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Planning Commission <br />Meeting Minutes <br />July 9, 2015 <br />Page 15 of 17 <br />DeJong says this is outside my wheelhouse. There is a certain process to do in eminent <br />domain. There are offers and final offers. If there is still disputed value, there is a process that <br />the court decides on how to determine it such as appraisals or committees. There are several <br />different routes it can go from there. <br />Russell says I want to clarify. Voiding those agreements is a form of eminent domain so <br />compensation is due to the parties who are agreed to those conditions. I am interested to what <br />degree we should be allowing speculation about future use on this property influencing our <br />decision tonight. We are clear that we are not here to approve or accept or deal with an actual <br />redevelopment plan. We are here to determine if it is appropriate to apply this urban renewal <br />tool to this site. In my opinion, it is self-evident that this is blighted based on the fact that on a <br />weekday at 2:00 pm, I was able to take my 15 year -old son and use that parking lot to teach him <br />how to drive. That to me is probably not a statutory condition of blight, but if I can do that in the <br />middle of the week in what is supposed to be the City's primary economic engine, then we have <br />a big issue to deal with there. We do not make planning decisions based on the impact to <br />individuals; we make planning decisions based on what is best for the community. I am mindful <br />of that issue. I want someone to help us talk about how to deal with the substance of renewal <br />and how to deal with the speculation about future use. I don't care if the devil himself owns <br />Albertsons. What I care about is that there were two parties who willingly entered into an <br />agreement and that agreement has existed for a couple of decades. I am a little uncomfortable <br />with this ability to reach back and void an agreement that two business entities, with lawyers <br />and accountants and lots of money behind them, entered into. I understand it may be what we <br />have to do to advance this redevelopment. I don't care who owns Albertsons and I don't care <br />who owns this property. What I care about is that people entered into an agreement; we are <br />potentially going to void that agreement so we can release some economic value; and it may be <br />the right thing to do. Can you help us talk about how to deal with this speculation about future <br />use on this property? Should we even be talking about that aspect of the redevelopment plan? <br />DeJong says no. Your charge is to look at if the objectives and the tools in the Urban Renewal <br />Plan are something that is in concert with our Comp Plan. Looking at a specific use, knowing <br />that the Comp Plan says this should be fiscally positive, a mix of uses, and our main retail <br />corridor, that is the lens that Staff is seeing through as to if this conforms with the plan or not. <br />Pritchard says he agrees. The question before us is the question of conformity. We are not <br />looking at what possibly could happen. There is going to be a long negotiation. Every party that <br />signed those covenants is going to be involved at some point. There is going to be <br />compensation in some form. I want to bring everybody back to the issue before us, is an empty <br />building part of the Comp Plan? If this proposal conforms with the larger picture of what the <br />Comp Plan is trying to accomplish, that is what we are addressing. <br />Rice says this is an over -simplification and perhaps necessarily so. To make this property <br />economically useful is, in my view and beyond a doubt, a part of the Comp Plan. That's what we <br />want this property to do is to work. If it is that urban renewal is a potential tool to make that <br />happen, then I think that is consistent with the Comp Plan. I think that is the question being <br />posed here. I really believe that the issues we have been discussing and being raised here are <br />so far ahead of where we are in this process that I don't think they are appropriate. All we're <br />talking about is giving potential tools to be used in potential ways. We are not at the point where <br />anybody is proposing that covenants be vitiated in any way. We are not there yet. I think it is <br />appropriate from everything I have heard and read to enact this plan which is consistent with the <br />Comp Plan. <br />O'Connell asks Staff under the Comp Plan, we have policies and we have principles. What is <br />the difference between a policy and a principle? <br />