Commercial Properties (vacancies, new businesses, etc.):
Carlson’s “Sandlandia”: This project appears to be stalled – after speaking with Mr. Carlson, it appears to be because PGE is taking longer to install electricity to the site than they had initially estimated. The reason for this delay is unknown. Jerry also has a few details to work out with the Planning Department, but nothing that should cause any major problems. He is justifiably waiting to pave and stripe the parking until the utility installations are complete.
Goodwill Industries site (formerly Oja Lumber): The 60 day vacate period the Oja family had with the developer of this site appears to be over. There is heavy equipment on the site now, and the main storage building next to Starbucks has now been taken down. The only remaining building on the site is the old shuttlecock-looking mill building, and I anticipate this will be torn down soon as well. Current project completion date is December 2016.
Michael Maiden properties: It appears that Lil Cubs Pre-School, which has been looking for a new home for a couple of months now, has determined that the larger of Mike’s two available spaces might actually work for her. After checking out the space with Terre and I, it seems that we might be on to a pre-application meeting with Planning to see if we can overcome some minor hurdles. I will likely be working with Ms. Turner quite a bit over the summer to see if I can assist her with the financing of this project and getting a few resources to flow her way via the SBDC and SCORE.
old Paris Café space: …is about to be occupied! Julie Littlepage has put down a deposit on the property and is awaiting state and health department inspections prior to begin customizing the space for her day care center. Terre has inspected the location and has given her a list of conditions to satisfy prior to approval, but there is nothing major on the list and we anticipate smooth sailing. The building owner seems fairly pleased with the lease as well, as all three retail buildings in this complex are now 100% occupied. Ms. Littlepage is anticipating a mid-May opening date – this is probably a little bit optimistic, but we shall see.
Sparky’s Pizza: Spoke with Todd Sparks via email a few weeks ago. He is currently drawing up the plans for his dining room expansion and plans to bring these in to the Planning Department for an initial review in a matter of weeks. He seems to be genuinely excited about this expansion, and I have relayed to him that we are ready to go when he is.
I have also approached Todd about possibly being a vendor for Music Fair & Feast in July. The Chamber is trying to organize this event in-house this year after the untimely passing of Kristy Wheeler, the event management vendor we contracted with. We are now free to contract with any food vendors we want for this event, and we are making a concerted effort to include local Sandy businesses for this year’s Feast. It’s too bad that Tamale Factory closed its doors when it did — we might have been able to help them out. 🙂
Smoky Hearth: While contemplating new food vendors for Music Fair and Feast this year (see above), I traveled down to the Smoky Hearth to ask the owners if they would be interested. Their response surprised me: they said they would love to, but they are so low on employees right now that they are beginning to wonder how they are going to keep their doors open this summer. At the time I spoke to them, they said they are at least 3 FTEs down and are worried they might lose more once summer begins. They also said they have tried everything to find employees – the state unemployment office, local job boards, Craigslist, the “For Sale in Sandy” Facebook page, the career center at SHS….they have even resorted to driving through all of the local drive thrus in Sandy handing out free hamburger cards and promising to train and put anyone on the schedule that was looking for extra hours. All to no avail.
I immediately put them in touch with AntFarm’s program manager to get them a table for their upcoming job fair in May, and also sent a prospective employee their way — I happened to know a small business owner who is hurting for money right now who would happily wait tables or operate a pizza over for a few extra clams. However, this got me thinking….I wonder if other restaurants and local retail are having a problem finding employees in general, or if the Smoky Hearth is just having a bad week. I will speak with other small businesses in town over the next couple of weeks to see if I can identify any trends…
Project work:
- City of Sandy Omnibus Bicycle Tourism Proposal: Funding has arrived, and I am currently working on the webpage portion of this project. This will replace the “Sandy: Biking HQ for NW Oregon” page that our former city manager slapped together with a much nicer, more streamlined series of pages. Bike station has been received; waiting to receive bike rack before having PW install both.
- Community Partnership Program grant: All funding has been received. The design work for the 2015 2016 City of Sandy Bike Map is finally complete, and the order was sent off to the printer on May 2nd. We should have two versions of the map (PolyArt for waterproof, tearproof version and a regular glossy version) ready for distribution at the end of May. Grant funds covered all of the design work and the first 6,000 or so combined copies, and the map will be kept on file electronically if we need additional copies in the future.
- COGS project: For those interested, I am embarking on a cost of goods sold project with Damon Schwab for AntFarm this month in my spare time. This project entails breaking down all of the items on the Café menu into their component items and determining the cost of each ingredient to see what is profitable on the menu and what is not. We are hoping that this will help get the Café in the black within the next year.
- Mount Hood Farmer’s Market: Opens on 5/7 (and the evening of 5/6 for First Friday!) and will run through late October. Many thanks to Sandy City Council for declaring our market a “community event”, thereby allowing proper signage without getting sideways with sign code.
Conferences/training:
None this month – Thrive at 25 in May; Oregon Economic Development Association 2016 Conference (McMinnville, OR) in June.