Read the January 29 meeting.

Okay, good evening. We will call to order. Can I start by asking the City Clerks to call the roll?

Council Member Bridegan? Here. Council Member 2 Ho Nguyen? Here. Council Member Vapui? Here. Council Member Kim Nguyen? Here. Council Member Tom Allenstein? Here. Mayor Jones? Here. Council Member O'Neil is absent.

With the city of Santa Ana, Councilmember Sarmiento, not present. Councilmember Pinalosa?

David Penaloza

Here.

Councilmember Solorio? Present. Councilmember Reyna?

David Penaloza

Here.

Councilmember Iglesias? Here. Mayor Portem Villegas? Present. Mayor Colido? Here. Mayor. Can I ask Santa Ana Mayor Pro Tem Juan Villegas to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

If I will please stand. The flag, put your right hand over your heart, ready to begin.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all.

Unfortunately, I want to start this meeting on a very somber note. Garden Grove lost our fire chief just on Sunday at age 54. Very tragic, very unexpected and sudden passing. We're deeply, deeply saddened and I think we're still in tremendous amount of shock that it actually happened. Can I just ask for a brief moment of silence in memory of Fire Chief Tom Schultz.

Okay, thank you very much. We'll get to business. I think

we'll hear some reports this evening. In recent months we have had

some town hall meetings, a series of town hall meetings that were conducted by one of our consultants. We've got another consultant who did some economic analysis on the site. So we'll hear from staff and their joint effort in moving the ball along down the line to this point in time. I think we'll just start with maybe just some introductions from San Antonio Mayor Boleto and myself before we get into the staff section. Please.

Yes, I want to first of all welcome both city councils here. And I know that Councilmember Sarmiento will be joining us very shortly. I think this is a tremendous effort, having both councils working together. We can really do some things. I know you all know we're mainly focused on Willowick, but we're partner cities with Mayor Jones and his leadership at OCTA and by the way he's now vice chair so next year he's going to be chairman of the board over at OCTA and I think that bodes very well for our OC streetcar and all things that we're doing here between

Santa Ana and Garden Grove we're working very very closely together I was speaking you know to some of the council members and and to mayor Jones recently and this is more for staff just something to begin thinking about and And that is that I think in the very near future we ought to really figure out our joint powers authority. You know, we're going to let on RFP, people are going to start coming at us. I'd like to have things ahead of time figured out in terms of, you know, costs and mainly revenue sharing. You know, if the property is sold, how do we share, you know, jointly.

and also long term we're going to hopefully entitle something that's going to produce a whole lot of taxes. That needs not to go all to Santa Ana because it's in Santa Ana. In the spirit of partnership, I think we ought to share everything 50-50. And the sooner we articulate that and put it in an agreement, the better. So those are my comments for now, Mr. Mayor. And I thank you for your leadership. I know you're spending a lot of time on a lot of things. and this is one of the I think most important project that we have before us

thank you thank you mayor so I think I just want to hand back one second just frame this from a highlight higher level perspective this is a really really exciting opportunity for both of our cities and what a unique experience to have two city councils collectively together again at a at a joint meeting for this so we've got this wonderful opportunity with Willowick golf course a 102 acre site owned by the city of Garden Grove located in the city of Santa Ana right in the heart of Orange County with a four mile stretch of street car OC street car just about to come through which is actually

commencing construction this year it's it's real it's not hypothetical it's the contracts have been let the funding agreement is in place and so the street car is coming it's going to go straight through the middle of this site and this could be the greatest economic windfall opportunity for both cities if we keep our heads together and we just work on creating shared vision that works for both cities on how to get there so I'm super excited that we're back here again today I know there's a lot of work that's been done behind the scenes we're gonna hear a little bit about that

today from staff and from our consultants and then I think determine next steps in the process to go forward. I think to your point, Mayor, yeah, we need to come together so that at some point when we are ultimately narrowing down and reviewing actual proposals and negotiating with developers that the two cities are somehow on the same side of the table as one in doing that. So that's prudent. And perhaps the way to get there is to, between now and then, as we start to form the ad hoc committee, which you recommended in the last meeting, which I think we have factored into the game plan

of what we're doing to proceed forward in that regard so that we get ad hoc committees studying that and other and other items as we proceed towards an RFP and and just promoting the site far and wide around the world with that I think I'll where do I go from here I hand over to staff and we'll hear some maybe some status updates and some reports oh or communications I'm sorry

I'll go ahead and do this now. I only have one card. If there's anyone else wishing to speak at oral, please submit a card. And I'll start with Michelle Martinez. That's the only card I actually have.

our former councilman.

Thank you all. It feels good to be on the other side.

But good evening to you all. I want to thank you all for your service and your dedication to Garden Grove and obviously to the city of Santa Ana. And so I am here today as a private citizen and proud to be a private citizen in the city of Santa Ana. And just a ton of the great opportunity that you all have here today. two amazing cities in Orange County to look and dream big and have that vision and not look at yourself as just Orange County or just Santa Ana or just Garden Grove but look at yourself as a mega region you are part of a mega region there are some amazing assets here in California in Southern California and

here in Orange County this is the moment in time that you can capitalize on these amazing assets and I want to break some things down for you and I want to talk about three things that I believe that I see here in the audience and a lot of folks from the from the developing community that are here and is that they look at this both of these city councils and what you all are going to do and really bringing the community in the conversation as well I'm a big believer in a process before plan that the community should be able to co-author

what they so choose to want in that property so that this community, both communities can be sustainable in the long term. But as we look at this mega region, I want you all to think about life sciences, in particular in the medical field. And then the second thing, as we talk about and what we've heard from the community, is sports. And I know our mayor has talked about stadiums and others have talked about soccer and talked about golf. But think about here in California, you have 19 professional sports teams. And in Southern California, you have 12.

So when I talk about life sciences, I'm talking about the medical hub. The medical hub of Southern California, guess where it's at, ladies and gentlemen. It is here in Orange County. It is in Irvine. It is in Santa Ana. You need to capitalize on that. With sports, sports medicine, medical hub. If you think about the opportunity and the amount of revenue that the professional teams, these 19 professional teams in California are bringing to California, in particular Southern California and the medical field.

And I want to break down those numbers. OC leads Southern California medical device industry $27.3 billion annually, ladies and gentlemen. Okay, and throughout Southern California, by BioconMath, again, this is just based on the research that I've done, that industry is $76.4 billion. That is an asset that's already here that you can capitalize and you can do research and development. When we talk about Pittsburgh and the research and development that they're doing with autonomous vehicles,

look, you have the opportunity to do research and development with medical devices and using the sports. Because you want to provide stadiums, you can do that. You want to provide baseball, you want to provide soccer. Guess what? You can draw some of the best professionals, some of the best medical hub companies here to do research and design. and imagine having, you know, baseball player, you know, what's his name? What's your guys' famous baseball player, the angel? What's his name?

David Penaloza

Pujols.

What's his name?

David Penaloza

Pujols.

Pujols. Pujols. Albert Pujols coming down. He's already in Santa Ana, right, with cooking and helping with homeless. But imagine him, you know, when he has an injury that he can come to Willowick and get some of the best specialized medicine and technology. You can get all those professional, not just from California, but throughout this nation, throughout this world, coming to Willowick. And you can still play and have fun and still do mixed use, but you want to capitalize on the assets of California and think of yourself as a mega region, just in particular in regards to sports.

You know, with the 19 teens in California, that, and I want to be very clear that when you look at the amount of activity at these stadiums and the jobs they provide, which are important, but more so in the medical field, the average salary, because we all want jobs, right? Michelle, the light is yellow, by the way. jobs a hundred and twenty thousand dollars is the annual salary and so let me conclude by telling you that you have the tools available to you all when you look at Metro financing you look at opportunity zones and layering tax

increment you have the development community ready to go with this with with this capital staff ready to help leverage and move forward and making sure that this development whatever it's going to be think big dream big because our community deserves it and with that thank you so very much thank you I do not have any other cards anyone else wishing to speak oh please come forward

i'd like to echo um a shout out the sentiment about the future of the area but i'd like to look I'll get it from a different perspective. There was a neighborhood leader when I first came to organize in New England communities in Santa Ana and Marco Romero, who had a house in Fifth Street right there on the outside of the golf course. And the state of Santa Ana at the time wanted to bring in Spriana, a big factory in there. Marco refused to move to the south, so Spriana took a hike. But, you know, the people who are similar to the market still live there. Their lives haven't gotten better.

They need jobs, they just need jobs, and all that. And that's the future, I think, that Michelle was alluding to. But it has to be job that also fit people that also, as in our city, we're in a poor city, we have a lot of people that can provide good labor, work hard, but they may not have the skills for those technical jobs. So, but there could be job training, whether it's a stadium, whether it's sports medicine, whether whatever you put there, it could be Hollywood too. Those can be training jobs that provide good living for people who live insane, put their kids through college and their lives get better.

And that's what I'm going to ask you after looking down to the future. Are we selling and giving ourselves a debt? What are you giving to the types of the developer? How much are we going to be in debt in the future? You know, is this going to lower our quality life because we give them everything and when we get a bill or they don't get a bill and they get all the tax credits and all that, we've still got whatever it is that's going to be built. So it's not easy, I think, what you've been going through, you have all these options, you've got a lot of promises.

I work in the wheel of promises to do with market tax credits and all these other different kinds of development money. And I know that sometime to unbundle what this corporation is dealing with, there's a lot of other corporations and things. So please be careful of what we're selling your future for because we're still trying to get our lives better. There's not a lot of investment in terms of those that are up to the bottom that we need to do. And I know you care, and I'm not yelling at you as much as encouraging you to look at things up.

And you're right, Miguel, the transportation does provide us an opportunity to get around. Let's have some destination where we're going, you know, museum, community centers or something, or we have access to it too, we're going to be using a big chunk of open space. So, you know, it'd be nice to have something loaded in our country, or if you're going to put something in there, give some access to the open space and to where everybody else goes in there. And I think that a lot of the residents have placed, they're concerned about traffic, and they're not defying. They come down here, they're going down to the car,

and all the time to go. and since the two of you guys are on most of the TAA, I know that when our program for community partnership, we had great cooperation with the state of Iron Road in Santa Ana in terms of and in terms of improving the health and providing access to transportation, biking, and all that. And Michelle was a great part of that, as well, with AHAR. So, we know that we can do the plan that improved the policy of last year. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Any more public comments?

Seeing none, we will close oral and go to Steph for some status updates.

Good evening, honorable mayors and members of the city council. Can we all be ready?

Speak up a little. Okay.

Good evening, honorable mayors and members of the City Council. It's been a year since we last met at a joint study session, so I'm excited to report on milestones to date. And so I'm going to switch to the slide to walk through some of the milestones. So in 2017, we entered into an MOU between both the cities of Santa Ana and Garden Road. We also received direction at the joint study session to move forward on conducting additional exploration relating to the reuse of the Willowick site. Most of that activity took place in 2018.

We proceeded with the selection of two consultants, one primarily focused on visioning and community engagement, and the second is our consultant that assisted us with some economic analysis and market data. So tonight we are going to have both of our consultants really highlight the results of those efforts. The first will be Mr. Andrew Watkins with SWA, who will be presenting the overview of our visioning and essentially the last six months of effort relating to community workshops and engagement with both the cities of Santa Ana and Garnet Grove residents.

and then followed by Mr. Alexander Quinn who will highlight our market conditions and economic assessment. So I'm going to introduce Mr. Watkins to lead off with our next presentation, really a general overview of the visioning and he's going to start.

Thank you.

Can you hear me?

Nope.

Testing. How about now? That sounds better. Great. Thank you, Lisa. Good evening, honorable members of the City Council. It's a real pleasure to be here this evening. It has been great working with your city staffs and awesome working with both of your communities. So we have had, as Lisa said, a process over the last six months where we have held three, three and a half community meetings. And these have been kind of structured under the titles of Listen, Create, and Evaluate. And those kind of guided our work process. So in Listen, we kind of first sought to understand the site.

And so I'd like to just give you a kind of brief overview of the site. Many of you may be very familiar with it. But it is a great asset to both cities, just over 100 acres, a very unique large piece of land that is very hard to find in all of Orange County. The primary access is from Fifth Street. The exciting new part is a potential new OC streetcar stop along the Pacific Electric right-of-way to the north of the site. The site also borders the Santa Ana River, which we think is an exciting opportunity for a future reuse of the site.

The site is surrounded by some residential neighborhoods and does have access from some of that western edge, but is more limited in terms of real traffic capacity to be able to serve on that edge of the site.

In the first workshop that we held, we had two primary exercises. One was a pop quiz in which we asked the community a series of questions. The second exercise was a dot polling exercise in which we asked the community members to place dots on a series of character and use boards. Some of the things we learned from the pop quiz, there was a lot of focus on neighborhood safety and access, community and family oriented development, emphasis on culture and learning, renovating and renewing the site, and places to play and gather.

The top kind of dot getters on the dot polling were learning, playing, engaging, entertaining, and gathering.

From the community workshop, we pieced together a vision statement, and I'd like to read that to you now. This is our community value statement, and that reads, The cities of Garden Grove and Santa Ana value a vibrant, multi-use gathering place, a complete community that is family-oriented, safe, and publicly accessible. A new Willowick will foster the community's cultural heritage, provide educational and economic opportunities that encourage community interaction, and allow a multitude of uses that bring families together for generations to come.

We also then developed a series of guiding principles that would lead into our next phase of creating some ideas for the site. These principles started with celebrating the history and legacy of Willowick. The Pacific Electric right-of-way used to house the Red Car. The Red Car connected a series of communities through the LA region and Orange County, through farm fields back in the day, and into historic cores of cities here. And so we wanted to pull from that idea that the new OC Streetcar would connect to this place, a core within the communities of Garden Grove and Santa Ana.

It was very important to look at safety and accessibility. The OC Streetcar was going to be a great catalyst for the site, and we wanted to leverage that. We also wanted to create memorable gathering places, places for the community to gather family-oriented, pedestrian-scaled.

We wanted to promote a distinct character of place, right? This place should have an identity, a brand that marks it as different from other destinations within Orange County. We also wanted to create a flexible framework, one that could develop over time. A hundred acre site is a really large site and it may not develop all at once and so it needs to be able to respond to changing market conditions over time.

The second phase of our process was create. In our second community workshop, we actually held two workshops, one in Santa Ana and one in Garden Grove. And we had two exercises as part of this workshop. We presented a series of case studies, other similar projects that could inform how this site might develop, and also exhibited certain uses or characteristics. and we wanted feedback on those uses and characteristics from the community. And so some of the feedback was that the community really liked the idea of an urban farm or access to local food,

park-like settings, the way that some of these developments respected the existing development at their edges, a mix of housing choices, again, kind of a central park or amenity for the community, and potentially connections to the river. We also had a really fun exercise where we allowed the community to kind of design their Willowick, a series of plastic blocks that the community could lay out on a map and envision how they would design it if they could. And so some of the big uses were parks, spaces to gather, again a kind of mix of housing,

very similar themes complementing the adjacent neighborhoods, public safety and security, and some neighborhoods serving retail and commercial spaces.

From this workshop we developed a vision statement that might guide our own creation of ideas for the site. And I'd like to read that. For the future of Willowick, the cities of Garden Grove and Santa Ana envision a safe, vibrant, and multi-use destination for its residents. A new Willowick will celebrate the history of the site and provide memorable family-oriented public gathering places that enrich the quality of the existing neighborhoods. Through a flexible framework with ever-evolving experiential qualities, Willowith will be able to support a layered program that reinforces the economic viability of the area.

We also developed a series of framework strategies that came from the input from the community, and these were kind of diagrams that, again, and serve to guide our own explorations of the site. And so one of those was transit oriented development, capitalizing on the OC streetcar stop, connecting to the Santa Ana River and the bike trail, that great recreational trail that could provide access to the region, transitioning to adjacent uses, being respectful of some of the adjacent residential uses, creating a community gathering space, or a core that people can come to there,

providing access to food and agriculture, and a mix of housing types, including attainable and affordable housing.

So then we developed three concepts, and the idea here was to really kind of bookend, kind of explore different ideas that the community could respond to and give us some further input on. So the first of these ideas we called Willowick Stadium, and this concept included a large stadium. you could think about it as a large entertainment use. So this use took up about half of the site, the stadium itself plus additional parking that would serve that entertainment use and then concentrated a high scale development at that TOD stop. So this was kind of the most intense development, had a large park along the river

and really tried to be the highest and best transit oriented development concept. concept. Here's an aerial view of that concept. We did not get great response from the community on this concept. This was their least favorite of the three we developed. It was a dense development and I think community members felt that it was out of scale and maybe more regionally focused and not as much neighborhood focused. The second concept we presented, We call it Willowick District. This is kind of a mid-rise scale.

It had a cultural and gathering kind of heart at the center of the large riverfront park. And it had kind of green fingers that stretched back and connected into the community. So a mix of uses, residential, office. It might include some higher-end office, R&D-type developments. Mixed use core at the OC streetcar and a connection down to Fifth Avenue through a kind of smaller neighborhood serving commercial site. An aerial of that concept of Willowick District. And this was kind of the middle favorite.

it. The last concept that we did was Willowick Tech and the main vision here was a tech and agriculture innovation, kind of a real R&D, flex tech type development, lower in scale, a central urban farm, but with agriculture and orchards incorporated throughout the plan, kind of pulling from the history of orchards in Orange County. It also had small kind of neighborhood spaces, open spaces distributed throughout the plan as well. And it included a mix of, as I said, FlexTech and some lower scale residential.

And aerial of that. And this was the favorite of the community, Maybe because of the lower scale, they could envision it more within the community.

We also got some specific feedback in this process of kind of what were some of the uses that the community members liked in each of the schemes and kind of characteristics from each of the concepts. So even though they might not have liked the concept as a whole, were there parts and pieces of the concepts that they did like? We thought that was important to try to test to get a more nuanced view of how they saw the different projects. In Willowick Stadium, they really didn't see much that they liked as a whole. There was some mediocre response on some of the uses and characteristics,

but was mostly on the no uses, no characteristics shown. For Willowick District, we did get some good response on including a cultural or community use, as well as kind of this large park that kind of connected back to the neighborhood. So those were two of the kind of favorite pieces of that project. And then in Willowick Tech, we got a lot of great response on that central urban farm as well as kind of continuing that agricultural theme through the project that kind of really spoke to people.

So we then took everything that we had learned through that public process and put that into a series of suggested implementation, kind of visioning of ideas. One of the things we heard clearly from the community is that they wanted to continue to be part of the dialogue and they wanted to continue to be engaged in the future process. and so in whatever future process you guys determine, I think it's important that there's a series of continued meetings and clear communication with the neighborhoods there. We also really wanted to encourage talking to additional potential partners. It's awesome that you guys are here together

tonight. It's pretty unique in many ways. It already shows your willingness to work together. and so I think that will be an awesome asset to the project.

Issuing an RFP, you guys have thought through that quite a bit and that is underway. And then kind of a series of ideas that we think should remain in the mix of possibilities for the site. So that's community uses, gathering spaces, whether it's community center, education, museums, focusing on safety and accessibility, a mix of housing, attainable, affordable, park spaces, lots of kids wanted a skate park, engaging the Santa Ana River, really using that as a recreational asset for the site, and then providing local food and community agricultural sources.

Thank you.

Thank you, Joe. Next we'll introduce Alexander Quinn who will walk us through the economic and market data for the project.

Mr. Chair. Good evening, honorable mayors and members of the council. I'd like to ask questions during this. Sure. Of course. Do you want to do it while the last consultant is up? I just was going to get a quick answer from him. Can we bring you back up for a minute before we move on?

You referred to three community meetings in your study. Can you give me an estimate of the attendance at those meetings that weren't city staffs, obviously, and that kind of thing, just the community members? Sure. in each of the meetings we probably had at least 30 if kind of 30 to 60 was the range the meeting in Garden Grove was probably on the smaller end and then a larger attendance at the meetings in Santa Ana thank you very much good evening honorable mayors and members of the council councils excuse me my My name is Alexander Quinn.

I'm the director of sustainable economics for Hatch. And I'm going to give you a very high overview of the market conditions and real estate forces for this specific site. And I think I'll first phrase it in very large terms. When we did an analysis of sites of this size, anything over 50 acres or larger, within a 10-mile radius, we only found eight sites, infill development sites of this size. and this site accounted for roughly 10% of the available land, redevelopment land available. So when you think about opportunity, this is one of those few sites within the region

that's available for large reconsideration, re-market configuration in the area at large, and not just for Santa Ana, but also for the region overall.

so I'm going to talk really high level and talk about some of the larger market drivers the first one is population growth as you probably already know Orange County grew by 12% from 2000 to 2018 that's if you look at garden growth it was less about 7% the major part of the growth about 30% of the population growth over that period can be accounted in one city that's Irvine. Irvine accounted for a third roughly of all population growth during that period. And Santa Ana roughly remained flat from 2000 to 2018. So it's

an indication not of necessarily a lack of demand but just a lack of supply a lack of available land for development. When you look at the big thing that you notice is Santa Ana's average household size so a lot more families than Orange County overall compare it to even Garden Grove we're looking at around 4.4 persons per household versus the state is less than three so a lot more families in Santa Ana which demands more family housing and that obviously plays out with the share of families with children under the age of 18 I'd like to highlight that roughly 53% or over half of the of the household population in

Santa Ana have households with kids it's an important thing to know when you consider redevelopment at the site when we look at employment you want to look at employment growth because you want to look at commercial development and what are the main drivers that will drive commercial development on the site so we looked at employment growth from 2002 to 2017 it's around 200,000 jobs in Orange County overall again Santa Ana and or in Garden Grove lag behind in terms of that growth period what but one thing that'd be interesting is that the health sector and the education sector accounted

for 77 percent of the growth so considerable amount of growth and then the other would be you guessed it leisure and hospitality in other words Disneyland and other uh resort jobs that were grew about 40% over that same period construction jobs are near where they were at the pre-recession levels which was 2005 we've kind of hit that level again in the most recent numbers so I want to also talk directly about employment growth in in Garden Grove and Santa Ana and again it's about 14,000 jobs grown in Santa Ana and these are local jobs these are not employed

persons but jobs people working in that city and around 7,000 jobs again it's a decreasing share of Orange County overall during that period I'll drive right into real estate market conditions what you see in terms of unemployment and land values is that they really align really well so I'm going to show your graphic and here we are in 2002 that black line is unemployment you could see it drop down as home prices rise so unemployment keeps dropping keeps dropping over we're at our peak in Santa Ana and then a steep dive birth bears concerns occurs Santa Ana is the first to drop because of predatory

lending practices drops within a year and it hits its bottom garden grove and Orange County taken till about 2011 and we're almost at the point of pre recession periods for Santa Ana Santa Ana still hasn't hit in its median home price the price it was at its peak and garden grove and Orange County are just marginally above in real terms in other words in future accounting for inflation it's actually still below the peak it was back in 2006 so just to keep that in excess where we are in the economic cycles important context so i want to go right into uh multifamily rents as you saw that injection

of homeowners moving into rent uh into the rental market what you saw was a rise in rent so That supply and demand matrix played out in 2010 and rinsing have increased considerably over the last seven years So in Santa Ana it's around $2,500 to $2,700 in terms of average rent compared to 3,000 so it's slightly lower than the county overall, but it's grown a lot and it's grown in Garden Grove around 24% in Santa Ana it's grown above the rate of Orange County by 30% again because of that injection of owners resulted in new new renters into the

market that increased the demand which resulted in higher rent rental prices

still compared to Orange County overall rents are still relatively low in comparison to the county so what you're looking at there is just a gradient map and Santa Ana is in the middle of the circle in garden Grove the site is that little arrow and you can see that rents are still in the lower half compared to some very expensive rents in Laguna and Newport Beach I stopped here just to talk about market share so if you think about a way to of development you might say okay well in the future garden grove and Santa Ana can only account for 3% of that condo demand that's not really what's happening that is a case of

where there's not enough supply. If you brought on this amount of land in the market, your market share, the amount of opportunity for housing would actually grow. So this is not a way to think of the site and say multifamily is only gonna account for a small share. It's just to say that we really haven't built a lot of multifamily in Garden Grove and Seattle. I'm gonna go into retails, because you might wanna consider retail on this site. A few things to think about. real household income in California, in Orange County, in Garden Grove, and in Santa Ana have

remained relatively flat. So in other words, our purchasing power, what it was in 2011, is essentially the same as it is in 2016. Meanwhile, at the same time, the e-commerce market penetration was around 1% in 2000. Now it's up to 9%, and it's growing much faster. So when you think of retail real estate, that share has not increased. The pie has not grown. So if you're looking for a regional demand for retail, it's not a driving force here. You have to have localized retail spending. In other words, the local housing that's created from the site has to demand that retail.

It's not something that's growing and you can take a share of that growing pie. It's actually shrinking.

In terms of purchasing power, you account for roughly 8%, including Gardner Grove and Center. Office is a consideration at this site. And we did some numbers on this. Again, I'm going to keep it very high level. You've got a lot of latent antiquated supply that's still out there that's accounting for a higher vacancy rate than normal. Normally we assume that around 10% is a good time to start building 10% vacancy, and you're above that. And that's partially because of the supply. We think that there's actually demand for office space at this site. It's locationally challenged, but there is some demand for that at this location.

There is headwinds associated with that, and rents in this area don't set a precedent for new development. And really you'd be trying to command rents that are more represented in Newport and Laguna. And it accounts for around 9% of the total market share. Hotel is a strong, market forces are very strong in this area. You've seen roughly an occupancy rate of around 78%, which is really good. We usually say you're full if you're above 75%. Some people say 85%, but still.

If you're above 75% you're doing really well and the market overall in Orange County is strong and in Garner Grove and San and it's strong as well We expect that revenue is going to increase slightly above the rate of inflation Again, it's an area of an opportunity for for this site and roughly Garner Grove for the central market area accounts for about 22% of the market and With that I'll let you guys ask questions Thank you.

Thank you. Any questions?

I have a few questions. Go ahead.

First of all, I am very excited about the potential for this site. For many years, we have been hoping that we can bring the former Garden Pro West, which is the concept of bringing tourism industry from area north of Garibaldi Bulba down to 17th Street. This might be something that might be helpful in that direction. However, there are things in here that I do not see it is being bring out.

And I hope that as we develop the RFP, it will be included in the RFP so that this issue will be addressed by the developers.

Now, 100 acres is a very large parcel and with that will come a lot of people, whether it is residential or sport or entertainment, you name it. And yet I understand you have already identified the streetcar as a potential hub for bringing and addressing a lot of the traffic issues. However, that alone will be very far from being able to be adequate. Because as you can see, I don't know whether you're familiar with the geography here in Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Fountain Valley.

But if you travel during big traffic, going south or northbound during big traffic time, you travel just a few blocks, somehow take half an hour. That's because people between 45 freeway and KDQ freeway need to go back to their home. Now we're throwing in 100 acres of a lot more office workers, residents, entertainments, soccer, whatever. The streetcar alone will never be adequate.

And so I think those kind of criteria need to be included in the RFP so that the developer will anticipate that they will have to do something to address the traffic. Because we do not want that the existing chaos during big time work hours will become even more painful for our residents.

Thank you. Any other comments at this time?

Yeah. Yeah, I see assistance. We're going to have a couple more slides before we walk through and conclude our presentation, so I'm just going to wrap up.

Again, I do want to thank our consultants. This was a collaborative effort with the Santa Ana team, my very little team, myself, Lisa Kim, and Steve Mendoza, a lot of our community up to this point. And going forward, there are some milestones that we're tackling in terms of gearing up for the request for qualification slash RTP process. We're in the process of completing the visioning document, which the highlights were presented this evening. We're in the process of reviewing the preliminary title report to understand the extent of the property. Can you talk a little closer to your mic? Absolutely.

We are also in the process of conducting a boundary survey of the site and completing a phase one assessment. And at this point, we're gearing up for our RFQ RFP process. The next slide provides an overview of our anticipated timeline to release the RFP to solicit for a master developer for the Willowick Golf Course property. We anticipate rolling out the RFP sometime in April. And then the deadline to submit the proposals would be sometime in June. and the goal is to present a recommendation to the City Council for the master developer selection by fall of this year.

At this point, staff recommendation this evening is to request the Garden Growth City Council approve the development and the issuance of the RFQ RFP and for the recommendation for the Santa Ana City Council is concurrence of the development and issuance of the RFQ RFP. This concludes staff's presentation and available for questions.

Thank you. The one thing I've gathered from just all my interactions with my own council and also with St. Anna council members seems to be urgency, like kind of a general consensus of let's expedite this thing along and not get stuck in kind of analysis paralysis, but let's move forward as expeditiously as possible and get this out there so we can start kind of seeing what what might be available in terms of opportunities that we actually hear from the marketplace. So I'm I'm eager to I think technically it's the Garden Grove City Council has to

direct staff in a motion to proceed with the RFP since Garden Grove is the legal owner of the property and then I think subsequently Santa Ana would acknowledge that to concur so any

other comments or yeah I've got comments well go ahead councilman Solorio

thank you mayors we have two so it's nice mayor jones and mayor palito uh thank you all for for the attendees that joined us um i have a few really just uh comments because i know this is just another stage in a process. First, I do also know we have somebody from OCTA here because if done well, the streetcar can be adequate for the needs of hundreds if not thousands of people. Some glad that we are represented here. We'll hear about OCTA. A few thoughts.

Number one, I agree with what Mayor Jones just said in terms of urgency. I was one of probably too few council members last year that had concerns with the timeline for the visioning project you know I think at the time you know we're always wishful thinkers right so it was oh you know it's just gonna take four months or so I'm you know in government time that means about a year and sure enough we're here a year later and I was just last night at a BIA large event with a thousand people listening to economists and looking at forecasts and you know we

have about another year and a half left of a decent economy at least from a real estate perspective but volumes are down sales are down rents are slowing it's we're heading into troubled times so here you know we have an RFP that I think could be tightened up a little bit because as it currently is it says by fall of this year is when we might make a selection which means the holiday period which really means that you know the folks start that the following year and so well what I like to suggest that at least informally because I know both

cities have been talking about this under the mayor's is you know maybe we form an ad hoc committee that can meet regularly because I know it's hard scheduling everybody like this so for council members that live as close to that area and then others that have a general interest because I know today we're giving just general direction on working on this RFP but the devil's in the details they say and so I really would like some policy makers also to see what the scope of the RFP is including or RFQ including a timeline Also, you know, a big factor for residents, the development community, and policymakers

is zoning and what level of density, you know, what we envision. And you know, a little bit of thought needs to be given to that sooner than later. And then there might be some things that whoever we select that they might be able to continue to do outreach. I always felt like really you needed a master developer and a visioneering firm to kind of work together rather than, you know, some work early on and then none later with the community. So I would really encourage that another element of this RFP be, you know, an ongoing community outreach component. So those really are my main thoughts.

Again, let's see if we can't speed this timeline up a little bit more. have each of the cities develop an ad hoc committee that can meet very soon like within the next 30 days and talk with staff and review a draft or at least discuss what the elements in the RFP is including the the timeline and again continue to do outreach parallel to this this additional work for right now those are my comments thank you

I want to echo, you have to forgive me, but Councilman Solario, what he said, waiting and delaying doesn't do either city any good. So I think we want to act as expeditiously as possible. But with that being said, this is a once-in-a-life opportunity here, and we have a chance to make a major impact on the community at large. So I also want to caution diligence.

Yeah, we want to move along, but not at the point of not gathering the proper community input, not at the point of maybe taking shortcuts and making mistakes that we don't need to. Yes, let's move forward rapidly, but it's not carefully get the cart in front of the horse

Council and rain and then also go ahead. Yes, please. Thank you. You know, this is a great opportunity a rare opportunity for both our cities to be able to Look at a potential project and the impact is going to have it for years Generations to come and I'm excited about that as we do move forward But I do want to make sure that we take into consideration the residents that live in that immediate area. It's one of the oldest communities in our city. It's been there for generations. And I heard there's some community input. But in a city of virtually 500,000, 30 people, this is a little concerning.

So I definitely want to make sure that we get their involvement, that we get their input. Because it's going to have the most profound impact directly on them. Either they're going to benefit from it or we're going to thank them and ask them to leave. So let's make sure that we conclude their residence as we go forward. We may also want to look at parking and traffic. I remember once upon a time they are talking about and I'm not proposing this I'm just asking for other options of traffic mitigation of coming and going

Whether it's be part of the streetcar as an exit whether there's something on the riverbed just as an exit not two-way flowing But something that's going to be able to relieve some of that traffic there. But thank you looking forward to the exciting opportunity

If I may, Mayor Jones, I would just like to add a few thoughts. One is that I might be the only person here that served on the Great Park Board of Directors. I was there for about 10 years, and we did all this stuff. We took our time. We hired different consultants for different things, lots of analysis, frankly, lots of paralysis. At the end of the day, a whole lot, I can show you studies this thick, you know, conceptual, different analysis, redevelopment went away.

Finally, it's now almost 15 years later and they're beginning to do some of the things that we thought about at the very beginning. It just took a huge, huge, huge long road to get there. so so I would say you know yes let's analyze but let's trust ourselves a little bit we're all elected officials we know our neighbors we know that our cities we know a lot of folks and and if our gut tells us something it has some value so we should do that also I am a little bit concerned and look it's hard to get 60 people to come out to attend anything.

Unless there's a problem and somebody's upset at you, then you can get lots of people. They'll all show up, they'll all be complaining. But if you want to have an envision or something, you gotta like, you know, twist arms to get 60 people. However, this is a bigger project than both of our cities. This is really, if we do it well, this is a regional project that's gonna potentially impact all of Orange County. and if it's going to help our cities economically we want people from outside the immediate area to come in and to bring you know their their their

talents and their dollars and and the share in this experience so I would like to propose that we form two ad hoc committees I'll work with my council maybe Garden Grove can do the same I suggest possibly three people on each committee otherwise we get in a brown act and all that other stuff and and then let let let that ad hoc committee report back to their respective council members but let's try to figure out where we can do it well how to make things go a lot quicker because I'm telling you even the streetcar what you hear about you know

mayor Jones and I had to push that a whole lot a whole lot it never would happen without pushing it and in this project whatever it is is going to have a lot of different challenges it's going to be a thousand things we can't even think about right now and we have to have a a strong team a go forward attitude and i think in essence we have to be one and that's why i think a joint agreement would be good so that our interests are aligned and if we say you know this project produces you know 50 million dollars or a hundred million dollars we already know what the split is going to be and how we're going to

work it out and what it's going to mean and that way we really think is is is one entity and also I think we think regionally how can we really help our both of our cities in the region this is a very unique opportunity and it's an opportunity where definitely we you know it's a legacy opportunity and and it's one that can, I think, economically, potentially, solidify our budgets. I mean, both our cities are strained. We would like to do more things than we're able to do today. And often what's in the way is lack of revenue. And here I think we have a chance to reposition the cities,

and especially with opportunity zones. Opportunity zones are huge. And here we lucked out. There's an opportunity zone. We're gonna have people that are gonna be willing to invest more money than they normally would because they're gonna get tax breaks. We need to take advantage of that on behalf of our respective communities. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

David Penaloza

Mr. Mayor, can I say something really quick? May I? I just, I agree 100% with what my predecessor, Ms. Martinez said and Mayor Pulido, where this is a huge window of opportunity that's bigger than Santa Ana, bigger than Garden Grove. We're talking regionally Orange County here. We want something that could put both our cities on the map. We got to find ways that we could both mutually capitalize on and benefit from. We want to echo what the mayor said, you know, we want to be able to invite, you know, outside dollars to come in and grow our city. And I look at these plans,

David Penaloza

and no offense to anybody, but the stadium one, half of it is a parking lot. We saw where California Adventure is, it's on a parking lot that used to be flat. Disneyland built up. They built a parking lot, a parking structure. There's a lot of things that we could still do, and I think these visual concepts are very premature, and I think we could build on both of them. and just wanted to agree with with the mayor and Miss Martinez apparently my

daughter I don't know what happened but she's having some kind of a car emergency the car smoking really bad and she thinks it might catch on fire so I'm gonna ask my fellow council members from both cities mayor Jones will represent me right now I'm gonna go see what's happening with her because if something really bad I need to be there.

David Penaloza

You still going David? Do you want to? No that was it. I just wanted to echo what they both said and you know I come from the private sector and also a time is very you know I'm a very impatient person at work when when I request something I expected it an hour ago and you know when it comes to government we see these things go on for years and I understand that need and we should you know do these do this carefully but at the same time you know efficiently where we could get through it quickly thank you thank you

yeah I'll get that in one second season would you like to speak I just would like to ask a few

questions i know we had three different i think it was proposals for the community to assess to see if that's what they wanted at this location are we bound just to those three proposals or is that something that when we inform the ad hoc committees it's going to be more conversation that's going to happen so i don't know if that's a question for staff i can i think i can address

that so just for perspective all that really was in those drawings and those graphics that were shown on the screen were just high-level kind of visioning concepts that came out of the neighborhood town hall meetings we did a series of community engagement meetings with the consultants and just put up different concepts and did different charrettes like getting people red dots and you can pick what you like what you don't like that sort of thing so it was just to sort of poll the local community and get some initial feedback on likes

dislikes and feelings on that I think the next step is we set all that aside for a minute and we actually go out that the next direction is that we actually go out for a formal request for qualifications request for proposals from the private community so the next step is we would actually have an RFP that theoretically hits the street around April, and then the development community comes in and they tell us, with the benefit of being able to see all of this documentation that came out of the visioning meetings, they can certainly factor that into their way of looking at the site. And we'll get offers, and we'll get proposals,

and we'll get concepts from different, and I presume from a range of different development concepts.

so I think it's prudent that we keep it open at this point in time and we allow the private sector to come in and tell us what they think is feasible what's financeable what's developable on this site it's a it's a very it's a large site and it's it's it's big enough that there's you know only players I think of a certain caliber are going to be able to truly meet the qualifications and address it so I'd like to put it out there and just start to get those ideas from sophisticated market participants that want to take a look at it and then and then we come back again and we say here's all the proposals we actually

have then we start drilling down into based on everything we know based on what we heard of the community visioning back then based on the proposals we received based on our consultants and our staff you know analysis and stuff then we start to drill down into which direction we want to go and what makes sense for the two cities collectively.

So that's something that is going to be forthcoming to all of us. Work in process. And then I just have another question where it says seek potential partners. I don't see the county of Orange here as a potential partner. Is there a reason why they weren't included, especially because we have the riverbed right on the outskirts of the project? Would they be a potential partner too, or have they been reached out to?

we've identified the Orange County flood control district but if it's beyond that and it does directly relate to the county of Orange we certainly want to include that them as part of the conversation as well so they'll be

invited to participate yes okay

councilmember Sarmiento suggested we just kind of go down the line and so maybe I'll do that I'll go from that end down and then I'll go from that end down and we can if anybody wants to speak just to look so thank you mayor councilman I don't know if this is on or not can anybody yet thank you mayor Jones I have kind of a loud voice anyways so hopefully you all can hear me but yeah I think since all of us have have something to say maybe it'll be more efficient for us to kind of move it along this path but I wanted to thank Garden Grove because without you all we can't have this conversation right you

own this asset and even though it's within the city boundaries without a willingness to consider this asset something that could be converted into many things right and we see a lot of different conceptuals but you know I'm glad that our mayor I thought he was about to say he's the only one that was here during the founding of the city so I was close but you know one of the things I think that's really important for us to remember and I say this with all due respect because I really do respect The members of the council on the garden books and council

Look this is a hundred acres that's embedded in the neighborhood. It's already embedded in the city So to the extent that it can be big and it can be massive and it can be a regional

Destination, it's not like it's a hundred acres on the outskirts of the county where there's open space. This is where families live and they've lived there for decades and for generations. So to the extent that we're sensitive to that, we have to make sure that we use a measured approach to make sure that we don't impact those families to the extent that we disrupt their lives. So we all want to see something great and I think our dynamics are important because Because we have land use control in the city, in Santa Ana.

You all want to maximize the potential, and I'm talking about garden growth, maximize the potential of that asset. And that makes sense. And I think we can find a good balance between that. We just have to make sure that we're judicious in the way we make these decisions and understand this isn't 100 acres out in the south county somewhere where nobody's going to be impacted. we have folks that are going to be impacted, I think, as was mentioned by some of the consultants, traffic, congestion, parking, there's going to be a real, real disruption. So if it's done well, I think we can minimize and mitigate all those.

If it's done poorly, it's going to be something we all regret. And so, you know, I think that we want to be as expeditious as possible, but we want to be as thoughtful as possible as well. So let's understand that dynamic as we go forward. The other dynamic I think that's important here at State is something that I think Mayor Jones and I have spoken about in the past. Is it private sector-led? Is it public sector-led? That's a really profound, deep question because the private sector sees this differently than we do as elected officials who have a responsibility and a fiduciary duty to our constituents, our unusual constituents.

So we have to make sure when we release an RFP, are we saying, okay, we're letting the private sector dictate what the possibilities are here, or how do we rein that in? So that's something that I think as we move forward, maybe the ad hocs are gonna consider speaking to that, but that is a question that we have to make sure we understand, and I think we're thoughtful enough that we're not gonna just say we're gonna abandon in our responsibilities and abdicate our roles and give it to the private sector. I think it has to be done concurrently by both. But that is something that, you know, who's leading what, right?

So that's just a preliminary question that I would say we need to respond to. And, you know, I think that, you know, the idea of a working group is good. Everything I've seen and the principles that were made, that were listed by the consultant shows that what we're looking at is probably a blend of something. There isn't an ideal concept or idea or a vision. It just sounds like this is a very unique opportunity. And so to the extent that we can incorporate a lot of the needs, you know, and they're done well, I think we can really have something special here. And between us, I think it's probably going to

outlive many of us. I think that these things take time and unfortunately as quickly as we want to move we're going to realize that there are obstacles. So to the extent that we're going to get through this cycle that may not happen. We may hit the next cycle and it may run concurrent with that next cycle. It's probably more realistic. So but thank you for being such great hosts and thank you for wanting to work with us and saying look let's have this conversation. Thank you. please don't feel inclined that you have to speak either but we'll go down the line

yeah I don't mean it's scourge but just don't feel pressure that you that you need to add something or people I don't want to be redundant I agree with most of the things that were said here what I do want to do is tack on to a few of the comments councilmember segmento touched on something that I actually brought up at the last a year ago study session which was about the communities that surround that area and I think we keep talking about this in the context of Santa Ana and I want to remind folks that this actually kisses my boundary of my district in a very impoverished area so we're not just talking about Santa

Ana the neighborhoods that exist there or the schools there we're also talking about Garden Grove there are schools there's gang injunctions there's you know high density apartments and mobile homes so let's not forget that and I think I asked staff specifically at the last study session that moving forward when we when we have visuals of this property that we include more landmarks of Garden Grove because this is gonna directly affect those areas and I did not see that reflected on these maps. So moving forward, we need to make sure that we include that. And the other thing too is, you know, one of the,

I think two millennials sitting here, we have to think about not just what's trending now, what's trend in the past, what we projected out, you know, from 20 years ago, what it would look like now, but we have to project out 20, 30, 40 years into the future from today, right? What was cool and innovative back then and it's actually happening now at a very slower rate, but what's going to happen past that? Council Member Martinez talked about, you know, self-driving vehicles and all these other opportunities that are happening in other states, and what is the big draw here in Southern California?

She mentioned sports medicine, things like that. So not that I'm inclined one way or the other or suggesting one thing over the other, but let's not focus in. Let's let the professionals come in, tell us what they think will work for this site because I'm not a Smee, I'm not going to know what should be or shouldn't be here, but I do want to stress that let's not think of this solely in the context of Sinianna's neighborhoods, but also in the ones of Garden Grove. She was looking at me when she said the two millennials up here.

Way down there. She was me. I'm close.

I already spoke a little bit, so I'll yield for now. Okay. If you have one more comment, but after the rest, speak.

I actually go down the checklist, but I guess everybody already mentioned it, so I don't want to take the part from the time from all of you. So I concur to most of whatever you mentioned.

Thank you. I want to thank all the staff for the great reports. It's been great work. I want to thank Garden Grove for hosting this this evening.

A couple of things. just I feel that it's very necessary to to echo what councilmember Soloria was saying a minute ago about the zoning because right now it's zoned at something else open space and I think we really need to get on that and change the zone to multi-use that way we can get that out of the way and but this project touches my ward my words around this surrounds this area and we do need to be mindful of the residents and very sensitive to what they have to say and

what we're going to do we can do a large project but we also can do it in a sense that it won't affect the residents so much we can make it a medium project or something to that effect so won't give such a high impact this we are talking about some a lot of residents it's a very very old neighborhood there's a lot of people there and we definitely need to be mindful I real quick I want to make a quick comment on former councilmember Michelle Martinez's idea about

the sports medicine area that is a great great idea in my opinion because we have a lot of professional sports teams here but we also have a lot of semi-pro teams and then we have a lot of regular high-level amateur teams also where the from the parks very very competitive and if you play sports long enough you're going to experience injury and these folks are very competitive and they're always looking for the edge to get better to get faster always looking for

that one area that's gonna they can improve on but the reality is people do experience injuries so this is something I can't think of another area where they have something at large where they can come down and do research and and look into this it's just it's a great idea but to be something that we need to explore more I want to thank you Mary Jones

thank you sir David anything else to add at this time I just would like to say that it's an honor to be a part of this process and just to say thank you to the City of Santa Ana for being a part of this with us and for the synergy and cohesion that I feel up here at this table. I think all of us had a lot to agree upon tonight and I think that's a great first step and a great part of this process. As I look through the tentative dates and the timeline, obviously we've talked about moving this forward and quickening the process as much as possible

and I have faith in our staff and in the City of Santa Ana that we can do just that wherever it's permitted and wherever it makes sense. I'm very excited to see what the ICSC convention in May brings to the table. And I'm just excited to see what developers in general bring to the table. There's so many things that this could be. I don't want to put it in a box or limit it. I'm excited just to watch this process unfold. I think the ad hoc committees is a good idea. My suggestion, though, is just to make sure that that line of communication continues so that the entire council is updated and is aware and abreast of what is happening

because sometimes there's a lot of detail and minutiae that goes on. and just to make sure that we're all aware of it and have our eyes on this and have a handle of what's going on. And I just want to thank staff, both in the city of Santa Ana and Garden Grove, for all their hard work on the presentations and so forth. Thank you. Okay, thank you, everyone. A lot of great comments made here tonight.

Sensitivity of the local neighborhoods surrounding the site and the reality of plopping something big and grandiose in there obviously requires a lot of thought and diligence.

Kind of an underlying theme of excitement and expression of wanting to expedite, but at the same time wanting to proceed with caution and with diligence and with a lot of thorough analysis along the way. Very profound comment I thought from Council Member Sarmiento about just the high-level approach at this of, you know, private market driven versus public vision driven and that sort of concept. And maybe I'll just clarify my thought on that for what it's worth is just, I just didn't want to jade the private sector in terms of too much upfront. I just kind of wanted to leave it a blank slate,

let them come to us, and then once we see what's out there within the realm of possibilities, then we kind of dive into okay so that's what's out there now what's important to us and what's what you know kind of shape the public vision around the realm of the possible different solutions that we got and i'm afraid that if we if we skew it too much up front then they're going to tell us what we want to hear but not necessarily give us we may be stifling creativity and other options for that um timing you know Stephanie you mentioned ICSC coming up if this hits the street if the

RFP RFQ RFP hits the street in around April ICSC which is the largest convention in Las Vegas every year which happens in May which is real estate developers finance people cities retailers all coming together a lot of deal-making that goes on a lot of our hotel deals and other deals we've had in in the city over the last couple decades have come out of ICSC relationships that have been formed. So it'd be a wonderful opportunity if this was together and actually hit the street in time to be marketed and promoted at ICSC.

Comments about inclusion. So yeah, there's talk about forming ad hoc committees. I think we already received direction in the last go around to do that, so we will implement that. but also to make sure that everyone is included. The purpose of the ad hoc committees being that smaller groups could meet more frequently and stay kind of more hands-on because putting together full-blown meetings like this with both councils take a while, and that's part of why it's been a year since we've been here. So I would suggest that we proceed to form the ad hoc committees.

Maybe both city councils go back and sort of convene amongst themselves and figure that out, make a selection of three from each council and maybe we do that within the next couple weeks if that's if that's feasible um just so we have a little bit of opportunity to kick that around i think amongst ourselves and the individual councils and figure out how we approach that and i would also like to recommend or do you need a formal motion to that from the garden Grove City Council that we direct staff to proceed with preparation of the RFQ RFP

how would how would you like that or is there a Omar how would you like that do you want a formal motion or yeah I think that in order for staff to be able to expand you know continue to expand resources in doing that we do need a motion okay so clarification just terms of procedurally and I think the way this was structured on the agenda is, the property is owned by Garden Grove, so it would be the Garden Grove City Council directing staff through an approved motion to prepare and proceed on the RFP, and then subsequently, Santa Ana City Council could acknowledge that or concur with it, if you will. Yes. Okay, so I'd like to move.

Mr. Mayor, I do have, please, one thought. I know what we did, the last time actually worked pretty good where once there was an RFP both councils adopted it at their their level and I think we split the costs because there is some level of power and who does the RFP and so if this is a shared partnership I don't want to lose that by this piece that's not to say we can't act as it's pretty general today but but once you know your staff kind of gets it going that it somehow go back to the council and if there is going to be some cost maybe there is maybe there isn't for this that

that we split it um and then one last story regarding timing i think for santa anna another reason why the timing is a little bit sensitive to us uh is that the streetcar is coming it's coming real fast it's not really talk i mean they're they've done already a lot of pre-construction work, they're cutting up streets. It's coming very late this year, early next, and I worked at OCTA years. I know how they count boardings, and I know how they count a lot of other things that they do their best, but if we don't have a good anchor or good activity on this side of the streetcar,

it's going to be deemed a failure by many, and getting traction to do next legs or other work is going to be increasingly more difficult. Not that timing, and this needs to be the only driver, but it's something that we all need to be sensitive to as well.

Thank you. Does staff or council or either want to kind of weigh in on those comments about just the process of going to RFP or the cost of going to RFP? How will the two staffs work together in the preparation of the RFP? I think the process is ongoing. We will be meeting regularly, weekly, to really formulate the outline and essentially the format for the RFP.

As the ad hoc committee is established, we will certainly report out to those respective ad hoc committee members on the status and milestones of the RFP. We will be ready to bring this RFP to the street in April. That is our target. If we can bring it sooner, that would be optimal as well. In terms of cost, at this point in time, most of the RFP formulation is done in-house with both Santa Ana and Garden Grove team members. If there is a cost, it may be associated with a third party facilitator to assist us with the economic analysis as those final proposals are brought forward and

at the time of submittal. So we can certainly continue to report out to the councils respectively if additional resources are needed, but at this point in time, the RFP as it stands alone will be prepared internally. So if I'm hearing this correctly, there's really no need to amend the motion, we're already sharing in the responsibilities and whatnot, and it won't delay or process any, correct? Yeah, that's correct. The reason we had a cost-sharing agreement is because we had to hire the two consultants, and so the city is sharing the cost of the consultant's work.

But if we're doing the work in-house, the staff is already within the budget. That's the case. I'll second the motion.

So that then just points to the criticality of having ad hocs that can review the RFPs, because again, what's in the RFP and who has authority over timeline and other things are critical, and we don't want either city to make all these decisions on their own. So let's continue to have both staff working together and let's get these ad hocs going so that they can be part of the process before approval.

Two weeks of realistic time frame to get both of our ad hocs together? Kind of a general question for everybody. Yeah. Okay. Let's do it. Put a little time, artificial time pressure on ourselves to just get that started, and then the ad hocs can start interacting with both staffs as they can be. Okay. So motion in a second. This is for Garden Grove City Council to direct staff to proceed with preparation of an RFQ RFP. Call to vote. Council member Radio. Yes. Can I please stop in? Yes. Council Member Hilton? Yes.

Mayor Jones? Yes. That leads five those votes?

Thank you.

I'm sure it's five those votes. I'm not sure I'm going to get it.

What would the legal counsel, what would be the next appropriate act for Santa Ana Council

the agreement that both city councils approve of the last joint meeting actually individually there was an agreement that each council of approved individually already has provisions for the ad hoc committees to be formed so that doesn't require an additional motion and at this point, you know, Santa Ana can simply, if it wishes to acknowledge and concur, they can do that, or they can simply not take any further action and just wait for when we're ready to come back to the city councils. I would suggest they do, just so we're all kind of

showing the sign of being all on the same page. Yeah, I would, with all due respect, I think maybe Mr. Mayor Potem, you could go ahead and leave that on us. I don't think we have our city attorney here who can even know this thing works. You do have representation if you wish to put him on the hot seat.

If he wants to join, I'll get closer. It'd be great.

No need. He's conveniently hiding.

All I was going to say is that this is technically, as an attorney who does some land use work in other cities, this is your asset, so you technically have rights to it. we it would be like somebody else who had an asset within our city doing that so we really are in a secondary position to the asset owner so i think it's symbolic you go ahead and take this that we concur and we we support the direction that the asset owner is taking with respect to this asset that's within the city balance absolutely thank you councilman sarmento and i do concur with legal counsel from Garden Grove.

The action that was taken by Garden Grove was the perfectly acceptable and sufficient action as the property owner. Santa Ana City Council can take an action in support of that. However, there is no need or requirement for the Santa Ana City Council to take any action at this point.

We're going to go ahead and take an oral support for it. So if I could have my council members...

All moved. Second.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. Sanhau. Aye. Motion passes.

Solid air. Exactly, yeah. I think it's great that even if symbolic that that shows that the two councils are both on the same page and we're exploring this together hand in hand. I think that's the only way we're going to get across the finish line and get it done is if we continue to work together and care about each other's interests in this process as well.

Mr. Mayor, if I can just chime in. Scott Stiles, City Manager. So I just want to, for the benefit of all the members of the two city councils, our staffers, our two staffs have been really working tremendously well together on pushing this process forward. We know urgency is the word, but be diligent about it. We're focused on that. We want to pay attention to that.

For the sake of transparency, we're also, we will endeavor to include a lot of this information on the website that we're building for transparency so all of the residents, both of our communities can read this and we can push data out and advise folks, a lot of whom need to know more about this. So we'll continue on that course as well.

Yeah, please.

So I know you say you're going to be putting it on your website, but it also

go on the Santa Ana website? Okay, and also... We've been paralleling both websites as we've developed this process along the way. Okay, and then also are we taking advantage of

social media to present to the community, like, you know, the plans and I guess the presentations that you gave us today, is that out there too in

social media? We will get it on the website and our city manager's office will certainly get it out to the media as necessary. As we hit milestones, there'll probably be some periods of time where information isn't going out to social media, but we certainly, when we hit those milestones, we will release that information. And I would like to add the summaries of all the presentations through the community workshops and town hall meetings that have been already presented in the Envision Willowick website, and the information that's presenting today will be added as well. So they have gone live and we appreciate

your input and we'll certainly promote that outreach on social media to really update the community members both in Garden Grove, Santa Ana and the County of Orange and far wide of this opportunity coming ahead.

One of the things we'd be cautious on is when you share these these plans, these were just visioned possibilities, basically, exemplar. They're not concrete, this is gonna happen, or these are what we wanna do type of things. Goes out to RFP, developer might come back with something we never thought of, or the community never thought of, like maybe a drone landing site for Amazon, or some kind of, I mean, I'm just being facetious, but we're moving in technology and whatnot, so one of the problems when you put this stuff out on social media is community oh my god they're building a stadium there there

you know you get people angry needlessly really so anyway just you know be

cautious of that well true

thank you anyone else if not I'll say a few words and we can wrap it up so thank you everyone for coming we've got residents we've got consultants we've We've got staff, we've got market participants, presumably, all that. So thank you very much for taking the time out of your lives to be here on an evening with us to discuss this. Again, I'd say I'm super excited about this. This is a weird meeting, right? Like it's hard enough getting things done in any one city in a formal process, let alone getting two city councils together to have a meeting and two staffs together.

It's got to be very stressful for staff trying to figure out how to prepare for all this kind of thing and to present in front of two councils together. So huge thanks to staff for all the legwork behind the scenes that went into this meeting and that went into the last year, frankly. And I just want to encourage all of us to say let's stay positive. Let's stay together and let's stay focused on the prize here, which is if we keep our heads and move forward diligently, we've got an opportunity to do something absolutely great here for both of our cities. So let's go hand in hand in that direction and keep this thing moving forward.

So thank you everyone for the support from both councils tonight to take this thing one step farther down the field. And with that, we will adjourn and we will continue to report out as our city managers said transparently as we go forward. So thank you very much. Have a good night.