General notes: A quick update on the Ford Family Foundation’s new cohort, otherwise known as Highway to Hood version 2.0. They have chosen their project recipient, and it is the AntFarm. The project concept is to improve the facilities at the Leather’s lot (paint and a new roof for the shack, construction of farmer’s market booths and new equipment for their bottle & can recycling program, etc). In discussing this with Nunpa, I discovered that his next project is to find a way to create a farmer’s market in this lot, and the FFF project dovetails nicely into this. He said he understands that the lot can be sold at any time, which is why he is trying to direct most of the funding to pieces that can be removed from the property if necessary (everything but the roof – the paint should be provided by MetroPaint and the labor will be volunteer, so the paint job will be of minimal cost). He would like to work with the City (Tracy and myself) as well as other businesses (Organic Sandy, local farmers, Thompson Farms, etc), the County (grant funding) and anyone else that wants to be a part of it. More as this develops…
Commercial Properties (vacancies, new businesses, etc.):
Amarin Thai/Try My Thai: I have been getting some feedback about this restaurant now that the new owners have taken over, and it is overwhelmingly positive. The general opinion is that the food has improved so much (not that Amarin was particularly bad or anything….just a bit pedestrian) that TMT has possibly overtaken Thai Home as the best Thai restaurant in Sandy. I have now had lunch there a couple of times, and I would say it’s a tie! The general quality level of Sandy restaurants moves up a notch…huzzah!
Beaverbrook Dental: I stopped into Beaverbrook for my annual cleaning and x-rays last week, and ended up in a conversation with their front office manager about a number of City-related issues. First, they are interested in business fiber, so I am efforting to put together a meeting with Dr. Claggett, myself and Scott Brown to see how we can get them service.
Her primary issue, however, is with the changes to the downtown parking district. With all of the slots around their business being limited to 2 hours, they are very concerned that their employees will have no where to park without risking a parking ticket. Some of their customers have complained as well, stating that some of their procedures require more than 2 hours to complete. I told her that I helped put together the parking study, and that this is what downtown businesses told us they wanted, primarily because employees of neighboring businesses were parking in front of their businesses all day long. She said she didn’t know anything about that. I told her that there was a free public parking lot 2 blocks away (the one behind 2 Bros) that was well lit and frequently patrolled. She said she absolutely would not use it, claiming that walking to that lot in the dark would be dangerous. I told her we had never had an incident with that lot that I know of. She didn’t care and reiterated that she would not use it for safety reasons. I asked her what she would do if, hypothetically, the business relocated to downtown Portland, because there’s no way she would have free parking 2 blocks from her place of employment. She said “well, that’s not as big of a deal because there are more people around at night.” I said “And that makes it safer somehow? Are you sure about that?” She didn’t have an answer for that, but was still not having any of my argument. I asked her if they had considered talking to Ernie at AEC about purchasing some space in his private lot across the street. They had already taken that step, and Ernie offered 1 space to Dr. Claggett, but this does nothing for the other 10 employees of the business.
They want this policy changed, and already have an appointment scheduled with Seth to discuss it. I told them that changes to policy would have to be brought before the Council and approved by that body, so it would be in their best interests to attend a Council meeting and state their case as well.
There is one other variable to this problem that might help ease this issue along. AEC employees seem to be taking up all of the untimed spaces in Pioneer Parking Lot during regular business hours, even though Mr. Brache has gone to great lengths (and personal expense) to expand his private AEC lot across the street. A certain percentage of his employees simply won’t park on the other side of Pioneer under any circumstance. I have asked Ernie on a number of occasions to please ask his employees to use the private AEC lot, and he is always happy to do so. He sends out a company-wide email, and in the past his employees have obeyed him….for a week or two. They seem to be outright ignoring him at this point. If we could figure out a way to politely ask Mr, Brache to be a little more…um….assertive with his staff, we might be able to head this off at the pass. If any counselor has any suggestions as to how to do that, I’m all ears.
Whitney Signs (Estacada): Sandy Main Street will be getting our highway banner for the Tree Lighting Ceremony altered with WS shortly, so I will use this as another opportunity to check in on them. The construction project over at Jody Argue’s place continues – new roof should be getting installed as I type this – so that property keeps moving closer to economic productivity. Watch this space.
Starbucks: Yes, it’s open. If you haven’t been in yet, stop by. It’s impressive. And the employee count has literally doubled (from 11 to 22). No word yet on what will go into the old Starbucks space – the manager from Phillips Edison (complex property manager) said that Starbucks is still under lease at their old location, but that they will probably buy out the lease shortly. There have been no inquiries into the availability of this space so far…
Barbara Sah Properties: Unfortunately, our rock hound business has already petered out….Barbara Sah tells me that they backed out a number of weeks ago citing lack of funds and a need to do more research. There is a 50-50 chance that they will revisit this idea later in 2015 when they become more established in town.
We have also started the discussion with the Sahs about wiring their building with gigabit fiber this afternoon. Scott Brown has committed to providing them with a quote for gigabit fiber within the next several weeks. We have not settled yet on the exact approach to take, but there is the possibility that we can keep Barbara out of it and just bill her tenants directly for the service with her approval. This would allow us to charge each business a discounted rate and keep the Sahs from having to deal with collecting payment and other housekeeping chores. It would also eliminate the need for the Sahs to be involved in dealing with service and performance issues, as they are not particularly tech-saavy. It would, however, allow them to market the existing spaces in their building as “gigabit-fiber ready”, which they would be.
Frontier Properties/46&2 Properties LLC: With Peak Mortgage (large office) and Legends of Lore (a Magic the Gathering card shop – small office) taking over the two spaces left unoccupied by the departure of ITZetta and Boring Properties LLC occupying Lori Ryland’s old space, this building is now full. Ribbon-cutting ceremony for Legends of Lore occurred last week, and I was pleasantly surprised to see dozens of people show up for this event. This appears to be a very interesting (and potentially lucrative, judging by the turnout) niche market that I will enjoy watching in the coming months. If proprietor Jonathan Soriahkoff plays his cards right (sorry, I couldn’t resist), he is well on his way to a comfortable profit. The only housekeeping issue left on the table is to “encourage” Boring Properties to apply for a business license, which they should probably do sometime soon considering they are up and operating.
Sandy Main Street: I have been continuing with my mission to ask locals who are “connected” in Sandy to consider accepting a position on the executive board of Sandy Main Street to reconstitute the program. So far, of the 25 people I have identified as being potential candidates for these 9 positions, I have received 12 responses. They have all been negative, with the primary reason for turning the position down being “I am already over-committed with (kids, family, church, Kiwanis, Lions Club, City committees & boards, County committees & boards, the Chamber of Commerce, AntFarm, the Action Center, 4-H, Sandy High School, etc.)”. I will continue to ask until I have exhausted the possibilities, but for now it looks I will be recommending that the City cease funding Sandy Main Street at the end of the biennium due to lack of community commitment. Sadly, there is an abundance of support for the underlying principles of the organization and the community largely has a positive view of it. However, community development organizations need extremely dedicated volunteers to plan, administer and fundraise properly in order to be successful. It seems to me that our dedicated community volunteers are already full to the brim with other responsibilities at the moment.
Trick or Treat Trail: Another smashing success! We had roughly the same number of kids as last year (600-700), but the traffic patterns were different. Last year we had a huge rush of people at the 3PM to 4PM hour, and very little in between. This year the flow seemed very steady from beginning to end. We had about half a dozen business participate this year that did not participate last year, and 95% of the feedback was extremely positive.
The only complaint I heard was from two separate business owners with the same complaint: they didn’t understand why we advertised the event in the Oregonian, because that goes out all over the region, and while they enjoyed the event, they didn’t want to pay for candy for kids who “weren’t from this community” whom they felt were taking advantage of them. (!) My response to this Scrooge-ish complaint was this: “The purpose of this event is not to give candy to kids – it is to promote downtown businesses by getting those kids’ parents to understand that there are retail stores downtown. If the parents of these “not-from-Sandy” kids decided they wanted to purchase something in your store, would you turn them down? Of course not, right? So why would you have a problem giving their kids a $0.10 piece of candy?”
Some people need to work on their holiday spirit a little bit, it seems….
Project work:
Nothing at the moment
Conferences/training: [Clackamas County Practitioner’s Roundtable – November 6th] Our regular quarterly meeting at the Red Soils campus in the OC. I introduced Jennifer as our new “Aubrey” to a warm welcome, and reported out on the following:
- New City website: people were checking it out on their phones while I was speaking. So far I have gotten several “attaboys” and one request for information about EvoGov. We might have just found them another customer…perhaps our illustrious city manager can finagle a discount out of them if that comes to fruition. I hear he’s good at that. 🙂
- Fiber: after speaking about this project at length at these meetings over the last 2 years +, I could finally report out the number I’ve been waiting for all this time – number of customers lit. Thanks to Joe K. for giving me “up-to-the-minute” numbers to report. We are the envy of the County.