per our special event ordinance for level two and three events that require tickets for entry, um, we have the ability to impose a fee of either a dollar or 1% um, on the ticket price, whichever is greater. We have historically waved this fee for the chamber.

I wanted to pull this to discuss the fee... it is our policy that we collect this fee from anybody who submits a permit request for events like this. And this is unusual. It's it's maybe it's been traditional, but it's goes against what we typically do.

I think it's it's probably it's something that we could maybe consider next year and have that conversation with them ahead of time, but otherwise, they're going to be out whatever fee we charge them and this is a huge money maker for them. So, I'm okay keeping it open in the future, but I think right now because they've already sold everything, um I think that's probably unfair to do that right now...

per our our ordinance says the city may reduce or wave this fee for events that are charitable or have a significant fundraising component for a nonprofit, community, or civic organization. So, we don't have the authority to wave this fee for anything outside of those parameters, but you may wave this fee if it meets that criteria.

The applicant's request is to uh essentially expound upon an existing variance that was granted in 2020 uh to reduce that required 50% retail area in both frontage and in area from 50% down to 11%. The prior variance issued in 2020 uh already reduced it down to 22%.

The planning commission on December 1st, 2025 uh reaffirmed their action of the public hearing and adopted their report and recommendation uh recommending denial of their request. The reason uh they found the following following findings of fact these are uh that the application would not be consistent with the intent of the ordinance or the comprehensive plan. The applicant had not established that practical difficulties were present on the site. The variance request was not unique in nature to the site and the var the variance if granted would alter the essential character of the neighborhood.

the retail component is looking to kind of downsize. Um Walley Capital who was on the third floor is looking to expand. So there's this kind of mutually beneficial use of this first floor to occupy that and kind of make sure there's activity at least still happening on this first floor.

I struggle with that because I don't want empty space that we say has to be retail in an area that we know is tougher for retail to survive. Um, but we gave concessions when the building was approved and cut the retail requirement down at that time.

this is an outgrowth of a zoning situation we've got in the in the city that we are trying to force something that the marketplace really isn't accepting... it points out that we need to have this discussion again down the road about you know forcing retail where it just doesn't work.

property taxes in our commercial core now are making up anywhere from $18 to $24 of the CAM portion of their rent. So that's driving rents north of 35 upwards of $60 a foot for retail.