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Home My WebLink AboutA009 - Email correspondence from Mayor to City Council regarding Lincoln Way Corridor - Communications and Update 5 Lincoln Way Corridor- communications and update John Haila to: Ames City Council 06/24/2018 09:19 PM Cc: Steve Schainker, Kelly Diekmann, Diane R Voss, Mark Lambert Council, You all received the first email (at the bottom of the "chain below") from Rick Thompson. He and I interacted post receipt and I present the remainder of email conversation for your information. I have also attached the minutes of the June 14th meeting held with Steve, Kelly, approximately 20 LW business and property owners and me. This will be sent out to all attendees tomorrow. It is a good summary of the topics covered during the 3 hour plus long meeting. In those minutes on page 4 and 5 it lists the 3 primary issues/concerns of the attendees. They are elimination of drive throughs; diminished current uses allowed by HOC; and reduction of HOC property within the city. Under separate cover you also received an email from Bill Kusy. Mr. Kusy (owner of the far west end property, Grand Junction LLC) attended the June 14th meeting, but according to him has not been involved with the group of individuals referred to by Rick Thompson in Rick's email. I would like to offer a couple of suggestions for your consideration in light of the ongoing discussion, public input, my personal conversations with individuals, the June 14th meeting and emails. 1. Reduce the area being rezoned by removing all of the property west of Clark Ave. It has multiple drive throughs already, is bounded on the south by non-affected HOC (Lincoln Plaza), will address one of the major property owners concerns about drive throughs (Mr. Kusy - has three buildings with multiple businesses and Little Ceasers franchise owner who already paid $65,000 for technology for a drive up window, reportedly invested prior to the moratorium commencing, and he informed me that he has a sizable mortgage on the property and tenants have lease options to extend their leases for 7 years, so it will be a long time before any of his property would be considered for redevelopment), and retains some HOC in the area. The original Option 2 presented by staff to council is also a viable option. 2. Several of you asked if any changes that might be made to the standards (allowing drive throughs from side streets, off of alleys for example) would be well received and seen as an beneficial compromise to the property and business owners. I will let the last sentence of Rick Thompson's initial email below answer your question, and his follow up email of June 22nd attesting to the fact that in general he was speaking for the group, not just himself. See red text below. 3. It would seem that modifying standards to allow drive throughs accessing and exiting from a site via side streets vs. off of LW might be amenable to some of the corner property owners, but it will pose a challenge for on site circulation and no property owner wanted to give up their site access from LW, so to try and prohibit people from accessing or exiting via LW may prove difficult to control. As of right now, with the current, and included in the council packet, modification to the Standards changing non-conforming to pre-existing, I see that as a positive, not negative, and as such does not warrant public input. If the map is changed as discussed in 1. above, similarly, in my opinion, it is positive not negative so no public comment will be invited . And the same goes for the drive throughs and adding back in uses. If any added changes are made (including those mentioned above), Mark will need to confirm that they are minor enough to make and still allow third reading and passage of both the Standards and Map. There is no inclusion of a moratorium extension in the agenda, so we cannot extend that Tuesday night. So tabling either the Standards and/or Map (items 38 and 39) is not an option unless Council is OK with the implication of the moratorium lapsing and the ordinances not being in place. John A. Halla Mayor Ak, «� • Ames- 515.239.5105 main ihaila@city.ames.ia.us I City Hall, 515 Clark Avenue I Ames, IA 50010 www.CitvofAmes.org I - Caring People'" Quality Programs- Exceptional Service -----Forwarded by John Haila/COA on 06/24/2018 08:23PM ----- To: "John Haila" <ihailaacity.ames.ia.us> From: "Rick Thompson"<rick(a)thompsonoil.com> Date: 0 6/24/2 018 12:47 P M Subject: Re: Lincoln Way Corridor John, There is no compromise other than to re-zone the properties that want to sell for the Argent project and leave the rest as HOC. (And or the same for any other mixed use project that comes along.) It's really pretty simple, not one City employee or City Council person has anything to lose regarding the vision but most property owners do. The City's vision of re zoning along with the number of property restrictions included, is not the same vision most property owners along this corridor share. In a nutshell, nobody is willing to go away quite yet Rick -----Original Message----- From: John Haila To: Rick Thompson Sent: Friday, June.22, 2018 5:28 PM Subject: Re: Lincoln Way Corridor Rick, Thank you for your reply. Can you expound on"escalated conversation"? Thanks. John A. Haila Mayor 515.239.5105 main jhaila city.ames.ia.us I City Hall, 515 Clark Avenue I Ames, IA 50010 www.CityofAmes.org I —Caring People—Quality Programs— Exceptional Service On Jun 22, 2018, at 5:23 PM, Rick Thompson <rick(@thompsonoil.com>wrote: John, Sorry for being slow to respond but I've been waiting for reply's from the group making sure I didn't speak out of turn in my email to you and the Council. So here's the deal: First of all, I believe everyone at the meeting last Thursday with you, Steve and Kelly were all part of the group except Mr. Cousy(owner of the Lincoln Way &Grand corner). He has been on his own and never has met with us as a group to my knowledge. In our group meeting a couple days ago there was a lot of talk about a lot of things including the Tuesday night meeting regarding Downtown. At one point I told them I had found some information pertaining to the value of drive thru's that I wanted to forward because you had questioned me in our meeting at our office if I could support my comment of higher rents for properties with drive thru's. I told them I would be emailing you all with that information. As long as I was sending an email there were a few other things they wanted me to throw in there also but I didn't. They didn't appoint me to speak for them necessarily but with the replies received today I would say that is where the group stands in answer to your question. Let me just say this John, the spirit of the conversations in our group a couple days ago has escalated. I will say one of the comments pertained to a certain Council person who we believe has let their day job interfere with being an effective Council person. Everybody wants to get back to work and keep their properties zoned as they are today. Anyway, unfortunately I had a trip planned and will be out of town the first few days next week so will have to miss the Council meeting. I guess we'll see how everything plays out Rick -----Original Message----- From: John Haila To: Rick Thompson Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2018 5:23 PM Subject: Re: Lincoln Way Corridor Rick, I would like you to verify one point you make in your email. Does your last sentence reflect the sentiment of every one of the business and property owners opinions, and have they asked you to speak for them as a group?And does this group include all of those who we met with last Thursday afternoon. If the answers to the questions above is yes, and that you speak for all of them corporately,then 1 p all of them want"...(Lincoln Way rezoning) to go away no matter the compromises."? Is that correct? John A. Halla Mayor <mime.gif> 515.239.5105 main Ihaila@city.ames.ia.us I City Hall, 515 Clark Avenue I Ames, IA 50010 www.CitvofAmes.org —Caring People—Quality Programs — Exceptional Service^' From: "Rick Thompson"<rick(cDthompsonoil.com> To: <amescitycouncil city.ames.ia.us> Date: 06/21/2018 10:10 AM Subject: Lincoln Way Corridor Hello all, I was asked by John in one of our meetings if I could prove drive thru windows commanded more rent or were more valuable commercial space. Attached are a couple of items I found to support our cause. (the one I couldn't seem to cut and paste so it's a screen shot) http://www.saglo.com/best-space-lease-strip-center-end-cap/ We had another group meeting yesterday and also discussed the Downtown meeting that was held Tuesday night. I wasn't there but from some that attended it sounds as though there are some unhappy campers in the Downtown area also. We think this whole vision needs to come to a stop before you start rezoning people's property that will affect their values and upsetting livelihoods. There seems to be very few for and a lot more against for a variety of reasons. The consensus with our group is for this (Lincoln Way rezoning)to go away no matter the compromises. Thank you Rick Rick Thompson Tomco LLC 414 S. Duff Ave. Ames, Iowa 50010 515-232-6666 (o) 515-232-1467 (f)[attachment"Drive Thru's.JPG"deleted by John Haila/COA]