Economic Development Authority Annual Meeting   1/21/2025

All right, I will call the meeting to order.

No one has signed up to speak.

So we'll move on to the

annual meeting.

The first IM of Business is election of officers.

I emailed the board to ask if anyone else was interested in running for any of the positions other than the current slate.

I did not ask the current slate if they were interested in reading.

So not having any volunteers, I would move that the current slate of officers be reelected for the next year, be as chair, as vice chair, and as treasurer.

Second.

All right, any discussion?

All right, hearing none, do we need to call the roll?

And how is that different than our, do we have to vote to inflame ourselves?

All right, all in favor?

Aye.

All right, by acclamation, we have new officers.

And then the next item is the re-adoption of the remote virtual meeting policies.

So is anything,

But there were a couple of changes in the statute, right?

Right, we did that already.

And so the purpose, and so we did that in, I think it was in August, maybe July, to comport with the statute.

So what the statute does require is that this body has to review and readopt every year.

And so if other bodies do, they'll do it at their annual meeting.

So if we do it here, then this puts us on the cycle to continue doing it at each meeting.

All right.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right.

Any further discussion?

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

And actually, I forgot what I was going to do at the beginning of the meeting.

We have a new member of the EDA, Steve Hood, who has joined us today.

So I thought what we would do is we'll go around the room and everybody can do a quick introduction of themselves and for the board members, what they do in their non-board time, and then everybody else sitting around the table.

and introduce themselves.

So I'm Don Long.

I'm the chair of the EDA and I am a business and transactional lawyer for PEC.

Jeff Morrill, vice chair.

My name is Andrea Johnson and up until Friday I was the CEO of Mandolin Recycling.

I have now taken that position with the Construction Demolition Recycling Association and National Association.

So that will be, I have a couple weeks in between and then I will be starting in February.

Thanks for being here.

I'm David Storm.

Well, I'm the new guy.

I'm Steve.

About a year later, all this construction began and all these people from DIA started showing up.

So me and my counterpart, Phil Roberts, kind of blanketed

What was the defense structure here in Charlottesville?

It wasn't much.

We had to kind of, you know, work congenially to get the DIA employees to move out of the DC area down here.

So when I left the movie in 2009, the contractor building was up, the road building was up.

A few guys are familiar with the structure at Rivanna Station.

And so I've known Anne on the board of certain advisors since about 2008.

And so she asked me to take the seat in military expertise.

So I'm glad to do it up.

And thank you.

Sure.

I'm Jeff Richardson, County Executive.

Welcome to

Bea LaPisto-Kirtley, Board of Supervisors, liaison member to this board, and I represent the Rivanna District, which represents Rivanna Station.

We do have a lot of Rivanna stuff.

My name is Jeanette Ark.

So you got to pronounce it right too.

This new cultural learning.

I'm Richie DeLoria and I'm an attorney with the Albemarle County Attorney's Office.

I think over five years.

Absolutely.

Hi Steve, I'm Ashley Hernandorena.

I bet you guys have seen a lot of change, right?

I've been on board.

I've held a couple positions in the department, but I've been on board for about three and a half years now.

Been in the county, like you, since about 2009.

So it's a lot of different.

You're like an old-timer, though, because I was seven.

I don't, you know.

Yeah.

Welcome, Steve.

We met in the hallway.

I'm the deputy director for the economic development.

All right.

Great.

Thanks for that.

Sure.

Thanks again for joining us.

My pleasure.

So the next item is the approval of the minutes.

The only comment I had on the minutes was that that meeting was a virtual meeting.

So we just need to note that on the minutes.

I don't know if anybody else had any comments.

All right.

Is there a second?

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

All right, the only change, we have our new format here, but the only change that's worth noting is under expenditures and contributions, which is the CEVO Biohub that we voted on.

And you can see there was 100,000 went out for that.

And then of course, the main number that we need to,

that applies to us are the funds that are available to us for support initiatives.

And that's gonna be down there at the bottom.

It's just under 1.39.

And then Avery's going to go over the second page.

Yes, thank you.

So this secondary page is going to be another iteration of what we talked about before so this is just going to show the performance agreements that we have currently.

Last week, Director Johnson gave me some good feedback so we're working to incorporate that.

Part of that is naming the categories that's going to line up with what other localities might use when they're naming a report such as this and then the other thing is adding the lifetime years or the time period to each one of the agreements as another column so that this is just more of a overview snapshot that we can reference on every month that we come to this meeting and not so much

the nitty-gritty details of each one of these things.

So if anybody has any other feedback right now, I'm open to it.

Okay.

And I'll just say, I'm really excited that Avery in a pretty short time has been able to get a real strong grasp of the financials for both the office and the authorities.

All right, any questions or comments?

We haven't had one for a while, so I figured we need to adopt this one.

All in favor?

Aye.

So unfinished business update on the Board of Supervisors Economic Development Authority MOU.

So where we are is

We asked Richie to start the first draft of that document.

He prepared that draft.

I've reviewed it.

Emily's reviewed it.

before the week after.

Within a two week window.

We will get together and discuss the changes.

But I mean, at least based on my read, I don't think there's a lot.

So we anticipate that we would get it drafted together and then circulate it to the board to look at this board to look at before our next meeting so that we can get any feedback, prove it, and then send it on to the board of supervisors to consider.

I would just say that Richie did a really fantastic and quick job turning the term sheet into more of the legal form that we'd be used to in the MOU agreement.

And actually, Don and I are the reason that it's not quite ready for you all yet.

So thanks to Richie for the work done there.

And I think it's very reflective of the conversation that the board had when they had their review of the term sheet.

All right, so on to new business.

Yeah, so Maureen Kelly, the Director of Economic Development and Tourism for Nelson County is here.

Maureen was here a couple of months ago to talk about the Go Virginia Wine study, that effort that she's been leading on behalf of the region nine region of which we're a part.

And the final report from that effort was finished up late in 2024, but Maureen was here to sort of talk, big picture what the recommendations and findings of that report were, and made an incredible effort to get the next phase going, which is an implementation grant through the same Go Virginia program.

Thank you.

Yeah, and thank you.

And I'm proud to say that Go Virginia last week, so long ago,

approved Rivanna Futures, and also this is Region 9, Go Virginia on board, and also the implementation grant to go forward to the state board for review and hopefully approval.

So it was a good day.

And so what I want to do very quickly is run through the slides that I'm sure you've received and reviewed.

and then we can talk, we can answer questions and talk a little bit about what we see happening next because there's things already happening which is exciting.

Project overview, goal is to get Virginia wine starting with region 9 into the traded sector and we spent, we

It was a year contract.

We only had eight months.

But we worked very hard and very quickly to get all the partners, many of the silos to open up and actually communicate with one another.

And it was very exciting.

So if nothing else were to happen, that level of communication and collaboration

It was a really good day for me when I met with Nikki Hastings from the Seville Biohub because my mind exploded and I was like, coalition, that's what we need.

And having learned, and she was like, don't do this.

And so it's been very good and additive to watch their success and learn from how they really are catalyzing that particular industry sector.

And we see the same kind of model for the wine industry.

So it's been exciting.

The ambassador, so it was funny, working with, you met Matthew Brown.

He's all about wine.

and all about wine marketing.

and it was really wonderful to watch him learn new words, like economic development words.

And I remember sitting in this room making a little list of Matthew's new vocabulary terms.

And so it's been fun to take the economic development workforce and all the things we do and say, you know what, let's soften it a little bit so that the businesses, the private sector can really wrap their heads.

Because I remember the first time I was talking to a couple of wine users like,

cluster up, and I thought, oh, yeah, it's a thing.

During the pandemic, someone asked me, you know, we used to think you made up words like supply chain, and I was like, oh, okay.

So this Virginia wine certificate program is very important because

It is going to educate people to move Virginia wine out of state.

And we know that this works in places like California, Texas, believe it or not, Oregon and Washington, because those have been our models.

But it's a real hard sell to tie it directly to export.

And we've struggled with that because if California hasn't done that connection, if you will, that economic development connection, it's going to be really hard.

We're going to be the leaders and do that in our certificate program.

Go Virginia had just had a hard time with that.

And so we wanted to move the project forward.

And so we pulled the credential program from the Go Virginia ask, and we feel

We're kind of sad.

But we're also looking for other funding opportunities for that.

And we really think that the body that owns that certificate program, they're going to have something.

It may land in the Department of Agriculture.

We just don't know right now.

If you're familiar with WSET, which is an international wine certificate program, don't know what that acronym means, nothing, but the wine planning grant report is in their curriculum now and we have been getting calls from all over the

Yes, The Globe directed at our wineries, at winemakers and others about like, this is really interesting.

And so we feel that there's, but the ambassador program would be targeted and we want it to be accessible.

We want it to be the price point to be accessible.

And so,

We're talking about not just tasting room staff, but people, Somali restaurants, what's called off trade, those not in the trade, but those, the retailers, the distributors, all those people who are going to get Virginia wine out of Virginia.

We also see it as that sales force.

And as we did a little bit of a deeper dive,

with the wineries and surveys and just conversations and things.

The question was, quite frankly, if Avery were to become credentialed, would you pay him more?

And the answer was, well, A, would you pay for it?

and would you pay him more?

And the answer across the board was yes.

And the follow-up question was that, do you see yourselves adding sales staff?

And we, in one of the average Virginia Wine Monthly does an annual survey, a salary survey.

And so we pick kind of the midpoint based on Virginia and it's a US publication.

That's, it's not a bad salary starting there, but it's usually, it's commission based and all the things.

So it's good.

The primary initiatives, if you will, these are, we really think that the customer discovery part of this process, implementation process is critical because what we've found is these wineries are in their own little space.

and they don't really ask a lot of hard questions about how you really feel about their product.

And that is reflected in their sales.

We did a deep dive, if you remember the planning grant report and the top, the three tiers of good sales, you know, and it actually tied directly back to that customer discovery.

So who is your customer?

Where are they coming from?

And PS, how are you getting your,

product out of that tasting room.

And what we also found during these discussions is there is a lot of wonderful, I hate to say this, underutilized resources in our area and statewide that businesses are just too darn busy to take advantage of.

And so, and for example, the Small Business Development Center, big fans,

They do have a craft beverage person.

Chris is wonderful.

He's going to serve on the coalition, but they are very general principles and activities and resources.

What we need, I'll just give you the best example.

So does anyone in this room know how to depreciate a vine?

But there are folks in our area, businesses in our area who do have that expertise.

And so bringing them in and helping the businesses with these specific needs is going to increase their sales and what we also know is that there is excess capacity in this industry.

Well, all the tools are in the toolbox.

We have excess capacity.

We have the ability to make more wine because, you know, that was one of the questions was how much wine are we really, do we really have and are we selling it?

The answer is yes.

Most of these under 20, most of our wineries in this region are under 2,500 cases.

And you know, you better get that special blend or whatever, cause it's gone.

which is a great problem to have but not if you're trying to grow.

So these business resources are extremely unique and, you know, for unmet needs that none of it currently exists and it's going to be a

Could be a process to pull all this information together and again, make it accessible through not just membership organizations like Virginia Wineries Association or the Vineyards Association, but through the economic development professionals.

We're gonna have to have a whole new section of the toolbox that we can pull out and say, hey, this is what you need, or this is who you need to talk to, or this is where you need to go.

So that's very important.

We also found during our work that there's a lot of great workforce programs out there, but not a lot of collaboration, just not a lot of communication.

And again, the wineries themselves are not aware of these resources.

I mean, there's money for internships.

All kinds of options available.

And so this is a support function.

This is we don't need to get into workforce.

It's a whole other job.

So this is super important.

Sustainability is critical.

If Virginia wine is going to take it to the next level, we have a choice pretty much right now, because the industry is shrinking.

It's just the way it is.

In order to grow it, we're going to have to get into more sustainable practices and things like that.

There is a group of winemakers.

One is from, let's see.

There are three gentlemen right now who are working on it, but they need support.

And we see the coalition as supporting all of these efforts.

And then this innovation section is actually biohub driven, if you will.

What we find with some of these winery organizations is that they just talk to themselves.

They don't bring in

experts from the outside to look at Virginia wine critically, and that very much needs to happen, again, in collaboration with so many agencies.

So again, because it's Go Virginia Region 9, we are focused on Region 9 wineries, and there are 104.

We are bringing in

Shenandoah Valley Winery, because the plan is to deploy this.

We're going to bring in region eight, which Shenandoah Valley, go Virginia region eight next time and then deploy it statewide and at some level.

And so you see this significant opportunities for growth and

We have four proposals due the 1st of February to the Virginia Wine Board.

They are extremely excited about this.

Someone asked, well, why isn't the Wine Board doing this?

Well, the Wine Board, that's not what they do.

Their funding is through the excise tax from wine sales, and then they

give this money away to people who are going to implement projects that will forward Virginia Wine.

And Virginia Wine Marketing Office is thrilled about this.

We have letters of support that say

We really want this coalition and these programs of work because we need to be supported.

And that's the same with Piedmont Virginia Community College.

They are extremely excited about that and news.

Courtney Caucasian, Charles Warrier Convention of Visitors Bureau, Director, okay.

She's been talking to PVCC for some time.

Anyway, during this whole conversation last year, she mentioned it, and I was like, well, who are you talking to?

And she said, bid.

And I said, huh?

And so it was just a matter of a conversation, moving her in the right direction.

They're talking about that curriculum.

That is very exciting.

And again, compliments what's going on here.

So we have, again, the go-ahead green light from the Go Virginia Region 9 Council waiting for the states, March 11th.

and then, but we are going to just go ahead and we've, the coalition wants to meet in February.

We're not going to say no because we want them to continue the work that's been done.

We've got a green light for PVCC to host it there.

So there's no cost or anything like that.

So the work continues and the conversation continues and that's the most important thing.

My request from you today is that you continue to support this process with another $20,000.

You did $20,000 for the planning grant, which was one year.

This is a two-year implementation process, and we have the match to do all this, the local match, and especially since our budget was reduced, minus the accreditation program, if you will, but we really feel, we feel it's important to have a good, strong cash match to demonstrate to the Go Virginia State Board that this is important to our region.

You mentioned that there's a lot of resources out there now that a lot of these wineries are not using, not taking advantage of.

Those resources are more general in business planning.

is great, but when you're talking about a winery or vineyard operation, it's very specific to that business.

We had someone at the Go Virginia Region 9 meeting to consider this grant proposal last week share

Could this be brought in to include the breweries and the cideries as well?

Beer's 40 days.

You really turn out this, you have one chance after harvest to put something in the multiple years.

It's truly with vineyards and wineries is patient capital.

Once you install that grape.

Yes.

And we will be working with all the Small Business Development Center and all those agencies to share, sharing so that they will

They can refer or they can say, hey, we can help you too.

So no way, no way.

I won't duplicate efforts.

I won't do it.

And so this program is very, very unique and specific.

It's very different than the California Wine Institute one.

So the money you're asking for, does that match something else?

Is it part of, goes with other money that's coming in from other places?

How does it fit into the next step?

That's all right, just generally.

So I think it was $255,000 was the total budget, and local match was

Oh, thank you, Emily.

And Go Virginia's formula prescribes a certain amount of cash match.

I have something here that might help.

Let's see.

Private sector support is 5,000.

Oh, we've received another 6,100 since.

and in kind from private sectors 13,250.

at this juncture.

I don't have the cash stuff in here.

I apologize because I wanted to very much emphasize the private sector-led initiative.

That is how the Charlottesville Biohub has been so successful, and that's the model.

We believe strongly that the private sector should have skin in the game.

They should be at the table the entire time.

But what most people really don't understand is the margins for the wineries themselves are pretty thin.

So we would be leaning on the retailers, the wholesalers, the suppliers, the people who

benefit from the wineries work and products.

And they've already, we've got a couple letters of support from them saying, yes.

And one said, well, would you like a letters with a number?

And I said, no, that's no, that's weird.

And I don't think that's appropriate.

And plus, I don't know if your number is big enough yet.

So that's, yeah, so we fully expect.

And again, we are looking at a department of agriculture because some of the recommendations

11 of the 25 recommendations in the report are fundable from Go Virginia.

The others are not because they are more marketing type.

And so we are working with, again, the Virginia Wine Board, Virginia Wine Marketing Office, Virginia Tourism Corporation, Department of Agriculture has a couple of programs that we think will fit these funding, but the coalition and its work

And so the $20,000 you're asking for, does that get you where you need to go to get the coalition?

That's just the last piece.

It is.

Or are there other monies that you need to get in?

It is the last piece.

And there's approximately, doing that on the fly, which is always dangerous, $16,000 in cash, combined cash, from some of the other counties that are participating in the study.

There's a request for $20,000 from Albemarle County and then in-kind contributions, participation in the advisory committee that comprise the balance of the match and so the hope would be to bring down

Roughly $210,000.

Is that the new budget number?

255.

255 from Go Virginia.

Another quick question.

So for all the individual wineries, do they have to pay to be a member of the coalition or are they just because they're in our region, they automatically are.

How has that communication happened so that they know this is going on because there's 100 plus of them, you know, as well as the suppliers.

How are you linking all this

There we have a we've created a fairly sophisticated communication and response mechanism and so for example well I sent an update to the advisory board after the after the Go Virginia meeting and after that

An email went out to the winery saying, hey, this is where we are.

So we're communicating with them as well as the off-trade folks in real time.

We want them to know exactly what's going on so that there are no expectations.

And people always have good ideas.

Have you thought about this?

What about this?

We're always looking for feedback.

We like feedback.

That planning report went through.

About 15 iterations because we just kept collecting the feedback from specifically the off-trade to validate what is needed, what they really need.

Another follow-up question.

The Go Virginia is really good about making you come up with metrics, outcomes.

We count a lot.

And it's good because it does, it keeps you honest.

And again, in real time, everything is reported at least quarterly to the Department of Housing and Community Development, which is the parent of Go Virginia.

And again,

There's a lot of reporting that goes on.

And we're excited about that.

In fact, we were told by Shannon Holland, the director of Go Virginia Region 9, not so many metrics, Maureen.

And I was like, yeah, but we want to be able to track all this.

And it's everything from jobs to sales, volume of sales.

It's a great list.

And getting folks to respond.

Your winery owner, you're doing everything.

It's not a lot of fun.

And then there's a survey that you have to fill out.

We did this through the planning grant was our response rate was really good because we hadn't heard from Mr. Long.

We would show up and say, let's go through this together.

This is really good.

This is important information.

And we have all that baseline information.

We want more.

We want to know.

We want to know how to help you.

Part of the wonder is asking for this help about just that freeze that

Ronald Reagan, Jane Fain, from the government, we're here to help you.

Very much so.

Very much so.

And that's why the coalition is so private sector led, because they want this.

They need the help.

And that's really important because sometimes you don't know you need the help.

And so if you know it and you're actually asking for it, because those are really hard words, I need help.

And so, yes, we feel very strongly and we know there's appetite from outside of Region 9 for this from other wineries.

That's why we grabbed somebody from Shenandoah Valley because he heard about it and he's like, I want to be in this.

I said, well, you really can't say Shenandoah Valley very much.

A little bit of what Jeff said.

So much of what these wineries have to do is federal government driven and state government driven because not only is it just sort of the normal piece of the state government, but half of them use the state government as their distribution, right?

The DWDC.

So what's the plan for

easing the state government burden on these wineries that will help them.

Right.

VWDC needs to do a better job of helping them get this out.

And they're not really a full blown distributor.

They don't do the marketing.

We don't have those sales reps.

They don't have the people who necessarily want to get that certification to go out and sell Virginia wine as much.

That was definitely a strong recommendation from the wineries.

However, Go Virginia money cannot be used in any way, shape, or form to evaluate or help another state agency.

So we're going outside of that, probably the private sector funding, to figure that out.

And we've got one of the best

Alcohol Legal Minds in the Commonwealth.

She's an alcohol compliance attorney on the coalition.

Her name is Mary Beth Williams.

And Mary Beth has some good ideas already.

But it's going to be a journey on that one, because that's in some ways a sacred cow.

In some ways, we've been told, be careful.

over there.

Yes?

Okay.

But again, it needs to be discussed.

I got a new guy question.

I guess we're going down there.

We're going in whatever order, but it's now in the idea of like other states.

So I guess, novice here, but California is probably the number one producer.

nationwide, right?

Yes, volume.

And so I would say Virginia is like an emerging wine producer, right?

Yeah, my sisters in San Antonio, I'm like, yeah, right, right, right.

Don't be like that.

And, but they have been, Texas has been very aggressive in the accreditation process, in the state marketing and things like that.

And there's a national competition that is annually held in Dallas.

Okay, I just didn't, I never would have thought of that.

We do not want to reinvent the wheel or duplicate efforts in any way, shape, or form.

No one has time for that.

We are at a critical juncture in the Virginia wine industry.

And it's either going to be we are content with our tasting room sales or we're going out to state, which is where we need to go.

We already have some ideas.

One of the recommendations is a retail location.

in Washington, D.C.

I was on the phone with Joe Boatwright from the USDA, and we were going through some programs, and I was like, I don't like that one.

I want that.

And I was like, well, wait.

Would that program fund a D.C. location for wine?

And he was like, I like the way you think.

So we're at least talking about that, because that is an amazing place.

Those folks are coming to Virginia to enjoy Virginia wine.

They should have the opportunity to buy it right

So it's those sorts of things.

And so the other state that we thought was a little more wine-friendly, North Carolina, turns out not as much as we thought it was.

So we've been really, really in the weeds during this planning grant.

And it's paid dividends because we feel we're very focused.

We feel we have the right recommendations.

I am really excited about this because I've been working with a lot of with various wineries and such and David mentioned something very important which was distribution state laws distributors

We cannot get our wines into our local stores because the distributors mark up the price and then it becomes unaffordable for a lot of people.

So that is a huge thing when in reality our wineries could distribute it themselves.

You know, take it to the stores, Kroger, Costco, and places like that.

Yeah, so that's one, maybe something Go Virginia could work on.

The other thing is, in most places, like in European countries, they produce their wine, and that's what they sell in the locality.

So here we were drinking California, Washington, everybody else's wine, but our own.

So that's a problem right there that we're not drinking enough of our own wines, which are now competing.

And you may not know this, but there's a project

So it's in the thinking stage, but they want to have a contest, frankly, between Virginia wines and California wines, a double blind test, just like they did, you know, years ago when, I can't say it, but when California be dead of the country, because I'm half that of the country, so I can't believe that is.

But the bad fluence, is that what you're talking about, that competition?

When the California wines won over the French wines.

It was like a knife through my heart, but that's okay.

I mean, that's what, you know, that's the way it is.

But they're talking about doing some kind of an event like that.

A certain winery.

I don't want to get into details.

A winery is going to sponsor this contest between the two.

Because we're working with an organization called BevFluence.

And we're actually going to have a booth at CiderCon in Chicago in whatever month that is.

And we're allowed to bring Virginia product, not just cider, to that.

This is more of a local Albemarle, so our wines versus, you know, and the wines in the region around Albemarle, so that would be a contest there, you know, a lot of publicity there.

What would really help us a lot also is right now at Memorial County we have farm wineries so you cannot you don't have the restaurants with the wineries and yet in reality if you think about it that will cut down on drunk driving because

You're eating and drinking and not, I'll give you an example, Jefferson Vineyard, when I went there, they serve oyster crackers.

So if I do a flight and eat oyster crackers, I'm driving drunk because it doesn't take much for me.

I'd love to have the support of the committee to be able to say let's look at that because there are some wineries that can have a quality restaurant.

Not a lot because it's going to take a lot of money.

You want the acreage, you don't want to disturb the neighbors.

things like that.

But that's something that would really bring in business because we're losing business to Early Manon Vineyard.

We're losing business to Palladio and Barbersville.

That's a high-end restaurant and very good.

So that was, and I'll give you a good example.

There's a certain wineries, they served delicious raw oysters.

Everybody loved their oysters.

Albemarle County says, you can have those oysters.

DDAC says you can't have those oysters because you're a farm winery.

So it's this, we're not helping ourselves.

Some of our laws are not helping ourselves because we, I think we have a really booming industry.

We're bringing in millions.

The wine industry is bringing in millions and it would just be nice to

And the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is at the table, at the coalition table.

Can we get a copy of your slides emailed, or was it already emailed to her?

We can send them to do that.

So if we don't need to make a decision today, my suggestion would be to just move the decision point to the next meeting.

If anybody has questions, I need to read them.

I certainly think, obviously, Albemarle County has

All right, so not quite a majority.

Close to half.

So I think we should be doing what we need to do to support the wineries.

So I certainly support that.

I'd just like to understand a little better about the context.

So here's what I would suggest is everybody look at the information.

If there's any information that we need, we should get it from Maureen so that when we come to the meeting next time, we'll be ready to make a decision.

Agreeable to everybody.

Thanks, Maureen.

All right.

Yeah, while David comes up, I think I'll just really quickly

mentioned some of the breadcrumbs for this study, meaning just some of the brief history.

The county became interested in studying the Broadway Street corridor following the announcement by Willow Tree, which was a big tech company growing out of the city, considering other states.

And the city worked with the county to redevelop the Woolen Mills site, which is at the end of Broadway Street, to retain this company and grow it.

That announcement was for $12.3 million in capital investment and 200 jobs.

So at the time it was the largest economic development project the county had ever encountered.

And the Broadway Street corridor at that time was a

was a relatively quiet place.

The Woollen Mills site had yet to be redeveloped and the county was imagining the hundreds of employees that would be traveling down the corridor, what kind of impacts there would be on infrastructure.

And so they committed to a study, a phase one study,

Looking at three different areas, which David will talk about in depth.

But the county wanted to understand how they were going to, how economic vitality, connectivity, and placemaking could really be maximized as a result of this big investment and big project happening on the corridor.

Phase one, just like the wine study, just looked at what was there and what the opportunities were.

And then David, through the community development department, bravely led the phase two study to look at the implementation opportunities, which is what he's going to get into today.

So the last thing I'll say is there's no ask here.

This is all just for information so that the EDA is apprised of what the Broadway studies have yielded.

And with that, I'll

Welcome, David.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you.

I'm going to try to get a reasonably brief overview.

So I don't know how familiar you all are with the Robley Street area.

So I'm going to assume that there is some level of understanding that would give you kind of an overview of what we

budgeted in the study and the study was scholarly.

Is anyone generally familiar with the area?

It's faraway corridor is sort of those county islands surrounded by the city and on the south is Moores Creek with the study area and then east and north is the Rivanna River, East Market Street for a portion of mostly the railroad.

And then on the west is Franklin Street.

Franklin Street provides the primary access to the area on all of Franklin Street, as you can see.

So the phase two study, as J.T.

indicated, the recommendation of the phase one study was to undertake this phase two study to develop actionable implementation strategies that were focused then on these three focus areas, economic vitality, place-making, and connectivity.

At the time we did the study, we added up to work land use, which all the land use had.

There was a focus area in and of itself and it had a significant impact on the other three as well.

So there was a fourth focus area that was added in the study.

The study created goals and expectations for each of those focus areas and then strategies in the short term, during five years, long term, five to 15.

Ears, and then what was called integration strategies.

And those integration strategies are really things that require collaboration from other entities or partners the county can't fully control.

We hired two consultants to work on the project, 3TV Ventures out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but they have a local office here, and then Lying Grade Engineering.

Engagement

that we undertook for this study focused very heavily on getting input from the business community, the businesses there, the tenants, as well as the property owners.

We did engage with the city's neighborhood development services, kept them informed of what we were working on throughout the process and the study.

They had opportunities and did provide us input and ideas.

The board endorsed this study on September 4th, 2024.

In that action, they referred the study to the Economic Development Office and Community Development Department for implementation.

And as such, what that means is that the document on the news will help us work out in our work program what projects we'll be working on in the future, at least in CBD.

That's how we approach it.

and it also provides a guide for us on decision-making regarding policy, projects, and proposals that we might see in the area.

Again, at least a little more of responsibility in community development.

That's how we would anticipate using the project.

So what do we hear from the stakeholders and the consultants regarding each of these focus areas?

go through them individually and just give you some highlights of what we heard because that is what we heard led to the goals and strategies that we came out of the study.

For economic vitality, what we heard from the stakeholders is that continued affordability of land and space is vitally important to them.

Broadway, Porter has historically provided relatively affordable space for startups and local artists and factory services.

And there is a need and desire from those stakeholders and from our needed inventory to maintain that.

While

That's a desire of what has been happening in this area because of its location and other market-driven conditions, land costs are going up.

So there is a concern that businesses may be priced out of this area.

Along with that, the consultant reminded us of what we already know.

Our industrial land use inventory is pretty weak and small in Albemarle County, and there's a need for more land generally for industrial type uses, but it

But as to the importance of protecting this area, you know, retaining it for this inventory and the Pantops so we can expand our inventory.

So,

What I'm going to do with each of these areas is sort of go through the goals.

I believe the goals are as important as the strategies, actually, because the goals set the picture for what we're trying to achieve in these focus areas.

The strategies over time, as it takes time to develop, meaning change, and you need to measure how useful with the pros and cons of those strategies are, but you always look back to the goals for what you're trying to achieve.

So I'm going to take a minute and kind of read through these so you understand that.

what we are saying is important in these focus areas.

And for land use and economic development, economic vitality, economic vitality goal is to maintain Broadway as an affordable place for local startups, artisans, existing businesses, while continuing to encourage new creative industries within Broadway.

And the land use goal is in the near term, maintain primacy of

Creative Industries invite industrial land uses within Broadlight while also supporting complimentary uses that bring vibrancy and activity to the area, especially during evening and weekend hours.

Some of the businesses that are emerging in that area, the breweries are doing that at a brewery, future beverage businesses too, let's understand, and that's an opportunity

In terms of the strategies to implement that goal.

We'll get it there, David.

I think this thing might be going.

Yeah, we'll move it from here.

So the general focus of the strategies for that area, this focus area is to retain industrial land use designations and zoning and minimize competing land uses and zoning.

There was some interest in fostering mixed use development and residential development in the area, but there was a concern that that would create a competing market for the industrial land.

So again,

The focus is retaining those industrial lands.

Improve zoning ordinances to allow flexibility and compatibility for different uses that can leverage other revenue streams for stakeholders, property owners, and businesses, and to foster those off-power uses.

And then continue business retention, the theme that carried through the study.

and long-term just continue to monitor land usage and market demands for this area.

The connectivity focus area, what we heard from the stakeholders and from the consultants analysis was that there is poor and unsaved pedestrian and bike access and there's a need to maintain

At the same time, there's a need to maintain large vehicle truck access for industries.

And that traffic and parking needs to be better managed, both the maintenance and also speeding.

And that access and connections to other surrounding areas, Franklin Street and the city were important.

So that goal is to establish an integrated concept and vision for Broadway Street that unifies the adjacent land uses, maintains adequate access for light, light industrial uses, and invites pedestrians to walk, bike, the destinations and landmarks along the corridor while establishing an aesthetic quality and character that make the Broadway District unique and engaging.

I'll do this and placemaking together.

Placemaking, what we heard is that there are both the stakeholders and the consultant is that there are opportunities in this area that in amenities and resources that need to be tapped into that included the Rivanna River, Moores Creek and the trails.

and Open Space that were associated with those, the Willow Mills Historic District and the emerging arts and artisan community that is there, plus the brewery, possible future breweries, the cidery that has intentions to maybe open themselves up for visitation as well.

There was also a note that there was also a lack of public space for events and markets and for the artisans that are there and some of the businesses to create some energy in the area by having those types of markets and open space available to provide that.

And then a big one was the

Lack of awareness and visibility of the area.

A lot of people have a hard time understanding where that is, what Broadway means.

So the notion of rate binding, signage, and branding of the area became the first concept that needed to be focused in on in placemaking.

So the placemaking goal is to create, incorporate creative design elements in public space within Broadway that highlight the unique and creative character of Broadway.

to elevate these areas, compelling destination for the business of people.

Then when you look at those goals together, look at the strategies.

The strategies are kind of obvious for these areas, but they focus in on

Pedestrian and bike improvements along Broadway Street and East Market Street.

And then looking at Marchant Street as a possible pedestrian connection and addressing some safety issues.

The pedestrian biker, is that what you mean when you say in-built development?

Yeah, infill really relates to better utility of some of the existing buildings.

One of the things I didn't touch on, but it's a lot of one story type development, various setbacks related to zoning districts and such.

kind of limit the opportunity to infill on the land site and infill them with the type of businesses that would be beneficial.

Can I interrupt for just a second?

I was going to ask Jeff, does that kind of line up with the area in Asheville, the area on the, wasn't it an area on the French Broad that got flooded?

Yeah.

I think so.

I think it's a good comparison.

Not long before I left, we landed a huge brewery that took over on

an EPA contaminated site, they came in and they put their East Coast distribution center there and the city put about $4 million in infrastructure investment in really a blighted area and it flipped it immediately from some of the

lowest return on investment property anywhere in the city to an area that was destined for economic investment and the key was the investment of the of the brewery in that area.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I remember that there were people, the artisans, and a lot of the folks were down along the river and in those spaces.

Yeah, I think there are some similarities.

This is a much smaller area, 62 acres.

He has a similar mix.

I think in Asheville, from my experience there and looking into it, it has become a little more large, heavy, whereas we would see where this goes, but we certainly don't want to lose the garage door firm and the other opportunities.

The integration strategies, just real quickly, as I mentioned there, these were separated out just because they require collaboration.

We can't control that on our own.

One of the ones that you all may be aware of that falls into this category is the Renfrew Banner River Bridge Coordination.

So that's one of the implementation strategies that is actually on the border of this area.

And this area actually provides a great opportunity with the Moores Creek Trail.

Rivanna Trail, the potential bridge to be sort of a center of lightning trail opportunities and sort of a center for that kind of activity, which also could support that after hour type of businesses that could be put in these buildings.

One of the things that we heard from the

Stakeholders in the area that there is a perception that services to the area could be improved.

Police service, utilities, road maintenance.

Because this is, again, a county island around the city, VDOT has to come from several, literally several miles away to serve in the area and maintain it.

Police protection, police and cars drive through it.

Young, so the notion is sort of talking about those opportunities to continue to improve and better the services in that area.

Franklin Street pedestrian improvements are Franklin Street's in the city, so that requires city commitment.

And again, Marshawn Street is actually a road that goes from

Broadway to East Market Street.

It goes across the railroad tracks.

It seems to have an opportunity for pedestrian crossings, but obviously that's a major safety issue.

Are those us?

CSX?

CSX.

Yeah.

OK.

So the study recommends a number of recommendations or strategies.

We can go through these if you want.

I've kind of hit the summary of all of these in that summary.

I think just go to the next one.

I think the origin of this request was just to get a simple update on a couple of them.

So I'm using this table.

These are some of the strategies that we are actually in some ways working on right now.

And so the first one is to retain that industrial land use designation in our comp plan and zoning.

That's sort of an ongoing policy, but we are in the throes of our comp plan update.

We've incorporated those concepts, and we are continuing to maintain this area as an industrially mixed-use border, flex-type industrially used by mixed-run adventure.

And we're actually designated it as a employment district within the community, which gives it some priority for

infrastructure support and other things.

Increased flexibility through zoning.

This kind of touches on the issue of providing for better land uses to address better ability to use the land that's there or those evening after hour activities that can provide an income stream to some of the property owners.

We have a zoning ordinance rewrite that's under

Underway right now, it's a long-term project that's going to take a while.

Completion is probably expected in FY 25-26, but the recommendation in the study will be considered as part of that work.

On Broadway, business retention again is a continuation of EDOs here at REACH.

I'm going to skip the Broadway Blueprint because I've got one more or two more slides that we can go on and look at a little bit.

Did I read that right?

Yeah, I'll go ahead and hit the last two before we go to that one.

It's a lot of money.

First, the Market Street Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan.

The study calls for pedestrian and bike planning along East Market Street at the

eastern end of the wool factory site.

We as staff, I'm kind of thinking on that as of right now, but actually the property along East Market Street, the residence and wool factory owner are working together to try to figure out the traffic management issues there to control access and speeding that's occurring at the end of that road and if they

Get to an agreement and get some improvements in.

It could be kates or bollards or command controls.

That will improve access for bikes in that area.

It's currently pretty dangerous if you've been down there.

It's a very narrow road.

Speeds get pretty high when there's an event there.

So some better traffic control may be worked out.

I don't know if that will benefit pedestrian and bike access there.

The Rivanna Ridge, the Rivanna River pedestrian bridge project is one that's underway.

J.T.

might be able to stick to this better than me.

He's a little more dialed in with the TJPEC's work.

They're making an application for a federal grant for a preliminary engineering study.

That more enhanced engineering study may be able to help refine the cost estimates for this project.

Because, my understanding is because of the

Geology is a little unknown in the engineering costs for spanning the river in that location.

The VDOT estimates and the smart scale estimates are relatively high and they're sort of worst case names.

So this primary engineering study is really trying to get at that shocking claim.

It was in there.

Sorry, it is on a slide.

It's back here.

That Michael Baker international diagram is showing the eastern anchor would be adjacent to the State Farm campus.

And then it would come across and land right at the Holy Mills.

Yeah, it's not just the bridge itself.

No, that's right.

That's right.

Since we're on this slide, I'll just quickly mention, I spoke about at the very beginning willow tree considering other states.

The completion of our bridge, the little bridge that was in one of the other pictures that connected the trail system, that was considered a real distinguishing factor for the company.

They were, their

Their employees had an expectation of being able to get out into nature on their lunch hour and connecting the Rivanna Trail system with this bridge was the reason, one of the major reasons that they decided to stay here.

That's the current bridge.

So last project of speakers, a little bit more depth on, not much more on what has been, is striping of Broadway Street to improve pedestrian bike accidents.

And that's part of a larger project to upgrade the water line in the Broadway Street corridor.

The whole line there that needs to be upgraded is being done.

The work will start March 2025 and will be done in July of this year.

Related to that, because the line is in the road, the road needs to be resurfaced.

That creates an opportunity for us to strike the road.

A consultant being made aware of that project saw that there was a low cost opportunity to improve pedestrian and bike access without a lot of capital costs and at the same time also addressing one of the other important issues in this area is allowing tractor trailers to serve the businesses and industries in the area.

They need that big width of roadway to be able to move the trucks around.

So curb and gutter and sidewalk are probably not a good option there.

So in the short term, it's simple striping so it looks like bike lanes.

Hopefully with some pedestrian striping and markers on it, it'll create a visual separation between the pedestrian bike area and traffic while also allowing the tractor trailers to negotiate and they continue to support the industries

Also, from time to time, there are events we understand, whether it's parking on the street, and this provides for an important opportunity parking area that it can be in market.

We have VDOT approval.

It has been funded.

This is only $21,000.

One of the things that we're going to be looking into is speed limits.

We understand that road doesn't have a speed limit.

I think that is something that's sort of the next step in the traffic management process.

It's really actually doesn't even have a road category.

It's so out there in the NEOD system.

They know it's there.

I don't know if other people have any questions.

I guess mine would be mostly a comment.

I think

I appreciate you sharing all this information.

I didn't see too much based on kind of where we are that we could do.

I think it's a great

I agree.

Great opportunity.

My kids go down there to the Cypher and all those places down there.

So I know that especially with a lot of the younger people, it's really happening in the area.

We might be aware, though, that this would be

I'm not saying that we shouldn't do that, and I think that when you can, you know, improve a community, improve a neighborhood, nothing wrong with that.

That's the balance the consultant is trying to work through.

and a lot of the stakeholders there, owners and tenants just said leave us.

We don't want your help.

There are some things that we do need some help with and I think that's the approach that the consultant tried to take is helping with revenue streams so that they could get more money out of their building after hours and without gentrifying the area, it's tough to do.

This area is in a very tough area because in terms of

Fighting the eventual market because it's just so close to these amenities, so close to downtown.

How far we can fight off that market to keep the prices down is going to be tough.

And the consultant actually acknowledges that in their long-term recommendations, we need to continue to monitor with the market.

Inevitability is on.

A neighbor owns a business in that area and I'm not sure he's even aware

Well, by all means, please, by all means, please be happy to send him.

Right.

So he does the malting, right.

Oh, I just visited with Bob a few weeks ago.

So, yeah.

So this year or so.

So he's doing great.

But that's good.

So I remember when he launched and just some of the struggles he had and just trying to be able to grow.

And he's been very successful there.

But some of what we're talking about here will be impacting increased rents.

Because what he does, it doesn't need to be a traffic scenario.

He doesn't have a ton of traffic.

But he does need those bigger trucks that come through.

For sure.

but just not just his business, but all the rest of the businesses there to try and grow them and keep them.

And from what I read though, it sounds like there's a lot of land that's not, I won't say highest and best use, but a lot of surface parking, a lot of places where between the combination of zoning and the comprehensive plan, we get those aligned.

Allowing verticality and allowing the secondary uses in the evening so that the basement or ground floor can be used.

I think there's a lot of opportunity here.

And on that note, if any of you are aware of businesses that do desire support or just want to have a relationship strikened up, striked up, kind of developed.

It's nice to see the infrastructure investment too.

It's good stuff because, you know, it's not fun, but, you know, we'll look at Richmond when the pipes and everything are not working, it's a problem.

So, I mean, that's money well spent.

All right.

Thank you.

Thanks David.

All right, we will go swiftly, I promise.

Welcome, Director Hood.

The statement of economic interest forms, you all should have received a copy of those from the clerk's office early January.

Those are due back to the clerk on February 3rd by 5 p.m. That is required as part of your service on the Economic Development Authority.

It's a requirement under the state code.

So it's, I did mine over the weekend.

You can do it, but it takes some effort.

And there is almost no flexibility in terms of being late.

$250 fine if you're late and it's

So no flexibility.

Get it in on time.

And when you do it, save it so that next year it's easy to fill out.

I think the form stays fairly static year to year.

And that's a good segue to the next one, EDA email update.

So we had talked in the fall about a transition of the EDA director emails.

And as Director Hood is probably acutely aware, the landscape of cybersecurity is ever shifting.

And

The IT has since the since we sort of talked through what we were going to do for the EDA director emails, there's been sort of a new understanding of cybersecurity threats around email forwarding, which was how we were going to handle that.

And so the IT department has requested that we sort of leave things as they are

for a little bit longer.

They have a new solution identified, and once we're certain that that's what we're gonna do, I'll provide an update to you all.

But just wanted to let you know that if you've been relying on the forwarding taking effect as we had planned, that won't be happening.

But we've got, I think we've got a good solution, and I'm sorry for the delay on that.

I'm gonna turn it over to J.T.

Yeah, thanks Emily.

Spent just a couple minutes to inform the EDA that our kickoff to updating our strategic plan is starting this week.

There's a stakeholder committee of which Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley and Chair Long are participating and representing the EDA's interest on that we'll meet with

A consultant that we've hired from a firm called Resonance.

This is the same consultant that updated the city's strategic plan last year, which is a really good strategic plan.

I'd encourage you to take a look at it if you ever did have a chance.

But Emily and I have met with Steven Pedigo several times in the lead up to this Thursday's virtual meeting with the stakeholder committee.

He's really excited to get here.

at least a couple of times throughout the update process and meet folks and get to hear their voices for this process.

He is a dean at the UT Austin at the Lyndon Johnson School of Public Affairs.

So he brings a really cool perspective, has done plans for a lot of major cities and other municipalities around the country.

I wanted to talk really briefly about four phases of work that the update process will include.

There's this arrow indicating both directions just to say that this is not intended to be like a linear process, but this will all kind of be happening simultaneously.

So there's the strategy development and kickoff that I mentioned.

this Thursday.

He and Stephen and his research associates have already started a benchmarking analysis of 10 peer localities looking deeply at our target industries, which is something that people often ask us about.

Do we have the right targets?

What's the data that supports them as our right target?

Between now and summer, there will be lots of opportunities for partner engagement.

There'll be round table discussions, things that are in-person, things that are virtual.

There'll be an online survey.

There'll be a webpage that people can visit and get more background information, as well as the latest information about the process.

And then it leads into... Looks like we have some...

It's like we are in a, no, there it is.

Some of the other touch points, but Project Enable, our existing strategic plan has served us well, but it's time for us to move on.

You know, I'm expecting that this new plan will, you know, may include things like we heard from David in terms of placemaking and some of the things that

Employers of choice really value in terms of trying to attract the talent that they need.

I expect it will be shorter than Project Enable, probably be fewer goals.

I think Project Enable has seven goals and 70 plus objectives.

So hopefully allow us to get a little more focused in what we're doing.

And certainly Rivanna Futures is a huge project and will be a big focus, I think, of what we see in the plan.

Speaking of Rivanna Futures, we revamped, we've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to get ready for the grants and the funding requests that we have into the state right now.

And so the first step was to make sure that our outside bases were ready.

So we revamped the webpage that we have in Rivanna Futures.

overlay some of the language about what we're hoping to build out there and some of the key documents that we've been developing over the past 12 months are on there.

The other, so that was sort of in front to make sure that we're in a good position as we're communicating with different entities of the state as we seek funding for the site readiness work that we've been working so hard towards.

So there are three funding requests kind of all happening in parallel.

Maureen mentioned the Go Virginia Region 9 process.

Her grant application was submitted at the December 11th due date.

That was also the same process that we submitted ours for.

The Go Virginia funding, if it was awarded, would fund a lot of the design work that we would need to be ready to do site construction,

if we were successful in getting, at the bottom in the blue, the Virginia Business Ready Sites program funding from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, which is the state economic development agency.

So the GoVirginia funding is a little over $600,000.

We'll find out about that on March 11th.

We were approved by the region.

Once you're approved by your region, you go up to the state council.

for final approval.

And so we'll be working with 39 staff to get ready for the state process that's happening over the next several weeks.

At the same time, our Virginia Business Ready Sites program grant was due January the 8th.

Thank you, Jeanette, for all of the hard work to get us ready for that.

It's a very complicated application process with a lot of

Attachments, I think it's like 300 pages if you were to print it out, which we would never because that's a lot of paper.

That program is a little bit of another iterative process.

So we'll know more in the March, April timeframe, and we'll have a final decision from them sometime in June.

And we're hopeful that we'll be able to be successful for some grant funding from them.

Yes, for the Site 8 up at North Fork.

And then the state budget.

We've also requested funds from the state budget.

There's a benefit to getting state budget direct line funding.

Grant programs are wonderful and they fund the things that they were designed to fund.

There are things that you can't use, that you can't apply to fund with the Virginia Business Ready Sites program that we need to do

In order to make this project successful, the most obvious one is BBRSP does not fund road construction.

And for us to be able to have access deeper into the property that we purchased, we would need a road to be part of that.

And so we're hoping that we'll be successful in attracting some state budget dollars

that'll help give us just a little bit of flexibility in thinking about the development work more comprehensively than more piecemeal.

And so I think the next, yeah, the next slide has the budget.

We had a budget amendment request submitted from Senator Deeds and from Delia Lawford.

So on both sides of the General Assembly have a bill under consideration and we'll be working

over the next several weeks to answer questions, make ourselves available to members of the General Assembly, and share information to hopefully help share what we believe is truly a Commonwealth-wide opportunity that is located in Albemarle County.

Just a couple announcements.

This body supported an application that the name has changed several times.

You may not recognize this one, but the Seville Biohub submitted an application to Go Virginia

probably about a year ago to start a wet lab accelerator which you all agreed to support with $100,000 a year for the three-year pilot, so for a total of $300,000.

It was the largest project that Go Virginia has awarded and so it was a little bit, it took a little bit longer to work its way through the process but was officially announced a couple weeks ago.

They'll be having a ribbon cutting event

in February, and we'll make sure that we share that information with you all.

The full project budget is over $7 million, and the goal would be to work with anywhere between 12 and 20 companies over the three-year pilot to help provide inexpensive wet lab space, which is hard to come by.

as well as a lot of support services to help put startup companies in a position to do their own fundraising and hopefully continue to grow and hopefully here.

And so the goal is to really create a physical location for the biotech industry to live at.

And again, the location for that is up at the North Fork Discovery Park.

UVA Foundation is supporting the cost of a lease as part of that pilot program.

A couple of upcoming events to just put on your radar.

On Thursday, a number of local economic development folks will be presenting at an event that the Defense Affairs Committee of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce has organized on this idea of a burgeoning innovation corridor that's happening that kind of connects Greene County, Albemarle, and the city of Charlottesville.

and a bit beyond in a lot of interest lately in national security and intelligence.

But there's also a really great biotech story, too, when we don't want to lose one for the other.

And so we're sort of talking about them together more intentionally.

There's been a request to make a presentation similar to that to this body in February.

And so if you can't make that one, we're hoping to bring that here as well.

Speaking of Siebel Biohub, Siebel Biohub is hosting their second device and tech expo on January 30th.

It's from 4 to 7, also up at North Fork, and that's a great opportunity to just shake hands and meet some of the entrepreneurs in our community and get a better sense of what some of the biotech companies are actually doing.

The more I learned about biotech, the more I appreciate how diverse applications can be.

You can have software companies, you can have folks who are really making physical products and therapies.

And so the range can be pretty impressive.

Oh, so the 30th is just sort of hanging out there.

We could get everyone to use the same format.

And then the one of the goals in Project Enable is around the tourism sector.

The Charlottesville Albemarle's

mentioned a visitor's bureau, is having a Tourism for All training and recognition program on February 11th from 9 to 3.30 at Highland and is a bit of learning, a bit of recognition and celebration.

And the Tourism for All initiative is really about having an inclusive tourism experience for everyone that comes to our community.

I'll take the next one.

Just a quick where we've been this month on business retention and expansion.

You can see we've had a couple more biotechs than we've had in recent months here and continue our focus on the defense and intelligence sector as well as some agribusiness activity.

This is a slide that Chair Long asked if I could

tried to put together.

I don't know that he's impressed.

But this tries to just sort of set out.

There's a lot of planning happening in the county right now.

There's always a lot of planning happening in the county.

This tries to sort of take the bigger items and show how they kind of work together.

So AC44 is the name for the comprehensive plan update that's underway.

That process was kicked off

I want to say in 2022, and we expect we'll wrap sometime this calendar year, one of the key chapters as it relates to the work of the EDA is the thriving economy chapter.

That's still being drafted.

It is expected to be in front of the planning commission at the end of February and then in front of the board.

They're hoping for some time in March.

When we have dates, we will share those with you all, as well as a draft.

But our office has been engaged in the thriving economy chapter.

And then, you know, from the MOU work that we've been doing with the board, that there's a lot of focus in the current MOU on development area versus rural area.

How does AC44

Yeah, so the comp plan is a 20 year vision for the county and it covers a wide range of areas.

It's primarily driven around land use, but it also includes the economy chapter,

It talks about conservation efforts of the county, placemaking, amenities, service expectations around police and fire, public safety type items.

And so it's really all encompassing of the things that local government does.

And it's a 20-year document, so it's looking to sort of the next generation out, what do we want to be?

It's updated every five-ish years and what that looks like is a little bit different.

So sometimes the board will create a new chapter, a master plan for a specific area of the county.

Sometimes it'll be a full comprehensive comprehensive plan update where they'll kind of take the whole document and take a deep look.

The last comprehensive comprehensive plan amendment was done in 2015.

And so here we are roughly 10 years later getting ready to adopt the next 20 year vision.

And so you don't wait 20 years to revise the comp plan.

And it's a great way to kind of take that long range look at where the county should go.

That is then thought of kind of in five-year increments.

So the county strategic plan is a five-year document that sort of says, here's the roadmap.

Here's the first chunk of the comp plan that we can take.

And we're going to commit to goals and objectives and actions to get us down the road on where we're going.

I'm going to skip down to the annual budget.

The comp plan, the county strategic plan, then really drives how staff approaches budgeting and works with the board on developing the annual budget.

And that's really, you know, what's the one year work plan to advance the five year strategic plan that's going to get us down the road on that comp plan.

The county strategic plan is all-encompassing, so it's all local government work.

The economic development strategic plan is really a focused look at the economy and how we'll focus there.

The way that the approach for the driving economy chapter is lining up is to have some land use related economic development type items in the comp plan and then really take the strategy and sort of have a call out to read the county's economic development strategic plan to understand the strategy that we're using over the next five years.

And so that gives us a nimbleness as we work through the economic development strategic plan process to not have to go through the full comp plan amendment process.

So it lets us kind of be a little bit more reactive to the world around us.

So if there were to be another pandemic, we might say we need a whole new economic development strategic plan, so we're just going to put this one on ice, figure out what's a quick, you know, rapid fire way to respond to this challenge that we're facing, and not be kind of stuck in, well, you know, the comp plan was adopted by the board of supervisors, and it's this whole process to kind of

Change what's in there.

And so that's the current thinking on how that thriving economy chapter will come together.

And then the MOU.

is an agreement between the Board of Supervisors and the Economic Development Authority on how, you know, sort of the roles and responsibilities.

How are we going to get this done together?

And, you know, the Board appoints the Economic Development Authority members, and so I think it's also a nice way for the Board to articulate, here's where your focus should be, and here are the tools that you, you know, we're hoping that you'll use to get us there.

Well, I think it's really helpful to sort of see the different pieces.

And the part that I was looking for is really sort of where we are or where the economic development piece of each of those things is in terms of the development.

But I think this helps everybody understand what the different areas that we are.

And then I think

What I would be useful is maybe just as something like what Aiden has done with the performance grant, just something that says, hey, for each of these things, here's what's kind of coming up in terms of the next steps.

I don't think we need to spend talking about it unless somebody wants to, but just say, oh, we're now getting to whatever

The Board of Supervisors is going to consider some part of the strategic plan.

Yeah.

Great.

All right.

Any other

Any other matters if anybody wants to bring up questions?

All right.

Thanks, everybody.