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LAKE ELMO CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP MINUTES MARCH 11, 2014 Page 1 of 7 CITY OF LAKE ELMO CITY COUNCIL/EDA JOINT WORKSHOP MINUTES MARCH 11, 2014 Mayor Pearson called the meeting to order at 6:30 pm. PRESENT: Mayor Mike Pearson, Council Members Wally Nelson, Anne Smith, Justin Bloyer and Mike Reeves. Planning Commissioner Kathy Haggard, EDA Members Dan Raleigh, John Schiltz, John Thompson, NOT PRESENT: Planning Commission Chair Williams(?), Park Commission Chair Weis, EDA members Steve Nelson and Tony Yocum Also Present: City Administrator Zuleger, Community Development Director Klatt, City Planner Johnson, City Engineer Griffin, Communication and Taxpayer Relations Coordinator MacLeod, Deputy Clerk Gumatz II. Focus of the Workshop: Developing a Vibrant Downtown City Administrator gave an overview of what the workshop will consist of. With the addition of sewer, downtown is going to be changing. Focus on 4 issues tonight. Going to look at the fundamentals of a downtown. III. What Can We Be? – Downtown Market Analysis, University of Minnesota Community Development Director Klatt introduced Ryan Pesch, speaker from the University of Minnesota Extension. Mr. Pesch presented the Market Area Profile with the University of Minnesota Extension Program. Primary project objectives. Number one reason communities come to them and ask for market are profile is they are looking for realistic ideas for their downtown business district. Given size or location of our town, what types of businesses are realistic for our community. Often driven by vacancies, that is the case in western mn. Another reason is branding and niche development, where strengths lie as a downtown community. Last major reason is to have a resource for local entrepreneurs or those looking to move into business community. Market area profile overview. They do not do any data collection, it is based on secondary data analysis. Assemble data together for a given trade area. Four main parts. customer profile- combined demographic data from census with state of MN. Gives info on age profile, income level, number of households, breakdown of values of homes. Tapestry Segmentation- going beyond demographics. Identify what types of customers live in the trade area. Can be used to fine tune how business owners market. Market potential data– gives info about the media that people use in the trade area. Retail hierarchy- what’s realistic for our neighborhood? Larger the community, more variety. Do a retail gap analysis to see how people spend their dollars. Council Member Bloyer asked what a realistic trade area for LE being so close to the metro area? Mr. Pesch answered that they have done this project in the metro area before, it is a little trickier, the way they define a trade area is by doing a focus group of folks from the community, so they know the area. Council Member Nelson asked how differentiate between them and commercial real estate broker? Mr. Pesch answered that they are not in the business of real estate development or putting together pro forma. As part of university they want to work with community to learn about what is the market and then the community would use the market data to recruit the individual businesses or developing properties. They just gather the numbers and do the analysis. Todd Streeter(?) asked about secondary source information and where they get their information from and why they don’t use primary data. Mr. Pesch answered that they use (3 data places: economic something,