Is there a motion to approve the meeting agenda as published?

So moved.

I second.

Our initial reaction in responding to this RFP is coming from a place of trying to help build this side of Edina out and create a neighborhood here, something special. It's got all the makings of a neighborhood with retail surrounding it, walkability, good access.

We see ourselves uh working with you to create a small neighborhood here that that uh is very desirable. I think it's a real opportunity. I'm a big fan of infill development. I've been doing it throughout my career here in the Twin Cities.

Ownership here is is obviously owner occupied units. We think that's just a completely different feel than renter a renter neighborhood. It it creates more ownership and sense of belonging for people.

I vow to you that we will be flexible, transparent partner with you and uh work work with you to achieve your goals as well.

We're breaking this down and there's seven buildings proposed and it steps up with a dramatic change in the height elevation starting with an activated corner with Brent's restaurant uh that really follows the guidelines of the district seeking to activate this area and then two to three story town homes that will line um Arcadia on that side that are walkups.

I love that there is no driveway off of Arcadia since it's such a steep slope and that was a big concern. So, thank you for just having one driveway. Um, I really appreciate the logic of having that along the railway.

I feel like you're really appreciating the site for what it is and it is a very complicated site. I also feel like so often we get designs coming to us that appear to be in a bubble and don't acknowledge what's around it and this really feels like it developed in a way that was informed by the context.

We went through about six plans to get to something that we all felt good about.

We really looked at optimizing uh the grade as best as we could. Uh the challenges of the um the grade and the the new walkway to the north um and just how much we drop from north to south. we started looking at it and saying, 'How can we maximize access to the site, parking, as well as um different types of housing uses?'

Often the brief we get is um please put as much density as possible within some certain height limit and you end up with a very blunt blocky building. Knowing that that wasn't really the case here, it was a it was refreshing to be able to to sort of look at this with new eyes and and really create some some interesting architecture and provide some some rare um almost missing metal um housing types.

The thing that we really appreciated about um about this brief was um you know the the um the emphasis on different different heights of buildings, different styles of buildings. And we tried to embrace that everywhere from um a multi-story apartment building that's that's a little more um conventional to town homes with detached garages, um walk up flats with tuck under garages. um just a lot of a lot of variety.

We really focused on trying to activate those street frontages. Even though um the the majority of the street frontage is primarily housing, what we tried to do was put as many doors on the street as possible with um with outdoor stoops and patios, ways for to to really enliven that street and try to make it into a neighborhood.

So um I'm going to ask everybody this. How much pvious surface are we looking at here?

I would guess that maybe more than half is is permeable.

Can you talk about whether um this could be um a rentto-own situation or in the future making it an ownership opportunity?

We are looking at what those options look like for either a ownership option at the very beginning or to your uh to your comment uh possible conversion down the road. and and a big portion part of that would be which portions and which buildings are um a type a concrete construction versus wood.

I know that you're still kind of thinking through how to do that activation on the on the top side of it. And I think that that's going to be a really really important component.

Good scale on both Eden and Arcadia. I thought uh recognition of the railroad tracks uh was handled in an interesting way. Uh a good trail connection through the site. Um reasonable amount of density. I think that's one of the things that we're all sensitive to.

Our goal is to show you what we want to do from a vision perspective, but we're really interested in strengthening this community.

I've felt that NDINA has been extremely creative and successful with um what uh some people from the outside would think would be easy. I don't think your uh land use use uh and your redevelopment is at all simple or um uh something that just comes automatically to you. You've uh and your predecessors have done a really exceptional job uh making this city special and continuing to regenerate the kind of energy that you need.

We develop and invest for generations. And so this project you'll see every decision. Steve, David, Casey, and Pete and I have spent quite a bit of time looking at Adina. We view it, we viewed it through a long-term lens because we are your partners.

Our vision is to create a mixeduse development with attainable town home ownership, quality rental apartments, groundf flooror commercial space, and beautiful public plaza that serves the entire community.

What sets us apart isn't just experience, and I'd like to share that a little bit more, and Steve did share um and I maybe I'll add a little bit to Nor Companies because I didn't talk about it, but it's more importantly, it's commitment. We develop and invest for generations.

The cost of the site is going to be driven a lot by soils and grade. And so we really put a lot of time into trying to understand the best way to deal with the grade. So the building acts as retaining walls.

I just want to say thank you for coming forward. I think my fellow commissioners have asked the questions, but thank you so much for taking the time and effort to give us this proposal. It's very interesting.

We're not trying to just bring in some temporary capital then to go flip it, right? So, we find equity partners. Um, usually friends and family. Um we work with smaller institutional offices or family offices where we actually know the people and um we just had um some investment partners um come into town um a couple weeks ago and we spent all day together walking one of our buildings and going out to dinner and we have a relationship with those folks.

One, this is early flight planning and it also is missing a really important component which is community engagement and city involvement. And so to the extent that um all the questions that have come up, those are all things that were both flexible and collaborative on to the to the extent that the numbers work.

Our proposal started kind of talking more about kind of this mixed use and more mixed residentially uh focused proposal. One of the things that we had contemplated before submitting our RFP um uh proposal to you was just how could we have more of that commercial worked into our proposal without it being like absolutely you know huge and a big traffic driver because it just didn't feel like the right fit for kind of the other things that we thought could be beneficial for this particular site.

We know that this site had previously had a cooperative proposal. We believe that this is kind of more rightsized or right fit for this particular location. compared to some of the other people that do cooperatives, particularly in the Twin Cities, our company really strives to be more boutique intentionally, um allows people to kind of know the names and faces of people that live within the building, not just who's right next door or kind of on that particular uh hallway, so to speak.

The stack flat kind of concept is kind of a what I'll call town home on steroids. It kind of gives you a much more diverse ability for a young professional, younger family with young kids all the way up to an empty neester who isn't quite ready to go into a a multi-unit building and looking for something a little more on their own.

The uh the kind of storefront look on Eden gives us a little bit of that commercial flare, but yet within that residential component. Um we're looking at probably professional offices and kind of any other complimentary uses pro. Um there's just a diverse range of opportunities there.

One opportunity is each homeowner would purchase one of those. The other opportunity is does the condo association control them. So if one person says, you know what, I need a bigger space. Can I get two of those? And one says, you know what, I really don't need to live work. So it gives them the maximum opportunity to not pigeon hole into our belief of what should happen and let it organically change over time because those changes will extreme.

We're hitting everything that's kind of within, you know, a hundred uh 50,000 to, you know, several hundred,000 in terms of equity and price point. So, we can appeal to a broader market. And where we don't believe that even on the cooperative side, this is 100% Edina residents, there's probably going to be a lot of Edinina residents that move into the cooperative because it's at a price point, at least the way that we've contemplated and financially modeled it.

I appreciate the information on how you will achieve affordability. Um the one concern and actually this has to do with information coming from us and I just want to know with that um pedestrian bridge across on the northern side. It sounds like, you know, you see that as a real asset to connect to the stores and businesses over there. And if you haven't walked that, I really encourage you to do that. It does land on the upper deck of the Jerry's parking ramp. Um, so it's depending on whether you're pushing a stroller or using a wheelchair. You got to go upstairs or you got to go down a the entry ramp for cars, which is very steep.

Um if you could speak to any experience you have in doing these types of projects and if you have that experience maybe even sample for me. I know these, you know, it could eb and flow over time, but what are some additional examples of what kind of work um examples we could see within those sites?

I think at this point, we haven't done what I'll say the same as this. I mean, there's other areas where people have that opportunity. Um, I think it's really driven by the site. It's the uniqueness of having that Eden Avenue potentially being able to get those parallel stalls in there that allow for that opportunity. Um, I think with, you know, if you look at the Dina market, I mean, I can think of a hundred different uses. I mean, it's, you know, accounting's office, legal office, um, someone that maybe works from their home, creates some product, maybe a small craft shop that, you know, probably not a high volume retail site there just because you're only going to have a few stalls.

I think one of the things that we included in our proposal. So, if I shift from just talking a little bit about the cooperative to our overall um project, as Mike said, we kind of came together. We're familiar with each other. We love kind of the two compatible uses. We're looking at this being an entirely privately financed endeavor for us that we stand on our own. We're not looking for additional public subsidy.

I think from a price point, that's what went into our our offer and I think we're trying to show you as much of kind of the math, so to speak, on how and why we got to where we did.

We're going to have a series of developer presentations this morning with respect to the potential use of the property owned by the city over uh at 5146 Eden Avenue, the old public work site, former public work site. And our first team is going to be starting here about right now.

We've invited each of those teams to join us this morning. uh we've told them they have 30 minutes to present their proposal and to answer your questions. So the way we have that structured is uh we expect a presentation about 15 minutes or so from the team. Um and that leaves about 15 minutes for questions and answers uh from you. Um we're striving to to limit it to 30 minutes because we've got the next team scheduled to be here in in in 31 minutes.

Mr. Chair, we are out of time.