All right. Welcome everybody to the Fall
2024 solicitations announcement webinar. Please, as you come in, remember
to put your questions into the Zoom and they will go into our
frequently asked questions addendum and we'll answer them
as we as we get to the end. OK, now I'm going to share my
screen. This is driving me crazy. Before we started, no crashing. Now crashing. It is the way that it works. Let me just open up that screen
again. Here we go. All right, introductions Hi, my
name is Jerica Gomez and I'm the multi family development
specialist here in Ramsey County. If you are interested and want
to learn more about the emerging diverse developers program, you
can go to our website at www.ramseycounty.us\ EDD.

This webinar will be recorded. As I mentioned before, some of
you came in. If you have any questions, feel
free to put them in the chat. Just make sure that you mark for
everyone to be able to see them and they will be compiled and
placed in our frequently asked questions document. If we cannot answer them today,
we will try to get you answers in that document. Master, I'd like to introduce
yourself, everyone. I'm Max Oldies and I'm the
deputy director of housing development here at Branson
County Community and Economic Development. Thanks, everyone. Carmel, Hi everyone. Doctor Mel San Juan, she for
pronouns. I am a planning specialist and I
help manage the critical corridors program, which it's
kind of towards the end of this presentation here.

So yeah, nice to meet you all
and anyone from NAO in the room would like to introduce
themselves. Hello, my name is Malika
Billingsley. I work with NAO Partners and
Jerrica on the EDD program, and I can offer some TA for some of
these scripts. So I'm super excited to hear all
the money that we can get for developments. Me too, Me too Some housekeeping
the program background for EDD, this is the second year for the
Emerging and diverse Developers program. This is one program with two
parts. We assist developers who need
help building a little bit of capacity to get into the field
of development. And this year we'll be doing
both commercial and and housing development, which is really
exciting. This year a few changes have
come down the pipeline. We'll talk, which we'll talk
about a little bit later.

We'll go through scoring and
evaluation for this specific solicitation and then we'll talk
about some other solicitations we have around Ramsey County
CED, specifically the Emerging and Diverse Developers program. First of all, let's start all
the way from the back. What is a solicitation? A solicitation is a funding
opportunity. There are documents that make
the government's requirements clear so that businesses or
individuals such as yourselves can submit competitive
applications. Municipalities generally acquire
goods and services through this cost effective, competitive and
competitive and fair process accessible to all businesses. Now you may have heard of
RFQSRFPS Notice of funding opportunities. These are all very close to what
a solicitation is and the reason why we're talking about this
because if you're just getting into the field, you may not know
these words and we're going to be using them over and over
throughout this presentation.

What is a housing developer? They're entrepreneurs who
oversee development and redevelopment of properties. They plan to control projects
from start to finish, from purchasing the land to building
the property to rehab. There are many points of there
are many points of entry to this industry. So that doesn't mean that you
have to have a master's degree in housing development or you
have to be a realtor or you have to be a teacher. You don't have to be anything to
be a developer. So I just want to clear that up. And Ramsey County specifically
defines emerging developers as an individual or entity that has
owned or developed no more than 25 housing units or 15,000
square feet of commercial space. Remember how we said there were
a couple of changes this year and that is one of them? So 25 units of housing as
opposed to properties.

If anybody has any questions,
please feel free to place them in the chat. And if you qualify under that
definition, then you are a housing developer even if you
haven't developed your first housing. I want to just take away any
stereotype type threat that you might be feeling as you come
into this room. This presentation is for you
solicitation announcement. So specifically for the EDD
program, the applicants will have to have 25 housing units or
less. That's for both the solicitation
and the technical assistance that is that is offered this
year underneath NAIL and you can find that on our website. People who are applying for
commercial development would apply underneath our commercial
solicitations, but you are still welcome to apply using EDD, EDD
technical assistance because that is available to you. This year. Housing development that serves
low to moderate income residents is going to be is what we're
going to be funding underneath the EDD program solicitation and
that's going to be awarded with a deferrable 0% interest loan
and it's going to come with 20 years of affordability and it's
eligible in both Saint Paul and suburban Ramsey County.

And the application. Started last week, September 5th
and will be open until October 31st or will be accepting
responses until October 31st. And then our recommended awards
will go to board in December 2024. What are some of the goals of
EDD? So the Emerging and Diverse
Developers program was built to accomplish a lot of Ramsey
County's strategies as well as our ECI plans through our
Economic Competitiveness and Inclusion plan. And if you haven't read this
plan, I really suggest that you do because it's such an amazing
opportunity to learn about what the community has said that they
want from Ramsey County and what we're doing through the EDD
program, the Equitable Development Framework is
something that really teaches us how.

So basically we're giving you
this opportunity to read these plans so that you can understand
what it is that Ramsey County is looking for to do for the
constituents. So that while you're developing
your plan, while you're while you're reading it, you can have
things that resonate with you and pull them out and put them
in some of your responses. Because if you tell me exactly
what I told you that I want it, that you can do that for me as
you're score, as we're scoring the applications, that's what
we're going to be looking for.

Now I told you that we
accomplished a lot of Ramsey County strategies and goals with
the emerging and diverse developers program and I was not
lying to you. 2 county goals are to cultivate
economic prosperity and invest in neighborhoods with
concentrated financial poverty and to enhance access to
opportunity and mobility for all residents and businesses. As you can see, we have covered
so many of these goals with the EDD program, so it is no small
feat. I want to thank my partners in
this work, NEO Partners, because we were able to accomplish so
much by doing the EDD program last year. We invested $3.1 million back
into the community and we've got several housing units coming
online right now for from the EDD program for last year, which
is just really exciting.

Housing is getting built. Developers are getting into the
field and becoming successful through housing development,
which is really, really just, I mean, I get to do my dream job. So I'm really happy about this. Next slide. Eligible activities underneath
the EDD program. So the EDD program solicitation
allows you to build new construction rehab, naturally
occurring affordable housing assistant acquisition with some
form of site control, I hate to say assistant acquisition
because you will not get searching money. So like if you're looking for a
property, you will not get searching money that's not a
part of the EDD program.

Instead we award in the, the
parcel or the, the, the address that you apply with. And so if you were to, for
instance, be purchasing 529 Arundel and you were to get an
award for 529 Arundel and 529 Arundel fell through, then that
award would no longer be yours because we award towards the
parcel. So when I say acquisition, I
don't want you to feel like this is searching money. This is instead specific parcel
application. So I hope that makes sense. And then with site ownership, so
say you already own the site, we can award pre development
funding. This is a very, very competitive
process. So the application pieces really
do matter. Last year we got 29 applications
and we were able to award 11. So this is a very competitive
process. But these are the eligible
activities underneath the EDD program. So pre development funding is
such a huge opportunity for Ramsey County. And if you own, you have full
site ownership, that means that you have a executed purchase
agreement, that means that your name is on the deed. So the reason why site ownership
is so important is because it is attached to the lien of the
parcel that you are applying with.

And this could cover things like
your architectural fees, your engineering fees, your
consulting fees, your environmental assessments, legal
consultant marking, market analysis, administrative costs
for loan commitments, zone approvals and land application
fees, and then permanent fees. These are really amazing funds
because as you all know who are in development or who have been
in this field for a while, pre development costs are not easy
to come by. This $20,000 grant. Well, this $20,000 loan will
turn into a grant as long as you get the, as long as you do what
you said you were going to do. So the loan will be attached to
the lien of your property. But if you do create the housing
that you said that you were going to create, it will be
forgiven as a grant. All right, so we are currently
in our open application. This is a 8 week. Between September 5th and
October 31st, in this point, we are accepting applications so
you can go into our Zoom grants profile and find the EDD program
solicitation.

In November, we will review
those applications as a staff, as an interdisciplinary staff
for four criteria, which we'll talk about in just a second. The applicants will be notified
in December if they were awarded or not. The recommended projects will go
to the board in the third week of December and closing
conversations can begin as early as January as long as you have
all of your, all of your things down. The reason why I'm telling you
this now is because as you're looking for your properties, as
you're getting to the, the conversations with your banks,
with your financial institutions for the rest of the money that
you're looking for, for these projects. I want you to be aware of what
that timeline looks like as we, as we move forward into, you
know, giving awards and closing so that you can inform
everybody, all of the stakeholders on your project as
to what's going on at Ramsey County at the time that you're,
you're, you're, you're asking for status reports generally
after applications are received.

We do not take, we don't take
any extra documentation. We don't really communicate very
much between potential awardees and, and Ramsey County only
because there are, there are conflict of interest rules for
this. But we may reach out to you in
the meantime to ask you questions about your project to
help us better understand what it is that you're proposing
scoring and evaluation. We believe that it's very
important that scoring is transparent. So we give you 4 criteria in
which I'll talk about in just a moment to focus on as you're
developing your applications because we want you to know this
is exactly what we're looking for so that you can sell score
before you even submit your application to, you know,
understand the competitiveness of this program. Our scoring criteria are
strategic alignment, affordability, financial
feasibility and organizational capacity. If you look at our strategic
alignment portion, that's that nice Big Blue portion, it's a
little bit larger. In this specific solicitation. If you've applied for other
solicitations, you may be like, whoa, 40 points.

That's a huge amount. And the reason why we increased
it so substantially with the EDD program is because we realized
prior to EDD, we had emerging developers who would apply into
our solicitations. And those emerging developers
really understood what the community wanted. And that's what strategic
alignment is all about. They knew exactly what it was
that we were asking for to be provided because many of them
were members of the community. And so to incentivize the we're
not trying to teach fish how to fly or we're not trying to teach
birds how to swim, unless you're a duck. Sorry, Minnesota joke. To incentivize that, we increase
the level of points awarded for the EDD program to 40 as opposed
to 25 and the organizational capacity down to 10 points
because we understand that you're just starting, just
building your team, and that makes it so.

Our quantitative and qualitative
analysis is exactly 5050. So the quality of your
application, the quality of your project is just as important as
the quantitative analysis. And we plan to help you with
both. So this is very exciting for
Ramsey County and it's also very exciting for emerging developers
as they're coming into this field. Please remember if you have
questions to put them in the chat and we will make sure to
get to them by the end of today if we can. Otherwise they will go into our
frequently asked questions document. Now I, I beat the drum of
strategic alignment and there's a really good reason for that. It's because Ramsey County has
the frameworks, we have the strategies, we have the goals,
and I want to make it so that when we're providing projects,
when we're awarding projects, we're awarding what it is that
we ask people to do.

So applicants who score the
highest and strategic alignment will fully respond to all of my
attachment A questions. The attachment A is our
livability questionnaire. And the reason why this is so
important is because this is how we determine that 40 points. So if you don't turn in a
livability questionnaire, first of all, it's a pass fill
document. Second of all, 40 points. I don't know very many people
who can miss 40 points on a test and still pass that test.

So I want you to take it very
seriously and I want you to give me $500,000 questions. Let me answer this to my
questions. Applicant fully response to
attachment A demonstrates a clear link between the project
and the economic competitiveness and inclusion plan, the equity
development framework and deeply affordable housing initiative
report. All of these links will be
posted in this presentation as it's on our website. So you will have access to all
of these documents as well as they are attached to our website
already. But I put them all in one place
just for you guys to be able to read. Now I'm not going to go through
all of the other ones. Because imagine if a full answer
does all of this and gives you 40 points. Then if you don't give me a full
answer, you will get less points. And just thinking about, you
know, missing 10 points because you weren't able to connect
your, your project to the Ecuador develop equitable
development framework, say that three times fast or the deeply
affordable housing initiative report, it just doesn't seem
worth it.

So I would read and understand
these reports as you're applying and understanding, you know,
what it is that Ramsey County is looking for now for
affordability. We do allow for a mix of
affordability. And your mix doesn't have to be,
your mix has to be under 80%, but it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to include 30%
AMI. It doesn't have to include 50%
AMI, but it should between be between 30 and 80% AMI. Otherwise it will not be
competitive in this process and it won't score for
affordability. And like I said, missing 25
points is a substantial amount of points to miss. As you look at this
affordability slide, you can see on the right I've given you an
example of what a mix of affordability looks like. Here we have a four unit
building with 150% AMI, 130% AMI, actually 250% AMI. Why did I separate them? I just wanted to confuse myself. 250% AMI, a 30% AMI and an 80%
AMI. Now this building qualifies as
52.5 AMI, 52.5 AMI is not trackable, OK. So because it's over 50% AMI and
under 60% AMI, we would track this for 60% AMI for the for the
building.

This is what's called income
averaging. It allows you to have a mix of
incomes for your affordable housing and it really does
provide a basis of support for diversity in area median income
within your project. This is quantitative, so
quantitative analysis is all about the numbers. There is no ambiguity there. If your projects mix averages
50% AMI or less, than you'll score 20 points. If your project unit mix
averages to 60% AMI or less, you'll score 15 points. If you have deeper
affordability, you could score five additional points and so
the maximum points here is 25. We'll be looking across the
spectrum at your total development costs, your number
of units, your cost per unit, your amount requested, your
amount per unit requested and the percentage of Ramsey County
subsidy as compared to other sources in your multi family
workbook, which we'll talk about in just a minute.

Percentage of other funding and
a letter of support from municipality could create a more
competitive application on your behalf. Financial feasibility will be
all about the cost of that unit. So if your. So affordability and financial
feasibility are both quantitative, but they are
different. Affordability is how much our
constituents pay. Financial feasibility is how
much we'll have to give you compared to other applications
across the board. So if your unit is less than
$200,000 and that's per unit, so say you had a 20 unit building
and each unit you were rehabbing cost about $180,000, you could
score 20 points in the financial feasibility category. I don't want you to fight to
make your prices this much if this is if you're doing new
developments, it's almost impossible to get a unit for 200
point for 20 for $200,000 as a new development. What this is about is
understanding that you may not score high in every single
category, but so that you can, you can kind of self score and
add your scores up as you're, you know, developing your
application. So think about if you don't
score high in the financial feasibility category or the
affordability category, you know how you're going to score as
you're going into strategic alignment, how you're going to
score as you're going into organizational capacity.

This way you can conceptualize
what it is that you're you're providing as you're doing these
applications, which often take 30 hours to complete. So they are very, very long
applications. I just want to make sure that
people know as they're going into them what it is that we're
looking for. Organizational capacity. We do provide an organizational
capacity worksheet and it's going to give you just kind of a
template to follow as to what we're looking for, for your
organizational capacity. This is 10 points on your
application. So think about your team, think
about your architect, think about your your GC, your general
contractor. I'm sorry, I've tried not to use
these acronyms, but they just come out of me. Think about the financial
institution in which you're using.

Think about your civil engineer,
if you have one on your team. Think about all of the little
pieces that go into all of the the people that go into the
development of your application. Because you know, we get further
when we go together and this is 10 points towards your
application. So, so if you don't have a full
team yet, just know that you know, this is what we're looking
for. All right, now that we're 30
minutes into the meeting, let's go over some of the required
documents for the EDD program. These are what we consider in
Ramsey County our pass fail requirements. This is how you get to the
scoring table.

So we talked about eligible
housing type earlier. That was the new development,
the rehab, the acquisition, the pre development. So those are your eligible uses,
right. So if you have an eligible
housing type that you're providing your multi family
workbook, that's the quantitative analysis document
that is generally created through Excel. We use the Minnesota Multi
Family Workbook and there is one attached in our Zoom grants and
we'll look at that a little bit later. This could be also called a pro
forma. This has all of your 15 year
projections inside of it. It'll have all of your unit
costs inside of it. It'll have all of your sources
and uses. This document is very, very
helpful in required as you come into the solicitation. So you want to make sure that
you understand the Multi family Workbook and if you do need
assistance, if you are looking at this document, you feel cross
eyed because it is a lot of information.

Please make sure you go to our
website www.ramseycounty.us and Scroll down to apply for
technical assistance in order to help you with your application
because we do have wonderful technical assistance providers
and because the solicitation is currently open, anybody here at
Ramsey County is not really able to answer your project specific
questions as you answer them. So I just want to reiterate and
harp that Nail partners who provides our technical
assistance is very good and they are very understanding of all of
the elements of this application. So if you see the document, I
don't want you to get scared and be like I can't apply that. I don't know what I'm doing. There is technical assistance
available. You will also inside of Zoom
grants see that there is a section for your project
description and those are the questions one through 12.

Your project description is
required to get to the scoring table. Your acknowledgement letter,
which is just a letter acknowledging that everything
that you put in your application is true. Your lobby's certificate form
and your responses to the Ramsey County Equitable development and
livability questions or attachment A. So these are the six
requirements, 6 required documents that we have for the
Ramsey County Emerging and Diverse Developers Program. And these get you to the scoring
table. Now I'm going to scroll over to
this next screen. I don't want you to get
overwhelmed because remember, these are the six required
documents, OK? Now, these 21 additional
materials are also important, but you want to make sure that
you understand many of these documents are already included
in some of the things that you've provided.

That's your you're going to want
to give us your project schedule, your organizational
capacity worksheet, your market feasibility analysis plan if you
have it. Applicants, financial
statements, detailed project budget, explanation of funding
sources, commitment letters from other lenders and funders. Like say for instance, you have
a loan from a CDFI that you're going to be applying to this
this project architectural drawings if you have them, sworn
construction cost statement if you have it, bids and
specifications if you have them.

Site improvement plans, project
scope of work, photos of project site, evidence of site control,
operating expense projections, 15 year pro forma projections,
detailed housing unit breakdown, occupancy field projections,
tenant data, zoning and land use documentation, as well as any
resolutions that you have from the local municipality in which
you're applying on behalf of. That's a lot. I do want to tell you that all
of these documents go into the scoring conversation. So they are important, but you
do not have to have them in order to get to the scoring
table. But if you want the most
competitive application, you do apply with these documents also. But many of these documents as I
said before are included in your multi family workbook. The explanation of funding
sources, the detailed project budget, your sources and use to
the statement, your operating expense projections, your 15
year pro forma projections, your detailed housing unit breakdown,
your occupancy fill projections, those are all in your workbook.

And that's 30% of all of the
additional information that we asked for. And you could take some
pictures. So there's even more that you
can do for your project in order to really go forward and go into
the scoring table with giving us a complete application. All right, I'm going to pass it
to Max as he talks to you about our Zoom Grants profile and how
we review applications.

OK, hey everyone. I'm going to show you our
website landing page on ramseycounty dot US. And just before this meeting, we
had a some text was deleted. So I'll show you where you'll
find the Zoom Grants link. It will be there. And then I'm going to put the
Zoom Grants link back in the chat so that we can all follow
along as well. So first let me do that. OK, so that is the simple URL
there. I just put it in the chat and
I'm going to start at ramseycounty dot US slash EDD. So I'm going to share my screen
and I am going to go to here. OK, so here we are at
ramseycounty dot US slash EDD. So I'm going to type that in so
we can all see the simple URL and it brings you to this page.

It tells you information about
our about the program, last year's evaluation reports. You can see how we've viewed the
program in the past, program eligibility, program goals, the
cohort that's currently happening, this technical
assistance option is completely full. So this is just to let you know
that this is going on. And then here's the technical
assistance SurveyMonkey that Malika also put in the chat so
you can press apply now. And that's for one-on-one
technical assistance for folks who are specifically intending
to apply to either the 2024 emerging developers or one of
these other solicitation opportunities. Funding opportunities is where
we'll re add the Zoom grants link. It'll say apply now as well. So it'll have a blue button
right there under funding opportunities. And this is really important. So it's the solicitation notice.

So everything that we went over
today and more is in that solicitation notice. And then here we are in
resources. So this was today's meeting and
at the very end, we'll collapse this so it's a little more user
friendly. But these are all of our awards
from the previous years by source. So you can kind of look back and
see which projects received previous awards as well.

So a lot of resources for you to
look over and then you can see the related resources. So attachment A that Derek has
spoke about is based off of these plans over here where it
says related resources. So you have those easy links
there as well. And so that'll take you to the
ECI plan or the Economic Competitiveness Inclusion plan,
the Deeply Affordable Housing Initiative, and the Equitable
Development Framework. So that is our landing page. I'm just going to move my tab
down for a second and I'm going to go to the simple URL for Zoom
grants. And this is what it looks like
when you don't have an account. This is not logged into
anything. You can see all the information
on the page here about the solicitation to see if it's
something you're interested in applying to. It goes over all the information
that's in the solicitation notice.

And let's say you're like, you
know what I mean? I'm going to log in and I am
going to do that. I'm going to take a crack at
this. You log in in the upper right
corner if you already have an account or you can create a new
account as well. If you do not have a new Zoom
Grants account. It's free and it's, it's
basically just your e-mail and a password. So I'm going to go into my Gmail
one and make sure no one can see my password. OK And so now I'm logged into an
existing Zoom Grants account and you can see that what it looks
like now as well. So it looks basically the same,
they'll just be more options towards the end. So here we have general
considerations about the solicitation. It links back to the
Ramseycounty dot US/EDD page. You can see all of the
requirements. So what's an eligible housing
type, eligible soft costs, pass fail materials.

So what Jericho went over today
and then all the additional materials that we just went over
as well. And then it goes over the type
of funding available. You do not as an applicant do
not need to worry about that. We do. We connect recommended projects
to an eligible source. So you don't need to worry about
that. But it's good to know where
we're coming from. And then you can go into scoring
and evaluation.

This is all on the Zoom grants
page as well as reminders. It gets very specific about what
we're looking for in terms of those scoring criteria that
Jericho went over. And then just some reminders. This is what we call the
library. It's called resources for
solicitation. And these are all downloadable
worksheets for you guys to complete your application. So we have the multi family
workbook, We have attachment A, the equitable development and
livability questions that affects your strategic alignment
score. Attachment B is the
acknowledgements form. Attachment CD is the lobbying
certification form. And then the additional material
of the organizational capacity worksheet that aids in our
scoring of your organizational capacity. So now you press apply now and
there should be a bunch of I'm going to scroll back through
that And you can see now we have places where we can enter in
information about our projects.

So let's say I am going to start
a project called, my last name is Fuldhusen. I'm going to call my building
Fuldhusen Flats and I'm going to be requesting $500,000 for this
6 unit building. And then you can list your
organization name. That could be yourself if you're
an sole entity, or it could be a a company and you can go through
that. And I'm going to press next. And then it gets into these
eligibility determinations. Next will be our 12 questions on
the project. And then you have additional
places to upload materials. So that is Zoom Grants. It's pretty straightforward. It's just an online application
portal. Just want to make sure you see
that and that you have the Zoom Grants link in the chat right
now and that will be posted on www.ramsaycounty.us slash EDD.

So everything will be on slash
EDD. So I'm going to stop sharing and
I'll go back to Jericho. All right, thank you so much for
that walkthrough, Max. We appreciate you. Now, I'm going to turn it over
to my colleague Carmel, who's going to walk through some of
the other solicitations that Ramsey County will be hosting
this fall or we're actually currently hosting many of them. So I will turn it over to you,
Carmel. Hey, Jerika, you can go to the
next slide. Did someone push it to the next
slide, please? Thank you. So just a little bit of
background here again, the HRA Housing and Redevelopment
Authority levy, it's a funding source for multiple programs
within CED. The other solicitations that
I'll be talking about will be critical corridors. Jerrica spoke about EDD already
site assessment grants and then another program that we offer as
well. It's first home down payment
assistance that is also a funding source or that also has
the HRA levy as a funding source.

And so the first year of HRA
levy programs was in 2022 and the eligibility for these
programs are limited to the HRA area of operation that simply
means anywhere in Nancy County with the exception of the City
of North Saint Paul. And more information can be
available at the website there in next slide. OK. So the critical corridors
development and infrastructure solicitation, so this is
currently open. It is something that I manage
along with Ella Mitchell. And the deadline for this, so
it's a kind of a quicker deadline than the EDD
solicitation. It is on Tuesday, October 15th
at the end of the day. And so the program website there
will show a lot of the useful information that you can find
about this critical border solicitation. And so the overall purpose of
this program is to fund inclusive redevelopment and
public infrastructure within critical corridors, critical
corridors that meaning major transit areas. And yes, thank you for sending
that Max. And I'll actually share the map
that you can use to see if your project is located in a critical
corridor. So if you click on the link that
leads to a map there that shows all the different corridors
within the county.

And if your project is in kind
of the green sections then that is eligible to upload. For our critical corridors
funding and so we want to make sure a little slight difference
with EDD and that we are very much transit oriented
development type of program. That simply meaning that we want
to kind of support efficient land use kind of that compact
built form supporting density essentially along transit
corridors and to enhance connectivity between housing,
jobs, retail and services while also wanting to encourage that
walkable environment and be able to use other transportation
besides cars. And so eligible applicants for
these are developers for profit and nonprofit, any government
public agencies and then any related development authorities. And so a maximum funding request
that you can have for this program is $500,000. And next slide please. And so here is a list of the
critical quarters eligible activities. Here we fund the kind of
activities that are outside of the building envelope.

So essentially kind of
extraordinary, extraordinary hard construction costs for
housing, commercial or mixed-use redevelopment projects. So we're not simply focused on
housing, but we can, we also fund mixed-use commercial
projects to say that don't have housing at all. And so we fund site preparation,
public realm improvements or amenities, any storm water
management on the side, geotech soil correction, adaptive reuse
of buildings, say converting a office type building into
housing and things like that.

Building and related structure
removal, any demolition, deconstruction and clearance
costs and then parking removal associated with redeveloping a
building. Because that is kind of a focus
that we want to make sure that any redevelopment project is
trying to encourage kind of public transit use as opposed to
vehicle use. And so we also fund any public
site infrastructure improvements. And so this could be something
like expanding a sidewalk or creating a Plaza in your
project. And so we just want to also make
sure though that whatever your project you might be proposing,
it's not just improving a single sidewalk or a single street
light on your project, but wanting it to be more, more
comprehensive. And so in this last bullet
point, so we fund strategic property acquisition, but this
is only if you a are a local unit of government. So this is the one kind of key
difference here with EDD. And so we would only fund to say
if you are a city applying for a property acquisition to for
future higher density development, then we will allow
that. But if you a are a private or a
nonprofit developer, we don't fund strategic property
acquisition and that's just not the main funding by reading here
with our specific program.

So yeah, can we move on to the
next slide? Thank you. And so we saw a kind of quick
list of ineligible activities as well administrative staff time,
any building interior renovation. And this is kind of a loose,
loose bullet point here in that we do I guess it's depending on
the project specifics. We do fund some rehabilitation. But like any, any major interior
renovation, that is not the focus of this project because we
of this program, I mean, because critical corridors is kind of
activating more of the public space. And so any kind of the public
storefronts or any, anything that that is wanting to not as
related to interior renovation. And so I just want to make sure
that that is also said here. And of course, we also, if you'd
like to chat more, maybe you have a certain project that
you're not too sure could qualify.

We're happy to take pre
application meetings kind of just to discuss eligibility
wise, but not so much advising you on what would be the best
type of application to save. So if that makes sense. And so we just want to make sure
you're not applying to us and then we find out, oh, you're not
quite eligible at all. And so we want to prevent that. And so we invite you to please
e-mail us and you'll have my e-mail information here in the
next slide, I believe to discuss kind of if you have any
confusion over these bullet points because they are a little
bit more broad than nuanced, I would say, than our EGD
solicitation, we would be happy to chat and just make sure that
you are eligible to apply or maybe you might not be, but a
future project, project might work. And so I'll keep going down the
list here. We are not funding environmental
remediation. We have different programs for
that, that I'll also share. And the streetscaping or
landscaping tenant relocation costs and improvements and any
conceptual design services, legal fees or other soft costs,
contingencies and administration is also ineligible to request 3
invoice for it.

And so you can go to the next
slide, OK. And so the application timeline
here, the solicitation opened last Tuesday, September 3rd and
it closes on October 15th. And so that's a six week, well
more like 5 week timeline now considering we're into the
second week here. But our decisions are accepted
or are will be released in December and activities for this
program would have to be completed by December 31st of
2026. And so I think I forgot to
mention here that our program is kind of on a reimbursement
basis.

So it would be you'd be able to
request up to $500,000 in grant funding and or that's kind of
our default to have our awards given as a grant as opposed to a
loan. But of course there's sometimes
some projects that where it makes a little bit more
financial sense to have as a loan. But that can come of course
after awards are given and we can kind of discuss through
that. But I also want to remind here
too, those pre application meetings are really helpful. We can still have those kind of
just to discuss eligibility to make sure that you can apply to
it and you have have an eligible project and my e-mail guide
there Carmel dot San Juan at AMC county dot US and I'll type that
here in the chat as well as a contact for you for this
critical corridors program.

So and go on to the next slide,
OK. And so here are other
solicitations now. So we are done speaking about
critical corridors and I'm presenting two other
environmental solicitations that you can apply for. We have the Environmental
Response Fund or Earth funding. Its application is opening on
the 15th, so coming up pretty soon here and closing on
November 1st. And so eligible activities for
this are environmental remediation activities, things
like soil cleanup, groundwater cleanup, soil vapor mitigation,
asbestos abatement and lead based paint abatement. And you can find more
information about that at the program website right there down
below. And then site assessment grants,
that is another program that we have as well that accepts
rolling applications throughout the year. It doesn't have a deadline. It's more of just there's a
certain amount of funding for each year and we kind of accept
applications until that funding runs out. And so we are still accepting
applications and this one is more for environmental
assessment. So it's kind of the free before
you clean up. It's kind of just wanting to
investigate your project site and funding phase one,
environmental site assessments, Phase 2 limited environmental
sampling, response action plans, RAP development and some radon
testing.

And you can also see the program
website right there down below. And so just want to share also
those two as two other solicitations that you can apply
into for your project in the next slide. I think that might be. Well, yeah, I just want to jump
in on SAG here. So this is a really great
opportunity for emerging developers. Like Carmel said, it's only
eligible for nonprofits and emerging developers. So big developers cannot apply
for this. And it's really like the step
before you apply for environmental cleanup, right? So you have to learn what's on
your site first before to learn if you need anything more.

And a lot of lenders require
phase one at least and they may require a Phase 2. So if you already own a site,
this is a great opportunity to kind of expand your pre
development funding as well. Thank you, Carmel. Yes. Thank you for the clarification,
Max. I also wanted to share, sorry,
if you could go back 2 slides, the site assessment grants,
those are, we do that in partnership with Minnesota
Brownfields who really manages this program in partnership with
us. And so if you go on to that
site, you'll be able to see kind of where you're able to start
that application and they have kind of their own documents
system.

And that is different from all
the Zoom Grants applications that we provide. And so Environmental Response
Fund, it's also a few Zoom Grants. And then Critical Corridors is
also on Zoom Grants as well. And you'll see application
buttons on the specific program that sites for that. So yeah, and that's it for me. I don't think I have any more
slides here. So, oh, you have a few for the
background of Critical Corridors. We can we can skip them if you
want to. We can skip that. Sorry, I may have not removed
that that price. And then, Max, would you mind
going over pre veiling like wage just quickly? Yeah. So Ramsey County has a
prevailing wage ordinance. So anything with construction
labor hours with an award over $25,000 will trigger our
prevailing wage ordinance.

And that basically means that
all the people doing construction on a project have
to get paid a certain wage. We'll work with whoever is
awarded to determine, help determine what those wages may
be. And this is actually a complaint
based process. So if the county attorney's
office receives complaints from workers on your construction
site, that will that may open up an investigation and would have
to you'd have to show all your payroll and things like that. So where a general contractor
might. So this is more just to let you
know that we do have a prevailing wage ordinance right
now. All right, we have made it to
the end with three minutes to spare. I'm going to in the slideshow,
stop sharing. Actually, you know what, let's
go back to the top. Just give you something to look
at while I'm answering these questions. I'm actually realizing that
there were some questions shared in the chat while I was speaking
about what I meant by a reimbursement basis. And so I, I want to also
reiterate that Critical Corridors is a grant.

And so we have a reimbursement
form that you would be filling out. So you would basically be paying
for these expenses 1st and then we will be reimbursing you for
those expenses. And so I just wanted to
reiterate that it's we are kind of our default is a grant, but
if it makes more sense for it to be a loan when we would kind of
kind of not have a reimbursement basis quite, then we can also
chat about that if you are awarded funding. So I hope that clarifies that
question there. Max. I don't see very many questions. Yeah. How long do you have to submit
that form for reimbursement And I'm typing it. It's just taking me too long to
tie.

How long sorry is your question
when you need to submit reimbursements by so say I'm
slow, I can be slow and I've spent the money. How how long do I have before I
can't get the reimbursement anymore? Oh, got it. OK. So I believe that our timeline
is we need to make sure you get that reimbursement, that check
sent to you within two weeks. I believe that will be kind of
outlined in your agreement that you would be signing with us. And yes, I'm pretty sure it's
two weeks, but I can also get back to you on that just to
double check and kind of read through our agreements again
just to make sure. Oh, no, I mean, how long do I
have to submit the form to you as the person who's received the
grant? My bad. OK. And so you, I guess as your
project progresses, you can submit reimbursements whenever
that makes the most sense for you. We do, we do prefer that we
don't just give you like say $100 for each little thing to
kind of group reimbursements a bit more.

And so you don't necessarily
have a timeline of when you need to submit reimbursements by we
kind of as we take them, we'll kind of review the
reimbursements that you're testing for and then we'll send
that to finance to send you a check. And so we can chat about what
makes the most sense for your project in terms of
reimbursement basis. But often times our grantees do
submit monthly reimbursements or quarterly reimbursements,
whatever makes the most sense for them and their project. So I hope that answers. Oh and also reimbursements can
be given through projects after award dates. And so our avoid dates for this
round is in early December.

Any activities that happen after
that avoid dates say it's December 3rd, anything that
happens December 4th and onward, then you can request
reimbursement for that. And so even if we don't have an
agreement fully executed yet that that will still be eligible
for reimbursement and we'll be able to cover that for you. So, yeah, All right. I am open for one question for
EDD before we end today because we it is 11:00.

OK, I must have been done really
great at presenting because none of you have any questions. If you have anything in the next
day or so, please make sure that you send me an e-mail so that I
can get attached to the frequently asked questions
addendum. Otherwise, I hope everybody has
a great day and a great weekend. I look forward to reviewing your
applications. Thank you. You can stop recording..

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