Old Webster Business District Advisory Commission

Old Webster Special Business District Advisory Commission MEETING MINUTES APPROVED MEETING DATE: Tuesday, November 28, 2017 LOCATION: City Hall CALLED TO ORDER: 8:20 AM MEETING ADJOURNED: 9:13 AM NEXT MEETING: Tuesday, January 23, 2018 NAME PRESENT ABSENT Ron Clipp, Chair X Chris Hite X Joe Rath X Stacie Swederska X Morry Cole X Mark Hinkle X Tim Delanty X Micki Hansel X Scott Kemper X Matt Armstrong, Council Liaison X Mara Perry, City Liaison X Also in attendance: Fran Sudekum – Administrative Support APPROVAL OF MINUTES Motion to approve October minutes was made by Chris Hite, seconded by Joe Rath, and unanimously approved. VISITOR COMMENTS Michael Hanrahan – Shared preliminary site plans and elevations for a proposed project on the former Gerber Chapel location (0.8 acres) as well as information about the proposed project with Commission Members. Since Member Scott Kemper is one of the new owners of the property along with Mr. Hanrahan and Dave Brader, he left the room for the duration of Mr. Hanrahan’s informational presentation. Regions Bank is the business for the proposed project and have given a letter of intent. Regions would build the building and lease the land on a long-term basis. The project would include a drive up (30% of Regions’ business is from drive ups); however, drive ups are against the current zoning for the property and a request for rezoning would have to take place. The hill will have to be regraded and the retaining wall would have to be removed. The property owners marketed the property to the community and have spoken with a wide variety of housing and retail developers. Regions Bank is the only business to present a proposal to the property owners thus far. OLD BUSINESS Recycle Dumpster Update – Changing the pick-up days to Tuesday and Friday have helped with the overflowing issue. However, some businesses are still contributing to the problem by not breaking down their boxes; the main culprits seem to be restaurants. District Parking Update • Webster Groves Presbyterian Church Moody Lot – Public Works has checked out the lot and it need to be totally redone, not fixed, so Public Works is working up some numbers to see what the impact on a potential lease agreement would look like. The Church is open to the idea and is willing to discuss; they will wait on a proposal from the City. There is no money for a redo of the lot in this year’s budget; it would need to be included in next year’s. • Potential New Spots on Gore – Public Works is looking at the potential re-configuration for new parking spaces on South Gore adjacent to the east end of the Bristol Elementary School playground; this is something to look at for next year’s budget. NEW BUSINESS Ron Clipp and Joe Rath attended a meeting of fellow Commission Members of the Webster Groves Business Development Commission and the Special Business Districts of Old Webster, Old Orchard, and Crossroads, as well as City Attorney Helmut Starr on November 16, 2017. The intent of the meeting was to discuss ways for the business districts to cooperate with each other more and pool some of their funding. The meeting talked about various options to collaborate, cooperate, and communicate with each other as well as pool funding for city-wide promotion on a more formal basis which would include changes in decision-making structure. A formal structure would be an Inter-Governmental Cooperation Agreement, a “super committee,” which would require additional meetings of those involved and some loss of control at the district level. None of the members were in favor of this arrangement and were concerned about an additional level of bureaucracy and potential conflicts of interest. The three Districts already take advantage pooling scale for such things as trash cans and benches and all put in funding for the streetscaping handled by the Parks Department. In addition, they all put money into the kitty for holiday season and social media by contributing to the Business Development’s promotional activities. The BDC would like to do more, be more effective, and do it year-round. This would require additional funds from the Districts; where those funds come from and how decisions would be made on their use was a concern to Commission Members. Presenting a unified “branding” was also discussed in reference to the new winter banners which were recently purchased by Old Webster and Old Orchard. Old Webster came up with the design and Old Orchard adopted the same design for their district. The only difference between the two is Old Webster’s says “Old Webster” while Old Orchard’s says “Webster Groves.” Commission Members discussed how they wanted future banners to be treated. They felt city-wide uniformity could be attained with all districts using the same design, yet each district still maintaining their identity using their different names, i.e. still use Old Webster vs. just Webster Groves. Members felt the history and identity of the districts was important and too valuable to be lost. All members agreed cross communication between the districts needs to be improved and would be beneficial to all. CITY UPDATE • There were 38 speakers at the public hearing for the proposed rezoning pf the former YMCA property for the Ridge House Apartments project. The request will come before City Council at next Tuesday’s meeting. They are asking for one variance on the parking. • The Clover and the Bee is close to opening. • The nail salon is very close to opening. • The former location of Charlie’s Hair Design is white boxing the space and working on ADA bathroom permits. • Nothing new to report on the project for the former Auto Beauty location; working on the parking study as a parking plan has to be in place before the upper space can move forward. • City Staff is working on simplifying the commercial uses in the City’s code to clean up the language; no existing uses will be removed. ADJOURNED Meeting adjourned at 9:13 AM. NEXT MEETING The next meeting will be held at City Hall on Tuesday, January 23, 2017 from 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM.