5. EDSR 09-11-2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

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EDA Marketing Committee iVfinutes August 28, 2006 Page 2 • Industrial bxokexs noted small companies care more about cost, larger companies care more about productivity. After site selection, their clients worry about employee retention and how they will be impacted as the city grows, wanting to see no eroding of design standards and land use. • Most Northwest Metro industrial users want to build ox buy, not lease. There seems to be more demand from large (100k sf+) users than from smaller (<SOk sf users). • Elk River and Rogers axe perceived to have few available industrial sites for the large users. • Everybody wants commercial/retail development but bxokexs emphasized you can't force it. Just because a city wants nicer restaurants, spending resources and time targeting those folks is not going to generate results. Those users will come to the community when they are ready. • Ramsey and Monticello has become very aggressive in the industrial land market recently. The committee discussed the concept of hiring brokers to market city owned industrial properties. Committee member Santwire stated private industrial landowners have tried marketing property through big name brokers with no success -specifically Colliers Towle marketing Elk Path Business Center. Community Development Director Scott Clark stated when Brooklyn Park txansitioned from targeting small manufacturers to large (100k sf +) manufacturers they tried a strategy to get inside the broker network. The strategy becomes a very relationship-based product where the objective is to get on the short list. Mehelich mentioned she has heard from bxokexs that it is often the ease of working with a city on the development process and reputation. She stated that we to consider that the broker community is best at locating medium to large light industrial market and smaller users tend to avoid having to pay brokers. Tviete stated that land availability is number one with broker community anyway, regardless of being the best city to work with. Santwire stated he felt if the city made bxokexs aware that they'd be paid a fee the city would see action on the lots in a short time. Urista agreed if Elk River was willing to pay 6% of the broker commission, which is a big sale advantage to the client. Uxista stated is important to know who the people are and that there is probably 6 ox 7 commercial brokers that do 90% of the business, and probably 3 that know the Northwest quadrant and as long as word gets out to them the message will spread. Clark stated Brooklyn Park never paid a broker fee and instead felt what was more important was an assurance that they are going to get through the process, knowing the expectations and fees, and the city ended up selling the development process and building a reputation on that experience. The consensus of the committee was that rather than partnering up with any one broker, the city should consider or continue to compensate brokers with either a finder's fee or a percentage of the buyer's cost and most importantly that the city make that incentive known through to the brokerage community. The committee discussed the land issue. Mx. Wolf noted the city must decide what kind of development before it establishes new development sites. Santwire asked do we like what happened near Home Depot? If yes, then let's just recreate that rather than spending a lot of time discussing what we want. Carlson agreed, and that the market would dictate size and product. Mehelich stated there is a market to discuss between where the natural market is (small to medium) and what we know we don't want to target (corporate campus) and that opportunity is the medium to large market. She mentioned the challenges (wetlands, gas lines) the city ran into with developing the land (Northstar Business Paxk and Gateway) the city acquired ahead of time without really planning ahead for what would go there. She stated it is important to agree on the vision for what size users we want before we just buy