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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2022-12-21 City Council Special Meeting (minutes) MINUTES COTTAGE GROVE CITY COUNCIL December 21, 2022 COUNCIL CHAMBERS 12800 RAVINE PARKWAY SOUTH SPECIAL MEETING - 6:00 P.M. TRAINING ROOM 1. CALL TO ORDER Mayor Bailey called the Special Meeting to order. 2. WORKSHOP - NorthPoint Discussion Brent Miles, Chief Marketing Officer, NorthPoint presented the Council with an update on the lull in leasing across the nation. Adding it is the lowest leasing they’ve seen in four-or-five years. Miles told Administrator Levitt that he’d never seen the final elevations or designs of the buildings until he was here two weeks ago. They’ve never put that amount of brick on any of their 500 buildings; those are the best-looking buildings they own in the whole country. CMO Miles stated this recession that we’re going through doesn’t look like anything else we’ve seen; it’s not the employment rate or the consumer confidence, it’s something a bit different, which is why he’s calling the recession a lull. Council Member Olsen stated people tend to be a little risk averse, especially this time of year, but he’s confident that it will turn around quickly. He asked if there was anything we can do to help. CMO Miles stated they don’t want the completion date to change but they’re going to request from your staff and consultants to push that start date back six months for the next tranche of buildings. CMO Miles added If something changes, and we lease half of Building 2 early in Q1, they’ll hit the original timelines. Given the weather cycle here, and when they do the grade, etc., they’re going to ask to change the start for one of those spaces from Spring to Fall. He said they’ll be back before Council in the next 60 days or so, but that one change would help them out a lot. He stated they purchased BJB Realty, or Crystal Canyon, and spent over $1 million. The good thing is that helps them expand Building 7, so we grew the park by about 200,000 square feet. If they didn’t have the confidence in the park, they would not have closed on Crystal Canyon and would not be expanding that building. They wouldn’t be looking at extending the infrastructure south of Building 9, 105th Street; they’re going to expand that infrastructure, which will cost money, but that obviously fits into the long- CITY OF COTTAGE GROVE  12800 Ravine Parkway  Cottage Grove, Minnesota 55016 www.cottagegrovemn.gov  651-458-2800  Fax 651-458-2897  Equal Opportunity Employer City Council Special Meeting Minutes December 21, 2022 Page 2 term plan of getting 105th Street across there. We all know that’s the big plan that both of us have. Mayor Bailey stated that we all kind of expected this because of what was going on; we’re seeing this even on the housing side right now, as some of our proposed developments have been put on hold or no extra earnest money has been received. Council Member Khambata commended NorthPoint on being proactive, unlike some other players, who have been suspiciously quiet. CMO Miles stated they always say news should travel the same speed, whether it’s good or bad. Administrator Levitt told Council on the TIF side of things, as mentioned by CMO Miles, we’d be looking at adjusting the commencement date. We might also be platting things differently with Building 7, as we can’t have a building go over the lot line in the TIF District and out of the TIF District. So, there are some things that we’ll have to mechanically do to maybe bring Building 7 out and put it back in. One of the key things on the images was the 105th Street extension on the Gene Smallidge piece. As we think about the available acreage next door and how valuable that is to that site, we would have that dollar value; it’s about $936,000 of infrastructure. Because Crystal Canyon was something we desired, we would allow some portion of that acquisition to be in the actual TIF District. That’s what we would look to package, and you’d most likely see that commencement date change at the next EDA Meeting. We can answer any questions about that and thoughts on the schedules. Council Member Dennis stated NorthPoint has been a great partner; we’re very happy to have had their interest to invest in our community. This is something that nobody asked for or could have predicted; weird things happen in the world, and the Federal Reserve has done some things that are almost unprecedented. He agreed this is like a coiled spring. So, if we get to the point where the Fed is comfortable in saying no more rate hikes, or maybe even dropping some rates next year, he could really see this taking off. There’s a high degree of confidence and he thought we all agreed on this; he’s very comfortable in supporting everything we need to do to get through this time. He felt it would all turn out well. Council Member Olsen stated in his opinion, one thing that works in their favor is they’ve been people of their word, have been very transparent. What they say is what they do; he assumes they operate that way in their business as they do with us here in the city. 3. ADJOURNMENT Council Member Dennis made a motion to adjourn; second by Council Member Thiede. Motion carried: 5-0. The meeting was adjourned at 6:13 p.m. Minutes prepared by Judy Graf and reviewed by Tamara Anderson, City Clerk.