The Fall River Redevelopment Authority convened its monthly meeting on March 30, 2022, at City Hall. The board commenced by approving the open session minutes from February 23, 2022, and subsequently approved a warrant for March totaling $85,163.63. A significant portion of the meeting was dedicated to updates on the City Pier project. Discussions included the development of comprehensive signage rules, with Ann and Johnny volunteering to work on this with the Executive Director, involving input from the parks department, police, and insurance. The board approved a change order for an additional seven bollards, mandated by National Grid, at an estimated cost of $10,000 to $15,000. Additionally, potential future change orders for specialized electrical outlets for events and the conceptual approval for a locked yard hydrant for water access were discussed.
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i'd like to call to order the um fall river redevelopment authority monthly meeting held here at city hall it's five o'clock the recording of this open session can be viewed on full river government television www.frgtv.com first item on the agenda is to call to order this meeting and i will read the open meeting law statement which says pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video
0:38recording of this public meeting or may transmit transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmission are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible i'd
1:08hmm
1:23and also joining with us is sarah page our executive director john coughlin our council and ken fiola administrative service consultant as well as paul second item on the agenda is the approval of the open session the minutes from february 23rd 2022.
1:45remove we approve the 223 meeting minutes open session is there a second second second by joe madeira all in favor signify by saying aye aye anyone opposed okay so move third item is the approval of warrant and financial update any first of all i want to confirm everyone did receive it okay the discussion questions a motion to accept smooth we approve the warrant uh total of 85 163.63 for march okay
2:31uh motion made second second second by anne uh all in favor signify by saying aye aye anyone opposed someone uh the fourth item is the city pier 600 and wall street um we're going to go over well you want to talk about the signage yes like do you want to talk about the signs let's talk about the signage so in the contract is a a whole list of signs that were kind of placeholders
3:10that the uh engineer put in there so that we would have mas bid on numerous signs that would need to be put in concrete bases and then produce so now we're looking at what signs do we exactly want i've talked with the head of the parks department i looked at a pier that's similar to ours in tiverton that had some you know really similar kinds of rules that we might want
3:42i'm about to talk with the police department because we need to figure out all of our rules and how they'll be enforced or not enforced so that we can come up with these signs that specifically list the rules for city peer and it's complicated and what we have come up with is that we would have two large signs with all the rules one would be at the entrance from the north and one would be
4:18from the entrance off the boardwalk and um i need to talk with paul burke about a sign that says don't dive don't swim off the pier and we may need a couple of those well for the for the record paul burke is our insurance yes sorry no that's okay yeah and um so what i wanted to ask the board is if anyone would like to serve on just uh if they would like to work
4:53with me on this project i assumed i might have ann and johnny do that because they've been working on waterfront issues um but i wanted to ask if anybody else would like to really weigh in on the rules so there's no standard set of rules either from a state perspective or no it's amazing how online you can look at all different you know ours is similar to a park except
5:28that it has all these aspects of being up here where phishing's an issue where you know jumping off of it is an issue so there really aren't and so i've looked at all different examples found good language bad language but for example we have bicycle hitches there and so we're assuming people are going to bicycle to the pier but the parks department said you absolutely don't want to allow people bicycling on
6:06the walkways now when nobody's there it would be fine for people to bicycle on the walkways but if it's a busy saturday with kids all over the place no you don't want someone bicycling on the walkways so these are the kinds of issues we have to kind of parse out all right and you know and the part in city parks it says don't bicycle on the walkways implying that there are other areas that you could bicycle
6:42and um the other thing that is that everyone has been clear about is if we say it's open from john to dusk then we also have to say except by permit because we're going to allow people to watch the fireworks there and you know there will be various events and concerts that will go beyond so they said if you're going to have exceptions you need to make sure you're explicit about those
7:13that's kind of where i want the police to weigh in because if we set rules and we're not going to enforce them that's a problem and they're the ones who will go if there's a problem so so i'm deep in as you can tell with this whole issue and i don't want to spend a lot of money and have rules put up and then decide oh that was a mistake we may be there and
7:40we may have to deal with that but well what you said about uh dealing with your insurance company yeah because that will protect us and we'll know what our exposure is right and recovering from that explosion um i don't know i mean you're talking about this specific item right the signage yes and i'm actually under pressure to get this decided because the contractor is trying to make sure
8:07they order everything that needs to be installed and so we need to tell them exactly what we well i'll be happy to work with you okay does anybody else want to work with me on it it might not be the heavy lifting side okay great i thought johnny had already kind of engaged in it so you and johnny okay yeah well wait a minute are we going to bring this back for the board vote as to
8:33what is ultimately going to be on this list of rules we can i think we should yeah okay and putting in down too because i've coerced it oh she didn't say no i think the major thing the contractor wants to know is where they're going because they can um you know and kind of what size they're going to be they can pour the concrete foundation and have a post there and then they can
9:06order the sign later and put it up okay okay just a question you may want to open your audio signs uh-huh order duplicates oh because they'll be taken down vandalized or something like that whether but there's also the possibility that we'll put our rules up there and then realize they weren't quite right so i think we may have to you know decide oh there are some scientists there's some signs that are
9:38in a website update some whenever we change them why do they all have to be spelled out well if you go to bicentennial park two blocks off what's what rules there are hardly any rules there but most parks have rules now the city has a list of on their website of all the rules for the parks and then they have kind of simplified lifts at their park which is what we would be having a relatively
10:06simplified list yeah but do people really go to the website and say i wonder what the rules are in the park well i don't know i mean everybody has cell phones i walk tto uh ttoy properties i walk everything you just go you look at what hours they're open i don't oh i was yeah i was a great point yeah and sarah and i walked down so you walked through the other one and like there were
10:28random signs like don't eat the birds
10:37yeah that's what jones said they're on a website they just did it could be a qr code everyone has a cell phone but also have a qr code if anyone's really interested they can scan it and we just change the back end of the qr code we can always keep updating the website or something yeah that's a good idea just seems to be crazy to list 12 rules and then change them every time you want
11:02to right yeah i i'm more thinking that we just might operate for three months and then say wow we wish we had said you can't do this or yeah right like we should get the major rules up there no jumping no this know that right right the ones that are breaking the laws or or cause potentially causing hazard to themselves or anyone at the park and then anything else anything smaller they can just go to the
11:32site what are the rules for the boardwalk is that open door to dusk like that i mean this is part of a larger nobody enforces the whole people walking from the heritage state park down to veterans memorial there's no reinforcing people that can't walk there's no park closures but it's supposed to be done to dusk the whole thing i have no idea i know heritage turned into dawn to dust that's the state of people they're
11:58walking after i mean this this boardwalk goes from bicentennial all the way down exactly right and they worked very hard and spent a lot of money to put incredible lighting there so to say you know you can't be there after dark is it is a little ironic that'll be part of the discussion then yeah and wouldn't it be a discussion with the police department around yeah i think just to make a round
12:24you know when it gets to be a certain time there shouldn't be anyone there really well we will work on it okay thank you for listening to all that thank you for doing what you've done so far the next item under city pier is a change order approval for an additional seven bollards required by national grid at a cost of ten thousand to fifteen thousand dollars is there any discussion
12:51on this well we had to make that decision so you johnny ken and i agreed that they should go ahead and put the bollards up because national grid would not put the transformer there until they had the bollards so we're really asking you to confirm a decision that we felt we had no choice but to make okay thank you well is there a motion to confirm approval of the additional ten to fifteen thousand dollar expense
13:23and we approve the additional ten to fifteen additional dollars yep and uh second to that motion second second by joan all in favor aye aye anyone opposed so moved potential change orders for the electrical outlets for events dockage and a yard hydrant so we had made sure that we had high voltage electric uh service available in the middle part of the two piers and then out in the north pier four concerts
14:02this is especially important for the uh concerts that the narrows will be doing but there may be other concerts at the end of the pier and so we found that what we didn't have was the kind of box that you need with the kind of plugs that you need for plugging the amps in so we need to we're ordering this specific kind of box and that will be you know a change order it shouldn't be
14:36significant and we really need that because they need to be able to get this high voltage electricity do you want to say a little more to that no it's just uh we did a little research and um you know when uh audio visual folks come in this is it's called a cam lock and they just plug right in you don't have to do any wiring whatsoever it's kind of the standard for the industry so we uh
15:05they did the same thing down at um the gates and uh we talked with uh the gentleman the contractor that did it and he helped us uh provided us through what we need so we should be all set and disgusted last week with uh yeah so that will be a change order um well that's a future team change order we're not voting on it now we just need to know that it's
15:31coming up it's coming yeah yep and then the other that i want your approval on because we haven't you know we don't necessarily have to do this but we've gone back and forth in our original plans about water we said we don't want a water fountain and yet we have water service out to the site but we didn't put in any access or a tap so that if you had an event and you wanted to wash
16:08dishes or you know you needed water we don't have any way to access the water so what we are proposing to do is put in a yard hydrant so that will be locked and be not open to the public but if you have a big event you will be able to access water and it would come off of the irrigation system so it would be right near the entrance so it would be
16:34really handy for a caterer or a food truck or anyone to access so that's going to be a change order and i just think it makes logical sense and wanted you to um you know approve that conceptually okay right so what's the item about dockage that's listed here oh we're not there yet that's oh that's their children the uh it's just that um to some extent well the way that we ran the electric also serves
17:16the dockage and i thought maybe we needed to look at how the electric service would be made available to the docks but we've got that covered okay so we don't need to do anything extra it's just the this panel for the concerts oh okay thank you next item is uh city pier uh phase four we've got two applications uh the chapter 91 license to allow for uh dockage and events is that uh in the
17:58works it is in the works and so the next piece we're not sure if we're applying to the seaport council uh in may we were proposing to do that and can you're still looking into whether we should do it in may or in the fall we were getting different kind of different information from the seaport council um about the fact that if we don't have our chapter 91 license right in the fall
18:37that or if we if we're going to get it in such a way that we could actually put pilings and dockage in in the spring of 23 which is probably when we would be ready to do that they're saying then we should come with an application in november later in the year but we had wanted to go in may and we still are researching that jane our city grant writer is all said to
19:09help us write a grant if we can go in may so we're still trying to figure that out okay but it will be really um uh i think it's great that either way we'll be able to go and ask for funding for the pilings the floating docks and some of the um gang ways that would get you from the dock up to the pier and so um once we have our checked in 91 license
19:45we'll be able to do that in there right now designing that helping us price it so we would be ready to do a proposal when's the what's the timeline on obtaining a chapter 91 license well we think they're they're putting all the paperwork in in april and it can take six months for it to get approved and so it may not be until um the fall that we would have it
20:13approved we're hoping that we'll have it in the summer right but that itself in and of itself won't prohibit us from opening the pier no not opening the pier well maybe not not opening up here but there's a couple things right so i think we should you know we'll probably refine this a little bit in the next couple weeks as to whether or not we submit the application in may correct um
20:42so that typically they'll make an award in the summer uh for these things now historically they like to make sure that all the projects are permitted well yeah you know before they make an award but you know that's doesn't mean they can't make something contingent upon a permit my fear is that there's going to be a change in administrations and i'm not sure what the new admin we
21:06don't even know if there's going to be a seaport council right that's probably chances that would be but there could be a possibility that there may be a refocus of the council they may take it in the direction they may not be allocating monies for these types of projects in the future so i'd hate to see a potential funding round go by and not be able to tap into it secondly with regard to the six-month
21:34waiting period for the chapter 91 i'm hoping that because this is a straightforward chapter 91 permit that we may be able to accelerate the approval of that so if we put it in may and by the time we get an approval june excuse me maybe august you know that may be in time for an award from a cpa council so those are the types of things we're we're trying to wrestle with at this
22:03point um but you will need that chapter 91 permit to host concerts on the um on the pier you may be able to get a buy with the application pending to do some other things such as your festivals your food truck festivals or or something else but you don't want to be pressing that envelope too much until you get the actual permit in hand so we just it's a little delicate
22:32balance that we have to be in you know adhere to during that approval process we've applied it already we've applied we're going to well the paperwork for the chapter 91 should be submitted by may that's okay that's that's the one that was submitted down all right vader's doing that they're also costing out the docks and the floats and the pilings and everything all right any uh any other discussion on the city beer
23:08all right hearing none uh project updates again back to you sarah well we had a really good meeting last night of the um flint neighborhood uh little group that we have meeting with us and um i don't know if anyone else would like to speak to that um i can introduce what we did we had a huge map and we had a number of people um with property and people on the um the
23:48association the flint association and neighborhood association and um we went really along the map of pleasant street looking at buildings that are vacant buildings owned by the city buildings that are um condemned you know just looked at all the challenges and talked about the importance of having um more inspections done being able to really go in and inspect properties having tax taking done so that those that
24:27are you know have significant back taxes are reacquired by the city and so we looked at all of the ways that we might really address issues on pleasant street and to everybody that i've talked with said that it was a really good meeting how many people about 10 20 10 15 15.
24:55yeah the mayor was there um you know a lot of our committee members came um well it's not a committee it's a it's called a citizen's advisory group and um so we had a good group do you wanna yeah i i agree i think it was um a very robust uh conversation around the table with stakeholders um in different places but all concerned about the same thing that we make this a better neighborhood when all
25:33is said and done so i thought it was very positive from that standpoint yeah i would probably echo the same sentiments um you know the devil's always in the details of these things so moving forward i think coming up with a plan that's um real i think is you know you know that's the real aspect of it right so one of the big discussion points we had yesterday was you know lack of inspections of properties and
26:03it's not certainly not a reflection upon this administration but i think state law mandates you're supposed to inspect all your properties once every three years on the residential side um the city of fall river hasn't really done those in 40 years yeah 40 to 50 actually um so when you don't inspect properties that long you run the risk of having a lot of violations uh illegal apartments
26:35you know those types of things that if you really want to get a plan that's you know that's um going to be you know an implementable plan you got to really get to the foundational elements and figure out what's going on so i think that we had a lot of discussion on that yesterday it seemed people were the private sector people seem to be aghast that this wasn't happening right right
26:59and one of the private sector people has property in another community where they do regularly inspect and the person had absolutely no problem with the thought of that happening and it's a person with a significant portfolio just in terms of public safety yeah and we have fire fire issues of course the impact impacts on neighborhoods safety yeah very good thank you thank you very much
27:25um oh let me say one more thing about that yes so we have a public meeting on may 4th and it's going to be at the um lady of light band and conf and um meeting space and we're doing lots of advertising for that and we want the neighborhood to really come out for that we really want a lot of people and so we're really now getting focused
27:57on that we're going to try to get it up on the city website on viva fall river but you know the challenge there is we don't want the whole city coming out we really want people in the flint coming out so we may do a mailing yeah that would make sense all of the addresses and we asked the committee members to you know put them in their retail stores and i'm going to
28:21get some out to more of the stores and i think that i think it will be really successful i really think we'll get people out for that good right and your collaboration on the tdi district and south main street yeah just two things um i had talked about the fact that we're working on district management and researching how district management might work there and we're creating a steering committee
29:00the tdi partnership is creating a steering committee and so we brainstormed a lot of potential participants on that and other people who might be good advisors and so the group is starting to ask people to join the key steering committee members we already have like ken and um zach from uh alexandra's and um jessica from rob roy who um is part of a district management process in taunton and really had a lot of um
29:41input to give on that so so that's really on its way and is a real focus and then we're also i'm working closely with caitlin and civic moxie a consulting firm that is very experienced in helping cities set up their outdoor dining program and so we're getting to the point where the city will have clearer guidelines application process and really be ready to promote outdoor dining and we have restaurants really
30:21really happy that this is coming and we have money to help restaurants do the work and so once we get this new process in place it looks as though that will really happen for restaurants that wanted it to happen last year and and it didn't and so it's our goal to have several able to be having outdoor dining this year thank you mass development's renewal of commitment to fall river and the tdi district yeah
30:57i just wanted to update you on that on the partnership meeting the other day uh noah koretz from mass development explained a little more about what that commitment is and they are playing they're trying to keep um jim mckeg on but have him do work that isn't just in our tdi district but there was a lot of interest in a district type effort happening up near portugalia and bedford street and we had
31:35expressed interest eventually in having a tdi type process up in the flint and so my sense is that mass development's three-year new commitment will help those efforts in the flint in the bedford street area um and then they're also looking at the fact that tdi districts were approved for hyannis and a few other places another one in new bedford few other places in the south coast so they think that jim may
32:14help those and help connect everybody so we have tdi districts in new bedford in here that have had successes and we could help um you know give encouragement and information to these brand new tdi districts so um so that's the update it's just a little clearer how this will play out over the long term and the other piece of it is their commitment of funding for a project so
32:46it may be that flint will be able to apply to mass development for some projects do you want to get that yeah so um new 79 continues to move forward um i'm pretty certain the project uh will be advertised uh within the next few days oh with the contract award being in the fall of this year um the where everybody's gone through the final phases of looking at the projected costs
33:20just to make sure they're in line with current cost you know as opposed to having outdated cost estimates uh but the um this this is a go this project is going to happen this is not something that's pie in the sky anymore there's going to be a contract awarded by the end of this calendar year and work beginning in 2023 and hopefully concluded in 2000 late 2025 2026.
33:48so over the next two three years there will be some disruption along that corridor as they are moving forward with the proposed improvements um i know massdot's gonna do everything in their power to keep those disruptions down to a minimum um but like with any large-scale project there will be disruptions right that's a fact of life it's just like when we're doing the uh the spaghetti ramps those were some
34:13disruptions you you have to work with the contractors and i know that the city is going to be closely working with them and they're going to try to keep as many lanes of traffic open um they're going to be keeping you know once even once when they start demolishing the upper sections of route 79 the lower sections of the wall street road is going to be open when they have to work
34:38on the opposite the the new the raised portion of 79 was down to grade level and they have to work on the wall street north and south you might be redirected to the middle lanes until everything's done so there's a whole traffic remediation plan that's uh that's being developed as part of this to offset those types of things but you know it's just one of these things where you're going to keep keeping your
35:02eye on the ball in terms of the long run and having this completed within the two three year time period so that we can start really changing that waterfront once the construction is done good thank you um the next item on the agenda is the remaining two five plus acre apostles on commerce drive and innovation way so i don't think i told all of you that the sausage company that was interested
35:37in coming to our innovation way parcel they took a vote among their uh their managers and the managers said that they just felt that they would lose a lot of staff coming to fall river which you know some of you said that you were afraid well i thought that well they're from new bedford too they're from new bedford and they have new bedford staff and they said we you know have wonderful staff and that they're
36:07going to have a hard time going to innovation way but we now today or yeah last night got a proposal for that very same parcel that looks excellent so we'll be talking about that in executive session but the other thing that i wanted to bring up is we've gotten lots of inquiries about the property we have on commerce drive and it's a very difficult site with a small amount of buildable area in the front
36:43big chunk of wetlands and then there is buildable land in the back but it's not easy to access so on paper it looks as though we could charge 600 000 for this parcel given the build the buildable land except you can't really easily access buildable land so there was a an appraisal done in in the fall of 2019 by the redevelopment authority that canadian did and it was a good appraisal and ken and i
37:20really think that it would be good to ask him to update that appraisal for the new market that we're in because it took into account the wetland and the challenges of this site and given the amount of interest i'd really like to have confidence about the price that we're putting on it and given that it's in an urban renewal area we would need an updated appraisal anyway for dhcd so i wanted you to um
37:54approve that we go ahead and ask canadian to do that and i don't know if i guess i didn't put a vote on there joe i'm sorry and what so on the uh the request of having canadian do the update are you asking for the request for us to approve of getting a quote yeah i'm asking you to approve getting a quote from canaan for um doing that i think that's what you
38:24really need to vote for us are you going to bring back a contract i guess that's the question we expect that it's going to be um not not a lot of money so would you be willing to say don't not exceed amount for an updated appraisal yeah so do we if it's less than ten thousand do we still gonna get three quotes or can we source this as a professional exemption under ten you can
38:53use sound business practice okay anything ten to fifties okay so so i guess the question i think the vote may be to shows if it's under 10 000 to a water right to get it going yeah it's a question of are you just going to get the quote and then coming back for a vote or do you want the vote to just go ahead and hire them tonight that's well it's under 10 000. yeah yeah but
39:14you know it should be a few thousand because a whole entire appraisal is coming in at you know around 5 000. so but you're going to get a new appraisal well we thought he could update it can't he take his probably not no okay that's been my experience you're talking about something that's nearly three years old at this point yeah yeah he's gonna go out and give you a full appraisal because the market has changed
39:43oh right i know that right the appraisal had all kinds of information from vhb and you know it had all kinds of information that doesn't get dated that's about the environmental conditions of the lot and everything but you're right he'll have to do new comps i think that's what you say so right but most likely it's going to be a new appraisal that's been my professional it's going to be a new
40:11appraisal but a lot of the costs they shouldn't reflect the cost of a new appraisal because a lot of the background information is already there that's right right in terms of size and in terms of buying wetlands and in terms of stuff like that so taking that into account it shouldn't be as much as a a brand new starting from zero no appraisal that's around the cost for the cost what is price has went up
40:38in three years and it's not as if this is super time sensitive so if we want to just bring it back to the next board meeting that would be fine you'll know that then if i'm wrong john but it doesn't have to be a disposition appraisal it does so it's got to be a disposition appraisal that complies with those d's that come right so that we can um use it when we
41:03go to sell the property right dhcd is uh that we have to present it to dhcd for approval i think you just get the quote and just bring it back to the next one it could be easier yeah i don't think you need a vote to do that no but do it do it for the next meeting though because who's to say people aren't going to be interested in the property they are there you go
41:22so it is time sensitive it is time sensitive but it's not you know it's not as if someone today is knocking down the door no but i i think we'll we'll put some time on it meaning that we'll come back yeah decide on that okay so so i i think you're right i don't think we need to and ask what's the time frame for getting it done the other thing on that lot not that we
41:51want to make this more complicated than what needs to be if accessing the buildable portion and a lot is problematic because of the wetlands yeah to enhance the value of that you can replicate petition dep for wetland replication fill in those wetlands and replicate it somewhere else on the lot that may give you more value yeah right and a better parcel yeah because you have a better parcel but i think i think
42:22it's a two to one replication so if you were if you had to fill in twenty thousand square feet you might have to replicate forty thousand square feet but just something to keep in mind mm-hmm how much frontage is on that lock do you remember absolutely just put it to the beats in a an r yeah i mean it's already been something it's already been something it really is thinner in the front and then it expands
42:47out in the back yes okay thank you okay so you'll do that okay uh proposal to list properties on loopnet website and develop marketing materials have you started that no i and you know it's a little less important in my mind now that we have a very good offer for the innovation way parcel i think that it makes sense once we get a price based on a new appraisal to put it on loot net
43:24i don't know that we really need to do too much for marketing materials but um you know we just have to have a good description and put it on loot net because people are out there looking for property and we could just describe it and probably get more people asking okay any any further questions of sarah okay that being the case i'm going to ask to go into executive session i make a finding that an open
44:00session i'm sorry would have a detrimental effect on the negotiation position of the public into executive session to approve the february 23rd 2022 executive session to address real estate duval street 45 aniwan street and 72 bank street and not return to open session so i'll entertain a motion for that to happen and move we move into executive session okay is there a second second to move into executive session
44:44and then we need a rule called what john harrison yes jones harris yes joe marshall yes ann king yes okay thank you