The Fall River Redevelopment Authority held a meeting on April 26, 2023. The meeting began with a call to order and a statement regarding the Open Meeting Law. Attendees included Sarah Page, John Coughlin, Ken Fiola, Karen Martin, John Erickson, Joan Medeiros, and Ron Russin. The board approved the Open Session meeting minutes from March 30th and a warrant totaling $53,222.07. Both approvals were unanimous.
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recording the Open Session can be viewed a Fall River government TV www.frgtv.us uh first uh items call to order uh first went to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording to this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recording and transmission are being made with a perceived or unperceived by those
0:33present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible in attendance we have Sarah page John Coughlin Ken Fiola is is supposed to becoming Karen Martin our project coordinator and uh we need a roll call John Erickson the Wisconsin Joan Medeiros Ron russin young team okay um we need to approve the Open session meeting minutes from March 30th does anybody have any questions about that so move second okay
1:10uh you you all have the warrant yeah John Erickson those condos yeah Joan Medeiros yes Ron russin yes and Keane yes okay um you all have the warrant which is a total of fifty three thousand two hundred twenty two dollars and seven cents any questions on that yeah uh next project updates motion to approve the Warren I'm a racing no rush sorry I need a motion to prove the warrant so moved second okay yes
1:58you go okay Joan Medeiros yes the Wisconsin yes Ron Russian yes okay uh project updates Waterfront City Pier uh Sarah do you want to speak to the program aspect of it so I just want to clarify that after the last board meeting I went back and I mentioned to the mayor that um well he has to be have the board meeting go the way he sometimes does and I said well we're concerned about programming
2:30on CD peer and how we're going to fund the um events and he said don't worry you know we've got money and so he said Senator rodericks has allocated some funds for events in Fall River this summer and um then we had a meeting and Patrick said that The Narrows in Viva Fall River both can fund the events they're not going to be major events and that they can take care of that and they will be
3:12organizing them so the concerns that I had I think came legitimately out of a meeting where there was all this discussion and I was left with the impression that we would need to come up with money for it but we don't need to come up with money for it and people understand that we're doing docs and everything else and that we need other people to be putting on the events so that was really helpful I'm really
3:40appreciative that you kind of gave me the feedback that you two didn't think that we were trying to fund and organize the events the way I was beginning to worry about and I do want to clarify something Ron asked at the last meeting if we can charge the food trucks and I was told that nobody in fall river is charging the food trucks for these food truck nights because the food trucks are
4:09not making so much money that their did that's part of the deal the deal is come to Fall River so that people will come out at night and go to big food truck events and um we're not charging them so and you know especially with the fact that everyone's worried about parking for events on Duval Street it's probably not a summer that charging for things is going to be as easy as when we go forward
4:46also keep in mind that shutting down that road in August of two weeks yeah uh so we can't have events during that time there's a point I know the Cove is shut down they cannot for two weeks they cannot open and they show it's gonna be a time zone around there that we can't have a concert so be careful how you schedule uh because that road will be closed for up here do we know what two
5:06weeks that is I can find out I try to get a little repeated today but he wasn't available you don't know Ken do you no it's for something here yep how did you hear about it uh Cove Restaurant said that yeah it was actually a friend of his who told me who Austin is that he's no he's really worried about it being closed that's his biggest time for uh I don't know his
5:26business it doesn't sound right I know but I I'm not saying that's not true I'm just saying usually they maintain access at all points yeah it might be different because eventually when they're working on those roads the middle of the project which is being worked on now there's going to be roadways up there but they're going to have to allow access for people to live at Point Gloria yeah people to get to the parks
5:50people to get to the business that one pot there where the bridge is now that's everything I don't know why it would take two weeks to do that yeah bridge is there's no longer a bridge yeah yeah that was taken out so I don't know I don't know if that I'll find out but I haven't heard that maybe true but I'm not sure Sarah do you want to speak to excuse me Pleasant Street yes so
6:20we're coming to the end of the analysis of the properties that we want to have on our potential acquisition list we got the final version of the tax title properties from Matt Thomas at the end of the day yesterday met with him about it today Karen and I are going to go out and confirm a few there are quite a few in-text taking that are Residential Properties that Innis Associates put on
6:53the list but we don't think that we're interested in most Residential Properties single-family homes especially so so we're just going to confirm which ones of those if any we want on our list the primary ones are on Pleasant Street and the real focus is on Pleasant Street so we're going to confirm that list and get that off to her so that she will have the list for us to review at our team meeting next
7:24Wednesday and then we have a uh citizens Advisory Group meeting in the Flint finally again where we'll be able to really talk with our committee about both the road map and the draft of the urban renewal plan and um soon Emily uh is going to send it to um dhcd I think there's she wanted to send it before our Advisory Group meeting but we've asked her to wait so The Advisory
8:00Group gets to give their input and then she's informally sending it to dhcd for a technical review so that they'll tell us if there's anywhere we're really straying and need to revise before they do their formal review and so that is moving along and then I'll update you on the downtown historic district expansion all the documents were completed Ken and I thought that the consultant did a really good job
8:38um Jason the chair of the um City's historic commission has been really involved and he's been giving input and that's been helpful so a really good package of material went to the mass historic commission a couple of weeks ago and we are waiting to hear if they approve our area of expansion which we think we now have given them the arguments that they should approve it we had been told way back that they weren't
9:15sure that we should have one historic district that included the North Main Street area and the South Main and we're arguing that there was too big a split between the two halves and our consultant found a document from the mass historic commission that said that they thought many years ago that it should be all one historic district so he he put together really good arguments I think will get approval of that and
9:45then we will have public meetings and then he can make any revisions and send it off to the National Park Service eventually but at least we're through some major first hurdles can I just comment them yeah the takings so when we did the other urban renewal plans we did include Residential Properties for potential takings you did yeah um not that they're going to be taken but if there are a bunch of properties
10:19together that you may want to try to do something with but having them listed as takings would prevent you from doing that so yeah I'm not sure what the rationality if there were groups of them it would be one thing but there's like one here one there I I and that's why we're gonna go out and look at it they're you know one of the things we want to look at is there's
10:44a parking lot in the middle of a residential area maybe that could be combined with something else and could be really useful so you know we will definitely look at that um there the other thing that's on there is a few condos and obviously we don't want those um I just also on another note I just heard from a Danette yeah he's unaware of any section of the Wall Street being closed okay yeah
11:12so there's always going to be access to the Wall Street and crush crush the cross streets um only one cross street at a time will be closed okay okay so anyway the clear setup yeah anybody have any anything else the chair makes a finding that an open session we have a detrimental effect on negotiating litigating position of the public body the purpose of consecutive session is to assume the executive session and it's
11:46from March 30th 2023 and discussed strategy with respect to potential litigation regarding City Pier strategy regarding real estate transactions at 2501 South Main Street Innovation Way end of all street so we need to we need a roll call vote to go into executive session for those items and not to return to open session we need to vote to uh go into executive session and we're not going to return correct okay
12:16John Erickson yes Joe Medeiros yes and Keane yes Ron Russian yes hmm