12.17.2025 Redevelopment Authority

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First item is the roll call. John Anderson, Ron Rousen, Danny Fleber, Joan Nadarus and Keane.

Also attending Sarah Page executive director John Coughlin and Karen Martin project manager. Thank you. Uh first item is the open session minutes from November.

If there are no uh questions, I'll entertain a motion to approve those.

A motion to approve November 20th, 2025 open session minutes.

Second.

Second.

John, yes.

Ron Rousen, yes.

Ben Fuleber, yes.

Joan, yes.

Ke, yes.

Thank you. Next item, uh is our warrant uh which Joan has already gone through.

Um, if there's no questions on that, I'll entertain a motion to motion to approve the December warrant amount of 259,41167.

Second.

Second.

John Erikson. Yes.

Fonden. Yes.

Fleber. Yes.

Joe Maderas. Yes. And Keem. Yes.

Thank you. Uh we in your package you have a revision to the um pre procurement policy for uh Sarah from the executive director. Um anybody have any questions on I think it's Karen explained that it's pretty much isn't it just number six?

Yeah. And the reason that it comes up is because we're starting to get um the contract documents for the um onetop and um the earmark is it doesn't apply to but on the onetop and I guess future grants coming they're all starting to go to a more electronic platform for signature and um it's it's sometimes difficult um if they're sending a docuign document to Johnny you know we have no way of

tracking it And you know, Johnny's working you outside. We've got a million things going on. So, you know, this this way if we can when we're doing votes moving forward, we can designate either Johnny or, you know, potentially Sarah to sign these things. Um, it would make it easier just so that we can get the contract end of things signed and moving on. So because we can't really do

anything of like billing against any of these grants until the contract documents are fully executed. So it seems like the state is catching up the technology now.

Are you saying up to 10,000?

No, that's the policy we have now. And that's for uh entering into a contract with, you know, a consultant or something. And I still have to check with Johnny and Joan for that. Um and that so that's in here because this is just a revision of the whole policy regarding you know my authority on these we haven't been well verssed in.

It's something you've already voted on.

So, the only thing I'd like to do is add a little language at item six, which would just go on to say um any contract amendments would be um uh would be sent to the board after this so that we're aware of it so that we're notified of any contract amendments. Yeah, we would have to definitely we would have to actually if there was a contract amendment that we would have to expend money or spend

money, it would be voted on before it would ever actually be signed.

Right. But the way this reads, my inter and John Coplin can can opine on this. The way this reads, I get the impression that the executive director could sign any contract amendments if so voted by the board. So, I think this is only if the board's already taken a vote. You can either vote to designate Sarah or if you voted to designate the chair, he can then say Sarah signed for me. But in either

event, the intent is that the board's already voted on it.

This is just the administrative signing the contract after the fact.

Okay.

But you can add anything to clarify that if you want to just y All right. I'll go I'll go along with you.

Okay. So, um, I'll entertain a motion to approve those revisions.

A motion to approve the revision dated 121725 to the executive director of procurement policy and improve the revision to be incorporated into the financial policies and procurement manual.

Second.

Second.

John Ericson. Yes.

Ron Rousen. Yes.

Yes.

Maderas. Yes. And yes.

Thanks, guys. Uh Karen's going to speak to the um update on the cathotic protection at Norton Pier.

Yes, it's uh it was a busy day out at City Pier today. I was out there most of the day. My windb blown effect is from all of that.

So uh for the cathodic protection, we had um Kavanaaugh bring their boat over and Carlos the engineer went out on the boat and he did um a full inspection of all the punch list items and all the change order work. Um, for the most part it was well done. The only thing is in some like in the, you know, in the U part of City Pier, um, uh, there's a few, you mean of the bulkhead?

Of the bulkhead? Yeah, City Pier in the bulkhead there. Um, there are a few, um, places where they didn't get the full 8ft strip of paint on or coating on, and it's probably just because that's the where you get the biggest wave action.

So, um, and then there's a couple of spots along, um, the north, um, the north side next to the transient docks that the same thing has, um, happened.

So, they're going to go out there tomorrow, Kavanaaugh, and they're bringing a 2x4 8-footer, and they're going to basically just measure everything and make sure they're down the 8 ft. And, um, because tomorrow's a good day with low tide. So, um, so they should wrap everything up tomorrow and then it, um, uh, Carlos and I will go out and we'll measure and make sure all those areas have been corrected and then

we're hoping in January it'll be a final requisition for um, Kavanaaugh and FA.

So, we'll be wrapped up with the project. Um, so that's um, so that's all good news. And it looks like the anodess are doing a great job. Um, so that's um, that's good also. So that should soon be over.

Northfield Point.

Northfield Point. We were out there again this afternoon for a for a site meeting and um that's go going well too.

It looks really good. I don't know if everyone's um gone out there and seen it, but it's a big difference than what was out there before, but he has pretty much put in all this the revetment all the way to Point Gloria. And um he is um working with the resident engineer now to go through some final locations where they need to like just up the stone a little bit and make sure everything's

tight. And they're probably 3/4 of the way done that. And um he's he's probably got a few more spots he's got to do. And then um Beta is going to be out there tomorrow. We're going to move some of the big boulders into place that will um that will help start kind of the final look for um the Northfield point. And um we today we will sign the contract documents for the um earmark.

So that we'll be able to start billing against. They're going to give us half of the money by the end of January and then in January I'll put in a bill for the remaining funds. So that will be good. that'll go towards that reventment work also. And then the only thing that came up today that's um kind of um not a bit of a surprise but just a potential um uh change in the

works is is that there there might be some areas where we had to put more Revetman stone in just because of the way the top elevations have worked out based on um the contours of the site actually. So next week the resident engineer and Tim Tim's foreman um are going to take final elevations and figure out the total square footage of a vetman placed and we're just going to compare that to the contract square

footage and um hopefully there shouldn't be too big of a discrepancy but there may be um some final change numbers that we have to discuss at our January meeting. But I just figured I'd give you that heads up.

Is that the the same thing that we were talking about with Bill and Eric the last week the the dips? Yeah.

Yeah. There was some Yeah. So they So we had to bring some elevations. We had to bring some of the revetment up to make up for those um those ir really eroded areas.

Yeah. Really eroded areas that had to just build back up places. Okay.

Yeah. It's the similar spots. Yeah. And then also in the very um beginning part um where it butts up against the um where the triangle starts up against the boardwalk kind of. And um so there's some areas there that might have a little bit more of a veteran stone than what we're showing on the drawings.

So there are other places besides the Yeah, there's like pockets of it.

Yeah.

And um but it looks good. He's going to be um hopefully getting his big rig off the site by Christmas. Um he'll be, you know, he's back blading the site and then he's going to hydro seed with a winter rye and straw just to keep it so that um there's no erosion over the winter. all his erosion control will stay on the perimeter and um and so it should be good for winter and he'll get

his turbidity curtain out um prior to the um winter flounder spawning season.

Don't want to interrupt them.

So um so that's all going pretty well also. Um but he's hoping to be pretty much wrapped up by Christmas and doing some maybe touchup stuff after that.

It's going to be good.

Karen, do you know um maybe we discussed what like the water there is that what percentage of that is salt versus I don't know what the it's I imagine it changes with the tide, right?

Um I don't know if it changes with the tide. I mean it's technically it's brackish but it's not but it's brackish but it's not like ocean salt. You know what I mean? But, you know, I think the whole thing is the further away you get from the main ocean, the less and less salt there is in the water. So, I'm not really sure what the salinity is to be honest.

I'm just curious. I thought we talked about that. Um, next item is Sarah for um Pleasant Street in the Flint.

Yep. Great. So on the urban renewal plan, uh we are supposed to get the um the state is supposed to approve in December the revisions they're proposing on MEPA regulations, which would make housing and urban renewal plans expedited significantly and we are in a different position because we already are far into our urban renewal plan and MEPA's review of it. So we're hearing that even though the

regulations will be changed, MEPA put a special review process out as another change and we may be required to go through the special review procedure which is not um nothing like what we were going to have to do. and we don't we read it, we um made comments on it.

We hope she'll cut it back a little bit from what she laid out. But in any case, our consultants will jump on it and we'll be able to move forward uh to get our urban renewal plan done, which I'm getting more and more anxious about because we're really trying to start working in the Flint and it would really be good to have that done. And so we'll let you know in January. Allies of ours

are calling the administration saying, "You told us the regs would be uh decisions would be made in December.

We're coming to the end of December. You know, are they when are they coming?"

And as I said, once they're adopted, we'll be able to tear forward. and our consultants are just waiting to hear.

So, moving on to an item that I brought to you at the last meeting. We applied for uh with mass development to create a TDI district in the Flint. TDI stands for transformative development initiative and it's designed to help you take a neighborhood like the Flint and make lots of improvements that are really multifaceted and I feel good about the application we put in.

Uh we pulled together a really good partnership from the people who were part of the early partnership that Joan went to meetings on a lot and um and new partners and that was a key piece of this application. You had to have a really good partnership ready to work on the district.

And we learned a lot from what happened on South Main Street and what we're doing now on uh North Main Street and we understand what you really need in a partnership and we think we really pulled that together. So they then wrote us very soon after we applied and said, "We want to interview your partnership."

And it was a really challenging interview because they gave us 45 minutes. They introduced their six staff and then we had to get our 11 folks to introduce themselves. The mayor came on, Mike Dion did. They both spoke about the importance to the city of the Flint and were really compelling and that it really mattered that the mayor came on and said that. And um one really good piece of this is that

Lisa Jones, the new director of Family First, the large health center in the Flint, uh is willing to be the fiscal agent. let us use um a extra office they have for free for the TDI fellow and use all kinds of conference rooms they have.

I was amazed. They have a lot of extra space because they were kind of created their space. It was created out of an old Bradley's G supermarket and so they have um space that they can lend.

And um one of the really really heart um heartwarming pieces of this is that the love your block program that um Dr. Gloria Sadler is running through community development funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies using kind of their structure. She's gotten lots of people out volunteering, creating interesting projects, and getting some of them mini grants. So, a community garden was created in Father

Travaso's Park, and it brought so many people together. The um the Cambodian community is nearby and they got really into growing vegetables there.

uh seniors came from the senior housing right nearby and um kids were involved.

It's right near um uh Espirto Santos school so they're involved. So this garden has brought people together in a wonderful way and so we talked about that and um uh you know the partners talked about these things and I think it showed a real commitment in the neighborhood. We have four arts organizations involved.

They include um Fall River Mocha and Frack and Frack has agreed to kind of help coordinate them all. And um another we had a number of businesses that are on Pleasant Street, which was important.

And um Shannon, the dentist at Rodriguez Dental Office, who's been there 20 years, and her father created it many years before that. So, she spoke to the fact that her dental office is right next to the worst building in um on on Pleasant Street and it has had all kinds of loitering and lots of issues and so she spoke passionately about how important this is and so package to her. Sarah, are you talking?

Okay. She's attached to you remember where the motorcycle gang went and the city had to get them out. So she's next to that there are like two other buildings what used to be charore furniture and then there's a new restaurant and the package store and I've been talking with the chief. She's committed to come out once a month and have a meeting with the partnership and whoever else wants to come uh in the

neighborhood to talk about what they're doing. They're aggressively going after criminal activity. They've gotten a gun off the street. They're working on a number of pieces, but it's safety there is a big concern. And so one other thing I had to do was have every department head commit to participating in this and contributing. And so the mayor had me come to the department head meeting and

tell them all about it. And I did get good commitments out of people and the police chief committed this once a month meeting which they like to have in neighborhoods.

So, just keep your fingers crossed. I'm writing a thank you note and emphasizing some things that we feel we didn't get to talk about. It was incredible to have that many people um for 45 minutes and it just was so difficult to get everything across. But what we did was we went to the uh Chamber of Commerce conference room where they have an owl that is a camera that goes around and

makes it possible to be in a big conference room and be seen. And so um mass development folks were really impressed with that and we did that so that we could really show our partnership and then some people were on Zoom. Um, so that is that any Yeah.

So I I understand the TDI what it stands for, but this TDI application you put it in, it is something accepted and you get grants from it. Is it what what's your reason for it?

Sorry, I didn't I didn't discuss that.

So, it's a three-year program where you get a fellow who's a midcareer community development person who's supposed to come with experience that will be helpful for you.

And you apply and property owners in the district get the opportunity to apply for equity grants for their projects.

um in Fall River. Um a number of them were made. We think it probably ended up being $1.5 to2 million worth of equity going into buildings in our target area and around it. And um the other grants that we could get are um we would go after facade grants because the facades all up and down Pleasant Street could really use a facelift. And the ones that um Mike Dion was able to get done with

ARPA money at Gilbert's Jewelers and White Rose Bakery um just really thrilled people. And so they have eight applications for more facads and no money. And so a lot of people are saying we need our facade done. And so if we became a TDI district, that's one of the first things we would go after. And um I so they asked why would this be different? How would this be? Um, you

know, what have you learned from the last TDI partnership?

And um you know I mentioned that it would be better to have more um kind of committees under the whole group so that uh stores and you know businesses on the street could have their own kind of convening and feed into the larger group. and um the arts organizations need to really collaborate and figure out all the things they want to do together and so they should have kind of

a working group and that wasn't the case um in our work downtown. Um so um so there are then lots of unknowns given that we have three years and the group can come up with other ideas. So they could say we really want to have a yearly festival and we want a lot of help you know creating that. Um what are better examples? Um, you know, we want um a streetscape designed for Pleasant Street that helps

really show how it might become more vibrant. Um, there are lots of things. They could also give us a real estate uh advisor who would be able to help us think about some of the buildings and how we acquire them and how we get a developer to take them on.

So, a lot of them sold, five or six of them were sold in the last 6 months. The buildings are being bought now. A lot of them planned on apartments. Two of them approved for apartments already.

Yeah.

So, there's a lot of things going on there. Hopefully some of the guys that bought them probably want the guys who want don't want to buy them but they did buy them.

But besides that it's uh I think a lot of them are going to be bought and but I've been seeing a lot of social media access how horrible it is over there. I mean the dirtiness and people I guess Sunday or Saturday or Sunday they went uh the guy there that ran for mayor didn't run for mayor. Uh the sandwich guy Carlos Caesar Christopher Christopher he had things already how they went there

and they cleaned like seemed like one block. Yeah, he showed before and after pictures and how they made it look and he put some kind of paper design on the windows or something. So that's the building we want taken down desperately. And so the real challenge, Ron, is that people are buying buildings and rehabbing them, but getting people to buy these buildings that really need to come down and be developed as new

construction where they won't get historic tax credits, where the expenses are much higher. That's the challenge.

And when we started working in the Flint, um there was a developer interested in taking that worst building down, the one that Christopher did some work with. And um he was going to build 25 units and you could put 25 units there. Maybe he was thinking even more, but uh given parking constraints, you might get 25 or more. Um but to find we need to find somebody who's willing to do that.

You can't do without historic reps.

It cost $280,000 to do a unit. Now you do $2,85. There's no way the rent would even cover it. Somebody would have to build a building and take a negative.

That's why, you know, they put in 40 48 million 4.9 million for historic uh income credits. So the developers will be able to build them and come close to breaking out even, not even making money on them. So a lot of people think the rents are so high, but you add a $280,000 besides buying the property. Now you do $280,000 per unit, what it cost to build them, it's impossible to make money.

That's why nobody's going to do it.

Well, we'd have to bring public money into it. And um that's why we fought so hard to get H DIP, the housing incentive program. And so I would assume they would get 25,000 or more per unit in H DIP.

And then there are other programs and there some TDI programs that we could help people access.

I mean this is most they have they added 48 48 and 49 million I think next three years. But you can only do two per city.

So only two projects can be done per every six months. So four can be done every year.

Yeah. It's insane.

And you know, you got like 12 that already planned to be built up. You got 3,000 units going up now. It's tough because there's six other cities who want that money, too. And you know, you add 14 into it, you get 28, you get 2 million each, you have 56 million. We don't even have enough to do that. So it just that's what's the challenging part about it. It sounds good, but we've been

offered more money than ever, and that's why there's a lot of big properties going up right now. But Pleasant Street doesn't seem to be it's a less desirable place to live, right?

I mean, so you want to build you want to spend $280,000 in a unit where nobody wants to live and they're not going to pay the rents that you want to get. And even the higher rents don't cover their amount. So that's a challenge. They have to come up with something different than apartments, I think, over there. I mean, I don't know what else you can do, you know, but something hopefully this guy

for three years can think about it and do something with it, but the numbers just don't work.

Yeah. even with age tip money.

Yeah, that worries me a lot because there's not a, you know, Ken and I talk about just purchasing, you know, seeing if the redevelopment authority could purchase it and take everything down, then you get a big hole there. You kind of need to plant trees and make it look like a park while you wait for the neighborhood to turn around and for it to be desirable. And whether that's a mission

we'd want to take on is a question.

Other thoughts?

No.

Challenging. It's very challenging.

that area is going to be I can't see hopefully somebody with this this community development fellowship guy will be very intelligent county and come up with something creative because we got a whole waterfront we're worrying about right now and that's going to be a project for the next three to four years and that's going to require money too and anybody that's project down here is

going to be looking for age dip money and y that's you know you got three years left and that's the challenge.

Yep.

Is there anything um new on NMA?

Oh, yeah. Just quickly, um we got the police chief to meet with the steering committee recently. There's a lot of concern about the hanging around in front of the library and incidents that have happened in front of the library, in front of Bank Five, in the street. Um so, NMA is trying to address that. We're invite I I think the police chief is committing to join us on January 14th.

We're hoping to have it at the library, our district meeting. So, we kind of get everybody together and lots of the restaurants come and we usually get a good number of people. So um so we're hoping she will come and talk about adding police beats in the neighborhood and we've defined kind of a certain number of blocks just a small area um is what's challenging and people are afraid to walk from their office to their

parking lot to some extent and those are the things that we're trying to address.

And um so that's on Nova. That's what we're up to.

If there's no further matters for the open session, the chair makes a finding that an open session would have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of the public body. The purpose of the executive session is to approve the executive session minutes from November 20th, 2025 and discuss strategy with respect to potential real estate transactions for property located at 45

Anowan Street, Fall River and the Deval Street Corridor, Fall River. I'll entertain a motion to enter into executive session and we will not return to open session.

Motion to enter into executive session and we will not return to open session.

I just heard that.

You need to just make the motion.

Second.

John Erikson. Yes.

Ron Rousen. Yes.

Yes. Joan Maderas. Yes. King. Yes.

Thanks everybody.