Minutes - Economic Development Authority - 02/09/2017

Home

encompassing business that matches the business plan with a corporation and matches a strategic plan that is customized, whether it is phases or if they need to dispose of land or develop the land. Whatever it is, they help to customize the plan to that specific corporation. He stated this is a little different approach than their typical brokerage firm and all of the employees in the firm have a different specialty that they focus on. Mr. LaFavre stated in regards to question three, the hot issue now is the Millennials. Everyone wants to live where they work so the hot areas are downtown areas. What is happening is the older Millennials are now building families and want to move out further to the suburbs to work, live and have their children educated and they want a high-density location where they can walk and bike to close amenities like they had in the city. Many cities are talking about creating more density with a downtown core area and Ramsey currently has that. They need to have a long- term strategy plan and he thought the role of Government was to create the vision and then remove the barriers to make that happen. He stated Ramsey has already created the vision but needs to expand on it which can be discussed further. He thought the COR is well positioned to where the millennials and the next generations are going and he thought that was extremely important. He thought the other thing too is in these core areas, there is a lot of sense of community. For the COR to be successful, you need to think about cradle to grave. You cannot think about just one sector because a healthy community caters to the whole community, all ages. Mr. LaFavre thought as far as strengths of Ramsey is the fact that there is energy behind the commissions in Ramsey and there is a lot of community pride to make a difference. He stated the other positive is Ramsey has a clean slate which will make it easier to make the vision come to life. He stated as far as weaknesses, there is still some hangover in the community of the things Ramsey went through before. People who are close to it know the professionalism of the City Council and the other groups here today but they also know the challenges the community had in the past. For better or for worse there is some of that out there and when he talks to some of the developers he knows they put up a red flag. He thought that would change as the City continues to do what they are doing but that also creates a little bit of a distraction as they try to recruit and talk to people. He stated another weakness is that Ramsey is smaller but growing and developers are focusing now on bigger opportunities where the demand equation is clearly defined. In Ramsey, there are smaller opportunities. Many of the large developers are going to say that they cannot clearly define the demand equation and it is too small of a project to focus energy on. He thought there would be smaller developers that will make a lot of this happen which will mean there will be a lot more hand holding and a lot more help will be needed to put financing together, etc. Mr. LaFavre stated in regards to marketing they have a well-defined corporate base in Ramsey, which is a positive, and they want to continue to mold that. The ability to attract large corporations into this area is going to be difficult because most of the companies that want to be in Ramsey are already here so they want to continue to cultivate the businesses that are here. He thought it would be interesting to think about an incubator concept and try to do something that would allow small businesses to really thrive and start up here, people who are already living in this area that have a passion. The City has had great success with medical and there is nothing really set aside area for that. He wondered with the growth of medical if they should rethink The Economic Development Authority/February 9, 2017 Page 8 of 10