So, this morning, we'd really appreciate some guidance on whether or not the HR would be interested in intervening to support some improvements on the site. Um uh this is the um uh this is kind of part one of this proposal. Um in order to address some of their parking concerns, they would need two things. Some funding support and um uh a site plan amendment.

I'm super optimistic that if we can get more parking, then we can have more sales, hire more staff, keep more staff. But to your question specifically, um we've tried valet. The residents did not like that. They thought we were too fancy of a restaurant, so we removed the valet portion.

If the project well if the project uh if the funding is approved by the HA um but the contract doesn't finish the owner is at risk right so if they if they don't finish until January 1st we cannot provide funding so that I mean so the the owner is at risk for that.

I mean, in the bottom, in the end, I would support this um because it is good use of the spark funds. It's creating new jobs. That's why we have it. But um but it just feels so uh like a lot of pressure on you, a lot of inefficiencies in parking.

However, it would be in my view uh better stewardship to return the remaining 1 million of spark um back to the county to be redistributed. And I say this because we have a backlog of um repair that we need to do maintenance. We also, and this is a project that I really I know I'm never going to see as a um commissioner, get launched and built, but will maybe get launched a little bit. Maybe in 5 10 years, we'll have an actual park building for Lewis Park.

And and for me, the the the use of this money uh for this purpose is entirely consistent with what we've done in the past to create opportunities for other businesses. Uh whether it's an elevator for a nightclub, that's just enormously successful as I understand it. Uh and what I expect to have happen over at Cafe Americana.

So, with this $1 million balance that we had, uh there was a number of items that were clearly eligible and then there's some that just clearly are not. So, we could have used those monies for public improvements, roads, utilities, sewers, sidewalks, lights, those types of things. Uh, we could use that to acquire land, for demolition, for environmental cleanup, uh for affordable housing, for a variety of redevelopment studies to push redevelopment and explore that different options, and also for some staff internal administrative expenses.

So we're we're we're looking at the present. We're looking at at opportunities and situations where we can create public improvement but also with an eye to the future so that there's this opportunity for funding again. Um and and and of course with every expenditure we bring um in the future we'll bring it back to the city council at the time we'll have very similar conversations to what we're having this morning. Should we keep it? Should we spend it? Should we give it away?

But I'd kind of like to see our spending in tiff and maybe even not even for projects but for public improvements um using the Centennial Lakes but maybe other TIFF funding compared to those sort of external factors because I I would that would help me in the future make decisions about this.

I think it's also nice to look at the level of investment that businesses were willing to make uh because of the public improvements that preceded the the private development that occurred around those public improvements which is you know always a sort of a fundamental strategy that build it and they'll they'll come which we've seen particularly around Centennial Lakes itself I think and in that district.