EDA Packet 06.20.17 - Laserfiche WebLink

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ULI Minnesota Regional Council of Mayors MEMORANDUM TO: Bryan Bear, City Administrator Rachel Juba, Planner FROM: Gordon Hughes and Cathy Bennett, ULI Minnesota DATE: May 30, 2017 SUBJECT: ULI Minnesota Navigating Your Competitive Future Workshop On behalf of ULI Minnesota, thank you for the opportunity to meet with the City's elected and appointed officials and staff on May 16, 2017. Our ULI MN workshop team enjoyed the dialogue and appreciated your hospitality. We also appreciated the time that you spent with us preparing for this workshop. As a follow up to the workshop, we would like to take a moment to summarize some of the key observations expressed during our panel discussion and dialogue. • Data on demographics, employment and jobs in Hugo, presented at the workshop, offered a point of reference for trends that will affect the City in coming years. Please feel free to contact us if you have any follow up questions on the data presented at the workshop or any of the materials which we provided. • Economic development is about what a community has rather than what it lacks. Hugo's strength is "an urban environment in a rural setting." A good economic development strategy would include a thoughtful inventory of Hugo's assets with an eye towards preserving the community's character and sense of place. • Hugo is on the periphery of the metro area industrial and retail market and development opportunities in other areas may need to be absorbed first. Hugo, like most cities in the metro area, is well -retailed, i.e. a broad range of goods and services are available to members of the community even if those goods and services may not be located in Hugo. They may be just across community lines or on the dominant routes that take residents to and from work or around town. Retailers tend to pay less attention to community boundaries than to circulation patterns and shopping habits. • Hugo has done a great job of not forcing development before the market is ready. Cities which have done this sometimes end up with less than ideal developments on a long-term basis. Retail growth will follow rooftops, but will be largely comprised of services and convenience goods for Hugo residents and employees. Dining will follow rooftops and a more significant daytime population which is now lacking in Hugo.