geographic area licensed by the ABC annually.

that allows the consumption of alcoholic beverages, wine, beer, mixed beverages within public spaces or inside a business without an ABC license as long as the business owner agrees.

An example which happened down in Scottsville, Director Munson, was that they held an event in Saturday where they held a designated outdoor refreshment area.

And you can see on this particular slide

The area that was designated, you can see it in red, and thank you, in that particular area and the participating businesses.

Scottsville did it.

We reached out to the town administrator, Matt Lawless.

He identified that it was very successful, that the businesses saw a significant uptick in sales and revenues.

So although we have only a small sample size, those that we do have was very successful for that particular area.

So what's needed to establish ADORA?

You must obtain an ABC license, and the eligible applicants are a locality or a business improvement district, which we don't have, or a nonprofit organization.

What's allowed is up to 16 events per year.

Each event can be no longer than three days.

You need a letter of support from the locality.

In this case, it would be Albemarle County.

You have to pay, you have to submit an ABC application, and there's a fee associated with that.

And that fee goes up if you want to do more than 16 events per year.

OK, thank you.

I didn't get down to that third section there.

And you need a public safety plan, which would include things about ingress, egress, security guards, who is going to, where is the designated drop off areas and pick up areas, particularly as it relates to lift or Uber is one of those requirements.

It also requires a specific container.

So you have to have a designated container so that it's clearly identified

that you purchased a beverage from a brick and mortar location and it's in one of these containers and you must carry the alcohol around the container.

And there's some other sort of requirements with the logo that are necessary.

This will allow you to take a beverage into an operation, an existing business.

Now you can't take a beverage from one, you can't purchase it at one location and then turn around

and carried into another location that also sells alcohol.

You must consume it all before moving into the next location.

Other requirements, you must have signage to designate where the actual area is itself, sort of the borders of the area to identify where alcohol is allowed and not allowed.

Unlike a normal permitting requirement, it usually requires boundaries

and other sorts of ID checks and the like.

In this scenario, their responsibility is on the actual businesses themselves.

I will mention that you're not allowed to just sell open.

You're not allowed to sell alcohol openly.

You see the Scottsville example.

You know, for the most part, these would be ambassadors, as we probably wouldn't want to have 2 a.m. completion times for designated outdoor refreshments.

And here's a couple of examples.

As we went and conducted some due diligence, we found Ohio, the state of Ohio itself has had this in place and a little more advanced than the state of Virginia.

This is just an example from Kent, Ohio, how they designated an area.

And I believe we also have an example of Mason, Ohio.

So they do it a little differently, but the area is designated where when and where things can happen and who's participating.

And then there's some additional signage that would be helpful that may not be required, but if a local businesses was a local business was located inside of a designated outdoor refreshment area, but didn't want alcohol in their

So with that being said, we wanted to entertain your thoughts about the appropriateness of a designated outdoor refreshment area in Albemarle County.

And just to follow up on what Roger said, ours was a big success.

And we've actually done a second one after that as well too.

We saw significant increase in traffic, both on the street and in businesses, and we had no problems whatsoever.

At least in this environment, we found if you treat people like adults, they'll act like adults.

So I'm a big supporter of them.

I think they're great.

Stuart, what were your times?

I just, my eyes maybe were Yeah, as I recall, it was

Early afternoon to early evening.

So we combined it with an art walk.

So we wanted to have daylight for people to see the streetscape.

Roger, a question for you.

Do you think this is what City of Charlottesville is using?

This is different than, I believe there's a regulation that would allow in essence a food court to serve

alcohol amongst various restaurants.

That's correct.

You're talking about a special permit to do an event and that will allow for anyone to sell alcohol and or food trucks and the like.

but it sounds like- This would allow for both areas and inside of businesses.

No, sir.

It's limited to 16 events per year, no later than three days.

Well, there is that third bullet point, though.

Well, I don't know if it's 24-7.

I see.

I got you.

Okay.

Yeah, having lived in South Louisiana, I know exactly what you're talking about there with the drive-through daiquiris and so forth.

It strikes me that Scottsville is perfect for this and potentially Crozet, kind of where you have some sort of city center feeling and a place to sort of roam around.

Well, yeah, I'll be happy to share my recommendation.

I think it's a fantastic idea.

Coming from North Carolina, we saw similar they have different regulations, but it resulted in a similar similar sort of culture and environment.

And they were hugely successful.

But for the rare occasion and those rare occasions usually involve like

either a rock concert or a rap concert, and it required additional levels of security that we're not talking about here.

Based off of my experience, if it was to promote those types of things, I would have a difficult time recommending to this group or the board that we would want that in our community.

So it requires the support of the local government.

You know, we'll run this through our board at a later date if we have an application.

But your comments are welcome as well.

That would be my recommendation to them.

We have met with the Albemarle County Police Department.

to solicit their feedback.

They're generally supportive of this.

They did ask if there could be a caveat, if there ever became, any of these events ever became problematic, can we just have those canceled?

And we're gonna have to research that.

We didn't know the answer.

We just met with them today.

So that's my, you know, overall, they've been usually successful.

Or is there one more question?

Were you considering any of the sort of other commercial centers in Albemarle County?

There is.

Yeah, we looked at it from an economic development perspective is what primarily is a way to bring people down here and we collaborated with the Scottsville Center for Arts and Natural Environment.

Connection to

Well, I'm going to assume that if there were any non-starters, someone would raise their hand and let us know.

I wanted to talk a little bit about a general idea related to affordable housing.

And I know that you all are pretty familiar with this, but I think it is important that we educate the community about what we're talking about here.

So bear with me as I digress just a little bit and talk about the mechanics of tax increment financing.

Next slide, please.

We at Albemarle County use a synthetic TIF in that we look at it project by project and determine the future tax value and what the rebates may be.

The TIF itself is usually a whole geographic area that's identified in advance.

And then that area is eligible for tax increment finance.

And we look at it project specific.

But in general, you can look at a property and that property has a baseline value.

And then after that property is developed, it has a new value, which is greater than the original baseline value.

That variance between the baseline value and the new appraised value post development is called the tax increment.

That tax increment is going to generate additional revenue and those additional revenues are utilized to make projects happen that wouldn't happen otherwise or include public elements that wouldn't be included otherwise in that the project itself would not be financially feasible.

Next slide, please.

We call that the but-for requirement.

And I've just got one example here for the community to illustrate how this happens.

On the left-hand side, you'll see a dilapidated parking deck in Wilmington, North Carolina.

When I was working there, we tried to find a developer who would build something on our riverfront to include a parking structure.

Well, as we spoke with the development community, they came back with a unanimity that says you can't build something on this particular property that includes a parking structure and make a profit.

So what you do is you create a synthetic tax increment financing to offset the cost of building the parking structure by rebating taxes that makes that project financially feasible that wouldn't otherwise have been.

In this scenario, you'll see what the parking deck looked like some eight years ago.

and in the top right hand corner, you can see what that parking structure looks like now.

And J.T., I see that you are carrying the mouse.

If you would go to that little white area that's kind of in the background to my left, you can see there's condos been on the outside, but the parking deck is now wrapped a little bit further to your left, J.T., right there.

That's actually a parking structure, but it's wrapped by condos in the front and condos to its right.

that hides it and makes it aesthetically pleasing.

And so now you're able to build a project that was not financially feasible otherwise and build what the community wants.

The community, the business district needed the parking downtown for their customers.

The community wanted a better, more aesthetic down riverfront.

And the community also wanted some residents downtown.

So this is how you can use tax increment financing to accomplish something that wouldn't otherwise happen.

So that's just one example.

So the question for you as directors is, do you think the Economic Development Authority would have an interest in using this synthetic tax increment financing to help affordable housing be built in our community?

We have one application working down the pipeline to consider this.

RST is their name.

We had another affordable housing group contact us, ask if we'd be willing to do this.

We'd be in the Economic Development Authority.

I had to excuse Don Long from the conversation initially because his wife is participating or at least representing one of the applicants.

So I reach out to Vice Chair Ray

and the vice chair said, yeah, I believe this is worthy of a conversation.

Yeah, it seems like another tool that we could potentially use to encourage affordable housing.

As I mentioned, there's very few of them at this point that we have.

and we're struggling with how do we get a developer down here to build something and you know have them make enough profit to make it worthwhile and still have price these things in some sort of an affordable manner at least that will allow people

from Scottsville and work in Scottsville to live in Scottsville, which is difficult given the price of housing around here.

The one weakness I see with this tool is that while a parking garage facility does have a lifetime,

It won't necessarily or officially last forever.

It does imply a kind of a more permanent public benefit for the money that you're expending.

Whereas I think the experience with a lot of these with affordable housing is that the benefit conveyed tends to be temporary.

So what I would like us to do if we are interested in using this tool, and I think it could be used quite

productively, if we did it right, is to think creatively about how we could make the affordability component much more permanent than it usually is so that you're not just conveying, you know, and there's some benefit to that.

I mean, if it's like a 10 year, a decade long benefit of affordability for a number of tenants, presumably some of those tenants might be able to use that period of affordability as a bridge to

Ownership on their own later.

And so there's not it's not without benefits.

But but that is one of the real weaknesses is that it it tends to be a temporary arrangement.

And I think there might be ways where we can we can fix that, though.

I would just turn it was exactly my concern is just the length of time that you're able to lock in a rate that is defined as affordable.

but I do think it's an important tool and it's in a very, in the conversation about economic development, housing comes up all the time.

I'd like to mention two examples where the EDA has been active in the recent past in affecting a tax increment style of support for affordable housing projects, the first being Brookdale.

It's a LIHTC project, 96 units, overall for old Lynchburg Road, that about a $1.5 million contribution in tax rebates through the EDA

to help that project overcome some limitations on the affordability at the time when they were seeking those tax credits.

I believe that the term of that, I think it's 15 years of affordability I believe.

Some of you were on, maybe they've been here and remember.

The other and more visibly is the Southwood project, phase one, which, you know, a pretty significant negotiation ultimately ended up in a performance agreement, which obviously requires the EDA's participation of a rebate of some expected increase in value and taxes to the county to help them make those investments, both in LIHTC and in habitat built homes, which, you know, sensibly have a kind of a longer shelf life in terms of affordability.

And so the absent housing authority, the county doesn't have one, the economic development authority has been the mechanism by which the county has to this point kind of considered how best to do that.

So I just mentioned that because it's an important role that you play for the county right now, an important tool that you have.

And I do appreciate the conversations around how this might kind of shape the conversations that the board has from a policy perspective on developer incentives or making affordable housing much more permanent or more long lasting in our community.

I do think that there's an important role that

whether it's in this case, the Yukon Development Authority or some future housing authority could play in that respect.

Thanks.

And the other thing that's kind of built into this, which is presents a little bit of a quandary is that the way in which these are often promoted and sold and made attractive to the community

is to suggest that you're gonna have increased value and therefore increased property tax revenues in the out years as these projects take effect.

And that's generally what happens, at least to some extent, even though there's some case there where maybe it's a little bit too optimistic.

But nonetheless, what you often see then is that there's,

We know from incident studies that the increased property taxes are passed on to the residents when you have rental properties like this.

So it does build in added pressure on the backend for, you know, against keeping these units affordable.

My only comment, I'm certainly, affordable housing is certainly an issue that we need to confront and I am certainly supportive of that.

I do think that as we continue the discussions about this, we need to be focused on the fact that there's, we're sort of talking about two different things.

There's the EDA's role as really just a conduit where the county would say, we want you to

you know, help affordable housing by providing this financing to, you know, through a bond issuance in some format.

And then there's the sort of more policy questions, which is the kind of things that Dave and Kat are talking about is, you know, from an EDA standpoint, an economic development standpoint, you know, are we going to

What are our thoughts on how do we influence housing policy?

And I think those are two somewhat different things that we just need to think about as we're doing it, because I think there's some things that we can do as an EDA to support the financial goals that really don't require our exploring the policy.

I think they are very distinct, not just somewhat, but quite distinct.

Thank you, Chair.

OK, thanks, Roger.

The next item on the agenda is the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center update.

Malou Stark and Sarah Grand from

The Exploratory Center are here and I think they are going to get, Ashley will promote them just so everybody understands sort of what our process is and I'll wait for Malou and Sarah to be, looks like they're in now.

So we're going to have an open session now, and then we're going to have a closed session with members of the Exploratory Center to talk about some of their information that's proprietary.

So once we have the public session, we'll then move into that closed session to meet with them on that.

And then there'll be a further discussion with just the board.

And then we have some other closed session matters that we'll also do with just the board.

So welcome.

I'll lead off and then Sarah, I've asked Sarah if she would join in with us.

Thank you all for having us today.

We have some new things to share with you and some old business that needs to be addressed with you.

The pandemic of course dealt us a hefty blow as it did I think most nonprofits.

We were not able to open during most of the pandemic.

We began very small last fall with very private small group.

Tours of two or three people at a time.

And then we made the the board made the decision in January to go for the summer camps this year.

So we have a full schedule of summer camps that we'll be offering this year.

Schools still have not booked in large groups.

They're still pretty leery of field trips.

We've had a few mainly private and homeschool groups booked for us, but not the normal public schools.

Normally we serve about five, six counties with the public schools.

And we are pretty heavily booked from this time of year from about

The first of March until the first of June with school groups and then it starts back up in September.

We've continued renting out our building and we have been very successful during the pandemic in getting grants that we have gone after and have been awarded to us.

We've had also some unforeseen experiences like a roof leak that came with our green roof.

That is a construction flaw.

We're going back on the original contractor to some degree on that, and we have received a grant to fix that, but it is leaking in through the building and caused some damage.

We've also had a lot of increased visitors, and I'll just give you an example.

Before the pandemic, we used to have around 3,000 visitors a month.

A weekend, excuse me, not a month, a weekend to Darden Cow Park.

That included soccer players, families, everybody.

It's gone up to about 8,000 is the park's estimate now.

That's a weekend.

We were overrun with people using our facilities free, vandalism, bums, the whole nine yards.

and we were fortunate enough last fall to get a gate installed.

That has definitely cut down tremendously on it.

It's no fun to have a mother and a three-year-old child.

This particular instance resonates with me because I was the one dealing with it while someone is shooting up heroin right in front of them.

You're trying to protect the child.

You're trying to protect the mother.

And before we could have any of our groups there, any of the kids or anything else, we'd have to spend an hour to two hours a day cleaning up our site, not the bark, our site.

So this gate has definitely helped and it has protected us.

This winter, we had a couple of instances of people breaking into the keelboat, which is outside.

We keep the cabin locked normally and spending the night.

It was quite cozy in there with the captain's beds, and apparently it was quite well used.

Needless to say, we have ended that little free camping site exhibit now.

But those are some of the things that we have done.

We continue to offer new programs, new educational programs, new environmental programs, and new exploration.

We have an amphitheater that we have at the quarry.

where we can take them down and show them rocks.

And so we are open for business now and we are steadily increasing our visitation and our visibility.

With that, if anybody has any questions, I'll try and answer them and then Sarah can say whatever she feels like she needs to say.

Okay, thank you Malou, Sarah.

And I will, I forgot to mention before we started that we did have a meeting with Malou and Sarah, Dave and Alexandra Serles, the executive director prior to this meeting where we had a chance to sort of talk about things as well.

Well first of all I appreciate all of your time and being here and also having a pre-meeting was very helpful to understand what the goals of the EDA are.

Also we had Ashley and J.T.

help us with some of the technology pieces

A bit of a new format.

So I first of all appreciate all of all of that and you're seeing the name Zach Graham, my son uses my iPad for his virtual school so this is not Zach it is not school but by the way there was a county and there was an outage.

Let me just make a quick note of that.

And so school has some issues.

But anyway, that's why you're seeing Zachary.

And if he was here, he would be able to help me to change the name, but he's not.

So anyway, that's why you're seeing Zachary.

It's really Sarah Grant.

So anyway, I just like I said, I really appreciate the cooperative attitude that we had and

When we were wanting to prepare for this meeting, we took away the thoughts and ideas that were addressed a week ago and really wanted to hear what the

EDA was saying about repayment of this loan and that we take it seriously.

And that what we heard was that, you know, I'm not going to go into the past.

I was not on the board at that time.

There's no way, no reason to rehash that because we want to move forward.

However, you know, when, you know, we were talking a week ago,

What you wanted in moving forward was a clear plan of repayment and, you know, just, you know, better communication.

So we want to provide that.

Obviously, we would go into some more details about the finances in closed session because there are some information that

the executive director and the board didn't want to be shared.

But I want to just, you know, know that we had a board meeting.

We brought these concerns to the board.

The only reason we had that board meeting was to address this issue.

So we take it seriously.

And personally, as a resident taxpayer, property taxpayer, mom of three, you know, I personally take it seriously that, you know,

our debt be repaid to the best of the ability of the center and what we have available, you know, right now and what we can do in the future but we also want to be

Be realistic and what we're able to do.

So that's sort of where things are and we wanted to go in just a little more detail.

I know Malou set some documents that kind of went through some of the things that we're working on currently and what we have planned for the future and also some more detail on the repayment plan.

Thank you, Sarah.

Any questions for them right now before we go into closed session?

All right, hearing none, we need the closed session motion.

Okay, so I will read this.

I move that the Albemarle County

Economic Development Authority go into a closed meeting as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, section 2.23711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 6 to discuss and consider the investment of public funds for the development of downtown Crozet, the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center at Dardentown Park,

and Project Khaki where bargaining is involved and where if made public initially would adversely affect the financial interests of the county and subsection 8 to discuss and consider consultation with EDA legal counsel regarding the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center loan which requires legal counsel's advice and if provided in open section would adversely affect the EDA's negotiating posture.

and subsection 39 to discuss and consider information subject to the exclusion in subdivision 3 of section 2.2370.6 related to the economic development.

To wit,

the proprietary information voluntary provided by the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center, a private business pursuant to a promise of confidentiality by the EDA upon the center's request and used by the EDA for business trade and tourism development or retention.

All right, there's a second.

I believe that we do not need to call the roll for this.

Do not.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Hearing none, the motion is approved.

So I believe J.T.

or Ashley, you're going to switch to teams.

Yes, Mr.

Chair.

Everyone, all the directors and invited guests should have received an email just moments ago with the link to the Teams meeting.

I will remain here in the Zoom and open session for anybody that has difficulty accessing the Teams meeting, but that is a

Yes, I will keep it open with my account and for the members of the public.

And then we will go to Teams and have closed session and then we'll send another link

Okay, any questions before we leave about the process?

Does everybody see that?

Yep.

All right.

Yes.

All right.

Let's go for it.

Yeah.

unknown caller.

Did you make it into the meeting?

I know, I said, where's Don?

Yeah, well, that's Sequoia National Park in California.

Can you hear me?

Yep.

Well, you're coming in loud and clear, so that's good.

Roger needs to be promoted there we go.

Oh, here he is.

Well, why don't we let's go ahead and you want to put the certification up and we can go ahead and do it and vote on it.

So I move that the EDA certified by recorded vote that to the best of each director's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

Is there a second?

Second.

Director Ray.

Aye.

Director Shreve.

Director Munson.

Aye.

Director Mottola.

Not yet.

We're working on it.

Okay, thank you.

So we're out of out of closed session.

You had mentioned you wanted to talk about the the status of our meetings going forward.

Yeah, I'm glad to do that very quickly.

The board tomorrow will be

taking action to end the local emergency after two years.

That'll have some effect, but it won't be effective for the board until the April the 4th, meaning that the board's first in-person meeting in two years will be on Wednesday, April the 6th.

That's the board of supervisors.

The intention is to group the public bodies into tiers to come back over a period of time.

The Continuity of Government Operations ordinance remains in effect to allow us to have kind of a deceleration lane or I guess an on-ramp, off-ramp, however you want to characterize it.

And so the three bodies that will be first will be the Board of Supervisors, the School Board, and a Planning Commission.

The EDA would be in the second tier, likely not before June.

So heading into mid-summer into later summer, we'd be then talking about a return to in-person meetings for the EDA and others that are in that tier two category.

So that's what I would share with you.

I think you should expect to stay in this platform for another few months.

And Mr. Walker, is it fair to state that the reason for the tiers has to do with ongoing support and capacity in terms of technology?

There are choices that are going to be made about which meetings will be supported in a hybrid format and which ones will not.

just because of the technology that's required, support that's required.

And we've made a lot of changes in our use of technology.

And so we need to kind of work through that on a fairly limited basis before we kind of expand it.

Okay.

Thank you, Doug.

It seems reasonable that because we've upfitted both Lane Auditorium and 241 in the county office building to allow for hybrid meetings, that the EDA would fall into that category of using 241 for a hybrid meeting.

Okay, thanks.

Anything else?

I know it's late, so

All right, well, I think that is it.

We will adjourn this meeting.

And our next meeting will be April 19th.

And we'll send the invitation out about that.

Anything else before we leave?

Nice try.