Board of Aldermen 6-23-2020 Page 13
Alderman Klee
Thank you, Madam President. | agree with everything that Alderman Dowd just said. | have a follow up
question to that, if we approve this and it is being approved for the thing such as the dance and so on. If
they decide to use the funds to do something else in that same area with the Riverfront, do they need to
come back to us? If they decided that wasn’t what they wanted to do, because that’s kind of what
Alderman Dowd indicated that maybe they would do something else if they couldn’t come through with the
dance. | just want to get that clear?
Tim Cummings, Director of Economic Development
Madam President? Thank you for allowing me to join this evening. For the record, Tim Cummings,
Director of Economic Development. | apologize for my casual attire, | wasn’t planning on joining, | was
watching the meeting remotely. | thought it may help to chime in and clarify some questions that were just
raised. So first and foremost, this contract that is being put before you was brought about in a lot of ways
to help me and my office. For those of you who may or may not know, | have been working a lot and |
haven’t been able to spend some time on some other projects. So having an extra set of hands through a
contracted service type basis to actually implement the Downtown Riverfront Project, is what this is trying to
achieve and trying to do it on a limited scope. So there are some things that I’ve asked Paul Shea,
because of his unique knowledge of the downtown, his unique knowledge of the Riverfront and GAD’s
mission, it made sense to bring him in temporarily through GAD to help so we stay on course with this
major project that | think is a priority for the City.
So a couple of things that we have discussed in the Downtown Implementation of the Master Plan, which |
believe we are working towards having a presentation to this body or a sub committee of this body on July
8'". And then in addition to that execute on some plans to operationalize the Downtown Riverfront. What
does that mean? Some of you may have seen, we did yoga along the Riverfront recently. That was
through GAD’s efforts. | mean, and already they are trying to do things like yoga, like kayak promotion, like
Dancing in the Streets. So we are trying to look at the Riverfront in a different way, we are trying to use it
as a natural asset that is competitive advantage for us, that makes our downtown unique. But we need to
start looking at the downtown in that way and we want to have GAD promoting those types of activities. So
it was along those lines that we were looking to bring GAD on board temporarily to help move this overall
project forward. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you, Director Cummings.
Steve Bolton Corporation Counsel
Madam President, Steve Bolton. | think | can answer Alderman Klee’s specific question about whether if the
Dancing in the Streets Program doesn’t happen, are other programs contemplated by the contract. And the
fact is that the Dancing in the Streets program is actually one small part of the scope of the work of the
contract. It contemplates the yoga program as well, it contemplates general other activities in that Riverfront
TIF District, Marketing support, Communication with the Stakeholders. So this is not $24,000.00 to have a
single Dancing in the Street program. That maybe one or more Dancing in the Streets, but it is also going
to be apparently several other things.
Alderman Klee
Madam President, may | follow up. Thank you Attorney Bolton and thank you Director Cummings, |
appreciate both of those explanations. It does answer a lot of the questions | have. | am definitely all for
this. | have seen the yoga, | have heard back positive things from the yoga. | think using our Riverfront is
brilliant, | think putting somebody like Paul Shea there to do this kind of work is also another thing that
