Laserfiche WebLink
IWAts city of <br />I)NEW <br />MGHTON <br />the city that works for you <br />DATE: February 26, 2016 <br />Community Assets & <br />Development Department <br />MEMORANDUM <br />TO: Economic Development Commission <br />FROM: Janice Gundlach, Asst. Director of Community Assets & <br />Development/Planning Director <br />SUBJECT: Sense of Place <br />In February of 2015 the EDC spent time defining economic development into four <br />categories. Those categories were: <br />• Physical Redevelopment <br />• Business Retention & Expansion (BR&E) <br />• Sense of Place <br />• Housing Programs <br />In March of 2015, these concepts were presented to the City Council where collectively <br />there was a general consensus to continue to study these areas and formulate <br />recommendations back to Council. Since the City already has been actively working on <br />Physical Redevelopment, the Commission moved on to BR&E and spent much of 2015 <br />formulating a BR&E program/policy, which were presented to, and affirmed by the <br />Council in January of 2016 by adoption of Resolution 2016-011. <br />Last month, based upon direction from the Council, the EDC revised the Council's <br />Economic Development Strategic Priority to be defined based upon these four categories. <br />Since the areas of Physical Redevelopment and BR&E have been defined, and previous <br />Councils have done some work on the Housing Programs item (work that has not yet <br />been presented to the EDC), the chair has directed staff to focus on the Sense of Place <br />topic. As such, this memo and attachments aims to introduce this topic to the EDC to <br />fully spur discussion and ideas on how the commission could advance recommendations <br />and/or policies to the Council for consideration, as it pertains to creating a Sense of Place <br />as a part of the City's overall Economic Development program. <br />In February of 2015, when these topics were originally introduced to the commission, <br />staff provided the attached slide show presentation prepared by Ehlers. These slides <br />present the Sense of Place topic, include background and definitions, and advance to <br />actual examples and photos of what communities have done. To summarize, creating a <br />