Greetings and welcome to Friday!
This week was one of those weeks – total “tyranny of the urgent” that pulled both Sarah and I in multiple reactive directions – but we survived! There were number of things that we hoped to wrap up this week that got pushed off to next week, but we put together a good battle plan! Onward!
Here’s our staff update for the week:
Blue Economy::
This week, I had the opportunity to meet James Sulikowski of the Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station (which let to a very productive followup call with Selina Heppell of OSU’s Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Sciences).
Yesterday, Sarah, Leslie and I met again with Fletcher and Bridgette Conn of Norpac Consulting (they work closely with the Oregon Cluster Initiative) to discuss some potential ways we could collaborate in Blue Economy work going forward.
Sarah and I also connected with Robert Killen of RAIN (who has now moved to Florence Italy – so we got to talk food and wine a bit) to talk through the final few items on our Star Up Blue contract with them. – Paul & Sarah
Broadband::
This week was our monthly broadband “deep dive.” I had one-on-one meetings with Solarity and Anne Whittington at the COG to explore Lincoln County project next steps (and order of operations) as well as how we can maximize our grant writing hours to deliver the most impact to Lincoln, Linn and Benton counties. We also had our monthly Broadband Action Team meeting as well as our core EDA planning team meeting. I’ve got a number of folks to reach out to as we explore potential projects across multiple funding sources. – Paul
Community Connecting::
This week, Leslie delivered a solid draft of a plan-of-work contract between EDALC and the Ford Family Foundation. Next week, I’ll work with her to put together an itemized budget and get our organizational materials together for FFF – so they’ll be able to enter into a grant agreement with a 501(c)(6). – Paul
Creative Economies::
For ART Toledo this week, I finished the Art, Oysters & Brews promo video from the August event. I also created and sent out a new vendor survey to all the vendors from the last event, posted on our Facebook page about the Chalk the Block event happening on Saturday morning, and updated the ART Toledo website. I also created the Michael Gibbons mural presentation video, attended the meeting Thursday morning, and got supplies ready for the Chalk the Block event that I will be at Saturday morning. – Sarah
Enterprise Zone::
On Monday, Spencer Nebel, Derrick Tokos and I met with a team from Ferguson Hotel Development to dive in a little deeper on a potential two-phase, two hotel development in South Beach (it was our third meeting). One item of discussion was potential use of the enterprise zone. Currently, our zone does NOT allow hotels to enjoy the EZ incentive, and due to some fairly esoteric EZ rules, that limitation can’t be altered. I did speak with the State to see if we could create a separate, embedded zone (perhaps called the Lincoln County Resort Enterprise Zone) that could have a number of tax lots in multiple communities to encourage new hotel development (especially with diminishing STR numbers). It looks like that is indeed a possibility – so I’ll be investigating further. – Paul
Project Work::
I continued to work on the major employers report, I am down to only three businesses left! I created some invoices, updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider and Oregon prospector listings, and read a report on changes in the Leisure and Hospitality industry in Oregon since the pandemic. – Sarah
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
In an odd “everything old is new again” moment, I was interviewed this morning on a video podcast by celebrity game/entertainment personality Trish Hershberger for the Apogee Entertainment Twitch and YouTube channels. We talked about the early days of 3D first-person computer game development. It’ll go live early next week – I’ll share the link next week.
Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all. Have a wonderful weekend!
Cheers,
-Paul 🙂