Thanks for Requesting the Downtown Revitalization Webinar

Juliana Ficheli Hoffman

Jim Hickey, AICP

00:04
Hello everyone, welcome and thank you for joining us. I'm Juliana Hoffman, Director of Marketing Communications for SafeBuild and today's topic is all about downtowns and how municipalities of all sizes, what they are doing to breathe new life into them. We've got a great panel of experts from the CGA subsidiary of SafeBuild and I'm here to introduce them to you. It's Jim Hickey and David Dixon. So if you wouldn't mind telling a little bit about yourselves.

00:32
and how you came about to CGA and SafeBuild, a bit of your experience.  Jim Hickey, I'm the Director of Planning for CGA SafeBuild. I've been with the company for about seven years. I have 29 years of experience in the planning realm.  The majority of that, the first 22 years was in on the public side. So I've worked for municipalities, I've worked for counties. I've worked in, I think, five or six different states doing work. So it's great to be here today and can't wait to talk with Dave on.

01:01
downtowns.  And good day, everybody. I'm Dave Dixon, principal planner with CGA. Been here for about two and a half years. I'm one of those coast to coast planners where I was educated in planning on the biggest city in the West Coast and worked my way entirely across the US and Canada through the mountains.  And I'm finally back down in the ocean in Southeast. And I love it here. And I've done any kind of planning you can imagine,  mostly focusing on land use, urban design.

01:31
and excited to speak about some of our experience and how it might help communities around the US.  Excellent. So let's get started. Let's dive into it.  So downtowns mean different things to different municipalities. For smaller municipalities, it might be your typical Main Street, USA. Larger communities, it might be the financial district. Regardless of one or another,  what are some of the general trends that you are seeing?

01:59
of communities and municipalities trying to revitalize or increase new business and getting to those regions.  What are some of the general trends that it seems to be, you know, at the core center of the conversations in the planning world?  Sure, I can start. I think one of the one of the things I think cities need to think about is when you start looking at a downtown, you say, I want to look like the neighboring town or I want to look like two towns over. I want to look like

02:29
that. And I think what sometimes they don't think about is what makes them unique is really what's going to define them and define the sense of place. You know, find the uniqueness in your community and start to work with that and see how you can integrate that into your redevelopment plans so that you're not looking like something if you're in Florida and you and you're emulating something in California, it's going to look it's not going to look right. So you want to make sure that you're

02:58
you're working with your strengths and identifying those things that do make you unique.  What I see a lot is towns, as far as a trend, towns just thinking a code change is going to do it. And that's true. You can change your code to allow for more or more flexible types of businesses if you want to revitalize a street or an area. But really, it's got to have that multifaceted approach, not just a code change or upzoning is really going to help you.

03:26
You've to engage your business community and find that person who's going to be that conduit between you as a municipality or county and that business community.  And then you can look at a code change as part of a multifaceted strategic plan.  But look beyond just that one silver bullet. And you mentioned about having kind of a local advocate.  That local advocate can be a business owner. That local advocate could be someone that's lived in the community for 40 years.

03:53
Someone that really tries to activate and energize the area, I think, is you need one of those leaders to kind of help guide even the business owners and the property owners to say, hey, this sounds like a good idea. This is the direction we should go in.  And Jim, that doesn't even always have to be a CRA or a redevelopment agency. And maybe in some smaller communities, it shouldn't be. It should just be somebody who has the energy.

04:21
to get out there and get after it. That's the thing. You don't have to have a really formal district or framework to do this. I think if you get the right people, right consultants, the right business liaisons on board,  then you already have that kind of energy going.  And looking at things like, simple things that are not overlooked, but are maybe need to be considered more like cleaning up streets.

04:50
What does your street look like? The street that you want to revitalize. What does it look like when you walk down it? Would you walk down it? Is it bright enough at night or at dusk? Does it have surveillance?  All those simple things, they still work, making people feel comfortable.  That's tried and true piece of the formula, right, Jim? You got to put all of them together. Yeah, I agree. think part of the whole discussion is that streetscape.

05:19
sidewalks look like, are there trees, are there benches, are there places to sit?  If you have an ice cream store, are there seats outside that you can sit on, or at least a bench?  Those types of things I think go a long way.  I think a city plays, or a town plays a role in that kind of developing that streetscape to help bring more development downtown.  And I love how you guys explained that. I think it's wonderful. Let's say I'm from a community where I don't have an economic development department.

05:48
her say, how do I get started? What is the number one thing that I should be doing first? I know that there is not necessarily a problem with my downtown, but I know that I want to improve foot traffic and everything else. What are some of the first few things I should be looking at if I don't have that formal economic development department there will be my advocate?

06:13
I want to start with just the organizational part, because I'd be just going through this in a community that we work in here in South Florida.  And then Jim, maybe you could talk about the mechanics of it.  But I would say put together your team, just like you're going into any big project.  Find a team, talk with them.  Who's going to be your conduit for the businesses?  You're going to need somebody planning. You're going to need a planner.  think planners can see.

06:42
the whole world as it kind of fits together in that puzzle.  And then find your local leadership elected, you know, somebody that has that respect between all parts of the community to put that energy in it and to motivate, know, just put together that team of four or five different circles that interact when it comes to revitalization being in the middle of the Venn diagram, right? That's step one. And then there's also the things, the actual actions that you do, which maybe Jim, you can speak to some of those.

07:13
Yeah, I really think, you know, getting that group together, doing some sort of master plan or minimum visioning to kind of get and get the temperature of the residents, the business owners, kind of what they see versus what they don't see. Sometimes those two don't always see eye to eye. So it's trying to integrate those those views into a common vision that moves forward.  And

07:41
Dave's right in a lot of ways, you need to get buy-in, right? You need the buy-in from the public and then you need buy-in by, you know,  the city leaders. And then finally, the electeds need to buy-in, right? Because they're ultimately going to approve some of these things.  So, yeah, I think it's really important to kind of have all levels of that. That's that first actual step of action.  You know, sometimes we'll do an economic development committee with appointed members.

08:10
it's formalized, it's adopted through resolution or whatnot.  But at the end of it, you should come out with a, we need a strategic plan, maybe is what it is, or revitalization plan, or economic development plan,  or it could be part of your long range comprehensive plan.  But to me, the real step is to, I just look at things geographically, right? So there are places that are gonna want more attention than others, or there are things that are gonna want more attention, like the streetscape or the sidewalk or.

08:38
the pipes underneath the asphalt right away.  But mapping out where those needs are, I think that's a huge part of it. That's just how my mind works. But I think if you can show a map to folks,  no matter who they are, they'll understand, okay, yeah, you're right. That place does need some help more than that place. And helps you sort of start to prioritize what kind of actual projects you're going to do.  And then the market study, right? The market study will help that bigger picture part.

09:08
What really will work here? Where's your price points? What's your cost?  Compared to what you can generate revenue that kind of thing.  That's the kind of step one A and one B to me. I love how you explain a little bit that, you know, the visioning and all that and then sometimes these would be at odds. Can you talk a little bit how, for instance, our team has helped certain communities to

09:34
narrow that gap between what the city thought would be the visioning and then a recent study or the residents seem to have a different idea. How can we bring those visions together? What can we do?  Sure, you know in our experience and Dave can talk about it too, you know sometimes you get to meetings and you get there and there's 300 people there objecting to an item via the development or whatever it might be and a lot of times what's happened is the

10:03
what I call the homework hasn't been done before the plan gets there, right?  So the city staff and the city can have a great idea of where they want to go, but you need to go back to the community and make sure that's the ultimate thing. And that's really what the vision is. The vision is just really more of a global look at,  you know, we may be a small town, we may be growing and we may be growing at an exponential rate.  What is most important for us as a community, sense of place?

10:32
our downtown, what do want it to be?  What do you want it to maintain?  Then you can start to develop those things and move forward. It's very difficult to do that.  I'll just talk one example. was working for a community and they had a downtown area and they wanted to,  they had additional density, but there was a lot of concern at the public level that they didn't want to see density. And one of the things we worked with our urban design folks in our office to

11:01
really take the nuts and bolts of the downtown code and show it in a 3D version and say, hey, really it's more about how that building looks and how that building orients to the street than what's in it. Whether it has 12 homes or 20 homes, 20 units in the apartment, it doesn't matter because it forms into the code.  And really hitting home the idea of

11:28
yes, you can have development here and we realize that there's neighborhoods behind. So this is what we're going to do and identify those things.  So I remember at the end, I talked a little bit about all those people coming in. I had 30 or 40 people show up all in the same shirt and I was worried that they would be against it, but in fact they were for it.  And really going to the community, you know, going to the thought leaders and going to the community and the commission and saying like, hey, this is great. We want this to happen. So it's a good example of

11:58
how that public engagement and just,  it's hard. These are concepts that are hard for,  Dave and I are in this all the time, so we kind of know what it's going to look like. I think in this day and age, you have to show people what could be to have them work with you to find out what the ultimate vision is. Yeah, I like what you said, that education is part of the process of bringing the public early because...

12:24
Perhaps, you know,  sometimes words, semantics play a role, right? You see something written in a newspaper, you think, oh my God, they're going to destroy the sense of identity of my community. And it turned out that, you know, that term or the way that word has been used,  I got a slightly different meaning in the planning and zoning world. Can you give us an example of some of the public outritches or perhaps a community pop-up?

12:50
that you conducted,  that you changed the mind of the community. Perhaps they saw something in writing the agenda, they got confused and misunderstood, but once you were there, once you educated,  showed the graphics, showed what really meant and the impact it would have to that region,  a little bit of how that transpired and how it's important to have the community brought in very early in terms of visioning and their opinion. I can think of a number of examples, and this is kind of a

13:19
double-edged sword,  but you want people to come in to engagement meetings,  right? Just advertising. And certainly with social media nowadays, can even get, know, the way we do it, you advertise to Facebook or social media and it'll get a radius of a certain point that you want and get even a neighborhood. People will get it on their feed, on their phone. So that's been a really awesome way to reach out to the exact people that might be affected by something that you're doing, whether it's revitalization or just a development plan.

13:48
But one of the things that it always works is to target the issue.  And that's what gets people out.  They might not care about a zone change or a code change that we think is going to revitalize an area.  But if there's something that this community is against, you might actually just point to it and say, hey, we're talking about this. It'll get people out.

14:12
And when they come in and they realize that's not actually what we're doing, we're not talking about building a 20 story tower. We're talking about a design where the building reacts to the type of street that it's in front of, right? And it's actually going to be beneficial to you because you're not going to be looking at a wall. You know, you're going to be looking at more of an articulated design and it's going to bring in an amenity or a sandwich shop that you might not have had before.  So getting them out based on the issue at hand, that'll get them there. And then as planners,

14:42
that's our opportunity to really change their mind. Yeah. And just to add, think one of the tools in the toolbox that I found very effective is the online polling.  You can do instantaneous polling of the public because a lot of times,  and Dave will agree with this, when folks come out, it's usually the folks that don't want change.  They're the loudest, right? They're always the loudest, but they're not often the majority.

15:09
So by instant polling, you you can say, hey, do you think it's a good idea to add more density to downtown?  You show it up, everybody votes in their phone, and it shows that the majority of people want that. So you can kind of get that consensus building through tools that we use to kind of not that you want it. You want those people that are there. You know, you want the every community has three or four people that come to every commission meeting and they're very.

15:37
it's very important to them and they have pride in their community, which is great.  You need to bring those into the discussion so that you have a full understanding of what it is, but you also want to get the folks that maybe don't speak up to get input from them. So that's one of the tools that I found recently that works really well in that kind of when you have two sides and you're trying to get consensus.  yeah, and Jimmy, know, one of our recent projects, was community very, very sensitive to growth of really any kind, but

16:07
Certainly the size and shape of it was very important. It's a very kind of tight geography.  So we used the live poll to actually, and some amazing new GIS-based 3D visualization software that we use to in real time demonstrate and visualize through three dimensions a scenario, a development scenario that had us turning the knobs, so to speak, of zoning, whether that's height or setback or even stepping back at a certain height, right?

16:36
We can live poll people's responses anonymously so they don't have to tell them, voted for this, right? Like Jim was saying.  And we can get their reactions on three-dimensional outcomes. You always have to be careful when showing 3D stuff.  That's theoretical.  But with this anonymous live polling,  you can learn things that you would never really get otherwise.  And what we learned that day is that it wasn't necessarily the

17:04
you know,  a wedding cake type of thing that was desired. was more of just,  you the box was fine as long as it was set back more more and more and there was enough space between the buildings, which is something that you just, you could talk to every person individually and have a bunch of drawings, but really we would not have learned that with any other way. All right. So I'm going to talk a little bit specific, if I may.

17:29
about form-based and conventional zoning and what role it plays when we're talking about a district or in this case downtown areas that we want to revitalize. What is the deal? What works? What doesn't work? What communities should be worried? Are there any differences between small communities and larger communities? How they see those?  Well, I think maybe we should just start on kind of what form-based code is and really it's looking at the

17:59
The United States has been doing planning and zoning the same way, I think, since the 1920s. So, foreign-based codes came in because really harkening back to before that, right? When you had large cities,  buildings just came in, got developed, wasn't really concerned about what was in the building, really, but what was there and you had mixes of uses and things.  What that tool can be used now for, I think, and Dave and I can discuss the point, but I think foreign-based is best in a downtown.

18:29
because that's really when you want to form bases more really about where the building is placed, how the building is placed, how the building interacts with the sidewalk,  with the streetscape,  where the ingress or egress locations are for cars that walking, right? To really look at it at a pedestrian scale to see how that building works and how that fits into their downtown.

18:59
In my opinion, think conventional zoning is better for your more suburban type of developments, your residential developments, those areas which will continue to build in the future.  But I think those work better with conventional zoning. We have certain setbacks for houses so that they're not close to one another.  Those types of things I think work better in that more suburban setting.  Form-based, it's great because it does

19:27
alter your experience for a small downtown or even a big downtown.  It's really trying to engage the human being that's on the street or sidewalk or car. That's really what it does a great job of.  sometimes if you have a form-based code that's too rigid or too sticky with things like how that front door

19:56
hits the sidewalk or how much frontage type you have to have.  But you'll miss out on a really nice piece of architecture that might have a new or innovative construction technique that still puts the human being on the sidewalk first and looks amazing and adds that variety that makes a downtown interesting, makes a place.

20:19
the rigidity of a form-based code, you'd either have to get some kind of exception for that type of design. That's the thing that you really have to think about as a community.  And I don't see why you can't have both, but you just have to make sure your code is going to respond to that type of innovation should it come about. And a lot of the times when we see on the news, on an article about a downtown that has been revitalized,  sometimes we think that it has to be this one size fits all recipe.

20:47
For example, oh, now they want to revitalize, they're going to change their architecture for the entire street, for the entire district in one way or another.  Can you explain a little bit for some of the municipal leaders, they are not so acquainted with that? It doesn't have to be the case. To revitalize a downtown means there are many different layers to it.  An architecture side of it seems to be one of it, that people think, oh, now we're all just going to have to have this colonial style or now modern style.

21:15
Can you explain a little bit how one thing does not prevent the other? I really think for downtown you have to think outside the box, right? Because the majority of the types of or the zoning that you have in your community is single use only. Your commercial area is here,  your supermarket is here, your residential is here.  Downtown you have all those different uses. So I think you really need to think about

21:41
the flexibility of allowing those uses and the flexibility of allowing those uses potentially in multi-story structures, right?  You know, the old time, you know, bakery downstairs or convenience store downstairs, levels above, I think you need to look at that.  So I think you need to be less rigid on those regulations. Some cities are really specific about that. First floor has to be all retail. And that may work in a...

22:10
central business district in a large community, large city, but in a smaller town that might not work because that might not be leasable, right? You might have 20,000 square feet on the first floor,  a restaurant comes in, they probably want 2,000. And that's kind of what you're going to get. That's the type of development that may happen there. But if you have that huge amount, you end up having a large space that's not leased, becomes much more difficult to,  for it to become affordable, right?

22:39
So those types of things you need to really think about as you do that and be flexible.  That's not saying you open the door and let everything in, but I think with design, I think with how the building is laid out, I think you have to have more flexibility in how that happens because it is more difficult to do redevelopment than development.  It takes,  I used to say twice as long, I think it takes three times as much energy.

23:05
to go in to demolish a building that's next to another building, to do construction, and to make that pro forma work for development. have to be flexible enough to allow that type of development if that's what the community is looking for. And playing devil's advocate a little bit here, Jim. So why are so many communities still very reluctant to make those changes? What is the thought processing behind? And what they should be thinking about?

23:33
if they really want to boost their economic development in those regions. I think the first thing is visioning, having a common vision. So when a development comes in that doesn't fit, it's a lot easier for the city as a whole to say,  well,  potentially is a good idea, but it doesn't work for the community. And here's why. Or it doesn't match the uses that we have. And here's why.  I think that's a very important thing.

24:01
One of the things that Dave and I talked about and we actually talked about it this week is that a lot of communities have a code, have a zoning code or land development code that they've had for, let's say they did a rewrite 10 years ago. So that's the code they've had and they don't want to make any changes.  And that's a difficult thing. think as planners, it's difficult, right? Because I know exactly where the code is, that section and 10 feet and this is that.  I think sometimes we get stuck in the...

24:29
minutiae of the language.  you know, I think I think city leaders do and it's the same thing is like, well, this is how it has to be. It doesn't. Right. But in order to do that, you kind of have to take the time and work on that and a lot of a lot of smaller cities. But you know, I would say, I've worked in the public sector, you're busy all the time, you're working on deadlines for your boards, your commissions, your committee, you know, there's always something that you're doing. So to take the time to kind of back out of that and

24:58
and work on code changes is difficult.  So I think that's one of the things as consultants that we can help and say, you know, someone could say like, hey, we need our downtown code. Can you take a look at that and potentially make changes and we can work with the community. But I think that's part of it. And I just think a lot of, a lot of cities that are growing struggle with this because they have a sense of place and they're so concerned about it. They don't want to lose it. That if you

25:25
if you kind of change some of this stuff, it's going to basically change the community. I think that's one of the most important aspects. I've got one that we're a community that we're working in right now that's dealing with this exact thing.  it's a little bit the other side of that, which is why do economic development? And certainly they might need it in some, mean, everybody could use them, but it's like, we're finding the way we are. We're going along just fine. Right.

25:54
We don't need to do anything.  is we're city of whatever we're finding, which is true to some degree.  So what do you do about it? Well, I think the leadership has to really sell it on, well, right now is a perfect opportunity to pivot if we need to, or to do things before it gets too late.  The what if selling point, right?  What if we don't, if we stick to business as usual and we don't...

26:21
have any stance on what we want to be as a downtown,  what our identity is, or what kind of industries we want to attract,  then you're going to miss out. You're going to miss out on getting those.  And I think that's what you see when a lot of times the shiny object is growth on the edge of town.  If you're a smaller community, you don't have a huge administrative capacity.

26:45
And you have this applications coming in for subdivisions on the edge of town. Maybe you're even considering annexation. Of course, you have to look at the infrastructure, but why would you look at your downtown if it's doing just fine when there's this big shiny generating thing over here, right? That's what we see all the time.  So it's tough, but I think you have to say, no, look, our downtown is what makes us who we are. It's our heart.  So we do need to put revitalization resources to it. We do need to get the people out of about that.

27:15
You could do both too. And you could actually use one to maybe even leverage the other, right? Yeah. And I, and I agree. And I think, you know, that you were talking about that shiny object there. One of the things is, yes, if those, if those roofs come into the community,  those roofs want entertainment, they want places to go. They want, they want us, they want a sense of place as well. So how do you make your existing downtown attract that, attract those new folks that are coming in and kind of have them.

27:42
join into the sense of place and not have them be out there and not doing other things.  You know, I think we're going off of downtowns, but I think the perfect example of something that might not be in the downtown would be, you know, industrial developments or, you know, those types of things, which may be by railroads or they develop, you you've identified a place. think that's in that marketing is very important as well, because I think as we all know, commercial and industrial tend to bring in more tax taxes.

28:12
to help with your downtown, to help with the residential communities, to help with public safety and fire and police and all those things.  So, you know, it's a balancing act. But I think sometimes with all of those pieces going,  sometimes you neglect the one thing that you have that you want to basically not revitalize, but enhance and make it better.  Yeah. And think about the new dynamics. So many places that need our help are these Zoom towns, the people.

28:41
places where we have workers that just don't work there in a typical central business district or downtown.  But whereas you might leave work in a downtown and go to a pub or get a burger with some family or friends right where you work after work,  people are still doing that even if they don't work in the downtown and you have to capture that.  Those people might be in the new rooftops somewhere else. But you still need that place. That place has to be there because everybody still wants that.

29:11
like you were just saying,  you need to have a downtown with those cool things.  Historic, all the better, know, that kind of compact place where it just feels good to be hanging out, a third space. It's not homework, right? So I love how you guys frame that because I think what we are saying is that one thing is not mutually exclusive. A minor or a few changes in the code does not mean that you're selling out your historic downtown.

29:38
You know, so it just means that you are making adjustments so that you can preserve that attract new business, attract a new community.  so let me rephrase that.  It just means that. It just means that you are adapting and adjusting to the community needs, maybe in the economic sense or the housing sense,  educational facilities and everything else. You're making your town more attractive to new business.

30:06
and to the new generation to move in and thrive in that sense in that municipality. You got that right. And the only thing I would add to, think, I think that your code should be a living, breathing document.  And it needs to change with, we're talking about autonomous vehicles, right? We're talking about electric vehicles. Where are those charging? All of those things come in and you need to identify those and

30:33
figure out what's best for your community and how to implement new technologies or new ideas or things that come in. You need to really be able to be nimble enough to go in and say, hey, we might need a change on this because of the impacts of this potential new technology. and even better, talking about next generation or innovative,  if you could be that place that does it first,  you're talking about making an identity,  pick something and just be the pioneer, right?

31:00
it might be even low cost and huge impact. And then that kind of puts you on the stage, oh, did you hear city of so-and-so just, they just put in a solar EV charging place in their park, you something like that. And then that brands you as the place that's going to be that progressive pioneering place. And you can do it ahead of time, right?  That's, it's such a great economic development tool. I want to talk a little bit about some of the misconceptions and some of the fears.

31:29
city leaders have about when we're talking about economic development, we're going to increase food traffic, trafficking to an area that otherwise hadn't seen so many people, so many cars. Parking is always a big issue.  can we talk about when once the visioning has been done, we heard about, we heard from the community, what are some of the pitfalls that we should be watching out and what are some of the

31:56
items that we should be paying very close attention to. think one of the things, and you mentioned parking, I think parking is always, to me I think parking is the one thing that controls a lot of approvals across the country because everyone has parking standards.  A lot of communities have the same parking standards for downtown than they would have for a power center where there's grocery store and there's a

32:25
There's a target or one of those large scale things. And it's different.  I worked with the community,  had a great downtown. They had a form based code. It was ready to go.  And the first question I asked was, you know, what's, what's the main concern? And they said, well, we have trouble with restaurants.  Well, what's the trouble with restaurants?  Well, any restaurant that comes into the town has to get a additional approval and their town, it's called a warrant. They have to get a warrant every time they come in.

32:54
So you can imagine you're a small restaurant, let's say you're a pizza place and you want to open,  you have to apply for a permit, you have to go through the process, you have to pay fees, you have to go to a commission and get approvals to allow it because of parking constraints. You know, I think that is kind of an example of the intent in there was to make sure that the proliferation of restaurants wouldn't cause a parking problem in their downtown.  But what it's doing is stopping development from coming in.

33:23
You know, I think in a lot of places, you know, if you asked me 10 years ago, I would say parking codes are great and they should stay the way they are.  you know, in real life, when developments come in, if a major development comes in, let's say an apartment building,  they know exactly how many spaces they need.  They know they'll say 1.72 or 1.6, whatever that number is per unit, they know exactly what they are. Having a parking problem is not necessarily a bad thing. It's actually in my, in a lot of ways, it's a good thing.

33:52
because that means that you have more,  the energy that you're bringing to your downtown is so important that people are trying to get there.  Some cities look for that. Some communities will buy a plot of land and they'll put a garage in at some point to allow that folks to park. I think in a lot of communities, if you've got ride share programs,  a lot of people now will ride share, especially if you're going out to dinner on a Saturday night.

34:22
So the parking there,  then you have one space for rideshare. You don't need 15 spaces or 20 spaces for people coming in and out.  So I really think that's one of the things that communities could look at to really help bring in the type of development that they want.  Completely agree. Certainly also that parking problem is not always a huge problem. It means you're already on the right path. You've done what we just talked about in the first part.  So here's what I'd like to have a real world example.

34:51
When you're looking at revitalization, looking at your identity,  I think it's great when communities say, this is what we do. This is who we are.  So let's reduce the parking for those types of uses. And I'll explain, we're helping several communities on the Gulf Coast of Florida here rebuild after the terrible, terrible hurricanes,  hurricanes last, last year,  The old.

35:17
code that Jim was talking about will not let them have enough parking if they reopen their business today. They're non-conforming, so they don't conform. They need like 10 to 12 more spaces than they have,  which they've all survived. They're all thriving businesses before the hurricane. Now that happens,  they destroy the rebuilding.  So in this case,  these all back up to marinas and docks. So we were changing the code or at least proposing it that you can get a one to two or one to one

35:46
reduction in parking if you offer boat slips. And that is the scene there on even weekdays in the season, people come there on boats, right? The fact that they didn't have this was kind of crazy.  So now not only are we matching the identity,  we're helping out this business open when it was not conforming previously. And what was the other one, Jim, you were talking about? think we had another business that had some uniqueness that maybe didn't meet parking, but... It was a restaurant in a downtown and

36:16
He was having trouble having patrons come and one of the big,  a large number of folks that went to the restaurant were on bicycle. And it was in an area, not that the area was good or bad, but it was an area where if you have a bike that's worth two or $3,000, you don't want to leave that on the street or put it around a tree or something like that because you don't know if it's going to be there when you come out of the restaurant.

36:43
So the owner of the restaurant talked to the neighbor next door who had a third floor space that was vacant. And he basically built a park, a bike valet. So people could come drop their bike off. They would bring the bike upstairs. It would be locked in. And then when they came back out, they could do that. It was a simple thing. It wasn't even in the code. It was just something that this owner had said, you know, I have a huge following. And it did. They're all of the bike groups and everybody sent notice to this community.  And the restaurant's still there. It's been there for.

37:12
20, 25 years. And that was, I think that was about 25 years ago when that was put in.  And, you know, it just shows you examples of it doesn't have to, you don't have to always park a car.  And I think you should really think about those parking regulations and make them work for what the community is doing.  Should we talk a little bit about mixed use? How people seem to think that mixed use is the recipe for success for everything?  Being a misconception now, however,  it would

37:42
be so great to have that small medium scale mixed use in a small to medium sized downtown?  You sometimes the numbers for developers make it so that you have to have a lot, a lot of units, but how do we get that medium size mixed use, that 30 unit thing, kind of another topic altogether.  But I think what you see as a mistake, because we want it so much, is to mandate having commercial on the ground floor. Right, Jim, how many times do we see this?

38:12
and, or having an active storefront that for retail that, you know, it's really great for pedestrians walking past and wanting to window shop, but how much retail do we need anymore with online shopping?  So I think we all have to take a look at our codes in our downtown areas and make sure that it's right sized to how much of that commercial activity you're doing, how much retail food and beverage seems to be taking up, you know, still very strong.  So, but they don't need storefront.

38:41
Windows like a retail shop does.  Right. So that's just the ground floor. But I think loosening up that mixed use requirement or making sure that the market will tell you what it needs as far as the mix in commercial.  This might be a better approach.  think Jim? No, I agree. And I think a mix is different than developing a kind of one use building.  And, you know, it's

39:08
It's intricate of the pro forma how that works.  If you have a one floor, the first floor must be retail or non-residential.  Well, that's great. But if you can't sell the whole first floor, then now you've got unleasable space, your pro forma's off. There's now issues with the condo of the apartments because they can't afford the,  you know, how that was done.  it does require

39:37
You know, think one of the things I would recommend or think about is if you are looking at some sort of mixed use to see if you have local developers that do this and get their input. That doesn't mean you need to agree with everything they're saying,  but you need to understand the economic side of how that works before you put regulations in that may not work.  You know, if you have a 20 mile road in your town, you can't have mixed use everywhere, right?

40:05
We can't support that amount of commercial anymore because most of us have a membership to some online shopping that allows you to get things delivered to your door. So that has really changed the way that commercial development works. So you need to be really understanding of that and how that happens. I'm really glad this topic came up too because there's something that I've always thought was so obvious when it comes to mixed use and it comes to revitalization.

40:35
is it doesn't always have to be vertical, right?  It can be horizontal mixed use and it serves the exact same purpose. We just have this traditional idea of housing being on top of a commercial ground floor.  If it's the same parcel and you have a tower of commercial and a tower of residential and it's all parked the same on a garage podium, whatever it may be, why does it have to be vertical? And sometimes construction is so much easier and cheaper if it's not.

41:04
So think that's something that if our code's forcing a vertical mixed use, it doesn't hurt if it's separated, right? Right. And Dave, we have examples here in South Florida where there's a major arterial and that's where the commercial is. There's a strip probably 150 feet deep and that's where the commercial development is. That's where the restaurants are. They have outdoor seating.  That's where the activity is. And then behind that, there's an alleyway. But behind that, that's where the multifamily is.

41:33
So it is a mixed-use development, but again, it's separated and it really kind of helps, it helps the commercial because then they're front and center along the arterial and the residential is further back from that arterial.  So noise is a little bit low, but they still have the ability to say, hey, let's go downstairs and go grab something to eat there.  So it really depends on where the areas and how it functions as to how it works.  I love that. I think that this is a great thing for us.

42:02
these city leaders to actually think about and reevaluate how they are thinking about revitalizing their downtowns. To wrap everything up, give us a couple of must do, the municipal leaders thinking about a specific area, maybe the downtown or perhaps an area that they want to revitalize. What are the two must to do that you would recommend,  Jim? So I would say, I think the first thing is at a minimum, I think

42:29
like a visioning study, it doesn't need to be a charrette. I think an overall visioning of,  hey, here's where we are now. You know, the city is thinking of going in this direction. What do you think? What do you think it should look like? What really should be? I think that's the first step. And then after that, once you figure out what that step is needed, then you can look towards,  it looking at your zoning rewrite? Is it looking at maybe bringing an economic person in?

42:56
maybe bringing someone else in to do more public engagement to really drill down and find out exactly what's needed.  That would be the two that I would say.  And if you're a smaller community, that is difficult unless you have someone from the outside helping.  smaller communities are really tough. You're 12 different things at the same time. It's really hard to stop and think and do that 30,000 foot, like, okay, what do we really want the city to look like?

43:23
when you're trying to get the day-to-day stuff done too. So it's always the challenge to balance that.  completely agree.  For me, must-dos, we'll find out where your boundaries are and then get the buy-in from those people who own those properties.  Get the buy-in and then get the buy-in from community. Those two things can happen at the same time in the visioning sessions that Jim just mentioned.  And then come up with a really funny, catchy slogan.

43:54
There's some good ones out there and they're memorable.  That's to say, market and brand this effort if you're really looking at, and that's what people are looking at today.  They're not going to remember the so-and-so and so-and-so-and-area district plan or effort. They're going to remember slogan and a cool logo.  That comes up on their social media page. I think it's huge. I love that. Thank you so much. think that wraps up our conversation today about revitalizing downtowns. A big thank you for our two panelists.

44:24
And if you're watching and find yourself having more questions, please use the QR code on your screen, or you can also reach us at safebuild.com. Thank you so much and see you next time.