going to call the meeting to order good afternoon welcome to november 20th 2025 community redevelopment agency meeting and uh first order of business is we have uh commissioner walker we need to agree to give him an excused absence because he is and i want to read this right i don't want to get it wrong he is at the vfw right now because mr robert boulet is being honored posthumously by the french consulate general with the french legion of honor for his service in the liberation of france so it is a very big deal and uh certainly we wanted to have some representation there and so commissioner walker filled that void he will be here for the regular meeting um because this ceremony is actually happening at the same time as is what we're meeting um so if i could have a motion to excuse give an excused absence to commissioner walker so moved and second okay and all in favor aye aye and motion passed unanimously our second one which we will also do for the regular meeting uh anyone in the public is not aware um vice mayor gow had a tragedy in his family the loss of his daughter and so he was he is still working through that and uh and uh our hearts go out to him and his wife karen and so we need to give him an excused absence as well so if i get a motion so moved second all in favor aye aye and motion passes unanimously okay so uh citizen input is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak on any item that is not on the agenda okay seeing no one i will close citizen input we'll go to our first order of business uh draft minutes from september 18 2025 community redevelopment so are there any changes okay so hearing none can i have a motion to approve the minutes so moved second okay motion in a second uh all in favor all right aye aye and motion passed unanimously okay yeah i think we're in trouble right but yeah i think we know who has to do the motion in the second now just you guys just take turns which one right okay and now we go to community redevelopment agency advisory committee chair reports so uh and that's going to be giving by chair alan mckale alan mckale good afternoon mayor commissioners city staff uh alan mckale i'm the chairman currently of the cria advisory committee we met on september the third um at that time we um received updates from uh director ironsmith on several projects in the downtown area namely skinner boulevard the old city hall site the parking garage on scotland main street exchange streetscaping on main street and the proposed sale of part of the united methodist church on main street and then bob gave us an update on possible introduction of new restaurants in the downtown namely a tapas an asian restaurant and a men's clothing store which is quite exciting um there was a discussion on the or an update on the the uh um proposal to allow uh food trucks and house of beer and other premises and the committee were quite happy at the result of that exercise um we also discussed the resolution 2404 which was updated to take out reference to the ddma and the prac subcommittees um and then we discussed um proposed road closures for the upcoming year and jory gave us a a proposed new event to consider which will be around the time of the welcome back to the blue jays it's proposed to do an elite car show and by the museum in the parking lot next to their building so i'm sure that's going through the approval process at the moment but we had no objections to that from our perspective it brings a new audience into the need and that we're not really used to um and that was really it was quite a short meeting in comparison to other times um one other discussion that we had was regarding the crosswalk on douglas and main street and that there was a view that the lighting is quite poor at night time so it might be a safety issue especially with cars turning right coming off douglas going into main street and uh conflicting with the pedestrian crossing green man that they have and that the lighting is quite poor so bob's looking into that and to see if there's anything can be done to uh make it safer that was all we had though okay well questions um for uh alan uh commissioner sandberg i i don't think i have any for alan but will we have a minute to address some other questions okay i have none for alan then okay any for alan and i don't have any either but certainly appreciate it you're awesome i'm sure we'll see you in your kilt on saturday right no you will not oh he's going to california oh okay so unless you're in san francisco you might see me again yeah no it's okay i won't be there no we're going to wait uh san francisco to be with family for thanksgiving that's awesome so happy thanksgiving to each and every one of you thank you safe travels too you too okay so um any any other comments at all i guess uh any follow-up comments about i have none mayor nothing none for me okay so we will move to the next item let me change that okay um i would like to hear a little bit about the partial sale of the church uh do you have any in-depth information on that is that more of a carolyn yeah i think staff can okay staff can do that so we'll go so okay so we're going to go to community redevelopment agency director's report seeing seeing that bob is not here carolyn i guess you're taking the role hopefully you'll see him next time okay no this is two this is the second time yeah in a row okay so happy early thanksgiving to the cra board i'm going to try not to say commission um and bob is he's on vacation but he might be watching right now so just hi bob if you are yep so carolyn homer in for bob i have his notes on the project so first is old city hall um we are going to the commission on december 18th to award the bid for the low bidder of mallee contracting corporation out of tampa and then there will be a piggyback award for a second item at that commission meeting december 18th um if approved it takes eight months to install the restroom structure and we're on budget it's approximately a million part of that cra i know we'll probably have questions on that later um parking garage they selected the team um selection team selected three contractors from the seven that were originally on the list we have finn frock jay kokolakis contracting and creative contractors so we're going to meet with the commission to approve the three and then we go out for the three rfps to narrow it down to one so everybody there you'll know what's going on it's for the parking garage yes and i know it's confusing yep but that's that's where we are right now so at least we have the three names for now um we did meet with the owners of the rock house since our last meeting and they're working on parking and looking at some details they they should know what to do from here um but they're going to talk to their architect um skinner's obviously the road itself is going well we're waiting on duke for the undergrounding we're working on easement agreements with the private property owners we have those all out to them and they were due today we've received a few so we might have a few um that are late but we're everybody's at least communicating if there's a delay overall and trevor's been out doing like a lot of uh one-on-one conversations with the owners or having the conversations rather um the gateway bob plans to meet with mr kokolakis in december um the florida department of transportation staging in that area has ended for that the skinner project and then obviously it's serving as event parking as of now um streetscape that the projects we have on the list for that or the locations everything needs to be we know finished the construction has to be finished by october 1st due to the an arpa deadline that les told us about the finance director said it has to be finished by then so that's good because we're trying to it's a good incentive to get that done um casatina's uh project and i don't there's some names i don't have the official name in in front of me but um she's working on having the right-of-way vacated um for the location i and i'm not sure exactly what everybody knows for the details there um but it's it's with the is it a an old barn i don't know but the structure that's involved in that it's it's the old feed store and uh so tina avila and and how they have submitted uh preliminary plans to develop uh mixed use um which is essentially right behind casa tina's in the the center of that mixed use is uh right-of-way city right-of-way with with uh infrastructure live infrastructure within the right alley yes actually it's interesting because it runs uh perpendicular to the alley the infrastructure yeah and so we are working with um uh tina jave to to figure out a way to uh have them realize their plan and at the same time uh preserve you know the infrastructure that we need either they relocate it or it remains in place and they build around it so we're working with them on it cool thank you and tapas el turco over by vasculini's is also they're resubmitting with um they're reconfiguring their parking requirements with their architect main street exchange is set up for arc in december lpa in january and two commission meetings in february and march so that's finally been the plans have been approved and they're moving forward so the next step ocean optics thank you yeah main street exchange itself yes not the parking garage related to it um and then we had a conference in october in west palm for the florida redevelopment conference is what it's called a lot of commissioners were there so i don't know if anyone's interested for next time it's usually in october um the church i honestly i have it on my list at the very bottom as an add-on because i don't have a lot of details they did meet with us but they're selling off part of the church to fund the renovations for the rest so i believe it's the it's the staggered brown part i don't know how everybody's used to seeing in all the old pictures i think that would be for sale and then they would renovate everything else and it looks the plans look it and they want it to be more inviting the whole idea is like more inviting off main street and they have a lot of good ideas but i don't have anything formal other than just renderings that are not in front of me so and lastly i don't know if we need to do questions on projects before we introduce matt we have a new hire for december so yeah you can you can introduce matt and then we'll we can do our questions okay so bob wanted to let matt come to the podium for the first time to introduce himself hi matt good evening mayor city manager board members city staff my name is matt jackson i'm currently the planning manager for the city of oldsmart and i'm joining the economic development and housing team december 10th and so they invited me to come out introduce myself so i'm very excited to be here tonight i actually was born and raised in clearwater did all my high school and uh under schooling in clearwater so please don't hold that against me none of that happened in dunedin um attained a master's degree down at florida atlantic university and have years of experience in the uh planning mostly planning um in south florida on the private side and then here i'm in pinellas county with the city of clearwater city of oldsmart and both with the city of clearwater and city of oldsmart worked in the economic development field i'm really excited to join the staff here i had a wonderful couple meetings with staff and i've watched the meetings here and i really appreciate um the fact that you're working on so many exciting projects and the the environment here we work together it's clearly a teamwork environment between you and staff and i'm i'm excited to start and join the team that's great welcome glad you're here thank you so much awesome thank you felicia donnelly's not speaking to me but anyway no i i've known felicia for for many years and um after submitting my my paperwork my resignation i went personally talked to her thank for the opportunity at um at oldsmart which i'm very thankful for and she understood so i'm sure hope you guys can mend your relationship we have already thank you man thank you any any questions or any questions well i look forward to getting to know you all i'm working yeah look forward to thank you you know you're working with us thank you appreciate it welcome okay so uh so overall questions uh for caroline i want to start with commissioner de gard um can you share what kind of footage we're looking at selling at the church and what we're seeing what's it's going to be on the which side of the church i just don't think it's the main the brown you know it's the like stepped roof that's facing main street so it's facing main street okay and how much square footage is going i don't know i should have i i have like i said like i barely wrote it on the list at the end and i was like i didn't have the detail i don't have the details in front of me but if i may um we can get you some of those details and send it out to you under separate cover it is such a visible mm-hmm location yeah i think we should kind of shadow it closely okay all right that's all i have thank you makes sense but it's the one behind the church right it's not on main street it's they're selling the one facing main street is what i understand okay and i had to ask several times just to get the make sure i was oriented when i looked at it and we did some google maps with them and looked over but yeah i do have something i can email i guess you're right we got to pay attention to that yeah yeah i like getting that as well thanks for bringing it up any other questions okay commissioner sandburne you and your wild funky jacket i i love it every time i look over there i gotta like should have brought my sunglasses so thank you mayor yeah um no i appreciate uh and i came to you guys earlier in the week when i was approached by that resident on grant street and i don't know where that came out that there's going to be singing and dancing and hooting and hollering and i i knew the answer but i just wanted to hear it from from your office yeah right i mean there's not a lot of parking there anyway and right it's hard to imagine a lot of live music but it was a concern that the residents approached me when i was on on in that area so i was just told because they have to still abide by the decibel readings that that'll apply and that's the everything else is they're following the rules yeah i knew the answer too but i was nice to hear it from your office yeah um so you talked about the garage that's interesting that there's there will be three contractors that will bid it is that what i understood you said i would told bob these are bob's words because i knew that there would be confusion but um let's see parking garage they're going to meet we're meeting with the commission to approve the three that i mentioned later officially because what he said then we go out for the three rfps to narrow down to one for the commission to also vote on that final one so okay i think city manager can add some clarification sure absolutely and so um we did a design criteria package and so now we have the design in mind exactly what we're looking for then we essentially uh put on rfp and narrow it down to the three companies that we want to work work uh with and then put out a request for a proposal they'll submit their proposals and we'll pick the one that we're going to recommend all of you so we're really essentially playing the market right now to get the best proposal that we can on the table okay good you know it was uh when you talked about those car shows you know many many years ago that was very common downtown and they really you know back in the day main street would be closed and the cars would be it was almost like a swap meet you know the car they were the cars were for sale they had you know it was really it was a good draw and i i want to say it was always in the fall and many years i remember going to it it's nice to hear that that's it's a ferrari led i guess event so we had someone from ferrari at the last cra advisory meeting okay advisory committee meeting so and mr baby he they worked on the application so okay good you know that you brought up about the um that rock house i can't imagine how many years we've been hearing about that is is there parking along i guess that would be grant street and highland can is that what they were what what are their plans would we keep hearing about the parking there i have an answer but i will defer to zeddy manager and so the original plan that they had uh from an architect working with um the owner mr uh frank chavis or not the owner he was a party working with the owner um showed parking uh completely uh contained on site which is required by our code our required parking is um required to be fully on the site they then submitted a second um plan which showed parking on grant street which is partially within the right of way which is not permitted by code and so um uh i know that staff met with with the owners um and told them that we can't it's not something that we can support and so they're going back to at this point i i i assume rework the plan i'm not sure exactly how they're going to rework it maybe the original plan i'm not sure but what we do know is that the um the the original plan showed demolition of the house and then uh that we're going to save certain materials of it to incorporate within the new site to to honor the house the uh h-pack was okay with that okay um the the owner then uh had expressed when they met with staff just recently expressed um a desire to to uh not demolish the house and in order to do that they felt that they would need to put the parking on grand street and it would be partially on the right of way and so um given that we'd already been through the process h-pack had already supported demolition of the house uh we didn't feel that to go back and you know address that again was really necessary okay so it there you know they're the property owners it's up to them to see which direction they want to go in i know it's just been it's been hanging around for a number of years yeah and the last thing i'm not sure if if this would be something we could talk about is the landscaping inside the roundabouts is that cra or is that something in the roundabouts that that's getting crazy the i've yeah i see that that's f dot was supposed to take care of it and then i think the city has stepped in i don't know if it today has been mowed and so um and actually uh we've been working with f dot uh they're responsible for the landscaping and the lighting and we're still working on the undergrounding as well and that's taking longer than we thought to get the permission you know to get the signatures on all the easements okay but that landscaping is not going to be done and for another until december of 2026 completely finished okay so um having met with staff uh um it wasn't a pretty meeting so because we thought that it would be done a long time before that okay yeah yeah i mean obviously when we get back in the rainy season that grass is going to grow right and it's it it's like pre-landscape what you see now is just like right hold over till they landscape but it does need to be cut we know we'll make sure it's cut to the proper level okay yeah no that's all i had carolyn thank you that's a good mirror you can have a little throughway driveway through it too or you know i'm just kidding some people are trying to make that i had great people love those roundabouts though they do i don't know do we get any negative about it i'm sure we get some negative but a few i overwhelmingly get positive a few but it is overwhelmingly positive which is fantastic i mean i love it and i have to travel it all the time so it's great um so my questions um and jennifer i guess this is more for you um on the skinner project i might have mentioned to you at forward pinellas the other day it came up and um and um commissioner eggers actually brought up like the quick merge that happens right at bass and and um and skinner yes yep and so then and actually i've had people bring it up to me so of course i piled on we had the fdot representative there at the meeting at board pinellas so we kind of like so they're going to look at it but from our end i don't know if we're coordinating on that yeah and actually commissioner sam bergen brought it up to me oh um in the past and so um we discussed it during a department head meeting good and uh we're we're talking to fdot about various remedies for that okay good so we're all on the same page that's awesome yeah because it is a quick merge i mean actually peg told me she almost you know got in an accident there so i hear about it all the time so there you go um okay so that was one question and then i forget what you said did you tell me or were you confirming whether the holiday decorations in downtown are absolutely going to be done for they are they will be done yes awesome great um that's all the questions i have so um and then other than that any final CRA comments commissioner de guard commissioner samberg none mayor and i don't have any either if you may or something of course we're ready to no no you can yeah it's all good well i have to say that we have to congratulate the chair of the CRA advisory committee for being valedictorian of citizens academy yes so according to his wife it was a lifelong ambition of his so is that a real it's a real title that's great i was hoping you'd say that that's why i brought it up but no i'm just kidding alan no but thank you very much for that alan that's very nice i'll let staff know but i will pile on though uh alan you know when i see you i i just think about some of the stuff you've done with the scottish-american society i mean you guys it's amazing really it's amazing how you've you know that has evolved and the improvements that are happening and the programming that's being done and so you deserve a big you know commendation for that i can tell you that it's impressive it's very impressive come up yeah people won't hear you if people are listening apologize for that it's okay um when jonah and i got involved in that organization it's about seven years ago they were bankrupt um they were living on an overdraft um the hall was a mess uh it was smelly um and it wasn't being rented out to anyone now that hall is being used six or seven days a week um there are four or five different organizations that are running classes through the week to keep the culture going um yeah we have our fun on our our uh what we call happy hour on a friday night but what's more important for us i gotta get back to one of those yeah what's really important is to keep our membership happy keep the events going keep the culture going um at the beginning of this year we had just under 300 members and as of i think yesterday we've got up to 470. so people want to belong they want to be associated and um our city manager just joined us last week which we're delighted about as well so yeah so thank you for for recognizing it we're really proud to be part of the community and uh keep the culture going it's something that sets the needing apart it's a living breathing center now and you feel it it is really part of so what you're doing and the messaging as well as you know the activities it's great one thing i mentioned to the city manager last night was that last weekend we had a young singer that came from scotland and she's won all sorts of awards for traditional music for singing and for musicianship she came in on a thursday and she stayed until sunday so she spent all day friday and all day saturday in the town and she has never stopped posting on her social media she's back in scotland now but she's been posting to our social media that goes as far away as australia and how much the need made an impact on our life this weekend so it's fantastic for us and it's great for the city that's great well thank you thanks for all you guys you're doing alan valedictorian congratulations and did you tell them about the floor i think you need credit for the flooring of the scottish american society yeah i think they pulled up four layers right yeah i mean the kitchen there was seven layers of flooring we've just done uh there was a section of the bar that had a problem um and i had it was actually caused by a spillage there was four layers of flooring underneath that and then um because we put a new ceiling in the bar area this year it separated the seal between the ceiling and the main building um and we got that repaired apparently there are two roofs and two ceilings in that part haven't it it must have multi layers all over that building but um yeah yeah we're uh it's a constant challenge to keep it going but you never know what we're going to find yeah well you're doing great stuff so thank you again yeah okay if there's nothing else for the good of the the order the meeting is adjourned you