9.3. SR 04-16-2018 - Laserfiche WebLink

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-000 Elk River Area CHAMBER O F C O M M E R C E April 16, 2018 Dear Elk River City Council: ;tw dou I TE lv\ cf , 2 Elk River has a long history of hockey — including fans, players who have had significant success, Hockey Day Minnesota and teams that have taught sportsmanship, team work and athletic skills to countless young men and women. The primary purpose of Elk River Area Chamber of Commerce is to support and advocate for area business and all that impacts those businesses in our area, including economic development concerns. In Elk River, hockey is recognized for its economic impact for many stakeholders: schools, home builders, restaurants and families who choose to move to a community where hockey is supported. Building or repairing an Ice Arena is indeed a major impact on the Elk River community, it's business property owners and therefore on businesses, their owners and their families. To build or not to build a major City owned facility is at its heart an Economic Development issue that impacts not only City budgets, but those of our many business property owners as well. The business property owners in Elk River will be significantly impacted by a multi -million -dollar debt service on bonds issued to repair or rebuild the Ice Arena. They are impacted disproportionately to the value they would receive from the improvements made on the facility if the payments are added to the property tax levy without a vision and master plan for future growth. For businesses to grow and flourish, we need a stable environment in which to grow. That stability comes from understanding what our City Council's vision and master plan is for Elk River's future. This vision and master plan needs to consider not just one project in a vacuum, but include a broader perspective regarding the other various projects also being considered by the Council, such as the need for Police Department expansion, a potential new downtown TIF district, a potential new fire station, the Highway 169/Corridors of Commerce matching grant, and the on-going need for maintenance of existing facilities. That vision and plan must be allow for meaningful, broad-based input, and communicated clearly, so that we as business owners, voters and residents and developers can make our plans to be part of the future growth of this great community. We need to understand how the increase in taxes will benefit growth, whether that means additional customers, employees or property value or simply just more taxes. We respectfully recommend that the current Ice Arena project: • Be included as part of a city wide master plan, that considers the expected growth of our community and the additional demands that growth and aging infrastructure will cost. • Would be better analyzed after a cost-effective economic impact and feasibility study is conducted, similar to what was commissioned for ERX in 2015. • Consider additional demands on capital needs facing the City. These need to be ranked in order of priority and considered in an orderly manner with a plan for addressing them. • Not move forward without first obtaining precise and reliable information on the nature, extent and cost of the repair, both immediate and long term. Perhaps this should be best done through a competitive bidding process that solicits proposals from reputable ice arena facilities contractors from other communities that have successfully developed and/or repaired similar facilities. Our understanding is that the previous ice -arena task force was given general information that it was 'too costly to repair' but there was never an amount associated with this. Elk River Area Chamber of Commerce 509 Highway 10 Elk River MN 55330 www.ElkRiverChamber.org Phone (763) 441-3110 Fax (763) 441-3409 eracc@elkriverchamber.org