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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2025-04-16 Retail Committee Summary MinutesRETAIL COMMITTEE SUMMARY MINUTES Page 1 of 5 Regular Meeting April 16, 2025 The Retail Committee of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Community Meeting Room and by virtual teleconference at 9:04 A.M. Present In-Person: Reckdahl (Chair), Burt Absent: Lythcott-Haims Call to Order Chair Reckdahl called the meeting to order. The clerk called roll and declared two were present. Public Comments There were no requests to speak. Agenda Items 2. Designation of City Council Liaisons with Local Business Stakeholders Kiely Nose, Assistant City Manager, described this as an opportunity for the Committee to discuss liaisons with the local business stakeholder community. She stated they had routine meetings and engagements with the Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown University Avenue business area, Cal Avenue, etc. She wanted to provide this opportunity for the Committee members to talk about attendance at that support. She discussed regulations that had to be followed as a Brown Act body. Chair Reckdahl had questions about the quorum being just two. He indicated he had been appointed for the Chamber of Commerce liaison and proposed adding the Downtown area to that along with assigning Councilmember Burt to Cal Ave and the hotels and Councilmember Lythcott-Haims to Midtown, Charleston Plaza and El Camino. He queried if Staff would be doing any coordination. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 2 of 5 Retail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 04/16/2024 Assistant City Manager Nose confirmed the quorum was two so only one member could attend or participate. She explained Staff would be doing the outreach for the meetings. This would provide Staff the guidance of who from this Committee to include on those invites. Ed Shikada, City Manager, thought the rule of thumb had been that if other members were present they could not speak so were not actually participating. He added they also had interest from other Council members in attending the meetings that were not Committee members so presumably the same would apply to them. He mentioned another option to consider would be if designating liaisons to these groups, they could share what happened at the last meeting during Council member comments and bring the full Council into the loop. He added he expected there may be times the business groups would invite the liaisons to attend and Staff would not need to be involved with all of the interactions with the business groups but it was helpful for them to be aware of that. Councilmember Burt was in agreement with the appointments. He wondered if there was any established policy as to what degree the meetings were open to invitees only. City Manager Shikada replied there was no established policy on that. They tried to be flexible with the groups themselves. They were not formal groups other than the Chamber of Commerce. If Staff organizes a meeting, it would be open to whoever chooses to attend. If the independent group organizes the meeting, they may not have complete visibility on who gets invited. He advised he would write this up in a report going to full Council and that it should be announced during Council member comments at the next Council meeting. Item 2 Public Comment: No requests to speak and no hands raised. NO ACTION 1. Economic Development Activity Report April 2025 Assistant City Manager Nose provided the report with a slide presentation including CoStar data associated with University and California Avenue vacancy rates and 2025 economic development and retail vibrancy priority objectives. Chair Reckdahl assumed if the property was under lease but vacant it was not counted. He asked if properties under construction would be considered vacant or had to be actively advertised. Assistant City Manager Nose confirmed if the property was under lease but vacant it was not counted to the extent that was how the data was reported in CoStar. She stated they would SUMMARY MINUTES Page 3 of 5 Retail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 04/16/2024 find out if properties under construction would be considered vacant or had to be actively advertised. Councilmember Burt queried if they had the ability to look at average rental rates within the different districts in particular as opposed to citywide. He inquired what information was available about hotel data on occupancies and average daily rates. He recollected the last update showed TOT revenue but did not break it down between occupancy and average daily rate and observed it was important to understand that in different areas of the City. He also mentioned when they looked at the TOT revenue increases, they did not look at the change in number of rooms available. He mentioned did not follow the relationship of fiber to the premise related to retail. He suggested it would be most relevant for this Committee to have a rough estimate on the fiber plan when it would start effective small commercial. He asked if there was an update on a narrative to dispel the idea of their permitting process being excessive. He talked about the benefits of having an ombudsman or lead contact in facilitating the permitting process. Assistant City Manager Nose replied they do have that ability based on the data in the system; however, the data will have its constraints. She thought Staff would want to look at those constraints so they could daylight that when they provide data to the Committee and if that was insufficient they could look at alternative means. She commented they received information about hotel data when TOT receipts were submitted to the City on a monthly basis. It typically runs about two months in arrears in terms of the live nature of the data. They have a consultant to assist them in administering that tax in terms of collections. City Manager Shikada elaborated they had considered if this information was of interest to the Committee on an ongoing basis, they might establish a small contract with a local broker to have them put together a brief report with the same type of information. Councilmember Burt and Chair Reckdahl supported that consideration. He explained fiber to the premise was looking at fiber to smaller commercial. Jonathan Lait, Planning & Development Services Director, hoped to pull together information about initiatives they were taking to facilitate and improve the permitting process by the next Committee meeting. He intended to personally reach out to contractors to engage them and let them know the changes that were made. He indicated he would also share survey data about how people were responding to their inspection program. He discussed ways they were trying to improve on the customer service in processing permits. He hoped to bring an ombudsman or lead contact to Palo Alto. He noted this was a program that was overtaxed with the amount of work coming in relative to the resources they had so they had to prioritize life and safety issues over other complaints. Chair Reckdahl inquired if there was any measure of Downtown office vacancies. Assistant City Manager Nose thought they would want to engage in a small contract with a broker to provide the lease information. She indicated there was no source for employee data. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 4 of 5 Retail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 04/16/2024 City Manager Shikada agreed there was no source for employee data. He indicated that with the upcoming new parking guidance system they would have ongoing data collection on parking counts. Councilmember Burt questioned the technologies on vehicle patterns. City Manager Shikada remarked StreetLight and Replica would inform them on vehicle patterns. He did not think they had the subscriptions or expertise to draw that that data on an ongoing basis but they could discuss that with Staff and external providers. Chair Reckdahl queried if it was easy to pull data about Caltrain ridership and how many people get off at University Avenue. City Manager Shikada had not seen Caltrain ridership data reported. Councilmember Burt confirmed they had Caltrain ridership data. It fell to the wayside during COVID and they were picking that back up. He did not know whether VTA, SamTrans and Marguerite had data on ridership versus numbers of buses. They might be able to get that data. He thought it might be important to track how many more cars they had versus how many more transit riders. Electrification had boosted Caltrain ridership. Chair Reckdahl described a city to city comparison put together for the PTC that was enlightening and suggested it would be useful information for them. Councilmember Burt stated the correlation between rents and vacancy was strong and there was a resistance for property owners to adjust downward which was a big part of why there were still vacancies in desirable retail locations. Item 1 Public Comment 1. Steve L. alleged the vacancy data reported by Staff was inconsistent with his experience Downtown. He asked if CoStar was counting vacant spaces as not vacant if they had a permit or lease. He wanted to see the full CoStar data on what places they say are vacant in order to figure out whether they were counting permits or rent. He was skeptical that parking was a barrier. He advised figuring out what actual rent the tenants were paying. NO ACTION Future Meetings and Agendas City Manager Shikada suggested tentatively scheduling a meeting in May with the upcoming work on the California Avenue Activation Guidelines. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 5 of 5 Retail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 04/16/2024 Assistant City Manager Nose added the meeting could be on May 21 or 28. Councilmember Burt was agreeable with either day. Chair Reckdahl wanted to shoot for May 21. Councilmember Burt wanted to confirm the activation would only be Cal Ave at that time. He asked if there was a timeline for Ramona. City Manager Shikada confirmed that to be correct. Assistant City Manager Nose replied they were hoping to have Ramona ready by June. It would be brought to the Committee in June and would not hit Council until after their summer recess. Chair Reckdahl indicated they had some outreach meetings talking about Downtown public safety. Assistant City Manager Nose confirmed that to be correct and remarked they were looking at May 1 and would coordinate with the Downtown stakeholders to include them on that. They were looking at 1 or 1:30 PM that day. The second one coming up was the Cal Avenue Stakeholders/Merchants meeting. They were looking at April 30 around 3 PM. They would confirm that location and time. Chair Reckdahl mentioned there had been discussion about potential public outreach for the Streetscape University Avenue. Assistant City Manager Nose commented that would be included as part of the Downtown meeting. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 9:50 A.M.