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09/16/2020 - MinutesSALT LAKE CITY BUSINESS ADVISORY BOARD Wednesday, September 16th, 2020 8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. This meeting will be an electronic meeting pursuant to Salt Lake City Emergency Proclamation No. 2 of 2020 (2)(b). To access and participate in the meeting please visit: https://saltlakecity.webex.com/saltlakecity/j.php?MTID=mca900ee7a0aec35a7aba642512358f28 MINUTES Chairperson Thornhill read the following statement: I, Curtis Thornhill, Chairperson of the Business Advisory Board, hereby determine that conducting the Business Advisory Board meeting at an anchor location presents a substantial risk to the health and safety of those who may be present at the anchor location. The World Health Organization, the President of the United States, the Governor of Utah, the Salt Lake County Health Department, Salt Lake County Mayor, and the Mayor of Salt Lake City have all recognized a global pandemic exists related to the new strain of the coronavirus, SARS- CoV-2. Due to the state of emergency caused by the global pandemic, I find that conducting a meeting at an anchor location under the current state of public health emergency constitutes a substantial risk to the health and safety of those who may be present at the location. 1. Roll call The following members of the Business Advisory Board were present: Curtis Thornhill, Chair JD Smith Darin Piccoli, Vice-Chair Karen Gunn Jeff Carleton (by phone) John Lair The following members of the Business Advisory Board were absent: Angela Brown Sue Rice Kestrel Liedtke Alfonso Brito Abudujannah Soud Also Present: Ben Kolendar, Department of Economic Development; Rachel Molinari, Department of Economic Development; Roberta Reichgelt, Department of Economic Development;; Will Wright, Department of Economic Development; Hang Vu, Department of Economic Development; Peter Makowski, Department of Economic Development; Jon Larsen, Transportation Department; Allison Rowland, Salt Lake City Council Office; Derek Deitsch, Downtown Alliance; Kristen Lavelett, Local First Utah. 2. Announcements Board Member Announcements Chairperson Thornhill reminded the Board that upcoming elections will take place in January 2021. He also stated that he will be resigning from the Board at that time but will stay on until a new Chairperson is elected. 3. Approval of the minutes of the August 12th, 2020 meeting Mr. Carleton made a motion to approve the minutes from August 12, 2020 meeting. Chairperson Thornhill seconded the motion. Upon roll call, the motion passed unanimously. 4. Business Item A. Parking Strip Policy – Jon Larsen, Director of Transportation Department Mr. Larsen shared a presentation about the City’s Park Strip Policy. (The presentation is attached) He said the Transportation Department has received pressure from developers and small business owners to pave over park strips in order to provide more angled parking. He asked the Board to provide feedback on what would be appropriate exceptions to Transportation’s recommended policy. Vice-Chair Piccoli said a common theme in other cities with downtown areas, including Salt Lake City, is limited parking and he thinks it is important to keep the city landscaped. Mr. Carleton added that green strips in front of his business, located on 400 W, provide a place to pile snow in winter, but then customers must climb over the snow to visit the business. He also said that he has looked into angled parking but was told they would have to tear into the park strip in order to do that, so they decided against it. Mr. Larsen provided a link to the Transportation Department’s street and intersection topography design guide and encouraged BAB members to provide feedback on the designs. https://www.slc.gov/transportation/2019/08/30/typologies/ Ms. Reichgelt recommended exception for areas that do not have access to or are not near public transit routes. Mr. Larsen said that most of the requests come from smaller neighborhood districts like 9th & 9th or areas on the fringe of downtown. He noted that Transportation has worked together with the Fire Department to provide some on street parking while meeting Fire’s requirements for access space. B. COVID Updates – Ben Kolendar, Peter Makowski, and Roberta Reichgelt, DED Director Kolendar said the City has made progress on several considerations the Board addressed in its letter to the Mayor in March 2020. He said the Board did a very good job looking into the future with its advisements to the City. He explained how the City has addressed each point of the letter starting with the request to advocate for spending locally. He said DED has been working with Local First and the Utah Restaurant Association to organize roundtable discussions in addition to promoting buying local on its website. He added that the City Council purchased food from local restaurants to feed all those who helped with the windstorm cleanup. Ms. Reichgelt added that she is on an advisory committee related to a food security project called Nourish to Flourish which connects organizations that need fresh meals with restaurants that can provide them. Regarding the Board’s request for financial relief to businesses, Director Kolendar stated DED created a $1M Emergency Loam Program (ELP) with the intent to bridge a gap for businesses until the Federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) kicked in. The Department awarded 52 ELP loans. 52 biz got loans. He explained that other levels of government had additional resources (ex. CARES Act) and DED’s role was to promote and inform businesses about the all available resources and were encouraged to help businesses navigate the system. On the topic of potential school closures and looking into alternatives that was mentioned in the letter, Director Kolendar said the Mayor submitted a budget request to the City Council for an expansion of the Youth City Program as an alternative to school for children of working parents who have no other options for their children. Director Kolendar asked Mr. Larson to provide any updates relating to alternatives to transportation that the Board mentioned in its letter. Mr. Larsen said the local neighborhood Stay Safe Stay Active program will be reduced from 10 to 4 streets and will wrap up in a month. He said the Transportation Department is working with DED to close Main Street in downtown to support businesses. He also mentioned that Utah Transit Authority (UTA) had to reduce service dramatically but as of 3 weeks ago are back to running at full capacity. He stated that number of transit riders are down considerably, but that UTA is a lifeline service to keep economy going and must operate so that essential workers can get to work. Director Kolendar addressed the Board’s recommendation of lobbying for insurance coverage and said the Department has been tracking this since the beginning and the CARES Act came in to help businesses with their insurance policies along with other programs though the State. Director Kolendar provided a high-level overview of Salt Lake City’s economic data, mentioning that economic developers around the country are saying the City is a darling of the nation right now with almost full employment, 4.5% unemployment locally and 5% in the County. He said that while Utah’s entertainment, tourism, retail, and restaurant industry has been hurt, there has been a huge uptick in construction jobs and that the housing market continues to get pressure, especially with people interested in coming to Utah and SLC in particular to telework. He added that many challenges remain and that there is still a lot of uncertainty and help to be given to the community. Director Kolendar spoke to the State’s transition from Orange to Yellow COVID level and what that means moving forward. He said that it allows for the closure of Main Street on the weekends to activate businesses on a portion of the street, a project that the Department has been working on for months, and hopes to serve as a pilot program for other similar activation of streets in other areas of the City in the future. The shift to Yellow also allows pools and hotels to open. He said that schools will look to reopen in Q2 and that no changes will be made to school plans for Q1. Director Kolendar concluded by asking the Board what it is doing as ambassadors in the community for the City and what they need from the Department to better fit their role. He mentioned that there had been discussions relating to ownership of an area and business districts and how the Board can act as a communication channel for these groups on behalf of the City. He said the Board is already highly engaged with the Downtown Alliance (DTA) but asked what other groups need to be involved in these conversations. Mr. Carleton asked if the Department had access to a database of businesses sorted by district and if Board members could have a list of all businesses in their respective districts to know who to reach out to and communicate with for Board business related items. Director Kolendar said that was interesting and made note to look into generating that list. Chair-person Thornhill said he has seen business owners fall into two categories because of COVID- successful or struggling. He said he is interested in looking at the long-term effects of those who are currently thriving, siting the construction and asbestos industries as examples, and what they should do if they need to scale down the recent employees they’ve hired because of the surge in business that most likely will not be sustainable. Mr. Lair added that he believed we have not seen the full economic effects on businesses because of the artificial cropping up of the labor market with the extra unemployment benefits offered. He said it has been 6 weeks since those benefits ended employment and thinks that the unemployment numbers will shrink as a result because those who were previously looking for work to receive the benefit will no longer keep searching for jobs. Director Kolendar offered a technical solution to look at the entire span of unemployment numbers U1-6 and not just what is typically marketed out (U3-U5) to capture the whole picture of who is not working. Ms. Reichgelt announced that the Shop in Utah Grant added an additional $30M and was re- released on this week and was accounted for in 12 hours. She said the County is considering offering another round of funding by allocating CARES Act funds from a less popular program to the Shop in Utah Grant. Vice-chair Piccoli asked who decides how to use CARES Act funding and approves the reallocation of the funds. Ms. Reichgelt said she believed all decisions are made in Legislative Sessions. He noted that there are State and County taskforces involved in the discussions, but they don’t make the decisions. Ms. Reichgelt said the Commercial Rent Assistance Program has been expanded from only those who lease their building to those who own the building and have a mortgage. She said that they have asked people to not reapply if you have done so already. Vice-chair Piccoli stated that while businesses do not need to reapply to be considered for the program, but they do have to add additional reports to be considered. Mr. Carleton added that the program is having trouble with password and access to the website. He received direction to use personal email address rather than a business email address to help with this issue. Ms. Reichgelt shared that the County’s Small Business Impact Grant (SBIG) program closes on the September 18, 2020. She said if the hotline number does not respond to please reach out to her and she will get you connected to the contact for the program. Ms. Reichgelt said she would share the recent Gastronomic SLC article that covered the restaurant industry and businesses that are doing well and their strategies and ways they have had to pivot because of COVID. Mr. Carleton said the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) Program has streamlined its process and made it very easy and quick to apply. He stated that the application process took a total of 10 minutes and that he received the funding in 7 days. He recommended people reapply if they had done so in the past with no success. Mr. Makowski said the City has been working with the Downtown Alliance (DTA), Utah Department of Alcohol Beverage Control (DABC), and the County to open sidewalks and close the street for restaurants between 300 – 400 South along Main Street. He explained that they had to wait for the State to move to Yellow status in order to begin the program and that the purpose was to get people comfortable spending time downtown and to help the restaurants in the area that have been hit hard by COVID. The program will run for the next 4 weekends (Thursday-Saturday from 6pm-closing), starting on September 17, 2020. He said there will be buskers and other street activation activities on Regent Street and the nearby area. He made it clear that the event is not a block party and that security will used to keep pedestrians moving and break up anyone who is congregating. C. Legacy Business Program and Commercial Affordability Team – Roberta Reichgelt Ms. Reichgelt made the decision to table the Legacy Business Program discussion until next month for the sake of time. Ms. Reichgelt explained that she frequently gets inquiries from architects and design experts wanting to offer free consulting services to help small business owners. She has also read about a commercial affordability team in Seattle, WA that could potentially be replicated in Salt Lake City. She explained that the Board could lead out on creating a subcommittee, similar to the Seattle team to assist SLC business owners with the feasibility concerns of their new venture projects and to serve as a resource and to provide assistance and advice to business owners because these services are very costly. Ms. Reichgelt said that in conjunction with the subcommittee there could also be a handbook created in case meetings are too difficult to establish. She asked the Board for additional ideas, feedback, and for any volunteers. Mr. Carleton, Mr. Lair, and Ms. Gunn expressed their interest to be involved. 5. Adjournment There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned. ____________________________________ Curtis Thornhill, Chairperson This document and the recording constitute the official minutes of the Economic Development Business Advisory Board meeting held September 16, 2020. Salt Lake City Park Strip Policy Renewed effort to protect park strips to better align actions with City goals. •Enhanced resiliency to the impacts of climate change. For example, the vegetation serves as a carbon sink and helps mitigate urban heat island impacts. •Mitigation of flooding via infiltration during precipitation events. •Filtration of runoff, providing water quality benefits. •Social and aesthetic benefit for the community (when well designed).•Enabling plows to move the snow off the roadway, including bike lanes, even during heavy snow periods. •Space to install signs, school flashers and RRFB's.•Room for landscaping and tree canopy to make for a more enjoyable walking (and biking) experience. •Preservation of space to add green/sustainable infrastructure in the future. •Reduction in demand on the City’s piped stormwater system, which is already at or over capacity; it will both save taxpayer money and improve water quality to preserve and enhance green infrastructure rather than adding more miles of pipe. •Reduction in conflicts with necessary infrastructure, particularly underground utilities.•Preservation of the option of adding separate bicycle infrastructure or wider sidewalks. •Increased flexibility to manage curb space as technology influences how we move people, services, and products. •The addition of impervious surface, exacerbating urban heat island and stormwater runoff problems.•Effectively widening the City’s already wide streets.•Induced demand to drive, thereby adding to the existing air pollution burden.•Additional conflict with motorists backing out of angled parking stalls into bike lanes and travel lanes. •The perception of privatizing the public space within the right-of-way.•Increased maintenance costs involved with additional pavement. Salt Lake City should eliminate the practice of replacing park strips with parking or any other impervious surface, with rare exceptions. Examples could include the addition or widening of sidewalks, or where the overall urban design of the block face is improved through a careful, intentional design. Another potential exception could be where the green space can be replaced elsewhere on the block, such as a planted median, although this case would be extremely rare. What would be appropriate exceptions to this recommended policy?