Agenda - 06-03-2008-5b5b - Laserfiche WebLink

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I~~:.~~ T I~T~I [..TTY S 9 1 think we did get a little bit of a promise from DOT to give us some money for improvements, but 2 certainly not sufficient to do all of these improvements. 3 ' 4 One of the things that was discussed, and I agree with Commissioner Nelson, I think in the 5 economic development plan that we have, that we do talk about the kind of jobs that we're 6 encouraging and they are all at least living wage jobs. I would think that it would be important 7 for the developers to talk about, within your control, whether that's the kind of jobs that we're 8 talking about. Any development that we've encouraged, I guess the only one was the window 9 sash company where we gave them a $50,000 water and sewer grant in order to hook into the 10 Orange-Alamance system for water. 11 12 Geof Gledhill: And also the Builder's First Ghoice project. 13 14 Chair Jacobs: In those circumstances, we require that they be living wage jobs, that they be 15 insurance provided for workers. I know those are the kinds of jobs that we envisioned when we 16 talked about getting 5,000 new jobs. We weren't envisioning McDonald's or Wal-Mart. Again, 17 within your capacity to assure those kinds of things, I think that would be important in Orange 18 County. 19 20 Finally, I agree to some extent with Commissioner Nelson, we do have a plan for the 21 Hillsborough EDD, we developed that over about 16 months with Hillsborough, and it's within 22 Hillsborough's jurisdiction. Commissioner Foushee has been working with the owners and staff 23 to do a very detailed plan for the Eno EDD, which is on the border of Durham and Orange 24 County. But, despite the requests aver a number of years from several of us, we never did 25 develop a plan for this economic development district. That's not to say .positively or negatively 26 whether retail or anything else should be in that economic district. But the fact is that, while we 27 could have done various things, we're kind of caught. This is the one economic development 28 district that really does not have a specific plan. That's not to say that it can't adapt to your plan, 29 yours is about a quarter of acreage that would be possible, if you take out the middle school and 30 the soccer complex. 31 32 Commissioner Foushee: I only have one other thing that 1 ask that we consider, and that 33 would be how we might recruit local businesses for this development. 34 35 Commissioner Gordon:.. I would just like to reinforce what's been said about the,transportation 36 plan, for one thing. I have brought up before, there were concerns about the inner-circulation 37 and the walkability and haw it would work out within the development; but there are of course 38 concerns about how the traffic would be handled after the development, what kind of road 39 widening would be included, and then also what provisions would be made for transit. Long- 40 range, not in Orange County, but regional, we are thinking about an east-west public transit. 41 But that could be given a big boost if this development were in a place where that would be one 42 of the parts, not only on the system, but if somehow the developer would contribute to the 43 system. This is all assuming that the development goes in this economic development district, 44 which has general guidelines, but it does not have specific guidelines. The Economic 45 Development Commission did start to talk about target industries, but I don't know if they've 46 ever adopted, and of course the whole economic development district has changed when we 47 approved the middle school and the soccer complex, it changed the scope of what could be 48 accommodated there. It's correct that we have a general economic development strategic plan, 49 but we don't have a specific plan. I guess the thing I would like to have explored, and my 50 comments now do have to do with transportation, including the points that have been made 51 about how much of the traffic and the patronage of the businesses do we expect that's going to "1~