Economic Development – Monthly Report – May 2013
Commercial Properties (vacancies, new businesses, etc.): Last month’s rumor about the Local Cow opening a new restaurant in Sandy seems to be a bit premature. The Planning Desk informs me that the space currently occupied by the Sub Shop will be taken over in an expansion of the Cellular Plus/Verizon Wireless store which occupies the rest of the building. See below for additional information.
No word from the local artist I’ve been working with regarding the search for a suitable property for a studio/gallery in the downtown business district. I have a request for information in with her, and am currently waiting for her to respond.
I have had a few more inquiries about potential future businesses, including one sit-down visit from a new resident that is interested in opening an organic produce delivery service for the mountain, and possibly a brewpub as well. The local economy continues to show promising signs…
Sandy Family Restaurant: Open for business. More reviews continue to roll in. While most people are very impressed with Ria’s remodel job on the restaurant, the food and service have been a little inconsistent. However, some of this is to be expected when ownership of a restaurant changes as the new ownership inevitably changes over to new processes, scheduling and equipment. Hopefully the kinks can get worked out over the next few months…
The Sub Shop: The owner of the Sub Shop would like to re-open in a different location somewhere in Sandy, but needs to find a property that was previously a restaurant of some sort. She has been looking at the vacant property next to the DMV (which has never been a restaurant), but to convert that property to include all of the required plumbing, grease interceptor, fire suppression equipment and the like, she was quoted $18,000. She told me it would take her two years just to make that investment back, and she’s not even sure that her loan application with Clackamas FCU would be approved anyway. I put her in touch with CCB, so perhaps they might be able to help out with financing if CFCU can not. The only available commercial property in Sandy that was formerly a restaurant is the old Paris Café, and while she is considering that property, she is considering it only as a last resort because of the poor location.
Leathers property: Work continues on rehabbing the old Produce Shack and grounds in anticipation of the development of Sandy’s first Farmer’s Market. The shack will be used primarily as the HQ for the AntFarm’s outdoor programs, but the grounds will be configured to set up produce stands similar to the Thompson Farms stand in Centennial Plaza. Damon at the AntFarm tells me that 2 people have already been hired for this project, and they are looking at having the first stands open for business by the beginning of July. They are also seeking more ancillary products to sell, like farm fresh eggs, honey, berries, and the like – and I will definitely be sending any potential stand owners their way (I have one appointment set up already.) Definitely more to come….
* Sandy Antiques & More: This business illustrates a potential problem with the City’s process for getting involved with new businesses. Before opening, the owner called me to talk about his vision for the business….a move I wholeheartedly support. Along with selling antiques, he was also very adamant about selling espresso, as he had come across an espresso machine in his travels and wanted to use it in his store. I cautioned him about this for two reasons: a) such a machine would require dedicated plumbing, which would require additional permitting and inspection by our building inspector, and b) serving espresso counts as serving prepared food, which requires the County to get involved on several levels (food handler’s permits, County health inspection, etc.). This was on top of the fact that there were no less than 5 coffee shops within a 2 block radius of his store. He said he understood all of this, but serving espresso in his store was essential to his business and he would deal with all of the inspections and permitting when he was ready to go. He then had the machine plumbed sans permit (by a licensed local plumber (Jeff Newberry) who knew that a permit was required!) and activated without doing any of this. When the building inspector called him on the lack of required permitting, he blamed the City for not letting him know. He was informed about the required permitting/inspection three times to my knowledge – once by myself in a phone conversation, once by Noryne face-to-face, and once by Terre during his health/life safety inspection. Apparently he didn’t “remember” any of these conversations.
The plumber has since been called on the carpet for performing work without a permit, and the proper permit has now been pulled. However, the store owner has not scheduled an inspection yet and is still serving espresso to the best of my knowledge. His problems were compounded a few days ago, as he received a cease and desist order from Clackamas County’s health inspector for serving food without a permit or an inspection. This should be discussed by the various ED committees in Sandy to determine if we can somehow change our process to stop this from happening in the future…
Public Information:
- Social media: Facebook followers = 3,176 (+27) // Twitter followers: 122 (+1) // Not much activity this month, as our posts were mostly advertising events going on in town. Biggest traffic generators were the Petsafe contest for dog park funding (11 likes, 9 comments, 11 shares) and the announcement of the new SHS principal (20 likes, 13 comments) and Hoodview’s Annual Clean-Up Day (21L, 7C, 1S) which has been roundly praised by almost everyone. I will attempt to generate more activity on the FB page in June…
- Current copy of H2O bill newsletter – G:\Economic Development\PIO duties\Water bill newsletter\previous newsletters\2013\June 2013.pdf
- Current copy of the Sandy Business Insider –
ED Committee: The rapid response team training given at the May 14th ED Committee meeting was as good as advertised. We went through the process that medium to large companies go through when looking for a new site, and focused on what kinds of information they might be searching for. We also discussed how to properly set up a recruitment meeting and how to determine if Sandy is a good fit for the company (and whether the company and its community philosophy is a good fit for Sandy!) We then split into three groups and role-played how we would present our fair city to a fictitious company. The overarching message concerning rapid response teams is that there is a lot of information that companies could potentially ask us about Sandy, and we need to devote some resources to consolidating that information into writing and making it available to everyone involved in our rapid response team. There is simply too much information for any one person (other than maybe Scott J) to keep in their head, and it is neither practical nor efficient to try and memorize every other department head’s “sales pitch”. I will be working on drafting a few cut sheets regarding ED information (demographics, tax structures and comparison to surrounding cities, comparative info on Sandy’s residential neighborhoods, etc.) Next meeting: TBD (August)
Members of the ED Committee (myself, Mayor King, and Jeremiah Heiser from the Sandy Inn Best Western), City Manager Lazenby and Chief Yamashita met with representatives of Hood to Coast (COO and President) on May 9th, and the meeting was very productive. The Hood to Coast folks were very gracious and understanding about our concerns, and were quick to offer solutions to the problems that we presented to them. They will be helping the Sandy Inn with signage to better identify the hotel’s parking and instruct teams that hotel parking must be vacated by 2pm for hotel customers to check in. They were also very understanding of our concerns regarding participant behavior, gave us emergency contact information for race officials on race day in the event that we end up with uncooperative or disruptive teams, and acknowledged the Chief’s concerns about racers not putting emergency contact information on their numbers (they might penalize teams for this in the future). Finally, they loved the idea of race-day coupons and agreed to put those coupons in all 1400 team packets if we would get them the coupons soon enough, and I am already asking local businesses to get those to me ASAP.
Project work:
- destination hotel – Nothing new to report here, but every indication from Wendy that I have received says she is still pursuing this project. Project is in a holding pattern until we get more information…
- i3 fiber project – According to Scott and Joe, our contacts at what was i3America have gotten back in touch with us, just as the gentleman I met from Grass Valley, CA at the Broadband Communities Conference in TX said they would. Apparently i3America has been bought out, and the new owners of the business would like to renegotiate the contract somewhat. However, they are willing to start the wheels turning again soon, and are looking at September as a target for getting their engineers out to scope out the City’s sewer system. Details will no doubt change over the next few months. Joe will give a much more detailed update at the next SandyNet Advisory board meeting later in the month. Stay tuned…
- PPLIP – The program continues (9 prizes left), and although the weather is improving, usage of the parking lot doesn’t seem to be affected much. Unfortunately, I am beginning to believe that usage of this lot will only improve when a) we have better signage installed through the wayfinding project later this summer so non-Sandyites learn where it is, and b) the Farmer’s Market being planned for the Leather’s lot makes usage of the lot necessary.
- Tupper to Bruns urban trail project – On Saturday, June 1st, Kelly O’Neill and I led a party of mostly City staff volunteers in a rehabbing of the urban trail connecting the end of Bruns Avenue to Tupper Road. Project volunteers marked off the trail, removed undergrowth, laid down and compacted gravel, and disposed of all of the vegetative debris using the City chipper. The trail is now usable and much easier to monitor from a distance, serving our citizens and police alike. This project was also completed without any sizable expense (so far the only expense has been food) to the City’s budget.
- Ford Family Foundation project – see below…
Conferences/training: The Ford Institute Leadership Program that Beth Scarth, Monica Smith and I have been involved with is now done with the fundraising portion of the project. We have exceeded our initial goal by raising enough to qualify for $5,000 of matching grants from the Ford Family Foundation. The fundraiser for the project sponsored by Buddha Kat winery netted us an additional $500 in funding, and was a very well attended event that ended up benefitting the winery as well. We are now preparing for the build/work segment of the project, and will begin working on the interior remodel of the Action Center on the weekend of July 20th, with the following weekend reserved if we cannot get done in 72 hours. Special thanks to Beth for writing the grant for us, and to Monica Smith for being a dedicated group member.
For complete information on the FILP Highway to Hood Cohort and our SCAC Remodel project, check out our project presentation at: http://www.myplacetolearn.com/uploads/users/files/H2H-SCACPresentation/index.html
Attended an OLLI day class in Newport on May 22 entitled “Oregon Planning Procedures – From Application to Approval” taught by John Morgan, currently the Community Development Director in Damascus. I’ve taken several classes from John before, and his instruction is second to none. Unfortunately, the…um…mess in Damascus was happening as the class was being taught, so he had to rely on his partnered instructor for a good portion of the class as he ducked out of the room to put out fires at Damascus City Hall via cell phone. However, I did get some good information out of the class – mostly about what kinds of planning information I need to familiarize myself with in the coming months.