4.3. SR 02-03-2020 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

M v MODERN CONSTRUCTION OF MINNESOTA Mayor, Council, Staff, I hope everyone had a good holiday season and I wish everyone the best for 2020. I'd like to provide an update on the Downtown development project. Over the last few months I have engaged with the majority of the primary stakeholders in the project, including but not limited to the Downtown Rivers Edge Business Association, The Elk River Chamber, The Bank of Elk River, First National Bank of Elk River, Elk River Lutheran Church, many of the downtown business owners and tenants. Work is well underway on -site designs that incorporate all of the feedback I received, which I am very please to share has been overwhelmingly positive. There is a strong community of business owners downtown working hard to beautify downtown for the city and its residents and I'm excited and honored to be a part of that. The primary concern of everyone I've spoken with both downtown and in the larger community is parking; not just availability of parking but the quality of parking, access to parking, and the proximity of the parking in relation to the front doors of the business's people are trying to visit. This has been the primary focus of site design at this time and I am happy to report with confidence after completing multiple iterations of the site design there will be a significant increase in parking stalls- and they will be closer to the business doors, safer, and more accessible. I'm very excited to be able to share designs with all of you once they are fully vetted. Movement on the project has been steady but slower than anticipated. With the large number of stakeholders involved coordinating meetings, gathering information, and then updating designs has not moved as quickly as hoped. Some of the building owners were unavailable to talk with until early this year and I believe it's important that everyone is involved in the process. I'd like to request from the mayor and council a 4-month extension to the development agreement we have in place so I can spend the next 30-60 days completing all of my community engagement and then have a couple of months to drill into the designs and preliminary engineering to insure my proposal is well vetted and sufficiently detailed. Thank you for your consideration, Jesse Hartung, President