The Mad Hatter Holiday Festival attracts thousands of people to the historic downtown district of Vallejo with its creative lighted and fire shooting Wonderland recreations that turns the city into a fantasy world for children and adults alike.

Written eviction notices handed out to residents of the encampment in Guelph's St. George Square in late October took effect on Wednesday. Unoccupied tents were removed and bylaw officers were waiting for the remaining few residents to leave voluntarily. Doug Godfrey, the general manager of Guelph's operations department, said in an emailed statement that bylaw officers may issue trespass notices to those who choose not to comply with the eviction order. Reporting by Cameron Mahler/CBC.

Lazzaro submits an interior black and white photo of a diner which he will later identify with a shot of its business sign. In GroupBlog 328.

Coppola's 1983 "Rumble Fish", based on S.E. Hinton's novel, was filmed in downtown Tulsa. The characters in the film hang out at Benny's Billiards. A photo/video art installation will be unveiled at 8 pm tonight at 13 East Brady (site of Benny's). Circle Cinema is showing the movie at 11:00 pm. Meet and Greet at Caz's Chowhouse starting at 6 pm. More at the link.

Article from the Tulsa World about the razing of the Downtowner Motel, YouTube from This Land TV about Coney Island, until recently ensconced on the ground floor of the Downtowner. Background on the motel's beginning in GroupBlog 305

Wow, 24 months of inventory for DT Condos as of June 20, 2024. This is extraordinary. And we see an inverted price pattern on the right side of this chart telling us at a glance that listings are over-priced for demand. (Mine is one of them). In a *rising* market, Actives can be priced higher than Pendings, which are priced higher than Solds (skate to where the puck will be).  In a declining market, those price relationships result in a 2 year inventory. Pricing has to catch the falling market. As I am my own seller on my Seaholm unit, I ask myself, should I cut the price by 10%, or hold tight and wait for the market to rebound in perhaps two years? FYI – ChatGPT create this chart upon my instructions. Charts like this tell stories that are easy for buyers and sellers to understand.

GoldenTree Asset Management, Vista Investments of Florida, more | downtown West Palm Beach  Steve Ross scored new tenants and lease renewals at his downtown West Palm Beach office towers.  New York-based global asset manager GoldenTree  Asset Management, founded by Steven A. Tananbaum; Chicago-based Vista Investments of Florida, founded by Tom Tisbo; and New York-based private equity […]

The post Lease roundup: Steve Ross lands GoldenTree, Amerant Bank at his downtown West Palm towers appeared first on The Real Deal.

Citing ethical issues and potential conflicts of interest, advocates want the city to halt a no-bid contract renewal that would funnel millions to the Portland Metro Chamber. by Courtney Vaughn

For years, Portland has collected fees from property owners in enhanced service districts to pay for added cleaning and security services in designated areas. The districts are typically concentrated around businesses, offering private security, extra policing, janitorial services, and more recently, removal of homeless camps. 

Some stakeholders say the city has yet to confront the unique and outsized role of Portland’s most powerful business lobbying group at one enhanced service district (ESD) in particular—Downtown Portland Clean & Safe.

This week, Portland City Council is scheduled to vote on a 116-acre expansion of the Downtown Portland Clean & Safe district, as well as a fee hike and a five-year management contract renewal for the district. 

Ahead of Wednesday’s vote, more than 100 Portlanders and over a dozen community groups are urging City Council to postpone the contract renewal that would funnel a hefty portion of a $58 million, no-bid contract to the Portland Metro Chamber.

An open letter to city commissioners outlines a number of transparency and ethics issues surrounding the Clean & Safe contract, asking the Council vote to be tabled until a new Council is sworn in this January.

Currently, the Downtown Portland Clean & Safe district is overseen by an organization of the same name, whose management has significant overlap with the executive leadership of the Portland Metro Chamber (formerly the Portland Business Alliance).

A large chunk of funding for the Metro Chamber’s leadership staff comes from a lucrative contract to oversee the Downtown Portland Clean & Safe ESD.

That means a private group that lobbies the city on behalf of private business interests is being paid millions in public money to oversee a service district that includes a large swath of its own dues-paying members. The downtown district also includes several government agencies and properties that pay into the ESD—including Portland City Hall. Moreover, community groups say the contract and service delivery model are convoluted at best, with next to no oversight from the city.

The letter’s signatories say the petition for district expansion, and the accompanying contract renewal “raises serious concerns related to affordability, efficient use of public resources, accountability, and transparency.”

“The City contracts with Clean & Safe, which subcontracts with other organizations to carry out cleaning and safety services. Yet the executive director of Clean & Safe is simultaneously an employee of the Portland Business Alliance, which is also a subcontractor of Clean & Safe,” the open letter to Council states. “Unclear lines of oversight make it difficult for ratepayers or the public to hold anyone accountable. Even more concerning, the contract allocates significant overhead to the Portland Business Alliance, the city’s most active lobbying organization.”

It's a contract that mystifies everyone from accountants, to ratepayers, and even auditors. 

A 2020 city audit of Portland's ESDs found "little oversight" of the privately funded public service districts and noted "complicated governance and management systems" that obfuscate public access to basic information such as budgets and subcontracts.

Not long after the city audit, a local business executive spoke out about the questionable business arrangement baked into the Clean & Safe contract. When she did, she was allegedly threatened with a lawsuit from the Portland Business Alliance.

Since then, other local government watchdogs have taken note, but gotten little traction with city leadership.

“I think this council has an ethical responsibility to answer all these questions for the voters, or wait,” Diane Goodwin, a member of local political advocacy group Portland For All, says.

It's unclear what Clean & Safe's latest budget includes. A 2021 budget calculated total expenses at around $5 million, including about $858,000 in salaries. Exactly what portion of staff is covered in those salary expenses is murky. Both the Metro Chamber and Downtown Clean & Safe share staff. In fact, the Chamber's CEO and president, Andrew Hoan, is also the CEO and president of Downtown Clean & Safe. The 2021 budget shows $243,000 in "shared administration" salary costs. 

Tax documents from 2022 show Hoan drew a $333,000 salary from the Chamber that year. The two organizations also share an executive assistant and an advocacy coordinator. Clean & Safe's operations director and executive director are also listed as part of the Chamber's staff. The Clean & Safe executive director drew a $154,000 salary from the Chamber that same year.

Businesses and commercial property owners in the district overwhelmingly support the expansion, saying the frequent cleaning and beefed up security have improved downtown Portland and made it safer for workers and visitors.

“We want our associates to feel safe coming into work,” Kelly Mullen, president of Portland’s Safeway and Albertsons division, told the Council on October 31 during its initial consideration of the contract and ESD expansion. Mullen said recently, the Safeway location at 10th and Jefferson has had to reduce store hours and close off an entrance, to improve safety at the grocery store.

“We want to be part of the solution and really make our community thrive,” Mullen said.

The council also heard from the principal of a private school advocating for the district expansion so her students and staff could receive extra security and clean-up around the campus.

One element of Downtown Clean & Safe that’s lauded by nearly every district member, even critics, is the Clean Start program, run by Central City Concern. The program offers janitorial jobs cleaning city streets to people transitioning out of homelessness. For many, it offers a fresh start and a path toward self-sufficiency. 

City staff and Clean & Safe reps say the expanded district and new proposed rate structures will offer more transparency, reasonable fee calculations, inflation adjustments, and a cap on rates for condo owners. Several residential ratepayers say the whole Clean & Safe arrangement leaves them with more questions than services received. 

John Pumphrey owns a condominium in the downtown district. He and other condo owners say the services they pay for are often duplicative of private security and janitorial services they already pay for through their homeowners association. They also say the services serve mainly to benefit businesses, not residents.

“I’m a condo owner in downtown Portland and our building pays $24,000 a year to Clean & Safe and for this, [we] receive next to nothing,” Pumphrey told the Council, asking them to vote against the contract renewal. “What’s really irritating to some of us about Clean & Safe is that 50 percent of what we contribute … is skimmed off the top by the Portland Metro Chamber.”

Pumphrey isn’t the only one critical of the unusually high compensation provided to Portland Metro Chamber staff from the Downtown Clean & Safe contract.

The open letter to City Council also makes mention of the compensation arrangement, asserting the Clean & Safe contract “pays nearly 50 percent of Business Alliance executive salaries in addition to up to 30% in administrative overhead.”

“Many of these executives appear in City lobbying records and in state filings for PACs that advocate for private business interests, often directly in conflict with the will of the voting public,” the letter reads. “It is inappropriate to use public resources to offset the cost of business lobbying.”

Devin Reynolds, the city's ESD coordinator, said the arrangement between the Metro Chamber and Dowtown Clean & Safe isn't an anomaly.

“Having an ESD contract with a third party to fulfill some, or all their service areas is indeed common across business improvement districts, business improvement areas, and enhanced services districts,” Reynolds told the Mercury earlier this year.

Commonplace or not, some downtown ESD ratepayers say they’ve been cut off from any meaningful participation in their district’s oversight or decisions.

Anita Davidson, a condo owner in the downtown district, told the Mercury that for years, condo owners have had no representation in district leadership, and there is little to no transparency around operational decisions.

“As residential people, we don’t feel we belong there. We don't have a vote in who runs Clean & Safe,” she said. “We can’t even join Portland Metro Chamber, because it's for businesses. I’d like to see Clean & Safe become a public nonprofit. That would solve a lot of things. I still have to make a public records request [just] to see their budget.”

In an effort to appease homeowners, the new contract includes a fee cap on residential units. It’s a nice accommodation, but homeowners in the industry-dominated district say what they really want is a way to opt out.

There currently is no mechanism to do that, and the process for annexing additional property into an ESD doesn’t require a vote from affected property owners. It’s left up to City Council to approve. Current standards only require the city to notify affected property owners by mail and hold public hearings where they can chime in. 

“Unfortunately for ratepayers, the city has not yet, after 30 years, adopted standards for formation, renewal, or expansion of the ESDs,” Davidson told Council. “At some point, we hope and expect that this will happen, although listening tonight, it sounds like it's an all-in-one thing.”

Other district members say they disagree with their tax revenue being used to initiate homeless sweeps, and pay for increased police presence.

That’s especially true in the case of Sisters of the Road, a homeless services nonprofit and member of the Downtown Portland Clean & Safe district.

“From 2016-2020, unhoused residents accounted for over half of arrests made in Portland. Their charges were primarily nonviolent, survival crimes. That same data showed that people are 20 times more likely to experience criminalization in Downtown Clean & Safe versus other areas of the city,” Lauren Armony, program director at Sisters of the Road, told the city in written testimony earlier this year. “Hyper-surveillance has not made our neighborhood any healthier or safer, but further entrenched vulnerable individuals in the cycle of incarceration and poverty.”

Organizations like Sisters of the Road say they're irked that the ESD funnels its members’ taxes into the Metro Chamber, which has powerful influence over city politics and often advocates against the city’s vulnerable, unhoused residents–the same population Sisters of the Road is trying to help. 

The Clean & Safe contract and district expansion are currently scheduled for a second reading and vote by Portland City Council on Wednesday.

Connecticut punk rocker Vicki F has released a new music video for her acoustic, post-punk version of Petula Clark's classic "Downtown." The video was captured "Let It Be-Style" on a rooftop in downtown Norwalk CT.

Ackerman Retail's Brian Lefkoff and Stephany Cruz represent luxury patisserie in its first location outside of Louisiana

The line-up has surpassed expectation for the second Owensboro Music Business Expo, taking place April 19-20 this year at the Theatre Workshop of Owensboro.

Celebrating Women's Fashion: Kristen d'Offay's Brick-and-Mortar Store Opens Its Doors in Historic Downtown Santa Barbara

From 2,000 to 52,000 square feet, the Fort Worth commercial spaces for lease are ideal for distributors or other businesses that do a lot of shipping and receiving

Radio Reacting to New Single.

Rocker Goes Back To Roots.

Roots Rocker Releases Acoustic EP.

Roots Rocker Releases New Digital 45

City leaders in Sandpoint, Idaho recognized the negative effects of parking mandates and decided to act.

Their name is Robert Allen.

(Wed, Nov 13 2024 10:00 PM to Thu, Nov 14 2024 3:45 AM) Orange Ln trns will operate counterclockwise on the Outer Loop. Board/exit Orange Ln trns on the Brown Line platform at all Loop stations.

The cooling towers located on the roof of Granite Tower in Denver were meant to last 20 years. But at nearly 40 years, the cooling towers and fluid coolers were well past their life expectancy.

11/13/2024 - 6:30 PM - Venue: The Senate

Orlando Fringe has ended its deal with the city and will leave the Church Street ArtSpace by February, leaders say. Finances are to blame.

M3 Roofing in Miami took on a 6,000 square-foot reroofing with the help of Polyglass' multi-ply roofing system.

Denver International Airport To/from Westin Denver Downtown Limousine And Car Service

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser forgot which lines on the D.C. Metro service Capital One Arena while trying to argue against the NBA's Washington Wizards and the NHL's Washington Capitals moving to a new arena in Virginia.

The narrative goes something like this: Downtown Spokane is in decline, is unsafe, is a hotbed of crime and unsavory activity…

There are only three rules in improv: Be mentally present in the scene, always make your scene partner look good, and approach every scene with a "yes and..." mentality…

When it comes to the 4th of July, fireworks and film go hand-in-hand! Both David Fair and Russ Collins are on vacation this week, so WEMU's Mat Hopson and Marquee Arts cinema programming director Nick Alderink meet up to chat about the newest films and special screenings coming your way this Independence Day weekend!

The Ann Arbor Art Fair kicks off this week, and the Michigan and State Theatres will bring along some great movies to go with it! WEMU's David Fair meets up with Marquee Arts cinema programming director Nick Alderink to chat about all of the cinematic happenings for the coming weekend!

We're halfway through August, so there's still time to catch a summer flick! WEMU's David Fair is away this week, so Mat Hopson steps in to discuss the newest movies and upcoming special screenings at your favorite downtown movie houses with Marquee Arts executive director Russ Collins!

After a week away, WEMU's David Fair returns to chatting about cinema with Marquee Arts executive director Russ Collins. As they do every week, they deliver all of the details on new films and the many special screenings coming to Ann Arbor!

It's the first week of September, and we have plenty of movies to chat about! WEMU's Mat Hopson sits in David Fair to share all of the movie news and info on special screenings and events you could ask for with Marquee Arts executive director Russ Collins!

Days are getting a bit shorter here in Michigan, but there's always time to catch a flick! WEMU's David Fair meets up again with Marquee Arts executive director Russ Collins to chat about the newest films and special events hitting the big screen!

Whether you prefer the modern age of cinema or the silent era, there's plenty of films worth checking out this weekend and beyond! WEMU's Russ Collins from Marquee Arts gives the full cinematic rundown in his conversation with WEMU's David Fair.

Russ Collins is on a tour of Broadway this week, so, Marquee Arts cinema program director Nick Alderink steps in on Cinema Chat this week. He joined WEMU's David Fair to cover the latest film openings and special screenings in the area.

Had Denver matched the regional average gain, it would have seen an additional $646 million more in taxable sales revenues, the report estimates.

Hundreds of observers marked Remembrance Day and the 80th anniversary of D-Day during a downtown ceremony at the Gore Park cenotaph on Monday, recalling efforts by local soldiers who gave their lives on the battlefield.

Two buildings collapsed on Hamilton’s Gore Park early Monday morning after being boarded up for over a decade. The fire department says no one was injured and the city has issued an emergency demolition order.

Over $12 Million In State Investments Highlighted In Annual Report And Interactive Story Map   The Downtown Development Districts (DDD) program, administered by the Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA), recently released its Fiscal Year 2021 (FY2021) Annual Report and Story Map.  During FY2021 and amid a global pandemic, 60 development projects throughout the state were […]

Dover, Del. March 10, 2023 – The Downtown Development Districts (DDD) program, administered by the Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA), recently released its Fiscal Year 2022 (FY2022) Annual Report and Story Map. During FY2022, 64 development projects were completed receiving $4.6 million in state funds and leveraging $44 million in private investment. A majority were […]

The Downtown Development Districts Rebate Program (DDD), administered by the Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA), is proud to release its Fiscal Year 2023 (FY2023) Annual Report and Story Map.   During FY2023, 63 development projects – 13 large and 50 small projects — were completed, receiving $10.9 million in state funds and leveraging $170 million […]

Owners of five Delaware businesses are thinking holidays already, and they have every reason to do so – they’ll be taking part in a state-led initiative that will provide them with rent-free commercial space for three months in a Delaware downtown from October through December.

Once-vacant properties in four Delaware downtowns have been transformed into wellsprings of opportunity thanks to a state-run program offering small business owners a head start in brick-and-mortar locations.

Calgary will be getting yet another show-stopping skyscraper, this one a LEED Platinum-exceeding mixed-use development designed by Bjarke Ingels Group.

Circus animal gets away from handlers, causes a stir during rush hour.

US Rocker releases rare tracks with R'n'R HOF E Streeters.

US Rocker releases new single and albums to worldwide audience.