General notes: Sandy Mountain Festival. Music Fair and Feast. Summer Sounds. Shakespeare in the Park. Wine in the Woods. The Brewgrass Festival. Hood to Coast. Fiber contractors trenching through people’s yards. Hiring a new RARE coordinator. Oy!
With all of the activity that is going on in Sandy right now, I’m going to take a hiatus in the general notes section this month so I can focus on getting some things done. There is nothing currently “on-fire” with regard to Economic Development right now….just a lot of reporting that needs to be completed. If you have any questions, concerns or comments, please don’t hesitate to call or email me.
There is one exception to this, and it’s just an FYI. I was informed last week that Firwood Designs is going to be hiring another engineer in September. This is great news for Firwood and for the general economy, as it shows that the local economy continues to improve. However, it also means that Sandy Main Street (and yours truly) is going to have to find a new home by the end of September. We have paid our rent through this period, and Kelli Grover has been very hospitable by giving us 90 days to figure this out instead of the typical 30 days. The most promising new home for SMS is probably our old home — sharing the space in the Wheatland Building with SandyNet. However, considering the growth of SandyNet and their space needs during this fiber rollout, that might not be an easy transition. Seth and I are currently discussing our next move, so if you have any suggestions for other sites to conisder, please let us know.
Commercial Properties (vacancies, new businesses, etc.):
Dolly’s Pet Shoppe: Anna and Marlene have settled nicely into their new storefront and are currently working on improving their signage and other exterior issues. Last week they removed the wooden Sandy Area Chamber of Commerce sign on the west wall of the building and have replaced it with their old teal backlit sign (which is no longer backlit). I also asked Public Works to remove the sign outside on the old B of A property advertising for the Visitor’s Center and Sno-Park permits, which they did last week as well. They are now looking into having an awning company make some covers for the awnings covering up the SACC verbiage and replacing it with Dolly’s verbiage, thereby eliminating the last clues that the Chamber was once there.
Barbara Sah Properties; Mike Maiden Properties; Jody Argue Properties: I will be meeting with Barbara next week to discuss the remaining vacancies in her building, including what we can do to help market them (like putting them on the City’s Commercial Properties database). If available, I will take Scott from SandyNet with me to possibly discuss wiring the building for fiber and setting Barbara up as a reseller of those services, an idea that she has been surprisingly open to in the past.
I understand that Mike Maiden has a couple more spaces available over in his metal pre-fab building complex on 362nd. Last I spoke with him, he was looking to lease to a local group contemplating a distillery in one of his two vacant properties. I will contact him this week to get those properties (if still vacant) on the commercial properties database. Also, Jody Argue (owner of the house on Pioneer across from Berkshire Hathaway) has requested a meeting with Terre and I to discuss what is necessary for moving forward with the needed construction on her property, indicating that she has likely either found some independent financing or has found someone willing to finance the work in exchange for rights to lease the space. Either way, good for her….hopefully this means another leased property by the end of the year.
Sandy Organic: Had a productive meeting about collective marketing ideas with Jennifer Davis, Khrys Jones and Cindy Bloomer (SACC Board President) this week. Came up with some good ideas, including pooling local food related businesses’ resources and buying ads through the SACC (non-profit discount) in certain publications to try and get skiers and other recreators to stop in Sandy to “supply-up”.
Sandy Main Street: We will be conducting interviews the week of July 14th for Aubrey’s 2014-2015 RARE replacement. We currently have four prospective participants on the schedule of the five that we were given; we had a bad phone number for the fifth, but have corrected this and are currently awaiting his return call. The interview panel currently consists of myself, Seth, Aubrey, and Councilor Exner (our current Business Committee chair). Councilor Coleman, as a foundational member of Sandy Main Street you are welcome to participate in any of the interviews if you wish; an invite will be extended to George Hoyt as well. The interview schedule is as follows:
- Thursday, July 17th
o 2:30 pm – Jacqueline Flores – in person interview, City Hall conference room
o 3:30 pm – Jennifer Marks – in person interview, City Hall conference room
- Friday, July 18th
o 2:30 pm – Mariah Dodson – phone interview, SMS office
o 3:30 pm – Keaghan Caldwell – phone interview, SMS office [pending]
o 4:30 pm – Katelynn Essig – phone interview, SMS office
First Friday will return in August after taking our official July hiatus. The theme for August will be the Best Poker Hand contest, September will be Safari Bingo, and October will be a Downtown Harvest Celebration (where we hope to have, amongst other sub-events, a petting zoo in Centennial Plaza put on by FFA)
Project work:
- Sandy Area Chamber of Commerce – First of all,I would like to take a brief moment to thank City staff for their understanding, their flexibility and for just generally helping out with the preparations for Music Fair & Feast. Special thanks to Julie Stephens and all of the SAM drivers at Transit for helping out with moving the bus stops and helping with the barricades, Kevin at Public Works for providing the temporary barricades after hours and being present while we were setting up, and Joe Preston for cleaning the square prior to setup. Setup actually went very smoothly this year due to this extra level of cooperation, and we didn’t have to threaten to tow anyone from the Plaza. Kudos all around!
Music Fair and Feast was a mixed bag this year. We are still tabulating the numbers, but preliminary reports say we were very slow on Friday (most likely due to weather conditions) and insanely busy on Saturday. From my perch at the beer token booth (which I volunteer for every year) Saturday night, we seemed to have a few more people than last year, so with Friday’s slow numbers I’m going to assume that we did close to the same numbers as 2013. One thing our contractor (Kristy Wheeler) did mention to us was that we had a lot of difficulties working with the Sandy Mountain Festival Committee on a number of issues this year. We were treated with an entitled and surly attitude from some of their contacts, and one of their members badmouthed our organization directly to some of our food vendors which contributed to two of them leaving MF&F in the middle of the day Saturday before the rush started. This caused us to have to scramble to fill that vacuum, and has resulted in those two vendors being barred from any future events with us.
Conferences/training: [Oregon City/County Manager’s Association summer conference – July 8- 11] Another OCCMA summer conference has come and gone, and this year’s was just as good as years past. Seth and I shared a room at Mount Bachelor Resort, and the programming was superb. There was one 2 hour presentation that they referred to as “speed coaching” where we went around the room and met with different senior managers to run some of our ongoing problems by them to see if we could get a different perspective. I used that time to try and get answers on my two perpetual problems – getting business recruitment training, and the “Sandy Syndrome” – and got some GREAT ideas from some very interesting people. Regarding business recruitment, I actually got a huge list of different organizations to check out from Steve Bryant (senior ICMA adviser, former Albany city manager) and Michael Jordan (no, not that one….Director, Oregon Department of Administrative Services) that I plan to pursue vigorously. Regarding Sandy Syndrome, I had a long talk with Joe Gall (city manager, Sherwood; former Fairview city manager) about what we might be able to do about that, and will be talking with Seth about our conversation at our next one-on-one….Joe’s ideas might involve a little funding, but if it leads to just ONE of our build-to-suit properties being developed downtown, it would be sooooooo worth it.