Minutes - Council Work Session - 06/15/2004

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Center. The Ramsey Town Center Master Development Agreement puts into place the understanding of bow the second parking ramp is to be constructed and how an investment of up to six million dollars will be spread out throughout the Town Center for the financing of the project. The RTC Master Developer brought up a suggestion made by the City Administrator that the assessment could be forgiven in exchange for land in the core of the Town Center. Both the City representatives and the RTC Developers agreed to continue meeting to discuss the issue l'urthcr. Two meetings have been held between the RTC Developer and the City and the discussion now has grown to include a larger section of land in exchange for the parking ramp assessments and the benchmarks described in Article 4.16 which restricts residential development. John Feges of RTC stated this project is grand in scale with multiple levels of details. Everyone has worked extremely hard from both sides to come to an equitable and fair development agreement. Some assumptions and projections were made on how that would be implemented, but the reality is there is not a template or document for this situation. They are not really looking to change the development agreement, but there is probably a better way, which is to reevaluate what they are trying to achieve. There are costs associated with the road improvement project, particularly with ramps. The need to determine is how they get that disseminated over a large parcel of land. The special district and assessments has restricted them from using the whole parccl, rather only using the commercial piece, which could be detrimental. It was concluded that maybe they should re-look at this to be able to disseminate out those costs over a larger area by identifying a land mass that could support the collection of profits from that land to offset that obligation. Unfortunately, the property is encumbered by a mortgage, which needs to be taken into account as well. That is where they entered into looking at the benchmarks, which were put into the contract to try to have some equilibrium with residential growth paralleling the retail growth. The City did not want a proliferation of housing done with no movement toxvards the development of the retail. It made sense to have that balance there. However, if they are going to disseminate the cost of the improvements over the site and not put a total burden on the retail, the way to capture that money is to release the benchmarks and allow them to move forward with the residential as the market bears it, with that revenue to help pay for those improvements. Jim Lasher, representative of LSA Design, explained the position the developer is in is that the housing market is as hot as it will ever be and there is a looming interest rate spike. They do not want to lose an opportunity that is available today. When the development agreement was put together 1-72 years ago they did not know everything that would happen. The biggest issue is the request roi' the release of the benchmarks and how to protect the City should the Council choose to do that. The biggest reason for this is to get the project moving, which releasing the benchmarks may do. They believe action and activity in any fashion is what spurs interest and excitement fi'om other people to come and look at the area. He reviewed the proposal in xvhich the City would acquire a larger section of 21 acres of land in exchange for the parking ramp assessments and the release of the benchmarks. Mayor Gamec commented they have been going back and forth on this, trying to spur the commercial development. However, at the same time the money the developer needs and can City Council Work Session/June 15, 2004 Page 2 of 8