06-06-17 Business Improvement District Minutes2017 — 2027 KALISPELL BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT BOARD MEETING MINUTES
Meeting date: June 0, 2017
Location: 14 3�d St. E., Kalispell, MT.
BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: chairman Jon Fetveit, Debbie Snyder, Chris Peterson, Jayson
Peters, Jarrod Shew, Karen Sanderson, Lee Kozlowski, John Hinchey & Pam Carbonari (BID
Coordinator)
ABSENT: no one
PUBLIC IN ATTENDANCE: Ken Yachechak, Fran Tabor
MEETING CALLED To ORDER at 8:30 AM by Jon Fetveit, Chair
MOTION: to approve the agenda dated June 0 by John with a second by Debbie Snyder — approved
unanimously
MOTION: to accept and approve the minutes of May 2 — Retiring board. Motion to approve by John
Hinchey with a second by Lee Kozlowski, approved unanimously
MOTION: to approve the minutes of May 9 — Joint boards. Motion to approve by Debbie Snyder with
a second by Jarrod Shew, approved unanimously
MOTION: to approve the minutes of May 23 — New BID board. Motion to approve by Jarrod Shew
with a second by Karen Sanderson
HEARING of THE PUBLIC: Fran Tabor submitted written comments which are attached. Ken
Yachechak shared his opinion that downtown Kalispell is a dynamic community not a historic
community like so many other cities. He expressed that downtown is a mix of government, small
retail sales, business, strong financial area with banks, brokerage firms, and financial services.
Additionally, many food and beverage establishments and other services like automotive and hair
styling. He would like to see the BID address and encourage "do business in Kalispell this is where
you want to come". He urged the BID to look at other communities but not Missoula as they are
different than us. He would like to see the focus on newer ideas rather than looking backwards. He
does not believe that the focus should be on store fronts or retail. One idea he likes is WIFI access
all over downtown. chair Jon Fetveit explained that one of the goals for the BID is to recruit
businesses to move downtown and not necessarily retail. Debbie Snyder agreed that yes, we do
have a strong financial district but also a retail district. Ken Yachechak expressed that his property,
Depot Park Square is moving towards business services instead of retail and he would like to see a
more inclusive downtown. One of his new businesses is retail, Natures Baby but they do a lot of on
line sales and ship from the business but also wanted a store front. He acknowledged that retail is
having more of a difficult time competing with on line purchases. He indicated that he spoke with the
owner of Athletes Foot and people come in, get fitted and then leave and purchase on line.
Fran Tabor agreed that downtown is a mixed community and she indicated that other communities
has moved to diagonal parking and now they are not satisfied with it and with the lack of traffic lanes.
She encourages a deeper look at reducing lanes.
BUDGET: The new BID Board reviewed the 2017 — 2018 proposed budget. A suggestion to have a
conversation with TBID about producing the walking tour in the future was mentioned. The board
would like to evaluate the insurance expenditure and perhaps have the KDA take over the insurance
expense. John Hinchey clarified that it is a 12 month budget but with the first assessments not
collected until the end of November it is really a 9 month time frame. A motion to approve was made
by Eric Robbins with a second by Caren Sanderson. The motion passed unanimously.
GOALS/Projects: Jayson Peters offered to fine tune goals/objectives/projects for discussion by the
board. He sent an email with the following comments and proposal.
"I took the 9 original ideas from the past board and put them into 4 overall categories. I deleted #0
"Continue on -going efforts supporting events." I see that as a function of KDA.
The 4 categories are what I heard were the most important objectives, the specific details of how to
accomplish each objective could be an endless list of ideas.
I am not attached to any specific wording, just want to focus our limited resources in a singular
direction for the biggest impact.
My thoughts are that the CBID should be focused on building the infrastructure for downtown (with a
primary focus on property owners) and the KDA can work toward create events, social functions,
driving foot traffic and working with the business owners. We build the house, they organize & throw
the party. This will focus our time & attention on providing the most value for our stakeholders and
give us something to measure each project against.77
His proposal follows. -
Looking at the other organizations that promote downtown it is his understanding that,
TBID — Heads in Beds
KDA -- Bring people into downtown community. Promote events to generate traffic. Focused on the
storefront business.
What is the single focus of the Kalispell BID (downtown)? What will be our achievements in 1 Oyrs?
KBID — "Create a thriving area to do business."
Measurables: Increase property values, Occupancy rate.
What we are: Primary Driver for Economic Development in Downtown Kalispell
Objectives. -
How we do it:
1. Cooperative Marketing for Downtown.
Focus on infrastructure needs (building the house vs planting a garden)
Build our Brand. Do business downtown. Socialize downtown. Be downtown.
Kalispell entrance signage, online presence, Facebook, more effective communication tools
2. Advocate & organize property owners on critical issues.
Core area redevelopment, downtown parking & traffic solutions, courthouse couplet and zoning.
3. Design & implement a program to recruit, equip & place new businesses into vacant properties
within the district.
4. Create a downtown that is more family, pedestrian &bike friendly to increase foot traffic and
capacity AND remain practical for automobile traffic.
Infrastructure: Bike racks (hardware), clean up parking lots (personnel), signage (tangible asset),
flowers.
Jayson also indicated that he would be comfortable adding a 5th objective;
5. Create & sustain dynamic programs to bring business downtown.
This information will be presented to the city council at a work session together with the budget.
Flowers -- All downtown flowers will be planted by the 15th of June.
Future meetings —
Eric would like to discuss strategies for addressing parking as soon as possible.
Caren Sanderson will work on a Facebook page for the BID and Chris and Karen will continue
to work on the BIDS web presence.
• Consider creating small teams to work on special projects
• Review Downtown Plan and evaluate projects for next year at the next meeting
• Chris would like to see us have quarterly town hail meetings.
• Discussion was held and a motion made by Chris Petersen with a second by Jayson Peters to
increase the hourly rate charged for the Downtown Ambassador to work on special projects
such as cleaning parking lots, garbage collection to charge cost plus 20%. The motion passed
unanimously new agreements will need to be reached with the City of Kalispell. The Chamber
of Commerce is also interested in our services to clean the back parking lot at the chamber
and the grounds. The motion passed unanimously.
ADJOURN: Motion to adjourn the meeting at 10:05 Ally by Jayson Peters with a second from Eric
Robbins. The motion passed unanimously.
NEXT" REGULARMEETING: Thursday July 0, 2017 because of the 4th of July. Meetings will now
start at 3:00 AM — Whipps Building, Second Floor Conference Room.
Respectfully submitted,
Pam Carbonari, BID Coordinator