At this point, uh the county has developed a preferred design alternative for presentation this evening and um they're going to to share that information. But then I I do want to just uh make a statement here that we're looking for um some direction here at the the close of the discussion. That is whether council [...] is comfortable uh with the county coming back for uh seeking a resolution of support later this fall uh to kick off final design for the project.

With that, drum roll. Our project team is recommending the roundabout concept as the preferred alternative.

And then in terms of the cost shares at 10% based upon the county formula or based upon knowing things that the city is responsible for at this point because these are both count these are both county roads. We don't have any property there. The school already set aside the right ofway on the northwest corner.

I I I do think that Yeah. I mean, based on what we've heard, I I haven't heard any real concerns. We certainly thank the county for all their work on this in short notice given the school wanted to put a school in that location and and changed a lot of the dynamics revolving around that intersection. And um certainly I think you'll find support from the city on proceeding to to final design when you want to come back in in the fall.

The current contract is a five-year contract that we have right now and it expires December 31st of this year. So, we thought it'd be a good time to bring them in, get a little recap on what they do for the city and then see what direction we should go from there.

Our firm motto, our firm mission, I should call it a motto, it's like a tattoo. It's a mission. It's a goal. It's a passion, is to build and strengthen communities. Something we take very, very seriously.

It really does come back to making sure we've got people with the passion and the experience in each role.

I find it to be a the value on behalf of residents. I have no issue with the services that are being provided and I think we continue to move forward. I'm fine with that.

I I just want to offer I appreciate the victim centric approach on that as well because I I know there are firms that out there that you know whether they do it or not, who knows? But it's not clarified. It's not emphasized. And so I on behalf of citizens here where that is applicable, I do appreciate that.

Is the city council interested in pursuing the purchase and redevelopment of the area. Is the city open to master planning the site as a coordinated development? Uh, is the city willing to commit to a TND traditional neighborhood development approach?

We believe without investment from the city the site will most likely follow a suburban development pattern and we'll talk about that a little bit throughout this presentation why that's important.

We have a purchase agreement with the Stillwater School District for the whole of the Lake Elmo Elementary School property. It currently runs until early October. So, we plan to make an extension request here shortly for a period of time, and it's to the school district to decide if they're willing to extend it, and if so, for how long.

I just if this is something that I guess my my philosophy on this is if it's something that the private market can do then the government should do it.

The other thing I look at is for both of those sites is we do the city council did, the previous city council agreed that um TIFF would be eligible for redevelopment sites.

But we can control what it looks like. We can control where it goes. And council member Hearn's point, yeah, we can do it through zoning and we have. We also can take it to that next level of saying what the change shall look like.

I fully agree for for new places the market should drive it. This is there are costs here that the market is not going to easily tackle and their approach would probably create a product that we don't want.

Although the survey outlined uh that uh the project had the attempt we had the intent to sell the land um despite that context many participants use the survey as an opportunity to advocate for anti-development and pro-preservation stances.

The level of support for the developing or for developing the land was about 44% across all respondents. Um that was somewhat support or strongly support and around 49% for those that somewhat were strongly opposed.

I mean to me, especially parcels one and two, three I think is going to be a different discussion, but for parcels one and two, the reason we got this from 3M is to assist the city with finances on our end.

I'd rather they decide. And then with the sewer, is that safe to assume that we would like the developer to bring the sewer to parcel three as we discussed going back to uli?

It would be interesting to see if that changes the public perception at all of of doing this project versus not doing a project, right? because you know their perception is like why would we have this developed if it's going to go to pay for something that I don't want at all that doesn't impact us.