Commercial Properties (vacancies, new businesses, etc.):
Timberline Meats: This business is now in the midst of a “soft open” to get their employees trained up and all the kinks in their processes worked out. However, they seem to be open for most of their posted hours now, and so far the response from the community has been fantastic. (When I went in to make my first purchase on the Saturday of Mountain Festival weekend, there were five people ahead of me!)
The store is very clean and bright, and the staff was selected primarily for their superior customer service skills. Their meat is sole sourced from ranches in Oregon (pork), Washington (beef) and northern California (poultry), and the spice/condiment rack is stocked with products local to Oregon as well.
Timberline Meats will be hosting their grand opening event on July 17th from 6:00 to 7:00 PM (right before our City Council meeting!), and will have samples of many of their products available as well and beer and wine tasting. Many thanks to Mayor King for stopping by to cut the ribbon.
Sandlandia: We have another cart up and operational in June, giving us a grand total of six carts now in operation. Taqueria el Jaliscience (“of Jalisco!”) is the new orange cart serving Mexican fare, and is owned and operated by the gentleman that owns the food truck in Boring. He comes to Sandy with a reputation for fantastic food and a built-in regional following.
Sandlandia’s carts are starting to acclimate to the ebbs and flows of our community – hours seem to be getting more stable, and summer help is getting trained up. A few of the carts did stay open later during Mountain Festival weekend and ended up reaping the benefits of that decision.
Sandy Community Action Center: We now have enough project bids to move forward with a façade project if the Action Center has the funds to match. If current bids hold, the Sandy Urban Renewal Agency will end up paying for about 57% of the project. They are currently fundraising for the match, and I am working with the executive director of the organization to help make this happen.
With the removal of the old houses on the neighboring Connelly property, their building is much more visible than it used to be. This increases the urgency for a façade improvement, as their west-facing wall is also the surface most badly in need of repair. Fortunately, their board seems to be as keen on this project as we are, so the likelihood of the project moving forward is good.
The project will replace the glass in their front door that was shattered during an attempted break-in earlier this month. It will also repaint the building green, but the orange trim will be repainted a nice shade of tan to more closely match the brick façade in the front of the building. Most of the rest of the work will be to make repairs to damaged parts of the exterior and to place protective bollards on the rear building corners to protect from people running into the building with their vehicles
Sandy Shell Station: Complete. Very nice upgrade to the west entrance to downtown Sandy….an area that is getting a lot more notice now because of Sandlandia and the Mount Hood Farmer’s Market. The “Sandy Style” features are very prominent. Fantastic use of urban renewal dollars from an economic development perspective.
Project work:
- Aquatic/Recreation Center project: Earlier in June, the special selection committee looked at the five responses to our RFP for this project and narrowed them down to the top three. We then met on June 27th to view presentations from and interview the remaining three design candidates. Results are not fully tabulated yet, but it seems that a clear favorite has emerged. UPDATE: It appears that the steering committee has selected Opsis (our sole Portland-based bid) as our preferred design contractor.
- NorthStar – branding project: The branding committee met with Benjamin Stansell from Northstar and his marketing specialist via web/conference call last week to take the next steps on this project. We looked at a lot of logo, font and tagline (they call it “strap line”) examples to try and give them an idea about the style we’re looking to develop. For what it’s worth, they said we were one of the most opinionated and verbally communicative groups they’ve had in quite some time, which was exactly what they were looking for. Will be concentrating on the strap line a bit more at our next meeting on August 1.
Conferences/training: Nothing this month.