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We're live at the monthly meeting of the Tupelo Redevelopment Agency. The agency is the city-created board charged with overseeing the development of the Fairpark District in downtown Tupelo.
The meeting started at 2 and is slated to end at 5 p.m. It's at the Downtown Tupelo Main Street office and Daphene with Main Street has been kind enough to provide us with coffee.
Attendees:
- John Oxford, chairman
- Lynn Norris, city CFO
- Debbie Brangenberg, city liaison and exec director of Main Street
- Reed Hillen, board member
- Darrell Smith, city COO
- BJ Teal, director of the city's development services department
- Tim Prewitt, board member
- Tony Bologna, design and development consultant from Memphis
- Jim Collins, board member
- Daphene Hendricks, an employee of Main Street and TRA
The board approved its monthly bills:
- $4,624.88 to Ten Oaks Consulting for Fairpark maintenance
- $377.48 to Sundance Water Design
The board opens its annual worksession. Topics on the agenda:
- vision
- land use planning
- identify projects for development
- marketing
Tony Bologna, consultant who has worked with Fairpark since the beginning to help shape its design:
When Toyota first started, there was a lot of talk and excitement about Fairpark. Then Toyota put it on hold, but now that it is back on, the talk is back. We need to talk about the future of Fairpark.
We need to have something always going on. One way to do that would be with residential. We could pick one lot and build a house on it to our guidelines and how we want it. People want to see things going on. It's not good when something hasn't happened in six months.
One way to do it - TRA already owns the lot. You have to find a builder you trust and then fund the building and pay the builder a fee.
You build just one at a time. You don't build a bunch at a time. Once you get a contract for sale on the house, you roll the money into the construction of another house.
You don't tie up a bunch of money in this, maybe $200,000. Square footage could be 1,600 to 2,300.
We did this in Harbor Town (the Memphis mixed-use development Fairpark is modeled after). It allowed us to include the details and the quality that we wanted.
Another way - builder could submit all the bills each month and then TRA pays all the bills. That's kind of a bookkeeping nightmare.
House was sold in Harbor Town through Realtors who made full commission on the sale.
Another way to stir up interest - keep the area manicured. Grass needs to be mowed. Everything needs to be manicured.
Reed Hillen, board member: We haven't decided about where we will go with Tommy Morgan's proposal (previous coverage), but if we did, we could tie in something with a home sale.
Bologna: The key thing is getting the right house. The "wow" factor has to be there.
Hillen: We need more small, upscale houses. We don't have that in Tupelo. If and when we decide to go back to Tommy, we need to make a home sale part of that.
Debbie Brangenberg, city liaison and exec director of Downtown Tupelo Main Street Association: What incentives did you offer to get people to move to the island?
Bologna: We had different issues that you do. People didn't want to move out to the island because they had to go through bad neighborhoods.
Here, people are downtown so they don't have that issue. I think you have people who don't want to be the lone ranger. They don't want to move downtown and have vacant lots and weeds next to them. If offices move down here, they want to have shops and restaurants by them.
Next part of this is how do we get some real mixed-used things in the buildings around City Hall.
Plus, we've got the apartments - the biggest thorn in our side. We've got to come up with incentives to make apartments work. Henry Turley said he's still willing to do it if we can figure out how to make it work.
Study said the highest rent people would pay is 85 cents/square foot. But we would need a little over $1 to make it work. That's too high of a gap.
Hillen: Why are we talking about apartments again? Is this the apartment complex by the pond? I thought we decided we didn't want to do that. Why do we have to?
Bologna: Apartments at some point create that sense of critical mass. It gets people downtown.
Toyota changes the whole dynamics. If it gets blowing and going again in a year, it might change all the dynamics. We can take a look at that later.
And parking, there's too much parking behind City Hall. We're never going to fill that up again. We've talked about doing a building in part of the parking lot. Wouldn't think about doing that now, but we should keep that in the back of our mind for later.
Should think about mixed-use building on the other side of the parking lot. Get someone who can use the whole first floor (maybe office tenant) and have floors of apartments up above. That makes sense.
I think you'll have a lot more activity as Toyota gets closer.
Oxford: For better or for worse, Sunday alcohol sales has interested several restaurants that weren't interested before.
Good lot for a coffee/donut shop is the grass patch in front of Hilton. We don't own it but it'd be a good spot to market for that.
Bologna: What's going on with the commercial/residential association?
Brangenberg: I think the residential owners are ready to go forward but the commercial owners aren't sure. Stanford is the big unknown.
Bologna: What do we need to go forward? We already have the documents with the point structure. I think we need to get the association put in place as soon as possible. Can just start with residential association.
We've presented it two or three times to the owners. We've made adjustments.
Brangenberg: We should look back over and see if we need to make more adjustments since it's been a while since we've looked at it.
Bologna: Tim and I are on the committee. We can review it and present it again in an open session. We can't let this drag on any more.
Tim Prewitt: We need to get all the people together and let them know that we're doing this. We keep saying "we're selling this" and "we're doing that" but the people who live there are the ones who sell the neighborhood.
Bologna: Absolutely. The people who live there, if they don't feel they have a vested interest in the neighborhood, they aren't going to sell it.
Oxford: If we do this for a third time, it needs to be for finality. We can't keep getting these people to come back. They aren't going to do it if we do that. We can't keeping asking them to get in a room for two hours and speak legal terms to them for two hours.
Prewitt: What if we got renderings on billboards of what we wanted to do? I bring people down there all the time and they have a hard time visualizing what we want to do.
Bologna: We can do billboards if we are going to do the development.
Members and Bologna are talking about the "awful brown nonfence" in the residential area that has just fence posts and steps to nowhere. They are asking what they can do about it because they don't own the property. No decisions or recommendations made, but the discussion should warn the property owners - you and your lawn mowing habits are being watched :-)
Bologna: Points determine how much the lot owners pay in association/maintenance fees. Back before, we set the maintence budget at $100,000 and that was really high. (Prewitt said the budget also included commercial lots).
Brangenberg: People at the meeting couldn't get past that number. It was a sample budget. It wasn't a real budget. It wasn't what it would really cost.
Bologna: You have a track record now and you know how much it costs to maintain. You should put together a real budget now and present it to them.
Prewitt: People wanted to know what would happen to any extra money.
Bologna: You could lower fees for the next year. Or you can put it in reserve. In Harbor Town, we put the money in reserve for road paving. Or you can invest the money in reserve. Once you figure out how much money you need in reserve, you can start lessening the fees.
Residential development gets development in a mixed-use development gets included in the commercial association not the residential because that gets too complicated. And the residential people would pay the building owner and not the association.
You get into the Us versus Them all the time. Commercial versus Residential. In order to get this put to bed, we just need to establish the residential association on their own. And maybe later, we can establish the commercial association on their own.
General talking: Stalking horse bidder has been identified for Stanford building in Fairpark. Full auction is supposed to be this month.
Bologna: What would really help is to get development on the former Oby's and Joe/Chad Kea lot. It's tough because people who could get a loan last year can't.
Oxford (banker at Renasant): You know something is up when mortgage rates are so low and people still aren't buying. Money is cheap and people still aren't buying homes.
Prewitt: And as a contractor, I can tell you that they aren't building because they don't have jobs.
Brangenberg: TRA has about $850,000 to work with.
Oxford: I don't ever want to see us get below $500,000.
Prewitt: A big mistake people make is when they hear Toyota is coming they think "Instant people. Instant goldmine." That's not going to happen. A lot of developers lost out in other areas because they thought that. We have the advantage of using their experience.
What you've got to remember about Toyota, in order to save face, the people who buy these homes, the homes can't be more than the guy who runs the plant. And from what I understand, the guy has a home that is $350,000.
So whatever we do has to be less than that.
Bologna: If we did this, a good first home would be $175,000.
Prewitt: You've got to create a lot of bang for your buck. What we've got now - we've got a lot of really nice properties. But what we lack now is "I've got to have it right now." We've got to do that.
Members are halfway joking that they need to make the homes more appealing to the women because the women are the ones that make the buying decision.
Collins: I still feel we to get that area to itself. It needs to feel like it is an area by itself.
Bologna: In the plans for a year or two down the road is to fence in that area.
Prewitt: I hate fences. My idea is that we plant trees all around our perimeter edge. Large trees. LARGE trees.
Collins: Absolutely.
Bologna: You need to develop in bite sizes. Don't do 40 at a time. Do 5. Easier and you develop a sense of urgency because you say "There's only 1 lot left before we go to the next phase."
Prewitt: If this was my piece of property, I would plant trees along the perimeter and then I would strategically plant trees at specific areas inside the the development in groves. I'd also plant grass that stays green all year.
Collins: A lot of people have asked me about the cattle barn. We've got to block that off.
Prewitt: 20-25 foot trees could do that. My suggestion is that we plant several types of trees and that we don't plant them in a row. We want them to look natural.
We want to block the view.
It's hard to sell a house in the middle of what appears to be a street.
Bologna: Hard for people to visualize. When they see it now, they think, "That's what I'm going to be looking at for now on."
Prewitt: We need something growing and alive out there. When you go out there and it looks like tumbleweeds, it's hard for a buyer to visualize it. That's what we're lacking.
My experience is that most people, including myself, do not have good imaginations when it comes to seeing the finished product. What about a rendering?
Bologna: That's valid. I can see us putting a rendering out there.
Oxford: Last thing there is to talk about is the housing project.
Bologna: You can't let the builder do it on his own dime or it won't get done. It needs to be overseen locally.
Prewitt (of JBHM): This is my background and I'll volunteer to oversee and I'll throw in my part for nothing.
We can build the house - we can build the house ourselves. I'll manage that. We can hire the subs and TRA will actually build it. This will get it rolling and I'll do it for free. Y'all think about it.
I know I'll do it right because I want to sell some stuff out there. And you've got to have the best subcontractors out there. We've got to have the job so the buyers when they walk up they say, "I can't get this anywhere else and I want this."
Collins: We've got to do this right.
Bologna: The goal is to show everyone what we think is right. We've got to do it right so they'll see what we mean.
Members are talking and saying there is one lot left in the current phase. It's sandwiched between two houses and it's a tough lot. Members say that lot would make a good lot for TRA to build on.
Hillen: We need to come up with incentives to get commercial development in Fairpark. We need to get someone to step up and build. We could severely discount the lot prices.
Brangenberg: We could sit down and review the lot prices.
BJ Teal of the city: My primary concern is stabilization of neighborhoods and blighted areas.
First thing has to be the overall appearance of these areas so they will attract developers and increase our land values and help the tax bases.
In Fairpark, what if some of the incentives could be infrastructure in place? Sewer lines, underground utilities ...
Oxford: What happened to the property we deeded over to the Neighborhood Development Corp (headed by Zell Long at the city) by the basketball courts by Front Street?
Teal: We have 12 lots. My goal over the next few months is to attract developers to build.
Public meeting wrapping up.
Members identify the following projects for the to-do list:
- building a house in Fairpark
- planting trees around the perimeter of the project
- determining appropriate landscaping plants (grass varieties and trees)
- creating the residential association
- reviewing lot prices
Collins makes a motion to pursue a homebuilding project. Members all vote to study how TRA could build the home itself and make the project cost-effective.
Members vote to go into an executive session to discuss the pricing of the lot next to the Renasant Bank property and to discuss the time limitations in a contract to build.
An executive session means that the members and their invitees discuss business in a private meeting that is without the media and is off the record. This is a 100 percent legal session due to the nature of the reasons stated before the session started.
Regular session started back after 30 minutes.
Board has authorized John Oxford to negoitiate a land sale.
Another motion has been made and passed to sell the lots with the original bylaws, which require residential landowners to develop the property within one year. The board voted to amend the bylaws and contract to require landowners to come in 60 days after the year passes to give TRA an update on the property and allow for a property review.
Meeting adjourned after 2.5 hours.
Brad Prewitt is on the Major Thoroughfare Committee.
Tim Prewitt is a construction administrator at JBHM architects and is on the TRA board.
I've corrected the list of attendees.
As per my earlier comment about the apartments, I talked with Bologna after the meeting to hear exactly why it called the apartments a "thorn."
As I suspected, he said it was because it has been so difficult to get them developed. The "thorn" came from the development side, not because they are apartments.
He reiterated his earlier comment that apartments are needed to created critical mass and get more people in the area.
AvilaSJ - Several of the other upscale apartment complexes in town were mentioned at the meeting as comparisons of what would be good in Fairpark.
At one point, the apartments in Fairpark were going to be for upscale, high-end living. Since the project has been on hold, I don't know if that's still the mission but I seriously doubt TRA would allow a complex that didn't meet the standards of the development.
The board members continue to stress that they want to attract good residents downtown but that the price points of living in Fairpark need to be looked at to make that happen.
Main Street board members have said this too, adding that the prices right now prevent young couples from buying starter homes downtown.
But now that things are picking up, we as residents expect action. Or I can assure you we will not be here much longer.
We both work out of town and have no other reason to live here other than we like living here.
And you are correct the people that live here are your best sellers. My husband and I do everything we can to promote this area as do the other residents that actually do live here and don't just own property.
Let me address a few items.
1. Yes, the weeds are a huge problem. Boyd does a great job on keeping the grass around the residents done. But the vacant fields are a mess and need to be kept up better.
2. The ugly brown fence I would most certainly like to see addressed soon. I am tired of looking at it. The owners of that property either need to build or sell it and move on. They should at least be expected to put up the wrought iron between the fence posts.
3. I would like to see the empty lot in the 4 house row be the lot that gets the house. At least finish out that section.
4. The cow barn actually doesn't bother me. But I would much prefer trees and not fences.
5. As for apartments..I don't have an huge issue with it as long as they are upper scale apartments. I absolutely do not want this to turn into a rental neighbor. We already have one house that is being rented out.
6. I want the neighborhood association started as soon as possible. And John Oxford you are correct, I do not want my time wasted sitting in a room listening to more legal mumbo jumbo. Have everything ready to go before you go and call us all together.
7.As for Tommy Morgan, unless he is going to invest and start building good quality, unique homes in Fairpark, my suggestion would be no to his request.
We are excited about the new businesses that are locating to Fairpark and all of the activities that are going on. That is a huge plus! But the residential section needs to get a push on and soon. Our patience is wearing thin.
Check out the link below and tell me how many 'PURPLE' you seeing?
It's obvious there's needed growth.
http://www.tupelomainstreet.com/~tupelomainst962/uploads/DOWNTOWN MAP Front.pdf
Tupelo is a small southern town and, like WLJ said, there's nothing wrong with that.
But small southern towns, don't have, don't need, and can't afford:
1) A helicopter
2) An airport
3) A bus system
4) A communications director and other unnecessary "staff"
5) A deputy police chief that can't effectively lead because they've committed felonies while on the job and are now un-certifiable.
6) Annexation of more land when it can't service the citizens it has already.
7) Hiring consultants and forming "task forces" to make nearly every decision.
8) Bike lanes that only a few dozen people a year will ever use.
9) Trying to force the creation of entertainment districts.
10) Building of entertainment venues with taxpayer money
11) And probably a dozen other things that Jack Jr. thinks Tupelo needs but doesn't realize it can't afford
There's SO MUCH that would need to change about Tupelo before either a Hard Rock or an entertainment district in general is even a realistic topic of discussion.
And what needs to change has a lot more to do with the attitudes of Tupelo's citizens than it does with the local government trying to force the development of an entertainment district.
Tupelo is a small town, and there's nothing wrong with that. But stop trying to make it something that it is not now and will probably never be, no matter how hard you try or how much taxpayer money you spend.
Really? You're serious? Are you related to Jack Reed Jr.?
I'll bet you think that Tupelo is ready to try to develop an "entertainment district" too, huh?
Name another non-oceanfront US town of 40,000 people that has a Hard Rock Cafe?
Elvis' birthplace is not enough of a draw to support a Hard Rock Cafe.
So, the reason that there's not a Hard Rock in Tupelo is simple, Tupelo doesn't fit the demographic model that they use when determining where to put their restaurants.
People need to get real about what Tupelo is and is not.
And contrary to Jack Reed Jr.'s thinking, Tupelo is just a little small southern town.
Also Downtown Tupelo could add more restaurants like the popular ones: TGIFS, Buffalo Wild Wings, Hard Rock Cafe, etc. and also hometown restaurants that has that southern charm, yet keeping up with the modern times. Why we don't have Hard Rock Cafe here? It's Elvis' Birthplace! I can just see it on a corner somewhere downtown.
A dance club could be established. If it goes well and reaches its full capacity every, say, Fri-Saturdays nights, then they can add another dance club/lounge. Think of Beale Street in Memphis, but less bars/dance clubs. Senses on Poplar Ave. is a great example! They got great designs inside and the club is always jumping. We need something like that downtown.
It's my understanding that the apartments themselves are not the problem. The problem is getting them developed and finding a model that will convince a developer to build them.
Make sense?
Any other questions from anyone?