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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2025-05-06 TranscriptionIowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https� / /citychannel4 com/city-council html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:00:20] It is May 6th, 2025, and this is the City of Iowa City work session. We have some items that we're going to wait until 4:00 PM to address because I don't see all of P&Z members here yet. We're going to move. I'm going to go ahead and take us down to Item Number 3, which is clarification of agenda items, and we'll go three through we'll also do Item Number 4 and maybe Item number 6. So clarification of agenda items. Hearing nothing. We're going to move on to Item Number 4, which is information packet discussions. We have three. We're going to start with April 17th. [00:01:18] Mayor, can I ask a question very quickly about the pullout? I should know this with clarifications. If I just wanted to make a comment about something that was on the agenda, um, and I can do it in open session or Formal. [00:01:291 Yes. (00:01:30] So that would just be 6H. I just want to make a comment on it 100:01:33] Yes. So then if you wanted to do that. (00:01:37] 1 mean, it doesn't really need to be pulled in. 100:01:39] Well, you would do that during the consent because we would have our [00:01:43] All there any comments from. [00:01:46] Just making sure. So, Eric, Counselor Alter wants to make comments about some an information packet? [00:02:061 No- no. I'm sorry. Not on information packet. I mean, you had- I was still trying to process my thoughts. It's actually about, um, the formal agenda. The consent agenda. I just want to make a comment about one of the items. [00:02:181 Yes, you can. Yes. Page 1 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https�//citychannel4.cQm/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:02:19] So I can just do that time. [00:02:20) Do that time- during that time. [00:02:21] Okay. I need to record right. (00:02:23] Great. Thank you. [00:02:24) Thank you for the clarification. [00:02:251 All right, great. So we're on information packet April 17th. We're going to move on to Information packet April 24th. [00:02:40] I'd just like to note that IP3, the joint entities meeting minutes had some errors. I have already written Julie Parsons and Marley Mesh for corrections. They will be presented at the next joint entities meeting. (00:02:51] Great. And we'll move on to May 1st. [00:03:04] Say thanks to the staff for the Affordable Housing Fund memo. I found that very informative. So thank you for putting that together. (00:03:12] Great. We're going to switch down to Item Number 6 which is Council Updates on assigned boards, commissions, and committees. [00:03:33] Did we meet between economic development committee? [00:03:37] 1 just procedurally, I was wondering if this is when we would talk about that. [00:03:421 Yeah. Economic Development Committee. Page 2 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at httos-//citychannel4 com /city-council.html This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:03:48] 1 just wanted to say that we had a really good conversation about the, uh, beginnings of a process for, uh, the Sycamore Mall area, um, in terms of creating whatever it. (00:04:04] Strategic investment District. 100:04:06] District. Yes. Um, and I really liked the way that the folks involved are going about doing their absolute best to make it an all inclusive holistic process. And so I believe that- I'm excited to see what they bring forward this summer for first steps. [00:04:26] Yeah. So it would be greater Iowa City that's leading that charge, and people should see on their website, and also, we're promoting some of these things for, um, sessions for community engagement for what could happen in a strategic investment district in the southeast Side. Yeah. [00:04:421 So yeah, I would encourage residents within that district, like the Sycamore Mall area, what's it actually called now? [00:04:47] IC Marketplace. [00:04:48] IC marketplace with the- with the Panera in the movie theater. But it's not just that area. It's a- it's a pretty sizable. So if you live close to that area or relatively close to that area, I would recommend going to greater Iowa City's website and getting involved, seeing if you can get your voice heard in this process. [00:05:07] Especially residers, all around. There's such a desert for retail there. [00:05:15] Anything else for Item 6? Hearing nothing else, we're going to, uh, take a quick break and be back at 4:00 PM to continue our work session. All right, we're going to continue our work session on May 6th, 2025, and we're going to go to Item Number 1, which is a rezoned in North Governor Street, and we've asked for P&Z to join us. Um, and oftentimes when the council, um, have a rezoning item before us, if there is the likelihood that the majority of the council will not vote, um, in conjunction with P&Z that we invite you all here. We did have a, um, a petition which required a supermajority to vote. And so that's why we have you all here today because, uh, when in that informal vote, there was not enough Page 3 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https•//citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. sufficient that would be inclined to vote with P&Z. And this is an opportunity for you all to come and just share something about that conversation, that interaction that you would like counsel to know. I do understand that there was one individual that did not vote with this item, and so we would, you know, welcome all opinions and thoughts. So we'll turn it over to you P&Z at this time. 100:06:421 Who wants to go first? Scott since you're the chair? [00:06:451 Yeah, sure. I'm happy to start. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, so if the counsel has any specific questions, I'm more than happy to try to share my perspective, or otherwise, I can help, you know, share a little bit about why I made the motion that I did and why I voted the way that I did. Um, so, I mean, in brief, I think this is a great opportunity to take land that's now mostly been blight and turn it into housing, which I would say very much needs. And I can't think of too many better places to do it. I mean, this is close to a grocery store, mass transit, two arterial streets in downtown. Uh, you know, there are two main objections, as I understand them, uh, that I think others have done a nice job of articulating, but I don't think that either of them is a good reason, at least to me to restrict our housing supply. Uh, the main complaint is that this is going to result in more traffic in the neighborhood. And that is the natural result of expanding access to housing and providing more places for people to live. Um, but I- I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. You know, the city engineer did look at the capacity of Dodge and Muscatine and found that those streets are really substantially under capacity. I think they're operating at about a third of their capacity. So, you know, traffic did not strike me as a major concern. And density also has a lot of benefits. You know, there are cultural, environmental, financial, and other benefits associated to having a dense community and a lot of people in the same place. Uh, you know, there are also a number of people that expressed concerns with the exact way out and the plan for the site that the builders have. Uh, but, you know, that's why we have provisions in the Zoning Code and the building code that govern aesthetics and ensure that all of these projects are evaluated and and treated equally. Um, it also, you know, is not directly a zoning reclassification issue. You know, today, we're essentially evaluating a rezoning petition, which asks whether it makes sense to clean up a bunch of out of date zoning classifications that apply to this property and approve its use is multifamily housing. And to me, the answer to that is clearly, yes, and would help bring down the price of housing in our community. So that's why I made the motion that I did. [00:09:10] Thank you. [00:09:12] Right. [00:09:12] Thanks. I think mine was the dcmply vote, if I'm not mistaken. Um, the reason- it's my neighborhood, first often. You know, I hate to come to a meeting, and it's the people in the neighborhood that say, Oh, Page 4 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//­citychannel4.com/city-colincil.htmi This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. I don't want that in my neighborhood. It's not about that. Can you hear me? Okay. That's better. But if you travel North Dodge and Governor, this area is an island in the middle of those two. One going, one way, one coming the other way. Often you have people going the wrong way. So unless there is a way to direct that new traffic with those three buildings of additional people, then we're going to have a problem there. There are lots. There's a school there. All right at the corner? Just more traffic. It's not about the traffic, it's the way it's directed and signs that say one way. Um, just this week, this weekend, we're traveling over Governor, and there's a car coming in the wrong direction. And speeding. So these are concerns that I have about my neighborhood. And if there's a way- and I ask, is there- is there going to be a stop light there? No- no need for it. Well, how are you going to direct that traffic coming from those apartments or that housing, onto North Dodge and to Governor? My concern. [00:10:40] All right. I'll go ahead. Thank you, Ms. Townson. Mr. Quellhorst, Quellhorst, I think covered it very well. So I- I have really three points. I have two months left, and I've completed 10 years on planning and zoning, so I think about this stuff a lot and I've looked at it for many- many years. And there's one conclusion I've come to is people that make an application to the city, they follow all the rules, they follow the codes. They work with city staff. They have to expect some predictability for approval because the rules are set by you guys. And if people are following the rules and they're working with city staff, there should be some predictability that their application is going to be approved. Secondly, the location, I think is almost perfect. you got two major throughways, Governor Dodge. To the south of this location is the park. If there's ever a great location for a larger building. This is really it. As Mr. Quellhorst says, this is blighted area. It had a multiple irregular parcels that were all zoned differently. And after a lot of work, the city's been working on this for I don't know, decade, decades, and I really can't see a better location for a larger housing area. Iowa City is struggling mightily with affordable housing. There are many aspects to- to try to solve the affordable housing crisis. I'm not sure it's solvable, but to at least make an impact. One of those is supply. I'm not sure how by turning down the opportunity to add to the housing supply, We are addressing the affordable- affordability of housing in Iowa City. Certainly, it's multi pronged, but every chance we have to add to supply for a good project, we should really endorse that and jump on that. So those were my thoughts. In addition to everything they said, and I always respect Mrs. Townson. She's a voice of reason, love her dearly. So I don't discount a thing as she says. So thank you. [00:12:53] Right. [00:12:55] 1 don't need to repeat what has already been said. I voted for this, and one of the- I also struggled with the compatibility with the neighborhood, uh, but the P&Z added, um, a request to put a barrier between the park and this building. So to me, that helped in terms of just making it, uh, less visible for people in the park. [00:13:24] Page 5 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at haps,//citychannel4.com/city-council.htmI) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: Al -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. Um, I was pretty enthusiastic about this proposal. I think it meets, um, the city's goals for adding housing. And, you know, we've done a lot of things in my years, my almost six years, five years on P&Z, the emphasis of infill, and, you know, we've- we've passed- we've approved things and passed them on to, uh, you about ADUs. And all kinds of initiatives that we hope will expand the housing availability in Iowa City. And, you know, I don't need to repeat everything that everybody said, but I think I mean, when this location came along, I thought, If not here, where. I mean, this is in my opinion, an excellent site for a large housing unit. It is not next door to any single family house, um, but it is in a very strategic location, convenient to school, park, grocery store, hardware store. I mean, an easy bike ride to downtown. Um, I just think it's a very good project, and it would serve the city well. So my concern, as we were discussing on P&Z, was a sidewalk on the. (00:14:501 East. [00:14:51] Governor Street side that would have to come down to connect these buildings to the park. And, you know, that's not probably going to be a simple thing to do because that's a pretty steep ravine there along the park. But I would think that would be the city's responsibility. And I mean, I'm a big sidewalk person, so. [00:15:12] And to follow up with Maggie said, we had a condition of 5 three screening on the south side with the purpose of improving the aesthetics. So if people are in the park, they don't look out a big retaining wall, that there would be vegetation there, so it'd look park -like, um, looking to the north. [00:15:32] The other thing we talked about was the affordableness of these projects that are coming in. And, of course, affordable housing 10-20 years is not going to solve our problem. So I think we need to address that affordable housing piece before we talk about three units in the middle of a area that really is affordable- half way affordable. [00:15:581 This step on the top. [00:16:01] 1 voted for it as well. I think the density is appropriate for the site. For all the reasons everyone said, I think I struggled with the orientation of the building that didn't front the road. I mean, it's good that has walk up units to help, you know, activate the sidewalk and pedestrian realm there, but, um, I wish it fronted the road, but I think they just kind of squeezed it in there cause it fit better that way, which doesn't feel like the right solution, but, um, I think, you know, it hides the parking behind it. It -you know, for all the reasons, everyone has said, it's the right place to add density in the city, I think. So yeah. Page 6 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https�//"`citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:16:44] And for the benefit of the public, um, on the issue of, um, affordable housing and a requirement to have affordable units, that's only required in riverfront crossings and in annexation land. So, um, we couldn't put that requirement on there because we have no ability to do that. (00:17:08] Yeah, um, I think if I can just say one additional thing on the affordable housing piece. Um, you know, housing is expensive to build, and people need economic incentives to build it. And if we want to bring prices down, what we do is we increase supply. And so, you know, I think this is an excellent opportunity to do that, and even though it might not directly itself have affordable housing units, when you put more units on the market, you're going to lower rents for everybody, and that's a big part of why I supported the project. [00:17:37] Great. Yes. [00:17:391 The time for our questions? [00:17:40] Yeah, absolutely. [00:17:41] Go ahead. (00:17:42] Yeah, I guess I ask you, I know that only one person voted no for this. But did you have, like some reside - residents came and oppose this project? And if you do what their fear was or what their opposition is, and how did you address it? [00:17:58] Yeah. Well, as I stated, I've been doing this for 10 years. So at every meeting, during the public hearings, literally everyone, there's people pro and con to a particular project. And I totally understand being a resident on the south side of feeling like everything's being pushed on us and other parts of the community don't have this. But the fact is, at least from planning zonings perspective, I believe, we always have to make the decision what's best for Iowa City. Sometimes what some particular neighbors may not care for doesn't necessarily mean the project isn't best for the community, because if you stop all development because a couple of people are not in favor of it, then nothing will happen because we're a large city and very engaged populace. There will always be people for things and against things. So that's why finding and zoning is here to listen to those people and make decisions based on the merits of the application, not on political considerations. Page 7 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https-//citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:18:56] Yeah, but I think my question not bean answer yet [00:19:01] 1 think my memory is that the concerns of the people who were against it and who spoke at planning and zoning, um, the size of it was a huge part of that. They thought it was simply too big. And there seems to be a pretty equally divided conversation between people about the access to the park. You know, we were concerned that we didn't want the park to look like the yard or that it belonged to this development. And so we put in the screening part. But there are other people in the neighborhood who it's silly to build that building and not have direct access to the park, which I think can be solved personally with the sidewalk that would come down. But the size of it seems to me, I mean, several of the neighbors who spoke or people in the neighborhood said, we're not opposed to development. It is a bad looking area, and it- it is prime location, um, but it just needs to be smaller than it is now. And I think there is also some positive effort, and, you know, I understand that Mr. Barcola has given you some other issues that you may be talking about. But I think getting the rezoning done would be a big piece of moving along and doing something positive with this parcel, whatever it is. Because it's been in this limbo- it's one of the reasons it looks the way it is because it's been in this limbo of, you know, it's been in state court, two times. And let's consolidate all of that, whether it's he who does the development, someone else who does the development, or the city who does the development, you're going to need to have the zoning to allow the development for more housing, which is what we feel, and I think you feel is a priority for Iowa City. [00:21:08] Yeah. And I just want to go back to what you said. I agree with what you told me like, you know, each time we have something, people will come and above it and you've been there for a long time and all this. But also- and- and also you said earlier, the developer will come and check all the boxes, and those rules has been done by us. And so if they check all the boxes, we should go with them. But also, like, we have a rule for the neighborhood to come and object some stuff. And if that neighborhood, they can protest it if they have enough signature. Also that a policy of the city, and I think that's what is happening right now. So I'm not going to ignore all those people, guess because it is good for the whole city. We said- we said also rules for the neighborhood. And they reach out that. [00:22:05] One way to be able to address neighborhood concerns is by adding conditions to the approval to whatever the zoning is. And that way, I think people on rightly feel like they're heard. [00:22:161 Yes. [00:22:161 Because these conditions are added to help meet some of the conditions. Page 8 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at httl2s://citychannel4.com/city-gQLlncil.html This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:22:19] 100%agree. Thank you. [00:22:221 So I- sorry, are you- can I? [00:22:251 1 finish yeah. [00:22:25] Okay. I guess it sounds as though the planning and zoning staff didn't have any objections to the RM20 component of it, but the PUD, the actual specifics of the plan is where there were concerns about traffic, about scale and about that transition zone. And I was curious to know from your perspective, like, you chose the screening to sort of reduce the impact of that tall retaining wall. Did you guys consider other remedies, like stair stepped retaining walls or telling them they had to reduce the corner of the building, or was it really -you guys felt limited. And I guess would you be concerned if counsel were to modify any of your conditions in subtle ways to address that very specific issue? 100:23:12] No, we didn't discuss that, because our understanding was the retaining wall was right up to the parcel line or near it. And we added that conditioning because one of the people that spoke at the public hearing was talking about being in the park and then viewing this bare wall. [00:23:291 Right? [00:23:29] And so addressing their concern. So what you said, all valid? No, we didn't discuss that [00:23:35) Yeah. [00:23:381 Good question [00:23:39] And as far as traffic, um, the traffic component, which is your concern about that, um, do you we in your mind a condition that could be added to improve that, like, make it very, very difficult to go the wrong way, or? [00:23:56] Page 9 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,// /citychannel4 com/city-councit.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. Well, signage helps 100:23:571 Signage? [00:23:581 And alight would help that crossing for those that would be crossing and not looking. I would- city people do that often. (00:24:07] Oh, I don't know, no. [00:24:08] They're on the phones, and they don't look. [00:24:09] Two dangerous pairs of roads [00:24:11] Exactly. The other thing is parking in that area. After you get these, well, two units, not three, I've been corrected. Where do people park when they come to visit those people that are now going to be in those units? Um I don't know. [00:24:28] Yeah. [00:24:29] 1 think it's a great idea. You've got schools there. You've got, you know, service stations there. You've got grocery stores. You've got all the things you need. You've got park. I mean, what else would you need to make a family happy, except safety and my concern? [00:24:43] So your biggest concern was related to the- [00:24:46] Safety. (00:24:471 -safety and walking out or driving out of that location? [00:24:50] Are these 80 year -olds driving and people walking across the streets? Page 10 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at ems,//citychannel4.com/ci-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. (00:24:54] Sure. [LAUGHTER] Madam, thank you. For our commissioners, relating to the public comments about these specific two buildings and kind of, yeah, the height and how visible they are. Can you just speak to if you considered that and how the topography played into your decision making, if it did? [00:25:171 Can I just mention there is- there are are two or three units right there on the. Govern- on the Dad Street side already. And they're two story, not three story. So you really don't even notice it unless you know that they're there. They kind of fit in with the residential buildings that are there. But to put two huge, well, an additional story, it's gonna cause some, you know, difference in the way things look. [00:25:47] And we discussed that and correct me because I don't remember all the conversation. But with that building, the larger building being angled as you're approaching northerly on Governor, then that angle would help break up that mass and scale issue. Um, It's still a big building, but, you know, trying to use some of the- the architectural tricks of- of reorienting the building to break up that scale. So it's not just flush along the parcel line, um, parallel to Governor Street. [00:26:20] Yeah, I- I think they did a nice job of addressing some of those considerations, and, you know, two additional things that I would mention. You know, one is currently that property is blighted. And so if we're talking about aesthetic concerns, you know, right now, it's a boarded up old building that's been abandoned for years, and is, you know, a severe ice or anytime you, you know, drive or walk by. Um, and the other thing that I would note is that much of this property already does allow for multifamily development. It's just under very old antiquated zoning classifications that were imposed by a state court case. And so there's nothing that would prevent development of this property. It would just be done a pretty haphazard way, and under some old requirements that I understand, you are pretty outdated and don't give the city the protections that are provided for in the modern zoning code. And so, you know, part of this is about, uh, determining whether this site is suitable for multifamily housing But a lot of it is also just cleaning up, you know, some really messy old zoning classifications that were imposed by years of litigation. [00:27:37] Wondering if there's any more discussion? [00:27:41] My last question, my understanding there is two houses there. It will be demolished, right? Is that a renter houses or is this, like, you will own it and live on it or this is a renter? [00:27:55] Rentals. Page 11 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//ciiychannel4.com/city-cQLlncil.htmi This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:27:57] So we can probably ask staff to answer that [00:28:00) Yeah, I- I think that they're presumed at this point in time to be rentals. I'm sure those issues all change, as I've also learned on five years on [inaudible 00:28:10]. What you think you're getting isn't what you're getting there. [00:28:16] Just from the perspective of- of y'all, um, uh, just like what a lot of people have already clarified, it seems the like it's- it's not the RM20 classification that a lot of the citizens are concerned about. It is the PD. Uh, that's the right acronym, right? Okay. [LAUGHTER] It's the PD. And so people are- it seems like they're frustrated that not only is the- that the zoning has to go through with a change in the zoning, but a specific plan has to go with it. And after the rezoning happens, people really have zero recourse into what happens in their neighborhood in regards to not just, uh, even if it was not even something opposed to the density or the 84 units, um, but just lay out architecture, certain small specific things that they feel like they don't, at this point, if it goes through that they have no- they have no power in the situation. So, I mean, is there any, uh, advice you would give to these citizens? After- if this goes through, what can they do? [00:29:291 Nothing. My pet peeve is Myrtle, right there at Riverside and Myrtle, that huge building that's gone up that I'm sure the plans did not look like that when it came through PNZ. And where is all that traffic going to go once it comes out onto Riverside? I think that's going to be a mess when it finally opens. You know the buildings I'm talking about. [00:29:53] 1 think so. [00:29:54] Riverside, Myrtle. There is a big park there [00:29:581 Yeah. [00:29:59] And this building, that is huge. And I'm not sure how many units there are now in that building, but when the traffic starts to flow, I can't imagine what kind of traffic jams you're going to have to increase the traffic on Riverside. (00:30:18] Page 12 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https://citychanngl4.cL)m/city-council.html] This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. I think that- I lost my train of up there. [LAUGHTER] What was I thinking? [LAUGHTER] Must not have been much. [00:30:301 How to plan development overly. [00:30:31] That- that part of the answer to citizens who bring those concerns is, you know, in Iowa City, in all the time I've lived here, which is almost SO years, the trend has been to we've always been a community that values citizen input, which is one of the great things about this city. And they through the council, and then through the staff have put in place processes, procedures, you know, transparency things that make this a city where if any citizen who wants to know what's going on, they have an opportunity to know what's going on in this city, which I very much appreciate. But also, through your zoning ordinances and all the other things that you do, that's where you are protecting citizens. And they have to look at the zoning ordinance and say, this is what this zoning code allows. And as Scott pointed out, someone could go in there today and use the zoning that is in place on part of this property and build something that maybe nobody would like, but the zoning allows it. And so you are protecting neighborhoods and citizens through your zoning. But right now, again, the hodgepodge of things that are there, I'm not sure you're protecting much of anybody. [00:32:09] Yeah. And I think I mean, I- I completely agree with the point that you're raising that there's a difference between the zoning classification and then the actual, you know, PUD or plain for the site itself. And I think, you know, we're looking at zoning and whether this is an appropriate use of the property. And I think when it comes to, you know, precisely how you develop a property, once it's rezoned, I mean, we have a very detailed zoning code and building code for that that regulates things like aesthetics, density, setbacks. And so, you know, that's where the protection is for people to make sure that these projects are suitable for their neighborhoods. And, I think staff does a wonderful job of keeping those codes up to date and making sure that they make sense. But you know, if there's an issue, then I think the remedy is to address it in the code rather than with regard to this particular site, because like Commissioner Hench said, I think it's really important that we apply the rules equally to everybody. And if you have a proposal for a site that meets zoning criteria and it meets the building code, then, I think it should be approved as long as we're comfortable with the idea of that particular parcel being used for multifamily housing. And for reasons that we've discussed, I couldn't think of a better place to use for multifamily housing. [00:33:28] Well, I want to thank you, commissioners for coming and spending your Tuesday afternoon with us and really appreciate all the work that you all do. I know is never easy, um, because you have a lot before you. So thanks for coming today and sharing with counsel today. [00:33:46) Page 13 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https•//ciiychannel4.com/city-cogncil.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. Absolutely [00:33:46] Thank you, Mr. Mayor. [00:33:48] Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you Council [00:33:49] Thank you. [00:33:491 Great. Thanks. All right. [00:33:51] Is there another agenda item. [00:33:56) Yes, so we're gonna have- yep so we're going to do the comprehensive plan. That's right. You all are going to be here for that. So I'm going to invite staff up to start us on the comp plan. Yeah. Welcome. 100:34:12] Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'm Anne Russe with Neighborhood Development Services. I'm just going to introduce Christopher Shires with Confluence Planning and Design, who's been helping us with our update. And he has a presentation for you all tonight. [00:34:27] Great. Welcome. [00:34:321 Well, thank you, um, Mayor- Mayor Pro Tem, council members, as well as planning Commissioners. Thanks for not leaving. You're excited to leave. I'm going to do my darnedest to be quick, but there's a lot of good information that I want to share, and I know you may have some questions for us. So again, I'm Christopher Shires, Principal of Confluence. I also have Jared Go Branson here, who's going to speak a little bit as well tonight with WSP our important partner on this project. You've seen me before. Many of you are on the steering committee. I'm going to give you a summary of our analysis review, but I do want to give you a little bit of a recap of where we're at on the process to update the comprehensive plan. But then we're going to get into a little bit on the physical profile of the community, some of our analysis on the community itself, and then a quick recap of where goes next. And, of course, this is your meeting. So if you want to interrupt with questions, please feel free if you want to wait till you're done, feel free, and also feel free to just follow up with any questions or comments either to us directly or through your staff. And so with that a little bit about this process, we do have this broken out into five Page 14 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at httl2s,//citychannel4.com/­`city-cQlincil.htmI This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. phases. That first phase was our initial investigation and analysis, and we do are benefited by a technical advisory committee of which several of you are a member. So, thank you for your time serving on that. But where we've gone through the existing analysis, making sure we understand the process we want to go through. So right now we're in the middle of Phase 2 in the very important public engagement phase. And at the end of the presentation, I'll go through a little bit more detail of what we're working on. But right now, I want Jared to come up and give us a little bit on the transportation utility analysis. [00:36:20] Good afternoon. Chris said, I'm Jared Go Branson, I'm a transportation planner with WSP, and we're part of the confluence team. Um, we were looking at the complete multimodal transportation network. So I'm going to give you the very high level of a lot of in-depth analysis on different parts of that here. But first, physical profile of the city, I'm sure many of you have seen this map before, um, looking at the different land uses across the city. So predominantly low -density residential and the yellow color there, um, are commercial nodes in red, industrial areas in gray. Um, and parkland in green. Something else we've noticed, um, stands out is the predominance of with the university, public land available, um, in the city. For this next one, um, looking at auto traffic. So this map is showing us, uh, ADT, the annual average daily traffic volumes. So not shocking. AD is seeing the highest volumes in the region, really between that Dodge exit and First Avenue. Um, you know, it's hard to read the numbers there, but that's 25-30 thousand vehicles per day. Um, and then the 218 corridor, as well as, um, Highway 6 and Highway 1. And then Burlington Bridge has seen about 18,000 vehicles per day, so a very important node to the multimodal transportation system. So safety is really important to us. Um, so this is all crashes, um, of all severity over a 30-year time frame between 2014 and 2024. And we start to see some patterns and hot spots emerge here. And so, you know, we zoom in on the map to the outside, kind of zooms in on downtown. And we see three areas that stand out, the intersection of Highway 6 and Riverside Drive, Riverside and the Benton to Highway 1 intersection. And then lastly, along Burlington, we see a big standout area around Gilbert, um, and up to Clinton. So important spots for us to really pay attention to as we look forward, thinking about recommendations for the future. We looked at a lot of the bicycle and pedestrian amenities around the city. So this is a map of sidewalks existing in the area. Uh, this also gives sidewalk conditions. So green sidewalks in good condition, the orange and sidewalk and fair condition, and the red areas are sidewalks, in poor condition. And purple is gaps in the system. So overall, a great network of sidewalk connectivity throughout the entire city. About 400 miles of sidewalks with most streets having a sidewalk on one or both sides or a trail adjacent. Um, and, you know, as in most cities, as that sidewalk maintenance is usually borne by the- the adjacent property owner. We pulled out the same analysisjust looking at pedestrian and bicycle crashes. And so we see a lot of the same patterns there. One note that's different that stood out for us was by the University of Iowa Hospitals and clinics between Kanick and Hawkins Drive, really popped as a place for numerous crashes with pedestrians and cyclists. We also see a high intensity there again, on the entire Burlington cardor, really from the Iowa River up to Dodge Street. So we'll be keying in on that and looking at that a lot more closely as we keep going on with the complaint. I'm a public transit planner by background, so I really enjoyed looking at this part of it. So we looked at, uh, all the transit providers in the region, including Iowa City Transit, Cambus, and Coralville Transit, as you know, a comprehensive network for fixed route and paratransit services within the region. Um, so again, high level. We took a look at Page 15 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//citychanne]4.com/city-council.html This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. ridership trends over the last decade. Um, and so, you know, in 2023, Iowa City Transit provided more than a million rides, um, a lot of that has to do too, a great increase with the Zero fare program that's been very popular here, helping to bring people back to transit. You can see in this trend line, too, the really dramatic impact that COVID had on transit ridership, um, you know, not unique to Iowa City. This is a very big national trend, and many transit providers working to come back from that re -hiring operators and just bringing people back to Transit in general. So, um, really great system, um, for the whole region and for Iowa City. So great coverage there. And with that, I believe, I will hand things back to Chris for a look at the community profile. So, thank you. [00:40:591 Thank you. [00:41:00] Thank you, Jared. [00:41:01] So, a little bit on the community profile. 100:41:03] As you may know, when we look at the past 100 years, Iowa City has had a strong and steady growth trend, and even when we focus in since 2000, over 25% or 21% population increase. And when we take that, and we used various techniques to try to project, predict the population growth. It is, of course, an upward continued trend, really looking at kind of an average results of almost a 95,000 population city in 2050. So, some significant steady growth, everything stayed the same. And when we look at the community today, um, we have, you know, 37% being single -person households in our household size, a lot of rest in the one and two, and then a much lower amount of four -person or plus household. Maybe not surprising with the impact of our university. When we look at- when we use the term tenure, if it's runner occupied or owner occupied, you're almost a 50/50 city, where it's half rental occupied, half owner occupied. Also not a surprise for us. When we look at your income ranges, you're a very diverse community from an income standpoint. You have very large population of the lower earners, large population of the higher earners, and then that kind of that solid middle earners as well. Again, not a surprise for us, considering the impact of our students. When we look at educational attainment, this is where you really stand out. One of those really fun facts. Nearly 100%of adults, so 96.8% have a high school diploma or equivalent, and then 60%of the population at least having a bachelor's degree. And then this is amazing one, that 30% having a grad degree or higher. When we look at the housing makeup, you know, about 33 plus thousand housing units, so quite a number to go with your population size, and then running around that 9%vacancy rate, which is a pretty healthy and typical number that does eb and flow and change over time. Uh, when we look a little bit more on that physical characteristic of year built, um, you have quite that range. There are older homes in the community, and older homes do need a little more love and attention, but you also have that- that strong new 2,000 and newer homes or homes built in the 80s and 90s. Number of bedrooms. We don't always see the higher number of bedrooms, the three and four -bedroom units, so it's nice to see that. That is a desired Page 16 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. housing type that's sometimes hard for the marketplace to fulfill. When we look at home values, and I'm going to put a big caveat on this. This is the latest available data from this data source, 2023. 1 bet if we were able to pull this number accurately today, we'd almost slide all those home values down one whole bar. We've seen great price inflation on housing, not a shock to probably anybody in the room. And when we look at your median owner -occupied home value of 220, almost $275,000, that is a significant number. And so we do think housing is probably one of the most critical or more critical issues that we think the comprehensive plan should focus in on and address. Along that same line, when we do the calculations to consider your residents on being cost burdened when it comes to housing, and the definition of cost burden is if you're spending more than 30%of your income on your housing. That's either your mortgage, your rent, utility payments, things related to your living arrangement, that our owner occupies, which we tend to see less burdened, about 21% are cost burdened, Then on your renter occupied, almost 62% of the population is considered cost burden. Now, a little bit of grain of salt there. Your students do kind of tend to sway that number because they show lower incomes, but they sometimes have that family support to help them pay for rent. But this is an area of focus and attention that we think deserves further review. When we look up the makeup of housing stock itself, right now you have a pretty solid mix, but we think there's some room for improvement and growth, and this will be something we'll continue to work with you. Uh, 40% is a traditional single-family detached home. About 20% is, sometimes we'll call it missing middle. It's the Duplex Row house, townhome property, and then the more traditional multifamily apartment at about 40%. Something that we'll want to consider what is that appropriate mix for Iowa City going forward. So when we look to the future and think, God, what happens in 2050 when we're about 95,000 population, that's, you know, more than 19,000 new residents. That's about 8,600 new households, and then thinking we've got to have some vacancy in there to cover the typical vacancy rate. That's about 9,000 new housing units that we'll need in the community just to house our growing population. So, be thinking that's 364 new single-family homes, town homes, row houses, duplexes, as well as apartments, every year to kind of stay status quo on the growth. And that doesn't necessarily even take care of when we sometimes lose structures due to age or even infill redevelopment. Want to switch gears a little bit on employment. And so some really interesting numbers here, probably no surprise, your two big sectors are healthcare and education, and then healthcare being actually rather volatile, especially when we were going through the great recession in that 2008 time period. And even if you can kind of tell, you can see the little bump we had with COVID starting in 2020, and then some tail off. And so some quite volatility, but some of the other categories a little more stable. But still that- that growth in jobs is always important. In fact, when we look since 2002, up to 2022, the latest available datasets for us, you can see that in Blue, healthcare and social assistance, our biggest growth category, as well as educational services. But then in the purple down below, we have lost jobs and information, as well as kind of that professional service science technical type of jobs. And I think there's a couple of employers that really kind of cause that in particular with their business change. However, It's still a lot of good news. You are a regional employment center. You are a net importer of jobs, and significantly. So you have about 38,000 people coming into the community to work. About almost 14,000 people that live- leave every day for work that live here, but work elsewhere. Then this really healthy 18,000 that live and work within the community. And we know that number changes over time, and somebody in the room should ask me, well, what about those people that work from home? This data set, we have to use the best available Page 17 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. from the federal government is a little bit dated, so it doesn't quite perfectly capture those work from homes. We're not sure exactly how they're going to change that over time. My guess, it depends on where they're actually receiving their paycheck. And so if they're periodically leaving town for where their office is located, they're showing as a outcomuting employee. A little bit of data on where some recent development is and kind of that vacancy rate when we look at office, and so all these dots mean something. And so, uh, the larger the circle, in this case, the blue circle on the map, the bigger of an office center it is or office square footage, the smaller, the less square footage, and then the darker blue, the newer construction. So you can we you've had a lot of varying size of office development, um, you know, um, over the last so many years throughout the area. The number I want to focus in on is that vacancy rate of about 11.5%. And this is reasonably fresh data. It's only a few months old pulled from Costar. That is important, but you're in really in line with what a lot of communities are seeing. We have had such a change to the working environment that we do have a bit of a surplus of office on the marketplace. We will contrast that dramatically with industrial. And so same kind of map here, the larger the circle, the larger the amount of industrial square footage- building square footage, the darker the gray, the newer the construction. And so you can see you've had a significant amount of industrial construction, a lot of it on that Highway 6 corridor heading out of town on your west side. But you have that low 3%vacancy rate, really showing that there is continued growth and demand in this. And then kind of a similar customer that the hybrid between industrial and retail or commercial. We call it Flex development or Flex Industrial, little smaller amount of square footage, but kind of a growing area. And you can see by the little circles on where they're occurring. Some of it's a little closer into town, a lot more diversity on location, some bigger footprints, but a really, really low vacancy rate. So, definitely showing a demand for that type of business space. We contrast that again with in this case, retail, commercial retail, the larger the circle, the greater square footage of retail area. The darker the red, the newer the construction is a really low vacancy rate. So one thing your retail marketplace is doing is doing a good job of- of not overbuilding the market However, this is showing being such a low vacancy rate number that there is demand so that something that, especially with local population growth, we would imagine there'd be continued local retail demand growth. And it's a nice spread through multiple areas in the community. However, when we kind of put everything together, you really start seeing some trends that you've had a lot of development focus, kind of in the city core in the downtown area. So for multiple factors and reasons. [00:51:46] Okay. I was trying to go quick. So I hope I didn't go too quick. Uh, I'll talk a little bit about where you can find the much, much longer, lengthier presentation. But this is the fun part, the key takeaways. You have so many really great things going on in the community. Uh, you're a fun community to work in that we're not trying to fix horrible problems. We're trying to make you even better. How do we get you to that next level? So let's talk about the key takeaways. You have a significant amount of publicly owned land. Not a surprise, something for us to consider. We do have the floodplain and steep slopes that kind of do inhibit some of the buildable areas, but it also makes the community interesting and attractive, and pretty from a natural standpoint. You have great mobility and circulation. I eight is a big asset, strong pedestrian and bike network, and connectivity today. But a big demand to do even more. I think you- you definitely hear that on a regular basis. We want more- we want more. You've had significant Page 18 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//citychannel4.com/cit3Lcouncil.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. and steady population growth. You are I should not skip down ahead. I was going to say and, of course, you are an employment center. Um, but you have this young, diverse, and well-educated population. It's just this great entrepreneurial, uh, workforce that really the sky is the limit. You have a diverse housing mix today. But we need to have some honest conversations about that mix and about really trying to push those other housing types to expand your housing needs, especially as we're running into scarcity on land availability. And then you have a lot of great development and redevelopment occurring within your city center. And again, I'll just harp on it again, this net importer of jobs, being a regional employment center is a really big deal. So going forward, like I said, public engagements begun, before we draft anything or bring back any ideas or thoughts to the Technical Advisory Committee, as well as use the Commission and council members, uh, we want to make sure we understand what's important to the community, what their values are, what their interests lie. And so there is a professional survey that will be going out to the randomized randomly selected households. We have a project website that has been launched, and there is additional information, as well as public engagement opportunities on it. And we've begun our series of community listening sessions. Soon, we'll be reaching out to our community stakeholders and setting up some small group focus meetings. And then, of course, we'll have our neighborhood meetings, some other opportunity shreds, special events to get the word out about the process, as well as get input on the plan. And so, specifically, um, Next Monday, we'll be back to do our third listening session. It'll be at the downtown library, starting at 5:30.1 do hope people will show up. It's going to be an engaged, kind of a modified strengths weakness as opportunities threat, um, discussion with us facilitating. We're following our planners' emerging trends, topics. And then, of course, there are some others. I want to leave you with the project website. And so you can get to this from the City's website. There's a little scan me code. If you really want to sit in, you can type in that URL as well. On this has our process has all the information about the comprehensive plan, our public engagement. And then very importantly, the information that we've been sharing with the Technical Advisory Committee. So the full version, the lengthy version of our presentation on the existing conditions analysis is available there. And so people can go through it today at their leisure, see what the slides say, and frankly share back with us any questions or comments they may have. So with that, do you have any questions or comments for us? [00:55:381 All right, I have one quick one. Can you go back about 12 slides to the community profile future demand market demand slide? Oh, bit a little bit more. [00:55:52] One of these. [00:55:531 Keep going, it's the housing goals [00:55:56] Oh, [OVERLAPPING]. Right? I find this very informative, and I have, I guess, a request, and it would be I know our council has a strong desire to have goals and metrics to try to go after. This would be most Page 19 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https•//citychannel4 cam/city-council.htmi This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. helpful if it was presented as not just raw units, but raw units as a function of family side, and raw units as a function of income distribution. [00:56:21] Ah, yeah. [00:56:24] Just additionally with that specific metric. Does the- I think that what you presented is that this takes into account that future growth. Does it take into account any shortage of supply that we currently have? [00:56:39] That is a great question. So the short answer is, no, it does not take into account shortages today. And even back to your comment, let's say we have a shortage in senior housing, or certain affordability index, which based on the fact that our renters are very cost -burdened, yes, we can say there is a shortage there or there is a demand. And so, no, it is a raw number of calculation. In fact, that'll be a part of one of the next steps is for us to think through, what is that healthy mix. What do we want to gear ourselves towards? And, frankly, I love this as an idea of being a specific target or goal for you as- as the commission and elected body to consider. [00:57:23] 1 was wondering if you could go back to the slide that talked about vacancy in residential properties [00:57:32) Yes. [00:57:33] So do we have any information on what types of properties are vacant? [00:57:38] So, uh, this is where the datasets get a little bit rough. Um, we can find that get that information on multi -family housing much more readily. It's harder to get for single family. Those datasets are actually being developed and improving over time, some of the commercial providers. Um, I- some of the information we had did not look like- it did not add up correctly. So we try to take a real critical eye before we share something with you because these are not census counts these are statistical estimates, in this case from the Census Bureau, that's the ACS data. So I don't have with me tonight the breakdown between say multi -family and single-family, but that's something I hope in our final report we can give to you. 100:58:32] Yeah, and I was really thinking about specifically, um, because it says it's mainly rentals. Do you know what mainly means? Does that mean 9%, or does that mean 8.5 or? Page 20 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,I/citychanne]4.com/city-council.html This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: Al -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:58:451 Um. [00:58:46] It's okay, if we do [00:58:471 That's why I don't have that number. But, um, anecdotally, we would think the majority or the biggest percent holder of the vacancy is the multi -family, that it's the single family that has the most pressure. And considering how long the housing houses stay on the market, it's short, that their vacancy rate is two or three, whereas the multi -families in the 910. [00:59:14] Okay. [00:59:14] That's also not unusual. That's why we're kind of predicting that and anticipating that. There's the data set we had. We weren't really comfortable with saying this is correct. [00:59:25] And included in that data set, is it- is that also included the rents of those specific units? Like, are the vacancy rates mainly units that have this kind of rent or this kind of rent high or low? [00:59:44] So we do not have a data set that gets to that level of precision. And in fact, you're not the first one to ask that great question. So we're trying to see if we can figure out some other ways to come up with those numbers. I'm going to guess that vacancy rates increase as unit rates are higher. A $ 2,000-a- month apartment has a higher vacancy rate than a $800 apartment, no matter the size or bedroom, that is a trend we more generally see just because there's more demand for the affordable end than the higher end, if you will. [01:00:23] So you think it would be wise as a city to do whatever we can to not build any more high -cost units or to let the market try to figure it out by itself and build higher market -rate units? Sorry, I'm putting you on the spot here, but- [LAUGHTER] [01:00:42] So I'm going to- I'm going to give you just that great, really careful to walk -the -line response, and I'm going to do it in two parts. First, Allow us first to hear from the community, do a little more stakeholder interviews and a little more analysis before we give you a very specific recommendation. Two, I am a fan of, and I do think that the data will bear this out. You need housing construction at all levels. You need Page 21 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//citychannel4.com/city-council.htmI This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. affordable, you need middle, and you need high -end. And that, frankly, as a community, you really need housing construction at all price points. We can't forget any sector of this. And so anything you can do to support that, the marketplace tends to handle the high -end stuff. It's the affordable stuff that either needs extra help or a subsidy. [01:01:32] Thank you. [01:01:32] Yeah. [01:01:33] Um, I just went to the website. Thank you for giving us that information. This is incredibly technical, but I clicked on the follow button, and it doesn't do anything. [01:01:44] Okay, shoot. Alright. We'll fix that. [01:01:45] Thank you. Is that too, like, sign up for e-mail reminders? Okay. [01:01:49] That's it exactly. [01:01:50] Okay. Thank you. [01:01:53] It is new, and sometimes we don't quite find all the little button clicks that we'll get. Thank you for the warning. [01:02:04] All right. Hearing nothing else. Thank you so much. [01:02:08) Thank you. [01:02:091 It was very comprehensive. And thanks to P&Z Commissioners for]oining us. Thank you all so much. (01:02:17) Thank you guys. Page 22 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//ciiychannel4,com/city-g:Quni:il.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [01:02:17] Enjoy the rest of your beautiful night. I would say to you- say to you, but Oh. [01:02:301 And I know staff is going to come on back up. I will ask USG- I'm going to ask USG to come to give us a report before we go to Item Number 6. Oh, Item S. Before we go to Item 5. 101:02:561 Yes. (01:03:111 One second. [01:03:12) Yes. [01:03:15) 1 won't have them moving around while you're up talking. [01:03:21] Quick movie. 101:03:30] All right. We're going to move on to Item 7. We're going to invite University of Iowa Student Government up now for dates. Welcome. [01:03:38] Thank you. Can I hand these out to you guys? [01:03:41] Yes. [01:03:49] We go to pass the down, everybody. [01:03:521 Come back. [01:03:53] Thank you. Page 23 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at httpsT//citychannel4.com/city-council.html This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [01:03:53] Thankyou [01:03:58] Thanks. (01:04:05] Sorry. I'll wait a quick second for you guys to get those papers. Hello. My name is Shaft. I'm with USG, and we have our wonderful external Chief of staff here, Gillian, as well. Um, so today we are presenting SSR 1, a resolution that was passed on April 29, the second to last day of Mina American Heritage Month. And we are asking you guys to also pass this resolution. I think it would be called a proclamation for you. Yes. So this is denoting recognizing April as Mina American Heritage Month. Mina means Middle East and North African. We're using Mina instead of a because Mina is more inclusive. So Mina encompasses more cultural, ethnic, and linguistic identities. Mina Americans have large roots in the Midwest, specifically in Iowa, and I'm going to give you two examples, one of which is- both of them are in Cedar Rapids, actually, so the Mother Mosque of America, and then also St. George Orthodox Church, which have both greatly shaped community life in Iowa. Mina Americans have enriched American society with their leadership, societal roles, and traditions. And April has been recognized annually by the federal government and Lynn County as a time to honor and celebrate Mina American heritage. So we ask of you guys to also do this. I know you guys passed one in April of 2023, and we would love you guys to pass it this year as well. We also had a question about if we could make it an annual thing, instead of just repassing it every year. [01:06:01] So I can connect with you. (01:06:03] Sure. [01:06:041 Outside of the meeting and just talk about the proclamations in the process. It is the proclamations do go through the mayor. Yes. So we'll connect with you. [01:06:141 Okay. (01:06:15) Thank you. [01:06:161 Yeah. And then, just a quick We're just going to glance at the first two whereas statements, and we would like to suggest two amendments to those statements. So first, um, we have including but not Page 24 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//citychannel4.com/city-cQLingil.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. limited to communities from countries in the Mina region, such as sorry, we just have communities in the countries in the Mina region, and then we don't list any countries there. So we would like to add all the countries in the Mina region because there is a power with naming. And with naming all those countries, I won't list them all out for you, but it gives the power of humanization. So I will actually list dumb out for you. Its, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, occupied Palestinian territories, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Yemen, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Malta, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Djibouti, and Yemen. We didn't include Turkey in this because they don't consider themselves as Middle East, or North African. So we would love for you guys to admit that first Whereas statement. And then with the second Whereas statement, we have a list of ethnicities there. And we would like to focus on the Arab and the subsection of that. So Arabs, parentheses, including Draws, Jews, Alawites, Maronites, and other Arab subgroups. So we currently have Jewish people listed separately in Draws listed separately. But obviously, these are like the same people subcategory of an ethnic group. So we just want to put those together. Those are the only two things. And yeah, do you guys have any questions? [01:08:06] No. Thank you. 101:08:08] Yes. [01:08:09] Thank you. [01:08:09) Thank you. [01:08:10] Thank you. [01:08:131 Any other USG updates? I know it's finals. [01:08:171 Class [inaudible 01:08:201. It's great. We'll be back in the fall. [01:08:211 Alright, well, wish you all the best with finals, and look forward to seeing those that are going to remain through the summer. But those that will go and come back this fall, save travels. Alright. We're going to move to our last agenda item, which is number S. And this is going to be 21 South Lynn Street. I'm going to turn it over to our city manager to get started. Oh, yes. Page 25 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at httl2s://citychannel4.com/city-council.html This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [01:08:52] Wait,1 minute here and then we'll get started. (01:08:54) We have two councilors leaving that will recuse themselves. [01:08:59] Great. [01:09:031 Okay, Mayor and Council. Uh, we are back here talking about 215outh Lynn. It's been, ah, quite a journey to get to this point, and I appreciate all the time that you all have put in and not only the public input phase and developing the RFP, but evaluating the three initial proposals that- that we've received. I also really want to continue to acknowledge all of the teams that have worked hard on submitting these proposals. It's no simple task to respond to an RFP like this, and it's not just time, but it's real financial investment and professional commitment, as well, and we've been fortunate along this journey to have three great teams present. We'll fast forward to where we are tonight, and you've got a memo in your packet that describes kind of where we've -where we've come since your April 15, 2025 work session. Do you recall at that work session that you requested a few clarifications from the two remaining development teams, those being Grand Rail and the Iceberg Salta team. Um, since that time, we have received a letter withdrawing-, ah, withdrawal letter from Iceberg Salida, who no longer, uh, wish to be in the consideration for this project, and it's best to let their letter speak for itself and not to try to paraphrase their reasons for- for leaving. But want to thank their team for their commitment. And as I mentioned in the memo, the nice thing is- is we happen to have great relationships with all of those team members, and they're all actively working on other projects in the community. So I feel good about being able to- to continue to work with them in- in different realms. But we do have one remaining team, that is the grand rail team. Um, you have heard from representatives of Grand Rail a couple of times, including their partners with urban Acres and OPN architects. Staff feels very comfortable, and we would be very excited to move forward to the next stage with them. Uh, but this is an opportunity for you to discuss the clarifications that they provided you in your packet and- and that- and their proposal as a whole before we take that next step with them. As a reminder, the next step would be to work on the finer details of a purchase agreement for the property. And really taking where we're at from a- a concept into a- a final agreement with all of the details that you would expect to see. That next process will take several months, and we'll require a considerable amount of additional time from both their team and from city staff. And specifically I want to mention some of the work that will be involved with- with their team. As you move farther, you might remember some of these slides that we have provided you along the way. But as you move to each step of the process, the level of commitment and financial investment becomes more significant. So as we move forward, potentially with the Grand Rail team, they'll have to spend more money on design and feasibility and financing plans and all of those things. So we want to make sure that we fully understand your expectations for that next step. And I'll be happy to answer questions. I know the representatives from the team are also in the audience and can respond to questions you have about their proposal and the clarifications that they submitted. Page 26 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 202S (audio and video recordings can be found at https�//citychannel4.com/city-council.himl) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [01:13:021 Well, I want to say thanks to, of course, both the individuals that submitted their proposal. I want to say thanks to Iceberg for all of the work that they've done up until now, and respect your position at this time. Understood your withdrawal as well. So I wanted to at least express some gratitude for all of the work that you undertook to submit to the community and to the council an opportunity for us. For Grand Rail. There's a few items that you had in your April 29 memo. And I guess I will invite you up at this point, maybe someone to just maybe talk a little bit about anything that you want to highlight from that. But specifically, I'm more interested in the affordable housing component, the permanent affordability that you noted that the council is interested in. I understand that certainly you would have to find a partner and that we have to wait to see who that will be. But I wanted to maybe have you just speak to some home dunk points that you know this is going to be shoe in, but also identify some challenges with it being permanent affordability. 101:14:44] Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council members. [01:14:47] Good evening. [01:14:47] My name is Mike Bales. I'm with Urban Acres and part of the Grand Rail team. Um, in response directly to the affordable housing, I think the biggest thing that we want to hit home is we are flexible. I- I think there's a lot of ideas out there and a lot of good ideas, but we want to bring stakeholders to the table. Um, the city staff, Housing Trust Fund, Johnson County Affordable Housing. We've spoken to different people about different ideas, and what we really want to do is get people in a room and say, what does the city want? What does the city need? And how can we work to provide it? And I think all of that in the context of financial viability, you know, that, I think has been the strength of our proposal from the beginning. I think personally that's why we're the kind of standing here tonight is that, you know, we really focused on presenting an RFP that we could work with, but we always wanted to and have acknowledged throughout the process that we're flexible. We're build a suit in terms of taking the project and trying to coalesce to different components. And as far as, you know, coming back to the original question about the permanent affordability, we -we look forward to working with the -the local stakeholders and- and coming up with a viable solution. [01:16:14] Great- great. Thank you. And this is just Council opportunity to make any comments on 21 South Linn in general. [01:16:31] Page 27 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//citychannel4.com /city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. Uh I- I suppose I was going to be talking about or asking about the flexibility of the plan, which I really appreciate. Is there a, I know it says roughly between six to nine stories just making sure that I'm correct on this. [01:16:51] Six to eight. [01:16:52] Six to eight. Yeah, that's right. In terms of flex!, is that something that's going to remain consistent as the preferred scale of flexibility, or yeah? [01:17:08] And- and I guess I'll add to yours, if I may, because it talks about flexibility, but at some point we need to know what we're getting. Right? We need to know how many affordable units. So in your response, somehow when we get to that place of we're making a transaction, we're going to want to make sure that we know what we're getting. [01:17:34] Correct. And before Mike jumps in, let me just help you with maybe an illustrative example. If you recall, well, you wouldn't have recalled because you all were out on the council for the Chauncey, which is the last time we went through this process. The initial proposal was for a 20 story building, and there were all kinds of different configurations of, you know, what kind of units and hotel rooms and all those things. Really, it's the next phase when a lot of that gets fleshed out. We're going to be working from staff to development team hand in hand to figure out what is the most viable and advantageous project for the community. But you will absolutely see those details in that final purchase agreement. I would say if you feel very strongly, if you say, you know, six is where I'm at, I can't support this to go hire. That's great for us to know up front. But we're working under the assumption that- that we're going to - we're going to collaboratively determine whether it's six seven or eight stories. That's the workable range based on the proposal, and you will see those details at a later stage. So if you feel strongly, I would suggest putting that on the record now, otherwise, we consider that flexible as some of those details come together. [01:18:56] I would say Ditto. [01:18:57] All right. Great. [01:18:57) Yeah. In terms of not just flexibility in regards to- regards to height, but flexibility in regards to usage of there's a couple proposals and I'm wondering, especially since we heard about the kind of large vacancy rate we have for office building. Like what if is stuff like that flexible to where if we say, we don't think Page 28 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//citychannel4.com/city-cgLincil.htmI This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. we need this many in either version that you're talking about, and we would like more residential in that. Is that something that we- it's flexible. [01:19:44] We always looked at this RFP process as two -fold. The first was, ah, here are some identified wants needs and also make it financially viable. So we put a product together. You'll see from our first iteration till tonight. It hasn't substantially changed because we did a lot of the upfront lifting and figuring out that we didn't feel a 13 story building or higher could work. Ah, so that was the first part of the RFP that we felt very good about and had been very consistent. The second piece, I think is what Mr. Fruin just kind of talked about, which is, you're selecting a preferred developer partner. Once we get in there, you know, our resources are going to be combined with yours in determining the final product. And we're willing to do that. [01:20:42] Thank you. [01:20:43] Yeah, specific to the- the office use. I think the comp plan presentation was very timely with that question. I would- I would think, and the real estate professionals can correct me if I'm wrong. If there's identified office users at the time we're working on the details of that agreement, you're more likely to see office. I think it's highly unlikely at this time that there will be SPEC office, meaning that the development will include office without a user identified up front. That would be rare in the office market. It wouldn't be as rare for the retail market, right? You- you can spec retail and have more confidence that it will fill during the construction phase, but to SPEC office right now, it would be a lot more risky, is that fair to say? [01:21:33] That's very fair to say. [01:21:341 Okay. [01:21:34] Yeah. [01:21:36] Thank you. [01:21:36] Thank you. [01:21:37] Page 29 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//citychanne14.com/city-council.htmi This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. Great [01:21:39] Apologies for being late. Family medical emergency, but I was listening in on the way here. Just want to echo everybody else's gratitude. As I was coming in, I heard sort of the question on height that had come up. I think just so you know, for me, the height issue is one of whatever gets us the best combination of viability and affordable housing. So I have no problem with six seven or eight. So again, it's more of what we get in those stories. It matters a lot more to me than the number of stories themselves. Although, obviously, it seems like more stories would mean more in housing. So that seems like a little bit like a benefit there. But yeah, so. Was there any other question that I had missed when I was walking from my car to in the building that? [01:22:241 No. [01:22:24] Okay. 101:22:27] And I think Mayor Pro Tern had mentioned, you know, great to see affordable units a part of this. There's a huge need for three bedrooms, as we already know. Two bedrooms is great. One, maybe not so preferred. But there's a place for it all as we heard from the comp plan. So I would love to just keep in mind that we definitely need more three bedrooms as well. So I think the council really does need to kind of make some decisions here on to give staff some- some direction on what's next and to kind of signal to the city where we're- we're going with this. So we have one proposal before us, and I think the real question is, is our comfort level at kind of say, let's keep going down this path with the staff and with the city Grand Rail? [01:23:401 Happy to kick things off unless somebody else wants to. I kind of up to this point, up until the last week or so with the new development. I felt like we had two really interesting and potentially very exciting proposals before us with the Iceberg, Salida, and the Grand Rail. And my take on that was going to be- it was going to be tough to choose between the two of them. And so certainly echoing what others said. Completely understand the second group deciding to back out. And thank you so much for the work and effort and the influence you had on all of the people sort of had on the entire process and what we're looking at now. I don't see a reason not to move forward, since one of the two- two proposals that I thought was exciting to me is still there. Like that doesn't seem like, you know, had we only started with one, I might have felt a little differently, but since we'd already narrowed it to two, and, you know, I was going to have a tough time choosing between the two. I mean, I see, you know, obviously contingent upon all the things that have to get negotiated, which are still to come in the future processes, I would be comfortable putting this on the agenda as a moving forward kind of- of a discussion. So that's just kind of my take on it. I'm obviously just one of us, so I don't know how everyone else is feeling. Page 30 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https�//citychannel4.com/cii�-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [01:25:00] Yeah, I agree with, uh, you, Sean, and- and I think well said that there's been a great opportunity to, uh, have consideration of a lot of different factors when we had the three, and then two and now one proposal. So I'm comfortable moving forward with this one as well. [01:25:18) Yeah. And I would just like to say that, you know, like, uh- uh, the Grand Rail folks are saying is that this isn't uh, a binding agreement on a certain project. So this provides us a chance to move forward and work with the team, um, which I'm happy to do. And I would rather- uh, I'm just excited to see that land not just be fenced off barren land anymore. And I think the public would like to see that too. And, um, so, yeah, I'm comfortable with it. [01:25:52] 1 just have a question like on, even if we move forward to discuss this, is there still opportunity that we can change on the one or request changing? Because I- I really have some reservations about affordable housing in this one, and also the size of the- the, like, retail shop that they have, the businesses. And yeah, those kind of things. I don't mind, like you mean moving forward with it to see if it's going to work [01:26:271 Yeah, and so it's just like, sorry-. [01:26:28] You can discuss it more, or you know, and figure that's what you mean. [01:26:32] Well, at this point, typically, what would happen would be that staff would- would negotiate in a manner that we feel is consistent with their proposal. So when you look at the scale of the building, the general architecture, the mix of uses, all of those things would be consistent, knowing that some may change a little bit, but you're not going to see a drastically different project come back. And- and we wouldn't plan additional, uh, council work session time to really talk about it until we had those details worked out. And that could be several months down the road before are- before those are ready. So if there are aspects of the plan and the concept that you're- you're not comfortable with or that you would like to see change in what I would say, a more substantial way, it'd be helpful to hear the council discuss that now. Otherwise, when it comes back to, you should expect to see something very, you know, very similar to what you're seeing here, including similar financial terms and mixes of uses. Like, and you mentioned the retail on the first floor, you know, it's currently shown as 6,300 square foot of entertainment space. But in their March presentation, they also showed a couple of variations on if there's not a user at that scale, they showed how they could do micro retail units and have more attainable retail spaces for small businesses. For example, if that was a priority for you, and you said, we really want to make sure that we get some smaller retail spaces 500 square feet or so, then that's great feedback now, and that's something that we can absolutely work on. Otherwise, when- when we get Page 31 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https://citychannel4.comICitv-C!2uncil.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. together with the Grand Rail team, we being the staff, we would kind of lay everything out on the table, and, you know, they would advise us on what the market outlook, you know, would be for leasing those types of units, and we would express kind of some of our priorities, and we'd try to find that compromise position. Maybe it's not a compromise, maybe it's fully aligned, but that's kind of how that would work. So on that ground floor, example that you gave Mayor Pro Tem. That's a good one. I'm glad you brought that up. If micro retail or any particular use is truly a priority, this is a good time to express that. [01:28:58] Yeah. [01:28:59] 1 would support that, too. The micro retail specifically, that that would be something that I'd be really interested in kind of my take on the, uh, opportunities that would provide for the downtown district and also for entrepreneurs. So, I think that would be, you know, as these things get worked through, I think - I would agree with that being a priority, not wanting to come in and, like, with my slide rule and pencil and anything quite that drastic, but- but in terms of something that would be really attractive, I think that would be- I would agree with that. [01:29:311 1 guess my question on that is just for staff and for Grand Rail, are you thinking that you must see one with A retail? Are you still with that flexibility of, as Geoff mentioned, if it's 6,300 square footage where there's a, you know, an entity that is going to occupy that space. But let's say they don't need 63, then yes, there's the fallback of if they don't need all of the space, then we can create some retail. I- I think that is the question that at least for me in this moment, I need clarification on. Is it still flexible where it can, if it works out to have retail, or is it more it must have retail space? [01:30:30] I- I want to see it must. This is a city land, and we're talking all the time about, like, a small entrepreneur who cannot find space at the downtown Iowa City because it's expensive. And now we are reducing on the price. What are we getting out of that? That's really important to me. You know, if we- if we give you something, we need something back. You know, I think if the- if the land was we're not getting the full price for the land, okay, what else are we- for the sake of the resident of the city who already in the beginning bay for that, can we do something pay away, like, just fulfilled our needs like regarding maybe small business, and also, like buyback community where they don't get, like space on the downtown area. I just feel like that's one of the things we want to do, and this is our chance to use, like, you know, everything that we want to do, we can do with here if we can. I really- that's what I believe. (01:31:40] Yeah, and I totally- totally agree with you. I guess I just thought that, um, it is already within kind of, like the current proposal that there is an Option 1 and Option 2, one including, like five units of and one Page 32 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https://cit5Lchanne]4,cQm/city-council.htmll This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. without. So it seems like we down the line, even if we move forward with them, like, without putting in any more stipulations, we can still have that option, is that- I am I reading that correctly? [01:32:07] Yeah, I think right now, because there is Option 1 and Option 2 of anything within that option that we absolutely want to we. This is the time that we need to make sure that staff and Grand Rail know that from Option 1 and Option 2, these are things that we absolutely want to see because they may not be in both. So that's our time now so that when staff and Grand Rail walk away, they know what the council has stated must be- must be presented to us. [01:32:411 And Geoff mentioned that maybe we are not going to see completely different building. Yeah, I agree, but height also is completely different building. If we said, like, we more more heights and this, that's because that's going to be additional money and everything. [01:32:55] Yeah, I think at some point, the- the- the numbers that they've based their proposal on start to fall apart. So I- I would say you need to- with moving forward with this one, you really need to be locked into that 6-8 range. [01:33:10) Yeah. [01:33:11] 1 think I'm almost maybe not exactly. For me, it wouldn't necessarily, at this point, be a deal breaker one way or the other. But depending how it balances out with the other pieces, like the affordable housing piece and the other- the other pieces of, you know, the viability and stuff, but it would be a strong preference. And, you know, as those things are being negotiated out, I would put myself as very close to Councilor Sally's position. But maybe not quite deal breaker, but real- real strong preference. [01:33:42] Yeah, that's fair enough. But I guess mean, like, because we asking for affordable housing. I wasn't all affordable housing on this project to begin with. And I'm just thinking, like, more height maybe give more, you know, space to have affordable housing. That's what I was saying. [01:34:00] And I think that majority of councils we're on board with we know we need more housing. We know we need more affordable housing, and we know that downtown, people who want affordable housing should not be excluded from downtown just because of the more expensive nature of real estate downtown. Affordable housing should be everywhere. Um, and- so I think I don't want to speak for anybody, but I think all of us are on the same page with that. Page 33 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//ciMhannel4.com/city-council.html This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [01:34:31) It seems that. I think so [01:34:331 Yeah. [01:34:34] And especially like one bedroom. On bedroom, you know, yeah, we need one bedroom, but I think so maybe mostly two bedroom because I really see that the people who really need affordable housing mostly family, which is they cannot make end meets, and that's why they will be needed those kind of things. When I see, like one bedroom, that could be like a couple or maybe I guess, one person, single person. So I would love to see 2-3 more on that. [01:35:07] And the more people that live downtown, the more people- the more people are spending time downtown, and that helps the businesses. And that's been something that's been communicated to me by folks. Uh, so is it time right now for us, you know, if we say, I think it's reasonable to conclude- to get as much out of this in terms of housing as we want. We would need to see it on one of the higher end of- and is that something that we should give direction to now a higher end on story height? Okay. Yeah. High end on story height, so like eight. So is that the type of direction we should be giving now, or is that something that doesn't need to be addressed immediately? (01:35:53] As long as I know that you're comfortable going up to that eight, I think that's sufficient. I- I understand your priorities with the affordable housing piece. I wouldn't want to lock in if we don't really have to at this point because there's a lot of variables that the- the team's going to have to inform us on, like, you know, what are the cost of those two additional stories? And- and are there some- some reasons and why actually going to seven or going to eight may not be advantageous that we're not thinking of right now. So as long as I know you're comfortable with eight, and I know you really want to maximize the affordable housing impact that you have, I feel like we can take it from here and give it our best shot. And I think collaboratively, we can present you what's in a really attractive solution at the end. Thank you. [01:36:39] And I think I heard something too on my way in. Perhaps it was the presenter talking about now at this stage, sitting down with like Johnson County Affordable Housing Trust Fund, et cetera, et cetera, to really hammering out the best, most efficient and biggest impact mix of that. And so I'm also kind of excited to hear in a few months where that conversation went. And, you know, I'm optimistic that that's going to get us something that we're going to be excited about- continue to be excited about. [01:37:091 Page 34 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at httl2s,//citychanne]4.com/city-council.htmI) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. Yeah, I think to- to- and this is reflected in their proposal. So this is new. On one of our- one of our primary goals here is to get housing in the hands of a mission driven nonprofit. Um, it doesn't mean that that has to be the only solution, but that would be our goal. I think that's been our goal. That ensures permanent affordability. Uh, and so bringing some of those stakeholders to the- to the table to understand, you know, in this environment downtown, what are the types of units that you feel are most um, uh marketable or most needed? Um, are there offske considerations that we should be considering? Uh, we should have all that input from- from those organizations that may end up being the owner of these units. Uh, and hopefully, when the time comes to present this to you with- with the agreement itself and all the details, Uh, those stakeholders can speak to their support for whatever we have come to- to agree upon? [01:38:10] Okay. [01:38:11) 1 just want to weigh in on the micro retail question. Thanks for bringing that up, Mayor Pro Tem, I do think particularly with this part of the conversation that we've had about, like, the value of a unit and how for the same amount of investment, there could be affordability elsewhere. I just want to kind of pull in the commercial part to that as well. And I think with this proposal, um, given that there's not other subsidy asks, right? We're just kind of looking at that 1.5 million discount on the sale price of the land, I would encourage you to hear that, you know, we understand that something like the micro retail is- could be a different model than typically would be on, you know, a storefront on this kind of downtown street and to just encourage you to be creative and know that, you know, that- that is a priority as far as how that change things around, you know, for that first floor. So at least that's my feeling and input that there is some priority for accessibility for small, usable, downtown commercial spaces of high quality that may not fit the typical Iowa City downtown kind of supply and demand structure, if that makes sense. So to keep having that conversation, even though we understand what you've informed us about how things pencil out. [01:39:38] And the flexibility even with that, because, you know, one of the designs, say, I think, five, you know, 4-5 retail spots. Well, depending on if there is another well, there would be another operation on the same level. It may not have the availability for five anymore. It may be two. So that's where the flexibility come in, and I think that's what staff and Grand Rail wants to hear from us right now is kind of that general direction. [01:40:10] How many was proposed previously in [inaudible 01:40:14]? [01:40:171 So that- I'm going to say five from-. Page 35 Iowa City City Council Work Session of May 6, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https,//citychannel4.com/city-council.htm] This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [01:40:221 How bigger is the five? [01:40:25] I'm not sure. [01:40:27] Each one. [01:40:28] Oh, the square footage. It looks like it's the lowest is 260, and the highest is 410 square foot. Um, yeah. [01:40:441 And I think that's something we're talking with community partners about what could be viable, what could be needed and, you know, making sure the conversations are happening with the experiences of, like, in the south district market and those kinds of things. I know there's a lot of lessons learned and can be learned and appreciate your collaboration on that. (01:41:061 Any other items we want to discuss and give direction before we send staff off. It sounds like the Council is blessing moving forward with Grand Rail. Yes. Yes. All right. And if no other direction, I want to again congratulate Grand Rail for- at this point, you're going to be our partners moving forward. And again, I want to say huge thanks to Iceberg, Salida for helping us through this journey, taking this journey with us, really appreciate all of your contributions. And I know many of you, as Geoff mentioned earlier, and we still plan to work with you all in the community on various other projects. So If there is nothing else, hold on, make sure that Geoff, you're good to go. All right. If nothing else, we are going to be adjourned from our work session, and we'll be back at 6:00 P.M. For our formal meeting. [MUSIC] Page 36