12-17-09 A day late

I got behind on my blogging. Now I'll have to blog from my day-old memory.


I got up for a run with Ellis. We were on the road at 5:00. It was our first foggy winter run. It is amazing how different it is in the fog. You can't see worth a darn, but the sound carries so clearly. The train sounds so close and you can hear it so long. I almost ran into another dog. I could see the lady running, she had a headlamp on, but I didn't see the long leash or the dog until the last second.


My first meeting was at 7:00 with Rollie, Preston, Eileen and Keith. We discussed the Housing Authority projects, Rollie discussed an introduction he was making for us with an investor in Lowell and Keith recommended a book called the Happiness Hypothesis.


I spent most of the day at the City Council meeting. We had several items on the agenda. We had spent the past few days answering questions from Council Members regarding the agenda items. Some of the Council Members had suggested delaying the Fulton Corridor Specific Plan and Downtown Neighborhoods Community Plan because of questions about cost savings. The Council did table the item when they approved the agenda at the beginning of the meeting. They made supportive comments beforehand. The item will come back on January 28th and we'll prepare some additional options for their consideration.


4-5 folks showed up at the meeting to ask questions about the Property Based Improvement District. It wasn't on the agenda, but they wanted to register their concerns.


The Council unanimously supported the Downtown Development incentives. This is the first of many that we will be bringing to them over the next few months. We want downtown to be the most desirable place to invest, develop and to open a business. This particular incentive will give developments within the footprint of the specific plan 7 years to pay for traffic, park, and public safety fees. These citywide fees pay for new construction, much of which is done outside of downtown. The first three years there are no charges and the fees are spread over years 4-7. This delay can help the cash flow and financing of downtown projects.


The City Council also unanimously approved some changes to the Card Room ordinance which applies to Club One Casino. The changes allow for higher betting limits for poker games and also allow Club One to play poker games approved by the State, rather than naming the games individually. Once the games are approved by the State, Club One can begin hosting them, rather than having to come back to the Council every single time to update the ordinance.


The City Council also approved a stay of the lawsuit against the Hotel Fresno for 13 months and will drop the lawsuit if the new owners need to clear the title when they get financing. The owners are the people who just renovated the Hotel Virginia and who are now renovating the Mayflower Apartments at Broadway and Tuolumne. The lawsuit had been initiated against prior owners. The current owners have been responsible, so we wanted to give them some relief while they attempt to secure financing.


I also had some time to meet with the Mayor and do some long range planning in between Council items. I also dashed out to meet with some of my Urban Entrepreneurship students at Heros as they celebrated the end of their semester.


Finally, the Council approved the lease with the Grizzlies on a 6-1 vote. Not only was this the best option fiscally, but it keeps the team in place and will give us a chance to make the stadium the cornerstone of revitalization that was originally envisioned. An empty stadium would have cost the City even more and would have been a huge black hole in downtown. After the meeting several of us went out to celebrate the successful conclusion of months of precarious negotiations. Go Grizzlies!