5.2. SR 03-12-2007 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Downtown Redevelopment Plan Taskforce 1\1inutes February 5, 2007 Page 2 4. Market Perspective Presentations: Frank Dunbar of Dunbar Development and Mark Moorhouse of Dominium Inc. Ms. Kvilvang introduced guest speakers Frank Dunbar and Mark Moorhouse. She stated that the main goal of tonight's meeting is to gain a market perspective of the redevelopment area. Mr. Dunbar and Mr. Moorhouse provided brief backgrounds of their development experiences and answered questions over the course of one hour and forty minutes. Mark Moorhouse added that he grew up north of Becker, and attended/played sports at Elk River High School. The developers' responses are listed below: Frank Dunbar, Dunbar Development . The natural barrier of Hwy 10 and the raili:oad will be a tough issue to deal with no matter how the highway and raili:oad may change over the years. . Focus on redeveloping south ofHwy 10 as the core downtown. Developers, investors and marketers will prefer this area. . North of Hwy 10 would be a good place to develop employment centers because the daytime users would support the retail located in the core downtown. A medical office building would be perfect for notth of Hwy 10. . Retail does not work by train depot stations because people are only there for one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening and they're typically not shopping during those times. . Future developers will look at MetroPlains as the pioneers of redevelopment in downtown Elk River. They will decide what to do based upon how MetroPlains' project succeeds. . Redevelopment is difficult and trying to redevelop both sides of Hwy 10 will be doubly difficult. . The next redevelopment project logically should be along the river on Main Street, west of the current project. . Downtown employees should not park in the core downtown as those spots should be available to customers. . Parking lots arc better than ramps for customers. . Seniors will be the primary housing market for downtown. Seniors of 60-75 years will likely occupy the units. A grocery store downtown is not crucial because seniors typically have a lot of visitors who always bring them food. . Fine dining may not work in downtown Elk. River because restaurants need more than weekend customers to survive. In addition, for a restaurant to be successful, it needs to be supported by the community, not just people working or living nearby. It's also rare to locate fUle dining establishments in the northern suburbs. The restaurant business is extremely tough. It's even tougher for restaurants who don't serve alcohol. . Otsego does not provide competitive threat to Elk River. . Better utilization of the river will make future downtown redevelopment successful. . Even in metro area redevelopments, it is very tough to keep retail spaces occupied unless they are corporate users. . If developers break even on retail projects, they are happy. . Established neighborhoods are good for retail in addition to convenient parking. . The businesses downtown are currendy and will be in the future destination oriented in nature and do not depend on Hwy 10 traffic.