We'll call to order the November 3, 2025 meeting of the City of Clearwater Downtown Development Board. Today in attendance, we have Council Member Menino, Council Member Albritt, Council Member Zach Shada, and Board Member Cordinson. I expect Council Member Cotton to be joining us later, and I don't know about Board Member Frazier if she's going to be here today or not. Okay. With that, we'll proceed to Agenda Item 2.1. Approve the minutes for the September 3, 2025 Downtown Development Board meeting. Is there a motion? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. Agenda Item 2.2. Approve the minutes of the September 17, 2025 Downtown Development Board meeting. Is there a motion? Move to approve agenda Item 2.2. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. Agenda Item 3.1. Good afternoon. Vicki Shire, CR Division Manager. This item was originally presented to the Board on the April 2025 Board meeting, part of the Cleveland Street Activation Plan. Due to the scheduling coordination challenges, staff, along with our partners at the St. Petersburg College, agreed to postpone the market to early next year to allow more time for marketing, better recruitment, and overall planning. We are now seeking approval for the revised dates for the Friday Night Market Series, which will run for six consecutive weeks from January 9th through February 7th, every Friday evening from 6 to 9 p.m. on the 400 and 500 block of Cleveland Street. The final weekend will be February 6th and 7th, and will feature a special Friday and Saturday market to close out with a big ta-da. Staff recommends approving the revised dates, and I have Ms. Amanda Montero and Annabelle Lavish from St. Petersburg College to answer any questions at this time. Questions from the Board on this agenda? We are too. There are no questions. Thank you for coming here today. Either of you want to share anything further? What's been shared? Good afternoon. We're just excited for this project to launch, finally, and this is something that we've been looking forward to having. Our students, our entrepreneurs are excited as well, so thank you for your time and consideration for this project. We're happy to be celebrating the 60th year of the Clearwater campus of St. Petersburg College. It's such an important part of our community and has been for 60 years, so we appreciate this opportunity to partner with the college again. With that, is there a motion? Move to approve agenda item 3.1. Second. Before we vote, does anyone here from the public desire to speak to this agenda item? Not all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. Thank you. Thank you for being here today. Thank you. Agenda item 3.2. This next item before you is for the world's largest rubber duck exhibit. You've been provided with a revised budget, which staff received on Friday, October 31st. After reviewing the updated information, staff is still recommending $21,500 in eligible expenses for DDB. At this time, I have Amber Bryce from Arts and Culture Affairs Manager and Jewel Smith, Recreation Supervisor, whom are producing the events and here to provide any additional information regarding the budget and the event details. I actually have a presentation, but you don't have to do it if you don't want to. Okay. Love to see it. Amber Bryce, Arts and Cultural Affairs Manager for the City of Clearwater. I have with me Jewel Smith. She's Recreation Supervisor for Special Events. I know most people don't do presentations, but I felt words really didn't do this exhibit justice. I feel like you really need to see photos to get the whole scale. So since stepping into this role three years ago, my goal has been to bring the world's largest rubber duck to Clearwater, and I'm happy to announce that she will be here in January. So here's some specs on Mama Duck. She is 61 feet high, so approximately six stories tall, 64 feet wide, 74 feet long, and you can see her mission statement here. On this slide, we have what we're lovingly called our duck days, which are events that we are hoping to put on surrounding the rubber duck. So on the ninth, we're having, like, a special photo opportunity exclusive to Jeep owners or whoever. So we're going to sell time slots. We're going to move the barricades out of the way so people can have an unobstructed view of the duck and take photos with her. And then if this is successful, like if we sell out of time slots, this is something we can continue to do over the course of the next week. This also acts as free marketing and promotion for us because these Jeep owners will go and put these photos on their Jeep clubs, on Facebook groups and social media. Then we have our Market Marie, which is already a well-established event, but this is the first major event for the duck. We've spoken with Blair. She's very excited about having the duck at her event. Then special events is going to put on a duck-5K, which we're really excited about. We're estimating 175 runners based on the past 5K they've done, but since this is themed, it'll be January. We're hoping that there'll be more people. Then we're really excited about our rubber ducky birthday bash. So we're celebrating National Rubber Duck Day. We're going to have performances by Jack Hartman, which if you know, you know. If you don't, he's a YouTube sensation. He has 5 million followers on YouTube. He's a child song performer. He does a lot of concerts on the libraries, and they always have waiting lists, like 100 people. So we're excited to do a big event where all the families will get to participate, along with Mr. Brad, also a child song performer. Face painters, balloon artists, paint busts, hopefully kids' craft vendors. Then on the 23rd, there'll be a Scenes in the Green, which is essentially a movie in the park with a duck theme, hopefully. This is an event that special events has put on many times. And then a culminating event will be our Duck and Drive Jeep Invasion, which we're playing off of the fact that Gasparilla's the next weekend. So we're using the word invasion. This will be all-out Jeep-themed live music, axe throwing, touch a Jeep area. And this event will hopefully extend all the way up into the 500 block of Cleveland. And we hope to have Jeeps parked all the way along the streets. So she can be illuminated from within, which is great. People will be able to see her on the bridge, driving by, in their boats. Maybe they're going to Capitol Theater, and they'll go, what's that, down there, and come down and take a picture. Lots of sponsorship opportunities. And then I'll talk about the baby duck. Timmy is a 10-foot-tall baby duck. It's kind of a pop-up photo. He'll be here a month before Mama Duck. So we're allowing our sponsors to ask if they would like Timmy in front of their businesses. We can partner with downtown businesses. And then we'll have a full list of, you know, baby duck sightings for people to come take photos with. But as you can see in this picture, there will be 28 barricades that surround the duck. So there's lots of signage opportunities, social media. We're in talks with a Jeep dealership to see if they would like to, you know, sponsor and maybe park some Jeeps on in Coachman. That can act as a barrier. We haven't spoken with the merchant yet. I'll just preface by saying that we will work with CRA to approach businesses. But there's many opportunities for them to use this duck theme to, you know, get more people in the doors. And then I'll just end with saying, you know, this is community benefits. But I know this is super unique, kitschy, fun opportunity for the city of Clearwater and downtown. You know, some people won't get it. Some people will think it's funny. Some people will think it's stupid. But they will be talking about the duck. And even if they don't like it, they will come down and they will take pictures with the duck. And that is our goal, is to show that Clearwater can be playful, silly, and fun. But our other main goal is to kid people downtown and to bring people from not even all over Clearwater but neighboring counties. And this is something unique enough that I think we'll do that. So thank you for your time. If you have any questions, we are here to answer that. Okay. Councilman Rolbrin. Was Daddy Duck not invited? We only have one. Okay. Well, you know, when you have an event like this, which I think is great, the most important part of this is getting the word out. And, you know, when I was doing this back on the DDB 15 or so years ago, I went to Bright House at the time and then got some PSAs on TV. I mean, I was lucky to get some during, like, prime time. But, you know, the more you can get it out there, I think this will be a big hit. But you need to get – if you can get the Jeep guys to do it, they can help with getting the word out, and it will attract a lot more people. And we are in communication with multiple Jeep groups for the Jeep event. Okay. Amber, this is a great example of strategic, well-thought-out planning, from involving the Jeeps with their affinity and their history with rubber ducks to actually timing it perfectly in conjunction for the birthday bash and even including sponsorship opportunities. It's very well planned out. I'm impressed. Thank you. Councilman Bonito. Thank you, Mayor. I'm excited for the rubber duck week as well. I'm glad that it's not just a one-day, one-afternoon thing. It's two weeks. I think you have a lot of opportunities to get some traction via social media and whatever hashtags we're doing downtown Clearwater. I think this could be part of a larger movement that we keep discussing about rebranding our downtown and having something, a hashtag this, and doing best picture award wins, a dinner at, whatever. I think these are some good opportunities. It seems like a no-brainer with a Jeep dealership, right? This is every GPC driving around Pinellas County has 50 to 60 little ducklings in there. I don't know if it's Timmy's relatives or not, but we'll see it. The thing looks massive. It looks like the Macy's Day Parade is coming to Coach Moon Park, so that's exciting. I look forward to being a part of it. One thing that caught my eye, the first thing when I get these is I always go and look at the budget, obviously. And so often when we see a non-City of Clearwater presenter, this marketing and advertising number always seems just astronomically crazy. I don't know if that's because we pad it or not. And then I look at our staff, who's obviously not going to pad the numbers per se. And it's only $1,500, right, which is quite of a difference. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm saying that's a good thing and it's appreciated because we see some events that get a couple thousand people and they put $30,000, $40,000 in a marketing budget, and I don't know if that's truly where the money goes. And to be fair, we have a public communications department. Agreed. So it's nice to see that number where my eyes just naturally go. But I'm looking forward to the two weeks and welcoming Timmy and his mother into town, and it should be a lot of fun. So thank you. Yeah, I don't disagree. I think that this is a unique, fun, even the haters, like you pointed out, are going to be talking about it. So I think when you have that type of buzz, people are going to want to see the giant six-story duck, right? So even those visitors that we have coming from out of state, out of country, they're going to our beautiful beach, you'll see it. And another reason to draw them into downtown. So I think this is great. You're good? Well, yeah, I think you touched on what I was going to say. I mean, my son's a big Jeep owner, too. It's a whole community of Jeep owners that really, I think, could pull together a good crowd for this. So tapping into that's a wise idea. It's not just the Jeep dealers, but it's the accessories, all these accessories that go with Jeeps, that some of those might be interested in sponsoring, too, to make it kind of a bigger Jeep community event. What I'd like to see is just, you know, we're committing whatever we're committing, DDB funds here for this. I'd just like to see if you get a great feedback return from the community, from sponsors, to see our contribution lesson. We're kind of a backdrop, backstop for you, that if you really do get an overwhelming support from the Jeep community, we'd like to see some of that return back to the DDB. But it looks like a great idea and a unique thing, and I think that's what we want to be known for, Goshen Park, you know, different unique things, and this certainly is unique. So thank you for bringing that idea. At this time, is there anybody here from the public that desires to come in on this agenda item? If not, is there a motion? Make a motion to approve agenda item 3.2. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. Okay. Look forward to it. Okay. This time we'll move to agenda item 3.3. Good afternoon again. Vicki Shire, CRI Division Manager. The Jingle Bell Family Fun Fest is a new holiday celebration designed to attract family, residents, and visitors. This event will take place on Saturday, December 20th, 2025, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. throughout Goshen Park, including the Green, Lower and Upper Plaza, the Cleveland Street Extension, and the BayWalk Promenade. The one-day event will feature community vendors, holiday-themed contests, live entertainment, family activities, including Santa Claus, and photo opportunities with holiday characters. Attendance is expected to reach approximately 3,000. The applicant is requesting funding not to exceed $12,900 to cover direct costs and city fees. The same applicant previously hosted the Fall Y'all Festival at Goshen Park. This event received strong community feedback, robust social media engagement, and positive coverage. The total event budget for the Jingle Bell Family Fun Fest is $25,500, and the applicant is requesting $12,900 in eligible DDB expenses. Staff recommends approval of the $12,900 to support the Jingle Bell Family Fun Fest, a new family holiday event that advances the DDB's mission, supports the city's strategic goals, and meets all the DDB program criterias. At this time, I have the Saucy Queen family here to answer any questions. Thank you. Hello. Yeah, I'm going to present it. Let me just share a few words. Yes. Okay, so we have Mr. and Mrs. Claus coming. We have Rudolph, Frosty, tons of photo ops. We also already have some media lined up. I'm hoping the mayor, again, will be able to step in because he did such a great job with Charlie Belcher and Channel 28. We were really excited with the amount of media we did get for Fall Y'all, so we anticipate having just as much or more for Jingle Bell. We're going to have some really cute contests for pets, families, and kiddos where the kiddos could dress up on stage, so I'm hoping maybe some members of council can come and help pass out the Little Reindeer Awards, which is just so cute. I know Vicki was able to do that for Fall Y'all, and it's just totally adorable. So we're excited, and the one thing I do want to say is that we do shows all over the Tampa Bay area. In fact, this weekend, we're doing the Tarpon Springs Seafood Festival, and the staff at Clearwater is the best. All of the staff that we work with on-site, day of, and before, they're just excellent. So they made our job easier, and they were so positive, and we look forward to doing that again for Jingle Bell. Is there more to hear from the public that is asking to speak to this agenda item? If not, is there any more discussion? Councilmember Albrighton? Yeah, I just wanted to say I think it's a great event. You know, any time we can use the green at the park, I was so glad to see the expansion of that green area. We need more of these things, and, you know, it just shows the diversity and what we can have there. So I'm going to look forward to seeing it. Thank you so much. Menino? Thank you. Excited about the event. Obviously, Peek did some of the events you guys have done in the past. You've done a great job. She's not joking about community feedback being very high. You did get a lot of accolades on organization and professionalism. And I appreciate that as it matches our staff, as you did say. Greatly appreciate you sharing the feedback regarding our staff. They are amazing. We are blessed in this city. So I thank you for that. In the order of consistency of what I just said on the last one, can you chat with us a little bit on what your advertising and marketing plan is? Sure. It's like I just identified $1,500 on the past one, like a two-week event, and now we're looking at a one-day event with a $9,000 figure. So I'm just wondering what the plan is. So for fall y'all, we had asked for $30,000. We ended up coming in under budget by $12,000 less. So we take what we put out there very seriously. This is a little bit more than what we actually probably will spend, but we don't know until we get into it if we get a radio opportunity or a TV station opportunity. Currently, for Tarpon Springs, I just did like a cable ad, you know, similar to what you were talking about. So I am working with that. So that's a possibility that would make it higher. So realistically, it would probably be around $5,000, but that includes PR, meaning booking all the TV stations. That includes ads, that type of thing. It also includes our video and drone footage. So it's not just marketing. It's the post things, too, a photographer, that type of thing. Got it. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, sir. I'll hit on what the mayor said, too. You know, I'm looking forward to something like this, and you guys did great on the last event. It's just going forward again, trying to find other sponsorships to start lowering that cost, right? Right. Which, for last time, like I said, we did come in so much lower. Perfect. And we plan on doing the same thing. Continuing that trajectory. Exactly. Because as we go through it, we'll understand the Clearwater area a little bit easier. I'm already in all of the community groups, so that makes it easier and lowers the cost as well. No, that's awesome. And I also want to say thank you for recognizing staff. I think they work tremendously hard, too. And it's always good to hear it from vendors when you come in and working directly with them. Right. And I am looking for somebody to wear the Grinch costume. So I don't know. Oh, really? Is that your hand? I don't know. That might be Monino. I saw your right hand just come up. If we have to see, that would be from 12 to 1 if we could put you down for that. Maybe I can be your Grinch. I'll have to see. That would be great. That would help me lower the cost as well. Oh, that was a good interjection. I do appreciate that. Thank you. But I look forward to this. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Anybody want to follow that? I would hate to offer me for it. I guess I will. The fall, you all, was a great event. Thank you so much. It was so well publicized. Thank you. Got a lot of live TV coverage and well attended. Yeah. And folks I met there were from all over Tampa Bay. So that was the first time. And, again, you shared with me the day of the event how wonderful our staff was and how good they made your experience. We so appreciate them and what they do to help host the event. So with that, is there a motion? Motion. Go ahead. Motion to approve 3.3. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. We'll see. Thank you. For sure. Thank you. Thank you very much. Move to item 3.4, approve the July through September 2025 financial statement for filing. I don't have costume requests, so. We're safe on this one. Yes. The next two, we're safe. No costume requests. Yeah. Ann Lopez, CRA Assistant Director. This first item that I have before you is your financials. So this takes you from July to September. So this kind of takes you through the end of last fiscal year. There was, for the month of July, $15,482.98 that was spent. In August, $20,989.58 in September, $72,787.96 and unencumbered at the end of the fiscal year. Right now, we had $216,109.71. I will say there are still some expenses that are coming through, so we still have a couple items left to be paid out of next fiscal year. So that hasn't officially been closed out yet. But what I do plan to do is, once the year does close out, so hopefully around the January meeting, I'll bring a budget amendment to bring whatever was unallocated back forward to you and allocate that into the budget for the remainder of this year. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. Does anyone here from the public desire to speak to this agenda? Hearing, seeing none, is there any board discussion? No board discussion. Is there a motion? Move to approve agenda item 3.4. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Anonymous. Thank you. You're not in 4.1. Director's report for October. Thank you. So we'll just call this the assistant director's report for October for today. So what we're going to really be reporting out today is a lot of our wins. So you're going to see quite a few of the micro-grant program that the DDB currently has. So the first event that we have coming up is the Gimmick Art Walk scheduled for this Thursday from 6 to 9 p.m. on the 400 block. This was in partnership with Blair from the market culture. There will be some live painting, pottery, music games, an interactive art experience, and also something that I read called the Gimmick Community Canvas, which is a large wooden art piece for guests to paint on and express their creativity. So very excited to see that. Then on Friday, November 7th from 6 to 8 p.m., also on the 400 block, an event brought to you by the Clearwater Sister Cities. They will be celebrating our two sister cities that the city of Clearwater has with Nagano, Japan, and Ix-Makilpan, Mexico. They'll be international goods, make-and-take cultural arts and crafts, music, snacks, and more. The third is Cornhole. This has been going on for a couple of months now. This is in partnership with St. Pete Cornhole and Prelude down on the 500 block of Cleveland Street. November will conclude their current application that they have, so we'll sit down with the owners of St. Pete Cornhole and staff to sit down and see what this looks like moving forward for them. And then your first Friday lunchtime market. So October 3rd was the first lunchtime market. We had a little over 150 attendees. We collected about 80 raffle tickets, 11 vendors, and there were three restaurants on the 400 and 500 block that participated on that event. We got some great exposure. I will say, in all the time that I've been working here at the city, this was actually my first interview I'd ever done. So, you know, that was a first for me on First Friday. We also had Nola, who is one of the owners of Chiang Mai. She did an on-the-spot interview. I got to watch it. It was amazing. I have never seen so much enthusiasm come out of one person. It was great. But they were one of our participating merchants, and they said that they had a specific deal that they had for their pop-up lunch, and they got about 12 to 15 different grab-and-go deals that day. This is some of the feedback that we received from Kevin, who is the owner of Ollivan Time and the District Bistro. He really appreciated the event. He said that it's exactly what the merchants wanted to see. This was also the same feedback that we had received from Chiang Mai as well. And then the upcoming, so for November this Friday, November 7th from 10 to 2 on the 400 block of Cleveland Street, we have about 15 vendors scheduled, so that's four more than we had last month. This past Saturday was Salsa at the District Dia de los Muertos costume party. Saw lots of pictures and videos of that on social media. It looked like there were lots of people down there. So very excited to hear back from Richard Del Rio on the report out for that event. We also have our outdoor cafe grant, so right now we have four businesses that have applied since October 1st. Again, it's a reimbursement of up to $8,000, and anybody who's interested on the 400 and 500 block can contact CRA staff to work through that program. And here you can also see a quote that we received from Frank, who is one of the co-owners of Downtown Pizza. And these are just some of the thank yous that we received on behalf of grant recipients from the DDB. You can see your very own Saucy Queen right there for fall, y'all. I will say I took my kids to that, and they had a blast. And then I did want to just provide a really quick update regarding Cleveland Street Market. We did receive notice that slow or on-the-go cafe has closed for unforeseen reasons. We did also hear that Top Nosh Tap House and Tap House, who are by the same owner, will be closing as well. Top Golf, which is the golf simulator that's in there, we're unsure if they are closed or not, because that's being run by the NM Residential, who's the owners of the Nolan. Our last conversation with Wayne from Machi Boba, he was unsure if he would be closing. We did see a sign in there that said a new restaurant would be opening soon called Saburoso, so hopefully something will be going in there soon. We have reached out to the director of operations for the Nolan. I have emailed and given her a call, so waiting for them to give us a call back to see if we can schedule some time to sit down and talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. And then one last thing before I answer any questions. You probably have seen that right at the corner of Cleveland and Garden, signs right there at the telephone building for Flipside Burger. I did reach out to Scott Dobbins with the consulting group for that build-out, and I got contact information, so I did send an email out to Michael Schwartz, who is going to be the owner of Flipside Burger. So as soon as I get some information back on opening, we'll definitely share that. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions for temporary director? For the week, and then he can have his thought back. Thank you for presenting. Yes, absolutely. Okay. It's time to move to item 5 on the agenda. Board members to be heard. Anyone else have anything you want to share? If not, then we will adjourn the November 3, 2025 meeting of the City of Colorado Downtown Development Board. Recess for just a few minutes while we change the main plans. Thank you. Thank you.